Lenton Prayer 2021

 Lenton Prayer 2021

The following is a necessary re-post:

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Almighty God, O Holy God, in the name of Jesus, we pray (Lord, hear our prayer): As the Lenten season begins this Wednesday, give us grace to draw near to you and to seek your face. We thank you that we have been given access to you, Father God, as your Spirit prompted the writer of Hebrews: 19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. And then Lord, as we draw near to you and your Spirit reminds us of our ongoing sin and as we remember the crucifixion of Jesus that comes at the end of Lent (in time almost 2000 years ago), we hear again from the word: …let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Lord Jesus give us grace to rededicate ourselves to the purpose of glorifying you and seeking to enjoy your presence as we identify with you in your journey to the cross. And as we ask this, we are again reminded from your word: 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons… (from Hebrews ch.12) And the scripture goes on to add: 12 Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. O Lord God, we do ask for Your strength in our weaknesses and for Your grace to put aside ourselves and draw near to You. For the church universal and for all of us now praying, we ask that you create in us a pure heart, O God, and that You renew a steadfast spirit within us. We ask that You not cast us away from your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from us, and Holy God, may you yet maintain in us the joy of your salvation. Lord grant us this Lent a willing spirit and sustain us with the bread of heaven. May your church experience revival and reformation and may our nation see and hear Your mighty works and come to repentance and salvation. In the name of Jesus we pray.

Voting Fraud Demonstration (until Google takes it down)

Link

Facts vs. COVID theater

 This guy's blog article does a good job summarizing the facts vs. the hysteria of our current ongoing COVID theater:

https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2020/7/27/lockdownlunacythree

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I miss the illusion of freedom. Even otherwise intelligent and educated folks are buying/supporting the deception and resultant bad policy. 

I'll say it again, everyone needs to stop worshiping government and think for themselves. 

May day the revolution begins

Today we begin to ignore the fascist proclamations of current government officials in the USA. These are mostly Democrat party members with a few cowardly Republicans thrown in for flavoring. Stop obeying and loving these shitheads claiming sovereignty over your dumb asses!

Self Education

copy this, then delete this entry

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-get-a-world-class-education-for-free-on-the-internet?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Changes are coming after so long a time...

Quick note here that I hope to finally set up my own domain and start hosting this and other blogs elsewhere. If perchance a publisher should agree to buy something I've written in future days, I don't want the google empire confiscating my work because I had it posted here in their space.

I will likely leave this blog "up" with a pointer to my domain address (forthcoming...) Personal background may get dumped...

Also, now that I have forsworn fake-book-like social media and ephemera monitoring*, I should have time to make more frequent posts to The Traveller.

Stay tuned oh audience of -1,000,000....














*Note that I let myself get caught up in the social media of my day for the original purpose of warning all my friends and loved ones away from the idolatries of our age. I found myself in error and was eager to encourage my loved ones toward enlightenment (I plead with anyone who would listen day and night for twelve plus years)--this is not a good idea, since most people gain awareness each at individual rates, one must instead learn to be patient and less confrontational about evil in the world. I live in a time when the masses just ignore injustice unless it directly affects themselves personally, so their wink at evil makes trying to repent of it difficult. One should just work on oneself, pray, and if one is around when or if the others awaken, one can rejoice exceedingly. Until that day, may God give us grace to follow wisdom and grow our character and be patient with those who do not want TRUTH.

Wolfgang Smith---pending

Of late, and especially because of my monthly philosophy group meetings, I have been delving into Wolfgang Smith's writings. I started with his last major book, "The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology: Contemporary Science in Light of Tradition," and am now working on his, "Science and Myth (With Response to Stephen Hawking)," which is really a chapterized collection of excellent essays concerning different aspects of perennial philosophy and it's impact on knowledge and scientific enterprise.

There is great writing throughout "Science & Myth," and I'd love to quote the entire book, so get a copy and read it for yourself if you have the slightest interest in philosophy. Today's reading of chapter three brought forth to my mind these lovely mind tickling passages (the first is from pp60-61; the second from pp62-65):

