Tool Shed 4

Posted on May 25, 2013 by ehurst

Spent something close to 10 hours on a single computer this past week.
The issue at hand was a collection of Trojans and related malware. In the mess, I was unable to salvage anything from the file system. Even booting from a LiveCD did not offer much access to the files the client lost. We couldn’t even access the factory recovery partition. None of the standard Win7 tools were sufficient to recover things. So what we had was a major corruption of the file system itself, because everything reports that the harddrive was just peachy itself.
It all broke down when I had to use Windows Defender Offline. For once Vipre Rescue didn’t do it for me. The problem came when Defender removed Alureon.J and the file system finally tanked.
In the process I discovered someone had in the past installed a VNC application so he could fix the computer remotely, but he passed away and the thing was still there. Inevitably, those things prevent updates. I don’t doubt the guy was careful enough to secure the connection properly, but they always seem to prevent a system updating. Once it was uninstalled, the sucker tried to suddenly update everything.
It seemed the infection vector was a Linksys E900 wifi router one of the client’s family members installed. This relative didn’t live there, just wanted it for his convenience when he visited. He used the “Wifi Protected Setup” protocol, which is about as secure as stripping naked in a bad neighborhood in broad daylight. The client’s computer was “protected” by McAfee. Win7 even told her to remove the wifi router, but she thought it was just complaining about nothing.
The system stopped booting, so I first ran the Bootup Repair routine and got back in far enough to begin cleaning up. We got one tool to remove one pair of nasties, but we never could get her preferred Trend Micro Titanium to install because Alureon blocked it. So I tried Microsoft Security Essentials and it installed, and then recommended it’s Offline cleanup tool. But removing Alureon took a bite out of the file system and it simply could not recover with the tools available to me.
So we “nuked it from orbit” by reinstalling from scratch with a DVD I had. The client lost all their files.
Lessons learned: McAfee isn’t any good. VNC might be a good way for secure remote assistance, but if you aren’t careful, it can block updates. Malware can come through a badly configured router. One of the system error messages I got indicated the router was acting as a file system and fed into the damage. I didn’t pursue fixing the router, just removed it. Always keep your own copies of the OS installer you deal with, because a corrupt file system can ruin the factory provided recovery partition.
Teach folks how to use Windows Backup and a good external drive; they should come bundled with a new computer. Unfortunately, most of the backup software on external disks really suck. They are highly annoying and want to dominate what little time you have for using a computer. You need to be able to unplug it so viruses don’t infest your backups, too, and most of them whine if they aren’t plugged in 24/7. But Windows’ own backup tools are a bit hard to learn for average users, so most folks don’t mess with it.
Nobody has to tell me I could have done better, but I can’t afford some of the nifty tools other folks use. I work for donations, which sometimes means for free. I’m not a serious technician, just someone down the road ahead of most folks. Still, I put more effort into it than almost every computer shop I’ve seen. Windows 7 has some very good tools built in and I rather like working on it, but some things can’t be fixed that easily. I still think Linux works better, but this is a very bad time to learn it because no sane people are involved in interface development. XFCE is the most sane, and it’s still too radical and too limited to easily replace Windows in most people’s minds. I use it, but I don’t recommend it to your average home user. Taming the other graphical interfaces is simply way too much work because the defaults are user-hostile.
Meanwhile, I keep praying ReactOS gets good enough for general use, because common computer users are used to that, and it’s time they got a break.

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Prophetic Reasoning in Disasters

