Dream

As I have said, I don't remember my dreams very often.  I had one, last night, that Gloria was in.  It's hard to say that it was about Gloria, because it's hard to say it was about anything.

The dream *seemed* to go on all night, and it *seemed* like I kept waking up from it and going back to the same dream.  But dream states mess with your perception of time and sequence, and it's more likely it was just one dream, for a short time.

Gloria was involved in preparing for a church service: some major event.  Some important people, in the musical world, were involved, for reasons which made no sense when I woke up.  I was helping out, with stuff which made no sense when I woke up.

In the latter part of the dream I was looking for Gloria, and couldn't find her.  In the dream there was no sense of urgency, but, as soon as I woke up enough, I knew that Gloria was dead, and so it must all have been a dream.

I don't exactly feel devastated, like Gloria died all over again, but I'm sad ...

MGG - 2.0 - Scouts, beans, and explosions

In the dim and distant past of my ill-spent youth, I was a Cub Scout, and then a Boy Scout, and then, eventually, a Scoutmaster.  This was not my first experience at teaching, but well predated my first appearance, as a teacher, or even student teacher, in a public school classroom.  It probably did inform my later philosophy on classroom management (probably best described as "pick your battles").

The Boy Scout region for the group that I was with owned a property that was an island in the Chilliwack River.  At this particular point, the Chilliwack River was not very big, so the island wasn't very big either.  Access to the island was easily afforded by fording, but we had created a bridge, by the simple expedient of laying down a few sturdy planks.  But there was no vehicle access to our Island property: just a footpath roughly down the middle of the island, campsites strung alternately on either side along it.  The far end terminated at a somewhat larger campsite, which, of course, we, as the scoutmasters, scoffed for ourselves.

In those dim and distance carefree days, most of the time you are allowed to build campfires.  We, although we didn't go whole hog and mandate Coleman or Primus stoves for the campers, had decided that discretion was the better part of fire safety, and that our campfires would not be open.  Someone had taken some forty-five gallon drums, cut them in half, cut a rectangular opening on one side of the cut end, and a circular opening on the diametrically opposed side, but near the flat drum top, providing a simplistic stove, the rectangular opening allowing the scouts to build, and maintain a fire, inside the half drum, with the round opening on the opposite side acting as a kind of a chimney.  This also provided for a large flat cooking surface, on top, eliminating the need to tenuously balance pots or frying pans on an open fire.

In order to increase the safety factor, we had told all of the scouting patrols that they were required to bank Earth up against the outside of the half drum, at least two-thirds of the way up the drum to the flat top.

We were, in fact, discussing this arrangement, and congratulating ourselves on its absolute safety, and protection from any fire related injuries, when we heard the bang.  It wasn't just any bang.  It was a very sharp report, like a gunshot, but much louder.

Of course the leaders, all of us, took off at once, running up the footpath, and checking the campsites to either side, looking for anything that might indicate a fire, or any similar untoward event.  We were running rapidly, and checking rapidly as we went.  Campsite to the left no fire.  Campsite to the right, no fire.  Campsite to the left, no fire.  Campsite to the right, no fire.  Campsite to the left, no fire.  Campsite to the right, no fire.  Wait a minute: no stove.  No steel drum.  But there was a grey circular patch, approximately the diameter of a forty-five gallon drum, with a fan of grey in front of it, and a straight line, about six inches across, pointing directly away on the opposite side of the grey circle.  Where was the drum?  In fact, since these this particular group had been very diligent about the banking of earth around their steel drum oven, and had banked it up all the way to the top, where was the banked earth?

Yes, this was the site of the explosion.  We did, eventually, find the half steel drum.  It was about thirty feet away, in the bushes.

One of the Scouts in this patrol had decided that he was hungry.  He didn't feel like preparing a full meal, and it wasn't exactly meal time anyway.  But he thought that, perhaps, rather than opening the can, and pouring the beans into a pot, and heating the pot that way, which might have taken a while in any case, and would have necessitated washing a pot, the quickest expedient was to throw the can of beans into the fire.  He decided that the beans would heat up much more quickly that way, being surrounded by the fire, but protected by the can.  (We did not, overmuch, task him with describing how he thought he was going to open a very hot can of beans, to get at the beans, and eat them.)

