More Political Blather

Posted on December 4, 2016 by ehurst

You don’t have to read this; it’s not essential to our parish business. It’s just me. I’m trying to avoid sounding cryptic, but it would probably take a small book to explain what I see. Nobody has to remind you that I could be wrong, but if I don’t reveal what I believe is in my heart, I’ll be a liar for sure.

The business of Jill Stein demanding recounts in three states is funded by major Clinton supporters. It’s purpose is not to actually try to see if a recount can change the electoral votes; it’s to tie up those three states in legal challenges so that they aren’t allowed to cast their electoral votes at all. The Electoral College vote on December 19 is only two weeks away. Choking these three states like this would trim back Trump’s electoral lead by a margin where it’s just about possible that unfaithful electors in some other states might change the final outcome. But it’s not cheating because at this point it’s all a matter of law.

It’s also a lot of senseless drama. Should this masked Clinton plot succeed, we will have our civil war, far worse than if Clinton had won outright. I’m not saying it will be troops in the streets, but the systemic convulsions will quite likely destroy the nation. In other words, no human can predict the outcome, but it won’t be pleasant for anyone. The legal system that would allow Clinton to hijack things would no longer be there to protect her or allow her to keep what she imagines she’ll gain. And while the Clinton camp refuses to see this, there are plenty of other folks who do, and I am convinced they’ll prevent it going that way. Maybe I can’t suggest who those folks might be, but I have confidence that My Father isn’t playing games.

I have confidence that my Father has brought me to the point that I can see at least some portion of what He’s doing. In my own limited understanding, this has all been consistent going back several years, though the picture has gotten steadily more complete. Even if you take seriously my blather about a shift in reality, it’s still consistent with God’s moral character, so far as I can see, and that’s the basis for my chatter here. So you need to check your own heart as you read this to see if you recognize what I write as trustworthy. Don’t just swallow what I say.

Instead of one huge global apocalypse, we are now going to see a lot of smaller dramatic changes that will seem consistent only to those who see with the heart. The net result in the long run will be the same either way, but we now have a rich opportunity to stay alive and spread this heart-led message under less traumatic conditions. God is being merciful to His people.

I’ve watched this bogus left-right, Republican-Democrat conflict for a long time and it’s always been one big lie. Back a couple of decades ago when the Republicans claimed their “Contract with America” would change things once and for all, it failed on two primary issues. One is that the Republicans were a mix of nationalists and neocon imperialists. The latter infiltrated this big movement and gutted it when the hard moments came. Two is that those who were serious about the changes weren’t actually ready to do what it took, weren’t willing to rip the rug out from under the globalists or imperialists when they could have. The window was small and closed before they realized what it would take. They weren’t willing to pay the awful price, having too much to lose.

Well that’s all changed now. Trump has nothing to lose and he can stomach the nastiness it will take. Where do you think the majority of globalist power rests? In government-funded institutions that they control. Trump plans to de-fund all of them. Further, some of his allies are altogether willing to go after folks like Soros and strip them through various means to seize their wealth, tying it up or confiscating it. He’s willing to bend the rules to the maximum. At some point he’ll probably change the rules.

Once things start down that road, there’s no going back. I’m hardly cheering this on; it’s going to be very messy. It will be harder for us than it is now, but not so hard as it would be if Clinton won. Keep your eye on the nature of the propaganda war, particularly the hacking and “doxing” that exposes even more secrets. This will be a war of leveraging the Internet, and the globalists are already at a deep disadvantage. They don’t understand how their old games of deception and manipulation are going to come apart, because the Net is hostile to secrecy.

To the degree the neocons cling to deception and manipulation, they will struggle, too, but they’ve been working longer at the sneaky business of infiltrating the various public forums on the Net. They will eventually face trouble for entirely different reasons: their dependence on contracted commercial software. They aren’t building their own weapons, so they don’t control some of the critical factors of their strategy.

In the midst of this we need to find our place and speak the truth about Our Father and His revelation. Exploit the situation for His glory. Let people see your serenity in the storm so that some will question their own sanity and start asking how you handle the madness.

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Psalm 119: Kaph

Posted on December 3, 2016 by ehurst

This octet offers us Hope in the Darkness. The Hebrew culture viewed time altogether differently than Westerners do today. The psalmist is fully aware that a part of the Curse of the Fall was locking our human awareness into a time-space constraint that blinds us to God’s perspective on things. So for the Hebrew folks, a part of redemption is learning that the key to understanding the passage of time was in the image of ripeness: Things in Creation come when they are ripe. It’s a struggle to learn that, and it’s a lesson the bears repeating often. Western thinking never bothers struggling toward redemption, but assumes that time-space constraints are universal and builds a culture based on measuring time in precise increments, as if reality ran along some ineluctable track. Meanwhile, we treat as genius someone able to think in the long term, and as saintly those who can joyfully wait on the hand of God. Hebrew people thought of this as the norm.

