That Which is Fact and That Which is Fiction

It’s easy to believe that touching a blue spot on paper each morning can put one in protective custody for the rest of the day. And that a bowl of oranges on the table can provoke congeniality within a household. Or metal bracelets can relieve physical distress, or potions of the most unlikely mixes of raw ingredients can relieve pain. Or practicing mental stretches of thought can provoke a life of wealth and success, and vitamin supplements of unknown origin can extend earth life, and a dab of frog-sweat on the epidermis can cure skin disorders.

Yet, in this mix of unscientific and trumped-up unproved convictions, why can’t we wrap our silly heads around a belief in a loving and supreme creator though it seems to me, in light of these other convictions, it should be easier than easy.

But of course one has to understand that if our magical and mystical potions do not work, there are good and valid reasons. Most obvious is probably because our biological make-up is too alkaline or too acidic. Other easily understood reasons – the blue spot is too dusty, or the metal bracelet was too close to an electronic device that drained its power. Or the potion was contaminated with a metal spoon, or our mental stretches were too fragile, or the frog sweat was collected prior to sunset, etc.

But really, there’s no problem when these things fail. It is easy to accept that such therapies waver in heat, and cold, and light, and temperature. And of course, it is understandable, as well, that these are therapies that only work for some of the people some of the time.

Still, let me remind you, that these are convictions about potions and rituals that are regularly and forever collaborated in a reasonable way by others in the group who have been cured and cleansed of a depressed mind and ill-health by following the prescribed regimen with dedicated resolution. And furthermore, small moments of doubt, of faltering disbelief, are usually not long-lived. Not with a common sense approach that sets a proper context for standards. When these remedies fail, so what?

It is undoubtedly our own fault. We obviously erred in the application.

On the other hand, when it comes to the God-thing, we are intellectual and reasoning realists. In light of that, we are totally unable to accept a fairy-tale God without solid proof. Since the Big Bang Theory, drop it. There is no collaboration in the God-thing provided by trees, breezes, flowers, and sunsets.

And of course, if there is a God, he/she is unquestionably obligated to benefit our being ALL of the time – with unsurpassable perfection and profuse blessings. We can’t have none of the wavering that accompanies our other collection of deeply embedded and ever expanding convictions.

What excellence in critical minds, rational minds, thoughtful minds—like ours, that have sufficient wisdom to so wisely filter out that which is fact and that which is fiction.

Soya Sauce in Your Coffee?

No big trauma in today’s events, but still enough going on to inspire a lengthy rant. Now to start with, I poured myself a cup of coffee this morning and reached into the fridge for a dab of cream. And in the act of doing so, there was a slight time delay before sight synapsed with brain, and when it did, I realized I added soy sauce, rather than cream, to my coffee.

But then I think, ‘This is probably how the more creative recipes are made. Furthermore, the bargain coffee I bought needs help and this might just be the help it needs’.
So then I add a dab of cream as well, and take a sip.

Nah. Not for me. Obviously that is not the help this coffee needs.

So I pour a fresh cup, add cream this time, (no soy sauce), and pull out my laptop. And away we go with an inspiring rant. It was about baking and Christmas presents. How I oft give home-baked presents with hesitation, only to find, to my surprise, that receivers of such gifts are truly delighted. And in the writing of that rant, I am inspired to want to give a gift of sweet ‘dainties’ to blogging friends.

So I think about the easiest (and most delightful) thing I have ever made. And then I recall, by some miracle, a recipe I jotted down in a notebook that I have had for more than 30 years. The book isn’t even shelved with other recipe books. It is in a small plastic bag against the back wall of the canister cupboard. There is no sticky stuff on it, no gritty flour, no curled pages. Because, except for the few times I wrote in it, I never use it.

And in that forgotten little book, I find the recipe I want. I still remember the few times I made those crunchy little snacks so many years ago. I remember how delicious they were. Like honey sesame-seed bars, but even better. Made so simply with nothing more than graham wafers, butter, brown sugar, and sliced almonds.