"     Getting back to "scientism" in the first sense--the reification, namely, of the physical universe--let us now ask ourselves how this self-contradictory world-view could have imposed itself upon a major portion of mankind. One might think that the operational validity of physics--the fact that "it works" and gives rise to a miraculous technology--leaves us no choice; but whereas this may be partly true in the case of the uninformed, it can hardly be so when it comes to scientists of first rank. To recognize what ultimately stands at issue, we need to remind ourselves that man was made, not to play positivistic games, but to know truth, to know being. It is no more possible for him to renounce the being of things than it is to stop breathing; his hunger for being--and indeed, for Being itself, which is God!--is relentless, and cannot finally be appeased by anything less. And so it comes about that when being has been excluded from his purview by an act of epitemic closure, the scientist himself feels compelled to bring it back, to reinstate it somehow in his universe. Admittedly it is possible to obviate the reification of the physical, as we have noted: but only at the cost of locating being in some other domain. It is safe to say that for all but the most wise or the ultra-sophisticated, it will be the physical-concept universe that is reified, and the few who manage to avoid this pitfall will likely succumb to some alternative mode of scientism. There is in fact only one way to obviate scientistic illusion, and that is the way of authentic philosophy: one needs to see the whole picture--the epistemic circle plus the unlimited speculative field within which it is drawn--in order not to be deceived. The moment, therefore, that a science loses contact with what Borella terms "the general science which is philosophy"--in that very instant the birth of illusion is bound to take place. Something alien and indeed contradictory to science is unwittingly smuggled in, and thenceforth masquerades in scientific garb: thus does science of the post-Galilean kind beget scientism. The die has been cast in a radical act of epistemic closure, which cuts the human individual off from true being, or subjectively speaking, from his own true ground and "higher" subconscious.17"

{17. This does not mean that the scientist makes no use of this "subconscious" in the exercise of his scientific functions; as we have noted before, he does, most assuredly, make use of it. My point, rather, is that in the name of epistemic closure the existence and rightful function of that faculty is implicitly denied.}

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THE ULUBURUN SHIP

Current thinking suggests that the Uluburun ship may have begun its journey in either Egypt or Canaan (perhaps at Abu Hawam in what is now modern-day Israel), and made stops at Ugarit in northern Syria and possibly at a port on Cyprus. It then headed west into the Aegean, following the southern coastline of Anatolia (modern Turkey). Along the way, the crew of the vessel had taken on board raw glass, storage jars full of barley, resin, spices, and perhaps wine, and— most precious of all— nearly a ton of raw tin and ten tons of raw copper, which were to be mixed together to form that most wondrous of metals, bronze.

From the ship’s cargo, we are reasonably certain that it was traveling westward from the Levant, apparently bound for a port city in the Aegean— perhaps one of the two or three on the Greek mainland that served the capital center of Mycenae, or maybe one of the other major cities, such as Pylos on the mainland or Kommos or even Knossos on Crete. The mere fact that there was another ship sailing from east to west during the Late Bronze Age was enough to confirm Bass’s theories and completely alter modern scholars’ thoughts about the extent of trade and contacts that took place more than three thousand years ago. Three Bronze Age ships have now been found, but the wreck at Uluburun is the largest, wealthiest, and most completely excavated.

The owner and sponsors of the ship are still unknown. One can speculate about different possibilities to explain the origins of the vessel and the location of its final resting place. It may have been a commercial venture, sent by Near Eastern or Egyptian merchants, perhaps with the blessing of an Egyptian pharaoh or Canaanite king. Or it may have been sent directly by a pharaoh or king, as a greeting-gift from one sovereign to another, as was frequently done during the Amarna Age a few decades earlier. Perhaps the ship was sent by the Mycenaeans on a “shopping expedition” to the Eastern Mediterranean and sank on the return voyage. The merchants on board might have acquired the raw materials and other goods not available in Greece itself, such as the tin and copper, as well as the ton of terebinth resin (from pistachio trees) that could be used in the perfume manufactured at Pylos on mainland Greece and then shipped back to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. There is obviously no shortage of possible scenarios. If the Mycenaeans were the intended recipients, then they might have been waiting impatiently for the cargo on the ship, for it contained enough raw metal to outfit an army of three hundred men with bronze swords, shields, helmets, and armor, in addition to precious ivory and other exotic items. Clearly, when the boat sank that day in approximately 1300 BC, someone or some kingdom lost a fortune.

The Uluburun ship sank in fairly deep water— its stern is currently 140 feet below the surface, with the rest of the ship at an angle sloping even farther down, to 170 feet below the surface. Diving to the depth of 140– 70 feet is dangerous, for it is beyond the limit of safe scuba diving. The INA divers were allowed only two dives per day, twenty minutes each time. In addition, at those depths, increased levels of inhaled gases can cause a narcotic effect. Working that deep, Bass said, felt as though they had had two martinis before starting— so every dive and every movement to be made underwater had to be planned out in advance.

