Easter Sunday Open Thread

 

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Wishing everyone a joyous Easter! May your hearts be filled with the resurrective power of Life, Truth, and Love, as demonstrated by our Savior, Jesus Christ, through his ministry and ultimate triumph over the grave.

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Someone I Have Been Thinking About

 

    It is fascinating to me how the truth will be proclaimed somehow, no matter what. Surely the old rabbi could speak better than a stone.

    I can't help thinking of Luke 19:37-40.

37 Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, 38 saying:

“ ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

39 And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”

40 But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”

    It is my humble contention that G*d will reveal truth even from flawed vessels.

    It is also my utter conviction that he never intended that Jews and Christians be in warring camps.  It was supposed to be one faith, one truth revealed and finished in Yeshuah haMashiach, Jesus the Christ.

Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

That goes for everybody else too!

The Tyranny of Urgency

 

Deadline Schmedline!

    When I pick the stitches of life apart, one of the hard to discern knots has been labeled urgency. 

    The invisible whip. The hand of time. Also the imagined expectations of others.
    I looked it up in the good old Etymologyonline.com.

urgent (adj.)

mid-15c., from Old French urgent "pressing, impelling" (14c.), from Latin urgentem (nominative urgens), present participle of urgere "to press hard, urge" (see urge (v.)). Related: Urgently.

I also landed on exigency.

exigency (n.)

1580s, "that which is needed," from French exigence, from Latin exigentia "urgency," from exigentem (nominative exigens), present participle of exigere "demand, require, enforce," literally "to drive or force out," also "to finish, measure," from ex "out" (see ex-) + agere "to set in motion, drive, drive forward; to do, perform" (from PIE root *ag- "to drive, draw out or forth, move"). Meaning "state of being urgent" is from 1769. Related: Exigencies (1650s).

    Just to be sure I know what I’m talking about, you know?
    One of my present goals is to get out from under the imaginary whip. I believe that it’s a matter of discernment. What I care about matters.
    Some things must be dealt with immediately, the baby, the job, the fire, that sort of thing.
    I have always been the right now kid. I did a lot of things real fast and hassled my own head.
    Sometimes being the right now kid pays off, but sometimes it leads to trouble for years to come.
    So, I am working on not speaking instantly. Really! Not acting instantly. Not imagining that there is an invisible choir of people waiting for me to produce, to act, to get to the point.
    I am trying to concentrate on being. To have value in and of just being, not stripping my gears so urgently. To inhabit the eternal now with poise.

    Also, if I would slow the heck down I might do a better job after all.

    

When The Dark Cloud Rolled Away

 

Just for the mood and the clouds!

They were cut off from Earth on planet Athena.
 

    The dark cloud began to dissipate after the dissolution of the gate. The red light vanished leaving no trace behind. The sky began to brighten. The last bits of the black cloud drifted away on the wind leaving a normal sunny sky. They had never seen a vessel up there, just the light and the cloud. Naturally, the watchers felt there must have been a machine up there, they just couldn’t see it.
    Delores’ intended returned from his looking and calling empty handed.  The rest of his group didn’t look much better than he did. Then they saw the loose material on the platform where the gate had been.     Everyone who saw it appeared to be deep in their own thoughts, reassessing their own lives.
    It seems like every historic disaster will enable a natural leader somehow. This time it was the cook, Bob. His mostly bald head and his prophetic looking black beard stood out above any group on Athena. His assumption of authority went unquestioned usually.
    The population of Athena, all told, as far as they knew, was 237 souls.  Five of these had been born on Athena. They ranged from a few months to two years.
    “Well, people, this is a situation, isn't it,” Bob hollered over the heads of the watchers and the lately searchers. “We have some stuff to figure out if we can.
    “I know we’re all scared!  The first order of business is still to find Delores.  The next order of business is the usual order of business.  That is doing our work and living. At this point it amounts to survival with no help from Earth. We don’t know what that business overhead means yet. Probably if they wanted to kill us, they could have.  Why didn’t they?
    “Alice Franklin represents the Agency on Earth to us here, but somebody needs to speak for all of us now. I saw all your eyes turn to me after the gate died and I stand ready. If that is acceptable that is.”
    Bob waited for a reaction, and he got one. Almost everyone said yes and raised a hand. Even Jerry, from the Athena head office, was happy to see Bob take the job. People stood in groups talking. Those who had been sleeping during the previous hour arrived on the green and were told what had happened. Some of the women cried. Some of the men seemed to be looking angrily around, as if to find who to blame. No one felt like eating or doing their jobs either.
    “Let’s take today off from work to find Delores,” said Bob to the people. “We need to think this out. I’ll be in the back of the kitchen doing my job though, just like regular. I think breakfast would help everyone right now. Of course I think that. I’m a cook!” People did laugh a little.
    “After that, let’s renew our efforts.”
    James, wearing his new jeans and flannel shirt, came tearing out of the office doorway. He was yelling something about a woman on the floor. Since he didn’t know anyone really, except Martha, he was looking for her. He saw her standing in the back of the crowd.
    “Does this place have a doctor,” James asked loudly.     “She’s on the floor. She’s alive I think!” All heads turned in his direction and people started moving toward the office doorway.
    Someone whispered, “it has to be Delores!”
    “Get Mike!”
    “Get Dr. Miller!”
    Mike, who was Delores’ boyfriend ran ahead. He came out with Delores in his arms. Her dress was soaked and so was her hair. She looked like she was asleep.
    Lucy Miller, the doctor, said, “take her to her room Mike. I’ll be right behind you.”
    Dr. Miller stripped the wet clothes off of Delores in her room and put her to bed, just to warm her up. Mike stayed close beside her as she began to wake up. He made tea for her while the doctor checked her over and talked with her.
    They asked her what happened.  She had no idea. They asked her how she came to be in her office after everyone had looked for her there.  She didn’t know that either. They asked her if she remembered anything.
    She said she remembered being dropped in water, like a little pool that she had never seen before. She said she couldn’t remember why she was dropped like that.  It just happened.
    She remembered, she said at last, being carried in someone’s arms. He was someone she had never seen before and he was quite similar to a human, but very much taller and wider.

