The last page of the novel Moby Dick describes the sinking of the whaling vessel Pequod – how it and all the sailors whose personal dramas and inter-relationships had been recounted for hundreds of pages sank beneath the water and no sign remained that the ship and crew had ever existed. Not a ripple marked the spot where it had gone down. “The great shroud of the sea rolled on as it had for thousands of years.”
This is the nature of death – what exists disappears. This is what happens to you and me – we die, and nothing of us remains. It is not a pleasant thing to contemplate.
One man, Ishmael, survives the sinking of the Pequod. He is saved by a wooden coffin that buoys him.
The Christian religion promises a pardon, a kind of wooden coffin, from the sentence of death we live under. Christianity says that the Savior Jesus Christ redeemed us by dying in our place. By dying he disabled death itself, we are told. He was resurrected by God, and so may we be. Salvation is attainable. We shall not surely die, not really, at least not the part that is really us. Our bodies may perish, but not us.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in the Resurrection. The essence of what they believe will no doubt come to pass. Their bodies will perish, but who they really are will ascend unto heaven, there to be united with God into eternity. For myself, however, I see such beliefs as tending toward self-deception. The fact is, our time here on earth is at best a substitute pattern of what God intended; we are not, as it was put, walking with God and sharing in his creative processes. As fallen man, we live lives separated from God in our consciousness. Anything we do separate from God will perish. Like the Pequod and its crew, it is all going to pass away.
A few years back my mother died and my two daughters and I spent a sad afternoon sorting through her personal effects. Most of her photographs and correspondence we put in the trash barrel because we didn’t know the people. They had enriched my mother’s life, but without her none of the things had meaning. The day is coming when my things too will go into the trash. And rightly so. The remains of my human existence here on earth will disappear.
The Book of Genesis records the creation of man and the purpose of his existence – to walk with God and serve as his steward on earth. The book also tells the story of how man, represented by the figures of Adam and Eve, disobeyed God and hid from Him. And were subsequently expelled from the Garden of Eden (actually they expelled themselves). And how they were condemned to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow and how death came upon them – despite the sibilant hissing of the serpent, “Ye shall not surely die.” Death is not the ordained end of man as God made him, but it is the unavoidable end of fallen man.
Professed Christians sell themselves short. They have a self-centered, limited vision of themselves and the cosmos that God created. Christians imagine that life consists of three score and ten years here on earth and then an eternity in heaven. Zip, zip, once around the track, across the finish line, up to heaven, and that’s it. The race is run, the game is done. The truth, the reality, might prove to be something more. There is no finish line. God's creatuve processes are ongoing and never ending. We are all a part of the unending, never finished work in progress. That's where our consciousness, our sense of self, our "soul" if you will, needs to be. Evrything else perishes.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
A Memory of Sunrise
(Note: This memoir was written at the request of my older daughter, who was born and reared on Sunrise and lived there until she was 19. She wanted a written history of the place she called home. I share it here because the story relates to all of us. -- Bob Moore)
Now living in my eighth decade of life on this earth, I look back and ask what it was all about, what did I do with my time on the planet, did any of it mean anything. Old people think about such things. We all have a story to tell.
My story starts back in the summer of 1958, at a boarding house on Montana Avenue in El Paso, Texas. I was 22 years old, and my personal life was in a turmoil. In the evenings I often played chess with an older fellow who smoked a pipe because he was trying to wean himself off cigarettes. He had an interesting way of saying things that I found soothing. One evening he told me about a place called Sunrise Ranch up in Colorado. He said it was kind of like the Walden Pond place I had read about where people could relax and learn to think straight.
Six months later, at his invitation, I visited this curiosity called Sunrise Ranch. It was like stepping back a quarter of a century into the Great Depression. I saw a lot of people crammed into primitive buildings. Meals were taken communally in an old ranch house, and there were a number of small cinder-block cottages where people lived with no utilities other than electricity. A number of outhouses were scattered about the property. I was full of questions but by way of answers was told that physical labor is always a prerequisite to understanding abstractions. And so I spent a number of hours each day straightening nails salvaged from scrap lumber.
I learned quite a bit about the community by simply observing. Milk cows, goats and chickens, for instance, provided much of the food. An appointed committee oversaw financial expenditures and purchases, and work leaders called focalizers supervised various construction and agricultural projects. Women rotated work in the kitchen preparing meals, and several worked as transcribers, using their home as an office. A two-acre garden produced vegetables in the summer, and tons of fruit were canned in the fall. Everybody, men, women and children, participated in these group projects.
In some respects it was a harsh environment, not very uplifting. Nothing about the human habitation appealed to the eye. Yet the natural setting was beautiful. Green Ridge to the west rose in ever-higher forested crests as part of the Rocky Mountains, and to the east the sandstone reds of the rimrock made a colorful framework for the narrow strip of fertile soil called Eden Valley.
When I first arrived at the Ranch my friend Tom from El Paso brought me in by what he termed the “Gateway,” a road that left the Estes Park highway and crossed the Big Thompson River. Several houses were clustered on the slope where the river and the road came together. We stopped at one of the houses and went inside to meet Tom’s special friends, Dave and Rosa Groves, an elderly couple from the Arkansas Ozarks. They were a sweet and engaging couple who could have posed for a picture representing “everybody’s grandpa and grandma.” Dave and Rosa had three grown daughters, the youngest of whom, Kathy, had married a young man named Lloyd Meeker. And it is with him that the real story of Sunrise Ranch is told.
Lloyd Meeker was a prophet sent by God. Now that’s what you could call a declarative sentence! But one that needs to be said, for it is the premise behind Sunrise Ranch. A normal, sensible person will of course rightly be skeptical in accepting such a statement. However, the reader is not asked to believe anything. Unlike the Christianity with which we are all acquainted, the God that Meeker represented promises no rewards for believing and no threats of penalties for disbelieving.
In written and audio records left by Meeker, he has described how he began a ministry in 1932 designed to provide a foundation for the restoration of the earth and its people to what God intended for his creation. In 1946 he was able to purchase a “hardscrabble” rundown farm ten miles from Loveland, CO, which he gave the name “Sunrise” to symbolically portray the dawn of a new day, and “Ranch” to designate its rural setting.
The Ranch had a twofold purpose: It provided a self-sufficient community in which people could learn how the spiritual and physical aspects of life intersected, and as a place where people located around the world could look for leadership.
Meeker took on the pen name of Uranda, the sound of which he said best conveyed the name of his eternal spiritual identity.
Over the years Uranda established a network of followers across the United States and Canada. He traveled extensively, giving lectures and talks to small groups. Many of the responding ones from these meetings eventually came to live at the Ranch, and others created “service centers” where Uranda’s talks were read and discussed.
A burgeoning number of “service centers” were led by graduates of the Palmer School of Chiropractic. They were attracted to Uranda because he was able to explain in rational terms how the “no hands” chiropractic adjustment that some practictioners were using in their offices worked. In essence, Uranda’s explanation said that every human being both emits and receives “radiation,” what he called “the currents of life.” Alignment of the spinal cord, which is the primary chiropractic treatment, could be achieved in just a few minutes of “no hands on” radiation.
Uranda called this healing process, which he expanded far beyond chiropractic boundaries, “attunement.” Many remarkable stories of health restoration via attunement have been recorded. Attunement, however, is not intended to replace other forms of healing. In fact, attunement is never offered as a “treatment” of any illness because attunement is viewed as just one facet of a holistic process.
In 1952 a number of these “attunement servers” and their families gathered on Sunrise to attend a six-month educational program called the Servers Training Class. Refinements of the attunement technique were taught, but the primary teaching focused on “attuning” the body, mind and heart of each individual to his or her spiritual life source. To the degree that an individual let this occur, he or she became a more effective, stable and happy human being. This “attuning” process was 24/7 for everyone on the Ranch. Or at least it was supposed to be. Human nature being what it is, over the years there were those who tended to forget why they were there.
The Servers Training Class became an annual affair, numbers increased, attendees came from all walks of life and the chiropractic input was lessened. In August 1954 the community was stunned by news that Uranda and Kathy, along with two others, had died when their private plane crashed into San Francisco Bay.
The future of the Ranch, and indeed of everything Uranda had established, seemed in jeopardy. But, as some like to say, the Lord provided. One of Uranda’s earliest contacts had been a Canadian, transplanted from England, named Martin Cecil (pronounced sess-el). In 1940 Uranda had acknowledged him as his prophetic equal and eventual successor.
So it was that until his death in 1989 Martin Cecil led the ministry Uranda had christened as Emissaries of Divine Light with headquarters on Sunrise Ranch. EDL was the legal name which enabled the ministry to function as a tax-free entity, but both Uranda and Martin preferred the term, Third Sacred School, to describe the enterprise. God’s covenant with Abraham, which formed the tribal Children of Israel, was considered the First Sacred School; two thousand years later the advent of the Christ, Jesus, followed as the Second Sacred School; and two thousand years after that, the formation of the Third Sacred School, which was built upon the foundation provided by the First and Second Schools.
Martin, as the saying goes, was a different kettle of fish from Uranda, an entirely different personality. Uranda had been outgoing and ebullient, and some said “you couldn’t stop from falling in love with him.” Martin, however, had the seemingly aloof personality of the upper class British society in which he had been born. He was all business.
