Understanding Divine Mercy

Posted on September 6, 2015 by ehurst

As a whole, Western Christianity gets forgiveness alarmingly wrong.

King David committed horrid crimes. We read in 2 Samuel 11-12 of his adultery and murder. On the one hand, he was the king of what was then a very powerful kingdom. On the other hand, the Law of Moses prescribed execution for his crimes. If you read things in terms of Western legalism, it looks like serious corruption. Most Westerners ask: Why didn’t God enforce His own laws?

He did, of course, but it requires first understanding God and His concept of enforcement. We have to understand that God is not fair and balanced in the Western sense of things. Our Western arrogance teaches us to condemn, if not God Himself, then the Hebrew way of looking at things. “They didn’t know God as well as we do.” This is taught in a very wide range of mainstream Christianity. It’s not as if God was unable to correct things according to His tastes. But Western minds stumble yet again in thinking that the innocent son of this adulterous affair is the one who paid. And while they might connect how this crime resulted in Absalom’s Revolt, Western Christians still get it all wrong.

God is the definition of justice. What He does is justice. It remains for us to understand as much as possible. And I remind my readers that the Hebrew cultural viewpoint was shaped by God’s own hand; they were not some poor benighted intellectual backwater bumpkins. He didn’t struggle to reveal Himself to ignorant barbarians as a placeholder until He could get things going on the right path with Western Christianity. Rather, folks like Abraham and Moses were His closest human servants, His very real friends on this earth and men who understood Him better than any human at that time. They grasped His character far better than most humans today. Jesus did not set out to create Western Civilization; He strove to resurrect the ancient Hebrew viewpoint against a growing resistance from God’s own people. Western Civilization is largely the result of that resistance still active today. The viewpoint of the ancient Hebrew people is about as close to reality as we can get, in the sense that it was Jesus’ own viewpoint.

David was a skirt-chaser and in that way a fairly ordinary man. His tastes were far different from anything we know of today, but he surely loved the ladies. David was also a man God said was “after My own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). The two ideas are not incompatible. Westerners have an incredibly twisted and perverted understanding of human sexuality when judged by Hebrew standards. It takes whole books to explain this. We don’t understand how God can simply pass over David’s adultery, so we come up with all kinds of idiotic Western Christian teaching about it.

The primary issue in the Law of Moses was always social stability. Jesus said the lawful penalty for adultery (execution by stoning) required a just community first. Adultery is a threat to social stability; it rubs raw the wiring of how we interact. Despite our fallen nature and vast ocean of lustful desires, we cannot possibly move toward redemption if we tolerate that kind of marital looseness. But the legal penalty is not absolute. In Hebrew culture, laws are stated as the personal character of the Lawgiver, not as propositional truth standing out there in some imaginary intellectual ideal. The apex of applying legal penalties is head of household who represents God to the members of the household. The penalty is best exercised by someone who is up to his ears in the context because that is the strongest restraint against overdoing it.

Tolerance, mercy and forgiveness were a vital necessity for human survival, and a vital element of God’s character. Western minds keep reading that out of their understanding of the Bible. The words are not the problem, but the context that gives the words meaning is where we fail. How penitent was the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)? Nobody says you can just whitewash sin, but someone who genuinely repents is not the same as someone trying to cover up or excuse their sin. David was the highest ranking chief of tribes, clans and households; he was Israel’s acting Big Daddy. Who could execute the Chief Executioner? When David confesses after the prophet accuses him, we sense David was ready to pay the full price. In that case, God Himself was handling the investigation and trial, so we have no standing to question David’s sincerity. There were consequences, and we can be sure God entertained David’s appeal for the boy’s life, but decided it was best to bring that boy home to Heaven instead of allowing a life to flower on the ground of such a grave mistake. Yes, innocent children go straight to heaven, a far better place than this world, so the child didn’t lose anything.

In the Hebrew mind, human life in this fallen realm is not sacred in itself. Rather, life under divine justice is sacred. It is sacred regardless of the length or lack thereof, and sacred because it shines the light of glory on the Lord. David opened the door for demonic influence in his own household and his reign was shaken. The people of Israel joined in paying the price for David’s sin. That’s how it works. God had no trouble mitigating individual suffering for His faithful servants, but He does not simply disconnect everyone in full from the fallen context just because they didn’t do anything in particular to bring upon themselves that suffering. Such thinking does not represent His viewpoint and it is upon our shoulders to correct our thinking to match His. That means we are obliged to adopt the Ancient Hebrew thinking that He designed as the means to reveal Himself. You cannot know Him any other way.

God plays favorites in various ways, but the full details of His plans are seldom visible to any human or group of humans. Lots of stuff happens to us as background noise and we are obliged to bear with it. Some people appear to get off easy while others are crushed for no apparent reason. Get over it. You can ask, but God owes you no explanations, nor is He accountable to your reasoning and logic. All the more so if your logic is shaped by a culture that rejected Him outright, as the Greek philosophers did. Yes, those famous Greek thinkers knew about the Hebrew people and their God, but their hearts were asleep and unable to point them to the truth. They preferred to trust their own logic, the very essence of the Fall itself.

