Tag: animals

21 Century- Divine High Places

We’re not so different than the ancients. Here’s why:

See the image below? It is a “high place”.

For the ancients it is, unquestionably, the best place to reach a (pagan) god.
A god of human making.

Not good.

2 Kings17: 7

All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods 8and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them, as well as the practices that the kings of Israel had introduced.9The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that were not right. From watchtower to fortified city they built themselves high places in all their towns. 10They set up sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. 11At every high place they burned incense, as the nations whom the Lord had driven out before them had done. They did wicked things that aroused the Lord’s anger. 12They worshiped idols, though the Lord had said, “You shall not do this.”b

ancienhighplace
(ancient high place used for worship)

Why a high place?

They built on the highest parts of mountains to tap into unseen power.
They erected “antenna” to communicate with the gods of their own making.
They knew that the high ground was a prime location in their pursuit of more of everything they desired.
They sacrificed their time, energy, blood, sweat, effort, animals and sometimes their children  to get the upper hand the mountain high places could provide.

So do we. Yes?

Smartphone_as_Child_Toy
(A child sacrificed and handed over to the god of our times?)

On our high places we build towers to better our lives that would look like religious shrines to anyone one who stumbled on them millennia later.

And aren’t they, really?

 

highplace
(21st Century high place)

Tech is certainly our Baal.

Instant access and fast communication are two of gods we love.

We love access to the internet, high speed wifi, speedy download times, cable or digital tv, reliable mobile phone service.

And we need our high places for all that.

It seems we don’t have moral superiority on this.

The ancients aren’t more foolish or more gullible than us…not as we may suppose they are.

Couldn’t the ancients accuse us of the same sorts of categorical trappings and devotions?

It is humbling.

 

Verse for reflection:

John 4:23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” -Jesus

This temple Site pre-dates civilization, itself

220px-GobeklitepeHeykelAs promised, I’m giving you a summary of the Wesley Forum I attended on April 7.

Lecturer Dr Ben Witherington focused his 3 lectures on The Imago Dei (Image of God)

The 1st session had to do with the Imago Dei seen through archeology.

He spoke about the huge dig at a high place found in Turkey, in 1993, called Gobeckli (click for amazing National Geographic photos and info).

This is probably one of the most significant discoveries since the Rosetta Stone–and I hadn’t even heard of it. Have you?

It invalidates the typical (secular) ideas of how religious and spiritual life emerged among humans.

 

1005733_10151742803658130_874282299_n

 

Social Anthropologists have, until now, thought that religion came after people began farming and wanted to gain control of their unpredictable environment.

It worked like this…so they thought…

• Human stumbles on a new kind of mutated wheat that be more easily harvested.

• They kept the seeds and settled in areas to raise crops.

• They struggled against the harsh elements and began to think of wind, sun, rain, etc as superpowers (i.e. gods)…(superstitious folks).

• They tried to please and apprise the gods to gain better circumstances…and…

• Boom…religion.

You’ve heard this theory before, right?

 

To Witherington, this recent discovery shows that the need to reconcile with the divine is part of the human experience, not an invention that came at the advent of the agricultural age.

The religion of these high places helped begin civilization, not the other way around.

1379537020-gobekli+tepe+2

The oldest part of the Gobeckli site is dated to 10,000-12,000 years ago and is the oldest temple ever found in the world.

That’s old…but how old?

Wrap your brain around this!

It was created before people were living in villages, farming, and before they had domesticated any animals (sheep, dogs, cattle, etc).

People were wandering, gathering, hunting, and trying to connect to the divine…the whole time.

As the highest point in the region and situated between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, I can’t help but wonder if Cain and Able used this very place. It could be just east of Eden. (LD)

Now, think of the age of this place this way:

The site dates to about 6,000 years before the Great Pyramids were created. It’s a time that precedes writing, by thousands of years.

And yes, it’s pre-Noah and the flood.

