KJV Luke 9:25 “For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself or be cast away."
Over and over again I rue the decisions I’ve made which have lost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. The opportunities increase in such a way for any who more forward in righteousness. I think of the offer for $2000 a day writing prescriptions for marijuana. I reflect on my friend who said he couldn’t continue to be a corporate lawyer in Toronto and remain a Christian.
I have so many times been ‘tempted’. Temptation comes as ‘too good to be true’. It’s like the promises of politicians. They say that you must give them your money and they will no better how to spend it. Then they give it to strangers who are their friends whereas your friends who are not stranger go without.
In the story of Jesus, the devil tempts him with all manner of power and wealth and privilege but he turns it down as temporary gain choosing instead to honour his father and follow in the godly ways.
It is so tempting to do what is wrong. That which is wrong has that extra appeal. There’s the pleasure in breaking taboos. Betrayal has a sweetness too I supposed for betrayal has such appeal for some. I am loyal and loving and thoughtful for this is how I have been taught and over time it remains the way that works best as yet for me.
I spend within my means but my government and especially that child man Justin Trudeau waste money as if it grows on trees. But it doesn’t grow on trees. It comes from my labour. It comes from the real labour of the working man so that the snake with forked tongue can take it and buy favours with his friends , not for all but for himself and his cronies. Politics was ever thus, I fear.
I would seek the spiritual. In the depth there is more while on the surface there is ever less. That said I like the luxuries as well. Having motorcycle and a car is wealth indeed. I know the truly decadent minimize their wealth comparing themselves always with those with more while belittling those with less and pointing out to them their advantages rather than acknowledging their own. They are like the friends of Job.
I feel my age. There is an ennui in much whereas there is a desire to return to those places and activities where joy is remembered. Youth pulls from behind. Even now I remember a place in a library where I struggled to understand and remember the latest learning preparing to help a person further along the way with the arcane bits of learning I had worked so hard to gain. Now I see that I could have lied and cheated and bullied and formed false alliances and bullied to the same end, perhaps. Envy and lust and covetousness are found in comparison. I am truly blessed.
The laughter is less. I am more wary of the snakes. Though I have won all the encounters with travail to date this day might well be the one they succeed to maim me. It has been more often I than them that has caused me pain. I am my own ‘friendly fire’. The more I learn of life the more I see that I have stumbled and fallen in the ditch and no one has pushed me. I have learned so much from the Zen of Motorcycling. It is where one keeps their attention that one goes and I’m forever looking everywhere like the Fool of the Tarot.
The meditator calls this the ‘monkey mind’ but to me it’s more the ‘puppy mind’. I have the focus in helping another but in my own life I’m less focussed on reward and more focussed on gathering my wits and breath for another flight in the Battle of Britain. The calls come increasingly in the night and the wee hours of the morning. The insane sound like screams in a burning building. I know their are others but more and more I see them turn their backs and I am falling too. We are aging en mass and there is a turning away.
But I ask myself “For what is a man advantaged? If he gain the whole world or be cast away.?
I once felt outside the love of God and know that this is truly an impossibility but blinding myself I could not find my way back to the light and love. That was when I knew Grace. There are those who have not known the love of the Father or the love of the Mother. More and more in high places believe in the lies of Marijuana, Alcohol, Cocaine, Crystal Meth and Opiates. So many look for the Architect in the Wall.
I am blessed beyond compare. I have known the love of God. Anxiety is a measure of one’s distance from God. I watch bodies die as men and women hold in their anger, despair and sorrow. They are tough and put on brave faces while their blood pressures don’t lie and their eyes show how much the light has gone out and how much they have already died but continue to walk. Zombies are among us even in high places. Chameleons are common. Yet the eyes don’t light and eyes that are lifeless are so tragic.
I am God said. Asked his name, he said I am. Being not consuming. Living not dying. They are subtle in appearance but the difference in depth is akin to the man who built his home on rock as compared to him who builds his home on sand.
I would love God more and do thy will. Guide me this day. Hurry me closer to you. Be with me now that I may know your will and do that which is true. Thank you God for this day, for all that I know and have. Bring me deeper into your safety and your love. Thank you Lord. Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Psalm 32
From Psalm 32, NIV Bible,
“You are my hiding place;
You will protect me from trouble
And surround me with songs of deliverance.'
++++
“Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous,
sing, all you who are upright in heart."
I love the psalms. When people have been threatening to kill me, kill my dog, or kill my family, I have turned to the psalms for comfort. They were written by David facing all the armies of his enemies and those who were supposedly friends who betrayed him. I am amused that House of Thrones is so popular but it’s really just historic deviance and divide and conquer.
I just read a history of Armenia and that poor kingdom was under attack from either the Greek Christians or Muslems every few years all the while there was internal strife.
Israel was an attractive e nation along the trade routes. Armies passed through going each way. Empires one after another attempted and succeeded in subjugate it.
Canada is a young country that has not known invasions but increasingly our immigrants come from regions where war was a constant. Of Scottish/Irish heritage we’d known peace within the British empire for hundreds of years with minor conflicts compared to the later great war.
