Time Travel with Marty McFly and Deanna Troi: One Possible Explanation for the Christian Trinity

I’ve been thinking lately about the existence of the Trinity Godhead outside of our time and dimension.  I think it comes close to some concepts found in Science Fiction stories pertaining to time travel and alternate realities.  

In the movie Back to the Future Part 2, the characters Marty McFly and Doc Brown encounter other versions of themselves when they fly back in time again to the year 1955.  Each Marty and Doc are the same, but different.  In the first movie, Marty traveled from 1985 to 1955, and met a much younger Doc Brown from that moment in time.  In the second movie, both the Marty and Doc from the future travel back to 1955 again and meet their doppelgangers: The Marty that traveled back in time the first time, from the first film, and the Doc who lived during that time.  Both the Martys are equally Marty McFly, both from different times, and merely coexisting temporarily at the same time and place along the timeline.  The only difference is that the second Marty is further along in time, having already experienced everything the other Marty is currently experiencing.  But that doesn’t mean one or the other is an imposter – they are both Marty McFly, and both are equally Marty McFly.

     In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Parallels,” the Klingon character Worf begins experiencing other realities, shifting from one to another.  The android Data explains that each instance in time has thousands of possible outcomes, and that all possible outcomes that can occur do occur, and with each outcome “creating” a new dimension or universe, and that Worf is, for some strange reason, shifting in and out of some of these alternate universes created by some of these outcomes.  This particular quantum theory is mind boggling, yet I believe that God’s existence is more akin to this rather than our limited four dimensions.  In the episode, Worf encounters several different versions of Deanna Troi.  In one existence, she and Worf are living together.  In another, they are married with two children, and his first son Alexander doesn’t even exist.  Yet just because she is not the Deanna Troi from his universe doesn’t mean that she is any less real, or any less “Deanna Troi” than the one that exists in his universe.  All the different Deanna Trois that Worf encounters, or could encounter, all that could possibly exist in any universe, are all equally valid, all equally Deanna Troi.  Even though every single one of them is different from the others, existing in different universes or dimensions, with different experiences causing them to travel down different paths in their lives, they are all still 100 % Deanna Troi.

     Now, Marty McFly and Deanna Troi are fictional characters, yet, at least in these particular instances, they can become windows into comprehending in the smallest possible way the manner in which God might exist, or be able to exist.

     In a similar way that these different versions of Marty and Deanna are all different, yet all equally Marty and Deanna, and all equally valid, so too is God.  In this same respect, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit can each be separate and different, yet all the same, all equally God, and all valid, especially when you stop to consider that God is not constrained by our dimensions of space and time.

     Yet even this fantastical, Science Fiction-like explanation is lacking in describing what God is.  This explanation is merely one of thousands of possible explanations for the different ways of understanding and perceiving God.   God’s actual existence is probably very different than the one I just tried to describe, but I’m hoping that this model based on a popular movie series and science fiction television series at least scratches the surface of what may be possible with God.  Traveling backwards and forwards through time is something only fictional human characters can do, but in reality, God exists outside of time.  If I can use this silly, trivial movie and TV episode to explain one possible model for the existence of the Triune Godhead, and their differences and at the same time their similarities as God, then something similar must be possible in the real world as well... because with God, all things are possible.


From my journal, July 1999

What Would MLK Think of Today's Cultural Landscape?

I used to write about culture in my journal to speak my mind about the things that are going on the world, and voice my opinion about them.  But more than that, I wanted to capture a truthful voice, so that when all was said and done, my opinion would merge with fact.  That’s not always the way it’s been, but I’d like to at least attempt that again.  I may be asking of myself a total impossibility.

     For starters, I think I need to write about things when they happen, such as my thoughts when Whitney Houston died.  I wrote about that, and included it with the month of February in my journal, even before I wrote this for what happened in January!  It doesn’t always have to be my thoughts about a major news story happening at the time (though that doesn’t hurt).  It could be just my thoughts on modern culture, such as this very passage.

     For months, possibly years, my writings in my journal about culture and the news has been sort of a dumping ground.  I never worried too much about because, since I wasn’t blogging, nobody was reading it.  (And now that I am blogging, I still don't think anyone is really reading it!)  It got to a point where I wasn't  writing about this stuff while it was happening, and so I was starting to forget about the facts when it came time to write about how I felt about it all.  I end up just putting up a few headlines about what happened in the news and included a few relevant political cartoons… and sure, I like the cartoons, but it’s a cop out.  It’s a way to shorten my section on culture when I’m pressed for time and it's now a month after the fact, and I can’t remember all the stories, let alone the names and dates (which aren’t as important anyway as what the stories themselves might mean to the world and to me).  My section on movies is always so much larger.  I guess one can see where my head is at!  I need to get back to just writing about anything that might be on my mind about the news or culture, regardless of what information I might have culled (though it might help if I try to write about these news stories as they happen, such as I did with the death of Whitney Houston).

     Also, there are so many opinions, and opinions about other people’s opinions, and quite a lot of those opinions are filled with hate.  Can I honestly say that my opinions are more viable just because they are mine, or aren’t laced with venom?

     I saw a news story recently of a teenage boy who quit his choir in Grand Junction, Colorado because they were singing the song “Zkir” (referring to an Islamic devotional act, according to Wikipedia) from the movie Slumdog Millionaire, written by the Indian composer A.R. Rahman, which, when translated, contains the lyric “There is no truth but Allah”.  The kid, being a Christian, didn’t want to sing lyrics that give praise to another God.  The Bible teaches that we are not to do this, and it is quite understandable.  I support this kid, because, quite frankly, being Christian, I wouldn’t want to do it either.  In my eyes, it would be the same as being invited into a Buddist Temple and told to bow in reverence.  One Christian contestant on an episode of Survivor several years ago refused to do just that.  As an American and a Christian, this is their right, and being a Christian, I am the same.  But we must ask, is it right?  In this grand cultural landscape of the world, with all these other nationalities, should we have such a problem with it?  In the same news story about the kid refusing to sing praise to Allah, a Muslim was interviewed, and he talked about how Allah translates as “God,” and how the same God that Jesus prayed to was the same God that Moses loved, and that Mohamed followed, and that this boy certainly has a right as a free American to refuse to sing a song with lyrics about Allah if he truly believes Allah is not the same Christian God, but how they are, in fact, the same.  It’s certainly an interesting thought, but it's not what the Bible teaches, and if they are the same, then why is there such animosity and hate and war between these religions?  If they are the same, why can’t the Muslim be a friend to the Christian, on a national level, since they apparently worship the same God, according to this Muslim who was interviewed?  Do they really believe this themselves?  If so, why has there been such a division between Muslims and Christians from the moment Mohammed started the Islamic religion more than a thousand years ago?