Over the course of nearly a dozen seasons, from 1984 to 1994, the team dove on the wreck more than twenty-two thousand times without a single major injury, testament to their precautions and the fact that their dives were overseen by an ex– Navy SEAL. The end result was a plan of the ancient wreck and its cargo that is as accurate, down to the millimeter, as any made at a land excavation, despite the great depths at which they were working. The dives also resulted in the retrieval of thousands of objects, which are still being studied.

The boat itself was originally about fifty feet long. It was well constructed, with planks and keel made from Lebanese cedar and using a mortise-and-tenon design for the hull. Previously, the earliest-known wreck in the Mediterranean to use this mortise-and-tenon technique was the Kyrenia wreck found off the coast of Cyprus, dating more than a thousand years later, to about 300 BC.

The copper ingots, of which there were more than 350, were especially difficult to excavate and bring to the surface. During the three thousand years that they had lain underwater, stacked herringbone fashion in four separate rows, many of them had significantly disintegrated and were now in an extremely fragile state. Eventually, a new type of glue had to be used by the archaeological conservators working on Bass’s team: an adhesive that could be injected into the remains of an ingot, and which would congeal and harden underwater over the course of a year. The glue would eventually bond together the disparate parts of a decomposed ingot well enough so that it could be hauled to the surface.

But there was far more on board the ship than just the copper ingots. It turned out that the cargo carried in the Uluburun ship consisted of an incredible assortment of goods, truly an international manifest. In all, products from at least seven different countries, states, and empires were on board the ship. In addition to its primary cargo of ten tons of Cypriot copper, one ton of tin, and a ton of terebinth resin, there were also two dozen ebony logs from Nubia; almost two hundred ingots of raw glass from Mesopotamia, most colored dark blue, but others of light blue, purple, and even a shade of honey/ amber; about 140 Canaanite storage jars in two or three basic sizes, which contained the terebinth resin, remains of grapes, pomegranates, and figs, as well as spices like coriander and sumac; brand-new pottery from Cyprus and Canaan, including oil lamps, bowls, jugs, and jars; scarabs from Egypt and cylinder seals from elsewhere in the Near East; swords and daggers from Italy and Greece (some of which might have belonged to crew members or passengers), including one with an inlaid hilt of ebony and ivory; and even a stone scepter-mace from the Balkans. There was also gold jewelry, including pendants, and a gold chalice; duck-shaped ivory cosmetic containers; copper, bronze, and tin bowls and other vessels; twenty-four stone anchors; fourteen pieces of hippopotamus ivory and one elephant tusk; and a six-inch-tall statue of a Canaanite deity made of bronze overlaid with gold in places— which, if it was supposed to serve as the protective deity for the ship, didn’t do its job very well.

The tin probably came from the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan, one of the few places where it was available during the second millennium BC. The lapis lazuli on board came from the same area, traveling thousands of miles overland before being brought onto the ship. Many of the pieces, such as the lapis lazuli cylinder seals, were tiny and easy to miss during the excavations, especially when the huge vacuum tubes were used to remove the sand that covered the remains. The fact that they were recovered at all is a testament to the skill of the underwater archaeologists excavating the wreck, led first by Bass and then by his chosen successor, Cemal Pulak.

One of the smallest objects found on board the ship was also one of the most important— an Egyptian scarab made of solid gold. Rare as such an object might be, it was made even more unusual by the hieroglyphs inscribed upon it, for they spelled out the name of Nefertiti, wife of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. Her name is written on the scarab as “Nefer-neferu-aten”; it is a spelling that Nefertiti used only during the first five years of her reign, at a time when her husband may have been at the height of his heretical condemnation of every Egyptian deity except Aten, the disk of the sun, whom he— and he alone alone— was allowed to worship directly. 6 The archaeologists used the scarab to help date the ship, for it could not have been made— and therefore the ship could not have sailed— before Nefertiti came to power about 1350 BC.

The archaeologists were able to date the sinking of the ship in three other ways as well. One method involved radiocarbon dating the short-lived twigs and branches that once were used on the deck of the ship. Another involved dendrochronology (counting of tree rings), making use of the wooden beams that made up the hull. The third was the well-used Mycenaean and Minoan pottery that was found on board, which appeared to the specialists to date toward the end of the fourteenth century BC. The four independent dating mechanisms together point to approximately 1300 BC— the very beginning of the thirteenth century BC, give or take a few years in either direction— as the year when the ship went down.

