Ark One Quotes

It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.

Shepherd Book: What are we up to, sweetheart? River: Fixing your Bible. Book: I, um... What? River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense. Shepherd Book: No, no. You-you-you can't... River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem. Shepherd Book: Really? River: We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat. Shepherd Book: River, you don't fix the Bible. River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense. Book: It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you.

Ego Tripping I was born in the congo I walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinx I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect light I am bad I sat on the throne drinking nectar with allah I got hot and sent an ice age to europe to cool my thirst My oldest daughter is nefertiti the tears from my birth pains created the nile I am a beautiful woman I gazed on the forest and burned out the sahara desert with a packet of goat's meat and a change of clothes I crossed it in two hours I am a gazelle so swift so swift you can't catch me For a birthday present when he was three I gave my son hannibal an elephant He gave me rome for mother's day My strength flows ever on My son noah built new/ark and I stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer day I turned myself into myself and was jesus men intone my loving name All praises All praises I am the one who would save I sowed diamonds in my back yard My bowels deliver uranium the filings from my fingernails are semi-precious jewels On a trip north I caught a cold and blew My nose giving oil to the arab world I am so hip even my errors are correct I sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continents I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission I mean...I...can fly like a bird in the sky...

Remember, the village idiot was the spiritual man who built the ark and saved his family. Keep being you and never give up marching to the beat of your own drum!

I don't know what I'd do without you. There's no one else to look after me. And it's not just that. I sometimes think you're the only person who really knows me. I only feel normal when I'm with you.

Faith precedes the miracle. It has ever been so and shall ever be. It was not raining when Noah was commanded to build an ark. There was no visible ram in the thicket when Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. Two heavenly personages were not yet seen when Joseph knelt and prayed. First came the test of faith–and then the miracle. Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other. Cast out doubt. Cultivate faith.

Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which--the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.

Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man.You are the tree of Life. Beware of fractionating yourselves. Set not a fruit against a fruit, a leaf against a leaf, a bough against a bough; nor set the stem against the roots; nor set the tree against the mother- soil. That is precisely what you do when you love one part more than the rest, or to the exclusion of the rest. No love is possible except by the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self. Therefore is God all Love, because he loves himself. So long as you are pained by Love, you have not found your real self, nor have you found the golden key of Love. Because you love an ephemeral self, your love is ephemeral.

No one can find what they do not seek.

 Elections have consequences, and the consequence of losing the next one could end the American democratic experiment.

Most uncomfortable! Did we lose anyone? Head count! Lee Ark, Leetu, and Brunstetter. Three. Should we count the meech egg? No, I think not. Don't drop it, Brunstetter. I'm to take it home and raise it. Ridiculous. Being a parent at my age. Where were we? Oh, yes, three. One o'rant, two kimens, two minor dragons. Eight. A librarian and a diplomat. Ten.

One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back into the darkness of the Ark

Furniture or gold can be taken away from you, but knowledge and a new language can easily be taken from one place to the other, and nobody can take them away from you.

But in the end, black can never be white, one plus one must always equal two, and Mara Lynn was a normal little girl.

If the fall of man consists in the separation of god and the devil the serpent must have appeared out of the middle of the apple when Eve bit like the original worm in it, splitting it in half and sundering everything which was once one into a pair of opposites, so the world is Noah's ark on the sea of eternity containing all the endless pairs of things, irreconcilable and inseparable, and heat will always long for cold and the back for the front and smiles for tears and mutt for jeff and no for yes with the most unutterable nostalgia there is.

The world has held great Heroes, As history-books have showed; But never a name to go down to fame Compared with that of Toad! The clever men at Oxford Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half as much As intelligent Mr. Toad! The animals sat in the Ark and cried, Their tears in torrents flowed. Who was it said, 'There's land ahead?' Encouraging Mr. Toad! The army all saluted As they marched along the road. Was it the King? Or Kitchener? No. It was Mr. Toad. The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting Sat at the window and sewed. She cried, 'Look! who's that handsome man?' They answered, 'Mr. Toad.' There was a great deal more of the same sort, but too dreadfully conceited to be written down. These are some of the milder verses.

Our Master puts the desire to procreate in us to be sure that we are fruitful and multiply. He knows how important animals are to the planet because most animals He allows to reproduce in great number. He put every one of us on the ark for a reason. Do you think it’s a mistake that dogs and cats have litters of 8, 9, 10 or more and people typically only have one or maybe two? It’s no mistake. It’s because God intends that there is more than enough four-legged love to go around.

We should expect nothing less from the language that was originally given by God, to His human family. Hebrew was the method that God chose for mankind to speak to Him, and Him to them. Adam spoke Hebrew—and your Bible confirms this. Everyone who got off the ark spoke one language—Hebrew. Even Abraham spoke Hebrew. Where did Abraham learn to speak Hebrew? Abraham was descended from Noah’s son, Shem. (Ge 11:10-26) Shem’s household was not affected by the later confusion of languages, at Babel. (Ge 11:5-9) To the contrary, Shem was blessed while the rest of Babel was cursed. (Ge 9:26) That is how Abraham retained Hebrew, despite residing in Babylon. So, Shem’s language can be traced back to Adam. (Ge 11:1) And, Shem (Noah’s son) was still alive when Jacob and Esau was 30 years of age. Obviously, Hebrew (the original language) was clearly spoken by Jacob’s sons. (Ge 14:13)

Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks, china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships, clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers, tu-wit-tuwoo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that cataract their ticks, old time weeping clocks with ebony beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill, but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime, and tock.

It’s best to have a small boat of friends where everyone rows than an ark of friends where no one does. At least you’re getting somewhere.

To Juan at the Winter Solstice There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling, Whether as learned bard or gifted child; To it all lines or lesser gauds belong That startle with their shining Such common stories as they stray into. Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues, Or strange beasts that beset you, Of birds that croak at you the Triple will? Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns Below the Boreal Crown, Prison to all true kings that ever reigned? Water to water, ark again to ark, From woman back to woman: So each new victim treads unfalteringly The never altered circuit of his fate, Bringing twelve peers as witness Both to his starry rise and starry fall. Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty, All fish below the thighs? She in her left hand bears a leafy quince; When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling, How many the King hold back? Royally then he barters life for love. Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched, Whose coils contain the ocean, Into whose chops with naked sword he springs, Then in black water, tangled by the reeds, Battles three days and nights, To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore? Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly, The owl hoots from the elder, Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup: Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. The log groans and confesses: There is one story and one story only. Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling, Do not forget what flowers The great boar trampled down in ivy time. Her brow was creamy as the crested wave, Her sea-blue eyes were wild But nothing promised that is not performed.

The ark was like a portable computer hard drive and Noah was a one-man Geek Squad, and he dumped God's most important files onto it before he zorched the virus-ridden computer that was the world.

She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose. That autumn always gave way to winter, but it was her favorite time of year—those fleeting bursts of beauty before the branches went bare.

Passersby looked at us curiously. In the porch, Mr. Whitman held the church door open for us. “Hurry up, please,” he said. “We don’t want to attract attention.” No, sure, there was nothing likely to attract attention in two black limousines parking in North Audley Street in broad daylight so that men in suits could carry the Lost Ark out of the trunk of one of the cars, over the sidewalk, and into the church. Although from a distance the chest carrying it could have been a small coffin . . . The thought gave me goose bumps. “I hope at least you remembered your pistol,” I whispered to Gideon. “You have a funny idea of what goes on at a soiree,” he said, in a normal tone of voice, arranging the scarf around my shoulders. “Did anyone check what’s in your bag? We don’t want your mobile ringing in the middle of a musical performance.” I couldn’t keep from laughing at the idea, because just then my ringtone was a croaking frog. “There won’t be anyone there who could call me except you,” I pointed out. “And I don’t even know your number. Please may I take a look inside your bag?” “It’s called a reticule,” I said, shrugging and handing him the little bag. “Smelling salts, handkerchief, perfume, powder . . . excellent,” said Gideon. “All just as it should be. Come along.” He gave me the reticule back, took my hand, and led me through the church porch. Mr. Whitman bolted the door again behind us. Gideon forgot to let go of my hand once we were inside the church, which was just as well, because otherwise I’d have panicked at the last moment and run away.

Much of [John Hanning] Speke's Journal of the Discovery of the Source of Nile is devoted to descriptions of the physical and moral ugliness of Africa's "primitive races," in whose condition he found "a strikingly existing proof of the Holy Scriptures." For his text, Speke took the story in Genesis 9, which tells how Noah, when he was just six hundred years old and had safely skippered his ark over the flood to dry land, got drunk and passed out naked in his tent. On emerging from his oblivion, Noah learned that his youngest son, Ham, had seen him naked; that Ham had told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, of the spectacle; and that Shem and Japheth had, with their backs chastely turned, covered the old man with a garment. Noah responded by cursing the progeny of Ham's son, Canaan, saying, "A slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers." Amid the perplexities of Genesis, this is one of the most enigmatic stories, and it has been subjected to many bewildering interpretations--most notably that Ham was the original black man. To the gentry of the American South, the weird tale of Noah's curse justified slavery, and to Spake and his colonial contemporaries it spelled the history of Africa's peoples. On "contemplating these sons of Noah," he marveled that "as they were then, so they appear to be now.

One little girl. Two soulmates. And three mended hearts. I’m a believer now. I can see it with my own eyes. Everything should come in threes.

With networking, some people build bridges, some people burn bridges, and some people, like myself, use a boat to cross the river that divides us from one another. Well, with all the animals I associate with, it’s more of an ark than a boat.

How do you tell one You've spoken with God? / Would you believe someone / Who said that they saw / Plans for a boat / To hold all the beasts / And you and your kids From a flood to retreat?

I mention all this to make the point that if you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job. But here's an extremely salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. It's an unnerving thought that we may be living the universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously. Because we are so remarkably careless about looking after things, both when alive and when not, we have no idea-- really none at all-- about how many things have died off permanently, or may soon, or may never, and what role we have played in any part of the process. In 1979, in the book The Sinking Ark, the author Norman Myers suggested that human activities were causing about two extinctions a week on the planet. By the early 1990s he had raised the figure to about some six hundred per week. (That's extinctions of all types-- plants, insects, and so on as well as animals.) Others have put the figure ever higher-- to well over a thousand a week. A United Nations report of 1995, on the other hand, put the total number of known extinctions in the last four hundred years at slightly under 500 for animals and slightly over 650 for plants-- while allowing that this was "almost certainly an underestimate," particularly with regard to tropical species. A few interpreters think most extinction figures are grossly inflated. The fact is, we don't know. Don't have any idea. We don't know when we started doing many of the things we've done. We don't know what we are doing right now or how our present actions will affect the future. What we do know is that there is only one planet to do it on, and only one species of being capable of making a considered difference. Edward O. Wilson expressed it with unimprovable brevity in The Diversity of Life: "One planet, one experiment." If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-- and by "we" i mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp. We have arrived at this position of eminence in a stunningly short time. Behaviorally modern human beings-- that is, people who can speak and make art and organize complex activities-- have existed for only about 0.0001 percent of Earth's history. But surviving for even that little while has required a nearly endless string of good fortune. We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a good deal more than lucky breaks.

it was unmatched life experience that bestowed in her eyes the sultry gleam that separates women from girls. although she viewed her “life experience” like bruises on a peach, men of all ages still found ways to see past the indications of damaged goods long enough to offer her a drink. hell, it was less than an hour ago that one such man called her “gothic perfection” and cried on her shoulder. her boyfriend agreed that a crazy life can “grow a girl up quick”; it was only last november that she turned seventeen.

The moment I entered the bright, buzzing lobby of Men’s House I was overcome by a sense of alienation and hostility … The lobby was the meeting place for various groups still caught up in the illusions that had just been boomeranged out of my head: college boys working to return to school down South; older advocates of racial progress with utopian schemes for building black business empires; preachers ordained by no authority except their own, without church or congregation, without bread or wine, body or blood; the community “leaders” without followers; old men of sixty or more still caught up in post-Civil War dreams of freedom within segregation; the pathetic ones who possessed noting beyond their dreams of being gentlemen, who held small jobs or drew small pensions, and all pretending to be engaged in some vast, though obscure, enterprise, who affected the pseudo-courtly manners of certain southern congressmen and bowed and nodded as they passed like senile old roosters in a barnyard; they younger crowd for whom I now felt a contempt such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream—the business students from southern colleges, for whom business was a vague, abstract game with rules as obsolete as Noah’s Ark but who yet were drunk on finance.

She had a woman’s swagger at twelve-and-a-half. Hair: strawberry-blonde, and I vaguely recall a daisy in the crook of her ear. She was an inch taller than me, two with the ponytail; smooth cheeks and darling brown eyes that marbled in luscious contrast with her magnolia skin; cream, melting to peach, melting to pink. She beamed like a cherub without the baby fat; a tender neck; pristine lips that would never part for a dirty word. Her body--of no interest to me at the time--was wrapped from neck to toes with home-made footie pajamas, the kind they make for toddlers, but I didn’t laugh; the girl filled that silly one-piece ensemble as if it were couture.

It had been a long road to here from Earth, but not as far as he himself had travelled from their state of innocence. The burden of knowledge in his head burned like an intolerable coal: the certainty of dead Earth, of frozen colonies, a star-spanning empire shrunk to one mad brain in a cold satellite . . . and the ark overrun by the monkeys.

Some serious Christians may possibly tremble for the Ark, and think the Christian religion in danger when divested of the patronage of civil power. They may fear inroads from licentiousness and infidelity, on the one hand, and from sectaries and party divisions on the other. But we may dismiss our fears, when we consider that truth can never be in real hazard, where there is a sufficiency of light and knowledge, and full liberty to vindicate it.

In that, you take seven loaves of bread for a seven lives journey" Should I take seven thousand then ? "Not even one

I am not cruel,” he said. “Not in the sense you mean. But cruelty is a useful tool if one can only recognise the precise moment when it must be used.

That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose.

This one was called Ark Madiba, after a Moiran biologist of the Fourth Millennium who had in turn been named in memory of a hero of Old Earth.

But man, unhappily, has written one of his blackest records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands. He has seldom set foot on an island that he has not brought about disastrous changes. He has destroyed environments by cutting, clearing, and burning; he has brought with him as a chance associate the nefarious rat; and almost invariably he has turned loose upon the islands a whole Noah’s Ark of goats, hogs, cattle, dogs, cats, and other non-native animals as well as plants. Upon species after species of island life, the black night of extinction has fallen.

No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. When the sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if the dove from the ark had lighted there. My fear fell from me as if it had been a vaporous garment which dissolved in the warmth. I must take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me. Last night one of my post-dated letters went to post, the first of that fatal series which is to blot out the very traces of my existence from the earth.

The world has held great Heroes, As history-books have showed; But never a name to go down to fame Compared with that of Toad! 'The clever men at Oxford Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half as much As intelligent Mr. Toad! 'The animals sat in the Ark and cried, Their tears in torrents flowed. Who was it said, "There's land ahead?" Encouraging Mr. Toad! 'The army all saluted As they marched along the road. Was it the King? Or Kitchener? No. It was Mr. Toad. 'The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting Sat at the window and sewed. She cried, "Look! who's that handsome man?" They answered, "Mr. Toad.

