“There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

 

“There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28.

We view ourselves as so civilized and advanced these days. It horrified the West to hear on the news about Iran whipping women for not wearing a hijab or Afghanistan, making it illegal for girls to go to school. Canada demanded China uphold human rights and not force its citizens to abandon their religion and way of life.

We forget much of our past easily. Just over a hundred years ago, there were still slaves on our continent. A slave is a human being who has no rights whatsoever. If you had the money to purchase one, you could do with them whatever you wanted. Some grandchildren of slaves walk amongst us today. If you were born to slaves, you were a slave.

If you were born a girl, you couldn’t vote and your husband could beat you to submission. If you were not Caucasian, you had much fewer rights and your children were the same. Well, thank God now Great Britain has a Prime minister of Indian descent, not that I agree with his political views.

Here the government is contemplating paying some First Nations for the land stolen from them against our laws (they weren’t selling and we took it) and soon there will be a public backlash. I am preaching equality but don’t wish to pay for the sins of my fathers. How about you? How can we fix past injustice?

When I started working for the City of Calgary, we excluded women from managerial positions. If they became pregnant, they were forced to resign and reapply after the child was able to go to Day Care. When they did, they lost their seniority. I and some others fought against that rule. Call me a fool, but the world was changing. We started considering human rights.

When I was six, there was a woman that used the bus I went to school on. Her nose was cut off, and the adults said that she was unfaithful to her husband and he cut her nose off. Although I was frightened by her, her situation taught me that women are equally human. I think here they are, but we can improve.

Life went on and I got old. Living in Canada is so much better than it could have been in the other half of the world. We no longer have slaves and I have a female doctor and studied under female professors.

The real conflict in this day and age is over the theory of evolution. There is no question in my mind that all living and growing things change over time to improve their survival. The question we have not answered is, who really is the fittest that will survive? Is it the rugged, selfish individual or the multitude uniting to assure their own survival? Here the line is not clear.

In the past, it was much more obvious. Some capable person would shed their moral code, hire an army, and take over smaller nations or groups less powerful. The foolish people would join in admiring a strong leader. Little do they know that they will probably end up being exterminated or dying lacking the necessaries of life. Admiring a strong leader and wishing to be like him is the opposite of what some faiths, like Christianity, are all about.

Two thousand years ago, humankind was developing to where a decision had to form. Some simple people from the middle east went to the world preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand. Humans understood that there is a force, not physical or material in nature, which influences human destiny but does not dominate it. That force, which people loosely call God, will not force us to do things. It goes against its nature. Teaching and convincing are necessary to secure a win. It is the only way to have our species buy into it.

I have been studying what I can about that force for over fifty years now. It does much that I don’t understand and it never rests. The believers think it will judge people on judgment day, but it looks to me as if each day is judgment day. Those who choose to follow the selfish strong leader seem to suffer consequences here in this life, not needing hell in the afterlife. I am conflicted, yet my faith is stronger than ever.

With no research or even thinking hard, I can name four or five strong men who must hang on to their political leadership positions to stay out of jail. This forces them to do favors for other selfish people and hurts the poor more than they are now. Often when the powerful lose their grip on power, the punishment is severe.

There are things beyond our comprehension, hidden from our limited senses.

We have great knowledge, but civilizations before us also did and died off. All I know how to do is to be another simple man from the Middle East and try to tell what I think is true. When we need help we pray (Just honesty, no devices.) and trust the force that we can’t see, because it’s good.

Political games.

 

Political games.

As far as I can see, Canada is on fire. I will not name all the provinces that are burning. I am glad that it’s over. Don’t laugh. According to a friend, yesterday they caught the woman who was setting the fires. According to another friend, they caught a First Nations person who was setting the fires. I don’t know if they were setting fires only in Canada or also in the US, but we should be free from fires now. Sad ha ha moment, we are not.

Canada is now heavily involved in the war in Ukraine. I don’t know if the Russians can hurt us, but it worries me. Less than ten of their nuclear weapons can finish us. We are the country with the most fresh water in the world and I see us fighting about water. Our Health Care system is failing us and our Education is getting worse. Public opinion steered by politicians is causing us to irritate China, which is a major trade partner.

Sitting here, I am worried about the future. Yet the number one newsmaker in Canada is the public inquiry into Chinese interference in the elections of a couple of members of political parties. The government, as if they had nothing better to do, is all tied up with foreign interference in our elections, talking about it for days and weeks.

I am not a political insider, but I am afraid that we have foreign interference in our politics. It may be from outside the country or by people on the inside who don’t have the well-being of most of us at heart. From where I am, it looks the same. Money in politics is used to sway people to vote against their best interests. I would love to see the accounting of our last provincial elections. How much each party spent on campaigns and where the money came from.

What I do know is that in 2008, the chief electoral officer Lorne Gibson was fired after publicly pointing out that 27% of voters were left off the list. The NDP rehired him and he discovered problems with Jason Kenney winning the leadership against Brian Jean. Kenney won the next provincial election and eliminated the Chief electoral officer’s position. Here is something I am more interested in than the possible Chinese interference in our electoral process, but may never know the truth.