James and Martha.docx

Dawn Comes, But Darkly

 

    When Martha woke, she didn’t know where she was for a long fearsome moment or two. Where she came from at the girls’ facility, the lights were never completely darkened. It was still dark in room 205, because it was still before dawn. Her window on the second floor was just a black rectangle.
    When memory returned, she rose and went to the window. She could hear voices raised in distress. People were moving around outside her building. She opened the window to hear them better. The white curtains floated like ghosts in the breeze. People seemed to be convening a search party. There were at least 20 young men and women gathering on the grass. She heard the name Delores mentioned a few times.
    For the sake of speed, she slipped into her powder blue overall from Earth, thinking to experiment with her new clothing later. She remembered to put her door key in her pocket, went out of her door and slipped down the stairway, past the building office and out. If she thought anything about this morning at this point it was that whatever she thought might happen on her second day on Athena, this was not it.
    “I’ve never seen it this dark, Bob,” the girl from the dining room was speaking to Bob, the head cook. She folded her arms around herself as if it were also cold. In the dim light from the first floor windows, she looked afraid, hollow eyed. Both of them were still in their night clothing. Evidently there was some terrible urgency to this meeting. Martha hung around the outer perimeter of the crowd trying to understand what the emergency was.
    “I’ve been here since ’43 and I’ve never seen the sky this black at night before. It’s been starry every blinking night since then. And now this, and Delores is just flat gone,” Bob answered the girl, whose name Martha didn’t know yet. “They can’t be related, but it sure is creepy,” the girl said.
    Martha turned to the girl and introduced herself, saying, “Hi, I’m Martha. I just got here yesterday. I wish I knew your name, and I wish somebody would tell me what’s wrong this morning.”
    “Hey, Martha. I’m Evie. What’s wrong is that Delores never went to her room last night. Her boyfriend went to her room early this morning to talk to her because he hadn’t seen her last night before bed, and she wasn’t there. Her bed had not been slept in either. He was totally confused and scared, and he started waking up their friends to see if anyone knew where she was. But no one had seen her since late afternoon yesterday and no one could figure out where she was at all!” Evie shivered.
    “We’re all pretty close here,” she added.
    Martha wished she had awakened James. He was the closest thing she had to a friend now and she missed him badly all at once.
    Bob the cook seemed to be taking charge of the search. Maybe because he was the tallest and had the loudest voice or was just used to bossing people around. He divided the group into two companies. One he sent to search around the margins of the housing development and one he sent to look in the garden areas and all around them. It was a hard time to search well because it was so very dark. Martha couldn’t imagine how they could hope to find anyone in these conditions.
    It seemed like the sun would never rise. The clouds thickened. A wind began to blow bits of dust and plant matter over the surface of the ground. It even smelled strange. Martha and Evie were the only ones not out searching for Delores. Bob had asked them to stick around just in case Delores came home or something.     However, Delores did not appear. Morning came, darkly. The clouds lowered.
    The first party returned without Delores. They were frankly dispirited and frightened. The sky was really getting to them. No one they spoke with knew anything. They clustered together considering other searches and discussing whether they were experiencing some kind of rare storm on Athena. Some of them drifted off to get dressed and eat, promising to come back and continue searching.
    Delores’ boyfriend went with the second group. They were still out walking down garden rows and further afield. He was getting more volubly upset as time went on. Martha could hear him calling Delores’ name all the way from the back of the garden area.
    Someone who was looking up instead on down said, “what the hell is that……?” Martha heard gasps and soft cries then a pregnant silence. She looked at the sky.
    In the belly of the low black clouds, glowing menacingly, was a wide round red light, partly obscured by the stuff of the cloud. There was no sound. It pulsed slightly, like a terrible dreaming vision of some kind.

    The strange red light spun around; rays of that red light shot off in all directions. A low moaning noise began in the area of the Athena end of the Slip Chute. Weird vibrations and hums finished with a mighty sucking crash and the gate was no more. It fell into itself completely until nothing was left but the wooden platform it had set upon, and some broken metal material lying there.

They were cutoff from Earth on planet Athena.

James and Martha.docx

First Night On Athena

 

    Standing right in from of the petals, he said “Athena.” The petals drew into the wall all around the Chute leaving a pearlescent lighted circle exposed. It looked a little like fog in there, but shiny fog. 

    David stepped into the fog and vanished.