King David was essential to God’s plans. There was surely a better way of getting the proper mixture of DNA for God’s choice of heirs for David. God can remake anything and everything in the universe on His whims. Whatever God had in mind, it was David who took the wrong path. If nothing else, God’s choice to raise up Solomon as the second son of this weird marriage indicates how completely He can forgive sin. We have no excuse for the bitter and resentful way we do things, particularly in the Pharisaical legalistic way Western churches do it. Western churches pretend to be balance, fair and just, but only from the Western bureaucratic point of view, despite Orwellian abuse of biblical family language. Christ meant for His churches to be the moral equivalent of extended family households in His Kingdom, families after the style of genuine Hebraic households. Seems to me Church History is replete with examples of how completely we missed that.

Don’t just ignore sin, but learn divine justice and learn how God forgives.

Addenda: Offline question asks about the phrase in Galatians 2:6 that “God is no respecter of persons.” This is a Greek phrasing of a Hebrew idiom, as happens quite often in the New Testament. The closest English phrase is “God takes no one at face value.” You can be a legalistic butthead about the wording, but the context is obvious. God is not impressed with man’s sense of importance, so your human political standing does not automatically translate to a similar standing with God. It does not mean God is impartial in some absolutist legalistic sense. Rather, it means God plays favorites according to His own standard, as any eastern potentate would do. If He thinks you are a man/woman after His own heart, He will display distinct favoritism in some ways consistent with His character. In God’s revelation, everything is personal.

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Psalm 66

Posted on September 5, 2015 by ehurst

In Hebrew, the word translated “song” means words for singing, whereas “psalm” means specifically that instruments should be played with it.

David calls for praise from all the earth, meaning both the planet itself and all the people living on it. Get the whole orchestra involved in support of the choir and glorify His divine title as Lord of all. Because of His awe-inspiring actions even His enemies will fall at His feet, even if only in pretense to avoid His wrath. But every living thing will eventually worship Him, one way or another; they have no choice.

Why? Because the entire universe is just a toy in His hands. David mentions the demonstrations of that power in favor of Israel at her birth in the Exodus. Whenever she is faithful to Him, Israel faces no meaningful resistance from those who do not serve her Lord. You can either humble yourself before Him or be humbled by His power.

When people praise Him in joyful worship, He sees to it that their lives are firmly established in this world as His witnesses. That doesn’t mean we face no trials, but that we come through them like refined precious metals. He notes how Israel had passed through fiery trials, walked on by other nations at times, but God never abandoned His witness. Israel always emerged to abundant provisions.

As for himself personally, David would not fail to enter the place of worship with whatever he had vowed to offer. It didn’t matter how frivolous or extravagant he might have been in times of trouble, it was worth that and more simply be God’s chosen. David stands ready to regale them with tales of God’s generous blessings in his life. It’s not as if David pretends he was always just and innocent; surely he has faced the damage sin caused in his life. However, upon repentance God always restored David to His favor.

God is merciful to those who call on Him.

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Anatomy of Hog Creek, Part 2

Posted on September 5, 2015 by ehurst

(Click any of the thumbnail images for a larger view.)

SE55nValleyWayToday we trace West Branch Hog Creek (hereafter WBHC). Who would have thought its source was just a few hundred meters south of the source for the main branch? Today’s ride started about the same, but I turned into the next housing development south: See Open Street Map and Google Maps. As you can see, it’s just a rain capture at the side of someone’s yard. It drops into the culvert cover and disappears to reemerge on the south edge of the housing area in someone else’s back yard.

WBnSE59thIt’s a dismal view with dumped junk, but this is where it hits SE 59th coming from the north side. I was able to run on down do another housing development that runs south off SE 59th along the creek, but there was no way to take a picture without trespassing. Most of it forms the west edge at the back of the house lots. While I was able to get back there at one point on a stub street, the light was horrible at that time of day. However, I note the steep valley sides have already begun at this point, and it’s less than a mile from the source.

WBnSE74thThis was the best of a bad series of shots that I won’t post. Much of it looked about like this, running through heavy forested hollows and diving deep under the roadway in culverts. This is where it comes in from the north at the north side service road on I-240, connected to the old SE 74th coming east off Post Road. I rode back up the steep climb to Post Road and caught glimpses of that majestic hill and valley stuff (MH&VS) but nothing that the camera could capture. Crossing over I-240 and running down the service road in the south side offered an even worse view, because the foliage made it almost impossible to see even the concrete facing of the culvert.

SE84thnWBThere is a stretch here where WBHC enters a flat swampy area and you really can’t trace the course of it because it varies from year to year. The last episode of heavy rains left a just barely visible trace that is hard to see in this shot. The soil was disturbed by a heavy tractor driving through the damp muck. I was standing on SE 84th west of Westminster Road. There isn’t a year-round flow at this point, but several low spots hold stagnant water.

