Don’t Count on It

Posted on April 18, 2017 by ehurst

Context: I surrendered to the gospel ministry as a teenager. Then, I attended college (Oklahoma Baptist University) to study and train for it. I never made it to seminary, though I never stopped trying to study on that level on my own. I spent hundreds of dollars on books, but eventually kept only a few. The journey out of bondage to Western evangelical Christian religion was long and painful, but it began with something I heard back in college. “The Bible is an eastern book; Jesus was an eastern man. Christianity is an eastern religion.” It took awhile for that to sink in.

During that long lag time from the late 1970s in college to my final departure in 2005, I did my best to volunteer in churches on whatever basis they would tolerate me. A couple of times I was granted an official internship. Several other times I was hired as Music Director simply because no one else would do it, and I just barely could. So I was frequently working as church staff and often hanging out with the pastors in daily work and conferences and just anywhere I could. I was trying to absorb the culture and hoping someone would notice my spirit and talents and sponsor me for something more permanent. While that never happened, I did learn a lot about the culture.

It included endless whining about how the mass of church membership just barely showed up. Never more than something like 20% actually got involved enough to make things happen (by their estimates). Today there is an endless supply of books and studies and programs on how to provoke your membership to a greater degree of spirituality. As you know from reading much of anything I’ve written, it can’t happen because they confuse “spirituality” with “better thinking and acting.”

Now, I will tell you that I did learn how to grow an organization so that more people showed up and put their money in the offering plates. And I was pretty good at that part, but I always felt that I failed because the majority of the people were unchanged. They liked how I could talk and stir up their enthusiasm, but they never did much. They had too many different reasons why they just couldn’t. Eventually, I got used to it.

It was good training in one sense. That kind of disappointment as “normal” made me capable of tolerating the lack of response on these two blogs.

Brothers and Sisters, what we do here makes us total aliens to the mainstream. It’s not that we can’t find mainstream folks who can love us and deal with us; the church leadership wouldn’t let someone like me stay around very long. The honest truth is that what I teach undermines their programs, and I refuse to attend a church where I can’t teach. I will not be silent, so that means they have to marginalize me at best. I’m not going to sit there and sing and enjoy the music and chat with friends and knuckle under bad teaching.

I’ve known for at least a decade that my calling was to prepare, to make myself an arrow in the quiver. I knew that a time would come when chaos would come and then my gifts from God would be activated. The small things I’ve accomplished here were training, sharpening, proving that these things work. A few of you have responded and found this stuff useful. God bless you, because that blesses me. It keeps me on the path, but sooner or later that path will meet chaos. Indeed, my prophetic gift tells me we are all headed for the chaos of tribulation. That’s what I’ve been prepared for; that’s what it will take to break open the somnolence of souls chained to all that bad teaching. It will be my faith and shalom in the midst of chaos that will call to those who suddenly realize they need something they don’t already have.

Now, God can do anything He likes. This could turn into a huge movement of sorts that reaches millions. Let’s pray to that end, but let us also hear with our convictions what God tells us He wants us to believe. Some of you are already with me, standing in faith until He pulls us out of the quiver and launches us into the battle. Some others of you will blossom and join that work. And some of you will tell me about it and we will rejoice together in the miracles. Still, my heart right now says we shouldn’t expect much in terms of numbers. We aren’t doing a religion that is designed to draw crowds and our socio-cultural context doesn’t encourage genuine heart-led conviction.

So while some mainstream Christian leaders know how to game human behavior to attract large audiences, we aren’t in that game. What we do is inherently “inefficient” in those terms. Those pastors struggle to get their huge numbers to really get involved in religion; we will struggle to avoid attracting that kind of audience. We’ll give freely to all who ask, but we know there won’t be that many takers once they understand what it involves. We aren’t building a system that automates religion. What we do is a lot of work right from the start. That’s the only way it will work at all.

Christian Mysticism will never be a mass movement, unless it becomes fake.

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Photography: Downtown OKC

Posted on April 18, 2017 by ehurst

Yesterday was overcast but it never rained on us. I wanted a break from the routine and spent time cycling around Bricktown and nearby tourist traps. First up is not too far from the lower end of the Bricktown Canal. You can look it up on services like Google Earth, but you can’t get much from Streetview because too much of it is off-street.