In Moscow a few years ago I met with a uniform supplier for the Russian army. He said war was big business and that Europeans had wars every 50 years on average. All of the nations of the ‘Security Council’ are principal arms dealers and major war concerns. The purpose of the United Nations was to cement the gains and ensure the Allied Empire would remain in charge thereafter. The “cold war’, was really not so much a war but an ‘arms race’ that culminated in Detente and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The competition between ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’ was won with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The American model was a model of decentralization, freedom and meritocracy. The communist model was central control, totalitarian and fear based. It resulted in the ‘mediocrity’ that haunts all socialist countries. Stalin said that socialism was communism. Marxist socialism was a dyadic (beugeoisie/proletariat, with the aim of continual warfare till the lowest common denominator , the proletariat ruled. By contrast there was a Scottish socialist model based on triadic principles of three class society which gave rise to the Union movement. All economies are a mixture of capitalism and socialism. Historically the collective agreed to serve in those areas where profit was least likely immediate so less attractive to the capitalist investor. NAZI was socialism and called itself the National Socialist Party. Ironically today given the propaganda and disinformation the average person does not recognize ‘central’ control as the hallmark of socialism and dictatorship. Yet Lenin, revered socialist, insisted on ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
Even in the church there is the central control of the Catholic contrasted with the regional control of presbytery. The pendulum swings. In Canada we are facing more dictatorship. Pierre Trudeau threatened the country’s citizens collectively bringing on martial law against all for the action of an few individuals. The French have historically swung from their love of monarchy or Napoleonic Empire dictatorship to their bloody French Revolution and radicalism. In almost all the colonies of the French there have been persistent war left for generations while British colonies by comparison have been relatively stable. As Canada has become ruled by Quebec dictatorship following the increasing reduction in ‘eligible’ political candidacy, first ‘fluent french speakers’ and now pro abortionist only we have become a centralized oligarchy.
The natural appeal of dictatorship is the ‘benign dictator’ is the most appealing efficient government yet ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ with Canada increasingly corrupt as a nation, perhaps more corrupt than ever. The Charbonneau Enquiry essentially showed that the Eastern Mafia and Biker Gangs controlled the building of Quebec and naturally as Quebec dominates Canada the influence of corruption spreads through the nation. Not that western Canada is still “Canada the good’ , once the ‘bread basket of the world’, it’s agricultural achievement today is it’s production of marijuana.
The legal/political byzantine squabbling at the top which each corporation trying to get special deals and own the law makers who are themselves seeking special retirement havens like the world renown Canadian Senate, the best of all Old Age Pension deals for the ‘good friend’ of the wheeling dealing central socialist government, it all seems to the common man like a brawl going on in the sky between gods and goddesses of ancient greece and rome. These Gods and Goddessess aren’t called Mars and Venus but rather Walmart, Pfizer, de Havilland, Nike, etc. Meanwhile the Hillary Clinton debate wages to the south and Brexit has escaped from the centralized authority and cancerous bureaucracy of Brussels. It remains to be seen if England will survive this encounter with the Germans. The Communist experiment in Babylon fell as has the Islamic Babylon tumbled before Desert Spring. The struggle remains in the West and China. Always the Borg meets Captain Picard.
In the midst of all this apparent deceit, corruption and greed, divisiveness and empire, it’s good to turn to the Lord. The psalms are a comfort.
“You are my hiding place,
You will protect me from trouble.
And surround me with songs of deliverance."
When I attended Regent College Dr. James Houston taught courses on spirituality which we were truly blessed to attend year after year. He taught that reading all the psalms day after day till they are finished would help one to feel ‘anointed’. There’s a recurrent theme being lost and found over and over again. It’s the story of David.
David’s heir was Jesus.
Hallelujah.
“You are my hiding place;
You will protect me from trouble
And surround me with songs of deliverance.'
++++
“Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous,
sing, all you who are upright in heart."
I love the psalms. When people have been threatening to kill me, kill my dog, or kill my family, I have turned to the psalms for comfort. They were written by David facing all the armies of his enemies and those who were supposedly friends who betrayed him. I am amused that House of Thrones is so popular but it’s really just historic deviance and divide and conquer.
I just read a history of Armenia and that poor kingdom was under attack from either the Greek Christians or Muslems every few years all the while there was internal strife.
Israel was an attractive e nation along the trade routes. Armies passed through going each way. Empires one after another attempted and succeeded in subjugate it.
Canada is a young country that has not known invasions but increasingly our immigrants come from regions where war was a constant. Of Scottish/Irish heritage we’d known peace within the British empire for hundreds of years with minor conflicts compared to the later great war.
In Moscow a few years ago I met with a uniform supplier for the Russian army. He said war was big business and that Europeans had wars every 50 years on average. All of the nations of the ‘Security Council’ are principal arms dealers and major war concerns. The purpose of the United Nations was to cement the gains and ensure the Allied Empire would remain in charge thereafter. The “cold war’, was really not so much a war but an ‘arms race’ that culminated in Detente and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The competition between ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’ was won with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The American model was a model of decentralization, freedom and meritocracy. The communist model was central control, totalitarian and fear based. It resulted in the ‘mediocrity’ that haunts all socialist countries. Stalin said that socialism was communism. Marxist socialism was a dyadic (beugeoisie/proletariat, with the aim of continual warfare till the lowest common denominator , the proletariat ruled. By contrast there was a Scottish socialist model based on triadic principles of three class society which gave rise to the Union movement. All economies are a mixture of capitalism and socialism. Historically the collective agreed to serve in those areas where profit was least likely immediate so less attractive to the capitalist investor. NAZI was socialism and called itself the National Socialist Party. Ironically today given the propaganda and disinformation the average person does not recognize ‘central’ control as the hallmark of socialism and dictatorship. Yet Lenin, revered socialist, insisted on ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
Even in the church there is the central control of the Catholic contrasted with the regional control of presbytery. The pendulum swings. In Canada we are facing more dictatorship. Pierre Trudeau threatened the country’s citizens collectively bringing on martial law against all for the action of an few individuals. The French have historically swung from their love of monarchy or Napoleonic Empire dictatorship to their bloody French Revolution and radicalism. In almost all the colonies of the French there have been persistent war left for generations while British colonies by comparison have been relatively stable. As Canada has become ruled by Quebec dictatorship following the increasing reduction in ‘eligible’ political candidacy, first ‘fluent french speakers’ and now pro abortionist only we have become a centralized oligarchy.
The natural appeal of dictatorship is the ‘benign dictator’ is the most appealing efficient government yet ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ with Canada increasingly corrupt as a nation, perhaps more corrupt than ever. The Charbonneau Enquiry essentially showed that the Eastern Mafia and Biker Gangs controlled the building of Quebec and naturally as Quebec dominates Canada the influence of corruption spreads through the nation. Not that western Canada is still “Canada the good’ , once the ‘bread basket of the world’, it’s agricultural achievement today is it’s production of marijuana.
