Thursday, March 01, 2007

The Metaphysical Food Pyramid (3.15.09)

Reader Bob says, "I love what you're doing with the Arc of Salvation. I think we have a huge problem with the Arc remaining fossilized in geography though. As a technologist myself, I don't see how we survive what the non-Coons are about to do to us with our own coonkind's technology -- I do believe we all need to become Coons."

Another reader asked me what I thought about a book by an eminent physicist whose thesis is that time does not really exist. True, a number of reviewers felt the book was so boring that they thought it would never end, but endless time is not the same as timelessness.

Obviously this physicist has never heard of the Islamists, who are days away from the nuclear bomb but centuries from the nuclear age. That's a long time. In other words, it takes only one Islamist to disprove all of the quantum physicist's elegant theories about the non-existence of time. For time is not an empty and abstract category of mere duration, nor is it merely an illusory by-product of change. Rather, human time -- which is a distant echo and reflection of divine time -- is both full and directional.

Of all people, the scientist should be aware of the various developmental stages he had to have traversed in order to end up a scientist capable of detached, abstract cognition about the foundations of reality. A rock cannot do that. Nor an animal, a child, or a radical imam. The changes that occur on the way from child to man are not merely horizontal but vertical. As Ken Wilber has said, true development -- which is to say transcendence -- is not just a matter of rearranging the furniture on the floor of a building, but taking the elevator to the next floor.

Any materialist has failed the first test of spirituality -- or "temptation in the wilderness" -- which is to not try to turn stones into bread, or quantity into quality. For in so doing, the materialist inevitably reduces bread to stones, or life to death, spirit to matter. We are left with only stones, so there is "nothing left to eat," speaking metaphysically. And with nothing to eat, there is no way to grow. But if time is an illusion -- a mere "quantity" -- then growth cannot be real anyway. A man is just a large child.

Those of a materialistic bent like to say that religion is speculative, but in a very real sense, the opposite is true. When it comes to metaphysics -- the science of the absolute -- the scientist can only speculate, while the religiously informed person has access to a realm of perennial knowledge and truth that is as stable and secure as a rock, for it is the "axis of the Real." It reflects truths that cannot be untrue. For example, Paul's delineation of vertical levels of maturity along this vertical axis is a universal truth of spirituality: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Thus, at its very heart, Christianity is clearly both evolutionary and developmental. No Christian could ever maintain that "time is an illusion," for time is of the essence of Christian life -- again, not the abstract quantitative duration of the physicist, but the explicitly qualitative time that distinguishes the spiritual child from the spiritual adult in the arc of salvation.

Elsewhere in the same epistle Paul proposes a three part schema of spiritual development: infant, child and man. Each requires a different kind of "food." In 1 Corinthians 3:3, he implies that the infant, or "babe," is equivalent to the carnal man, an ironic reversal of secular hubris, in that carnal man is but a spiritual babe in the woods. The infant can only be fed milk rather than solid food (which is for the child) or meat ( which is for the adult). Thus, as one moves up the developmental axis of spirituality, we eventually graduate to meat -- not only meat, of course, but as a supplement to the other foods. To try to live only on meat would be somewhat analogous to trying to live only on vitamin pills, which are highly potent but not necessarily nourishing if taken out of context. Metaphysics without religion is like the vitamins without the food, which "activates" the vitamins, so to speak.

Needless to say, a Raccoon is not just mdesxcarnivorous, but omnivorous. If you check out the library of a typical Coon, the first thing you will notice is that they'll eat almost anything -- literature, poetry, science, psychology, philosophy, scripture, theology, mysticism, the Baseball Encyclopedia -- but not in an indiscriminate manner. Rather, they respect the "food pyramid," which obviously has a top and a bottom. You've seen the Raccoon food pyramid on the back of any dollar bill -- it has that little eye at the top, radiating light.

An eye radiating light? How does that work? I thought the eye only receives light. How can it radiate light?

Don't worry. We'll get to that.

Not infrequently we have visitors in the Cosmos who are infants or children, which is why they find me indigestible if not frankly nauseating. I'm trying to think of a delicate way to put this, but those of you with babies of your own are certainly accustomed to dealing with the full spectrum of bodily fluids. Let us just say that Dupree's unenviable job is to clean up the projectile vomit these babies leave behind here.