When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations.... The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the most of. The long-recognized blood-relations and connexions by marriage made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by possibilities, presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and pathetic hopefulness.

Ensuring that our home planet is healthy and life sustaining is an overwhelming priority that undercuts all other human activities. The ship must first float. Our failure to grasp these fundamental tenants of existence will be our undoing. And one thing is for certain. No calvary is going to come charging to our rescue. We are going to have to rescue ourselves or die trying. Workable solutions are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. The real issue is our elementary accord with Earth and the plant and animal kingdoms has to be revitalized and re-understood. The burning question is, How?

Those who floated in the ark were weightless and had weightless thoughts. They were neither hungry nor satisfied. They had no happiness and no fear of losing it. Their heads were not filled with petty official calculations, intrigues, promotions, and their shoulders were not burdened with concerns about housing, fuel, bread, and clothes for the children. Love, which from time immemorial has been the delight and the torment of humanity, was powerless to communicate to them its thrill or its agony. Their prison terms were so long that no one even thought of the time when he would go out into freedom. Men with exceptional Intellect, education, and experience, but too devoted to their families to have much of themselves left over for their friends, here belonged only to friends.

I saw them,” he said. I frowned. “Saw what?” He took a deep breath as he eyed me. “The paintings.” For a moment, I didn’t get where he was going with this. Not when he traced the curve of my cheek with his thumb and not when a soft smile curved his lips. And then it hit me. “The paintings?” I swallowed and started to sit up, but he didn’t let me get very far. “The paintings at my place?” When he nodded, I felt my face heat like I was out under the summer sun. “The ones that are . . . ?” “Of me?” he supplied. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Oh my God. Seriously?” “Yes.” Mortified, I didn’t know what to say. “They were in my closet. Why were you in my closet?” “Looking for a psycho stalker,” he answered. My eyes popped opened. “That . . . that was like two weeks ago! You saw them back then and didn’t say anything.” Reece sat up, bringing me with him. Somehow my body ended up between his legs and we were face-to-face. “I didn’t say anything, because I figured you’d respond this way.” “Of course I’d respond this way! It’s embarrassing. You probably think I’m some kind of freak. A stalker—a creepy stalker who paints pictures of you when you’re not around.” “I don’t think you’re a stalker, babe.” His voice was dry. I screwed up my face. “I can’t believe you saw them.” He chuckled, and my eyes narrowed on him. “Honestly? I really didn’t know how you truly felt about me until I saw them.” My brows flew up. “I thought you were all-knowing.” Reece smirked. “I had my suspicions that you were in love with me from the first time you laid eyes on me.” “Oh dear baby Jesus in a manger,” I muttered. “But I don’t think I was a hundred percent until I saw those paintings, especially the one of me in the kitchen. You painted that after . . . after I left.” His brows lowered as he gave a little shake of his head. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I think it’s sweet.

Two walks; two sightings of the bald doc with the scalpel; two old people suffering insomnia and seeing brightly colored visions; two notes. It’s like Noah leading the animals onto the ark, not one by one but in pairs . . . and is another hard rain going to fall? Well, what do you think, old man?

I was not a great man whose history has been recorded for children to study in school. No bells will ring for me, no flags descend upon their mast. For I was an ordinary man, my son, one of many, with ordinary hopes and ordinary dreams and ordinary fears. I, too, dreamed of wealth and riches, health and strength. I, too, feared hunger and poverty, war and weakness. I was the neighbour who lived in the next house. The man standing in the subway on his way to work: who held a match to his cigarette: who walked with his dog. I was the soldier shaking with fear: the man berating the umpire at the ball game: the citizen in the privacy of the voting booth, happily electing the worthless candidate. I was the man who lived a thousand times and died a thousand times in all man’s six thousand years of record. I was the man who sailed with Noah  in his ark, who was the multitude that crossed the sea that Moses held apart, who hung from the cross next to Christ. I was the ordinary man about whom songs are never written, stories are never told, legends are never remembered.

Unfortunately, no one has ever successfully postulated a super-symmetry holding between two known particles. Instead, in all the supersymmetric theories the numbers of particles are at least doubled. A new superpartner is simply postulated to go along with each known particle. Not only are there squarks and sleptons and photinos, there are also sneutrinos to partner the neutrinos, Higgsinos with the Higgs, and gravitinos to go with the gravitons. Two by two, a regular Noah's ark of particles. Sooner or later, tangled in the web of new snames and naminos, you begin to feel like Sbozo the clown. Or Bozo the clownino. Or swhatever.

For the first time, there’s no barrier between us and we make eye contact. All of a sudden, I feel like the character in Raiders of the Lost Ark—the one who watches in horror as the wispy, beautiful angels floating from the Ark of the Covenant morph into howling, homicidal demons. You know, right before he melts like a cheap candle.

No one who isn't us is going to destroy Earth, and no one who isn't us is going to save it. The most hopeless conditions can inspire the most hopeful actions. We have found ways to restore life on Earth in the event of a total collapse because we have found ways to cause a total collapse of life on Earth. We are the flood, and we are the ark.

Why do we so mindlessly abuse our planet, our only home? The answer to that lies in each of us. Therefore, we will strive to bring about understanding that we are--each one of us--responsible for more than just ourselves, our family, our football team, our country, or our own kind; that there is more to life than just these things. That each one of us must also bring the natural world back into its proper place in our lives, and realize that doing so is not some lofty ideal but a vital part of our personal survival.

You’re so beautiful. Your eyes are like the water you see in those pictures of paradise. A color that can’t be described because a word for it can’t do it justice. And your hair is gold, like the sun. You’re my paradise, Blue. You and Ark are all I have left.” “I’m yours, JD. If you want me, I’m yours.” “No, Blue,” he whispers back. “You’re ours.

Unrest is one great characteristic of the world: hurry, vexation, failure, disappointment, stare us in the face on every side. But here is hope: there is an ark of refuge for the weary, as truly as there was for Noah's dove. There is rest in Christ, rest of conscience, and rest of heart, rest built on pardon of all sin, rest flowing from peace with God.

If you aren't willing to look foolish, you're foolish. And that's why so many people have never built an ark, killed a giant, or walked on water.

I believe spirituality is a very personal and individual experience that varies from one person to the next.

She is not one lost girl. We are not two best friends. We are one trinity of perfection.

Kitten Kisses

One cannot sit on rainbows with them only becoming intangible upon recognition.

Thanks to suffering and madness, I have had a finer, richer life than any of you, and I wish to go to my death with dignity, as befits the great moment after which all dignity and majesty cease. Let my body be my ark and my death a long floating on the waves of eternity. A nothing amid nothingness. What defense have I against nothingness but this ark in which I have tried to gather everything that was dear to me, people, birds, animals, and plants, everything that I carry in my eye and in my heart, in the triple-decked ark of my body and soul. Like the pharaohs in the majestic peace of their tombs, I wanted to have all those things with me in death, I wanted everything to be as it was before; I wanted the birds to sing for me forever, I wanted to exchange Charon's bark for another, less desolate and less empty; I wanted to ennoble eternity's unconscionable void with the bitter herbs that spring from the heart of man, to ennoble the soundless emptiness of eternity with the cry of the cuckoo and the song of the lark. All I have done is to develop that bitter poetic metaphor, carry it with passionate logic to its ultimate consequence, which transforms sleep into waking (and the converse); lucidity into madness (and the converse); life into death, as though there were no borderline, and the converse; death into eternity, as if they were not one and the same thing. Thus my egoism is only the egoism of human existence, the egoism of life, counterweight to the egoism of death, and, appearances to the contrary, my consciousness resists nothingness with an egoism that has no equal, resists the outrage of death with the passionate metaphor of the wish to reunite the few people and the bit of love that made up my life. I have wanted and still want to depart this life with specimens of people, flora and fauna, to lodge them all in my heart as in an ark, to shut them up behind my eyelids when they close for the last time. I wanted to smuggle this pure abstraction into nothingness, to sneak it across the threshold of that other abstraction, so crushing in its immensity: the threshold of nothingness. I have therefore tried to condense this abstraction, to condense it by force of will, faith, intelligence, madness, and love (self-love), to condense it so drastically that its specific weight will be such as to life it like a balloon and carry it beyond the reach of darkness and oblivion. If nothing else survives, perhaps my material herbarium or my notes or my letters will live on, and what are they but condensed, materialized idea; materialized life: a paltry, pathetic human victory over immense, eternal, divine nothingness. Or perhaps--if all else is drowned in the great flood--my madness and my dream will remain like a northern light and a distant echo. Perhaps someone will see that light or hear that distant echo, the shadow of a sound that was once, and will grasp the meaning of that light, that echo. Perhaps it will be my son who will someday publish my notes and my herbarium of Pannonian plants (unfinished and incomplete, like all things human). But anything that survives death is a paltry, pathetic victory over the eternity of nothingness--a proof of man's greatness and Yahweh's mercy. Non omnis moriar.

Watch movies. Read screenplays. Let them be your guide. […] Yes, McKee has been able to break down how the popular screenplay has worked. He has identified key qualities that many commercially successful screenplays share, he has codified a language that has been adopted by creative executives in both film and television. So there might be something of tangible value to be gained by interacting with his material, either in book form or at one of the seminars. But for someone who wants to be an artist, a creator, an architect of an original vision, the best book to read on screenwriting is no book on screenwriting. The best seminar is no seminar at all. To me, the writer wants to get as many outside voices OUT of his/her head as possible. Experts win by getting us to be dependent on their view of the world. They win when they get to frame the discussion, when they get to tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to think about the game, whatever the game is. Because that makes you dependent on them. If they have the secret rules, then you need them if you want to get ahead. The truth is, you don’t. If you love and want to make movies about issues of social import, get your hands on Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for Network. Read it. Then watch the movie. Then read it again. If you love and want to make big blockbusters that also have great artistic merit, do the same thing with Lawrence Kasdan’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark screenplay and the movie made from it. Think about how the screenplays made you feel. And how the movies built from these screenplays did or didn’t hit you the same way. […] This sounds basic, right? That’s because it is basic. And it’s true. All the information you need is the movies and screenplays you love. And in the books you’ve read and the relationships you’ve had and your ability to use those things.

One could think of American society as Bishop Warburton thought of the English Church, that like the ark of Noah it “is worth saving, not for the sake of the unclean beasts that almost filled it and probably made most noise and clamour in it, but for the little corner of rationality that was as much distressed by the stink within as by the tempest without.” Nevertheless,

They desperately needed hope that a safe haven even existed, that the war's horrors would one day end," while they drifted along in the strange villa even its owners referred to as an ark.

Meanwhile, the war storm blew violently, scaring all, and "casting a shadow on the lives of our Guests, who fled from the entrance of crematoriums and the thresholds of gas chambers," needing more than refuge. "They desperately needed hope that a safe haven even existed, that the war's horrors would one day end," while they drifted along in the strange villa even its owners referred to as an ark.

That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose. That autumn always gave way to winter, but it was her favorite time of year— those fleeting bursts of beauty before the branches went bare.

THE FORTRESS Under the pink quilted covers I hold the pulse that counts your blood. I think the woods outdoors are half asleep, left over from summer like a stack of books after a flood, left over like those promises I never keep. On the right, the scrub pine tree waits like a fruit store holding up bunches of tufted broccoli. We watch the wind from our square bed. I press down my index finger -- half in jest, half in dread -- on the brown mole under your left eye, inherited from my right cheek: a spot of danger where a bewitched worm ate its way through our soul in search of beauty. My child, since July the leaves have been fed secretly from a pool of beet-red dye. And sometimes they are battle green with trunks as wet as hunters' boots, smacked hard by the wind, clean as oilskins. No, the wind's not off the ocean. Yes, it cried in your room like a wolf and your pony tail hurt you. That was a long time ago. The wind rolled the tide like a dying woman. She wouldn't sleep, she rolled there all night, grunting and sighing. Darling, life is not in my hands; life with its terrible changes will take you, bombs or glands, your own child at your breast, your own house on your own land. Outside the bittersweet turns orange. Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat branches, finding orange nipples on the gray wire strands. We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples. Your feet thump-thump against my back and you whisper to yourself. Child, what are you wishing? What pact are you making? What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark can I fill for you when the world goes wild? The woods are underwater, their weeds are shaking in the tide; birches like zebra fish flash by in a pack. Child, I cannot promise that you will get your wish. I cannot promise very much. I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch. A pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled through the mulch by his thick white collar. He's on show like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed, one time, from an old lady's hat. We laugh and we touch. I promise you love. Time will not take away that.

Often truths we are not ready for can cause trauma and pain and push one deeper into denial. It can also make one more aggressive to defend the denial and seek others like yourself to defend this shared denial as well.

One of my delights in these books, on the other hand, has been to include movies not often cited as “great”—some because they are dismissed as merely popular (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark), some because they are frankly entertainments (Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Rififi), some because they are too obscure (The Fall of the House of Usher, Stroszek). We go to different movies for different reasons, and greatness comes in many forms.

Then there was the gray of human habitation. The blue places were turning brown, the yellow places to dust, the green places to smoke and ashes. Each time one of the animals disappeared--they went by species or sometimes by organizations of species, interconnected--it was as though all mountains were gone, or all lakes. A certain form of the world. But in the gray that metastasized over continents and hemispheres few appeared to be deterred by this extinguishing or even to speak of it, no one outside fringe elements and elite groups, professors and hippies, small populations of little general importance. The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed.

If Mr. Castillo had been in charge of building the Ark, Noah would have wound up with a boat the size of the New Jersey." "It still wouldn't have been big enough for all those animals," said Freddie. "Honestly, Freddie," I said. "Don't you know a joke when you hear one?" "Sure," he said. "Just the same, Val, with the few people the Ark had aboard, there wouldn't be enough of them to shovel all the-" I threw a pine cone at him and chased him back to camp.

Some people want to put restrictions on themselves according to their talent, intelligence, or experience. Others worry about their age. But with God, one person can always make a difference, regardless of circumstances or situation. And age means nothing to Him. When Jesus fed the five thousand, a boy provided the loaves and fishes (John 6:1-13). And in the case of Noah, when it began to rain and he entered the ark, he was six hundred years old! You’re never too old—or too young—to make a difference for God.

Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my hand To hold the Ark, although it seem to shake Through th’ old sinnes and new doctrines of our land. Onely, since God doth often vessels make Of lowly matter for high uses meet, I throw me at his feet. —George Herbert1

An open mind does not censor truth, it discerns it through recognition, study, doubt, and faith. It recognizes it as complimentary to every truth in existence. When confronted with truth that makes one uncomfortable give yourself time to be open, but also time to acclimatize

is the “waters” of the celestial “ocean” which come to mind, in which Noah’s Ark now swims as a constellation. In the Indian version of this story the ark is a boat on which the Seven Rishis (better known to us as the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major), and the Vedic culture that they represent, are ferried to safety by a giant Fish (the constellation Pisces). Gazing on myth from this angle we can find in the skies many of the cast of characters of “The Greatness of Saturn.” Aditi [* FOOTNOTE: A well-thought-out cosmology which catalogues such extensions of ‘Earth’ into ‘Space’ is presented by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Namlet’s Mill, and the interested reader will find a wealth of detail worth pondering in that book.] (‘The Unbroken, Unbounded One’; by extension, eternity) is the mother of the devas, the ‘shining celestials,’ and Diti (‘The Bound, Divided, Cut One’) is the mother of the asuras, the enemies of the devas. There is good reason to believe that Aditi represents the northern celestial hemisphere and the zodiac, which being the part of the heavens that is visible throughout the year

We’ve managed to do without intelligent machines until now, Skade. Not because we fear them but because we know that any intelligent entity must choose its own destiny. Yet that servitor doesn’t have any free will, does it? Just intelligence. The one without the other is a travesty. We’ve gone to war over less.]

Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

SURELY YOU SEE from this that you shouldn’t take your own experience as the rule of thumb by which you judge other contemplatives. For example, those who must work really hard to reach the peak of contemplation, and then only get there occasionally, might make the mistake of using their own experience as the standard for other contemplatives. We must remember that not everyone has a difficult journey to the exceptional ecstasy. Some walk a simple path, routinely meeting the miraculous in the ordinary. On the other hand, these contemplatives must not make the opposite assumption that their experience is universal. Not everyone feels the joy of contemplation whenever they wish. Avoid both close-minded ways of thinking, for you can’t judge another’s unique contemplative experience by your own. Besides, you can’t know God’s wisdom; someone who has struggled a long time with prayer only to know the extraordinary transcendent moment may one day have these moments whenever they want and as often as they want. Moses is a good example of this. To start with, he only rarely caught a glimpse of the Ark’s form and not without first working awfully hard on the mountain. But later, when the Ark was kept in the valley, Moses could see it as often as he liked.1

That hundreds of millions of people believe that a man named Noah built an ark and put all of the world's species onto it two-by-two, that those species included dinosaurs—even though dinosaurs and man are separated by millions of years—that these people want this taught as science, that they want to get onto every school board and into every legislature to ensure that their view prevails, and that the mainstream media of a modern society continues to take this seriously, may only mildly annoy one smart person, perhaps one who grew up in religion and is tempted to give religion a pass. But it will seriously outrage—and almost derange—another smart person who is convinced that these views always come with an authoritarian edge and a coercive public agenda. It will likewise strike a smart person as a ludicrous claim that the collectivist farms in her country are working beautifully when there is no food to be found on the shelves of any grocery store anywhere or to claim that a certain corporation is a mighty source for good and innovation when it is paying its employees peanuts and freely polluting. Misrepresentations of this sort affect our brain and our nervous system. They are an assault on our senses as well as our sense of right and wrong, and they bring pain and distress.

Peter never cared anything for the words or the deeds of old Parlow…. But Frosted Moses! … he had lived for ever, and people said that he could never die. Peter had heard that he had been in the Ark with Noah, and he had often wished to ask him questions about that interesting period, about Ham, Shem and Japheth, and about the animals. Of course, therefore, he knew everything about Life, and this remark of his about Courage was worth considering. Peter watched him very solemnly and noticed how his white beard shone in the fire-light, how there was a red handkerchief falling out of one enormous pocket, and how there was a big silver ring on one brown and bony finger …

Naimy writes, ‘As a living branch of a living vine, when buried in the ground, strikes root and ultimately becomes an independent grape-bearing vine like its mother with which it remains connected, so shall Man, the living branch of the Vine Divine, when buried in the soil of its divinity, become a God, remaining permanently one with God.

Some find it difficult to withstand the mocking and unsavory remarks of foolish ones who ridicule chastity, honesty, and obedience to God’s commands. But the world has ever belittled adherence to principle. When Noah was instructed to build an ark, the foolish populace looked at the cloudless sky, then scoffed and jeered—until the rain came.

For all the contradictions of the present-day world, for all the diversity of social and political systems in it, and for all the different choices made by the nations in different times, this world is nevertheless one whole. We are all passengers aboard one ship, the Earth, and we must not allow it to be wrecked. There will be no second Noah's Ark.

In a hypothetical, extremely simple Cloud Ark consisting of only two arklets, only one calculation needed to be performed: namely, the calculation that answered the question “Will Arklet 1 bang into Arklet 2 if both stay on their current courses?” In a three-arklet cloud, it was also necessary to figure out whether Arklet 1 would collide with Arklet 3, and whether 2 and 3 were going to collide. So, that was a total of three calculations. If the cloud expanded to four arklets, six calculations were needed, and so on. In mathematical terms these were known as triangular numbers, a kind of binomial coefficient, but the bottom line was that the number of calculations went up rapidly with the number of arklets in the cloud.

Over the past several months, Amelía’s Google history had become a reference of her despair: “can’t have children, reasons for infertility in women, reasons for infertility in men, discussing infertility with husband, price of surrogate mothers, signs of depression, adoption agencies, infertility support groups…” The endless searches only provided two categories of results: medical sites that took pride in listing every worst-case scenario, and blogs written by white women with phrases like “silent suffering” and “living with uncertainty,” mixing in Bible verses about God’s Grace, none of which filled the void or helped Aimee ignore the fact that Mother’s Day was a month away and she would have to watch her family celebrate the one thing she wanted most and might never have.

So maybe he had been apologizing for giving her life in the first place, when he knew it would be full of dread. She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose. That autumn always gave way to winter, but it was her favorite time of year—those fleeting bursts of beauty before the branches went bare.

I’m trying to be an adult. I’m trying to be responsible. I’m trying not to call home crying. But it’s hard. It’s hard when every morning feels like a hangover. It’s hard when I hear voices every time I go to sleep. It’s hard when the only thing that would make me feel better is to crawl in bed with the one person who truly knows me, but I’m more afraid of her than the bears or the perverts or whoever the hell visits her when I’m away.

We do not wish harm or destruction on you,” said Yekini. “At least, not us three. But I’m not sure how we can help you in your quest. As you can see, we are incapacitated ourselves.” Understandable, said Omíwálé. But you must remember: it is fate that has brought us together, not me. Each one of us here has somehow tasked themselves with making our world better than it is—helping a people divided by time and tales come together. What are we if not called and chosen?

Kath Two wondered, as she always did, whether the people of the Epic would have said and done some of what they had, had they known that, five thousand years later, billions of people would be watching them on video screens, citing them as examples, and quoting them from memory. Over the first few decades on Cleft, the cameras had died one by one. Depending on how you felt about ubiquitous surveillance, the result had either been a new Dark Age and an incalculable loss to history, or a liberation from digital tyranny. Either way, it signaled the end of the Epic: the painstakingly recorded account of everything that the people of the Cloud Ark had done from Zero onward. After that it had all been oral history for about a thousand years, since there had been no paper to write on and no ink to write on it with. Memory devices were scarce and jury-rigged. Every single chip had been used for critical functions such as robots and life support.

You see, Noah got drunk this one time on the Ark, and he was a-layin on his bed, naked as a jaybird. Two of his sons wouldn’t look at him, they just turned the other way and put a blanket over him. I don’t know, it might’ve been a sheet. But Ham—he was the coon of the family—looked on his father in his nakedness, and God cursed him and all his race to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. So there it is. That’s what’s behind it. Genesis, chapter nine. You go on and look it up, Mr. Amberson.

Henry, you mustn’t mind. It is really a kindness to have him.’ ‘Well, I do mind, Emily,’ said Mr Leslie, getting up. ‘Kindness is one thing and your family is another. You treat this house as if it were the Ark, Emily, inviting everyone in.’ ‘At least she doesn’t ask them in couples, sir,’ said David. ‘A female Holt would be appalling.’ ‘That’s enough,’ said his father. ‘If Mr Holt comes into this house, I go out of it.’ He took a cigar from the sideboard and went out, almost slamming the door.

Begin in Genesis with the well-loved story of Noah, derived from the Babylonian myth of Uta-Napisthim and known from the older mythologies of several cultures. The legend of the animals going into the ark two by two is charming, but the moral of the story of Noah is appalling. God took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children and also, for good measure, the rest of the presumably blameless) animals as well. Of course, irritated theologians will protest that we don't take the book of Genesis literally any more. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories. Such picking and choosing is a matter of personal decision, just as much, or as little, as the atheist's decision to follow this moral precept or that was a personal decision, without an absolute foundation. If one of these is 'morality flying by the seat of its pants,' so is the other.

I want to start a seed bank. There are half as many trees in the world as there were before we came down out of them.” “Because of us?” “One percent of the world forest, every decade. An area larger than Connecticut, every year.” He nods, as if no one paying attention would be surprised. “A third to a half of existing species may go extinct by the time I’m gone.” Her words puzzle him. She’s going somewhere? “Tens of thousands of trees we know nothing about. Species we’ve barely classified. Like burning down the library, art museum, pharmacy, and hall of records, all at once.” “You want to start an ark.” She smiles at the word, but shrugs. It’s as good as any. “I want to start an ark.” “Where you can keep . . .” The strangeness of the idea gets him. A vault to store a few hundred million years of tinkering. Hand on the car door, he fixes on something high up in a cedar. “What . . . would you do with them? When would they ever . . . ?” “Den, I don’t know. But a seed can lie dormant for thousands of years.

Statues of Saints CHALLENGE “The Catholic use of statues of saints is idolatry.” DEFENSE Idolatry involves worshipping a statue as a god. That's not what Catholics do with statues. Statues of saints do not represent gods. They represent human beings or angels united with God in heaven. Even the least learned practicing Catholics are aware that statues of saints are not gods, and neither are the saints they represent. If you point to a statue of the Virgin Mary and ask, “Is this a goddess?” or “Is the Virgin Mary a goddess?” you should receive the answer “no” in both cases. If this is the case for the Virgin Mary, the same will be true of any saint. As long as one is not confusing a statue with a god, it is not an idol, and the commandment against idolatry is not violated. This was true in the Bible. At various points, God commanded the Israelites to make statues and images for religious use. For example, in the book of Numbers the Israelites were suffering from a plague of poisonous snakes, and God commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole so that those bitten by the snakes could gaze upon the bronze serpent and live (Num. 21:6–9). The act of looking at a statue has no natural power to heal, so this was a religious use. It was only when, centuries later, people began to regard the statue as a god that it was being used as an idol and so was destroyed (2 Kings 18:4). God also commanded that his temple, which represented heaven, be filled with images of the inhabitants of heaven. Thus he originally ordered that craftsmen work images of cherubim (a kind of angel) into curtains of the Tent of Meeting (Exod. 26:1). Later, carvings of cherubim were made on the walls and doors of the temple (1 Kings 6:29–35). Statues were also made. The lid of the Ark of the Covenant included two statues of cherubim that spread their wings toward each other (Exod. 25:18–20), and the temple included giant, fifteen-foot tall statues of cherubim in the holy of holies (1 Kings 6:23–28). Since the Ascension of Christ, the saints have joined the angels in heaven (CCC 1023), making images of them in church appropriate as well.

Brain-like in function and speed, the internet connected over one-third of the global population. Three million searches every minute; one-hundred-trillion emails every year; more Facebook users than people in North America, all with with personal photos, videos, apps, and chats. There were dozens of dating sites, an immersive universe called 2nd Life that boasted a country-sized GDP, a slew of viruses, obnoxious advertising, more than a billion photos of naked women, and seventy-two hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This was the environment where the friendship flourished.

This unusual situation is due to the fact that the tablet omits all outbreaks of the conventional literary structure – Anu opened his mouth to speak, saying to the lady Ishtar … followed by Ishtar opened her mouth to speak, saying to her father, Anu … Gilgamesh VI: 87–88; 92–93 – with which Babylonian narrative literature is, not to put too fine a point on it, slightly tiresomely littered. In fact, I cannot come up with another example of Babylonian mythological or epic literature that is devoid of this characteristic speech-linking device. Its repetitive nature at first sight looks like a remnant of oral literature, where things are repeated more than we would repeat them today, which the modern connoisseur of cuneiform literature just has to accept, or appreciate as atmospheric and authentic. On reflection, however, it is just the opposite. The characteristic dependence on this formula originates in the very transition from oral to written literature, for who is speaking at any one time will always be clear in a storyteller’s presentation, but the process of writing down what has previously been spoken aloud creates ambiguity for the reader unless each speaker is clearly identified.

Line of AuNor, dragon bold Flows to me from days of old, And through years lost in the mist My blood names a famous list. By Air, by Water, by Fire, by Earth In pride I claim a noble birth. From EmLar Gray, a deadly deed By his flame Urlant was freed, Of fearsome hosts of blighters dark And took his reward: a golden ark! My Mother’s sire knew battle well Before him nine-score villages fell. When AuRye Red coursed the sky Elven arrows in vain would fly, He broke the ranks of men at will In glittering mines dwarves he’d kill. Grandsire he is through Father’s blood A river of strength in fullest flood. My egg was one of Irelia’s Clutch Her wisdom passed in mental touch. Mother took up before ever I woke The parent dragon’s heavy yoke; For me, her son, she lost her life Murderous dwarves brought blackened knife. A father I had in the Bronze AuRel Hunter of renown upon wood and fell He gave his clutch through lessons hard A chance at life beyond his guard. Father taught me where, and when, and how To fight or flee, so I sing now. Wistala, sibling, brilliant green Escaped with me the axes keen We hunted as pair, made our kill From stormy raindrops drank our fill When elves and dwarves took after us I told her “Run,” and lost her thus. Bound by ropes; by Hazeleye freed And dolphin-rescued in time of need I hid among men with fishing boats On island thick with blown sea-oats I became a drake and breathed first fire When dolphin-slaughter aroused my ire. I ran with wolves of Blackhard’s pack Killed three hunters on my track The Dragonblade’s men sought my hide But I escaped through a fangèd tide Of canine friends, assembled Thing Then met young Djer, who cut collar-ring. I crossed the steppes with dwarves of trade On the banks of the Vhydic Ironriders slayed Then sought out NooMoahk, dragon black And took my Hieba daughter back To find her kind; then took first flight Saw NooMoahk buried in honor right. When war came to friends I long had known My path was set, my heart was stone I sought the source of dreadful hate And on this Isle I met my fate Found Natasatch in a cavern deep So I had one more promise to keep. To claim this day my life’s sole mate In future years to share my fate A dragon’s troth is this day pledged To she who’ll see me fully fledged. Through this dragon’s life, as dragon-dame shall add your blood to my family’s fame.

But Hannah's friend didn’t understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn’t understand Hannah’s stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn’t understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn’t hurt, didn’t cry, didn’t spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah’s best ideas—sometimes her only ideas—were buried beneath the skin.

Maybe! That’s the moral of many, many stories. Chaos emerges in a household, bit by bit. Mutual unhappiness and resentment pile up. Everything untidy is swept under the rug, where the dragon feasts on the crumbs. But no one says anything, as the shared society and negotiated order of the household reveals itself as inadequate, or disintegrates, in the face of the unexpected and threatening. Everybody whistles in the dark, instead. Communication would require admission of terrible emotions: resentment, terror, loneliness, despair, jealousy, frustration, hatred, boredom. Moment by moment, it’s easier to keep the peace. But in the background, in Billy Bixbee’s house, and in all that are like it, the dragon grows. One day it bursts forth, in a form that no one can ignore. It lifts the very household from its foundations. Then it’s an affair, or a decades-long custody dispute of ruinous economic and psychological proportions. Then it’s the concentrated version of the acrimony that could have been spread out, tolerably, issue by issue, over the years of the pseudo-paradise of the marriage. Every one of the three hundred thousand unrevealed issues, which have been lied about, avoided, rationalized away, hidden like an army of skeletons in some great horrific closet, bursts forth like Noah’s flood, drowning everything. There’s no ark, because no one built one, even though everyone felt the storm gathering.

