FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT

AS EVER, WENT TO CHURCH last Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Advent. Being in Colorado, this was the United Methodist Church just down the hill from my daughter's home in Holland Hills. Mainly, this was a Christmas Pageant, which was disappointing for me as I love to hear the readings from the Jewish part of the Bible (what Christians call the 'Old Testament'), also from the Epistles, and finally the Gospels.

Call me a traditionalist when I comes to 'order of worship'. Apart from the merest scrap of so of the scripture, there was no sermon or even a short homily. As you will all know from my last posting, I consider the best evidence suggests that the story of the magical birth of Jesus was a later addition to the gospel story, made long after the death of Jesus. The earliest writings in the Christian Bible (the New Testament') are the epistles of Paul. Despite his conferring with those who had known Jesus, he makes not mention of the elements we celebrate during the Advent season. Nor do the earliest and latest gospels in our possession (Mark and John), nor either can these stories be found in the other gospels that have come to light in recent times.

Despite the flimsy warrant for the Christmas story, I do enjoy this time. The exchange of gifts and the celebration of the possibility that the divine is part of human being, if we will only let it so. In the view of many serious Christian thinkers and in mine also, this is the fundamental message of the doctrine of the Incarnation. I love the stories from the first World War telling us that, at this time, opposing troops in the trenches of France, took a 'holy day' to join in the sharing of Christmas rations. It is a story of great power and beauty.

Many Christian pastors, through their original theological training and later reading, have become aware of the new understanding we have of the Bible and its fundamental message.This has come as a result of the study of these writings using the same methods as have been applied to other ancient writings. These scholars have wrestled with the issue of what is the core message that these writings have for us today. Beginning with the Jewish philosopher and scholar, Spinoza, they also have valiantly and rigorously sought to define a new meaning of 'god' in relation to the world.

I am sure that Jesus, as with other sages who have worked had at living in harmony with divine humanity, has a message for our times. What a good thing it might be were those who portray themselves as his publicists and evangelists were to get serious about discovering this and telling us in plain terms how to experience the breaking out of the kingdom of god in these troubled times.

In an interesting article in New York Times, Eric Weiner has something to say about the need for a better approach to becoming 'religious' (remember that to be religious is to find values that actually order our mode of being in the world). Weiner concluded,

"We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious."

REFLECTIONS ON MY LAST DAY IN OZ

A WHILE BACK, I BEGAN THE LET'S SACK GOD SERIES. At the end I concluded that, since god exists only as a concept within language and culture, we are free to define god in terms of our current knowledge about the nature of the world, its origins, and how it works; just as did the ancients who invented god at the outset and who redefined it through the ages. I concluded that, for me at least, this made me free to define god as the universe and this earth in particular. So I am part of god, I walk on god, I breath god, I feed on god. From god I arise, as do all of humanity and living creatures, and to god I return. So far, so good as the saying goes, but how can this relate to the practice of spirituality and the regulation that is the practice of religion?

It may seem paradoxical to you that I, agnostic, regularly attend Christian worship and especially the holy communion of the last supper of Jesus with his disciples. I seek to be a disciple of Jesus, despite my postion as agnostic. I stumbled upon Jesus by accident of birth and culture. Had I been born in India, I might have been of Hindu persuasion, or Buhdist, or even Muslim. In terms of the quest for spirituality and religious orientation, these are not inferior to the Christian culture I encountered as each has produced outstanding sages who have had much of value to say to we humans.

So here goes on what I think of Jesus.

Almost all that we know of Jesus is contained in the Christian Bible, the part know as the 'New Testament', mostly from the Gospels but a little from other writings. Beyond historical doubt, Jesus was a real person and is referred to very occasionally in secular histories not too long after his death. He was a remarkable person whose manner of life and teachings had profound influence on his early followers; this influence lived on and grew stronger after his death, even including many who had never known of him, apart from the news of him given from the first missionaries, apostles chosen by him to spread his message and also folk like Paul, whose writings constitute a good part of the New Testament and were the earliest references to Jesus. The Gospels were not written until some 40 to 60 years after his life ended.

The Old Teatament contains the record of how, over nearly a thousand years, the Jewish nation developed. It is a multifaceted story, long and sometimes tedious. and best read with some literary aids. In it we discover how the Jewish people came to believe in themselves as a chosen nation whose forefathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) entered into an agreement with a being so other that they refused to name and commonly referred to as THE LORD. This covenant was understood by the most clear minded to lead to eventual benefit for all nations but often descended to jingoist levels.

The record tells how, over the centuries, the nation fell away from this high purpose, only to be called back to it by fearless prophets who confronted them with the Word of The Lord. By the time of the more substantial prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah), it would seem as if The Lord eventually abandoned the original covenant, such as the one written on stone (as with the tablets of Moses), and was seeking a more effective way of bringing his purpose to fruition, a new covenant written in the human heart.

Through these centuries the Jewish people had considerable ups and downs, some days of spendour under King Solomon and downhill much of the time after him. This included civil war, conquest by other nations, physical removal to other lands, and a painful return and reconstruction leading toward the time of Jesus. Despite all this, a core of Jews held to the sacred traditions about following the way of The Lord. Eventually, following a long conquest by Alexander the Great, the Jewish lands were crushed under the might of Rome.

Jesus was born into a time when Greek influence was pervasive and Roman soldiers everywhere. As with any occupation, many lined up for a profitable relationship with Roman rule, others formed a resistance, and most just tried to get on with life as best they could. Jewish religious life was regulated from the Temple in Jerusalem but there were dissident religious groups also. Long deprived of true status as a nation, many treasured and held to the notions of the Prophets and looked for a better way, the Kingdom of God mediated by someone annointed by The Lord, known as the Messiah.

Jesus taught across the Jewish regions. speaking with singular authority and living in a controversial manner that often offended traditional religionists. However, most folk loved his messages. He was followed by large crowds from time to time and was sufficiently respected to be asked to speak in the synagoges following the reading of The Law and Prophets. He openly stated that he was to bring in the Kingdom of God, the rule of The Lord in the hearts of men and women.

Jesus walked a very tricky line, steering away from the notion of bringing in a new politik but emphasing how ordinary folk could live so as to fulfil the intention of the Law and Prophets, that is to love god with all one's heart and one's neighbor as oneself. He clearly realized his approach would bring eventual hated and resistance from officialdom. He warned his disciples that he would be killed and actively prepared a central group how to proceed after his death.

After his death, there was a period of confusion and then a process of consolidation. In making sense of things, his followers realized that his life had embodied completely the rule of The Lord, that he was the truest word of The Lord to human kind. The more they reflected on this, the more it seemed as if his words that he would always be with them seemed to have come true.

The further from his death, the more early Christians found it difficult to understand how such a man could have arisen. In the production of the gospels, they likely tended to embellish the stories of his teachings and life with fanciiful additions about his birth and supposed physical resurrection. I do not accept these as factual and it is not at all clear to me, after much study of the matter, that the early folllowers held these views. We are lucky indeed to have the record of some of his teachings and some glimpses of the person he was. These are sufficent to be a spiritual guide.

WHAT, HAVE WE BEEN MISTAKEN ABOUT SHOES? Or is this a modern parable?

THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE, suggests running shoes may not be good for us. The piece has had a good run, both in the 'most emailed' and 'most viewed' lists for the past month. According to this view, a couple of million or so years of evolving into remarkably efficient walkers and runners has given us the ability to cover very large distances, due to the structure of our legs and feet, and also to our ability to cool by perspiration.

This gave us the ability to hunt game despite their being more fleet. In turn, this altered our diet to include more protein and fat and so may have influenced the development of larger brains. The few remaining hunter-gatherers, mainly in Africa, do not wear shoes.

I do not know when we first began to wear shoes. I am sure there was not much science to it. Shoes have proved their worth, assisting us to explore and populate all sorts of environments and accomplish difficult tasks. However, when I was a little fellow, in the Summer, we did without shoes totally, except when having to wear our best. Remarkable, really, how tough the soles of one's feet can become. Years ago a colleague of mine who trained marathon runners (before marathons were all the rage) told me he always ran in bare feet!

Wearing shoes has possibly altered the way we walk, transforming our gait from stepping onto the balls of our feet to first striking the ground with our heels. Soon after reading the NY Times article I was watching a tourism advertisement on the local South Australian TV. I was astonished to see a father and son of about eight years walking along the beach. The father strode along heels first while his son followed, springing along using the balls of his feet!

I have a pair of those fancy foot gloves, no cushioning of the heel, which encourages me to step first onto the front of the foot. It was a little strange at first but it seems to work just fine.

As part of buying a new bike, I was offered a free bike fit and pedaling instruction. Me...learn to pedal? Turns out a lot has been discovered about the science of pedaling. And would you believe, I have had to learn a new way to do that too! Recall that adage about old dogs and new tricks?

About the same time, I have been reading about the Jewish origins of the Christian faith. A bit odd, you might suppose, for an expressed agnostic, but I am holding onto the possibility that one might be influenced by Jesus even if one were to be atheistic. Back then, following the teaching of Jesus was know as 'walking in the way'.

Is there a metaphor, even a parable, tucked away here somewhere I wonder?

