Trouble on the Mount

In the middle of time, as we know it . . . on the cusp of B.C. and A.D., along came a prophetess, Anna. She spoke profoundly, in a prophetic way, to all people who were looking for:  the redemption of Jerusalem. Whatever that is. . .

The Western world has been wondering, for over 2000 years now, what is meant by the “redemption of Jerusalem.” This concept is yet to be clearly manifested.

  But we do notice that now, in 2023, the opposite is happening, again.  The furies start to fly, maybe because Pandora has opened her box? but that’s just an old Greek wives’ tale.

Yesterday, all those troubles seemed so far away; now it looks as though they’re suddenly here to stay.  Newly-appointed Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the mosque, with Israeli Security guards surrounding him. 

His visit has stirred up a hornet’s nest of Muslim rage.

According to Jean Shaoul, writing yesterday for the World Socialist, Itamar had posted pictures of himself last May while he and his family were visiting the mosque. At that time he had  “called for its destruction to ‘establish a synagogue on the mountain.’”

That’s pretty serious stuff, and the fact that Itamar is now an official of the Netanyahu administration has upped the ante in this notorious poker game of the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif.

Yesterday, January 5, Ben-Gvir stirred up a hornet’s nest of Muslim rage when he visited Al Aqsa again, this time in his official capacity with a group of Israeli security guys surrounding him. 

The problem here goes back to the seventh century BC, when Muhammed, the Most Holy Prophet of Islam, was transported in a nocturnal vision, to the mountain and had a visitation with Allah. 

According to Abu Abd al-Rahman and his translator, Frederick S. Colby, in The Subtleties of the Ascension, 2006: 

“The narrative describes how the Prophet was led by the angel Gabriel in the middle of the night from a location in Mecca to a remote location, which came to be identified with Jerusalem.”

The location at issue is the historic mountaintop in Jerusalem, called Haram al-Sharif  by the Muslims, called the Temple Mount by Jews and Christians. 

The mountain had originated as a holy spot because, in ancient times, Abraham had sacrificed a ram there instead of his son Isaac. Centuries later, the Jews established their tabernacle there. 

Later, under King Solomon, they built their Temple. The Israelis have hopes of building a new temple there. If they are ever able to erect one, it might look something like this:

 Their original Temple was destroyed in 70 AD by the Roman general Titus, as Jesus had vaguely predicted.  Centuries later, the Dome of the Rock, Muslim holy site, was  built there, which still stands.  

A dozen years ago, I wrote a novel, Glass half-Full, in which a news reporter strolled across the spacious plaza pictured above, and wondered why the Jews could not build their new temple there, and everybody would be happy with both Jews and Israelis attending their sacred place on the mountain.

During the 1967 war between Israelis and Muslims, General Moshe Dayan took military possession of the sacred mountintop. He (wisely) forbade his men to wreck the place. 

History reveals that this mountaintop is the hottest spot in the world for contention and enmity. Someday the words of the prophetess Anna will be fulfilled, when the “redemption of Jerusalem” is achieved, however that plays out. Notice that the western gate is currently closed. Someday, it will be opened.

Glass half-Full 

Jim Crow Religion, 1963

In the year 1963. From chapter 4, King of Soul:

 This Sunday morning, Aerlie and her friends visited the other church, the big one with the tall steeple and rich brick exterior in the middle of downtown Jackson.

        People can maybe change their minds about a thing or two but there is a certain impediment amongst the monumental edifices of history; it gets built up as an obstruction to justice and mercy and thereby renders the processes of righteous change quite difficult.

        Institutions crop up in society like trees, and once they get rooted in the wild and they grow up to be immovable trunks, these botanous growths can be quite a stupendous presence that hinders the seedlings down on the forest floor. Men cut them down in order to make best use, but in some cases institutions can be pruned instead of cut down and thereby by n by suit the purposes of men like for instance the ornamental trees in the town square, the magnolias, the azaleas, camellias. You can prune them and they’ll do better, produce more loverly flowers and generally garnish the surroundings with myriads of beauty and provide nesting opportunities for the bluebirds of happiness.

