Open Blogging
My home is now under a Level 2 evacuation and I’ll be going home tonight.
No power yet, but still home.
Miss Kitty and I thank you for all your kind words and prayers.
We have so much to be grateful for among the carnage.
Now, it’s all yours…
I just want to say that I’m thrilled that you, Michael, are safe, and mildly happy also that your feline pets are safe as well. What a mercy of God that your house has been spared. While I regret that you have lost electricity, I trust that you can find a U Tube video which will teach you how to make candles.
Thank you for keeping us abreast of your situation and please continue to provide salt and light to both your immediate community and your blog community.
Welcome news… stay safe.
Here’s a take on George Floyd that I have not seen elsewhere
https://providencemag.com/2020/06/american-aftermath-george-floyd-paganism-christianity/
Level 2? Hope there is no more of this soon…. May be without electricity for a while…. but joining in thanking God for getting you and yours through this… Hope the chaos did mot disturb your Mom to any great degree… You did say that she showed signs of possible dementia? Or am i the one? LOL
Lord, we could all use some rain… Could You fool those forecasters for us?
Michael,
You need to move here to the Arizona desert where it feels like your on fire and the landscape looks like it’s been burned over – but it is just our natural habitat. 🙂
So good to hear you have a home to come back to. Praying for electricity ASAP & that the Lord gives you strength.
Kerosene lamps and candles… just be VERY careful my friend…
BD,
An interesting article. It’s not really about George Floyd, though. He’s used as a backdrop. It’s more a reflection on whether how he was treated might be a turning point for our culture, esp. WRT paganism v. Christianity. Not sure I agree with the author’s take, though.
An interesting piece from a long-time religious con/neocon organization. Thanks for sharing.
Floyd is not the backdrop but he has become almost archetyped as the innocent victim whose stain cannot be removed without purging the whole. Though as I posted his name portending something more personal, your correction is received.
Have we become so polarized and jaded that the medium compromises the hearing? The journal itself? I had never heard of it. However. I have become familiar with Mitchell and perhaps his erudite style is off-putting in the context.
The fear is that we have turned our identity into tribal nationalism that can only be satiated by blood up to the horses bridles. The current trajectory appears that way.
Thanks for engaging the article. Identity politics has us on a road to perdition.
All I did was express an opinion different from yours. I thought it was a good article and merits some consideration. And I always check sources because there are so few of them anymore that don’t slant things one way or another.
I really don’t understand the what I consider hysterical comments in your last 2 grafs.
bob1
I hope they are hysterical. The politics of the 20th century linger over the 21st and tell me that my alarm is both material and realistic.
Well, I think it’s overwrought. And with you, I do agree that I hope they’re just hysterical.
The other thing is: isn’t there anything we can do to turn this around? Even if it takes years? I believe there is, as long as I believe that God is a God of hope.
I think the article had a very short shelf life. It was written 1 week after the George Floyd incident – and may have had some relevance.
One hundred days later not so much.
bob1,
“The other thing is: isn’t there anything we can do to turn this around?”
Not without a peacemaker. There are no peacemakers. Unless, and until, a peacemaker emerges, I don’t see any way our society will turn around.
Even the very people who are called to be peacemakers, will not stand up, publicly and in mass, to work for peace. Politicians count votes.
Aren’t Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, AOL, Harris peacemakers? Don’t they all say that the discord is all Trumps fault? 😳
It’s all relative Em. Trump’s trump is the most divisive politician of my lifetime. His is a 10 on the scale. The rest are down the scale from Trump. Of the names you’v mentioned, Biden is the most peaceable.
However, two things are working against Biden. He is not especially inspirational and no leader can lead where no one will follow. So while I have no doubt that Biden can improve the social climate a bit, I don’t think he can reverse the downward direction the country is heading. With Trump, we’ll get to the bottom a lot quicker though.
Jean, as you say, yes it’s all relative….
I found this cute montage of Presidents and their loyal pets:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/98c10797773ac5d18dbbb01ef2d7e1c1aaad9ad7cda63edff702f947dc40801c.jpg
CM,
The prostration of some of congressmen and women would make Nero jealous.
“The love of most will grow cold” Matt24
Seems to have more relevance today than article written within the past 100 days.
Does “agape” here refer only to the church? Is it only an ecclesiastical term when used in the NT?