Fragments from a small wooden tablet, originally with ivory hinges, were found on the ship, preserved within a storage jar into which it might have floated while the ship was sinking. Reminiscent of Homer’s “tablet with baneful signs” (Il. 6.178), it is older by more than five hundred years than similar writing boards that had been found at Nimrud in Iraq. The tablet might once have contained a record of the ship’s itinerary, or perhaps the cargo manifest. However, the wax on which the writing was inscribed within the two sides of the tablet vanished long ago, leaving no sign of what had been recorded. It is therefore still impossible to tell whether the cargo on board was meant as a royal gift, perhaps from the king of Egypt to the king at Mycenae, or whether it belonged to a private merchant, selling goods at the principal ports around the Mediterranean. As hypothesized previously, it also could be purchases made on a long-distance shopping trip, for the raw materials on board matched what was needed by the workmen and craft shops of Mycenaean palaces such as Pylos in order to make high-demand concoctions, including perfumes and oils, as well as jewelry such as glass necklaces.

We may never know who sent the Uluburun ship on its voyage or where it was going and why, but it is clear that the ship contained a microcosm of the international trade and contacts that were ongoing in the Eastern Mediterranean, and across the Aegean, during the early thirteenth century BC. Not only were there goods from at least seven different areas, but— judging from the personal possessions the archaeologists found in the shipwreck— there were also at least two Mycenaeans on board, even though this seems to have been a Canaanite ship. Clearly this ship does not belong to a world of isolated civilizations, kingdoms, and fiefdoms, but rather to an interconnected world of trade, migration, diplomacy, and, alas, war. This really was the first truly global age.



Cline, Eric H. (2014-03-23). 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) (p. 74-79). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

Here is the wikipedia article also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uluburun_shipwreck

For Memorial Day 2015

The following from "Hannah Coulter" by Wendell Berry

21

Okinawa

I married the war twice, as you might say, once in ignorance, once in knowledge. And yet I knew of it only what we suffered of it at home and what I read of it in the newspaper at the time, and later the little I sometimes saw of it on television. But of the actual experience of actual people in the war, I knew little. Of what Nathan had actually known and done and suffered in the fighting on Okinawa, I knew nothing.

That is maybe not so hard to understand. Our life from the day we married until Nathan died was like a stretched strand. We had our obligations to meet and our work to do, the tasks overlapped and kept on, before the work of one year had ended the work of the next year began. I don’t think Nathan himself dwelled more on the war than he had to, but I think he had to dwell on it. I think he saw the war as in a way the circumstance of the rest of his life. I know he dreamed about it. I know he did not talk about it.

He did not talk about it, I understood, because it was painful to remember, and for the same reason I did not ask him about it. Now that I have taken the pains to learn something about it, I had better ask if I really wanted to know. I did. I needed to know, but I am not glad to know.

I learned enough to know why I didn’t learn it any sooner. Nathan was not the only one who was in it, who survived it and came home from it, and did not talk about it. There were several from Port William who went and fought and came home and lived to be old men here, whose memories contained in silence the farthest distances of the world, terrible sights, terrible sufferings. Some of them were heroes. And they said not a word. They stood among us like monuments without inscriptions. They said nothing or said little because we have barely a language for what they knew, and they could not bear the pain of talking of their knowledge in even so poor a language as we have.

They knew the torment of the whole world at war, that nobody could make or end or escape alone, in which everybody suffered alone. As many who have known it have said of it, war is Hell. It is the outer darkness beyond the reach of love, where people who do not know one another kill one another and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, where nothing is allowed to be real enough to be spared.

Hell is a shameful place, and it is hard to speak of what you know of it. It is hard to live in Port William and yet have in mind the blasted and burnt, bloodied and muddy and stinking battlegrounds of Okinawa, hard to live in one place and imagine another. It is hard to live one life and imagine another. But imagination is what is needed. Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don’t know and have compassion for them at the same time?  

I was changed by Nathan’s death, because I had to be. Our life together here was over. It was my life alone that had to go on. The strand had slackened. I had begun the half-a-life you have when you have a whole life that you can only remember. I began this practice of sitting sometimes long hours into the night, telling over this story, this life, that even when it was only mine was wholly Nathan’s and mine because for the term of this world we were wholly each other’s. We were each other’s chance to live in the room of love where we could be known well enough to be spared. We were each other’s gift.

But in my telling I pretty soon had to reckon with Nathan’s silence about the war. Out of all I knew of him came this need to know what he had known that I did not know. I went to the library and found books. I found some imperfect and false books, some picture books, for instance, that showed only the enemy dead. And I found some that were true, terrible for being true, brave enough to be terrible enough to be true. I didn’t find out what happened to Nathan himself, of course, for what he knew will not be known again. I found out the sort of thing you would have known if you were a soldier and were there on Okinawa in the spring of 1945 when Easter and the beginning of battle both came on April Fool’s Day.