Posted on May 23, 2013 by ehurst

(This is a prophetcraft post.)
Let’s clarify the biblical understanding of disasters.
The starting point is humanity is fallen. In Adam, we all chose the wrong path; we chose human reason over the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit. We have no native connection to the Holy Spirit, though we are designed for it. Thus, we are spiritually dead. We cannot natively see the moral fabric of the universe; we do not natively understand the divine element in things. The moral fabric includes God’s perspective on things, a raft of divine motivations and expectations. We don’t have that. We are restricted to the human reasoning we chose when we ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
So we don’t have an instinctive understanding of how the world works. Nature is not fallen in itself, but under the Fall because we — God’s chosen management — have no power to manage. We can’t see what nature does from God’s point of view, so we can’t manage it by God’s power. We are blind and powerless. Instead, we stumble along with our damaged human perception and pitiful science.
After the Fall, God granted His Flaming Sword of truth, His revelation. You can’t embrace it unless you embrace the death of your human reasoning. In more clinical terms, you have to embrace obedience to a faculty above reason, a birth of the spirit by the Presence of His Spirit. He alone controls that on a basis He cannot explain because we cannot understand it. All we can understand is the blunt statement nothing in any human resource can affect whom, when and if He chooses to give spiritual life. His Word implies there is an accountability, but the word “choice” does not apply to us in any sense we understand. Stop trying to define that because it is beyond human capabilities. The point is, if you don’t embrace what He has offered, symbolized by the Flaming Sword, you can’t rise above the curse of the Fall in any way. The Sword is the path back to Eden.
What we do have within our grasp is the Laws of God. Those Laws provide a representation of the moral fabric; they are not the moral fabric itself. Rather, they come to us packaged in a different reasoning, a totally different frame of reference from what most people would assume in the absence of any divine guidance. His revelation is not rules and laws as humans would define them, but as God defines them within His revelation. It’s a package; you get the content only when you accept the packaging.
Human reasoning excludes revelation before it even starts building, so it puts us at a disadvantage. Human reasoning assumes there is nothing outside the universe; this is it. It’s everything and we have to understand it by our senses and our logic. Revelation assumes the universe is a piffle, something not that important, a poor shadow of what could be. Revelation assumes you aren’t too worried about what’s here because there is so much more and so much better beyond it. What we have here is temporary, broken and not all that useful. This is just the beginning of explaining the difference. But revelation is within the reach of anyone who chooses to obey it. Obeying it means embracing the underlying intellectual frame of reference.
Revelation comes in the form of imperatives to obey. It’s a call to personal commitment to a Person, God Himself. He alone is truth, and all else is shadowy lies. There is nothing outside Him that matters. There is no objective body of truth possible. Start there and you will begin understanding the world in which you live. Reject that fundamental assumption about reality, and you’ll make mistakes.
So the world in which we live is untamed and unguided because we don’t have the full weight of God’s revelation in our beings. We have only a shadowy representation, but that does help a lot. It does put us in a position to leverage morality to modify the universe and it’s random behavior. If we choose to obey what little of God’s revelation we can understand, we can avoid the worst of natural events that will disrupt our activities. Since our activities will be based on revelation, we would tend avoid trouble. We also gain leverage to ask God to help us in two ways: (1) We will get a clue to His plans and stay out of the way of wrath and (2) He will ameliorate His wrath on our behalf when it passes close to us.
Do you recall the Exodus, where God distinguished between Egyptians and Israel? He can do that every time, but we first have to understand how to be in a position to understand how it works. The particulars of the Passover in Egypt were not the point, but what they say about underlying reality. The entire foundation of Western Civilization is hostile to that kind of understanding. America in particular has fought it tooth and nail, with even those called by the Spirit offering a hostile understanding of His message and perverting His revelation. That is, Christians and their organizations typically misrepresent what God’s revelation says to humans because they have embraced certain fundamental lies. They reject the Hebrew intellectual approach God mandated for understanding the Bible, using an alternative epistemology. This is the sin of trying to hold God accountable to an alien standard. It doesn’t work too well.
So we end up with lots of good Christian people in Moore building their houses, schools and businesses in places where God already planned some tornadoes. Worses, their refusal to embrace Hebrew revelatory reasoning means they can’t effectively ask God to spare them. Instead, they have to rely on the science of meteorology for a brief warning before His planned wrath against sin falls. No, I cannot promise you that the tornado would have taken a different path if that neighborhood had been true believers of the sort I teach, but it would have been the only hope for such a request before God. Western Christian morality is pretty much a failure against God’s standard.
My house received a minor beating from hail. I could explain scientifically how that hail was made worse for us by where the storm collapsed, the same storm cell that chewed up Moore. That’s not important, nor is this house, when it comes down to it. However, God’s Word tells me that if I could have convinced my neighborhood to embrace His revelation, it might not have been so bad. As it was, our minor hail damage represents God’s mercy in stopping the storm there, instead of pushing it farther and entirely too close to us. We got hail instead of wind damage that could have shredded our trailer park. It’s not a simple accounting process, but the fuzzy reasoning of moral truth as revealed in the Bible.
The issue of clarity is not in the results, but in the commitment to His revelation.

