Creation Lake Quotes

One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made; that this is still the morning of creation; that mountains long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes...

This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with its beautiful stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King In Yellow.

I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.

We do not need to plan or devise a "world of the future"; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid "futurology" available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at "the future of the human race"; we have the same pressing need that we have always had - to love, care for, and teach our children. (pg. 73, "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine")

Fundamentalist Christianity: fascinating. These people actually believe that the world is twelve thousand years old. Swear to God. Based on what? I asked them. "Well, we looked at all the people in the Bible and we added 'em up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages? Twelve thousand years." "Well, how fucking scientific, OK. I didn't know that you'd gone to so much trouble there. That's good. You believe the world's twelve thousand years old?" "That's right." "OK, I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready?" "Uh huh." "Dinosaurs." You know, the world's twelve thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, and existed in that time, you'd think it would been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point: And O, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus... with a splinter in its paw. And the disciples did run a-screamin'. "What a big fucking lizard, Lord!" "I'm sure gonna mention this in my book," Luke said. "Well, I'm sure gonna mention it in my book," Matthew said. But Jesus was unafraid. And he took the splinter from the brontosaurus paw, and the brontosaurus became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a loch, O so many years, attracting fat American families with their fat fuckin' dollars to look for the Loch Ness Monster. And O the Scots did praise the Lord: "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!" Twelve thousand years old. But I actually asked this guy, "OK, dinosaur fossils-- how does that fit into your scheme of life? What's the deal?" He goes: "God put those here to test our faith." "I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. I think I've figured this out." Does that-- That's what this guy said. Does that bother anyone here? The idea that God might be fucking with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's running around burying fossils: "Ho ho! We'll see who believes in me now, ha ha! I'm a prankster God. I am killing me, ho ho ho!" You know? You die, you go to St. Peter: "Did you believe in dinosaurs?" "Well, yeah. There were fossils everywhere. (trapdoor opens) Aaaaarhhh!" "You fuckin' idiot! Flying lizards? You're a moron. God was fuckin' with you!" "It seemed so plausible, aaaaaahh!" "Enjoy the lake of fire, fucker!" They believe this. But you ever notice how people who believe in Creationism usually look pretty unevolved. Eyes really close together, big furry hands and feet? "I believe God created me in one day." Yeah, looks like he rushed it. Such a weird belief. Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he's gonna want to see a fucking cross, man? "Ow." Might be why he hasn't shown up yet. "Man, they're still wearing crosses. Fuck it, I'm not goin' back, Dad. No, they totally missed the point. When they start wearing fishes, I might show up again, but... let me bury fossils with you, Dad. Fuck 'em, let's fuck with 'em! Hand me that brontosaurus head, Dad.

The morning light shimmered through the trees and gave the lake an otherworldly hue. Everything in summer Michigan seemed to have a soft shimmer to it, as though God had hung gauze over the sky and softly scattered glitter on all His creations.

Charisma does not originate inside the person called “charismatic.” It comes from the need of others to believe that special people exist.

The greatest minds and the most advanced engineering went into its creation. They carved the prison out of solid rock from the face of the mountains just north of the lake. They sealed it not only with metal, stone, and wood but also with ancient and powerful enchantments. In the end, when it was finished, it was believed to be the most secure prison in the world.” “They must have had some really nasty criminals back then to go to so much trouble,” Hadrian said. “No,” Myron replied matter-of-factly, “just one.” “One?” Alric asked. “An entire prison designed to hold just one man?” “His name was Esrahaddon.

The truth was that upsilamba was one of Nabokovs fascinating creations, possibly a word he invented. I said I associate Upsilamba with the impossible joy of a suspended leap. Yassi, who seemed excited for no particular reason, cried out that she always thought it could be a name of a dance- you know, "C'mon, baby, do the Upsilamba with me". Manna suggested that the word upsilamba evoked the image of small silver fish leaping in and out of a moonlit lake. Nima added in parentheses, Just so you won't forget me, although you have barred me from your class: an upsilamba to you too! For Azin it was a sound, a melody. Mahashid described an image of three girls jumping rope and shouting" Upsilamba" with each leap. For Sanaz, the word was a small African boy's secret magical name. Mitra wasn't sure why the word reminded her of the paradox of a blissful sigh. And for Nassrin it was a magic code that opened the door to a secret cave filled with treasures.

Spirit and purpose in all things. For all creation, respect.

to misunderstand the adult world, and to misuse it, are the precursors to innovation.

It’s the same, whether you’re in a relationship with a man or pretending to be in one. They want you to listen when they tell you about their precious youth.

The man turned and put his hand on her arm, an ancient gesture employed in every epoch of history by gullible men attempting to calm strident women beset by reasonable doubts.

Her name, said the Oracle, will this time be Ama, a female that sleeps in every one of us, Yin of Creation, a wisdom guide that with her purity extinguishes thirst for spiritual longings. She is the one that stands on a crescent moon with stars in her hair, pouring water from jars of her soul into lakes of emotions, awakening compassion for humankind and its Chaos, nourishing Earth and Her constant renewal.

Plus, Lucien said, a lot of them had come from other social milieus and had tattoos from earlier lives, since people who change affinities are the same kinds of people who are attracted to the permanence of tattoos.

My biker and these tramps, as people who organize their life around some subculture or other: People can sometimes pretend so thoroughly that they forget they are pretending. At which point, it could even be said that they are no longer pretending.

But why would you want to survive mass death? What would be the purpose of life, if life were reduced to a handful of armed pessimists hoarding canned foods and fearing each other? In a bunker, you cannot hear the human community in the earth, the deep cistern of voices, the lake of our creation.

Milton's Eve! Milton's Eve! ... Milton tried to see the first woman; but Cary, he saw her not ... I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus" -- "Pagan that you are! what does that signify?" "I say, there were giants on the earth in those days: giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend with Omnipotence: the stregth which could bear a thousand years of bondage, -- the vitality which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, -- the unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born: vast was the heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation. ... I saw -- I now see -- a woman-Titan: her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil white as an avalanche sweeps from hear head to her feet, and arabesques of lighting flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that horizon: through its blush shines the star of evening. Her steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear -- they are deep as lakes -- they are lifted and full of worship -- they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers: she reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God. That Eve is Jehova's daughter, as Adam was His son.