You went from an ordinary day in the ordinary world into the world of war, an exploding world where you lived inescapably hour after hour, day after day, killing as you were bidden to do, suffering as you were bidden to do, dying as you were bidden to do. You were there to kill until you were killed. And this would finally seem to be the only world there was.

It was a world where no place was safe, where you or your friends could be killed in any place at any minute.

You were living, it seemed, inside a dark cloud filled with lightning and thunder: thousands of tons of explosives, bombs and shells, machine gun and rifle fire. The air was full of death. In some units, sooner or later, everybody was hit.  

You see a friend, shot and dying, lying in the dirt. A medical corpsman is kneeling beside him, tenderly touching his face, making the sign of the cross over him, weeping.

Mortar shells are coming in as you open a can of food and try to eat. The friend beside you is hit, his head blown off. His brains spatter your clothes and your food. You start to vomit, and you cannot stop.

You are standing beside your friend. A shell comes in and explodes. Your friend, knocked down, attempts to leap up and discovers that he has no legs. He dies. You cannot forget this.

You have killed your enemy. You have seen his face as he died, the face of a living young man dying. You cannot forget this. Compassion makes the suffering worse. In the world of war everything makes everything worse.

Death falls from the sky. It flies in the air. The ground fills with the dead. The rain falls day after day. Mud makes everything worse. It is harder to bring up supplies, harder to move, harder to bring out the wounded and to bury the dead.

Under fire, you attempt to dig a foxhole, and you dig right into the body of a man, rotten and full of maggots.

The dead are blasted out of their graves. If you slip on a muddy slope and fall, you get up covered with maggots. They are on your clothes, on your skin, in your pockets.

Flies are everywhere. Recalling the words of politicians about gallantry and sacrifice, one survivor said, “Only the flies benefited.” The flies spread dysentery. You are wet, muddy, soiled with your own shit, and you live day after day, night after night in the same clothes.

The battlefield stinks of rotting flesh, excrement, vomit, the smoke of explosives and of everything that will burn.

Because of the stench and the noise and the never-ending fear, your rations, which are never appetizing, become harder and harder to eat. You are exhausted, and you cannot rest. As the weeks go by, you lose weight, maybe twenty pounds. You know, from looking at your friends, that you no longer look like yourself.

It goes on without mercy, the fear unending, worst at night. At night the quiet sounds worry you most. At night you never know the origin of a quiet sound. Is it a friend or an enemy? Are you hearing things? Are you losing your mind? You have to make up your mind that you will not lose your mind.

You find where the enemy buried one of theirs, leaving a green branch in his canteen on his grave. Compassion makes it worse.  

You performed the cruelties that were required and sometimes cruelties that were not, and what would your folks have thought?

You fought for days without knowing where you were, when the known world consisted of what you could see, the few friends fighting on either side of you, and the unknown enemy in front. You were lost in an enormous fact. The ones of you who were lost in it may never quite have found your way out of it, and nobody outside it would ever quite understand it. How far from home were you? How far beyond the political slogans? You were one of an army of young men fighting to stay alive, and you were fighting an army of young men who finally were fighting only to die. They had to be killed, almost every one of them.

You knew the terrible loneliness of the thought that your life was worth nothing. You were expendable. You were being spent. Your folks could not have imagined what you were going through, you could not want them to know, you would never tell them.

What saved it from utter meaninglessness and madness and ruin was the love between you and your friends fighting beside you. For them, you did what you had to do to try to stay alive, to try to keep them alive. For them, you did heroic acts that you did not know were heroic.

What saved it were the medical corpsmen and stretcher-bearers who went out again and again into the fields of fire to bring away the wounded, who brought something angelic into that Hell of misery and hurt and destruction and death.

What saved it was the enormous pity that seemed to accumulate in the air over it.  

To read of that battle when you love a man who was in it, that is hard going. I read in wonder, believing and sickened. I read weeping. Because I didn’t know exactly what had happened to Nathan, it all seemed to have happened to him. You can’t give yourself over to love for somebody without giving yourself over to suffering.

You can’t give yourself to love for a soldier without giving yourself to his suffering in war. It is this body of our suffering that Christ was born into, to suffer it Himself and to fill it with light, so that beyond the suffering we can imagine Easter morning and the peace of God on little earthly homelands such as Port William and the farming villages of Okinawa.