         In the South, one institution that needed to be dealt with—and it was, so to speak, at the town square—was  the Church, because down here in Dixie, it’s a big deal.

         So this Sunday morning, just a few days after the killing of Medgar Evers, Aerlie Mufroe and her NAACP friends timidly traipsed  up  high stone steps and entered into the high holy place of the white folks’ worship.

          What they found out was: Bad idea.

          But wait a minute. As there’s a silver lining around a cloud every now and then, they discovered something special about the institution of Church in southern society, and as even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then, so they were able to find one good nut amongst the hard-shelled congregants of First Baptist Church, and it happened this way:

         This little old lady spoke to the usher. She said, “Please let them in, Mr. Calloway. We’ll sit with them.”

         To which Mr. Calloway replied, “Mrs. Dixon, the church has decided what is to be done. A resolution has been passed, and we are to abide by it.”

         The impediment was, as we were saying before, the institution thing. Sometimes they have to be pruned in order to thrive better. Toward that end, Mrs. Dixon replied to Mr. Calloway, “Who are we to decide such a thing? This is a house of God, and God is to make all of the decisions. He is the judge of us all.”

        In other words, this wasn’t about what men think they have to do. This wasn’t about the committee’s resolution. This wasn’t about President Kennedy trying to convince Gov. Wallace of anything, or about Congress legislating some heavyhanded proclamations upon Ross Barnett, the Governor of Mississippi. It wasn’t about all that Federal Guvmint intrusion and contusion.

         This is about God and men, and women too. Here were two intrepid Christian women whispering in the back of the church, one white and one black, and they were trying to convince poor Mr. Galloway to just let the tide of history come gushing through the main entrance of First Baptist, but he wasn’t going to do it because he was just, as Cousin Bob had sung, just a pawn in the game.

          So Aerlie, even as determined as she was to make a dent in the way things were, surveyed the scene. She took stock of the situation, sized everything up, made a quick assessment of the situation, the plusses and the minuses, the risks and the benefits, and so she decided that this thing wasn’t going to happen without a big counter-productive  blowup because Mr. Calloway and the other ushers threatened to call the police if Aerlie and her friends didn’t leave.

          Even though they were Christians. On both sides they were.

         “We appreciate very much what you’ve done,” said Aerlie to Mrs. Dixon, and the black folks walked away from the white church.

          Not to be outdone, someone suggested they try another church. So they did. A few blocks away, they visited the Episcopalians.

         Two ushers were standing in the back of the church when Aerlie and her friends entered. Uh-oh, here we go.

         But lo and behold and I say unto thee, the usher looked at Aerlie and he asked, “May we help you?”

         “Yes,” said the young college student. “We would like to worship with you today.”

        ““Will you sign the guest list, please, and we will show you to your seats.”

         So they sat down; the church service went without a hitch. When it was over, the minister invited them to visit again.

        That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for man’s religion.

Glass half-Full

Primordial Faith

This was the forest primeval

before the world and the woe and the evil.

This was the faith prior to evil

before religion took hold in medieval

before baptists got weighed down 

with bricks and fried chicken;

before presbys went to town

and piscopaliens dragged down

with towers of stone and religion;

even before cathlics were legion

and orthdox went grievin’

their loss of byzantium;

Hey!, even before yanks had a national anthem

before christians got lost

and the Faith it got tossed

to the dogs of politics

and the cats of metaphysics,

this was the faith primeval:

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John

walking in the path of the Son!

Glass half-Full 

A World-class Sacred Mountain

About 27 centuries ago, the Jewish prophet Isaiah urged his people to live righteously, according to the laws that God had delivered earlier to the prophet, Moses.

By his use of predictive prophecy, Isaiah reinforced his exhortations toward the necessity  of holy living. As his biblical message has been brought down to us through history–even to this day–actual fulfillments of Isaiah’s predictions lent credence to the legitimacy of his message.

Consider this prediction:

“And it shall be at the end of days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be firmly established at the top of the mountains, and it shall be raised above the hills, and all the nations shall stream to it.”

This prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled repeatedly for many centuries, and continues to be actualized every day of our 21st-century life.

In a steady stream of faces and pilgrims of all types, people from all over the world visit “the mountain of the Lord’s house” in Jerusalem.

Every day.

In this large flat area, Jews from all over the world congregate to pray at their open-air synagogue, the Kotel, which is an ancient wall that retains the side of the mountain where their temple had stood in ancient times.

Christians also visit this site in great numbers. We  are welcomed every day by the Jewish people. Most Christians stroll through, gathering faithful inspiration, on their way to their own holy site nearby, in the Christian quarter of the Old City . . .

where Christ was crucified almost 2000 years ago, and laid in a sepulchre, before rising from the dead on the third day after his death.

In my photo below. . .

. . .  notice the long ramp that connects the ground-level plaza to a higher location at the top of the wall. Through this stairway, the Muslims allow some visitors access, at certain times of the day, to their holy site, al-Haram al-Sharif, which happens to be the same location as the ancient Jewish temple. The Muslim shrine there, built in 692 c.e., is  known by us Christians as the Dome of the Rock. Believers of all three faiths— Jewish, Muslim and Christian— believe Abraham was led by the Eternal One up onto that high spot with his son.

In that world-famous episode, God revealed his will about ritual sacrifice; the Lord Himself provided an animal for Abraham to offer instead of his son. Muslims believe that the son was Ishmael. Jews and Christians believe it was Isaac. Whatever you believe about it, suffice it to say that the Eternal One thereby clarified once and for all: his call for sacrifice did not include any human victim.

A Christian rendering of that event is painted on a wall inside the nearby Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

This clarification from God about the offering of sacrifice took place on the mountain–called Mt. Moriah by Jews–and called al-Haram al-Sharif  by Muslims.

In our day and time, some visitors are more fortunate in the timing of their pilgrimage. At certain times of the day,  the Islamic-administered mountaintop is opened to visitors from other faiths. Christians and others may walk up the wooden-covered stairway to gain a limited access to the sacred mountaintop. Up there, they are allowed a brief access to Islam’s third-holiest site. They can amble for a while, to get a closer view of Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock. They can also stroll around and get a panoramic view of Jerusalem, from Mt. Scopus, toward the northeast, to Mt. Zion at the westward view.

After a brief time, they will be conducted away, back to their own quarters, by Islamic devotees, so that the followers of Mohammed may express their devotion to Allah among an exclusive gathering of the faithful.

Infidels who do not subscribe to Mohammed’s revelation are thus asked at the appointed  times to leave the mountaintop, al-Haram al-Sharif. This practice is more restrictive than what is allowed by  the Jews and Christians below.

Muslims arrive on the sacred height by other entrances, from the Muslim quarter. After being summoned by several muezzin callers who chant their calls through loudly amplified minaret towers, the Mohammedan faithful enter those two holy structures to pray.

All of this carefully controlled sharing of the sacred mountain takes place every day in Jerusalem. Thanks be to ____ that this happens peacefully.

And this Christian says, may it always be so! until ____ visits the place in a more persuasive way, and perhaps aligns us all on the same page.

Pray, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Back down at the lower plaza level, the Israeli administrators of this dividedly sacred mountain have posted a sign that acknowledges the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy so long ago.

If you enjoying listening to music, you may appreciate hearing a song about this mountain. My friend David wrote and recorded it many years ago, with a little help from our friends, Danny, Donna and Jenny:

Aliyah Yerushalayim

Glass half-Full

Dome and Temple? Why not?

Whilst strolling on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem this afternoon, I remembered an imaginary scene. I had written it into the first novel, Glass half-Full, back in 2007:

Beneath a cold, clear, azure sky the city of Jerusalem lay stretched upon the mountains and valleys like a fuzzy glove upon God’s hand. People from all over the world had gathered here to unearth evidence of God at work among the people of the earth. Some sought a temple that no longer exists. Some sought a mosque where a prophet entered heaven. Some trod upon the cobblestones of ancient, holy real estate, pleading for reconciliation, seeking atonement for the human condition.

