The Big Questions

The big questions are:
1. How did I get here?
2. How did we get here?
3. What is the purpose of being here?
4. What should I do while I am here?

At the age of 27 years, about 43 years ago, I had made a big mess of my life. So I turned my life over to Jesus.
I am happy about how life has turned out for me and the family that God has given me.

Prior to salvation, I was quite undecided about those big questions listed above. Now, after walking with the Lord for 41 years, I have managed to answer those questions to my satisfaction. There are, however, a few questions hovering somewhat unresolved in my mind.
For instance, as pertaining to the big question #2 above—how did we get here?—I do subscribe to the biblical explanation, although I do not understand it. I cannot comprehend all that is being described in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis.



I do understand, and accept as true, that very first sentence of the biblical revelation:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The verses that follow confuse me every time I try to impose order in my mind about the sequence through which our Creator did his creative work. This confusion does not really bother me. But it does fascinate me to ponder that subject.
Cutting to the chase—that is to say—the end of the book or the end of my life, the big truth that has been shown to me is that I will live eternally after passing through this life’s death.
How do I know this?
As the old song sings. . . the Bible tells me so.
The Word tells me what I really need to know: there is one man in the history of the world who survived death itself, and lived to tell about it:

Jesus.

This is a matter of belief, and I do believe it, thank God. I have been given the faith to believe in my resurrection from death, because Jesus himself has already shone the way—has been there and done that— and has passed that privilege of overcoming death along to me and to anyone else who believes what he has said about it, and demonstrated by his Resurrection.
Now, getting to the point of why I write on this particular day, year of our Lord 2020, March 3. . . while I have been fortunate enough to answer those big questions, there are still a few curiosity points that bounce around in my mind and my soul as I live and breathe in this earthly life.

For Instance, what about that creation sequence that is is described in Genesis?
People have been wondering about it, talking about it for thousands of years. In the last two centuries, speculations about question #2 above—how did we get here?—have taken a wider swath of variation than ever before. As far as I can see, this widening of theories and enquiries is prompted by two main developments in our collective human database—
1.) the discovery of geologic time, which scientifically explains how our earth was continuously rearranged by huge tectonic and geologic forces over millions of years. 
2.) Darwin’s discovery of natural selection in the biological developments of life in nature.
As a believer in Jesus, I have no problem with either of these scientific discoveries. I believe these discoveries are merely a human way of classifying the universal and life principles that God set in motion millions of years ago.
For example: Genesis reports, in verse 1:24:

Then God said, ‘ Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind.’

This is just an old-fashioned way of saying: God designed into his creation a written code for ordering the development of life: DNA.


So I hope you’re tracking with me on this. I realize that some of my believing brethren do not subscribe to this interpretation. But that’s okay; we’re not going to agree on everything. By ’n by, we’ll still celebrate our eternal life together with Jesus because of what he endured in sacrificing his perfect life at Calvary.
But the reason I am writing this today is: an amazing thing happened this morning. I had a funny little revelation while reading in Genesis. 
In Genesis 2, we learn the truth that:

“. . . the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.,  The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man whom He had formed.”

So we learn that Adam—and later Eve, were a special creation, placed in a special place, for a special, divinely determined destiny. But Adam and Eve screwed that arrangement up when they opted for knowledge instead of truth.
So our Creator had to suspend their special status. Consequently, he ejected them from the Garden; they had to  go out and make their way by the sweat of their brow like  all those other humans who had evolved out there in the wild wild world.
A little further down in the scripture we learn more about historical human developments. From Genesis 6:

“Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves . . .”

Who were those “sons of God”? They were the offspring of the Creator’s special creation in Paradise, the children of Adam and Eve.
We are told the names of the created couple's first three sons: Cain, Abel and Seth.
These boys were, categorically, the “sons of God,” because their parents did not carry the same genetic imprint as those other men and women who originated “east of Eden,” outside the gates of Paradise.

Now just because they were “sons of God” does not mean they necessarily acted like it. You may remember that Cain killed Abel, and that God had a serious discussion with him about what was to happen next. But then God had mercy on Cain, even though he had committed such a heinous deed by killing his own brother, who had not deserved such a fate.
 God gave Cain a second chance anyway, by releasing him out into mankind to get a new start.
In Genesis 4, the story continues:

  “Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain had relations with his wife, and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch, and he built a city. . .”

For a very long time, I had wondered about . . .
 a.) these “sons of God”—who they were and where they came from? Answer: They came from Adam and Eve.
and b.) the land of Nod, and the people who populated that land? Answer: They were humans who evolved through God’s natural selection process.
Now I understand more about reconciling the revealed Truth of our Creator with what we ourselves have scientifically understood  about life on this amazing planet.



Glass half-Full

Money's Swan Song

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Well a lot has happened since then.

Our Creator had done some amazing creating through that original sparkle, and has given us the wherewithal to jump in there and participate in the creative playing out of all things in our domain.

The power to create was not given to other species on our planet—only to us.

We humans have done some pretty amazing things with our God-given talents.