I have sat in the audience and heard Martin speak at least a thousand times. And each of those talks was exactly sixty minutes. Well, give or take 30 seconds. There was no clock on the wall, no wrist watch, just Martin’s internal clock. Every talk was done without notes, entirely extemporaneous, had a beginning, middle and end, and was perfectly timed.
For many, many years he gave four hour-long talks a week –Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday and Saturday evenings. And when the class was in session, he spoke for an hour every weekday morning, always without notes. All of his talks were transcribed, and today, along with Uranda’s words, comprise the 18 printed volumes of the Third Sacred School.
Today I read those words that I once heard first hand, and I wonder anew at them. Much of what he said zinged right over my head when I first heard him, I wasn’t sufficiently “attuned” to comprehend all that was said. Nowadays my perception is better and I marvel at how clearly he was aware of his role in furnishing for posterity a complete record of God’s will for man.
People sometimes ask me what the religious beliefs of “Emissaries” are. I reply that I can’t think of a single one. Beliefs are mental concepts that may or may not have some connection with reality. Emissaries honor the Bible as a record of God’s interaction with man and often use biblical verses to illustrate a point. The one known as Jesus is also acknowledged as the focal point of deity on earth. The Emissary ministry is not just another Christian denomination. For one thing, it does not accept the underlying premise of Christianity – that man can kill God. Man has the temporary ability to defy God, to steal from God, but man, unlike what Christians assert, cannot kill God.
Returning to my personal story, after my initial visit to the Ranch I returned and stayed for 25 years. I took the six-month Servers Training Class in 1960. I milked cows and goats, changed irrigation pipes, baled hay, stacked hay, weeded in the garden, washed dishes in the dining hall, picked corn, canned fruit, painted walls and ceilings, fixed flats, edited two Emissary publications. I married and fathered two wonderful girls, and met many people from all over the world, some of them becoming lifelong friends. Is that sufficient description on a quarter of a century?
In her book, The Vibrational Ark, Grace Van Duzen gives at least one comment on each resident of the Ranch. In her eyes, I was best known for stringing 26,000 feet of barbed wire one winter. If I were to single out an accomplishment, I think it would be that I probably set a record for most pipe changes. It was something over 2,000.
But the time at Sunrise was not really about milking cows or baling hay. The real work to be done, the reason for being there, was attunement – learning how to let one’s capacities of body, mind and heart be attuned to one’s own divine source. In theory, physical work was a way to accomplish this. The spiritual and the physical are two aspects of the same world, not two separate worlds.
It is said that the devil is in the details, and so it proved to be for me and many others at Sunrise.
My early years at Sunrise were joyous and uplifting, full of challenges and accomplishment, but the later years were tinged by a sense of failure and disappointment. Unable to find resolution, my wife LeAnna and I were divorced and I left the Ranch. Now, another quarter of a century later, aided by time and distance, I can look back and discern what happened.
1) Too many people stopped along the way. Pioneers don’t always make it to their intended destination. They lose a wheel off a wagon and instead of repairing it decide that this looks like a comfortable spot to stay and live. Total immersion in the truth of being was required, but many settled for intellectual knowledge about the truth.
2) The healing currents of the attunement technique became an addiction for many. Their lives tended to center around the wonderful sense of serenity they knew when they “got an attunement.”
3) Too many Sunrise residents tended to believe that their community organization was a microcosm for what the whole world should be and they had the authority to make it so. Consequently a plethora of Little Hitlers developed, or as Martin himself more kindly put it, “Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.”
4) A gushy, syrupy, sickly sweet interpretation of what “spiritual expression” meant.
5) A tendency to worship Uranda and then Martin. Some said that worship of Uranda was so pervasive that it blocked the flowering of his ministry, and that Martin deliberately cultivated an aura of austerity in order to discourage personal adoration.
In the mid 1970s Sunrise built a 300-seat Dome Chapel – an architectural marvel in its time – to seat the growing number of people coming to hear Martin speak. Plans were laid and later fulfilled for a two-story dining facility called The Pavilion to handle the crowds. In this decade Martin made several allusions to the year 1981. He said that year, give or take a year or two – could mark a significant milepost in the ministry originated 50 years earlier– perhaps the beginnings of a manifestation of Uranda’s vision.
In 1982, a world conference of Emissaries was held at Colorado State University in Fort Collins because the Ranch couldn’t handle the numbers. (Parenthetically, it was the presence of Emissaries on campus that summer that prompted the Denver Broncos to permanently move their football training camp to Greeley.)
That world conference proved to be the high tide of the EDL enterprise; the numbers and the energy receded year by year. Apparently a tipping point had been reached; either a sufficient number of people had realized the supremacy of their spiritual selves so that the next level of a heavenly outworking could be attained -- or they had not. Possibly a celestial accounting agency had crunched the numbers and came out with a negative score.
Martin continued to speak once a week until his death in 1989 at age 82. Several years prior to his passing, however, he is reported to have commented that he had said all he had come to say. His son Michael took his place for a couple of years. Then Michael announced that EDL had served its purpose and he would no longer have any ties with the organization.
A number of Emissaries chose to keep the EDL organization operating, and to continue the existence of Sunrise Ranch. A democratic governing body of EDL was established, consisting of seven elective board members. Sunrise Ranch, now a fairly modern resort with a property value in the millions of dollars, began supporting its 50 or so remaining residents by catering to weekend or week-long gatherings of New Age groups, providing meals, lodging and a Dome for meetings.
About 20 years after I left the Ranch I met with a couple of old friends who had shared my time there and we recalled one memorable evening of service. Martin had delivered his customary 60-minute talk, ending it with a prayer and an AUM that seemed to shake all the rafters in the building. The prolonged sound –AUM -- coming through Martin’s voice but seeming to reverberate in our own bodies and in the very air around us and to go on and on, was, we agreed, the most vivid, unforgettable experience we ever had on Sunrise Ranch.
I have pondered that experience, and likened it to the biblical account of Pentecost, when “a sound as of a mighty rushing wind” filled the room. Martin never repeated the event; some of us wondered why. Perhaps the comments that I heard voiced in conversations -- that it was “just so wonderful” and “made me feel so good” – indicated that too many people were still stuck in their self-centeredness.
A visit to the Sunrise Ranch of today finds quiet serenity; one can stand in the midst of the property and not see a single soul moving about – a stark contrast to the bustling activity that once characterized the place. It would probably be accurate to say that Sunrise served as the womb that nourished the birth of the Third Sacred School and, having fulfilled that function, the placenta has dissolved back into the earth. The buildings of Sunrise remain, but the purpose that imbued the structures with meaning has accomplished its mission and moved on.
A nagging sense of having failed at a great enterprise plagued me for many years, but recently I have come to view my Sunrise experience in a less critical light. I suppose I could say it took me a long while to grow up. I didn’t immediately heed what might be called the great preachment delivered over and over again – let the personal circumstance you complain about be used as the means of your deliverance. It took me a while to discover the freedom that comes with spiritual expression. The truth is simple: We are all spiritual beings having a human experience here on earth.
Whether or not the ministry of restoration initiated by Uranda in 1932 realized the full flowering of its potential will never be known. The face of God is inscrutable to the eyes of men. But one thing is a fact: it did leave a great legacy for mankind, the books of the Third Sacred School. Moreover, those who drank from the cup of life offered by Uranda and Martin have become a new generation of the seed planted thousands of years ago. There is a parting of the ways occurring in the world, and tribulation ahead for the human race, but the outcome is sure – the restoration of the human race to its divine identity.
A friend met more than 40 years ago on Sunrise recently gave me his own assessment of his time spent there, and we agreed that:
“It was the best of times and the worst of times. It was a call to greatness. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
Now living in my eighth decade of life on this earth, I look back and ask what it was all about, what did I do with my time on the planet, did any of it mean anything. Old people think about such things. We all have a story to tell.
My story starts back in the summer of 1958, at a boarding house on Montana Avenue in El Paso, Texas. I was 22 years old, and my personal life was in a turmoil. In the evenings I often played chess with an older fellow who smoked a pipe because he was trying to wean himself off cigarettes. He had an interesting way of saying things that I found soothing. One evening he told me about a place called Sunrise Ranch up in Colorado. He said it was kind of like the Walden Pond place I had read about where people could relax and learn to think straight.
Six months later, at his invitation, I visited this curiosity called Sunrise Ranch. It was like stepping back a quarter of a century into the Great Depression. I saw a lot of people crammed into primitive buildings. Meals were taken communally in an old ranch house, and there were a number of small cinder-block cottages where people lived with no utilities other than electricity. A number of outhouses were scattered about the property. I was full of questions but by way of answers was told that physical labor is always a prerequisite to understanding abstractions. And so I spent a number of hours each day straightening nails salvaged from scrap lumber.
I learned quite a bit about the community by simply observing. Milk cows, goats and chickens, for instance, provided much of the food. An appointed committee oversaw financial expenditures and purchases, and work leaders called focalizers supervised various construction and agricultural projects. Women rotated work in the kitchen preparing meals, and several worked as transcribers, using their home as an office. A two-acre garden produced vegetables in the summer, and tons of fruit were canned in the fall. Everybody, men, women and children, participated in these group projects.