WBnSE89thnrWestminsterWBHC wanders through a bit more swamp on the other side of Westminster Road and dips under SE 89th not far east of there. You can see on the asphalt scrape marks from heavy equipment shoring up the outflow side after it nearly washed away. The boulders packed against the side are called “rip-rap”. From there the creek wanders back and forth over SE 89th repeatedly, dodging the ends of high ridges. I rode over one of those ridges to come down on another crossing some distance before Anderson Road.

WBnAndersonRdWComing around the corner on Anderson Road, this is a view SW back upstream (image left), where the creek is marked by shrub-sized willows just visible over the roadside foliage to your left. The opposite view eastward is somewhat better (image right).WBnAndersonE On the side is a tributary, while WBHC runs through the trees on the right side of the picture.

WBBelowSE89thI climbed back up to SE 89th, then climbed even harder up that street past that stupid dog I had to chase back through his bent gate a couple of weeks ago. Today he stayed hidden somewhere in his yard. There are several grand vistas viewing WBHC Valley on the north side, but the price of admission is two brutal razorback ridges. So brutal, in fact, that my bike broke again. That is, during the climb the stuff that miraculously fixed itself previously is all unfixed now. (God works in mysterious ways.) I managed to finish the ride, but it was rough. I didn’t have far to go.

WBnHiwaseeRdComing down off the second hard climb on SE 89th, we come back down to Hiwasee and that infamous washout that has been repaired. At this point the water is actually running because it picks up some trickles between Anderson and Hiwasee Roads. Again, it wanders over a wide flat area, crossing under SE 89th one more time east of there.

SE89thnOakHillRd Unfortunately, it’s hidden by foliage again. I wanted to show this cut through the sandstone bedrock underlying the sharp ridges here. Even the hardest climbs still have this kind of cut at the peak. In the far background is SE 89th coming down off the second high ridge I crossed coming down to Hiwasee. This is looking back west after I passed through seeking one last shot of the creek.

WBnHenneyThis was it (right). We are looking south from SE 89th right about Henney Road. The street is closed just a short way beyond this, but the dirt path runs up over the ridge I captured in one of the final shots from chasing the main branch. So in the back of this image, hidden among the willows and cottonwoods, and nearly at the base of the distant tree-covered ridge is our last view of the valley.

It was time to ride my crippled bike home.

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Depth and Height

Posted on September 5, 2015 by ehurst

Metaphors are so much fun! In the Bible, the language of parables (“parabolic language”) and symbolic logic are the standard. Just grasping those things on their own terms is a whole new vista of sky and mountain that does not exist in Western intellectual traditions.

It’s one thing to have depth. That’s a concept that means you’ve explored a great deal of one particular level. It takes significant depth to be aware that Western Civilization is different, that all the previous civilizations have more in common with each other than any one of them has with the West. But if you don’t seize the fullness offered in that vast difference, you have no height.

Every day I encounter people who claim a spiritual awareness, but can’t seem to get above the daily grind. That’s an example of how language robs us of both depth and height. Most Christians talk about spiritual depth and departing from the ambient secular culture, but all they’ve done is choose a different flavor, usually an older version of the same culture they eschew. Strictness and conservative rules do not make you spiritual. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t breathe life into something that was dead from the start.

For example, you might think my life was in a rut. I eat a narrow range of foods that I can afford and that my body tolerates. Sure, I add wild foods in season, but that isn’t much where I live. I’m not into killing and processing meat. So someone said my life seems to be in a rut as far as they could discern. But this person has zero height in her soul. All she sees is the boredom of the mundane level of existence, and no comprehension of the moral sphere, much less a genuine apprehension of the spiritual.

Engaging your heart-mind opens a vast height to your soul. It shows you options most of the world doesn’t have. For example, this person who sees my life as a rut cannot respond on the heart level and refuses to accept the notion it even exists. So I treat her according to the Laws as written, not so much according to the Laws as living in the moral sphere. It’s an option for me and one we should all learn. When grace doesn’t work in your human relations, there’s always the Law. That’s why the Lord saw to it the written version of His Law Covenants remains available. People without that height see the written record as the whole thing; their soul stops at that level.

We also have hope that a proper application of the Law before such people will eventually trigger something, that God will use it to move them above their shallow ditch of a life.

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Secret Insanity

Posted on September 4, 2015 by ehurst

I’ll repeat a fundamental principle: Reality is variable.

I could as easily had said that Creation is living, active and has a will of its own. You’ve probably experienced and dismissed it in the past because our society places the entire burden on the individual sensory response to environment. If there’s a conflict, then it must be your perceptions at fault. Perception is a factor, but it’s not the whole story. You may well be deluded and see something that simply isn’t there, but it could also be that you are the only one present who is permitted to see it. Or maybe you watched something change before your eyes and chose not to believe them.