Giant monoliths, the largest weighing about 50 tons (¡ yikes !), depict a host of detailed carvings of animals. There are  also some stylized carvings of people dressed in priestly vestments. Even more tremendous are the enormous erected stones which have holes drilled into them to tie up animals.

But, remember this is a pre-bronze age. Pre-iron age.

How long did it take to make a hole such as this in this rock with just another rock?

These structures are made in a sophisticated fashion. Cave people were smarter than we assume.

It’s astonishing.

 

birds

 

But there are not just 1 of these 30 m. circles with 13 massive stones …they have found 17 of them.

Each takes about 3 years to unearth. (Things are just starting to get interesting! In 50 years they still will not be finish. Much more surprises could be in store.)

Here’s the wikipeda article about the site.

According to archeologists on the dig, the site was eventually backfilled (purposefully) at a point in human development when villages were being established. It seems that local temples were used at that point.

 

NOTE: (Witherington believes they were not backfilled purposefully, but that the flood (in Noah’s time) moved sand up to the place from the Tigris River. I, personally, think that the flood would have ruined them and that they were indeed backfilled purposefully [for what specific reason, I don’t know]. To me, this burying is what preserved them so well so we could now find them intact. It’s a crazy amount of work to do such a thing, and I don’t know how they could, but the whole site baffles our understanding, so I haven’t ruled it out.)

 

Dr Witherington concludes that because of the image of God within us, we desire to commune with God (or gods). We always have.

All the ancient people groups had 3 things:

1. Temples

2. Priests

3. Sacrifices

 

I will elaborate more on the lectures in the next post and include some of my notes from the other 2 sessions.

Read PART II

Read PART III

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Update on the Time Machine

 

 

 

 

Interested in Time Travelers Mints?
CLICK HERE.antiueweather

 

Time to give you a tiny glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes. (an update)

I’m building a time travel machine, as some of you know.

Well, sort of. That sounds really grand to say “I’m building a time machine”. It seems like it should involve a Delorean. It doesn’t. That’s just the movies. Real time travel is painstaking and boring hard work, like everything else that is a meaningful project.

OFFICIAL UPDATE:
So far, in the initial first tests the “machine” takes you back in time to a beautiful day or forward in time to a day with very poor weather. You can’t pick the day.
I was surprised and, to be honest, disappointed by that bit. I’m a novice at this stuff (obviously) and I got more than a few of my calculations and instrumentation configurations dead wrong. Correcting it completely could take nuclear power, and I just don’t have the resources for that…yet.
I’ve had to become more resourceful.

(This is another reason why my jetpack work got sidetracked in late summer. Shortly after learning to weld a mishap with a grey squirrel, a metal harshness and headset, and a PVC cannon style concept went awry, I settled in for a long, but probably safer, haul with short interval time traveling work and animals without bushy tails.

But, back to the weather travel.
Yes, I was hoping for a time machine in the strict sense, but maybe this glitch has happened for a reason. I do prefer late Spring to November weather. I’m still working on it and I have several other prototypes in the works too of varying sizes and capacities. All of it is in the very early stages.

Let me be clear:
I don’t have all the kinks worked out, and I haven’t actually traveled in time, personally, because I’ve been too frightening of being caught in bad weather with no chance of escape back to my own time, or of being stuck in the past on a gorgeous day. Never returning to family and friends isn’t something I’m up for, even on a good day.

I’ve been able to visually see and document what is happening through the power of properly placed technology (sort of like a periscope and a camera thing with some twisty bread ties and hot mess of petroleum jelly), but I haven’t made any trips yet myself. It’s risky, so I’m sure you understand.

Early RESULTS:
The test data seems to indicate that time travel occurred for about 11 seconds, until it didn’t.

Now before you are tempted to mock me because that is a rather meager number, I’ll remind you that the Wright Brothers only flew off the ground in the skeletal airplane-tpye contraption for just 11 seconds and everyone thought it was a very big deal.

