Pride

Pride: Failing to recognize in all you do that, if it were not directly God Himself doing it, then, it was at least He who let you.


--T.S. not Elliot

Da Hunt!

Diss is where last deer season, which was also the final year of an eight year long drought, I wood walk across da river to some public land that was very hard to get to any other way. There I would sit, pretty much all alone, not bothering anybody (for a change), and enjoy waiting for all the deer to come along. I thought I would do the same thing this year.

Diss year the water was way over da tops of my booots and sow I could no longer just walk across da river into hunterless paradise. So I taut, what do I have ta dooo, drop a tree across or get my canoe, er what? Well, I taut, why not walk up treem a liddle bit and maybe sumptin will come to me. And it did!

I looked up stream, and, whether it was intended as such or not, there was a nice big blessing from God. A tree, right across the river. Taaaaaaannnk yoo.

A nice big Balsam had fallen across the river sometime since last year and pretty toon I was scouting ta udder side of the river wid dry boots.

A little farther on at what was left of the base of the tree was a nice clean break (no saw marks).

It was kind of high up there to get on the thing but, IT WAS DRY. And that was nice.

After stomping off a few braches it became a veritable boardwalk.

And on the other side, looking back, it felt a little too good to be true (and very dry).

Through the brush and up the river bank and whoops. Just barely visible through the brush I could see a little glaze orange peeking through the thin harwood covering. You probably can't see it unless you zoom in. But that's o.k. because in order to avoid that hunter and his "blind", the deer will all be walking over to my side. Well that's how it's projected to go in theory anyway. But I will probably spend most of my time hunting down stream to the south and try not to bother him. I just can't sit in one place very long. To much to see, to many places to go.

There was an interesting specimen of a tree which had been struck by lightning. And that fella's stand was straight behind it only by about 20 yards.

And there was some "sign" around where that big critter I was hoping to trick into walking in front of me had scraped the velvet off of his antlers a couple months ago.

I'm still sort of pinching myself over such a nice tree across the river. What a day. Season opens tomorrow.

The End of Evolution or Just A Whole New Generation of Martians?

With the gradual burning out of the Sun, and the Earth scheduled to slowly turn into an unimaginably cold ball of ice (an incomprehensibly long time from now, or between now and whatever time God ordains that to be); what happens to the most widely accepted Evolutionary Model, "A process in which the whole universe is a progression of interrelated phenomena"? Part of what "progression" is traveling further and further away from everything out into the unknown? Progress?  Seems to me the progression here on Earth just ended at about that time. And what do all of the "interrelated phenomena" become then? Everything Will be frozen and hurling through space. What an anticlimactic little scenario in store for this Earth. A fitting end? "How are all my family photos going to fare", I wonder?

All of the sudden explanations of origins and outcomes within the narrow context of Evolution become awfully inadequate.

"We are 'progressing', toward 'what' again... professor?"

________________________________________________________________

Oh, I get it! Part of our evolutionary paradigm includes a jump to the planet Mars, after the planet Earth begins to fail; presumably, to wait for someone from another galaxy to come along and rescue us from extinction as we hurl farther and farther out into a colder and colder and gradually darker and darker outer space?

So some of our descendants are going to be Martians?

Check out Mars here on Microsoft's World Wide Telescope

_______________________

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press Nicholas K. Geranios, Associated Press – Mon Nov 15, 4:12 am ET
PULLMAN, Wash. – Invoking the spirit of "Star Trek" in a scholarly article entitled "To Boldly Go," two scientists contend human travel to Mars could happen much more quickly and cheaply if the missions are made one-way. They argue that it would be little different from early settlers to North America, who left Europe with little expectation of return.

"The main point is to get Mars exploration moving," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University, who wrote the article in the latest "Journal of Cosmology" with Paul Davies of Arizona State University. The colleagues state — in one of 55 articles in the issue devoted to exploring Mars — that humans must begin colonizing another planet as a hedge against a catastrophe on Earth.

Mars is a six-month flight away, possesses surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant water, carbon dioxide and essential minerals. They propose the missions start by sending two two-person teams, in separate ships, to Mars. More colonists and regular supply ships would follow.

A Promising Little Allegory Called, "The Parable of the Faithful Wordsmiths"

-T S Not Elliot

__________________

One day, just as He had foretold, God made His appearance again on this Earth. He reminded man where He'd been, why, and that, while He was planning to leave His Spirit here, He would soon be going away again for a while, and thus, would they please write down the things He was saying and make sure that they get shared in all places for everyone's edification while He's gone, and quite soon after that, He left.
,
Many men went about seeing to it that His words were studiously written do,wn, praised and thanked Him for them and spread them faithfully across the whole orb just as He had spoken them, with His Spirit there seeing to it that no one would be missed.