Beautiful Maria, how Sweet are your hips... Is the man whom you love never to find that out? Beautiful Maria, listen to what I say to you: only a little to one side of this way, a flight of stairs leads steeply upward, leading to freedom... Your knees are trembling... how sweet that is! Do you think to overcome your weakness by clasping your hands? You call upon God, but believe me: God does not hear you! Since I came upon the earth as the great flood, to destroy all in existence but Noah’s ark, God has been deaf to the scream of His creatures.  Or did you think I had forgotten how the mothers screamed then? Have you more responsibility on your conscience than God on His? Turn back, beautiful Maria, turn back!

The first place to fall, after the crossing of the Jordan, was Jericho, one of the most ancient cities in the world. The excavations of Kathleen Kenyon and carbon-dating show that it goes back to the seventh millennium BC. It had enormous walls in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, and the strength of its defences produced one of the most vivid passages in the Bible. Joshua the prophet-general ordered the priests to carry the Ark round the city, with their ram’s-horn trumpeters, on six consecutive days; and on the seventh, ‘when the priests blew with the trumpets’, he commanded to all the people: ‘Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.’ Then ‘the people shouted with a great shout, that the walls fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city.’126 Owing to erosion, the Kenyon researches threw no light on how the walls were destroyed; she thinks it may have been an earthquake which the Israelites attributed to divine intervention. The Bible narrative says: ‘And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and ass, with the edge of the sword.’ Miss Kenyon established that the city was certainly burnt at this time and that, in addition, it was not reoccupied for a very long time afterwards, which accords with Joshua’s determination that no one should rebuild it, and his threat: ‘Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho.

Of the many wonderful tales Moor told me, the most wonderful, the most delightful one, was “Hans Röckle.” It went on for months; it was a whole series of stories... Hans Röckle himself was a Hoffman-like magician, who kept a toyshop, and who was always “hard up.” His shop was full of the most wonderful things—of wooden men and women, giants and dwarfs, kings and queens, workmen and masters, animals and birds as numerous as Noah got into the Ark, tables and chairs, carriages, boxes of all sorts and sizes. And though he was a magician, Hans could never meet his obligations either to the devil or to the butcher, and was therefore—much against the grain—constantly obliged to sell his toys to the devil. These then went through wonderful adventures—always ending in a return to Hans Röckle’s shop. —Eleanor Marx, on her father Karl’s bedtime stories (in Stallybrass 1998:198)

It was fun for me also to point out that this brand of young-Earth creationism claims that kangaroos came from a huge ship, the ark, which is supposed to have safely run aground on Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey. It’s a respectable peak—5,165 meters (almost 17,000 feet)—and it’s snowcapped. It’s not clear to me how all the animals and humans made the arduous descent. The kangaroos, both of them, are supposed to have made it down the mountain, ran or hopped from there to Australia—and no one saw them. Furthermore, if they took a reasonable amount of time to make the trip, you’d expect some kangaroo pups or joeys to have been born and some adults to have died along the way. You’d expect some kangaroo fossils out there somewhere in what is now Laos or Tibet. Also, they are supposed to have run across a land bridge from Eurasia to Australia. But there’s no evidence of such a bridge or any kangaroo fossils in that area, not any.

One day, W.E. and I parked on the side of the highway and launched our boat in a ditch. Our fishing spot of choice that day was a bubbling culvert right under a fifty-five-mile-per-hour-speed-limit sign. When we started fishing at daylight, there was normal traffic on the road. But as the day went on, water came crashing over low points of the road and traffic stopped when the road was closed. We had set a goal of catching fifty-five largemouth bass under that sign, and we were paying more attention to reaching our goal than the rising floodwaters. As you have probably already realized, determination is a Robertson trait that is an asset most of the time. But this time, not so much! By the time we caught the fifty-five fish and returned to our truck, there was no sign of the road. The current from the water was so strong that our truck was shaking. I quickly realized we had underestimated the speed of the rising water and were now in a dangerous situation. I decided to get in the back of the truck with a life jacket on, while W.E. tried to navigate the submerged road. I had a better vantage point to see the painted lines of the highway, so every time he strayed from the road I banged on the roof of the truck. We traveled about a mile to a bridge on higher ground, where hundreds of people--along with the police--had gathered to watch the spectacle of the flood. I’m positive that we must have looked like Jesus walking on water. Noah might have used a giant ark to escape danger, but we used a truck and some redneck ingenuity! The crowd’s faces were filled with shock and bewilderment as they parted to make way for us. At some point, the people started cheering, and I felt like a politician running for office as I waved to the crowd. Even though we were basking in the glory of the moment and had an ice chest full of fish, we realized we were very fortunate to have survived.

Noah had grown tired of being a prophet of doom, forever announcing a catastrophe that never came and that no one took seriously. One day, he clothed himself in sackcloth and covered his head with ashes. Only a man who was mourning [the death of] a beloved child or his wife was allowed to do this. Clothed in the garb of truth, bearer of sorrow, he went back to the city, resolved to turn the curiosity, spitefulness, and superstition of its inhabitants to his advantage. Soon a small crowd of curious people had gathered around him. They asked him questions. They asked if someone had died, and who the dead person was. Noah replied to them that many had died, and then, to the great amusement of his listeners, said that they themselves were the dead of whom he spoke. When he was asked when this catastrophe had taken place, he replied to them: “Tomorrow.” Profiting from their attention and confusion, Noah drew himself up to his full height and said these words: “The day after tomorrow, the flood will be something that will have been. And when the flood will have been, everything that is will never have existed. When the flood will have carried off everything that is, everything that will have been, it will be too late to remember, for there will no longer be anyone alive. And so there will no longer be any difference between the dead and those who mourn them. If I have come before you, it is in order to reverse time, to mourn tomorrow’s dead today. The day after tomorrow it will be too late.” With this he went back whence he had come, took off the sackcloth [that he wore], cleaned his face of the ashes that covered it, and went to his workshop. That evening a carpenter knocked on his door and said to him: “Let me help you build the ark, so that it may become false.” Later a roofer joined them, saying: “It is raining over the mountains, let me help you, so that it may become false.”14

Each one of us has to save his own soul, and has to do God's work himself, but instead of that we busy ourselves saving other people and teaching them. And what do we teach them? We teach them now, at the end of the nineteenth century, that God created the world in six days, then caused a flood, and put all the animals in an ark, and all the rest of the horrors and nonsense of the Old Testament. And then that Christ ordered everyone to be baptized with water; and we make them believe in all the absurdity and meanness of an Atonement essential to salvation; and then that he rose up into the heavens which do not really exist, and there sat down at the right hand of the Father. We have got used to all this, but really it is dreadful! A child, fresh and ready to receive all that is good and true, asks us what the world is, and what its laws are; and we, instead of revealing to him the teaching of love and truth that has been given to us, carefully ram into his head all sorts of horrible absurdities and meannesses, ascribing them all to God.

college boys working to return to school down South; older advocates of racial progress with Utopian schemes for building black business empires; preachers ordained by no authority except their own, without church or congregation, without bread or wine, body or blood; the community "leaders" without followers; old men of sixty or more still caught up in post-Civil-War dreams of freedom within segregation; the pathetic ones who possessed nothing beyond their dreams of being gentlemen, who held small jobs or drew small pensions, and all pretending to be engaged in some vast, though obscure, enterprise, who affected the pseudo-courtly manners of certain southern congressmen and bowed and nodded as they passed like senile old roosters in a barnyard; the younger crowd for whom I now felt a contempt such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream -- the business students from southern colleges, for whom business was a vague, abstract game with rules as obsolete as Noah's Ark but who yet were drunk on finance. Yes, and that older group with similar aspirations, the "fundamentalists," the "actors" who sought to achieve the status of brokers through imagination alone, a group of janitors and messengers who spent most of their wages on clothing such as was fashionable among Wall Street brokers, with their Brooks Brothers suits and bowler hats, English umbrellas, black calfskin shoes and yellow gloves; with their orthodox and passionate argument as to what was the correct tie to wear with what shirt, what shade of gray was correct for spats and what would the Prince of Wales wear at a certain seasonal event; should field glasses be slung from the right or from the left shoulder; who never read the financial pages though they purchased the Wall Street Journal religiously and carried it beneath the left elbow, pressed firm against the body and grasped in the left hand -- always manicured and gloved, fair weather or foul -- with an easy precision (Oh, they had style) while the other hand whipped a tightly rolled umbrella back and forth at a calculated angle; with their homburgs and Chesterfields, their polo coats and Tyrolean hats worn strictly as fashion demanded. I could feel their eyes, saw them all and saw too the time when they would know that my prospects were ended and saw already the contempt they'd feel for me, a college man who had lost his prospects and pride. I could see it all and I knew that even the officials and the older men would despise me as though, somehow, in losing my place in Bledsoe's world I had betrayed them . . . I saw it as they looked at my overalls.

Sometimes we think we are not capable of doing certain things. I hear comments from my students such as, “My brain isn’t wired to do math,” or “I am not good at math.” It is true that there are people who are better at math than you, but that does not mean you can’t do it. This just means you need to put in more effort than others do. Focusing on our weaknesses may hinder our progress. We may think that we must be born with certain skills and abilities; they must be in our genes. This is not the case. Do you think Nephi could build a ship? Could the brother of Jared have caused light to come into dark barges? Do you think Noah could have built an ark that would hold two of every animal species on the earth? Do you think Moses had the power to part a sea? Actually, no. None of these men had the power to do any of these things. However, they all had something in common. They all knew how to tap into the power of someone who could—the Savior’s power. It is so important that we learn how to tap into that power. The Atonement literally means “at-one-ment,” or becoming one with God. The Savior gave us the power to become gods. He enabled us so we would be able to perform miracles through Him. But we must understand that this kind of power is not free. There is only one thing that the Savior, through His Atonement, gave us for free and that is the power to overcome death. Everything else that He offers must come “after all we can do.” [2] For example, Jesus Christ promises us eternal life, but only after we have faith in Him, obey His commandments, and endure to the end. Similarly, He gives us power to move mountains, but only after doing all we can and having trust in Him. The power to change our lives, change the world, and perform miracles is within each of us. However, we need to have enough humility to realize that, in the end, we are not the ones performing the miracles—He is. Occasionally, I have a student who does not do their homework, rarely comes to class, and then comes at the end of the semester and asks, “Sister Qumsiyeh, is there anything I can do to pass? Do you offer any extra credit?” I know some of you are smiling right now because you know you have done this to your teachers. This is what I wish I could say to the student who asks that question: “You need to invent a time machine and go back and do what you should have done this semester. You failed because you did not try your best. It is too late.” Do we all really hope to stand before the Savior at the Judgement Day and expect Him to save us without us doing our part? Do we really expect Him to allow us into the celestial kingdom and to just save us? No, that is not how the Atonement works. It does not work without us having tried our best. Of course, our best may not be enough. In fact, it hardly ever is. But if we do our best and have faith in Him, He magnifies our efforts. The brother of Jared could not make the 16 stones shine, but he spent hours preparing them and then humbly took them to the Lord and basically said, “Here is my small effort; magnify it.” This the Lord did. [3] Elder David A. Bednar said, “The power of the Atonement makes repentance possible and quells the despair caused by sin; it also strengthens us to see, do, and become good in ways that we could never recognize or accomplish with our limited mortal capacity.

That must be my surgeon coming aboard. You will like him; a reading man too, most amazing learned; a full-blown physician into the bargain, and my particular friend. But I must tell you this, Yorke; he is wealthy – ‘ In point of fact Captain Aubrey had little idea of his surgeon’s fortune, apart from knowing that he owned a good deal of hilly land in Catalonia with a tumbledown castle on it. But Stephen had done pretty well out of the Mauritius campaign; his manner of living was Spartan – one suit of clothes every five years and perhaps a couple of shirts – and apart from books he had no visible expenses at all. Jack was no Macchiavel, but he did know that to the rich it should be given; that capital possessed a mystical significance; that even the most perfectly disinterested respected it and its owner; and that although a naval surgeon was ordinarily a person of no great consequence, the same man moved into quite a different category the moment he was endowed with comfortable private means. In short, that whereas an ordinary surgeon, living on his pay, might not readily be indulged in room for exotic livestock, an imperfectly- preserved giant squid, and several tons of natural specimens, in a stranger’s ship, a wealthy natural philosopher might meet with more consideration; and Jack knew how Stephen prized the collection he had made during their arduous voyage. ‘ – he is wealthy, and he only comes with me because of the opportunities for natural philosophy; though he is a first-rate surgeon, too, and we are lucky to have him. But this voyage the opportunities have been prodigious, and he has turned the Leopard into a down-right Ark. Most of the Desolation creatures are stuffed or pickled but there are some from New Holland that skip and bound about: I hope you are not too crowded in La Fleche?

I will not delay the reader with lengthy quotations from the very many Taiwanese flood myths that were collected from amongst the indigenous population, primarily by Japanese scholars, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Typically they tell a story of a warning from the gods, the sound of thunder in the sky, terrifying earthquakes, the pouring down of a wall of water which engulfs mankind, and the survival of a remnant who had either fled to mountain tops or who floated to safety on some sort of improvised vessel. To provide just one example (from the Ami tribe of central Taiwan), we hear how the four gods of the sea conspired with two gods of the land, Kabitt and Aka, to destroy mankind. The gods of the sea warned Kabitt and Aka: 'In five days when the round moon appears, the sea will make a booming sound: then escape to a mountain where there are stars.' Kabitt and Aka heeded the warning immediately and fled to the mountain and 'when they reached the summit, the sea suddenly began to make the sound and rose higher and higher'. All the lowland settlements were inundated but two children, Sura and Nakao, were not drowned: 'For when the flood overtook them, they embarked in a wooden mortar, which chanced to be lying in the yard of their house, and in that frail vessel they floated safely to the Ragasan mountain.' So here, handed down since time immemorial by Taiwanese headhunters, we have the essence of the story of Noah's Ark, which is also the story of Manu and the story of Zisudra and (with astonishingly minor variations) the story of all the deluge escapees and survivors in all the world. At some point a real investigation should be mounted into why it is that furious tribes of archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists continue to describe the similarities amongst these myths of earth-destroying floods as coincidental, rooted in exaggeration, etc., and thus irrelevant as historical testimony. This is contrary to reason when we know that over a period of roughly 10,000 years between 17,000 and 7000 years ago more than 25 million square kilometres of the earth's surface were inundated. The flood epoch was a reality and in my opinion, since our ancestors went through it, it is not surprising that they told stories and bequeathed to us their shared memories of it. As well as continuing to unveil it through sciences like inundation mapping and palaeo-climatology, therefore, I suggest that if we want to learn what the world was really like during the meltdown we should LISTEN TO THE MYTHS.