From what we can discover from recently unearthed early Christian writings and from a study of the gospels, what those early followers in the way believed and thought about Jesus could be very different from more recent, traditional views. I am not sure that one can assert that the early views, if different, are more correct than those modern Christian beliefs. Jewish sandals or Christian clogs...who can say?

Even so, I find it very liberating to try to discover what kind of person Jesus might have been and to get away from complex ideas, developed centuries after the fact, of who he was and what was his game, as a contrary Jew in a Jewish culture, with Jewish history behind him.

If the early believers in Jesus could have heard these doctrines, they would likely be greatly surprised, as well might have Jesus. Early beliefs about Jesus sat easily side by side with conventional Jewish views and could have been seen as an advance on current understanding of Jewish scriptures, as any reading of the Book of Acts, the earliest history of the spread of belief in Jesus, can demonstrate.

As I have mentioned in earlier postings, from the third century onward, the Church has fostered views of the nature of the world that are dualistic (heaven separated from earth, and so on) and unsupportable in the light of scientific knowledge, although consonant with the understanding of the third century.

As the saying has it, 'If the shoe fits, wear it.' But which shoe? The sandals of those early believers or the clogs of classical western Christianity? Perhaps neither. We need new shoes to try on.

One thing we do know. Whenever those early Christians met, it was with a profoundly powerful sense that Jesus was somehow amongst them. In these meetings we know they always broke bread and drank wine with a deliberate focus on the selfless life of Jesus who brought to them the strong sense of divine love.

Though important particularly for Christians, Jesus need not be the only spiritual guide since there are many who have though deeply about what it means to live a godly, or good life. Perhaps there are modern prophets to whom we might listen. What it seems to me I can do is to keep my life open to the possible in-rushing of spiritual insight and energy, an opening up of 'the way'.

Like new shoes that help me to a new way of walking.

ON OPENING A SUITCASE...

WHAT IS IN A SUITCASE CAN SURPRISE YOU...even if you think you know what is inside. I love the story of how Ernest Hemingway, on returning to Paris after many years, entered the hotel where he had so often stayed. The manager, having made him welcome, inquired whether he would like to take possession of the suitcase he had left in storage there. Hemingway had forgotten all about the suitcase but had worried over the loss of all his notes made when, as a young man, he had lived in the Latin Quarter. On opening the suitcase, there they were! His earlier life once more revealed. These became the material for his book "A Moveable Feast".

I cannot claim such a momentous experience but when I opened my suitcase left at my sister's home containing a cache of Aussie summer clothes, I was overtaken by surprise. Suddenly I became the fellow who had packed that case, with all the feelings and thoughts that I had at that time, contemplating my return to the US! My passing through the eye of the needle was about to become a labyrinthine adventure.

You who have so faithfully followed these postings will recall that I had intended to return to live in Australia permanently but, on being here for some months, decided that I really wanted to live in the Corning area in upper New York state. I can tell you that I had lots of ideas of how that might be and, frankly, quite a deal of anxiety, not to mention a certain feeling of slight insanity about this sudden reversal.

As I surveyed the contents of that case I felt as if sucked back into a time vortex, falling through the seeming eons of change in my life since closing up that case, a brief experience akin to Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Lots of things have happened since then. Instead of building a little home for myself, I found a house just perfect for conversion into an ageing bachelor's abode with hardly a vestige of garden just waiting transformation. This story is continuing in my other Blog

I returned to the US, spent some time with my daughter in Colorado and then drove up through Glacier National Park to visit with friends first in Fort Langley BC, then in Seattle and Portland, before returning to Basalt CO. In Portland, Howard, my sometime counselor, led me to see how core to my being is traveling, a revelation to me but likely no news to you, my readers.

Then it was across a good part of the US, enjoying the first signs of Spring through the mid-western states and finally into New York state where I was welcomed by rain, rain, and more rain. Eventually I went as far as Chatham, almost to Massachusetts, to assist Richard and Gina a little with the renovations of their new home. I had little idea of the adventure I was about to embark on with my small home in Sterling Street, back in Corning.

There have been other adventures but central has been my quest for spirituality. I managed to sack the god of my early adulthood and to redefine for myself the nature of belief. A stout agnostic, tending atheist, I nevertheless faithfully attend the local Episcopal Church when at home and where I feel very much at home. I have rediscovered what it might be to be a follower of Jesus (now a very different figure compared with my early conceptions of him) and value the company of those who follow a similar course and also the connectedness I feel with those who have gone before, all the way back to his time and teachings. I am not much concerned with theology though its complexities, inconsistencies, and dilemmas I still find most interesting. I think that I am learning more than ever to respect the faith of others.

Emboldened by the suitcase experience, this last Sunday I ventured downtown (into Adelaide, the City of Churches) into Flinders Street, first of all to Holy Communion (8 AM) at Pilgrim Church. This is part of the Uniting Church (formerly Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches). I joined with 20 or so other followers of Jesus to remember the last meeting of Jesus with his followers, according to his request). The visiting speaker spoke of the partnership the Uniting Church has with other fellowships around the world, particularly in Bali where Christians are developing interfaith approaches to worship and combating the effects of global warming. Following the breaking of bread and the communal cup of remembrance, we all met for breakfast.

My next stop was Flinders Street Baptist Church for their 10AM worship meeting. In this church I was ordained to the Baptist pastoral ministry (July 31, 1964). Must have been all of 40 years since last in this place! At coffee and biscuits after, I met an amazing number of folk I had known back in those long gone days, some of whom I was hitherto sure would have since died! So, another suitcase opened with very pleasurable results.

Just goes to show, suitcase have their little surprises.

ROBERTO DOWN UNDER.

MY LIFE HAS SETTLED INTO A PLEASANT ROUTINE. I manage to get in good walk each day, usually first thing after two cups of coffee, either along the cliff tops overlooking the sea (if at my sister's) or around the area where my daughter lives, if with her and her family. The bicycle has added a more demanding dimension, especially if at my sister's, as the hills thereabouts can be quite demanding. A 'to do' list is appearing as I survey the work yet to be done on her house. My daughter has a list too, but not so demanding so I can be more relaxed.

I though you might like this picture of the Aussie Magpie snapped while on my suburban walk, apparently studying a young Bottle Brush. This is alongside the light rail line that so conveniently runs close to where my daughter lives and then into downtown , or to the beach, depending on direction.

The beach terminus, by the way, as at a seaside place called 'Glenelg', the only town name palin-drome of which I am aware.

The Queen has been down here also, at least her fourth visit to this land. She did not come to Adelaide thereby avoiding getting in my way...that she has done three times so far, once in Adelaide, once in Melbourne, and once in Brighton UK. "What's with all these crowds?", I have asked these three occasions. "Its the Queen, silly.", has come the reply.

One of the reasons she has visited is to lead the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, an auspicious event unlikely to be noticed by the non-Commonwealth world*. Sixteen nations make up the Queen's Realm', including the UK, Canada, and Australia; these have the Queen as their nominal head of government. There is a bunch of other countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, all united by their love of the game of cricket (with the exception of Canada, although it is played in British Columbia)

Australians are quite given over to gambling. Currently there is a move by the government to require poker machines to have players nominate the amount of money they are prepared to lose. Once they reach this amount, the machines will cease playing for them. Given the many tales of gambling induced tragedy, one could hardly fault such a move. Predictably, the gambling business is up in arms against this measure. One gambling magnate said that present measures are adequate to prevent abuse and that other more effective means could be devised. A statement likened by one commentator as similar to a well-known African dictator speaking for democracy!

Less controversial is the famous Melbourne Cup Day, the culmination of a several weeks of horse racing. Aussies do love the horses. Some are a little miffed that the Queen, herself a prominent owner of racing horses, is not hanging about for this event (although she is 'bouncing the ball' to start an Aussie Rules football match over in Perth before she departs...akin to the President pitching the first ball at a baseball game). What is remarkable is that, on the first Tuesday in November, the nation will virtually stop to listen to the broadcast commentary, or watch the televised race. In offices everywhere, there will be the 'Cup sweep" when hopefuls will contribute a dollar or two, maybe to take home small winnings. Well, one has to be in it to win it! Your name is attached to a horse's name drawn at random from a hat and you may be lucky enough to have scored the winner.

After 'The Cup', the nation will settle down back to normal.

Apart from Adelaide, that is. Here in a couple of weeks, the Great Christmas Pageant will occur. Colorful floats depicting fairy tales and Christmas stories will emerge, all spruced up, from storage and parade through the city streets. This is almost an international event, attracting many visitors from around the world, and many thousands of children and their proud parents, all lining the streets and awed by the procession. The last float will have on board good old jolly Father Christmas and a gang of helping gnomes and fairies. This will deliver the venerable gentleman to the Magic Cave in the basement of one of the large downtown stores (the event sponsor), thereby opening the way for all the other stores to produce their St. Nicholas clones. Finally, the Season of Joy will be resoundingly upon us.

How I loved this event when a child, growing up in this fair city. Now I avoid it (like the Queen).

The Queen, in her royal way, is quite the trooper, even likened by some to having rock-star quality. There is some agreement that her visit may have set back somewhat the occasional urge of Australians to become some sort of republic. This can only be determined by a nation-wide referendum, involving a majority of the people and at least half of the states. This may go on the back burner during the present Monarch's lifetime, or until she abdicates. Long live the Queen?

