2023 Foray No.2 Waterford Greenway

 Waterford Greenway

It’s always good to have a goal. In this case the goal was to cycle the Waterford Greenway (46km of free-for-use, dedicated, paved cycleway / footpath on the bed of a former railway line - more on that later), which implied an overnight stay. The Greenway boasts three original viaducts and a tunnel, and numerous other bridges including a new bridge over the N25. The details included balancing tent and sleeping bag on my bike, with backpack for the rest of the stuff even we minimalistic humans require to exist, cycling from home to Sallins (Naas), then train (using my free travel pass) with bike to Waterford (I had to change at Kildare), thence following the Greenway to its terminus at Dungarvan. Potter about a while, visit Lidl and finally to succumb to fish and chips, and after consumption thereof setting off for Trá na mBó on Ireland’s majestic Copper Coast, where I made camp on a grassy promontory. 

Without doubt Trá na mBó is an idyllic spot and A1 for wild camping. The name translates disappointedly to “Strand of the Cows”. The Irish is more charming. In old Irish Bó translates as ‘cow’. The prefix ‘m’ is a mutation (i.e. modification of the initial consonant of a word) so that a mBó translates as ‘their cow’. Or ‘cows’. Leastways I think so.

The night was fitful, not warm and with the leg cramps I always get after arduous cycling, but I survived. I got up at around 7am with the original intent of frying bacon. But Trá na mBó had lost its charm - it was overcast, cold and windy and all I wanted to do was to hasten to warmer climes, so I struck camp without breakfast, travelling north to Kilmacthomas where I rejoined the Greenway and found myself a bit of grass on which to stand my new camping stove and cook my bacon.

Track statistics

1. Tuesday: Home to Sallins (Naas) 13.2 miles average speed moving 11.65mph

2. Waterford to Lidl Dungarvan 30.4 miles (48.7km)

3. Dungarvan to Trá na mBó 13.1 miles, average speed moving 8.95mph, elevation gain 274m

4. Wednesday Trá na mBó to Waterford 23.7 miles average speed 8.1mph elevation gain 243m 

5. Newbridge to home 15.2 miles average speed moving 8.7mph elevation gain 250m

Grand total distance on bike 95.6 miles

My pictures can be found here.

Check out the Suir Valley narrow gauge railway here where can also be found:

The Waterford, Dungarvan and Lismore Line was still not linked to the main network of rail lines, to overcome this problem, the Red Iron Bridge was built in 1906 and after this passengers could travel directly to Rosslare. Many wealthy families living in London bought summer houses in Killarney and could leave Paddington by the evening express train to Fishguard complete with children and domestic staff. On arriving at Fishguard the train ran alongside the ship and passengers were able to transfer, thus allowing immediate departure. The ship journey was at least half an hour faster than nowadays, and the train was waiting on the pier at Rosslare when the boat arrived alongside, facilitating another prompt departure. There were of course no customs delays in those days. The train stopped at Waterford around breakfast time, breakfast being served in the dining car of the train. On arrival in Mallow the train took the Kerry line from Mallow, arriving at Killarney around lunchtime.

Sadly so many of these branch lines have now been closed. Thankfully the branch to Killarney and Tralee is still operational.

Kilmacthomas viaduct drone video courtesy of JJ's World Tour:

2023 Foray No.1 Tralee

Now that Covid has (or the official rules concerning Covid have) retreated somewhat, my Free Travel pass is burning a hole in my wallet. So I decided on a leisurely beginning. The rule of the game is that the trip must cost nothing, or at least very little. That rules out using a car or a B&B or purchasing much in the way of kit.

I took the 07:10 bus from the end of our road not yet fully decided on a destination, and ended up getting off at the Square, Tallaght and taking the Luas tram to Dublin Heuston station and boarding the train for Cork. At Mallow I changed to the single-track Killarney line and rode all the way to its terminus at Tralee. Here I disembarked somewhat perfunctorily - to convince myself and any interested railway staff that I had arrived at my final destination (they were not interested) - and then re-boarded. I guess I was at my final destination there for less than 10 minutes before the train retraced its wheels back to Mallow, thence to Heuston, the Square, and finally back home. This must be the furthest you can go from my home in one day using public transport. The total cost (to me) of this trip was the €3.80 I rashly spent for an overpriced and underrated coffee on the train.

On my last foray at Killarney station I pointed out the strange track alignment indicated above. To depart from Killarney towards Tralee the train has to reverse and come to a halt in a siding. The driver then switches ends (he walks through the train corridor to do this) and the points are set so that the train, going forward, now branches to the right and thus towards Tralee. With a reverse procedure on the return journey. Which process takes time and must be a trial for the driver.

Sun rise over our lake, from the bus stop

Loughmore Castle

Carrauntoohil over there somewhere

Is speaking in tongues a thing?

There is not much doubt about it being a "thing": more to the point what kind of a thing is it? The Bible accounts may be referring to a genuine experience but my own contribution, which I took to be from God, I now consider to be fake. Please - I am talking about my own experience. If you claim to speak in tongues and are edified by so doing, so be it.

In the précis of my spiritual life posted elsewhere I alluded to this spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, hereafter "Tongues". In our church, as is common in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, Tongues is considered a confirmation or indication that one has received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, or "The Baptism". Many years ago, wanting to "go on" with God, and encouraged to do so by the Christians I respected and looked up to, I earnestly sought The Baptism. I was counselled to ask God for this it and then accept its receipt in faith on the basis of Matthew 7:11. And similarly with Tongues, only here some tangible action was required, so I started (as I had been taught) by voicing nonsense syllables. With practice I became better at doing this. But both then and now it was totally under my control and thus did not seem to be supernatural as one might expect a gift of the Holy Spirit would be. All this I now know is familiar ground to many, for example per the links I give below.

