Hike organized by Sierra Club. On Friday evening we drove to the camp site close to Cumberland Falls State Resort Park where we started 14 miles trail the next morning. It poured rain Friday night making it sleepless for many.
Saturday was also rainy but all 12 of us, full of energy and good humors, were following the river for around 7 miles to finally end on a make-up shelter quite tired from rain and difficult terrain. 6 of us slept in the shelter (simple wooden construction with a roof and one wall open, nothing more than that) The rest of us got into our own tents and John, Michael, Laurence and I found a nice dry camp 100 yards to the left of the shelter. We made a fire and cooked our dinners. There was plenty of water near by and the owners of water filters were very, very popular.
It stopped raining Saturday evening. It did not rain much at all on Sunday. Rain or not, makes little difference on this trail. It is so humid that after 15 minutes everyone is wet anyway. On Sunday, after breakfast and coffee, Jessie (14) who came on the trip with his Grandfather (>60) from North Carolina, together with our co-leader Shelly, got us going again. They started fast pace . We could barely keep up. Shelly runs her own little hobby-company climbing trees with earth joy.com
Soon the group decided to split and let the younger group (~40,50) go up front and get the car that was going take the drivers back to the beginning sooner than the entire group. The terrain was getting even more difficult and we had another 7 miles to go. So Jessie, Shelly, I(37), John (>50), Laurence (>50) and Jessie's Grandfather got to the 'end' of our hike about 15 minutes earlier than the older group. I was impressed by the older group with many of them in their 60's and Larry 71 doing extremely well considering the terrain. There were also two ladies Karen and Diane, both great hikers.
So once the header group got to the dam (trail followed the river) Laurence and I hiked additional 2 miles or so to get to his car that we parked Friday night. Once we got there after an hour or so, we drove back to the dam, picked up 3 drivers and drove back to the State Park where we picked all cars and drove back to the dam. We were all done around 4.30 pm on Sunday afternoon.
We had a great time. You get to know people, you share the ups and downs, laughs, falls, poison ivy and iron plan (FYI, as I am sure you are curious, it is called "Pokrzywa" in Polish :-)) Poison ivy can hurt you later (depends if you're allergic), iron plant hurts you right when you walk through it and there is no way around them.
You have lots of time when you keep on walking. You get to know people, and you want to walk at least a few feet apart on Sunday ... there ain't any showers on the way unless you do not mind rather cold water dropping 50, 60 feet from the cliffs all the way down, almost directly on your head ...
It is beautiful and green all the way around, you can hear the water all the time and you can feel it on every inch of your body (which obviously sometimes you wish you wouldn't) We saw two turtles and some kind of wild bird.
Till the next time folks. I need to do this more often ...
Pointers for hike 1) pack light 2) use polyester or nylon everything, no cotton 3) use wool socks and good hiking shoes but also bring light sandals for evenings 4) if you do not have stove and hope for fire, bring some fire starting thing and lighter (matches do not work well specially in rainy conditions) 5) ... more you get to know when you do this, if I tell you everything, it would be no fun to laugh at the novice :-)
Process of creating Tornado Shelter from crawling space roughly 15 feet by 8 feet and final height 6.5 feet.
Original height of crawling space 42 inches. Added 38 plus 6 or so for concrete floor. Entrance from Garage. Pictures tell the story
"Don't try this at home" :-) (Put it another way, it ain't worth it ... so much work for little storage space ... the only justification is the 'tornado shelter' but I hope I will never know if that justifies my effort in building it)
But what war is lost? What are we actually fighting for? Bunch of cheap oil, and soon there after gasoline for 30 cents a gallon? And now we are going to leave, exposing ourselves to "grave consequences" ... of $30 a gallon while Middle East burns?!
Oil is our GOD and we are 'crude awaking' slowly ... it is almost too late, but no politician is brave (wait, that is oxymoron) enough to tell that to "#1" ...
Oil is ending and thanks to the Internet USA long ago lost the communications war. People are smarter. While inside here people still can't really handle the truth and keep on believing in "power of pride", the reality is that this whole country is like a fish that sees the lake dry out and starts flipping because there is not enough water …
And! We aren't doing anything to stop our decline ... Europe and Asia have sophisticated electrical train system and will survive much longer than we do when the oil stops floating … All politicians know this fact as the only way they get to be politicians is the corruptive money they receive from corporation – which know very very well what this whole middle east colonization is supposed to prohibit $30 a gallon and end of this empire with no clothes as we know it … Yes, other countries will get hurt too, but they will stand up later on while we will be 3rd world country.
And we used to be good ... "victory gardens" anyone?
Oh, and please do not blame Bush for all this. He was just trying to keep the oil going a little longer and in a way he succeeded. We never leave Iraq, unless to Iran or some other Middle East country! "Modern colonization" keeps on going ...