Keep a list, Bruno wrote, of those who have been martyred to joy, lost to it. Do not be on that list.

hung with flapping laundry—the international flag for anonymous women’s work.

Rather the artist’s delight in what becomes, the cheerfulness of artistic creation that defies all misfortune, is merely a bright image of clouds and sky mirrored in a black lake of sadness.

History is a story, my grandfather said. I offer a friendly amendment: history is many stories. Those stories are written, spoken, and sung. They are carried in our bodies. They billow all around us like copper-colored dust that sometimes obscures everything. In those stories, we grasp at meaning. We search for ourselves, for our place, for direction. We search for a way forward: a woman warrior, a complication man, an invitation home, a meteor, a lake, a child landing with a splat. Destruction and creation. Changes in light, terrain, and atmosphere. Delicate new freedom. Hope.

Abundance of the Heart. He describes an experience with nature and his father. An environment of trust can have to do with a special experience, a place, another person, or people. My first real discovery of nature in life came one morning in April 1916. My father put me on the back of his bike, where I had a little seat, and said, "Off we go." And then he turned in the wrong direction for I thought he was taking me down to Quakers' meeting--it was a Sunday. "No," he said, "we are going somewhere else today." And we rode for about eight miles, and we stopped at a wood. . . . We went into the wood; and there, suddenly, was a great pool of bluebells stretching for perhaps a hundred yards in the shade of the oak trees. And I could scarcely breathe because the impression was so great. The experience then was just the bluebells and the scent; now, when I recall it, it is also the love of my father who chose to do that that morning--to give me that experience. I am sure he had been there the day before, found it, and thought, "I'll take my son there." As we rode there and as we rode back, we heard the distant thud of the guns at the Battle of the Somme, where thousands were dying every day. That overwhelming experience of a natural phenomenon, a demonstration of beneficent creation, and at the same time hearing those guns on the Somme--that experience has remained with me almost more clearly than anything else in my life. [The Abundance of the Heart (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1986), p. 88]

Light takes darkness vanish and worlds reappear. Light opens each day with a blaring overture, then throws its wands to earth and casts diamonds on lakes and oceans. Each night, lights tricks make the stars seem alive.

Allow the beauty of creation to soak deep within our souls with eye candy such as mountain or lake or ocean or countryside or forest. It reminds us how small we are and how utterly magnificent God is, and that makes His love for us all the more breathtaking.

stood at the window at four a.m. and told myself: You, too, have a core of precious salt. The human core of inner salt, like this salt of Cardona, comes from the deepest part. Human salt, like this salt, is everlasting. Mine it, use it, and it will not deplete. In my own salt, my own core, this is what I knew: Life goes on a while. Then it ends. There is no fairness. Bad people are honored, and good ones are punished. The reverse is also true. Good people are honored, and bad people are punished, and some will call this grace, or the hand of God, instead of luck. But deep down, even if they lack the courage to admit it, inside each person, they know that the world is lawless and chaotic and random. This truth is stored in their salt. Some have access. Others don’t. A gift or a curse, that my salt is right here, with me all the time? A gift. I’d rather be driven by immutable truths than the winds of some opinion, whose real function is to underscore a person’s social position in a group, a belief without depth. These boys in the library would profess to share beliefs.

Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.” The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back. A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames. Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth’s surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid. Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.

The wind spoke. The water sang. All sound had purpose. When an Anishinaabe approached the wigwam of another, he respectfully made noise to announce his coming. Thunder, therefore, was the respectful way of the storm in announcing its approach. Spirit and purpose in all things. For all creation, respect.

When you walk along a wooded path In the nature my heart held so dear, Remember the joy that it gave me And know that I’ll always be near. When a robin announces his presence Singing solo as day becomes new The doe lifts her head to listen As her fawn drinks the freshness of dew. When an otter glides through the river, His swim is a masterful one. He engages his mate in a playful chase Then they climb on the rocks to sun. When the rustling leaves touch the autumn sky, Boasting colors of russet and gold Geese wing on their southern-most journey To escape from the beckoning cold. When the North wind blows through the towering pines It delivers a mid winter’s chill While snowflakes drift softly on fresh frozen lakes And the call of the wild becomes still. In each of these things, remember me. And know that I’ll always be near. The woodlands, God’s wondrous Creation, In His nature my heart held so dear.

The catch is that fire is not always positive. And more crucially, fire is not a quality. It is not a trait that a life-form can possess. It isn’t night vision or silent wing feathers or a hinged jaw, a spring-loaded capacity to pounce. Man, bland and featureless in this myth, lacking in his own special trait, was condemned, instead, to ingenuity, to being a devious little bastard.

TRADITIONALLY THE ANISHINAABE were a quiet people. Before the whites came, they lived in the silence of great woods and more often than not, the voices they heard were not human. The wind spoke. The water sang. All sound had purpose. When an Anishinaabe approached the wigwam of another, he respectfully made noise to announce his coming. Thunder, therefore, was the respectful way of the storm in announcing its approach. Spirit and purpose in all things. For all creation, respect.

The breath had become as much a trick as breathing. Things were not dual merely, but multiple. I had become a cage of mirrors reflecting vacuity. But vacuity once stoutly posited I was at home and what is called creation was merely a job of filling up holes. The trolley conveniently carried me about from place to place and in each little side pocket of the great vacuum I dropped a ton of poems to wipe out the idea of annihilation. I had ever before me boundless vistas. I began to live in the vista, like a microscopic speck on the lens of a giant telescope. There was no night in which to rest. It was perpetual starlight on the arid surface of dead planets. Now and then a lake black as marble in which I saw myself walking amidst brilliant orbs of lights. So low hung the stars and so dazzling was the light they shed, that it seemed as if the universe were only about to be born. What rendered the impression stronger was that I was alone; not only were there no animals, no trees, no other beings, but there was not even a blade of grass, not even a dead root. In that violet incandescent light witihout even the suggestion of a shadow motion itself seemed to be absent. It was like a blaze of pure consciousness, thought become God. And God, for the first time in my knowledge, was dean-shaven. I was also clean-shaven, flawless, deadly accurate. I saw my image in the marble black lakes and it was diapered with stars. Stars, stars... like a clout between the eyes and all remembrance fast run out. I was Samson and I was Lackawanna and I was dying as one being in the ecstasy of full consciousness.

