Photography: South of Trosper Park

Posted on September 29, 2016 by ehurst

01formeraptcomplexAs always, click on any image to see it full-sized. CTRL-click will open the image in a separate browser tab.

02okcskylineIf you understand walking through life by your heart, no one has to explain. I felt drawn to go back and revisit an area between Cherry and Crooked Oak Creeks. My heart told me there would be some rich imagery there, plus some on the way both directions. First up is the site of an apartment complex that was properly cleaned up.03oldshed This happens to look down toward Crooked Oak Creek. In the foreground the exposed soil shows the belated removal of a large concrete parking area. Second is a skyline shot of OKC overlooking a pipe yard. Third is an old garden shed near the Grand Boulevard Bike Trail.

04rattystablekennelGrand Boulevard actually splits the original Trosper Park. On the south side is an undeveloped woodland featuring horse trails. So you should not be surprised to find a riding club along with several private stables.05vacanthouse-a Some are in pretty rough shape. The image on the right includes several kennels between some old stables. The horses stirred and came out to gaze at me when the dogs started barking.

06vacanthouse-bThere are a lot vacant houses out in that area, as well. 07syro-malabarchOne thing I never expected to see in this neighborhood was a Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. It tells me something about the oldest residents still living out here. Most of the places were neat, but showed a character that wasn’t exactly your average suburban Americans.08frontshed This ancient vine-covered shed and garage were standing on the street side of the property and facing inward (image right). From what I could see through the gaps in the privacy fence, it was still in use.

09abandonedhouseOf course, there is always at least one abandoned house still standing in most neighborhoods. But the Syro-Malabar church was not the only religious surprise.10buddhistshrine Would you believe there is a Salvation Army worship center out here on SE 44th Street? Would you believe right across the street is a very large Buddhist Temple and gardens? The outdoor shrine has seen improvements over the years. This place has been around for a very long time.11buddhisttemple They once had a majestic gate entrance, but at some point reworked the driveway because of some kind of code enforcement about alignment with cross streets and such. The elaborate gate was left standing where it was, I suppose because of the high investment.12originalbuddhisttemple It seems to me that Buddhists have this thing about not discarding something that they once lavished with attention and offerings. On one corner of their extensive property is this old house; you can’t read the sign because of the angle of the sun, but it’s impossible to see the place from any other angle with all the vegetation. 13olderhomeThis is their original facility, obviously a former house that was already there. They added quite a bit on the rear. Older homes are common out here (image above left).

14drillingrigAlso common out here, as previously noted, is all sorts of petroleum drilling industries. This monster rig is visible all over the area, sitting in an equipment sales yard. This thing is all painted up and for sale; they actually move these massive beasts around on our roads.

15deadendA really good visual pun is this dead end barrier; beyond the fence is a graveyard. As I rode back through parts of Del City on my way home, I was reminded of how much had changed when I first saw this place back in 1973.16oldwarehouse I would have to ask around what was in this ancient warehouse, but I’m pretty sure someone remembers. Given the sun was still at an angle behind, it was a tricky thing getting this shaded face without glare, but the backside is covered by trees. At any rate, the perspective is a little odd from that angle.

Good workout because the temperatures are just about 66°F (19C).

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Photography: Ride in the Park

Posted on September 28, 2016 by ehurst

01trail-aAs always, click on any image to see it full-sized. CTRL-click will open the image in a separate browser tab.

02trail-bIt was a high tension workout day, but I had the itch to take some pictures. So I got out my bike and rode to the Regional Parks system to see if anything spoke to me.03trail-c Rather than associate the pictures with some kind of narrative order, I’ve grouped them by general subject. First up are some trail shots. I wanted to test some different settings on the camera and see how it affected the mixture of shadow and light from the sun.

creek-aNext are a batch of images along the banks of Soldier Creek. Again, there’s a strong interplay and light and shadow.creek-b The creek was fairly low today, but the autumn storm season has already begun, if only feebly. I’m looking forward to catching a lot of shots of heavy run-off.creek-c This tree with nearly all its roots exposed by washout is still healthy and strong.creek-d Just a little ways upstream stands this natural sandstone dam (image left) that makes a very nice spot to sit and hear Creation speak. The Parks Department put a bench there long ago, and it’s just about worn out.creek-ecreek-f One of the the major hindrances for some of these shots is that I still can’t put too much pressure on the right knee. That means limited clambering around, and for someone as adventurous as me, that’s hard to face.

park-apark-bNext are some random shots of various open areas in the parks system. This first one is in Pecan Grove Park. Pecans are just starting to ripen but the squirrels are impatient, picking some that are still just a tad green. There are already a good scattering of husks and shells on the trails. Of course, the biggest is Barnes Park, right next to the golf course.park-c At this point, the ground is down much closer to the water level of Soldier Creek and the Parks Department dredged it a bit to accommodate the wild waterfowl. This section of the creek stays full year-round.

structure-aFinally, I rode out of the park and into the edge of what was once a very busy shopping area. There’s a vacant warehouse on Republic Drive, just across the street from the Century distribution center.structure-b It’s much larger than the image through the fence indicates. Next is a few shots from an old quonset hut warehouse alongside the decommissioned tracks.structure-c I can’t recall what was there originally, but for part of my youth, Sears used it as their catalog sales facility. They had a regular small store nearby. This thing is oddly built, because the front faces the street squarely, but the quonset hut portion is parallel to the tracks, not square with the front.structure-d This old concrete pad next to the tracks was the rail dock; it used to have an adjustable steel extension for unloading rail cars. Now the pad hosts a pile of rusting rails pulled up from somewhere else on this line, plus a section of concrete conduit.