In some respects it was a harsh environment, not very uplifting. Nothing about the human habitation appealed to the eye. Yet the natural setting was beautiful. Green Ridge to the west rose in ever-higher forested crests as part of the Rocky Mountains, and to the east the sandstone reds of the rimrock made a colorful framework for the narrow strip of fertile soil called Eden Valley.
When I first arrived at the Ranch my friend Tom from El Paso brought me in by what he termed the “Gateway,” a road that left the Estes Park highway and crossed the Big Thompson River. Several houses were clustered on the slope where the river and the road came together. We stopped at one of the houses and went inside to meet Tom’s special friends, Dave and Rosa Groves, an elderly couple from the Arkansas Ozarks. They were a sweet and engaging couple who could have posed for a picture representing “everybody’s grandpa and grandma.” Dave and Rosa had three grown daughters, the youngest of whom, Kathy, had married a young man named Lloyd Meeker. And it is with him that the real story of Sunrise Ranch is told.
Lloyd Meeker was a prophet sent by God. Now that’s what you could call a declarative sentence! But one that needs to be said, for it is the premise behind Sunrise Ranch. A normal, sensible person will of course rightly be skeptical in accepting such a statement. However, the reader is not asked to believe anything. Unlike the Christianity with which we are all acquainted, the God that Meeker represented promises no rewards for believing and no threats of penalties for disbelieving.
In written and audio records left by Meeker, he has described how he began a ministry in 1932 designed to provide a foundation for the restoration of the earth and its people to what God intended for his creation. In 1946 he was able to purchase a “hardscrabble” rundown farm ten miles from Loveland, CO, which he gave the name “Sunrise” to symbolically portray the dawn of a new day, and “Ranch” to designate its rural setting.
The Ranch had a twofold purpose: It provided a self-sufficient community in which people could learn how the spiritual and physical aspects of life intersected, and as a place where people located around the world could look for leadership.
Meeker took on the pen name of Uranda, the sound of which he said best conveyed the name of his eternal spiritual identity.
Over the years Uranda established a network of followers across the United States and Canada. He traveled extensively, giving lectures and talks to small groups. Many of the responding ones from these meetings eventually came to live at the Ranch, and others created “service centers” where Uranda’s talks were read and discussed.
A burgeoning number of “service centers” were led by graduates of the Palmer School of Chiropractic. They were attracted to Uranda because he was able to explain in rational terms how the “no hands” chiropractic adjustment that some practictioners were using in their offices worked. In essence, Uranda’s explanation said that every human being both emits and receives “radiation,” what he called “the currents of life.” Alignment of the spinal cord, which is the primary chiropractic treatment, could be achieved in just a few minutes of “no hands on” radiation.
Uranda called this healing process, which he expanded far beyond chiropractic boundaries, “attunement.” Many remarkable stories of health restoration via attunement have been recorded. Attunement, however, is not intended to replace other forms of healing. In fact, attunement is never offered as a “treatment” of any illness because attunement is viewed as just one facet of a holistic process.
In 1952 a number of these “attunement servers” and their families gathered on Sunrise to attend a six-month educational program called the Servers Training Class. Refinements of the attunement technique were taught, but the primary teaching focused on “attuning” the body, mind and heart of each individual to his or her spiritual life source. To the degree that an individual let this occur, he or she became a more effective, stable and happy human being. This “attuning” process was 24/7 for everyone on the Ranch. Or at least it was supposed to be. Human nature being what it is, over the years there were those who tended to forget why they were there.
The Servers Training Class became an annual affair, numbers increased, attendees came from all walks of life and the chiropractic input was lessened. In August 1954 the community was stunned by news that Uranda and Kathy, along with two others, had died when their private plane crashed into San Francisco Bay.
The future of the Ranch, and indeed of everything Uranda had established, seemed in jeopardy. But, as some like to say, the Lord provided. One of Uranda’s earliest contacts had been a Canadian, transplanted from England, named Martin Cecil (pronounced sess-el). In 1940 Uranda had acknowledged him as his prophetic equal and eventual successor.
So it was that until his death in 1989 Martin Cecil led the ministry Uranda had christened as Emissaries of Divine Light with headquarters on Sunrise Ranch. EDL was the legal name which enabled the ministry to function as a tax-free entity, but both Uranda and Martin preferred the term, Third Sacred School, to describe the enterprise. God’s covenant with Abraham, which formed the tribal Children of Israel, was considered the First Sacred School; two thousand years later the advent of the Christ, Jesus, followed as the Second Sacred School; and two thousand years after that, the formation of the Third Sacred School, which was built upon the foundation provided by the First and Second Schools.
Martin, as the saying goes, was a different kettle of fish from Uranda, an entirely different personality. Uranda had been outgoing and ebullient, and some said “you couldn’t stop from falling in love with him.” Martin, however, had the seemingly aloof personality of the upper class British society in which he had been born. He was all business.
I have sat in the audience and heard Martin speak at least a thousand times. And each of those talks was exactly sixty minutes. Well, give or take 30 seconds. There was no clock on the wall, no wrist watch, just Martin’s internal clock. Every talk was done without notes, entirely extemporaneous, had a beginning, middle and end, and was perfectly timed.
For many, many years he gave four hour-long talks a week –Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday and Saturday evenings. And when the class was in session, he spoke for an hour every weekday morning, always without notes. All of his talks were transcribed, and today, along with Uranda’s words, comprise the 18 printed volumes of the Third Sacred School.
Today I read those words that I once heard first hand, and I wonder anew at them. Much of what he said zinged right over my head when I first heard him, I wasn’t sufficiently “attuned” to comprehend all that was said. Nowadays my perception is better and I marvel at how clearly he was aware of his role in furnishing for posterity a complete record of God’s will for man.
People sometimes ask me what the religious beliefs of “Emissaries” are. I reply that I can’t think of a single one. Beliefs are mental concepts that may or may not have some connection with reality. Emissaries honor the Bible as a record of God’s interaction with man and often use biblical verses to illustrate a point. The one known as Jesus is also acknowledged as the focal point of deity on earth. The Emissary ministry is not just another Christian denomination. For one thing, it does not accept the underlying premise of Christianity – that man can kill God. Man has the temporary ability to defy God, to steal from God, but man, unlike what Christians assert, cannot kill God.
Returning to my personal story, after my initial visit to the Ranch I returned and stayed for 25 years. I took the six-month Servers Training Class in 1960. I milked cows and goats, changed irrigation pipes, baled hay, stacked hay, weeded in the garden, washed dishes in the dining hall, picked corn, canned fruit, painted walls and ceilings, fixed flats, edited two Emissary publications. I married and fathered two wonderful girls, and met many people from all over the world, some of them becoming lifelong friends. Is that sufficient description on a quarter of a century?
In her book, The Vibrational Ark, Grace Van Duzen gives at least one comment on each resident of the Ranch. In her eyes, I was best known for stringing 26,000 feet of barbed wire one winter. If I were to single out an accomplishment, I think it would be that I probably set a record for most pipe changes. It was something over 2,000.
But the time at Sunrise was not really about milking cows or baling hay. The real work to be done, the reason for being there, was attunement – learning how to let one’s capacities of body, mind and heart be attuned to one’s own divine source. In theory, physical work was a way to accomplish this. The spiritual and the physical are two aspects of the same world, not two separate worlds.
It is said that the devil is in the details, and so it proved to be for me and many others at Sunrise.
My early years at Sunrise were joyous and uplifting, full of challenges and accomplishment, but the later years were tinged by a sense of failure and disappointment. Unable to find resolution, my wife LeAnna and I were divorced and I left the Ranch. Now, another quarter of a century later, aided by time and distance, I can look back and discern what happened.
1) Too many people stopped along the way. Pioneers don’t always make it to their intended destination. They lose a wheel off a wagon and instead of repairing it decide that this looks like a comfortable spot to stay and live. Total immersion in the truth of being was required, but many settled for intellectual knowledge about the truth.
2) The healing currents of the attunement technique became an addiction for many. Their lives tended to center around the wonderful sense of serenity they knew when they “got an attunement.”
3) Too many Sunrise residents tended to believe that their community organization was a microcosm for what the whole world should be and they had the authority to make it so. Consequently a plethora of Little Hitlers developed, or as Martin himself more kindly put it, “Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.”
4) A gushy, syrupy, sickly sweet interpretation of what “spiritual expression” meant.
5) A tendency to worship Uranda and then Martin. Some said that worship of Uranda was so pervasive that it blocked the flowering of his ministry, and that Martin deliberately cultivated an aura of austerity in order to discourage personal adoration.
In the mid 1970s Sunrise built a 300-seat Dome Chapel – an architectural marvel in its time – to seat the growing number of people coming to hear Martin speak. Plans were laid and later fulfilled for a two-story dining facility called The Pavilion to handle the crowds. In this decade Martin made several allusions to the year 1981. He said that year, give or take a year or two – could mark a significant milepost in the ministry originated 50 years earlier– perhaps the beginnings of a manifestation of Uranda’s vision.
In 1982, a world conference of Emissaries was held at Colorado State University in Fort Collins because the Ranch couldn’t handle the numbers. (Parenthetically, it was the presence of Emissaries on campus that summer that prompted the Denver Broncos to permanently move their football training camp to Greeley.)