Almost immediately, men began to feel that they could do a much better job at putting into their own words what the Lord had had them write down, to the point where, pretty soon other men began having to say, "Hey, wait a minute, what did you say He said???".

They could see how poorly the men had done who thought they could do a much better job at putting into their own words that which the Lord had had them write down, and so it wasn't long before they began going about showing that they could do a much better job at it themselves.

Pretty soon the problem grew much worse. More and more, and still more men were making the same mistake as the first by thinking they could do a much better job than the others at putting into their own words that which the Lord had had them write down.

More and more men began seeing the problem now and felt it important to gather together from far and wide to sit down with each other and prove, once and for all, who of them it was that "does the best job of all" at putting into his own words that which the Lord had once had them write down, when they came to the startling realization that, there was a much bigger problem here than they might ever have imagined: After enlisting the finest tools known to men, and the most brilliant men on the face of the orb, each of the men present, astonishingly, was able to prove that he alone was able to do the much better job than the next at putting into his own words that which the Lord had once had them write down; and, that every other man was indeed, doing it poorly.

Oh my! You can imagine the problem this caused as. . . the one to whom it appeared the other had gotten it backwards, to the other appeared to had gotten it inside out. The next, who thought the other to have turned it completely around, was himself, thought to have stood it altogether on its head. It was as if they had all gone slightly mad, one by one. Quite a sight...

_________________________________

(to be cont. right here a.s.a.p.)

A Conversation on Divorce.

I initiated a discussion over at the Full Contact Christianity blog, (poor them), as to whether or not the bible agrees with divorce for reasons other than premarital infidelity. Well, the discussion really implodes; there is no divorce the Lord approves of, it simply points to Him the fact that you messed it up all the more without Him. He forgives you but not without a re-tuning of your understanding of what marriage is (and sure, He may forgive you even if you remain in the dark). The discussion here really degenerates, as do so many blog discussions today; but the truths gleaned from it are precious. The ugliness with which this discussion ends, I think, emphasizes how badly emotion had overtaken sensibility in this issue.

I'm going to look at the beauty though the ugliness. I'm sorry, but at the end of the day this is what I do and how I think. My design for the activity in this blog is for it to be real. The good and the bad. Development of a whole picture; fully illuminated with no dark part. Being accountable.

This is "reality blogging" at it's most real. Insufficient time for it, insufficient training for it, but issues come up that need addressing. Things stand or fall on their own merit. Nobody gets a free pass based on their credentials. Man's wisdom gets tested against God's, and, sometimes it gets swept aside by God's larger truths.

In this case, some uncomplimentary things were published about how God views divorce. When you sift the New Testament down on divorce, it doesn't appear to be o.k. under any circumstances. So the facts deserve to be sifted through.

Was "Full Contact" made with the issue? It ends terribly ugly; but not before an important matter is settled. A matter which demanded correction, whether done perfectly of imperfectly; a matter that needs to be addressed regardless of the willingness or unwillingness of one to be corrected. The main 'uglines' is a fellows tendency to look for technicalities to rescue himself from not having answers.

This discussion is sort of a tame one as blogging goes. Sometimes men of low character show up and shine light on things for us. Someone must. I'll be the weak one. God uses the weak. The test here is whether we are going to focus more on style or substance. Sometimes maybe God needs to use men with a strategy to get through our tangled web of excuses and willingness not to listen. I'll be the one with the poor manners, but "Full Contact Tim" will have to be the one with the faulty reasoning. Poor reasoning, in this instance, renders the institution of Christian marriage just a temporary formality; poor reasoning gives permission to a 'legitimate' exit from a marriage following an infidelity (and much less) in the place of reconciliation, forgiveness, and the process for maturation, hope. It replaces God's hope with our hope that the next marriage will be better; or the next. Reasoning that legitimizes Christians having the same divorce rate as Non-Christians as being the work of God..

In Nursing, it is taught that the important thing is the answer, not the means of obtaining it. And in the end, style is nice, but is nothing without substance. Good style can lead to a bad end. Good substance never will. God gives us clear and infallible substance to teach and help infuse into a marriage. When it appears to fail, it is our failure, not His. Marriage maintains it's potential for permanence without us.

-- Marriage is permanent and the Lord will never tell you divorce is a good end.

Christ will help you succeed; but He will not help you fail. He is not an "enabler" to disobedience and defeat. But if you accept that you have failed without Him, He will be there after a divorce to help you pick up the pieces and go on.

But the real astonishing part of all of this; He will be there to empower us to endure a marriage that we may not be able to see how we can possibly endure by ourselves, and which may hold a blessing that we have not yet grasped.

Now let us who are able, continue to expand on and teach that great truth. . . our own imperfections and all.