My conversation with God this morning

OK. I have several friends that either don't believe in God, or have a very different concept of who God is than I do, and I'm OK with that. I will not try to change you, or your opinion. Those friends will probably think something is 'wrong' with me after reading this, and I'm OK with that too.

I talk to God every morning. I pick a time and a place that is quiet, and no one will interrupt me, and that is God's time to shine in my life. Most of the time, our 'conversation' is nothing more that me saying, "Helloooo, God? Are you there?" Sometimes, I can't get a word in edgewise. Sometimes (read VERY rarely), we actually have a deep two way conversation. Those rare conversations are deeply profound, and I cherish them like life itself. This morning was one of those rare moments, and I felt compelled to share it this morning. The feeling I got was that there is someone who probably needed this more than me this morning.

I am not going into the details or the mechanics of how I 'hear' God. I do not 'hear' an audible voice...it is more like 'hearing' with my gut, if that makes sense.

So, in this morning's time, God brought be back to a post I made around Thanksgiving on Facebook about my trials were blessings. This is something I know and believe to be true, but God wanted me to dig a bit deeper into it.

His question to me was, "Why do you count your trials as blessings?"

Me: Ummmm, because even my trials are from you, and you produce nothing bad?

God: True, but what is the blessing? What do you derive from your trials?

Me: Ummmm, experience?

God: Yes! And, why is experience good?

Me: Ummmmm....

God: When you have a task before you that you have no experience with, what do you do?

Me: Try to learn something about it.

God: How?

Me: Research. Read, look for a video, ask someone.

God: You seek out someone else with experience, right?

Me: Yes! Exactly!

God: Why?

Me: Because they have already done it, and can point me in the right direction. (now feeling like I have put a feather in my cap)

At this point, God starting rolling out some of my life's experiences (some of which I would just assume forget) that I count as trials. Almost all of them were somewhat painful, or embarrassing at the time.

God: Now, if you were to experience these today, how would you react?

Me: ALL AT THE SAME TIME????!!!!

God: No. Pick one. Remember it. Recall how you felt in the middle of it. If THAT one happened now, how would you feel?

Me: Well, I still wouldn't like it, but now it would not be such a big deal.

God: Why would it not be such a big deal now?

Me: Well, I'm more mature now, for one.

God: Good! Where does maturity come from?

Me: Age....no, that's not quite right. I know people years older than me that have never quite grown up...sorry, I didn't mean to be judgmental.

God: Well, let's see if we can learn something from that. What is another characteristic that you see in people that you would describe as immature; regardless of age?

Me: Ummmmm.....

God: What do you always tell people about mistakes?

Me: Ohhh!!! 1) Own up to it. 2)Fix it as best you can. 3)Learn from it. 4)Move on! (Again feeling like I have a feather in my cap)

God: What else do you always tell people about problems/mistakes.

Me: Uhhhhhh.... What?

God: "What doesn't kill us...

Me: MAKES US STRONGER!!!! Oh yeah!!!

God: Now, let's look back at maturity. Where does it come from?

Me: Experience!

God: Not just any experience...

Me: Experience gained through troubles?

God: Exactly! Well done! I love you!

So, I hope someone out there finds my conversation this morning as profound as I did. Now I'm headed up to enjoy some of God's scenery in the Cohutta Wilderness :-)

Close encounter of the Ursus kind.

So, today I take off to the Cohutta Wilderness to do some exploring. I was introduced to the Cohutta last year, and have a strong desire to explore more of it. Today's route was a route I had never taken, and it was the first long hike for me of the season.

I have never seen a black bear in the wild. Since starting to explore the Cohutta last year, I have seem lots of bear spoor, but not the bear that left it.

Today, I parked at Three Forks Mountain. My planned trek was to hike along East Cowpen trail to Panther Creek trail. I was going to stop at Panther Creek Falls, eat lunch, and return along the same route.