Nor should you imagine that the question is whether you ought to start believing everything you see. You should start filtering it through you heart first. That’s the key. It’s not a question of whether some change actually happened or if you just hadn’t really noticed in the first place. That’s asking the wrong question. The right question is whether you give the Creator glory. Not simply because this or that happened to your benefit, but that He is glorious and you have one more opportunity to exploit for recognizing His glory.

I should warn you that The Cult knows that reality can be altered, but they imagine that there is a mechanism they can learn and exploit for their benefit. Their darkened hearts teach them to pursue the wrong things, and they glorify themselves. A difficulty for us is that we can’t easily catch the elites in their private moments when they might manifest a belief that reality is fungible in some way. If we did, we’d know for certain they were insiders, actual members of The Cult, because it’s a distinguishing characteristic among the ruling elite.

Of course, plenty of lesser folks know it, but the sensible ones don’t aspire to rule the human race. Yes, I realize a significant number of pagans believe it, too. Check the Old Testament and you’ll see it was taken for granted throughout that part of the world, regardless of religious orientation. They knew from first-hand experience. You wouldn’t catch Moses suggesting that the magicians in Pharaoh’s court were faking it. Blowing it off as somehow satanic gives the Devil too much credit. The Devil didn’t make those things happen; he simply made sure the practitioners never fully understood what God had granted to all humanity. Reality is flexible and God didn’t keep it a secret. Whether or not someone knew Him as the real power behind it all was a separate question in the Scripture. He made the world to work in a certain way and Westerners don’t have a clue, but an awful lot of folks who didn’t worship Jehovah did have a clue.

Most of the time they thought this stuff was all secret, that only a select few were capable of understanding it. You can see this manifested in things like the Kabbala, which is actually a legitimate portion of the Orthodox Talmud. This is not publicly acknowledged, and even denied by Jewish scholars, but they repeat the story the Talmud insists they must tell to Gentiles. Much of this is reflected in how The Cult acts. Indeed, virtually the entire profession of information security is a direct result of The Cult’s dealings with each other and their servants. Popular glamorization of spying and intel work is mostly bullshit. The workaday world for intel folks is freaking insane and no fun at all.

I’ll give you an example. It was public knowledge that my wartime mission where I was stationed in Europe was to provide security for troops and equipment to move between the ports of entry and any theater of action. At first it was all based on the assumptions of moving assets from the US into Europe to face the Soviet Union. During Desert Storm they added a component that reversed the movement and we secured assets coming out of Europe and headed for Iraq. I spent the Gulf War in Rotterdam guarding all the stuff that was loaded onto ships. What is actually privileged information is the details of who and what was shipped out, or what would theoretically be shipped in, and in what order. The data is mind-numbingly boring and easy to forget. Now it’s all obsolete, but I’m still required to keep mum about it. Not hard at all.

But some of the folks in the military intel offices in my area knew stuff that made them sick, because they had in front of them the evidence of things the whole rest of the world said was immoral. The US government has been run by psychopaths for a long time, and the rulers know beyond all doubt what we would think if we knew what they were up to. But in order to do their will, they have to drag in a lot of minions who are required to adopt, at least in context, the utter lack of morals among our rulers who crank out all this secret crap. That’s why so much of it is secret, because we are the enemy in that sense.

People of good conscience who work in that business end up one of three ways. One: They go crazy — the suicide rate is very high. Two: They can’t wait to get out of there and retire or do something else. Three: They become deeply cynical and lose their faith because Western Christianity is so completely incompatible with reality and with the intel business. It was part of my job to escort these folks because they weren’t authorized to carry a weapon most of the time, whereas I was a Military Policeman who had sufficient clearance to run around with them. They never divulged stuff I wasn’t authorized to hear or see (so far as I know). Instead, they talked about safe subjects and in the process revealed how crazy it all was.

It required a pervasive conscious compartmentalization of their minds. Actual ability to pull it off varied. Success meant they either hated the work or hated life itself, and sometimes both. As long as they didn’t lose their grip on the security of info, the system would tolerate a certain amount of losing their grip on life. Very few humans are anywhere close to the ideal for this work, because very few humans have an active heart. Part of our bogus Western morality is this irresistible urge to control the factors of our human existence. If you know about it, you are required to act on it. It’s your moral duty. That’s where activism comes from. Only if your heart is active can you let things slide because you can recognize what God has placed in your hands and leave the rest to Him.

While it wasn’t my military duty to know what my friends knew, it was my spiritual duty to minister to their hurts. Those people were hurting, but my power to help was limited. We could try to tell the whole world everything we know in our hearts, but it’s veiled from their eyes because their hearts are asleep. It does not depend on us to wake them up; God didn’t give us that power. Western Christians ignore all of that and insist God told them, not only to tell everyone their version of the gospel, but to manipulate others into making some “decision for Christ” that equates to spiritual birth. This they do despite Paul bluntly stating it doesn’t work that way (Romans 8-9). We don’t have to be frantic about saving the world, organizing and mobilizing resources for some crazy mission that amounts to cultural influence. The gospel is not mere cognitive facts, nor a bundle of orthodox beliefs. The gospel is you and I living His Laws as taught by Christ.