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Anatomy of Crooked Oak Creek

Posted on September 27, 2016 by ehurst

01crookedsourceAs always, click on any image to see it full-sized. CTRL-click will open the image in a separate browser tab.

Crooked Oak Creek was a long ride, and quite disturbing at times. For one, the creek wanders through some serious neglect and polluting heavy industry. For another, I was using the little red Coolpix and it’s not working well. I stumbled across a reference to upgrading the firmware on the Coolpix and I thought it was working better. However, the mechanism for extending and retracting the lens is badly worn and freezes part way. It requires taking out the battery to get a reset. 02crookedsourceAlso, the lens may be out of alignment, because the shots are consistently out of focus on the upper right corner. We had a good run, little red camera, but you are officially retired.

03earlywetnessOur first two shots are two different angles looking across the lovely pasture toward a pair of small ponds rather close together, the source of Crooked Oak Creek. The willow trees mark the edge of the shallow ponds, and you may be able to discern how they lie in a shallow draw. 04crookedeasternJust behind me is the watershed between the Canadian River a couple of counties to the south and the North Canadian River just a few miles north. The creek runs across this field toward SE 89th, because the drainage ditch, then winds back around into another pond where 89th meets Eastern Avenue (above right). It crosses just a short time later (image left) still looking like a ditch, and runs northward along the west side of Eastern Avenue for a few miles. But in this first mile, it quickly picks up seasonal tributaries, making this a major creek very suddenly.

05crookedbudweiserBut while it gather size, it runs across some protected turf controlled by the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railway company (Flynn Yard). In fact, it follows the long entrance drive all the way back against the rail lines. The next landowner north there is Premium Beers — a massive Anheuser-Busch distribution center.06crookedi240 They doll it all up nice with a private drive that bridges the creek (image right). The next access to the creek is the north service road on Interstate 240 (image left).

07crookedse66thThis is where it gets ugly. From this point on, we pass through several miles of oil drilling equipment yards — numerous acres of pipe yard, drilling machinery, oilfield trucking, related industries and even a couple of old farm tractor outfits. This whole valley is “rough neck” territory, the nickname for oilfield drilling rig workers.08discardedasphalt And the creek shows the total contempt corporate drilling companies have for natural resources. Above right, the creek is wholly inaccessible on SE 66th because no one takes care of the creek. You can barely catch a glimpse of the dirty water from the street. I ran into that repeatedly, and they don’t want you to see it. Above left is a massive asphalt dumping yard, both paving materials and other stuff like roofing waste.09valleybrookwater That yard is for sale, abandoned without any effort at clean-up.

10crookedse44thBetween Eastern Avenue and the old Crossroads Mall (now a Mexican mall) and SE 66th to SE 59th is Valley Brook. This is easily the most corrupt and crooked little municipality in the state. Their water treatment (above right) is revoltingly primitive, sitting right on the creek bank. The water crawls out of the woods at Eastern Avenue and SE 59th (above left). The place is culturally rough-neck; the residents aren’t all low-life, but all of the business facing out on SE 59th are variations on “gentleman’s clubs.” It’s a ticket trap for drivers, as well, a major source of municipal revenue. Some time ago, the municipal judge owned the only towing business in town; think about that for a moment.

11crookedse44thSo while the creek leaves Valley Brook, it still wanders hidden behind fences that secure more oil field servicing yards. At this point most of the pollutants are particulate solids, but the moral pollution of human contempt is what really burns. 12crookedgrandblvd-aIt stinks where it crosses SE 44th (image right). But it has almost another mile of neglect and abuse hidden from sight before it catches one powerful dose of fallow regrowth just before it reaches Grand Boulevard.13crookedgrandblvd-b It approaches in a long forgotten culvert (image left), the only indicator that this area once hosted homes and businesses. The culvert ends at the road bed and forms a quiet pool on the north side of Grand Boulevard (image right). By some miracle, it now smells like a fishing pond.

14crookedeastern-bAfter crossing Eastern Avenue again, it now runs through Trosper Park and the attached golf course. The park and golf course are divided by SE 29th (image below right). But even the golf course looks the worse for wear and shows very poor management. I know a little about one because my Dad was once worked on one in Purcell, OK.15crookedse22nd There is a nice quiet street running along the northern boundary of the course, SE 22nd. Some decades ago this was all the backside of Crooked Oak school district. There isn’t any actual community by that name, but at some point the folks here chartered their own independent school district, and their mascot is — you guessed it, “the Ruffnex.” So this quiet lane runs between the golf course on the south and their school sports complex on the north, with a city parks maintenance yard squeezed in one side.