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From a Sincere and Honest Kook

Posted on May 23, 2013 by ehurst

I am blessed. Think about it: With all this pervasive surveillance and electronic snooping, I am guaranteed all my prophetic warnings against the US government are surely noticed, archived and waiting for the time when God proves His Word lives in me.
Not that it will do them any good, and I seriously doubt it will make my human existence any better. That was never the objective. The objective is to cling to the truth of God and let it take my human life where it will. I’ll be glad when it’s all over and I get to go Home to Heaven, but until then, this is my mission.
I’m not like the lawyers’ Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas (Westboro). I reject their Western epistemology. Some few things they say are accurate, but not true, and their actions represent nothing in Scripture. They don’t understand the Hebrew point of view, so they don’t understand the Bible. My message is totally different.
Indeed, the sin of the Westboro Phelps crew is the quintessential sin of the West in general, and America in particular. They are an expression of what’s wrong with America, the same fundamental error with a different flavoring, all growing from the same root. America has rejected God’s Word as He gave it, and when they bother referring to it all, they get it desperately wrong because they reject the intellectual foundation God used to build His revelation. The West is burning with hatred for God’s truth.
So today we have sent our hatred abroad in the form of our troops in every sector of planet. Where we do not have them already, we are determined to destroy whatever keeps them out. We are currently sending money and weapons into Syria, stirring up fake Muslims to insane hatred that they would just as gladly bring to our shores. Give them time. Right now, they are ripping up Assad’s government. On my human side, I suspect Assad will fall, but only as a symbol. I seriously doubt the rebels will actually win much, and will eventually lose.
We did not win in Iraq; we simply destroyed what we built and gave the plutocrats another masked opportunity to raid the US economy in the process. We’ve pretty much left it to the residents to fight it out with terribly destroyed infrastructure. This does have something to do with the natural disasters striking the US; God is returning our destruction on our own heads and He’s just getting started.
We didn’t win in Afghanistan. Without our constant presence and occupation, we cannot even pretend to hold any ground there. As soon as we back out the least bit, our presumed enemy will simply recover with a vengeance. We have the money and the training, but they have everything else we lack, which is an awful lot. They have God on their side by default, because we are surely more evil in His sight. Yes, they are far closer to obeying His Laws.
So we won’t be able to accomplish much in Syria beyond an attempt to destroy what little good they have. They’ll reorganize and rebuild despite us, and we won’t be able to prevent it. But when we attack Iran, God will use the occasion to finish us off. This is from God, a prophetic warning: We will lose in battle against Iran. God Himself will fight for their side. He won’t even bother to explain why, because it will be too late.
Our propaganda excuses for all this hate are pretty thin; everyone knows it has to do with a huge move by plutocrats, the shadow government that actually runs things here and in a lot of other countries. That would include Israel. No, Israel does not write US policy, despite how it appears. Our policy is written by the same demons who write theirs, working through the same select group of human agents. These are the folks whom we have all elected to obey simply by refusing to understand things well enough to recognize the evil they have planned. We have closed our eyes and bought the lesser lies because it came wrapped in a promise of material and creature comfort.
We trade holiness and divine guidance for material prosperity, so we shall have neither. We have purchased the spilling of vast oceans of innocent blood and even the destruction of tornadoes are our own fault. But in righteousness we will attempt to reach out in kindness to recover what is left for our own. That’s one of our few virtues. Too bad we can’t treat the rest of the world that way; instead, we send our hatred wrapped up in ever-changing uniforms and weapons systems.
The really cool part is I know for a certainty the US government bureaucrats will read this and analyze it and at least a few folks guilty of keeping this wall of propaganda in place to obscure the truth will have no excuse when God puts His hands of wrath on their lives.