A man wandered beyond the dome, past the blocked-up eastern gate; curving around northward, he noticed a large open area beside the mosque. Was this where the former temple had stood? What a beautiful mosque.

Could not the owners of this hill sell the adjoining, vacant acre or two to those pilgrims who, standing daily at the wall below, were wailing for their wonderful temple? Why not make a deal? Such a deal. Cousin to Cousin. Temple and Mosque, Mosque and Temple…Mosque Shsmosque, Temple Shmemple. Such a deal. Everybody happy. You pray your way; I pray mine.

Glass half-Full

The Tower of Signals

Thousands of years ago, we built a legendary tower, the shadow of which has seemed to darken our human history even unto today.

According to a certain well-known historical source, the Bible . . . the tower of Babel was erected in some location east of the Euphrates River. The region therein has been known since that ancient time by various names:  Chaldea, Shinar, Babylon, and a few other identities, such as the current one, Iraq.

So an ancient tale about the tower of Babel, especially its fall, has been passed down to us through the ages.   The biblical account says that The Tower of Babel’s undoing happened because the people were unable to communicate. So they were not able to get the thing built.

In our modern reflection upon that archaic project, I think what Will Rogers or Mark Twain or Yogi Berra, or some such sage  said, applies:

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

It’s an old story, but true.

Nevertheless, I’m here to tell ya that in spite of ourselves we people of the earth have managed to erect some pretty impressive towers here and there throughout the ages.

For instance, notice this  classic religious tower in San Francisco, which happens to be a double.

This structure represents that spirit of religion that dominated our Western culture for a couple of thousand years.

Here’s a Spanish project representing a more contemporary creative impulse toward the divine.

Very impressive. But the era of God-inspired basilica-building has been overtaken by more humanistic projects. Since the so-called Enlightenment in the 18th-century, people have aspired to ideals even loftier than mere religion. This modern emphasis has wrought even higher and higher feats of skyscraping.

The long epoch of God-inspired tower-building has been overtaken by a New Age of Man.

And yet, our rising human spirit has morphed itself beyond mere commercial, citified projections. Check out an Olympic objet d’art that the Barcelonans fashioned for the 1992 Olympics:

This fluidic rising structure embodies a humanic zeitgeist; it aspires to inspire ascension to world peace—a peace wrought through zealous sports competition instead of bloody wars fought with destructive weapons on muddy battlefields.

Pretty damned impresseve, huh?!

Higher and higher we strive; higher and higher we arrive.

Now in 21st-century AI, We find ourselves in the upper regions of human accomplishment.

Physical upbuilding has now taken a back seat to the loftiness of our ideals.

So we’ve built a stupendous net of ideas, an electronic network that ceaselessly transmits gigabytes of presciently important data around the world. It is a web as ethereal as the sun itself . . . as surreal as a Dali . . .  as real as a Warhol.

And towards this end, we’ve built towers of a different—a new and different—kind:

Towers such as this one–structures of ascending human perfectibility– are slavishly repeating signals all day and all night for the benefit of all mankind!

For the benefit of Mr. Kite, ever and ever onward to greater heights!

We hold these spires to be self-evident—that our updated tower-driven secretions will project a worldwide web of human achievement to rise higher than  the Tower of Babel ever did!

Good luck with that.

Glass Chimera

Religion Relapse

How odd it is—as a 21st-century scenario sets itself up—

we see the world gone mad preparing again to erupt.

So unforeseen it was that our great Argument of the Ages,

the dogmatic contentions of cadres and sages

should abandon the trappings of intelligent delusion

and revert to jihadic religious intrusion.

 

Europa intelligentsia had decided that God was indeed dead,

and they talked for a few generations of what to do instead:

whether a capitalist path or the communist wrath,

then a communist road or a big fascist goad—

And in the midst of all that

polarizing ideological spat—

we waged two world-class wars to settle the matter

of who should wield power and who should be scattered.

You know the drill;

it persists among us still:

Who should be in charge?

a strong-arm few or the people at large—

a fascist state or some proletarian rabble,

by authoritarian edict or sectarian babble?