     I’ve seen extremely hateful comments on the internet lately from non-whites explaining how the whites will never understand the plight of the colored people in America.  That may be true, but if you ask me, I think these same people hold a grudge they perhaps shouldn’t hold.  I don’t think this is how Martin Luther King Jr. would be acting if he were alive today.  These internet bloggers and commentators have hate in their hearts, and that’s not the goal of America, is it?  In my eyes, it’s just another opportunity to put America down when, in fact, this same kind of thing has afflicted every single country since man has walked the earth, and often more viciously and brutally than it has here.  And it’s still going on today!  At least in America, people can speak their minds.  The Constitution affords them that freedom (though occasionally, the ACLU will get in the way).  That’s not the same in many other countries today, where you can be put to death for speaking your opinion, or forced into “re-education” camps.  Ask any North Korean who didn’t attend Kim Jong Il’s funeral, or didn’t cry at his funeral, or didn’t cry convincingly at his funeral.  I've seen some recent and shocking news stories about this.  And there may still be racism here, but it’s not what it once was.  I was just watching the movie Joyful Noise (which, by the way, only garnered a 34% Tomatometer rating on the Rotten Tomatoes site), and it’s a movie that would not have been made just 40 years ago, maybe even 30 years ago, and one of the things I kept thinking while watching it was how Martin Luther King Jr. would have loved seeing something like this, with white and black characters living together and loving each other as friends and neighbors.  It’s all over the place if you choose to look for it, in real life and in our entertainments.  I have worked alongside all kinds of people, both men and women, black and white, Hispanic and Asian, people with different religious beliefs, and people who are sick, healthy, young, old, short, tall, gay, straight, ugly, pretty, thin, fat, single, married, loud, quiet, liberal, conservative, carefree, reserved, long haired, short haired, low class, high class, low income, high income, scruffy and tattooed, buttoned down and straight-laced, and some of them I’ve called friends, and some of them I haven’t, but it all had to do with their personalities and how friendly they were, and not by the color of their skin or what they look like or even what they choose to believe, and that’s as it should be. 

     In television and movies, I’ve noticed fictional black and white characters and people of other nationalities working and living alongside each other.   Think of just about any TV show and you’ll see it over and over again these days.  The judges on American Idol, from Simon, Paula, and Randy all the way to Ellen Degeneres and now Randy, Jennifer Lopez, and Steven Tyler, and all the contestants that they’ve had, is, I think, a reflection of today’s society.  Even my cherished Star Trek is a reflection of this, starting way back in the 1960’s with a bridge crew that included Asian and Russian nationalities and a black woman, almost unheard of back then, and when Nichelle Nichols decided to leave the show, it was Martin Luther King Jr. himself who talked her out of it.  Stretching it even further, it also included an alien, and at least one show examined the prejudice that still existed for non-humans.  Later shows had women in positions of authority, a myriad of nationalities and skin colors, and aliens galore.  The Vulcan catchphrase supports this concept: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.”

     I think MLK, for the most part, would love to see the America we’ve become, with a black president, and Oprah Winfrey, and “little black boys and girls… holding hands with little white boys and girls.”  It’s not what it was when he was alive.  We still have some growing to do, but I believe we have arrived at a level Martin Luther King Jr. would be proud to see, but there is still all this hate on the internet with people hating other people because of the color of their skin, whether it’s white people hating blacks or, more common these days, black people hating whites because they just don’t understand all the things their "people" (translation: anscestors) have had to suffer.  Well, if you want to know the truth, I don’t think a lot of these internet haters can quite appreciate that they have it better than their parents and grandparents did.  Some can, but definitely not these haters on the internet.  To put it another way, these internet haters are, if anything, part of the ongoing problem, and not part of the solution.  There are no answers in hate.

     And yet, my opinion isn’t necessarily the right opinion simply because it’s mine, and I must ask if these internet haters, as uncomfortable as they may be, might not have a valid point to make.  I’m sure there are quite a few things I can’t understand about them and what they’ve had to suffer.  But if it’s anything like the pure, unadulterated hatred I feel coming off those internet rants, then maybe I can!  I shudder to think what might happen if these kinds of people got real power against those they hate so much!  Would they practice the same love and compassion for us that they expect us to have for them?

     But do their arguments hold water?  For that, since I’m not really ethnic myself (most of my ancestors were from white European countries like France, Germany, England, Ireland, and the Netherlands) I must turn to some of the right-wing political commentators who are ethnic, such as Michelle Malkin, Dinesh D’Souza, Jeff Jacoby (who is Jewish), and particularly Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder, as black conservatives.  They bring a different view to the arguments born out by the internet haters.  Larry Elder’s latest column is titled “Whitney Houston Critics Called Her ‘Too White’ – Black Republicans Can Relate”.  From them, we see all these arguments from yet another perspective.  I bet Condoleezza Rice would have quite a few stories to tell as George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, and all the liberal hate that goes with it!