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Kindness Needs No Reason

Posted on May 22, 2013 by ehurst

Reason gets in the way of a lot of godly things.
Kindness is a command. It is a motivation unto itself in the sense it seeks no particular outcome. If we tie things to outcome, we fail God completely. Seeking an outcome is rejecting His rule; it gets in His way, seeks to limit His hand. The outcome is always in His hands; He said so in many ways and places in the Bible. It’s included in this blog’s title: Do What’s Right. Do it because it is right, not for any other reason. Our search for divine justice is the end in itself. Justice is not an end product; it is the living grasp at the vital divine element still within reach in the fallen realm of existence.
I would have thought this was obvious, but I keep seeing references that seek to constrain kindness or other virtues to some reason for doing them. Stop that. It’s the wrong approach from the start; it’s evil. It reduces things to instrumentality and clings to the fallen nature of our humanity. Need a motivation? God’s glory. That’s the only reason He hasn’t taken you home to your reward already. He isn’t done with you in His glory. There is no end point on this side of eternity in the sense God is pointing at some goal. The “goal” is His glory all day long. He seldom bothers to reveal to us when His glory is finished with us. Let Him take care of the results and stop trying to steer things to a conclusion. What’s right is right regardless of human disappointments or celebrations.
In this moment, always in this moment, do what’s right. You don’t need any other reason.

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Epilogue of Angels

Posted on May 21, 2013 by ehurst

Angie and Preston had a rather quiet fall season volksmarching in the Eifel, Rheinland and Saarland areas.
During a beautiful hike in Trier, they stopped for a snack on the university campus. While they sat enjoying Bavarian pretzels, Preston’s phone rang.
Gary’s voice was the same casual tone, but he never called for frivolous reasons. “We think it’s time to recruit in the Liege-Maastricht corridor. Are you game?”
Preston asked, “Are we moving again or do you have something else in mind?”
“It would be great if you could set up shop there somewhere, but I’m having trouble finding safe quarters. Who would have thought a real estate attorney would fail to find something decent?”
Preston caught Angie’s eye while he spoke into the phone. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this. I may have a useful solution. Can I get back with you in say, a week or so? I may have to wear out this phone.”
“I’m game,” Gary said.
It was only two weeks later Preston and Angie took possession of a lovely used Dutch houseboat. It took some calls to get access to his accounts in the secretive Caribbean bank, but he had more than enough to buy the boat outright. He worked through his friend Harry, of course. For good measure, he added a slender canoe, mounted on the stern for easy access. There aren’t many places in the Benelux where a canal doesn’t run within a few hours of biking or canoeing.
They picked up the boat where it was moored along the Molendijk in Krimpen aan de Lek. They hired a professional pilot to train them as they journeyed slowly upriver on the Neder Rijn. The pilot left it to them in Arnhem. Through connecting canals, they made their way to Nijmegen and up the Mass. They celebrated their first Christmas together in Maastricht.
There had been dozens of boats for sale as winter began to descend over the land. They never told anyone, but the primary reason they picked this particular boat was a small image, the common European conception of an angel holding an anchor, painted on the stern next to the name: Waterwings.
End