But not to all. I knew someone who had had much more "miraculous" experience of receiving The Baptism in which they suddenly and spontaneously erupted into Tongues accompanied by feelings of ecstasy. I cannot comment further on such experiences other than it did not happen to me in this way. Perhaps, you will say, was I not earnest enough, or did I not have sufficient faith? Such criticisms are common but not helpful.

From then until recently I spoke in Tongues when it seemed appropriate and I naively assumed I was on course, although I did have recurring doubts. True, in private prayer, Tongues could be handy if one just did not know how else to pray, perhaps because of the feeling it gave of having accomplished something.

What has made me particularly sceptical was when a preacher invited anyone in the congregation who wanted to receive The Baptism to come forward. Older believers would then be asked to gather around and lay hands on the candidate - let's call him John. The preacher would then claim The Baptism for John whilst the others gabbled away in Tongues. At this point John was himself expected to erupt into Tongues. More often than not he would not, so then the preacher would tell him to open his mouth and make noises: almost anything would do initially. Meanwhile he would press more heavily on and shake John's forehead amid even more fervent prayers from the others. The process became very stressful and would go on for what seemed ages until John either gave in and made up suitable noises or the preacher would cop out, explaining that not everyone spoke in Tongues immediately, telling John that he should spend time privately on his knees... The palaver was intensely emotional and very pressurised and I hated it. Surely if Tongues was a gift of God it ought to be more given more graciously: spontaneously and obviously.

This procedure is doubtless based on Acts 19:6, except that in that case there is no suggestion that the men were pressurised by Paul. 

There's a lot on the internet on the subject: much of it from advocates proselytising and non-believers or cessationists debunking. Finding a fair treatment is more of a challenge. Here are a few more level-headed articles that align in some way with my own thinking:

An atheist speaking in tongues

Paper on spontaneous and context-dependent Tongues

History and origin?

Mentioning effect of peer pressure

Is Tongues nowadays fake?

But the bottom line (for me) is my own experience. Since I choose each syllable that I utter I conclude it is not Holy Spirit inspired and thus it is fake. Perhaps real Tongues is a thing but I regret that it is outside my own experience. And this in turn makes me doubt whether I ever received The Baptism. Which reduces me to being just an "ordinary, first-feast Christian" and I suppose with this I must remain content: but so saying another nail has pierced the coffin of my disillusionment. 

PS. However... on re-reading this I figure I have not explained myself very well and I can predict all manner of counter arguments and comments, like "where is your faith, brother?" But I've said elsewhere that faith is not a ethereal concept - faith without works is dead. 

How God becomes real

This post has been in draft for several months. The problem is that I do not want to misrepresent others or myself or, if you like, I am not yet 100% convinced, and there does not even seem the possibility of ever becoming fully sure, about my subject. Which is: how and when and whether God speaks to us.

Since my previous post Hearing God speak I have been somewhat surprised to find serious investigation into this phenomenon. My title comes from the book by Tanya M. Luhrmann. You can listen to her 2015 TEDx talk. I challenge you to read her books and judge for yourself. In her Preface, and, as a taster, she writes: People don't (easily) have faith in gods and spirits. People do not, in fact, behave as if gods and spirits are real in the way that everyday objects are real... To have a sustained commitment to the reality of invisible agents... [e.g. God] someone must interpret the world through a special way of thinking, expecting, and remembering. I will call this a faith frame. That faith frame coexists alongside the ordinary ways people make sense of the world, and sometimes contradicts them. The priest says: this is my body, but it looks like a dry cracker. The sermon insists: my God can do anything, but God didn't stop the divorce. And so faith is hard - particularly when an invisible other is supposed to love you, care for you, and keep you safe. 

She goes on with six further points which form a roadmap to the following chapters, and then assures us that Nothing I say here speaks for or against the genuine reality of gods and spirits.

Luhrmann has done her homework. In her prequel "When God talks back" she writes: I found the church in my own backyard, a few blocks from where I lived in Chicago... I went in looking for a nondenominational church that taught people to hear God speak back, but I didn't go back for months after my first visit because nobody did anything to suggest they were much different from the people in the liberal mainstream churches I'd known as a child. Nobody spoke in tongues or fell over in spiritual bliss. The pastor... explained a book of the Bible chapter by chapter, as if he were lecturing to an undergraduate class... People were taking notes. Many of them had their Bibles out, and they were staring at the text as if they were trying to analyze a difficult poem. 

I finally went back for a second visit because I had done enough reading to figure out that this was in fact exactly the kind of church in which God was not a distant, abstract, principle but a person among persons. I stayed for two years. On a Sunday, the service in this church begins with music... at a church like the Vineyard, music is prayer. The church sets aside a full thirty minutes for the music at the beginning of the service, and they call this section of the service "worship?' There are no hymnals, just PowerPoint-projected lyrics of songs people know so well that many sing them with their eyes shut... The techies dim the lights. Some people stand, eyes closed, palms out and upward, swaying slightly, their cheeks sometimes wet with tears. Some sit and rest their foreheads on clasped hands. Some kneel in prayer. Occasionally someone lies prostrate or dances in the open space to the side of the seating area...