Of course, the predictable had happened.  The beans, in the can, did heat up, and, presumably, boiled.  The boiling, whatever it may have done to the beans in the can, in the way of charring, etc, definitely increased the pressure in the can.  At some point, probably by the time the folds in the can had straightened out under the pressure, and the ends had probably started to bulge with the pressure, the pressure inside the can overcame the tensile strength of the steel of the can.  Whatever water had been in the can, when released from pressure, turned into steam pretty much instantly.  Since we never found any evidence of any actual beans, we figured that some of the beans, being composed of carbohydrates and other materials that were combustible at that temperature, probably added to the explosion.  The resulting release of steam, and some overpressure from the explosion itself, fortunately vaporizes the flaming sticks and embers that were part of the fire.  We never did find any evidence of any fires started (and, since it was a spring camp, the woods were pretty well soaking wet anyway).

The fire, itself, disappeared into ash, and, as mentioned, we never found any evidence of it anywhere, except for the ash design that I have described.  The half forty-five gallon drum stove must have launched a considerable height into the air, and, also as previously mentioned, traveled thirty feet into the bush.  The beans, presumably, vaporized and possibly combusted.  We never even found a trace of the tin can.  Also as noted, the force of the blast distributed the mounted earthwork to such an extent that you couldn't even tell where it had been.

We had second thoughts as to the absolute safety of this setup, but congratulated ourselves on a fortunate escape, and noted, to the boys, that putting a can of beans into a fire, to warm it up, was not a good idea.

The next day, there was another, although smaller, blast.  In this case, the explosive device was a can of apple juice, which, since they open with a piece of sticky foil, occasioned a considerably smaller blast.  Even so, we informed the boys that if there were any further experiments with throwing containers into the fires, they would be eating cold meals for the rest of the camp.  We also started a discussion reconsidering the advisability of using Coleman stoves at the campsite.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1d3-cooking.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-21-teaching.html

Review of "The Dictionary of Lost Words," by Pip Williams

This book is about many things that are important to me: words, gender disparities, the OED, loss, languages threatened with extinction, grief, inequities in credit, and love.

I love the book, and I think that it's great.  I think that it is very well written, readable, and with interesting and sympathetic characters.

Sermon 50 - The Advent Candle of Joy

Sermon 50 - The Advent Candle of Joy

Matthew 2:9,10

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.  When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.

I am at a serious disadvantage when talking about joy.  After all, I am a depressive.  That does kind of work against the topic.  I have a great deal of difficulty when mental health counselors, and the like, ask what brings you joy.  There are some things that do bring me joy, but they are not necessarily within my control.  For example, one thing I could think of that would bring me joy is Gloria, but Gloria is dead.  There is nothing I can do about that.

Another thing that could bring me joy is teaching.  I love to teach.  And I have a wide variety of subjects I can teach on.  But, try as I might, for the last couple of years I haven't been able to develop any opportunities for teaching.  The local school district doesn't seem to be too active beyond the confines of the immediate needs of the provincial curriculum.  The local campus of the regional college doesn't seem to be too active either, and has a very limited set of programs in any case.  Between the school district and the college, absolutely nobody is doing any computer or technical training in town.  I have tried quite a number of other possibilities, including presenting workshops and seminars through local churches as a form of outreach to the community, to invite people to a workshop when they might not show up to a church service.  Unfortunately, the local churches don't see outreach in quite the same light.  They are fine about reaching out to people in Guatemala, but people here in town, not quite so much.

So, about the only thing left that might bring me joy is Timbits, and that is contraindicated by my diabetes.

This is not to say that I wander around as some kind of grump.  Gloria taught me that, like so many other things.  No, just because you are not enjoying things, doesn't mean you have to go around this snarl on your face.  Gloria was a soloist, and knew from a very early age that she was going to be spending her life on church platforms.  She took this responsibility seriously, and trained herself to have a resting face that was, at least, pleasant.  She was so good at this that, when she was walking down the street, people would often smile at her, thinking that they were smiling back at her because she was smiling at them.  Very often she would not even have known, until they smiled at her, of their existence.  So, I learned this lesson from her.  Not quite as well as she did, but I have trained myself to have a resting space that is at least minimally pleasant.

But of course, just because I have a smile on my face, doesn't mean that I'm happy.  Shakespeare said that a man may smile and smile and be a villain.  It's also true that a man may smile and smile and be a depressive.

Now this does not mean that I have never experienced joy in my life.  Every time I think about the topic I can recall one shining moment.  There wasn't anything particularly special about it.  I was working at a job that I didn't particularly enjoy, for minimum wage.  It was a job where I was primarily alone, and taking care of an area that contained a large, and weed strewn, gravel lot.  It wasn't particularly pretty, and it wasn't particularly interesting.  But one day, a fairly ordinary day, as I was walking across said weed strewn gravel lot, I was just struck with joy.  I just really felt good in that particular moment.  For no particular reason.