*I take that back...it did get a mention in the latest NY Times at least.

NOW IN ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

AS YOU MIGHT RECALL, I was last heard from in San Francisco airport, awaiting boarding for my flight to Sydney, somewhat dreading the coming ordeal. It turned out to be not so bad, as is the case with most things dreaded, and perhaps one of the better experiences I have had crossing the Pacific. Since I have now done this 30 or so times, this may be worth noting.
Apropos of how to avoid jet lag, this time I decided to sleep according to departure zone and eat according to arrival zone time. I had an aisle seat in the Exit row with plenty of leg room and that helped a lot too. Whatever the reason or reasons, not a trace of jet lag.

After a very long night (some 13 hours) we arrived in Sydney on time, about 7 AM local time. A short wait in the Transit Lounge and I boarded the United flight on to Melbourne. There I met up with my dear friend of some 30 years, Kim. We ate Thai and I say again that it is hard to beat Melbourne for excellent food. Then aboard the bus for the overnight trip to Adelaide. To complete the diversity of travel (plane, bus, BART, and walking), I ambled in the early morning hour to the central square of Adelaide to catch the light rail to my daughter's home (just across the parklands from Adelaide downtown), presenting myself at just on 7AM. How very nice to have arrived, at last!

Since then, I have gotten in lots of walking and have even purchased a cycle to ride when I am here each year (alas, Bike Friday remains in Corning; I hope not too upset at being left behind). This is a great season to be here, the weather very like that in San Francisco. Many natives bloom during the Winter and the wattle is still quite beautiful, though somewhat muted. This cannot be said of the birds, all as colorful and noisy as ever. With the warming of the weather, the lizards and skinks are eager to soak up the sun. Walking with the family yesterday, I spied a Blue Tongued lizard hogging his share who then quickly scuttled off into the safety of a nearby bush as we approached.

The Spring flowers are making their entrance and I am including a picture of one such along the bike path I use for my morning walk (commonly called, I think, the Bottle Brush). You will see why as you view this photo. Of course, you may never use a bottle brush but we oldies once did to clean out bottles. Very useful indeed!

So it is very pleasant to be back here for some six weeks. My little house awaits my return. Daniel, my contractor, will be finishing out the external trim on the sun/potting room, fixing up some leaks and removing the framework of the wall between the living room and the kitchen/breakfast room. With the temperatures falling during the Fall (what else can the temperature do in the Fall?), the house will be mainly closed up and the heating system set to run close to 60 deg. F. I will be very interested to see what the gas use will be during this period I am away. I expect to see six inches of snow when I return after Christmas.

Those cyclists among you will be interested to see what my cycle looks like. It is exactly the sort of bike I wanted for riding around hereabouts and cost about half of what I thought I might have to pay. The mechanic in the pic is Graham, formerly of Winnipeg, Canada. He does not miss the Winter there. It is a modest bike, with more gears/speeds than I expect to use and 'flat' handlebars. It is very comfortable, being quite well suited to my peculiar build.

Until next time. I probably will not say more about Adelaide. In the unlikely event that you might one day visit 'Down Under', I recommend to you my home city. A very relaxing place to be and well endowed with good food, wine, and places to go.

ONLY IN AMERICA

SORRY FOLKS... you will have to wait a bit longer of a final 'god' posting but some things are going on I need to reflect on with you. As for the no doubt long awaited note of possible implications on of choosing Mother Earth, imagine that it were She who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush or on Mt Horeb, what might the Ten Commandments have said?

In a week or so, I will be back in Australia for almost two months which will certainly be a change of scene, not the least entering Spring and then a taste of Summer. Now prepare for a slight jump.

Just last week I attended the annual presentation of the Medicare Advantage fund I have chosen. A bunch of us seniors gathered at a local, very spiffy, motel to hear the good news and the bad news about our 2012 cover and costs to us. No need to go into the boring detail of this except to say that I found myself reflecting that, under Medicare in Australia, there would never be a reason to go to such a meeting, nor would I be getting monthly summaries from such an organization. All needless under 'socialized medicine'. I would, of course,be comforted for any possible sense of loss by the knowledge that far less money would be spent on administration and therefore available for actual services. I did ask a question about cover while out of state and this betrayed that I am from Australia, a far away and mysterious country hereabouts.

Now here comes the jump I mentioned: a woman came up to me after the meeting to say that she had heard that Australia is a very prejudiced country. Hmm, I thought to myself, this is news to me, given that there are about 200 different language groups and almost half of the inhabitants born somewhere else and all getting on fairly well.

After several questions, it became clearer that she was thinking about intolerance toward religion and particularly directed at Christianity. Now this was really news to me but I managed to keep my peace. Walking back to my car, I reflected that there is something really 'nutty' about some folks views on religion and the role it ought to play in this society. Forget that Jesus once said, 'Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.'

Consider that the country may be in much the same trouble as before the Great Depression of the 1930s but, instead of pulling together in a time of crisis, proper government has been traduced by devastating political partisanship. The political right looks to be taken over by christian fundamentalists, some of them claiming to be 'new apostles', while the current paramount political anxiety seems focused on that a looming serious candidate for the presidency is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints ( a Mormon)!

As the saying goes...Give me a break! Unattended to is the greater divide by wealth. Millions are out of work, 15% of the population are in poverty, homelessness even of some who were once middle class is increasing, some 46 million are without health insurance, and most of us now know that 40% of the wealth is owned by 1% of the population, while only 15% is owned by 80%. Over 20% of high-school graduates cannot get work. Meanwhile, four of five members of Congress are millionaires. Once elected, members can expect generous health care and comfortable retirement benefits for the rest of their lives. Nonetheless many freely talk of reducing the costs of benefits for the poor and for seniors to 'balance the budget'. And so it goes...gone is the 'American Dream'; work hard and you might become rich, or at least enjoy the 'good life'.

A new development is the move to 'Occupy Wall Street". This began with young people but many older disenchanted middle class folk, and more recently the Labor Unions, are joining this movement. It is spreading to other cites, even my old home town of Portland, Oregon (Occupy Portland). The chant is, 'We are the 99%'. A growing number of folk sense that they have lost influence over government, that it has become 'government by the wealthy for the wealthy'. Some sense that, here in the US, home of the 'greatest democracy', some form of revolution is imminent. Around the world, young people, armed with iPods and immersed in Twitter, have emerged as a powerful revolutionary force.

Occupy Wall Street has been disparaged as 'aimless' and 'disorganized'. A somewhat radial Australian website (Citizen's Electoral Council) has acquainted me this is not the case. This movement is demanding return to the provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act passed in 1933. This regulated the banks to separate ordinary, commercial banking from investment banking and came about to restore order to the collapsed banking system here in the USA. Prior to this, bankers could do pretty much anything they wanted. This legislation was repealed in 1999 by the Republican dominated Senate and House of Representatives, signed into law by President (then just recently become a millionaire), and setting the stage for the 2007/2008 financial collapse here in the US which continues to affect global economy. Basically, the repeal turned the clock back to the pre-Great Depression era of unbridled financial license.

I doubt that the 99% are overly concerned about a Mormon possibly being in the White House. After all, we survived the election of a Roman Catholic and more recently the election a non-Caucasian. If the sky is falling, race and religion have little, if anything at all, to do with our current woes. Mormons, so far as I have been able to see, are honest, conscientious, moral, hardworking and trustworthy folk, at least as much as any other group given to faith. This could be seen by some as a breath of fresh air at the pinnacle of politics! This quip aside, I prefer to wait and see how things turn out.

What is the 'so what' of all this? Like folk the world around, Americans want to feel that the government is for the common weal. There are many who, as do I, don't want politicians who seem to pander to 'Wall Street', who are overly influenced by lobbyists (whether representing the drug companies, the health industry, the energy industry, the military related industries, the rifle associations and gun lobbies, the wealthy corporations, the labor unions, or religious groups). As the common Aussie phrase has it, just give us all a 'fair go'.

I suppose and hope that those increasing number chanting in the streets, 'We are the 99%', might finally get the politicians to listen to what once was the 'silent majority'.

TOMORROWS' GOD, TODAY?

A VEXING ASPECT OF BELIEF IN GOD is that, more often that not, our preference is to make this an ISSUE OF FACT. Suppose that this were just a matter of choice. On the one hand, you choose for a variety of reasons, to believe in God (as a factual being) and I, on the other and for another set of reasons, choose not to. This is just a matter of a difference of opinion. Each opinion seems as likely to be equally useful. Atheists, agnostics, and other non-theists are as likely to act morally, or immorally, and to have a sense of meaning and direction as those that hold to belief in God.

The unfortunate question is not, "Do you or do you not believe in a god, or gods?", but rather,"Is there or is there not a god, or gods?'. I have followed a course of thinking that this question does not occur spontaneously to us during the critical early years of life when we are internalizing representations of our physical selves within the physical world. Once we have acquired language we begin to encounter the much more complex world of culture and knowledge. Here we discover the musings of our culture, including whether the physical universe may be a consequence of some 'god', or supernatural being, active within or outside of it.