Next to the Cox Arena and a monster hotel is a 5-story parking garage. It’s open for folks wandering around and I took some photos. OKC’s actual train station nestles below the elevated rail line; you can estimate its location by the cover over the boarding area. Said rail line runs north-south and divides between Downtown and Bricktown; the latter is on the far side. There’s a sample of our perpetual construction. It’s permanent feature of Downtown for something to be torn up while lowest bidder contractors take forever to get anything done, only to have another contractor tear it up again soon after because… well, by the time something is actually built, somebody has a brilliant new plan for something else, or maybe the last contractor screwed things up.

I can recall when this Crystal Bridge was first built, how it was hyped to the sky. It’s an over-priced hot-house containing supposedly rare tropical plants and whatnot. I saw it once long ago; meh. The city has done a decent job with the exterior park around it, though. When the weather warms up you would see a lot more bodies crowding the walkways. On the west side is this fancy amphitheater. This thing has become a decent venue for outdoor live performances, but it’s still over-priced. Directly back of me where I took this shot was another open-air thing with a grassy oval in front of it for less formal performances. I captured the semi-artistic stage hood in the foreground while looking at the base of the Devon Tower. Devon is basically a monster petroleum company; that’s big business in Oklahoma. That tower is our newest landmark and the company sponsors all kinds of stuff. I took a lot more pictures but the iPhone is limited and the weather was crappy, so they didn’t turn out well.

To continue in my cynical vein, though, I was trying to capture pictures of the new expressway through Downtown. You see, I-40 once ran a course across the southern edge of the central district, but the elevated highway was ancient (early 1960s) and was crumbling. It was poorly engineered in the first place. So the city and state invested huge sums of money tearing out a new path for I-40 so it could sit on the ground. There was all kinds of wild promises about what to do with the old path of I-40, but they ended up simply putting a new road through it. It starts as a break-off from I-235/I-35 on the east end and runs along the old corridor with an elevated glimpse of Bricktown, then drops below the rail line. For now it stops right there at Shields Boulevard/EK Gaylord Street. Once the current stuff is torn out completely, it will continue curving across the urban landscape until it reconnects with the existing stub on the other side of Downtown around Western Avenue. This expensive boondoggle is called “Oklahoma City Boulevard.” Isn’t that imaginative?

I need to bring my better camera back on a day with clear skies.

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The Sniper 10

Posted on April 18, 2017 by ehurst

They should have moved the camp, but all the roads were blocked by troops keeping a perimeter around the craters left by the fighting. But then, the troops meant Franklin could take a break, too.

He was sitting at a small folding table under the big tent with his netbook. Ostensibly it was because he was involved in a some kind of role-playing game with other players. However, this game was more turn-based instead of running full time online; there was no advantage offered to obsessive players who stayed connected. Instead, the game was incrementally updated by the participants as each interacted with the game offline, then uploaded their actions in the form of a compressed data file. Franklin had told the curious team members that it wasn’t much on simulated combat, but heavy on adventurous quests.

He didn’t mind when anyone watched, so when Joe sidled up with a folding chair and sat next to him, Franklin turned to glance at him with a faint half-smile.

“Can you take a moment to tell me a little more about your parallel society?” Joe had obviously been thinking hard about their last conversation in the cab of the truck.

Without turning from his game, Franklin answered in quiet tones. “It’s not an organization in any conventional sense. More like a family. There’s no name for it, but there are clusters associated with some major players. Some are elders, and I stick with one in particular. He calls his part of the family ‘The Shepherd’s Household.’ Most of us call ourselves the Shepherd Family.”

“Okay, so it’s not like his name,” Joe guessed.

“Nah. It’s a role, the quintessential image of mature adulthood in our society.”

“How did this whole thing get started? How do folks join?” Joe was deeply curious.

“Well, the official answer is that it never did start. Whatever it is that gives us our shared identity is as old as the human race. But in recent centuries the distribution of such folks really thinned out. Where whole nations and civilizations had this outlook in ancient times, it almost disappeared when Western Civilization came to dominate. Some years back a few folks bumped into each other on the Internet and their shared outlook became a sort of self-conscious identity. Once they started writing about it, other folks recognized themselves in the discussion. They were still geographically scattered, but began to constitute a virtual miniature civilization, a parallel society.” Franklin glanced up with that faint smile again.

“So you don’t join it, you just decide to hang out with folks who think alike.”

Franklin released a single puff of laughter through his nose. “You got it. I can give you a link to the website where I connect to the Shepherd Family. If that doesn’t seem like home to you, there are links to other elders and websites.” He scribbled something on a small notepad next to him, then passed it Joe and resumed his game.