We take our hands off and make room for God to change reality itself on His whims.

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Heart Memories

Posted on September 3, 2015 by ehurst

But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said to you. (John 14:26 MKJV)

Don’t assume this somehow limits what the Comforter can do with your memories. When I came home from the military in 1993 with my knees all bunged up, I was conflicted. It wasn’t on the surface, but eventually it all came out. However, it was not before I ran through a lot of other experiences. That included returning to college for a teaching certificate, eventually moving to a rural area of south central Texas and being stuck there until Hurricane Rita chased us out. During that whole mess, I was driven from the role of former Military Policeman and fedgov cheerleader to hapless church music director driven from his ministry by bumbling federal thugs. I was for awhile fervently anti-government, as you might expect. Eventually my theology training blossomed anew and I moved way beyond my professors, ending up here with this blog.

In recent months the Lord has pulled out from my compartmentalized memory things the military in particular, and government in general, allowed me to see. Please don’t see this an attempt to inflate my credibility. In the final analysis I can only tell you what the Lord has done in my life. Part of the weirdness of my military experience was rubbing shoulders with people who carried very high security clearances. I try to avoid talking about the particulars. There’s a fine line between divulging secrets and using that information as analytical background. Nothing in the law keeps me from telling you what follows.

For example, it is a general principle that various federal agencies engage in PysOps (Psychological Operations). There is a bunch of stuff out there on the Net that was planted as leaked secrets and it’s pure bullshit. Keeping the general population afraid is a very old trick, older than the United States itself. The US government has been using this longer than you might expect. That old story about REX 86 is mostly nonsense. Some of the pictures are taken from Military Police training sites, not actually usable as detention camps. A part of my training in the Military Police is detention camp design, construction and operations. Those camps are not real.

Furthermore, the long list of FEMA camp sites going around includes a couple of places right here where I live. Both of them are impossible to use as FEMA camps. I can only guess that most of that list is bullshit. But let’s pretend they are real for just a moment: All of them together aren’t big enough for the number of people likely to be swept up according to the stories you can read. The kind of people described by the warnings is a number way too big. When I lived in Texas, I became acquainted with some of the folks who would be likely candidates for that kind of action, and in my area alone were too many for any single camp on that list. These are folks with FFL Class 3 permits.

If just 10 percent of those folks showed up armed at some point of interest, there would not be enough military and police forces combined to face them. In a genuine revolt, the US government would fold in just hours, while the elites hide out in their bunkers, impotent to regain their control of the outside world.

We do still have a problem with FEMA and things have not gotten better since Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. But the only people held in those awful conditions inside the Superdome were folks who weren’t smart enough to leave town. That was a targeted operation to drive out a certain class of folks from a certain neighborhood. Very few were anything like you and I. It’s not a question of whether they were good or bad people, but they were vulnerable in ways we can hardly imagine. The city government had already said they intended to clear that area out, and we have credible testimony from witnesses that the dikes were allowed to collapse. The hurricane was just the excuse they needed. FEMA and related agencies are all about control and dehumanizing the victims, but they will back down from genuine resistance.

Note: God’s wrath includes an increase in natural disasters. It’s not some general round up that FEMA plans, but localized when disasters give them an excuse to take over.

What we are up against is worse than any FEMA camp roundups. The economy is already going down the tubes; the Dow Jones is not the whole story. It also has precious little to do with China. This stuff is very complicated if you didn’t study economics and/or business; I taught economics in high school. I’m not smarter than you, but I can see the dynamics and ignore the propaganda. I could write a long explanation about why things are okay where I live, with new McMansions going up all over out here in Eastern Oklahoma County. But we aren’t a very significant portion of the national economy except in terms of the lower end of essentials. We do food and petroleum; that’s about it. Our petroleum is pretty cheap for now, so the oil price is not killing us yet.

But the big stuff that makes Wall Street pay attention doesn’t happen here very much, so it may take awhile before we start feeling the pinch, if at all. Some things will simply never shut down. Most of the US population is packed in cities where the big money stuff happens and it ain’t happening so much any more. Local economies can do well, but the US as a whole is crashing. It’s a long, slow crash, but it’s already started and there’s no turning back. Businesses with little room to run are already closing; more will follow. Some are run by folks smart enough to simply resize and keep running. The biggest issue will be debt, of course. Still, look for the MSM to sow panic when it serves a purpose.

What happens when things appear to get really bad in any country? The people become ripe for fascism. It’s a fake moral revival, something that typically resembles a religious revival. Do you suppose there are any movements already waiting in the wings, since everyone could see this coming? The religion industry grows from fear, and people are afraid. It’s not just a rise in crime, but crazy crime. People are going berserk as our highly artificial world comes apart. But it won’t really be that bad, just seem like it.