But Christ’s living unto death in this body of our suffering did not end the suffering. He asked us to end it, but we have not ended it. We suffer the old suffering over and over again. Eventually, in loving, you see that you have given yourself over to the knowledge of suffering in a state of war that is always going on. And you wake in the night to the thought of the hurt and the helpless, the scorned and the cheated, the burnt, the bombed, the shot, the imprisoned, the beaten, the tortured, the maimed, the spit upon, the shit upon.

The Battle of Okinawa was not a battle only of two armies making war against each other. It was a battle of both armies making war against a place and its people.

Before that spring, Okinawa had been a place of ancient country villages and farming landscapes of little fields, perfectly cultivated. The people were poor by our standards now but peaceable and courteous, hospitable and kind. They hated violence and had no weapons. They made music and sang when they rested from their work in the fields. It was “a land of song and dance.” The people made beautiful things with their hands: buildings and gardens, weaving and pottery. They had survived conquest, poverty, storms and drouths, disease and hunger, but they had met no calamity like the battle of 1945. It killed 150,000 of them as the fighting drove them out of their homes and they wandered with their children and old people into the fields of fire. They were killed by mistake. Nobody intended to kill them, they were just in the wrong place. It was their own place, but the war had made it wrong.

And their beloved, lovely island was scoured and burned. Everything standing was destroyed: houses, trees, gardens, tombs, towns, the capital city of Naha, the beautiful castle of Shuri. I found books with photographs of beautiful buildings, walls and gates, bridges and gardens, all “destroyed in 1945.” I found a photograph of some tanks driving across little fields, leaving deep tracks.

I began to imagine something I know I cannot actually imagine: a human storm of explosions and quakes and fire, a man-made natural disaster gathering itself up over a long time out of ignorance and hatred, greed and pride, selfishness and a silly love of power. I imagined it gathering up into armies of “ignorant boys, killing each other” and passing like a wind-driven fire over the quiet land and kind people. I knew then what Nathan knew all his life: It can happen anywhere.  

Like any storm, it finally ended. Like any fire, it burnt itself out. Like all the living, those doomed to die finally were dead. I imagined the quiet coming again over the burnt and blasted land. I imagined a green slope somewhere undestroyed where a fresh, untainted breeze blew in from the sea. I imagined Nathan coming there alone and sitting down, facing home, knowing that he had lived and would live, the quiet coming over him, rest coming to him. And I imagined Port William, the town, the farmsteads, the fields and the woods, the river valley and the long, slow river, taking shape again in his mind.

And so I came to know, as I had not known before, what this place of ours had been and meant to him. I knew, as I had not known before, what I had meant to him. Our life in our place had been a benediction to him, but he had seen it always within a circle of fire that might have closed upon it.

He was a rock to me, but now I knew that he had been shaken. Okinawa shook him, and he was shaken for life, and deep in the night he needed to touch me. I didn’t know the reason then, but now I know that some old nightmare of the war had come back to him and frightened him awake. And ever so quietly, ever so gently, so as not to wake me, he would touch me. I would pretend to sleep on, so as not to disturb him with the thought that he had wakened me. It was not a lover’s touch. As I knew partly then but know completely now, he needed to know that he was here and I was here with him, that he had come from the world of war, again, to this. Reassured, he would sleep again, and I too would sleep.

Now I remember, now I seem to dream again, that sleep of ours, helpless and dark, precious and brief, somehow allowed within the encircling fire.

War Prayer

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fulttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!

Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think. “God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”

…

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.


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ORP: HG Creel's "Confucius, The Man and the Myth" part 1

The book begins with the social conditions in China at the time of Confucius' birth and childhood (about 2500 years ago):

 "Centralized government had broken down. The feudal lords acknowledged only nominal allegiance to the king. Yet they could not be called independent, for some of them were no more than puppets in the hands of their own swashbuckling underlings. Public and private wars raged unchecked. There was very little law and order save what each man could enforce by his own right arm, his armed followers, or his powers of intrigue. Even the greatest noble could not be sure that he would not be ruined and perhaps assassinated. The position of the common people was tragic. Whoever won the wars, they lost. Even when there was peace they had no security, for they had no power. They were virtual pawns of the aristocrats, whose principal interests had come to be hunting, war, and extravagant living. To pay for these pastimes they taxed the people beyond what the traffic could bear, and suppressed all protest ruthlessly."