*** 

    Martha stared at James open mouthed. James’ eyebrows went up, but Alice just smiled at them. The petals of the opening closed just like an old-time camera shutter. But in five minutes they opened again.
    Before they had time to say anything David stepped back into the room. He carried two apples and an exotic flower. The exoticism of the flower, a brilliantly orange thing, was lost on Martha and James since they didn’t know much about flowers anyhow. He gave an apple to each of them, as a sort of proof that he had gone somewhere real. He handed the flower to Martha and the Slip Chute closed again.
    He looked fine, not harmed at all, blond, handsome, his blue eyes smiling. “So, you see. It’s quite simple in its operation, though mysterious as heck in its origins,” said David.
    “So, what do you two think,” said Alice. “Are you still interested and ready to try the Slip? I know it goes against natural instincts. But, once you try it, it won’t bother you a bit.”
    “Try your apples,” said David. “Athena is as solid and normal as those nice apples. Just think for a minute and I will pray for you too.”
    Prayer was another thing James and Martha knew nothing about, but they watched and waited, tasting their apples while David commended them to the Creator for peace of heart and safety during the Slip. It seemed pleasant and comforting to them, in a fatherly sort of way, if they had known anything fatherly that is.
    Alice said, “I can go first and be there to receive you if you like, or you can go first and I will follow, but I will be right with you in any case.”
    Martha said, “I think I would feel better if you went first. I can’t believe, in a way, that I am even talking this way, but we have to keep being brave, don’t we? There is no way we can go back to the pods and that miserable city.” James nodded.
    “Good girl,” said Alice with a big grin. “If you wrap your arms around each other when you step in you will arrive in the same condition. You will land in a kind of park, on a sort of platform made of wood once you step out of the gate. I’ll be right there waiting for you.”
    In a moment Alice was gone. The gate closed.
    James wrapped his arms around Martha. She held him tightly too right around his middle. Together they stood in front of the gate. James said firmly, “Athena!” The petals opened again and together they stepped in and vanished from the sight of the watchers in the room, who cheered them on as they went!
    They felt a weightless moment of disorientation, then there was a solid surface under their feet, and they could see the back of the same sort of petal arrangement as they had just entered a moment before. It opened. Still tightly wrapped together they stepped through onto a rather plain wooden platform. As the gate closed behind them, they saw Alice who was sitting on a bench on the platform watching their reaction to their first sight of Athena.
    Holding hands, they looked around. It seemed very normal. The air was pleasant with a slight floral scent. It was a warm day with a little breeze. The sky was blue, but ever so slightly darker blue than on Earth. There were clouds in the sky, lightly golden colored clouds. The platform was built in a grassy area. The grass looked totally normal. There were flower beds here and there around the grassy area. It looked very informal, but not random.
    Alice patted the bench beside herself, so they sat beside her, just to take a breath and look around for a few minutes.
    “We have to get you settled in rooms in our apartment building for unmarrieds and then visit the store! You are going to need everything aren’t you? You can get everything on credit. Most people come like you did, with nothing of their own. So, we just front you want you need. When you start getting paid you can pay the store.
    “We’ll talk about what kinds of jobs are available too.”
    There was a narrow graveled road leading away from the park. In the distance were several buildings. They were of wooden construction, very simple, but also very pleasant to look at. They looked comfortable. There was a large five story building and beyond it an area with small houses laid out in a grid. Beside the apartment building was a low building with larger windows. This was the store.
    James was beginning to wonder how they were able to build all of this with only what they could bring through the Slip Chute. He was impressed because it must have been only the tools they could carry. This small village represented a lot of work. He could see that they had really started from scratch on Athena.
    “Alice, do you have any kind of electronic communication here,” asked James. “Or is that coming in the future?”
    “We do, and maybe your work will be involved with building and maintaining it. What we have is pretty basic. It’s mostly just record keeping now,” said Alice. “All of the hardware has to come through that Slip Chute. You would probably be going back and forth and bringing material in.”
    They talked as they walked toward the larger building. Both young people were smiling and looking all around.
    Inside the building there was an office on the first floor right inside the door before the hall that passed through the length of the building. In the office, a lady sat at a desk working on a keyboard. She was young like them. Alice introduced her as Delores Garcia. She had a great head of curly dark hair and rather jolly brown eyes and was wearing a floral print dress. Martha had never seen a dress. She was intrigued. And somewhat envious.
    Delores took them up to the second floor and showed them two rooms next to each other. Each had a bed with plain bedding, a table, two chairs, a closet, and a bathroom. Each had a window facing the park. She gave them keys to numbers 205 and 206. The rooms were pretty in a simple way, with nicely painted walls and woodwork. There was an analog clock over the door of each room.
    Delores explained that the dining room was on the first floor and about how mealtimes worked. People who had houses did their own cooking, but the new hires and other single people usually just ate at the dining room. There was a modest charge for each meal and they kept track of each person's charges there in the dining room. She mentioned that the kitchen could always use a hand with all the cooking and serving if Martha was interested. Martha had never done any cooking but thought she could learn, so yes, she was interested.
    Next Alice brought them to the only store on Athena. She and the staff helped Martha and James set up accounts. Then they spent an hour or so choosing clothing, toiletries, and some things just for fun. People in the village often made things for sale, so there were handmade clothes, but the shoes were brought over from Earth. There was no shoemaker in town yet. There were homemade candies and cookies too. They could see that they would be coming back to the store from time to time as they found out what they needed.
    Outside around the corner was the office for the whole village. It was like a town hall, but with an employment department too. Alice introduced them to the man at the desk, who turned out to be a man that James had grown up with. They were astounded to meet each other there. His name was Jerry. No one was worried about having last names yet. After their names they just wrote the date they first came to Athena. For convenience they used the Earth date. Everyone understood it.
    James and Jerry talked about James helping with IT on planet. It seemed like he had a position built in already. Martha and Alice watched happily.
    Soon it was time for dinner. There was a three hour period of time when you could come for dinner, so there weren’t too many people there at any one time. It was pretty quiet when they entered the room. There were locally made tables with benches. A few men and women watched them get settled. A young girl came to the table with a list of offerings. There was a choice of three dinners. All the food was locally produced.
    It impressed Martha and James that everything they looked at or touched on Athena had been built by these people they saw sitting there eating their dinners.
    Alice brought Martha to the head cook and introduced her to him. His name was Bob, also with no last name, because he came from the pods too a couple of years before. Alice said Martha would like to learn cooking and it was settled that she would appear in the kitchen, not tomorrow but the next day at 6AM. It seemed like a good fit for a very young girl with no previous skills.
    Alice said she would walk them up to their rooms to say goodnight and then she would walk home to one of the small houses, where her husband waited for her. It had been a busy but very successful day for the best recruiter Athena had working for them.
    She left them standing outside numbers 205 and 206. They were exhausted. It had been a day unlike any other, but a very good day. James held Martha in his arms for a few minutes. She cried a little just from tiredness and the newness of it all. They said goodnight to each other, went into their rooms and to bed for their first night on Athena.