If your heart is running the show in your life, the Blood of the Lamb is already on your door posts. The crazy will pass you by, even if you still have to face some of the effects on other people. There will be some measure of protection, but it will match His calling on your life in this season. The Holy Spirit’s memory goes back a lot farther than ours, so you can never tell how He’ll guide you.

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Anatomy of Hog Creek, Part 1

Posted on September 3, 2015 by ehurst

This was one hard ride, not because of the distance, but because chasing Hog Creek meant climbing more hills, and more brutal hills, than I normally see in a single ride.

A word about online mapping services: You probably know about Google Maps. If I give you a direct URL on that service — the starting point — you could probably find it just fine. However, nothing in the various GMaps system would indicate that this was the source of Hog Creek, as it seldom chases any water course that far. On the other hand, Open Street Maps does a much better job of pulling in the various official survey maps. As you might expect, every inch of Oklahoma’s water courses have been surveyed and the accurate data is included. So if I give you this link, you won’t get the option for satellite view or Street View, but you’ll see how the surveyed starting point for Hog Creek is clearly shown. You could poke around on that webpage and find a “layers” feature that allows you to select a bicycle map, and that includes the altitude survey lines. You would see that this location is a hilltop. But I can’t leave markers for you to see precise points. If it matters, you can open both links in separate browser tabs and try to follow along.

(Click on any thumbnail image for a full-sized view.)

HogCreekSourceIt was five miles to this point. In our first image, I’m standing at the corner of SE 54th and Mystic Place. That cul-de-sac is the primary rain catch for the source of Hog Creek, the main branch as noted on official mapping sources. From here, it runs south of SE 44th for several miles, than drops southeast from about SE 44th and Hiwasee Road over toward Choctaw Road somewhere between SE 89th and SE 104th, where it joins it’s own West Branch. That’s as far as I went in this episode, attempting to take pictures without violating access restrictions. Much of it crosses private land, and in some places the foliage is too dense. In fact, foliage is a bigger problem than fences, for the most part.

SE44thnPostRdI rode back out to Post Road and headed north to SE 44th. Here’s an image of rusting ancient car bodies (left), and I managed to catch only about half of what was there. They are visible on Google’s Street View. I once knew the fellow how lived there forty years ago, and this would be typical of him. We weren’t exactly friends, so I’m not stopping to find out. Instead, I continued east to the entrance of Kennington housing development and turned in, wandering all over the place to catch glimpses of Hog Creek, but nothing was suitable for the camera. This area merges with Brook Hollow and I managed to exit out on Westminster Road.

HogCreekWestminster So this image (right) is viewing back west from Westminster Road. Behind me the creek runs through dense foliage across more than a mile of private property. This area is densely forested and there are no vistas from any of the streets and roads that run through this section. That meant heading back up Westminster, over the interstate highway and along SE 44th on the other side for some serious razorback ridges. At Anderson I turned back south and just out from under I-40 is the next crossing.

HogCreekAndersonRdThe water course is not actually visible (left), but this gives some idea of how it runs mostly eastward to meet I-40 and cross under. The heavy trees along the left side across the open field are on the creek bank. That field is somewhat swampy.

HogCreekSherwoodParkRiding back under the interstate and up Anderson Road, we come to Sherwood Avenue running up off to the right. It’s a nice climb and then a quick drop down into the valley where Sherwood Mobile Home Park (one of the few independent parks in this area) hugs Hog Creek just off I-40. I suppose you’d have to get used to the constant highway noise, but this is where Hog Creek starts to look downright nice. While the ridges on either side do get pretty high very early, here they are quite close. This image (right) views south along the creek back where it crosses under the interstate. The park captures a nice pond from the flow. The creek runs through dense foliage and comes back out into the open about a half-mile to east, but it’s a much longer ride to see it.

HogCreekSE44thnHiwaseeSo I headed back north the SE 44th again and took some more razorback ridges. Any land near Hog Creek is always hilly because it cuts a deep valley. On your left here we see where it emerges in the far back of the image, while a tributary joins it from our right. There are several lagoons here and I have no idea what for, but this is a lovely view. This is a case where I had to find a spot where the roadside foliage allowed me to see the open area. The creek runs to the left.

HogCreekHiwasee I walked just a few feet past the cattle guard to catch this shot (right) not far from the previous. I headed south on Hiwasee and stopped just short of the creek, so it runs from our right and this view is SE, just barely showing the steep ridges on both sides in the background. From here it runs across some private ranch land until we see it emerge near the intersection of Henney Road and SE 59th. I am unable to get a clear view to shoot back toward where this image was taken.

HogCreekSE59thnHenneyPart way up the climb on SE 59th toward Choctaw Road, there is this one open spot in the foliage where we can look back SW to see the ridge on the other side (left). Here the creek runs under trees all the way from SE 59th toward the interstate again. Pedaling up the high ridges to Choctaw Road, I headed south in heavy traffic and tried to see if I could spot it from the Love’s Truck Stop property. They built on a high spot, but they have a water treatment facility on the backside (west) and this hides the creek from view, way down in the bottom. On the other side of I-40, the Pilot Truck Stop is surrounded by high trees.