Could I hope to find a more perfect ‘daintie’ for my blogger friends? With only 4 ingredients, 5 minutes to arrange, and 8 minutes to cook. That’s as good as if I made it, packaged it, and sent it ready-made to each one of you. So now I am excited. This little recipe will be my special gift to you.

(Men, stay with me. This blog is not only about cooking.)
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Now because the recipe is so old, and because I have not made these ‘dainties’ for eons, I decide to buy some graham wafers and make a test batch so I can be sure that if you try them, you will not be disappointed.

Now I haven’t bought graham wafers for 10 or 15 years either, but while in the grocery store, I grab a box. Turn it over, and oh horror, guess what I see? There on the box, big as life, is the very recipe I wrote this morning in my special blog for all of you. The nerve!

Then—while still in town, Hub and I go to the Hardware to buy some stove pipe for a wood burner. In the outside yard, with other hardware, we see some stove pipe. So we go to that part of the yard. We find the elbows in a large box and the pipe telescoped together nearby. We pick out what we need and go to the cashier.

The clerk cannot find the price code and neither can her Supervisor. So Hub takes the Supervisor back to the box where we made our selection. He laughs. Tells us that no one could ever criticize us for not independently looking (without assistance) for what we need. Turns out that the pipe and elbows in our cart are materials that are not for sale. They belong to a work-crew repairing the store heating system! There is stovepipe in another section of the store but only the not-for-sale-pipe was the size we needed.

I tell you this and the coffee story, to affirm that I am a separate-thinking individual. But despite the expanse of this separation, going back to the incident of the old recipe I wanted to post, here is a prime example of a definite plexus of my mind, with other minds, like-thinking as it were, despite the uniqueness of my thinking in the coffee story and the stovepipe story.
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Now you’re going to be sorry you read this because then I start to think.

How do unique minds (as unique as illustrated above) collide the way they do? I am a unique individual. No one was nurtured in the self-same environment, handed the same lessons, or coaxed along the same path, except my siblings. And even they don’t think like I do in many respects.

But yet this colliding of my mind with others, with different backgrounds, differing values and environments – happens way too often to be brushed off as coincidence. I cannot even guess how many times I have written a blog on an out-of-the-ordinary theme only to find on that self-same day there were three more blogs written by other bloggers on the exact same theme.

But that’s not all. I think things, develop and explore them in my mind, then off to bed, grab a book, and there you go. Now I find myself reading about the very thing that I was thinking. It happened again. Last night, as a matter of fact.

I love old books, the older the better. But still in 18th century books, of old England, old Rome, old Italy, and early America and the Wild West, I find expressions of thoughts colliding with my own.

I went to bed thinking about dreaded trips to town for Christmas shopping. And thinking about the guilt I feel because of my love of seclusion. And thinking how ‘not normal’ others make me feel about it. And so, to ease an anxious mind that wants to be left alone, and given solitary space, I randomly pick a book the way I picked soya sauce from the fridge, and this is what I read –

“How calm and quiet a delight
Is it, alone
To read and meditate and write,
By none offended, and offending none [noon]!
To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one’s own ease;
And, pleasing a man’s self, none other to displease.”
(and farther down the page…)

…Lord! Would men let me alone,
What an over-happy one
Should I think myself to be, –
Might I in this desert place,
(Which most men in discourse disgrace,)
Live but undisturbed and free!..”

“Retirement” by Charles Cotton (Apr 1630-Feb 1687)

I assume, in reading this, that the bracketed comment referrences a prominent social belief as far back as the 1600’s that those who love solitude are not normal. So here we go, again. How does this happen? How do these thoughts from another time, another world, another space, (i.e. the 1600’s) manage to collide and duplicate social conventions of the 21st century and at the same time, convictions of my own?
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So now I have a new theory.

