A better place.

 

The Simple Raven’s Post.

A better place.

The air in the church was heavy with the smell of hundreds of people and incense. My ears rang from the silence. I could still hear the organ and the voices of the choir that a minute ago filled the space with energy. The community said goodbye to one of its own, giving it all they had. Now there were voices of people filtering through the opened double doors as the funeral staff was loading the elaborate shiny wood coffin onto the hearse and there was a harsh slam of a car door closing. Bang. One who lived here is now gone and not coming back. A living, breathing person used up all the minutes he had. In the cemetery, the people will gather around an open grave and some men in long white gowns will say words. There will be a sound of dirt and rocks falling on wood….

In the church lobby, one person remains sitting in a wheelchair. I go to talk. The elderly lady has red eyes and wrinkles. Hello, hi. Are you a relative I asked, pointing towards the doors. Yes, she said, no explanation. He is going to a better place; she said. Silence. He will meet his dad, she said in a quivering voice. Yes, I agreed and stayed close. Sometimes we just need another human around. I am it. I feel shame. Did I just lie to the old woman? She looks as if soon she will find out for herself. Her minutes of life are close to being used up. I hope she used hers well. Will she be up there looking down at me, saying, you lied to me? I wish I could not think that, but I can’t help it. Do I know that we go to a “better place?”

I look at her hands in her lap. They are old and wrinkled. The joints are swollen. She is wearing a long, good-quality black jacket. My mind whirls. I see the pudgy hands of a toddler jumping up and down without control. Now, the hands of a prepubescent girl adorned with a thin gold ring. The picture changes. There is a slender young woman’s hand by a lacey white sleeve, and a man is placing an expensive gold ring on it. It fits perfectly. The hands change again, holding a child.

Are we going to a better place? What would be a better place I ask myself? I am in a world perfect for humans and other animals. It provides all that we need. Air, water, food, shelter, continuity of crated species, free energy, work, entertainment, love. It’s all there and we just have to find it and take it. There is always enough for everybody. When we run out of food, soon we discover ways to make more. If we are short in one area, we have ways to bring it from another location where there is a surplus. It is a gift that keeps on giving.

Nothing ever stays the same in our world. It is constantly renewing itself, improving, and evolving. The Earth knows we are built for work and problem solving, so our lives are like a game. It is aware that we get bored with monotony, so it offers a myriad of options in every respect. Those who complain about the world tend to forget that all the evils of the world are man-made or could be prevented by humans taking the right decisions.

I am in a church trying to counsel an older woman full of grief. Again, cautiously, I look at the beautiful old face that witnessed so much in this life. She doesn’t show any sign of hope. Weak and probably ill with more than one disease, she sits there in her wheelchair wringing her old-looking hands that have seen better days. She couldn’t even go to the last part of the funeral of someone she dearly loved. Later, I discovered it was her son.

Two things she wants are to go to a better place and to see again those she loved who died. She feels that she lived too long. She reluctantly accepts what she was told but wishes that things would be different, but youth is not coming back and we thrive on youth.

Slowly and carefully, I kneel beside her, take her hand in mine, and say, there is another way.

I will not tell her that we have to change our ways to be in a better place. She is too old and fragile to cause a change and it will not happen in her lifetime.

We here in this church believe in everlasting life and a world without end, I say. Everyone says that, we sing it, but people don’t really believe what they can’t see. Yet we all believe in a Holy Spirit that no one has ever seen. I know it is true and now you do as well. All that has passed is still there. It didn’t go anywhere; we only chose to believe that it couldn’t be true, so for us, it’s not.

She was sleeping. Dream shamelessly little one.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

The air in the church was heavy with the smell of hundreds of people and incense. My ears rang from the silence. I could still hear the organ and the voices of the choir that a minute ago filled the space with energy. The community said goodbye to one of its own, giving it all they had. Now there were voices of people filtering through the opened double doors as the funeral staff was loading the elaborate shiny wood coffin onto the hearse and there was a harsh slam of a car door closing. Bang. One who lived here is now gone and not coming back. A living, breathing person used up all the minutes he had. In the cemetery, the people will gather around an open grave and some men in long white gowns will say words. There will be a sound of dirt and rocks falling on wood….