  

After all the holocaust horror and gulag gangrene

we plummet again to mucky slog of humanic bad dream.

Obsessive jihadi encircle the world;

believing their fanatic flag will fully unfurl.

Back at the hub the elite are perplexed,

while their technocrat cadres compute the complex

as the widening gyre of the jihadi fire

leaps higher and higher and higher and higher.

  

Perhaps the privileged, enlightened elite

should renew communion with the (wo)man on the street

whose faith in a sacrificial, Prince of Peace deity

brings resurrection instead of  jihad enmity.

Could it be that the God who was tossed aside

by the godless secular bureaucratizing tide

is actually the same eternal entity

who spoke our world out of chaos infinity?

Oh, let us recover some providential indemnity,

and by this testament regain our serenity.

After the Enlightenment, the Ideology, the Decline and the Fall,

Think about it the repentative way: Selah, y’all.

King of Soul

What people Dotoeachother

Seems like folks these days are gettin all wound up about politics and stupid stuff like that. Democrats v. Republicans. Progressives v. Conservatives. Extremists v. Moderates, blah blah blah.

And to make it worse, with the intensifying effects of cellphones and pads and pods and whatnot and so-called social media blather, what we are barreling toward is a vast dumbing-down, barbarizing of all public discourse.

What was called debate in earlier times now has degenerated to knee-jerk bluster hubris yada yada blahblah hatred the-loudest-loudmouth-wins trouble.

People take sides on every little controversy that rears its ugly little head in the public domain. Seems to me more like, as William Faulkner or William Shakespeare might have called it, sound and fury signifying nothing.

My studies of human history indicate some recurring characteristics of the tactics employed by extremist diehard yahoos: Such people want to push public discourse farther and farther toward extremist tactics so they can impose their great radical-fringe remedies on the rest of us who want only to live in peace and security with a little justice, mercy and neighborly good will toward our fellow-man thrown in.

I was born in the middle of the 20th-century, 1951. Looking back on all that happened during that century, I’ve noticed a few alarming things, such as:

The two worst 20th-century  assholes who ever came along the pike and pretended to be great leaders—Hitler and Stalin—both of them manipulated evolving political institutions, and the idiot people within them— to make a grand bloody mess of their two nations and the whole damn world at large.

Both dictators, Hitler and Stalin, were idealogues. Historians call Hitler a Nazi, which is a type of Fascist. They call Stalin a Communist.

What’s more important, however, in the historical classification game is this:

Both Hitler and Stalin were mass-murderers. They did not do justice to the people they claimed to govern.

This factual identification is more important than the ideological label by which each of these two demagogues manipulated their bloody way into absolute power.

And they weren’t the only ones. In the 20th-century, there were others: Pol Pot, Idi Amin. Some would say Mao. And onn a small scale. . . Jim Jones, Charles Manson?

This scenario to which I make reference— this human behavior attribute of folks being swept up into murderous behavior by a maniacal leader driven by ideological or religious frenzy that results in mass murder—it could be right around a historical corner now.

If people do not allow the practice of mercy, decency, compassion, reason— and most of all forgiveness— to overpower imminent institutionalized manipulations of bloody power-mongers, then we’ll have another terrible round of mass murder on this planet.

Religion (old-school) and Ideology (new school) are both, when carried to extremes, cut from the same extremist cloth, and can drive people to endorse mass murder.

Don’t go there.

Ideology is a big circle. On one half of the circle is the arc of conservatism, which in its extremism leads to fascism; on the other half is the arc progressivism, which in its extremism leads to communism. They both start their movements at the top of the circle going in opposite directions. But at the bottom where they collide, we find extremism so lethal that it requires mass-murder as a so-called final solution.

You know what I’m talking about: “Somebody needs to kill them bastards!”

Religion, same thing. “Somebody needs to kill them _____” (fill in the blank)

Which is why we must harken to the greatest clarion call of all, the one spoken by the man from Galilee who stood on a mountainside and taught us:

“Whatever you would want done to you—do that for everybody else.”

This is the most important principle of all. Far greater  than communism or fascism, far more effectual than Democratic or Republican power-mongering, far more spiritually effective that the Church or the Caliphate.

