Local Produce

Have you noticed the current focus on physical condition?  Everyone is doing something to maintain their health. If you are twenty, that may mean that you run, have a gym membership, play sports, or maybe ride a mountain bike.  If you are 80, exercise may be as simple as standing on one foot for as long as you can to improve your balance or taking your dog for a walk. Today, I would like to ask this question, might there be a additional component to our being that needs much the same care as our physical body?

Let’s start with a theological idea.  The Bible tells us that man is created “in God’s image” (Genesis 1: 26-27).  That’s a bit confusing, because it is generally understood that God is a spirit, not flesh (John 4:24). “In God’s Image” doesn’t mean that we are constructed exactly as God is constructed, but I would argue that we, who perceive ourselves as physical beings, also have a spiritual component, one that is separate and distinct from our physical being.  Personally, I like to think of my body as the “electro-chemical interface” between my “spiritual component” and the outside world.  The next question to arise is this, “Is there evidence to suggest that such a spiritual component exists?”  For that, I will go with the “Near-Death Experience”, or “NDE”. To access a credible overview of NDEs, look HERE. Near-Death Experiences support the idea that we, as human beings are a duality, consisting, at minimum, of two identifiable components, a physical body and a spirit.  Of course, no one who has “remained dead” has come back to tell us if the NDE is one hundred percent representative of what we might encounter on “the other side.” NDEs do, however, support the idea of duality.  From NDEs we learn that our spirit component appears to define our concept of self, it is the “I” that participates in thought, in social situations, and makes our subjective decisions. It appears that our spirit can also exist separate from the body, defying the physical limitations that we might normally consider to be inviolable. 

There are also Biblical references that clearly apply.  As Jesus prepared his disciples to go out and spread his gospel, He said this to them, “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul…” (Matthew 10:28a). I’m drawing upon Jesus here, because, for most, He is a credible source, and He makes a clear distinction between the disciple’s physical body and their immortal soul. Christianity has much to say about the life of our spirit.  In 1 Corinthians, 15:44, the apostle Paul makes this distinction between body and spirit: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” Even if you don’t believe a word of the bible, couple these ideas with the NIH article, then tell me that you aren’t getting at least a hint of vibration.

To find out where this leaves us, let’s return to man, “created in His image.”  God is assumed to be Holy, while man is sinful.  Now, I can’t prove to you that God is Holy, but He certainly has that reputation.  I can quickly prove, however, that man is incredibly sinful.  For that, I refer you to the morning news.  In the news, we find parents killing their children, there are reports of human trafficking, sexual slavery, and every kind of perversion (the latter often promoted as perfectly normal). We have people who sew envy and hate, which then incites others to set upon strangers, with the intent of killing them. I think you will agree that every kind of evil is prevalent in the world today.

If we allocate to God omniscience (all knowledge), He then knew from the beginning that man, his creation, would fall into sin.  For that reason, He immediately began constructing a plan for man’s rescue.  For that, He created a nation (Israel – the only nation on earth created by God Himself) and, from its beginning, he promised Israel a role in correcting the relationship between Himself and sinful man.  Along the way, He exposed the Israelites to the trials of poor leadership, disbelief, scattering of the people and slavery (see the old testament).  He also provided them with copious rules to live by, the first ten of which we call the ten commandments.  Among those rules, they were to sacrifice the most perfect of their animals as payment for their sins.  Most importantly, through the blood line of the very first Israelite (Abraham), God sent his perfect Son to live on this earth and, ultimately, to pay the penalty for every man’s sin; notice that we have converged with the traditional Christmas story.  

The essence Christianity differs from all other religions. Man did not successfully reach up to God, but rather, God reached down to man … to do that which man could not do for himself. In Christianity, a God chooses to die for his people.  This time of year, millions and millions of Christians are celebrating Christmas. They are giving gifts.  And why do they do that?  In memory of God giving His son, a gift (and a sacrifice) that would bridge the gap between sinful man and a Holy God. And … to go there, to approach that God, all you must do is “believe” (see Acts 16:31).  Then, you may ask, “what is the value of that?”  Well, Christian believers are promised eternal rest for that spirit component of yours.  Look at believing in, and learning about Christianity, just the same as you look at going to the gym.  In this post I am urging you to take care of your spiritual self this Christmas and, like body building, there is a clear-cut starting place. For an overview of the entry level, I invite you to visit HERE.

Enjoy the greatest Christmas present of all this year … a gym membership for your soul!

Author’s note: The NDE is an area of intense interest to me. The idea that each of us has a critical spiritual component, in conjunction with my Christian perspective, have taken away all fear of death. To me, death will mean simply stepping out of a worn out electro-chemical interface and into a perfect and, already familiar, spirit world (now, go back and read the NIH link again) … and then think about it.

I fell off a ladder today …  

There’s a rusty chronometer somewhere in my brain. Occasionally it whispers something silly, like … “You can still do that!”