That world conference proved to be the high tide of the EDL enterprise; the numbers and the energy receded year by year. Apparently a tipping point had been reached; either a sufficient number of people had realized the supremacy of their spiritual selves so that the next level of a heavenly outworking could be attained -- or they had not. Possibly a celestial accounting agency had crunched the numbers and came out with a negative score.
Martin continued to speak once a week until his death in 1989 at age 82. Several years prior to his passing, however, he is reported to have commented that he had said all he had come to say. His son Michael took his place for a couple of years. Then Michael announced that EDL had served its purpose and he would no longer have any ties with the organization.
A number of Emissaries chose to keep the EDL organization operating, and to continue the existence of Sunrise Ranch. A democratic governing body of EDL was established, consisting of seven elective board members. Sunrise Ranch, now a fairly modern resort with a property value in the millions of dollars, began supporting its 50 or so remaining residents by catering to weekend or week-long gatherings of New Age groups, providing meals, lodging and a Dome for meetings.
About 20 years after I left the Ranch I met with a couple of old friends who had shared my time there and we recalled one memorable evening of service. Martin had delivered his customary 60-minute talk, ending it with a prayer and an AUM that seemed to shake all the rafters in the building. The prolonged sound –AUM -- coming through Martin’s voice but seeming to reverberate in our own bodies and in the very air around us and to go on and on, was, we agreed, the most vivid, unforgettable experience we ever had on Sunrise Ranch.
I have pondered that experience, and likened it to the biblical account of Pentecost, when “a sound as of a mighty rushing wind” filled the room. Martin never repeated the event; some of us wondered why. Perhaps the comments that I heard voiced in conversations -- that it was “just so wonderful” and “made me feel so good” – indicated that too many people were still stuck in their self-centeredness.
A visit to the Sunrise Ranch of today finds quiet serenity; one can stand in the midst of the property and not see a single soul moving about – a stark contrast to the bustling activity that once characterized the place. It would probably be accurate to say that Sunrise served as the womb that nourished the birth of the Third Sacred School and, having fulfilled that function, the placenta has dissolved back into the earth. The buildings of Sunrise remain, but the purpose that imbued the structures with meaning has accomplished its mission and moved on.
A nagging sense of having failed at a great enterprise plagued me for many years, but recently I have come to view my Sunrise experience in a less critical light. I suppose I could say it took me a long while to grow up. I didn’t immediately heed what might be called the great preachment delivered over and over again – let the personal circumstance you complain about be used as the means of your deliverance. It took me a while to discover the freedom that comes with spiritual expression. The truth is simple: We are all spiritual beings having a human experience here on earth.
Whether or not the ministry of restoration initiated by Uranda in 1932 realized the full flowering of its potential will never be known. The face of God is inscrutable to the eyes of men. But one thing is a fact: it did leave a great legacy for mankind, the books of the Third Sacred School. Moreover, those who drank from the cup of life offered by Uranda and Martin have become a new generation of the seed planted thousands of years ago. There is a parting of the ways occurring in the world, and tribulation ahead for the human race, but the outcome is sure – the restoration of the human race to its divine identity.
A friend met more than 40 years ago on Sunrise recently gave me his own assessment of his time spent there, and we agreed that:
“It was the best of times and the worst of times. It was a call to greatness. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
We Live on a Ball of Fire
A recent news article in the Cody newspaper featured a hoax on the internet that had anyone living within 100 miles of Yellowstone National Park being evacuated due to an impending volcanic explosion. The hoax was built on factual reports of hundreds of small earthquakes occurring in the Park during the Christmas holidays. The largest of the quakes was measured at 3.8 on the Richter scale and was not considered dangerous. The series of quakes, however, did remind everyone that Yellowstone Park is in fact the dome of the world’s largest volcano, and molten lava comes within a few feet of the surface.
No one knows why the quakes occurred, but there is a fearful recognition that a huge volcanic eruption of disastrous proportions is possible in the Park. And for good reason. The rocky crust of the planet is no more than 25 miles thick (or thin, depending on how you look at it), much less than that in Yellowstone. The core of the planet is molten lava, with a temperature of about 6,000 degrees centigrade, 8,000 miles across.
Almost nothing is known about this fiery core, or how it affects life on the earth’s surface, including human beings. The little that has been deduced relates to such things as the Earth’s magnetic field and the probability of its influence on the migration of birds and animals. One thing that is known is that human bodies are composed of the substances of the planetary body, the crumbly minerals that originated in the fiery core – “the dust of the earth” as it is put in the Bible.
It is also known that all life on the planet, including humans, is dependent upon the radiation of the sun 93 million miles away. Without the sun all life would perish. Exactly how the sun affects human bodies is a relatively new study, but it is known, for example, that being deprived of sunshine often results in mental depression.
The sun, of course, is entirely molten, and is a thousand times bigger than the Earth. There are uncounted millions of suns – stars – in the galaxy. In cosmic terms, our little earth is exceptional because it has that thin little skin of cold rock where there lives these peculiar little two-legged creatures called humans.
So we have the sun above us, and the fiery core beneath us. Life, including us, is animated by energy which emerges from both the planetary core and the sun. There is a chain of relatedness of smaller forms to larger ones. There is the relatedness of man to the planet, the planet to the sun, the sun to its center in the galaxy, and the galaxies orienting to their larger Center of orientation. The core of the cosmic Body is fire – and the suns, which are spread throughout the cosmos, are the primary portals of the animating energy.
Fire can be a purging, healing element, an animator of life. Or it can be destructive. Peter wrote: “But the heavens and the earth…are…reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” Offending life forms can be eliminated with the dropping or raising of the earth’s temperature by just a few degrees – an ice age can readily clear the decks, as can raising the temperature.
We live on the cool crust of a planet that is essentially a ball of fire. We are blind to what goes on underneath our feet, even though our very lives depend upon that fiery heat. It is all part of a Grand Design established long ago, in which human beings were created to tend and keep a Garden. One way or another, the planet and the life upon its surface will fulfill the purpose for which it was brought forth.
No one knows why the quakes occurred, but there is a fearful recognition that a huge volcanic eruption of disastrous proportions is possible in the Park. And for good reason. The rocky crust of the planet is no more than 25 miles thick (or thin, depending on how you look at it), much less than that in Yellowstone. The core of the planet is molten lava, with a temperature of about 6,000 degrees centigrade, 8,000 miles across.
Almost nothing is known about this fiery core, or how it affects life on the earth’s surface, including human beings. The little that has been deduced relates to such things as the Earth’s magnetic field and the probability of its influence on the migration of birds and animals. One thing that is known is that human bodies are composed of the substances of the planetary body, the crumbly minerals that originated in the fiery core – “the dust of the earth” as it is put in the Bible.
It is also known that all life on the planet, including humans, is dependent upon the radiation of the sun 93 million miles away. Without the sun all life would perish. Exactly how the sun affects human bodies is a relatively new study, but it is known, for example, that being deprived of sunshine often results in mental depression.
The sun, of course, is entirely molten, and is a thousand times bigger than the Earth. There are uncounted millions of suns – stars – in the galaxy. In cosmic terms, our little earth is exceptional because it has that thin little skin of cold rock where there lives these peculiar little two-legged creatures called humans.
So we have the sun above us, and the fiery core beneath us. Life, including us, is animated by energy which emerges from both the planetary core and the sun. There is a chain of relatedness of smaller forms to larger ones. There is the relatedness of man to the planet, the planet to the sun, the sun to its center in the galaxy, and the galaxies orienting to their larger Center of orientation. The core of the cosmic Body is fire – and the suns, which are spread throughout the cosmos, are the primary portals of the animating energy.
Fire can be a purging, healing element, an animator of life. Or it can be destructive. Peter wrote: “But the heavens and the earth…are…reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” Offending life forms can be eliminated with the dropping or raising of the earth’s temperature by just a few degrees – an ice age can readily clear the decks, as can raising the temperature.
We live on the cool crust of a planet that is essentially a ball of fire. We are blind to what goes on underneath our feet, even though our very lives depend upon that fiery heat. It is all part of a Grand Design established long ago, in which human beings were created to tend and keep a Garden. One way or another, the planet and the life upon its surface will fulfill the purpose for which it was brought forth.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Christmas: The Birth of Light
Christmas is a day set apart in the calendar to celebrate the birth of light on earth – in this instance, one small point of light, represented by the birth of a babe.
The presence of light is a dominant feature in the many pictographs that have been drawn of the birthing scene. In some, a shaft of light descends from the sky to a stable in Bethlehem; in others, the light is more diffuse, lighting up the countryside.
According to the biblical record, “the glory of the Lord shone all about.” Yet, also according to the record, only three shepherds tending their flocks at night are reported to have seen the phenomenon. If the light “shone all about,” one would suppose that everyone would have seen it, and been drawn to the manger to gaze in wonder at the awesome event that had occurred. Or, at the very least, there would have arisen a noisy hubbub of speculation about this strange display of light in the night.
In fact, the number of people who were aware of the light accompanying the greatest event in the history of the world could be counted on the fingers of one hand – the two parents and the three shepherds. There might have been more, but the record does not mention them.