I have always based my God-belief on the unequivocal determination that all the wonders of nature show the hand of a superior being. But maybe, that is not what was intended to give or offer validation of a creator-god existence.

Maybe the spiritualism of mankind stems from all the like-minded thinking that goes on that would never have become apparent without the connectivity of very old books and more recently, The Web.

Archaeologists made us a wee bit suspicious when they first determined that all tribes believed in an afterlife – even the earliest humans that they have been able to investigate. Proof being in the manner in which the dead were buried with cooking pots and hunting tools or other paraphernalia that served crucial purposes in their daily lives.

And so we assumed, that like us, it was nature’s displays of life and death and rebirth that convinced early man of sun-gods, moon-gods, and an after life. But maybe, that is not what it was. Maybe it was colliding thoughts. The thoughts of uniquely different individuals, colliding over geographical distance, ethnic distance, astrological distance, from the Cambrian period right down, or conversely, through the ages to present time?

And then I think about the Bermuda Triangle. It’s not that I necessarily believe all that has been reported about it, but it is the only thing I can think of that resembles the theory I am discussing here. The only reference I can use to spare you from another 30 – 40 pages.

How inexplicable the history of planes and ships that have disappeared there. How remarkable the theories put forth about warps of time, space, speed, and magnetic fields. And the assumptions that in this triangular area one inadvertently slips into another dimension of life – another plane of reality. And a place of disorientation of thought that could easily lead one to add soy sauce to their coffee. And then I wonder if perhaps this skewed environment might be part of the same skewed current that magnetizes thoughts so that they collide across vast distances of time and space.

It is unfortunate that pride in our intelligence makes it necessary for us to rationalize every conviction through our five senses, and anything outside of that ‘box’ is dismissed as fanciful or imaginary. I say that, because maybe thought collisions are a space > (greater than) or = (equal to) the Bermuda triangle.

Maybe it is not patterns of nature, but thought collisions existing somewhere in another plane that causes, each and all of us, to endlessly question, since the beginning of time, why we are here and what life is about. And maybe the answers are forever elusive because we refuse—adamantly refuse—to explore any space that we are convinced is pure fancy, and therefore, for the sake of ‘intelligence’, must be avoided.

Ultimately, maybe all mysteries are resolved somewhere in the current of the garbled global and timeless transmissions of the subconscious that make thoughts collide. We will never know if we don’t investigate such a notion.

So now, that’s it for today. Soya sauce in your coffee, anyone?

Articles of Faith - Part 2 (conclusion)

2. The Fools of 'Dingley-Dell'

So this is my catechism and at times it is suffocating. Despite the oppression of it, in my youth, I posted pictures on every inch of the bare boards of my attic-bedroom walls. Pictures of spiral staircases, lovely brick houses surrounded by paradise gardens, furniture and home accents of color and unsurpassed beauty, and divinely tall and fair looking ladies in long flowing gowns of lace. All of which were representative of me, my hopes, and my dreams.

Of course, the conflict in all this is that the love of money, thought of money, aspiration for money, all form still another context of sin.

As I’ve already said I must mimic my mother’s simplicity for my own redemption and to be as certain as she was of her paradise, money must have no context in my life. Mother never carried money (except that small bit on a Sunday that my Dad gave her for the collection plate). She spent no money, or asked for no money. All because she was so solidly convinced that it was a sinful act to participate in the dispensation or gathering of money. When money was offered to her, she turned her back and curtly stated, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and onto God the things that are God’s.”

And so, my dad made the money and spent the money. He bought the groceries and household needs without input or communication with her as to cost or deferred payments. And it was only when my father walked past the clothesline on his way to the biffy, and saw a ratty display of mother’s underclothes, that he would finally purchase a few new under-things for her to wear, or a swatch of cloth to make a new dress.

And now the foregoing contemplations remind me of another curious ritual. I don’t know whose benefit it was for. Maybe it was just because of my mother’s strong disdain for money. But when my Dad opened his wallet he turned his back and moved into a corner of the room. I have never seen hell, I have never seen heaven, and the other thing, as I child, I never saw, was the inside of my father’s wallet.