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Recapitulation

Posted on May 20, 2013 by ehurst

I’m a true radical, radical about the very most fundamental elements of our assumptions about reality.
This blog assumes a huge difference between Western/Aristotelian epistemology and that of the Bible. I am wholly untroubled by apparent differences between human science, history, etc., versus assertions in Scripture. They aren’t talking about the same thing, nor even viewing reality from a similar set of assumptions. Your insistence on using the human viewpoint is not my problem. I may address it from time to time, but my blog posts assume a divine perspective when it comes to offering answers to anything.
While I’ve joked around a bit about starting up a new cult, I realize what I am doing constitutes a whole new approach to Christian religion. In many ways, it is the same thing as what has come before. You should have no trouble using what I teach in any current religious organization, simply because I assert theology and practice aren’t that important. Believe what you like; you can follow this blog and not see the need to argue about my conclusions. I don’t believe I’ve confused conclusions with assumptions, and I’ve often said you should always investigate these things for yourself. Don’t take my word for it. At the same time, I know this is a wholly different religion, in the sense that it is not like anything I’ve seen on this earth so far in these times.
The main reason I don’t belong to any group myself is a combination of two factors. First, my assumptions lead me to conclusions which no current organized religion accepts, so far as I know. There are overlaps here and there, but not enough anywhere to be useful. Second, I am commanded by God to teach wherever I go, and most organizations simply cannot handle that. Unwilling as I am to make trouble for anyone unnecessarily, I stay away. I strive to build outside the current system.
I don’t support any form of activism as people think of it. Nothing in human politics today is anywhere close to what God had in mind, so it’s a dead subject from the start. I recognize the peculiarities of the system, even to the point of understanding the various competing philosophical assumptions, but not one of them is even on the same planet with what God commands. Thus, there is no point at all to leveraging any part of the system except as an outsider. I’ll take advantage of what exists, but nothing in my world is worth any investment of emotional energy. I don’t want change; I want total removal of all the systems currently in place. That is not something I can assist much directly. It’s God’s department. I am called to focus on what I can do to implement His commands despite the system. The system may or may not notice me, but conflict of some sort is inevitable. Barring a miracle of God, I won’t win in any battles as humans measure such things. I don’t confront it if I can avoid it, because what really matters is nowhere inside this universe in the first place. I don’t have to accomplish anything; I just have to be faithful to my God.
God forbid I should repeat the mistakes I see everyone else making these days. In theory what I offer is universal, but the teaching itself recognizes the lack of appeal it would have for most folks. On the one hand, I know the burden of my calling is to bridge the chasm between what people normally assume and what they really ought to believe. I’m supposed to communicate as clearly as possible. On the other hand, the means to appeal arising from what I believe rejects the majority of what people expect. That is, I can’t use the marketing methods everyone else is using, because all of that belongs to things I’ve rejected before the start. It’s sort of that thing Jesus said about new wine and old wineskins. It’s funny how what’s ancient is now radically new, but that’s where I stand. I’m part of the fresh crop from the original roots, I believe.
Critical to this is my understanding of how civilization is drifting toward a new type. I believe I understand what’s coming, but that doesn’t mean I approve. It’s just a new set of problems. It’s a new set of opportunities, too. For now, nothing currently embraced as the proper way to reach the widest audience is proper for me. Maybe you could take the same teachings and see no conflict; have at it. By all means, take the truth and run with it. That’s the whole point: It’s not my truth. It comes from God and you need your own version because you aren’t me. I’m not trying to build a community around my particular brand. I’m trying to teach the underlying assumptions first, because that’s the part that is universal. What makes them universal is also what keeps them out of my hands. I’m giving it away; take what fits into the holes in your soul.
Meanwhile, once we agree on a different set of assumptions, I do hope there is some community possible from what I teach as conclusions. That would require more direct involvement from me; that’s the leadership part. I’m still feeling my way along the ancient paths on this, and it’s very hard to track. While the assumptions are the truly radical part, what I build from them is what people see, and it seems more radical than it is. I’m not sure what would make anyone take an interest on the human level. This is the part where I take all comers, where I say that I am an Internet pastor who makes no rules about what you have to believe or practice. Nobody I know has any experience dealing with that, so I’m having to make it up as I go. The bond is not what I impose, but what we find in common. I’ll be in charge of my part, and you manage your part. The parts we share is the community. You tell me: What level of communion is comfortable for you?
The binding factor is sacrificial love, the most radical element of all.

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Of Truth and Angels 10

Posted on May 20, 2013 by ehurst

Grabbing their bags, they made sure to check that everything was as they had found it. Returning the key to the tiny enveloped, they hung it on the door handle, closed the lock on the hasp and strode off into the woods.
They had taken longer volksmarches, some lasting all day. Somehow, this felt like more work. Still, it was more beautiful woodland, hills and valleys. They found their way to the village of Foy. Once again, they wished they could have brought their bikes. Not because hiking was so hard, but they had entered a valley in which the railroad line had long ago been turned into a paved bike route. Instead, they had some dinner at the cafe that also served as bus stop. Eventually a TEC bus came along to take them back down into the Meuse Valley. On the way, they chuckled about passing the chateau where most of the conferees had been staying.
The bus took them northward into Yvoir and stopped just a couple hundred meters from the train station. In the gathering darkness, they caught a train northward toward Namur. It was quite late when they got home in Heerlen.
They woke up early and worked hard with their minds the next two days while their bodies rested and healed. Over the next week they read with some amusement the stories appearing in various media outlets. Some of the stories hit only the tabloids. Preston knew that sometimes the truth is so shocking, no sane person is going to believe it. The whole thing had a cascade effect as the Belgian government collapsed again as it did so often. Election time again.
The links to the stories were passed to them via the email account. In the middle of this, Preston found a message in the dropbox.

Gordy hospitalized and one other with heart trouble from over-exertion. Check out the fall volksmarching in Germany. The Benelux could use the rest.

Gary’s dry sense of humor never failed, nor did the angels or the truth.