Woken up by heartburn, I guess metaphorically…
Maybe God is just judging Oregon like when he gave us Trump.
As bad as Trump is, you’re the kind of ignorant, soulless, scum that is destroying what we used to be. Get the hell off this site and never come back…and may God spare you from what we’re going through.
600 homes have burned, 100 businesses lost…that we know about. They are combing the ashes for the dead. Half of the children in our schools are now homeless…and you make a political comment. You need to get saved…but not here.
I have to drive across the valley to get power for my computer. You will be banned . You are sick…
Jerod
“Agape” is used as the love Christians have for one another, God’s love for humankind and even the love we are to have for our neighbor… In his book on the Creeds, O.C. Quick wrote:
“If we could imagine the love of one who loves men purely for their own sake, and not because of any need or desire of his own, purely desires their good, and yet loves them wholly, not for what at this moment they are, but for what he knows he can make of them because he made them, then we should have in our minds some true image of the love of the Father and Creator of mankind.”
Michael, I am glad you are safe. I know that these Oregon fires have done so much damage and taken the lives of babies and children, rich and poor – and in such a short time it is terrifying and saddening. God spare Oregon any more.
Re-posted from another article thread….
Some welcome good news. I hope they send more (same with our Canadian neighbors):
https://www.upworthy.com/sister-city-in-mexico-has-sent-volunteer-firefighters-to-help-with-southern-oregon-wildfires
We are as dry as the leaves we used to rake into burn piles in the fall… We go to bed at night praying to not wake up to fire in our hills and thanking God in the morning … AND we pray for those already impacted by these fires by both material loss and lost, burned or missing loved ones…
Is it a specific judgement from God or just the commerce of a fallen, God rejecting and cursed world? Could be both, but it is not for us to mock or taunt… PRAY? Yes!
Just thinkin…. and sayin
Fire in the west and hurricanes in the east? YES! Pray like our lives depend on it
God keep
Just wish all the water from the hurricanes would have rained onto the fire areas….
Me too, CM, me too
Continued prayers from wife and I for you Michael and your neighbors.
Looks like this week some moisture will arrive in OR and WA:
https://weather.com/forecast/regional/news/2020-09-09-wildfire-relief-weather-pattern-change-washington-oregon
Happy for you Michael. Hope you get some rest after this past week, and power.
FWIW – utube has drone footage of Phoenix OR after the fire taken Sunday. Heartbreaking
Don’t think i can link from this little fire tablet…..
Don’t imagine anyone can answer this, but….
My daughter heard a weatherman say that in his 30 years of meteorology he had never seen a pattern that produced the smoke “pileup” along the west coast that we have now… instead of disbursing, currents in the air over the Pacific keep forcing it downward and back onto the land….
Is it climate manipulation by man or by God?
Hi Em.
Actually, I am a meteorologist (not TV, but work in transportation). I’ll bite on this one.
Summer and autumn are typically very dry for much of the western U.S. This is primarily due to high pressure that resides over most of the region, and with a large expansive high pressure regime, you get sinking air, and with this sinking air comes warm spells, lack of precipitation, and stagnant air. Also the jet stream is usually not present, so nothing can more the smoke/clouds efficiently.
So it’s not unusual to have smoke/haze linger in areas for days on end, but this season has been especially dry and hot, and there were some “dry” thunderstorms in northern CA and NV a few weeks back (dry meaning that most of the rain didn’t make it to the ground), and the lightning triggered some of the fires.
We have had smokey skies here in Georgia on occasion this summer, as has much of the nation east of the Rockies.
I can’t speak for Michael or anyone west of the Rockies, but it seems what is going on is extreme and may be unprecedented for northern CA into OR and WA.
DFG.
The NW is supposed to get Indian Summer. Temp drops below dewpoint at night, warms afternoon. Sept is drought month. The idea of upper 80’s-90’s with high wind speeds is crazy. Plus, no late Aug front passed through to provide a break from Summer drought.
If this is the trend, the NW is in real trouble.
Thanks, Dan… your explanation makes sense – never seen it this bad and i have spent nearly all my life on the west coast…
I think global warming is real, but i am not convinced the U.S. is the cause
nd there were some “dry” thunderstorms in northern CA and NV a few weeks back (dry meaning that most of the rain didn’t make it to the ground),<<<
Yep. It rained for probably five minutes in the middle of an entire night of thunder and lightning. It was the herald of the holocaust that followed.