The disciple John, in his description, comments that “the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Apparently the vast majority of people at that time were “in darkness,” which is to say, insensitive and unreceptive to anything outside their normal range of perception. They were busy solving the big problems of the day, whether on a personal or national scale. Those of us today are no better. We consider ourselves well-educated, “enlightened” perhaps, but we rarely perceive anything other than what we are accustomed to seeing. What we “see” is conditioned and controlled by our cultural heredity – we think of important things as vast forces at work across the globe creating conflict between individuals and nations, huge problems that need our attention. We are so focused on the big and the “important” things of the day that we would not be aware of a little point of light that might appear in the midst of all this darkness. Sadly, Hollywood has conditioned us to expect God to act in terms of booming thunder and blazes of lightning ripping across the sky, not a quiet “light shining all about.”
John also made the observation that the light “…lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” This statement has been interpreted in various ways, but it can be taken literally – each one of us was a point of light when we were born into the world. Presumably we still are a point of light, at least potentially.
“In him (the Christ) was life; and the life was the light of men.” There would be no consciousness, no ability to perceive, to understand anything, if it were not for the fact of life. The presence of life establishes what we call mind and the ability to experience emotion. Human beings act as though the fact that they have the ability to think is a cause, but it is only an effect. There is something which has produced this effect. One way of describing that “something” is light.
The presence of light is a dominant feature in the many pictographs that have been drawn of the birthing scene. In some, a shaft of light descends from the sky to a stable in Bethlehem; in others, the light is more diffuse, lighting up the countryside.
According to the biblical record, “the glory of the Lord shone all about.” Yet, also according to the record, only three shepherds tending their flocks at night are reported to have seen the phenomenon. If the light “shone all about,” one would suppose that everyone would have seen it, and been drawn to the manger to gaze in wonder at the awesome event that had occurred. Or, at the very least, there would have arisen a noisy hubbub of speculation about this strange display of light in the night.
In fact, the number of people who were aware of the light accompanying the greatest event in the history of the world could be counted on the fingers of one hand – the two parents and the three shepherds. There might have been more, but the record does not mention them.
The disciple John, in his description, comments that “the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Apparently the vast majority of people at that time were “in darkness,” which is to say, insensitive and unreceptive to anything outside their normal range of perception. They were busy solving the big problems of the day, whether on a personal or national scale. Those of us today are no better. We consider ourselves well-educated, “enlightened” perhaps, but we rarely perceive anything other than what we are accustomed to seeing. What we “see” is conditioned and controlled by our cultural heredity – we think of important things as vast forces at work across the globe creating conflict between individuals and nations, huge problems that need our attention. We are so focused on the big and the “important” things of the day that we would not be aware of a little point of light that might appear in the midst of all this darkness. Sadly, Hollywood has conditioned us to expect God to act in terms of booming thunder and blazes of lightning ripping across the sky, not a quiet “light shining all about.”
John also made the observation that the light “…lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” This statement has been interpreted in various ways, but it can be taken literally – each one of us was a point of light when we were born into the world. Presumably we still are a point of light, at least potentially.
“In him (the Christ) was life; and the life was the light of men.” There would be no consciousness, no ability to perceive, to understand anything, if it were not for the fact of life. The presence of life establishes what we call mind and the ability to experience emotion. Human beings act as though the fact that they have the ability to think is a cause, but it is only an effect. There is something which has produced this effect. One way of describing that “something” is light.
Memories of a Noble Profession
Whenever I attend church I’m likely to hear about flocks of sheep and good shepherds. The pastor will tell a noble story about a godly profession, but invariably I drift away into reminisces of cigarettes and polluted water that are my childhood memories of being a herder of sheep.
When I was nine years old my father bought several hundred sheep and immediately discovered that owning sheep in cattle country is not a good way to gain new friends or keep old ones. But that’s another story. My story is that my father hired me (bribed?) that summer to help herd the sheep for $1 a week (I could go home on weekends). This was a fortune to my nine-year-old eyes, for $1 in those days could buy 10 comic books or 20 ice cream cones -- assuming one could get to town, which I seldom did except on a school bus that made no stops for personal business.
Anyway, the deal was that I was to camp out with a wizened little old Mexican man (“as old as the hills” applied to him) and learn the responsibilities involved in being a shepherd and, according to my father’s instructions, to learn Spanish. Well, I lived for six weeks with that old Mexican and learned a little something about sheep but no Spanish because the talking was confined to occasional grunts. What I learned, to my father’s chagrin, was how to roll cigarettes. I am still adept at it. Those were the days of Bull Durham sacks with drawstrings you tightened with your teeth. I will always associate the thought of sheep with the memories of those cigarettes.
Another thing about the Mexican shepherd is that he ate canned sardines for lunch every day, and then would drink from the canteen and leave the stench of sardines in the water. I would just about gag when it was my turn to drink. For supper we ate from a pot of pinto beans heated over a campfire and sour dough bread baked in a Dutch oven.
Well, the summer ended and school started. Dad didn’t keep the sheepherder, as it was expensive, the coyote menace was diminished, and the sheep seemed to get along on their own. Except that they needed to be in the corral at night, and that became my job. As soon as I got off the school bus I had to saddle a horse and go get the sheep, who usually grazed on a mesa about two miles from the house. In the winter it was apt to be sundown or dusk by the time I reached the sheep, and it was a very cold and slow ride home. Sheep are the slowest creatures in the world! I learned that once I got the sheep started toward home they would finish on their own, so I would leave them and take off at a gallop for home and a place in front of the stove.
One evening the sheep didn’t show up at the corral. It got dark and supper was finished. My father asked me where the sheep were. All I could do was stammer that they were headed home last time I saw them. My father simply stared at me, didn’t say anything. I wanted to shrink down into the floorboards and disappear. He went out and brought the sheep in himself, and never said anything more about it.
From that day forward I made sure the sheep were home before I was.
Later that year, to my monumental relief, my dad sold the sheep and ended my days as a member of a noble profession.
When I was nine years old my father bought several hundred sheep and immediately discovered that owning sheep in cattle country is not a good way to gain new friends or keep old ones. But that’s another story. My story is that my father hired me (bribed?) that summer to help herd the sheep for $1 a week (I could go home on weekends). This was a fortune to my nine-year-old eyes, for $1 in those days could buy 10 comic books or 20 ice cream cones -- assuming one could get to town, which I seldom did except on a school bus that made no stops for personal business.
Anyway, the deal was that I was to camp out with a wizened little old Mexican man (“as old as the hills” applied to him) and learn the responsibilities involved in being a shepherd and, according to my father’s instructions, to learn Spanish. Well, I lived for six weeks with that old Mexican and learned a little something about sheep but no Spanish because the talking was confined to occasional grunts. What I learned, to my father’s chagrin, was how to roll cigarettes. I am still adept at it. Those were the days of Bull Durham sacks with drawstrings you tightened with your teeth. I will always associate the thought of sheep with the memories of those cigarettes.
Another thing about the Mexican shepherd is that he ate canned sardines for lunch every day, and then would drink from the canteen and leave the stench of sardines in the water. I would just about gag when it was my turn to drink. For supper we ate from a pot of pinto beans heated over a campfire and sour dough bread baked in a Dutch oven.
Well, the summer ended and school started. Dad didn’t keep the sheepherder, as it was expensive, the coyote menace was diminished, and the sheep seemed to get along on their own. Except that they needed to be in the corral at night, and that became my job. As soon as I got off the school bus I had to saddle a horse and go get the sheep, who usually grazed on a mesa about two miles from the house. In the winter it was apt to be sundown or dusk by the time I reached the sheep, and it was a very cold and slow ride home. Sheep are the slowest creatures in the world! I learned that once I got the sheep started toward home they would finish on their own, so I would leave them and take off at a gallop for home and a place in front of the stove.
One evening the sheep didn’t show up at the corral. It got dark and supper was finished. My father asked me where the sheep were. All I could do was stammer that they were headed home last time I saw them. My father simply stared at me, didn’t say anything. I wanted to shrink down into the floorboards and disappear. He went out and brought the sheep in himself, and never said anything more about it.
From that day forward I made sure the sheep were home before I was.
Later that year, to my monumental relief, my dad sold the sheep and ended my days as a member of a noble profession.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Discouragement
Discouragement is one of the most common maladies around. We’ve all suffered multiple doses of it. Very depressing! Here’s my home remedy.
First, I have set up a system of alarm buzzers and flashing red lights that go off in my mind automatically when this feeling creeps up on me. All this buzzing and flashing tells me to stop whatever I’m doing, take a deep breath and acknowledge that I have for the moment wandered off into an unreal world. Pep talks or trying to assume a positive attitude don’t do it because in that state I’m insane, at least temporarily. I’m literally out of my mind. So I turn off the buzzers and flashers and go to that quiet, still place within myself where I can think straight and assess the situation.
What is this discouragement that is causing all this turmoil? Invariably it turns out that I feel discouraged because what I want isn’t appearing, the way I think things should be isn’t working out, that person over there isn’t behaving the way he should, and so I have this heavy load to bear. Woe is me! My lower lip is apt to stick out in a pout.
Baloney.
If I feel discouraged, it is because I have bought into an unreal world that exists only in my imagination. In this instance, it is a self-centered world, a world in which it’s all about me, I’m the most important person, I’m the big enchilada, and I know just how everything and everyone should be. Oh my! Thank goodness for those buzzers and flashers that warn me of insanity!