In the church lobby, one person remains sitting in a wheelchair. I go to talk. The elderly lady has red eyes and wrinkles. Hello, hi. Are you a relative I asked, pointing towards the doors. Yes, she said, no explanation. He is going to a better place; she said. Silence. He will meet his dad, she said in a quivering voice. Yes, I agreed and stayed close. Sometimes we just need another human around. I am it. I feel shame. Did I just lie to the old woman? She looks as if soon she will find out for herself. Her minutes of life are close to being used up. I hope she used hers well. Will she be up there looking down at me, saying, you lied to me? I wish I could not think that, but I can’t help it. Do I know that we go to a “better place?”

I look at her hands in her lap. They are old and wrinkled. The joints are swollen. She is wearing a long, good-quality black jacket. My mind whirls. I see the pudgy hands of a toddler jumping up and down without control. Now, the hands of a prepubescent girl adorned with a thin gold ring. The picture changes. There is a slender young woman’s hand by a lacey white sleeve, and a man is placing an expensive gold ring on it. It fits perfectly. The hands change again, holding a child.

Are we going to a better place? What would be a better place I ask myself? I am in a world perfect for humans and other animals. It provides all that we need. Air, water, food, shelter, continuity of crated species, free energy, work, entertainment, love. It’s all there and we just have to find it and take it. There is always enough for everybody. When we run out of food, soon we discover ways to make more. If we are short in one area, we have ways to bring it from another location where there is a surplus. It is a gift that keeps on giving.

Nothing ever stays the same in our world. It is constantly renewing itself, improving, and evolving. The Earth knows we are built for work and problem solving, so our lives are like a game. It is aware that we get bored with monotony, so it offers a myriad of options in every respect. Those who complain about the world tend to forget that all the evils of the world are man-made or could be prevented by humans taking the right decisions.

I am in a church trying to counsel an older woman full of grief. Again, cautiously, I look at the beautiful old face that witnessed so much in this life. She doesn’t show any sign of hope. Weak and probably ill with more than one disease, she sits there in her wheelchair wringing her old-looking hands that have seen better days. She couldn’t even go to the last part of the funeral of someone she dearly loved. Later, I discovered it was her son.

Two things she wants are to go to a better place and to see again those she loved who died. She feels that she lived too long. She reluctantly accepts what she was told but wishes that things would be different, but youth is not coming back and we thrive on youth.

Slowly and carefully, I kneel beside her, take her hand in mine, and say, there is another way.

I will not tell her that we have to change our ways to be in a better place. She is too old and fragile to cause a change and it will not happen in her lifetime.

We here in this church believe in everlasting life and a world without end, I say. Everyone says that, we sing it, but people don’t really believe what they can’t see. Yet we all believe in a Holy Spirit that no one has ever seen. I know it is true and now you do as well. All that has passed is still there. It didn’t go anywhere; we only chose to believe that it couldn’t be true, so for us, it’s not.

She was sleeping. Dream shamelessly little one.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

 

Slaves to businessmen.

Slaves, serfs, workers, employees, Human resources, and “independent” businessmen.

Most of you, if you are like me, learned early history from the Bible and later some more from archeology. There is hardly a way that we can learn the truth from those sources without a time machine that we don’t have. Later, writing became more available to humans, and history was developed, but very inaccurate. History must be written, can be altered or destroyed, and often we see conflicting history stories that we must choose if to believe or not. We can’t even agree on what is happening in front of our eyes here and now, never mind a thousand years ago.  