The legal/political byzantine squabbling at the top which each corporation trying to get special deals and own the law makers who are themselves seeking special retirement havens like the world renown Canadian Senate, the best of all Old Age Pension deals for the ‘good friend’ of the wheeling dealing central socialist government, it all seems to the common man like a brawl going on in the sky between gods and goddesses of ancient greece and rome. These Gods and Goddessess aren’t called Mars and Venus but rather Walmart, Pfizer, de Havilland, Nike, etc. Meanwhile the Hillary Clinton debate wages to the south and Brexit has escaped from the centralized authority and cancerous bureaucracy of Brussels. It remains to be seen if England will survive this encounter with the Germans. The Communist experiment in Babylon fell as has the Islamic Babylon tumbled before Desert Spring. The struggle remains in the West and China. Always the Borg meets Captain Picard.
In the midst of all this apparent deceit, corruption and greed, divisiveness and empire, it’s good to turn to the Lord. The psalms are a comfort.
“You are my hiding place,
You will protect me from trouble.
And surround me with songs of deliverance."
When I attended Regent College Dr. James Houston taught courses on spirituality which we were truly blessed to attend year after year. He taught that reading all the psalms day after day till they are finished would help one to feel ‘anointed’. There’s a recurrent theme being lost and found over and over again. It’s the story of David.
David’s heir was Jesus.
Hallelujah.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
As a Canadian I am demonized today
As a Canadian I am demonized today because:
1) I believe in God and Jesus Christ and am demonized for these beliefs. I am ridiculed and condemned yet I am supposed to accept that those who are so judgemental of theists and Christians are themselves enlightened and tolerant. I am persecuted for my beliefs attacked as ignorant and insane for my faith.
2) I am pro life. Our Justin Trudeau is pro abortion and dictated that no one can be in his government who disagrees with abortion. I am by this one ultimatum of the petite Napoleon, persona non grata. I am ‘excluded’ by this government who claims to be diverse and inclusive. I have been screamed at and condemned and threatened for simply expressing and holding this belief.
3) I am a scientist and consider the central hypothesis of Climate Change, that the world is heating up principally due to man’s production of hot air purely a political construct with little scientific basis. I believe in Carbon Dioxide, the breath of life for plants and believe the taxation of carbon is a grand scheme of disinformation for political purpose. I have watched ever promise of the Climate Change Cult be proved wrong from Silent Spring’s death by ‘acid rain’ , to the boiling away of the planet by the destruction of the ozone layer, to Al Gore the greatest scientific fool of the century promising the ice caps would be gone by 2015. All the fish continue to live in the post Silent Spring world, and Mount St. Helena spewed more ozone into the climate than man in man’s life time with no damage to the ozone layer whose hole mysteriously appears to lessening. Now the Ice Caps are alive and well and never before has plant life been so radiant and yet I am demonized for saying that Canada has reached an all time embarrassing low by creating a Department of Climate Change. For a scientist this is like living in a world where the government has created a Department of Scientific Alchemy. That’s the sleight of hand of Climate Change and because I am opposed to this ridiculous deceit and the even more preposterous claims that the ‘world is going to end’ if you don’t give me more billions of dollars, then I am even threatened as a scientist with incarceration. Scientists simply don’t say other scientists who disagree with them should be put in jail or asylums but totalitarians do.
4) I am a libertarian mostly and against Communism specifically. I am demonized as a person who faced with the question of the ‘state against the individual’ puts more faith in the individual than the state. The state has killed more people than the individual and people in groups commonly act poorly compared to an individual. While I respect institutions I’m not naive to the history of the mass killing of innocents by the eurocrats of Communist Russia, Communist China and Fascist Germany. Yet I am attacked and demonized for not agreeing with the belief in Big Government, Centralization of Authority, Bigger Government and loss rights of regions and individuals.
5) I hunt and fish and kill, clean and prepare my own meat but suddenly those who are fed on mass by the urban butchers and industries of commercial endeavour hold me as somehow evil and primitive and a killer. The effete even approach food as a fashion statement and condemn outright all humans that preceded their experiment in taste. I and the billions upon billions before us are the enemy overnight and these sentimentalists defend the chicken and lamb but not the snake and alligator or even the fish. It’s bizarre how the cuddly are championed but I am those like me who hunt are demonized and suddenly the ‘trophy hunter’ is akin to the gas chamber bureaucrats who gassed children in the wars. The level of ignorance of the media and the urbanites is frightening because they all don’t seem to know that no food goes to waste in the wild and a ‘trophy’ hunt is about killing the oldest and most likely to die from old age that winter. More case for protecting veal in the restaurant than from killing the 8 point buck. Most unusual and outrageously ignorant behaviour in this mass hysteria fueled by urban elitism against all those who living in the country consider eating home grown vegetables and home shot meat as normal as the horrid city person might be considered for going to the 5 star restaurant. Yet here I am, son of a hunter, grandson of a rancher, raised on wild game and home grown vegetables all my life maligned by the masses as somehow un Canadian. I am demonized and excluded by those very effete who claim to be non judgemental and inclusive.
6) I am wholly against political correctness which I believe is the language of totalitarianism and goes against all the freedoms which the poor and marginalized have fought for since the origins of the magna carta. The Politically Correct have always been the ‘courtly’ the fawners, and the psychopaths and sociopaths who chameleon but lack substance and character. I believe in truth by contrast not relative truth but truth, the objective, agreed truth of consensus arrived at by hidden ballot if not by common sense.
7) I believe in democracy and the right of dissent.
I feel increasingly that Canada, once a tolerant nation is intolerant of the familiar, it’s own and it’s forbears and suddenly embraces strangers while condemning me and those like me. I am afraid in Canada today because of the violence of those who powerfully maintain that they are peaceful and loving but are not this to me.
