What is attractive about little mountain towns?

Many years ago, I drove through the Crowsnest Pass towns and was so impressed that I told people about that nice place that I found. Now I am one of the old timers here. It was a place that, according to one visitor, “time has passed by”. It had the historical look and all the amenities that a person needs. Hospital, mall, grocery stores, hardware, and lumber.

When I arrived, a herd of mountain sheep greeted me by an old white Anglican church. Cars were slowing down and folks taking pictures. Now uniformed public servants chase them away. The place was old but clean. I remembered visiting the towns some years before when mining was still going on. The same streets and buildings, but coal dust dulled the colors. Now the sun looked brighter. Beside an old home on the main street, a deer was napping in the shade and two fawns were grazing. “Free lawn care included”, crossed my mind, but there was a fence keeping creatures out of the flowers.

It was clear that the place was changing. The whole world was transforming. No longer we need many people for menial jobs and not everyone can be technicians or white-collar workers. Those were quickly disappearing as well. Computers were doing the old jobs. The new interest now was around traveling, recreation, and jobs are in the service industries. The Pass is an ideal place for it.

In the mornings when the sun rises, the mists lift over the mountain trails, lakes, rivers, and forests, drawing people. People are good for the economy. We should not be trying to do all things with less labor, but the opposite. We must realize that we feed each other or we all be gone. It is good for the economy if many people have good, well-paying jobs. Here in the Pass, there is a feeling of healing in the air. In the period after the first world war, they sent injured veterans here to a sanatorium in Frank.

It was amazing to look for a retirement place where moose and bears roamed and half of the population owned pets. Here in the mountains, there was an obvious relationship between people, animals, and nature that didn’t exist in the city, but it was under threat.

After I moved here, some old people told me about their worries. An old friend expressed the sentiment in a few words. People come to visit here, he said, and they are impressed by what we have. They like our way of life and some move here. A short time later, they get busy changing the place to be exactly like the places they moved from. You can see it in everything.

People talk about shopping locally to keep the place going. The new business owners bring the city business attitude in. Soon prices here are rising since competition is far away. They forced the locals to go to big box stores away from town, and when they get too old to travel, seniors move. Our community is changing. He pointed out the fact that we had a lot of little self-sustained businesses and they disappeared when Walmart arrived in a nearby town. True enough, I met many of our locals at Walmart, Costco, and other chain stores.

Slowly, in front of my eyes, the little community that attracted me began to change and the friendly little town atmosphere dissipated. My son-in-law came for a visit and said, grandpa, what is happening to your little town? I drive through the main street and every business has a for sale or rent sign. Is the place going to survive? I was wondering myself.

The town didn’t realize what was really killing it. Instead of working to retain the little community atmosphere, they tried to make it more like the city. Soon we saw new bylaws forcing people to not have pets. Another old resident called me to complain. He lost his closest relatives in a short time and was denied his ability to drive, for his safety, of course.

His lifelong friend, his cat, was sentenced to life in prison by the authorities. Might as well be stuffed as decoration. There must be a cat hater on the council. The guy had a dog that took him for walks. When all public spaces were taken off limits for free, well-behaved dogs, he had to give the dog up. He can’t drive to an “off-leash” place. You know Avner he said, our environment determines our life span. Studies prove that people who attend church live 15 years longer, and married and pet owners live 8 years more. I could not argue. He is right.

As I watched, things were changing again. The hills filled up with new homes and the for sale signs disappeared. Older homes are being renovated and people move in to work from home. Others are coming to spend their holidays here, close to animals and nature. I hope that our local leaders will notice and act quickly.

Let people have pets and relearn how to live with nature, not be at war with it. That is our edge. Reward little businesses that don’t gouge residents and welcome competition instead of killing it in its infancy. The best council is one that removes useless laws not enact new restrictions wholesale. Let us be what we are, a little community that lives with nature and provides what cities can’t.

 

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.

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.

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