God Is In the Reruns, And ...

God Is In the Reruns And …

Second time …

“God is in the details.”  A long time quote you see and hear a lot.  I have no idea who is responsible for it.  (Not me)  The question then arises from this; God being in the details; is where or how are these details established.  Exactly what details.  There is a tendency for everything to have a lot of details.

And just because a particular thing is small, does not mean it doesn’t have a lot of details.  The act of breathing has a lot of details.  God is definitely in the act of breathing!  Doncha think?  Grains of sand, planets, contemporary TV schedules.

Spending some time on this concept, a couple of – or three – thoughts occurred to me.  First of all, let’s say a person believes deeply in a particular God.  A God that has an established focus group and a manual.  By this I infer a clergy of some sort and a Bible, or Talmud, or Koran.  A Godly God that has been around for some time. 

Still with me?

Okay …

So, according to an established God’s word, as it were, a person of that faith is expected to act, live, behave in set ways.  How are these specifics, or details, arrived at?  Why by studying the manuals (Bible, etc.) and listening to the various clergymen.  And all of this is based on what has happened in the past.  In other words, a person of faith scrutinizes the details of what has happened before.

A major theme in the religious manuals is; God says, “Don’t do this (some particular thing) and you’d better do that (some other particular thing – like … oh … respect your mother and father.)  The people (in the historical manual) disobey and they do the thing they were told not to do.  Then they turn right around and don’t do the other thing.

Sa-mote-ah!!!  That God these people ignored doth put the big smote! upon their asses.  The big whammy!  The  major smack-down!   Suddenly it’s raining burning frogs, there are like … floods and stuff drowns – like everything gets wet and starts to mold.  Old people are wearing their baseball hats backwards.  All the beer in the world goes all funky.  Tragedy and tough times everywhere you look.

The Godly clergy all make little notes in the margins of their Bible manuals and repeat the stories of what God WILL put down if the faithful don’t start toeing the line.  And the people “were sore afeerd!” and straightened up for a while and everything became just peachy wonderful.  Everyone’s boils all healed up.  The old people started wearing their baseball hats like old people should.  The burning frogs turned into some kind of Tastee Cake and the people rejoiced and became slightly overweight, which was considered a beauty mark of the ancient old timey times.

Then the people got overconfident and screwed up again and again came the burning frogs.  Round and around.  With the clergy sulking in the background and mumbling at the sidewalks, “Stupid people …. I told ‘em an’ I tole ‘em … do this shit an don’t do that shit an no-ho-body listens … oh no … don’t listen to me … I read the manual and wrote the stuff in the margins an I tole ‘em …  mmmble, mmmmble … now we got the friggin' flaming toads falling out of the clouds agin …”

So my contention is that you can’t find the details unless you study the reruns.  It’s all there in the reruns.  Like the dialogue in a movie you miss when you are sitting in the movie theater watching a movie you have looked forward to for … like, months.  You paid your … like twenty bucks and found a good seat because you got there early.  And at the last minute some big jerk comes pushing in and sits right fucking behind you!!!  Then every ten seconds he’s kickin’ the back of your seat!!!!!!!  And you miss what the actors are saying!!!!!

Man!!!  You really want to smote that turkey!!!

So you have to wait until that movie comes out for rental and carefully listen to the part you missed.  Those details in the reruns.  That’s what I’m talking about.

*****

I will have a new video for you next week.  I promise.  Really, truly true.
But here is a photo of my latest Grapevine and chalk drawing on packing paper.  These are my oldest motorcycle boots.  I call it Wa-a-ay Old Motorcycle Boots #414.

******

If you enjoyed this blog, and/or found any value to you within it, please do subscribe.  I’d really appreciate it.  And feel free to write to me, or add a comment.

Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014

Please check out my new book Drawing Blind (Learn to draw without looking) at:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426600

It’s free – all I ask is that you post a review.

You can also get any of my books for Amazon Kindle at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=dale+clarence+peterson

My website:

http://daleclarencepeterson.com

My YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCul-hKF7pWsaLZruFwlTcdA 

The Impossible Mountain

The Impossible Mountain

The mountain is impossible to climb.  It simply cannot be done.  This particular mountain – the “insane mountain”.  Or, you might call it Crazy Mountain.

When asked why he chose to devote so much of his life and endure so much pain and trial, climbing Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hilary answered, “Because it is there.” 

What is there to understand about this?  What if Hilary’s mountain was impossible to climb?  If every time he tried to climb it, he failed, like Sisyphus, he got nearly to the top and he died.  Only to be reborn at the bottom and be compulsively driven to climb it again.

But, every time he got older, he became more disabled by each effort.  Failing over and over.  The pain of each failure building on the last, until every step, even the very first step of each new effort, was beyond what he could endure.  However he cannot stop trying. 

Why?

Why doesn’t he just quit?  Why doesn’t he just stop trying?