A lot of people, when talking about joy, say that joy should be shared.  Generally speaking, I would hardly agree that chasing after joy is a futile endeavor.  And, yes, I would say that, in most cases, sharing your joy helps to expand it, and also means that it brings joy to others.

But I would I would note a caveat about that in most cases.

I have two counter-examples.  The first is yet another moment that I can remember, when I experienced joy.  I was teaching a course, to do with technology, and part of the course was to teach students programming, and, specifically, to teach students how to program in the JavaScript scripting language.  JavaScript would not be my first choice.  It contains a number of really bad elements, which experience programmers know should not be taught to beginning programming students.  But this was the language I was to teach, and so I tried to do my best.  At one point I had given the students an assignment to create functions, really for the same purpose, but, in one case, using iteration (simply the cyclical repeating of a function), and in the other case recursion.  It is hard to explain recursion to a non-technical audience.  Recursion would appear, to the outsider, simply to be another case of using a cyclical function.  However, there is a nuanced, but important, difference.  The recursive function starts its own separate, but identical, function, using as its input the output of the calling function.  It's okay if you don't understand that: we'll just put it down to the fact that you are not a programmer, and we'll go on.

It is difficult, even for an experienced programmer, to avoid the trap of falling back on iteration and just thinking that you are doing recursion.  So I worked hard at creating a sample, which I could use with the students once their own assignments had been marked.  And I managed to do it.  And I managed to do it properly.  And I was, once again, struck, briefly, by joy.  And having achieved my purpose, I ran downstairs, to try and share my joy with Gloria.  And Gloria didn't understand.  I never should have expected Gloria to understand in the first place.  As I say, it is a complicated and nuanced distinction.  And Gloria didn't understand why I was so chuffed about it.  And that was kind of a buzzkill.  So, sometimes, you just *can't* share the joy.

But sharing the joy is sometimes pretty cruel.  Not always, and not necessarily even in most cases.  There are a number of people that I know, who are bubbly, happy people.  And I, as a depressive, really do enjoy being around them.  Joy and happiness pretty much always helps, even when you are depressed.  But some people are toxically positive.  These are the type of people who *insist* that when I am depressed I could just *choose* to have a great day!  Some say that it's a choice.  That every day you should just choose joy.  But simply choosing Joy does not mean that joy will choose you.

I suppose that there is a difference here.  On the one hand, someone is insisting that I am wrong, and not only wrong but *deliberately* wrong, because I won't *choose* to have a good day, when they figure that everybody could just *choose* to have a good day.  The other people are just happy, enjoy it, and that happiness, while it will sometimes clash with my darkest moods, is, in pretty much no case, harmful to me, as long as you just aren't insisting that I could be a part of it regardless of my situation.  Yes, in some of my darkest and bleakest moods, anybody else's happiness is somewhat painful.  But it's the *insistence* that I could just choose to be happy, that God *always* and invariably binds up the broken hearted, that God *always* and invariably comforts the afflicted: that insistence without regard to my situation or mood is toxic positivity.  That isn't actually joy.  That isn't actually even happiness.  That toxic positivity seems to be based more on some extraordinarily deep-seated *fear* that your happiness is so tenuously balanced, and so weak, that not sharing it might damage it in some way, and might even destroy it.  There is a vast difference between joy and toxic positivity.  Those who are truly joyous and truly happy need not fear that they are harming me by being happy around me.  Those who are afraid of my depression are the ones whose joy isn't really joy.

(I have, recently, been trying to come up with a greeting for the new year which is less toxically positive than the normal *command* that you should have a "Happy New Year!"  So far the best that I've been able to come up with is that, "I hope, but have, as yet, no evidence that would support any expectation, that this year, for you, is less disastrous than last.")

Now, a lot of people, when talking about joy, note that joy eludes you when you chase after it, and escapes you when you grasp for it.  Some note that joy shrinks when held tight.  Yes, in the two examples that I gave above, there is no point in trying to hold on to that joy.  The joy came unexpectedly, and stays fleetingly.  There is no point to trying to hold that state of mind.  Joy comes when it will, and leaves when it will.  Those who make lists of ten rules to achieving joy are foolish.  Trying to chase after joy is equally unproductive.  We cannot create joy.  There may be certain things we can do to make it more likely that joy will come to us; to attract it like a hummingbird or a butterfly, but joy is always faster than you are, and chasing it will never allow you to catch it.