After hunting and gathering, we planted, harvested and ate the fruits of our labors.

in the course of history, we have moved far beyond just eating, drinking and homesteading.

It’s been ever onward and upward for us, since we got a hold of this divine spark thing that we call creativity.

We’ve built pyramids and great walls, temples, mosques, cathedrals, skyscrapers, great bridges and machines that move across those bridges.

We’ve built roads, rails, blazed trails, had great successes and fails. We’ve devised tools, schools, lots of rules; we’ve forged implements, arts, coins, currency, and we’ve maintained a steady errancy.

We’ve painted, sculpted, interpreted the real world as works of art. We’ve disrupted, interrupted, corrupted and upended nature itself.

Now our carbonized creation turns—in some ways—against us.

Back at the olden time, when we received the power to cultivate earth, we were instructed to subdue those elements of the natural world that seem to be active against us—like, say, lions and tigers and bears. Such critters we had to subdue, so they would not make mincemeat of us.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, tsunamis, etc.— these adverse forces we could not subdue, so we took shelter. As the ages rolled by, our sheltering instincts developed into elaborate structures.

And we have done pretty well with that. We homo sapiens have taken control of the planet—or at least we think we have. The planet may yet rise up to bite us in the ass. We shall see what happens with that.

A major sea-change that happened along the long odyssey of our progress was: we devised ways to substitute real goods into artificial representations of wealth.

Better known as making money.

Land, food, livestock, clothing, shelter and such commodities that are essential for survival—all these are now exchanged by monies, currencies, paper-backed assets. And the latest thing is: electrons seem to be our new currency.

Our ancestors carved trails out of the wilderness. They gathered grains, sowed seeds, domesticated animals, and sold to neighbors or merchants all the produce thereof.

As those primary goods coalesced over the ages as markets, their value was measured and traded as money. This we called trade. Then we called it commerce, then business, and now. . . economics. We humans invented the system a long time ago because . . . well, because . . . I don’t why.

lt’s just what we do I guess.

For one thing, it made the process of manipulating wealth easier.

In economics, wealth was and is evaluated in terms of dollars or yuan or yen, or marks, francs, drachmas, denarii, zlotys, rubles, pesos, pounds sterling, etc.

Euros are the new kid on the block. They seem to have trouble making that one work.

The difficulty with retaining true value in these currencies is related to the fact that they’re—in real survival life terms—not really worth anything.

They only represent wealth. But they are not really the real thing.

I say the EU is having trouble establishing the value of their Euro. This goes way back.

The Brits, for instance, were having trouble in the 1930’s retaining the value of their pound. It seemed that their constructed currency could not maintain its value compared to gold.

Who the hell can compete with gold?

Gold goes way back.

Way back.

The second chapter of Genesis, for instance, mentions gold.

“The name of the first (river) is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.”

I suppose there’s a reason why gold goes way back in our history. Even though you can’t eat it, drink it, or keep your household warm with it, it is . . .

quite shiny.

Beautiful stuff, that gold. Precious!

Back to the Brits. As the world economy was falling apart back in the ’30’s, many savvy persons decided they would trade their British currency—pounds—for gold.

So many savvies were wanting to get back to gold, that the British government quit selling it.

What would happen after such an arrangement?

I think it was that fellow Keynes who figured out that—guess what—the economy just kept on cranking—all the goods and stuff and commodities and products and financial instruments and whatnot—just kept swirling around in international commerce.

The world didn’t stop turning. Business just kept on doing their thing. Rich get richer and poor get poorer and hey what else is new.

What else is new? Nothing. Nothing new under the sun.

Guess what. We didn’t really need gold to back currency! It was just a phase we were going through—the golden age of gold.

Back in ’73, Nixon pulled the same trick as the Brits had done in the ’30’s. He and his Bretton Woods powers-that-be decided we could no longer afford to sell gold for dollars. Too many folks wanted the gold instead of the dollars.

So we see that man-made currencies are not foolproof, and the gold bugs are always trying to make a comeback.

Money is a habit; that’s all. A very old habit.

Folks are born and bred into this modern economic world.  We are commercialized, or socialized (depending on your politics) to just keep spending those pounds and dollars and cents and euros and yuan and yen and SDRs and thusandsuch.

Nowadays we don’t really even use the money any more. Now it’s just electrons flowing around that represent debits and credits.

And that’s why—I suppose— the central banks of the world can keep cranking out their reserves, because the right to assign value is now reserved to them. It has nothing to do with gold or fiscal guarantee.

The central banks, in the fatal footsteps of every financial crisis, have reserved the right to “create money out of thin air.”

I told you we were creative!

The greatest discovery of the modern world:  we don’t even need anything to take the place of gold.

Money is just an old habit we have; we’ll never put it to rest. So somebody has to be “printing” it somewhere.  We spend so much money that all the .govs of the world are running deep debts trying to keep all the citizens fat 'n happy.

There’s so much liquidity in the world today that the dark swan of excess has smooth sailing. 