16oldcoppercreekJust a little farther east is what was once Cooper Creek Apartments. As I’ve noted before, it was a really bad experiment in project housing, being too remote from any of the typical life supports. So the frustrated little rats housed here destroyed the place and their families were evicted. The whole thing was destroyed, leaving only a vast green area still mowed by someone, but otherwise it contains a surprising number of homeless. The creek runs in the far background of this picture, and after seeing it was occupied, I decided to leave the folks to their privacy.

17crookedse15thgrandThe next access would have been SE 15th, but it crosses the curvy Grand Boulevard just a few yards from there, so I shot from a position that shows that short stretch. From here it runs up behind one of the largest salvage automobile holding yards in the state on one side, and another pipe yard on the other side. From there it runs along Bryant Avenue and down behind another long-gone apartment complex.18crookedreno This one, perched on the south side of Interstate 40, was burned out several times and is not just a green pasture. So the creek runs under I-40 there and toward Reno Avenue just below an exit ramp from the interstate (image left).

19crookedmouthJust across Reno you can see the creek run it’s final stretch into the North Canadian. This is also where that odd loop and bridge on the Eagle Lake Bike Trail stands. However, in this last image they are obscured behind the railroad bridge.

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Anatomy of Cherry Creek

Posted on September 26, 2016 by ehurst

As always, click on any image to see it full-sized. CTRL-click will open the image in a separate browser tab.

01cherrycrksourceIt’s the only water course of significance between Crutcho Creek on the east and Crooked Oak Creek on the west (we’ll do Crooked Oak soon). There is no apparent reason for calling it Cherry Creek, since no cherries grow anywhere in this area. At any rate, it’s a minor stream that we can cover in one post, though it took two days to shoot because something interfered with the process.02cherrycrkbirth The source is a fairly high ridge just north of SE 67th near Bryant Avenue. In this image, the creek starts somewhere off to the left and above the patch of woods on the back lot of a drilling outfit. While there is a tinhorn running under this backroad, the creek itself doesn’t take shape until far below this slight elevation. The second image here (above right) shows a broad open draw where rain would run down from either side and into the center background of the picture.03cherrycrkse59th

It’s not until a half-mile downstream that it looks anything like a creek, where it runs under SE 59th (image right). This was taken Saturday and there must have been a bike ride or race, because dozens of cyclists on expensive road bikes came sailing by in little groups, heading west of SE 59th. I received some cordial greetings, of course.04cherrycrkbryant Just a short distance around the corner and north on Bryant, the creek tumbles out of an undeveloped field into this concrete culvert. This thing parallels Bryant running northward for more than a half-mile.05cherrycrkse44th At that point it swings back east behind an old strip mall and a battered apartment complex. Where it hits SE 44th the water was stagnant and smelled like sewage lying in the bottom of a very wide culvert.

06cherrycrkhartsdaleJust across the street on the north side of SE 44th is the Hartsdell district, where the creek is labeled for the first time. It is notorious for flooding enough to surge into some of the homes on either side once every few years. That school house on the right has gotten wet a few times; it’s a ratty old building belonging to OKC Schools, and my first few experiences with substitute teaching after coming home from the military took place there (1993).07hartsdaleend Cherry Creek runs like this, splitting Hartsdell until it drops off into a natural bed where the double street stops unceremoniously. It runs through some woods and out into an open field with nothing but an oil well sitting in it.08twdse29th You can just make out the heavy foliage in the bottom of the creek bed (image left).

09awayfromse29thJust across the street is the monster MTM Corporation — I can recall when it was just a single building that did trophies and plaques for local awards. Now they own a half-mile of frontage and a dozen buildings along SE 29th Street.10thruepperlyhts And Cherry Creek comes out from under SE 29th back into a culvert again that splits the MTM property. It stays in a culvert almost all the way across the whole square mile, generally referred to as Epperly Heights (image left), sometimes with vertical walls and sometimes sloped.11behindschool The only break from this routine is a patch of park behind the Epperly Heights Elementary School (image right). It’s one of numerous Lion’s Club parks in the OKC Metro, but this one is nothing to be proud of, showing few signs of significant use.

12oldironfootbridgeAs the creek runs farther north across the section, the houses are progressively less well-kept and less expensive in the first place. This battered iron footbridge is likely older than I am, and represents how long this place has been occupied by homes.

13cherrycrkse15thEventually it passes under SE 15th, where I had to contend with the overpowering smell of seasoned frying oil emitting from the Church’s Fried Chicken place off-camera to the right. 14cherrycrksunnylaneThe creek runs on behind a few very long standing commercial buildings (oh, the stories they could tell) once owned by some real estate scoundrels. Right where Interstate Highway 40 angles across the north end of Del City, the creek ducks under Sunnylane and the interstate all at the same time (image left). Running at an angle, it remains deeply buried for more than a hundred meters and emerges on the far side near a Hyundai car dealership.15floodchannel This access road runs down to Ray Trent Park, which we encountered in the survey of Crutcho Creek.16cherrycrkraytrentpk On the right here is a shot of the flood control channel that runs between the two creeks where they come within a hundred meters or so. The city parks built a multi-use path through the park and this shot was taken from a bridge, looking toward Cherry Creek. One branch of that path runs across the creek (above left) and into a housing development.