Christianity, and related religious views, has preserved the notion of a two level universe, the one where we live and the other where 'god' has always been and still is ('as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be evermore'). This leads to quite a bit of mischief. Just before the beginning of the current era, an Epicurean thinker called Lucretius advanced the view that atoms comprise the world, including ourselves, and that this world is the only world (no other world where god or gods may be, and no 'next world' awaiting us after death). Lucretius was regarded by the Church as an atheist and anti-religionist. His book, 'On the Nature of Things', was suppressed by the Church and lost from the Third until the early Fifteenth Century when the only known remaining copy was discovered in an isolated monastery by a lover of old books .

The ideas of Lucretius presaged modern cosmologies based on the work of science on the nature of the substance of things. Now we see that we truly are made out of 'star dust', that the complex and amazing phenomenon of life has emerged naturally from this physical foundation, and that the soul or spirit of human kind resides only in our bodies as a consequence of our taking in the knowledge and beliefs of the culture into which we are born. This is courtesy of the workings of our fantastically complex brains and the equally amazing facility of human language, itself the foundation of thought and self-awareness.

What am I to do with this appreciation? I have no idea of what was the case before the 'Big Bang', when in the blink of an eye or less, our current world exploded into being. Perhaps 'god' was there; maybe this world of ours is fleeting phantasmagoria in the dreams of such a being. I will never know. It seems to me that, so far as we humans are concerned, the universe we know has become aware of itself through the rise of our intelligence. If a useful concept of god is to arise, it must as ever be our invention. Man creates 'god', not 'god' created man.

For myself, I embrace Mother Earth as my 'god'. I am dust of Her dust and to Her dust I will return. This is a view that cannot lead to much mischief, except by the 'sins' of omission.

Now, how to make sense of this leap of faith?

TOMORROW'S GOD?

THE CHIEF BUSINESS OF RELIGION is to provide meaning and a means of ordering life according to valued ideals . We understand a person's religion by observing how they live. As we have seen, the original and fundamental meaning of the word 'religion' refers to the ordering of actions according to cherished values and ideas. We may fall short of these values from time to time but, as religious persons, we keep returning to them. The concept of 'god' may or may not assist in this search.

It is also true that the concept of 'god', as we trace it in the long human story, has been central in our search for meaning. This need to understand the meaning of life seems to be built into us. Almost as soon as a child acquires language we begin to hear questions like,
'Who am I?'
'How did I get here?
'How did this world around me get to be?'
The child is not the first to ask such questions. Human kind has been asking them for eons. Culture stands ready to assist us with answers. At convent school, my catechism class informed me that God made me, and the world, for his glory.

From ancient stories and from the living fossils of the beliefs and stories of original humans, such as the Australian aborigine, the Inuit peoples, and native American tribes people, we may conclude that the world they experienced they understood to be moved from behind, as it were, by supernatural forces. These eventually became personalized as powerful ancient creatures, or as gods. In those days, we learned to accommodate to the wishes of these forces through rituals, perhaps hoping also we could influence events that were powerful and utterly mysterious. These rituals and the beliefs were central to life and rigorously guarded.

Another profound aspect of early human life appears to be that we then saw ourselves as part and parcel of the world around us. We came from the earth, were of the earth, and returned to the earth. Man and nature were the same, as with every living thing.

About three thousand years ago, as agriculture freed a class of thinkers to reflect more on the nature of the world, the notion of many gods that could be placated by rituals began to be 'pooh poohed' . The prophets of the Old Testament and the Greek philosophers even poked fun at these ideas. Buddha likewise argued their irrelevance. An enduring outcome of this radical thinking was the rise of monotheism, that there is just one 'god'. Associated with this was the loss of feminine attributes from the notion of 'god' and the tendency to move the concept of the deity out of nature to 'another' level of being. Likewise, man became removed from nature and began to be cast as created to have dominion over other animals and nature generally.

If you wish to follow this development, there are many sources but the writings of Lloyd Geering (the title of whose book, Tomorrow's God, I have borrowed to lead this posting) can get you started.

Western Christianity, heavily influenced by Paul (whom many regard as the founder of Christianity and a profoundly Greek Jew) absorbed and promoted a form of monotheism along with the dualistic view of nature vs. man and 'God'. It is ironic that Paul who, on his own confession, never met Jesus or heard him teach, paid scant attention to the teachings of Jesus but preferred to concentrate on the death and resurrection of Jesus and through this the notion of the creation of a 'New Israel' in the life of the churches he influenced. Though Paul may be special case, because of his wide influence, it is very probable that none of the writers who contributed to what we now call the 'New Testament', had met or heard Jesus. The same can be said, but more forcibly, of all who have written about Christianity since.

The other monotheistic faiths, Judaism and later Islam, have followed a similar course, masculating the deity, separating the domain of the deity from the earth and nature, and casting humankind as the center of the universe and the chosen master of nature.

But wait...in the last two hundred years another world view has emerged. The stuff of life is also the stuff of the universe. Elements that make my biochemistry possible, that make me work as I type this posting, were manufactured only lately in the life of the universe, in the collapse and explosions of fourth generation stars, blasted across eons and finally collected here in our planet, Earth. Scientists, delving laboriously into the nature of things, tell me that matter is not what I think it to be but continuously disappears and reappears, and that the 'vacuum' of space is full of energy and stuff the like of which I will never understand. Meanwhile the biologists, delving into the DNA that has driven my own personal development from conception, contains the DNA of bacteria that may have been the first forms of life, and then of primitive plants, and all manner of creatures that have come and gone in the generations of life on this planet.

So, in a fundamental sense, the wheel of meaning has turned an entire circle, back to where we are beginning to see that human kind, and all kind, are part and parcel of the earth, coextensive and one with the universe, a concatenation or merging once more of the secular and the sacred. However, this cannot support the notion of a 'god' who is 'up above', or 'out there' in a higher level of being.Now we may see how we differ from our ancestral seekers of meaning.

PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE

A QUITE HAIR RAISING TIME in my life came about when my family moved from the quiet town of Clare (in the mid-North of South Australia) down to the outskirts of Adelaide (the capital city of South Australia). I must have been around nine or ten years (a long time ago!). On a clear day, one could just see the 'tall' buildings of the city in the distance. The suburb was called 'Northfield'.

The first 'scary' thing was that I now had to go to the one-teacher school just across the road. Having attended convent school where only the nuns taught, this was very different and formidable. I feigned sick for three days until my mother took me across. It did not help that the teacher was called Mr. Basham (aka, Bash 'Em?). As with many things that initially frighten, this turned out to be an unexpectedly enriching experience.

What was really frightening was the local gang of boys, some of whom were already attending high-school and learning science. These local lads were fond of making knives, slingshots, and fireworks (having learned to make gunpowder) and loved to get into adventures around the local quarries. Some adventures were really hair raising. Had they know of them, our parents would have clamped down on our freedom; we, however, kept 'Mum'.

The leaders of our local lads had learned to pick the lock on the explosives store at the quarry. From this we occasional 'borrowed' sticks of gelignite, fuse, and detonators. What a time we had, blowing up rabbit warrens, fence posts, and impressing the girls, when we all went skinny-dipping down at a disused quarry filled with water, by throwing a quarter stick, fuse sizzling, into the deepest parts, enormous aquatic eruptions resulting. Ah, those were the days! I think it was then that I began to gain a respect for life and the wisdom of carefully graduating risk.

The Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel invented the Nobel patent detonator used with dynamite and nitroglycerin. Dynamite, or gelignite, consists of nitroglycerin mixed with clay which makes it safe to handle (a slight shock can set off nitroglycerin) which then needed a device to set it off reliably. As the dynamite king, he became very rich and remains famous and influential due to the Nobel Prize.

Can I hear you saying, "What has this to do with belief in 'God'?" A seemingly tenuous connection, I do admit. On the other hand, it makes for an attention getting beginning to this post. Perhaps toying with the notion of 'God' may appear a little like playing with dynamite. Our word, 'dynamite', comes directly from the Greek, 'dunamis', meaning power. Actually, 'elemental power'...the kind of power seen in the tempest, the whirlwind, tornado or hurricane, volcanic eruptions and earthquake, events that the ancients attributed to 'god'. Even today, we sometimes refer to these as 'acts of God'.

What I have been leading up to is that the ancients got it back to front. They concluded that 'god' or 'gods' were behind such events. As with the air they breathed so also the language they used. They came to speak of 'gods' and 'god' because they could speak.

Language has been with us for so long that we know little of how it became invented or even how, once created by man, it developed. But invented it was and is now so much a part of our nature that we are hardly aware of it and how profoundly this invention has influenced human development. It has been conjectured that language is coupled to increasingly efficiency of our evolutionary forebears as hunters. More dietary meat supported increased brain development (less gut needed, more brain possible within the range of possible energy intake). More brain supported more language capacity, while better communication through language led to better hunting and foraging, to a more versatile omnivorous diet, and so on. Efficient food gathering in turn mean more time for sitting around and just talking, and the invention of stories and so, the rise of culture and art, each an enormous expansion of the range of the individual mind.