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The Wisdom of Solomon

Posted on May 19, 2013 by ehurst

Spoiler alert: I’m going to explain how the book of Ecclesiastes turns out, while our weekly study will continue running for a couple of months.
First, a little context. Solomon took the throne rather like a big fish in a small pond. He wasn’t the most powerful of emperors because he avoided the sort of control that comes with empire. He was a king over the one most stable and prosperous kingdom in an age when there weren’t very many stable governments anywhere.
His father David did most of the work of extending influence and power over the unraveling edges of previous empires. At the same time, David established the standard for Hebrew poetry. Solomon established the standard or Hebrew wisdom literature. David still carried the familiarity with nomadic living and fighting for survival, so things had not hit the stasis we see much later when Israel virtually forgets how to live in tents. Thus, David’s poetry exhibits the kind of depth and hunger of soul for peace that makes great art. Solomon still had the taste of that as he settled things down. He experimented with a lot of things in a very short number of years and had the talent to comprehend the importance of what he did. Thus, the pinnacle of Hebrew visionary prophecy was just a couple of centuries later, then the culture of the people went downhill on the same slope of their lost devotion to God’s truth.
Solomon represents the pinnacle of Hebrew self-awareness. It is deeply ANE (Ancient Near Eastern). If you approach Solomon’s books of wisdom from a Western perspective, you’ll be lucky if you are smart enough to think it’s existentialism. It isn’t, but it will seem that way from a Western epistemology. You’ll read things back into his words in just about any translation and it will seem to match the likes of Albert Camus.
You’ll miss the point entirely.
There are several ways to state the fundamental query Solomon makes. In essence, he explores every effort mankind has made, or could make under any context, to overcome the curse of the Fall. Can it be ignored? Good luck with that; you still won’t escape it. Maybe you can convince yourself it’s all bogus and really do some great things and rise in power and importance over great stretches of land and humanity. But it won’t allow you to escape the futility of human existence. Being human after the Fall is the definition of futility. This life isn’t worth much trouble, and certainly not worth a moment’s anxiety.
Solomon does not directly address the issue of cosmology. It’s not a simple matter of not having one, or not understand it. They had access to ancient legends and literature. Don’t forget that despite all the lies by those who hate the Bible (ala the Documentary Hypothesis), the Books of Moses were already published and available for anyone to read. They knew what they believed, and didn’t see much need in hashing it out again. If anything, Solomon hashes out the failed assertions to the contrary.
The one thing you could easily miss is how he smashes the entire range of Western epistemology before there was a West.
The point of Ecclesiastes is to show how foolish it is to embrace the idea that man is not fallen. There were plenty of philosophers in his day promoting the ideas later crystallized in Aristotle’s teachings. Aristotle might have come up with his ideas independently, but they weren’t new. Lots of folks had long asserted the unitary universe. So Solomon decides to play their game and applied his legendary wisdom and intellect to the question of whether they were right. He points out how it all goes wrong in the end.
He tested living on those terms, an honest effort to see how it works out. He did all the things humans could do, all the different ways people chased after some sense of purpose and accomplishment on this earth. Even at the pinnacle of his power, it really didn’t mean much. In the end, he still had to die. And even if you could be immortal on this earth, you wouldn’t like it.
Without directly saying so, Solomon asserts it is not possible to evolve into a higher life form, either. God won’t permit it. Feel free to argue with Him, but it’s a waste of breath.
If you focus on the thing itself, nothing you do will matter for long. You’ll enjoy it, but when it runs out, it’s game over. You still die and someone else gets your stuff. The final answer is for you to make your best effort to discern what God intended for you personally. Don’t make the mistake of thinking He doesn’t notice. He made you and knows what’s best.
Don’t chase what captures your imagination. That might tend to indicate something, but it could also be the worst delusion. Stop daydreaming about stuff you can do, as if doing is important. Stop dreaming about being something or someone. Solomon was in his day the ultimate Someone, and it didn’t matter in the end. That’s the part that sounds like existentialism, or fatalism and some other -isms you might dream up. It all misses the point.
If you are certain God has called you to conquer the world, do so. If you simply want it for yourself, don’t be a fool. Meanwhile, the humblest peasant who scraped by is no worse off than King Solomon in the end. Living as King of Wisdom didn’t help matters, except it allowed him to see all too clearly and write it up in a little book.
You can do no better than embrace God’s revelation and figure out what God wants for you. Then chase that with all your might, because that’s how you reach out to God Himself.

