Walking to school, uphill both ways.

I remember Wednesdays on the farm. It was washing day and by night my mom’s hands were raw, red, and bleeding. She used an iron tub and a washing board. It had “ribs” on it and she would rub the heavy cottons up and down, dipping them again and again. After rinsing, she would take it outside to hang on the clothesline to dry in the wind and sun. The cloth was stiff but smelled heavenly. Chicken for supper meant catching the screaming chicken, cleaning and feathering it, cutting and roasting, or cooking. We lived in a tropical climate, so we didn’t have an oven.

The vegetables came from the garden, (where else?) and fruits from the trees, while berries grew on bushes. Most people grew potatoes, onions, and most importantly, nature’s antibiotic, garlic. There was no room in the pantry for pet food, but we had no pantry. No refrigerator either.

Although women’s work was strenuous by today’s standards, men’s work was much harder. Backbreaking is an appropriate description of it. Men didn’t complain and always faced the reality that they may have to stop and take arms to defend their way of life. I didn’t know any men who didn’t have a second job in the army.

Now, most of what we called women’s work and much of the back-breaking work is done by machines powered by electricity and fuels. Work is something we do in an air-conditioned office using a computer mouse. Even “blue collar” jobs are a fraction of what they used to be in terms of physical contribution. People are no longer imagining a life that is less back-breaking, but a cruise or resort vacation every few months.

I was attempting to tell my children what we used to do and my child said. Yes, dad, you used to walk to school for a mile carrying 30 lbs of books going uphill both ways, and they laughed. The sacrifice that their elders made is not registering in their spoiled young brains. They think we are kidding.

Surprisingly, they can and do go on one of their holidays and see people living in the same conditions that we used to live in. Half, if not more, of the world’s population, still live in poverty and face food insecurity. We talk about advancing them to our level but can’t do it. If we did, the pollution we would create would kill all living things on earth.

Strangely, the Heaven that most of us strive to get to is not available doesn’t matter what we do. I learned that in Heaven, all things are good. God, the creator of the universe, will handle all the problems. Mom will not have red bleeding hands, and dad will not hammer red hot iron sprinkling a shower of sparks on himself. There will be no cancer or other diseases and no annoying lineups for passports, or a shortage of houses for hard-working people. Hunger and thirst will not exist, nor will hard work make existence hard or impossible. All we have to do to get there is live life without sin and eternal bliss will follow.

Now I am old in human terms and my brain or mind is full of life’s experiences. I still believe in Heaven and have seen people experiencing what we can only describe as Hell. It is physical, but the worst of it is not material. There is pain that hurts worse than anything physical and it doesn’t get better. The pain of guilt. The only cure for it is forgiveness, but it’s nearly impossible to truly forgive, not just say we do.

The universe is charged with something. Here we call it electricity. It must have negative and positive and all its benefits are in between the two. We have captured it, direct it and use it, but it’s always there. We can’t see it, hear or feel it without help. There is no reason to think that it’s not so in heaven.

The old ones who wrote the Bible described it as light and dark, order and disorder. They didn’t use computers, but they easily could have been wiser than us. They described a garden of Eden but humans were not happy enough with it and got themselves kicked out to where there is hard work and great pain. From that point, life was and is challenging and risky. 

Those who pay attention know that God, the supreme universal intelligence, or whatever we choose to call him, is willing to grant us what we want or pray for. He knows our hearts. We are sending Him a message that we wouldn’t admit to ourselves. We want the Heaven described in the literature but only for ourselves.

Now we are arriving at an age of artificial intelligence, robots, nanomedicine, and much more than we could imagine even a little time ago. If we don’t destroy the atmosphere that sustains us on Earth, much of Heaven will be possible soon. What we create will give us most of what we always wished for, but the others who are not as privileged will block us. We only move forward if we move together. We must only take what we need and leave the rest. We have to control those who eat it all.

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

 

 Dear Leadership Candidates.

The Simple Raven from the Crowsnest Pass doesn’t routinely address political candidates. What is human politics to an old bird in rugged mountains, anyway? Humans come and go, but they are tiny from where the crows fly. This time it’s different. The world is in turmoil and Alberta will play a part if we like it or not.

Alberta is a province bigger than many countries and has more resources than many. Alberta produces food and energy. All it needs is a good leader, who loves the Province and its people.

I was there when the Progressive Conservative party of Alberta was formed by Peter Lougheed. Here was a young, well-educated son of the province, willing to use his gifts to place us on the world map. He was in politics to make life better for all Albertans. I was treated in the General Hospital that he renovated and expanded, studied at the University of Calgary that he built, and worked in recreation, which he developed as an important aspect of what a government provides to save money in other ways. He did it using finite energy resources, planning a wonderful future. Calgary advanced from a “cow town” to a business centre, and he fought like hell to keep it so.

Now we are at a crossroads again. The province must transition from carbon energy dependence to a future green energy hub, and we have the resources needed, including the trained hard-working people to do it with. An opportunist politician is on the way out and the next leader will decide our future. I don’t know all the candidates but I see one that I like. Yes, I am looking for a new champion basing my hopes on a well-known example that many of us still remember.

Mr. Lougheed didn’t bully the medical profession by imploding hospitals, didn’t try to force the poorest people to work by cutting their allowance, or force academia to play his song by reducing education grants. The people of Alberta became the envy of other Canadians and contributed more to the growing economy. We were not short workers and didn’t have above-normal unemployment levels.

When the rest of Canada saw the prosperity that we enjoyed, they demanded a share. Thinking that it was all tied to oil, they wanted a share in this Canadian resource. Lougheed was OK with a fair share but guarded against forcing us to give away the goose that laid the golden eggs. Oil, he said, was a temporary boon and must ensure a wonderful future after its heyday. Alberta negotiated a good deal and began saving for future generations. The Alberta Heritage fund was set up to do just that. Together with the infrastructure that was built, the well-trained labor force, and the spirit of confidence in a bright future, we were set up for success. It is the legacy of a genuine leader that makes me search for a new champion.  