Someday, some Leninish strongman will come along and dissolve all that debt into even more liquidity.

It will be a meal ticket for everybody. Yes, Virginia, there is a free lunch, doesn’t matter who’s paying for it.

It’s only money.

Glass half-Full

what Original artist did

While universe was expanding in all directions, Creator chose one lump and began working with it, rearranging its underneath mass so that water could rise to the surface. The hydrogen/oxygen element would move in a purposeful way instead of just sloshing around.

Creator spun that world into motion so that the sunlight which struck its surface would brighten half of world for a day while allowing the other half to return to darkness during the same interval.

Thus did this division between the lightened side of world and the darkened side establish a cycle which would become known to us as day and night.

Then Creator used the interaction of sunlight and water to introduce an earthly cycle by which water could morph between two different states: liquid and vapor. The liquid would generally flow on, and within, the surface, while the vapor would rise to celestial functions.

This was a heavenly arrangement, although it was happening on crude earth—pretty cool, definitely an improvement over the old lump. Let us just call it day and night. Makes sense to me. You?

Creator was inspired, and so, kept going with it, stirring the flowing waters, gathering them together and thus separating the water from a new thing that was emerging—dry land.

Thus did we have earth and seas. Once again. . . pretty cool, and btw, cooling; by this stage, progressive processes had definitely been set into motion to produce something worthy of a good narrative.

But Creator didn’t stop there. Next thing you know, from out of this developing earth—this interplay between light and dark, active and passive, wet and dry—here comes a new kind of stuff having the coding wherewithal to sprout new stuff never before seen or heard of. Long story short—plant life that could and would regenerate itself on a regular purpose so that Creator could go on to bigger and better things. Awesome!

Through the veggies and their seeds, it was obvious that things were getting better on earth, through the continuing interplay of this very predictable, dependable alternating cycle between light and dark, day and night, active and passive, living and dying.

All in all, not bad for a day’s work, as we say out here in flyover country.

But, hey, that was just the beginning. . .

Glass half-Full

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

Believing, or figuring it all out?

You may believe, as I do, that we were created long ago in the image of God.
Or you may think that we evolved, even longer ago, from lower life forms,
Since we don’t really really know exactly how it all spun out, let’s consider these two scenarios for a moment.
What if one of our hominid progenitors were set aside in a select place and given a “special” touch by the LifeForce, so that the new being would share a certain spiritual characteristic or two with its Creator? . . .
instead of being just, you know, another dumb critter.
What if some of us, caught up in this mysterious thing called human history, chose to identify with the special Creation?
What if others of us just continued to evolve the rough-and-tumble way, acknowledging our primeval struggle through the long ranks of evolving, biological creatures. . . vertebrates, primates, hominids, neanderthals, and ultimately homo sapiens?
What if the Creator (aka the LifeForce) set up both paths of human development—one being “special’ and the other being the long, gradual process that Mr. Darwin sought to explain?
And what if, according to our human predicament, you were able to choose which model of development you would subscribe to, and thus pattern your life by?
Which would you choose?
Come let us reason together.
Could it be that the LifeForce ignited that first big shbang, and then later selected a spot from whence to spark something new, called “life”, beginning at the very lowest level? and then took a sort of sabbath break from creating while allowing the life process to move forward in a natural way over a vast expanse of time?
On the other hand could it be that, at some point in said development, that LifeCreator sovereignly made a supra-natural selection, setting a particular primate aside and, sprinkling in the dust of the earth, and initiated thereby a spiritual, civilizing character through the soulish man and his other half, the loverly (wo)man?
I’m thinking that scenario would render some of us Sons or Daughters of God, while others would be sons or daughters of nature.
What if—way back when— the Sons of God saw the daughters of Men? And then, finding them desirable, chose to hookup with them?
What would we have then?
Perhaps we have a human race torn between simply believing versus trying to figure it all out—a homo sapiens species somewhat divided between them who settle for the simple wonder of believing . . .


versus them who propose to analyze it and document the results:


Which would you be?
I have made my choice, because I have not yet been able to figure it all out.  How about you?
 
King of Soul

The Mysterious Door

The great physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, had a problem in 1867. It was a very old problem; many had tried to solve it before he came along. It wasn’t actually his problem to fix, but merely to figure it out; his objective was to try and determine who or what had already solved "the problem". Because, you see, the matter had already been taken care of long, long ago.

Otherwise none of us would be here; nothing would be here.

The actual problem-solver who had worked it out was not thought to be credible at the time of Maxwell's work. The problem-solver's presumptuous  representatives had made such a mess of things.

Consequently, in the 1800’s, the scientific community placed little or no credence in what the so-called Church had to say about anything—especially presumably scientific matters like the origin and unfolding of the Universe.

19th-century scientists and other serious researchers like Darwin, Marx and many others were all in a tizzy about throwing the God idea out with the bath water. It was a leap of faith instead of a rational inference. They did have some legitimate arguments about the Church’s faith-based input, because the so-called Church had made such a mess of things while they were running the show back in the middle ages. Two especially bad screwed-ups the Church had done happened when they had, earlier, rejected the findings of Copernicus and Galileo.