All this seems very familiar to me. Luhrmann goes on to say that what some claim as God speaking is in fact an artefact of the human brain - voices in the head or "self-talk" as described in Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow". But so saying she does not rule out the existence of God.

And neither do I. I am not an atheist. Yet. Indeed, how dare you or I question out of hand (as some do), and on not much more than a whim, the experience of others or even the Biblical record? But I do question the evidence I see (or fail to see) in myself; my lack of the calibre of faith that says "All things are possible for one who believes".  For I too have in the past reckoned that I have heard God speak only to become disillusioned by lack of corresponding action. Or maybe it is that action is on its way but I am just not patient enough.

I realise that I am repeating things I have alluded to in previous posts, like Orual's belligerent mantra: Did you ever remember whose the girl was? She was mine. Mine. Do you not know what the word means? Mine! You're thieves, seducers. That's my wrong. I'll not complain (not now) that you're blood-drinkers and man-eaters. I'm past that..."

"Enough," said the judge. 

There was utter silence all round me. And now for the first time I knew what I had been doing. While I was reading, it had, once and again, seemed strange to me that the reading took so long; for the book was a small one. Now I knew that I had been reading it over and over — perhaps a dozen times. I would have read it forever, quick as I could, starting the first word again almost before the last was out of my mouth, if the judge had not stopped me. And the voice I read it in was strange to my ears. There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice. There was silence in the dark assembly long enough for me to have read my book out yet again. At last the judge spoke. 

"Are you answered?" he said. 

"Yes," said I.  [Lewis "Till we have faces"]

My own mantra is relevant because (as I once intimated) upon it hangs, to a large degree, my ability to hear from God.  In that instance, looking back, I thought I had heard God; now I find that my judgment has shifted, that I am more inclined to admit that I may have deluded myself. And, oh, what freedom, what release comes with such acknowledgment!  And yet, and yet... there definitely was a need that my deluded self had cared so much about. Any freedom I gained was entirely selfish. The whole episode remains one of my most intense and poignant personal battles and contributes to my views expressed in this post. Perhaps one day in looking back it will all make more sense.

---oOo---

You'll find plenty of other material on the internet dealing with "how to hear God" from slushy evangelical advice-columnists to die-hard atheist denial. I prefer to try to analyse what goes on inside me and what I reckon goes in inside those I interact with. Or to check out the Biblical record (for examples see here) where I find the Voice was often external to the subject. Whilst undeniably miraculous, it is hard to explain such accounts solely in terms of imagination. In some accounts the Voice was in a dream which, I grant, could be imagination. Even when the channel was not specified like "the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah...", in this case what follows is 14 chapters of verbiage plus a few visions which do not sound to me like self-talk. So I reckon that, should God actually speak to you, you ought not to be in any doubt. Gideon doubted his ability to fulfill what the angel said, but there is no suggestion that he doubted that he had heard.

The prevalence in evangelical or charismatic folk to expect God to speak inside their heads colours their concept of a "personal relationship" with God or Jesus. I can, if I choose, carry out a dialogue in my head. If I then associate one side with God speaking, my perceived relationship with God becomes more pally. Which sucks. For if God exists at all, He surely is all powerful, all knowing, far above anything my puny mind can imagine. Whereas inside my head I can dictate what this perceived "other" should say. If you don't believe me, try it!

I've already noted that Google and God not only start with the same letter. What if, when AI has reached maturity and has become ubiquitous, God is supplanted by something akin to Jane (who speaks to Ender via a jewel in his ear) who first found herself between the stars, her thoughts playing among the vibrations of the philotic strands of the ansible net. The computers of the Hundred Worlds were hands and feet, eyes and ears to her. She spoke every language that had ever been committed to computers and read every book in every library on every world [Orson Scott Card: Speaker for the Dead]?

Here's another web-identity "thoughtcontrol777" who questions how God is perceived to speak and writes: ...I began “searching” and became a born again Christian shortly thereafter. I remained in the church for twenty years, and it dramatically shaped who I was. There were many times as a Christian that I did not feel that I was myself, but rather just a poor version of trying to be someone else. But I was a fully committed and indoctrinated Christian: I was baptised in water, I spoke in tongues and I performed what I considered at the time to be the gifts of the spirit... I studied the Bible... Since leaving the church I have not missed it. I feel like I am me again and can attest that there is freedom outside of Christ Jesus. I am regretful of how much of my life was wasted in pointless church services, prayer meetings and administrative meetings for the church. 

And in their web page "The Voice of God" writes:

One of the most confusing aspects about living as a modern day Evangelical/Charismatic Christian is dealing with the issue of the voice of God. Many Evangelicals and basically all Pentecostals or Charismatics believe that God actually speaks to people personally. However, God does not typically speak in an audible voice but rather as a “still small voice” that a person hears only inside themselves. Literally, it is a voice inside their head. Many Christians claim to hear this voice, indeed I myself believed that I was hearing it for a number of years during my Christian life. But likewise other Christians, perhaps more discerning, acknowledge that they do not hear the voice of God.

During the latter part of my Christian experience I noticed that whenever I would ask God for advice on something important I would never get an answer. But I would hear “what I thought was” the voice of God in regards to other random unimportant things. This was baffling... So I began to put the voice to the test asking God to reveal certain things to me so that I knew that it was him who was actually speaking. Or, to show me signs. There were no occurrences in which the still small voice was able to accurately tell me anything about the future. And the signs were a no-show. This process took a number of years but at the end of it I stopped listening. If God was not going to accurately talk to me then why should I listen?