You and I are at fault! Capitalism is at fault for its attention to short-term only! The only way to fix it is to inquire BIG costs today! So it is so much easier to turn on False News or blame Bush and do not forget those evil Europeans and other Godless Liberals that want to destroy this country through imaginary things such as "global warming"
Otherwise loving this great land that went terribly array ... beginning sometimes after 1945 when it felt in love with ... OIL.
"Discovering, wondering and getting even a glimpse of what is most likely the truth is more fulfilling than settling on comfortable lies and illusions" - Shamick
If you ever had any questions about power of God, powerlessness of God, why he allows evil, who or what is God, where and how logically explain it - in a word, if you ever did what religions tells you just take on 'faith' or 'divine' and you should never ever question, you may want to listen to
I am vigor in a Church of England. I have been a priest for 20 years. For most of that time I have been struggling and grappling with questions about the nature of God, who is God. And I am very aware that when you say the word “God” many people will turn off immediately and most people, both within and outside of the organized Church, still have a picture of celestial controller, a rule maker, a policemen in the sky who orders everything and causes everything to happen. He will protect his own people and answer the prayers of the faithful. And in the worship of my church the most frequently used adjective about God is almighty.
But I have a problem with that. I have become more and more uncomfortable with this perception of God over the years. Do we really believe that God is the kind of male boss that we have been presenting in our worship and liturgies over the years.
Of course there have been thinkers that suggested different ways of looking at God, exploring the feminine nurturing side of divinity, suggesting that God expresses himself or herself through powerlessness rather than power, acknowledging that God is unknown and unknowable by definition. Finding deep residencies with other religions and philosophies and ways at looking at life as part of what it is universal and global search for meaning. These ideas are well known in liberal and academic circles. But clergy like myself have been reluctant to air them for fear of creating tension and division in our church communities, for fear of upsetting the simple faith of more traditional believers. I have chosen not to rock the boat. Then on December 26th last year, just two months ago, that underwater earthquake triggered the Tsunami and two weeks later Sunday Morning 9th January, I found myself standing in front of my congregation, intelligent well meaning mostly thoughtful Christian people and I needed to express on their behalf our feeling and our questions. I had my own personal responses but I also have a public role and something needed to be said. And this is what I said.
Shortly after the Tsunami I read a newspaper article written by the archbishop of Canterbury about the tragedy in Southern Asia. The essence of what he said was this “The people most affected by this devastation and loss of life do not want intellectual theories, about how God let this happen.” He wrote “If some religious genius did come up with explanation of exactly why did all these deaths made sense, would we feel happier, or safer or more confident in God? If the man in the photographs that appeared in the newspapers holding the hand of his dead child was standing in front of us now, there are no words that we can say to him. A verbal response would not be appropriate. The only appropriate response would be compassionate silence and some kind of practical help. It isn’t the time for explanation or preaching or philology. It is time for tears.
This is true and yet, here we are my church Knoxville, semi detached from events that happened a long way away but with our faith bruised. And we want an explanation from God, we demand an explanation from God.
Does God Feel our pain?
Some have concluded that we can only believe in God that shares our pain. In some way God must feel the anguish, and grief and physical pain that we feel. In some way the eternal God must be able to enter into the souls of human beings and experience the torment within. And if this is true it must also be that God knows the joy and exaltation of the human spirit as well. We want a God who can weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. This seems to me both deeply moving and convincing restatement of Christian belief about God. For hundred of years the prevailing orthodoxy, the accepted truth was that God the father, the Creator, is unchanging. And therefore by definition cannot feel pain or sadness. Now the unchanging God feels a bit cold and indifferent to me and the devastating events of the XX century have forced people to question the cold unfeeling God. The slaughter of millions in the trenches and the death camps have caused people to ask where is God in all this. Who is God in all this? And the answer was God is in this with us. Or God does not deserve our allegiant anymore.
If God is a bystander, observing but not involved, then God may well exist but we do not want to know about him. Many Jews and Christians are now feel like this I know. And I am among them.
So we have a suffering God. God who is intimately connected with this world and with every living soul. I every much relate to this idea of God. But it isn’t enough. I need to ask some more questions and I hope those are questions you may want to ask as well, some of you. Over the last few weeks I’ve been struck by words in our worship have felt bit inappropriate, bit doggie. We have a prime service on Tuesday morning for Moms and their preschool children and last week we sang with the children one of their favorite songs “The wise man build his house upon the rock” Perhaps some of you may know it.
Some of the words go like this “The foolish man built his house upon the sand and the floods came up and the house on the sand went crash” Then in the same week at the funeral we sang the familiar hymn “We plod the field and scatter” very English here. In the second verse comes the line “The winds and waves obey him”
Do they?
I don’t feel we can sign that song again in Church after what’s happened.
So the first big question is about control. Does God have a plan for each of us? Is God in control? Does God order each moment? Does the wind and waves obey him?
From time to time one hears Christians telling the story of how God organized things for them. So everything worked out right. Some difficulty overcome some illness cured some trouble averted. A parking space found at the crucial time. I can remember someone saying this to me with her eyes shining with enthusiasm at this wonderful confirmation of her faith and the goodness of God. But if God can and will do these things, intervene to change the flow of events then surely he could have stopped the Tsunami. Do we have a local God who can do little things like parking spaces but not big things like 500 miles per hour waves. That’s just not acceptable to intelligent Christians and we must acknowledge it.
