A History of Israel at a Glance

A relative put this valuable and interesting resource together, and it was recently updated.   I've decided to share it "as is." It's an illuminating resource.  Note that Palestine did not even enter the picture until 135 AD.  Paul Johnson is a great source.  Modern Times is another excellent title of Mr. Johnson's.   

Reflections on Fiducia Supplicans

Fiducia Supplicans, the recent Vatican statement on blessings, has caused quite the stir in the Catholic Church. As it’s our spiritual home, and there is a great deal of confusion about what is said in this document and perhaps intended, I’m sharing several reflections here. I should preface this post with the fact that I have a pending article under consideration at a major Catholic publication on a tenuously associated topic; I’m not going into great depth at this time. Also, there is a tendency in some circles to pile on Pope Francis. While I have disagreement with his repeated tendency towards obfuscation on issues of doctrine of the Church, I don’t believe it’s my place to encourage or participate in behavior that crosses the line. (Any vitriolic comments concerning Pope Francis will be deleted by the moderator.)

The first thing I’d like to point out is that there are two dimensions to this document. There is the reading of the document itself, then there is the foreseeable application or implication in the real world. We have all seen, for instance, what has happened in the past to denominations that have endeavored to make a simultaneous peace with the world and their church; it fails. In the time of C.S. Lewis and England, it concerned the ordination of women in the Anglican Church. In his essay the “Fern-seed and Elephants” Lewis took a hard look at the implications of this move. (Writers like Joseph Pearce have argued that Lewis would likely not have remained Anglican much longer, but his death in late 1963 left this question unanswerable.) There is no reason to doubt similar negative prospects on a document of this nature, but let’s back up a step or two.

The supporters of Fiducia Supplicans like to suggest that those who oppose it fail to understand the described nuances (loopholes) in the blessing descriptions. That’s not quite right. If you read the document as purely an academic piece, the nuances might perhaps work. If you read it as a piece integral to witness and evangelization, it fails for the degree of ambiguity and confusion it contributes to in its real world application. As a further aside, the document implies that it’s not about blessing the couple at all. It suggests these are akin to ordinary blessings of individuals. Yet, it repeatedly uses the the word “couple” within the document, which lends further discord and confusion to the argument.


38. For this reason, one should neither provide for nor promote a ritual for the blessings of couples in an irregular situation. At the same time, one should not prevent or prohibit the Church’s closeness to people in every situation in which they might seek God’s help through a simple blessing. In a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely.


Not only is this likely going to cause yet more confusion among the faithful (particularly chaste homosexuals), but it puts a bullseye on the back of any priest who declines to perform such a blessing. 

Resources and Commentary at a Glance:

Father Dwight Longenecker

Carl Olson

Carl Olson (2)

Saying Goodbye to the Best Dog Ever

 

On November 22, the day before Thanksgiving, my wife and I made the terribly difficult decision that it was time to put our eleven-year-old Newfoundland, Chester to sleep.  I have to admit the last three or four years have been hard.  He was a medically challenging dog, but we provided the best vet care we could afford.  It was a lot of hard work at times--not to mention expense--but it was all worth it, of course.  Still, when that time came on the 22nd, I wasn't expecting such a deep level of grief for a...dog.  I thought his years of illness would subdue the sadness somewhat, make the good times seem more distant; I was dead wrong.  For the first few days after, I kept thinking I saw him in the house out of the corner of my eye, or I would forget and watch for him at night for a moment as I was navigating the dark bedroom.

Chester was a gentle giant of a dog.  He welcomed everyone warmly and didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body---unless one of his people was in potential danger.  When hikers would catch sight of him, they would frequently joke he looked like a bear.  On one particular hike where the trail wasn't particularly good, I remember he seemed to rotate somewhat from the front of our little group to the back, keeping a watch on everyone. When he was a puppy he didn’t care for playing fetch, but he did enjoy soccer.  He was incredibly loving towards all of us and would also instantly adapt his behavior (particularly when younger) to people with special needs.  

I’m grateful he survived long enough to meet our grandson James.  The baby really enjoyed meeting him.  He was quite the dog, and he is sorely missed by all of us.  