A sad conclusion. 

So, whilst I am done with the voice in my head being divine, I hope to remain open minded and unbiased enough to acknowledge God should He manifest, cognisant of those religious leaders who failed to recognise Jesus despite the miracles.

Three little bones

Shortly after Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, and paralleling the development of the transistor as I have outlined before, a boy was born, a boy who loved mud, dirt and making things.

Aided by a trip to Woolworths where his father purchased battery, flashlight bulb, switch and wire, he became infatuated with all things electricity. Meanwhile, out in the world, Moore's law was making its interminable progress

As a boy he loved to take things apart to "see how they worked". Regrettably he was not equally good at reassembling them, so in consequence he amassed (and probably still does) a vast stock of bits and pieces. On one, well-remembered occasion he attempted to build a radio using these parts. The chassis was made of Meccano and there was an ear phone and a volume control somewhere in the mix, but these and many other pieces he joined together without much understanding and somewhat randomly. He reasoned that the stuff had once constituted a working radio so why not again? To his upmost disappointment it did not work. He got better at this sort of thing over time although probably still reveres the age old method of trial and error mixed with a good portion of hope which gave Edison the light bulb.

Later he was taken to an amateur showing  see the Moody Science Institute Faith and Faith film "Dust or Destiny" which explored the wonders of the human body. He was, of course, fascinated, hooked, even infatuated. Then it was in 16mm acetate medium and the projector interested him almost as much as the content. Now-a-days you can watch these films on Youtube. 

At that time in school biology he happened to be studying the five senses and recalls handing in some homework in which he had reproduced material from the film in graphic detail: he got full marks but also a caution about keeping to the question...

But the workings of the ear (to take one example) are indeed amazing. Here's a picture of the three bones of the inner ear, which carry out impedance matching to maximise the transfer of energy from airborne sound to vibrations in the inner ear fluid.  Striking a tuning fork and then pressing its foot onto a wooden surface amplifies the sound in a similar way. All fine and dandy in theory, but if I were to design a microphone with inner workings that looked this messy I can be pretty sure it would fall on deaf ears so to speak.

Three tiny bones in the middle ear

Quote: The malleus and incus are suspended by two ligaments that provide an axis of rotation so that the middle ear bones pivot when the tympanic membrane vibrates. The footplate of the stapes inserts into the oval window of the inner ear whence nerve endings detect what we perceive as sound.

And then there's the cochlea or organ of Corti, the inner ear which transfers these vibrations into nerve impulses. All told, the ear surpasses most if not all man-made microphones in terms of sensitivity (quote the sensitivity of the ear is close to the ultimate limit at which it would begin to detect the noise fluctuations in the air) and dynamic range (around 120dB).

Quote: The inner ear is divided into two fluid filled chambers... The fluid in the two chambers differs on the basis of the kind of salt that each contains. The fluid in the outer or bony chamber is filled with a sodium salt solution (called perilymph) that resembles the salt composition in the blood or the fluids found in the brain. The inner or membranous chamber is filled with a potassium salt solution (endolymph) that resembles the fluid that is normally found inside the cells of the body. Specialized cells that line parts of the membranous chamber and “pump” potassium into the membranous chamber maintain the difference in concentration between the two chambers. The difference in the chemical composition of these two fluids provides chemical energy (like a battery) that powers the activities of the sensory cells. 

The inner ear organs must be small because any increase in their size would increase their mass... [which would] decrease the sensitivity... The mass of the cochlear sensory epithelium is further reduced because it has only a small number of blood vessels... reduced by a unique system for converting the metabolic energy from sugar and oxygen in the blood into an electrical potential... the auditory system is sensitive enough to “hear” the vibrations associated with blood moving through blood vessels. It is fortunate they are located away from the organ of Corti.

There's much more detail freely available on the internet. You can find papers that purport to explain such workings of the human body and the implied evolutionary process but they often seem to me to use highly specialised terms only to obfuscate, for example (my emphasis):

All reptiles and birds have only one middle ear ossicle [bone], the stapes or columella. How these two additional ossicles came to reside and function in the middle ear of mammals has been studied for the last 200 years and represents one of the classic example of how structures can change during evolution to function in new and novel ways. From fossil data, comparative anatomy and developmental biology it is now clear that the two new bones in the mammalian middle ear, the malleus and incus, are homologous to the quadrate and articular, which form the articulation for the upper and lower jaws in non-mammalian jawed vertebrates. The incorporation of the primary jaw joint into the mammalian middle ear was only possible due to the evolution of a new way to articulate the upper and lower jaws, with the formation of the dentary-squamosal joint, or TMJ in humans. The evolution of the three-ossicle ear in mammals is thus intricately connected with the evolution of a novel jaw joint, the two structures evolving together to create the distinctive mammalian skull. 

Suffice it to say the design of the human ear is remarkable. Some would see this as evidence for an Intelligent Creator but then what or who designed the creator? By introducing God the need for intelligent design has simply been shifted. That all reptiles and birds have only one middle ear bone whilst we have three implies an evolutionary step which creationists contest. I am not endorsing either view (frankly I do not know) but I do marvel at how a bunch of bones, tissues, blood and gore could possibly detect sound with a sensitivity sensitivity close to the theoretical limit and enable us to communicate and to enjoy the emotional depths and artistry of music. Could a random assembly of electronic components ever become a first class radio receiver?

