when I thinks, I falls asleep II
Saturday, then, the Ides of March, eh? and Caesar is assassinated in, when? 44 B.C. was it? Why did his friend and enemies kill him? Caesar was ambitious, a grievous fault.
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
++++++++
Anymore, at this far distant point in life, I am anything but ambitious. I don't even care whether the pole I bought to stand by my bathtub for safer entry and especially exit, ever gets installed. For one, it requires reading an instruction sheet, which I don't. Joe does, maybe if it's still leaning against my bathroom wall the next Time Joe comes, he will install it. Or maybe I'll just give it to Habitat for Humanity as Linda suggests, because it needs to be screwed into the floor, and the floor is tile, and the pressure of it might break the ceiling material.
After the hurricane, while everything was all torn up and we were living at The Point in South Walton, I tried to find someone who would tear out my bathtub and install a regular stand-up shower, but nobody was available, and Whitehead Plumbing declined (they'd had a problem at HV with a leak that resulted in a lawsuit and they were no longer accepting work at HV), disappointing because they'd been my only plumber all the years at The Old Place. The opportunity to remodel my bathroom was fleeting, and in Time I just gave it a miss.
What am I doing? Reading and thinking. Thinking and reading, where both are part of Seeking. Seeking what? Truth. Where am I so far? IDK, it keeps moving. Not Truth, but potential answers. To Seek is essential, and I take it seriously, but more skeptically than seriously; which will be fine once I give it up and accept the inevitable.
One day in NT class, I've remembered this on +Time before, we were discussing Jesus' miracles (Gospel John calls them signs), and a student asked the professor if he believed the miracles really happened - - I mean calming a storm at sea, giving a blind man his sight, raising a dead child to life?, whatever were the gospel writers thinking? The professor responded that he was "the ultimate skeptic," and that he'd resolved years ago "to accept just this one thing: that God just this one Time raised a dead man, Jesus, to life" and that he was skeptical of everything else. So, I am good with my doubts, Thomas and me.
Thomas and I.
I'm just finishing picking out of an English teacup that was a wedding gift and likely never used for tea or coffee, the last of a handful of Virginia peanuts. Along with a magic mug of hot & black. It'll spoil my appetite for sure, but they were big and salty.
Where am I then? Closing the book with my bookmark, the envelope from an invoice, at the end of a chapter "Kill The Creature" that snakes are woven through, with an appreciation of postmodern nihilism that accepts meaninglessness as the answer. The reality of what is seen and experienced, while the answer to "Why?" is unknowable and the question itself is meaningless except for philosophers and extremely old men. I mean, 89&c, nomesane?
But meaninglessness is not despairing. Neither is it giving up. It's settling.
A Pauline Christian can rationalize relative meaninglessness, with Paul's notion that the dead rest, sleep, are oblivious in Jesus until the General Resurrection at the End of Days. How long, oh Lord?
Relax, eh? Obliviousness knows no passage of Time and therefore neither darkness, nor silence, nor impatience; it isn't even waiting. The End of Days will dawn in five billion years* as our Sun, transitioning to a red giant, expands to envelop Mercury, Venus, and Earth. Mars? I can wait, along with those I have loved who have already died, because in that sleep there is no sense of passing Time, and therefore no waiting.
Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that we may have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a reasonable and holy, in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those we love. Amen.
Do I believe that? Same as Jesus' miracles that Gospel John calls signs, lex orandi lex credendi, that prayer is a theology of my church; I can leave it standing without fervently scrooching up my eyes and clenching my fists and saying "I believe that" and I certainly don't need to renounce it. Although,
recently I read a scientific article that suggests our Universe is simply caught in a black hole of a parent universe, itself caught in a black hole of its own parent universe, and that (I recall having pondered this here before) every black hole leads into other universes to an endless and ineffably unimaginable number.
Why?
Lent: tomorrow is the Second Sunday in Lent (we like to say, "IN Lent, not OF Lent" so we can have a chocolate bar on Sundays IN Lent) and my desert Time is moving along imperceptibly, as slowly as it's meant to move, while I work out what to give up for Lent. And I'm settling. It's going to be these +Time blogposts. Writing for myself if or when I please during the week, and, if so moved, link only Sunday's blogpost on Facebook.
Why? Christian Wiman says, "Poetry is the only sanity." Sitting here looking out my window across St Andrews Bay into the thick haze, to his poetry, I'll add Anglican Chant and country music. And art: cars. Cars from the 1930s.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
*AI Overview
What will happen to the planets when the Sun becomes a red giant?
The Sun, as a main-sequence star, will transition into a red giant in approximately 5 billion years.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Current State:
The Sun is currently in the main sequence phase, steadily burning hydrogen into helium in its core.
Red Giant Transition:
In about 5 billion years, the Sun will exhaust its core hydrogen fuel, causing the core to contract and heat up.
Expansion:
This triggers hydrogen fusion in a shell surrounding the core, causing the outer layers of the Sun to expand dramatically, becoming a red giant.
Fate of Earth:
As the Sun expands, it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and likely Earth, too.
Long-term:
After the red giant phase, the Sun will eventually shed its outer layers, forming a planetary nebula, and leaving behind a hot, dense core called a white dwarf.