early Monday after late Sunday
Here I sit gazing out my window across St Andrews Bay into the last darkness before dawn on a chilly mid-January morning, progressing through extreme old age, with pretty much nothing left to do in life that I want to do except think, ponder, contemplate, decide nothing, and maybe jot some of it down like journal or diary entries in my +Time blog that, ever since starting it more than a dozen years ago, I call "my nonsense".
And don't bother "correcting" me about whether the period full-stop goes inside or outside the quotation marks, I know the rules, both English practice and absurdly inconsistent American practice, and I vary and apply them inconsistently, partly to suit myself, partly to jerk the chain of any persnickety reader; what's your problem?!
In my life's Time I've been, vocationally and avocationally, fish house worker, student, food service worker, naval officer, amateur astronomer, adjunct professor, consultant; and clergy member that made me a pastor, preacher, priest, teacher, struggling theologian, persistent believer, doubter, seeker.
In my early morning wee hours quiet, I scanned email and picked up an essay in the Progressive Christian version of "Patheos" that arrives on some schedule, IDK what. Catching my attention because it seemed to overlap interests in my life, it did actually, and led me to a couple other related connections. Entitled "Are the Bible and Big Bang Consonant?", the writer does an entertaining enough job that, though he works at being objective and balanced, nevertheless qualifies as apologia, Christian apologetics, which usually hangs out as sheer nonsense, although I somewhat agree with him on this one: Genesis creationism, the Big Bang, and multiverse theory are somewhat compatible. That is to say, science says something happened, we know what but don't know why; while religion says something happened because someone or something said "eh-YEH!"
I enjoyed this quotation:
"With irony and humor, Robert Jastrow, founder and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, declared that our scientists had arrived at the finish line in second place.
"'At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries” (Jastrow, 1978, p. 116).'"
Here's a link to the essay in case anyone wants to read it, although it's pretty long and, like many sermons, could have been brought to conclusion at any number of good stopping places:
+++++++++++
If I'm humoring myself, doing the exclusively human thing of contemplating myself, having myself as my own object (even a highly intelligent ape will go behind a mirror to fight with his reflection, and I'm not sure he's mentally capable of ever "getting it"), I, with nothing to do and liking it this way, see myself this way ->
believer, skeptic, seeker, doubter, hold-on-to never-forget a compliment, offense or hurt, oyster & mullet addict, strange person.
RSF&PTL
T
pic: the sunrise was brilliant red and orange, but that was the pathetic best my phone camera captured it this morning.