When I am out of my mind I’m liable to talk about “the real world” as if it were actually real. For instance, I might say that when I leave a church building after a Sunday worship I step out into the real world. If that were true, then the world I experience inside the church must be false and unreal. Is it? Which world is real, and which false?
The real world is where the Kingdom of God reigns. And it reigns everywhere, here and now, not just inside a church. If, in a state of insanity, I refer to anything else as “the real world,” well, I’m living in a fantasy world where things are always going wrong and it’s so discouraging, dontcha know?
As human beings we spend a good deal of time wandering around outside the kingdom of God in a substitute world that individually and collectively we have devised. So pervasive is this substitute world we actually believe it is the real world and sometimes we get caught up in a struggle between our relationship with God and paying our dues in the so-called real world. We get confused, and perhaps come to know first hand the truth of the statement, “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
When I release my emotional allegiance to the unreal world all problems and concerns fall away. They are seen for what they are – unreal, and in the process of passing away. “Not by power or might, saith the Lord, but by my spirit.”
First, I have set up a system of alarm buzzers and flashing red lights that go off in my mind automatically when this feeling creeps up on me. All this buzzing and flashing tells me to stop whatever I’m doing, take a deep breath and acknowledge that I have for the moment wandered off into an unreal world. Pep talks or trying to assume a positive attitude don’t do it because in that state I’m insane, at least temporarily. I’m literally out of my mind. So I turn off the buzzers and flashers and go to that quiet, still place within myself where I can think straight and assess the situation.
What is this discouragement that is causing all this turmoil? Invariably it turns out that I feel discouraged because what I want isn’t appearing, the way I think things should be isn’t working out, that person over there isn’t behaving the way he should, and so I have this heavy load to bear. Woe is me! My lower lip is apt to stick out in a pout.
Baloney.
If I feel discouraged, it is because I have bought into an unreal world that exists only in my imagination. In this instance, it is a self-centered world, a world in which it’s all about me, I’m the most important person, I’m the big enchilada, and I know just how everything and everyone should be. Oh my! Thank goodness for those buzzers and flashers that warn me of insanity!
When I am out of my mind I’m liable to talk about “the real world” as if it were actually real. For instance, I might say that when I leave a church building after a Sunday worship I step out into the real world. If that were true, then the world I experience inside the church must be false and unreal. Is it? Which world is real, and which false?
The real world is where the Kingdom of God reigns. And it reigns everywhere, here and now, not just inside a church. If, in a state of insanity, I refer to anything else as “the real world,” well, I’m living in a fantasy world where things are always going wrong and it’s so discouraging, dontcha know?
As human beings we spend a good deal of time wandering around outside the kingdom of God in a substitute world that individually and collectively we have devised. So pervasive is this substitute world we actually believe it is the real world and sometimes we get caught up in a struggle between our relationship with God and paying our dues in the so-called real world. We get confused, and perhaps come to know first hand the truth of the statement, “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
When I release my emotional allegiance to the unreal world all problems and concerns fall away. They are seen for what they are – unreal, and in the process of passing away. “Not by power or might, saith the Lord, but by my spirit.”
Monday, October 6, 2008
Who's Asking?
Many years ago I thought it would be beneficial to my “spiritual progress” to occasionally issue myself a report card on my achievement and deportment. I sought to answer the question, “How am I doing?”
Generally speaking, my self assessment said I wasn’t doing well. Most of my grades were Cs and Ds, some heart-breaking Fs, a few rare Bs. Never an A. I was struggling earnestly to be a better person, to be a better Christian. It was a hard and, if I were honest, not very rewarding task.
Then one day all that changed. I suddenly realized that God had no interest whatsoever in grading my progress. If I was looking for approval from Him, it would never come. God’s only “answer” to my “how am I doing?” question was one of His own: “Who’s asking?”
Who is asking? The self-important twerp, or the Christ-centered child of God? Only the twerp would feel the need to ask. The twerp, ensnared and enslaved by the value systems of the human nature world, is congenitally unsure and in constant need of propping up. He is wed to a false sense of self, a self that thinks itself independent and capable of existing outside the consciousness of God. That self is in the process of passing away and is desperately afraid. Perhaps, if it in some way “improves,” it will somehow be saved! Its report card, no matter how dismal the grades, is its supposed ticket to salvation.
The false self can seem very humble. It is quick to proclaim, for instance, that it is not perfect. “Nobody is perfect, you know,” it says with a nudge of the elbow and a knowing wink. “Nobody can be perfect.” In fact the false self by its very nature is arrogant. It proudly defies the words of Jesus Christ, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” Amazingly, no “good Christian” who professes a love for Jesus ever seems to contradict the twerpy self!
Any human being who imagines he can maintain an identity separate from God – who believes, for example, that he is an independent entity who has the power, even the right, to ignore God if he chooses – is imperfect and will remain so till death releases him. No report card of supposed progress will save him. Those who truly accept the dominion of Jesus Christ do not waste their time on earth measuring human imaginations of what perfection is. They abide in the spirit of the Almighty God, wherein is perfection.
Generally speaking, my self assessment said I wasn’t doing well. Most of my grades were Cs and Ds, some heart-breaking Fs, a few rare Bs. Never an A. I was struggling earnestly to be a better person, to be a better Christian. It was a hard and, if I were honest, not very rewarding task.
Then one day all that changed. I suddenly realized that God had no interest whatsoever in grading my progress. If I was looking for approval from Him, it would never come. God’s only “answer” to my “how am I doing?” question was one of His own: “Who’s asking?”
Who is asking? The self-important twerp, or the Christ-centered child of God? Only the twerp would feel the need to ask. The twerp, ensnared and enslaved by the value systems of the human nature world, is congenitally unsure and in constant need of propping up. He is wed to a false sense of self, a self that thinks itself independent and capable of existing outside the consciousness of God. That self is in the process of passing away and is desperately afraid. Perhaps, if it in some way “improves,” it will somehow be saved! Its report card, no matter how dismal the grades, is its supposed ticket to salvation.
The false self can seem very humble. It is quick to proclaim, for instance, that it is not perfect. “Nobody is perfect, you know,” it says with a nudge of the elbow and a knowing wink. “Nobody can be perfect.” In fact the false self by its very nature is arrogant. It proudly defies the words of Jesus Christ, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” Amazingly, no “good Christian” who professes a love for Jesus ever seems to contradict the twerpy self!
Any human being who imagines he can maintain an identity separate from God – who believes, for example, that he is an independent entity who has the power, even the right, to ignore God if he chooses – is imperfect and will remain so till death releases him. No report card of supposed progress will save him. Those who truly accept the dominion of Jesus Christ do not waste their time on earth measuring human imaginations of what perfection is. They abide in the spirit of the Almighty God, wherein is perfection.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Will the Real Sarah Please Stand Up?
The vice-presidential candidates debate is the featured drama on television Thursday evening. A record number of viewers are predicted. News analysts describe the upcoming event as if it were a prizefight: In this corner, the wily veteran Joe Biden, and in that corner the underdog newcomer Sarah Palin. Can Palin survive the bout, or will she fall to a knockout blow from Biden?
Pundits predict disaster for Palin. They say she was floored by questions from two news anchors in warm-up matches. Charlie Gibson glazed her eyes with a quick query about The Bush Doctrine, and Katie Couric shook her up with a left hook about McCain’s record as a reformer. “Saturday Night Live” comedians portray her as a dumb Alaskan housewife who can see Russia from her kitchen window and a witless goofball disturbed by all the foreigners she saw at the United Nations building.
Just three weeks ago Palin entered the national political scene as a breath of fresh air in a smoky, stale, arena of same-old, same-old politicians. Half the population immediately fell in love with her, and the other half, for no rational reason, loathe her.
Thursday evening will be “the moment of truth” for Palin. Is she for real, or just a meteor that flashed across the political sky for a few weeks? Is she an air-head, or is she a woman of uncommon substance and integrity? Is she a product of political hype, or a real human being with depth of character?
None of us really know. Not yet. But we are about to. That is why the Thursday night debate carries such dramatic interest. Palin will of necessity enter the arena by herself, no longer tied to handlers who have coached and instructed and protected. For the first time in this political campaign, Sarah Palin will be relying totally on herself.
What will she do? Will she be the Alaskan Sarah Palin touring the lower forty-eight, or will she try to be a urbane, knows-all-the-answers candidate crafted by political hacks? Are we going to see an honest-to-God real person, or are we to witness just another politician following the same tired old path?
Please, Sarah, answer our prayers and be real. You don’t have to know the name of the president of Georgia, not now. Be honest. Rely on the inner integrity that has brought you to this place in history. Strength of character is the only real qualification for the presidency. Do you have it, or don’t you? We are about to find out.
Pundits predict disaster for Palin. They say she was floored by questions from two news anchors in warm-up matches. Charlie Gibson glazed her eyes with a quick query about The Bush Doctrine, and Katie Couric shook her up with a left hook about McCain’s record as a reformer. “Saturday Night Live” comedians portray her as a dumb Alaskan housewife who can see Russia from her kitchen window and a witless goofball disturbed by all the foreigners she saw at the United Nations building.