James and Martha.docx

Slip Chute

 

    “OK, we’ll go Alice. We were willing to die for the sake of freedom here on Earth. We’ll take a chance on Athena. We have no reason not to,” said James.

*** 

    “I can see you have no baggage to bring along, and you aren’t likely to go back for anything, so this really will be a new birth for you both,” said Alice. “It won’t matter. We have anything you might need both on Earth and when you arrive on Athena. And since you will be working, you will be paid. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have you aboard!”
    “We have to wait for a ride back to our facility. It’s about 50 miles out in that mountain range there in a rather obscure looking building.” Alice rooted around in her big bag and got out a device rather like an old-fashioned smart phone and made a quick call.
    “Our ride isn’t that far away right now though. It’ll be here in a few minutes. I told him I already had some possible recruits,” Alice added.
    “You might be interested to know that you won’t have to wear those uniforms anymore. How about that? In fact, life is going to very different from anything you have ever known before.”
    James and Martha sat on the bench again. They looked like they were thinking, but excited too.
    In about half an hour a dusty white vehicle like a rather large van pulled silently up to the bus stop. A wide flexible door in the side rolled up into the roof. Inside was a U-shaped arrangement of seats. Behind the driver’s seat was a sort of cupboard containing various bottles and packages of products unfamiliar to the recruits. The driver turned toward the doorway, throwing his arm over his seat, and grinned at them. He was a forty-ish looking fellow with a black beard and a head of tight black curls.
    “This guy is Schmuel, kids. He will take care of us today. I will ride with you. I won’t leave you alone until you don’t need me,” said Alice, picking up her big bag and standing.
    James waited while Martha and then Alice stepped into the van, then he hopped in too. It looked like there was seating for about nine people so there was lots of room. The seats were soft but plain. The door rolled down and soft lights came on. There were no windows to expose the passengers.
    “There is a small bathroom in back,” said Alice, realizing that they had been out there talking and waiting for quite a while. “Also, we carry snacks for just such an occasion as this.”
    “Thanks Alice, I am hungry,” said Martha. They still had the multi-colored food bars from the pod but hadn’t touched them and didn’t intend to. In fact, since there was a waste receptacle in the van, James emptied his pockets into it. He grinned. “There, except for our clothes, that’s our last tie with the place we came from.” Then they explored the contents of the snack cupboard. There were pleasant fizzy drinks, water, various crispy things, cheese and chocolates.
    The big white van rolled silently down the empty highway heading further and further away from everything James and Martha had ever known. They could see out of the driver’s windows up in front. They passed empty suburban areas full of abandoned houses, then some small farms, some of which still seemed to be in operation.
    Soon they were up in the foothills of the nearby mountain range. Neither of them had seen landscape like this. Hills, trees, rivers! It was fascinating and incredibly lovely to Martha and to James too. She kept exclaiming over it. Her face became beautiful when she smiled.
    Soon Schmuel turned to the left off of the main road into a small side road and then from there down a tree-lined driveway. There was no indication what sort of a place the driveway led to, but at the end of the driveway was a grassy slope covered with wildflowers, in addition to the long grass. Set into the hillside were a couple of large green doors. They were adequate to admit the van which paused before them. Alice made another call and the doors opened, admitting the van, and then closing behind it. Schmuel parked the van near the double doors. Everyone climbed out.
    They had entered a large white room. There were four desks with some rather relaxed-looking guys sitting at them. There was also a sofa and a couple of armchairs off to the side. The men got up to greet the newcomers and Alice. Names were exchanged and congratulations offered. They seemed honestly excited to see the new recruits. The head man was named David Leffler.
    David said, “why don’t we all sit over here, and I’ll explain.”
    “This is all going to sound strange to you but hang in there and I think it will end up making sense to you both. What it boils down to is this; several years ago, we were approached by some off-planet researchers who offered to teach us some new technologies. We thought that was a great idea. Therefore, they taught us how to move through space and time by means of something we call a Slip Chute. Basically, it is a surface gate to surface gate between planets. It's almost like an airlock in a way.
    “They also knew that we had been looking, in our limited way for an earth-like planet and they knew of this one. So, we, with their help, built this gate and they built the one on Athena where you will land. It takes some nerve the first time you use the Slip Chute. But it works really well, and it won’t even mess your hair up when you jump in! By the way, you can slip together if you are snugged up tight together, if that helps.”
    He paused and smiled at James and Martha who were quietly trying to understand what they had landed in the middle of.
    David said, “I don’t really truly understand all of the physics of the thing either. The math is beyond me. But I know it works. Both Alice and I have slipped many many times. In fact, when we go home at night we go to Athena!”
    At the very back of the large white room was an expanse of wall with a sort of circular opening set into it. Six large petals closed over the opening. A diffuse white glow showed from behind the petals.
    David said, “to set your minds at ease, at much as possible, I will demonstrate slipping to Athena and then coming back. Come on over by the Chute.”
    Alice, with her bag, James, and Martha with nothing but themselves and David stood before the Chute. “This is how you do it,” said David.
    Standing right in from of the petals, he said “Athena.” The petals withdrew into the wall all around the Chute leaving a pearlescent lighted circle exposed. It looked a little like fog in there, but shiny fog.

    David stepped into the fog and vanished.

Link to whole story so far: James and Martha.docx

On Paying Attention

I didn't.

     I should have looked on down the road and seen it coming. And in fact, in a way I did. But you know how it is.

    There had been a light metallic noise under the hood that shouldn't be there for a while.

    And now that I think about it, I was getting a strong message about this not being a very good time to drive that old car.

    But I did it anyhow, even though it felt like swimming through jello to get ready and go out there on the road, in a pretty good rainstorm too.

    Next time I will pay better attention when the Holy Spirit is trying to save me from something.

    However, I am grateful that it was more of a hassle and expense than anything really bad.