And so I have grown up with an underlying current deep within my psyche that money matters are disgusting. That money is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. Couple that with the curse of my forbears, and I guess I’m as forever lost as someone who was stupid enough, foolish enough to wash sand from a stone three times.

If ‘evil thought’ equals ‘evil deed’, I am up there with the most extreme villains of all time. Particularly when I watch CNN and the never-ending-story over money matters. I’m left wondering if it is just me. Maybe I’m the dumb one. Maybe articles of faith are supposed to include money matters. Maybe life is not about purity of thought and deed. Maybe it is about playing the game of Monopoly and playing it well.

And then I watch the closing bell at the stock exchange and see that silly-looking group of the rich and famous from ‘Dingley-Dell’ decked out in their finest, standing behind a railing on a raised dais. Someone rings a stupid bell and then I observe them clapping their hands like ‘a bunch of brain-dead stupid fools’ – whether the market is up or down or stable.

I gaze in dismay, thinking impure thoughts of disgust and wondering what their catechism or articles of faith are, or if they have any.

[Acknowledgement: ‘Dingley-Dell’ is a name borrowed from Charles Dickenson’s novel “The Pickwick Papers”.]

Articles of Faith - Part I

1. Sins of Thought

When I was a child, no one ever asked, but if they had, this was my catechism. And these were the articles of my faith.

“I believe in God. And I believe in heaven and the certainty that it is the reward for the pure of mind, and hell – a deep pit of everlasting brimstone that is as certainly the reward of sinners.”

But the catch for me was that sin goes beyond evil deeds. It is also the mental act of impure thoughts. That blows my mind cause I can stay my hand when tempted to steal, or hold my tongue when tempted to lie, but it is impossible for me to avoid the equally vile sins of thought.

As a child, from little more than tiny seeds of resentment of expectations placed upon me, a forest grew of anger and annoyance and thoughts of bitter revenge. And likewise tiny spores of dissatisfaction with the poverty and want of my circumstance, grew like a flourishing field in light soil enriched with pig manure.

And so, it was hard for me to accept responsibility for the thoughts I entertained in my head of envy or distasteful judgment of other human beings. I knew it placed me in danger of burning brimstone, but though I could stay my hand from committing sins of the body, I could not stay my mind from mental digressions. Scenes and scripts in my mind fell so solidly outside of my control, that I was compelled to think my mind was oft under the control of a spirit other than my own.

So the pit of brimstone couldn’t be ignored with evil pictures unfolding in my mind for which I had little means of prevention. I feared the nasties that played endlessly like the music of a looping MP3-Player. Enough to wonder if perhaps I carried a curse that had descended from one evil individual within the root system of my family tree that would make my mind forever and always think impure thoughts of evil, envy, and disdain.

My father once told me that the most damnable act one could ever do was to wash a stone three times in a stream and each time repeat, “I wish to be as free of God as this stone is from sand.” And after the third time, there would be no turning back. That life would remain lonely, solitary, and godless.

I had never done it, never contemplated it. But had someone somewhere in my genealogical history done it. Is that why my father knew that and told me that?

So maybe this was the original curse, and maybe that curse is what prompts evil thoughts of hateful disdain for those who belittle things about me. Things over which I have no control – the eats in my lunch pail, my clothes, my shoes, my home, my family, my mother’s plain and unfashionable dress, or the culture of religious beliefs that rule my home.

But I digress when I want to get back to my articles of faith. To continue…

“I believe also that I can only save my soul from eternal damnation by mimicking my mother’s attitude of sparseness, humility, and self-denial.”

Like her, I need to deny the charm of riches, vanity, and worldly pleasures. Like her, I need to form alliances with lonely social misfits (without consideration how such alliances will damage my own status), and though I have a scarcity of luxuries, the few I have, I must willingly share with those who have less.