So the first couplet begins with the psalmist lamenting his moral weakness, and how quickly his fleshly awareness obsesses over how slow some things move. His words are more dramatic than most English translations indicate for his state of mind: “Lord, I’m dying here waiting for Your rescue!” Yet the state of his heart is not so frantic as the mind, for his faith remains fixed on the promise of justice in God’s Word. Still, his mind does not learn easily, for his brain searches with desperation for some clue, some lever or trick he can use to move God at his own convenience. We are all in good company.

Like a skin bladder for liquids, the psalmist complains he’s been too close to the fire for too long and now he feels brittle and leaky. But that’s just the fleshly part of him; his heart knows that the promises of God endure beyond his life. Indeed, his mortality is never far from his consciousness, so will he die before God judges those who hound him?

Everywhere he turns there are pitfalls. Yet these traps presume a reality different from what God says. He subtly hints that his commitment to God’s justice has kept his eyes open to these temptations seeking to take advantage of character flaws. No, despite their relentless persecution, God’s promises are faithful and he knows his cry for help is does not fall on deaf ears.

While he very nearly fell into at least one trap that would have destroyed his life, his convictions would not let him forsake God’s revelation. As he considers this, his faith rises again to ask for God to restore his sense of peace by letting him see clearly divine mercy for what it is. In the end, he knows this will give him the sense of confidence to promote what God has said.

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Cycling: Working NE 122nd

Posted on December 3, 2016 by ehurst

03openroadI knew it was going to rain all day today, so I rode yesterday with the intent to overdo it just a bit. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a straight hard ride in low winds.

01ncan-122ndIn fact, I almost didn’t bother posting the images, but it shows the degree of drought before the rain came. I took my usual back route through the Alliance Midwest Hospital area and connecting streets to Midwest Boulevard. It was a straight shot northward all the way to Hefner Road. Turning right, I rolled up to Douglas Boulevard; there was a good bit of dump-truck traffic at the sand and gravel mine there. I turned left because I wanted to see that lovely horse ranch up on NE 122nd. Right again on NE 122nd I crossed an expanse of flat farmland. The one farmhouse where last year’s storm blew over a massive tree now had the spot properly refilled and grass growing over it. The view from the bridge (above left) was peaceful and called for a moment of quiet prayer.

I couldn’t figure out how to capture the image of a cottonwood that had grown in the bank near the water, but bent over completely, practically lying on the downward slope into the water. While it’s not so terribly uncommon for such trees to lie down and prosper, this one had spent way too much time underwater and was dying slowly at only a moderate size.

02ncan-hefnerFrom there I followed the only route open to traffic: a hard right south on Westminster Road. Once I climbed back up to Hefner Road, I decided to avoid a troublesome dog I know that guards its domain too zealously further south on Westminster, and turned right again to begin the return leg. The bridge here on Hefner offered a slightly more dramatic view. Just under the bridge I spotted evidence of someone having a long stay on the end of a sandbar close to the water. There was the deep imprint of a very substantial ice chest and some other less identifiable impressions in the sand, plus a few empty containers that likely held fishing bait. However, in the picture I took you can just glimpse buried under silt the remains of the previous bridge, beams of the older steel truss design. And while the large sandbar has seen substantial off-road vehicle use, I suspect today that’s all under water.

So aside from two brief stops where the silence called to me, I road steadily and at a decent pace for 26 miles.

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Head in a Different World

Posted on December 2, 2016 by ehurst

(Note: To give you some perspective, Gary S. Paxton is most famous for writing the song, “Monster Mash.”)

There is a significant behavioral clinical literature on “conversion experience.” It’s a well established phenomena in psychology. It’s used in all sorts of ways, not least in hostile interrogations. Everyone has a breaking point; you just have to find it. Oddly, you’d be surprised how many churches use the data in their evangelism training. It’s well known that if this conversion rests on experience and reason, it’s always reversible. To the degree it rests on emotion, it’s just a little trickier. Yet any good behavioral scientist will tell you there are some folks who can’t be converted because their loyalties rest on something totally out of reach.

When you come to a place where you are aware that something stakes a claim on your soul, it’s typical for this to manifest itself in a conversion experience. I’ve been watching the broader reaction from folks who commune with us here and discover that the heart-led existence requires some hard work. It undermines everything you previously believed, because it shatters the ground on which your life was previously built. Once your heart makes its voice known in your mind, the same logical process of the mind makes entirely new and radical demands. We don’t aim to convert you in our parish, but we are fully aware it’s a typical result that comes with shifting your center of awareness from your head into your heart.