Paul says to his audience -- which by now numbers in the billions, including you -- that there was a time when he could not speak to you as an adult -- not as a spiritual person but only as a carnal one. Furthermore, he "fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still very carnal." Why is that? Because, "where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?"

Well? What say you?

When Paul refers to "divisions among you," he also means divisions within you -- which is to say, within oneself. For among other things, both the line of spiritual development and the arc of salvation are a function of increased integration -- which is to say wholeness, which is to say centration. If your eye [I] is single, then the whole body is full of radiant light; conversely, if it is divided, your I is full of darkness.

Full of darkness? Darkness does not actually exist in any positive sense. Rather, it is only the absence of light, a seemingly paradoxical fact, since the cosmos is made of light. So how can someone be "full" of "absence?" If it is the nature of light to radiate, how do we end up with all these non-radiating lacunae of darkness, both individually and collectively?

Before discussing how it happens, let us just stipulate that it only happens all the time. As a matter of fact, the human being is the only living thing that can be "filled with darkness." Light is knowledge just as love is its heat, which is why these individuals and cultures are filled with an absence of each -- which is to say envy and strife, just as Paul says.

For envy is both a cause and an effect of existential emptiness. It is truly "darkness visible," because it represents insatiable emptiness, exactly analogous to the black holes of quantum cosmology. The strife that accompanies these "hungry ghosts" is simply the "giant sucking sound" produced by their contact with the world. The perennial "class envy" of the left is simply the clattering noise produced by institutionalized darkness as it tries to pull down everything round it. This is why it is so indiscriminate and cannot just attack "wealth." Rather, you will have noticed that it also always pulls truth, beauty, and decency into its vortex -- the three "faces" of metaphysical light.

The black hole is an emptiness that pulls everything into it, including light, which becomes "inoperative" in its presence. The primordial property of light, like love, is to "radiate," and in fact, light is a property of radiation rather than vice versa. The envious, divided person is a black hole who will suck the light out of you to no purpose whatsoever-- no good purpose, anyway. The light simply disappears beyond the event horizon, into the darkness of their corrupted soul. Elsewhere in the cosmos, light radiates into darkness, but in the case of a black hole, light is surrounded and swallowed up.

Talk to the mullahs! Yes, why not? Why not talk to a black hole?

The U.N.? A black hole of darkness visible within the heart of light. If Turtle Bay were any closer to Washington D.C., perhaps the Shining City on A Hill would be pulled into the Valley of of the Shadow of Death. Understood metaphorically, this could actually happen, since it has already happened to most of the rest of the world, which has fallen into this night-cloaked principality ruled by the Cosmocrats of the Dark Aion.

Paul goes on to suggest that human beings may be the efficient or formal cause of their own evolution, but that the Creator is the final cause. In other words, you may cultivate the soil, plant the seeds, and water the garden -- in fact, it is your duty to do so -- but you are not responsible for the growth that results. Rather, as Paul says, "God gives the increase," which is another way of saying that we do not invent ourselves but become ourselves. We are God's "field" or "building," and the strength and resilience of your building will be tested by fire. If it is built on a foundation of reality it will endure, but otherwise it will be destroyed.

Again, time is not mere duration, but the time it takes for something to become what it is -- say, an acorn to become an oak tree or a milk-drinking infant to become an omnivorous Raccoon.

Now, a recent visitor suggested that I am "manichean" in my views. Manichaeism is a dualistic philosophy that divides the cosmos into good and evil in the manner of the Zoroastrians, who saw all of reality as a struggle between Ahriman, the god of darkness, and Ahura Mazda, the god of light.

I just checked out the wikipedia entry to brush up on my Manichaeism, which was an actual ancient religion. I believe the differences between it and the One True Doctrine are evident -- although there is probably every reason to believe that certain Manichean principles found their way into Judaism and therefore Christianity.

Manichaean theology postulates "two natures that existed from the beginning: light and darkness. The realm of light lived in peace, while the realm of darkness was in constant conflict with itself. The universe is the temporary result of an attack from the realm of darkness on the realm of light," so that the cosmos is literally said to be the result of a mixture of light and darkness. This is obviously quite different from the conception of the cosmos as the peripheral radiation of the central Sovereign Good.

