I don’t think of myself as an especially special thinker, Gentler Reader. I think you and I are alike, insomuch as I don’t assume you to be any more, or less, intelligent than I am. I find the attached video understandable, so I assume you could understand it as well. This seems logical to me.
The video is actually a short explanation of how we might understand a 4th dimension, by explaining how a being who lives in a 2-dimentional world – a “Flatlander” – might come to understand 3-dimensional beings like us. But we don’t really care about that. The physics aren’t what I found fascinating about the video. It’s the abilities.
The video imagines a 3-dimensional apple, passing through Flatland, and how it might be perceived by the Flatlanders. It struck me that this simple explanation….also describes some of Jesus’s miracles. What if heaven was indeed a place…just one in some adjacent 4th dimension? A dimension from which our 3-dimensional world might be viewed. A dimension where, let’s say, time can be entered and experienced in a different way than it can be here, where we are simply carried along by time’s flow. Perhaps there, one can step into and back out of time, and can therefore appear at the very moment in time one wishes. The very moment of someone’s need…
All of which is a pretty goofy idea, let’s face it.
Still…..
The narrator of this piece, scientist and science popularizer Dr. Carl Sagan, was by most accounts not a believer when he died. So he does not use any religious language in his depictions of the possible events he describes. But if you consider the video from a religious perspective…what he’s describing begins to sound like some of the stories from the Bible.
Listen to the descriptions of what the apple can do, how it might be perceived. And consider The King Of Kings, the Prince Of Peace, Lord Jesus.
“the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” -J. B. S. Haldane
It’s been a long while since my last post here. I’m sorry about that.
God has led me on a curved and uneven path over the last year or so. But I’m safe in His hands, and so like so many others these days, I struggle with my anxieties, but I trust in Him. More about those adventures in another post. Suffice it to say, recently I’ve had the blessing of time on my hands.
I’ve gotten into watching concerts from the British rock band Pink Floyd. If you aren’t familiar with the band, that’s not surprising. They’re from an earlier time, and their genre – psychedelic blues – may not be your cup of tea. You may have heard of some of their albums, though ~ “The Dark Side Of The Moon” and “The Wall” are two of the greatest-selling albums in music history.
The band formed in 1964, in London, and had begun to become successful, releasing two albums with guitarist Syd Barrett. Barrett was a close friend of both bassist Roger Waters, and future Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. Unfortunately, the band had to ask Syd to leave, reportedly due to heavy psychedelic drug use and mental health issues, and Gilmour stepped into his place. After a few unhappy years, Barrett disappeared from world and from his friends, until his death decades later. Losing their friend and comrade profoundly influenced the band, Waters in particular, and this theme of alienation and pain forcing you further and further away from friends and family can be found throughout the band’s greatest works. The entire album “Wish You Were Here” is understood to be Waters mourning the departure and loss of his good friend.
Most of the band came together for one last ride in 1994 for the Division Bell tour; Roger Waters had parted ways by this time. The European leg of this tour was filmed, and different performances were put together and released as a CD and DVD, collectively titled “Pulse“. These ‘Pulse’ concert presentations of their songs are the versions with which I’ve become utterly fascinated. I’ve also been binging ‘reaction’ videos, where young people, perhaps people like you, Gentle Reader, who have never heard of the band listen and react to videos of the ‘Pulse” concerts. At the end, more than one host has stared at the camera and said ‘I get it now’. One in particular sat silent for several seconds, before looking at the camera and saying, ‘Well, I can’t just sit here looking blown away’. They are truly amazing to watch and listen to.
I’ve been blessed enough to see the Floyd two times, including the Division Bell Tour, from which ‘Pulse’ sprang. Of course I cannot know what concerts you may have seen in your time on this Earth. But if you have not seen Pink Floyd, then you have also never seen anything like Pink Floyd. Their concerts are a singular event, a unique and mesmerizing experience. Their light show is legendary, their lyrics are frequently deep and philosophical, and David Gilmour’s bluesy, emotional solos have earned him a place on lists of the best guitar players the world has ever seen.
Once of the conceits of going to a live concert is that you, the audience, are the biggest and therefore, in a sense, the most important part of the show. But upon entering the venue at a Floyd concert, you immediately realize that isn’t going to be the case this night. The stage is huge, 180 feet wide, with a massive 700-ton steel arch that rises to 130 feet above the stage at it’s peak. It takes three full days to erect and take down. The entire structure is painted black, and it completely intimidates the venue and all within. The arch is encrusted with lights, so many lights. And it sits, waiting.
And then the lights go down. In the darkness, as the soft sound of a heartbeat signals the start of the show, you begin to get the sense that Pink Floyd brings their own reality on tour. And you’re inside it.
At one point you become convinced the stage is alive. Fast or slow, everything is always smooth. Setting aside the music for a moment, there is just so much imagination and creativity on display in the stage show. The lights move and writhe and rise and fall, the Eclipse looms, the lasers reach out to pull you in, and when that stage is in full-throated roar there is absolutely nothing like it.