What if we accept that a person’s life is like that of a tree?  The tree sets down roots and grows upward toward the sunlight.  The tree will continue to grow until it dies.  The tree knows nothing else – but to grow.  The only knowledge the tree possesses is to grow.  During its life cycle, the tree will devote some time and energy to fulfilling its role in reproducing, but even that is only a required part of its genetic growing program.

Believing in anything other than growing is beyond the ability of a tree.  As human beings, sentient beings, the belief is that humans have some kind of free will.  Well … compared to a tree, humans do have apparent choices.  The great bugaboo of genetics still has far greater power than anything humans might hope to wield.

And if that genetic programming determines we are to spend our lives climbing an impossible mountain, that programming cannot be undone.  It is also believed that all impossible mountains are obvious.  I mean, who can miss a mountain?  You go around it or over it or, possibly, between mountains.  But they are right there.  Right?

Assume that one mountain, a very special mountain, is only obvious to one special person.  What if Sir Edmund Hilary was the only person who could see Mt. Everest?  (Also know as Sagarmatha by the country in which it exists – Nepal) 

This must seem like such a silly argument.  Doesn’t it?  Of course we all know about Everest and Hilary.  Blah di blah …  I am postulating a theory however.  And this theory says that only Hilary could see Everest.  And he was programmed to spend his life climbing it and he was also programmed to fail every time.  To him, to Sir Edmund Hilary, HIS mountain was there and he was GOING to climb it. 

This is Crazy Mountain. 

However, Sir Edmund had to live in this world.  He had to get a driver’s license, get along with other people, avoid breaking the law, earn a living.  All of these things require living within society with other people.  And whenever he was asked, “What ‘cha doin’.”  He knew he couldn’t say, “Well, I’m getting ready to climb Mt. Everest again.”

“Climb what?”

“I have to climb that huge mountain right there (pointing at Mt. Everest).”

“What mountain?  Where?”

“That one.  Right there.  It’s huge.  Can’t you see it?”

“Sir Ed.  Have you ever considered therapy?”

So Sir Ed keeps it to himself.  Bearing the burden of his life compulsion inside just to keep from being locked up.  Or worse, shunned as if he had the dreaded lampapoo plague.

If he had had his leg chewed off by a mountain wolf, the sympathy and understanding would be immense.  Most probably even if he said it was on his mountain nobody else could see.  The fact that his leg was obviously gone would prove he must be telling the truth.  Hundreds of other mountain climbers and adventurer types would take off looking for Sir Ed’s mountain.

Is this a ridiculous concept?  How many people absolutely believe and spend enormous of time and resources looking for Sasquatch, the Yeti or, I dunno … the jackalope?   

One man’s Sasquatch is another man’s invisible mountain.  Why is the first acceptable and the second not acceptable?  Why is it acceptable to be missing a leg, but not to believe in the necessity of climbing a mountain no one else can see? 

If a person spends a life time being kind, even loving, honest and productive – how is this totally disqualified because of their invisible mountain?

Who is crazier, the ones who see what can be done, what might be done that no one else can see?  Or, the ones who simply refuse to see that anything can be done that they cannot see?

******

If you enjoyed this blog, and/or found any value to you within it, please do subscribe.  I’d really appreciate it.  And feel free to write to me, or add a comment.

Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014

Please check out my new book Drawing Blind (Learn to draw without looking) at:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426600

It’s free – all I ask is that you post a review.

You can also get any of my books for Amazon Kindle at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=dale+clarence+peterson

My website:

http://daleclarencepeterson.com

My YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCul-hKF7pWsaLZruFwlTcdA 

Broken Ribs

Broken Ribs

I think I have just become a more interesting person.

Shy of my sixty-eighth birthday by a month, my brain decided to take a holiday and have a seizure – while I was driving my car.  This was not fun.

First of all the inter-brain seizure experience was worse than having ether used as a anesthesia.  Something I have experienced, more than once actually. 

We were living in England at the time I was a lad of eight and determined that I could do judo.  My first victim happened to be another eight-year-old lad who also happened to be considerable larger than myself.  I got him up in the air in a judo flip and brought him down directly on my extended arm.   Snap!

When it got purple and about the size of an Arizona watermelon (very large) and was sticking out straight from my shoulder, such that I was dribbling my soup on the tablecloth at dinner, my father noticed it.  At the hospital, the English (British) hospital in the 1950’s, medical practices were still stuck at around 1910.  As an anesthetic ether was the common knock-out juice (gas).

“Don’t ask me.  They were the Doctors and that was the hospital.  I was a kid.”

Ether, if you are unaware of it, is basically horrible.  Ether does kill the pain of whatever god-awful injury you’ve got, but it works by inflicting worse pain.  Mostly in the head.  With your brain in a quisinarte, your eyes on fire and your ears ringing like a car alarm, any other physical considerations become moot.  

Have you ever seen one of those toys with a spinning propeller at the top of small rod with a spring-loaded flint thingy?  You push on a thumb lever and the propeller spins while the flint creates and throws sparks on the propeller?  I hate those toys.