As I've written elsewhere, I'm a firm believer that good pets will be with believers in heaven.  I believe we'll see him again someday, and I am thankful for that.

The UAP Question

Unfortunately, we have all been given the dubious blessing of living in interesting times.  Things seem to grow stranger and more bewildering with each passing day.  Whether it is the nonsensical gender identity/fluidity debate, Russia’s own hired mercenaries making a wild dash for Moscow, ridiculous conspiracy theories gaining traction, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) swooping in and out of the news, there is a lot to process.  While Joel 2:30 and Matthew 24 point to signs in heaven as well as “wars and rumors of wars” that signal the onset of end times or tribulation, it can become harder to consistently focus upon Christ with these distractions pulling us ever further away.  This turmoil may lead some to a concern that the strange events themselves point to a chaotic and uncontrolled reality untouched today by the hand of God.  This, then may also lead to the misguided idea that perhaps perception is reality.  That is, for instance, why continue to oppose things such as gender identity or abortion, if everything is going crazy around us and God has supposedly exited stage right?  After all, wouldn’t it be easier to just give in and “make nice?”  Please allow me a personal example to begin this look as I focus here on the UAP question--as it intersects with a person of faith, in particular.

 

A number of years ago, we lived a half hour away in the town of Salem, Oregon.  We had a nice ranch style home in a great neighborhood, situated within just a few blocks of our church.  One activity I enjoyed was to stand on my expansive (greatly missed) back deck and stare up at the night sky to take in the stars.  It was not unusual for me to catch the distant streak of a meteor or unwavering glint of a satellite high above.  Something else caught my eye one particular evening.  It appeared from the north heading south overhead.  Its triangular or “V” shape was more inferred than seen, as the sky and stars were partially blotted out overhead by this large, unknown craft.  Everything around me was remarkably still; absolutely no sound came from the thing gliding south above me.  I attempted to take a photo with my phone, but, of course, it was just blackness.  Before I could call my wife, the object was gone into the night—still heading south, as last I could discern.  My mind went briefly to the Native American tales of the thunderbird, except this thing was clearly enormous and mechanical in nature.  When you have nothing on which to gauge or compare size or height precisely, it is difficult to estimate proportions, but it certainly appeared to dwarf any aircraft of which I am familiar, and the absolute silence made it highly unlikely to be…from around here.

 

Since I am the guy writing this, I might as well sheepishly confess that this wasn’t the only occurrence.  I also saw multiple lights come together and then speed apart at a high rate of speed across the night sky of the Yakima Valley when I was just a child.  I tried to explain what I saw, but the adults in my life at the time assumed that I had simply been watching too much television.  Time to limit those Star Trek episodes perhaps?  Many years later when I heard that the FBI had made some large freedom of information releases online, I decided to search for my hometown and “UFOs.”  While I recalled locating information in that particular database, it must have been elsewhere.  The information I did begin to uncover, however, suggested that there were numerous other substantiated reports of occurrences along these lines dating back at least to the early 1970s.  In January 2019. For example, the Yakima Herald Republic ran an article exploring some of these instances. 

 

Some look at the question of potential alien life—just like certain social issues—and decide that it undermines faith, demanding a new way of understanding the spiritual and physical world; they are viewed as mutually exclusive.  While alien life would require some spiritual retooling perhaps, it need not damage one’s faith.  It may surprise readers to learn that C.S. Lewis addressed the issue of alien life in one of his essays—as well as his last recorded interview.  

 

…usually, when the popular hubbub has subsided and the novelty has been chewed over by real theologians, real scientists and real philosophers, both sides 

find themselves pretty much where they were before. So it was with Copernican astronomy, with Darwinism, with Biblical Criticism, with the new psychology. So, I 

cannot help expecting, it will be with the discovery of "life on other planets" If that discovery is ever made. 

 

The supposed threat is clearly directed against the doctrine of the Incarnation, the belief that God of God "for us men and for our salvation came down from 

heaven and was . . . made man." Why for us men more than for others? If we find ourselves to be but one among a million races, scattered through a million spheres, how can we, without absurd arrogance, believe ourselves to have been uniquely favored? I admit that the question could become formidable. 