     It can all get so confusing, especially if a person doesn’t have ethics of their own.  I like seeing arguments like this from all sides and all issues, but the water can get cloudy… and it can get rather sticky!  The political right knocks the political left, and the political left knocks the political right, and the libertarians get caught in the middle, and even Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are mudslinging against each other to win the Republican Presidential nomination, and the liberals are supporting Rick Santorum to win (same as I do, actually) since they probably think he can’t win against Obama, and all of this fighting gets rather vicious!  I don’t even know these people making comments on the internet (most often with atrocious spelling and grammar).  Should I pay them any mind?  Should I just dismiss them?  Do they have any merit?  Is my new blog yet just another voice in the fray, or does it have merit too?  After all, at the very least, it is another opinion in an internet blogosphere choked with opinions, and opinions about other opinions!

     And yet, ultimately, that’s not what I want.  I want my blog, and the words that I write, to have meaning, and more meaning than the trite hate and filthy language passing back and forth on the internet by the haters.  I want it to speak truth, yet wonder what is truth anymore in the middle of all of these millions of opinions?

A Case for Theism, and Why It's Better Than Naturalism

     It’s a physical world, with physical laws that predictably operate a certain way under certain physical conditions.  For instance, if I sit downstairs at the computer with my bare feet on a cold floor, my feet will get cold.  If I hold a rubber ball in my hand right now and let go of it, it would drop to the ground due to gravity.

Image from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NaivePhysics

If I exercise regularly and eat right, my health will improve.  Here’s a more obscure example, yet it too is physical:  If I made friends with people who dabble in gothic style and think it’s cool, and immerse myself in their culture, watching violent and sexual TV shows and movies, listening to pounding heavy metal music with lyrics that are consistently negative, obscene, violent, sexual, depressive, demeaning, and anti-social, and play consistently violent video games, it will have an effect on me somehow, and change me in some way – the way I think, act, and behave – and in a different way than if I immersed myself in a more Christian culture.  I don’t purposely mean to sound naturalistic here.  In the normal view of naturalism, God doesn’t fit, for true naturalists believe in the existence of the physical world and the natural laws that operate in it only.  I, on the other hand, believe there is more – a spiritual world that drives the natural one.  There are simply too many unanswered questions and problems with the view that the physical world is all there is, problems I’ve explored many times in my constant search for the truth.

     I believe that God created the physical world, and designed it to operate under physical laws he imposed upon it.  This view is called Theistic.  We are physical creations of God, existing in this physical world, and therefore, are subject to the physics of this world.  Being part of this physical world, events here have an effect upon us, and we have an effect upon this world.  But that is not all there is, for God does exist outside of the physical world he designed, and outside of the rigid constraints of linear time that we cannot escape.  Like everything else, linear time is merely one of the constraints God created for us here.  God exists simultaneously in this universe and outside of it, and simultaneously in what we perceive to be the past, present, and future.  It sounds like science fiction, and is one reason why God is so hard to understand or comprehend.

     Additionally, theists believe in morals, ethics, responsibility, and free will, while naturalists are confined in their cause and effect world view to believe in destiny, fate, and pre-determinism.  Since theists believe in a Designing Creator, and a spiritual existence behind the curtain of this world, the concept of God’s desires for this universe means there is a difference between right and wrong, bringing morality into the picture, along with the free will we would need to make choices between right and wrong.  Naturalists, on the other hand, believe in only one long, unbroken chain of cause and effect.  People are thereby destined for an unalterable future, locked into their fates that are determined by the causes and effects that came before.  In the truly naturalistic world view, people cannot, or should not, be held responsible for their actions, because given a cause and effect world, they really had no other choices, and things could not have turned out any other way.  They are merely products of their environment.  It’s kind of a sad view, really:  A world where nobody is to be blamed for what they do, a world where any morals and ethics are merely illusions, where free-will for the choices we make is really not free-will, because our choices are based on our past existence in the purely physical world of cause and effect.

     Naturalists believe that every given point in existence, everything that occurs, is ultimately predictable, and actually unavoidable – in their view, any given event could only have happened in one way based on the past events leading up to it, and everything and everyone involved.  In the naturalist’s view, chance is also an illusion.

     Let me illustrate.  You’re walking along, and come to a fork in the road, and have to make a choice about what to do.  

Image from http://likeadayoff.blogspot.com/2011/02/fork-in-road.html

You could keep walking, and take the road on the right, the road on the left, or take neither path, and either travel off-road, come back the way you came, or just stay where you are for the time being.  You could make your decision of what to do randomly by yourself, or reason it out, or flip a coin.  There’s also the possibility that something in the physical world could affect you, such as a lion attacking you, or getting hit by lightning, or perhaps a city work crew is repairing one of the roads.  

Image from http://www.sunspotimages.com/-/sunspotimages/detail.asp?photoID=1557683&cat=24074

In the naturalistic view, you are not exercising free-will when you make your choice, because whatever choice you make, there will be a reason for making the choice, and that reason has to do with your past, your physical experience up to that point.  

     Even if you flipped a coin, you make a choice for a reason.  There would be a reason why you would decide to flip a coin instead of making your choice in some other way.  There are also several options as to how you could flip the coin:  You could choose heads left and tails right, or heads right and tails left, or even something like heads travel and tails stay put, etc.  The actual act of flipping the coin also depends upon the physical world:  toss the coin higher or catch it lower, and it will change the outcome, or flipping it during a heavy wind storm.  In the naturalistic world, no matter what you decide, or what the outcome, it is all based on physics.  The thing making it seem like chance or luck is merely that we are not aware or prepared for what occurs, yet if we knew enough about it before hand, it could still all be pre-determined.

     I even agree with this model…to a point.  Yes, this world is physical, but no, there is more than this physical world.  God, Satan, angels, demons, and whatever other things and forces that exist beyond this world are as real as this world.  Such beings and things would see our world in a way we cannot, and be able to manipulate it in ways that would be unfathomable to us who exist only here.  I also believe that they are not the only ones who can rise above the rigid cause and effect physics of this world, but that God has given us this ability as well; otherwise, how would we even be able to have free-will, and make choices between right and wrong?  In my theistic world view, we are all creatures of the next world; we just happen to inhabit this world for a short time.  I believe God has given us the ability to stay connected to the real world behind this created one, allowing us to rise above cause and effect where freedom of choice is concerned.  For this reason, I pity the naturalists.  I’ve got God, free-will, and love, and they’ve got fate, pre-determinism, and physical science.  Which would you rather have?