Now it is evident that oil, particularly our oil, is coming to an end. The sands of time run out for fossil fuels. All the resources that are burned to produce energy are being phased out because of pollution. There will be some use for them but much reduced. The complete process has been sped up by war and human attention is focusing on new ways to provide clean energy.

Here in the Pass which was built around coal, a new initiative is happening. If government help will be available, we will be leaders in storing sun and wind energy using water and using gravity to unleash it when needed.

As we are working on that, a fresh development in technology is rising. In western Finland, which is a similar climate to Canada, a few young engineers discovered a new way to store heat energy and use it. The company is called Polar Night Energy. They use available surplus solar and wind energy that they produce on hot summer days to heat sand to 600 degrees and store the heat for months to be used when needed.

They distribute the heat to set locations by air through insulated pipes. Most cities, like New York, or even Ottawa, have distribution systems that heat large buildings. The parts, mostly pipes, are easy to manufacture in existing local factories. Even better, the heat can be made into electricity and sold to the grid.

The ideal locations for the system are empty mines. They need a hole in the ground that can be filled with sand. Power goes in, heats the sand and the heat is pumped out to be used. They are looking at the possibility of setting the new MIT-invented liquid metal batteries in the centre. Those ultra-efficient batteries operate at 600 degrees. Power will be produced and stored in the same location. On top of the production site, we can build greenhouses to use all the escaping energy. Cold Finland isn’t too worried about Putin cutting off their natural gas supply.

I hope that the next Premier of Alberta will be a person like Peter Lougheed. We have all that we need for a bright future and need a leader who will capitalize on opportunities, like the manufacturing of power, and use our people instead of chasing them away. A province like ours can keep building, educating, and providing a good life for us and those who will come behind us. Who will it be?

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

 

A world without God.

 

 A world without God.

Sometimes I listen to lectures by atheists. People who argue against the existence of God. Some are very intelligent, highly educated, and always very full of themselves. They honestly believe that God was invented by primitives who used the concept of a supreme being to extract gains from other uneducated people. After all, how can we trust a person who makes a living by selling a kingdom in heaven? It is easy for them to make a sound argument. Many humans are doing exactly that. The first test for a person who promotes God is, does he or she exact a worldly price for teaching about God? Are they better off in a material sense than their flock? A person who even has a minute inclination about what God is doesn’t need the wealth that humans hoard or even pleasurable gifts. The foxes have holes; the birds have nests, but the son of man….

Religions that we know of always built monuments, temples, churches, and other houses of worship held in trust for the people. Those are good examples of how faith can unite people to build amazing structures, but they do it for pride, which is not related to a spiritual belief. If your idea of God must have physical proof of being mighty, you do not understand the concept of God. Enjoy your achievements, but the atheists will run you to the ground. One can’t prove the existence of God any more than that God doesn’t exist. One famous atheist who claims to be a scientist said, “don’t tell me about your Sky God, He doesn’t exist. If He did, He wouldn’t allow all the evil in the world”. Does He?

I am thinking about the evil that I witnessed. I am a student of history. It looks to me as if evil wins. It shows that evil rarely stops without the use of force. When force is used, it knows no limits. First, force overcomes evil and later it becomes evil itself. Power is intoxicating to humans.

In the last few generations, we see in the west a steady decline in religions and an increase in atheism. There are still many people who were born into religious faiths and remain faithful, but the numbers are declining. The population is getting more educated. It’s no longer sufficient to subdue women or gays in the name of God, like in Afghanistan, people are looking for spirituality.

Those who were born into religions and follow it religiously are under attack by others demanding a rational explanation. The religious still have a formidable voting block, schools, universities, and property, but less intellectual justification. They lost domination over science. The earth is round, and it’s not the center of the universe. Viruses, not demons, get into people.

Atheists and believers are battling it out over the minds of humans, yet on the side, there is another power greater than both. It remains silent, invisible, and untouchable, but very noticeable. Churches are defending against atheists, while the “old guard” is dwindling, but humans keep believing in God. They can’t define God with human words but believe in His/Her existence and supreme power even over science and nature. A God existed in human minds before writing, the wheel, and fire.

When God created the world, according to the old stories, the first thing He did was “let there be light”. “Light speed” thousands of years later became the fastest speed at which human bodies may travel. Time of life is what humans cherish most, but the speed of light can change time. Time can move forward or in reverse if you move at the speed of light. God doesn’t use “time” to measure things, since what we know about Him is that he had no beginning or end.

Some of humanity’s best thinkers over all ages were theologians and philosophers who always considered God and tried to explain what that force was, but couldn’t. To explain God you must remove human guesses, not add words of explanation. We know what God is not, but not what He is.

Right from the beginning, the people who wrote the Bible insisted that we should not make graven images nor describe God in any human way. The supreme vision can only be realized if you get rid of all other visions.

Michael Angelo described his creations as emerging from the marble when he removed what wasn’t a part of the figure. That is how spiritual people view God. Even the name of God should not be uttered, since it will take away from what He is.

Religions are not spreading as they used to. Science is trying hard to fill the void but failing. Science is only studying what has been or is created but can’t explain the entire picture. Humans are yearning to know more about an invisible being and do not give up. Their numbers are growing and now they call themselves “spiritual”. Why? Most discover it by mistake and know that it’s there.

Some people know that there is a quantum force, working at random, shaping human destiny. It has a purpose that is often unknown until completion. People dream about something and later see it take shape. The atheists and the believers are proven irrelevant. They can join it or lose all credibility. It demands unity.

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