To mortals, the water would be nothing more than a black swatch in the center of town. But to my eyes, oh, to my eyes, the lake was teeming with life and energy and vibrations, with flowing particles of light that pulsated along the surface of the water—and just under, too. Light that wasn’t really light. It was energy, I knew. The energy that powered this Earth, this universe, energy that flowed over everything and anything, constantly, unendingly, flowing, flowing. From where it came, I did not know, but I had my ideas and a single word appeared to me now as I sat there in my front seat. God. Or something close to God. The Creator, the Source, the All That Ever Was. And each light particle was, I suspected, a part of God, to be used and gathered and collected as we see fit, to be harnessed as we see fit. It is the driving force of creation. It is the thing that holds our world together, keeps its place in its orbit around the Sun, and the Sun in its place in our Galaxy, and our Galaxy in its place in the known Universe. It is creation and love, and it flows and is there for all of us to be used, or not used, to experience or to not experience. It is inspiration. It is love. It is life. It is health. It is great ideas. And it is always there, flowing, moving, adapting, growing. And

The citizens of Buffalo, then a smallish lakeside town, embarked on a brief campaign, led by a local judge named Wilkeson, to clear their own eponymous riverway and so tempt the canal engineers to route the Erie Canal to a terminus nearby. Energetic lobbying, together with the clearance of the creek, evidently worked, for the engineers did eventually end their labors there, and the fact that more than a million people now still brave one of the country’s cruelest climates (with roof-topping lake-effect snowfalls drowning the city each winter) to live in and around Buffalo is testimony to the wisdom of Judge Wilkeson and the city fathers of 1825 in doing all the persuading, as well as dredging and prettifying the banks of Buffalo Creek.

The ancestors of the higher animals must be regarded as one-celled beings, similar to the Amoebae which at the present day occur in our rivers, pools, and lakes. The incontrovertible fact that each human individual develops from an egg, which, in common with those of all animals, is a simple cell, most clearly proves that the most remote ancestors of man were primordial animals of this sort, of a form equivalent to a simple cell. When, therefore, the theory of the animal descent of man is condemned as a 'horrible, shocking, and immoral' doctrine, tho unalterable fact, which can be proved at any moment under the microscope, that the human egg is a simple cell, which is in no way different to those of other mammals, must equally be pronounced 'horrible, shocking, and immoral.

People might claim to believe in this or that, but in the four a.m. version of themselves, most possess no fixed idea on how society should be organized. When people face themselves, alone, the passions they have been busy performing all day, and that they rely on to reassure themselves that they are who they claim to be, to reassure their milieu of the same, those things fall away. What is it people encounter in their stark and solitary four a.m. self? What is inside them? Not politics. There are no politics inside of people. The truth of a person, under all the layers and guises, the significations of group and type, the quiet truth, underneath the noise of opinions and “beliefs,” is a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt. This salt is the core. The four a.m. reality of being.

But whether people cultivate an exterior meant to signal their politics, or they cultivate, instead, a strait-laced appearance that does not signal their politics, their self-presentation is deliberate. It is meant to reinforce who they are (who they consider themselves to be). People tell themselves, strenuously, that they believe in this or that political position, whether it is to do with wealth distribution or climate policy or the rights of animals. They commit to some plan, whether it is to stop old-growth logging, or protest nuclear power, or block a shipping port in order to bring capitalism, or at least logistics, to its knees. But the deeper motivation for their rhetoric—the values they promote, the lifestyle they have chosen, the look they present—is to shore up their own identity. It is natural to attempt to reinforce identity, given how fragile people are underneath these identities they present to the world as “themselves.” Their stridencies are fragile, while their need to protect their ego, and what forms that ego, is strong.

Only hinted at in some of these tales, and clearly stated in others, it is apparent that there was a long and continuing conflict between paganism and Christianity in the early centuries A.D. This may also be the explanation behind other well creation tales, such as the slaying by St Barry of a 'great serpent' in County Roscommon. The saint thrust his crozier at it before it disappeared into Lough Lagan, and where his knee touched the ground, a holy well, Tobar Barry, sprang up. Although the serpent may represent paganism, and the saint's victory is therefore the victory of Christianity over paganism, we cannot entirely ignore the possibility that some of the serpents in similar Irish tales may have been real water monsters, which are still seen from time to time in the lakes of Ireland and Scotland. These eerie, ugly monsters, with their aura of primeval mystery, appropriately symbolize the uncouth savagery which the Christians attributed to all non-Christian beliefs; but that is not to say that the monsters were totally symbolic and did not have a reality of their own.

The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind. without the human presence it is just a concatenation of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It's we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That's what makes Mars Beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides. Now that we are here, it isn't enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That's science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation. The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It's too dangerous to keep the consciousness of the universe on only one planet, it could be wiped out. And so now we're on two, three if you count the moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won't destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won't go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars beauty? I don't think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different from Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind; if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it. So, we might as well start.

The word smacked me in the face like Ares’s body odour. I turned to Austin. ‘The Labyrinth? As in Daedalus’s Labyrinth?’ Austin nodded, his fingers worrying the ceramic camp beads around his neck. I had a sudden memory of his mother, Latricia – the way she used to fiddle with her cowry necklace when she lectured at Oberlin. Even I learned things from Latricia Lake’s music theory class, though I had found her distractingly beautiful. ‘During the war with Gaia,’ Austin said, ‘the maze reopened. We’ve been trying to map it ever since.’ ‘That’s impossible,’ I said. ‘Also insane. The Labyrinth is a malevolent sentient creation! It can’t be mapped or trusted.’ As usual, I could only draw on random bits and pieces of my memories, but I was fairly certain I spoke the truth. I remembered Daedalus. Back in the old days, the king of Crete had ordered him to build a maze to contain the monstrous Minotaur. But, oh no, a simple maze wasn’t good enough for a brilliant inventor like Daedalus. He had to make his Labyrinth self-aware and self-expanding. Over the centuries, it had honeycombed under the planet’s surface like an invasive root system. Stupid brilliant inventors.