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Of Truth and Angels 9

Posted on May 19, 2013 by ehurst

From behind, large brown hands grabbed Preston, lifting him slightly off the ground.
Purely by instinct, Preston simultaneous thrust the camera out at arm’s length while kicking where he thought the legs should be on whomever grappled with him from behind. The next instant he was bent over with a huge weight pressing him down as one hand reached for the camera. Preston knew instantly the arms were covered in the fancy suit he had seen Gordy wearing that morning.
Even the best trained fighters were seldom as skillful in combat as they hoped. Preston was barely keeping the camera from the grasping hands. His hat was gone and forgotten. They must have spun around two or three times. Things happened too quickly for him to tell.
Meanwhile, Angie recovered. For just an instant she watched in pain and horror as the dark-skinned giant wrestled with Preston. Suddenly she felt anger, as if all the things ever done wrong to her boiled over all at once. Worst of all, this brute was attacking her man, a capital offense in her world. She could have ripped his head off with teeth and claws if necessary. Hardly conscious of her actions, she simply acted on pure fury. Sprinting a couple of steps toward the flowerpot, she jumped up, planting her left foot smartly on the edge. She wasn’t sure what to do next, but getting up closer to the man’s head seemed an obvious necessity.
At that moment, Preston realized Gordy’s face was behind his head. He pushed back, and then snapped his head forward and backward again with all his might. The crown of his head connected to something not entirely hard. Suddenly the grip on him loosened just a bit. He had planned to spin around and add an elbow strike, but the man had backed off out of reach, standing almost upright, one hand instinctively rising to touch his face where the mouth and nose began bleeding profusely. The attempt still spun Preston around.
It was at this instant Angie launched herself at Gordy. She drew her feet up together and stomped at him with all she had. Her right foot impacted on the joint between his chest and left shoulder. The left foot hit him full in the sternum, driving his tie tack through the fabric and into his flesh. Already stunned from the hard headbutt to his face, he rose up full length and flailed this arms, trying to keep his balance as he back-pedaled.
Preston was already turned and instinctively caught Angie as she rebounded from the impact with Gordy. They watched for the split second it took to see him back forcefully into the railing. On most folks, it was almost chest high, but for Gordy it was just below waist level. Instead of arresting his backward momentum, the high aluminum bar only redirected it. His hands continued arcing back over his head and he flipped over the railing. His body managed to somersault once completely, landing him flat on his back with a very loud smack into the murky water of the Meuse.
Instinctively, Preston grabbed Angie’s hand as they sprinted off the bridge. There was only a slight hesitation as they dodged between two vehicles where they crossed the street. Glancing back, Preston saw a couple more nicely dressed men behind them. Straight ahead was the foot of the ancient stairway up the bluff to the citadel.
Neither he nor Angie hesitated. The entrance to the cable car ride was packed and spilling into their path. They managed to dodge through without hitting anyone and began sprinting, two steps at a time, threading past the tourists not nearly so hurried on the steps. With Preston’s hand pulling her, Angie was able to match his giant strides. Some part of Preston’s mind realized this moment alone justified all those times they had sprinted up the sandy hills of the Brunssumerheide for the past few weeks, repeating it until he nearly puked. He was just a bit faster on the hills than Angie, but she could repeat it more times. With such a lazy morning so far, they had plenty of energy to spare this time.
A bit of yelling behind them signaled the necessity of driving ahead full speed. Apparently none of those in pursuit were in any kind of shape at all. At the top of the first long run, Preston turned to glance back as the well dressed men were struggling to merely walk up the steps quite some distance behind. Preston whipped out his camera and took a quick shot of them, then grabbed Angie and sprinted up the next section. They hit the landing two-thirds of the way up, and without slowing, sprinted around the crowded photographers there and up the final run in the opposite direction. The men in fancy suits had either stopped or were simply too far behind to have any hope of catching them.
Preston got a couple more shots and followed Angie inside the fort. They climbed the interior stairs at a slower pace, then entered the interior courtyard. With so very many tourists and photographers already crowding the place, they simply bypassed the shops and ticket window and walked out the arched tunnel on the far end. They found out how to get out of the place. Hesitatingly they approached the gateway up the terraces, scanning to see if they recognized any trouble ahead. There were no suits and no limos in the parking lot.
They walked at a good hiking pace, already recovering their breath from the run up those four-hundred-plus steps. It was a short walk to the trails and Preston led the way off to the right. Just a short way into the woods, Preston pulled Angie off the trail to one side. He fished out his first aid kit and began dressing her skinned knee. “It’s a good thing you were on my side. Poor Gordy never had a chance.”
Angie nearly collapsed with laughter. Preston kept working as best he could. Then she recovered and asked, “Did he hurt you?”
“Just some bruises and sore spots. Lost my hat, but he apparently didn’t damage the camera any. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have done him any good. We had uploaded it all and I was live streaming at the time. He didn’t even unplug it from the tether. I did that when we got inside the fort.”
In essence they retraced their hike in the opposite direction from the day they had taken the kayak ride. There were a lot more hikers, so they were never quite alone this time.
After crossing La Lesse, they went farther upriver to another set of sluice gates and lock. This was a very broad path zigzagging over an island in the river. Only the part where they crossed the actual gate was narrow. Here the Meuse bent hard around, the far bank ran east and west. Just a short hike downstream toward the city brought them to a low underpass on one set of railroad tracks, then up a narrow lane where a trail permitted them to cross another set of tracks. They were careful to avoid touching any metal parts because this one was electrified, with heavy cables overhead suspended by metal and concrete frames. In the trees on the far side was a trail. Quite steep in places and slippery, they eventually gained the high ground next to the autobahn. There was a grassy cut through the trees along the south side of this all the way down to a farm road running into the backside of a village called Onhaye.
Passing through, they stayed on the small lanes and woodland paths, coming around behind their erstwhile quarters.
It had been a long and beautiful hike, and it was time to go home.