17cherrycrkrenoBack again across the AYSO soccer fields and onto Reno Avenue, it’s still rather close to Crutcho Creek, but not for long. Cherry Creek passes under Reno (image right) and turns west, while Crutcho turns east. 18cherrycrkne4th-aBut both are pretty much inaccessible for quite some ways here, running through undeveloped woodlands and lots of industrial property. We next see Cherry Creek running under NE 4th, my favorite path into OKC.19cherrycrkne4th-b Almost immediately on the other side of NE 4th the creek runs under a railroad track. This is a section of the old line that ran through Midwest City and out through southern Choctaw (right near where I used to live in that trailer park) and toward Shawnee. It’s no longer in service and the rails are slowing being pulled up one section at a time, so now this spot is just a parking place. That mattress and overstuffed chair are almost certainly washed down from some tramp camp upstream.

20cherrycrkncanAgain the creek disappears, but the area is now pretty flat and swampy. It runs behind a concrete mixing yard on one side and a sand-n-gravel depot on the other. The next time we see it is NE 10th. From here we can see where the creek empties into the North Canadian River in the distant background of this image (left).21tankfarm To give you some idea what’s down this way, most of the flood plain is occupied by sand-n-gravel storage, trucking yards, concrete and asphalt mixing plants, and several major oil company tank farms.

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Reprise: Moral Reasoning

Posted on September 26, 2016 by ehurst

We’ve picked up a crop of new subscribers lately. It’s time for one of those periodic restatements of faith. This time I’ll emphasize the basis for our moral reasoning here.

Our fallen nature rests on trusting the intellect to handle moral questions. That’s the meaning behind the Hebrew phrase translated as “The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” It’s “knowledge” in the sense of deciding and judging what is good and evil from our human resources, specifically as opposed to trusting in divine revelation. What is utterly opaque to Western culture is that the only way you can take advantage of divine revelation is by moving your conscious awareness into your heart-mind.

I use as a reference point two previous posts to explain what that means — Sensory Heart Science and Rebuilding Redemption. The Ancient Hebrews, as part of the Ancient Near East, regarded the heart as a superior faculty separate from the intellect; the heart is the seat of faith where God communicates through conviction. He does not address Himself to the human intellect. Even when God uses miraculous means to communicate through our human senses, He still addresses the heart, not the brain.

The convictions of your heart speak with moral authority to the mind, if you choose to let your heart rule. The mind was not designed to rule, but to organize and implement the moral reasoning of the heart. Building on this foundation, nothing I write is aimed at steering your thinking, but offering my thinking as a stimulus for your own heart-mind to consider what you have to do to obey the moral demands of your convictions. Your heart knows what God requires of you. Sometimes it speaks loudly and makes demands, pushing us to overcome inertia on some issues (assertive). But for most of us still striving to learn how the heart communicates to the mind, the majority of our discovery is when the convictions respond to some exposure (passive). My writing is meant to provoke a heart-led response first and foremost. Persuading you to agree with me is just a human desire that doesn’t rank very high in priority.

My regular readers already know that much, but there are enough new readers that it needs to be explained now and then, as the basis for some of the more radical ideas I present. Heart-led moral reasoning is not going to come up with the same answers to human problems as intellectual reasoning. On the one hand, I do continue a life-long study of Ancient Hebrew intellectual traditions, history and culture so my brain knows what to expect from the Bible. On the other hand, those Ancient Hebrews took very seriously the business of letting the heart rule. The result is that I strive to teach your mind what to expect from your heart. I get no satisfaction from people who echo my sentiments on this or that issue, but it’s a real blessing when you can describe how your heart has awakened to its role, and you have begun your own moral journey of discovery. You aren’t supposed to agree with me on details, but learn from how I get to those details.

A fundamental moral assumption in Scripture is that humans are hard-wired to live under a peculiar brand of feudalism that was once ubiquitous in the Near East. Whatever flaws we face in human society while living in this fallen world, our only hope for the blessings of God is to live in that Ancient Near Eastern feudal social structure and government. Any other form of government is morally inferior; no other can address the full range of human need for guidance and restraint from gross sin. So all your trendy “Christian” political theories are garbage against God’s revealed form of government. You cannot make sense of the Law Covenants until you first embrace Ancient Near Eastern feudalism as God’s answer to human need. Any form of democracy is a heathen concept built on rejecting God’s revelation, just as bad as tyranny.

Nobody has any business ruling your daily existence unless they are family. They can be family by blood or by covenant; indeed, the latter takes priority over DNA. But you cannot simply paste the word “covenant” over some other form of government that meets your logical and sentimental preferences. It has to be feudal in nature.