But you betcha the mystery still lay unsolved when the science boys took over, long about 1800 or so. They were working on the mystery intently. And so Mr. Maxwell, diligent Scot that he was, took hold of the mantle in 1867, as many others were doing at the time, and he gave it a shot—solving the riddle.

The question of how all this happened.

This existence, this world we live in—how did it get here?

There was, you see, a piece missing in this great puzzle of existence.

In the chain of events that ostensibly took place when the universe was made, there was a missing link that no one had been able to figure out. So, James Clerk Maxwell tackled the question, striving to solve the riddle of the missing link.

Therefore Dr. Maxwell came up with what he called the "Demon." My unschooled opinion says he could have chosen a better word. . . something like what Rene Descartes had termed it, the Prime Mover.

As Peter Hoffman gives an explanation of Maxwell's work, the Scot posed this profound question:

“How can molecular machines extract work from the uniform-temperature environment of cells without violating the second law of thermodynamics?”

In other words, how can atoms and molecules organize themselves to become something more than what they already are—just a bunch of damn molecules kicking around like unemployed vagrants?

Or to put it yet another way: How could life have come out of dead particles?

And so, as Dr. Maxwell pondered the problem of the missing link in 1867, he came up with the idea of (what was later called Maxwell’s. . .) Demon.

Peter M. Hoffman explains it, in his 2012 book, Life’s Ratchet,    https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00A29OFHS/ref       this way:

“Maxwell’s demon . . . was a a tiny hypothetical creature who controlled a little door separating two gas-filled chambers, which initially have the same average temperature. The job of the demon was to separate gas molecules into fast and slow molecules. . . Starting from a uniform-temperature system, the demon had created a temperature gradient—making one side cold and the other side hot. . . This temperature gradient could now be used to do work if a little turbine could be placed in the demon’s door.”

The analogy of a demon is not, of course, to be taken literally. James Maxwell was a brilliant physicist whose work paralleled Einstein’s. His use of the hypothetical creature is merely a literary device to communicate the function of an unidentified catalyst that makes something constructive happen in an environment in which (theoretically) nothing can happen.

Obviously something did happen, back in the days of universe origin, or we wouldn’t be here. Nothing would be here, if the problem had not been solved. Someone, demon or otherwise, must have worked it out.

Rene Descartes, a mathematician who lived in the 1600’s, had stumbled upon the same dilemma. He had posited the idea of a Prime Mover, which seemed pretty logical at the time.

Still does, if you ask me.

An original cause (as in cause in effect), that caused everything else to happen, big bang blah blah etc. and so forth and so on.

But what diligent mathematicians and scientists neglected to mention was that the problem had long ago been solved by a mysterious entity who had been so erroneously represented by the so-called Church: God.

Not a demon, but God. The demons were the created beings who tried to pull rank on the Creator, YWHeh.

Therefore, in order to now— in the 21st-century— give credit where credit is due . . .

I say it was a notable accomplishment what YWHeh did, when he solved the problem of the missing link, way back in time. And he said so.

He said it was good— in the first chapter of his bestseller, Genesis.

It was good when He separated light from darkness. Genesis 1:4:

"God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness."

This "separation" function is no chance development. It needed to happen. It's no coincidence that Maxwell's demon and Creator YWHeh both are depicted as having "separated" something from something else. . .  The Separator's accomplishment was functionally something like Maxwell’s presumed demon's task of separating molecules into two different energy levels in order to create

“a temperature difference between the chambers without expending work, thus seemingly violating the second law.”

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is the law that YWHeh seems to have broken when he started the ball of the universe rolling. But it didn’t matter if he broke that “Law” because he set up the whole kitnkiboodle anyway, back in the Day. That 2nd Law of Thermodynamics was an idea that we came up to try and explain it all. It wasn't something that YWHeh declared when he declared Let there be light and so forth and so on.

On Day 1 (whatever that means to you) the Prime Mover separated light from darkness, and the rest is history.

Not bad for a day’s work, YHWeh. Keep up the good work.

 

Glass Chimera 

A Big Bangin' Good Time It Was!

 In the beginning Yahoweh banged out the big universe, E=mc², and while doing so he set aside one particular chunk of it to form the earth.

The earth was initially formless and void of life, and darkness occluded all the deep stuff that, really, when you get right down to it, had some great potentiality, but it needed a little help, and some serious diversity, so the impressively energetic activating Spirit Yahoweh began activating the elements and he was lol at the emergence of helium so he got into into mating the hydrogen with  oxygen and before you knew it Yahoweh was, like, skimming all over the surface of the waters.

Its true what’s been reported on both MSBNB and Foxxy that Yahoweh did in fact tame the electromagnetic energy that had begun banging around wildly: Let there be light, he said and guess what, yo, there it was: light. Things were brightening up.