For two millennia the church has focused on worshiping a Christ who saves, a Christ who forgives, a Christ who cleanses, a Christ who challenges us and changes us, a Christ who convicts us and converts us, and a Christ who is coming again. If, as the Apostles’ Creed tells us, Jesus Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31; Rev. 19:11–21); and if those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ will live forever with God in his new creation (Mark 1:15; Acts 17:30; Rev. 21:7; 21:1–27) through the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Isa. 53:1–12; Rom. 5:1–21); and if those who are not born again (John 3:5) and do not believe in Christ (John 3:18) and do not turn from their sinful practices (1 John 3:4–10) will face eternal punishment and the just wrath of God in hell (John 3:36; 5:29); and if among those in the lake of fire excluded from the heavenly garden are the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev. 21:8, 27)—then determining what constitutes sexual immorality in God’s mind has everything to do with the storyline of Scripture. Is homosexual activity a sin that must be repented of, forsaken, and forgiven, or, given the right context and commitment, can we consider same-sex sexual intimacy a blessing worth celebrating and solemnizing?

It happens.” He turned again to the garden. “To the brain, I mean. It’s the drink, naturally. And the hepatic function. But there is clearly something else occurring, too. Certainly in other men I’ve seen it. There is something in certain abilities that is never far from—far from—” He looked out at the lake. “I cannot really know.” “No, please go on.” “Far from terror, perhaps. It is not such a rare phenomenon, you see. I used to encounter it around the maths division when I was at university, and I have seen it here, even, in my little country practice. It seems to be quite primal. At its crudest, it is a bona fide paranoia. Plenty in the field are gone before the age of twenty. I’ve seen that, too. Perhaps it is a harbinger. I believe it to be physiological.” He looked down. “I sometimes imagine it as God’s revenge.” “Against mathematicians?” “One must bear in mind that they might be considered spies.” He was smiling now. “By the Deity, you mean?” “Indeed. Your dad’s cantankerous nature, by the way—you know that this is his liver, too, don’t you? And of course the drink plays a part in it—but it is also the man himself. The emotions are ablaze in him.” He set down the bucket. “For people like you and me—well, we are shielded by all our damping circuitry. We maintain a cushion against the world, if you will. A comfort against the ravage. But I believe it is not so for him.” He regarded me. “Think of what life must be like for a mind like your father’s. I mean, human existence is bounded by tragedy, is it not? And shot through with it, as well. I was born in Lahore, so I know this in a particular way. But your father, too—he knows it just as particularly, in his own way. I have learned to keep such thoughts somewhat at bay. And so have you. But for him, there is no ignoring it. There is no joy in God’s creation. No pleasure in sunlight or water. No pleasure in a good meal. There is no pleasure in the company of friends. There is nothing. Nothing that might assuage the maw. He

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast, His place was taken by a family of chickadees; At noon a flock of humming birds passed south, Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala. All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain, The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them Over the face of the glacier. At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion, The Great Bear kneels on the mountain. Ten degrees below the moon Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley. Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall. Now there is distant thunder on the east wind. The east face of the mountain above me Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora. It is storming in the White Mountains, On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks; Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada. Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud, Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal, Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope. Frost, the color and quality of the cloud, Lies over all the marsh below my campsite. The wiry clumps of dwarfed whitebark pines Are smoky and indistinct in the moonlight, Only their shadows are really visible. The lake is immobile and holds the stars And the peaks deep in itself without a quiver. In the shallows the geometrical tendrils of ice Spread their wonderful mathematics in silence. All night the eyes of deer shine for an instant As they cross the radius of my firelight. In the morning the trail will look like a sheep driveway, All the tracks will point down to the lower canyon. “Thus,” says Tyndall, “the concerns of this little place Are changed and fashioned by the obliquity of the earth’s axis, The chain of dependence which runs through creation, And links the roll of a planet alike with the interests Of marmots and of men.

This is a way of thinking about the past in which space and time echo each other, and it is by no means particular to the Bandanese. Indeed, this form of thought may well have found its fullest elaboration on the other side of the planet, among the Indigenous peoples of North America, whose spiritual lives and understanding of history were always tied to specific landscapes. In the words of the great Native American thinker Vine Deloria Jr., a shared feature of Indigenous North American spiritual traditions is that they all “have a sacred center at a particular place, be it a river, a mountain, a plateau, valley, or other natural feature. . . . Regardless of what subsequently happens to the people, the sacred lands remain as permanent fixtures in their cultural or religious understanding.”12 Developing this argument, Deloria contrasts modes of thought that take their orientation from terrestrial spaces with those that privilege time. For the latter, the crucial question in relation to any event is “when did it happen?” For the former, it is “where did it happen?” The first question shapes the possible answers in a determinate way, locating the event within a particular historical period. The second question shapes the possible answers in a completely different way, because it accords a degree of agency to the landscape itself, and all that lies within it, including the entire range of nonhuman beings. The result, in Deloria’s words, is that “the [Indian] tribes confront and interact with a particular land along with its life forms. The task or role of the tribal religions is to relate the community of people to each and every facet of creation as they have experienced it.” For many Indigenous groups, landscapes remain as vividly alive today as they ever were. “For Indian men and women,” writes the anthropologist Peter Basso, of the Western Apache of Arizona, “the past lies embedded in features of the earth—in canyons and lakes, mountains and arroyos, rocks and vacant fields—which together endow their lands with multiple forms of significance that reach into their lives and shape the ways they think.”13 Stories about the past, built around familiar landmarks, inform every aspect of Apache life. Through these stories features of the landscape speak to people just as loudly as the human voices that historians bring to life from documentary sources.

If you are not aware of what you believe and not aware that you have a choice about what you believe, then your life will be shaped by those mistaken and limiting beliefs, and you will be a passive recipient of the results of those beliefs rather than a conscious co-creator of your life. In these pages, we will explore ways of moving beyond any distorted perceptions of reality that may have developed as a result of your beliefs to a truer, clearer, perception of reality. Each of you has been given and has acquired a set of beliefs that lead to a certain internal and, consequently, external reality. In that sense, you could say that you are programmed with a particular destiny. However, that destiny can be changed and shaped by you once you become more aware of what you are believing and the power you have to believe something else.