Within our modern collection of political philosophies we find a world of iniquity. All of them fundamentally reject the rule of the heart-mind. All of them are inherently materialistic, a flat rejection of revelation. Communism is easily the most materialistic of all political philosophies, and the one that suffers most from unrealistic assumptions about human nature. Socialism is hardly much different, just a little less intrusive in detailed control. Any leftist lean is inherently evil. But the right is no better. Libertarian philosophy offers zero mechanism for the necessity of moral restraint. The various flavors of conservative political leanings are simply libertarianism with restrictions. And whatever folks may imagine is centrist is just logical inconsistency. In every case, it’s asking the wrong questions.

On this basis we seldom agree with any of the specific policy agendas. This or that action might be good or might not, but without a proper foundation in moral reasoning of the heart, it’s entirely accidental.

I can also explain how our cultural mythology gets us into trouble on these things. The impulse to control in specifics (with specific requirements in outcomes) arises from the Cult of Oester inherent in the Germanic tribal background of Western Civilization. It’s reflects the Curse of the Fall on the feminine soul. The emphasis on mechanics and structure is a masculine thing arising from the appeal of reason found in Greco-Roman assumptions about reality. While this image oversimplifies, most people can see how it presents a basic pattern. So you understand that globalism is feminist-communist and nationalism is faux masculine logic. The whole mess rests on a heathen model of unnecessary conflict between male-female, feelings-logic, control-freedom, etc. The answer is not pragmatic compromise, but to move outside the broken model.

Things are further complicated because of abuse of terms. In Western mythology, the heart is just a quasi-emotional impulse that is actually the enemy of pure logic, and on a lower level than logic. When we advocate a heart-led life, it’s misread as something else. We don’t expect minds closed off to the heart to understand. It’s not incumbent on us to convince people’s minds, but to trust God for His power to provoke conviction and awaken hearts. Our calling is not persuading folks to convert, but to offer a vision that only hearts can grasp.

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Epistemology Wars

Posted on September 25, 2016 by ehurst

It’s everywhere. Every day I encounter some dispute where the opposing sides speak past each other, because each assumes a radically different reality. It’s polarizing because there is no debate at all, just yelling spite at each other as if neither side can imagine how the other could possibly disagree without forfeiting all claims to logic.

I suspect most of my readers are like me, not too happy with either side in this war of words. On the other hand, am I alone in thinking I’m a little closer to George Carlin than to the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs)? I swear I could never participate in public education ever again, because it’s largely owned by the SJWs, from preschool up through graduate schools. Then again, I’d probably find myself ostracized at a lot of private schools, too — especially the ones claiming to be Christian.

A related dispute is between the globalists and the nationalists — commies versus fascists, in practice. The polarization will result in bloodshed soon enough. I don’t favor the fascists, but they are going to win the next round here in the West, so we better get ready for it. This dispute manifests in the current international argument over Syria. The commie West is in panic because they were caught lying; they bombed the Syrian troops defending themselves against ISIS. Oh, and it looks like the evidence supports the idea a US drone fired a missile on the aid convoy in Aleppo, and then insisted Russia is to blame. It’s not that I’m in favor of Assad or Russia either one, but they are going to win this next round. Meanwhile, their opposition is using the most bizarre rhetoric.

The polarization is a false dichotomy. We don’t have to support either side, because there are simply two natural manifestations of Western epistemology. The whole argument is inherent in Western Civilization, a sort of bogus yin-yang conflict that never balances because the two sides are implacable. We can generally characterize nationalism as the masculine warrior mythology, whereas globalism is the result of feminist nest-building mythology. It’s not hard to see how that model stands behind all the various polarizing disputes we see in the world. Having rejected the Western epistemology, we are totally outside the whole thing.

Yet, we are stuck right in the middle of it. That is, we cannot escape the real-world implications of this warfare. Yet we are at war in our way, in the sense that we reject the fundamental assumptions about reality that have made all this folly mandatory. But our warfare is rooted in our otherworldly assumptions, so we fight in an entirely different manner. Indeed, God and His Creation carry the fight for us, since all we do is try to find our place and hang on as Our Sovereign carries His plans forward. By choosing God and His moral character revealed in Creation, we are choosing sides against the worldly assumptions of our Western society.

And we win. Not because they go down in flames, though they do in the long run. But we win by the very choice to withdraw from their worldly orientation. We don’t take this life too seriously; death is not a tragedy but a promotion to the next level of living. We invest our efforts in understanding God’s ways on this plane of existence so we can conform the eternal plane in advance of arriving there. Meanwhile, we have the bonus of truly enjoying this world because God shows us its true nature when we opt to move the focus of our awareness from the head to the heart. Victory here is a matter of getting deeper into the heart-mind; we kick our intellects off the throne and crown the heart-mind the ruler over the head-mind. This is what reverses the Fall and begins our release from the Curse of the Fall.

We don’t fight other people, but the fallen nature within ourselves. The rest is just picking up the plunder that God drops for us. Our divine inheritance is beyond comprehension.