An Offer Is Made

 

    James and Martha looked at each other and then sat down on the bench beside her. It seemed so pleasant and friendly in an unfamiliar way. She opened her bag and offered them some cookies from a container that had been in with her red yarn. They accepted a couple of Snickerdoodles each, and since they were young and hungry always, they ate their cookies. 
    “Now tell me,” said Alice, “where are you going children?”

*** 

    “Why do you ask,” whispered Martha.
    “It’s unusual to see people out for a walk these days,” observed Alice. “We used to walk all over the place, just because it was a nice day, or we felt restless.”
    “I don’t know what to call you,” said James. “I feel awkward answering questions asked by a stranger at a bus stop, even a very kind stranger.”
    Alice was encouraged. Caginess is always good, she thought. It can be a sign of intelligence. But not always.
    “My name is Alice Franklin. I am 66 years old, and I lived in this city before the pods were stacked.” She laughed a little.
    “I won’t ask your names because I can easily see that you are running. But don’t worry about me betraying you. That isn’t my business here today.”
    “Why do you have two names,” asked Martha, a bit bolder now.
    “Well, now, you must know,” said Alice, “about how people lived before? The parents and their own children, living together? Right? You know that. Well, they all together had a second name. You got that name from your parents. My father and mother had the second name, Franklin. You see? Actually, most of us had a middle name too. Mine is Lily. Now you know quite a bit about me! You may call me Alice.”
    “The nurses called me Martha, that’s all,” said Martha. James nodded. That was how he got his name also. “I’m just James,” said James. “We had parents, of course, but we never met them.”
    “I think they would have liked to number us, but it would be hard for the nurses to remember our numbers, so we got names, like pet animals,” said James.
    Alice said, “what made you pick up and leave? I’m curious.”
    “They decided it was time for me to produce a baby for them. So, they brought me to his pod and dumped me there. I was supposed to be there for five days. He was supposed to be the father. They called it a wedding,” Martha was whispering again and near tears.
    “So, we just walked out,” said James. “No matter what they think, we are people. We had to leave. If I had not made her pregnant, they would have dragged her to someone else and tried again.
    “I couldn’t stand it. So, we walked out. We thought that if we walked for a few days that we might run into people who lived like human beings out there somewhere. We thought that maybe even dying out there on the land was better than living in the pod stacks.”
    It seemed to Alice that he had basically answered her other two questions. Now came the really delicate part of her job, the really interesting part. The offer. The final screening.
        “I can see that you are looking for freedom really, aren’t you? A life that matters to yourselves and maybe others too,” said Alice.
    “I can give you a short history lesson which you wouldn’t get in the kind of schools where you kids grew up. Oh yeah, I know about those places. Some of the best kids I know grew up in those places, don’t worry! In fact, it won’t take much of a lesson at all.
    “Something like nearly a hundred years ago the powers over mankind decided to change the nature of people. They decided on two main ways. Destroy the family as it had been forever and ever, and the other way was to make people worship the state, instead of the Creator of all. The idea was to farm people and use them like animals, and in fact to get rid of most of them. There used to be a lot more people. Did you know that?
    “That’s where you two come into the story. You have been living this horrible life.” Alice watched their faces then for a couple of moments. She saw recognition in their eyes. Bingo. They could see it.
    “It very well could be that the Creator brought us together today. Such things do happen, even here and now, James and Martha,” said Alice.
    Alice was pleased. They sat listening to her. They didn’t deride or even just leave.
    It was coming up to midday. The sun beat straight down with that early summer intensity on the little group in the unused bus stop shelter. A boy and a girl on the road looking for something better, and a mysterious lady with a lot to say to them.
    “I’m not just a grandma knitting a sock, though I am that too, I am a representative, a recruiter you might say,” said Alice. “I am looking for people. It’s what I do. I look for people who, number one, will talk to me. People with some curiosity, who are hungry and looking. If I find such people, I have an offer to make.
    “It’s an odd one and it might be very hard to believe. But it’s just as real as those cookies you ate and the sun getting a little too hot in here.”
    “Go on,” said James, sitting forward, elbows on knees, listening, a tall slight figure in green coveralls.
    “Maybe you know, or maybe not, but for something like fifty years various earthbound space agencies have been looking for an earth-like planet, besides this one. Why, you ask? It seems to be a principle of life to keep looking outward and to go further and further.
    “Two things happened at nearly the same time around five years ago. A way to travel between solar systems was learned. We’ll get into that a bit later. Then they found a planet. Uninhabited. Temperate. The right size. Covered with plants and animals. They called this planet Xanto.
    “Simply put, the space agency I work for is looking for people to start populating Xanto with human beings. There really is no other way to do this but to find people who will go.
    “There are a few hundred on Xanto now. But that’s not enough.
    “This is where the offer comes into it. If you will go and work on Xanto for five years, we will get you out of here. After the five years, you will be free to make your own way on Xanto as you see fit, and conditions allow. You could even come back to earth if you wanted to.
    “But this offer is for now. I need to know today if you two are interested in Xanto. That’s the way it works. Are you brave enough, hungry enough, do you want out of this badly enough? I’ll just keep knitting for a while and let you think it through. Help yourselves to more cookies.” With that she fell silent and started turning the heel of her sock.
    “Alice, which space agency do you work for,” asked James.
    “Israeli. We’re the only one left really,” said Alice, then she winked.
    “We’re going to walk around and talk for a minute, be right back,” said James. So, Martha and James walked down the highway for about half a block then came back.
    When Alice looked up from her sock they were standing before her holding hands, looking serious.
    “OK, we’ll go Alice. We were willing to die for the sake of freedom here on Earth. We’ll take a chance on Xanto. We have no reason not to,” said James.

The whole story so far: James and Martha.docx

James And Martha Kept Walking

 

   The recruiter waited at an old bus stop shelter on the bench. It was made of green painted metal and the seat was of wooden slats. The plastic walls of the shelter were dulled and scratched. No buses stopped there anymore. She sat quietly knitting a large red sock. 