Entrances and Exits Between 4 million and 2 million years ago, at least 11 different hominid species existed in central, eastern, and southern Africa. These species fall into three genera: Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus. At any given time during this era, from four to seven different species existed simultaneously.8 Paleoanthropologists surmise that at least six of the hominids were Australopithecus. Like earlier hominids, australopithecines can be thought of as bipedal apes, distinct from chimpanzees.9 The brain size of australopithecines (380 to 450 cm3) was slightly larger than that of chimpanzees (300 to 400 cm3). Though the cranium, facial features, and dental anatomy were apelike, they were distinct from the corresponding chimpanzee features. The australopithecines stood about four feet tall and matured rapidly, like the great apes. Skull, pelvis, and lower limbs all display features that indicate these hominids walked erect. Still, the bipedalism, called facultative, was distinct from the obligatory bipedalism employed by Homo hominids. Some paleoanthropologists think the australopithecines could also climb and move effectively through trees. This idea is based on their relatively long upper arms, short lower limbs, and funnel-shaped torsos. Work published in 2000 indicates that some australopithecines might have knuckle-walked like the great apes.10 The earliest australopithecines lived either in a woodland environment or in a mixed habitat of trees and open savannas. Later australopithecines lived only on the grassy plains. Their capacity to climb and move through trees, as well as walk erect, gave these hominids easy mobility in their varied environment. The oldest member of Australopithecus, Australopithecus anamensis, existed between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago, based on fossils recovered near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Australopithecus afarensis fossils have been recovered in eastern Africa and date to between 4 and 3 million years old. “Lucy” (discovered in the early 1970s by Donald Johanson) is one of the best-known specimens. She is nearly 40 percent complete, with much of the postcranial skeleton intact.11 Remains of Australopithecus bahrelghazali, dated at 3.2 million years ago, have been recovered in Chad. Some paleoanthropologists think, however, that A. bahrelghazali is properly classified as an A. afarensis. Australopithecus africanus lived in South Africa between 3.0 and 2.2 million years ago, based on the fossil record. One of the best-known A. africanus specimens is the “Taung child” discovered in 1924 by Dart. The Taung child was the first australopithecine found.12

Back then the Appalachian Trail was barely a trail at all—it consisted of over 2,000 miles of mostly unmarked wilderness from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia. A man named Benton MacKaye had proposed its creation in the early 1920s. He had utopian visions about a place that could “transcend the economic scramble” and be a balm on the American psyche after World War I. He thought the trail could lift people out of the drudgery of modern life. Government workers needed a relaxing place to recuperate, he wrote in his proposal. Housewives, he said, could use the trail’s rejuvenating powers too. They could come during their leisure time. It could even be a cure for mental illness, whose sufferers “need acres not medicine.” Civilization was weakening, he said. Americans needed a path forward. The Appalachian Trail was the solution. There was still so much undeveloped land in the United States. The West had Yosemite and Yellowstone, and many more national parks, but the East Coast was the most populous part of the country, and the people who lived there should have something to rival the western parks. National parks already dotted the East Coast’s landscape, but what if they could be united? MacKaye imagined what Americans would see as they strode the length of the trail: the “Northwoods” pointed firs on Mount Washington, the placid, pine-rimmed lakes of the Adirondacks. They would cross the Delaware Water Gap, the Potomac, and Harpers Ferry. They could follow Daniel Boone’s footsteps through southern Appalachia to the hardwood forests of North Carolina and end at Springer Mountain in Georgia. They would know their country. Barbara was swept up by

life, Meeker continued on to New York, where he scuffled with police who wouldn’t allow him to run his oxen down Fifth Avenue. In Washington, D.C., he ran his rig onto the White House lawn and enlisted President Theodore Roosevelt to help him preserve the trail. Meeker was a big, visionary thinker. Not content with merely preserving the trail, he advocated the creation of a national commercial and military road across the West, linking growing cities like Denver and Salt Lake with the East, and spur roads that would connect with the vast national parks that had been created during the Progressive Era. Swimming and fishing facilities, hotels, and even towers with navigational beacons for passing airmail planes were all part of Meeker’s plan. None of this was built during his lifetime, and Meeker would receive no credit for his elaborate transportation dreams. But the national parks system built during the New Deal, and the interstate highways paved in the 1950s, eventually created a network of concrete and open spaces remarkably similar to Meeker’s original scheme. Meeker

The Moffat Tunnel is a cathedral to engineering. Its simplicity occludes its sophistication, with the creation of nothing from something—the deliberate absence of rock amid incalculable weight. The finalized engineering marvel has a ventilation system that performs a complete air exchange within the tunnel in 18 minutes. The seemingly endless stone archway has intricately designed and perfectly positioned “umbrellas” to disperse alpine lake seepage to either side of the tracks. During construction, on February 15, 1925, tunneling progress stalled 1,100 feet directly under Crater Lake as 1,800 gallons per minute of water began flowing into the tunnel. At the suggestion of electrician K.S. Weston, crews ventured to the lake, cut through three feet of ice, and poured in 10 pounds of chloride of lime. Shortly thereafter, the presence of lime was detected inside of the tunnel. In an attempt to close the seam, a stick of dynamite was tossed into the lake, and the flow rate dropped drastically to 150 gallons per minute and then slowed to a trickle. Multiple times per day, the visceral vibration of mechanical thunder reverberates through the bowels of the earth.

friendship with Christian researcher and author, Josh Peck. Josh’s book, Quantum Creation,

in many indigenous ways of knowing, time is not a river, but a lake in which the past, the present, and the future exist. Creation, then, is an ongoing process and the story is not history alone - it is also prophecy.

All acts of savagery originate with authority, he wrote. The work to be done, he told them, is a refusal of savagery.

Let us count stars and live in their luminous gaze.

that it was “easier to imagine the end of the world than it was to imagine the end of capitalism.

key principle of their navigation, Bruno had explained, was an inversion of movement: destinations arrived toward sailors, rather than sailors moving toward destinations. This concept of seafaring was called etak, Bruno had instructed, or “moving island”—in which a sailor in a canoe traveling the open ocean, whether standing with his legs apart feeling wave-swell, or seated and rowing, or seated and not rowing, this sailor was himself stationary, while waves and the occasional landmass flowed past his boat. These sailors weren’t stupid, Bruno had said. They knew they were not actually standing still. They were employing a special form of cognition, a skill that was crucial to getting somewhere. You and I, Bruno had said, don’t live in their world. Our own earth, our version of it, is fitted with Cartesian coordinates, a straitjacket of plumb lines and cross-stitches. The sky is no longer visible in most places. Our stars have been replaced by satellites, whose clocks tell atomic time. With GPS you can know your location without looking out the window, he had said. You can know your location without knowing your location. You can know things without knowing anything. We often proceed as if we know things without a sense of what knowledge even is, Bruno had said. The earth is turning, for instance: sure, we know that because we’ve memorized it. But our knowledge of the earth’s turn is false, it is knowledge without context, disconnected from the rest of the universe. When the sun rises, we think it’s rising. When it sets, we think it’s setting.