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Psalm 119: Aleph

Posted on September 24, 2016 by ehurst

Westerners get the impression the Hebrews weren’t too good at math, but that has more to do with a different attitude about when and where math matters. At 176 verses, this is the longest chapter in the Bible, and with few exceptions, each verse mentions the revelation of God directly. In English we see: law, testimony, statutes, ordinances, teaching, instructions, commandments, precepts, promises, ways and word, among others. It’s also an acrostic psalm in alphabetical order, 22 stanzas of 8 lines each, one for each letter, and each line in a stanza beginning with the same Hebrew letter of the alphabet.

Obviously the psalmist strives to get across his personal experience in devotion to God in terms of what we can know of God, what He allows us to see of Him through His self-disclosure. This is culturally challenging for us because Western Christians suffer the powerful influence of Hellenized Pharisaism and the resulting legalism. This is not a question of learning the Law as legislation, but as the manifestation of God’s personal character. The Law of God is not a mere record of statements and associated events, but the indicator of moral personality. The reason for the record is the Person behind it, so any obsessive legalistic focus on the record will never come up with the right answer. God’s revelation is also the very fundamental nature of reality itself. So we note that this psalm is an elongated celebration of Scripture as the tangible expression of God Himself.

We will examine this psalm one stanza at a time.

119: Aleph 1-8

The psalmist begins with a bold declaration: O, how blessed are those who are possessed of moral integrity! The image is a heart ruling over the entire being, directing all things in concert to conform to God’s divine moral character. This assertion is restated in different terms with twin Hebrew parallel statements. This is not legalism, since our notions of precision are not binding on God, but a celebration of how much power there is for living with a sincere commitment to pleasing God.

It’s the desire that matters, so God does not register their every miscalculation, but sees the heart of love and devotion. Thus, they are said to perform no evil, regardless of mistakes. These are people who do their best to walk in God’s footsteps. In the fourth verse, the word often translated “precept” actually has no English equivalent. It’s a reference to the substance of reality, arising from the concept that all of Creation reflects the moral nature of God. Clinging to whatever perception we have of that character makes our lives consistent with the very design of the universe.

The next verse (5) follows up by wishing mightily that his habits were built from God’s revelation. With that kind of character, reading the Scripture is a warming joy, not some kind of guilt-inducing embarrassment. Verse 7 looks forward to a life of worship that bubbles up irrepressibly from a heart that has an unalloyed commitment to God as personal Lord. Can you not see how our very existence takes on a blessed clarity when we order our commitments consistently? So the final verse is the psalmist’s resolve to build a thorny hedge of protection internally so that his habits of life create a moral hedge externally in his actions.

Finally, in accordance with courtly protocol, he asks that God keep a tight grip on his life and reserve His wrath for someone else.

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Potty Mouth

Posted on September 24, 2016 by ehurst

Our society’s obsession with cursing and foul language shows up as both a prissy objection to it, as well as a rejection of that standard by free use of such language. Yet even those who approve of cursing get tired of hearing someone use the f-word as verbal punctuation. The whole subject is fraught with cultural idiocy.

So it’s refreshing when we see someone actually study it with some academic rigor. We learn that most outbursts are just that — they arise from a different part of the brain than most normal speech. This is why people with Tourette’s syndrome can curse when they would really rather not.

The article also makes note of how slurs and insults fit into this whole picture. I do appreciate this bit:

Bergen does not think it wise to punish people for using slurs, as the NBA and NFL have done, or to ban or at least moderate their use, as the FCC tries to do. Rather, he advises that people who are tempted to use slurs be kinder and more respectful; conversely, those who hear them should relax and not always get so worked up. Legislation has not really worked to temper any kind of hate speech, so it is nice — although it seems naive — to think that Bergen’s common-sense approach could work.

Rule-making and legislation have no useful effect on slurs and insults (nor prejudice, for that matter), so get over it. But the article arises from Western culture and has no awareness of heart-led living, so the solution offered is pretty weak. If we bring in the heart-led factor, we discover the best way of handling this rather substantial problem is two-fold.

First, we need to discuss the nature of prejudice and what part it is meant to play in human nature. I’ve covered that before with discussing how we are hard-wired to be tribal and protective. When you make that “evil,” what’s left is racism and prejudice. It’s a serious flaw in our social mythology that rejects the utter necessity of tribal social structure. Let’s at least be aware of this issue. Then, second, we can pull that bundle of reactions out of the part of our brain that makes us blurt those things in raw emotional responses. All the artificial attempts to pull it out into rational processing have clearly failed, so let’s make it part of our moral processing, instead.

No, I am not the first person to see this, but if I tell you it comes from the Bible, most Western Christians will not be able to find it. My fellow heart-led believers who have read enough of the Bible will recognize it quickly.

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Chasing His Peace

Posted on September 23, 2016 by ehurst

You have nothing to lose by trusting in the Lord.

It’s funny how that statement seems mundane to so many mainstream Christians. I’ve seen it first hand, and I’m sure you have, too: It becomes a part of the ritual mantra that resides outside of one’s personal reality because religion is kept in a separate compartment from the rest of life. That’s what Western Christianity does, killing genuine faith by making it just another cerebral category of human endeavor.