1) I believe in God and Jesus Christ and am demonized for these beliefs. I am ridiculed and condemned yet I am supposed to accept that those who are so judgemental of theists and Christians are themselves enlightened and tolerant. I am persecuted for my beliefs attacked as ignorant and insane for my faith.
2) I am pro life. Our Justin Trudeau is pro abortion and dictated that no one can be in his government who disagrees with abortion. I am by this one ultimatum of the petite Napoleon, persona non grata. I am ‘excluded’ by this government who claims to be diverse and inclusive. I have been screamed at and condemned and threatened for simply expressing and holding this belief.
3) I am a scientist and consider the central hypothesis of Climate Change, that the world is heating up principally due to man’s production of hot air purely a political construct with little scientific basis. I believe in Carbon Dioxide, the breath of life for plants and believe the taxation of carbon is a grand scheme of disinformation for political purpose. I have watched ever promise of the Climate Change Cult be proved wrong from Silent Spring’s death by ‘acid rain’ , to the boiling away of the planet by the destruction of the ozone layer, to Al Gore the greatest scientific fool of the century promising the ice caps would be gone by 2015. All the fish continue to live in the post Silent Spring world, and Mount St. Helena spewed more ozone into the climate than man in man’s life time with no damage to the ozone layer whose hole mysteriously appears to lessening. Now the Ice Caps are alive and well and never before has plant life been so radiant and yet I am demonized for saying that Canada has reached an all time embarrassing low by creating a Department of Climate Change. For a scientist this is like living in a world where the government has created a Department of Scientific Alchemy. That’s the sleight of hand of Climate Change and because I am opposed to this ridiculous deceit and the even more preposterous claims that the ‘world is going to end’ if you don’t give me more billions of dollars, then I am even threatened as a scientist with incarceration. Scientists simply don’t say other scientists who disagree with them should be put in jail or asylums but totalitarians do.
4) I am a libertarian mostly and against Communism specifically. I am demonized as a person who faced with the question of the ‘state against the individual’ puts more faith in the individual than the state. The state has killed more people than the individual and people in groups commonly act poorly compared to an individual. While I respect institutions I’m not naive to the history of the mass killing of innocents by the eurocrats of Communist Russia, Communist China and Fascist Germany. Yet I am attacked and demonized for not agreeing with the belief in Big Government, Centralization of Authority, Bigger Government and loss rights of regions and individuals.
5) I hunt and fish and kill, clean and prepare my own meat but suddenly those who are fed on mass by the urban butchers and industries of commercial endeavour hold me as somehow evil and primitive and a killer. The effete even approach food as a fashion statement and condemn outright all humans that preceded their experiment in taste. I and the billions upon billions before us are the enemy overnight and these sentimentalists defend the chicken and lamb but not the snake and alligator or even the fish. It’s bizarre how the cuddly are championed but I am those like me who hunt are demonized and suddenly the ‘trophy hunter’ is akin to the gas chamber bureaucrats who gassed children in the wars. The level of ignorance of the media and the urbanites is frightening because they all don’t seem to know that no food goes to waste in the wild and a ‘trophy’ hunt is about killing the oldest and most likely to die from old age that winter. More case for protecting veal in the restaurant than from killing the 8 point buck. Most unusual and outrageously ignorant behaviour in this mass hysteria fueled by urban elitism against all those who living in the country consider eating home grown vegetables and home shot meat as normal as the horrid city person might be considered for going to the 5 star restaurant. Yet here I am, son of a hunter, grandson of a rancher, raised on wild game and home grown vegetables all my life maligned by the masses as somehow un Canadian. I am demonized and excluded by those very effete who claim to be non judgemental and inclusive.
6) I am wholly against political correctness which I believe is the language of totalitarianism and goes against all the freedoms which the poor and marginalized have fought for since the origins of the magna carta. The Politically Correct have always been the ‘courtly’ the fawners, and the psychopaths and sociopaths who chameleon but lack substance and character. I believe in truth by contrast not relative truth but truth, the objective, agreed truth of consensus arrived at by hidden ballot if not by common sense.
7) I believe in democracy and the right of dissent.
I feel increasingly that Canada, once a tolerant nation is intolerant of the familiar, it’s own and it’s forbears and suddenly embraces strangers while condemning me and those like me. I am afraid in Canada today because of the violence of those who powerfully maintain that they are peaceful and loving but are not this to me.
Genesis 1: 27
Genesis 1: 27. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Note here that God’s image is masculine and feminine. This is the Holy Bible. This is the original genesis story. There is however a later tale which is considered the addition of much later ‘priests’ which talks about Adam and the rib and Eve coming from the rib. That’s not the old text but a later text. Here is the essence of the ‘image’ of God, image being face and God being both masculine and famine as one might describe the omnipotentiality of a stem cell.
There’s always ‘mystery’. The great unknown. We stand in awe of God because God is us and more. We are different and alike. There is within us the connection to God and within us the capacity for creation as the creator.
I find it remarkable studying biology that a neut can regrow it’s tale, that skin heals, that nerves regenerate. The rate of the process seems limiting but the process is there. We have but to awaken the capacity which is inherent within despite the constant negativity that pours down from above politically and the policing that happen all around us. We are created in the image of God , male and female.
Image is face but it’s also the root of imagination. We are the dream within the dream. We are miraculous and this is all sacred.
Hallelujah!
Note here that God’s image is masculine and feminine. This is the Holy Bible. This is the original genesis story. There is however a later tale which is considered the addition of much later ‘priests’ which talks about Adam and the rib and Eve coming from the rib. That’s not the old text but a later text. Here is the essence of the ‘image’ of God, image being face and God being both masculine and famine as one might describe the omnipotentiality of a stem cell.
There’s always ‘mystery’. The great unknown. We stand in awe of God because God is us and more. We are different and alike. There is within us the connection to God and within us the capacity for creation as the creator.