Besides, I don’t want to get caught up in the hubris of mentioning statistics or worse: starting to show off, and besting myself as my own worst enemy. (For instance, listing the seconds as they increase during each trial, when they happen to. This could easily lead to emotional elation followed by terrible despair–the ruin of many creative people. Also I don’t want to shift my thinking to inadvertently assume I’m doing all of this just for your approval, and it could come to that.)

 

Again, it’s still early into the project.

The point is to stay focused and refine the instruments the best I can.

I’m documenting all the stories of my work, travels (or near-travels), and mishaps, and I’ll be sharing them with you in a collection in a few months (via a Kindle Book). God willing and if I don’t blow up…

or change my mind.

Now for the best part.
I’m synchronously building a few contraptions –one-off pieces– and other related ephemera for your own adventures, your personal collection of unusual things, or conversational props you can take out at cocktail parties. There will be a Kickstarter campaign to dole those out. More on that in time, so to speak. I’d like to see if it works out first in the future before I actually do it. But, if I can’t lengthen the traveling to a few months into the future to know, this will not be possible. Presently, that sort of result is “iffy” at best. I may just risk it anyhow. Clearly, I’m debating it with myself.

FOR FURTHER UPDATES
Tweets and reports to Facebook will be sent out from time-to-time using the hashtag #weathertravel.

If you want to keep up with the project or view the occasional pictures, see the occasional video, or learn when the items will be up for grabs search that hashtag. [Also my email list will get updates, so that’s another option, if you’d like to sign up in the side bar.] Many of the items will also come with their backstory included and written out for your amusement and records in short form. It will also include any usual related situations associated with it. There’s one about a prairie dog and a whiskey flask, for instance.

Another particular item is a ring device. It looks like jewelry but it is a non lethal (I think) mini travel device. I hope to get a photo up of it soon once it’s ready. It’s not as powerful as the bigger pieces, as you might imagine, but I think you’ll like it.

The Four Loves and Dogs

DOGintheGAPbonusedition+.pdf

I’m SO excited that our  book “Dog in the Gap” has been so well received. It’s even sold over a dozen copies BEFORE the Official release date!

Yes, you can buy it now.
Here.

or upgrade and get the BONUS EDITION:
here.

It was great to read a stellar review by Crystal Hurd, too. Crystal is a C.S. Lewis scholar and Lewis makes several appearances within the pages of “Dog in the Gap” thanks to my co-author Doug, a celebrated C.S. Lewis enthusiast and scholar in his own right. (He may be reluctant to tout it, but I’m fine telling you that he was even invited to the UK to present a paper on C.S. Lewis recently.)

But back now to the good tidings!

Enjoy this EXCERPT from Crystal Hurd’s blog:

Screen Shot 2013-08-17 at 8.12.41 PM

 

Lewis writes in his non-fiction work The Four Loves, ‘Emerson has said, ‘When the half-gods go, the gods arrive.’ That is a very doubtful maxim. Better say, ‘When God arrives (and only then) the half-gods can remain.’ In other words, when we fall under the all-wise (and therefore safe) authority of the One God, we can carry out our God-given responsibilities without becoming tyrants.  And among those responsibilities is the duty to woo the rational and relational in the lower animals.  Humanity’s creation in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) means, among other things, that we carry an inborn desire to sub-create rational begins and have relationships with them.

 

What great truth is this.  Have we ever considered that our responsibility to animals is molded after God’s responsibility of His children?  And as His children, do we always carry this responsibility with the same fervent devotion and attention that He offers to us?  It completely redefines the relationship I have with my pets and by extension to the animal kingdom at large. Not only do we forge important relationships with animals and gain substantial perspective (and companionship), but we also please our Father, the author and creator of Love who is the Great Architect of deep and meaningful connections.

Read the rest of Dr Crystal Hurd’s Review here.