I do what I must but there is no denying it. I still miss the beloved doll I gave, at my family’s suggestion, to the little girl who had none. I gave Dolly away but, in truth, I still feel more remorse than beatitude for that so-called generous act. And extreme guilt not only about the misplaced loyalty Dolly had in my love and care but also, sadness for my other doll, Lulabell, and her separation from a dearly beloved sister.

NEXT POST: Conclusion - The Fools of Dingley-Dell

A Call to Worship

I fall to my knees.

Drawn not by fear, or need, or any force of conviction – simply drawn by an intangible magnetism. A slight tug on all my limbs like a minute increase in gravity that urges me to kneel and prostrate myself and bow my head.

And when I do, a brilliant light peeks through clouds of darkness and spreads a burnished and visionary carpet around me of green gilded with gold. I remain with head bowed, sensing that the light is too blinding, too bright to look in the face of.

I grope at the earth, the soil of time – as old as creation, itself. I dig my bare hands into the ground. I seek deliverance like a frantic soul rocked by an earthquake. Hoping I will find reprieve—through penance. Repentance through covering myself with dirt, clay, and the rotting fecal material of cattle rather than sackcloth and ashes.

I do the thing I am only gently compelled to do, yet too weak to turn from. Despite the manure embedding itself under my fingernails, and sharp blades of grass cutting my hands, and slow-bruising stones pressing into my legs, I remain kneeling and frantically groping at the gritty soil.

And then from nowhere a breeze comes rippling, rippling, and suddenly and unexpectedly tosses my hair into an upward sweep. It strokes me with a warm gentle softness around my ears, forehead, and brows giving me the same ease and shivering-delight of a child when a soft brush is swept against his downy head.

Another, almost imperceptible, waft of magical air presses and holds me firm in sacred-worship-form. Worship of earth and day and light and life. And that same current of air makes indiscernible my physical discomfort.

I slip into another dimension. I am now only aware that I am among the resurrected. In awe and wonder I examine the tender and refreshing aspect of those recalled from their tombs.

I expected it. After all, this is my faith. So that being the case, why am I so filled with wonder at this trans-reversal? I guess because I had lost so much confidence in the faith. I was so filled with doubt. Doubt that resurrection can not come when death had been too long a sleep. That is part of my doubt but the other part of my doubt-blame falls on those who insist God’s voice is audible. What nonsense? Spirits have no physical voice-box. They are soundless. All that is spoken by God is spoken through forces and processes of nature.

But despite that analysis, my doubt is forceful. After all, these were cadavers trapped in the grasp of the terminator’s bitter cold and ice, and mold and decay for what had seemed to me, a never-ending season.

But here, in the garden, doubt flies like a helium balloon unanchored. Here I find the truth of the message of resurrection. And the marvel of it renews me, the light renews me, new life renews me, the breeze renews me. And so, deep within my soul, I too, am resurrected and reborn. Faith in resurrection is reaffirmed.

And so the unscheduled call to worship concludes. More than two hours have zipped by. Prayers are finished and I arise. An erect stance comes slowly as the separate vertebrae in my back slowly unlock one link at a time.

But that cursed perennial garden is cleansed, the dirt is fluffed, the weeds discarded. And as I make a pilgrimage back to house and home, with legs bruised, fingernails torn and hands chapped and dry, I wipe stomata from my brow. Bleeds of purged disillusionment and doubt.

As I withdraw, I smell the soot and charcoal stench of the damned. The stove is still on and supper is burning.

Sex & Immortality

One of the blessings of life is that every week some new discovery makes its way into my consciousness. And when that happens, my imagination kicks in, and pretty soon I have a whole new philosophy to contend with. Now if I thought I saw a UFO land in my potato patch, I wouldn’t tell you. That would be just too irrational. But if I conceptualize theories from undeniable facts, especially theories that relate to the meaning of life (which no one knows for certain anyhow), then I am anxious to share those suppositions.