I find it remarkable studying biology that a neut can regrow it’s tale, that skin heals, that nerves regenerate. The rate of the process seems limiting but the process is there. We have but to awaken the capacity which is inherent within despite the constant negativity that pours down from above politically and the policing that happen all around us. We are created in the image of God , male and female.
Image is face but it’s also the root of imagination. We are the dream within the dream. We are miraculous and this is all sacred.
Hallelujah!
Monday, August 15, 2016
Genesis 1: 6, 7 8, 9, 10
Genesis 1. 6. And God said,Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
1. 7. And God made the firmament , and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
1. 8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
1. 9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1. 10. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas; and God saw that it was good.
I find this interesting architecture. There’s a ‘firmament’ in the midst of the waters. The firmament is called ‘Heaven”. There are waters above and below the firmament. Isn’t this unusual. Dry land appears but the dry land isn’t the firmament and gathering together of the waters is the seas. But what of the water above the firmament. What is this ‘water’ , this dynamic, above the heavens. It’s a mystical conceptualization. Heaven is a dividing place. There’s been so often a flat earth with flat sky interpretation but that’s not what’s written in the Bible. There’s a distinctly different message here and a different cosmos than commonly taught in Sunday school. What is this firmament that is called Heaven. And what are these ‘waters’ which are above and below and become apparently when gathered together both earth and seas. Sounds very quantum physics to me.
The above is the King James Bible, an early interpretation when men were closer to the sacred and the world wasn’t digitalized and separate with fear so much today. The historical revisionism of the past assumes an ethnocentricity and states ‘we’re superior, they’re primitives’ but even the studies today, unbiased as such, show that the dark ages and medieval times were not nearly so ignorant or unhappy as the ‘modern’ mind would have. I loved the “Cloud of Unknowing” from the medieval times. But King James Bible is an interpretation and my study of hebrew shows it much deeper and more profound than ‘new’ language and scientific English known for it’s accounting capacity and recording capacity more than it’s poetic and illumination capacity. Old languages likes Hebrew, Sanskrit, Aramaic all served first and foremost the purpose of communication and less the purpose of empire which came later and ultimately science and banking which came even later. Poetry, song, story telling and prophecy are early roles for the old language. Much like the Old English of Chaucer which is not that very old at all but seems to a large degree untouched by the rigors of Francis Bacon. Modern theoretical physics and the psychology of the unconscious of Jung and Freud have more in common with the old than the high school or college scientific depiction or the language of law and accounting. They’re different. Very different. Not necessarily superior or inferior but with a different purpose and a different meaning.
The NIV is the latest translation. It’s definitely more ‘modern’ and very much less poetic than King James Version. It’s written by people more differentiated from their surroundings, more separate and apart than any one was in the time of King James. Today we are atomized and alienated in a way which would have been inconceivable to earlier generations where kinship with family and community was the rule.
Genesis 1. 6. And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water."
1. 7. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.
1. 8. God called the vault “sky”. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
1. 9. And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered in one place, and let dry land appear.” And it was so.
1. 10 God called the dry ground “land”, and the gathered waters he called ’seas’. And God saw that it was good.
Isn’t this amazing. The ‘firmament’ becomes a ‘vault’. The waters are still above and below the ‘vault’ and the gathering of water still produces ‘land’ and ’seas’ but the ‘heavens’ now becomes ’sky.’ Frankly I don’t like the idea of the ’sky’ being a ‘vault’ or that even the translation by the moderns is close to that of the ancients likely captured better as ‘heavens’. But this does show the significance of translation and interpretation.
In the Bible a hebrew world for Heavens and a Hebrew word for Sky might well be interchanged but here a ‘vault’ and a ‘firmament’ seem distinctly different so one wonders if the translators even had the same text. A Jewish Scholar might sort this out. The interpretation and translations of the Bible get complicated by which ‘folio’ or ‘book’ and which bit of which book is used.
But it’s a mystery isn’t it. A really deeply moving mystery which one must get is some kind of mystical and intuitive conceptualization of the beginning of the world handed down by oral traditions for thousands of years and then written and re written and translated and interpreted for thousands more. Yet most people think they ‘know’ Genesis. I do or did but keep returning to ponder, what is this water that is above and below ‘heaven’ or even ‘sky’. That sure does sound like Plank and Einstein. The emptiness of outer space isn’t empty but here on earth there is a ‘gathering’ a greater density of the fabric of the universe, the space between the stars and this ‘gathering’ can be land or sea. But what is this ‘vault’ , this ‘firmament’ and what is ‘heaven’. I really don’t think it’s just sky. Even a ‘vault’ is a thing that holds something. I would say more than ‘sky’. A vault is a receptacle for ‘souls’ perhaps or another enclosed space. For what purpose.
When I look at Hebrew translation for Heavens I found a marvellous article in Spectrum, “Then Genesis Account: Six Hebrew Words Make all the Difference. Brian Bull and Fritz Guy, ‘Translating Backwards,” in God, Sky and Land: Genesis 1 as the Ancient Hebrews Heard It.
The Hebrew word ‘shemayim’ may mean: heaven, sky, visible heavens, heaven as realm of the stars. It was thought that in 1530 the physics of the sky was a dome with stars and sun moving back and forth across it. Today we think of universe, and sometimes heavens is translated in modern times as ‘cosmos’ or ‘universe’ concepts unknown by Tyndale and unknown in 1530 and likely supposedly unknown at the time of the biblical writing. I ‘m not so sure of the later but the modern translation chose ‘sky’ as a limited ‘choice.
raquia, the hebrew word means “extended solid surface, vault of heaven supporting waters above, firmament, dome, vault.