Joe took the piece of paper. “What’s this? It doesn’t look like a URL to me.”

Franklin responded almost absently. “It’s an IP address; my elder controls the whole server there. It will give you a large menu of links. There’s a library, chat forum, a couple of old timey blogs, and some other stuff. There’s even some games like this one,” he said pointing to his netbook screen.

“Is that where you got that game?” Joe was almost laughing.

“Yep. But I’ll let you figure out what the connection is.” Franklin seemed to get more involved in the game and Joe took the hint. He stood and picked up his chair, walking away with his eyes on the slip of paper.

What Franklin kept to himself at this point was that the game was just another way for members of the virtual family to chat with each other. The conversations were couched in terms of the simulated adventures, which was a key to understanding their world. They insisted that the real truth of reality didn’t yield itself to objective and concrete descriptions. Rather, it could only be indicated and explored internally. It was beyond words and rational thought; it was all about a personal and living moral force. So the game chatter conveyed far more than a casual viewer could guess.

There was no real intent to keep secrets, but mere privacy. However, when something truly private between two individuals arose, the game offered an option. To the casual observer, the simulated characters all reported to some branch office where at least one person was always sitting at a keyboard in front of an ancient style computer console. When they checked in, their character name was displayed on the screen in line of sight. If the name was followed by a few lines of status data, followed by a block of numerical codes, it was about the game play. If there were no status lines, only codes, then it was a private message that was keyed to a code on the players own real-world computer. The player could trigger a decryption and the message would be a pop-over displaying on the screen in front of the game.

When Franklin noticed that he had such a message, that was when he subtly asked Joe to give him some privacy. The message wasn’t too alarming, but it was important.

We got wind of your near demise. Is this something we can help you with? If so, use a pad to respond.

Franklin knew that his virtual family were all over the place, but never expected something like this. Somebody knew he was nearly killed today, so that meant he had family in a position to know and offer help figuring out the puzzle. He couldn’t think of a reason to say “no.”

He saved his game, then moved his character up to the computer console and triggered the option to type on it inside the virtual world. He first selected the option to use an electronic one-time pad. It meant using a restricted vocabulary keyed to the codes that were randomized, but matched to another “pad” on the other end. Franklin had only ever used it once before back when he was getting help with his divorce. He decided to rely on the laborious process of picking one word at a time from the vocabulary list displayed in a pop-up. This kept him involved for quite a while, and he realized the rest of the team had retired for the night. Finally he saved the message, and then saved and closed the game. He took a moment to upload his game file before he quietly slipped off to his own tent for the night.

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Can’t Sleep

Posted on April 17, 2017 by ehurst

Something is burning in my soul and it’s keeping me from taking a nap.

For some twenty years I have been chasing down the dark alleys of my soul, trying to find out who God meant me to be. It’s not as if I have nothing left to learn, but I’ve never had this powerful sense of peace before. This is not something I can keep to myself, and I don’t try. While I can’t give you mine, I can certainly tell you how to find your own. And if I don’t tell you, I’m dead. I’ll spiral down into nightmarish depression and literally die.

How could I not assume it would be the same for everyone else? That is, if you aren’t chasing the demons out of your own life, then they own you and you are already in Hell. Lord knows, I see enough of it around me in meat space. I see people tormented and I long to tell them how I climbed out of my own pit. But our culture makes it hard to do that, and I know that in most cases the only way I can share is when they see my shalom and ask me about it. When they see the glory of Christ shining in my life, they are drawn to seek it for themselves. I’ve often shared the experiences in writing. The sad part of it is how few there are.

I can only assume that it’s the same for each of you. A precious few of you share your faith adventures with me, privately and sometimes in the comments. But out of some 800+ subscribers on the other blog, I’ve not heard from more than a dozen people, and some of those have disappeared. I’ve had a much larger number of people argue with me over the 8+ years of this blog. What difference does it make if you click the “like” button and I never hear your story?

This is not about chatting with me, a poor lonely soul at the keyboard. It’s about telling others who read this blog that I’m not the only one who actually does this heart-led stuff. It’s about the fellowship of moral communion that makes it all more real and powerful for all of us. It’s about showing your gratitude to God by standing up and testifying what He’s done for you. Now if you are doing that in some meat-space venue, I’ll praise the Lord with you. But only if you tell me something about it. Don’t send money or love notes; send a testimony.