How our kids will change the world

I hear babies cry

I watch them grow

They'll learn much more

Than I'll ever know

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Louis Armstrong

I sit beside the fire and think

of people long ago

and people who will see a world

that I shall never know.

sung by Bilbo Baggins

Extravert or introvert, leader or led, consumer or producer: dreamer, author, creator, inventor, artist, engineer, scientist - what will today's kids become or see or use in their lifetime? Consider how the world has changed in mine, given my particular interest in electronics: the transistor was invented around the time of my birth in 1952. Without it none of modern electronics could exist. Since then Moore's Law has faithfully mapped the exponential increase in complexity and corresponding decrease in size and cost of all things electronic so that today the Cerebras WSE-2 is the largest computer chip ever built and the fastest AI processor on Earth boasting 2.6 trillion transistors, 850,000 AI-optimized cores, and 40 gigabytes of high performance on-wafer memory. 

Laptops, tablets, smart phones, the pocket calculator... I remember my father using a Ready Reckoner to laboriously calculate the cost of items sold in his DIY shop. Later he invested in a mechanical calculator. The first electronic pocket calculators only became available when I was in college: Sinclair and HP leading the way. Today every high-school kid has one.

Children today have from infancy taken the smart phone for granted. They navigate through its myriad features probably more quickly even than those who designed them. A far cry from the monochrome text-only displays or the teletype interface of computers when I was at college.

---oOo---

It used to be said that the PSTN (global telephone network) was man's most complex invention with its  972 million fixed-line telephone subscriptions currently in use worldwide. Its inventor Graham Bell and his partners, Hubbard and Sanders, offered to sell the patent for the telephone outright to Western Union for $100,000, equal to $2.5 million today. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy. 

That accolade has been eclipsed by other contenders e.g. the internet, or the nuclear fusion reactor in France that promises to 'solve the world’s energy problems for the next 30 million years' with a cost so far of $20bn. Meanwhile the PSTN, or more accurately the POTS, is due for retirement - in 2025 in the UK - ousted by VoIP. Then, with so much relying on it, what if the internet falls over?

In 1943 Thomas Watson, president of IBM, is credited with saying "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." To be fair, he was referring to the mammoth machines of his day, but still... And now the microprocessor (a computer on a chip), touted by some as man's most complex invention, is ubiquitous. Your average cell-phone's microprocessor has 'over 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago'. 

Or is Dutch company ASML's 'extreme ultraviolet lithography machine' the most complex machine in the world, as required to manufacture today's silicon chips like Cerebras WSE-2? One arrived in Ireland in April 2022 at a cost of around $120m. 

Previously unbelievable inventions now enter stage often enough to avoid much fanfare. Did anyone notice exactly when the internet search engine came of age, or question how exactly does e.g. Google find results so quickly or can even predict what you want to look for?

Did anyone notice voice synthesis and recognition (as in Alexa, Siri, Hey Google, Cortana) making its debut and quickly becoming ubiquitous? Its adoption by the man-in-the-street seemed to happen overnight although it had been in development throughout my lifetime. Or what about the wonder of GPS navigation?

Here is a good summary of the history of human technology.

---oOo---

What new technologies will come to fruition during the next generation?  Has AI already passed the Turing Test?  Will robots ever pass as human? Who knows what horrors human genetic engineering will come up with? Will nuclear fusion be tamed and become the major source of energy? Already it looks like self-driving vehicles will become the norm. Will space travel become accessible to the ordinary person? And what of the global warming and climate change scare; and all those many conspiracy theories that abound: will any actually pan out? Or the invention of anti-gravity where the story poses that pure noise—a completely random sequences of pulses—contains all possible messages and information, and that our ability to understand it depends on the mental filters that we’ve set up. Give a team of geniuses a source of raw noise and loosen up their filters, the story argues, and they can figure out just about anything, as long as they’re convinced that it’s possible.

Or will all these bricks, man's accomplishments, come tumbling down, Babel fashion, as hubris soars, pandemics scourge, or wars devastate? 

I yearn for these young lives and their futures. So fragile, vulnerable, impressionable, innocent, credulous. And yet the future depends wholly on how they will perform. But if, through it all, anyone were to put their lives in jeopardy... it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Add to that globally declining population and its effect on society.

And quantum computing: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64492456

Now we are seventy

I crossed the round number age of 64 without any fuss despite the Beatles' rendition, because few are familiar with binary. But on having passed my 70th birthday (and Ali is just passed 71) a special brunch was put on for us this morning and accolades were read out. I found the experience quite overwhelming, humbling, that so many folk genuinely cared for, indeed love us.

Early in the morning I had discovered the arrangement in my photo and that was enough to make strong emotions rise in me, bringing to my remembrance:

"Ah!" roared Aslan. "You have conquered me. You have great hearts. Not for the sake of your dignity, Reepicheep, but for the love that is between you and your people, and still more for the kindness your people showed me long ago when you ate away the cords that bound me on the Stone Table (and it was then, though you have long forgotten it, that you began to be Talking Mice), you shall have your tail again.

There are a several resonances with my experience in this passage: one only will I draw attention to here, that it should be possible by our love for each other to conquer Aslan. 

That said, I find it a strange thing that I am now in my 70's. When I was younger I associated this age with decrepit, doddering, forgetful... The last one sticks but I'm still me inside.