You hear Premier Kenney talking about Alberta oil as the most ethical oil in the world. Ezra Levant, who lobbies for petroleum, coined the phrase Ethical Oil, without knowing that a barrel of our liquefied tar is producing around three times the pollution compared to Nordic oil, and it got popular in the media. Strangely, there are no waiting lines to purchase our product and not many investors to help build a pipeline to transport it. What will history say? Ethical or immoral?

We still debate the oldest historical argument I am aware of to this day. The Bible talks about kings who built cities, pyramids, and other grand capital projects. It doesn’t mention the thousands, perhaps millions of people who worked and died to complete the ventures.

In the story of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, the Hebrew scribes recorded the events mostly to show the power of God, not of the people. People enslaved were only the pawns in the game of history. Joseph, a Hebrew slave, rose to prominence and brought his family, Hebrew migrants, to Egypt, to save their lives. Over generations, they became a nation of slaves and the mighty hand of God saved them. Kings and armies fought and land titles changed hands.

In the biblical stories, people became slaves most often when their country or city was conquered by a bigger army. Otherwise, your own countrymen could be sold as slaves if you couldn’t pay a debt. Slaves had no rights but had value. A king who wanted to build a city had to have many slaves to do the work. If he wanted a large army, he would gain an advantage by owning a lot of women of childbearing age.

Christianity became popular and enslaving our own kind of people lost its luster, so a social change happened. Humans of other races were enslaved, while those more like the masters became serfs. The serf was a property that came with the land, but the master wasn’t obligated to keep them alive. The unwashed masses couldn’t negotiate anything to improve their living conditions. Their sons were drafted into armies and what they produced was taken away. Hunger was a way of life and if they broke the law to steal food, the penalties were harsh and deadly.

In comes the industrial revolution. Farming improved, there was no need for as many peasants, and people were pushed into factory jobs in cities. Men, women, and children worked their lives away. The pay was mostly only enough to survive. Workers created wealth, nobility controlled the army, and the army protected the industrialists and nobility who benefitted from the work.

There have been slave revolts, like with the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, but never on a large scale. In the last couple of hundred years, we witnessed an additional dimension. The unwashed masses realized that united, they have power. They could withdraw their labor and sink the ship. When they did it the Communist way, it didn’t work well, was too expensive to maintain by using force, or they could form union federations and demand some human rights. In Northern Europe, a shortage of labor hindered economic development. Although labor withdrew from Church Christianity, a new idea took hold. All is one. The people can work together to improve everyone’s lives. In Christian terms, the people are the body of Christ. They all need bread.

A country could do well if the government, employers, and workers worked together. An economy could also benefit from being open to competition avoiding monopolies. The northern Europeans proved the concept by experimenting on themselves. They developed the concept that a government is obliged to serve the people instead of the other way around. Understanding that the economy needs to sustain those who work in it, not just constantly growing, was another major step. Some people worked harder than others and are rewarded accordingly, but the first goal is to have enough to provide people with basic needs to avoid trouble.

Strikes, revolutions, wars, and poverty are all very expensive. Dealing with ecological disasters is devastating. Fighting against economical forced migration is almost impossible. Humans are not a resource, they are our equals in our image.

We shouldn’t work towards joining business and government to enslave people and wring the last drop of sweat and blood from them. Now the newest scheme is to call the workers independent businessmen, like the Uber drivers.

The wealthy may win in a short term, but all will be destroyed, eventually. The archeologists of whoever took our place on earth will try to form a picture of what we were like from our dry bones. It may be thousands of years in the future or a million years from now. The earth will still turn around, encircling the sun, but no one will be counting.

“You do not know the hour or the day,” the bible said, so you should always be ready. To be ready, we must make some changes to our behavior.

The earth gives us all we need. It’s a gift from the Lord. It’s a gift to all of us, not governments, employers, or workers alone. It must be shared. There is just no other way.

Love. What is it?

 

 Love. What is it?