 

Lewis, CS.  “Religion and Rocketry,” The World’s Last Night

 

 

It’s important to make a brief digression here.  Some extremely intelligent Catholics are making the somewhat naïve argument that all UAPs originate with the devil as further distractions from what is good and true.  While the devil may indeed may play some role here, I’d like to respectfully remind these writers that it seems highly implausible that evil spirits can interfere with humanity to the degree that they are able/permitted to take a nuclear missile system offline as has been revealed took place at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota on October 24, 1966 or that they can be seen and recorded by pilots and radar installations around the world.  (The following is one written account of many available of the 1966 incident.  This particular best-seller by journalist Leslie Kean brings together former military, commercial pilot, and air traffic controller accounts of interactions with UAPs from over the last half century, or so, and it includes testimony from those hailing from multiple countries.)

 

 Something very extraordinary also occurred one year earlier at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota: On October 24, 1966, the Minuteman missile system was adversely affected during an afternoon while UFOs were sighted from the ground by multiple observers at three separate missile sites for over three hours, and two objects were tracked on radar. Communications and radio transmissions between various facilities monitoring the events were disrupted by static when the UFO came close to the site. 

 

At 4:49 p.m. the outside and interior security alarms of safety for the Oscar 7 missile silo were activated at the control desk located sixteen kilometers (ten miles) away. A security team was dispatched and discovered that not only was the fence open but the horizontal door closing the missile silo was also open. This reinforced-concrete door weighed nearly twenty tons and there were no tire tracks nor any record of a visit that could account for this.

 

Kean, Leslie. UFOs (p. 139). Crown. Kindle Edition.

 

When one reads or hears first-person accounts from both military and commercial pilots, they do seem to carry more weight; these are people trained to observe and work under pressure.  More recently, UFO whistleblowers like retired Air Force Officer David Gruisch have also gone even further in expressing his concern as to what nefarious activities government may be involved in concerning these objects.

 

Be that as it may, what the issue really does come down to how Leslie Kean articulates this issue in the introduction.  

 

To approach UFOs rationally, we must maintain the agnostic position regarding their nature or origin, because we simply don’t know the answers yet. By being agnostics, we are taking a giant step forward. So often, the UFO debate fuels two polarities, both representing untenable positions. On one side, the “believers” proclaim that extraterrestrials have arrived from outer space and that we already know that UFOs are alien vehicles, and on the other, the “debunkers” argue with aggressive defensiveness that UFOs don’t exist at all. This counterproductive battle has unfortunately dominated public discourse for a long time, only heightening confusion and creating more distance from the scientific—the agnostic—approach.

 

Kean, Leslie. UFOs (pp. 12-13). Crown. Kindle Edition.

 

With the recent Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on UAPs, it’s abundantly clear that we can’t close our eyes to their reality.  Whatever these objects may prove be, they do appear to be part of our reality.  As such, it’s probably best that we begin to get our minds around that fact.  Yes, certainly some supposed interactions may be manifestations of the devil for purposes of deception, but spiritual entities don’t engage in dogfights with military jets or shutdown nuclear missile silos.  At any rate, I believe this is an important foundation to bear in mind, because confusion abounds when we over generalize about subject matter such as this.  The UAP issue is potentially so important, I believe, as perhaps another ringing sign that we may be approaching end times and serves as a gentle reminder to be vigilant.  (Bear in mind that that this is just my opinion, so feel free to take it with a couple grains of salt.)

Added a couple of my own astrophotography shots in early 2024.

 

 

Visiting "God's Thumb" (via the Knoll)

"God's Thumb" (Lincoln City, Oregon)

Did an interesting hike yesterday: "God's Thumb." (See AllTrails for the details.) It was a gorgeous hike, and the view at the end was magnificent...but I almost cashed in my chips. This hike had me feeling my age. If you're a young guy or an athletic older person, go for it, but my suggestion is take my short-cut route instead to Cascade Head.

I tried to capture the trail conditions and the steepness in some of my photographs, but it works about as well as photographing the giant trees on the Coast--proportions fail to really convey true nature. In case you're wondering, no, I did not venture onto God's "thumbnail," as the trail looked as safe as my first car navigating Queen Anne Blvd in Seattle; don't really care for heights. So, unless family members really want me to take them back for some mysterious reason, I think I'll stick to Cascade Head via the Hwy 101 short-cut.