Either God is responsible for Tsunami or God is not in control.
After the tragedy survivors’ stories began to emerged, you probably hear some of them. The man who served the wave, the teenage girl who recognized the danger because she just been learning about tsunamis at school, then there was the congregation who had left they usual church building on the shore to hold the service in the hills. The preacher delivered an extra long sermon so they were still out of harms way when the wave struck. After that someone said that God must have been looking after them.
So the next question is about partiality. Can we earn God’s favor by worshiping him or believing in him?Does God demand loyalty like any medieval tyrant? A God who looks after his own so the Christians are OK while everyone else perishes? A cosmic arsenate? And a God who is guilty of the worse kind of favoritism. That would be appalling! And that would be the point at which I would hand in my membership. Such a God would be morally inferior to the highest ideas of humanity.
So who is God? If not the great Puppet Master or the tribal protected. Perhaps God allows or permits terrible things to happen so the heroism and compassion can be shown. Perhaps God is testing us, testing our charity or our faith. Perhaps there is a great cosmic plan that allows for horrible suffering so everything will work out at the end. Perhaps, but these ideas are all just variations on God controlling everything. The supreme commander toying with expendable units in a great campaign. We are still left with the God that can do the Tsunami and allow Auschwitz.
In his great novel, “The Brother Caramantsov” Dostoyevsky gives these words to Ivan addressed to his naïve and devout brother Allioshia “If the suffering of children go to make up the sum of suffering which is necessary of the purchase of truth then I say beforehand that the entire truth is not worth such a price. We cannot afford to pay so much for admission. It is not God that I do not accept. I merely most respectfully return him the ticket.”
Or perhaps God set this whole universe at the beginning and then relinquished control for ever so the natural processes can occur and evolution run its course? This seems more acceptable. But it still leaves God with the ultimate moral responsibility.
Is God a cold unfeeling spectator? Or powerless lover watching with infinitive compassion things God is unable to control or change? Is God intimately involved in our suffering so his feels it in its own being?
If we believe something like this we must let go of the puppet master completely, take our leave of the almighty controller, and abandon traditional models. We must think again about God
Maybe God doesn’t do things at all? Maybe God isn’t an agent like all of us are agents. Early religious thoughts conceived God as a sort of super human person doing things all over the place, beating up the Egyptians, drowning them in the Red See, wasting cities, getting angry. The people knew that God by his mighty acts. But what if God doesn’t act? What if God doesn’t do things at all? What if God is in things? The loving soul of the universe, and indwelling compassionate presence underpinning and sustaining all things. What if God is in things? In the infinitively complex network of relationships and connections that make up life, in the nature cycle of life and death, the creation and destruction that must happen continuously, in the process of evolution and in incredible intricacy and magnificence of the natural world, in the collective unconscious, the soul of the human race, in you, in me, mind and body and spirit, in the tsunami, in the victims, in the depth of things, in the presence and in absence and simplicity and complexity, in change and development and growth?
How does this Inness, the interiority of God work?
It is hard to conceive and it begs more questions. Is god just another name for the Universe with no independent existence at all? I don’t know. To what extend we can ascribe personality to God? I don’t know.
In the end we have to say I don’t know. If we knew God would not be God. To have faith in this God would be more like trusting and essential benevolence in the Universe and less like believing in a system of doctrinal statements. Isn’t it ironic that Christians have claimed to believe in an infinite unknowable being than tie God down in close systems and ridged doctrines? How could one practice such a faith?
By seeking the God within, by cultivating my own inwardness, silence and meditation, in my inner space, in the me that remains when I gently put aside my passing emotions and ideas and preoccupations, in a wellness of the inner conversation.
And how would we live such a faith? How would I live such a faith? By seeking intimate connection with your inwardness, the kind of relationships when deep speaks to deep. If God is in all people then there is a meeting place where my relationship with you becomes a three way encounter. There is an Indian greeting, which I am sure some of you know ‘Namaste’ accompanying by respectful bow which roughly translated means “That which is of God in me greats that which is of God in you”. Namaste.
And how would one deep in such a faith?
By seeking the inwardness that is in all things, in music and poetry, and natural world of beauty, and in the small ordinary things in life. There is a deep indwelling presence that makes them extraordinary. It needs a profound attentiveness and a patient waiting a contemplative attitude and the generosity and openness to those whose experiences differ from my own.
When I stood up to speak to my people about God in a tsunami I had no answers to offer them, no neat packages of faith with bible references to prove them, only doubts and questioning and uncertainty. I had some suggestions to make, possible new ways of thinking about God, ways that may allow us to go on down a new and uncharted road.
But in the end, the only thing I can say for sure was “I don’t know”. And that may just be the most profoundly religious statement of all. Thank you.
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