Whatever...in reality, I conclude, man made god, through language, thinking, and wondering about the nature of things. We may say the 'God' made man (and the world), but this does not make it so. What does it mean to say, 'in reality'? I refer to the representation of the world that is in our heads, and in our culture, that has been painstakingly constructed over time and into which we have grown since birth.

It might well be extremely distressing to dismiss 'god' in this way. On the other hand it may also be abundantly creative. If the concept of 'god' is something within our control, maybe we can now do a proper job of work on it. There are pressing reasons why it would be of inestimable value to human kind to get on with this.

In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther defined 'god' as 'that to which we look for all good and where we resort in every time of need; to have a god is simply to trust and believe in one with our whole heart'. Here he is using the original notion of 'belief' which is to entrust oneself, or commit to a most highly valued course (as distinct from the modern use relating to assenting to a point of view).

As a former Augustinian monastic, and a leader of the Protestant Reformation, Luther was confident that a study of Holy Scripture would be the key to finding or fixing on the True God. Nowadays, it is possible to see that the Bible is a collection of stories of human origin, useful for guiding us in living but not conclusive when it comes to understanding the world. Moreover, I have suggested that it contains a view of reality, preserved by traditional Christianity, that is turning out to be dangerous to the world and our life on it.

An earlier monastic, a Franciscan, William of Ockam (try Googling 'Occam's Razor) proposed that the simplest explanation of anything should be preferred. Eventually this view, coupled with the overthrow of the authority of the Church, led to the scientific understanding of the world we now enjoy and the emergence of the modern secular world view. By holding onto the dualism implicit in traditional theological interpretations, broad Christianity has fallen behind, along with Islam and Judaism, in assisting human kind to find the faith needed for the challenges of the modern age.

If, instead, we turned to what we have come to know of the world, what manner of 'god' might we invent, to which we could entrust ourselves in our time of need?

A COFFEE MOMENT...

MY FAVORITE COFFEE SHOP, would you believe, is called 'Heavenly Cup'.  It is not far from where I used to live, at Gang Mills.  By the way, a ganged mill consists of several saws that, in tandem, cut, shape, and section a log horizontally and vertically, so that what enters as a log emerges as sawn timber.  The name reminds us that the Corning area  once had one of the largest forestry industries in the US. In passing, we could note that 'heavenly' cup refers to a quality and not a place.

The coffee at Heavenly Cup rivals that to be found anywhere.  There, last week, I was in conversation with one of the pastors of a church I occasionally attend...one of the modern versions with a youth band, lots of singing, and expositions a tad longer than those at Christ Church.  He wanted to know how it is that I came to my present view of faith and religion.  It was a clarifying moment; in cafe, veritas.  My mind flew back to that moment when I sacked God the second time.

Of course, I didn't really sack God;  I simply use this as a metaphor for the sudden, final collapse of the dualism implicit in modern Christianity and, for that matter, most western approaches to faith.  If there  is just one reality, the reality we have been attempting to incorporate and make sense of since birth, the physical world of which we are part and which scientific inquiry has been endeavoring to understand for the past two hundred years, then the traditional view of Christianity necessarily collapses.  If there is just one world, one universe, where in this world can the god of faith exist?  This is not to say that this 'god of faith' cannot exist, but not as a real being in some other realm of existence that we call 'heaven'.

We inherit the cosmology of traditional Christianity (Heaven up there somehow above the clouds, man being made of body and soul, Jesus both human and Divine, and so on) from an earlier time, the way the world was seen, conceptualized by the Greeks, Romans, and, to some extent, the Jews.  With two hundred years or so of scientific inquiry into the nature of things behind us, modern thinking about the foundations of faith should be able to do a lot better.

Talking with my friend over a heavenly cup also exemplified for me how a particular view of the Bible can stand in the way of achieving this.  This is the comparatively modern view that these writings are scientifically and historically accurate because divinely inspired.  Taking this view preserves the cosmology of the times of the various authors and disregards the immense amount of biblical scholars of all persuasions done over the last two hundred years on the nature and construction of these writings.

Unfortunately this also preserves the notion that man and nature are separate and that the earth is meant to be under the dominion of man, to be exploited however humans see fit.

Well, this is the story of my journey into faith and I am not asking you to agree with these views.  I am glad that I have lived to a time when a much clearer picture of Jesus has emerged, who he was, what he had to say, and his position in the stream of Jewish thought about the meaning of life.  This is the historical Jesus, not the Jesus of faith as worshiped by many Christians of today, the concept of The Christ I encounter when I attend at worship

But what about 'God'?   What might it mean to "believe in 'God'?"

CAN 'GOD' BE PUT BACK TO WORK?

I QUITE LIKE TO ATTEND CHURCH, which you might think a little weird, given my agnostic/atheist leanings.  I go the the local Episcopal services.  I am surprisingly regular, hardly missing a Sunday.  I love the hymns, which are more ancient than modern.  A small quip tucked away here, as the  Church of England, Anglican, Episcopal (depending on the country in which one is living) had an earlier hymnal called, 'Hymns, Ancient and Modern'.

Going into the local church building (Christ Church), with its tower and stained glass windows, is a like leaving the 21st Century and entering the Middle Ages.  This is certainly true of the cosmology inherent in almost every thing we say and do.  We pray to our Heavenly Father, at whose right hand is Jesus, the Son of God.  One day, Jesus will descend from heaven to judge the living and the dead.  The dead will be raised from Hades, below the earth, to face the judgement day.  We are joined with the hosts of heaven through the life of the Holy Spirit, making us one in Christ, forming the people of God or the body of Christ.  We ask for the forgiveness of sins and for help to live peaceful, good, and useful lives.  If anyone needs forgiveness for sins, that would be me, and I am grateful for any help to attain to the latter three.

It is greatly interesting to me that, had I not begun to attend this church, I might never have heard of the writings of Lloyd Geering.  A regular attender, at the fellowship hour after the worship service on my first attendance, having heard my confession of agnosticism, said, 'Have you read any of Lloyd Geering?', and strait-way mentioned a title, Christianity without God.

Professor Geering is a New Zealand theologian who was tried for heresy by the Presbyterian Church in 1968 (but not found guilty).  I recommend you read his work should you be interested in thinking 'out of the box' about the history of Christianity and its possible contribution to our modern secular age.  His writings have greatly assisted my own thinking.  He is erudite in many areas and familiar with the challenges modern science offers to Christian believers.  I had been completely unaware of his writings as his period of active writing roughly coincides with the period in which I was going about my second sacking of God.

Does this mean that, having sacked 'God' twice, I am about to reengage?  Not in the manner you might expect.

I have put forward, for your consideration, that talk about God is not talk about a being in the real world, or some other 'world' but rather is talk about a concept which, like all concepts, exists somehow 'in our heads'.  In other words, a concept that can only exist so long as there is language and culture to support it.  Many cultures we know of through  history have developed some notion of gods, or god.  This is often advanced as an argument for the existence of god as a real being instead of what it patently shows, that 'god as a concept' is vitally important to human kind.

Why is this concept, gods or god, so important to us?  I am persuaded that the major reason is human kind's passion for meaning, our desire to understand how things are connected and how things work.  Amongst other things, we want to know the answer to questions such as, 'Who am I?', and 'Why am I here?'...and, 'Did all the things that continue to be around us have a beginning?' and, if so, "What is the story of how things have gone since then to now?'

For many, the answers seem to cohere around the concept of god.

However, before I can re-employ 'God', I will have to do some considerable 're-working' of the concept itself.  Watch this space.

LETTING GOD GO

A SMALL CHILD WAS DRAWING AT SUNDAY SCHOOL, as a sweet story goes. 'What are you drawing?', says the teacher. 'I am drawing God' is the reply. 'But no one knows what God looks like.', the teacher remonstrates. 'When I am finished,' retorts the child proudly, 'every one will.'. So, sorry... no pictures.

I love that story. Almost as much as I love the story of the dyslectic chap who became an atheist exclaiming, 'There is no doG!'.

My last blog posting raised a little interest and I am looking forward to more replies.

Now to begin but but let me say at the outset, letting God go is not the end of being religious, if religion is what guides us and orders our choices.

Before I, and possibly you also, give God the sack, we could ask ourselves if God is, where might that be?

When I was growing up, God was in heaven but also, in some sense, everywhere. My illustrated Bible had pictures of God in the clouds. In many ways, the evolution of the idea of god in the life of the child who learns to think eventually as a adult mirrors the evolution or history of God, so far as we can surmise it, in the growing up of the human race. I came to believe that Heaven was 'up there' while 'down there' was an unpleasant place known as Hell. I also had the notion of Purgatory, where sinners might be purged of their sins before going on and up to Heaven.

I did not come to know this in the same sense of how I came to know the world around me. In my mother's womb, I knew very little, almost nothing, while my brain grew from just a few cells to the point where it was just big enough to permit, with a little squeezing, my head to pass through her birth canal. Even at that point, quite a bit of important cerebral machinery was missing. I refer to the fore-brain that begins to grow some eighteen months after birth and keeps on growing for several years more. With a full size brain we could never survive birth.