Remembering May 18, 1980

 

 

It seems like such a long time ago now.  I was just short of being a teenager, and I remember the Sunday began sunny in Washington State's Yakima Valley.  I recall on the drive out to West Valley to pick up two children for church that I remarked that the clouds reminded me of an upside down egg carton.  They looked very peculiar.  

Some time later, about the time my grandfather was finishing a Sunday school lesson on the book of Revelation (entertaining timing for years to come),  we noticed it was growing dark outside.  Someone must have caught the news report on the radio; it was the first we had heard of the eruption.  I remember we drove home in the dark with the headlights on through the gently falling ash, which sounded something like whispering from inside the car.   

The two girls we took to church had to shelter with us, as the roads were not considered safe. (The two girls were Shannon and Mora McGowan.  Tragically, Mora committed suicide in Portland in 1998.  All I remember is that she was a bubbly and happy reader.). An hour or two later, sometime in the early afternoon, I ventured outside for a few minutes.  I remember it was still like night.  I don't believe that the sun began to break through until close to sunset.   

 According to news reports, a number of roofs collapsed as a result of the ash fall, and machinery also broke down across the valley.  Some farmers said that the ash produced better crops, while others swore the opposite; it depended on with whom you spoke.    

   

 

Skewering Wokeism

In the late 1980s and 1990s, it was known as political correctness.  Personalities such as Rush Limbaugh took it on mercilessly on his show, yet the movement continued to grow and develop to the sad place we find ourselves today: where jobs and careers are lost over what would seem the most ridiculous reasons a few years ago.  We are more familiar with this phenomenon today as wokeism.  Let’s see how it is satirically approached by the Babylon Bee.

 

NATIONALITY Being woke is all about diversity. We love people of ALL nationalities and want the whole world to just be a big melting pot of all cultures, creeds, and nations. 

 

Except, of course, Americans. America is a disgusting place filled with white nationalists who could learn a thing or two from more advanced socialist countries like Venezuela or the Soviet Union. 

 

So if you’re a white Christian American male, you’ve got a real problem, because your entire existence is basically a plague upon the earth. You need to spend all your days online apologizing to people from superior countries for the place you’re ashamed to call home. The nice thing is you don’t actually have to put your money where your mouth is and move to Canada. You can just constantly threaten to leave the country and say things like “UGH, I’M SORRY FOR MY FELLOW AMERICANS” and “I’M TOTALLY MOVING TO CANADA THE NEXT TIME A REPUBLICAN WINS THE PRESIDENCY!!!” But you can keep reaping the benefits of American prosperity while never leaving for a country that’s not doing as well.

 

Babylon Bee. The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness (p. 20). Salem Books. Kindle Edition.

 

Another thought-provoking take on wokeism is voiced by Michael Rectenwald, Chief Academic Officer, American Scholars. In a December 2021 piece for Imprimis, he wrote the following.  (Note that before referring to the Great Reset, he referred to the contextual information and basis to support his argument--less so that it was an inevitable outcome, but more that there were indeed powerful individuals who wished to make it so by taking advantage of every calamity available to them.)


...Other developments that advance the Great Reset agenda have included unfettered immigration, travel restrictions for otherwise legal border crossing, the Federal Reserve’s unrestrained printing of money and the subsequent inflation, increased taxation, increased dependence on the state, broken supply chains, the restrictions and job losses due to vaccine mandates, and the prospect of personal carbon allowances.

Such policies reflect the “fairness” aspect of the Great Reset—fairness requires lowering the economic status of people in wealthier nations like the U.S. relative to that of people in poorer regions of the world. One of the functions of woke ideology is to make the majority in developed countries feel guilty about their wealth, which the elites aim to reset downwards—except, one notices, for the elites themselves, who need to be rich in order to fly in their private jets to Davos each year.

I thought this was a particularly good time to quickly raise this issue as there have been several excellent talks lately that I wanted to share with my growing audience.  Together, perhaps we can put an end to the censorship and cowardice betrayed by wokeism if we learn to stand our ground and better articulate our positions--with respect and courtesy.

Language and brief image warning for the above, but the message of this Bill Maher monologue is a timely one.