New Day, new week

Madigan and I just saw Laura off. Having her over for the weekend was wonderful.  Good excuse to do little, chat, watch tv, do errands and eat great meals.  Madigan was in heaven. Laura is his mommy but he forgets at times with his psychotic puppy brain and thinks she’s his girlfriend, trying to hump her leg when I’m not watching.  Aim called Gilbert ‘the humper’.  I’m thinking this is why young males get kicked out of the cave.  In fairness he’s actually learning the commands ‘no’, and ‘down’. 

It really was great having this time together. The Saturday outing was a trip to a couple of Bosley’s looking for his favourite Tikki food, specifically Greece, and a new water bottle attachment for trips in the truck

Linda Nankov at Flight Centre organized our holiday accommodation with no penalties if we had to cancel 48 hours before. With Covid and quarantine rules I didn’t want to be ‘locked’ into a hotel room.  

Thaun Vo at Rand and Fowler who takes care of all my vehicle insurance is arranging for us to have travel insurance .  It was exciting to be planning with Laura.

Then the two of us began thinking of camping this summer.

Last month it was so bleak. I had difficulty getting out of bed and getting through the day.  It’s the sun’s effect. 

I even charged the battery on my Harley. It was a time as usual to try and find how to remove the seat to get to the battery but I found the battery charger without difficult and the ratchets and screw driver. The whole process went without a glych.

We were sorry to hear a friend had a heart attach when the heart arteries were already too small for a stint. He had emergency open heart surgery and now has a 6 month recovery period. We’re so glad he lived. He’s a wonderful man.  So many of these guys with a ‘big heart’ seem to care for everyone till their actual heart bursts.  I’m pleased he didn’t work himself to death and I’m really pleased the scientific advances in cardiology are so advanced.  

We got more gummy vitamins. Laura turned me on to them.  Candy medicine.  I could only find Vitamin D in the Sesame Street brand so that’s what I’ve got.  When I was a kid everything that was good for you tasted terrible.

We even bought Madigan a new thin dog bed he hasn’t eaten yet. He eviscerated both the stuffed ones.  I changed the sheets and comforter covers and pillow cases because Laura was coving over. It really was nice to have clean sheets. I blame her for the work, like I blame her for all the comfort and luxury I add in my life not admitting I really enjoy it too. The joke is the guys call the camper, ‘Laura’s camper’ because she’d done her time tenting and wanted a shower and more protection from the bears.  I love the camper and was pleased to learn this weekend that it will be ready for spring and summer camping.  

It’s so hard to believe how good I feel when before Christmas I was literally crawling on my belly to the finishing line, so disheartened and depressed and fatigued with such a daily grind of chronic pain  Then Harrisons and the hot springs and more time with Laura and now I’m actually feeling joyful and hopeful.

Dr. Bonnie Henry is rolling back the pandemic to endemic status.  The tracking and tracing has finally stopped. I’ll be glad when the lockdowns are totally lifted.  It’s happening in Europe.  

I’m very thankful.  The weather is supposed to be warm like this for a few more days. We had fog with the inversion.  

It’s a new day, a new week, a new year. I wrote a song and played it and recorded it and was thankful people were kind.  I even played guitar again this week.  Too much time is spent on social media.  I’ve been reading a lot of books and watching tv, often with a travel perspective. The History of Modern ARt, the History of Scotland, the Stuart MacBride Scottish detective novels set in Aberdeen, the Louvre.  I completed my MOCOMP cycle successfully again despite 2020 Covid restriction. I may attend the positive psychology conference here in the summer or go to IDAA or both. I’ve so enjoyed attending the IDAA meetings on line, seeing all the old friends, feeling connected.  I’d not realized how disconnected I’d become. It was a bit like early days covid when the Rolling Stones ‘living in a ghost town’ summed it up. Now it’s just the tedium.  The Trucker Drive on Ottawa is taking place. I think Trudeau winning the election was the point when I lost faith in elections and concluded that the digital elections were open to fraud . If smart guys can hack everything else it’s got to be no difficulty hacking elections. Obviously Trudeau is who the Communist Chinese Army wants as Prime Minister.  I think of Wallace Freedom and realize the majority of recent immigrants unlike refugees are economic migrants who don’t share the ‘values’ that we knew as Canadians, « True North Proud and Free. ». Just like every other third world country we have this dictator want to be with all the corruption we once thought was Africa or Asia’s but is now the Canadian model. I talked to South Americans’ and they’re only surprised that we were optimistic.  We watched Matrix Resurrected.  

The truth is within.  The storms come and go like on the boat but the sun shines and fair winds and following seas eventually arrive. Spring is always so beautiful in Vancouver. The daffodils and crocuses and the returning birds.  It’s all so uplifting. 

I’m so blessed. Thank you Jesus. Thank you God of God. Thank you Lord of Lords.  Hallelujah!!!!