Image from http://www.zazzle.com/open_theism_the_third_way_tshirt-235262039447826278

- From my personal journal, May 1999

Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and the Death Dealers

The Two Faces of Whitney Houston.  Images from http://www.inquisitr.com/193192/remembering-whitney-houston-listen-to-the-singers-eleven-no-1-songs-video/ and http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2012/02/hosts-of-kfis-john-ken-show-suspended.html

Death Dealers.  It’s a movie reference straight out of the Underworld franchise, but instead of an elite group of vampires who hunt lycans, the Death Dealers in the real world make their living from the deaths of celebrities.

     The careers of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston were going nowhere fast.  After meteoric rises, they had meteoric falls.  They had their loving families, of course, and their devoted fans, mostly people who loved music so much they were willing to look past all their failings, like the contestants on American Idol, but after so many years of problems, these fans were fewer, especially in Jackson's case.  I myself was reluctant to buy Michael Jackson’s CDs once those allegations of child molestation hit, and noticed he looked very, very feminine on the arrest reports.  Putting my money in his pocket makes it seem that I’m okay with all those shenanigans.  My reaction was the same reaction I’m sure a lot of people had, including his sister LaToya:  “What’s wrong with him?”  Most fans turned their backs.  That’s the main reason why they weren’t as popular as they once were, and had all the problems with drugs and alcohol and the law that they did.  Whitney’s voice was gravely in her last known interview, and I saw clips of her last performance just days before her death; it was plagued with a bit of disjointed spaciness and, later, booze-fueled partying.  It seems that few were paying her any mind… until she died… and then everybody wanted a piece of her, just like they did with the deceased Michael Jackson, and you can throw Amy Winehouse into that mix as well, and any other celebrity whose career has stalled.  Nobody can stand poor Lindsey Lohan these days, but if she dies, people will come out of the woodwork to say what a gifted, young actress she was in films like The Parent Trap, Mean Girls, and Freaky Friday.  In the end, it seems nobody wanted to have anything to do with them, until they died, and then they suddenly all appeared with glowing love and support.  It’s too little too late.  She’s dead now.  If you loved her that much, where were you when she really needed you, when she was still alive?  Why wasn’t her name being plastered all over the place the week before she died?  Where was all this love and support and accolades then?

       So now, it seems everyone is saying what a great talent she was, and the fact is, she was!  Yet she wasn’t, and isn’t, the only one.  Never mind that the only recent footage of her I’d seen was of her inebriated tirade they show occasionally on The Soup (“KISS MY A**!”) and news of her troubled relationship with the hotheaded Bobby Brown, and her continued use of drugs and alcohol, whether crack or the later prescription medication (which, according to recent news, can be worse than street drugs), and the deterioration of her voice.  I remember when she came out with her sophomore album Whitney in 1987 and the critics were very harsh.  After “Saving All My Love for You” and “The Greatest Love of All,” she suddenly started singing bubbly pop songs that just about anybody could sing, like “How Will I Know,” “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” and “So Emotional,” and the critics hated it!  Over the years, she managed a few other classic soul songs to keep the critics appeased, but all of that unforgiving criticism for those bouncy pop songs is forgotten now, and everybody is acting like she was the greatest voice to ever grace the world with her presence.  It's certainly a nice notion, but are you kidding me?  People, especially critics, seem to have short memories.  You mean to tell me in the entire history of the world, with the billions of people who have ever been alive, and all the singers who came before her, including the billions who were alive before the invention of sound recording, that she beats them all?  What about Etta James, whose Grammy tribute was diminished after Whitney died?  Mariah Carey complimented Whitney on her voice after she died, but truthfully, she was no slouch either, and during the Grammy telecast, while they heaped praise upon Whitney, Jennifer Hudson did a version of “I Will Always Love You” that brought the house down, and Adele was showered with awards for her amazing voice and songs.  Dare I say that these women were amazing too?  Does that diminish the tribute to Houston?  In the grand scheme of things, Whitney Houston certainly had an amazing voice, once upon a time (and according to the critics, ended up squandering it on quite a few forgettable pop songs) but in the history of the entire world, when all is said and done, she’s really just another person with a great voice.  There were others before her, and there will be others after her, proven by the amazing performances on the very Grammy show that applauded her, and there will be more… lots more.  I agree that she defined a piece of the pop culture landscape in her time, and became the voice to emulate and the name to speak when you wanted to talk about great singers you might want to be like.  (It might be interesting to find out how many times her name was mentioned on American Idol over the years).  But there are other great voices too, and certainly other great songs.

     But the Death Dealers have her now, and I’m sure in time, she will be enshrined as one of the greats, and she’ll even deserve it.  But it won’t be the whole truth.  Putting her on such a high pedestal ultimately diminishes the talent of others, like Etta James, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Hudson, and Adele, and they don't deserve that.  Leave it to the Death Dealers to carry things just a bit too far... but only after the struggling talent dies.  And by that time, will anyone remember the state she was in when she died so very young?

The Joy of Camping...NOT!

These are the events of our big camping trip up in the Colorado mountains close to Estes Park in the Summer of 1999, and perhaps explains why I haven't been camping since:

We left on a Friday afternoon, and came back on Tuesday, somewhat refreshed yet also the worse for wear.  The outhouses stunk, permeating the air like a thick fog.  The only way we could use them was to put perfume on a bandanna and wear it around our faces before going in.

     On our second day there, everybody was just kind of sitting around.  I sat next to my brother Terry, who was lounging by the campfire pit, sucking tar into his lungs in the fresh mountain air, and I asked him, “So what are we doing today?  I’m bored!”

     “Gary,” he started with that annoyed tone, “I like this!”  He motioned to the mountains and the sky with his hands.  “I came camping to relax,” he explained.  “I like being bored like this!  I never get a chance to be bored at home!”  He then explained to me that there were no “plans,” and that everybody was just “doing whatever.” 