Some will say that music, or art, or some other beautiful thing will bring you joy.  Sometimes it will.  But art is not, or at least not always, about joy.  Sometimes art is to teach us, and sometimes the lessons are not pleasant, let alone joyful.  Some say that nature will bring you joy.  Nature is full of many things that are beautiful, and, yes, nature is possibly one of the places that will attract joy.  But marching forcefully into nature, determined to track down joy is likely to fail, in the same way that marching into a forest in search of a butterfly is unlikely to be successful.

Some say that focusing on the good, kind of following Philippians 4:8, will bring you joy.  Once again, I would say that focusing on the good may make it more probable that joy will come to you, but concentrating on joy, by itself, will not automatically bring you joy.  Many of those who would suggest that you concentrate on the good, or that love will bring joy, would undoubtedly recommend that you choose joy.  But simply choosing joy does not mean that joy will choose you.  Indeed, very often those who insist on seeing only the good; never allowing any negative images, or thoughts, for consideration or to be a part of your thinking; well that is toxic positivity.  That is pretty much guaranteed to bring pain to a lot of people that you push it upon.  Not joy.

Some will say that comparison is the death of joy.  In fact, Mark Twain said that.  And yes, comparing what you have, to what others have, is likely to make you either vain, or jealous.  Neither is conducive to joy.

Love is said to fuel joy.  Again, as with the practice of concentrating on the good, I would say that love creates an atmosphere attractive to joy.  But, once again, you cannot force joy.  I love doing volunteer work.  I love to help people.  I particularly love it when something that I have studied can be used to help others and protect them from the worst that may befall them.  But, today, while I was on my way to a shift with one volunteer group, I got a call from another volunteer group, telling me that my services are no longer required.  I love that second volunteer group.  I love the people I worked with, and I love the people that I helped, when doing it.  But, apparently, somewhere along the way, I upset someone.  And now I am dismissed.  This does not bring me joy.  No matter how much I love the work, the concept, my fellow volunteers, and the people that I help, joy did not come.  I do not know why.  But this happens.  Love is no guarantee of obtaining joy.

Many say to spread joy.  Well, as in one of the examples above, I tried.  It didn't work.  Sometimes you can share the joy, but often you can't.  And, as noted elsewhere, trying to force your joy on someone else, well, again, that is toxic positivity.  It will not bring others joy, and it is unlikely to increase your own joy.  Not unless you are exceptionally delusional.

Some say that joy increases our inner strength.  That joy *is* strength.  Yes, joy does give us strength.  But simply noting this does not increase our access to joy.

Others say that gratitude is the root of joy. It is interesting, David Steindl-Rast said that the root of joy is gratefulness: it is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful.  Concentrating on gratitude, like concentrating on the good, or prioritizing love, probably makes us more ready to accept joy when it arrives, and to realize it when it arrives.  But, once again, simply reciting three things you are grateful for does not automatically bring you joy.  There are always things to be grateful for, if only that your life is not worse than it is.  Gratitude does not automatically create joy.

I wish you joy.  I really do.  Joy is a gift, and it is a gift from God.  But joy is a *gift*.  A gift is given.  It is not pursued.  It is not obtained, or worked for, or given as part of some transaction.  Joy is a gift, and I hope God gives it to you.

If God does not give you the gift of joy ... well, let's just say that I hope he gives it to you.  If you do not have joy, yes, being grateful for what you have, thinking about whatever is pure and good, and loving others as much as you can, these are all good things.  But do not expect joy to come to you in return for this.

Look to nature, music, art, and beauty.  Concentrating on the good is always good.  Concentrating on the good, and the beautiful, will help you to weather minor trials and tribulations.  But do not expect that just concentrating on, and emphasizing, beauty will bring you joy.  Think on these things, yes, but mitigate your expectations.  If joy comes, if joy is given to you, that is good.  But merely concentrating on music or nature is unlikely to bring you true joy.

Choose always to be open to joy.  But do not expect the mere openness to bring you joy.  Joy is a gift.  Gifts must be given.  Do not expect to will to have joy, and then to obtain it.  Willing it, and having it appear for you, is not a gift.  It is magic.  And, many times, the Bible warns us to beware of magic, and not to pursue it.

If, when you are given joy, you can spread it, then it is even better.  But do not expect to be able, purely because you are joyful, to spread joy.  If you can bring joy to others, then you are truly blessed, but expecting to be given the gift of spreading joy is as unlikely as being able to grab joy, or chase joy, or trap joy, by your own efforts.

I hope God gives you joy.  But remember, joy is a *gift*.  It is given.  It is not the result of any kind of process or transaction.

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Do you *believe*!?!