In fact, "A key belief in Manichaeism is that there is no omnipotent good power. This claim addresses a theoretical part of the problem of evil by denying the infinite perfection of God and postulating the two equal and opposite powers mentioned previously. The human person is seen as a battleground for these powers: the good part is the soul (which is composed of light) and the bad part is the body (composed of dark earth). The soul defines the person and is incorruptible, but it is under the domination of a foreign power, which addressed the practical part of The Problem of Evil. Humans are said to be able to be saved from this power (matter) if they come to know who they are and identify themselves with their soul."

Here is a perfect example of what we were discussing yesterday, that is, the garbled interpretation of the Divine Message as a result of human impurity. For the truth is that existence is a battle between light and darkness, but with extremely important modifications. But at the moment, I am running short of time, so I suppose I'll have to continue this line of thought tomorrow, assuming anyone -- including me -- is interested. For now, just remember, Phase I: milk. Phase II: solid food. Phase III: meat.

Or, in the immortal words of Pink Floyd, How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

No comments yet?!

Well, as the first commentor (and I've been waiting - I really like to see what the other 'coons have to say before diving in; I grew up on a murky lake, and learned early that there was usually someone older and wiser than me who knew where the pointy branches and slimy weeds were hidden...)
I'd just like to say that reading these posts and then reading Meditations on the Tarot gives me a greatly improved understanding of both.

I'm finally on the fourth chapter (oddly enough, I've found that the male arcana thus far are easy for me to read - I already have a natural understanding of them, so to speak, while the female arcana have been much more difficult), and having just read this, courtesy of DL:

"Those of a materialistic bent like to say that religion is speculative, but in a very real sense, the opposite is true."

I then found this in Chapter IV (page 89, bottom of the second paragraph for those of you playing along):

"In fact, if you have a truth revealed from above, if the acceptance of this truth brings miracles of healing, peace and vivification with it, and if, lastly, it exlpains to you a thousand unexplained things - that are inexplicable without it - can you then consider it as an opinion among opinions?"

Indeed.

Off topic - typing out the word "opinion" makes the fingers dance in a fun way...

wv: ewsrkky
yes, I know I'm skrewy - what of it??

Anonymous said...

Wow, this dovetails with a book I'm reading right now:

The mind and heart of love, lion and unicorn;: A study in Eros and agape, by M.C. D'Arcy

Even the Manachean stuff. Thanks so much for clarifying your position on this, Dr. Bob.

One of the kits...

Anonymous said...

I think it is precisely this Manichean view that produces as a side effect in the idea of the 'evil' body and 'good' soul a hatred of physical life. It seems to do little good to acknowledge reality only to call it pure evil.

For instance, the physical darkness and physical light are not called good or evil when God creates light, but night and day. And when God is done? He says the creation is good. He doesn't say, "The light is good, but the animals and earth? Evil."

Also, Paul talks about the victory already being won (metaphorically and otherwise.) My issue with the Manichean idea is that you would really have to discard a lot, and I mean a lot of scripture to make it work.

But, it seems that Islam of the common variety and of the virulent strain are definitely infused with a certain level of Manichean-ism.

I mean, the 'house of war' and the 'house of peace/submission'?

As it was said of WWII, that the Teutons had to live out their mythology, it seems the Islamists may have to as well.

wv: fwdsfx (tires peeling out)

Anonymous said...

I got one of the lost sayings of Coonfucius in my fortune cookie last night:

~~ Coonfucius say man who don't ride elevator travels on camel in carnal caravan. ~~

Anonymous said...

Waiting at a stoplight this morning, I was struck by the light passing through a stand of winter trees. The bare fractal branches looked exactly upside down, like roots searching out the sky for nutrients. It was momentarily disorienting.

The symmetry of 'as above, so below' was clearly obvious. Below, the roots search out the nutrition hidden in decay and darkness while the power of the sun pulls it up through the cambium and transforms it into chlorophyll. Then in the magically green leaves, the spiritual transformation takes place, the alchemic conversion of darkness into lightness of being. Or that evil CO2 into oxygen.

One of those Annie Dillard moments.

It also reminded me that about 4 miles from here is an old estate in which the eccentric owner uprooted several very large oak trees and replanted them upside down. Until they finally rotted and fell over a few years back, it was a local landmark of the strange.