     So when my nephews Jason and Alex asked me if I wanted to go hiking and exploring, I said, “Sure!”  And so we did, and we had fun for about a half an hour or so.  Of course, on the way back to the campsite, Jason wanted to climb a rocky and rather steep incline.  Again, I said, “Sure!”

     Just a couple of feet up, I realized it was probably too rocky and steep, and the teacher in me spoke up as I said, “Guys, this is too rocky and steep.  Let’s go around, or someone’s gonna get hurt!”  It was only a few seconds later, I was lying on the ground next to a sharp, jagged rock and my right arm was split open with about a five to six inches long gash!

     I’m surprised I managed to stay so calm!  That’s good, ‘cause Jason was freaking out plenty enough for the both of us!  I managed to keep the wound closed with my left hand while we ran back to camp, which was thankfully only a few minutes walking distance.  Jason was the first to make it back, exclaiming that I had gotten cut, and that it was “really bad!”  Both Scott and Terry apparently thought Jason was making a mountain out of a molehill, and that they could fix my wound with a band aid and some anti-septic.

     When I arrived a few seconds later, Terry smugly and jokingly asked to see my wound, with a knowing grin on his face, sure that Jason was exaggerating.  I calmly showed him my arm, and that’s when his eyes bugged out like some bad actor in an old William Castle movie!  “Oh my God, Gary!” he shouted.  “That’s really bad!  Oh my God!”

     I tried to assure everybody, particularly Terry, that I was okay, and so while holding my arm closed, I tried to show that I was calm and in control of my faculties by saying something like, “Look, I’m fine you guys.  I know I need stitches, but I’ll survive, okay?  I’m fine!”  I found it amusing that I had to try to calm Terry down instead of the other way around!

Terry dresses my arm

     But Terry would have none of that kind of "I'm fine" talk and continued freaking out!  “Oh my God, Gary!  Here, sit down!  You’re gonna faint!  You’re in shock!  Somebody get him a blanket!  Here, have some water!  We’ve got to get you to an emergency room right away!”  Of course, by this time, my gash, which looked much worse than it felt, along with Terry’s uncontrolled rantings, had scared the kids, and had Alex in tears.  God, how I love those guys!

     I tried to reassure Terry I’d be perfectly fine until we got the emergency room.  “I’m not in shock, I’m not gonna faint, I’m not gonna die,” I promised him.  I was even clear headed enough to explain that I had all my insurance information on me and that I was keeping the wound closed, and the bleeding had pretty much stopped.

     Brian drove us to the hospital, with both Terry and Alex tagging along to the Estes Park Medical Center.  While Terry ranted about how some horrible tragedy always befalls them on camping trips, Alex was bawling, bless his wonderful soul.  Something like this makes you realize how much you mean to others!

     They put 18 stitches in my arm, and all the doctors and nurses marveled at what a “beautiful cut” it was, so clean and straight and “perfect.”  They couldn’t believe that a jagged rock had even caused it.

     After the split-arm incident ended the weekend on a downer, we then went to Estes Park on Monday, did sightseeing and shopping, and I took pictures of everybody.  It rained shortly after we arrived, so we had to cut it short, but Scott and Angie were kind enough to stop in front of the Stanley Hotel since they knew I had my heart set on taking a few snapshots of the infamous hotel that was the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining and for that novel’s spooky Overlook Hotel.  They even filmed most of the TV miniseries version of The Shining at the Stanley Hotel, and I managed a few pictures in the rain.  

The Stanley Hotel, inspiration for Stephen King's "The Shining," and Steven Weber  in the TV movie that was filmed there.

     Then we went back to camp where it rained for several more hours, making our last full day there the worst one.  The groundskeepers, a crotchety, old couple, did their best to make our stay a horrible one.  On the very first day, I could tell they were having difficulty remaining polite when they complained about our parking and explained how the one spigot with running water was not for brushing our teeth.  “Get the water in a container and brush your teeth elsewhere,” they warned us.  Saturday we stayed up late telling jokes and stories around the campfire, and Sunday we stayed up till midnight singing songs, and just having a grand old time in the outdoors.  I loved it!  Monday morning, the crotchety, old lady informed us that we were too loud, and that the other campers had complained.  She said we could be noisy until 10 PM, and then we had to be quiet and considerate of the other campers.  She also told us, twice, that somebody had pooped on the floor in the men’s outhouse, and considering that she told us this twice, I’m certain she was accusing us.  They were also rude to Heather when she tried to throw some garbage away in the dumpster.

     Needless to say, we hightailed it out of there as early as we could on Tuesday, leaving several hours before our 1:00 deadline.  We cleaned up our camping spots of any and all debris so the crotchety, old couple wouldn’t have that to complain about as well, and loaded up our cars, trucks, and vans.  The only thing we left was some wood, and can you believe it, the old guy complained about that!  Well, Terry found some people who wanted it, and so they came and got it.  The old campgrounds keeper was just gonna throw it away, and was complaining about it, so this at least took that task off his hands.

      The old woman then puttered up, raking some tree bark near our cars, and muttered to herself, but within earshot of Scott, that we “leave a bigger mess than 40 boy scouts!”  That was after we had cleaned up our campsite, and it left all of us, including Terry (who we sometimes compare to Felix Unger from The Odd Couple) wondering just what mess we could possibly have left behind.  Was she another Joan Crawford?  Did she want us to polish the trees?  Well Scott assured her after hearing her rude comment, “You don’t have to worry, ‘cause we will NEVER be back here again!”  And we won’t!

     I probably shouldn’t get so upset, but our campsites were SPOTLESS when we left.  I mean, here’s a campground where they expect you to literally sweep the dirt before you leave, and if you want to have a good time around the campfire, which is part of what camping is all about, you better not do it too late, ‘cause it’s “lights out” at 10 PM sharp.  If I wanted to follow this many rules, I could have stayed home, thank you!  To make matters worse, the bathrooms are so foul smelling, it even penetrated my continually plugged up nose!