There is, in a mall in Kentucky, a taxidermy bear, which, it is claimed, is the actual Cocaine Bear. The owners claim that the bear has the power to officiate legally binding weddings, due to Kentucky's marriage laws. This is only partially true. The bear does not have the ability to solemnize weddings, but the state of Kentucky cannot *invalidate* weddings performed by unqualified persons, if the parties being married believe that the person marrying them has the authority to do so.

You can cite this the next time someone tells you that *believing* in something makes it so ...

MGG - 6.05 - Gloria - or not?

Actually, a week after we got engaged, Gloria wanted to call it off.  She felt that she didn't love me as much as I loved her.  I said I was willing to take my chances.  (A few years after we got married, she started calling me a worm.  She said that, while, initially, she hadn't loved me as much as I loved here, over time I had "wormed" my way into her heart.)

So, we did agree to get married.  As noted, Gloria hated moving, and I agreed to move into her place.  (Over the years, as I got to know just how *much* Gloria hated moving, I started telling people that she only agreed to marry me because I was willing to move into her place, and not make her move again.)  Which I started to do, in bits and pieces.  Gloria (at this time still not sure that she loved me as much as I loved her) felt some pressure at me "invading" her home.  I was given *one* room, into which to move everything I was bringing from my apartment.  (It was to be my office.)  It was the smallest bedroom.  Predictably, at one point it got pretty full.  Gloria, still feeling invaded by all of this, was particularly upset one night when I brought over yet another load.  It was, in fact, a pretty small load: just four plastic shopping bags of stuff.  But it was kind of the last straw, at the time, and the fact that, when I went to put the bags in the room, they actually didn't fit, and stuck out a bit into the hall, set Gloria off.  She yelled about feeling this pressure, and feeling invaded, right there in the hall.

And I turned, and kicked at the bags, and yelled at them, "Back!  Back!"

Gloria laughed, and we talked about it some more, and Gloria said that she decided that she could take me on, since we could discuss *any* problem, even if the problem was me.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/12/mgg-604-gloria-engaged.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: TBA

Sermon 45 - The Difficulties of Law

Sermon 45 - The Difficulties of Law

Exodus 12:49

The same law applies both to the native-born and to the foreigner residing among you.

So, I’m co-teaching data communications in Washington, DC.  The venue is one that is obviously specifically designed for teaching commercial courses, and there are a number of them going on this particular week.  Over the week, it becomes apparent that all of the other instructors are Jewish.  I find this statistically odd, but otherwise unremarkable.  The guy I’m co-teaching with is Jewish, and has recently had a heart attack.  As with most such "death" scares, it has made him take religion seriously for the first time in a while, and there is some discussion in the mornings and at breaks as to aspects of the Torah that he is trying to follow, but that most of the other instructors aren’t.

One night, all of the instructors of the different seminars, about a dozen of us, decide to get together for dinner.  A sushi restaurant is chosen.  As we enter, my co-instructor, who has been wearing a yarmulke pretty much all week, takes it off.  Some of the other instructors question this, and my co-instructor says that he would not want to give anyone the false impression that the food is kosher, since much of it isn’t.

We are served an appetizer of octopus cubes in a sweet-vinegar sauce.  It is delicious.  Some of the instructors note that my co-instructor is not eating his, and encourage him to try it.  He demurs, saying that it is not kosher.  This occasions some surprise from the other instructors, and they ask why it isn’t kosher.  I say that it hasn’t got fins and scales.

I suddenly become aware that the whole table has stopped talking, and look up.  Everyone is looking at me.  All of their faces seem to be asking the same question: how is it that this goy knows more about Jewish dietary law than we do?

I read the Bible.  The *whole* Bible.  I doubt that I am anywhere near wise enough to decode which parts are important, and which aren't.  I even read the genealogies, the allotments of land to the various tribes of Israel, and the Minor Prophets.  So I've read the Law.  Many times.  And I was discussing some aspects of the Law with a friend, and noted that it must have been hard for people in northern Israel, being so far away from Jerusalem, and having to travel so far to do certain things.  And she responded that she had never thought of that, and that she bet that nobody had ever written a sermon on that.

So I did.

There are a couple of quotes that might help to set up the idea, as it were.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."  Anatole France

"'If life gives you lemons make lemonade' is the stupidest quote ever because if life doesn't also give you sugar and water that lemonade is gonna suck."  - Matt Aronson  https://www.instagram.com/p/DEPwqWbx3EJ/

Another reason that I got this idea for a sermon is that I have taught law.  Not to lawyers, necessarily (although I have, in a number of cases), and I am not a lawyer myself.  But for a quarter of a century, I have facilitated seminars that required me to teach about different types of legal systems, and legal principles.  So, in order to teach this material, I had to study it.  And one of the things I can tell you is, the law is not fair.