In the pastoral sense, some of you have called on me, needing help to evaluate the competing demands that arise during that process. At a minimum, it will change your relationships with those around you because it changes your relationship with God and His Creation. Sadly, most of you are living very close to folks who don’t hear that call to the heart-led life, and they don’t find your changes easy to understand, and maybe they don’t tolerate it well. But somewhere down the road, you figure out once again who you are and what’s real, what matters. You get a grip on the conflicts and find peace with where God placed you. Maybe some relationships are permanently broken, but more often you simply come to terms with things. That’s what I’m seeing when you folks talk to me about it.

We teach that Creation is alive, sentient and willfully acting by God’s moral character. That’s the language used in Scripture and we take it seriously. We teach that heart-led living pulls you into this moral realm of reality, a place where your heart speaks in terms of moral convictions that inevitably reflect how reality actually works. You’ll never quite reach the end of new discoveries, things that you have to unlearn and face in a different light, but at some point you will find yourself feeling entirely solid, planted again in the Garden of Eden. You are at peace with this existence. You know you belong in the Spirit Realm with God, but are content to live here in accordance with His divine justice until your witness to His glory is complete.

That is our evangelism. We live and breathe that full connection with Creation and Creator. God uses this to speak to hearts now and then, and you’ll be called on to explain. Some way, some how, your calling includes some means of expressing what makes your life so different from theirs. I’m doing my best to offer a frame of reference so that the verbal explanation is within your reach.

But a critical element in our witness is also offering some measure of healing to people who suffer. There is almost zero probability that anyone you encounter doesn’t have some kind of gripe with the world as it is. And most of them aren’t handling it according to the reality revealed to us in our hearts. So we have whiners, activists, warriors of all stripes trying to change the world, directly or by provoking others, so it makes more sense to them. But as long as they are not living in their hearts, nothing actually possible will satisfy that sense that something is broken. We talk about how most of humanity lives in a fantasy world; they just know for sure what the answer is, but they can’t seem to get everyone else to go along. And we can’t avoid wanting to help them understand, but we also know they have to hit that teachable moment before they’ll listen.

That’s how it was with each of us, too. But once we unlearned enough lies and made significant strides in walking heart-led, we find ourselves always ready and able to offer something they need to hear. Even if it’s not part of our education and training, we find God steps in and puts the words on our tongues. It happens to me just about daily, some days several times. And if not the words, then it’s some other means of expressing and demonstrating what they cannot see for themselves.

Further, it’s entirely natural that, if you can get used to heart-mind “logic,” you discover you can see beyond the boundaries of time and space. That is, some part of you simply knows what’s at the other end of some path that people choose. Many of you will be reluctant at first to discuss what you see, but if you wrestle and patiently wait through enough times, you’ll see that your premonition was accurate enough and you’ll be more confident about it. Or maybe you’ve built up a load of bad habits about what you think could happen and it takes a while to clear that out before you can see more accurately. But it’s entirely normal for heart-led folks to sense the end result of a human endeavor because we sense God’s moral character directly. God reveals some measure of His plans through our convictions and calling, and we eventually get used to how that all fits together so that we become somewhat prophetic. I assure you it can be more common than you know.

And then, who can imagine what other miraculous gifts He will bestow upon you? It’s entirely natural that, upon making that conscious shift of awareness to the heart-mind, that you suddenly realize your communion with nature in itself brings a host of surprise abilities that lay dormant and out of reach of the intellect.

I’ve already mentioned that we are in a time of tribulation. Prophetically I can tell you that the globalists, feminists and other social lefties are going to catch hell in the coming years. A lot of what they believe they have accomplished will go down the tubes; their strongholds will be torn down. Since we are outside of the entire left-right political dispute and eschew Western Civilization in the first place, we can avoid the appearance of choosing sides. Sure, we have to agree that the lefties are trying to respond to some very real problems, but they are trapped in a worldview that’s just as false as those on the right, and don’t really understand the nature of the problems they see. Westerners as a whole confuse symptoms with causes. Stay out of their disputes. It might be hard to get to them to understand that what they consider morality is just heathen mythology, but we can at least point out that we see from an entirely different perspective.

Speak the truth from a neutral point outside their system. Leave it to God whether they can embrace it.

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Cycling: Old Bridges

Posted on December 2, 2016 by ehurst

01fallcolorsWith the delayed arrival of cooler temperatures here, I tend to start my rides later in the day. That also means shorter rides. Today I felt the urge to visit that old rail bridge I noted crossing the Oklahoma River not far from Western Avenue. The foundation says it was built in 1966, making it fifty years old. I suppose it’s current state shows the lack of resolve — and lack of funding — in the once popular idea of turning abandoned railbeds into fitness trails. (As always, click on any image to see it full-sized. CTRL-click will open the image in a separate browser tab.)