And I have to wonder how many of those hundreds of subscribers are making this just a feel-good thing reading either of the two blogs. You might be physically awake, but you are morally asleep. It’s not about trying to change the world. The world will remain fallen long after we are dead. It’s about conquering your own fleshly fallen nature. It ain’t much of a victory if you keep it to yourself; there’s no glory for God if His glory doesn’t shine through you.

We can’t afford to be morally asleep. Can someone turn on a light, please?

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Let’s Catch Up

Posted on April 17, 2017 by ehurst

The story is done. Whew! Now I can think about other things for awhile. My fiction comes barging into my awareness and dominates everything until the story runs out. I will continue to serialize it here, in part because editing and refining works best after I walk away from it and have to review it with a critical eye.

Edit: I’ll offer a cryptic hint about the story. There are three main characters, each contributing to the final resolution by their unique talents, but the real hero is non-human.

We’ve had some heavy rains and they will be coming and going for a few more weeks. It means that the rivers in our area are up a good bit, but it also makes the water murky with silt. At least it smells better during a good flow; the load of pollutants is dissipated better.

It also brings out the flowers. This is what we call Indian Paintbrushes and they are just getting started. This small cluster will likely become a dense patch covering whole acres of fallow land that is mowed for hay. They don’t grow unless tall grass is mowed down. I should be able to get lots of good flower pix in the next few weeks, so I’m dusting off the big camera.

After asking my closest circle of supporters privately, it now seems appropriate to mention a prayer request to the wider audience of readers. Without getting bogged down in all my personal misgivings, I want you to pray with me about whether I should try to produce a few teaching videos. While I can probably do this by myself, I would really love to have some help. And if any of you, dear readers, are interested in joining the fun, to include making your own videos in support of Radix Fidem or this virtual parish, let me know. Maybe we can collaborate on a YouTube channel or something.

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The Sniper 09

Posted on April 17, 2017 by ehurst

Normally the techs would take the utility truck out to examine the wreckage and remains, take pictures and fill out a few survey forms. They never got to it. By the time the choppers had turned to rise back up into the sky, a small convey of military vehicles were headed their way from across the main valley.

Franklin disabled the sensor’s shooter and shut down the generator. His duty on the nest wasn’t officially over for some hours yet, and the techs had busied themselves with daily maintenance checks on the crawlers, along with the after-action analysis on the software update. But the presence of troops suspended his mission. He was watching the soldiers get out and inspect the battle damage when he heard yet another chopper approaching. It didn’t sound like the gunbirds the military used; then his sensor told him it was a company bird. Whatever happened during this attack, it sure got a lot of attention.

Franklin was turning it over in his mind when his local radio buzzed. Plopping the headset on, he responded, “What’s up?”

It was the chief. “Come on down; the troops are covering security right now. We’ve got VIPs coming and they want to talk to you.”

By the time the chopper found a flat spot near the camp and touched down, Franklin was all packed up and had begun the tiresome trudge back toward the pocket. His aging joints told him that a big advantage to his choice of nest site today was that it meant less climbing, but then they complained that it was a longer walk. He was still a few hundred meters out when a figure strode purposely toward him.

The stride told him all he needed to know — it was the Chief of Security. This was the man who hired him and could fire him. Franklin wasn’t too worried about the latter right now, because that man was also a friend. They became friends back when that man was his sniper instructor in the military, Carl. It was Carl who had personally called and begged him to come and test for the sniper job. Back in the military, with projectile weapons, Franklin had turned out to be marginal as a sniper. But Carl knew exactly how Franklin worked, and what kept him from being more expert. It was Carl who explained how he had lobbied so hard for the contract snipers to be permitted use of the new pulse rifles, and offered his confidence that Franklin’s shooting could only be a lot better with them.

Franklin managed to free his right hand from the load and reached out as he met Carl on a small flat rocky ledge. Carl’s left hand grabbed Franklin’s shoulder firmly, but his big grin didn’t hide the look of concern on his face. As was typical of Carl, he didn’t waste time on niceties.

“Franklin, had you been using that big rock over there for your nest previously?” The man let go of Franklin’s shoulder and pointed up the slope off to his left.

“Yeah, but something told me I needed a different perspective today,” Franklin replied and set down the gear in his other hand, because Carl hadn’t released his iron grip on the right hand.

“The top of that rock has powder burns and shrapnel all over it.” The smile was gone from Carl’s face as he let go of Franklin’s hand.

Franklin cocked his head to one side. “Mortar shells? Somebody was trying to destroy this whole team, so why shouldn’t they target me, too? What happened, Carl? With all of this weird evidence, you would think someone got sloppy and overplayed it.” Using their shared military jargon, Franklin gave a brief oral report, including his premonition, but not the dream.