Life is not fair.  God probably intends to *make* it fair, at some point, probably by making everything so good that nothing that came before will be of any importance.  But that isn't yet.  So far, on this imperfect earth, life is not fair.  It isn't equal.  And even the law that God gave to Moses isn't completely fair to everyone.

Since this sermon is predicated on the idea that some of the law seems to be quite difficult, and sometimes more difficult for some people than for others, I should start by acknowledging that most people seem to be in agreement with a good many parts of the law.  This is true even if those people aren't Jewish, or Christian, and don't even believe that there is a God to provide God's law.  Most people would agree that the Ten Commandments are a pretty good idea.  This is probably because they don't realize what the Ten Commandments actually *are*, and that the first commandment is that we will have no other gods before God. Yes, that holds the number one spot in the hit parade.  And, in fact, it's probably not until we get to number six that most people would really agree with the Ten Commandments, even if we lost the first five.  Oh, and, since we're speaking about the Ten Commandments, one has to ask, *which* Ten Commandments?  Not just the fact that the first five, in the first list are rather exclusively devoted to the Judeo-Christian religion, but the fact that there are, in fact, at least two, and probably three, different versions of the Ten Commandments, in different places in the books of the law.  That is, the Pentateuch, or the Books of Moses, or the Torah.

After we get out of the Ten Commandments, most of us don't think that it's terribly important to avoid eating bacon, or clam chowder, but, when you actually look at the law, there is an awful lot that makes a great deal of sense, even if some of the people most affected by the law, at that time, might not have realized it.  For example, there's that bit about fins and scales.  It is not only true that there are a lot of fish in the sea, but there is an awful lot of seafood, in the sea, that's, well, maybe a little bit questionable, particularly if you live in a place with a very hot climate.  Shellfish of all types tend to be delicious, but they also tend to go bad, very quickly, in the heat, and so, even though the fins and scales injunction still leaves an awful lot of leeway for fish that might be rather dangerous (particularly if kept too long in the heat), but at least limiting what you can consider edible does reduce the danger factor by an enormous amount.

And, on the bacon front, while pigs are extraordinarily efficient at turning forage and scraps into edible meat, their histology, because it is so surprisingly similar to that of human beings, is subject to an awful lot of germs, bacteria, and parasites that would make us very sick.  So, once again, having an injunction against pork would tend to benefit people in relation to health matters.  I'm not quite sure why we can't eat rabbits, but perhaps rabbits are just collateral damage, given the need to make a simple prohibition which allows the eating of certain animals and prevents the eating of others.

And now we come to possibly the first area of difficulty with the law.  And this is with law in general.  When you have a legal system, you probably want to minimize the number of actual laws, trying to make those minimal laws cover the maximum in terms of avoiding damage and harm.  So, we have a simple definition of animals you can eat, and animals you can't eat.  You can eat an animal if it has a split hoof, and chews its cud.  So you get to eat ruminants, and you get to eat certain types of ruminants.  This makes the stating, and deciding, of the law fairly simple, but it does make some arbitrary limits, and possibly it doesn't even cover all cases.

Even if we kind of waffle around some of the specific laws, some of the laws seem pretty arbitrary.  For example, when making a sacrifice of an animal, generally you have to burn the animal.  Some of the sacrifices, in certain cases, you can eat.  For example, there is the Passover sacrifice.  Pretty much everybody can eat it.  Men, even if they aren't Levites, women, who otherwise only get to share the parts of the sacrifice that you can eat under pretty specific conditions, and even foreigners, as long as they live in your house.  But there are certain parts of the sacrifices, even the burned sacrifices, which get given to the Levites, kind of as part of their wages.  But there are parts of the animal, when you burn it on the altar, which you are not supposed to burn.  And those parts can't just be thrown away: they have to be taken to a certain area, outside the camp, and burned, separately.

Oh, and then there are those sacrifices of plants, like the first fruits of your harvest, which don't have to be burned, necessarily, but can just be donated to the Levites nearby, wherever you happen to be.  They don't have to be taken to Jerusalem and burned in the temple.

Why not?  Or, in the first place, why?

Then again, this question of why, sometimes isn't addressed because the people to whom the law is being given just wouldn't understand the explanation.  There are, for example, quite a number of passages which point out that God is not interested in efficiency.  When you are harvesting your fields, you don't harvest right to the edge of the field.  After you have finished harvesting your field, you don't go back and gather up the missing bits that you didn't get the first time.  When you are harvesting from your olive trees, you don't shake the branches the second time.  Now, of course, if you did go over the field a second time, and if you did shake the branches a second time, you would get more from what you have been growing.  It would be more efficient.  (Also like the fact that pigs are more efficient for producing meat, but we've covered that separately.)