Now before I begin I must tell you that I see no conflict between ‘Biblical creation’ and ‘evolutionary’ creation. They fit as nicely together as two lovers in the spoon position.

After all when we read the story of the Biblical creation you will find it does not say that God mixed and molded any substance into fish and fowl. What it does say is that God commanded the waters (with their first tiny evolutionary microbes and stardust sprinkles from God’s hand) to ‘bring forth’ and ‘bring forth’ may well mean in an evolutionary way, fish and fowl. (Gen 1:20).

And then, from that he commanded ‘the earth to bring forth’ cattle and beasts (more evolution) (Gen 1:24). And so I reason that there is no conflict between creationism and evolution. There is nothing in the Bible that conflicts with evolution. Those references I have just cited validate that the earliest microbes evolved and adapted as evolution claims. And likewise, there is nothing to debate about how early man, if ape-like, could be in the image of God? Although God made earliest man in the image of God, nobody is using their head if they think this refers to man’s physical form. God has no image. God is a spirit and spirits have no physical design. The image of God that early man was given was not a domed forehead, smooth skin and an erect physical form. What he was given was an imprint of spiritual consciousness. Within that first more-man-like than ape-like creature, God deliberately caused a mutation of an embryonic consciousness, will, and intuition, that could evolve as freely as physical form did from the earliest form of a hairy ape-creature loping on four limbs to an erect creature capable of artful hunting, harvesting, and pondering. So where is the conflict between creationism and evolution?

That is the basis of my convictions and now we can move on to today’s discussion.

__________

This week I have been reading “Human Destiny” by Lecomte du Nouy. And in this book, while reading about evolutionary theories, I was totally astonished to discover that species of asexual reproduction are immortal. Do you realize what that means? That there were and still are species on this earth that are immortal. Here Lecomte du Nouy explains:

“Asexual cells do not know death as individuals. They are immortal. (but) All of a sudden, with sexual generation we see the appearance of an entirely new and unforeseen cyclical phenomenon: the birth and death of the individual.”

Elsewhere he says:

“They (asexual species) never die, except accidentally. They go on untiringly doubling their number according to their specific rhythm, so that if it were not checked by a more general or dominant phenomenon, they would soon smother the earth under their mass.”

That bit of information got me thinking about Adam and Eve and creation. The way the story goes is that the Garden of Eden was a perfect paradise where Adam and Eve would live forever. Living forever???…that means immortality. So now I’m thinking, if they initially possessed immortality prior to their disobedience, they must have been created as an asexual species.

Hey, that makes sense when I consider the evolution of the first woman, Eve. The Bible says she was made from Adam’s rib. Isn’t that how asexual reproduction works? But unfortunately in this fission, separation, rebirth, or whatever you call asexual reproduction, a slight mutation took place. But we know mutations can happen. The all-knowing Darwin told us so. The mutation was that Eve ended up with a genitalia mutation. And so, although clones of each other, one was man and the other woman. And meanwhile, the asexual Adam, in reasonable time easily regenerated a new rib because that is what asexual creatures do.

But now, comes the distress concerning the apple. What was in that apple they ate? Or perhaps I should be asking, “What happened at the Apple Feast that made them cover their private parts with leaves when God came back to walk with them in the garden?”

Maybe it isn’t recorded, but maybe there was another command to do with their immortality and their initial existence as asexual creatures. Asexual species have no rational reason to engage in physical sex, particularly since the act cancels immortality. So what was God really saying when he warned them with this command (Gen 2:16-17) “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt SURELY DIE.”

So I have to ask was God really saying, “No eating of the fruit of that tree and no engaging in physical sex.” It is intriguing to me that prior to this warning, Adam and Eve felt no shame in their nakedness but after their disobedience with the apple, they felt so guilty, that their nakedness disturbed them and they sought to hide themselves. Apples have nothing to do with nakedness but sex certainly does, so maybe while they were alone in the garden, the two of them did more than eat the forbidden fruit.