A mother loves her young. In some species, both adults love each other and their young. I see it on birds from my window. The male feeds the female when she takes care of the eggs. I see it in some primitive human cultures that take wonderful care of their aging population. It’s not the romantic love of movies, it’s self-sacrifice for others.

The romantic love that we so love to describe with art is something else. I am not even sure that erotic infatuation should be classified as a type of love. Is it a desire? I watch the deer below my window. If a female gets close to a male who found something good to eat, he will chase her away and try to kick her. When she is in heat, the males fight for mating rights with her. You may see a male and female snuggling together, but not for long. It is the love that exists until the Honeymoon is over.

I am no expert on animal love, but some behaviors move me emotionally. There is something about love that draws my attention. I see people attempting to love their God as per instructions from the Holy book. The Book forbade humans from making an image of God, but humans can’t love what they can’t picture. All religions have some artworks that bring an emotional response. Some do it with pictures, statues, masks, dolls, and some with secret architecture. Others attempt to focus on what they believe to be the word of God, letting the imagination fill in the gaps. Is that love, obedience, or fear? I don’t know.

In the latter part of history, people associated love with mating. Marriages used to be a contract between families for political, economic, and other reasons which did not include love. I remember two Iranian girls from one of my university classes. We, the western kids, were curious about their cultural heritage and asked about the pre-arranged marriage practiced in their country. They explained that they were too young to decide on something as important as marriage. The family, mostly the fathers, were responsible for the girls’ well-being and would do what was right for them, they said. What about love, I asked? It will come, they answered. We learn to love each other. In Iran, there was a very low rate of divorce while here in Alberta, Canada, it was around 50% when this conversation took place.

One type of love that I find most fascinating is the love of animals for their human masters. About a month ago, a full-size fox came to our place and was showing signs of hostility towards my wife. Out of nowhere came our male cat and viciously attacked the fox about three times his size. He chased the canine down the road and cornered him by some large rocks. We had to call the cat back to allow the fox to run away and never come back again close to the house.

There is a powerful love that people have for their country, as we presently see in Ukraine. People need a piece of the earth to call home and the land provides what they need for life. Just being born on a parcel of land makes people love it. We are most willing to fight and die for the motherland or the land of our fathers.

People love their method of worshipping God, which we call religion. We have fought many wars for the right to govern ourselves and to worship our way. Is fighting a way to prove love? There are many ways to fight. Some are peaceful, yet extremely powerful. India, under the leadership of the Mahatma Gandhi, won freedom from the British Empire without a war of independence. South Africa won freedom for its majority, who were governed by an outside minority, by convincing the rest of the world to help them.

There are many songs about the emotion called love. The songs do not talk about the number one love, money. People believe that money can buy you, love. It never does. The folks with the most money and fame can tell you that. So if you marry for money or a prearranged marriage, it’s the same. No love, only convenience.

The love that I am interested in is: there is one commandment above all, love. Love one another as I have loved you. The initiator died on the cross for it. It is a word for self-sacrifice for others, even for your enemies. You may be a Ukrainian soldier who comes across a wounded Russian soldier and gives him a drink of water. That is love. That is the kind of love that will get you to heaven.

I see all the signs, “I love coal”, “I love Alberta Beef,” and “I love gas and oil.” There were signs waved around “I hate Trudeau” The old hippie slogan, ” Make love, not war,” was empty as well. People don’t understand what “Love” is.

To me, love is what I read in the Sermon on the Mount. I also remember clearly when I met my wife fifty years ago. We talked about serious things which set us up for a long-lasting, loving relationship, but we also laughed a lot. Life was happening as it should and we loved being together. We still do. Ravens mate for life.

Others formed relationships based on selfish needs and wants, while we joked and enjoyed the moment. One moment joined another and there is no reason to believe that there will not be many more like it. If there is, I don’t see it. I am not looking.

Love is! And I can give it away, and when I do, I feel happy. I also receive love and I thank the one who created it.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Memories.