     Why would people go camping and then complain about other campers singing around a campfire?  Isn’t that what camping is for, to get away from it all and enjoy yourself?  It’s not like we were drunk and foul.  We were just singing songs around a campfire!  And it’s not like we stayed up the entire night.  We had quit by midnight.  I don’t mean to interrupt anyone’s “beauty sleep,” but this is a vacation, and we’re all supposed to be “roughing it” somewhat.  If you want to go to sleep and not be bothered by campfire songs, then go back to the suburbs!

     And excuse me, but if you’re really tired, and need sleep that badly, you can certainly sleep through a few campfire songs.  I certainly could!  We weren’t that loud.  If you can’t sleep through it, then I guess you really weren’t all that tired after all!  I think sometimes people just want to complain.  It’s their lot in life!  If there was nothing to complain about, then they’d have to make something up... kind of like they did here.  There we were, laughing, singing, reminiscing, and creating new memories that will last our lifetimes, and they wanted to squelch it so they could get a couple more hours of sleep.  Sleeping is not what camping is all about!  If camping is about anything at all, it’s about what we were doing!

A Government of Nancy Pelosi, by Nancy Pelosi, and for Nancy Pelosi

Image from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44598.html

I wrote this two years ago in January of 2010, but I think it has bearing during an election year, and helps to explain why I'm voting Republican:

Senator Stephen Brown won the Republican seat for the spot vacated by the deceased Ted Kennedy in the bluest of blue states that has had a democrat there for about as long as America has existed, and the White House and the democrats don’t seem to take this as a sign (or don’t want to admit) that they are unpopular and that the American people don’t want their brand of Socialistic change.  Like the true dictators they really are, they are still attempting to shove that monstrosity of a socialistic health care bill down our throats, mad with power and pushing forward no matter WHAT the American people want.  I’m sorry, but unless I just woke up in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez’ thumb, I thought this was a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not Nancy Pelosi’s “Whatever I say goes”, belligerent power trip!  Isn’t it the people who have final say in how they are to be governed, and not the other way around?  Didn’t the founding fathers build government with checks and balances so that power hungry, delusional tyrants wouldn’t be able to take over control from the people?  Why are Pelosi and Obama going forward with such an unpopular agenda the public obviously doesn’t want?  And why is the mainstream media still in bed with them, spinning it every which way but honestly?

Freedom and Morality Die Together

     I feel the effects of my existence drifting along, aging quickly while the world passes me by and I take notes that no one will ever read, or want to read; and if, perchance, someone did, it wouldn’t matter.  If I don’t have a family of my own, or love, or commitment, and am not really doing anything right now to help either myself or mankind, then what am I doing?  What is my purpose here?  To watch movies and keep myself entertained while I wait for the next life?  Hardly!

     I must make a difference in this world, and not be ashamed of who I am, or my past, for all that should matter now is the here and now, and who I am now, and what I do now to make a difference in this world.  Yes, this is another journal entry where I strive to be more than I am, and berate myself for talking the talk more than walking the walk.  I can hope, but this probably won’t be the last journal entry to follow this pattern.

     Yet regardless, I should always find fault with myself.  This is the only way I can strive to overcome my faults.  I’m afraid most of the world doesn’t share that view, and are too quick to blame others for their problems.  Just watch Jerry Springer:  It’s always someone else causing the problem!

     And how can I make a difference in this kind of atmosphere?  There are so many lost souls who just don’t get it, souls who think the problem at Columbine was mostly due to not enough restrictions on guns.  They actually think the problem will be solved if only we had tougher gun laws.

     Oh, I do not like this scenario, as I play with all possible repercussions from all possible sides and angles and points of view.  The outcome I foresee is an unsolved mess that won’t ultimately change anything no matter what happens.

     No wonder I’m depressed a lot of the time.  I'm beginning to think there is more negative than positive in this world, and most people can no longer tell the difference, if they ever could.  Even worse, they persecute and belittle those who can.

     Americans love their freedom!  America, freedom, and patriotism are often mixed into one big and glorious ideal, but it’s a double edged sword – an enigma, a paradox.  Just think of it:  Americans have so much patriotism for their country, land of the free!  They love their freedom so much that freedom takes precedence over morals and ethics, which are restricted four letter words in the liberal’s handbook.  Any liberal who read this would automatically wrinkle their nose and bristle when they get to the words “morals” and “ethics.”  (Do they even exist?  Aren’t they man-made?  Who’s moral’s are you referring to, your own?)  Yet I find it so ironic that when society breaks down due to a lack of morality, as it did at Columbine, one of the first actions of the liberal populace who love freedom so much is an attempt to restrict freedom (by passing more restrictive gun laws)!  In fact, the more morality fades away, the more restrictive laws we will need to keep a selfish and immoral populace from destroying themselves and each other.

     So I’m disillusioned with the world, and America.  I really don’t know a solution to this problem. There may not be one!  So I’ll just have to continue on for the moment with the only person I know I can change – me!
     -From my journal, May 1999, the month of the Columbine Massacre

Why I Liked "The Book of Eli"

When I started this blog a month ago, it was with the understanding that I had a huge backlog of material in my journal over the last two decades, and my idea was to share both some of my old and new writings.  In my intro, I explained how I had reviewed the movie The Book of Eli in my journal and shared what I wrote on Facebook, the very same essay I include below, and my older brother commented how impressed he was by my writing.  That, coupled with another person finding out that I love to write but don't keep a blog is what prompted me to finally start blogging in the first place.

However, I couldn't get my twin brother to understand what it is I liked about this movie when I picked this one Friday night in April, 2011, and he and his wife absolutely hated it.  "So violent for a 'Christian' film" they said when they politely tried to grill me about it over lunch the following Sunday.  I couldn't make them understand, and after upsetting him by posting to Facebook and making generalization about the kinds of entertainments he prefers, we've agreed to simply disagree; yet there is still the rest of my family, who agrees with my review below, and Scott, who paid me the ultimate compliment when he said after reading this review that I am real writer, whether or not it's my vocation.  "Bravo, dear brother" he posted back to me on Facebook, but I would turn that accolade around and thank him as well for his rave review of my writing abilities!