 

GOD IS LOVE

I loved the mystical medieval text “The Cloud of Unknowning”.  It speaks to the humility of wisdom.
Jesus taught, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Children are curious.
I am curious about God.
Martin Buber the great Jewish philosopher in his book, I and Thou, discussed the centrality of the question, what is the ‘Other”.  If I accept that I am not alone and that reality is not a ‘figment of my imagination’ then I ask, what or who is the Other.
We know that children developmentally first consider themselves one with their mother.  The umbilical chord is cut and psychologically and sociologically they separate in time to being individuals separate from their mother. They move along to separating from their families, their communities, and ultimately humanity. This is the process called ‘individuation’.  While they are in ‘relation’ with all others, they are also separate and apart,  increasingly ‘alien’.  Individuation and alienation go hand in hand.  The natives describe themselves ‘in relation’.  This is fundamentally the universal social development of  ‘tribal’ consciousness.
 The  Modern Age beginning circa 1850 in the West introduced the Industrial era and what today is fast becoming the era of technology.  The age of Rationality and intellectualism later with the individuation of gender because the age of Emotion and Emotionalism  which continues today. Ironically cognitive behavioural therapy teaches we ‘feel what we think’ and the post modernists believe this age of ‘emotionalism’ and ‘subjectivity’ somehow different continue in the past ‘age of rationalism’ albeit by a different name. More advanced  theorists posit “postmodernism”  simply ‘ultra rationalism.”  The age of rationalism was what gave rise to the ‘war to end all war’ and the failure of the ‘intellectualism” as it created the aetheist killing machine of communism and the world wars of Europe. The age of emotionalism has simply extended this era with the growth  of the United Nations.  Big Daddy is replaced by Big Mommy or Big Brother by Big Sister. Alienation and entropy grew.
Intellectually Kaffka wrote the Metamorphosis ,the classic novel of ‘alienation’, a culmination in intellectualization and individuation of abject navel gazing.  Man as insect.
Psychopaths were seen by McLean as having ‘lizard brains’ and not developing further to the more advanced animal and human brains of the “Triune Brain”.
The corporation,  as this has also been called the age of corporation, the new political entity that replaced the medieval baronies and duke ships, family and tribal based entities of the past  , is considered by modern law as a ‘legal individual’.  Star Trek compared  the Corporation as the “Borg”, the image of Corporate or Communist or Socialist conquer.  Assimilation in the Era of Technology.
Dr. Robert Hare , foremost authority on psychopathy, discussed the lizard developmental level of sociopath and compared this to the present nature of the Corporate legal model, in the documentary “Corporations.” The world today is a ‘legal’ judicial construct based on 15th century  model of social reality without the individual ‘relationships’ of that earlier age, wholly a construct of the failed ‘age of rationalism’ ultra modernist emotional and political, masquerading under the fancy name ‘post modern’. It is merely a construct of alienation.
By contrast the original hypothesis of relation begins with:
God and I.
I and Thou.
I and the Other
Am I alone?
Does the butterfly think the philosopher? Or does the philosopher think the butterfly?
I am born in blood and piss and shit and die in blood and piss and shit. Ashes to ashes. But is my soul solely this body.
Neuroscientist   Mario de Beuregaard elegantly ,with PET Scan and Carmelite Nuns meditating showed that we are more than ‘brain’ of materialism.  His book “The Spiritual Brain, A Neuroscientists Case for the Existence of the Soul” suggest much more than the reductionist aetheist materialist position of “Brain in Petrie dish” as  self.  The brain is but a tool of Self or Soul.
Genesis 1:26 states “God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”
Modern quantum physics and string theory posit a matrix of energy that we are apart of, no one disconnected in reality, but rather interconnected, not the fear and superstition based ‘tribal’ relations of old described so well by Jared Diamond in The World Until Yesterday, What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies .but rather in the love based matrix of the intuitive, beyond reason and emotion.
Grace is the idea of God as actively divine.  The Hound of Heaven poem by Francis Thompson described well the Modern Age of Intellectualism and Rationality and Emotionalism of the Post Modern Ultra Modern era.
“I fled Him, down the nights and the day. I fled Him down the arches of the years. I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind......I hid from Him, and under running laughter up vistaed hopes I sped.....from those strong feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace , deliberate speed, majestic instance, They beat - and a Voice beat more instant than the feet - “all things betray thee, who betrayed me”.
The greatest image of Man and God is the Old Testament of the Bible book, Solomon’s Song of Songs, “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine”.  It is the story of young love.
1 John: 4.8 in the New Testament of the Holy Bible says ,”Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love.”
The sociopath, or psychopath are shallow. Whatever power or influence they have, what ever they appear like, what ever their selfies show, remains to be seen ,simply because only the ‘loving” know God.  To Love is to know God. Like a child playing hide and seek.  Curious about that which is unknown and unknowable. Humble. The arrogant and the all knowing, the judgemental and the superior cannot know God for God is Love.
GOD LOVES AS WE LOVE.
The energy of the universe that binds us is LOVE.
In science, “Entropy is a thermodynamic concept that represents chaos and degradation. It occurs naturally in any physical system and will naturally grow (i.e. become more chaotic) if we don’t do something to arrest it’s growth. Doing something requires the expenditure of energy, so energy is what counters entropy.”
Love is as love does. Love is a verb not an object.
The first law of thermodynamics is the “law of conservation of energy”. The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant, energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can neither be created nor destroyed.”
God is Love and Love never really dies. Love is eternal and infinite whereas fear is by nature, finite.  Love conquers all.
The dance of love is the simply the dance of “I and Love”. Or “I and God”.  “I and One”.
The one becomes many.  That’s the great hide and seek of God and central to the idea of Love Your Enemy. This doesn’t mean let your enemy kill you because Jesus did say, Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  Loving oneself doesn't involve letting oneself be killed and thereby turning one’s neighbour into a killer. The disciples of Jesus wore swords. The monks of the east learned martial arts to protect themselves from the unenlightened. We teach children manners and how to play without hurting. Sentimentalism is a caricature of caring.
Only the humble can know God.  God is the first spark in the flame, for even a thought comes a nano second later, as neuroscience teaches so well.
I know and feel and intuit God’s love and endeavour today to love as God loves.