Peace on this planet ultimately comes down to what people are willing to do–or refuse to do– to each other in the name of  _______.

You fill in the blank.

King of Soul

The Mysterious Door

The great physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, had a problem in 1867. It was a very old problem; many had tried to solve it before he came along. It wasn’t actually his problem to fix, but merely to figure it out; his objective was to try and determine who or what had already solved “the problem”. Because, you see, the matter had already been taken care of long, long ago.

Otherwise none of us would be here; nothing would be here.

The actual problem-solver who had worked it out was not thought to be credible at the time of Maxwell’s work. The problem-solver’s presumptuous  representatives had made such a mess of things.

Consequently, in the 1800’s, the scientific community placed little or no credence in what the so-called Church had to say about anything—especially presumably scientific matters like the origin and unfolding of the Universe.

19th-century scientists and other serious researchers like Darwin, Marx and many others were all in a tizzy about throwing the God idea out with the bath water. It was a leap of faith instead of a rational inference. They did have some legitimate arguments about the Church’s faith-based input, because the so-called Church had made such a mess of things while they were running the show back in the middle ages. Two especially bad screwed-ups the Church had done happened when they had, earlier, rejected the findings of Copernicus and Galileo.

But you betcha the mystery still lay unsolved when the science boys took over, long about 1800 or so. They were working on the mystery intently. And so Mr. Maxwell, diligent Scot that he was, took hold of the mantle in 1867, as many others were doing at the time, and he gave it a shot—solving the riddle.

The question of how all this happened.

This existence, this world we live in—how did it get here?

There was, you see, a piece missing in this great puzzle of existence.

In the chain of events that ostensibly took place when the universe was made, there was a missing link that no one had been able to figure out. So, James Clerk Maxwell tackled the question, striving to solve the riddle of the missing link.

Therefore Dr. Maxwell came up with what he called the “Demon.” My unschooled opinion says he could have chosen a better word. . . something like what Rene Descartes had termed it, the Prime Mover.

As Peter Hoffman gives an explanation of Maxwell’s work, the Scot posed this profound question:

“How can molecular machines extract work from the uniform-temperature environment of cells without violating the second law of thermodynamics?”

In other words, how can atoms and molecules organize themselves to become something more than what they already are—just a bunch of damn molecules kicking around like unemployed vagrants?

Or to put it yet another way: How could life have come out of dead particles?

And so, as Dr. Maxwell pondered the problem of the missing link in 1867, he came up with the idea of (what was later called Maxwell’s. . .) Demon.

Peter M. Hoffman explains it, in his 2012 book, Life’s Ratchet,    https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00A29OFHS/ref       this way:

“Maxwell’s demon . . . was a a tiny hypothetical creature who controlled a little door separating two gas-filled chambers, which initially have the same average temperature. The job of the demon was to separate gas molecules into fast and slow molecules. . . Starting from a uniform-temperature system, the demon had created a temperature gradient—making one side cold and the other side hot. . . This temperature gradient could now be used to do work if a little turbine could be placed in the demon’s door.”

The analogy of a demon is not, of course, to be taken literally. James Maxwell was a brilliant physicist whose work paralleled Einstein’s. His use of the hypothetical creature is merely a literary device to communicate the function of an unidentified catalyst that makes something constructive happen in an environment in which (theoretically) nothing can happen.

Obviously something did happen, back in the days of universe origin, or we wouldn’t be here. Nothing would be here, if the problem had not been solved. Someone, demon or otherwise, must have worked it out.

Rene Descartes, a mathematician who lived in the 1600’s, had stumbled upon the same dilemma. He had posited the idea of a Prime Mover, which seemed pretty logical at the time.

Still does, if you ask me.

An original cause (as in cause in effect), that caused everything else to happen, big bang blah blah etc. and so forth and so on.

But what diligent mathematicians and scientists neglected to mention was that the problem had long ago been solved by a mysterious entity who had been so erroneously represented by the so-called Church: God.