02formerrailbridgeThe rail line used to run up from the southwest across the suburbs and through some industrial facilities, then across the river and through the edge of downtown. The downtown part was gone long ago, buried under several renovations of I-40 Crosstown, so the rails were pulled up long ago. But as the removal went southwesterly, it stopped near Stockyards City because it runs into a still active rail line that runs across the south side of the Metro. I’ve read about the way the process of deciding which lines to keep and which to abandon has gone back and forth and made commitments to conversion difficult or even impossible.03half-wayacross Anyway, this bridge is sturdy but hard to use. The gap between the ties is too wide for us old guys to ride across comfortably, so it needs a deck of some kind, and side rails would really be a good idea.

Still, I walked my bike across as I contemplated some things. I had ridden out westward from home, zigzagging through some quiet neighborhood streets until I was forced to use Reno to get to Eagle Lake. Where the Eagle Lake Trail runs out at Eastern Avenue, I took my usual diversion along the south riverbank where there has been some, but very little, activity starting back to work on the Indian Heritage Center.04treechorus Down where the dirt road dips under I-35, some guy was sitting on his pickup tailgate fishing in the rowing area. He can get away with it because there’s no training activity and no one’s paying attention to the south bank. I had the bike trails to myself all the way down to the railroad bridge. Once across, it was the same story heading back toward Bricktown on the north bank. But of course, auditory silence is not the same as heart silence. This last image shows the choir that greets me every time I ride by here.

This is the stretch between the very active rail bridge that runs into the OKC rail yard, and the entryway for the tourist dock at the Chesapeake Boathouse. On this part of the bike trail stands a thicket of mixed native trees. You might not hear a thing, but whenever I ride through here it sounds in my soul like the chatter of junior-high kids welcoming me like I’m some kind of hero. How many thousands of folks walk, jog or ride past here without using their sensory hearts? There’s a lot of pent-up emotion from those “standing people” in that silent language of the heart.

I followed the bike path into the boathouse inlet and around the monuments into the parking lot. It’s all interconnected with the parking lots of restaurants, entertainment venues and hotels that dominate Bricktown. Straight north from one of the hotels is a street that changes names once or twice in just a few blocks, but it takes me to NW 4th and that’s my ticket home. The yuppie lofts stop at the underpass for I-235. I run through the south end of the hospital district which is slowly replacing the ancient structures of the forgotten part of “Deep Deuce” and hit the old park that seldom sees many guests. The alleged “bike trail” that starts there is a standard sidewalk that often has too many pedestrians for me to ride safely, so I stick to the road until I’m almost to ML King Boulevard. While the little golf course is on the north side after that, it’s gritty oilfield suppliers on the south side of the street. Over the hump at I-35 and it’s rough road that becomes even rougher road along the tar and blacktop plants before the railroad crossing near Cherry Creek. Just another two miles and I’m home.

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Virtual Missionaries

Posted on December 1, 2016 by ehurst

I am the elder.

By way of reminder, I am the acting pastor of this virtual parish. Those two titles signify the current labels for the ancient offices of the Two Witnesses of God’s revelation, typically translated as king and priest, though “king” is closer to “head of household” — in our case, a covenant household of faith. This division of labor is entirely a product of the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) feudal way of life. It has always met with hostility in Western Civilization, so it’s no surprise that our current social context sees the two offices wrongly merged, making the pastor a magisterial manager of the church institution, which in turn is more like a corporation headed by an entertainer.

Fortunately, most of the ceremonial duties of the priestly role simply cannot be manifest in our virtual setting. Those require a physical presence to have any meaning. Each of us has to work on that in our respective meat-space contexts. I hope that someday in the future, the Lord will restore to His people the lost heritage ditched by Israel long before His Son was born, but it won’t look the same. It needs only restore the elements that answer our true design. Meanwhile, what’s left to me as elder and acting pastor is a lot of territory where the two roles overlap.

And you can still call me “pastor” in the colloquial sense; this isn’t a lesson in sacred terminology with the trappings of orthodoxy. But you should be aware that the role of elder is more fatherly, more of the shepherd of practical matters of life. If I get into the abstract academic territory once in awhile, it’s only because I want you to see what’s behind the guidance I try to offer. I want very much for you to take an active part in evaluating for your own life whether my suggestions match your context. The only sword of authority I have in the first place is in your own heart. If my work here doesn’t grab the handle of that blade, what I offer is not for you. But the final answer has always been inside of you.

Again, that’s the background for what follows.

A lot of voices are clamoring for your attention, particularly on the Net. For example, here’s one that explains The Real Reasons Why Another American Civil War Is Possible. Granted, Brandon Smith makes a very strong case; he explains clearly the nature of the political left. However, he probably conflates some noisy activity that isn’t leftist vengeance against Trump’s victory (like the pipeline protest in North Dakota) with the dramatic protests right after the election. Has anybody noticed how they have dwindled through November? Wikipedia is tracking this; scroll down a little way and you’ll see the timeline. By mid-November it was tapering off and now it’s about dead. You can only buy so much of that before weather and other things reduce their enthusiasm.