I am all for keeping our elections in Canada and Alberta fair and not shaking public confidence. Yet when the last provincial elections were going “neck and neck” all the way and then announced as “another miracle on the prairies” I was taken aback. I am a firm believer in the possibility of miracles, but not as far as winning elections in mysterious ways. If people answer polling questions one way leading to elections, I can’t see how they would change their opinion so fast when nothing happened to cause it. If any, I expected our elected Premier to have lost votes after breaking the law as to the best of my knowledge she did.

I am still spinning from the opposition, demanding that the Prime minister resign over the Chinese interference in our elections. I would demand of him election reforms that he has been promising for eight years, but the mood changed again. The Chinese are all but forgotten and we have a new demand for ministerial resignation, now because of Paul Bernardo. That rotten individual and his girlfriend Karla Homolka, tortured and killed young girls, including Karla’s sister. and filmed it.

The RCMP at the time, discovered who he was but failed to check the attic in his home for the incriminating evidence, so they offered Carla immunity if she witnessed against Paul. She, of course, did, and they jailed him for life. She got 12 years. When they found the tapes, they couldn’t touch her, but she perhaps was the one more guilty. Now the parole board, free of political interference, is releasing him into a medium-security facility and the opposition wants a minister to resign. Again, the government is spending money and time on something that will make no difference to most of us. Bummer. Why don’t they deal with the depleted state of our armed forces instead? Figure out how to protect our northern borders when and if the Russians storm in after the war in Europe, on their way to the USA, I say.

No, the Bernardo case is dominating the news. I was never a minister or even a council member in a little town, but in my job, they swamped me with thousands of reports, directions, and trivial information each day. Now the opposition is wasting valuable parliament time blaming a minister for not noticing some old memo about Paul Bernardo, wanting him to resign. I watch from the sidelines how the game of politics is played. Some politicians play it because they want to improve the country, province, or the lives of the people. They fail and the country is on fire with more to come. We have so many homeless people, drug addicts and you name it, that it would take years to correct. We expect leaders to solve the problems, but they don’t. Most are in the game for power and possibly personal gains. The people let themselves be led from one disaster to another as long as they have their tiny gains and only listen to what they consider “positive”, ignoring the power they have to make changes. Those on the bottom are suffering the most, while those on the top or middle specialize in not seeing their suffering. Just like Karla Homolka, we let evil win and cry for revenge instead of trying to stop it.

Did any of us even say a brief prayer for the migrants in Greece who drowned last week trying to get a better life? I doubt it. We probably didn’t watch the news when it showed their boat.

Am I an Alien from another reality?

 

Am I an Alien from another reality?

When I was little, there were a lot of stories told and repeated. People were busy with everyday life, yet had time to talk to each other. Just about everyone read and knew some classics. In Israel, just like in Canada, people came from foreign cultures and most spoke at least two languages. Today you meet people who don’t know what is going on in the world, saying that they don’t listen to the news or they only listen to fake news, thinking that it is reality. In the old days, they all knew the best stories such as science fiction best sellers. Everyone knew the main stories from the bible.

There were always stories about aliens who were here on Earth but were not actually humans. In my younger days, there were Martians and little green men arriving in a flying saucer. Generations before me talked about angels, demons, forest nymphs, and talking animals. Before them, some gods fought each other, mated, and caused unnatural things to happen. Lord only knows that I never expected to look at myself as one of those aliens from another world, but now I do.

The world I recall resembled this world a lot. The same continents, oceans, hot, cold, and tempered areas. Grass and trees grow from the ground, the sky was blue and rain made things grow. Much of my environment wasn’t the same, and looking back, it is obviously a different world.

In my early life, there was no plastic pollution. There was no plastic anywhere. We only heard about it. Electronics didn’t exist yet and only a few lucky people saw a television screen. After we had plumbing, the outhouses disappeared, but hot water on demand was rare. The toilet tank was up by the ceiling and you pulled a chain to flush. Most people didn’t yet have electricity and having a watch was a luxury.

A noticeable difference between my world and now was in the service provided. We were poor, but we had lots of services that now are not available. Just about everything was fixable. Seamsters fixed and made dresses. Tailors did the same with suits. Shoemakers and other trades made a reasonable living, mechanics, and delivery people were everywhere. In 1967, I went to fill gas, and the car got a quick safety inspection. Lights and fluids were checked, tire pressure was adjusted, and the attendant cleaned the windshield to look like new. In a restaurant, we were greeted with a glass of water and the server wore a uniform. At the stores, some people came over and asked if they can help. There was an appreciation for handmade things.

I remember the time before we had all the fancy medical scanners and life-saving machines. When someone was sick, we went to a doctor’s office, sat down, and waited our turn, which always came within an hour or less. People would have found it shocking if they had to wait for five weeks to see the doctor as it is now. In case of an emergency, the ambulance would arrive within ten minutes and you would receive immediate treatment. The staff now is as good as ever, but the system changed. 14 hours wait for Emergency at the Children’s Hospital.