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Ecclesiastes 2

Posted on May 18, 2013 by ehurst

The question remains: Can a human come up with better answers about life in this world? Surely becoming king is worth something, no? Solomon describes how he kept a part of his mind objective in testing everything. This isn’t plunging wantonly into mere physical pleasure, but includes that idea as a small part of a much bigger picture. Solomon tested the limits of what is position offered.
As the legendary King of Wisdom, Solomon entertained an endless stream of royal guests, the greatest artisans, the widest range of scholarship, exposing himself to everything a man could know about the world and the people in it. This did not satisfy his quest. At the same time, he indulged himself in the widest range of culinary experiences, using the shorthand term of wine-tasting. The whole time, he reserved a portion of his awareness for gauging whether any of it seemed to make life worthwhile of itself. Was partying with the greatest of this world going to bring some sense of satisfaction? Wrong again.
Next, Solomon threw himself into the work of amassing material possessions. He explains how built structures for every use man could imagine. Nor was this in any way frivolous. Not just water parks and gardens for himself, but genuine works of civil engineering that helped others. We know Solomon was a prodigious builder and architect in his own right, a genius at engineering. He piled up a vast army of slaves, piles of treasures from all over the world, the most rare and beautiful specimens any collector could desire. He had musicians running out his ears and more women in his harem than a single man could get to know even as a passing acquaintance. None of these things filled the void in the soul.
What about the eternal question of wisdom versus folly? Of course it’s better to be wise and intelligent. A fool has no idea what he’s doing or where his life is going. Such folks might not ever understand how they got where they are. A wise man, even with no power whatsoever, can at least see where things are going, what will be the results of things he does or does not do. Then again, the final end of both is about the same, since all die and return to dust. The one really bad side-effect of Solomon’s vast wisdom is he clearly understood that even wisdom was futile in that sense.
Worse, he clearly saw how everything he had gained would be passed onto his sons, regardless of whether they were foolish or wise. They would probably be deprived of the experience of rising up on their own accomplishments, because there would be little left for them to do, since their father had done it all. What was the point of all this work, because the work itself was probably the best thing, and it can’t be passed on to his sons.
Wisdom and native talent drive you relentlessly in the daylight. When you try to sleep, you always rehash everything you did and failed to do. So while it’s good in general for a man to work and enjoy the fruit of his own labor, the mere act of enjoyment is a gift of God’s mercy. God can easily take away the fruits of honest labor, but just as easily take away the joy itself. Everything men might imagine they could want comes from God. Some folks God has favored with moral wisdom, but fools only know about how they want something they don’t have. And once they get all they can, God gives it to the wise. You can’t fight God.

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