“Yeah, this was a contract hit writ large. Somebody knew where this team was, where you normally kept watch, and knew when the crawlers should have been unavailable. They brought enough people and equipment to shut down the pipeline for a whole day, all just for one crawler team. None of you were supposed to survive.” Carl let that hang in the air for just a moment.

Franklin shook his head. “I’m not that dangerous by myself. There has to be something else going on here.”

Carl nodded in agreement. “Do you think I could get a look at that software upgrade disk?”

Franklin laughed, grabbed his gear. “You don’t miss a thing, Carl!” They headed down to the camp.

Carl asked for Franklin’s netbook; he knew what kind of software was on it. Joe handed them the disk with a sly grin on his face. With the netbook tapping into the team’s satellite feed for broadband, Carl searched quickly and pulled up the crawler manufacturer’s site. He switched to the page for customer login. His fingers were too quick to follow, and when he was in, he clicked a few more links to find a list of hashes for the software in release number order. Matching the number on the disk, he pulled down the hash file. Then he ran a comparison between the hash and image on the disk. It took a bit of time; Franklin’s netbook was smart but not very powerful.

“They don’t match.” All three men said it at the same time.

Carl turned to Joe. “How much do you wanna bet this disk would have disabled the crawlers?”

“You win,” Joe said, raising his hands in mock surrender.

By this time the team chief had joined them, along with the theater corporate operations manager. He wasn’t exactly Carl’s boss, but he was definitely the big cheese over the crawler program.

This latter man said, “This is damned spooky. It makes me paranoid; who the hell can I trust at this point?” His question was clearly rhetorical. “On top of that, the commander over these troops just told me that he’s not sharing his report with me. It’ll have to come down from another source after it makes its way through their system. Meanwhile, they are scouring the ground and taking everything with them, and they have a crane and flatbed on the way to pick up what’s left of the vehicles. I would almost bet they’re going to bury this whole thing.”

Franklin put his right index finger over his lips, then turned back to his netbook. He found a clean disk and inserted it into the drive. He opened the case containing his sensor and pulled out a cable he wasn’t supposed to have to link the sensor to his netbook. “You’ll get my report right now, sir. I had the sensor on record during the fight. It also occurred to me to include a query of the satellite history to see if we can figure out when this attack was set up and maybe how they did it without anyone noticing.”

“Make two copies,” Carl said.

Franklin nodded at Carl as the big boss breathed a sigh of relief. “Am I the only one paranoid about this?” Everyone shook their heads back and forth.

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The Sniper 08

Posted on April 16, 2017 by ehurst

For the first time since he took this job, Franklin was startled to realize he had almost dozed off. What had jolted him back to full awareness was the alarm on his sensor. It was loud, not simply because he had dared to turn the volume up, but because it was multiple alarms going off at once.

As he stared at the display analysis of the situation, a part of him was thinking the only reason he might have been drowsy at all was because he had been awakened after a mere half-night of sleep. He remembered a vivid dream where some figure had come into his tent and told him he needed to get up early. Then this person slapped him on the chest and Franklin had shot up on his cot coughing, knocking his water canteen onto the rock surface on which his tent stood behind the Hummer. He must have made quite a bit of noise, and scrambled to find the canteen. He was coughing because the air was painfully dry and it felt like the entire desert south of here had crawled into his mouth.

Having nearly drained the whole liter of water, Franklin decided to obey the figure who had ordered him awake. He really did believe in mystical stuff like that, but his response was entirely practical. Taking it as a clue, he loaded up some extra gear, including the small generator, extra gasoline and two extra fuel cells for the rifle and sensor.

This time he chose a different spot for his nest. It was just a small hump, but the whole area was a little higher than usual, placing him at a different angle to the camp. He took the time to make sure the camouflage cover blended into the hump, then he set up the extra display and elevated the satellite receiver as high as it would stand. Firing up the tiny, well-muffled generator, he cranked up the gain on the receiver to insure the sensor would pull in more data from farther out. The generator was mostly because it also meant the sensor had to work harder and run its own interior cooling fans. This whole set up was common back in the more populated areas, but was quite rare out here in the wilderness.