Aha, there is this agreement here
I won’t get into the other 4 words but this ‘vault’ and ‘firmament’ seems satisfactorily explained in a limited ‘architectural’ way but there’s still no clarity around this ‘water’ idea. There’s also persisting ‘ethnocentricity’ which suggest we know physics and creation better than the ‘intuitive’ or ‘ancients’. Interestingly much of modern science has ‘confirmed’ the ‘insights’ of the ancients. This was seen when MRI’s and CTScans and Functional MRI”s supported to a large extent the insights that psychoanalysts had gained. They simply weren’t wholly ‘new’ ideas but rather built on the ‘observations’ and the ‘meditations’ of the people of before.
When I look for Biblical translations of the meaning of ‘waters’ I find that Genesis is said to use it in the idea of it’s two forms, one of the oceans, a symbol of death and the other as conventional water, a symbol of life. Water to a dessert people is ‘life giving’. There is life above and below the ‘vault’ so again there’s this image of heaven separating two ‘worlds’.
We pass to the other side in death. Our pets meet us at ‘rainbow bridge’. Death be not proud. The Christian idea of this world is that of a kindergarten. Kierkegaard described this life as ‘suffering to death’. People have thought of this life as the real purgatory and the future life of heaven or hell. Heavens are this other place of life creating waters or the place between. The Tibetans describe a ‘bardo’ or passing through place between reincarnations while the Hebrew describes
Strongs concordance describes the word as stemming from the Hebrew “mayim’ meaning water or waters, masculine noun. Interesting this symbol of life and death or simply of life should be ‘masculine’ in the Hebrew which tends to be patriarchal. Matriarchal society predates the later patriarchal society and then the patriarchal predates the matriarch. They’re rather cyclic that way. But translations then occur in the midst of cycles and understandings are influenced by the fashion of the day and perception of the day. Later they are interpreted through the lens of the listener or reader.
The Hebrew ‘Shamayim” was one part of the Hebrew three part cosmology, the others being ‘berets’ , the earth and ‘sheol’ the underworld. Sheol is the ‘underworld’ where both righteous and unrighteous go and is mostly described as rather colourless. However Isaiah describes it as the name of a ruler of the underworld which may be something different and the Elohim can save one from the Sheol. Sheol is feminine which takes us back to the patriarchy of Hebrew. But was this Sheol a creation of the earlier matriarchal times or later patriarchal times. One ‘descends’ in death whereas in the new testament Jesus ‘ascends’ to heaven. The Christian believes more in ‘ascent’ to heaven in general whereas as the Jew definitely descends.
It’s seems like nit picking but when I look on the internet I’m delighted to see others also ‘struggle’ with the ‘conceptualization’ which is a form of advanced meditation practice especially in the ‘mindfulness’ traditions. It’s contemplative and together old men gather to simply consider these points and together’ experience’ the meaning of ‘where two or more are gathered there too shall I’.
1. 7. And God made the firmament , and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
1. 8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
1. 9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1. 10. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas; and God saw that it was good.
I find this interesting architecture. There’s a ‘firmament’ in the midst of the waters. The firmament is called ‘Heaven”. There are waters above and below the firmament. Isn’t this unusual. Dry land appears but the dry land isn’t the firmament and gathering together of the waters is the seas. But what of the water above the firmament. What is this ‘water’ , this dynamic, above the heavens. It’s a mystical conceptualization. Heaven is a dividing place. There’s been so often a flat earth with flat sky interpretation but that’s not what’s written in the Bible. There’s a distinctly different message here and a different cosmos than commonly taught in Sunday school. What is this firmament that is called Heaven. And what are these ‘waters’ which are above and below and become apparently when gathered together both earth and seas. Sounds very quantum physics to me.
The above is the King James Bible, an early interpretation when men were closer to the sacred and the world wasn’t digitalized and separate with fear so much today. The historical revisionism of the past assumes an ethnocentricity and states ‘we’re superior, they’re primitives’ but even the studies today, unbiased as such, show that the dark ages and medieval times were not nearly so ignorant or unhappy as the ‘modern’ mind would have. I loved the “Cloud of Unknowing” from the medieval times. But King James Bible is an interpretation and my study of hebrew shows it much deeper and more profound than ‘new’ language and scientific English known for it’s accounting capacity and recording capacity more than it’s poetic and illumination capacity. Old languages likes Hebrew, Sanskrit, Aramaic all served first and foremost the purpose of communication and less the purpose of empire which came later and ultimately science and banking which came even later. Poetry, song, story telling and prophecy are early roles for the old language. Much like the Old English of Chaucer which is not that very old at all but seems to a large degree untouched by the rigors of Francis Bacon. Modern theoretical physics and the psychology of the unconscious of Jung and Freud have more in common with the old than the high school or college scientific depiction or the language of law and accounting. They’re different. Very different. Not necessarily superior or inferior but with a different purpose and a different meaning.
The NIV is the latest translation. It’s definitely more ‘modern’ and very much less poetic than King James Version. It’s written by people more differentiated from their surroundings, more separate and apart than any one was in the time of King James. Today we are atomized and alienated in a way which would have been inconceivable to earlier generations where kinship with family and community was the rule.
Genesis 1. 6. And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water."
1. 7. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.
1. 8. God called the vault “sky”. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
1. 9. And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered in one place, and let dry land appear.” And it was so.
1. 10 God called the dry ground “land”, and the gathered waters he called ’seas’. And God saw that it was good.
Isn’t this amazing. The ‘firmament’ becomes a ‘vault’. The waters are still above and below the ‘vault’ and the gathering of water still produces ‘land’ and ’seas’ but the ‘heavens’ now becomes ’sky.’ Frankly I don’t like the idea of the ’sky’ being a ‘vault’ or that even the translation by the moderns is close to that of the ancients likely captured better as ‘heavens’. But this does show the significance of translation and interpretation.
In the Bible a hebrew world for Heavens and a Hebrew word for Sky might well be interchanged but here a ‘vault’ and a ‘firmament’ seem distinctly different so one wonders if the translators even had the same text. A Jewish Scholar might sort this out. The interpretation and translations of the Bible get complicated by which ‘folio’ or ‘book’ and which bit of which book is used.