I went from knowing nothing about the world by dint of a lot of work done in my brain making sense of all the information I was getting through my ears, the sense of motion of my limbs, my eyes, and other senses. For the first two years or so, my knowledge of the world was very rudimentary and not much different from the knowledge of other mammalian young. In my head, I was making increasingly educated guesses about how the world worked and getting continual feedback about how good were those guesses. This is the stuff of the psychology of cognitive development, possibly one of the most fascinating realms of psychology (which I taught for five years when I was an academic).

When I began to use language, I entered another world entirely. I could ask my parents questions about the nature of the world. Older siblings were a great help too. From then on, knowledge of the world multiplied and grew exponentially. In my brain, the knowledge construction went on at a furious pace, old neural networks being broken down and new ones replacing them.

But this new knowledge came not from personal experience, as formerly, but in the context of language and culture. What others 'knew' was passed on to me.

Wait for it...

Here is where the concept of God occurs, this is where God is, in the world of story, history, myth, belief and opinion. This is a hard pill to swallow. We would like to have it that God is in the sense that we know a tree is, or a rock. With careful thought, we will see that we cannot maintain this view. It is quite possible to imagine a culture where the concept of God is completely absent. Would such a culture be barbaric and cruel, being so bereft of God? Not necessarily and certainly we can say that having a concept of God has not prevented us from lapsing in awful barbarisms.

I suppose that this is where you will get pretty mad at me. Already I have had one email saying I cannot sack God. Well, let's see.

God, or gods, as a concept has been around for a long time, perhaps as long as humans have had enough language to form abstract ideas. There is at least one book entitled, 'A History of God'.

There are living fossil cultures that tell us how humans first thought about God or gods. In the Australian Aboriginal Dream Time stories (these folk came to Australia between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago) there are stories of how super large creatures formed important geographical features. I love the one that tells how the Flinders Ranges, in the North of my home State of South Australia came to be. From the air, these look like impressions made in the earth by the fingers of one's hands. The totem for this land is the Snake ( a very large snake) who lived at the beginning of time. His snaking about formed the finger-like impressions. He also drank all the water (the country is very dry and arid); this gave him quite a belly ache and he took refuge beneath the land to get over it. The rumblings of his belly still shake the land occasionally (it is still somewhat volcanic). A great story, one that is passed on in much greater detail as part of the Aboriginal initiation rites. At this stage, such stories about the gods gave a sort of explanation of how things came to be as they are, like why it rains and thunders and how the seasons change.

Such stories predate writing but were in force still when the Greeks began to write stories. About three thousand years ago, some of them were included in the Old Testament. Notice that a child, growing up, could not derive such stories from the understanding that came through senses. Only when we learned language could we begin to receive this knowledge, slowly acquired as humanity grew and matured over hundreds of years.

It has been said that language is to the human mind as air to the birds and water to the fish and other denizens of the sea. We live and move in it, totally accepting it, but unaware to the huge, unfathomable extent that it has formed us. God is in the talk about God, in our thought about God. If he/she/it is somewhere else, we can never know of it.

THE SPRITUAL JOURNEY

I HAVE 'FIRED' GOD TWICE in my life.
The first time came at the end of the week in which my sister died. She was active, beautiful, talented, a great tennis player, an excellent pianist, she loved motor bikes, and she was a lot of fun. None of this stopped her catching the most virulent strain of poliomyelitis. I said goodbye to her as she was taken out to the ambulance and did not see again. I prayed all the week that she would get better but on the following Saturday we got word from the hospital that she had died. She was 19; I was four years younger. God got fired.

Motor bikes got me going to the local Methodist church. I was still too young to ride but lots of the church crowd had bikes. In a year or two, religious belief had its hold on me, this time it was 'you must be born again' Protestantism (vs. the nominal Catholicism of my younger days). Caught up in this enthusiasm, I think I became something of a pain in the neck (standing on street corners, giving my 'testimony', handing out tracts, asking if you had found Jesus, and the like). During my first year at Uni, I became convinced that God was calling me to become a minister. In 1958, at age 20, I entered into a four year theological course to become a Baptist minister. It was good work and I am very glad that I followed this course.

However, while studying theology, I also took courses in history and philosophy at Adelaide University. I was fortunate indeed to have excellent teachers in both disciplines. Theology is a form of history. My studies of the Lutheran reformation and the writings of Luther, for instance, were at a much greater depth and far more critical that similar courses at the theological college. On the other hand, my theology teachers guided me to a far more objective and critical appreciate of the scriptures than I had at the outset. These studies sowed seeds that took some while to germinate and grow, but grow they did.

As they did so, I had more and more difficulty maintaining the duality (body and spirit; heaven and earth, life and life-after-death) implicit in the Christian view of the world. I might also add that I had kept up my interest in physics, organic chemistry, and biology which I had studied at the undergraduate level.

Then, on Christmas Night of 1967, my father collapsed with a ruptured aortic aneurism and, despite a successful repair of the vessel, fell into a coma for several weeks. A few weeks after emerging from the coma, he suffered a pulmonary embolism and died. It was a Sunday morning but I preached no sermon that day.

I got to the hospital a little more than half an hour after he died. As I looked at his form in death, I quite clearly saw that all any of us have is just one life.

God got sacked a second time. This time not due to disappointment in his failure to answer prayer (I had never prayed for my father’s recovery, being content to do all I could for him and to see how it all would turn out). Rather, his death affirmed for me the correctness of the process of critical examination of faith and increasing skepticism I had been experiencing.

Now I am sacking God a third time. More of that next posting..

ROBERTO AT 74

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT! A whole month since my last post. I must have been busy.

Last month, I left 74 (my 74th year that is) and arrived at the 74th milestone. On the first of this month, I moved into my new home...at 74 Sterling St. Corning NY. There is a small joke with my address. Sterling runs between two streets, one named Dodge and the other Sly. You to be made of sterling stuff to thrive between the dodgy street and the sly street!

Being now in my 75th year, I celebrated by rejoining the local brew pub club and now have a tankard numbered 75.

I have been at #74 since June 1, virtually camping here with just a very few things. That is the great thing about passing through the eye of the needle, you do not have much to move from one place to the next! The house has not been lived in for two years so a good bit of the time has gone to making things work properly. A contractor (Daniel) comes and goes working on the roof to have it properly ventilated (and therefore cooler) and also on the electrical system which is a bit ancient and some circuits are defective. My Japanese bed and futons have arrived and I am learning to sleep on them. It was so hot early on in June that I moved down to the lower level for cooler sleeping. I am working long days, with lots to do, and therefore sleeping well. With the carpentry work done on the roof, it has now been painted with special white, reflective paint. This will greatly extend the life of the roof and cool the attic space very considerably. Since then I have been removing the walk-in robe and the storage closet that have divided the two bedrooms to create one spacious room the width of the house.

Entering my 75th year: My doctor and I agree that I am in excellent health. Also, the surgeon who did my 'tin' knees agrees that I have been looking after his handiwork well. Having the old, worn out knees replaced has been a great boon, giving me back a decade or more of life and activity.

The house is proving to be well located. It takes just 20 minutes to walk to the gym; so each morning before breakfast to row on their excellent, well-maintained Concept2 machines. I am learning a lot about walking.

Which brings me to the Battle of Aging (you will have to wait to the next post to get me on spirituality). I could claim to some expertise on aging (for non-US folk, 'ageing'). For one, it seems I am getting old. For another, if one is aging, it pays to know as much as possible about it. For a third time, in one of my lives, I taught a special course on the psychology of aging for five years, but that was when I was young!

Aging is a very slow process, almost imperceptible, so you have to keep an eye on it. Rather like the jungle or the forest asserting itself against farmland or the creep of weeds in the garden. In terms of thermodynamics, we are caught up in entropy or the tendency to chaos; the temporary structure we call our 'life' needs constant repair and will eventually fall to the ground, despite all our efforts. Besides constant vigilance (totally lacking the those who are still in the first half of their life), slowing aging requires lots of work. Aches and pains have a lot to do with it (discounting the effects of serious illness), as their constant press, if not resisted, steadily limit what one can do. And before you know it, you feel 'old'; if you are not careful, once you admit this, there are things you no longer attempt because you are 'old'.

I noticed this with my infamous knees: as the pain became chronic, I changed the way I walked and stood. I suppose I could back out of this and say that the way I walked and the way I stood changed. Uma called my walk 'the Robert walk'. Once I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window and thought, 'Golly, I stand like my father!' Of course, I had an immediate understanding of how he got to stand that way.

I once read that everyday one must do something you did when you were young (like skipping, hopping about, or whatever, that you gave up doing). If you like, you could call this 'active denial'; of Freud's famous defense mechanisms, denial is hard to beat. In regard to aging, it works well right up to death.

I am rather good at active denial and I hope to improve. At one level, this means forcing or requiring oneself to do things that some may thing 'the old' should not do. One of my heroes, a doctor in British Columbia, was still cross-country skiing in his mid 90's. I met two eighty year old men at a Cycle for Diabetes event who had recently completed the 'Ride Across America'.

Such heroes are almost inspiring enough to attempt the impossible but not quite. It takes a lot of personal resolve and self-forcing to do the yoga, go swimming, get on the cycle, hit the rower and do that morning exercise routine. I have found that sticking to my New Year resolution of not eating until I have done my morning exercise routine has turned into a major blessing.