What had Bruno said about the future? When we face our need to control it, we are better able to resist that need, and to live in the present.

Love confirms who a person is, and that they are worth loving. Politics do not confirm who a person is. People might claim to believe in this or that, but in the four a.m. version of themselves, most possess no fixed idea on how society should be organized. When people face themselves, alone, the passions they have been busy performing

of opinions and “beliefs,” is a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt. This salt is the core. The four a.m. reality of being.

In

In my own salt, my own core, this is what I knew: Life goes on a while. Then it ends. There is no fairness.

The rain had left enormous puddles that were the tint of milk chocolate, their surface

Sleep was key to thought, and to intellectual development. As man’s thoughts became ever more complex, the longer he needed to sleep. The longer man slept, Bruno said, the more he dreamed, and the more penetrating and wondrous his waking thought became.

I pictured Joan Crawford, that scale of face: dramatic, brutal, compelling.

No culture can be understood, nor should be defined, by what doesn’t wash away. The durable traces, the rock or rebar, are real, but they are time-disfigured nubs, as strange and unrecognizable to the people who left them behind as they seem to us. We must learn to leave room for the rest, for the vast and vanished world of which durable traces form only a tiny part.

In my own salt, my own core, this is what I knew: Life goes on a while. Then it ends. There is no fairness. Bad people are honored, and good ones are punished. The reverse is also true. Good people are honored, and bad people are punished, and some will call this grace, or the hand of God, instead of luck. But deep down, even if they lack the courage to admit it, inside each person, they know that the world is lawless and chaotic and random.

Who wants to argue that consumer culture, whether it’s fast food or franchised movies or duty-free cosmetics, is wholesome and beneficial? If people do not start out as imbeciles, they are made imbecilic by the corporate contours of their daily life, lulled into a sleep, a sleep which, according to Debord, prevents them from wanting a more authentic life. True enough.

That kind of success is for losers,” he said. “I aspire to something more. To be base and ubiquitous. You can’t plan for that. You can only dream of it.

Create. In loss or suffering, there can be joy in creating something that didn’t exist before. Creation and healing are born of the same thread. Bringing something to life can sometimes heal the soul, while still honoring what a person has lost.

Creation and healing are born of the same thread. Bringing something to life can sometimes heal the soul, while still honoring what a person has lost.

Ten days before the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, a plan circulated briefly, never to be executed, providing for the creation of a “surface attack group” under Fletcher’s cruiser boss, Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright, drawing the battleship North Carolina, the heavy cruisers Minneapolis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Portland, and Salt Lake City, the Atlanta, and four destroyers into a single fighting force should the Japanese fleet come within gun range. Those ships were finally reckoned too valuable to spare in missions other than antiaircraft defense.

Life has its own purpose and its own plan. Life brings you the people it does for many reasons, which you may never understand. Your only choice is whether or not to love who Life brings you.

All of us were intensely caught up in the activities of the United Nations, in Lake Success. The fall of 1947 proved to be the decisive period in the creation of the State of Israel. I listened to the radio and read avidly about the deliberations that led to the hoped for vote of November 29, 1947. That was the day when the United Nations voted for the partition plan of Palestine with a Jewish State and an Arab State. I was corresponding with Yuda frequently as well as with my friends in Bucharest. Later on, friends in Israel told me that my detailed reports about the U.N. deliberations and the decision in November, 1947, were read with great interest in Bucharest and were passed from hand to hand - an eye-witness report. All my friends started to make preparations for emigration to Israel; all of them left within the next few years.

We must see God’s gifts of creation as windows into his glory and opportunities to praise him. But we must also find pleasure in them. We should thank God for our day on the lake, but we don’t need to say, “Praise you, Jesus!” with each cast. We must thank God for our daily bread, but it’s okay to focus on the flavors of our sandwich while we’re eating it.

The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has entries that tend to change rather often and is biased toward the religion of secularism. Even so, they write: Typically a steep-walled, narrow gorge is inferred to represent slow persistent erosion. But because many of the geological formations of Canyon Lake Gorge are virtually indistinguishable from other formations which have been attributed to long term (slower) processes, the data collected from Canyon Lake Gorge lends further credence to the hypothesis that some of the most spectacular canyons on Earth may have been carved rapidly during ancient megaflood events.7 Notice that the religion of secular humanism still reigns supreme in this quote. The encyclopedia refuses to give the possibility of a global Flood (Noah’s Flood) being the triggering factor (as well as subsequent factors resulting from the Flood) for many of the great canyon’s formations. Instead they appeal to “megafloods.” But regardless, major floods and other catastrophes destroy the idea of millions of years and long ages.

It only took starlings (a type of bird) about 100 years to cover the entire North American continent when about 60 were released in New York City in 1890. With this in mind, it probably did not take long for many places to be populated with flying creatures after the Flood. Many birds can transverse great distances over lakes, seas, and oceans. Some birds and other flying creatures may have lost the ability to fly due to mutations or breeding (particularly inbreeding) since the Flood. This could have occurred after migrating long distances.

The ritual of uniting the Ka and Ba together is termed: se-akh 'to awaken', which is resembled by Seb who gets embraced by the Children of Horus (aka the Embracers of the Akh) who form a great celestial ladder for the revived Osiris to ascend. Seb (being one of the gods who watch the weighing of the heart of the deceased in the Judgment Hall) has the secret gates which he guards and are close by the Balance of Ra. The righteous were enabled to escape Earth wherein their hearts were laid, but the heavy-hearted were held fast by Seb. Seb (aka great Cackler) produces the great Egg whence the Sungod sprang in the form of a Phoenix, which flies and eventually lands on the Great Pyramid Benben stone; just like the Ba, but instead of being for a king, it is stemming right from the heart of a god. Seb was the god of Earth where the work of creation began from his Egg and as soon as the Sungod appeared in the sky, he sent forth his rays onto Earth where Seb occupies his position. The dead receives Horus' ba to his North and to the West is Thoth and his ka is now behind him and his soul looks upon the spirit of flame and passes through the lake of fire and takes his seat in the sky with his back towards Seb. In the Pyramid Texts, we read that Unas and his Ka are taken to the Great House for judgement; which alludes to the Great Pyramid and to his movement direction away from Ba.