A small example I like to use is cleaning up the litter around my apartment, dropped by other residents or visitors. When the maintenance guys come out in the morning with the trash bucket, their motive is entirely different. They pick up trash; I seek to bring healing to the environment. They aren’t bad guys, but they don’t do what I do and I can deal with that just fine. I am a part of God’s Creation, and it’s a part of me. My actions help everyone involved in ways they cannot grasp. By standing with God in obeying His revelation, and hearing His call and His claim on my soul, I enter more closely into His free offering to all mankind. I’m a little closer to what Adam was doing in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. I bring healing a little closer to the folks around me.

That’s not so different from what I strive to do on this blog — I want to vivify the healing hand of God in this world. I’m looking at events around me and seeking ways to obey the calling of God on my life. I can’t pretend to know everything; I don’t address issues for which He has not equipped me. But for the things I do sense an understanding in my heart, I prophesy of what His living moral character — the Spirit of His Son — says to things I can handle. So I’m picking up the crap people drop so I can contribute my part to making room for God to provide His promises.

I have a strong moral confidence when I talk about politics, for example. I’ve studied it academically in the Social Sciences and I’ve studied it in my heart through moral revelation and prayer. It’s not that I pretend to have answers for your choices, but that I can see the hand of God at work in human history. There’s no prescription except to tell you: Pray that God shows you His calling and what He requires you do in playing your part in His glorious revelation. I try to point out what I see God doing because I have full confidence that if I get some detail wrong, your heart will know and your internal reaction will, in itself, serve as a revelation of His will for you. Even my failures can serve to shine the light of truth if my heart is committed to Him. Accurate or mistaken in my grasp, I cannot remain silent.

I am eager to see His truth revealed. Depending on how well connected folks are to His truth, that could mean blessing or wrath. Even the verbal distinction between blessing and wrath is artificial; getting more truth is a blessing even when it hurts because we have shed some lies that are too tightly attached. Thus, the same prayer for His glory revealed means a prayer for an awful lot of wrath on those who don’t serve Him. And because I cannot serve Him without being deeply involved in the world around me, that means I’ll experience some human suffering when His wrath falls on others. At all costs, may His glory shine in me!

Don’t get lost. There’s one kind of wrath when folks riot in Charlotte, NC. Of course, the majority of rioters arrested are from out of state. They were paid and transported into town just for this event. This is not a local protest of any kind, but a manufactured crisis meant to distract from more important events. It’s not hard to find examples of the same sorrows handled properly in other places. In Charlotte an armed black man was shot by a black policeman. In Tulsa, OK, an unarmed black man was shot by a white police officer, but the protest was peaceful (and the officer was arrested eventually). I suppose the difference is that Soros doesn’t have that many friends in Tulsa.

I’m not sure what to make of all the noise coming from the alternative news sites about another kind of wrath. It’s something just as phony as the protests in Charlotte, but it’s something on a different level entirely — assassinations of public figures. The claim is that, in just a few days from now, there will be at least an attempt on the life of Trump and/or Clinton. As best I can tell, the claim comes from multiple independent sources. It could still be a big lie, but I suspect there’s some substance behind it. We should hardly be surprised; anyone paying attention to the news could have predicted this some months ago. It’s the timing that seems to be an issue here, a sort of “October Surprise” that we read about in election commentary so often.

But regardless of what my mind says about all of that, my heart says, “Don’t worry.” Whatever happens will not justify the drama everyone else invests in it. It matters little whose faces we see during the actual voting; certain trends will not change. The clash between the globalists versus the nationalists is not going to fade with the death of either/both candidates. And if the globalists start winning in any way, there will be a bloody revolt by the nationalists. Nationalism is surging all over the world, so we should expect some kind of right-wing fascist backlash here in the US.

Part of it is simply the natural human response to the economic and social instability resulting from abusive financial policies. The past few decades have seen the wealthy engaging in heedless willful plunder of everyone else. The mechanism is mostly a matter of excessively easy credit coupled with legislation that forces the productive classes to spend more than they would voluntarily do. Mere hedonistic enticement wasn’t enough, so the cost of living was artificially boosted by hugely expensive government mandates. On top of confiscatory taxation, we were all forced to give more money to the wealthy who produced nothing at all. And the wealthy ran with that money and invested it in each other’s unproductive businesses and in making debt both easier and more necessary just to live.

And now we have this incomprehensible notional debt that actually means nothing at all, but serves to keep us all enslaved. But it’s on the verge of breaking because the kind of blood-sucking it takes to keep it working has sucked it all dry. There’s nothing left to feed back into the debt system, so it’s going to collapse. We all know it on some level, and it makes everyone nervous and twitchy. It means folks will overreact to disturbances in the last little bit of shambling stability they think they have. And the most popular instinctive response is a kind of hyper-law-n-order crackdown, and that makes fascism likely.

That’s because the world is dominated by a Western materialism. When stuff is all you have, losing your stuff is a serious crisis, and it’s worth making someone else bleed to protect whatever little you might have. So we are headed for some turmoil.