Now, were it to restart in the spring after Trump’s inauguration, you’ll see some perfectly legal crackdowns under a new law labeling some forms of protest “economic terrorism.” That’s just a small sample of the right-wing backlash. It becomes an excuse to take a bite out of Soros and his ilk. It’s likely we’ll see similar efforts actually come into play, but it would be a mere distraction.

A real revolt with millions in the streets and scaring the powers that be costs too much. They didn’t see it coming. We certainly don’t have a resident population riled and ready, trained to engage in genuine resistance, so it would have to be purchased outright, and it’s just not possible. No, the real civil war is entirely confined to propaganda. I truly believe the globalists have already lost this one. Not that they won’t make some belated effort to counterattack, and it would surely include some dramatic computer hacking, but it’s already too late. The corporate media companies are already taking a big hit, and their allies like Facebook, Twitter and such will suffer accordingly.

Why does this matter to you or me? First, as previously noted here, this will provoke a big shift in the social media landscape. Did you know that Diaspora, a sort of free and open alternative to Facebook, is viable now? It almost died when the developers handed the project over to some folks who at first didn’t want to support free server space for user accounts. It meant users would have to host their own full software implementation to join the community, but now volunteers have stepped in and quite a few “nodes” have been created around the world where you can join without such a burden. I dropped out like a lot of other folks, but I’m considering trying it again now. You can bet I’ll be more assertive about having no political alignment.

While it’s not immediately likely Facebook will go away, since Zuckerberg is frankly worried about losing all that advertising money if membership declines, I think Twitter has already shot itself in the foot, and is turning the gun on its head. The issue with Twitter is the obvious double standard, where leftist thugs can verbally abuse everyone and get away with it, to include race war threats against whites, but Trump and his supporters are labeled “racist bigots” before they even say a word about anyone.

But for us what this means is that our message will have more room. You still need very much to live your heart-led existence in your meat-space context or what we splash on the Net means nothing. Indeed, in our social context of ears callused by ceaseless propaganda, along with activist harassment, we dare not say much at all until someone asks about our visible demonstration of faith. So our words belong on the Net, and we have to be among the most skilled at using that medium. You need not keep your eyes glued to some electronic display all day long; it’s not a question of time investment in bulk. It’s a question of exploiting the new reality for His glory. This is our best shot at delivering the gospel of heart-led faith.

We are all called in different ways to varying missions, but at least a significant portion of us will be called to evangelism — a form of evangelism the world has not yet seen. We need to invade all of the new social media landscape and claim it for Our Lord. We need a voice in every place where there might be hearts ready for awakening. There’s still a place for missionaries crossing the face of the earth, but now there’s a much bigger place for virtual missionaries.

We aren’t trying to solve the problems of this world; we cannot. We are trying to draw people out of this world and into the moral realm of the heart. We want people to reconnect to Creation, but we have to go where they are to make that happen. Instead of grousing about all the horrendous bad social habits of the cellphone generation, let’s find out why they do that stuff and meet them there with redemption. Don’t scold; call to their hearts.

If you commit to this mission, God will show you where to go and what to do. It will be obvious when you get there; your heart already knows. This is your virtual ordination ceremony; I lay my hands on you and commission you to the mission.

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Some More Babylon

Posted on November 30, 2016 by ehurst

The symbolic logic behind parables requires quantum thinking. It requires that you tear things down to the smallest practical level, including thinking about thinking itself, and become aware that a particular symbol has meaning on multiple levels. The parabolic symbols in Scripture are alive; they are discrete beings with a life of their own. We are meant to see them differently in different contexts. We are supposed to explore the narrative in which the symbols appear and let them speak to us about God’s moral truth. This is why I insist that parabolic communication is planting signposts that indicate places to explore, versus Western communication that pictures truth as contained within the words. “Words mean things” — to which we say, “nonsense!” Words have no power on their own; the power is in the life explored. You cannot contain life in a box without killing it.

Truth is alive; it can never be static. It’s not that we don’t care about facts; we care little about facts because the facts can never be known, only perceived, which is not the same thing. Perception becomes reality on the grounds that reality is shifty mists that God can change on-the-fly at His whim. His revelation declares that He has done so repeatedly. A reality of immutable fact is a myth. Certitude is the dream of fools. Humans at large perceive reality as immutable because this puts it within some theoretical reach of human reason. We don’t need God; we can figure it out on our own.

If you examine what goes on in fiction writing and movies regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI), you see one recurring theme: the rejection of the Fall. It was first formally pronounced as the doctrine of the early Catholic Church that man’s intellect is not fallen, that a human can be conditioned and improved until his/her better self prevails. This is a direct rejection of revelation. But this theme of perfectibility persists across the board in just about everything you read seeking to provoke men to remake a better world. No one argues that we this world is just fine; everyone agrees it’s pretty messed up. But any solution that doesn’t start with confession of our fallen nature is doomed to chase everything — anything — except the truth. So when someone asks the question of what constitutes human nature, the answer is our fallen perception that won’t let us see what we really are.

