Why is what we want to know. And How.

Tonight I received a copy of an email a good friend, Doug Franks, sent to some of his family and friends.  His comments about how much we don't know got me thinking so I responded with the following gibberish.  Enjoy!

We want to know what we do not know.  Mona and I are engaged in full time seeking of historical what-we-don't-knows. I walk towns and museums and old forts.  She reads voraciously. 

I spent the last 19 years of my life seeking God's what-we-don't-knows. And before that 27 years seeking what-I-don't-knows that I could sell and make a dime from.

We so want to know what we don't that we will spend billions on research and comparative millions on public education.  I'm not griping.  This is what we have done as humans since Sumer.  OK, we spend billions more on military defense, but isn't that pretty much to keep what we have learned in our seeking from an 'enemies' hands and minds?

I watched the super moon with Mona and some new friends tonight as it rose over our campground in very rural west Kansas (Scott Lake State Park). It was cool, and big, but as I watched it rise, and took a picture of it, I noticed that unless I enlarged the picture it was pretty much the same moon I've always looked up to see.  But when I enlarged it then the round orb lost its features and just became a blob of yellow light on a dark mat.  Not so super anymore.

I wonder if that may be happening with all of our quantum, micro, macro, and multi-universal discoveries and theories.  The harder we look into one the fuzzier what we know of it and others becomes.

Mona and I visited Princeton, NJ on Einstein's birthday this year.  The town goes nuts over Einstein every year at that time but we'd never visited before. You know what I remember about that day?  I remember a quote a shop owner who had a small Einstein museum  sort of thing behind the Einstein silly T's gave us. She said something like, "I knew the man when he lived down the street from my aunt.  He was a nut. He makes one big discovery and spends his life trying to defend it as pieces of it are ripped apart by his 'friends'.  He should have spent his life fishing."

I don't know if the great man would have enjoyed a life of fishing, but when he was sailing, which I know he enjoyed, he was still always wondering about what he did not know.

We are cursed with wanting to know.

I'm retired, and I still want to know more.  Why did Colonel Chivington want so badly to kill Indians that he thought it was all right to murder mother's and babes at their Peace Camp on Sand Creek?  Why did 19th century American Indians think retributive murders and kidnappings of children into slavery was OK? Why does God love me, when I have disappointed Him so often?

I'm retired and I can't stop asking WHY!

Good night from the Central Time Zone on the edge of the Mountain Time Zone.  Yawn!

Ken

Getting Higher

I am afraid of heights.  I don't really know why, though my memory of a day when I decided to join my dad while he was working on our two story home's flat roof comes to mind as something more a nightmare than a dream.  In any case, I am afraid of heights.

So today, as we were walking downtown Colorado Springs, and I looked up at these guys across from the post office, I froze.  I didn't freeze enough not to reach for my camera.  I just stopped walking while Mona went ahead to pick up our mail thinking I was right behind her.

 What is it that gives some the ability to do
                                   things without fear that make others cringe in abject terror?

What is it that allows some to overcome their fear so that they can do what they have never done before?  It does happen, you know.

 Years ago, when Ramona was a child, she experienced a horrible fright while playing under water. She thought she could not get air.  And from that day she did not, ever, put her head under water again.  Until...

Until one day she saw her grandsons in a campground pool we were sharing put their heads under water for the first time and express such glee at seeing the strange new world, even in a chlorined pool.

What was it that made her fear placing her head under water all those years?  And what was it that gave her the courage that day, without telling anyone of us she was doing it, to let herself simply sink under the blue green ripples and feel herself immersed in a world she could not enter a moment before.

I so remember the moment I looked for her in the pool, could not find her, felt a small twinge of , "Where...?" and then saw her slowly rise up, head first, from under.  I think I yelled.  maybe I screamed. But all of us stopped what we were doing, and maybe the rest of the swimmers did too, to watch Mona, for the first time in our memory, come dripping head to shoulders out of the water, only to go under again, and again, and again.




I do not know what bit is that makes us fear, but I think I know what makes us able to deny our fears.