But we call it “tribulation” because there’s a lot more to this than a cerebral social science analysis. In the midst of all this we see God rising up to destroy Western Civilization because it has run its course. What follows will probably be worse in many ways, but it will surely be different. The transition cannot be made easy; humans are intransigent about their sins. We who seek to live by a higher moral level of existence start out repenting of our sins, and we become otherworldly in the midst of a worldly crisis. We see it from an entirely different angle. People are running around trying to salvage their worldly existence and we are trying to run away from all of that and closer to God.

God says again and again that He is in control and that anyone who seeks His glory will find it. Strive to stand closer to Him in the midst of this rough stuff. Whatever that costs us — whatever we have to abandon to pull back from this world — is not worth much against the shalom He offers.

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Anatomy of Crutcho Creek, Part 3

Posted on September 22, 2016 by ehurst

map-22sep16As always, click on any image to see it full-sized. CTRL-click will open the image in a separate browser tab.

Today was a little disappointing because most of Crutcho Creek was inaccessible. That is, we are the point where the creek runs across a lot of flat terrain, wandering tortuously in tight bends and loops through government controlled land.01crutchone10th-a Our first image is Crutcho Creek running under NE 10th just outside of that housing development where we ended the previous part. The second image is the creek running off northward from NE 10th. It runs across some industrial property on both sides after that.02crutchone10th-b The area is a notorious flood zone from here on out. The problem is that just a little ways downstream from here is a pitiful short levy that can’t protect a rather large mobile home park up a ways from the north bank.

03crutchoairdepotThen the creek flows under Air Depot Boulevard (image right. This latest bridge was built well above the creek bed, but I’ve seen the water standing on both approaches to the bridge on either, so I’m not sure what was accomplished with that. 04fieldcrutchoOn the east side of Air Depot is where the creek flows across undeveloped private property. However, most of the area fronting out on Air Depot is maintained by Midwest City like it’s some kind of park. Somewhere in the background across the sunlit field (image left) is where Soldier Creek joins the flow of Crutcho Creek.

05crutchone23rdFrom there it runs under NE 23rd (image right). However, we have reached an interesting point in the course of the creek. Back across Air Depot on the west side is Crutcho.06crutchoschoolThe school is easily the defining landmark of the place (image left). It runs quite some ways back from NE 23rd (Highway 62), opposite a rather large National Guard site. All the way back up to the end of Air Depot is a dead end. You can see where the creek is by the tightly packed trees along the banks, but the area is fully controlled by oil companies and various government agencies.07crutchocommunity It’s the edge of the landfill, for example. But across the highway from the school to the south is the community of Crutcho (image right). Behind all those ratty businesses you will find a few square blocks of houses, and farther back is the trailer park that floods so often.

08crutchovalley-aJust east of this community rises a rather high ridge. Since there is no access at all westward from the creek for at least a mile or more, I headed up the hill and took these two images looking back down from the ridge into Crutcho Creek Valley.09crutchovalley-b The first (left) is from the south side of the highway. This is the other side of that spot where Soldier Creek runs down into Crutcho (far left background). The second image (right) is on the north side of the highway from the yard in front of a county maintenance depot.

10protectedlandThe signs here warn folks to stay out. This is on the north side of that area where Crutcho Creek wanders so wildly all over the place, running at least two miles of curves in less than a mile of land space.11crutchone36th The sign also warns that nearby is a water treatment facility run by Midwest City, which stands off-screen to the left over the creek. The next image shows the creek ducking under NE 36th. We are in the home stretch from here.

12crutchokolbcemBack up on the ridge past the water treatment facility is a pair of cemeteries. If you turn north into the very old Kolb Cemetery (rather famous with historians) you can view northward down toward the Crutcho Creek Valley as it turns toward its final destination, the North Canadian River.13crutchorr-a But before it gets there, we can approach it where it passed under the railroad line (image right).14crutchorr-b Where I perched on the bank to get that shot, Midwest Boulevard was just a few yards behind me. This is a popular fishing spot with ad hoc concrete steps down to the water’s edge and under the rail bridge. The next shot (above left) was taken from the rail bridge where it spills into a pool, then makes a hard right under the road.

15crutchoncanI took this long telephoto shot (image right) where the river turns hard left, and that’s where Crutcho Creek joins the flow, but not until after making yet another long loop you’d have to see on a map to believe. It’s almost as if the creek is delaying giving up its waters until the last moment.

16turtlesncanFinally, since I was right there where the river runs under Midwest Boulevard, I poked around awhile. 17ncanmwblvdI spotted a couple of turtles (image left) swimming in deep pool where the river turns under the bridge. On the south bank where the construction crews have done some much work erecting that high levy to prevent the river undercutting the bridge, it’s possible to come around on either side and find a rough trail running under the bridge. It’s another fishing spot, but it’s been used for camping and perhaps other things more nefarious (I found a discarded bikini on the ground). So I found a place to stand where I could look back upstream and catch this view (above right) of the bridge and the levy coming out. You can see we are in a low water period prior to the fall storms that bring floods.

Thanks for coming along on this survey of Crutcho Creek.

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