Off I went. I had just gotten my pack comfortable, and found a good stride; when less than 1/4 mile in, I saw the first pile of bear spoor...and it was fresh!!! I have seen spoor before, and not seen the bear, so I was trying to not get my hopes up too bad, but I was optimistic. I know you are not supposed to sneak up on bears...they can be quite dangerous, but if I was going to see one, it was time to shift into stealth mode. Bear hearing and eyesight are no better than ours really. It is their sense of smell that gives them the edge. As luck would have it, their was a nice breeze, and it was in my face...my scent was being blown behind me :-)Off I went creeping up the trail as quite as I could be.

No more than a couple of hundred yards or so along the trail, I came to the point where Rough Ridge/Jacks River trails intersect. I stopped to mark the point in my GPS. I was facing the new trail, and had my back to East Cowpen. I was typing the name in for the waypoint, when I heard a critter behind me. I have spent a LOT of time in the woods. I know what small critters, and big critters sound like. What I heard, I thought to be a rabbit, or perhaps a chipmunk. I finished saving the waypoint, and turned to enjoy the critter's company. When I turned, no more than 20' away was a black bear. It was an adolescent...not as small as a cub, but certainly not full grown. It saw me about the same time I saw it. It turned and ran away with great rapidity! What amazed me was just how quiet it was! It was in a running stride, and barely made a sound!

I was geeking out! I could have turned around and come home right then, and it would have been a worthwhile trip, but I carried on up the trail.

I was not in stealth mode anymore. I was looking to make some time, because there were some other nooks and crannies I wanted to explore if I had daylight enough left. I went on about another 200-300 yards, and started hearing a squirrel up in an oak tree about 40' away from me. I have seen so many grey squirrels that I pay them no attention any more, but I was intrigued by the possibility of seeing a fox squirrel. I stopped, and started looking up in the tree. At once I noticed that the tree top was shaking more than it should have been in the light breeze. I moved up the trail a bit further, then I saw it! Another bear, this one was a full grown adult, in the top of an oak tree eating acorns! It would reach out and bend an entire limb toward itself, and strip the acorns (and leaves, and branches) off of it then let it go. I fumbled for my phone to get video. I captured video, but I was shooting into the sun, and there is no manual focus. Basically, the shot sucks...kinda like someone showing a big foot video.

The bear looked right at me 2 or 3 times, but kept happily munching away. I grew frustrated with the phone and put it away. I stood watching a bit longer...then, it happened! It looked at me, and stopped what it was doing! One foot came down the tree, and that was my signal to get up and go!

The remainder of my hike was relatively uneventful. I know bears to be fairly territorial, so I knew there was a chance I may see one or both of them again on the way out.

As I approached the area, I started making noise on purpose. I now had the wind to my back, so my scent was blowing dead ahead of me as a warning. I was almost back to the intersection with Jack's River/Rough Ridge trail, when I heard commotion down the hill to my left. I looked over, and there were two bears, one large, and one smaller, running more or less away from me. I do believe them to be the same two, but could never swear to it. They were running away, so they were no threat, and I marched along my merry little way. As I went, I could still hear them (they were not nearly as quiet as they had been earlier), and it sounded like they were circling back around me! Now THAT got my attention. I turned around, and about 300 yards or so up the trail, they had popped out onto the trail, and were watching me! I turned my whole body around and walked backwards (never turn your back on a bear). They stayed put, and when I lost sight of them beyond a hill, I turned back around and double timed it to the truck!

It was a good day!

The convergent epiphany

So, here of late, I have been dealing with some minor issues dealing with time management. Once I started researching time management, I discovered that TM is only one leg of a more complex stool....we could call the stool 'life management'. Now, when I came across that term, I immediately thought in spiritual terms, but let me come back to that.

So, this concept of life management deals with managing time, money, relationships....the whole ball of wax. Initially, that seemed a bit overwhelming, but then I realized that those issues existed whether I had a plan to deal with them or not; and not having a plan seemed more overwhelming....so I threw myself into some research.

Very quickly, I came upon this guy named David Allen (how could you go wrong with anyone named David, right :-) His approach to life management intrigued me because he didn't start with a 'system'. He started with the user; the user's mind to be more precise. His argument was that you are not going to use any system for very long that doesn't work for you. The human mind does not deal very well with the things that it does not trust. To force the mind to deal with a reality, or a system that it does not trust, fosters worry and anxiety. Think about your past, and something that has worried you, or you have been anxious over. Odds are, the source of your worry was the reality of an unknown outcome. Your mind did not trust the system you had in place for dealing with the unknown (or not have in place for that matter).

