Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: January 15, 2005
Good Sabbath
January 15, 2005
O Lord didn't You say "no more floods"
Or did Noah misquote You?
The tsunami was a whirlwind of Mother Nature and Madam Fate's mischief, or was it that puny humans just keep choosing the wrong locations to live or to visit? We love to spend time at a beach, a water's edge, or in a place that gives us a view of supposedly pacific oceans. We fear the sharks but not the water; we eat fish and hope they don't bite back; science fiction writers have entertained us with tales of sea creatures, while Seal World lures us to be entertained by trained monsters of the deep, in fact my dear Frances was kissed by Shamu, while I shook with fear that he might snap-off her pretty red-head.
I trained to Los Angeles, had some great meetings, and then returned as nature and fate played games with time and weakened rails. It took me over 8-hours to get from LA to Solana Beach, by train, then bus, then train, with entertainment supplied by the echo-chamber, non-stop, cell-phone explanations of what was transpiring.
Are cell-phones hi tech or just noise?
And when I returned home, exhausted from uncertainty, I had a letter from Ann Wade that Bill had returned safely from Iraq, to family and a love-fest of friends and relieved everyone. This classic Marine officer is what heroism and love for country and command are all about.
Thank You, dear God, for Bill's safe return
Our collection of prayers and faith did the trick
O that all others can also come home safely--
Too late for too many--
As politicians pretend compassion.
More threatening than tsunami
More often than flood
Warfare returns like something we love
But haven't learned to hate enough
Mixing patriotism and fear
With certain recipe for true disaster.
Jared Diamond's new book, "Collapse...How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" warns of the dire lessons of history, which higher education cannot teach. Jared's why's are:1)failure to anticipate problem; 2) failure to perceive a problem that has actually arrived; 3)failure to attempt to solve a problem once it has been identified (because leaders put self-interest before the public good); 4)failure to find a viable solution to the problem because too little is done too late.
In the meantime I read that the quake lifted our earth's surface around the globe. "They're like ripples in a pond but our pond (earth) is a sphere, so they keep going around and around." Two of our friends were supposed to be in Bali and we haven't been able to find whether they were affected by the tidal wave. How many people are looking for word about friends trapped by flood, earthquake, avalanche, rampaging river, leaking damn?
"Surprise" is part of curiosity and discovery; it is a birthday party with surprise gifts or something that shocks us as we discover something lurking around a corner; it is good and it is bad, depending upon what it turns out to be, but it-like change--is always there, ready to pounce on our senses
We send a spacecraft to the utmost heights now possible; it seeks out and pounces onto Titan, one moon of Saturn's many. Scientists exult at the first pictures sent back. The seven-ton spacecraft carrying the 700# saucer-shaped landing probe, traveled a seven-year journey to become the first to orbit Saturn. "The mission has been like a fantasy come true." There is no end to what we can make come true, making our fantasies breathe the life of reality, instead of the trillions that are wasted in killing each other. We are a puzzlement,aren't we?
May our achievements be measured by the happiness they cause rather than by the disappointments we lend others.
sandy