Just three weeks ago Palin entered the national political scene as a breath of fresh air in a smoky, stale, arena of same-old, same-old politicians. Half the population immediately fell in love with her, and the other half, for no rational reason, loathe her.
Thursday evening will be “the moment of truth” for Palin. Is she for real, or just a meteor that flashed across the political sky for a few weeks? Is she an air-head, or is she a woman of uncommon substance and integrity? Is she a product of political hype, or a real human being with depth of character?
None of us really know. Not yet. But we are about to. That is why the Thursday night debate carries such dramatic interest. Palin will of necessity enter the arena by herself, no longer tied to handlers who have coached and instructed and protected. For the first time in this political campaign, Sarah Palin will be relying totally on herself.
What will she do? Will she be the Alaskan Sarah Palin touring the lower forty-eight, or will she try to be a urbane, knows-all-the-answers candidate crafted by political hacks? Are we going to see an honest-to-God real person, or are we to witness just another politician following the same tired old path?
Please, Sarah, answer our prayers and be real. You don’t have to know the name of the president of Georgia, not now. Be honest. Rely on the inner integrity that has brought you to this place in history. Strength of character is the only real qualification for the presidency. Do you have it, or don’t you? We are about to find out.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Presidential Experience?
“Who has the experience to be president of the United States?”
The announcement of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate has heated up the “experience” arguments. Critics of the nomination say that being the mayor of a small town and the governor of a sparsely populated state does not prepare her to be a world leader. Her supporters reply that the experience of a mayor and a governor trumps that of a community organizer and senator.
Let’s look at the question as dispassionately as we can. In the history of this nation, there have been 43 presidents. Which ones were qualified to fill the office, what experience prepared them for that responsibility?
How about the first one, George Washington? His experience consisted of being a farmer and a military officer lacking formal training. As a military officer he lost more battles than he won. He had never been elected to any kind of office prior to becoming president.
We don’t want to go through all 43 presidents, so let’s skip ahead to Abraham Lincoln, considered by many to be the nation’s greatest president. What experience did he have that prepared him for the office? Almost none. His venture into store keeping failed, he was “un-elected” as a captain of volunteers in the Blackhawk War, and he lost a senatorial election. All he was really good at was talking. He was a successful lawyer and story teller. And, even when he won the presidency, he attracted only 39 percent of the popular vote.
How about Harry Truman? Never was there a more invisible man before he became president, and never had a man failed at more enterprises than he. His political success, whether as county commissioner or U.S. Senator, was made possible by the support of the corrupt Pendergast political machine. He was a terrible speaker and had to live with his mother-in-law. Yet he is acknowledged today for his honesty and integrity. John F. Kennedy? Unlike Lincoln or Truman, he had no failures in his resume because he never did anything other than run for political office. He used his reputation as a war hero and his daddy’s money to win election to the Senate and squeezed into the presidency with the help of some murky Chicago politicos. Khrushchev called him “the boy” and moved missiles into Cuba. But Kennedy proved he had the mettle to fill the office.
Ronald Reagan had decades of experience as a movie star. Bill Clinton was unknown outside of Arkansas. George W. Bush was an oil speculator, owned a baseball team and served as a Texas governor. None of them could identify the name of the prime minister of Sri Lanka.
Which presidents were “best prepared,” in terms of experience, for the presidency? Well, uh, let’s see…. John Adams. He helped write the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, served in the Continental Congress, and was ambassador to Great Britain and France. He did not fare well as president. Woodrow Wilson was said to excel as a college professor. Herbert Hoover spent a lifetime in government, distributed aid to refugees of World War I and knew how to catch trout. Yet his name, 80 years after his term, is remembered with disdain.
Do any of the current nominees for president/vice-president have experience that prepares them for the presidency? No. There is really no criteria. So let’s stop arguing about it. Instead, let’s look for intangible qualities that have nothing to do with party affiliation, background or “experience.”
The announcement of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate has heated up the “experience” arguments. Critics of the nomination say that being the mayor of a small town and the governor of a sparsely populated state does not prepare her to be a world leader. Her supporters reply that the experience of a mayor and a governor trumps that of a community organizer and senator.
Let’s look at the question as dispassionately as we can. In the history of this nation, there have been 43 presidents. Which ones were qualified to fill the office, what experience prepared them for that responsibility?
How about the first one, George Washington? His experience consisted of being a farmer and a military officer lacking formal training. As a military officer he lost more battles than he won. He had never been elected to any kind of office prior to becoming president.
We don’t want to go through all 43 presidents, so let’s skip ahead to Abraham Lincoln, considered by many to be the nation’s greatest president. What experience did he have that prepared him for the office? Almost none. His venture into store keeping failed, he was “un-elected” as a captain of volunteers in the Blackhawk War, and he lost a senatorial election. All he was really good at was talking. He was a successful lawyer and story teller. And, even when he won the presidency, he attracted only 39 percent of the popular vote.
How about Harry Truman? Never was there a more invisible man before he became president, and never had a man failed at more enterprises than he. His political success, whether as county commissioner or U.S. Senator, was made possible by the support of the corrupt Pendergast political machine. He was a terrible speaker and had to live with his mother-in-law. Yet he is acknowledged today for his honesty and integrity. John F. Kennedy? Unlike Lincoln or Truman, he had no failures in his resume because he never did anything other than run for political office. He used his reputation as a war hero and his daddy’s money to win election to the Senate and squeezed into the presidency with the help of some murky Chicago politicos. Khrushchev called him “the boy” and moved missiles into Cuba. But Kennedy proved he had the mettle to fill the office.
Ronald Reagan had decades of experience as a movie star. Bill Clinton was unknown outside of Arkansas. George W. Bush was an oil speculator, owned a baseball team and served as a Texas governor. None of them could identify the name of the prime minister of Sri Lanka.
Which presidents were “best prepared,” in terms of experience, for the presidency? Well, uh, let’s see…. John Adams. He helped write the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, served in the Continental Congress, and was ambassador to Great Britain and France. He did not fare well as president. Woodrow Wilson was said to excel as a college professor. Herbert Hoover spent a lifetime in government, distributed aid to refugees of World War I and knew how to catch trout. Yet his name, 80 years after his term, is remembered with disdain.
Do any of the current nominees for president/vice-president have experience that prepares them for the presidency? No. There is really no criteria. So let’s stop arguing about it. Instead, let’s look for intangible qualities that have nothing to do with party affiliation, background or “experience.”
Change You Can Believe In
“Change you can believe in” is the motto of presidential candidate Barack Obama. Unprecedented numbers of young people and idealists have “bought in” to his campaign promises. The question is, can Obama deliver on his promises? The answer is No, and it has nothing to do with personality or political affiliation. No political candidate, no matter his or her party, is going to “change things in Washington,” “clean out” special interest groups, or accomplish any of the promised reforms cheered by Obama supporters.
All the things considered “wrong” in Washington are in fact merely the magnification of human nature traits common to the experience of everyone. In Washington, these characteristics are highlighted by TV cameras and fingers are pointed at individuals perceived to be practicing deception and dishonesty. “Elect me,” says the finger pointer, “and I will do away with all this bad behavior and do only good things.” The promises sound good, especially to the young and the idealistic who instinctively know that there must be a potentially better world. Older voters, on the other hand, instinctively realize that such “change” is easier said than done. Their experience is likely to be, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
This is the experience of the human nature world, which is a world that does not recognize the spirit of God nor its supreme sovereignty. Man builds his own world, and tells God, in effect, to stay out. Laws are passed to prohibit even the mention of God in public places.
To replace God, man devises what he considers “goodness.” It is good to consider all religions equal, for instance, and thereby eleminate religious conflict; Allah is just another word for God, goes the reasoning; man is evolving and getting better all the time. But as a matter of fact man teeters on the brink of self-extinction through nuclear holocaust, starvation, pollution or myriad other perils such as global warming. The United Nations, formed for the good purpose of creating global peace, is in fact composed mostly of rogue nations ruled by dictators. Every “good” thing in the human nature world sooner or later decays into ugly parodies of what was originally intended.
Accusation, Blame, Criticism, these are the abc’s of the human nature world. Listen to any politician’s spiel, and you will hear accusation, blame and criticism of that guy over there who is responsible for this mess. “Vote for me, I won’t make a mess.” But a mess is the only possible result because whatever is created is built upon accusation, blame and criticism. The process is an endless circle, a serpent chasing its tail.
“Change you can believe in” asks us to believe that a better world can result from policies that employ accusation, blame and criticism. And asks us to believe that a politician who uses these abc’s is somehow above the crowd. He’s not, and we should know better.
“Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.”
The only change you can really believe in is the one that occurs inside a person when he opens himself to the holy spirit. Perhaps someday there will be a sufficient number of those to form a government; in the meantime it might be best to rely on cynical practicality in selecting our governmental leaders.
All the things considered “wrong” in Washington are in fact merely the magnification of human nature traits common to the experience of everyone. In Washington, these characteristics are highlighted by TV cameras and fingers are pointed at individuals perceived to be practicing deception and dishonesty. “Elect me,” says the finger pointer, “and I will do away with all this bad behavior and do only good things.” The promises sound good, especially to the young and the idealistic who instinctively know that there must be a potentially better world. Older voters, on the other hand, instinctively realize that such “change” is easier said than done. Their experience is likely to be, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
This is the experience of the human nature world, which is a world that does not recognize the spirit of God nor its supreme sovereignty. Man builds his own world, and tells God, in effect, to stay out. Laws are passed to prohibit even the mention of God in public places.
