Azerbaijan Journal

I am awake in another part of the globe wondering if my position in space changed as it is affects the matrix of my mind.  Ultimately all is one and I am an inter relational being interconnected by laws of physics and spirituality.  Yet here I am exposing myself to a different geo-orbital space and wondering if this will in some way affect me at a cellular level.
Obviously everything affects one at the psychological level. Even now, awake since 5:30 I'm hearing the moslem call to prayer outside my hotel in the still dark streets. Were I hunting in northern BC I'd not be able to shoot bucks as there is just a sliver of light but not sufficient to identify whether the animal has horns or not. This early morning has often been a time for prayer and meditation for me but then it became a time for a while to prepare for surgery. Today it's more often associated with wilderness and sailing.  The end of the night watch is a favourite time at sea.  I love the dawn.
Now a new day begins. Will I walk closer with you God? Will you waken my eyes, and ears, and smell to your presence? Will you kick me out of the reductionist materialistic cowardly way of seeing things within the limits of my own conception. Stretch me and awaken me to all that is sacred.  Lift me out of the abyss of my anxious self and hold me closer to you.  Here in this foreign place let me awaken to what is ever real and near.
I imagined that this was the land of Ghengis Khan.  I don't know if Alexander came here.  There were likely chariots at some time.  Surely in this old city the rich did the advanced artisan activities of their age, making tents,  carving, pottery, like our computer geeks gather today in some equivalency.
The site of the Garden of Eden is not far.  Mount Ararat nearby.  Pilgrims walked this way.  Always there was fishing and boats. I love port cities.  I loved being in Anthens and looking out on the ancient harbour there.  I wish I had a boat to ply these waters and sail a ways across this bay.  Once there were pirates and armies and traders.
Missionaries have come and gone.  There were always lovers. Families have raised children.  Governments have ruled. Mostly people did what had to be done to survive.  But always someone asked of God.
Intellectuals and saints and smart women were burned or speared.  Some ruled.  It's ever been confusing.
And here I am reminded of being in countless other walled cities, hoping one day to see the Great Wall of China.  The Romans had a similar wall for my northern Scottish forebears.  We were once the outsiders.  Always the insider outsider switches are being made like the cycles of the planets arctic cores of hot and cold times.  Slow heatings followed by dramatic rapid drops in temperature.
There is consciousness.  But all that Descartes could be certain of was "Cogito ergo sum" .  What ever else we know is speculation. The ones who insist most heartily can not know for even gravity is deeply unknown while fractures surely amaze the mathematician in each of us.
The atheists here have killed millions.  That was the living but abortions have been something terrible as well. Women who have aborted dozens of times speak of numbness. A devolution must occur as with killers.  Their hearts are hardened.
When a heart is hardened it is like the blind. Only the harshest realities are perceived.  No shades or pastels can be perceived.  There is no sensation on scarring.  The losses are unfathomable.
But all is manure.  A new generation will surely build on this death culture of today.  Just as tribe after tribe slaughtered those in the old city making the city theres till another tribe took it over so our own people, this global race is being replaced by a younger generation.
I don't know if they'll be able to say they has as much fun as us baby boomers.  There music is grim at best and there are some admidst the zombies who will find shelter.  We who had so much promise staggered back from that one small step on the moon to eat our own and soil our nests lacking belief in our own immortality as a galaxy travelling race.
In the place of stars we have the evil of Article 21.  Why explore the universe when we can kill our own and take what remains.
Forget Joe Dimaggio. Where are you Christopher Columbus.  But Buckminister Fuller has come and gone and now there is grapheme and Moore's Law and always there is hope.
There is love. And there is hope.  Thank you Christ Jesus.