Dr. Woody Burton has progressed in education to become the Director of Schools for Lake County. With extensive experience as an educator and administrator, he embodies a strong dedication to student success. Outside his professional role, Dr. Burton delights in cooking and baking, often sharing his creations with colleagues and friends.

Charisma does not originate inside the person called "charismatic." It comes from the need of others to believe that special people exist.

Love confirms who a person is, and that they are worth loving. Politics do not confirm who a person is.

(Everyone at Le Moulin was white, or at least they looked white to me, but they were white people with the burnish of good language, who knew not to be coarse and racist.)

I felt sad for this child, who didn't know that his lament was being undermined by how ridiculous he looked, with crud caked around his mouth. I had the thought that public embarrassment starts at the beginning, before a person even knows to feel a sense of it.

These people made Nebraskan Beef Days look like an

I could sense him gathering a false hindsight that afternoon in the Place des Vosges, shaping a retrospective narrative, the thing a person tells himself about fate, about how everything had seemed fated, when the only evidence of this fate is how things went.

Ecclesiastes declares that life has no meaning, that evil will be rewarded, and goodness punished. He says that even the most honorable man can be left in town to die in the street, while the greediest fool gets a eulogy and a proper burial. But either people skip that part of the Old Testament, or they never read the Bible at all, and instead they follow their instinct to mythify a sequence of random events and the stream of strangers they encounter in life: Good things happen to them or people they like and they think, “justice.” Bad things happen to people they don’t like and once again they think, “justice.” This is part of why a cold bump can be so effective: Lucien believed that he summoned me into his life by heart alone, by fate. He believed he deserved to fall in love (everyone believes they deserve this) and, in his specific case, with someone like me. His satisfied desire was a reward, as if it were part of a grand design based on birthright, on being from a good family, and making good choices, moral choices, and aesthetic ones too. We took turns kissing and talking, lying on the grass of the Place des Vosges. Lucien was telling me about Victor Hugo, how Victor Hugo, exiled to the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, had heard voices in the waves, addressing him on the subject of the future of France.

Stealing is a way to stop time. Also, it refocuses the mind, the senses, if they become dulled, for instance by drinking. Stealing puts reality into sharper relief.

We've ceased to locate ourselves in a larger system, a grand design. We've cut the rope, my children.

Now that we are here,” he went on, “it isn’t enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That’s science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation. The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It’s too dangerous to keep the consciousness of the universe on only one planet, it could be wiped out. And so now we’re on two, three if you count the moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won’t destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won’t go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars’s beauty? I don’t think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different from Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind: if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it.

In a bunker, you cannot hear the human community in the earth, the deep cistern of voices, the lake of our creation.

But whether people cultivate an exterior meant to signal their politics, or they cultivate, instead, a strait-laced appearance that does not signal their politics, their self-representation is deliberate. It is meant to reinforce who they are (who they consider themselves to be).

Pull the stamper or lose a hand. I'd pulled the stamper, and I was done pulling the stamper.

He had not changed the world. Instead, he had merely become famous.

underground. Their symbolic world was formed in part by their activities in caves, by modalities and visions that darkness promised. Then, this all ceased. The underground world was lost to us. The industrial uses of the earth, the digging, fracking, tunneling, are mere plunder and do not count, Bruno said. Modern people who build bomb shelters, planning to survive some version of apocalypse, also do not count, he said. Yes, they go underground, but not in mind of a human continuum, a community. They think, I’ll be the clever one, the one who survives mass death. But why would you want to survive mass death? What would be the purpose of life, if life were reduced to a handful of armed pessimists hoarding canned foods and fearing each other? In a bunker, you cannot hear the human community in the earth, the deep cistern of voices, the lake of our creation. In my cave, he said, under my cave, welling up from deeper passages, I hear so many things. Not just the drip of water.

The Cycle of Creation states that the Water Element nourishes the Wood Element. An example of this is the rain/water that nourishes a tree/wood. The Wood Element nourishes the Fire Element. Think of adding a log/wood to a campfire. The Fire Element nourishes the Earth Element. Visualize the ashes of the fire mixing with the soil/earth. The Earth Element nourishes the Metal Element. Think of how various metals are found with the ground/earth. The Metal Element nourishes the Water Element. Consider the condensation/water on the side of a metal container on a hot day. That completes the cycle of interaction from a creation or nourishing perspective.1 It is depicted in the illustration below. Figure 9-1: Five Element Cycle of Creation. The Cycle of Control, or Destruction, is the counter to the Cycle of Creation. Chinese teachings maintain that there must always be balance within a system for everything to work properly. If all the organs of the body were in a constant state of nourishment the body would be completely out of balance. The Cycle of Control explains how the five elements can control one another, thus creating a balanced healthy organism. The Cycle of Control states that Water Element controls the Fire Element. That is easy enough to understand. Think of pouring water on a fire. The Fire Element controls the Metal Element. Visualize a blacksmith that is using fire to melt metal. The Metal Element controls the Wood Element. Think of a metal axe that is cutting a tree/wood. The Wood Element controls the Earth Element. Think of how the roots of a tree/wood penetrate the soil/earth. The Earth Element controls the Water Element. Think of how the soil/earth dams up a lake/water. That competes this cycle of interaction from a controlling or destructive perspective.2 See Figure 9-2. Figure 9-2: Five Element Cycle of Control. The Chinese grouped the various organs of the body, as they understood them, into the Five Element model. The amazing science of acupuncture, which was developed over the last three thousand years, utilizes that model to treat many forms of sickness and disease. Likewise, the martial artist can use the same model to enhance their combative abilities. The interactions of the Five Element Theory has expanded the combative aspects of the martial arts in the Western world. But, the vast majority of the applications have been focused on the easier understood interactions of the twelve Main Meridians. ORGAN

The enormous Virginia Colony stretched north to New York then to the Great Lakes and then due west, encompassing today’s Wisconsin and Michigan and all of the mid-west thereby leaving large tracts available under royal rule for additional colonies.