As It Turns Out

 

    March 23-24, this year,  is that relatively obscure Jewish holiday, Purim. The story is in the book of Esther. 

    Traditionally, among the serious Jews, it is a fast day. The fast is made to commemorate the fast that the Jews of the Persian city of Shushan conducted while praying for help because their destruction had been planned by Haman the prime minister of Persia, and enabled by King Ahaseurus.

    They understood that it was their own sin that had put them in this position of vulnerability. 

    For a quick look at the story:

PURIM In A Nutshell.

    How does any of this apply to today?  Well. As it turns out, all Believers, Jew or Christian are under assault by the powers of darkness, as always, as always.

    How can we handle this? A question for the ages. Firstly, we get squared away with the Almighty. Can't have lambs running with the goats and then expecting to be blessed.

    We make all legal efforts we can for justice. We appeal for justice openly before man.

    But really, we understand that we belong to another Kingdom. We will never be truly at peace with the world, and we should not expect to be.

    We operate on the principle that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, and that the Day of Salvation is Now. We must become a new creation within ourselves.

    In the culturally Jewish world they celebrate with costumes and goodies. Always a good idea!

Happy Purim!

Hebrew pūrīm, literally, lots; from the casting of lots by Haman (Esther 9:24–26)

HELLO KITTY POD STACK- A Short Story

 

    (I was thinking a while ago what it would be like if our phones could, of their own volition, pipe up and speak to us. What if they watched us go about out business and advised constantly….? What if that was part of a whole scene? What if the walls could speak?) 

**** 

Hello Kitty Pod Stack

All Pod Stacks are given cute names. It was thought to increase compliance. After a generation no one knows what the referents are anyhow. But the names persist.

****

6AM. (Voice reminiscent of anime’ girl's.) It’s time to wake up James! I’m just going to keep talking until you wake up James! Today is a special day, James!

    This is nothing new to James. It happens every morning of his life in his pod. His eyes open. He jumps up rapidly to avoid hearing anymore of the voice just then.

Be sure to shower James! This is a special day!

    Instant obedience is the quickest and least annoying option. Built into the one-piece module that is his very own pod is a tiny shower and toilet unit. Luckily for him, he is thin. His skin doesn’t touch the wall of the shower. After a rapid warmish shower with heavily mineralized water, he towels off quickly and goes to the hooks where he hangs his one-piece garments. They are pale green and made of a fabric that sheds soil. He has three of them. He hand washes them in his all-purpose sink from time to time. He chooses the freshest one to wear.

Better eat quickly James! You have five minutes.

    Food bars come in four colors. Yellow, green, brown, and orange. Nobody really knows what they are made of. He chooses yellow. It has a slight citrus tang to it that he prefers. But he will eventually have to eat all of the assortment. He hates the green ones. They come in an olive drab kind of green and taste like some spoiled plant matter he thinks. But he is not sure what kind. He has had little experience with the outdoors in any case.

     He has a hot water pot, so he can make a cup of instant coffee. Of course we would not recognize it as coffee. But that’s what the pod calls this drink. The pod voice is his constant companion.

Hurry James. They will bring her soon! It is your wedding day!

    He is supposed to be excited about this. He stares at himself in the small round mirror to the left of the door. He has no idea what to expect. He is more appalled than anything.
    He has heard that years before his present, they tried to make jug babies, but it didn’t work very well, and they don’t need that many babies anyhow. They decided to go back to the natural method, in a sense. For one thing, naturally bred children were more able and useful than the jug kids had been. They also looked better.
    He doesn’t know much about the lives of the mothers. The word "mother" has a strange taste in his mouth. If fact, he has seen very few girls in his daily life. Sometimes when he walked about outside the pod stack, he would see a girl walking also, but they never spoke to each other.
    From birth until 18 years, he lived in a boy's facility like a government school, but with beds and meals. There were caretakers to mind and instruct them. There were no girls in his building. Affectionate relationships were not meant to happen.
    When he was 18, he received his own pod and began a type of work. Some work required a human mind. Artificial intelligence had not worked out well. It had caused so much destruction of infrastructure that it had to be scaled back. Part of James’ job was to repair the damage. He was a re-organizer. He was now 22 years old.

His wandering thoughts snapped back to the present when the pod said: 

Open the door, James. Martha is here.

    Standing in front of the door James says "Door Open." The door slides to the left into the wall. Standing outside are two uniformed state nurses, dressed in black pants and tunics with various insignia. Between them, staring at the floor, is apparently, Martha. The black clad nurses, of indeterminate gender, more or less shove her through the doorway.
    “You will have five days, then we will return to fetch her,” one says.

Close your door, James. Bring her in.

    Martha has been crying. Her face is grubby with tears and dust. She is small and very young. He supposes that she is about 16. If she were clean and well-dressed and happy she would have been a pretty little thing. But she is wearing a pale blue coverall of the ubiquitous type. She is blond and has grey eyes, almost silvery.
    It occurs to James that she is terrified. He realizes that he is also terrified. He wonders what kind of people think this is acceptable.
    An idea comes to him. It is a totally new concept to James, that he might want to protect someone.
    “They say your name is Martha. Hello. I am James. Please sit. I’m sorry for all of this.”
    Martha doesn’t speak but moves slowly to his one chair and sits, still looking down. Her hands are folded together on her knees. She looks about to take flight.
    James has pencils and paper. Not everyone does, but he likes to write things that the pod can’t read. There is a love of privacy in James. He picks up his pad and writes ‘I will not touch you. Don’t be afraid.’ He casually hands Martha the pad. She scans it and hands it back quickly.
    He writes again. He feels the pod trying to look over his shoulder in a sense. But he has tested the pod. It can’t read his handwriting.
    ‘You know there are places where people don’t live like this Martha?’ Once again, he hands her the pad from his seat on his bed. She reads and nods. She looks up wide-eyed. She nods again. 