And yo, check it out, y’all: wherever the light struck earth— Yahoveh called it day, and wherever the darkness prevailed on earth he called night. Nice little back and forth thing going on—in and out of the bright spot—from the very start. Some great possibilities here.

Now it just so happened that  the way the earth popped out—it had this little spinning action going on, which would in the long run make things really interesting for us homo sapiens later. And so the  revolving motion of the earth brought forth a very cool  morning-morphing-into-evening scenario.

Therefore, since it would be easier for us to see what was happening in the daytime part of this developing arrangement, we call that whole once-around-the-axis revolution a “day,” meaning, you know, the whole 24-hour deal. . . as in, another day in the life, eh? You trackin’ with me?

But hey! Creator was just getting started, y’all.

Yahoweh spoke: Let there be a, like, an atmosphere in the midst of the waters, and let it get intimately involved with the waters and separate some waters from other waters.

And so Yahoweh breathed out this very expansive atmosphere, which retained some waters as hanging together and staying in the flow, while other waters drifted on up into the troposphere to do their rarified atmospheric thing. You can’t keep a good molecule down, and they’re gettin’ high just thinking about it.

Anyway, Yahoveh knew that, on down the road, folks would gaze up into that airy firmament and be inspired by the amazing expanse of it, so he gave it an impressive name: heaven. Meanwhile, back at  what would later become the ranch, that revolving day/night configuration was shifting into second gear. Therefore, by ’n by the second day was just as incredible as the first had been, if not more-so.

Yahoweh spoke: Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And hey! It was good! Pangaea, baby, that’s what I’m talking about!

Yahoweh called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters he called seas, and he saw that it was good.

It’s all good!

Pickin’ up steam, Yahoweh kept a-goin’. Let the earth sprout vegetation, he declared. We’ll be needin’ some flora for these folks, y’all:  plants yielding their seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit with their stamens and carpels and fruit chromosomes and stranded DNA embedded in their seeds; and so on and so on.

And so on Pangaea was brought forth vegetation, plants yielding their genetic progeny

and trees bearing seeds with tree-deoxyribonucleic coding so that all subsequent tree-cells would get the message that God had spoke and he said it was good, y’all!  Propogate!

Meanwhile, down at the axis, that earth just kept spinnin’ along and there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

Then Yahoweh said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and even years!

And let them lights light up the earth. And it was so.

And within all this arrangement, Yehoweh set up two special lights: the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night.

That lesser  light is the one by which Tony Bennett or some ole crooner croons the tune: when the moon’s in your eye like a big pizza pie—that’s amoré!

Oh, and btw, while Yehoweh was doing all this, he also, like, got a creative handle on all them whizzing chunks of big bang detritus that were barreling through space and he, like, made the stars, maybe as an afterthought, I dunno.

He did very generously open up the heavens so that later organismic developmentals (see trailer) would get a little light on the subject, and make adjustments in their routine for the night phase because nights would be a cool change-of-pace from the day-to-day routine, because we could look up at the stars and be inspired by them and make up stories about Orion and the BiG Dipper and the Big Bang and whatnot.

There was evening and there was morning and that’s the way it is, fourth day, hey hey hey! Stay tuned for a fabulous 3-day weekend!

Glass Chimera

Fishy, fishy, swimming around

Fishy, fishy, swimming around,

in the site and in the sound;

what venturesome hand or eye

could encode thy swishing symmetry?



From what current, sloshing seas

did you swim aground 'neath GMO trees?

On what slickery limbs did you then crawl

to spy out land and stand up tall?



And what shoulder, and what art

could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy fins began to crawl

what encoding hand did guide it all?



What the software? what the mode?

In which startup was it written, your code?

What bold investor? what venture tax-free

dared to make investment in thee?



When companies tossed out their dividends

and water'd the world with their vested friends:

did they rejoice their work to see?

Did them who wove the web weave thee?



Fishy, fishy, swimming around,

in the site and in the sound;

what human hand or eye

could create they swishing symmetry?



Glass Chimera

Air upon a strung string

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

Somewhere in the world virtuoso

fingers

dance upon stretched

string,

string strung upon neck of

wood.

Would you listen to it.

Somewhere in the world craftsman

fingers

carve upon some shapening piece so

peace

reigns upon a great grand old hall,

if only for a moment,

all

ears and eyes are trained upon

artisan

person pulling passion out of

string strung on

wood.

Would you hear it if you

could

not that you should

of course.

Coarse

wood sawn from spruce still

produce

sublime sound to

astound our attentive eyes and ears;

fears

fade as rapt attention in

suspension of all stress while all the

rest

is strung upon the tender breast of

humankind.

Behind

the finery and excellence you see rugged old

tree

whose seed was slung upon an earthen floor

for

Creator God to raise a tree, as

He

will yet raise you and me

and stretch us upon his neck of time,

fine

as gutty string doth

bring

music to our heart and mind.

Surely we all will someday shine

fine

in God's good time.