But there are other parts of the law that seem to indicate that God just isn't interested in efficiency.  When you loan money to someone, you aren't allowed to charge them interest.  As a matter of fact, when the sabbatical year rolls around, if somebody hasn't paid you back, you are just to forgive them the debt.  Now, how are you supposed to create an efficient economic systems, with credit cards and stuff, if you have all these restrictions?

Some of the restrictions might be explained in other ways.  For example, when you are gleaning your fields, you are to leave the stuff you didn't get the first time for the widows and orphans.  The phrase "widows and orphans" is used an awful lot in the Bible, and it seems to be code for what we would now call the disadvantaged.  People who don't have as much as you do.  And who don't have the opportunities you do.  So, yes, there might be some parts of the law that do have an explanation.  One of the common explanations is that God says you won't need to clean your field a second time, or shake your olive tree a second time, because God will provide so much for you.  So, these parts of the law, relating to efficiency, might just be saying pursuing efficiency demonstrates a lack of faith in God.

We should maybe keep that in mind in our modern, capitalist, age, where we pursue efficiency so avidly, that it might almost be considered to be a new false god.

Anyway, I wondered about this for something like forty years, after I first noticed it.  And then along came a pandemic.  And our society just about collapsed, particularly our financial systems, and commercial systems, mostly because of systems that we have set up in the name of efficiency, such as supply chains, and offshoring, and Just-in-Time manufacturing.  And all of a sudden it became, to me at least, completely clear.  One of the things we know is that as you make a system more efficient, you also make it more brittle.  It is less resilient.  When you make a completely efficient system, then whenever anything goes wrong, anything at all, the entire system collapses.  Resilience is inefficient.  Until you desperately need it.

So, there might be some parts of the law that might come under the category of, we still don't know enough to understand why this part of the law is good for us.  But let's proceed anyway.

Then Jesus came, and He said that He fulfilled the Law.  And we decided, probably correctly, that that meant that huge chunks of the Mosaic Law just weren't that important.  Preston Manning said, at least once, that pretty much the entire Old Testament was the story of the failure of the rule of law.  (Which is a rather interesting thing for a politician to say, when you think about it.)

(We still seem to think that *any* of the parts of the law that have to do with sex are really, *really*, *REALLY* important, but that's as may be.)

Let's rewind a bit, back to that business about having faith in God, and God blessing you.  Now, objectively, God has blessed me.  He let me be born in Canada.  He let me live in a place where pretty much nobody is dropping bombs on my house.  He let me live in Canada, and, even better than that, at a time when I was able to obtain an education, and support my university education with the jobs that I was able to get in the summer, and working weekends in the winter.  You tell that to the students these days, and they'll just laugh.  It's not possible, anymore, to get a job, at the minimum wage level that most students are forced to accept, because, after all, they have no work experience, that pays enough for you to pay your rent, and feed yourself, and pay for your tuition, and your books, and all the rest of what you need to live for four to twelve years in order to get an education in a profession.  But I was born in a time, and in a place, where I could pay for it, and could get it, and nobody was trying to kill me.

On the other hand, God gave me a thorn in the flesh.  God gave me depression.  I have spent pretty much half of my life depressed, and I only say half, because my depression used to be cyclical, and I would be four months depressed, and four months not quite depressed.  And then God gave me a wife.  And among the other things that God gave me, through Gloria, I had someone to talk to, and someone who cared how I felt, and whether I felt depressed.  Which went a long way to mitigating the effects of depression.  It didn't remediate it entirely, of course, but it was a lot of help.

And then God took Gloria from me.  And now I'm depressed again, and, not only that, but my depression is no longer cyclical in nature: it is constant.  So my depression is worse than ever.  And I am waiting for the blessing.  It's really hard to hold on to faith in that blessing, the longer it doesn't come.  And right about now, the greatest blessing, and favour, that God could do me, is to kill me.  I frequently ask God to do that.

Getting back to law (and I *will* tie all of this together, eventually), pretty much the only laws that we have left are that we love God, and we love our neighbours.  That shouldn't be too hard.  But it is harder for some, than for others.  It is easy to love God when things are going OK.  It's harder when *nothing* in your life is OK.  Now, as I say, God has, objectively, blessed me.  My life is not bad.  It could be worse.  The thing is, when you have depression, you can't enjoy anything.  Anything that anyone would normally enjoy, you can't.  All the mental health counsellors, and life coaches, and those of that ilk, tell you to enjoy the little things.  And good little things exist.  But when you have depression, you don't enjoy them.  You *can't* enjoy them.  That's just what depression is.  So, it is harder for me to love God.  It is harder for me to have faith in God.  How do you praise God when your life is just constantly terrible?  (And that business about loving your neighbour?  It's a lot harder to care about anybody else's troubles when you are in constant pain, even if it is "only" mental pain.)