It wasn’t just the dream, but the whole way up he had the nagging sense that this was going to be a bad day. And it was. He had watched the crawlers return at dawn when the work crews began swarming the work site on the pipeline. It was an hour or so later — still early morning — when the alarms had sounded and the display showed unusual traffic from four different directions. He zoomed in on the closest first: a half-dozen mopeds coming up behind him from around a large hill. That many together was unusual, but not rare. And a couple of rifles meant nothing out here. While this groups was in no particular hurry, being on a single-track goat trail, the sensor had worked out that each bike was two-up and each figure was apparently armed. Their rate of approach would put them in range in just a little over a half-hour.

From off to his left, another group of similar size was moving a bit faster on a better road, but they still had some distance to go. A third group was coming down the far slope directly in front of him, and it looked like they were about to meet up with some large vehicles coming up from the intervening side valley. The sensor said it looked like two technicals and an armored bomb rig gliding along the bottom of the wadi under some trees. Each group individually wasn’t such a big deal, but this was a company sized unit coming down on a single crawler team.

Franklin slipped the headset over his stiff gray hair and pulled the boom mic into place. His wireless intercom should be just within range. To his surprise, someone responded immediately to his buzz. It was Joe.

Franklin’s tone was nonchalant. “Joe, how is that upgrade coming?”

“You know, Frank, I’m not a light sleeper but this morning you made some noise way before dawn and I got up. Couldn’t go back to sleep. So I got a head start and directed the crawlers to download that software upgrade on-the-fly from the satellite link instead of waiting for them to come back and feed it from the disk that courier brought. I even had it preloaded for installation because they all still showed green on reserve power. When they got here it was pretty quick to make them halt and install just sitting out in the staging area. They can reboot with their motors running. At any rate, I just got finished recalibrating when you buzzed. Is there something you need?”

“Joe, it looks like you’ll get to run them through the test firing immediately. We need the crawlers redeployed in defense; in about a half-hour a full company on mopeds, two technicals and a bomb rig will be close enough to hurt us.”

Franklin heard Joe swear before the radio link went dead. He chuckled as he set the sensor to fire on the group behind him as soon as possible. It’s pulse gun was mounted inside a turntable that wrapped around the satellite dish mast on top. The turntable spun to face the rear. He watched the screen and saw where the crawlers came back online one at a time. They automatically moved forward and fanned out, seeking advantageous firing positions. From what he understood, the planned upgrade was supposed to make them better at optimizing fire and capacitor recharge timing, and an improved low-powered repeater that mimicked a machine-gun. Had Joe not gotten on the job before dawn, but waited and performed the upgrade by the book, the crawlers would not have been ready for another two or three hours yet.

The techs had only the older projectile assault rifles, so their direct contribution would come last. Franklin was watching and planned to hit the big vehicles from as far out as possible, before they were visible to the crawlers down in the pocket. He noticed the technicals and bikes had learned a new trick. Taking advantage of the exceedingly dry conditions, they were kicking up a huge dust wake that made the bomb rig invisible to energy weapons. Worse, according to the sensor, the driver of the bomb rig must have been prone inside the vehicle, because the whole thing was just about waist high, and with a good ground clearance, at that. Since the mopeds were in front of the technicals, he would have to pick them off one by one. Fine; each one would be a very messy detonation. Pulse fire hitting metal made a much fiercer explosion than striking flesh.

Apparently the crawler upgrade was worth the trouble. They picked off all the other riders before Franklin managed to get the ones only he could see. Those coming up from his rear had been fully exposed to the sensor’s fire because their path didn’t offer much loose dust. They all went up in smoke and flames, but the technicals managed to dodge the small craters that appeared in front them. His sensor kept track of everything and coordinated with the crawlers. Thus, the overwatch crawler fired off three missiles en defilade at the bigger vehicles and the whole battle was over. Franklin kept his eyes on the scanner for a few minutes, then radioed back that the fields of fire were now clear.

By this time the stronger radio traffic between the sensor and crawlers had gotten the attention of a couple of military choppers. They did a close flyover and hovered near the wreckage and remains of the attackers. The only thing Franklin hadn’t brought to his nest was a tactical radio, but apparently the chief got some feedback that he shared on the low powered wireless intercom link with Franklin.

“The chopper pilots told me it looked like they had matching brand new AKs, not the ratty stuff we usually see,” the chief said. “The technicals, similar with new 14.5s. The low-slung VBIED really surprised them; it had exploded like a flower, leaving some of the armored shell draped over the frame. Somehow the frame and part of the drive-train was still intact, like it had been loaded with shaped charges pointing laterally. Those weren’t your garden variety rebels.”

If that’s true, Franklin thought to himself, then the real trouble has just started.