Glass half-Full

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

In the Moment

In the moment of inspiration,
in that potent encounter with
the creating inclination of the universe,
in that moment, say,
as Beethoven listened at his piano
while stark moonlight shine through
the frosty window,
and struck upon his keys--
his dark tones and light strokes
provoking
a sonata of exquisite beauty and
tender moonlit passion;

Or in that vibration
when the musician touches his bow
to strings;

Or when the artist brushes paint on blank
canvas;

Or when the writer flings his words
on electrons of exquisite power--
in that moment,
do you
attribute it to the withering I, me, my?
or to the source of all creation
as Handel did,
or Bach.

As for me and mine,
in that precious moment
we are so small
and trembling, that we draw back the curtain
to peek
beyond data-folding neo-cortex,
beyond eternity's veil.

Order minus Chaos = Passion

As I was listening to WDAV today, an airy figment of Telemann music traveled through the radio and struck my ears. As it happened, the music plucked upon my very soul and, there I was, unexpectedly in the middle of the day, transported for a few minutes, back into the 18th century.

Not literally, of course, but in my mind. My thoughts escaped this present world of work and woe, and took refuge in an age long gone, a era of reason and order, long before the rude disruptions of world wars, global warmings and worldwide economic warnings.

Although there has always been an element of disarray and chaos in human activity, our hindsight view of the 1700s encompasses a world where composers like Telemann or Bach or Handel or Antonio Vivaldi could be seated at a musical instrument and, through intense toil and otherworldly inspiration, impose cryptic inked symbols onto a paper manuscript and thereby draw some amazingly expressive order out of the vast cosmos, by constructing a great work of music.

My all-time favorite is Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Here's the winter movement of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC-USAB530A&feature=related

Now, a few hours beyond that midday moment, the workday is over; the radio-induced flight of fancy has passed, and I sit at home sharing with you that time-travel moment--a sudden glimpse into 18th-century passion.

And I hope to remind us all that, out there in the midst of human noise and haste and confusion, someone somewhere has expressed passionate order by drawing it out of troublesome chaos. That happened three hundred years ago, and somewhere on earth, even now, some person or persons are deriving creative sense from the hopeless nonsense of our present world.

It's a little bit like touching that moment when Logos spoke electromagnetic light into existence from the dark void.


CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Dust of the ground, Elements of the earth

In his best-selling book, the Torah, which was later expanded to become the Bible, Moses wrote that God formed man from the dust of the ground.

In his best-selling book, the Origin of Species, which was later expanded to become a basis for evolutionary science, Darwin posited that man descended through natural selection from the elements of the earth.

What's the difference between these two traditions?

Mainly, the difference is that word "God."

Either way you look at it, mankind has a pretty muddy past, and probably a muddled future. However, if you accept the inclusion of "God" in your cosmology, your chances of getting cleaned up are probably better.

Glass half-Full

Planetary birth pangs

Out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about three or four miles down below the water surface, our planetary home gave birth to Hawaii.

As Father in Heaven had sewn within Mother Earth's deep crevices the seeds of creative planetary development, she cried out from the Deep in her anguish when the aweful time of delivery had come. With wailings of hot magma and rumblings of steamy contraction, Mama pushed out those volcanic islands-to-be. Spewing forth from her ocean floor, striving upward from her tectonic fissures, the nascent super-hot lava tumbled and rolled skyward from beneath its tectonic birthplace, into cold Pacific waters. Then, after a few million years of childlike submersion under watery tutelage, these pubescent islands stuck their stony little heads out into air and proclaimed to the birds and the stars that they had at last arrived, ready to be transformed as the land of the living.

Yesterday, we were walking on some of those rocky island shoulders. We watched with fascination as vehement Pacific waves pounded her dark lava extremities with ceaseless planetary fury, casting high cascades of spray into the blue sky with airy veils of aquamarine and silver-white brilliance. The basaltic wasteland whereon we trod was sculpted with moonish alacrity, revealing with otherworldly starkness layers of black, grey, reddish brown-- solid rock punctuated with massive boulders, cracky protrusions, some rounded by the rushing of the water and wind, others still sharp with the newness of elemental violence.

Then, there is was. A small carpet of vivid green something living, splayed upon the barren rock, growing as merrily as you please in the sunshine, with little orange-tipped teardrop succulent leaves spreading across the lithic void.

"That," said the traveler to his nephews and nieces, is the beginning of dirty old life.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

From hydrogen to iron is a long way

A man stands on the earth and looks up into the night sky. He sees the stars, the moon, the great expanse of space. He wonders at the immensity of it all, the brightness, the contrast, the arrangement of stars and heavenly bodies in the visible universe. He ponders it. He considers it all, from the perspective of one who knows a little something about how things seem to fit together here on earth. Could it have all just happened at random, or is there some grand design to it?

Yes.

I'm not the only person to have done this. Take, for instance, the famous progressive leader from antiquity, Moses. He started his best-selling book with this statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Let's compare this statement to Robert Hazen's statement in his brilliant best-selling book, The Story of Earth.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Story-Earth-Billion-Stardust/dp/0670023558

Mr. Hazen wrote, "In the beginning, all space and energy and matter came into existence from an unknowable void."