--from "Confucius: The Man and the Myth" by H.G. Creel

Speculative philosophy: Julian Jaynes on the imperialistic takeover of the American continents

"It is possible that it was one of the few confrontations between subjective and bicameral minds, that for things as unfamiliar as Inca Atahualpa was confronted with--these rough, milk-skinned men with hair drooling from their chins instead of from their scalps so that their heads looked upside down, clothed in metal, with avertive eyes, riding strange llama-like creatures with silver hoofs, having arrived like gods in gigantic huampus tiered like Mochian temples over the sea which to the Inca was unsailable--that for all this there were no bicameral voices coming from the sun, or from the golden statues of Cusco in their dazzling towers. Not subjectively conscious, unable to deceive or to narratize out the deception of others, the Inca and his lords were captured like helpless automatons. And as its people mechanically watched, this shipload of subjective men stripped the gold sheating from the holy city, melted down its golden images and all the treasures of the Golden Enclosure, its fields of golden corn with stems and leaves all cunningly wrought in gold, murdered its living god and his princes, raped its unprotesting women, and, narratizing their Spanish futures, sailed away with the yellow metal into the subjective conscious value system from which they had come."

ORP: Latest reading and self study plans, misc. personal

Since I am trying desperately to liquidate my debt in anticipation of near future US economy woes, I cannot take classes at my local college or university. I am engaging in self study of history, literature, and some psychology and science. This has the advantage in that I get to choose some really interesting books that are not normally assigned in a class, and I get to tailor the knowledge acquisition to fill in the specific gaps in my mind. The disadvantage of self study is that all the credential worshipers in our society will have no regard for my efforts, so no credit in university unless I can find a CLEP exam that applies--I'll chronicle this experience when and if I have the opportunity.

Along with the self study plan (organized in a quarter system to mirror the local colleges--also gets me used to study at certain times), I am embarking on a fairly comprehensive survey of science fiction literature in rough chronological order starting with the early twentieth century. I am a fan of Jules Verne, so I'll include some reading from the nineteenth century as well. As I was listing many of the titles in preparation for this survey, I noticed many books that I had read in middle school and high school. I read so many in those years (primarily for escapism) that I had forgotten how many I had consumed. As I make my way through these many works of pulp to space opera to hard s.f. to literary science fiction, I will be experiencing some interesting mental experiences as my current operating memory synchronizes with my sub-conscious.

I will try to make a few blog entries about all this, and I will get back to George Orwell when I get to the twentieth century in my history survey. After a few years of this, I will start taking some accredited classes at the local community college to get my lower division requirements completed. When I get to the science and mathematics, I'll be sure to take the time to make some entries that actually relate to Natural Philosophy.

For now,

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ORP: True Sociology: Herbert Spencer readings

After reading a short pamphlet by the author called "The Right to Ignore the State", I have moved on to this next book:

 The Man Versus the State by Herbert Spencer

Though this collection encompasses essays from 150 to 130 years ago concerning the consequences of State interference in society, the parallels in the loss of liberty for the individual and the growth of the over-weaning State in 19th century England are eerily similar to what has happened to us in the 20th century (and continuing in the early 21st) in America.

Miseries are compounded and progress in technical and social development was slowed and stopped then and now by that great evil called the State, thus this book is still relevant to all of us today who value liberty.

After this I hope to move on to the author's book entitled "Social Statics". I have yet to read the author's three volume series on sociology, as it is out of print and quite expensive to acquire (some libraries have the volumes in the reference stacks, but one needs time and access). If I have time, I will comment on "Social Statics" here in a future entry.

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ORP: GO: Burmese Days, et al

I've been busy with all manner of personal family difficulties, so I've not had the inclination or time to make any intelligent entries. (For ephemeral stuff like the on-going loss of liberty and various other atrocities of statism, I have been on Facebook.) For now, here is a review of one of several books I have just finished reading:

Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air by George Orwell


This book is a three novel collection of (to some) the lesser known novels of Orwell.

Burmese Days:

I found "Burmese Days" interesting for the attitude of the English, in the last part of their Empire phase, toward their subject peoples. If the reality in history was as bad as the characters portrayed in the novel, George was right to criticize and show us this, warts and all.

I liked the story for the poignant account of the protagonist's loneliness and desire for soul-mate companionship that he thinks can be fulfilled in Elizabeth. He is mistaken about the reciprocity of his love or desire, because Elizabeth just doesn't get it. Here is a passage that describes all this:

"'I said just now that I loved you. Love! The word's been used till it's meaningless. But let me try to explain. This afternoon when you were shooting with me, I thought, my God! here at last is somebody who can share my life with me, but really share it, really live it with me--do you see--'