There were other reasons you liked him, some actually quite pure, e.g. his dry humour and his shared assessment that you were both a great deal smarter than anyone else you knew. All couples thought things like that about themselves, but you hoped for their sake that the rest of your relationship was nothing they saw in their own, because you didn’t want to identify with most of it and you were one half of that actual couple. Mathematically if you didn’t want to be ‘most’ of a couple, as in over 50 per cent of an entity of two, then that did not commend your practice of self-love. You were twisted individuals successfully mated, like Noah’s Ark for sociopaths. Alternatively, you were well-meaning albeit imperfect humans with uncommonly scarce emotional resources at their disposal.

For Descartes, the Earth is only one body among others, but for originary perception, the Earth is undefinable in terms of the body: it is 'the soil of our experience.' We cannot say of it that it is finite or infinite, it is not an object among others objects, but the living stock from which objects are engendered. But we must not apply to the Earth the intraworldly relations that we apply within the Earth. The Earth is neither mobile nor at rest; it does not fall within these oppositions. In a general way, it is a type of being that contains all the ulterior possibilities and serves as a cradle for them...Our soil or ground expands, but it is not doubled, and we cannot think without reference to one soil of experience of this type. The Earth is the root of our history. Just as Noah's ark carried all that could remain living and possible, so too can the Earth be considered as carrier of all the possible.

After Trumpets, we have the Day of Atonement.  This was the One Day a year that the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies, going behind the Veil.  This Day coincides with the circumcision of Jesus.  Jesus goes on to live 33 ½ sinless years; He then circumcises the Veil from around the Ark of the Covenant.  Which we know the Ark represents the Heart.  The deeper meaning of circumcision is that of the heart.

One Babylonian roué, arraigned before a judge in about 1800 BC, testified, I swear that I did not have intercourse with her, that my penis did not enter her vagina; not, one reflects, the last time someone has got off on that technicality.

He found it odd he could even admit to caring what his population of little humans thought of him, but then what was the use of power with no one to appreciate it?

kill one man and you’re considered a murderer. Wipe out all life on an entire planet, with the exception of the occupants of a wooden ark, and you’re considered a god. Still,

Qi dao quan ji "prayer-boxing" tells us, like striking, not to pray at an object or about an object that only results in superficial glancing blows, but to 'pray through an object, not at one.' Mean business; pray hard to hit your target. Snap that prayer, don’t push! --boxing metaphor, Martial Arts on Noah's Ark

Two targets in particular seemed to interest [Ariel] Sharon’s army. One was the PLO Research Center. There were no guns at the PLO Research Center, no ammunition and no fighters. But there was something more dangerous—books about Palestine, old records and land deeds belonging to Palestinian families, photographs about Arab life in Palestine, historical archives about the Arab life in Palestine and, most important, maps—maps of pre-1948 Palestine with every Arab village on it before the state of Israel came into being and erased many of them. The Research Center was like an ark containing the Palestinians’ heritage—some of their credentials as a nation. In a certain sense, this is what Sharon most wanted to take home from Beirut. You could read it in the graffiti the Israeli boys left behind on the Research Center walls: [/block]Palestinians? What’s that?[block] And [/block]Palestinians, fuck you[block], and [/block]Arafat, I will hump your mother[block]. (The PLO later forced Israel to return the entire archive as part of a November 1983 prisoner exchange.)

Orthodox theologian Brad Jersak describes a time of exhaustion in his own life, on the verge of burnout, when he learned to attend to his soul in ways that would surely have resonated with Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, and the apostle Paul. It began with a strange fantasy—a dark cave with a crackling fire—that Brad started visiting regularly in prayer. Day after day he would simply imagine himself in this space, sitting silently with Jesus, sheltering from a storm outside, not even knowing if this counted as prayer. And then one day he “noticed” a surprising thing: the ark of the covenant had also materialized in the cave. This continued for weeks. All verbal prayer had given way to this internal, quiet vision. . . . I began to wonder if this was fruitful, if it was even prayer at all. Perhaps I should have started writing prayer lists again? But I had no heart for that. Even my forays into reading psalms ended with my forehead pasted in the pages of my Bible. All I

Now, the very legend of Vishnu, that pretends to make him no mere creature, but the supreme and "eternal god," shows that this interpretation of the name is no mere unfounded imagination. Thus is he celebrated in the "Matsya Puran:" "The sun, the wind, the ether, all things incorporeal, were absorbed into his Divine essence; and the universe being consumed, the eternal and omnipotent god, having assumed an ancient form, REPOSED mysteriously upon the surface of that (universal) ocean. But no one is capable of knowing whether that being was then visible or invisible, or what the holy name of that person was, or what the cause of his mysterious SLUMBER. Nor can any one tell how long he thus REPOSED until he conceived the thought of acting; for no one saw him, no one approached him, and no one can penetrate the mystery of his real essence." In conformity with this ancient legend, Vishnu is still represented as sleeping four months every year. Now, connect this story with the name of Noah, the man of "Rest," and with his personal history during the period of the flood, when the world was destroyed, when for forty days and forty nights all was chaos, when neither sun nor moon nor twinkling star appeared, when sea and sky were mingled, and all was one wide universal "ocean," on the bosom of which the patriarch floated, when there was no human being to "approach" him but those who were with him in the ark, and "the mystery of his real essence is penetrated" at once, "the holy name of that person" is ascertained, and his "mysterious slumber" fully accounted for. Now, wherever Noah is celebrated, whether by the name of Saturn, "the hidden one,"--for that name was applied to him as well as to Nimrod, on account of his having been "hidden" in the ark, in the "day of the Lord's fierce anger,"--or, "Oannes," or "Janus," the "Man of the Sea," he is generally described in such a way as shows that he was looked upon as Diphues, "twice-born," or "regenerate

The most learned explorers of Egyptian antiquities, including Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, admit that the story of Noah was mixed up with the story of Osiris. The ship of Isis, and the coffin of Osiris, floating on the waters, point distinctly to that remarkable event. There were different periods, in different places in Egypt, when the fate of Osiris was lamented; and at one time there was more special reference to the personal history of "the mighty hunter before the Lord," and at another to the awful catastrophe through which Noah passed. In the great and solemn festival called "The Disappearance of Osiris," it is evident that it is Noah himself who was then supposed to have been lost. The time when Osiris was "shut up in his coffin," and when that coffin was set afloat on the waters, as stated by Plutarch, agrees exactly with the period when Noah entered the ark.

Many say that this agenda of theirs [the New Atheists] is wholly their own fault, especially for the leaders but to our own dismay, one cannot simply point the finger so unilaterally. You see, their avarice is not just their own, it is born of hunger unsatisfied. If they act like Uncle Screwtape, it is because of the bland tasteless spiritual foods that corporate and illiterate religion has fed the masses for so long

When we let the light of truth, reason, empathy, and altruism shine enough, the clouds will clear. When our arguments are naturally reflected in pristine thought, like water, we will have the rainbow we seek. This rainbow will not be one that somehow reaches a burning Bifrost of Asgard nor has leprechauns dressed in green. For even if there were leprechauns, they would wear red, not green.

He took Mother for a ride in his first automobile, some early ancestor of Foolish Carriage. As Dad and Mother, dressed in dusters and wearing goggles, went scorching through the streets of Boston, bystanders tossed insults and ridicule in their direction... ..."Say, Noah, what are you doing with that Ark?" That did it. Dad slowed the car and cocked his checkered cap belligerently over one eye. "Collecting animals like the good Lord told me," he screamed back. "All I need is a jackass. Hop in.

He'd been too young to remember the events, though not too young to remember the feelings. That period of his life, he'd chalked up to one long nightmare he'd never revisit. Until today, that was.

i used to try to get people to talk about the ark with me – my school friends, my parents, my older brother – but no one really cared. they usually just found me annoying, because once i start talking about the ark, or anything really, i find it kind of hard to stop. but not juliet. we've spent hours upon hours talking about the ark and neither of us get tired or annoyed or bored with each other.

In zero gravity, heads did not loll lifelessly. Even mouths did not drop open. Dead bodies continued to assume more or less lifelike postures, whether restrained by webbing or allowed to drift untethered from wall to wall. It was one of the earliest and most chilling lessons of space warfare: in space, the dead were often difficult to tell from the living.

This is a wake up call. Don’t press the snooze alarm. The barbarians are at the gates, and, because they encourage breeding beyond the ability of the breeders to house, feed, and educate the breedees, violence and social disorganization continue. As the most Christian nation on earth watches its civilization dissolve like a Dove bar fallen off of that ark, attempts to enforce irrational superstitious solutions will accelerate. That Branch Davidian thing was a sample. Lots of other messiahs are waiting. Maybe we can have court-ordered Branch Davidian Social Services counseling for people who won’t share their wives with their god’s anointed. Maybe courts can acquit murderers if they believe a god’s finger was on their trigger. Maybe the barbarians will actually succeed in assuring that books, pictures, ideas, doctors, judges and military commanders share their vision. Then we will have a lot of interesting tribal warfare. One useful defense will be humanistic hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a fancy word for biblical interpretation. When religious types want to make something simple sound holy and mysterious, they often give it an important sounding high falutin’ name. This practice contrasts sharply with the usage of secular humanists, who, in explaining their views, employ simple words, that fall trippingly from the tongue, like ‘eupraxophy.’ Hermeneutics can be an important weapon to use against religious fanatics in the coming ARCW. The hard core nut cases—those who would control every aspect of our lives by forcing us to accept their understanding of the will of their god—tend to share certain operational assumptions. These include the belief that: (1) Every word of the Bible is true. (2) The English translation of the Bible authorized by King James the First of England, completed in 1611, Common Era, is the only fully acceptable, authoritative, and inspired-by-god translation of holy scripture. This translation is accurate in every respect, including punctuation marks. (3) The Bible is the basis of all morality. Without it there can be no morality. (4) The United States of America was established, and should be governed, according to biblical principles. (5) The Bible is without error. (6) No part of the Bible is in conflict with, or contradictory to, any other part. (7) Hermeneutics can be used to clarify and explain those truths of god in the Bible that might appear, to finite minds, to be in conflict. The goal of hermeneutics is to reconcile all portions of the ‘Word of God’ (the Bible) into a seamless, complete, infallible, and final statement of all past and future history (the latter is called prophecy), of divine law, and of how humans should behave and understand morality. The Bible, properly interpreted, is the final word on everything.

Separating the Ten Commandments as the law of the Old Covenant enables Barcellos to, on the one hand, agree that the Old Covenant is totally finished and gone, but, on the other hand, assert that the tables of the covenant, or the Ten Commandments, are still in full force and unchanged under the New Covenant. The law of the Old Covenant, the Ten Commandments, written on the tables of the covenant, remains, unchanged, but the Old Covenant is completely gone. When Barcellos identifies the New Covenant, he can say that it is the death knell of the Old Covenant because he has divorced the tablets of the covenant from the Old Covenant.103 The New Covenant replaces the Old Covenant, but it is the Old Covenant minus the Decalogue. He has denied that the actual treaty/covenant document (the tables of the covenant, the Ten Commandments), kept in the Ark of the Covenant, is a real part of the Old Covenant.

She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose.

The reason behind Israel’s engagement with Lebanon was justified at the time as based on national security grounds, with other nations admiring the Jewish state’s actions and wanting to learn from them, but there was something more existential at work. In his 1998 book on the Middle East, From Beirut to Jerusalem, the New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman gave an anecdote from 1982 about the real, less acknowledged mission of Israeli forces: Two targets in particular seemed to interest [Ariel] Sharon’s army. One was the PLO Research Center. There were no guns at the PLO Research Center, no ammunition and no fighters. But there was something more dangerous—books about Palestine, old records and land deeds belonging to Palestinian families, photographs about Arab life in Palestine, historical archives about the Arab life in Palestine and, most important, maps—maps of pre-1948 Palestine with every Arab village on it before the state of Israel came into being and erased many of them. The Research Center was like an ark containing the Palestinians’ heritage—some of their credentials as a nation. In a certain sense, this is what Sharon most wanted to take home from Beirut. You could read it in the graffiti the Israeli boys left behind on the Research Center walls: [/block]Palestinians? What’s that?[block] And [/block]Palestinians, fuck you[block], and [/block]Arafat, I will hump your mother[block]. (The PLO later forced Israel to return the entire archive as part of a November 1983 prisoner exchange.)56 It is not hard to see why this attitude was and remains so appealing to some governments. It is a desire to militarily destroy an opponent but also erase its history and ability to remember what has been lost. When surveillance technology is added to the mix, tested on unwilling subjects, it’s even harder to successfully resist.

The great enemy is time. It wears away stone and collapses arctic ice; it sinks ancient cities beneath the ocean and isolates giant arks on mountaintops and, if we let it, robs the light from our eyes. But the heart is its own measure; if it wishes, it can live forever when you accept the heart as a music box, a magical gift, one that’s aways there, like a rustling of the spheres or the leaves bouncing along the pavement deep down in the fall. A rainbow is up there. Don’t let anybody tell you there’s not.

So much can fit into one human heart. Each of us can be, if we get lost, a little ark of vast demons ferried from life to life.

When I get back to the house the others are still talking. I add my new things to the collection I already have, take out the dead ones which actually aren’t that many, and go back for some spiders I noticed at the far end of the mustard. And later they’re still at it. Arguing about this and that but it’s not a real argument where people listen and maybe change their minds about things. It’s the kind of argument where everyone is actually saying, This is what I think and I’m not going to listen to what you say because that would be like admitting I’m wrong. Then everyone stops talking. I say, Do it by size. … put the big things on the bottom with the little things on top… pg 92

be specific, then: a type in Scripture (tupos in Greek, meaning originally a die-stamp or matching impression) is an event, institution, place, object, office, or functioning person that patterns a greater reality that in some sense is of the same kind and is due to appear on history’s stage at some subsequent point. This greater reality is called the antitype. The term “type” is taken from Romans 5:14, where Adam is called a tupos(“pattern”) of Christ, the one who was to come. “Antitype” comes from 1 Peter 3:21, where baptism, understood not simply as an applying of water to the body but also, and essentially, as an outgoing of faith to God, is called the antitypethat the preserving of Noah through the flood waters by his entering the ark had prefigured. A type establishes a frame for interpreting the greater reality when it appears, and meantime, simply by existing, it inculcates the principle of which the greater reality will in fact be the supreme instance. When the greater reality arrives, it becomes the decisive factor in its own field; one way or another it transcends and supersedes the type. In space-time terms, the type is thenceforth a thing of the past, no longer determinative of what must be done or of what will happen. The biblical account of it, however, is of permanent value as providing concepts and categories for understanding the antitype. Typology thus becomes a kind of phrase book for use in theology.

The Dove in the Ark The first time a dove is mentioned in the Bible was after the flood when Noah released one from the ark. This dove left the ark three separate times. The first time, the dove returned to the ark because it found no resting place. This speaks of the Old Testament times when the Holy Spirit would only come upon certain people who were given special assignments, but He didn’t reside in them. The second time the dove left the ark, it came back with an olive leaf. This speaks of the gospel being declared by our Lord under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The third time the dove left the ark, it did not return. This speaks of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church as prophesied by the prophet Joel (Joel 2:28-29) and fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. Let’s take a closer look at this dove that was living in the ark.