And so, when God returned to the garden they were ashamed and felt a need to cover their nakedness. That only makes sense to me if they were romping in the bushes. And then God probably said, “You are asexual and thus immortal and that is why in good faith I told you there could be no physical sex. Now look what you’ve done. Disobeyed and because of that disobedience you have lost your immortality.”

And then, God expressly said to Eve, the seductress, something that is totally understandable in the light of all that I have just told you.

(Gen 3:16) “Unto the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shall bring forth children (no longer with the ease of asexual reproduction); and thy desire shall be to thy husband (physical sexual lust), and he shall rule over thee.’

And obviously, under such circumstances he felt it necessary to inform Adam he was no longer immortal. So unto Adam he said, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Gen 3:19).

So there you go. No more immortality for man. I knew it all along that there was much more to this story than I originally extracted from it, and if you think these theories are nonsense, maybe go read it for yourself.
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Solving the Matter of Creation

“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31

Read that sentence again. Doesn’t it sound like the creator was just a bit surprised? And I think he was. And that is what I want to talk about today.

First I have to tell you that my head is no good at complex theories. So to set the context of a simplified approach, allow me to digress for just one moment.

A few years ago I was literally floundering in a university-level course on Administration. The assignment – to discuss the role of an Administrator. But where to start? It was so impossible to extract anything meaningful from my workplace environment. Too much stuff to sift through. So finally in desperation I turned my study to the limited details of running my own home. Here I found great examples of administration and resource management. Then, surprisingly, within those very simple limitations, I fleshed out a grand essay about Corporate Jungle Administration. Despite the difference in the size and arena, the application was still there. But simplifying the problem allowed me to back away from the forest enough to see the trees.

So I backed away from Administration in order to see how an Administrator works. And now I want to back away from Creation enough to see how the Creator works.

So first of all, can we simplify the definition of creation? When brought to its lowest common denominator it is a conversion of an inanimate thing into an animate thing. So when I think about it that way, the big question is not the one we have so long puzzled over. “Is there a God? Is there a creator?” But rather, “Could Creation, as we know it, happen without a Creator?”

And that is the question that came to mind while watching Hub creating his newest batch of rhubarb wine. It struck me, that here, for me to observe, was a simplified version of creation. So now I need to assess from this observation whether this creation is the work of a Creator or nothing more than a coincidental reaction of natural forces?

And so I watched as Hub took inanimate matter (rhubarb, sugar, water, etc), and put it in a big pail and stored it in a warm place. Without interference on his part the mix fermented. And then after a space of time, Hub drained and clarified the brew. We tasted it and, to the Creator’s surprise, “Behold, it was very good!” But yet, it was a creation that was not all hands-on. Some of what occurred happened without any direct influence by him. Yet, without him, all that happened would not have happened. So he is the Creator.

Now my mother, on the other hand, made wine through the process of the ‘Big Bang Theory’. She canned fruit, often using recycled lids. And so some of that fruit became wine though that is not what it was meant to be. And “Behold, it was very good!” In this instance the Creator was both surprised and dismayed. But just because it was not her intent to make wine, does that mean she was not the creator of that wine? In the final analysis it wouldn’t have happened without her. So yes, she was the Creator. So even the ‘Big Bang Theory’ has a creator.

So now Hub, as a Creator, and my mother, as a Creator, cannot be dismissed because without their effort and involvement, there would be neither rhubarb wine or fruit wine. Yet in each of these processes things happened without their interference that were spontaneous reactions. And that spontaneous reaction thing, that thing that happened without their interference, does not mean that they are removed from the process. Or that creator-involvement can be denied.

No matter how much evolution, time, or space occurred in the beginning of Planet Earth, is not this simple proof that there was still, within that process, the involvement of a Creator? So what’s to debate about Creation and the Creator? Absolutely nothing.

Excuse me. Could I have more wine, please?