The Move is dead (almost)

In my last post I pondered what makes a Christian church part of the true Church. And in a previous post I have referred to the Move with which our church has been loosely connected. There are a number of preachers who get invited to visit Move groups and one of these "travelling ministry" has recently spoken in our church here. Chatting with him, it appears that Move groups the world over are in a state of flux: that it is not just in our own group that foundations we thought had been laid good and solid are now being questioned and often torn down. And so I suppose that the end-time Move of God (to give it a fuller title) is near its end.

Am I bothered? In one sense no, and neither am I surprised, because the true Church is built on a better foundation. But I grieve for its effect on folk who have grown up under its teachings and have invested all their life, energies and funds in an edifice which is now crumbling. Personally, I do have unanswered questions but I have few regrets: I think the experience has left me stronger, wiser.

Here's one of the early Move songs. Ironically the founder of the movement was killed in a plane crash.

People of God, it is time to arise

And proclaim to creation we're not going to die.

Let it ring from the valleys and the mountains so high,

God's people proclaiming we're not going to die;

All heaven's rejoicing, now hear them all sing,

Grave, where's thy victory? O death, where's thy sting?

The saints down the centuries have all come to pass,

Each one fulfilling his God-given task;

To His sons God has spoken, and witness His cry,

And proclaim to creation we're not going to die.

The prophets of the Lord had a line that they laid,

Though they were steadfast they all died in faith,

But they spoke of a people that would one day arise,

And proclaim to creation we're not going to die.

So take courage now, brethren, and close in your ranks,

Stand on the promises, giving God thanks;

For Satan will fight us, or surely he'll try,

But he can't beat a people that aren't going to die.

Is the Church of god the church of God?

Here's another post that I write ages ago but did not publish at the time...

So - I was reading the books of the Pentateuch and trying to get my head around the many rules in the so called Law of Moses. Are all these rules still applicable today or do Christians only have to contend with the moral law (e.g. Ten Commandments) and, if so, what does one do with the 3rd commandment (keeping the Sabbath)? I checked this out in Google (as one does) and ended up even more confused (as one does). I got lots of hits but found that most if not all of them were Very Opinionated.

The presbytery of one "Church of God"

For example, there are Christian movements that assert that members should keep the Jewish Sabbath i.e. from sun-down Friday and through Saturday. One such is the Living Church of God with their impressive web portal for questioning outsiders like myself. They think the whole Law of Moses still stands although I'm not sure on their application of details like You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk which injunction is mentioned three times in the OT repeated presumably for its importance. Some consider any Christian movement worth its salt will have the phrase "Church of God" in its title because that's what the Bible says, although a quick search of the NT showed 80 instances of  "church" of which only 8 were "church of God".

Some say that, since all these things [recorded in the OT] happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come, we should interpret them "spiritually" i.e. to extract some lesson from them rather get embroiled in the literal gory details. In this way the gore can conveniently and tacitly be ignored. Try telling those Israelites of old that their brutal lifestyle was only ever meant as a picture for future generations of some Vast Eternal Plan...

Wikipedia's entry for "Church of God" lists a large number of disparate movements with this phrase in their title, each considering theirs is the bee's knees. Some are offshoots from Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God (renamed Grace Communion International after their founder's death when they repudiated most of his whacky beliefs) including the above Living... Of course Armstrong claimed that his was the only true church of God while all others were counterfeits. This argument appears to be a common denominator in such movements. Indeed, in the Open Brethren church I grew up in, I found it hard to believe that any non-Brethren people could be true Christians. It came as a surprise to me, when I left home for college, to meet folk who were undeniably Christian yet were not Brethren. But, full circle, I later became involved with The Move who also implicitly regarded themselves as the true church. Granted, they did concede that there just might be Christians in other movements that had the revelation but implied this was unlikely.

If a movement or even one of its local congregations is heavily dependent on or elevate a single man or his (or her) unusual Biblical interpretation, or if they are in any way exclusive (i.e. claiming alone to be God's chosen people or at least that they are elite), or if they have a special identifying title or denomination or are insistent on having no title, or if they are the result of a split over doctrine, or if they have a special dress code or other strange rules, then I say that movement is highly questionable. It's taken me several years to learn this lesson!  With, I suppose, the exception that (as I think I have observed elsewhere) main-stream Christianity itself is, of course, founded on the teachings of a single man.

What I find most disturbing is the multiplicity of Christian movements which have a substantial following and think they are right, but which are mutually in disagreement with each other. And, worse, that I have unwittingly been involved in two of them.

Don't get me wrong - it is not my intention to decry any of these movements. Let their own members decide for themselves. I say, along with the apostle Paul, that each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. It is both foolish and irresponsible to blame another person for one's state. The only trouble with this line is that I find that I am not yet "fully convinced". Indeed, the older I get the less convinced I seem to become.

In the grand Calormene manner

I was brought up in a conservative Bible believing home and thus read the book with the presumption that it was all literally true. I find I can no longer do that: I read with a more open mind and discover nuances that eluded me before. An example is the OT book of Job which seems to me to be a highly structured tale. The details of the plot can be taken with a pinch of salt but the underlying moral is clear. To me, realising that the book of Job is fiction does not detract from the power of the message - for sometimes fairy stories say best what's to be said. When applied to the rest of the Bible the effect is refreshing. Some might find it heretical saying: if Job is to be fiction then next you'll be claiming that Jesus didn't do all those miracles or rise from the dead, which logic I refute.

Hearing God speak

I wrote this post some while ago but did not publish it at the time, possibly because I was afraid of the possible repercussions of "coming out" in this respect. But since I am now working on a sequel I figured I had better publish this first so that I can refer back to it. The whole story that I want to convey will thus become rather long and drawn out, but so it must if I am to be faithful to my inner convictions (or lack of them). Let he be blessed who reads it all and can convince me otherwise.