But it’s a mystery isn’t it. A really deeply moving mystery which one must get is some kind of mystical and intuitive conceptualization of the beginning of the world handed down by oral traditions for thousands of years and then written and re written and translated and interpreted for thousands more. Yet most people think they ‘know’ Genesis. I do or did but keep returning to ponder, what is this water that is above and below ‘heaven’ or even ‘sky’. That sure does sound like Plank and Einstein. The emptiness of outer space isn’t empty but here on earth there is a ‘gathering’ a greater density of the fabric of the universe, the space between the stars and this ‘gathering’ can be land or sea. But what is this ‘vault’ , this ‘firmament’ and what is ‘heaven’. I really don’t think it’s just sky. Even a ‘vault’ is a thing that holds something. I would say more than ‘sky’. A vault is a receptacle for ‘souls’ perhaps or another enclosed space. For what purpose.
When I look at Hebrew translation for Heavens I found a marvellous article in Spectrum, “Then Genesis Account: Six Hebrew Words Make all the Difference. Brian Bull and Fritz Guy, ‘Translating Backwards,” in God, Sky and Land: Genesis 1 as the Ancient Hebrews Heard It.
The Hebrew word ‘shemayim’ may mean: heaven, sky, visible heavens, heaven as realm of the stars. It was thought that in 1530 the physics of the sky was a dome with stars and sun moving back and forth across it. Today we think of universe, and sometimes heavens is translated in modern times as ‘cosmos’ or ‘universe’ concepts unknown by Tyndale and unknown in 1530 and likely supposedly unknown at the time of the biblical writing. I ‘m not so sure of the later but the modern translation chose ‘sky’ as a limited ‘choice.
raquia, the hebrew word means “extended solid surface, vault of heaven supporting waters above, firmament, dome, vault.
Aha, there is this agreement here
I won’t get into the other 4 words but this ‘vault’ and ‘firmament’ seems satisfactorily explained in a limited ‘architectural’ way but there’s still no clarity around this ‘water’ idea. There’s also persisting ‘ethnocentricity’ which suggest we know physics and creation better than the ‘intuitive’ or ‘ancients’. Interestingly much of modern science has ‘confirmed’ the ‘insights’ of the ancients. This was seen when MRI’s and CTScans and Functional MRI”s supported to a large extent the insights that psychoanalysts had gained. They simply weren’t wholly ‘new’ ideas but rather built on the ‘observations’ and the ‘meditations’ of the people of before.
When I look for Biblical translations of the meaning of ‘waters’ I find that Genesis is said to use it in the idea of it’s two forms, one of the oceans, a symbol of death and the other as conventional water, a symbol of life. Water to a dessert people is ‘life giving’. There is life above and below the ‘vault’ so again there’s this image of heaven separating two ‘worlds’.
We pass to the other side in death. Our pets meet us at ‘rainbow bridge’. Death be not proud. The Christian idea of this world is that of a kindergarten. Kierkegaard described this life as ‘suffering to death’. People have thought of this life as the real purgatory and the future life of heaven or hell. Heavens are this other place of life creating waters or the place between. The Tibetans describe a ‘bardo’ or passing through place between reincarnations while the Hebrew describes
Strongs concordance describes the word as stemming from the Hebrew “mayim’ meaning water or waters, masculine noun. Interesting this symbol of life and death or simply of life should be ‘masculine’ in the Hebrew which tends to be patriarchal. Matriarchal society predates the later patriarchal society and then the patriarchal predates the matriarch. They’re rather cyclic that way. But translations then occur in the midst of cycles and understandings are influenced by the fashion of the day and perception of the day. Later they are interpreted through the lens of the listener or reader.
The Hebrew ‘Shamayim” was one part of the Hebrew three part cosmology, the others being ‘berets’ , the earth and ‘sheol’ the underworld. Sheol is the ‘underworld’ where both righteous and unrighteous go and is mostly described as rather colourless. However Isaiah describes it as the name of a ruler of the underworld which may be something different and the Elohim can save one from the Sheol. Sheol is feminine which takes us back to the patriarchy of Hebrew. But was this Sheol a creation of the earlier matriarchal times or later patriarchal times. One ‘descends’ in death whereas in the new testament Jesus ‘ascends’ to heaven. The Christian believes more in ‘ascent’ to heaven in general whereas as the Jew definitely descends.
It’s seems like nit picking but when I look on the internet I’m delighted to see others also ‘struggle’ with the ‘conceptualization’ which is a form of advanced meditation practice especially in the ‘mindfulness’ traditions. It’s contemplative and together old men gather to simply consider these points and together’ experience’ the meaning of ‘where two or more are gathered there too shall I’.
Genesis 1. 1,2,3
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1: 2 And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1: 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
It seems straightforward when read as simply metaphors But when I stop to un pack the very beginning of the Bible and creation it’s far from straightforward. What is heaven? What is earth? We pray, as Jesus taught, Our Father who aren’t in heaven. Heaven seems to be inward. God isn’t ‘out there’ but rather ‘in here’. The eastern mystics chant, “I am the bubble, make me the sea.” Dr. Carl Jung used a similar idea of the ‘collective unconscious’.
I always ask, what did God ‘create from’. There was only God so all creation is God stuff. Later we see God dividing parts, separating but here it’s just creation.
The earth was without form refers to the stuff like clay which we later use as a metaphor too, describing God as a potter. Those are old world metaphors. Today we’d see God as the great chemist and physicist. The stuff of DNA and the Periodic Table are the first ingredients of the soup and/or Big Bang. Creation is spectacular.
But what of ‘darkness was on the face of the deep’. What is the deep. Again the image of face and deep. The superficial and deep. The deep was dark like any problem or any challenge. The simple is apparent. But the underlying message often appears hidden. Ad here it is. The deep seems to be God or heaven in my mind. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Earth formless is water? Where did the water come from? Now we have the division of the God into God and Spirit.