    She gestures for the pad and writes, 'everybody knows.'
    He writes. ‘Are you willing to risk cold and exhaustion, hunger and maybe even death to get out of this?’ He hands her the pad. This time she takes it eagerly. “Yes, James. Yes,” whispers Martha.
    “We’re going to go walk around the square,” said James loudly. He gathers up all the food bars, putting them into his various utility pockets. He doesn’t know what to do about water but decides they will chance finding it. He has some of the local scrip also. He hopes they can use it.
    Martha stands and walks with him to the doorway.
    “Open door,” orders James. Martha takes his hand like a child. They walk out of the door and out of the building and keep going.

Dinner With Ralph

 

    “Hey man,” crowed Ralph agreeably, “good to see you again! You brought a friend! Good, good! Hey, always glad to see you again any old time! 

    “Ramona’s cooking a Whole Hog! Let’s go see if it’s done yet, but first let me get another sixpack of that Shaggy Dog Dunkel stuff from down there….”

*** 

    Ralph has this habit of inviting anyone he speaks to home for dinner. This has repercussions. It means he has to hunt more, and Ramona ends up roasting whole animals sometimes. Fortunately, wild pigs abound and are relatively easy for him to catch, though noisy.
    On top of that, sometimes he forgets to tell her that company is coming. 
    When it’s just Maeve with some of her crew, it doesn’t matter so much. They mostly just talk anyhow, being a kind of arboreal news service and advise column in one. Unlike Elon, they can only see so far and report so much. Bless their little hearts.
    When it’s Mama Puma and the kitten twins, Ramona has a real cooking job on her hands. A whole feral piglet would be needed just for them alone.
    Besides all that, the truth of the matter is that Ralph loves an audience to try his theories out on. If they are bound by the rules of courtesy, all the better! A creature can hardly rebut and stomp off with a mouthful of herby roasted piglet.
    Somehow, Ralph heard somebody say that words make worlds. He got right to work on it. His first thought was, “they do not!” But he was just thinking about regular conversation then.
    “The world has existed from everlasting with no input from anybody but the Maker,” he thought to himself.
    Then he got to thinking of where the world exists. He figured then that it exists in minds that perceive it. This was getting less obviously obvious.
    He went out to his log and fished a King Edward out of the Tupperware box where he keeps them, and had a long thoughtful smoke. It occurred to him that reality is experienced by minds. Without minds, what is reality? He knew that what is said colors thought. Ipso facto, etc.  
    For a while out there on the pondering log, it seemed to him that all subjects connect at the edges somehow, and that all these subjects could indeed dance on the head of a pin, inside his mind. He began to see that all is one.
    This whole business of learning to speak had forced him to deal with concepts that the Unspeaking are not responsible for. All of the talking animals, and birds, Maeve, are in a similar position. Having speech, words, meant that they had to deal with the effects of speech, for good or ill.

    To return to the story at hand; Maurice, on his best behavior, not slavering or howling, and Folkie Joe,in his denim and woollies,  followed Ralph back to the home cave with the jolly cookfire in front of it. 

    It was a most pleasant scene. There was a large ring of medium sized boulders enclosing a nice bed of coals, and over it was a half grown piglet roasting on a spit that Ralph had contrived from some metal bits and pieces that he had liberated somewhere. The scent was intoxicating. Maurice and Folkie Joe began to think that visiting Ralph and family had been a very sound idea indeed.
    Months ago, Ralph had dragged some handy logs home to provide seating around the fire and incidentally, to make convenient seating for his listeners.
    Ramona and Twigg came out to meet the guys, Ralph made introductions. He had finally asked for their names! The two guests settled down on logs, near enough to the fire to be warm but not to be roasted. Ralph strode around thoughtfully, fingering his chin, for a while, then turned to his guests with a great big sunny smile.
    “Boys,” said Ralph, “I’ve been thinking!”
    A feral expression passed over Maurice’s muzzle. Folkie Joe looked somewhat haunted. Ramona and Twigg ducked back into the cave suddenly. She said she needed to get some plates and knives and forks and a salt shaker, and the bottle of Tabasco sauce.
    But then Ralph is a kind host, so he decided to just let people eat in peace.
    “Oh, never mind, I need to think about it some more anyhow,” Ralph said. “I want you to just have a nice dinner and go out into the world happy and full!

    "Here, have a Shaggy Dog and relax.  It's a great night in the forest!"

    So, that is exactly what they did, once Ralph decided to just love his guests.

Raven's Hop

 

*Maeve would have a word with you.* 

Words vs Meanings 

Oh No!

It’s all about the egg! An egg is a definition, says she. An enclosure. 

Inside the egg is one thing. 

Outside of the egg is everything else? Is it not so? 

We have eggs for our convenience, like a sort of medium of exchange. Oh! I meant words. What I may mean is as boundless as the air, the sky, the universe, but it’s diffuse. It’s slippery. It evades my intentions. So, the egg. 

“Words make worlds.” Perhaps it was the refining of chaos into definitions that is a way of looking at creation? “In the beginning was the Word.” Perhaps not chaos but just the impossibility of nothingness. Do I dare say “in the beginning was definition?” 

Oh dear. Perhaps I have rolled the egg over and mixed myself up. 

Maybe it would be better to say that words are the dresses we put our meanings into. So many, many different dresses! Depending on who or where. 

But back to Raven’s eggs. 

That’s where more Ravens come from. 

That I know for sure.

How It All Turned Out

      “You know, you’ll never see him again, right?” said Ramona a couple of days later.

    Ralph was lounging around in the cave after a big venison dinner, having told her about the strange meeting in the clearing and his long conversation with Louis.
    “I don’t know what he’s going to do,” yawned Ralph, "but  he was a lot calmer when he left."  He rolled over and went to sleep.