He was going to ask her to marry him--indeed, he had intended to ask her without more delay. But the words were not spoken yet; instead, he found himself talking egoistically on and on. He could not help it. It was so important that she should understand something of what his life in this country had been; that she should grasp the nature of the loneliness that he wanted her to nullify. And it was so devilishly difficult to explain. It is devilish to suffer from a pain that is all but nameless. Blessed are they who are stricken only with classifiable diseases! Blessed are the poor, the sick, the crossed in love, for at least other people know what is the matter with them and will listen to their belly-achings with sympathy. But who that has not suffered it understands the pain of exile? Elizabeth watched him as he moved to and fro, in and out of the pool of moonlight that turned silk coat to silver. Her heart was still knocking from the kiss, and yet her thoughts wandered as he talked. Was he going to ask her to marry him? He was being slow about it! She was dimly aware that he was saying something about loneliness. Ah, of course! He was telling her about the loneliness she would have to put up with in the jungle, when they were married. He needn't have troubled. Perhaps you did get rather lonely in the jungle sometimes? Miles from everywhere, no cinemas, no dances, no one but each other to talk to, nothing to do in the evenings except read--rather a bore, that. Still, you could have a gramophone. What a difference it would make when those new portable radio sets got out to Burma! She was about to say this when he added:

'Have I made myself at all clear to you? Have you got some picture of the life we live here? The foreignness, the solitude, the melancholy! Foreign trees, foreign flowers, foreign landscapes, foreign faces. It's all as alien as a different planet. But do you see--and it's this that I so want you to understand--do you see, it mightn't be so bad living on a different planet, it might even be the most interesting thing imaginable, if you had even one person to share it with. One person who could see it with eyes something like your own. This country's been a kind of solitary hell to me--it's so to most of us--and yet I tell you it could be a paradise if one weren't alone. Does all this seem quite meaningless?'"

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (update 1):

I just finished the second novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and I give it four stars because of the unlikeable main character, but the whole critique of society (English, of the time) was brilliant. This novel is where Orwell is channeling Dickens and James Joyce at the same time. So far the volume still gets high marks for the interesting way that the author writes.

Coming Up for Air (update 2):

I didn't know what to expect when I began this novel. At first it came across as a critique of the petit bourgeoisie, but now that I have finished the story, as I write this update, I find it to be a poignant history of a typical Englishman (warts and all) during the rapid change in society from the Victorian era to the current (of the time-1930s) brutal, soulless age. It shows also how easily we are constrained and compromised in any thought of liberty by the banality and pettiness of life.

Even Orwell's unsavory characters still come across as truly human. I recommend this collection of novels not for the sake of some nice twisty plot or some such innovation, but for the character studies. As character studies, they come across as metaphors for the soul of England as a nation (and by extension, the soul all of us). There is something for everyone in these three novels. For all these reasons, it gets four stars.
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At another Terran norm system, just outside of the spaceport, ...

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Mad Russian at the beginning of 2013

My fiftieth birthday present is this set of glasses.

Fall 2012

I wanted you. And I was looking for you. But I couldn't find you. I wanted you. And I was looking for you all day. But I couldn't find you. I couldn't find you. You're walking. And you don't always realize it, but you're always falling. With each step you fall forward slightly. And then catch yourself from falling. Over and over, you're falling. And then catching yourself from falling. And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.

Traveling without moving

Again, we may find a violence in some of the traditional imagery which tends to obscure the changelessness of God, the peace, which nearly all who approach Him have reported—the ‘still, small voice’. And it is here, I think, that the pre-Christian imagery is least suggestive. Yet even here, there is a danger lest the half conscious picture of some huge thing at rest—a clear, still ocean, a dome of ‘white radiance’—should smuggle in ideas of inertia or vacuity. The stillness in which the mystics approach Him is intent and alert—at the opposite pole from sleep or reverie. They are becoming like Him. Silences in the physical world occur in empty places: but the ultimate Peace is silent through very density of life. Saying is swallowed up in being. There is no movement because His action (which is Himself) is timeless. You might, if you wished, call it movement at an infinite speed, which is the same thing as rest, but reached by a different—perhaps a less misleading—way of approach.

Lewis, C. S.. Miracles (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewi) (pp. 148-149). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Hope Prayer

I hope that I will always be for each man what he needs me to be.

I hope that each man's death will always diminish me, but that fear of my own will never diminish my joy of life.

I hope that my love for those whom I like will never lessen my love for those whom I do not.

I hope that another man's love for me never be measure of my love for him.

I hope that every man will accept me as I am, but that I never will.

I hope that I will always ask for forgiveness from others, but will never need be asked for my own.

I hope that I will find a woman to love, but that I will never seek one.

I hope that I will always recognize my limitations, but that I will construct none.

I hope that loving will always be my goal, but that love will never be my idol.

I hope that every man will always have hope.

--Henri Nouwen, "Intimacy"