(On the other hand, only those who have *had* pain seem to have the patience to be with those who are, actually, in distress, so ...)

So, life is not fair.  Life is not equal.  And the law is not really fair or equal.  And that may be one of the lessons that God wanted (needed?) to teach us.  God undoubtedly gave us the best, and fairest, possible set of laws.  Deuteronomy 4:8 - "And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?"  And then set out to teach us that even that set of laws wasn't good enough.

Which is why Christianity isn't a religion.  The word religion comes from the Latin word religio.  Religio has to do with laws, duties, and special practices.  Probably its closest equivalent, in English, is actually the word legalism.  Christianity *isn't* about law.  It's about a relationship.  With God.

A God who will, eventually, make everything all right.

Sermon 27 - God's Law is Good for Us

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/05/sermon-27-gods-law-is-good-for-us.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Christmas, crowds, and charity

This started out as my reaction to the irony of a picture of a New Years Eve party for children.

First off, I didn't take the picture.  I was out with Community Policing that night, and I know that the kids didn't stay up until the new year: they were all out of there by 9 pm.

Secondly, if you look at the sides of the photo, you will notice how few people were actually there.  Sonja , although she does yeoman service in documenting everything that goes on around town, should have taken some tips from Hallmark movies.  Crowd scenes in Hallmark movies, even when they are supposed to represent events with thousands of attendees, never have more than thirty people in them.  But you have to crop and frame the shot so as not to give the game away:

Which got me in mind of Christmas.  I spent it at the Bread of Life, doing food prep, and then helping serve Christmas dinner, at lunchtime.  Part of the prep was cutting and plating 216 pieces of pie.  But, when we served lunch, I'd be surprised if we served even fifty plates.

When you are doing charity work, you can't be too concerned about efficiency in aspects of what you are doing.  For one thing, the clientele we were serving probably wouldn't (couldn't?) sign up in advance, to let you know how many to expect.  For another, the pies were donated, and, if not served, would have gone into the landfill anyway.  (The company donating them hadn't taken much care in packing them, and a lot of my work in plating the pieces involved reconstructing pies where the filling had slid out of the crust.)  In that situation, overpreparing is better than running out of food when more people than you expect show up.  The "effective altruism" movement (which took a big hit when FTX turned out to be a huge scam) to the contrary, charity can't always be based on efficiency.

Anyway, I hope, but do not, as yet, have any evidence to support any expectation, that, for you, the coming year will prove less disastrous than the last.

(I'm trying to work on a greeting that has less excess mindless toxic positivity than "Happy New Year!")

Zechariah 7:9,10

The Lord Almighty has said, Be sure that you are fair to all people.  Be kind to each other.  Do not cheat widows or orphans.  Do not cheat foreigners or poor people.  Do not think secretly of ways to hurt each other.

Review of "Supercommunicators," by Charles Duhigg

There are two possible books between the covers of this tome.  One is an enjoyable collection of anecdotes, exploring some of the aspects, weaknesses, foibles, problems, and possible solutions, in interpersonal communications, but with no value other than the enjoyment of reading the stories.  The other is a text about how to improve your own communication skills.

As far as the first goes, it succeeds admirably.  The anecdotes are quite readable, and most of the characters quite sympathetic.

As to the second, that is considerably more problematic.  Duhigg proposes a number of categories of conversations, and then breaks these down into subcategories, and even subsubcategories.  Talking broadly, all of this boils down to listen to people, and be honest, even if only to yourself, about your feelings about the discussion in question.  And, if at all possible, gain some understanding about the other party's feelings about the discussion.  But with all the categories and subcategories, it is hard to pick out which ones will be particularly useful for improving the conversations you might have.  It is also extremely difficult to extract the actual effective techniques, for improving your own communication, buried in the anecdotes and stories that make up the bulk of the text.

In other words, the author could use some additional skills in communication himself, and this book is unlikely to provide you with the techniques that you will need to improve your own communication, unless you put an awful lot of work into it.

Deuteronomy 28:66,67

Your life will hang in suspense and you will stand in dread both day and night, and have no assurance.  Every morning you will say, 'I want the night to come quickly!'  And every evening you will say, 'I want the morning to come quickly!'  You will say that because of the dread that your heart shall feel.