Image from http://www.shockya.com/news/2009/12/13/the-book-of-eli-poster-deliver-us/

The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic film that showed up on my radar out of nowhere.  I hadn’t heard much about it when my sister invited me and Mom to the movies with them, and despite its stark similarities to many such films that had come before – the Mad Max trilogy, old westerns like Hang ‘Em High, or many a latter day zombie movie – there was one thing this movie had that these others didn’t, and that was, believe it or not, Christ.  None of these other films could be considered Christian in nature, and none of them catered to a Christian audience.  It’s the sort of thing that makes all those supposedly radical, non-elitist reviewers over at Rotten Tomatoes turn up their liberal noses.  The book of Eli, you see, is a Bible, the very same one all the liberal college professors keep trying to convince everyone is nothing but pure fiction.  Denzel Washington’s character Eli is one of the oldest living people, having survived the apocalypse, and now, several decades later, all the young people who remain can’t read.  Gary Oldman plays an evil, manipulative character who wants to obtain Eli’s Bible at all costs, not because he has personal reverence for the book, but simply because he knows its power, and wants to use it to control the masses and rule the world.  Sure, he believes in God and in the Bible, but he is also unjust, and merely wants to use it for his own deplorable purposes that don’t mesh with what is written in the pages of the book.  His is a vile, wicked character, who thinks nothing of beating his blind girlfriend (Jessica Beals of Flashdance fame) or trying to force her daughter upon Eli sexually, all so he can determine if Eli really has a Bible or not.  Eli, on the other hand, is noble, and over the last 30 years since World War III destroyed everything, he has read it and cherished it, and committed it to memory.  He loved the Lord with all his heart, while Oldman only loved the power the Bible might give him if he could possess it, telling a cohort how he could get people to do or believe anything he wanted them to believe by using the words of the book.  Nothing against them really, because they couldn’t possibly understand what it’s really all about, but the liberals, like those over at Rotten Tomatoes for instance, can only see it as a gritty, futuristic, western-like thriller centering around two men fighting over the last remaining Bible on earth – just a book to them - no big deal!  But for Christians, we know, and we can identify with the Denzel Washington character, the noble one full of the love of God.

            I personally think there is a small but triumphant change taking place in Hollywood.  Oh, don’t get me wrong; the small Christian studios are still making dramas that appeal to the Christian crowd, like To Save a Life, that the critical elite will pass over and refer to as the equivalent of an After School Special (and truthfully, they’re right: By Hollywood standards, these films are small potatoes, not as expensive or as polished as the usual product from Tinseltown, both in the technical realm, and in the acting and heavy-handed scripts).  Yet they have also taken notice of the success of films like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and the Tyler Perry movies, and some of these “After School Special” variety, like the Kendrick Brothers’ Facing the Giants and Fireproof, or even such films as The Exorcism of Emily Rose or a Christian based fantasy like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  They’ve discovered an audience there, a Christian audience who is tired of all the filth, and are looking for something more positive and redeeming and inspirational.  It’s why Sandra Bullock’s career has suddenly been revived after years and years of one average film after another.  It wasn’t until she played the tough, inspirational, fully-realized Christian character of Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side that she became hot again, and was the frontrunner for a Best Actress Oscar!  There’s life in them there Christians yet!

Image from http://www.dramastyle.com/movie/The-Book-of-Eli/

It’s a cold, cold world out there.  In the fictional landscape of this movie, it’s been 30 years since the nuclear apocalypse.  Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is a drifter, wandering from place to place.  He’s a killer only because he has to be.  In this post-apocalyptic, dry and dusty landscape devoid of life, it is also mostly devoid of decency in the few human beings that are left, and as with the future world of the Mad Max trilogy, roving gangs will kill you for anything you possess that they may want, especially water, or they may decide to kill you for no reason at all.  And in this violent, desolate wasteland, Eli has learned how to survive, and protect himself, and the sacred book he carries and cherishes and loves.  It means everything to Eli.

            Now the critics for this movie, as one would expect, will not “get” the religious connotations.  Oh, they’ll understand it from a story angle.  They’ll see that Eli is a devoutly religious man, and understand full well the importance to the narrative of the last remaining bible that everyone seems intent on possessing, particularly Eli and Gary Oldman’s Carnegie, two people that were around before the world went to hell, and who know the importance of this book.  The critics will understand the plot, and roll their eyes at the same time, and yet they don’t have the faintest clue as to how meaningful that book really is, because they don’t believe.

            So Eli must kill.  He must kill – or be killed.  And he’s quite skilled in the use of various pieces of cutlery, from knives and daggers to swords and machetes.  He tells one ruthless vagabond bully who tries to accost him that if he puts his hand on him again, he won’t get it back.  The guy, of course, laughs, but in the end, when Eli has made mincemeat of his entire roving gang and the leader is sitting on the ground without his hand, Eli reminds him, “I told you you weren’t gonna get that back.”  He’s not perfect.  In a Godless world full of violence, this man who loves the Lord and only wants peace must employ violence to achieve it.  It’s sad, but true.  He must also keep his wits about him, and always be cunning.  Later in the movie, when he and a female friend come across a seemingly kind, old couple, they realize the crazy old loons have actually been only playing the part of a “charming old couple” to unnerve and disarm their guests before killing them and eating them!  Eli is too smart for them as well.   He has to be.

            And the reason he has to be isn’t for himself or his own safety.  It is for the book he carries, the last remaining Bible in existence.  His whole being, his reason for carrying on and existing, is to see to the preservation of the Word of God, so it will not be lost.  It is too important to him to let die, or be destroyed, or to find its way into the wrong hands.  This is something detractors of the movie would never understand, unless they became believers.