To replace God, man devises what he considers “goodness.” It is good to consider all religions equal, for instance, and thereby eleminate religious conflict; Allah is just another word for God, goes the reasoning; man is evolving and getting better all the time. But as a matter of fact man teeters on the brink of self-extinction through nuclear holocaust, starvation, pollution or myriad other perils such as global warming. The United Nations, formed for the good purpose of creating global peace, is in fact composed mostly of rogue nations ruled by dictators. Every “good” thing in the human nature world sooner or later decays into ugly parodies of what was originally intended.
Accusation, Blame, Criticism, these are the abc’s of the human nature world. Listen to any politician’s spiel, and you will hear accusation, blame and criticism of that guy over there who is responsible for this mess. “Vote for me, I won’t make a mess.” But a mess is the only possible result because whatever is created is built upon accusation, blame and criticism. The process is an endless circle, a serpent chasing its tail.
“Change you can believe in” asks us to believe that a better world can result from policies that employ accusation, blame and criticism. And asks us to believe that a politician who uses these abc’s is somehow above the crowd. He’s not, and we should know better.
“Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.”
The only change you can really believe in is the one that occurs inside a person when he opens himself to the holy spirit. Perhaps someday there will be a sufficient number of those to form a government; in the meantime it might be best to rely on cynical practicality in selecting our governmental leaders.
Carbon Dating and the Naked Emperor
Carbon dating is the heavy artillery that the scientific establishment trundles out to blast any arguments against its holy of holies, the Theory of Evolution. Anyone not well schooled in physics and other sciences is likely to be intimidated or to get lost in the explanations of exactly how the dating method works.
It’s really not all that difficult. One needn’t have a science background to see the flaws; one need only remember the fable about the emperor who had no clothes but everyone pretended he did because they were afraid to say he was naked.
In brief, carbon dating involves the cycles of “decay” by which organic materials are returned to an inorganic state. Atoms that comprise a substance known as carbon, over time, are synthesized into other atoms. Dating an old material can be achieved by determining how much of the carbon remains. At least that’s the theory.
Carbon is also a form of latent energy. Coal, for instance, is a carbon that can be easily transmuted into heat through the process of combustion. There is also a thermonuclear aspect involving atomic radiation which accounts for the light and heat provided by the solar sun and other stars.
The laws of physics pertaining to carbon are immutable and the scientific description of how it works is accurate. The question is not with the principle of carbon dating, but rather with the unprincipled manner in which it is often employed to “validate” questionable assumptions.
Carbon dating assumes a premise that time is the only factor impinging on the breakdown of carbon atoms. In other words, it assumes that all other factors have remained unchanged over the past thousands or millions of years. Yet even the most biased defender of the technique will acknowledge that a number of things have changed – drastic changes in world climate, for instance, along with cataclysmic volcano eruptions, earthquakes, great floods, meteor hits, perhaps even near collisions with other planetary bodies. Considerable combustion took place during some of these events, and carbon is a combustible material. It would be fair to say that carbon atoms have been subjected to a good deal more than time over the millenia.
Proponents of the evolutionary theory speak glibly of hundreds of millions of years required for evolution to, ah, evolve. The mathematical odds of atoms accidentially combining to form an amino acid, for instance, is so remote that theorists account for it by tacking on another hundred million years to their estimate of the earth’s history. The fact is that these theorists don’t have a clue as to how, for example, nucleotides, the building blocks of genes, were first formed. Their “answer” is to say that surely, given enough time, hundreds of millions of years perhaps, such an accident could happen. In short, it is all wild theory and not even remotely “scientific.” The vaunted theory of evolution, held in such esteem by “educated” people, is an emperor with no clothes.
It’s really not all that difficult. One needn’t have a science background to see the flaws; one need only remember the fable about the emperor who had no clothes but everyone pretended he did because they were afraid to say he was naked.
In brief, carbon dating involves the cycles of “decay” by which organic materials are returned to an inorganic state. Atoms that comprise a substance known as carbon, over time, are synthesized into other atoms. Dating an old material can be achieved by determining how much of the carbon remains. At least that’s the theory.
Carbon is also a form of latent energy. Coal, for instance, is a carbon that can be easily transmuted into heat through the process of combustion. There is also a thermonuclear aspect involving atomic radiation which accounts for the light and heat provided by the solar sun and other stars.
The laws of physics pertaining to carbon are immutable and the scientific description of how it works is accurate. The question is not with the principle of carbon dating, but rather with the unprincipled manner in which it is often employed to “validate” questionable assumptions.
Carbon dating assumes a premise that time is the only factor impinging on the breakdown of carbon atoms. In other words, it assumes that all other factors have remained unchanged over the past thousands or millions of years. Yet even the most biased defender of the technique will acknowledge that a number of things have changed – drastic changes in world climate, for instance, along with cataclysmic volcano eruptions, earthquakes, great floods, meteor hits, perhaps even near collisions with other planetary bodies. Considerable combustion took place during some of these events, and carbon is a combustible material. It would be fair to say that carbon atoms have been subjected to a good deal more than time over the millenia.
Proponents of the evolutionary theory speak glibly of hundreds of millions of years required for evolution to, ah, evolve. The mathematical odds of atoms accidentially combining to form an amino acid, for instance, is so remote that theorists account for it by tacking on another hundred million years to their estimate of the earth’s history. The fact is that these theorists don’t have a clue as to how, for example, nucleotides, the building blocks of genes, were first formed. Their “answer” is to say that surely, given enough time, hundreds of millions of years perhaps, such an accident could happen. In short, it is all wild theory and not even remotely “scientific.” The vaunted theory of evolution, held in such esteem by “educated” people, is an emperor with no clothes.
Sunday Morning Coming Down
“Sunday Morning Coming Down” is the name of a song written by Kris Kristofferson and sung by Johnny Cash. It is a hauntingly sad song, seemingly describing the after-effects of a self-indulgent Saturday night. “Hung over” is perhaps the condition of the narrator, but what comes across to the listener is the man’s cry of spiritual desolation, deep anguish, soul-rending despair. He is, in effect, a man with no place to go, no place to be. On a Sunday morning he feels the pain of his isolation, not just from the familiar weekday sounds and sights of the city, but from any sense of connection with the God for whom Sunday is set aside.
Forty years ago Kris Kristofferson was a genius. As a young man newly arrived in Hollywood, he could do no wrong. His songs touched the heart of the nation and dominated the airwaves. Then his talent seemed to dry up and he wrote no more. Now he is a grizzled old man who ekes out a living playing grizzled old men in the movies.
Sunday morning in a Kris Kristofferson world was a dreadful time. The normal activities of the workaday week were suspended. The downtown sidewalks were empty, there was “nothing to do” but mope about and feel the dark despair of a “Sunday morning coming down.” Johnny Cash’s deep baritone voice could make the phrase sound like doomsday.
“Sunday Morning Coming Down” strikes a universal chord in all of us because in our heart of hearts there is a sadness that never goes away, a sadness that never stops hurting because we have never learned how to fully give ourselves to God. We ascribe various reasons as to why we are sad, but the only reason for sadness is our separation from God. We mourn for him as we would a lost loved one. We can’t help it. That’s the way He made us. “Our hearts were made by thee, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee.”
Time and narcotics have apparently dulled at least some of Kristofferson’s pain. The rest of us have endured in various ways, and a few wise ones have come to the recognition that sadness can be transmuted into love when we worship God. And we worship God only as we treat every moment of our lives as “Sunday morning,” -- a time set aside for God -- and we rise up to greet our Sunday morning, giving to God our hearts, our feelings, our thoughts, thereby knowing the peace of His presence.
Forty years ago Kris Kristofferson was a genius. As a young man newly arrived in Hollywood, he could do no wrong. His songs touched the heart of the nation and dominated the airwaves. Then his talent seemed to dry up and he wrote no more. Now he is a grizzled old man who ekes out a living playing grizzled old men in the movies.
Sunday morning in a Kris Kristofferson world was a dreadful time. The normal activities of the workaday week were suspended. The downtown sidewalks were empty, there was “nothing to do” but mope about and feel the dark despair of a “Sunday morning coming down.” Johnny Cash’s deep baritone voice could make the phrase sound like doomsday.
“Sunday Morning Coming Down” strikes a universal chord in all of us because in our heart of hearts there is a sadness that never goes away, a sadness that never stops hurting because we have never learned how to fully give ourselves to God. We ascribe various reasons as to why we are sad, but the only reason for sadness is our separation from God. We mourn for him as we would a lost loved one. We can’t help it. That’s the way He made us. “Our hearts were made by thee, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee.”
Time and narcotics have apparently dulled at least some of Kristofferson’s pain. The rest of us have endured in various ways, and a few wise ones have come to the recognition that sadness can be transmuted into love when we worship God. And we worship God only as we treat every moment of our lives as “Sunday morning,” -- a time set aside for God -- and we rise up to greet our Sunday morning, giving to God our hearts, our feelings, our thoughts, thereby knowing the peace of His presence.
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