By the way, the early Catholic doctrine of man’s unfallen intellect comes from the long-term effects of the Judaizers. You knew that, right? It’s a part of the effects of Hellenism that perverted the Hebrew mystical outlook into the legalistic nonsense of Judaism. That’s where “words mean things” was born, and the false “mystical” silliness about the power of words to work magic. Take a look at most writing in the study of magic and you’ll see it never quite escapes the assumptions behind Western mythology, and it reads that power-of-words back into whatever ancient texts they presume to revere and learn from. Sheesh, it even shows up in charismatic Christian religions today as the “Word Faith” doctrine — derived from early Kabbala, a component of Orthodox Judaism. We still hear Charismatics say, “Don’t pronounce a word-curse on yourself by negative confession.” Words do not make reality; perception does, and it’s not permanent.

Back to parables and parabolic imagery: So we have that story of Babylon from the early chapters of Genesis. What do we see? A megalomaniac Nimrod whose doctrine is that mankind can build a unifying religion that will make reverence for God unnecessary. I can recall a very brilliant student telling me that if God would just leave us alone we could accomplish so much good. Like Nimrod who continued to eat from the Forbidden Fruit: “We can be our own gods! We can decide for ourselves what is good and evil.”

In the past I’ve noted that, on one level, Babylon means that everything has a price and that’s all we need to know. On another level, I said the Babylon means slavery and oppression, whether the chains be physical or mental. But on yet another level, I’ll suggest that globalism is just another manifestation of Babylon. It’s a dream of pulling folks together and improving ourselves until we can all discover that great unknown potential of humanity. Babylon means all of those things and much more.

But it’s that persistent lie that we can somehow fix ourselves, that the real problem with this world is that we just haven’t tried hard enough/long enough — that’s the meaning of Babylon I point at here. All the solutions that rest on changing people are doomed before they start. Think about some of the more thoughtful statements about the problems of social media, in which it’s a subtle reminder from some globalist why Trump (dammit!) won the election for POTUS. “If we don’t fix this problem, we can’t get rid of the Trumps in this world.” It’s a form of scolding that marks the Social Justice Warrior front still causing mayhem and havoc in the US today. Shall we tell them that Trump is God’s whip-hand flogging the globalists? And when that’s done, Trump will face his own doom, and his grand schemes will wither away, because that’s how God works with those who refuse to hear His truth with their hearts.

I don’t claim to have such marvelous far-seeing answers as the globalist dreamers. There’s nothing to fix in human nature because it can’t be fixed on our end. If God doesn’t reach out and restore to us individually the pathway back to Eden, we’ll never find it. And there sure-as-Hell isn’t any way my answers will be your answers. They might come close enough at times that we can fellowship and work together, but the one thing you should learn from me is how I found the path, not the path I found. There is no one universal answer for mankind once you get past the Flaming Sword.

What I want most for you is the capacity to deal with living truth on your own. I can’t describe it; I can’t make the truth fit into a neat container. I can indicate something about it with a narrative that walks on its own feet and plants markers to things you could explore for yourself. There is no preconceived result, no concrete solution, no great shiny vision for a human future on this planet. All I have are little stories about how I rediscovered something long and often lost in human history: It’s the heart ruling over the intellect. What you do with my little stories is wide open territory in front of us both. I’m not worried about how it turns out because I have no vested interest in outcomes. Just seeing you free to explore the true Land of the Heart, the Land without Words, is all the payback I need.

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Virtual War 2

Posted on November 30, 2016 by ehurst

It’s the nature of our shared faith. On the one hand, our heart-led path is very narrow, steep and rough. Precious few are those who walk with us. On the other hand, we so desperately need each other because no one of us has the whole picture. If you think I’m not learning from your witness, you really don’t understand. I may not have time to interact with you much on your blogs and sites, but I’m paying attention. We all depend on each other because that’s God’s way with us.

The likelihood of any of us ever concentrating our physical presence in one place is just about zero. I long to see each of you face-to-face, but God forbid that any of us would start to imagine that congregating someplace on this earth was essential to our religion. It’s the nature of our calling and how God is working at this time in human history that, without the Internet, we share precious little. More to the point, the Internet and computer technology is very critical to my calling. Such is the means of my mission. The degree to which your mission coincides with mine, we share over the Net.

On the one hand, there are numerous threats rising against the virtual freedom that we all take for granted. On the other hand, those threats are limited by the very nature of the Internet itself. More specifically, computer networking simply does not happen without a certain amount of philosophical agnosticism about content. It either transmits or it doesn’t. At the same time, there is a massive effort to find ways to place controls all around the network. At times I’ve indicated there are various threats against computers and our control over the devices we use. We really can’t stop surveillance; the traffic won’t go unless it’s possible to snoop. The real issue is hindering communication.