 

Memories.

It was cold, and nothing was familiar. I was lifted and manipulated by creatures I didn’t know and heard voices speak in a language I didn’t understand. I could see lights and dark, but nothing that made any sense to me since I remembered nothing like what I was in. Someone hurt me and made me cry, but there was no way to communicate, only the option of crying since I was scared. The hands of humans cleaned me up a bit, and I felt some comfort but no familiarity. I was born into the world of humans but didn’t know that I was like them or what they will do with me.

Having a body that I could move, but not so good, was an unfamiliar experience. The only thing I could remember was being in a snugly closed space where all my needs were provided and being ejected to where I had to do something but didn’t know what. The memory was fading fast and reality was taking over. Much later in life, I learned that there were dreams where I existed and did things, but their memory would rapidly fade when I was awake. The reality I am in is the one that matters.

In the dreams I could exist completely normal, never knowing that I was dreaming, but when awake, the dreams felt unreal. Remembering a dream is hard. I always remember that earlier I was dreaming something, but the information was scrambled and made to feel unreal or not fit into reality. Not enough information is available in memory to figure things out. Yet I remember it was very real when I was in it. Others told me about their dreams, but it was so much different from mine. When things happened in the “real” world, the memory of dreams disappeared altogether.

Every day of my life is full of events. Mostly, there is nothing special. Wake up, do whatever people do, and after some time go to sleep. Some days are nice while others are not. A large portion of what I call my existence is happening in my thoughts. People communicate with me in various ways. They make me wish, love, hate, happy, sad, and other emotions that there are no words to describe. I decide what to do based on what I can remember from my past or what I learned from stories. I know I can’t fly without mechanical aid, so I don’t jump off tall buildings or bridges. Never tried. Yet just falling off a chair made me careful about high places. Truthfully, most of what I know comes from memories, and most of those are not my own. Much of my memories are devoted to self-preservation and more is about surviving in a world that is all about competition. I know that if I am driving during the rush hour and if leave a space behind the next vehicle, another car will drive in and I will wait longer to get to my destination. I remember being told that time is money. It’s not, it’s “life.”

What concerns me is that I, an individual human, learned who or what I am from others who learned their personality traits from others yet. If all that I remember is what I was told, where is my freedom? I have no freedom. People all around me regularly express love or hate for things or other people. I automatically side with the majority. Just like kids in school that say, “mom, everybody is saying so.” When will I grow up and do what is right, not what everybody is doing?

It is so easy to see how human nature works. Look at our politics, which are well-publicized. Canada is one country and people can move freely between provinces. Relatively a short time ago, those we call easterners built a railroad and populated the west. They viewed it as an investment for their future. When the country became a nation, the westerners began to view the easterners as their oppressors and regularly vote opposite their brethren in the east. Some even prefer to be governed by the big neighbor to the south. They imagine another nation will allow them to make more personal gains. They don’t remember what happened to others who tried, like in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, or Hawaii. We mostly remember what we think will give us immediate rewards. They can’t remember that there is no free lunch. You always pay more than what you get.

A human is born with no memories and grows up absorbing what is available to him or her in the surrounding environment. We teach the learning in a language that inspires preconceived ideas and rejects others. Emotions can change a person’s opinions, but we learn that selfish motives are superior to all else. It’s a business decision.

Only one option is available. We all know how to love or hate ourselves. If we hate, it is self-destructive and we will not last. If we love ourselves, we know what it feels like. We can decide to love others as we love ourselves, but it’s very hard to do.

Not sharing and forgiving will lead to catastrophe as we see in some parts of the world. Sharing and forgiving are always unfair to some degree. The only solution is to say, God or nature gave me what I have, so I will do the same. It takes a level of maturity that most people lack. That memory is not preinstalled.

I, a human, am a memory chip governed by a processor, which selects memories that will enhance opinions I can’t remember originating from me. My freedom or free will could be just an illusion.