Lots could be said about the battle of aging (good diet, maintain active work, keep good company, enjoy some wine and beer, and the like) but beware the slow sap of giving in to it. Whatever you feel you should do...get on with it; make yourself do it.

And good luck.

POPPED FROM THE LABYRNTH

I ADMIT THAT MY HEAD IS STILL SPINNING at the speed at which this house is becoming mine! On Tuesday, we closed on the new home base for Roberto and Robert. If you want to Google Map it, check out '74 Sterling Street, Corning NY 14830'.

In a previous post, I told of making an offer of a fair market price for the house that was accepted by the four sellers (heirs to the couple who previously lived in the house) and was not matched by a previous offer. Before leaving for Chatham, my agent and I had arranged for an building inspection that revealed several structural problems, the major ones being problems with the electrical circuits and some black mold in the attic space (due to inadequate ventilation). Last week the sellers accepted the quotes that we had obtained for this work and agreed that this should come off the selling price. So the last business on Friday for me was to draw the check ('cheque' for Aussies and Brits), making the way clear for closing on the sale for tomorrow (Tuesday).

While this is a bad time for the US dollar (vs. the Aussie dollar) it has been good for me since the money has come from my Australian accounts at just a little more than 5% better; the icing as it were on the cake.

I hope you have had your ball of string working all the way with me on this labyrinthine journey as I went all the way back to Australia (thinking I would settle there), being surprised by that this was neither possible (economic reasons) or desirable (cultural considerations). Then I was full of intention to build a home for myself whereas now I have purchased one. Often there are several ways that might lead to one's desired destination and it becomes a matter of finding the one that works best. My desired destination is to have an energy efficient home in a community where I feel at home, close to services that I will need more as I age, that minimizes the need for a car, and where I can contribute to the life of the community, keeps me active through cycling and skiing, and has me in the garden most weeks of the year. I appear to be arriving at this destination.

This final approach came via a consideration of several economies. The first was the cost of living in the US vs. that in Australia. Now that I live on a more or less fixed income, this is an important factor. In US dollars, I consider the COL in Oz to be about 30% higher. This especially applies to the cost of land and housing. Most likely due to the resource boom Australia is in a housing bubble and anyone from outside that bubble faces formidable barriers either to entering or re-entering the game. I had to live there for several months to figure this out. Next, there are the costs associated with building vs. buying a home. Including purchase of a lot, at best these would come to around $110 per square foot of floor space. On the other had, it is possible to purchase an established house in reasonable condition for around $50 per square foot here in Corning. Mind you, there will be significant additional costs to bring such a house up to energy efficient standards and to make it one's own. Then, Corning area meets most or perhaps all of my other criteria, given that I re-discovered my preference for living in a small community (vs. a large city) and I have been able to purchase in an area that is convenient in that I can walk or ride to all the facilities I use.

Despite that the house is in good order, there is a lot of work ahead inside and in the surrounds. There is very little garden (apart from lots of lawn) so a lot of planning has to be done in respect to landscaping.

So, my good friends who read this Blog, I think you may gather in the string and emerge with me from this winding path, turning this way and that. My Corning home will be featured in a separate Blog. Meanwhile, here, you will have to endure other journeys with me. As ever, I invite you to:

WATCH THIS SPACE

BACK TO CORNING

I CANNOT RESIST DINERS. The one at the left is in Duanesberg (NY) and has be open since 1930. Wishing to avoid toll roads and ready for adventure, I allowed Richard (aka: GPS) to direct my homeward way from Chatham. Probably, the Diner is the most remarkable thing about Duanesberg. However, it is a town with a history going back to 1823, which history is celebrates every year.

In the event you are curious, I had the day's special: Boneless pork chops with sauerkraut and potatoes. I am still not too sure where Duanesberg is, after miles of back roads and beautiful scenery. That is the problem with GPS, it keeps one on track but, in the larger view of life, one looses track. Somewhat like not seeing the forest for the trees.

I had a fine week with the other Richard (Green) and family, meeting and making new friends and helping keep the local brew pub in business. I also removed quite a bit of unwanted ornamentation from off their new (built c. 1890) home-to-be beside assisting the sheet rock team. During this week the weather finally gave up Winter and presented itself as Spring, celebrated by an impressive night of lightning and thunder. Lots of fun experiences like getting water from the local spring, attending the weekly practice of Richard's group (considerably enabled by the liberal serving of cocktails, a hobby of one of the band members), getting to know the local community gardening group, shopping for items for the new bathroom (plumbing, as it were, the deep mysteries of crappers). I hope you know that the modern flushing toilet was invented by a Londoner named Crapper.

While on the topic of weather, while I was over in Chatham, Corning actually had a tornado alert on April 27. Absolutely unheard of! Not only did we have a warning but an tornado really happened in a nearby town, mowing an impressive swath for several miles but not actually damaging much property.

Back in town, the purchase of the Sterling Street house proceeds, with inspections and quotes. If all goes well, closing will be just prior to my birthday (29th May). I expect there may be a bit of haggling related to necessary repairs along the way. I am very excited about planning the garden. Lacking my own house, I have spent a couple of days Spring gardening for a close friend. I have also rejoined the Master Gardener program (an extension of Cornell University), and the local Gardening Club. On the subject of membership, I renewed place at the local Brew Pub (my own mug, #75, and discounted beer). I must be settling in.

On Sunday last, I attended the United Methodist Church in Richmond, just over into Massachusetts and took this photo. It is not too bad, as my photography goes, and the unpaved road descending and then running off into the distance I find quite inspiring. It makes a great background for my laptop screen.

THE END OF THE LABYRNTH?

VOILA, ROBERTO'S HOME TO BE!
This quite astonishing. I have been here in the Corning area just a week and I have successfully offered to buy this house!

Built in 1973, the house is a split-level ranch. The upper level is 750 square feet and is the main living area. The lower area remains finished in the 70's manner and has a second full bath as well as the laundry and plant room. It also has two bedrooms and a living room. It is 650 square feet. The upper area will be quite sufficient for my needs so there is plenty of room for occasional guests or even to sub-let. It has an unobstructed southerly aspect so will be perfect for incorporating passive solar heating technology. It is situated within easy walking distance of all the facilities I would routinely need.

The lot is bare, apart from plenty of grass, and will immediately need a small tool shed and later a workshop and car port. There is complete freedom to design the garden and, already, my head is abrim with ideas. I am beside myself with anticipated delight and can almost feel the sweat on by brow. Of course, there is the process of inspection and all the rest and, as the bard once remarked, there is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.

After enough looking at houses to figure out where I would prefer to live, and the kind of houses I would prefer not to live in, quite by chance I strayed into Sterling Street and saw the realty sign, and then the house. In sort order, I phoned the listing agent and had a quick look around and then arranged for a more thorough walk through with my agent. He liked it and we sorted out what would be a fair offer. The house had been occupied by a couple almost as old as I (unlike me, both now deceased) and the four heir/owners quickly agreed to the offer. Stunning! The months of an exceptionally bad Winter and recent deluges have made it perfect to see houses in their worst presentations.

I am settling back in with remarkable ease and have felt at home since the first day of my return. Of course, the weather has been characteristically terrible. I have begun attending the local Episcopal Church. They do not seem to mind my 'respectful agnostic, sometime atheist' orientation and I am already on the track, courtesy of guidance from similarly minded folk, of the writings of the New Zealand Presbyterian 'heretic', Lloyd Geering. Maybe I am sorting out my spirituality at last and realizing that I can fulfill my commitment of long ago to be a disciple of Jesus and not to be caught up too much in the ecclesiastical accretions that have gathered since he walked this earth. Like him, I am learning to respect the spiritual contributions of other religious thinkers.

I have also re-met old friends and some of their friends so I seem to be set for a grand experience of networking. I plan to assist my friend Richard in his move to their new home and then will have shared accommodation for a month before moving into my new place. What bliss! Much hard work is ahead. What joy!

WHAT'S IN A NAME #2

HERE I AM...camped in a motel in Horseheads (NY)
Horseheads? 'How did a town get a name like that?' you might well ask. It all goes back to the American Revolutionary War and 1779. After performing incredible service for their military masters, the worn out pack-horses of Major-General John Sullivan were put to rest in this place. The town is a memorial to their service.

Well then, How about 'Painted Post'? There was (and perhaps still is) a painted post. It was a sort of totem pole on which the local indigenous tribe set out their victories over their enemies. When Europeans came to the area, it became a trading post and later a village.

Painted Post and Horseheads form an entrance to the beautiful region of western New York known as the Finger Lakes, a half-dozen or so long, narrow, and deep lakes left over from the heavy glaciation of the last Ice Age, like so many fingers of a giant hand. Beyond is the larger town of Corning and I am at a loss just now to tell you how that name came about.

My home land, Australia, has some odd town names. How about 'Gumly Gumly', or 'Wogga Wogga',or 'Woolloomooloo'? I lived for two and a half years in a coastal town called 'Warrnambool', an Australian Aboriginal name meaning 'meeting of three rivers'. A few years back, I lived in a place where three rivers meet (the Yakima, Columbia, and Snake rivers), but this mighty triple confluence was completely overlooked and the towns instead are merely named 'The Tri-Cities' (Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland).