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Psalm 127

Posted on April 15, 2017 by ehurst

Translations vary on whether Solomon wrote this himself of took it into his collection of wisdom literature. Either way, it reflects the kind of broad moral insight he had. We can be sure this wasn’t written for the annual pilgrimage. However, it was included later because, without such moral wisdom, there would be no city and temple to which they should return every year. This psalm is loaded with Ancient Near Eastern symbolism; don’t get lost in the apparent literal meaning.

God is the foundation and the blueprint of a life worth living, for both individuals and the nation as a whole. Don’t start any projects without first insuring that God is involved. And once you have built, you cannot keep it without God’s continued favor. You must choose a course that God has laid out in His revelation, or everything you do is wasted effort.

Cease striving on your own power; work smarter, not harder. Internal peace is a gift from God. Good responsible stewardship means taking care of your own sanity and health as part of the shared resources of your covenant community. There is nothing noble about a pointless sacrifice to lesser things.

But if you hear and obey the Word of God, then it would be just like a man who fathers many children while he is still young. Now that’s a job worth some extra effort, worth a little struggle early on in your life. The spawn of obedience will go far, stopping threats from a distance like archery in battle. You can never have too many arrows of that sort. They will become men before you are old, established and well known in the community. Then when you do grow old, these worthy sons can present a strong argument in your favor when opponents try to bring judgment against you.

The implication is that you’ll die in peace because you lived in shalom.

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The Sniper 07

Posted on April 15, 2017 by ehurst

“In your mind, imagine a person, someone we all know and encounter every day. Most people pay little attention to this person who seems to speak a foreign language and seldom intrudes, just hanging around in the background. Most of us agree on what this person looks like, acts like and most other sensory data. However, it’s only natural that no two of us have exactly the same impression.”

Frankly glanced at Joe with a faint smile, then turned away to scan the terrain again. “But what if just a precious few of us humans bothered to get to know this person and learned to speak that other language? Our experience with that person would make a radical difference; we would actually have a relationship with that person.”

He let that sink in for a moment. “That person is reality, Joe. Reality is alive, has a unique character and will. It treats no two us exactly alike because no two of us are alike. When most of the world takes reality for granted, it creates a rather bland and lifeless impression with only minor differences from one person to the next. But those of who get up close and personal with reality find a vivid variation.”

After another pause, he went on. “You can’t rely on mere sensory data to tell you much about reality. And if you try to reason out what little you think you know, it will always be highly limited. When it comes time for something that demands reality to act, your sensory data and reasoning will fail. You will neither understand what they’ve done, nor will you understand what difference it makes. You may well decide nothing happened because you can’t process it. Until you get acquainted with the person, as a person, you have no idea what to expect and can’t interpret peculiar events. You may not even have any idea what that person actually does outside your active awareness. People don’t get to know each other by mere sensory data and reason. They share experiences and there is a depth that stands outside the intellect. Nor can you write it off as mere sentiment.”

Genuinely intrigued, Joe stopped the truck. “I get what your saying, but what do you call that other part of us where people become real to us?”

Franklin was ready for that. “You are familiar with the words: trust, loyalty, commitment. As long as you put them in the right context, you can say love and faith, but those words often come with too much false cultural baggage. It’s the same with the word ‘heart’ — our cultural image of that is just quasi-emotional but incomprehensible. In just about every other culture in history, especially the ones that once reigned in places like this damned place here, the heart was something entirely different. It was the seat of commitment and a higher form of moral awareness.”

As Joe started the truck moving forward again, Franklin added, “You can’t get to know reality until you accept it as a real person — a who, not an it. And you cannot rely on your senses and logic; there has to be that deep interpersonal connection. And it’s not just reality as all one thing, but every part of reality down to the smallest particle is a collection of persons, each with an individual will and intelligence. Every part of our reality knows us already, but we haven’t taken the time to get to know them. It’s not in our culture.”

A bit later, he added, “The society I belong to builds on that base, and we make every effort to know each other and the world around us on that level. It’s like living your whole life in sewers and discovering there’s a world of light above you. It’s blinding and even painful at first, totally unfamiliar, but once you’ve been there awhile and learn how to get around, you feel like life has just begun. More, you realize you never knew who you were, either. You have to get to know yourself as part of the massive living whole.”

Joe asked with a grin, “How does that help you deal with killing that woman back there?”