Hey, you guys have gotten your tickets punched a few times, or you wouldn’t be reading this. You’re either in the club or you’re not. The great enemy is time. It wears away stone and collapses arctic ice; it sinks ancient cities beneath the ocean and isolates giant arks on mountaintops and, if we let it, robs the light from our eyes. But the heart is its own measure; if it wishes, it can live forever when you accept the heart as a music box, a magical gift, one that’s aways there, like a rustling of the spheres or the leaves bouncing along the pavement deep down in the fall. A rainbow is up there. Don’t let anybody tell you there’s not. I said it’s only rock and roll? Wrong. It’s a poem, brother. Or sister.

How rational is it to risk the future of humankind on the assumption that future scientists will make some unknown planet-saving discoveries? Most of the presidents, ministers and CEOs who run the world are very rational people. Why are they willing to take such a gamble? Maybe because they don't think they are gambling on their own personal future. Even if bad comes to worse and science cannot hold off the deluge, engineers could still build a hi-tech Noah's Ark for the upper caste, while leaving billions of others to drown. The belief in this hi-tech Ark is currently one of the biggest threats to the future of humankind and of the entire ecosystem. People who believe in the hi-tech Ark should not be put in charge of the global ecology, for the same reason that people who believe in a heavenly afterlife should not be given nuclear weapons.

Readers' Favorite Book Reviews and Book Awards Review Rating: 5 Stars - Congratulations on your 5-star review! Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite The Magnificence of the 3 by Timeout A Taumua begins by looking at the connections between neuroscience, atomic structure, and biblical narratives. In it, Taumua draws parallels between the trees of knowledge in the Garden of Eden and the neurons in the human brain, speaking on the function of mirror neurons in memory and learning. Taumua discusses the significance of rhythmic radio signals from space as signs of design and the symbolic importance of the numbers three, six, and nine. He presents atomic structure as a metaphor for moral duality, with stable atoms representing balance and unstable atoms reflecting decay. He also talks at length on subjects like the interconnectedness of emotional dynamics, spiritual beliefs, and genetic factors, suggesting that desire acts as a stabilizing force in existence, guiding behavior and promoting community cohesion through practices like forgiveness and the evolution of the Sabbath. There's a huge amount of information to absorb in The Magnificence of the 3 by Timeout A Taumua, which is delivered in a thoughtful mix of scientific study with spiritual analysis. Taumua's writing style is academic, but I found it also to be accessible and was able to understand the representations of identities of the Tree of Knowledge, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life, and the Ark of the Covenant. It was fitting that Taumua would say, "One does not need a scientific degree to see the similarities of both the trees of knowledge and the trees of earth." As the idea of blind faith loses popularity, writers like Taumua become critically important in filling the vacuum that was once exclusively the domain of churches. Overall, this book is more than a philosophical treatise; it challenges readers to reconsider the links between knowledge, morality, and existence, making it an enlightening read for anyone interested in the fusion of science and spirituality. Very highly recommended.

Voyagers, I’ve always wanted to write about you. And now, at 4:41 a.m. on an autumn morning, Words have found their way into my mind. I picture myself like you— Distant from life, Alone, Yet moving towards an unknown destination! Like you, in the early stages of my journey, I could see, I could gather knowledge and transmit it, I was useful and efficient. But sometimes, to keep connected to the world, To be able to stay on course and conserve my energy, I had to shut parts of myself down, To survive, To go blind, to be deaf, to be isolated, and just occasionally signal my existence to the world. The same thing I do, that you do, that so many others do. The boundless reaches of space Have become somewhat more comprehensible through you, Yet the depths of the human soul remain unfathomable, And its pain incurable. We live in an age surrounded by a torrent of information, Yet somehow, we remain lonely and lost. Language has advanced, There are words for nearly everything, Everyone can describe their own state of mind, yet we’re still at war with one another. Earth has turned into a vast ship, Perhaps like Noah’s Ark, With maximum diversity and multiplicity, Yet everyone on this ship plays their own tune, rallies their own cause! Someone steps forward, claiming each individual’s thoughts and personal benefit are like rare pearls to be cherished, While another insists that collective welfare takes precedence, That the needs of the masses outweigh individual desires. Some launch movements to claim their rights, While others start movements to flaunt the rights they’ve acquired. No one knows what they truly want; We’re all still lost. I don’t know how Earth looks from afar— Perhaps like a blueberry-flavored lollipop, A lollipop with a stick, But Earth’s stick is an invisible one made of sorrow. I find something common among all the passengers on this ship, All the inhabitants of this blueberry lollipop: sorrow. A fetus in its mother’s womb is also like a lollipop, But connected by an umbilical cord. As a fetus, Growing in the mother’s womb, Suffering, malnutrition, and physical ailments can be painful for us. If the mother’s state is stable, We may enjoy brief periods of security and calm, but after that, We must endure the pain of separation, Learn how to breathe, And besides the sorrow of leaving security behind, We face new emotions like fear and anger. Later in life, We each take our own path. No matter how much they try to show humans as social creatures, It’s always the individual who walks their own way, who has the freedom to choose, Even if one finds the meaning of their path in joining a group or a collective, it’s their individual choice that put them on that path. Today, people have countless options to join others who are like them, And these options themselves bring confusion, And when you join a group out of confusion, You treat the other groups with hostility. Science, philosophy, religion, politics…each of them has thousands of branches, and each branch Wants to disprove the other, cleanse itself of its shameful past. Freedom of speech has become an excuse for verbal assaults and psychological wounds, Non-violence has become a breeding ground for new and emerging dictators, For heartless sects and brutal factions. Knowledge and science alone cannot save us, Just as religion couldn’t. I don’t want to write about chaos, Life isn’t that disorganized, In some corner of the world, A lover is staring up at his beloved’s window, A child is laughing joyfully. But writing about sorrow, Speaking of chaos and Asking questions can reveal where we stand. Now, we know so much about space, And about the Sun, too. The James Webb telescope has mapped out the cosmos for us, and countless projects are underway for the future, crafted with flawless precision and extraordinary coherence, but the rift between humans remains deep.

Whom I Desired (Chimadeti) SONG OF SOLOMON 2:3: “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” As I was reading this passage in my Hebrew Bible I was struck by the word chimadeti (great delight). That word was strangely out of place in this sweet romantic verse. I was intrigued as to how our English translators had handled this word. I first went to your friend and mine, the King James Version which rendered it as “great delight.” This seemed to be the good cowardly way out. Other modern translations said the same. Some simply rendered it as “delight.” One translation was a little braver and said “with whom I desired”. But the version with the most guts rendered this word as have I raptured. What caught my attention in the use of the word chimadeti is that it is used only once in the Song of Solomon and its rooted in the same word that is used in Exodus 20:17: “Thou shalt not covet.” If you ever go to a synagogue and glance at the Ten Commandments above the ark and scroll down to the 10th commandment you will see in Hebrew Script the words “Lo

Behind them all, carried upon the bed of an enormous carriage with thirteen sets of iron-banded wheels, nestled within a casement crafted from the bronzed skull of a giant, was the holiest relic in all skavendom: the Black Ark, the compact between the Horned Rat and the first Seerlord. Imprinted upon a block of purest warpstone, its quality unsurpassed by the richest ores ever found, were the thirteen tyrannies, the sacred dictates by which the skaven might placate their terrible god and achieve the promise He had made to them: that one day the ratkin would inherit the whole of the world.

Billy's one and only moment of candor was when I parked him in front of my computer to play a game. He took one look at the Noah's Ark display and his whole face flinched like someone had hit him. He told me that the snow leopard is extinct. The last surviving specimen died in a zoo a few weeks back. "The snow leopard was my favorite," he said. Then he sat down at the computer and within about 30 seconds he was lost in a realistic prison interior, shooting the guards' heads off, blowing doors open, getting killed.

Men say, “I don’t believe in the story of the flood.” Christ connected His own return to this world with that flood: “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” I believe the story of the flood just as much as I do the third chapter of John. I pity any man that is picking the old Book to pieces. The moment that we give up any one of these things, we touch the deity of the Son of God. I

Siku moja, jambo baya litatokea. Labda babu yako au mnyama wako kipenzi atafariki au shangazi yako atagundulika na kansa. Labda utafukuzwa kazi au utaachika kwa mumeo au mkeo mliyependana sana. Labda rafiki yako kipenzi atapata ajali mbaya ya gari na utatakiwa kupeleka taarifa kwa ndugu na marafiki zake. Kutoa taarifa ya jambo baya kwa mtu ni kazi ngumu sawa na kupokea taarifa ya jambo baya kutoka kwa mtu. Kama umeteuliwa kupeleka taarifa ya kifo au ya jambo lolote baya kwa mtu fanya hivyo kwa makini. Toa taarifa ya msiba au ya jambo lolote baya kwa hekima na busara kama Ibrahimu alivyofanya kwa Sara kuhusiana na kafara ya Isaka, si kama Mbenyamini alivyofanya kwa Eli kuhusiana na kutwaliwa kwa sanduku la agano na kuuwawa kwa watoto wake wawili. Jidhibiti kwanza wewe mwenyewe kama umeteuliwa kupeleka taarifa ya kifo au ya jambo lolote baya. Angalia kama wewe ni mtu sahihi wa kupeleka taarifa hiyo. Pangilia mawazo ya kile unachotaka kwenda kukisema au unachotaka kwenda kukiandika. Mwangalie machoni, si usoni, yule unayempelekea taarifa kisha mwambie kwa sauti ya upole nini kimetokea.

Given the number of species in the world, aren't there others who want to get high, or stoned, or drunk? This question set him on a path that would take twenty-five years of his life, studying the drug-taking habits of animals from the mongooses of Hawaii to the elephants of South Africa to the grasshoppers of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia. It was such an implausible mission that in one marijuana field in Hawaii, he was taken hostage by the local drug dealers, because when he told them he was there to see what happened when mongooses ate marijuana, they thought it was the worst police cover story they ever heard. What Ronald K. Siegel discovered seems strange at first. Noah's Ark, he found, would have looked a lot like London on a Saturday night.

One of the most interesting aspects of Waterman’s theory is his explanation of the contents of the debîr. According to the Bible, this housed the cherubîm and the Ark of the Covenant, and there is no reason to think that these items were secondarily placed in the debîr.  Waterman argues that the cherubîm could not have represented the presence of YHWH anymore than the cherubîm guarding the Garden of Eden would have done so. 

As therefore seventy tongues are indicated by number, and from dispersion the tongues are gathered into one by means of their interpretation; so is that ark declared a type of the body of Christ, which is both pure and immaculate. For as that ark was gilded with pure gold both within and without, so also is the body of Christ pure and resplendent, being adorned within by the Word, and shielded on the outside by the Spirit, in order that from both [materials] the splendour of the natures might be exhibited together.

wherever God says, God went up from Abraham,’ or, The Lord spake to Moses,’ and The Lord came down to behold the tower which the sons of men had built,’ or when God shut Noah into the ark,’ you must not imagine that the unbegotten God Himself came down or went up from any place. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither has come to any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, nor rises up, but remains in His own place, wherever that is, quick to behold and quick to hear, having neither eyes nor ears, but being of indescribable might; and He sees all things, and knows all things, and none of us escapes His observation; and He is not moved or confined to a spot in the whole world, for He existed before the world was made. How, then, could He talk with any one, or be seen by any one, or appear on the smallest portion of the earth, when the people at Sinai were not able to look even on the glory of Him who was sent from Him; and Moses himself could not enter into the tabernacle which he had erected, when it was filled with the glory of God; and the priest could not endure to stand before the temple when Solomon conveyed the ark into the house in Jerusalem which he had built for it? Therefore neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any other man, saw the Father and ineffable Lord of all, and also of Christ, but [saw] Him who was according to His will His Son, being God, and the Angel because He ministered to His will; whom also it pleased Him to be born man by the Virgin; who also was fire when He conversed with Moses from the bush. Since, unless we thus comprehend the Scriptures, it must follow that the Father and Lord of all had not been in heaven when what Moses wrote took place: And the Lord rained upon Sodom fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven;’ and again, when it is thus said by David: Lift up your gates, ye rulers; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting gates; and the King of glory shall enter;’ and again, when He says: The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.

Holy feasts, sacraments, anointing oil, clouds, temples, the ark and trumpets are a few symbols for the church. Jesus himself is seen as the star, the fountain of Israel, the Passover Lamb, the door to salvation, the healing balm, the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, our rock and foundation. He is the bread of life, the light of the world. That is but a few symbols. There are many more. The one that speaks to me is: The Light He is described in prophetic terms as Israel's living star (Num 24:17). In the New Testament a cloud of light appeared over Him and a voice declared " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!" (Matt 17:5) He is called light of the world for good reasons (John 9:5) for in Him is no darkness (1 John 1:5). In a world where the darkness of evil thrives it gives such hope that the light still shines in the dark. Such a reality inspires and calls us to be the light also. To not hide our light under a bowl, but rather to be a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. As the hymn says "live in the light, as he is in the light, shine like the stars in the heavens." So let the light shine!

When the family of Pharaoh found him in the river by the tree, Pharaoh called him Musa. Mu is water in Coptic and sha is tree. He named him by where he found him, for the ark stopped by the tree in the river. Pharaoh wanted to kill him. His wife, speaking by divine articulation in what she said to Pharaoh about Musa since Allah had created her for perfection as Allah said about her when He testified that she and Maryam, daughter of 'Imran, have the perfection which men have (8) - said, "he may be a source of delight for me and for you." (28:9) She would be consoled by him with the perfection which she received as we have said. The consolation of Pharaoh was with the belief Allah gave him when he was drowning. So Allah took him pure and purified. There was no impurity in him since He took him in his belief before he had acquired any wrong actions. Islam effaces what was before it. He made him a sign of His concern so that none might despair of the mercy of Allah, for "no one despairs of solace from Allah except for the unbelievers." (12:87) If Pharaoh been of those who despair, he would not have embarked on belief. Musa, peace be upon him, was, as the wife of Pharaoh said, "a source of delight for me and for you. Do not kill him. It may well be that he will be of use to us." That is what happened. Allah gave them use of Musa, although they were not aware that he was a prophet who would destroy the kingdom of Pharaoh and his family.

The twelve stay. They eat a final meal with Jesus, and with his hands he tears the unleavened bread and holds it up to them. 'This is my body,' he says. 'Remember me.' And he tells Simon that the adversary has asked to sift them all like wheat, but their faith will be restored. The next day the Christ is lifted up at Golgotha, nailed to a tree, dead before sunset. And when his Spirit leaves him, the temple curtain rends, a veil between God and man. Left exposed in the holiest place is the ark of the covenant, and in that, the manna given to the Hebrews in the desert, life-giving for those who ate of it, but only for a short while here on this earth. And the people remember his words on the shore of Capernaum: 'Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.' His body, crucified, given for them so they may taste eternity. Three days later, resurrected, so those who believe can come to his banquet table and be filled. His followers obey. They devote themselves to the breaking of the bread. They remember him each time they eat of it, and offer thanks. They are sustained in the world and rescued from the world because God became man, and man became bread.