She of the Green Kirtle

There are folk who live here that claim that God (or Jesus maybe) speaks to them on a regular basis. It is not my place to judge them - perhaps God does often speak to them which would of course be wonderful. True, there have been occasions when I have thought God was leading me - here I refer to an inner conviction (or at least a feeling), not an audible voice. But as I intimated in my recent post I now wonder if even this was in fact just wishful thinking, and thus I also wonder if these folk blessed by frequent conversations with Almighty God are also imagining it.

I am not talking about the word of God as in the Scripture which we understand is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, and in which long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. Such is God's general word to us whereas I am talking about specific direction from God to an individual.

A quick Google search on God's voice will uncover countless "Christian" sites - whacky and more staid and the sort that make you puke. These list the trad evangelical methods of "hearing God" that I had drummed into me as a young person and which include the supposed Still Small Voice. On the other hand, sites like this one claim that listening for God’s voice in your heart is a very new development and it’s deeply flawed.

The human mind is capable of all manner of strange artefacts - individuals we used to call "lunatic", now given PC euphemisms, who hear voices in their head; times when I have thought I had seen something "out of the corner of my eye" but then on looking more intently it is gone; vivid dreams that possibly have meaning, certainly have cause. And the "voice" of my inner conscience that deliberates my thought process, and with which I can (if I like) converse with. Perhaps this is what other folk think is God speaking? If so then it strikes me that it reflects a particularly poor sort of God, and this reminds me of the pretty poor world of She of the Green Kirtle.

Sure, you'll find many instances in the Bible of God, or an angel sent by God, speaking to this one or that. Like with Gideon. But if you consider the time period spanned by the Bible you'll find that these instances were relatively infrequent, indeed the exception and not the norm. Granted, Jesus said "my sheep hear my voice" and possibly meant this to include after his ascension, but he didn't say how often.

In this article, one that quotes Dallas Willard who seems to have been a big name in American evangelicalism, Bill Gaultiere writes "It’s hard to imagine an intimate relationship with Christ that does not include regular experiences of hearing his voice. An interactive relationship with God is conversational...". Later he writes "Today he is still speaking to our hearts in 'gentle whispers' (1 Kings 19:12)". The reference is to Elijah's "still small voice" often quoted by those who promote the personal relationship deal. But I am not at all sure that Elijah frequently heard God speak like this.

The thing is, having been brought up a staunch evangelical I feel like I ought to often hear God's voice even though my experience says otherwise. Which is sort of devastating in a way that a non-evangelical could never understand. My prayer life becomes less conversational. It becomes harder to take seriously those who really believe God speaks to them as often as their best friend. And I wonder if the foundations are cracking under my feet.

Bereavement

Bereavement is the experience of losing someone important to us and is characterised by grief. But losing anything of importance can result in similar albeit milder emotions. Although my retirement from Microlite began over a year ago, it is only recently that nearly all electronics and programming work has rather suddenly ceased. Then there was the decision to step down from leadership in our local church, reduced activity in helping home-schoolers, and even the loss of stamina associated with ageing. It feels a bit like those cartoons in which the ground is removed from under characters but it is only after a second or two that they start falling. I am beginning to feel that falling effect.

I’ve been re-reading Lewis’s “A grief observed”. He writes: if my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards.

It is all too easy to find temporary fulfilment in work, ministry, relationships, hobbies, but when those things are taken away we wonder what life really is all about.

A grand day out

Bus and Train (on free pass) to Dogheda then walk/jog down coast via Mornington, Laytown, Ballbriggan and finally to Skerries. It would have been more enjoyable had it been a tad warmer, but great fun nonetheless. 17.6 miles, average speed 3.4mph. Thus mostly walking! 

The Guards stopped me along the road to Mornington - apparently a passing motorist had queried my appearance: barefoot, jogging, and holding a bag.  Do they not do such things in Drogheda?  

Here are some pictures.

Looking for cracks

Crack:  a line on the surface of something along which it has split without breaking apart.

A crack implies compromised physical strength to the point of catastrophic failure. It involves a structural discontinuity, and may also provide a glimpse into what is on the other side, as in peeping through a crack in a solid fence.

LP cover Watered Garden by Cloud

A long time ago (1976 in fact) we purchased or were given an LP Watered Garden by Cloud, and the track Surely the Lord is in this place has stuck with me all these years. It is, of course, based on Jacob's words on waking from his stairway-to-heaven dream:

Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not... How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. 

It stuck with me for the unexpected turn of the melody in describing this "dreadful place". 

Here is another composer's rendering: Locus Iste which translates as This place was made by God:

OK, you say, it was "only" a dream. But what a dream! In my imagination "the gate of heaven" is like a crack giving a fleeting glimpse into the heavenly realm. There are other similar Biblical instances such as Moses and the burning bush, the three men that "appeared" out of the blue to Abraham:

And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him... 

or Gideon's encounter, the angel Gabriel visiting Mary, even the Revelation to John. Not to mention the miracles of Jesus. These encounters (unless you are the sort that simply dismisses them as myth) do not follow the "normal" course of human experience. Perhaps they are all examples of cracks in normality?

If cracks they be, I want to see some cracks with my own eyes. But maybe I'd be blown away by what I saw?