            I truly don’t believe this movie will convert anybody that isn’t already a Christian.  They can just enjoy it as a post-apocalyptic action thriller with unfortunate and ridiculous religious overtones.  (You know that’s what they say.)  Believers, on the other hand, can actually identify with it, and with its main character.  Our land may not literally be the cruel wasteland that Eli must physically endure, but figuratively, we, like Eli, walk through a wicked wasteland with evil all around us.  While Eli’s world is one of life-or-death brutality, ours is not, unless you look at the story from a spiritual level.  From the Christian perspective, from the words of the book, of our purpose here and what waits for us after we die, ours is the same life-and-death struggle.  We can learn a lot from this character about commitment and loving the Lord our God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength, especially when comparing Eli to the evil Carnegie, who only wants to use the prevailing words of the book out of selfishness and a quest for power.  In the end, Eli lives for God, and dies for God.  Would that we, in our faith, could be the same!

Welcome to Fantasy Exhibit

From all my studying, some of which I’ve shared in this journal, I’ve realized that the scientific view of evolution is nowhere near as cut and dried as they like us to believe, even though they’ve been able to convince an unthinking, unquestioning public that it is.  It is to a point where they claim it is now proven beyond any doubt, and no longer just a theory.  The public, which has been mass brain washed, tend to just blindly accept what the scientists feed them, mostly because they don’t think it through, but also because they’ve grown accustomed to a regular diet of “evolution as fact” by the scientific community, and don’t care how or why the scientists came by their information.

            This usually burns me up, but every so often, I just have some fun with this situation, like when I went to the Denver Museum of Natural History with my brother Terry and his family so that my niece Heather could fill out an eight page paper full of questions pertaining to the museum’s Prehistoric Exhibit.  Terry and I were graciously taking the whole thing in stride, and we came up with some sharp commentary:

¯  Terry said this exhibit should be introduced by Ricardo Montalban in a white suit:  “Welcome to Fantasy Exhibit.”

¯  One of the questions on Heather’s paper was something like, “What was the Precambrian explosion called?”  I said, “A miracle!”

¯  The museum displayed the old standby material about natural selection using the dated brown moth/white moth example from England’s industrial revolutionary period, showing how brown moths were predominant when the trees turned brown and how white moths regained prominence when the trees became white again, and I jokingly added, “and that’s how moths changed species in the past to eventually become human beings.”

¯  One of the exhibits displayed paintings on the walls, and Heather had to write on her paper the strange thing about the Hadrosaur.  The artist had painted a tiny Leprechaun on the dinosaur’s back, and Terry said, “Why not?  Everything else is fantasy!”

¯  We didn’t even have to make a joke out of these next two, as they were funny enough on their own!  Towards the beginning of the exhibit was a recipe for evolution, which was something like this:  Take natural elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, add water and sunlight, protein, amino acid, and time, and allow to form together into organized patterns [emphasis mine]! Sadly, our group was the only ones laughing at this – everyone else seemed to take it seriously.  Right next to this was a chart showing the stages of evolution with only the following pictures:  Fish, landfish or amphibian, reptile, and human.

¯  Terry and I overheard some lady telling a child how man evolved from fishes.  We thought she should have carried it to its logical conclusion.  “Here, Honey!  These fish fossils belonged to your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother Mertle.  Everyone thought she had the most beautiful scales in the family!

¯  At the end of the exhibit, patrons could look through a large window at the museum employees plying their trade.  I immediately did a voice over narration, a-la Crow T. Robot from Mystery Science Theater 3000, using his deep, instructional voice:  “And here you can see our top team of scientists working diligently to continue to give our museum visitors false information and distorted facts.  Watch them as they busily dust rocks and fossilized pieces of feces!  See them examine sketchy, theoretical evidence to the mysteries of the past and pass it along to you, the unsuspecting public, as undisputed, scientific assurities!"

¯  At the end of the exhibit was a reproduction based on the fossilized remains of “Lucy,” the supposed ape/human hybrid discovered by the respected archeologist Dr. Richard Leaky.  The museum, of course, had a small, furry, ape woman behind glass, giving her two all-knowing glass eyes full of intelligence and knowledge, and giving her the appearance of an apish sage full of the wisdom of the universe and the secrets to our past.  We felt they shouldn’t have stopped there, and that they should have done what they really wanted to do, making her animatronic so she could talk to these people.  She should have a refined, British accent, I think, to magnify the wisdom of her eyes.  I can see it all now:  Impressionable kids and their equally impressionable parents and teachers, strolling through the museum, when suddenly, they hear the voice of this simple ape-woman telling them about the past and evolution, and they watch, hypnotized, fascinated, and absorbing every word as truth, as if this creature was actually an all knowing voice from the past:

      “Hello.  My name is Lucy.  I am ever so pleased to meet your acquaintance.  I lived and died a long time ago, and my remains were only recently discovered by a brilliant archeologist by the name of Richard Leaky.  Well, as I’m sure you can just imagine, Dr. Leaky caused quite a stir among scientific, and even religious circles, when he found me, for you see, I am you!  I am your past!  I am the proof your modern day scientists have been searching for that links you to the lower forms of life you evolved from!  My ancestors (and yours too!) used to swing from the trees!  Like the apes you see in the zoo and on television documentaries, they lived a savage existence, hunting and gathering (and trying to keep from being hunted and gathered themselves!)  But by the time I came along, we had gained something very special!  We had gained intelligence, and imagination, and creativity!  No longer tree dwellers, we started walking upright, and with the invention of fire and tools, we slowly changed from hunters to farmers, tilling soil and working the land to grow crops to eat, and domesticating the animals we hunted for food, raising them as livestock instead, just like your modern farmers tend to cows and chickens and pigs!  We became much more than mere simians.  We gained personhood!  We were homo sapiens, human beings, just like you, and we called ourselves ‘mankind!’”

- From my journal, April 1999 

Pictures are from:

http://mortystv.com/showcards/fantasy_island.shtml

http://www.filmreference.com/Actors-and-Actresses-Le-Ma/Lewis-Jerry.html#b

http://blog.newsok.com/bamsblog/2008/10/27/mst3k-quote-of-the-day/

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1602/pcaustr.html