At a Christmas party I went to this year, the host had an upside-down Christmas tree. What's that all about anyway?

Maybe they're all right side up and I'm the one that's ass over teakettle.

ms. e: that's a fortune coonkie you got there.

:ivlak (hook me up, doc)

robinstarfish said...

little fish and loaves
as above so abover
seven baskets full

Anonymous said...

>>The black hole is an emptiness that pulls everything into it, including light, which becomes "inoperative" in its presence<<

The great astrologer/meta-philosopher Dane Rudyhar speculated that every individual has a particular star somewhere in the cosmos that is "theirs", that signifies and represents their existence, and that somehow figures in their ultimate destiny.

The existence of black holes - it's obvious what they symbolize, but do they actually serve a purpose in the manner of Rudyar's speculation?

Doing a little meta-speculating of my own: what if their ultimate purpose is to serve as prisons?

An aside - very quiet dream-like day today, a liminal day.

Anonymous said...

Will - you're right about the quietness. The comments today trickle in like molasses or honey, slow in coming but dense with flavor and sweetness.

A good day for taking pictures.

Anonymous said...

"stones into bread, or quantity into quality"

Brilliant. Solid food for sure.

Dr. Sanity today intimates how far we have fallen from Jesus' "If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust?"

Incidentally, I think the accusations of "Manichean" tend to come from "antinomians." That is, relativists who ask "who are you to identify anything as evil?!" Almost every heresy has its shadow heresy, and an accuser may have little more to expound than that (s)he prefers the opposite error.

And here's a piece of meat: "The Antichrist presents himself as pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist." Russian philosopher Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853-1900) via the preaching at the Pope's Lenten retreat.

NoMo said...

God is spirit and light. Spiritual darkness is the absence of God. The absence of God is not of His choosing. He did not create "original sin" - the spiritual black hole. Rather, perhaps it was / is / will be the embodiment of every turning away from His light, every act of separation, every embrace of the lie. Paul also wrote to the Corinthians regarding the gatekeeper of the black hole, "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

As Bob said, "For the truth is that existence is a battle between light and darkness, but with extremely important modifications." Can't wait to hear more...

Speaking of light, another one blinked on in our lives today with the birth of our 3rd grandchild, a girl. Gotta go.

Anonymous said...

Juliec - >>The comments today trickle in like molasses or honey, slow in coming but dense with flavor and sweetness<<

Or maybe like a slow, stately march of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade floats, Frosty, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, etc., all of them grandly bobbing back and forth in the wind.

w.v - justshutup

Anonymous said...

Wiil and Cosa and Julie I too have taken heightened notice of the atmosphere today. If Charles Dickens were in Texas today he would write "It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold; when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."

Which got me to thinking about Will wondering about the ultimate purpose of black holes. For me, prisons represent a place where life-gone-bad is not usually healed and transformed and like black holes "is an emptiness that pulls everything into it, including light, which becomes "inoperative" in its presence.

I'd like to think black holes are perhaps a space in which negative energy is held dormant, until enough light is sucked in that allows a transformation to take place.

Anyway, I'd like to see prison systems but that concept into practice.

Anonymous said...

61 replies yesterday. Just 12 so far today?
Perhaps there is something else going on. Even Dr Bob seemed to be in a rush. Shockwaves of something else?

For me? I went to a funeral today. I haven’t been a regular Churchgoer since grammar school. And like so many the occasionally mass and funeral… Since my recent fork in the road the experience was quite different than any time before.

This ceremony in the past was always just sadness. The ceremony itself. The words were the same words. But this time a message came through. Today it was so hopeful. ‘Things lost would once again be found’, the Priest said. This truth I would see repeats on for infinity.

A watched a distant relative of the man that died. I hadn’t since this man in nearly 20 years. He has 4 young sons now. At the end of the service, they walked in a line out the Church with him at the head of the line.

What first struck me was how their physical height decreased in a straight line, a decline, behind him. They all looked like miniature versions of him. I smiled. As I looked back in the line it was like a time machine traveling back to when I saw the father last. As I looked forward in the line it became an incline back to the father. Just like Bob’s post today.

Something had changed. But the change was in me. God hadn’t changed and the message was there all along. This truth repeats on for infinity.