So then let me present for your consideration, the ‘Pulse’ concert version of “Comfortably Numb“. It’s almost ten minutes long, so it’s an investment to watch. But David Gilmour’s two solos on the studio version of the song are often included on lists of the greatest guitar solos ever written. And this version is better.
“Comfortably Numb” is from the double album “The Wall“, a concept album. In it, Waters created the character of Pink Floyd, a young boy who endures a difficult childhood, to grow up and become a massively-famous rock star. But to get there he has sacrificed his friends and family, and walled himself off to protect himself, using among other things, drugs. As the song begins, rockstar Pink has again self-medicated, and the first voice you hear is that of his manager. He pretends to care if Pink is feeling okay, offering to help ease his pain, but in reality he just wants Pink to get out there and do that night’s show.
But Pink is hallucinating. He speaks about how his hands feel swollen, and ‘this is not how I am’. But the drugs have done their work, and he’s comfortably numb to all the pain in his life. Gilmour’s first solo here can still bring tears to my eyes. It’s bliss, and flight, and poignant loss. It’s brief, and beautiful.
The manager returns, gives Pink a shot of something and runs him out on-stage. Pink, still hallucinating, recalls the dreams he had as a youth, and mourns how he has sacrificed them for the success he now has to escape from. He has surrounded himself with evil people who care nothing about him. He sees he has become comfortably numb to the loneliness he endures, and Gilmour’s second solo is agonized, with Pink longing for what he gave up, and loathing what he’s become.
Posted in Uncategorized on August 10, 2020 by phoenician1
I recently had occasion to be treated for several different medical issues, and ended up spending a combination of nearly a month in hospital. This, at a time when CoVid was filling this same hospital with suffering victims of the infection. Indeed, one night at one o’clock in the morning, I and my possessions were piled into my hospital bed and moved to a room on a different floor, so the hospital could rapidly create another CoVid-only floor, to house all the new patients that were flooding in.
It gives one pause…
Much of my time in the hospital was spent simply receiving various medications and being observed. I had time to think, in a setting dedicated to life, but which is also all too often the scene of death as well. I thought about a man in a nearby room, whom I heard frequently shouting to the nurses, “Help MEEEEEE!!”, and “WHY WON’T YOU HELP ME?!!!?”. His cries for help were borne of sincere need, but they were also in a demanding, selfish tone. I wondered if that’s how I sounded to God, when I prayed. Was I demanding His help? Do I seek to require His assistance, rather than humbly beseeching my Creator, who already knows my affliction and the outcome He has chosen for me, to aid me in my weakness, in my perceived need?
Believers know that life is a gift, a status that is bestowed upon each of us for a time, until eventually it is withdrawn again, and we are called to account for what we did with this gift. If we believe and are saved, then that temporary gift becomes eternal. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, we read the parable of the three servants who were given responsibility by their master for portions of his wealth, while he traveled to a far land. After a time, he returns, and asks them what they did with what was entrusted to them. In Luke the property is expressed as minas, but in Matthew the property is described as silver ‘talents’. I always thought that the ‘talents’ referred to were simply coins; each servant was given a different number, with the first receiving ten talents, the second five, and the third one talent. But while the value of a talent has varied, in New Testament times it is estimated that a talent of silver was nearly 130 pounds of silver, an amount equal to a substantial portion of a servant’s income over his or her lifetime.
I have long believed that perhaps the greatest gift God might grant me, after the gift of life, is the gift of His wisdom. Put another way, I sought the gift of how to use the life and ‘possessions’ He has ‘given’ me, how best to spend what I have temporarily been entrusted with, appointed steward over.
My stays in the hospital have left me debilitated, and recovering slowly, if by His grace I am to recover what has been lost. One of my illnesses brought with it the threat of death, and it along with other complications have caused me to think on the end of this journey. I have been already blessed with decades of life, and I would deeply like to tell you that I have spent the majority of that time in faithful service to my King, but that is not the truth. To my shame, my walk of faith has been mostly about me, and too little about Him.
But as my time on this Earth draws ever closer to its inevitable and inescapable end, whenever that end may occur, the Holy Spirit has poured out His grace on me. It occurs to me that life is the currency with which God works. As life is a gift, believers also recognize that we do not own anything while we are here. We are merely keepers of what we have temporarily been given control over. We spend income to achieve our goals, and in that same way we can choose to spend a portion of our life to achieve God’s goals. Better yet, we can yield that life to Him, for Him to use – to spend – as He sees fit. Our lives…..become His currency.
I believe God has led me to a new job, one which puts me squarely in the cross-hairs of CoVid. It is a position of high exposure to the illness, and I bring to this potential exposure all of the co-morbidities that make me more likely to die if I become infected. So occupying my thoughts lately has been the question of my potential, impending………..end.
What if God leads me through the valley of the shadow of death….and there is no table for me, no feast in the presence of my enemies? Or what if that feast….is reunion with Him, and not an earthly celebration at all? Will I still be obedient and faithful? Or will I let my fears drive me, to another job, to a “safer” place…away from Him and His will? Will I spend my life, my gift, my currency from God….as I see fit? Will I choose to be “lawless”, as the Bible puts it? In my head, I have decided to serve Him, and walk the path He has set before me, in obedience. My heart….is a different matter.