When we want something badly enough, we will do literally anything to get it.  I don't mean 'things', though I know some aberrant and even inhuman behavior has occurred when a certain kind of person wants some THING too much. No, I am talking about wanting to share the joy of an experience so much that you actually do what before you never thought you would do.

I am afraid of heights, but Mona took a hot air balloon ride once and I so wanted to experience it with her that somehow I was able to place myself completely in God's hands and step over that low wicker hand rail and into the basket to effortlessly glide up a thousand feet and more for an experience, for me, of a lifetime.

Ah! Have I answered at least my second question myself?  I placed myself in God's hands. I literally and completely said, "Lord, I'm yours, so use me as you will today as I allow myself to step into this awful frightening low walled, fragile and frail basket."  And so He did, and has ever since.

I am still afraid of heights.  But I know if I ever need not to be God will once again remove my fear.

The year after we camped at that pool with our daughter Jennifer's family the two of us went to Cancun, Mexico, and Mona swam, with me, and the fishes, off a coral reef near Isla Mujeres, the Island of Women.
 

Mona doesn't snorkel much anymore. Not out of fear of the water.  Just because we haven't gone to where the water is warm enough for her to even want to get into it.

But if she ever wants, or for some reason needs, to go in badly enough, I know she won't  let even the cold keep her from doing so.

Mona knows how to give God her fear too. And together, we help each other defeat our fears, with God's strength.

Fears of coach breakdowns, dead batteries, getting lost, crowded cities, and even, if need be, heights.

-Pastor Ken

What do we value most?

Matthew 6:24 ESV
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."

I took a walk this morning in the clear warm 10,000 foot high air of Russell Gulch, Colorado.  I walked the horse trails on the old mine roads of the O'Rourke property and above till I got to what's sometimes called the 'Skeleton', but is more accurately known as the 'Jefferson', a mine shaft, or head, building with one of the largest and most impressive steel frameworks left standing in Colorado.

 The owners of this mine were going down super deep and wanted to open a shaft to all levels to send the miner's cage down and up in record time.  They thought their mine would last a hundred years or more so they built it's entrance building to last at least as long.  And at least the skeleton of it has.





But the mine did not.  Falling gold values, harder to reach ore, flooded or collapsed tunnels and the simple expense of crushing the expensive quartz ore ended the boom just decades after it began.  Though some mines held on for decades more eking out some profit, all were closed before the beginning of World War 2.
I took many pictures on my walk.  And I took them from many angles.  How fascinating this huge work of man. Pennsylvania Steel formed the beams and buttresses.  Chicago engines drove the cables that lowered and raised each shift of men. Bricks made locally were said to hold a minimal amount of gold dust in each since the area was so rich in gold the very clay contained it.

As I was just preparing to head back down the mountain I looked at the foot of one of the heavy stone walls which still held the steel upright. It was there that I saw the testament of time which spoke most to me.

I do not know in which sod the makers of this building rest, nor the uses to which their profits from this mine were put.  But I do know that the rocks at the rear of this photo have fallen from their massive wall.  I know that the fine steel they paid a high price for to bring up into this high valley is rusted beyond recognition. And I know that the brick, thought to have encased some amount of gold dust has lasted no longer than any other.

The tiny tree now growing from the ground just beside the deteriorating brick today has more value than the entire building above and behind it.  The buildings use is exhausted, but the tree will provide oxygen, animal homes, and shade for generations to come.

We all place value on temporal things.  And there is value in all things for God has made all things to be valued.  Sadly, we often place too little value on the things God values most.

So if you will allow me this metaphor, do not place your dependence on the gold or the steel of this world.  Place your trust in the God who can make trees grow where man has taken all he once valued away.


I THINK that I shall never see  
A poem lovely as a tree.  
  
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest  
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;  
  
A tree that looks at God all day,          
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;  
  
A tree that may in summer wear  
A nest of robins in her hair;  
  
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;  
Who intimately lives with rain.   
  
Poems are made by fools like me,  
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer - written about the time this mine was soon to be closed.

-Pastor Ken