The next stage is a hornfels, a thoroughly recrystallized rock, so named after its supposed resemblance to animal horn. Hornfels has one rather unexpected quality—when suitably shaped, it can produce beautiful musical notes when struck. Indeed, it took central place in an extraordinary narrative of the English Lake District. An eccentric 18th-century inventor, Peter Crosthwaite—a fighter against Malay pirates in his youth and, later in life, the founder of a museum in the town of Keswick—built a kind of xylophone using hornfels from the local Skiddaw mountain. Half a century later, the Keswick stone-maker and musician Joseph Richardson determined to top Crosthwaite’s achievement, and almost ruined his family financially by building an even bigger instrument, which would produce a larger range of musical notes. Once built, though, it was indeed a sensation. Richardson toured England for three years with his sons, playing Handel, Mozart, and dance tunes on his rock creation—though at times restraining the power of the instrument so it would not shatter concert hall windows. Queen Victoria liked the performances so much that she requested extra concerts (although reports from the time do suggest that she was not amused at its imitation of Alpine bells). The harmonious hornfels ‘lithophones’ may still be seen in the Keswick museum—and are to this day occasionally taken on musical tour.

Birkenhead Park was built to be large and to facilitate myriad strands of park life. There were wide, open spaces for sport, including a cricket ground; wilder areas of foliage and shrubbery for those who wanted a memory of their countryside childhoods; formal planting and bedding for flower lovers; a rockery; lakes with bridges and summerhouses; wide boulevards for promenading and narrow, winding paths for private walks and quiet moments of reflection. Birkenhead inspired the creation of a number of new parks across the country and beyond (it was a model for Central Park

None of these environmental problems is now more widespread and difficult to control than the creation of large dead zones in coastal waters. Nitrogen leached into streams is transported into ponds and lakes, eventually reaching the shallow coastal ocean waters, where it supports the excessive growth of algae. When these algae die and sink to the bottom, their decomposition consumes dissolved oxygen and leaves the water anoxic, suffocating fish and marine invertebrates. These dead zones are now found in the Gulf of Mexico and along many European and East Asian shorelines. Nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide released from fertilization and converted to nitrates in atmospheric reactions contribute to acidified precipitation (the phenomenon popularly known as acid rain, whose generation is dominated by the emissions of sulfur oxides).

Will We Become Angels? I’m often asked if people, particularly children, become angels when they die. The answer is no. Death is a relocation of the same person from one place to another. The place changes, but the person remains the same. The same person who becomes absent from his or her body becomes present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5: 8). The person who departs is the one who goes to be with Christ (Philippians 1: 23). Angels are angels. Humans are humans. Angels are beings with their own histories and memories, with distinct identities, reflected in the fact that they have personal names, such as Michael and Gabriel. Under God’s direction, they serve us on Earth (Hebrews 1: 14). Michael the archangel serves under God, and the other angels, in various positions, serve under Michael (Daniel 10: 13; Revelation 12: 7). In Heaven human beings will govern angels (1 Corinthians 6: 2-3). The fact that angels have served us on Earth will make meeting them in Heaven particularly fascinating. They may have been with us from childhood, protecting us, standing by us, doing whatever they could on our behalf (Matthew 18: 10). They may have witnessed virtually every moment of our lives. Besides God himself, no one could know us better. What will it be like not only to have them show us around the intermediate Heaven but also to walk and talk with them on the New Earth? What stories will they tell us, including what really happened that day at the lake thirty-five years ago when we almost drowned? They’ve guarded us, gone to fierce battle for us, served as God’s agents in answer to prayers. How great it will be to get to know these brilliant ancient creatures who’ve lived with God from their creation. We’ll consult them as well as advise them, realizing they too can learn from us, God’s image-bearers. Will an angel who guarded us be placed under our management? If we really believed angels were with us daily, here and now, wouldn’t it motivate us to make wiser choices? Wouldn’t we feel an accountability to holy beings who serve us as God’s representatives? Despite what some popular books say, there’s no biblical basis for trying to make contact with angels now. We’re to ask God, not angels, for wisdom (James 1: 5). As Scripture says and as I portray in my novels Dominion, Lord Foulgrin’s Letters, and The Ishbane Conspiracy, Satan’s servants can “masquerade as servants of righteousness” and bring us messages that appear to be from God but aren’t (2 Corinthians 11: 15). Nevertheless, because Scripture teaches that one or more of God’s angels may be in the room with me now, every once in a while I say “Thank you” out loud. And sometimes I add, “I look forward to meeting you.” I can’t wait to hear their stories. We won’t be angels, but we’ll be with angels—and that’ll be far better. Will We Have Emotions? In Scripture, God is said to enjoy, love, laugh, take delight, and rejoice, as well as be angry, happy, jealous, and glad. Rather than viewing these actions and descriptors as mere anthropomorphisms, we should consider that our emotions are derived from God’s. While we should always avoid creating God in our image, the fact remains we are created in his. Therefore, our emotions are a reflection of and sometimes (because of our sin) a distortion of God’s emotions. To be like God means to have and express emotions. Hence, we should expect that in Heaven

The idea here is that Jesus engaged in certain practices that allowed God’s grace to keep replenishing his spirit: • He prayed. • He had a circle of close friends — the twelve who went through life with him. He shared everything with them; people underestimate the role of friendship in Jesus’ life. • He engaged in regular corporate worship at synagogue. • He fed his mind with Scripture. • He enjoyed God’s creation — mountain, garden, and lake. • He took long walks. • He welcomed little children and hugged them and blessed them. • He enjoyed partying with non-religious types. Notice that the last one — one you might not have thought about — was so much the case that it actually gave rise to rumors about him: The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and people say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of immoral people.

As a baby, you saw reality clearly; however, you had no way of organizing and understanding what you saw. As you developed, language gave you a way of organizing the massive amounts of data that your senses delivered to your brain. Language also gave you a way to communicate with others. It allowed you to form relationships, survive, and carry out tasks in the world. What a miracle and gift language is!