John Noa moved slowly toward the window. Old age had not been kind to him, and though he could still sit a horse, his rigid joints grew more painful by the day. Looking down from his lofty vantage point, he could see the town below on the cusp of waking. A lone wolf stood in the square, his head tilted to one side. The old man smiled. He had always loved animals and none more than the gray wolf. Before the Melting, they had been almost eradicated, hunted to extinction. Extinction: the saddest word of all. Using science and with great care and attention, they had bred five pairs of wolves in captivity, producing fifteen new cubs, and then released them into the wild. Since then, the wolves had thrived. Amid all the destruction, it had seemed like a miracle to him. He loved the view from the high window at this time of day. The workers not yet awake and only the comforting sound of the water bubbling in the great tank. He sighed. Sadly, he couldn’t stay. He had work to do. Work! Always work. Problems to be solved, plans to be made. He had never expected it to be this difficult. On his bad days, he wondered if it had been worth it at all. Another glance at the wolf brought a smile to his lips. Yes. It was all worth it. He firmly believed that it was his passion for Ark that had kept him alive when so many had been lost. The images of death and destruction were always with him. Floods, earthquakes, famine, as livid in daylight as they were in his nightmares. Images of the past. But there were nightmares in the present too. Bandits. Desecrators. Tintown. People intent on destroying what he had built. People intent on going their own way regardless of the price. He felt the old rage stir in his heart. They would be dealt with. In the end, they would find

She would worry, just as you worry. It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.

Sorting Laundry" Folding clothes, I think of folding you into my life. Our king-sized sheets like tablecloths for the banquets of giants, pillowcases, despite so many washings, seems still holding our dreams. Towels patterned orange and green, flowered pink and lavender, gaudy, bought on sale, reserved, we said, for the beach, refusing, even after years, to bleach into respectability. So many shirts and skirts and pants recycling week after week, head over heels recapitulating themselves. All those wrinkles To be smoothed, or else ignored; they're in style. Myriad uncoupled socks which went paired into the foam like those creatures in the ark. And what's shrunk is tough to discard even for Goodwill. In pockets, surprises: forgotten matches, lost screws clinking the drain; well-washed dollars, legal tender for all debts public and private, intact despite agitation; and, gleaming in the maelstrom, one bright dime, broken necklace of good gold you brought from Kuwait, the strangely tailored shirt left by a former lover… If you were to leave me, if I were to fold only my own clothes, the convexes and concaves of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras turned upon themselves, a mountain of unsorted wash could not fill the empty side of the bed.

delight in putting colonies everywhere.  The Tadpoles noted the terraforming project on the fourth world with bemusement.  There was no shortage of habitable worlds beyond the tramlines either.  Why the humans considered an attempt to reshape an old and dry world into something suitable for them was beyond the factions.  It looked like an expensive and pointless project to them. Let them waste their resources, if they must, one sub-faction stated.  It only weakens them. We will set course for the fifth planet, the Combat Faction said.  There was nothing to be gained by trying to understand humans.  They were alien beings.  Their society and history spoke of nothing, but war.  They were too dangerous to be allowed to infest space.  And they will follow us. Doubt floated through parts of the Song, but not enough to force a change.  The fifth planet was a massive gas giant, one of the largest recorded.  And the installations orbiting the giant planet were easy to identify.  Cloudscoops and refineries ... if they were destroyed, they’d hamper human reconstruction.  It wasn't a direct way to win, but it would work.  And it would force the humans to give chase.  They’d have no choice. And then we will win, the Combat Faction stated.  It will only be

is possible to have more than one continent with a situation where waters are still in one place. Even so, some have proposed an initial supercontinent that looked like Pangaea going back to a creationist, Antonio Snider, in the 1800s.3 In this model, Pangaea breaks apart into the continents we have today during a catastrophic breakup during the Flood. Maps made in 1858 by geographer Antonio Snider, showing his version of how the American and African continents may have once fit together, then later separated.

When the land appeared in Genesis 1 on day 3, the land that was being separated from the water was dry, not wet. The text in Genesis says that the waters were gathered into one place (i.e., in heaps and storehouses) and then the dry land appeared. It says nothing of water running off of the land as it rises; otherwise, “wet” land would have appeared and then become dry. The response from God, “and it was so” seems to refute the idea that it was wet, and then became dry. But really, all we can be certain about is that the dry land appeared on day 3.

So carefully considering the text, we can conclude that the construction of the ark did not involve the 120 years mentioned in Genesis 6:3 but 75 years at the most. Years until the Flood Event Bible reference 120 Countdown to the Flood begins Genesis 6:3 100 Noah had Japheth, the first of his sons, when he was 500 years old Genesis 5:321, 10:212 98 Noah had Shem who was 100 two years after the Flood Genesis 11:103 ? Perhaps 95 or 96, the same time between Japheth and Shem Ham was the youngest one born to Noah and was aboard the ark, so he was born prior to the Flood Genesis 9:244; Genesis 7:135 ? Perhaps 20-40 years for all of the sons to be raised and find a wife Each son was old enough to be married before construction on the ark began Genesis 6:186 ~ 55–75 years (estimate) Noah was told to build the ark, for he, his wife, his sons, and his sons’ wives would be aboard the ark Genesis 6:187 Ark Completed ? Gather food and put it aboard the ark Genesis 6:218 7 days Loading the ark Genesis 7:2-39 0 Noah was 600 when the floodwaters came on the earth. Genesis 7:610

Elsewhere in Scripture we learn that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:2222), and the life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:1123). Because Adam sinned, a payment for sin was needed. Because sin’s penalty was death, then death and bloodshed were needed to atone for sin. So Genesis 3:21 would describe the first blood sacrifice as a penalty for sin — looking forward to the One who would die “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10–1424).

Another milestone with geological implications is day 150. At this stage of the Flood we are told that the ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat. This implies that modern mountain building, at least in what we now call the Middle East, had begun (see also Psalm 104:8–9).19 Furthermore, if our current understanding of mountain building is correct, for the mountains of Ararat to have been formed requires the Eurasian Plate, African Plate, and Arabian Plate to be colliding with one another (perhaps with some contribution from movement of the Indian Plate).

you can now take the remains of your cremated loved one and have their remaining carbon pressed into a diamond! Companies like LifeGem or Algordanza are currently doing this. The whole process only takes months. Writing about Algordanza’s work, Rae Ellen Bichell comments: Swiss company Algordanza takes cremated human remains and — under high heat and pressure that mimic conditions deep within the Earth — compress them into diamonds. . . . Each year, the remains of between 800 and 900 people enter the facility. About three months later, they exit as diamonds, to be kept in a box or turned into jewelry.7 There are also companies (like DNA2Diamonds or Pet-Gems) that specialize in turning your beloved pet’s ashes or hair into diamonds. The point is, it doesn’t take millions or billions of years to form diamonds, but rather days and weeks.

Dr. Tommy Mitchell sums this up nicely when he writes on the “no rain” subject as an argument we should avoid: The passage describes the environment before Adam was created. This mist may have been one of the primary methods that God used to hydrate the dry land He created on Day Three. Furthermore, while this mist was likely the watering source for that vegetation throughout the remainder of Creation Week, the text does not require it to be the only water source after Adam’s creation. Some argue that this mist eliminated the need for rain until the time of the Flood. However, presence of the mist prior to Adam’s creation does not preclude the existence of or the need for rain after he was created. Genesis 2:5–6 reveals that before the Sixth Day of Creation Week, God had watered the plants He made with a mist, but had not yet caused rain or created a man to till the ground. To demand that rain didn’t happen until after the Flood from this passage has no more logical support than to claim, from the passage, that no one farmed until after the Flood.

More recently, Britt Beemer, of America’s Research Group, found that: One in six said their pastor said something to make them believe that the Book of Genesis contained myths and legends that we know are untrue.8 Over 20% (one in five) said their pastors taught that Christians could believe in an earth that is millions or billions of years old.

In a world full of wickedness and violence, did it ever worry Noah about the danger his family would be in during the trials of building the ark? Noah was righteous and standing against that wicked world. One would think he was a “target” or perhaps his family was a “target” for evil motives and possibly murder. But consider this wonderful verse of assurance given to Noah: But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark — you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you (Genesis 6:18).

There are several canopy models, but they all have one thing in common.3 They all interpret the “waters above” the expanse (firmament) in Genesis 1:7 as some form of water-based canopy surrounding the earth that endured from creation until the Flood. Then God said, “Let there be a firmament [expanse] in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament [expanse], and divided the waters which were under the firmament [expanse] from the waters which were above the firmament [expanse]; and it was so (Genesis 1:6–7).

For example, expositor Dr. John Gill in the 1700s said: The lower part of it, the atmosphere above, which are the clouds full of water, from whence rain descends upon the earth; and which divided between them and those that were left on the earth, and so under it, not yet gathered into one place; as it now does between the clouds of heaven and the waters of the sea. Though Mr. Gregory is of the opinion, that an abyss of waters above the most supreme orb is here meant; or a great deep between the heavens and the heaven of heavens.6 Gill agrees that clouds were inclusive of these waters above but that the waters also extend to the heaven of heavens, at the outer edge of the universe. Matthew Poole noted this possibility as well in his commentary in the 1600s: . . . the expansion, or extension, because it is extended far and wide, even from the earth to the third heaven; called also the firmament, because it is fixed in its proper place, from whence it cannot be moved, unless by force.7 Matthew Henry also concurs that this expanse extends to the heaven of heavens (third heaven): The command of God concerning it: Let there be a firmament, an expansion, so the Hebrew word signifies, like a sheet spread, or a curtain drawn out. This includes all that is visible above the earth, between it and the third heavens: the air, its higher, middle, and lower, regions — the celestial globe, and all the spheres and orbs of light above: it reaches as high as the place where the stars are fixed, for that is called here the firmament of heaven Ge 1:14,15, and as low as the place where the birds fly, for that also is called the firmament of heaven, Ge 1:20.8 The point is that a canopy model about the earth is simply that . . . an interpretation. It should be evaluated as such, not taken as Scripture itself.

In fact, a variety of translations yield some variant of one of these two possibilities. Table 1. Translations of Psalm 104:8a4 Translation Agrees with: “They went up over the mountains and went down into the valleys” Agrees with: “Mountains rose and the valleys sank down” New American Standard X New International Version X King James Version X New King James Version X English Standard Version X Holman Christian Standard X English translation of the Septuagint X Revised Version (UK) X Amplified Bible X Good News Bible X New English Bible X Revised Berkley X J.N. Darby’s X Living Bible X New Living Translation X Jerusalem Bible X R.G. Moulton X Knox Version X The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text (a new translation by the Jewish Publication Society) X Revised Standard Version X Young’s Literal Translation X King James 21st Century Version X Geneva Bible X New Revised Standard Version X Webster’s Bible X New International Children’s Version X Interlinear Bible X Obviously, there is no consensus on translation among these English versions.

Any initial oceans before the Flood were likely much more shallow with a few deep areas. Keep in mind that about 95 percent of all fossils are from shallow marine organism — so this makes sense. Our current post-Flood oceanography has some areas that are shallow, but most is quite deep. Consider that oceans cover about 70 percent of the earth surface today. At one point the whole earth was covered with the Floodwater. It was very kind of the Lord to give us 30 percent of land surface back.

In other instances, some of these animals may have made it to a particular area and become extinct for various reasons — ultimately due to sin, of course! One objection to this is that we should find fossils of them if they lived in an area, but this is fallacious.2 Paul Taylor states the following regarding this subject on fossils: But the expectation of such fossils is a presuppositional error. Such an expectation is predicated on the assumption that fossils form gradually and inevitably from animal populations. In fact, fossilization is by no means inevitable. It usually requires sudden, rapid burial. Otherwise the bones would decompose before permineralization. One ought likewise to ask why it is that, despite the fact that millions of bison used to roam the prairies of North America, hardly any bison fossils are found there. Similarly, lion fossils are not found in Israel even though we know that lions once lived there.

Most believe the Flood of Noah triggered the Ice Age. The rising magmas, lavas, and hot waters associated with continental plate movements would have caused ocean temperatures to rise. Also, fine ash from volcanic eruptions probably lingered in the upper atmosphere in post-Flood years, which, unlike a greenhouse effect, would reduce the sunlight for cooler summers. So the mechanism for such a rare event was in place due to Genesis 6–8. But what happens in an ice age? A lot of water is taken out of the ocean and deposited on land, so the ocean level drops.7 This exposes land bridges. One well-known land bridge was the one that crossed what we call today “the Bering Strait” from Alaska to Russia, so it is easily feasible for animals to have walked from Asia to North and South America.

Let’s not forget another major factor to animal distribution — humans! Humans have been involved since the Flood. In fact, due to the ark, land animals and birds exist today. Although rats had already traveled to many parts of the world, by the age of exploration (a.d. 1400–1800), these stowaways were easily distributed around the world in all the European exploits and trade. They were commonplace on most ships and ended up all over the world because men accidentally transported them. Think how many insects were surely taken to various places in the same manner. Throughout history, people have brought plants and animals to new locations, and those organisms have become permanent populations, interacting with the original creatures. For example, it is claimed that the Romans brought pheasants (members of the chicken kind) to England, and they have since been regular inhabitants of various habitats. In fact, the Romans redistributed organisms from one side of the Roman Empire to the other.

Consider the Lord’s prophetic promise to Abraham and then Isaac was that God Himself would increase them (Genesis 13:16,12 22:17,13 26:414; Exodus 1:715; Deuteronomy 1:1016) — and this came true. God is the one responsible for multiplying Abraham’s descendants, and this exceeding increase came to Israel. The Egyptians recognized this and wanted to do something about this population explosion occurring with the Israelites — hence enslaving them and trying to kill their baby boys in an effort to control them! So this was an exceptional growth rate discussed in the Bible, but this would yield a population (if ~equal male to female) just over 1.2 million people and their children in these ten generations. This almost sets an extreme upper limit, as the Lord was not increasing the people before the Flood, as He did with the Israelites. Thus, we tentatively suggest the pre-Flood population was far less than this at its peak — perhaps just a few hundred thousand. Allow us to elaborate.

Kinds are like the dog sort (including dingoes, wolves, coyotes, domestic dogs, etc.), cat sort (including lions, tigers, cougars, bobcats, domestic cats, etc.), horse sort (ponies, Clydesdales, donkeys, zebras, etc.), and so on. There is variation within these kinds especially since the Flood, but not evolution where one kind changes into a totally different kind over long periods of time — which is not observed anyway (e.g., amoebas turning into dogs).

Researcher John Woodmorappe decided to go a different route in 1996. He wanted to calculate maximum figures for animals and also included food and even water on board Noah’s ark.5 To do this, Woodmorappe decided to use the smaller-sized ark (based on the shorter cubit of 18 inches). This would be an ark about 450 feet long. Then, instead of a family level for the kind (although he recognized the kind was closer to the family level), he used a genus level for all the kinds! So instead of one dog kind, there would be more than ten dog kinds represented in his numbers since there are more than 10 levels of genus within the dogs! For the sake of maximum figures, John Woodmorappe still did 14 of each genus of the clean animals, which again was still not that many! What he found was under 8,000 kinds and about 16,000 (15,745) individuals maximum, based on this genus level and calculations. With a smaller ark and this maximum number of animals and their required floor space/cages/rooms, this came out to be about 46.8% of the ark used to hold the animals!

Would undisputed evidence of the ark be of value? Absolutely. But is it necessary for one’s faith? Not in the least. So do not forget this point: the Bible is true, and Christ is who He says He is, regardless of whether anyone finds the remains of the ark or not.