In this indolent day-and-age it is possible for many of us Westerners to live most of our lives within our comfort zone and never (by our choice at least) venture outside it. In this way some folk would never try a rollercoaster even if you paid them. But a modicum of discomfort appears to be a healthy diet. Only by crossing the line of certainty and familiarity can you grow: pain is a signal of learning.

I have noted elsewhere how major changes like retirement or disillusionment with one's former beliefs have jolted me out of comfort leaving me feeling empty, lacking in motivation. I will gather all such changes together and label them one's predicament. Viktor Frankl's classic tells us of the overriding need for meaning in life even if there is believed to be none. Else one's predicament is liable to result in untimely death.

Meaning can be synthesised by demarcating an area (arbitrarily if need be) and then taking ownership over it. Like learning to master even mundane tasks like washing up the dishes or weeding the garden. The area could be material (a plot of land, a building, a machine) or intangible (a skill, a peculiar hobby, a favourite artist, the love and care for another person). It hardly matters: what does matter is that you choose to make it your domain and, as such, you nourish it, excel in it, make it beautiful, even use it to the betterment of others. But all of that not because anyone made you do it, or even suggested you should. Even if it was not your number one choice of activity you chose to do it, and do it you will, to the best of your ability. I will call this area your domain.

Back to where we were. So a predicament has removed meaning from one's life. You side-step and, by concentrating on your domain, you create a degree of meaning. But every so often, figuring there must be more to life, you look outside your domain - you look for a crack in what has become your normality.

I've been refreshing my knowledge of "modern physics" with a view to giving our eldest two students a brief summary as their last science lesson in our home-school here. The story is all about the cracks that started to appear in Newtonian aka classical physics around the turn of the 19th century. Cracks that opened a vista into realms hitherto unimagined: quantum mechanics with its wave-particle duality and uncertainty principle and ever smaller elementary particles making up the Standard Model; Einstein's theories of relativity with its invariant speed of light, mass-energy equivalence and curved space-time; cosmologists, aided by the James Webb telescope, finding an ever expanding universe and ever increasing numbers of galaxies; and biologists with their fossil data insisting that the theory of evolution is so well attested that it should be taught in schools as a fact.

Search for "cracks in the fabric of the universe" and you'll find that some scientists believe there really are cracks although what this knowledge does for us is not entirely clear. These cracks, if they exist at all, are fault lines, artefacts left over from the big bang and are or may be miles long, vanishingly thin, tremendously heavy but as yet invisible to us. I want better than that! Personally I'd be more interested in the sort of cracks that you can first see and then pass through... But what if one of these big bang cracks got too close to planet Earth...?

When ordinary people (like myself) try to make head or tail of all this, they can easily get the wrong end of the stick and fall for conspiracy theories or other nonsenses, but I suggest even the ordinary person has enough discernment to get the gist and recognise a crack when they experience one.

Back to where we were. In this my research it has become even more that usually evident that there are a lot of things I do not know for sure. In fact so prevalent are these things that I decided it is better to start with things that I do know for sure. Sadly I find there are precious few. I used to pare my Christian beliefs to the bare essential "Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tell me so" but I do a double take of even this now-a-days.

So I started a quest for "things I am sure about" and for cracks in all the rest. I recognise I am sadly ill-informed but I desperately want to know what is on the other side of the fence. I want the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill.

Sorrel Hill revisited

 My last visit was two years ago, so I figured it was fit for another.

22.4 miles bike'n'hike, 818m gain

Same as last time, I parked my bike in Lacken, went up the "mass path" and thence to the summit of Sorrel Hill at which point it started to downpour rain mixed with hail and a tidy head wind in my face. It was exceedingly chilly but descend I must and the quicker the better. By the time I had reached the road it had just about stopped.

Some photos...

Beth's maths and Ezekiel's vision

I remote teach maths to an eight-year old home-schooled girl who lives the other side of the mountains. Let's say her name is Beth. 

Beth is a delightful girl with a great sense of humour, full of sparkle, fun and mischief but not so full of maths. She is not "girl-ish" i.e. is not all about clothes and dolls. She treats me (and I try to treat her) as an equal albeit her teacher.  In anything other than maths we get on remarkably well.

She has a constant undercurrent of fun, machinations, anecdotes that hardly gives her time to engage in simple maths. And yet she is not numerically clueless - often it seems that a maths question or method I pose is either beneath her dignity to comment on, or else after a short pause she concludes "I don't know". Period. No matter how I turn the concept around, once she has decided it is too hard that's it. So I quickly change the subject hoping so doing to re-engage her attention...

It is not a secret that I am struggling with my Christian "faith". But I am still open for input; searching if you will. Struggling, but not given up. I find my own experience is not dissimilar to Beth's. I'm reading the book of Ezekiel at the moment (as one does) and have got to his temple vision. What does this mean, what relevance has it for me? I try commentaries and search the internet and nothing that I find helps my understanding appreciably. Along with many other things I again have to admit to myself: "I don't know". Even as I write these words I can picture Beth's face as she utters these words - two trains of thought: this one stops there point blank, the other continues as if nothing untoward has occurred - like, "what's this under my desk?" (she pulls out and starts to play with a ball of Blue-Tack) or "I'm going to give you a surprise" (get's paper and pencil and shifts the camera so that I cannot she her writing) - minutes pass and eventually she holds up her priceless work of art... Her latest taunt is "maths is so boring". 

I've come to love Beth - the maths question, however, remains unanswered.

Swim

 First swim in the lake this year. A bit fresh but I did not die...