              

*** 

    It was an abandoned farm. No one had lived or farmed there for twenty or so years. The native Alders and blackberries and all that other anonymous brush were coming back to re-establish their dominance. Senile apple and cherry trees shivered in ruin.
    It was late in the year so there was no foliage to block the dismal view of the farmhouse. There was a real Blair Witch vibe to the scene. No lights warmed the empty windows, which looked like empty eye sockets, though rectangular.
    It was a two-story Scandinavian style PNW farmhouse with a basement underneath. The door to the basement in back was slightly ajar.
    Now, since leaving his long conversation with Ralph, Louis had completely forgotten his promise to come back and meet the family. He had also taken up howling a bit once more. His toe pads were sore and worn. He had walked and loped and slunk even, for many a mile and he was looking for shelter. Being basically a big shaggy black mutt he had a good nose on him. He was smelling for shelter, in fact.
    He was a cross-country walker. Howlers do better to stay off the public thoroughfares. He finally came upon the deserted old farmhouse and saw that slightly open door and smelled shelter and thought some Cryptid version of “bingo!” He smelled the unmistakable scent of food and even sleep down there. He invited himself into the basement.
    It was dark. The concrete floor had mud tracked in a trail that led back to a corner of the main room. It was close in there out of the damp wind. It smelled a lot like his last shelter way back in the mountains of home.
    In that corner Louis found a nice down sleeping bag laid out and next to it one of those tiny camp stoves which unfolds and is so small you can carry it around in your pack. On the stove was an open can of Dinty Moore beef stew. Next to it was a spoon and an open box of crackers.
    Louis was just sitting there with his large shaggy tail wrapped around his feet getting ready to help himself when Folkie Joe, their owner, pushed his way through the selfsame door that Louis had pushed himself through. Folkie Joe did not expect to see the Ozark Howler drooling over his dinner. He let out an astonished yelp.
    “What or who in the name of biscuits and gravy are you?” hollered F. Joe.
    Louis turned his bleary red eyes upon Joe and said, “Maurice. My ma called me Maurice.” (Goes to show ya, doesn’t it?) “Who are you?”
    Visibly steadying himself, Folkie Joe said, “my street name is Folkie Joe, and I was just out there taking a wizz, and when I come back, I find you staring at my dinner!”
    “I’m hungry Joe. That big hairy guy out in the woods gave me a beer but that’s all. And he sure talks a lot! Well, we had cigars too, but that doesn’t fill the belly, does it?”
    Seeing that the course of wisdom indicated placation rather than confrontation with this hulking shaggy beast, Folkie Joe said, “hey, I have another can of the stuff. Do you want it hot or cold?” 

***

    “So how did you end up with a name like Folkie Joe?” inquired Maurice while lapping cold stew.
    “Ahh, that started way back when I was a meteorology student at the U. I used to stand on the Ave and sing the weather report and people would put change in my hat and I never did do a real weather report on TV or anything. But I did keep singing on the street. It doesn’t pay very well Maurice. So here I am and there you are.”
    “Hey Joe, I just remembered something. I know where we can get some dinner I betcha! I said I’d come back and meet this guy’s wife and kid! I do believe I will do so. Why don’t you come with me?!”
    It was agreed that they should do so and so they set out walking back to the forest.

*** 

    Meanwhile, out on his favorite log Ralph was showing Twigg how to blow bubbles with just his mouth and a soap solution. Oh yes, Ralph is all about soap. He doesn’t stink like the other Sasquatches. Oh, no! Ralph’s scent is that of pine, and mint and just a titch of musk.
    Twigg was just about to try it himself. The trick is not to swallow the soap but to gently blow through the soap membrane.
    Just about then four fundamentalist Sasquatch of the natural variety appeared silently before Ralph and his son. These fellows’ scent could scald the paint off a wall. Reproach was in their eyes. They were there to confront a sinner who was teaching his own child the ways of man. Besides, he was drawing attention to the whole question of whether they existed or not. (Come on! He was giving interviews!)
    Twigg started crying and ran back to the cave to Ramona, leaving his dad to deal. Ramona had just put a whole wild piglet on to roast, when Twigg zoomed into the cave howling with alarm.
    The clearing was getting really crowded. And tense. 

***

    Right when the debate was about to begin Maurice, the Ozark Howler and Folkie Joe, the weatherman strode in from stage left. This changed the balance of power somewhat by adding the random element of surprise.
    Seeing his buddy in trouble, Maurice loped around and around the large hominids howling like the very devil he sort of was. These Squatches were forced to put their hands over their ears. They began to feel as if the whole situation was making them conspicuous.
    Folkie Joe took his harmonica out, putting it in its holder, and began to play and sing old Pete Seeger hits like Which Side Are You On Boys! 

    While that was sinking in, he went on to If I Had A Hammer and then to a homey version of Close to You.
    That did it. The four fundamentalist heavyweights faded back into the Doug firs and the mist and the gloom and the silence. It seemed as if they had never existed at all, so profound was their absence, which is just exactly the way they like it!

    “Hey man,” crowed Ralph agreeably, “good to see you again! You brought a friend! Good, good! Hey, always glad to see you again any old time!

    “Ramona’s cooking a Whole Hog! Let’s go see if it’s done yet, but first let me get another sixpack of that Shaggy Dog Dunkel stuff from down there….”

Saturday Greetings From Friday!

 

    Lazy.   

    Didn't write a thing.

    I went outside for a while.

    I planted a giant pot of broccoli for the thinnings. I figure outdoor weather will benefit those things.  I am confident in them because in my opinion mustard family seeds germinate at about the rate of 400%.

    I planted a second pot to non-bulbing onions.  Never tried that before.  They take a long time the packet says. 65 days!

The seed came from Territorial Seed in OR, which is suitable for our climate here.

    As you can see in the photo of the alley out there the fruit trees are just about to blossom.

    Just about the same view on Feb 27. So here we are in the sunshine just over two weeks later!

As always, 

Love, p