Now it's time to go spiritual on you :-)

God tells us that his plan for us is perfect. We can know that in our hearts, and we can know that in our souls, but our minds need some convincing. Our minds deal with the physical reality we are in in the moment. Worry and anxiety enter into our lives when we fail to trust the perfection of God's plan. Think about anxiety for a moment. When do most of us feel most anxious? When we feel like we have no control over our physical surroundings. Our minds do not trust the perfection of God's plan, so they try to take control over the physical reality to substitute 'our plan' for God's. Control is an illusion. Sometimes, it makes us feel a bit better to feel like we are in control, but there is that nagging knowledge that the little bubble we have built for ourselves is still surrounded by a reality that is beyond our comprehension.

So, the human mind deals best with systems that it can trust.
It is easy to know God's perfection with our hearts ("Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart...)
It is easy to know God's perfection with our souls (...all your soul...)
Our mind needs a system in place to trust in the perfection of God's plan (...and all your mind".)

So here is the challenge really. How do we accept and trust a plan that we see evidence daily to the affect that it is anything but perfect? Let's ask Job. OK, go ahead and moan and groan...nobody likes talking about Job, right? I mean, who can make it through that story in one sitting? It is down right depressing. Sure, God blessed him beyond measure in the end, but look at the crap he had to go through to get there. What about his friends and his wife that came to talk to him while he was in the middle of misery? Basically, they were all asking him the same question, "Do you still think God's plan is perfect? Now, we read about Job, and we hear sermons about Job, and we see/learn that he never lost faith. Does that mean that he was able to ignore his physical reality? Not by a long shot. At times, he was angry with God. He was disappointed, he was in pain, he felt like God had abandoned him. That is what his physical reality was. Through Job, God tells us that it is OK to be angry with him. It is OK to be disappointed. It is OK to hurt. It is OK to feel alone. Because, through all of that mess, God's plan will be revealed to be perfect. If we could have asked Job in the middle of his story if God's plan was perfect, what would he have said? What would we say in the middle of our stories?

So, Job probably never fully understood the true perfection behind God's plan for him. He found God's abundant blessing on the other side of the misery, true; but do you think that Job knew how many trillions of people would read his story? In Job, God gave us a worst case scenario, so that we could have hope and faith in the middle of our physical realities....to put it another way, God gave us a system by which our minds could trust the perfection of his plan....and THAT, my friends, is Life Management.

So, here is food for thought...if our story were written down for generations after us to read, what would they learn from our story?

I Declare....

I Declare
I declare that the Declaration of Independence IS still relevant.
I declare that all people ARE created equal.
I declare that we ARE endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights.
I declare that we DO have the right to our own lives.
I declare that we DO have the right to Liberty.
I declare that we DO have the right to pursue our own happiness.
I declare that the PROPER role of government is to secure these rights.
I declare that a government exercises JUST power when, and only when, acting in this capacity.
I declare that WE DO have the power and authority to protect our own rights individually.
I declare that government ONLY has power and authority given to it by US.
I declare that when a government becomes destructive to that purpose, THE PEOPLE have the right to alter or abolish it through whatever means are required.
I declare that I will not exercise this right for light or transient reasons.
I declare that I will suffer the evils of an unjust government, so long as those evils are sufferable.
I declare that when those evils sink to absolute despotism, I will exercise my rights to their fullest.
I declare that I will prepare with due diligence, for the day when I may be called upon to exercise that right.

Lazy Americans, and Chinese plywood

So, today, I need to run out to the local home improvement store for 3 sheets of plywood for a project this weekend. The identity of the store is not important, as this scene could just as easily played itself out in either of the two big box retailers here in town.

I am the typical male shopper. I know what I want. I know where it is (most of the time). I know what I am willing to pay for it, and what I am not. I found my target grade of plywood. The price fell within my value range for the product, so the deal was done.....wait a minute....where are the lumber carts?