Nearby is a lovely town called 'Walla Walla' but I have not yet run to earth what that means. Some say an ancient Native American appellation.

Anyway, here I am on the verge of the next adventure. Sanity has, to some degree (admittedly unusual for me), overtaken me. By now you will be accustomed to my slight penchant for starting down a road only to discover that it is not quite what I had anticipated and then seeking a better path. I had thought this would be the area in which I would build the 'perfect ecological cabin'. Consultations with an architect, coupled with a new appreciation of the difficulties of the project, not to mention the cost, all led me to consider the alternate: purchase of an existing house and working to make it energy efficient. For now at least, the second approach is much the more cost effective. So I am house hunting, and seeking temporary shared accommodation. Not quite three balls in the air but it does feel like that at times.

The 'eye of the needle' experience has transformed into a labyrinth. The Navajo/Hopi have an emblem that looks rather like a squarish helical maze, in plan view. It represents a young man's journey. I am in there, I think, but towards the end with some way yet to go.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

I AM AT THE END OF MY JOURNEY. Starting out in Basalt Colorado and ending here at Horse Heads New York. Three days of driving and two motel nights. Some 1,900 miles later, here I am on the verge of what may be quite an adventure.

SALINA, Kansas. This is where I commenced the story. A town of about 45,000 Kansans and others, some like me, just passing through. The beginning day had me drifing down the Roaring Fork valley, the rising sun’s slanting rays striking the snow encrusted trees and making it all ‘drop dead’ beautiful. Overnight snow and the cold from the clear sky had encrusted the car with a mixture of ice and snow. A bit of scraping off was in order. Having filled up with gas at my favorite ‘el cheapo’ gas station in Glenwood Springs, I reset the trip meter to ‘000’ and set off. The view got even more beautiful driving up the canyon towards Denver. On the way from San Francisco, on the train, I had breakfasted with a nice lady whose deceased husband had designed the road that threads the canyon. It is an engineering work of art, to be sure. Nature’s art…on the one hand the canyon, carved by the busy, rushing Colorado River and, on the other, the graceful curves and tunnels fashioned by man.

On the way up the canyon, one passed by the town of No Name. For a long time the towns folk had not gotten around to naming their village; the story goes that the township could not have a Post Office until it had a name. After many abortive and noisy meetings, it settled on ‘No Name’. The ascent of the two high passes on the way to Denver awaited. Once past Denver, I settled to I70. Now the prairie begins, dead flat and almost treeless. The day is clear and warming. In the midst of this expanse of nothingness except for the occasional cluster of silos, small towns here and there, and lonely farmhouses, I pass by a sign saying, ‘A Point of Interest’. Is this some kind of East Colorado plains joke? I ask myself. The sign is the only point of interest I have so far spied!

Nearing Kansas, trees become abundant but all appear dead, still affected by the cold of Winter and awaiting the wetness and warmth of Spring. Over the KS border, a sign invites me to visit the Rest Stop and Tourist Information Center. I cannot resist the blandishment of free coffee and discover it is well worth the visit. Later on, I pass by the town of Bovina. What can these Kansan town names mean? Bovina…something to do with cows, perhaps? How about Salina…is health the focus here or was it the saltness of the creek it bestrides? On the basis that something is better than nothing, better than ‘No Name’? Wait a moment, who says something is better than nothing? How about, ‘No news is good news’?

Kansas is greener and has rolling hills. Colorado has to content itself with just the Rockies (what am I saying, ‘just the Rockies’!) They are towering, massive, frightening in their savagery. ‘Snow Chains Required’, ‘Chain Up Area’, ‘Road Ahead Icy’, and ‘Watch Out For Wild Life Crossing’ say the signs. Kansas seems richer too. Oil pumps dot the fields alongside the road and every so often a cluster of storage tanks. And ‘Wow’, the road surface is so smooooth! Kansans must be more accident conscious than the folk of Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and other Great Plains states…the maximum speed is 70 mph and not 75. Most drivers keep to the limit. The state troopers lurk around curves, scanning for speedsters and manage to catch a few deserving of fines or warnings; occasionally, at the roadside, the trooper’s car lights flash a warning to the rest of us.

The road climbs to higher hills (‘High Rolling Hills’) and suddenly I see myriads of wind turbines off to the North. Some are quite close to the road and declare to me how really tall and big they are. I must be in Wind Alley!

Finally into Salina, a hot bath and into bed.

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana: Was that only just last night?! The motel is situated in Speedway where all the roads are being remade at once, it seems. Richard get me there. And who is Richard? Some posts back, Glenn asked me had I named my TomTom. To be sure I hear everything TomTom says to me, I had selected the clear, crisp English voice called Richard. Now I actually have an English friend whose name is Richard, so I hope, Richard, when you read this, you will not take offense. So I have come to call my TomTom GPS 'Richard'. He is an unfailing friend who has never betrayed my trust.

Richard has me aware of the speed limit by flashing red at me when I exceed the posted limit. He does not save me from the State Trooper, in the predawn hours, pulling me over because he could not real my rear license plate! Now I have a yellow warning to remove the dealer's bricabrac from around the plate.

What to say of the country from the western edge of Kansas and the East unfolds? It just gets more and more beautiful. First the blush of the redbud trees, then the green and white of the first buds of the other threes. Finally, into Missouri where there are flowers peeking out at the beginning Spring. Over the Missouri and then the Mississippi and I am into Illinois. Cunning Richard has found a way to avoid the Toll Road out of Kansas City and I am once more enjoying the rural roads, travelling a few extra miles before rejoining I70. I will have been on I70 from Denver to Columbus (Ohio) where I veer northwards on I71 toward Cleveland and then splitting off for Erie (Pennsylvania). The weather stays fine and warm and I can only recall seeing one cloud the whole journey so far. At the rest stop on I71, the daffodils have enjoyed their annual resurrection, but the dandelions are not far behind.

However, the cirrus clouds ahead signify and change in the weather is likely. Joining I90 and once more running eastwards, the clouds become more dense ahead. After Erie and about to enter Western New York, the clouds reach down to touch the rising hills and I am driving in fog.

Then in heavy rain. I must be nearing Corning where we have four months of Winter and then seven of bad weather! The rain clears, the road ahead is smooth and finally I am driving into Painted Post to a favorite restaurant for a beer and a juicy pepper steak.

What's in a name? How about Painted Post? Well, there have been several painted posts, the first used by the local tribes to paint a record of their victories over their foes. Then the post still standing and in use, it became the site of an early trading post. I suppose there is yet one about, perhaps in the local museum. I shall have to look for it. Could you find it, Richard?

How about 'Horse Heads"? I shall have to find out.

BACK TO COLORADO or Good Fortune at Malheur

IT HAS BEEN QUITE THE JOURNEY: I filled the tank at the cheap gas station in Glenwood Springs just 3,751 miles since doing so at the beginning, a snowy morning early March. The litany of places includes Billings MT, Kalispell (entry town for western National Glacier Park), familiar places like Spokane and Seattle, leading to a wonderful stay with friends in Fort Langley BC. Then back down to Seattle and then Portland. Setting out for Basalt CO, I passed through the Oregon towns of Bend and Ontario, then into Idaho, staying overnight at Twin Falls, and then down through Utah and finally back into Colorado, driving alongside the Colorado River from Grand Junction to Glenwood Springs before the last 30 miles up Roaring Forks Valley to Basalt.

Once into the NW Pacific coastal stretch, it rained almost continuously with only two or three fine days. Miraculously, these occurred in Portland and I was able to don the roller blades on two days and one day ventured up to the mountain for some cross country skiing, each time with my friend Jack. Hence a new photo where you see me all kitted out for roller blading.

Lots of spectacular country to see along the way...mountains, rivers, and high desert. The high desert can be somewhat boring at times but at other times one is rewarded by a sight like a family of elk crossing the highway. This was in Malheur country, named by early French trappers for 'misfortune', but good fortune for me in meeting the friendly folk of eastern Oregon at the next cafe stop. Crossing the bridge over the Snake River into Twin Falls affords an amazing view down into the canyon some 500 feet below, wide and deep. If ever you should do this, be prepared to be suddenly distracted from the business of driving!

I was so impressed that, once settled into my motel room, I walked back to take a photo or two. The bridge is 480 above the river and is the only place where anyone with a parachute is permitted to jump off without qualification.

Mostly silent for the return journey, my GPS was invaluable threading my way around Brigham City and Salt Lake City. Richard (the British accented voice I chose to be my companion) kept me on track and able to manage the dense traffic. Let's hear an 'Hurrah' for good old Richard from TomTom land! The GPS also gave clear visual information, especially when lane changes were required to weave to the next highway. A great travel aid.

All that is left now is the 1,800 mile trip back to New York State where the adventure of the house project begins. I will devote a separate Blog to that. Meanwhile, I am reading all I can about house construction, contracting, site design and the like.

Just now it is wonderful to be back with my Basalt family. My granddaughter has made the Honor Roll once more and I imagine a more deserving recipient. The ski season draws to an end although, after a warm day or two, it has been snowing all of this Sunday morning and into the afternoon.

Warm wishes from this mountain country where it seems possible to have four seasons in one day.