HogCreekValleyCrkDrvSo I had to wait until I could wind my way through another ritzy housing development, Deerfield Estates. While the creek remains obscured by galleria trees, I got a shot (right) showing how it divides this bunch of McMansions from another (Deerfield West), yet it’s at least a five-mile drive between them because of how the interstate and segmented roads interfere. I’m told they plan to have at least a pedestrian bridge soon.

HogCreekSE89thA little farther south on Choctaw Road at SE 89th, there is a ragged end running west a short ways. I found a high spot with a view through the trees (left). Just beyond the web-worm infested foliage you can barely make out the course of Hog Creek running almost a straight line from the right side. The far ridge divides between the main branch and the West Branch coming in from the distant center.

HogCreekconfluenceIt’s pretty hard to see the confluence where West Branch joins, but this was the best I could do. The high embankment and foliage make it hard to see and I climbed up against the billionaire’s fancy fence to get this angle from across Choctaw Road. The two branches join in the middle ground just below and left of that barn in the background. That’s all for this ride, because it was another six miles back to the house.

When I get around to it, the next episode will be tracing West Branch Hog Creek up to this point.

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Not Our Allies

Posted on September 2, 2015 by ehurst

I suppose the title should be more like “The Greatest Threat to Our Parish” but that might attract the wrong kind of attention.

First, let me suggest this article: Dominionism Takes Center Stage in America. The author overstates some links among the various figures, but does a good job of explaining the secretive nature of this beast. It’s a perfect patsy for The Cult.

Consider that the current political swing is back toward the Republican Party. Even if they don’t actually grab the White House or some kind of congressional majority, it’s the rising influence of the “conservative” wing of American politics as a background. Whoever holds the titles may not matter one bit since the real government seems to like this CR (Christian Reconstruction) business. And the author correctly points out that the official libertarian face is just a mask; they are libertarian against the current government, not the one they plan to implement. So you can bet the military-industrial complex is hardly threatened by a rise in CR influence in politics. And you would be amazed how many Southern Baptists would be very comfortable supporting their political agenda, along with a large number of very big and influential religious voting blocks in the US. Unless things change radically in unexpected ways, this is their season.

So, how do they threaten us here at Kiln of the Soul online parish? We are their worst nightmare. We claim Christ and we aren’t fooled by their lies. We can smack them down with their own Bibles. I was one of them once, so I know exactly where their weaknesses are when it comes to justifying their evil agenda. What I’ve written here and in my books could shoot them down easily in a debate. We wouldn’t dislodge them from their hardened position, but third parties would be dissuaded from supporting them simply on the grounds of reasonable doubt.

If you feel led to examine them, go ahead and bring back questions you can’t answer. Between us we can all hash out a solid godly answer to their lies. Oh, and you’ll notice the linked article gives Gary North a high profile. I’ve talked with him some, and he’s incredibly rude and spiteful in private. I have acquaintances who could tell you even more about him and a whole range of major influences in this broader fundamentalist activist movement. They are not what they seem, and I can’t wait for God to rip the cover off. No need to fight them, just keep your head under the mastery of your heart and watch the fireworks. But at the same time, beware when they start actually getting the power to do things, because once they find out about us, it will not be friendly.

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The Devil’s Workshop

Posted on September 2, 2015 by ehurst

Passivity is the name of the game; there’s no work in the Devil’s workshop.

The Cult controls certain things, encourages a lot of stuff, and lets everything else take its own course. In pursuit of holiness, the trick is to detect where their interests lie. Heart-led living does not make you an activist, but it won’t make you passive by any means. With your eyes on the ideal of Christ’s Living Law, you’ll wade through the daily context in search of ways to bring the Father glory. We start out knowing the world cannot reckon with the heart-wisdom, and that we are aliens before we do anything at all. The Cult is not fully conscious of God as a Person, but opposes anything that weakens their control, so that means they oppose heart-led living outside of their own darkness.

When we focus on the moral fabric of Creation, we see things The Cult cannot comprehend clearly. Their master knows, but is not permitted to oppose it directly — he is constrained by the Laws of God in this prison of souls, the fallen world. But Satan is permitted to shape much of human behavior to build a context that not only robs us of our blessings, but serves to keep us from even knowing what’s possible.

Yet God will enlighten whom He enlightens. People might not have any idea what it is, but they will know that they belong to something different. If we who are fully aware can somehow make this truth visible to such people, they will be drawn against their human will to embrace it. Our mission is to live it first, and then to talk about it when our hearts tell us that moment has arrived when we must speak. While The Cult is unlikely to understand much of this, they know when something takes away their power. They will oppose us if we ever become a significant threat to their power. Whether and/or when that happens is not for us to decide. We can either join in the work of God or be left out and eventually called home in shame.