I get the feeling something larger happened today. To not only me and the rest of us at the funeral, but maybe something else happed to us here today too. Through the thing that connects all of us. I may just be projecting outward what happened inward. Perhaps. But I see now many truths repeat on for infinity.

Anonymous said...

Was wondering today about the Arc of Salvation. Both Phase I and II were followed by a ‘book’. Do you think we have a new ‘book’ on the way for the 3rd Phase?

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Nomo!

And I my brother had a new spark of his own recently. My brother the atheist (that’s right) said to me last night, out of the blue, that he’s been thinking about religion lately. I hadn’t talked to him in a few weeks so apparently he met this fork in the road around the same time I did, and each without knowing of the other, ended up on the same path.

So not as squeezable a spark as yours today :-) …but a spark.

Anonymous said...

The problem with socialism and all the other forms of collectivism is a problem of historical context.

Collectivism is a premature and forced eruption into a historical time that is not yet ready to bear it.

We are in Phase II of the Arc. Perhaps we are transitioning into Phase III. Either way, we're still pretty far from the end-game.

True Universal Cooperativism, as opposed to Collectivism, will have its place in the future. Maybe not in our lifetimes. But its day will come.

Socialism and Collectivism today are imposed from a top-down Pseudo-Authority.

But True Cooperativism will be built from the ground up by communities of individuals devoted to repairing themselves and repairing the world, while living out God's will from their own personal perspectives.

True Cooperativism must start with the individual and it cannot be imposed. It must be freely chosen and authentically lived.

True Cooperativism will build on the foundation of free markets, property rights and individual liberty. It will not seek to detroy these precious gifts we received from Phase II.

But Phase III will be different. An unprecendented level of COMMUNEism (not communism) will arise. Freedom and cooperation for the grace of God alone -

that God's will might finally be done in men after so many years of toil and sin and pain.

That man might finally recognize himself as the mirror image of his creator, living his life in harmony with his Realization.

Chapter III is the perfect denoument to this monumental chapter in the Story of Life.

True Cooperation, Freedom and Equality will arise, as opposed to the forced degradation of socialism.

As our wealth and knowlege and decency grow, we will find a way to abide in the paradise within. And this will be reflected throughout all of the Earth without.

This is the only end that could be. For God will reign in eternal Glory here on Earth.

Given the nature of God, it could not end otherwise.

Therefore, Phase III is avout building a dwelling internally and externally for God here on Earth.

Not by forcing it, but by opening ourselves to His Will. He shall transform the herebelow into His paradise, just as he will transfigure each and every one of us.

This is why I don't worry too much about bad shit in the world or in my life. Because it all has to work out. God, after all, is God.

The salvation of my soul and the Redemption of the world is a given. And I merely to watch, and engage the theodrama as it unfolds in the fullness of time.

This is why as much as I hate the evil propogated by socialists, I understand their drive.

They can usually intuit the glory that will come to pass in the end of times. They fall in love with the vision.

And they try to rush it. They try to hasten the gradual unfolding of God's Will by imposing their own will.

And of course, the consequences are monsterously evil.

But cooperativism in itself is beautiful when it manifests as the natural outpouring of the Phase III preparation of the World.

Again to sum up:

Phase I: Preparation of Mankind or Communal Salvation

Phase II: Preparation of the Individual or Internal/Soul Salvation

Phase III: Preparation of the External World or the Redemption of the Primordial Split.

So in Phase III, not only are we being redeemed (Salvation through Christ ) but the entire cosmos itself will be Healed (Tikkun Olam).

I pray that I can bear my role.

Anonymous said...

I think I must be getting some kind of message from above. My mind keeps running over those lines from the gospels... "Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ (For after all these things the Gentiles seek.) For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
i'm not certain what it means, but I have at least a hint as to why I'm getting it.

Anonymous said...

Quiet today. Did I somehow miss the
Rapture?

I hope everybody's OK.

-Another Bob

Van Harvey said...

“61 replies yesterday. Just 12 so far today?
Might have something to do with Tornado's... bit of a blustery day here in fly-over country.”

Speaking of black holes, here's Milton’s description of the fallen angels newly arived in Hell. Try reading this description as being less of the devils surroundings, than of what he really focuses his attention on to the exclusion of all else, his withdrawn self, separate from, regarding it exclusively even there, as above all else, the attempt to hold his own desires ("...dungeon horrible, on all sides round") above the Beautiful, the Good and the True:

"....But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.