The biggest threat is a very dastardly attempt to condition us socially so that we stop thinking about serious communication. Have you noticed how advertising aims elevate in our minds the necessity of frivolous chatter? “Oh, the fun you’ll have! Leave the serious communication stuff to experts; we’ll tell you to whom you should listen.” They don’t care about you, only getting your money and reducing you to a pliable drone.

Right now we are in the midst of the most deadly form of warfare I’ve ever seen in this battle over what constitutes “fake news.” The corporate media is deeply invested in this and are out for blood. This isn’t just more of the same silly noise they’ve always made. They are losing control and it will mean their virtual demise; the gravy train becomes the grave. And a part of their warfare is infiltration.

Have you heard about “Pizzagate”? Look it up, but most of it was the results of manipulative prodding at over-enthusiastic grass roots sleuths. I’ll tell you all you need to know about it: The owner of the pizza place in question is very much a pervert without the slightest compunction about things like raw child porn, but he’s not that close to the Clinton camp. Nor does he run a child-sex ring. That is, he’s just an average member of the wealthy and powerful class, which is loaded with gross perverts regardless of partisan affiliations. That story was provoked as misinformation to make the independent media look stupid. Infiltrators didn’t have to actually lead the thing, just wait for some fool to start off with something bogus and feed it. They are watching for every chance to tar their foes and maintain their own unearned reputation.

But I’ve also caught wind of the coming hacktivist warfare; you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is of more particular concern for me because it affects my computer ministry directly. I’ve never prodded anyone to migrate from Windows to Linux, but I’ve always done my best to make it easy. The simple reason is that it’s harder to hack your home computer if it’s running Linux; I’ve had direct experience with that. As hacktivism grows, you can expect to see malware and automated attacks rise as tools of partisan propaganda warfare. Do you know how easy it is to write software that probes for private home computers used to share political activist interests? And can you just imagine how many millions are doing that sharing, promoting their favorite agenda by trading various email campaigns with a private mailing list? That describes the majority of all the clients I’ve ever served. Some of them have already had trouble arising from that activity and had to call me about it.

What if the corporation making the software decides to “fix” certain things that affect such activity? I’ve already seen stuff that makes me suspicious. While I share none of their political interests, I’ve had to help some clients find ways to get around balky software that, for example, prevented them sharing a particular email, or blocked attempts to copy and paste some of the content. I saw it myself during those times I played at running Windows on my own computers. While I’ve researched it, nobody seems to have an answer, but it seems it never affects those who prefer a leftist political stance. Still, it’s not consistent enough to raise alarms among users. Yet. I’m convinced it will get worse.

As long as God prospers your technology choices, stay with it. It’s much more important to me that you become aware of the probabilities that will affect our online communion. The biggest thing we do here is open the doors and free you to obey your own internal calling. That’s the one thing that separates us from mainstream religion. No two of us will see the world the same, and no two of us will make the same choices in pursuit of His glory. Just keep your eyes open and be nimble and ready to make changes as required by the shifting context.

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Cycling: Miracle Hill

Posted on November 29, 2016 by ehurst

I’m not training for anything in particular. It’s nice to have the endurance for those epic 50-mile rides, but that’s just icing on the cake. Physical fitness is not an end in itself; it serves a much higher purpose, a purpose that will still be there when the body expires.

xtimbersToday I rode the Draper Drive loop: Out of the neighborhood, through Barnes Park, zigzagging the back streets until I got to the bike trail on Post Road. That trail ends at SE 29th, but Post Road south of there is a designated bike route. Post Road crosses both I-40 and I-240 before it merges with the eastern side of Draper Lake Drive. I just kept going along the road. Somehow I managed to pick a route again that meant a headwind on the way back, so once I hit the dam the temperature dropped a couple of degrees and the wind was no longer helping me. I stopped for lunch at the entrance to the Cross Timbers camping and motocross area on the southwest corner of the lake. That’s where this first shot called out to me.

miraclehillSo it was slow riding against the wind until I got to my favorite spot in the whole Draper Lake Recreational Area: Miracle Hill. Today I felt it was time to capture the unmowed crown of the hill, my companions in prayer. I had a question weighing on my soul and it was worthy of divine attention. Not that I can explain so easily the nature of the question, but I can offer something that indicates the nature of the answer I got.

Roughly a month ago, I predicted that this shift in reality would cause a lot of madness. Not in some apocalyptic sense of massive breakdown of society, but a certain element of madness where people without a heart-led awareness would not be able to cope. That is, however well they managed their existence previously in this Shadowlands, it was about to get much more difficult. So what I see around me is not a massive outbreak of violence, but a host of little symptoms that point to a fresh level of the typical madness that characterizes our world in the first place. If all you have is your reason trying to make sense of it, you’ll look for all the wrong kinds of explanation and you’ll remain a fool about it, stuck inside the same madness as everyone else.