Did you realize that one of the few commands given to mankind through Adam was “to be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:286)? If man had intense disobedience to God (e.g., Genesis 6:5,7 6:128) 120 years prior to the Flood (Genesis 6:39), are we to believe they were still being obedient to God’s command here? Likely not!

No one was innocent in the sight of God anyway. Now imagine the cannibalism, rape, murder, child sacrifice, and so on. Yet God was patient. He gave a 120-year countdown to the Flood (Genesis 6:313) and even sent a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:514).

Is that what happened to Mercier?” “No—not quite. In so far as I understood Sukhoi’s work, it appeared that the zero-mass state would be very difficult to realise physically. As it neared the zero-mass state, the vacuum would be inclined to flip to the other side. Sukhoi called it a tunnelling phenomenon.” Clavain raised an eyebrow. “The other side?” “The quantum-vacuum state in which matter has imaginary inertial mass. By imaginary I mean in the purely mathematical sense, in the sense that the square root of minus one is an imaginary number. Of course, you immediately see what that would imply.” “You’re talking about tachyonic matter,” Clavain said. “Matter travelling faster than light.

If the answer is not the one you want, maybe you're not asking the right question.

No one has ever encountered the full burning ecstatic beauty of a seabird quite in the way the twenty-two-year-old Herman Melville, crewing as a green hand on board a New Bedford whaler deep in the South Pacific at some time in 1841, first met an albatross. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king’s ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage

This field of activity generated a vast literature of carefully assembled one-line omens on this pattern: If A happened, B will happen. Here the sought-for outcome B, known as the apodosis, is deemed to be the consequence of an observed phenomenon, the protasis A. One

The Ark disappeared from history’s pages in 597 BC, when the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon razed Jerusalem to the ground in one of the most cataclysmic events ever to befall the Hebrews.” “Babylon?” Prince frowned. “Wasn’t that in Mesopotamia or somewhere near there?” “Mesopotamia is modern Iraq,” Ava confirmed. “Babylon is about fifty miles south of Baghdad.” A silence fell across the table.

Fingers of bitumen Here we have to understand the measure as the Sumerian ideogram ŠU.ŠI (usually written ŠU.SI), standing for the Babylonian ubānu, ‘finger’, one of which comes out at about 1.66 centimetres. Bitumen is thus applied to all ark surfaces to a depth of one finger.

When it occurs in literary texts šár = 3,600 is conventionally understood as no more than a conveniently large round number. This is evident when a well-wisher writes in a letter, ‘may the Sun God for my sake keep you well for 3,600 years’, or a battle-flushed Assyrian king claims to have ‘blinded 4 × 3,600 survivors’. Assyriologists therefore often translate šár as ‘myriad’, as conveying the right sort of mythological size and feel, although of course the Greek decimal myriad literally means ‘10,000’, whereas Mesopotamians naturally thought in sixties, one ŠÁR being 60 × 60. What is truly surprising in the Ark Tablet calculations is that this sign 3,600 does not function just as a large round number but is to be taken literally.

........................................To a man without a country, He appeared a joint sojourner. To Joshua armed but afraid, He came a valiant warrior. To Moses raised up on the mount, He was the One yet higher. To Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, He was the fourth man in the fire. To Elijah who stood as one for God, he was never less alone. For Noah's faithful family, He made an ark their home. To Ezekiel He appeared to be the light cast over the dark. To King David running from the throne, He was the true Monarch. To Daniel at the bite of death, He was the lock upon their jaws. To King Solomon who'd had it all, He was the only worthy cause. To a sinking fisherman, He was life upon the water. To a grieving Jairus, He was life unto his daughter. To a woman at the well, He was complete acceptance. To a doubting Thomas, He was the proof for his reluctance. To a dozen throwbacks from the world, He unleashed His awesome power. From a greedy grave of several days burst forth his finest hour. ........................................

To a man without a country, He appeared a joint sojourner. To Joshua armed but afraid, He came a valiant warrior. To Moses raised up on the mount, He was the One yet higher. To Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, He was the fourth man in the fire. To Elijah who stood as one for God, he was never less alone. For Noah's faithful family, He made an ark their home. To Ezekiel He appeared to be the light cast over the dark. To King David running from the throne, He was the true Monarch. To Daniel at the bite of death, He was the lock upon their jaws. To King Solomon who'd had it all, He was the only worthy cause. To a sinking fisherman, He was life upon the water. To a grieving Jairus, He was life unto his daughter. To a woman at the well, He was complete acceptance. To a doubting Thomas, He was the proof for his reluctance. To a dozen throwbacks from the world, He unleashed His awesome power. From a greedy grave of several days burst forth his finest hour." ~Things pondered

River! 12 Now choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. 13 The priests will carry the Ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth. As soon as their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the river will stand up like a wall.” 14 So the people

Here are a few mind teasers to help you think in unexpected ways (see answers at end of chapter). • A bus with 15 passengers crashed and all but 9 people were killed. How many survivors were there? • How many animals of each species did Moses take on the ark? • I have 2 coins that total $.35 in value. One is not a quarter. What are the 2 coins?

The Great Cloud of Witnesses The writer of Hebrews wrote about the active pursuit of a faith that embraces discipleship: Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3) The writer earlier created a list of heroes of the faith from the Old Testament era (see Hebrews 11:4-38): By faith Abel offered a proper sacrifice. By faith Noah built an ark. By faith Abraham packed up his family and moved. By faith Joseph ran from evil. By faith Moses chose a life of self-denial, confronted Pharaoh, and led the people through the Red Sea. By faith Joshua led the people around Jericho's walls. By faith Gideon showed courage in his obedience even though he was afraid. Samson, David, and Samuel-the world wasn't worthy of them. These are our great cloud of witnesses; they taught us faith. Notice that with their actions, they showed us what it means to believe. What kind of disciples is the gospel meant to create naturally? The answer is people like these, whose faith embraced following their Lord. Without this kind of faith demonstrated by obedience, can a person really please God (see Hebrews 11:6)? The lesson here is clear: Faith that doesn't result in action isn't faith, but something less. The apostle James, the half-brother of Jesus, wrote, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? ... In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:14,17). Jesus, "the author and perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2), taught James about faith. He demonstrated it by obeying in spite of the shame and suffering he faced and endured on the cross. In fact, Jesus' own words about faith couldn't be clearer: "Why do you call me, `Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete." (Luke 6:46-49)

Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [ ¤ SIG AeR.WLRS 253787890.546]. Space Colonization Subgroup. Open discussion board. Okay, so imagine we get past the next few rough decades and finally do what we should have back in TwenCen. Say we mine asteroids for platinum, discover the secrets of true nanotechnology, and set Von Neumann "sheep" grazing on the moon to produce boundless wealth. To listen to some of the rest of you, all our problems would then be over. The next step, star travel, and colonization of the galaxy, would be trivial. But hold on! Even assuming we solve how to maintain long-lasting ecologies in space and get so wealthy the costs of star-flight aren't crippling, you've still got the problem of time. I mean, most hypothetical designs show likely starships creeping along at no more than ten percent of the speed of light, a whole lot slower than those sci-fi cruisers we see zipping on three-vee. At such speeds it may take five, ten generations to reach a good colony site. Meanwhile, passengers will have to maintain villages and farms and cranky, claustrophobic grandkids, all inside their hollowed-out, spinning worldlets. What kind of social engineering will that take? Do you know how to design a closed society that'd last so long without flying apart? Oh, I think it can be done. But don't pretend it'll be simple! Nor will be solving the dilemma of gene pool isolation. In the arks and zoos right now, a lot of rescued species are dying off even though the microecologies are right, simply because too few individuals were included in the original mix. For a healthy gene pool you need diversity, variety, heterozygosity. One thing's clear, no starship will make it carrying only one racial group. What'll be needed, frankly, are mongrels… people who've bred back and forth with just about everybody and seem to enjoy it.

Is there more to the Fatima secret not yet revealed? Well, before he later revealed the content of the 3rd Secret of Fatima in 2000, John Paul II spoke to a select group of German Catholics at Fulda during his 1980 visit to Germany. Here is an excerpt from his words: The Holy Father was asked, “What about the Third Secret of Fatima? Should it not have already been published by 1960?” Pope John Paul II replied: “Given the seriousness of the contents, my predecessors in the Petrine office diplomatically preferred to postpone publication so as not to encourage the world power of Communism to make certain moves. On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this: if there is a message in which it is written that the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth, and that from one moment to the next millions of people will perish, truly the publication of such a message is no longer something to be so much desired.” At this point the Pope grasped a Rosary and said: “Here is the remedy against this evil. Pray, pray, and ask for nothing more. Leave everything else to the Mother of God.” The Holy Father was then asked: “What is going to happen to the Church?” He answered: “We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your and my prayer it is possible to mitigate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church sprung from blood! This time, too, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong and prepared, and trust in Christ and His Mother, and be very, very assiduous in praying the Rosary.” In his book, The Last Secret of Fatima, Cardinal Bertone, (now former) Vatican Secretary of State, acknowledged that John Paul II did in fact say these words (p. 48). What clarity, for those who can see!

If EVACC is a sort of ark, Griffith becomes its Noah, though one on extended duty, since already he’s been at things a good deal longer than forty days.

I didn’t believe that God told some guy, however many thousands of years ago, “Hey, build a ginormous boat in this desert over here.” I liked it as a story, though, because it seemed like the kind of thing God ought to say. There were crazy stupid things that needed to get done, or should have gotten done, or turned out to be wonderful when they did get done. And maybe, if God ever did tell people what to do, it was to stick up for these crazy stupid things that no one in their right mind would ever do otherwise.

The people buzzed with excitement and were amazed. Caleb watched it all with his poetic eye. He had seen how Yahweh was establishing Joshua as a new Moses to lead the people. This water crossing was reminiscent of the crossing of the Red Sea during the exodus under Moses. Joshua’s coronation occurred after coming down from the mountain much like Moses came down Sinai with the tablets of the Law. And now Yahweh talked to Joshua almost as he had talked to Moses. The priests carrying the Ark now walked out onto the dried up riverbed and stood with it in the middle as the people crossed over in procession. According to Yahweh’s own commands, twelve chosen men, one from each of the twelve tribes, pulled twelve large stones out of the riverbed from around the priests. They carried them to where they would be camping that night and placed them in a pile as a memorial of this day. At the same time, twelve others gathered a stone each and placed a pile of those stones in the center of the riverbed where the priests were standing.

then the Israelite’s secret weapon was brought to the fore of the lines: The Ark of the Covenant. The gold plated box glittered in the sun. It was carried on its poles by priests and accompanied by the high priest Eleazer. Caleb rose and Eleazer pronounced a benediction on him. “Caleb ben Jephunneh, Yahweh is with you! Yahweh is with Israel! Trust in him with all your heart and lean not on your own strength, but upon the Spirit of Yahweh Elohim! He will fight for you! Be strong and courageous! Do not fear this Seed of the Serpent!” Caleb turned to address the soldiers with Othniel proudly by his side. “Let all of Israel stand in awe and wonder, for our god will deliver us!” The men cheered. They believed him for the moment, as all good soldiers do. “Shout to the Lord and praise his name before the shadow of thine enemies!” The army of Yahweh responded with a shout that rang throughout the valley in such thunderous unison that it was now the Anakim’s turn to have their confidence shaken. It was a predetermined praise of Yahweh that they had been taught. And it almost sounded like the indomitable voices of the Seraphim before the throne of Yahweh, the sound of many voices as one.

Goliath said with somber voice, “Since it is our custom to grant defeated deities some amount of vassal-like privilege, the Lord of Ashdod, Mutallu, thought it only gracious to allow this Yahweh an audience in Dagon’s presence. But the next morning when the priests opened the temple, the image of Dagon was on the floor, face down before the Israelite ark.” Lahmi and Ittai gasped. Warati sighed. Ishbi said, “That is only the beginning of the pranks that malevolent deity has pulled.” Goliath said, “They returned Dagon to his position, but the very next morning, he was prostrate before the ark yet again. Only this time, Dagon’s head and hands had been cut off lying on the threshold.” “Holy father of Ba’al,” whispered Warati. The cutting off of heads and hands of enemy combatants was a peculiar tactic of victory in war. It was a denigration of one’s conquered foes into complete powerlessness. Warati continued, “It would take great strength to cut through that diorite. No one was seen in or near the temple?” “It was locked and guarded,” said Goliath. “The guards never even heard the sound of the fall or the breaking.” Ishbi added, “That abomination was followed by an infestation of rats as well as a plague of boils, tumors, and hemorrhoids.

Joshua and Caleb had been anticipating for forty years. They stood side by side with the people of Israel behind them. They followed Yahweh’s very specific directions in how they would cross the river and enter into Canaan. They watched the priests carry the Ark of the Covenant to the water’s edge and step their feet just into the bank, waiting for a miracle. The miracle would have to deal with the fact that this was the springtime, when the river was flooded with a stronger current. At this location it was about one hundred and fifty feet wide and about twelve feet deep. Crossing thousands of people in riverboats would take many days. But Yahweh had promised a sign that he would be true to his word that he would not fail to drive out the inhabitants of the land before them. That sign began seventeen miles north of their location near the city of Adam. An earthquake shook the earth mounds around the river and a large landslide of debris tumbled down causing a temporary damming of the Jordan river. The water stopped flowing southward and dried up the riverbed where the Israelites were standing with the Ark.

Philistine Lords knew the Rephaim ranks were too crucial to their success as an army, so instead, they decided to take responsibility and get rid of the abominable offense. They sent the ark away on a cart pulled by two unblemished milking cows and accompanied by a guilt offering of images; five rats and five tumors made out of gold, one for each of the Philistine Lords of the pentapolis. They reasoned that if it was Yahweh that had harmed them with the plagues, then he would lead the cows back to an Israelite city. But if the harm had been by coincidence then the cows would just wander into the desert to be consumed by Azazel. The cows had gone directly to Beth-shemesh of Israel, a known residence of their Levitical priests. Lahmi didn’t care where the

32Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:  33So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.  34Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.  35Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.  36But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.  37But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  38For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark,  39And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  40Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  41Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  42Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.  43But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.  44Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

One lost girl. Two best friends. Three eternal soulmates.

I knew that the first Europeans to arrive in Ethiopia had addressed the monarchs of that country as ‘Prester John.’ This use of the sacred relic as a war palladium – and as an effective one at that – was not, according to Archpriest Solomon [Gabre Selassie, Head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Britain], just something that had happened in Ethiopia’s distant past. On the contrary: ‘As recently as 1896 when the King of Kings Menelik the Second fought against the Italian aggressors at the battle of Adowa in Tigray region, the priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the field to confront the invaders. As a result of this, Menelik was very victorious and returned to Addis Abada in great honour.’ I re-read this part of the reply with considerable interest because I knew that Menelik II had indeed been ‘very victorious’ in 1896. In that year, under the command of General Baratieri, 17,700 Italian troops equipped with heavy artillery and the latest weapons had marched up into the Abyssinian highlands from the Eritrean coastal strip intent on colonizing the whole country. Menelik’s forces, though ill prepared and less well armed, had met them at Adowa on the morning of 1 March, winning in less than six hours what one historian had subsequently described as ‘the most notable victory of an African over a European army since the time of Hannibal.’ In a similar tone, the London Spectator of 7 March 1896 commented: ‘The Italians have suffered a great disaster… greater than has ever occurred to white men in Africa.