At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.

Such place Eternal Justice has prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set,
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to th' utmost pole.”

A black hole indeed. Is it a punishment? I don't think so, more a result, a self imposed result of seeking disintegration from the One. Sealed apart from the reach of light, the key to the exit in the one place it will never be reached for - within its very center. It only requires that he seek integration with the wider truth... just one seeking glimmer of self generated light, but it will never come. C.S. Lewis illustrated this well in "The Great Divorce", the infinite smallness, the self imposed separateness of parasitical self involvement. A black hole in Truth.

Congratulations NoMo, a good day to be born (My Wife’s B-Day today)!
(Having a devil of a time getting wordverif to show, just gives the token image, not letters - finally rebooted)

Van Harvey said...

"an eminent physicist whose thesis is that time does not really exist"

I can't remember the quote clearly, or who made it, but something to the effect of "There is no idiocy an Intellectual won't believe as long it's dressed up in an alluring theory" (If it wasn't quite to that effect... it should have been)[yeah, go ahead and slap me].

One wonders if his publisher mentioned anything about deadlines or effective dates in their contract.

NoMo said...

tiny beauty she
simplicity angelic
senses awaken

Van Harvey said...

"For envy is both a cause and an effect of existential emptiness. It is truly "darkness visible," because it represents insatiable emptiness, exactly analogous to the black holes of quantum cosmology."

So true. The root always seems to be in seeking the unearned, seeking to pretend that what isn't - is, seeking to assert that things aren't what they are so that you can pretend to more than you are.

It is that first step that puts you against reality, at war with the Beautiful, the Good and the True - it is what starts dis-integrating you from all that IS.

Also doing a little meta-speculating of my own here, it seems to me that just as there are two types of blackness in space - that of empty space and that of the black hole; there are two states of darkness of the soul as well. As the mere emptiness of space is seen as black, the state of those who have either 'accidentally', or through false beliefs, missed making key integrations that are essential for sparking the light of Truth, their soul would be one of blackness, but an empty blackness.

On the other hand there is the dense black substance of the Black Hole, those who purposefully disintegrate, tear apart and push away the light giving connections of Truth. These are the souls who flatten and compact themselves, who squeeze the light out of themselves, and enviously seek to suck the light from others - not to gain it for themselves, but to destroy it and deprive others of it.

This to me would mark out the difference between the incidentally bad person, and that of the truly malevolent and evil soul.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Nomo!

Anonymous said...

What a day...birth, death, rebirth, waves of light, black holes, wild weather.

And a parade. Freakin' awesome.

Way to go there NoMo on #3; about time a girl climbed into the family tree. :-)

Lisa said...

Congrats Nomo! What a blessing...

Just got this fortune from a cookie last week:

Confucious say: He who has hope, has everything.
Peking Noodle Co.

Anonymous said...

I'm certainly no prophet, but I had a crystal clear revelation in my dreams last evening and I feel compelled to share it.



The Story of the Universe:

Chapter 1: In the Beginning, Bang

Chapter 2: The Coalescence of Matter and Energy

Chapter 3: The Story of the Milky Way

Chapter 4: The Story of Earth

Chapter 5: The Story of Life

Chapter 6: The Story of Higher Life

Chapter 7: The Story of Horizontal Man

Chapter 8: The Cro-Magnon Revolution

Chapter 9: The Jewish Enlightenment

Chapter 10: The Vertical Salvation of Christ

Chapter 11: The Redemption of the World of Form

Chapter 12: The Reign of God

"Nation shall not lift up sword against nation and all men, both great and small, shall know the Lord."

You will notice that each Chapter is a concentric story within an ongoing Meta-story.

And the Chapters are getting ever-shorter over time.

The Story of the Universe is wrapping itself up at an exponential rate of acceleration.

But The End of Days is not the end of time. It is the end of purely horizontal time.

The Escahton is near, but it will not bring an end to the world as some would have you believe. It will bring an end to the purely horizontal world.

The Cosmos will go on. But it will be transfigured. And it will be redeemed.

And the magnitude of what comes next will be nothing like that which has already been.

A page-break in history is coming. An asymptotal curve that few can see beyond.

And it will be glorious.

Theme Song

Theme Song