The world changed, and humans went on to evolve. We could have evolved towards making more durable items, helping many simple people have gainful employment, and using our work for the betterment of all of us, but it went another way. All our efforts were expanded towards exploiting one another and maximizing profits. I have done so on behalf of my employers; I am ashamed to say. I employed people to work some hours when we were busy laying them off when we were not. I expected them to be available when and if we needed them. The money that was saved by making life difficult for those who couldn’t defend themselves didn’t get used to helping people, only to make some self-proclaimed leaders gain more power.

Life became nearly impossible for working people at the bottom. They worked long and hard for a meager existence, unable to pay the rent and sustain themselves and their families.

The new technological advancements helped produce our needs cheaper and more attractive thanks to plastic, but all were designed to fail at a predicted time and be impossible to repair. I must have a cell phone but it dies when paid for. Technology increased our life span yet a longer life may be spent in poverty.

In my world, we used to pray for our needs and those of our neighbors. Often we prayed for rain or possibly for the rain to stop. We prayed for peace and healing. Now we wish and work to be better off than other people. Lying and cheating are considered good business practices. Each nation or country is trying to get ahead of another, like China and the US, Russia, Western Europe, and many others.

I believe in God, and I think He doesn’t like what we are doing. He is no longer the God of the chosen people, but the God of all people. Take it or leave it. I feel like an Alien in my world.  

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

ESP and other mysteries.

 

ESP and other mysteries.

All that meets the eye. God created light by saying a word and life as we know it was born or created. We don’t know much about the creatures that we come from and at this point in our history have no way of finding out. Archeologists find tiny bone fragments and historians weave evolution stories around them.

When I was a child, we believed we were made from dirt by a mysterious divine being called God and we could have a one-way communication with Him through words we called prayers. By the time I was a teen, we were considered the results of evolution. There were other creatures like Neanderthals, who now were extinct, and Homoerectus won the race. That was us in a primitive form. Sometime later, there are billions of us on the Earth and we are fighting each other. Where I live, we are fighting to expand oil and gas production while the fires are snapping at our heels. Many of us disagree, but the political system only accepts one winner.

I was a child on the farm in Israel and I read all that I could about that which doesn’t meet the eye. For reasons I can’t explain, I had a special interest in things like (ESP) Extrasensory Perception, psychic abilities, telepathy, biofeedback, and consciousness. We didn’t yet have computers and the internet but people were testing and measuring the force that we can’t see but feel that exists. The religious people believed it is the power of God, but I felt it is just yet an unknown part of science. God, to me, is above the laws of physics, which we declare based on incomplete information.

I believed that there is a veil hiding some realities from the living about our existence. Life is a stage in my existence that can only function if I don’t know what comes after it and I don’t know why. The Bible talks about the “Kingdom of God” and people made stories about Hell. It is not mentioned in the Christian Bible. I look at my province and other parts of the country burning and I am reminded of the fires of Hell mentioned in our folklore. I remember Jesus saying, don’t cry for me, cry for your children. He also talked about family members fighting with each other. I see it materializing all around me.

My grandchildren are very concerned about what we are doing to the world. Their parents are ready to fight for the prosperity they hope to get by delaying action to stop the damage we are inflicting on the Earth. Sure, stop it, they say, after my time. The weapon manufacturers are increasing production. I wonder if we will be able to stomach watching the outcome of our search for prosperity when we face the results. But we choose what to believe or not.

I only know the world and all in it through my conscience. My conscience knows it through the five senses, mostly through the little black hole in each eye called the pupil. First, there was light, and we became aware of our universe. Now we began to learn where we are and figure out what we can do about it. Our brain learned to initiate action or movement, which each one of us repeats when we are born into the world. I can tell my leg or arm to move and it does. I can tell my brain to solve a problem and it will try its best.

When the brain does things, it is not doing so physically. I can say it’s doing some mental activity, or as the people from the past said, for lack of other words, spiritually. The “spirit” is the universal “force” that co-exists in our world but can’t be seen with any light. Some people worship it while others call it luck. Are we just lucky to have a world that is perfect for us? That is assigning too much power to luck, in my opinion. I believe in a holy spirit that can exist together with the physical world and has a mind of its own. It knows the future but grants us free will. Call me a fool, but I witnessed prayers work better than we can request them to. We can use the “force” or “Spirit” if we each discover how.

My thoughts change many times a second, so I have a hard time asking for the right things. Often, I jump on an idea just not to forget it. It may not be the best choice. When I do, I defend it out of pride. I humbly say I am just a human and trust in God. Many generations before me did, and we came a long way.

Some people cheated, others worked hard, and they all trusted that they were smart. A few became rich and powerful, but examining their whole life, I wouldn’t trade my life for theirs. I don’t trust my smartness and the material things. I trust the unseen that I feel but don’t see.

Every scientist today knows that if we go fast into space and come back, we will arrive at a different time than we experienced. Our old laws of physics are not true. We are advanced, but we don’t know a lot. Most of what we don’t know we still call mental or spiritual. We need new words to understand our reality. I am glad. I expect we will discover a new world in the old world that we know. I can’t give up on spiritualism.