Usually, I would have grabbed a lumber cart as soon as I saw one after walking in the door, but it has dawned on me that I have passed no such carts. I start walking up and down aisles looking for carts. As I'm walking (and not seeing ANY carts), I keep hearing a loud 'BANG'.....'BANG'.....'BANG'. The sound, is clearly heavy lumber being thrown (not dropped) somewhere in the store.

I finally make my way to the last aisle. As I turn the corner, the first thing I see is 3 of the store employees, quite loudly discussing their plans for later on that evening. The next thing I see is the source of the thrown lumber. Two customers are going through 2X8's (framing grade lumber mind you). Their 'rejects', they are literally throwing over the cart to land pixie stick style in the middle of the aisle. The aisle is impassable by the time I come upon this spectacle, and ALL of this is within view of the gaggle of employees. I hear one of the customers exclaim (quite loudly I may add) that they ARE going to find 2X8's in that stack without knots. My thought was, "No you're not, but you can believe that if you want".

So, now I have witnessed 2 retarded customers, and 3 store employees who don't seem to care enough about their store to do something to help avoid it being trashed; and I STILL haven't found a lumber cart. I decide that if they are not in the store, I will most likely find some outside. I walk by the cashier at the head of the lumber aisle. She pays me no attention. I'm not sure what had her attention, but it sure wasn't me. I walk out, and there, in all their glory, sits nearly every lumber cart in the store's inventory (or so it seems to me). I take hold of my quarry, and head right back to the door I came out (exit door mind you). I clunk..clunk my way in past the same cashier. She still has better things going on. I head back to the plywood (I can still hear the bang bang brothers). I load my cart up.

Now, not patting myself on the back, but I know that they need to scan this stuff, so in an effort to make the check out process a bit smoother, I usually try to make sure one barcode is facing so that the cashier can scan it easily (although she may have enjoyed the distraction of searching for it). I flipped the last sheet around so the barcode was faced out, and what did I see? At the bottom of the tag, in big, bold letters.....MADE IN CHINA! Serious! Are you freaking kidding me!? We are importing plywood from CHINA!!??

I feel like I could write something akin to a doctoral thesis on this, but suffice it to say:

- America, you have grown lazy. You have spent so much time and energy protecting people from the consequences of their bad decisions, that there are no longer any precipitable consequences. Unfortunately, that is a gross distortion of reality, and it will come home to roost. It is possible that it is too late to repair the damage, but we have to do something. People! WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS!! Take some pride in yourself! Take some pride in what you do! Don't pander to the lowest common denominator! We must hold ourselves to a standard, and achieve it!

My 2 cents worth, adjusted for inflation

The US Financial Crisis in numbers one can understand: Imagine a family that makes 47,620 dollars per year. They spend $71,040, therefore putting 23,420 on a credit card. Theres already $281,560 that they already owe on credit cards, and every day $82.79 dollars is added to the credit card in interest. We talk about this in the "Trillions" and most tune out. Break it down to a point where everyone can relate.

I copied and pasted this blurb from a FB friend today. Now, I haven't troubled myself to verify the accuracy of the numbers, and honestly, it is not necessary.

We can circumvent the accuracy argument by breaking it down even further:

Our government has a certain 'income' based on tax revenue

Every year, our government spends more that it brings in in taxes.

This is possible by 'borrowing money'. They do that by selling bonds and notes; mostly to foreign governments. They could also 'just print' money, but doing so lessens the value of the total amount of money (called inflation). This has happened to a certain extent, but the bulk of our 'budget deficit' comes from borrowing.

We have hit our credit limit. Now, if you are at your kitchen table discussing your financial problems with your spouse; the conversation invariably goes to stop spending more than you make, or borrow more (open a new credit card, or otherwise increase your credit limit). Could you imagine making the decision to borrow more and go further into debt because you 'have' to maintain your standard of living? That is exactly what our congress critters are debating... raising our credit limit so that we can borrow more to maintain an untenable life style.

Yep, that'll work.

Either no one in Australia was 'worthy' and got left behind, or the nut jobs can crawl back in their cave....either way, we return you to your life, already in progress.

We have all had a lot of fun at this guy's expense. I saw his name, but failed to commit it to memory...some preacher based in California? Well, that explains a lot!