I would like to tell you that I have that peace about my fate which passes understanding. Some days, some times, I do. But other times, in darker and lonelier nights… My heart trembles and bubbles and sobs with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear over my choice to believe in Him, fear of the power of this world to kill… This disease is far better at killing me than I am at avoiding it.
But my faith in Him who loves me remains. I choose to believe He exists, that He has a plan for my life. And if that plan is to lead me into a dark valley, and there to end my journey….then so be it. My existence has always been in His hands. And I will choose to walk that path which has been set before me to its end. So that when I reach that end, soon or in many years to come…let me be found faithful. Dreading the end of this life, but faithful to Him who gave it to me.
It isn’t my intent for this column to be exclusively about Christian matters. Lately, however, with all that has been going on with the Coronavirus pandemic and so many thousands of people dying, my thoughts do seem to have centered on God. Understandable, I suppose, all things considered. So it is that once again, my thoughts here in the desert return to the consideration of heaven.
If you also name the Name of Jesus Christ, and believe that He came to Earth, preached a gospel of love, obedience to and relationship with the Father, was crucified unto death for it, and was raised again to life on the third day, then here are a few things to think about. Hopefully, one or more might bring you closer to God.
The Holy Spirit lives in every believer, every moment of every day. He is our Guarantor of the salvation we have been promised, as sons and daughters of the Most High God. He is always available to us whenever we chose to pray. Wouldn’t it then be interesting if, when we arrive in heaven, we have that same kind of constant access to Jesus, for the rest of timeless eternity? Imagine, asking Him all of the questions you’re curious about….forever? Never having to wait for access to Him, never having to share time with Him with someone else, always having access to all the wisdom of the universe? What a mind-bending gift, all by itself, to have an unending private time with God.
In the seventh chapter of the book of Judges, God tells Gideon that his 32,000-man army is too big, and He eventually reduces it all the way down to 300 men. The 31,700 people that God, through Gideon, sent home did the will of God – by going home, and doing nothing! I can’t imagine this would have broad application in our day-to-day life, but it certainly is worth considering. Might there come a time in your life, when the best way you can serve God is by not doing anything? Perhaps a time when you have the opportunity to revenge yourself, or to take up verbal arms against someone who opposes you?
According to Revelation 21:23, “The city {of heaven} does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” (NIV) But many people believe the sky is at it’s most beautiful at sunrise, or sunset. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if God placed an eternal, ever-changing sunrise or sunset in His heaven, just for the enjoyment of His children?
The Bible has many stories of God exerting power over His children’s perceptions; one example is in Luke chapter 24, when Cleopas and another walked along the road to Emmaus with Jesus for most of a day, then sat down together for the evening meal with Him, without recognizing Him until He chose to reveal Himself to them – and then disappearing from their sight. Likewise, Jesus used many different methods to perform His miracles. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the city of heaven, the New Jerusalem, likewise was perceived by each person in a different way, perhaps even changing it’s appearance, simply because God can do such things if He chooses?
Readers of this column might know that I enjoy playing video games, and often in such entertainment, water in strange realms different from our own is portrayed as being a glowing sky-blue color. Wouldn’t it be delightful if in heaven the rivers of the waters of life looked like that? A beautiful, translucent blue, which glows with the love and the power and the life of God? Imagine drinking such a fluid, feeling it revitalize you, or bathing in it, feeling the life flowing into you, washing over you, refreshing you, any time you desired it?
Finally, there is a passage early in the seventh chapter of Matthew, which is often taken out of context, sometimes by those who want to bend the Bible to their own desires, who seek to see God as a magic genie subject to their prayers, rather than to use God’s Word as an instruction manual explaining how we should live, how we can grow closer to God, how to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Romans 12:2A (ESV) I must confess that I have fallen prey to that mindset myself, upon occasion. The passage is “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV) But there are two keys to understanding the real meaning of this passage. The first lies in recalling that when the words which eventually became the Bible were originally written down, there were no books, no chapters, no verses. It was all just written down, on scrolls, with no real organization beyond simply putting the sentences in the right order, one after another, in this case the order that Jesus spoke them. With that guidance in mind, the second key is to look to the context of this verse; specifically, look a few sentences earlier, which is now considered part of a different chapter of the Bible, but was only a few seconds earlier when Jesus originally spoke these words on the hillside. Look near the end of chapter 6, at what we now call verse 33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (NIV) This is what we are to ask for, to seek, to knock upon the door to gain access to. Not possessions, not wealth, not ease. This: God’s way, God’s will, God’s righteousness. Don’t be fooled by earthly desires, as I all too often have been.
Lastly, and of least importance, honesty compels me to confess that none of this came from me. Even the speculation comes from my imagination, which itself is a gift from God. Wisdom comes by way of the Holy Spirit, and the teaching on the verses in Matthew from my pastor. If I am useful at all, it is merely as a vessel for the Spirit, or as a re-transmitter of the wisdom of others. Glory belongs to God; I’m merely here to be used by Him.
The Cool of the Evening 