The issue for us is the Law of God in the mind and the character of God in the heart. It drives us to act, though we may be often little noticed by the world at large. That’s okay; we are in a time when the heart followers of Christ will be few because of a pervasive blindness.

I’m sure the guys working to invent and develop television had no interest in anything more than the thrill of discovery and the hope of better human communications. Very quickly someone discovered that TV is hypnotic. That information was passed to someone who knew how much power it gave them and The Cult developed a direct interest. You can pretend to harden yourself against it, but certain things are simply a matter of our wiring. We can’t blame the TV on Satan, but we can blame him for the current state of things with TV broadcasting and videos. The Cult dominates directly nearly all of the market. Christian videos? The Cult owns the business and works in the upper levels of management, shaping the final product. Christians are generally unaware that you cannot make TV safe and righteous unto the Lord without such a radical departure that no one dares think about it. TV and videos make us passive and there is little we can do to change that.

If you’ve been paying attention, you recognize the same forces have been at work making non-broadcast media the same way. It’s not just YouTube and Netflix on your computer, but the whole smartphone and tablet market is designed to cripple creativity. Have you tried to write more than a short paragraph on a tablet? Even if you have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, most of what we need for actual writing is simply not available because the mobile OSes are missing critical functions. Those functions will never be added; the market is controlled. The tools are crippled because the very design of the tablet concept was intentionally crippled. The Cult saw how hard it was to restrict PCs and laptops (though they are still working on it), and came out with the fundamental design of mobile devices to make us passive consumers of whatever appears on that tiny screen.

Meanwhile, everything you do on all but a precious few mobile devices, and on every PC with a mainstream OS, is transmitted to central servers. It’s too much for actual humans to track, but your mousing and keystrokes are all recorded and sniffed by logarithms watching for key data of interest to The Cult and its servants.

It’s not that the tools are evil, but that the evil influences of The Cult are in control of the market. They must have us as passive as possible. Not just intellectually, but they require a pervasive influence that makes it painful to be creative and driven by the heart. All those complaints about juvenile misbehavior? It’s because they are juveniles. In a sane world they would be considered young adults and already training for heart-led living. Today, that very concept is so foreign you can’t get anyone to entertain it for a second. “We must protect their childhood from adult concerns!” So we have several generations of adults who still cling to passive entertainments, and people put a high value on leisure, largely because they cannot bring their hearts to bear on everyday existence. They have no concept for divine exploitation of things for the greatest possible interest of all humanity: the glory of God.

We aren’t activists, but we dare not rest in passivity.

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Photolog 18: Collected Shots

Posted on September 1, 2015 by ehurst

Random shots from different rides. (Click to see a larger view of the photos.)

NCanfromNE63rd Central Oklahoma isn’t merely a matter of some arbitrary boundaries, but is actually a transition point between different types of terrain. In this first image, looking WSW from the slope of NE 63rd just below Peebly Road, it’s a view of the North Canadian River Valley showing that the natural terrain is given to more open prairie. Travel farther north and/or west in the state and it gradually becomes little else. The hills flatten out a bit as the land rises in elevation, until the Panhandle, where mountains and mesas dominate the landscape.

JonesParkThe tiny town of Jones has a decent little park with a lagoon of sorts. From what I can tell, this is the overflow from pre-processed water, so it has virtually no smell. The city recently removed the sludge sediment and spruced things up at the same time. This lagoon lies between the still active railroad line and Britton Road, on the east edge of town.

WallofSusans As you approach Draper Lake on Post Road headed south, you’ll pass this wall of Black-eyed Susans hiding some county property where various loads of dirt and gravel are rotated in and out between different projects. This is the SW corner of Post and SE 74th. Those suckers are easily 7-10 feet (2-3 m) tall. There are other flowers that come into full bloom late in the summer like this. One in particular has tiny white blossoms with a strong sweet smell that reminds me of wild rose, honeysuckle and something else I can’t identify.

BelowDraperDam This is what you can see from below the dam at Draper Lake. The dam itself is far in the background. Off to the left is a heavily forested East Elm Creek, which the reservoir captures, and it’s impossible to get any useful image. West Elm Creek, by the way, is sourced in a water treatment lagoon just a half mile from where I took this shot. It’s part of the massive complex of buildings hidden in a valley out of public view next to the dam. I was trying to capture some construction adding to this facility, but I went the wrong way and had to hustle out of there to avoid massive waves of swirling dust from the trucks. This shot was taken from Stella Road near Post Road, looking NNW.

SE134nrHiwaseeIt’s almost a hidden treasure. Anderson Road on the west is a high ridge and so is Hiwasee Road on the east, but between them on SE 134th is this gorgeous valley. Some of the homes are old money but the whole mile of broad flat expanse is just a treat to see. While somewhat closer to Draper on the west, it’s not that far to Thunderbird on the SE.

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