But seriously, what is the motivation at work here? Most Christians believe the Bible to be the 100%, infallible, perfect, word of God. I am Christian, but I do not believe that myself. I DO believe that even though the Bible is imperfect (being written by the hands of man, and all), there is a GREAT deal to be learned there. I am particularly intrigued by the parable of the prodigal son. That will be a blog for another day.

So, where is this guy coming from?

If he is Christian, and a pastor, no less; surely he has at least heard about the verse where Jesus tells us that no man shall know the day or hour of his return. Surely he knows that the day can not be calculated, as he has claimed to have done, no more than God's existence can be 'proven' through man's limited scope of logic and fact.

So, what does that leave us to draw about him?

1) He has no touch with reality, and is completely delusional.

2) He is quite rational, but has a motive that we have not yet explored.

Of the two, I believe #1 to be the case, but let us examine #2 a bit as an intellectual exercise. Perhaps we can learn something about ourselves and the modern church by doing so.

If he is rational, yet makes his doomsday predictions, in spite of the Biblical evidence, he does so for a reason. Why?

• He is not a Christian, and seeks to discredit Christianity by claiming to be one and making an absolute mockery of the faith. - Is this plausible? I have not wasted much time to look very deeply into this guys past, but the published claim is that he was a pastor of a church in California. For now, we will accept that as fact, although for any serious discussion to take place here, we should trouble ourselves to confirm it. It would also appear to be fact that he has spent a great deal of personal wealth on 'getting the word out'. In order to spend the time he did as a Christian leader, and go through the expense he has, if this is a discrediting campaign, it would come as the result of a severe disappointment,or anger with his former faith. I believe if this were the root, he would be pointing to the event that shook his world and screaming, "see, what GOD would allow this to happen?" We see this frequently with the death of loved ones, especially sudden deaths, or young ones where the survivors are ill prepared to handle the trauma. My vote is - Not plausible.
• He is Christian, and sees this as a tool to 'save the masses'. Drive them into a fear of eternal damnation on a definite time line, and watch them pour into the church for their helping of salvation. That is pretty crappy, right? I mean, let's not show people what God says about this, then we can use their own fear of the unknown to drive them into our waiting and loving arms, then we get credit for being the one who led them to Christ. Pretty crappy, right? Wait a minute....does the modern church not do this anyway? He has carried the tactic to the pinnacle, but this pastor has done nothing more than expand an already existent page in the Christian playbook. God tells us that Jesus died for our salvation......PERIOD! His love is unconditional....PERIOD! He requires nothing from us for that salvation. It has already been given. Do we hear that in our churches? What we hear in the church is a punch list of things we have to do in order to receive salvation. The punch list varies from denomination to denomination, and some denominational lists are shorter than others, but the fact of the matter remains, the list is there; and the modern church holds up the list and uses fear of consequences to herd people into checking off the items on the denominationally approved list. Let's take a trip back to the Bible for a moment, and see if we can find anyone else in Biblical history who did the same thing......ah, here we go. How about the Pharisees? This, more than the antics of our clown that brought this discussion into being, is more telling of the end of times than anything. The Pharisees claimed to represent God to the masses. They used their monopoly on theology to hold the masses in spiritual bondage. Jesus came to end that bondage and set us all free throughout the breadth of time. Now we have a modern church, who like the Pharisees, claims to represent God, I mean, after all...they are the hands and feet of Jesus, right? If you don't believe the same way they do, you, of course are condemned to hell, but they will keep praying for you until you believe the way they do.. The modern church doesn't hold a spiritual monopoly, but pretty darn close. When Jesus does come back, I believe it will be to release us from spiritual bondage again, only this time, the modern church will have taken the place of the Pharisees in the story.

Now, I still think this guy is a crack pot, but I think God has used him to show us something of His character in the process.

....my 2 cents worth, adjusted for inflation.

OK, I'll admit to the n'th degree of lameness on blogging. I could make hundreds of excuses; but the truth of the matter is, that I have not found great value for my time in blogging. I believe that is changing. I have found that documenting life, even one as mundane as mine, may actually have value.....stay tuned.