(The issue further is ‘translation’. Studying Hebrew I find that there is thousands of years of meaning and usage caught up in each of these words. There isn’t agreement in full on any of these principal parts. The very language of the ancients is dynamic and more inclusive. Today we have countless words and meanings but in the beginning with simply fewer words then these fewer words meant more. So reading the first lines of the Bible and thinking, I know that, is rather arrogant. There is so much more ‘unknowing’. At most I feel there is a finger pointing or a ‘wee small voice’. I look and listen. And pray.)
Finally God speaks and says “Let there be light: and there was light."
Aha!
1: 2 And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1: 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
It seems straightforward when read as simply metaphors But when I stop to un pack the very beginning of the Bible and creation it’s far from straightforward. What is heaven? What is earth? We pray, as Jesus taught, Our Father who aren’t in heaven. Heaven seems to be inward. God isn’t ‘out there’ but rather ‘in here’. The eastern mystics chant, “I am the bubble, make me the sea.” Dr. Carl Jung used a similar idea of the ‘collective unconscious’.
I always ask, what did God ‘create from’. There was only God so all creation is God stuff. Later we see God dividing parts, separating but here it’s just creation.
The earth was without form refers to the stuff like clay which we later use as a metaphor too, describing God as a potter. Those are old world metaphors. Today we’d see God as the great chemist and physicist. The stuff of DNA and the Periodic Table are the first ingredients of the soup and/or Big Bang. Creation is spectacular.
But what of ‘darkness was on the face of the deep’. What is the deep. Again the image of face and deep. The superficial and deep. The deep was dark like any problem or any challenge. The simple is apparent. But the underlying message often appears hidden. Ad here it is. The deep seems to be God or heaven in my mind. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Earth formless is water? Where did the water come from? Now we have the division of the God into God and Spirit.
(The issue further is ‘translation’. Studying Hebrew I find that there is thousands of years of meaning and usage caught up in each of these words. There isn’t agreement in full on any of these principal parts. The very language of the ancients is dynamic and more inclusive. Today we have countless words and meanings but in the beginning with simply fewer words then these fewer words meant more. So reading the first lines of the Bible and thinking, I know that, is rather arrogant. There is so much more ‘unknowing’. At most I feel there is a finger pointing or a ‘wee small voice’. I look and listen. And pray.)
Finally God speaks and says “Let there be light: and there was light."
Aha!
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Last of the Venison
I defrosted the last Venison roast. I cut 4 steaks from that piece and barbecued them. Coupled with Microwave baked potatoes with fresh butter and brussel sprouts Gilbert and I had a scrumptious meal. He stuck with bits of steak I gave me while I consumed everything. Delicious.
I put one steak in a ziploc for a venison sandwich this week.
I shot one deer last year and it’s lasted a whole year. I think of it as special so don’t eat it all up. Normally though I’m finished a deer by spring. A moose or elk can last a couple of years. This was a small deer but nonetheless it was special like all wild game.
Now I’ve got half a roast to cut up in stew meat for stew, curry or chilli. I have the pressure cooker to use. Then I have rabbit from a couple of weekends back. We’ll be bow hunting deer in only a few weeks. I’d hoped to catch some fish but just haven’t had the time or inclination to get out fishing. The seasons not over.
My nephew is gardening up a storm. My brother and sister in law have been watering plants for an hour a day to keep them alive while Ontario has had weeks of a drought that just broke. We grew up on Dad’s ducks, moose, venison, rabbits and partridge and mom’s garden. I’ve been raised that way. When we had the acreage I raised my own chickens, geese, ducks, and turkeys. I don’t miss the poultry as much as I miss the eggs. I’d love to have a half doze Arcana laying hens about. I just loved their delicious little eggs.
It’s a long way from my years as a strict vegetarian and then a lacto egg vegetarian. I don’t really miss that though I learned a lot about food those years.
Thanks to a very kind man I’ve been gifted with an English wild game cook book and I am looking forward to having venison and partridge to practice with. I’ll probably use it when I make the next rabbit stew. The pressure cooker should make the meat tender, something rabbit benefits from, though historically it was usually just cooked till the meat peeled off. That’s how I made rabbit stew when I lived in the country. It’s had been a decade or so since I’d shot a rabbit so I really did enjoy the rabbit stew Tom made when we were out camping and came across so many.
Thank you God for your bounty.
I put one steak in a ziploc for a venison sandwich this week.
I shot one deer last year and it’s lasted a whole year. I think of it as special so don’t eat it all up. Normally though I’m finished a deer by spring. A moose or elk can last a couple of years. This was a small deer but nonetheless it was special like all wild game.
Now I’ve got half a roast to cut up in stew meat for stew, curry or chilli. I have the pressure cooker to use. Then I have rabbit from a couple of weekends back. We’ll be bow hunting deer in only a few weeks. I’d hoped to catch some fish but just haven’t had the time or inclination to get out fishing. The seasons not over.
My nephew is gardening up a storm. My brother and sister in law have been watering plants for an hour a day to keep them alive while Ontario has had weeks of a drought that just broke. We grew up on Dad’s ducks, moose, venison, rabbits and partridge and mom’s garden. I’ve been raised that way. When we had the acreage I raised my own chickens, geese, ducks, and turkeys. I don’t miss the poultry as much as I miss the eggs. I’d love to have a half doze Arcana laying hens about. I just loved their delicious little eggs.
It’s a long way from my years as a strict vegetarian and then a lacto egg vegetarian. I don’t really miss that though I learned a lot about food those years.
Thanks to a very kind man I’ve been gifted with an English wild game cook book and I am looking forward to having venison and partridge to practice with. I’ll probably use it when I make the next rabbit stew. The pressure cooker should make the meat tender, something rabbit benefits from, though historically it was usually just cooked till the meat peeled off. That’s how I made rabbit stew when I lived in the country. It’s had been a decade or so since I’d shot a rabbit so I really did enjoy the rabbit stew Tom made when we were out camping and came across so many.
Thank you God for your bounty.
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