Franklin snorted. “The social mythology of chivalry belongs in the sewers. My commitment right now is you guys. Any threat to you is a threat to me. And you can bet the people in this country know about Western social mythology that includes chivalry. They take advantage of it all the time, sending women with bombs and kids with grenades. If a Western man kills them, it normally degrades him. Either he becomes a killing machine or he is tormented inside by the conflict. Until there is some higher moral purpose in dying, I’m going to take out every threat with whatever force seems appropriate. I could wish for a better world where nobody had to die, but I’m not in that world. I’m in this one, and folks who really want what makes for peace are few and far between. So that parallel society I belong to tries to make the most of a bad situation.”

The truck crested a rise and the camp came into view. Franklin added one last thought. “We know that the vast majority of the world remains blinded by false assumptions, and it’s not in our hands to change that. We can only change ourselves individually. We belong to the hidden reality nobody much seems to know. It’s the same reality, but we believe we see it far more clearly by getting to know it as a person.”

Joe had backed the truck in place. He turned to the sniper with an unspoken question still showing on his face. Franklin reached out his left hand and let rest on Joe’s arm. “The Coalition and corporations have decided to run this pipeline. The local people have decided to resist. I give both sides credit for being somewhat rational within their own context, and I offer them the respect due their actual authority to enforce their will. We cannot stop what they decide to do. I don’t waste time with envy at their power or anger at their choices for us. Only when their actions fall within our tiny little domain of free will can we apply our own leverage. I can’t keep the rebels from using women and children; it’s their choice to make them risk death. I’m committed to keeping you guys alive. All I can do is inject just a little sanity into the process. I’m doing that with all my heart.”

Joe’s face brightened just a bit as they got out of the truck.

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The Sniper 06

Posted on April 14, 2017 by ehurst

The driver of the utility truck had received his load from the larger supply truck and was making his way over the rough road back toward their camp. Franklin had time to watch for awhile to ensure the truck got out into open territory before breaking down his nest. It didn’t take that long, but his aging body didn’t appreciate any attempts to hurry down from the bluff, nor to that longish hike down to the road with the load of equipment.

He set his gear in the back of the truck, but kept the pulse rifle in his hands. Climbing into the passenger side, he settled into the front seat. The driver was the chief’s second and senior technician, Joe. He was the only one on the team that insisted on clipping off the end of Franklin’s name.

“Frank, how do you do it? I know you aren’t like those snipers with no soul, the guys who kill for the fun of it. You’re friendly. You have a heart, like with that little boy the other day. How do you manage to shoot women and children without going nuts the way so many contract snipers do?”

Franklin didn’t interrupt his scanning of the terrain to say, “I don’t suffer much from Western social mythology.”

Joe grinned. “There you go again, sounding like a philosopher. I know you aren’t the average guy from back home, but you always seem to keep a lot of yourself back. I mean… You don’t hide your background. I know your wife left you and stuff like that, but even after three months of sleeping in the same space, I feel like I don’t even know you.”

Franklin glanced at him with a half-smile, then resumed his watchful scanning for threats as they trundled along the bad road, their bodies jolting now and then inside the cab of the truck. “I live in the same society as you do, and I understand it well, but I don’t belong to it.”

Joe craned to see over the hood of the truck some visual obstacle in the road, then sank back down and shook his head. He stopped, twisted in the seat and reversed the truck, and then turned back to take a different path forward. His face showed a genuine curiosity as he turned again and asked, “Where do you belong? Is it like another country or something?”

“Another world,” Franklin said absently.

Joe was silent for a moment. “You’ll have to explain what you mean by that.”

Franklin gave that half-grin again. “I’m part of a parallel society. It’s not based on geographical location, but internal orientation. We share an added component that affects everything we do, though it’s usually subtle. For us it holds the typical chaotic human nature together, provides an internal sense of order, and helps us make sense of this crazy world.”

“Sort of like a religion?” Joe offered. “I’ve seen you do stuff that looks like prayer rituals.”

“It includes religion, but the religion is an effect of, not the source of, the difference. My religion is my own personal thing, but it points back to something everyone in our society shares.” Franklin was never what anyone would call “animated,” but something in his demeanor seemed more relaxed, as if he were in total command of the situation.

Joe mulled that over for awhile. Jokingly he said, “You make it sound like you and your friends have been taken over by aliens.” Then he added, “I’m educated enough to know you are referring to a different world view, but I wonder if you could sum it up before we get back to the camp.”

Franklin never seemed to lose track of the task at hand, scanning with his eyes. “Maybe I can get across the single key element,” he said, then took a deep breath.

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