So compare: What Moses calls "heavens and earth," Robert calls "space, matter, and energy." They are both writing about the same thing, which is all that stuff out there that we're not sure about exactly what it is and cannot really prove how it got there.

Faith and Science are equally clueless.

The scientific method, assuming we cannot know everything but positing that we can know some things, then proceeds to prove, by successive experimentation what we can know, one hypothesis at a time. Makes sense to me.

Faith, on the other hand says, there's a lot out there I don't know, but I do understand this: It didn't all just happen. There is an order to it, and, Whoever designed it included in the program a personal conviction within me that I didn't just randomly pop out of the stardust.

Pretty naive, n'est ce pas? I believe it.

So faith is one thing, and science, or knowledge, is another. One thing I like about science is: it is so very useful. Take, for instance, Mr. Hazen's very instructive scientific book. His introduction and first chapter have communicated to me light years of knowledge about the universe that I had not understood before. His explanation, based on the elements, and the Periodic Table by which we successfully contextualize their intricate interactions in the physical world, starts with the simplest element, hydrogen. Mr. Hazen then guides us very simply and concisely through the mysterious process of nuclear fusion. Fusion combined small quantities of the original, simplest element--hydrogen--to produce helium. Then, by continuing fusion, other more complex elements such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen were created, and ultimately life itself.

That last phrase, "life itself" is where misunderstandings between us Faith-holders and some Scientists tend to arrive at different conclusions. No problem for me though. I believe that Moses could stand on a sandy beach, as I did yesterday, and know, yes know, that indeed "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. But hey, even though I'm a person of faith, I can still move on, and learn some stuff. I wish I could have seen this cumulative hydrogen/fusion stuff in sixth grade instead of starting our science class with the atom, which was like starting a great story on page 7 instead of page 1.

But back to the future, or excuse me, to what is happening just now. . .here is something I learned yesterday, after standing on a Hawaii beach and contemplating the universe, and then reading Mr. Hazen's fascinating book:

"Iron is as far as this nuclear fusion process can go. When hydrogen fuses to produce helium, when helium fuses to produce carbon, and during all the other fusion steps, abundant nuclear energy is released. But iron has the lowest energy of any atomic nucleus. As when a blazing fire transforms every bit of fuel to ash, all the energy has been used up. Iron is the ultimate nuclear ash…"

In other words, after all that high-heat nuclear goings-on after Big Bang but before earth, a big hunk of iron was left over when things cooled down a bit. And that chunk of mineral/rock was (and yes, I am vastly oversimplifying this) our earth!

Praise God! What a piece of work is earth.

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

Something from Nothing

Today, I am going to expose to you my ignorance of quantum mechanics in the study of physics. Furthermore, you will plainly see that my childish grasp of the physicists' exposition of this phenomenon is woefully inadequate, even naive. But it doesn't matter if you can detect right off the bat how blatantly dense is my take on the matter. You see, I am one of those who short circuits the rational pursuit of truth by inserting faith in a Creator where there should by all hypothetical propositions be an equation, or some hard-earned experimental data.

It all started with this: http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201201132, wherein Lawrence Krauss is discussing the contents of his new book, A Universe From Nothing, with Ira Flatow, and Lawrence makes such potentially gravitational statements as "Nothing is unstable," meaning that nothingness itself is unstable, insofar as that it has a habit of generating stuff out of itself (nothing) out in space.

"Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them."

Spontaneous generation, we used to call it, and thinking about it is, as Lawrence points out, a little bit "like counting angels on the head of a pin."

But somewhere in the half-life of Lawrence's broadcast/webcast explanations, what really set my neurons hurdling into photonic frenzies is this idea that an electron, which is whirring somewhat orbitally around a proton, cannot be adequately assessed in terms of its position in relation to the proton, or in relation to, for that matter (haha) anything else. This is because, as soon as the analyst, or scientist, casts light on the subject particle(wave) in question, in order to view the electron and make some kind of determinating statement about it, the light (the energetic effect of the light) itself alters the quarky little rascal, rendering its position indeterminable! Imagine that! Like trying to herd cats.

And Lawrence also mentioned:

"Whole universes can pop out of nothing, by the laws of quantum mechanics."

Ha! I was stumped.

I tried, well into the evening and the nighttime, to wrap my warpish mind around all this, which must resemble a light beam trying to keep up with a neutrino, as the French say in Switzerland. I was getting a little short on the fourth dimension while trying to capture the essence of those quarks in question and fathom their unquantifiable fidgettance. And then, as if that weren't enough produndity to drag my faltering comprehension into a blackhole, Paul Krugman's recent comparison between Austrian economics and the 18th-century theory of phlogiston in chemistry popped out of nowhere, not to mention Higgs-Boson confusion on top of that, and...

while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping. . . and the faith-based short circuit suddenly presented itself, when my friend Dave sent out his daily ditty, http://outdeep.com/2012/01/13/light-in-our-heart , which started with this conveniently accessible concept:

For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)

to which my friend had also added:

"The sovereign creativity of God to bring forth what to us would have been unthinkable is staggering. This artistic endeavor of the Divine is used to illustrate the similar work of enlightening my heart."