And, boy, do I see that crazy stuff happening — people are doing the most inexplicable things these days. So the question was not merely on my mind, but in my soul at large. What do I need to know, Lord, to stay focused and obedient?

The last time I was up on this hill, the Lord gave me an overwhelming sense of peace that translates roughly to: fear not, Ed. I’m not going to tell you that everything will be dandy for you, but nothing about this coming time of insanity is going to really touch me. I am utterly certain you can find a place to stand, on your own Miracle Hill, where you can claim the same conviction of faith. Today that solemn divine promise was renewed.

Then the Lord gave me a handy hook for my mind to organize how it will obey that faith. Try not to the confine your thinking here, because the terminology isn’t meant to be that precise. Talking about matters of the heart-mind generally requires parables, symbolic references. Your intellect can get used to that, you know. But the madness is pegged to the Lord’s decision to disembowel globalism. I’m not saying it will just die and go away, but it will self-destruct in a certain sense. You can see it already in the way corporate news outlets are choking on their anger and hatred for everyone who isn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about the globalist agenda.

That symbolizes the general madness where God is grinding down globalism, and not merely in the political arena. The madness is because He’s going to strip away the pretense, no longer allowing the globalist mythology to appear to work very well. I’ve said often that such mystical expressions as, “He will not break off the bent reed or extinguish the smoking wick” indicates how God tends to let folly go until it burns itself out (Isaiah 42:3). And in several other places, Scripture states that God will treat the general run of humans as cattle, guiding them in ways they cannot see because they don’t live in their hearts. Sooner or later comes the time to thin the herd and sell some hamburgers. Maybe you can hear the grill sizzling; I can. In contrast to the harvest of lost souls, this is a time of slaughter.

If you see the madness as I do, then I think it’s best to remember that most of it is the death of globalism as a philosophy. It may still linger like fables in the minds of many, but the madness is their own moral blindness refusing to see what they could see. And a lot of their enemies aren’t really going to catch on, either, but they will at least find it entertaining. To the degree the general population experiences the craziness, it’s because however much they bought into the globalist lie, that part of them is breaking down.

Once I left the hill, I still had nine miles to go against the wind along the Sooner Road corridor, but the time passed quickly despite the slower riding pace. Another 30 miles, approximately, and it felt pretty good.

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Cycling: Back to Triple-X

Posted on November 28, 2016 by ehurst

01windmillIt was a glorious ride! Not in the sense of accomplishment, but all the way Creation kept calling out to me of the glory of Our Creator. There was one total surprise: It was a rare westerly stiff wind. We never get straight westerlies in Oklahoma. It added an extra training factor. The route was basically east from home to Woodside Drive, which turns into Spencer Road northbound. In Spencer, it winds around to Spencer-Jones Road, following the railroad tracks. As noted previously, Jones ain’t nothing special but out east of town on Britton Road stood this old windmill and pumphouse featuring the Jones High School mascot in the proper shade of green.

02grasshedgeI cut south across the farm fields on Indian Meridian and another mile east of the Jones Center Middle School to pick up Triple-X and that long, straight, flat two miles south. Up to that point it has been pretty easy with a tailwind half the time. At this point I realize the wind has just a hint of southerly leaning, but I had no trouble enjoying the wide open spaces of the North Canadian Valley. Where else can you find farmers actually cultivating natural prairie grass as a hedge?

03decayingroadChoctaw City and the county have still done nothing to restore the washed out farmland where the river ate three houses and a barn on Triple-X close to NE 36th. So that section of the road is still officially closed and darned difficult to access on the southern end. With far less traffic, the grass and weeds have begun to encroach through three layers of asphalt. Next year will see stuff sprouting through the cracks in the middle of the road. From there I turned into the wind for the first time and struggled up the hill toward Indian Meridian again.

04pasture-n-cedarsBut it wasn’t that hard, just slow going. Turning left I ran south toward Reno Avenue. This section of Indian Meridian was very nostalgic for the all the years I rode past this way before moving out of Choctaw and into Midwest City. The cedars along the fence of one lovely pasture called my name and invited me to take this shot. Another two miles south and I hit Reno.

05hillyrenoNow came the hard workout. Reno is very hilly out this part of the county. There were two brutal climbs made tougher by the headwinds, and numerous lesser hills. I found myself resting on the down-slopes instead of pedaling through. This shot is looking back down one of those brutal hills; the water tower in the distance stands at the corner of Henney Road. Still, I could hear the trees and other vegetation calling to me and singing God’s praise in the stiff winds. It was all very encouraging and I didn’t whine about the physical challenge.

Eventually I got past Post Road where it all flattens out again. I really don’t like Reno that close to the city, because of the heavier traffic, but it was tolerable and the drivers were decent with me. Near as I can calculate, I got home with 30 miles. And what a lovely ride it was.

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