I think global warming is real, but i am not convinced the U.S. is the cause<<<
We've been living like kings and queens on a planet designed for a more humble, simple, village-based agrarian way of life. Something was bound to give.
Just my opinion with no science to back it up so no need to Google anything….
I have picked up 5 dead birds in the yard here and it is swarming with all kinds of them… heavy smoke contributing? They predict lightening on Friday – that spells real disaster, barring God’s intervention…. Praying for His mercy
Spent 6 years in Wichita KS. Tornadoes are beginning to look bearable. ..
God told us to take care of the planet, not plunder it.
After 1000’s of years of plundering, we are seeing the results.
It’s disobedience to God that is causing all this planetary turmoil.
Well, Xenia, perhaps the Amish do know something, then…
Clip clopping along in a horse and buggy? Sounds enjoyable…
Em, when I was agonizing over what to do about my Christian life 20 years ago, I though I might like to join the Mennonites, who seemed more approachable than the Amish. But it wasn’t practical, to put it mildly. Then I had my Orthodox experience, and that solved my problem but I have a soft spot in my heart for the Amish.
Trouble is that today most leadership think God is a construct of timid people…..
Our State has done some proscriptive burns, but if the wind is up and the tall firs catch fire, burning the underbrush doesn’t help
I heard that some preacher, because of the full moon on Halloween is predicting the rapturing out of the Church in the first week of November.. Ya think? 😳
Do you know what the ultimate idea for a Christian novel? Someone decided to combine all the popular genres into the ultimate Christian novel: Amish, End-Times, and Vampires:
Cassidy: Amish Vampiress of the Tribulation
That’s right. It’s an Amish novel; it’s a vampire novel; it’s an end-times novel. It’s the best of all worlds.
Apparently 2 of the 3 have already been combined in real life:
https://www.amazon.com/Amish-Vampires-Space-Kerry-Nietz/dp/0983965552
Apparently it is not your ordinary bonnet ripper.
CM, there’ll be Amish vampires in the Tribulation? 😳
Thanks Nathan, Em, and Xenia. I was on shift the morning when the first wave of dry thunderstorms went through SFO. I believe it was sometime between midnight and sunrise. Was kind of taken aback…said to a coworker “isn’t it the wrong time of year for thunderstorms in SFO?” – check a lot of the local TV station websites and it was pretty much the lead story for all of them.
Tornadoes, derechos, hurricanes, lightning, hail, drought, blizzards, flooding. Me personally, I think flooding is the most unnerving.
In 1794 George Vancouver’s expedition went to Alaska where there was no Glacier Bay just ice. In 1879 John Muir measured and recorded that the Glacier had retreated 40 miles . By 1888 it had retreated a total of 44 miles and today some 65 miles from the entrance. Glacier Bay was not a result of man caused Global warming. Although today man certainly is contributing to the physical and Spiritual pollution of the earth.
It is interesting to follow the old testament and the various plagues, earthquakes, asteroids and even a flood in His judgements on mankind. When were the asteroids released to hit the enemies of Israel?
All was set in motion before the foundation of the world.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.
The prophecies of the Bible and the book of Revelations are unfolding at hyper speed. The earth groans as HIs people pray come Lord Jesus come.
Angel,
Here is the math:
Avg retreat per year (1794 – 2020): 65 / (2020 – 1794) = 0.288 miles per year
Avg retreat per year (1794 – 1879): 40 / (1879 – 1794) = 0.471 miles per year
Avg retreat per year (1879 – 2020): (65 – 40) / (2020 – 1879) = 0.178 miles per year
According to the math, the retreat is actually SLOWER now than it was in the past.
In our local paper this morning was the headline, “Hundreds of thousands”; NM sees migratory bird deaths. The birds are dying and no one knows why. They are dying in unprecedented numbers in New Mexico, which is on the route for many species of birds on their way to other places.
Strange days indeed.
We also, here in New Mexico have smoke haze from all the fires in your parts of the world.Lord have mercy…
Catherine, to date, one this morning, i have picked up seven dead birds in our yard…. it may have something to do with the heavy layer of smoke?
Blue sky this AM, a little rain last night… Such a blessing – thank You God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Thank You for a bit of respite from the oppressive air surrounding us for so long now
I saw this news item too on CNN about the birds dying. My wife and I are animal lovers, and this is sad to hear about.