With one of those things duct taped to each eye and a large brutal man marching around the room whanging on the largest brass cymbal he can hold, you begin to get an idea of ether.  This stops.  Then it starts all over again.  Over and over.

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“Jeezuz!  Just kill me!”  “Leave the arm broken!  Cut it the fuck off!”  “Just turn off the freakin’ ether!”

Later that same year I got a toothache and had to have the tooth pulled.  The British (English) dentist used ether (!) to help me with the pain.

Flash-forward, and I do mean flash, and after over a full half century, my brain goes on the fritz and it feels just like ether has been shot straight into both of my temporal lobes. 

All in all it could have been worse – ha ha – no it couldn’t have been worse.  I was driving at the time.  I’m driving.  Ether is shot into my brain.  I am crawling out of my car, which is nose into a tree. 

There is a full on medical explanation as to why it happened, but that is not important in this blog.  What is important is that while safety belts “save lives”, they do, apparently, also “break ribs”.  Better broken ribs than dead.  Yes … I agree.  But the ribs still really hurt.

-------

And here's your video this week.

******

If you enjoyed this blog, and/or found any value to you within it, please do subscribe.  I’d really appreciate it.  And feel free to write to me, or add a comment.

Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014

Please check out my new book Drawing Blind (Learn to draw without looking) at:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426600

It’s free – all I ask is that you post a review.

You can also get any of my books for Amazon Kindle at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=dale+clarence+peterson

My website:

http://daleclarencepeterson.com

My YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCul-hKF7pWsaLZruFwlTcdA 

Getting Whacked Upside the Head!

Getting Whacked Upside the Head!

Nothing changes.  I’ve heard it said a million times, “People don’t change.”  And, “You can’t change people.”

Hmm….  Might be true, at least at some fundamental level.  If a person is colorblind, that isn’t going to change.  If a person is conditioned over their early childhood, to steal things, well, that be hard to change.  I think the idea that “Things” as in life conditions, say being very poor as a child, or not having the opportunity to go to a good school, not being allowable to change, would take a great deal of the hope out of living.

And without hope (?) what is the point in getting up in the morning?

Alcoholics, other damaged addicts, people who commit crimes – without the hope that change can happen, that life, with work on their life choices, any kind of future becomes just a jump off a high cliff. 

Then we do have that fundamental level – the possible physical impairments, disabilities, genetic disorders that can be accepted as challenges, or restrictions.  The fundamentals of these conditions, situations, may be possible to change, but there is often that choice – challenge or restriction.  That can change.  That can, at any point in a person’s life, change, or even be changed.

Just for myself, I can say I have received that phone call where before the phone rang my life was going in one direction on a seemingly immutable path and after that particular phone call, it had made a 180 degree turn – at least a 90 degree turn.  I have had those days when I left the house in the morning as one kind of person and returned in the evening as a completely different person.

The details are not all that important, I might get into them a bit, we’ll see.  This is a blog and I don’t work from a hardened outline.  So … maybe … if it fits.

The whack upside the head can happen at any instant.  Even during sleep.  One instant your life is “like this and “whack!” , your life – your whole life – is “different”.

One example; you discover you are going to become a parent.  You wake up in the morning with your life centered around yourself, thinking and focusing on just yourself, maybe inclusive of a relationship, but mostly just you.  You go to bed that night with the knowledge that very soon you will be responsible for a new human life.

Now that is a, “whack upside the head”!  I have had others.  I have had the “I’m going to be a father” whack six times.  But I have also had the life changing job offer telephone calls and mail, or emails (as of the last fifteen years or so.)  Okay, I admit it, I woke up one morning with a horrible hangover and decided I was never going to drink alcohol again – and I haven’t for over thirty-five years.  Even when it was free. 

I think my objective in writing this is more for the younger readers.  I mean if you are say less than thirty (?) and believe you have your life course set, your career and all that set; the concrete has hardened, there will be no changes.  If you are pleased with things as you have set them, don’t be.  If you are upset or disappointed with your life as it is and believe you are stuck, don’t be.

It might be a good whack or it might be a tragic whack that you get.  It can happen once in a lifetime or it can happen a number of times.  The odds are mostly in favor, I believe, that it is going to happen – at least once.  I believe the odds are that it will happen more than once. 

When the whack is favorable, it is a mistake to think it happened because God loves you more than other people.  Just as when it is more tragic, or damaging, painful, it is a mistake to think it is because God has it in for you for some reason.  But pay attention to the fact that you have been whacked!  There is always a lesson to be learned – if you survive, of course, relatively unscathed physically. 

And now your video for this week:

******

If you enjoyed this blog, and/or found any value to you within it, please do subscribe.  I’d really appreciate it.  And feel free to write to me, or add a comment.

Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014

Please check out my new book Drawing Blind (Learn to draw without looking) at:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426600

It’s free – all I ask is that you post a review.

You can also get any of my books for Amazon Kindle at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=dale+clarence+peterson

My website:

http://daleclarencepeterson.com

My YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCul-hKF7pWsaLZruFwlTcdA