Not a demon, but God. The demons were the created beings who tried to pull rank on the Creator, YWHeh.

Therefore, in order to now— in the 21st-century— give credit where credit is due . . .

I say it was a notable accomplishment what YWHeh did, when he solved the problem of the missing link, way back in time. And he said so.

He said it was good— in the first chapter of his bestseller, Genesis.

It was good when He separated light from darkness. Genesis 1:4:

“God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”

This “separation” function is no chance development. It needed to happen. It’s no coincidence that Maxwell’s demon and Creator YWHeh both are depicted as having “separated” something from something else. . .  The Separator’s accomplishment was functionally something like Maxwell’s presumed demon’s task of separating molecules into two different energy levels in order to create

“a temperature difference between the chambers without expending work, thus seemingly violating the second law.”

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is the law that YWHeh seems to have broken when he started the ball of the universe rolling. But it didn’t matter if he broke that “Law” because he set up the whole kitnkiboodle anyway, back in the Day. That 2nd Law of Thermodynamics was an idea that we came up to try and explain it all. It wasn’t something that YWHeh declared when he declared Let there be light and so forth and so on.

On Day 1 (whatever that means to you) the Prime Mover separated light from darkness, and the rest is history.

Not bad for a day’s work, YHWeh. Keep up the good work.

Glass Chimera 

The killing of God

Just because the potentates of old Europe wrangled the Bible away from its Hebrew roots and turned it into dead religion doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist.

God did, after all, create humans with a free will. We are not programmed bots. Just because we homo sapiens screwed it up over the course of a few thousand years doesn’t mean that God wasn’t in the midst of it all somewhere, trying to break through our cerebral density, carnal shenanigans and political bullshit.

Actually, God did break through. But look what we did to him.

In the Middle Eastern crossroads where our wayward cruelties had taken advantage of 1st-century Empire-building power politics to nail him, a stake was driven in the ground. It turned out to be a bloody mess and a sacrifice of universal proportions.

So, as the centuries rolled by, the movers and the shakers among us took that bloody sacrifice and ran with it, transformed it into a first-class religious system that rolled on through time and continent like a runaway ox-cart on a roman road. A thousand years later, we’d manhandled that pivotal sacrifice into high-powered religion, through which men and women worldwide were either convinced or manipulated (depending upon your interpretation of it) into the mysteries of practiced religion.

Long about 1500 ad dominum, a few upstart readers who were paying attention to the original scripts started to figure out that something had gone wrong somewhere along the line.

So they raised some issues. Well, long story short, all hell broke loose.

That great institutional juggernaut that had rolled down through a millennium of pox humana religiosity suddenly was under attack from men who were trying to get to the bottom of it all, which is to say . . . trying to get through all that institutional religiosity to . . . the truth.

The truth? What is truth?

Haha glad you asked.

This little question became a matter of serious debate.

Now that the snake was out of the bag, everybody and their brother was trying to figure out what the truth really was and how it should be used to improve the human condition. People like Rousseau, Hegel, Engels and Marx, Lenin and several other notorious bastards.

As the movement to replace God with human wisdom and government gathered steam, human history heated up quite a bit. And the conflagration of it increased exponentially because this historic development just happened to coincide with the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. So we had a lot more fire power to implement all the big changes that needed to happen in order to get mankind delivered from the great religious debacle that had held us in bondage for so long.

Some guys in Prussia figured out that, since the great juggernaut institution of religion had been exposed to be the manipulative Oz-like empire that it was, the immediate conclusion was that not only had we killed religion, but we humans had managed to finally kill God! Voltaire, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche made this point perfectly clear.

Several bloody revolutions and a couple of world wars later, we are in the process now of finally getting our ducks in a row and ourselves straightened out, now that we’ve finally gotten God out of the way.

Even though we had already killed him one time before, but that’s another story.

Actually, it’s The Story.

His-story.

You can’t kill it, because that death-sentence strategy has already been implemented several times, yet without conclusive results.

We humanos insist on perpetually resurrecting that Story. We just can’t get enough of the un-killable presence among us. It refuses to stay dead. Might be worth looking into.

King of Soul