Wherefore, I in my lay-like confusion decided to just go with that, call it a day, and hit the hay, where my wife was so peacefully sleeping in preparation for today's nursing duties. I had found a universal incarnation that I could wrap my weary mind around. Now this morning, the sun shines brightly on snow out in the back .40. Thank God for a beautiful winter day here in the inexplicable universe. Ignorance is, as they say, bliss. Grits is good too, for breakfast, with cheese.

Glass half-Full

Gift of Soul, and so on...

If you think people evolved from lower life forms, then please understand that this creative work was revealed long ago--before science was invented-- when it was written very simply that "the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground."

And if you think that hominids such as Neanderthals or Cro-magnons lived on earth before Adam and Eve, then please wrap your mind around the fact that at a certain selected point in time, the Creator-- the One who had written the double-helixed codes of life itself--touched a man and gave him an essential gift--something very new and unprecedented. God placed within the man, Adam, a gift that would forever define the quality and direction of human life.

We call it soul. From that point on, men and women became less like the animals, more like God.

"God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

This gift of soul set men and women apart from other life forms, as its metamorphosing wonder formed within them self-consciousness and God-awareness. This had never been possible in the animal existence.

The soul-enabled path of higher development now available to us through God's shared creative work led ultimately to a new requirement--the need for law.
Through Moses, Law was given, so that we might civilize the world and live peaceably and productively within it.

The subsequent progress that sprung up through law-enabled civilization-- and its incessant entropy toward downfall-- led ultimately to a new epiphany--the need for Spirit, and not just any spirit, but a holy and righteous Spirit.

Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the holy Spirit was given. Are you ready for this?

Quantum creation, by design mechanics

"He doesn't believe in evolution," spoken about a political candidate.

How about baseball--does he believe in baseball?
"Well, yes. I think he likes the Cowboys, er, I mean the Rangers. And he likes the Yankees. I mean...Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, ya gotta love 'em, and Yogi Berra, who said 'the future ain't what it used to be.'"
Probably not the Red Sox then. He probably doesn't like the Red Sox, if he likes the Yankees?
"Uh, no, he'd say anybody but the Red Sox.But maybe the White Sox. I think he likes them."

What about apple pie? Does he believe in apple pie?
"Well, yes, probably. I mean...this is America, for God's sake."

The flag--does he believe in the flag?
"Absolutely."
What about Chevrolet? Would he drive a chevy to the levee?
"Actually, he drives a Ford. Have you driven one lately? Besides, I don't think he can afford a Volt."

How 'bout mom? Does he believe in motherhood?
"Oh, yes. Surely he does. I mean, who doesn't? How else would we have gotten here? Everybody has a mama."

But not by evolution.
"No."
What about Natural Selection?
"Oh...sure. Naturally. I'm pretty sure he believes in that. And he may even acknowledge natural selection and evolution as two of the plethora of natural processes that contribute to biological development, within creation."
So he believes in Creation?
"Sure. How can you not? I mean, its all around us."

Then you believe in Intelligent Design?
"Oh yeah, I've always had a Mac. I use it for everything."
You're not into Windows, then?
"Nah. Any Windows-based system can't hold a candle to a Mac. But I will say this about windows: Whenever God closes a door, he opens a window. I'm thankful for that."

Well ok then. I'm glad to hear it. Thanks for sharin'.
"Da nada, man. Its a free country."

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

from Relativity to Rock

As the big bang or whatever you want to call it manifested a universe through ever-widening time and space, Logos asserted, in the midst of diverging matter and energy, a creative force to countermand the default entropy. It was good.

So good, in fact, that Logos got excited and wanted to share the exuberance with someone. So Logos arranged a certain solar system so that it would fling out a planet upon which optimum conditions could evolve to produce sentient beings.

After those living entities had developed to an optimum condition, Logos breathed into one chosen specimen a new dimension called Spirit, which enabled the new species to communicate with Logos, which is why Logos referred to homo sapiens as being "in our image."

What that in our image attribute meant was: able to communicate with its creator. This was no small step for mankind.

One day many generations later an important turning point in the history of homo sapiens was reached. On a clear starry night, a certain very sensitive, intelligent man stepped out of his tent, looked up at the heavens and thought: This world, with its accompanying heavens and creatures, is quite impressive. I'd like to write a book about how it all happened, because my people have been wondering about its origins.

And Logos, reading his mind, replied: Good idea. I've been waiting for someone like you to come along. Sit down and start writing; I'll instruct you. I'll give you some material that will help the people understand what's going on in the universe, and will also help them to make a better life for themselves.

From our perspective several thousand years later, the man's opus was quite limited by his place and time. But he did a nice job of it, and managed to produce, with a little divine help, a best seller. You can still get a copy today.

His name was Moses.