Imagine yourself, sitting in your office. You have defined responsibilities, you have your co-workers’ respect, you are the person that they come to when there is a question in your area of expertise. You are invited to brainstorm when fresh insight or new ideas are needed.  You now decide to go to the break room for a cup of coffee.  You rise from your desk, and you leave your office through a door.  Ten minutes later, you return through the same door.  To the same office, the same job for the same employer.  You have the same responsibilities, and you enjoy the same respect from your management and your co-workers.  The door you enter is the very same door that you exited ten minutes earlier.

Let’s change the situation.  It is September.  You have graduated from high school back in June.  You have also celebrated your eighteen the birthday.  You live in your parents’ home and occupy the same bedroom where you have slept since middle school.  Your current part time job is insufficient to pay the rent, if you were to rent the same room from a stranger. In addition, the only transportation available to you is your parents’ automobile.  They make the rules; you are expected to be home by midnight. 

At some point, you enlist in the military and, on a given morning, you rise early; your mother drives you to meet the recruiter. That morning, you and your mom walk through a familiar door.  It is the door that you have been entering and leaving since middle school.  It is the door to your parent’s home, where you were expected to be … simply … “the kid.”

Now, four years later you return.  You have attended a technical school and you are reasonably proficient at a trade.  You have made every decision relating to what will happen in your free time each day for the past four years.  You have taken responsibility and you have taken risks.  You are driving your own car and possibly have a job lined up in a distant city … one that is sufficient to support you and pay the rent.  You get out of the car, and you walk up to the door.  Is it the same door that you walked out of four years earlier?  You are returning as an adult and the game has decidedly changed. You have been trained, tried and, in many ways, proven.  Your dad can’t expect to tell you to be home by midnight.  Your high school bedroom, while familiar, is going to remind you of another life, one that has ended; the dreams that you had in that room are now, at least in part, reality. In summary, your parent’s home doesn’t impose the same restrictions upon you that it once did.  Technically, you are about to go through the same door, but it doesn’t lead to the same thing.

A married man enjoys a modest home and has both the love and respect of his wife and children.  Daily, he walks through the door of that home and off to his job. In the evening, he returns to the same love and respect.  The house may be mortgaged but, to his family, it is home.  His wife serves as both his steady lover and a successful homemaker.  This home represents privacy, stability, and security.  Now, let’s assume that our head of household falls under the influence of the single crowd at work.  He begins to stop by a local watering hole each evening.  There, he has a few drinks and maybe shoots some darts or plays a bit of pool; shortly, he begins to fit right in.  At the same time, he arrives home to warmed-over dinner, kids that are sleeping and a wife that is fretting. Soon, he tires of her fretting. She’s nagging too, because his “single lifestyle” is having an impact on both the family budget and his responsibilities at home base.  He becomes dissatisfied …  she becomes dissatisfied. Before long, he packs his clothes and moves in with an acquaintance who is, of course, single.  Women flow into and out of the house … available women, and … what’s a guy to do? Meanwhile, the family struggles.  The finances are tight, snow isn’t shoveled, and the furnace needs repair. No one takes charge of the home spiritually; any sense of leadership is gone.  

Sometime later, our hero is once again ready for the comforts of home.  So, he packs his clothing and shows up at his family’s front door. Is it the same door?  Technically yes, but the trust that once lay beyond it … is missing. It now leads to people who don’t see the changed man that he claims to be.  No matter what the duration of his absence, the circumstances beyond the door have now changed … the impact long reaching … perhaps life long.

A Christian believer strays from his faith.  Satan is expert at making emptiness look both good and desirable.  Genuine, grounded, experience has been abandoned in favor of people with no faith in any god, and no faith in him.  He quickly learns that his new companions cannot “keep the faith” either, particularly in interpersonal relationships.  There is no trust, there is no brother or sisterhood.   Eventually, he admits to his emptiness and through some breath of the spirit, he begins to move back toward a spiritual anchor.  One day, he again steps through the door of God’s house.  Things have changed.  He is older and he is, at best, a visitor. The crowd that keeps this church running is both hot and tight.  They have been there since their very first meeting in a rented storefront.  He frets; unable to find a lost sense of grateful inclusion. The truth is, that even here … in God’s house … one returns through a different door than the he or she went out.

Allow me to close with this thought: This last example doesn’t mean that you cannot find a mission after returning to the church … this entire website is part of mine.

Doors …

Something interesting happens as one grows older …  the day comes when you look around and all the adults are gone … parents, teachers, our earliest workmates, beloved aunts, and trusted uncles.  

It’s an odd feeling, the first time that you feel the need to run some idea past a wizened olderster … and you discover that there are none! 

This week, while looking through my hometown newspaper, I saw an obituary for Eula Allison, age 99.  As a kid, perhaps ten years old, Eula existed on the periphery of my awareness.  She was thirty then, an adult, and I knew “of Eula,” rather than knowing her personally.  Her Son Tommy was my age, and during my childhood, I would occasionally see Tommy, or hear a bit of news from the Allison household. In those days, Eula was an adult and, most certainly, existed only on the edge of my radar.

My cousin, Nancy, maintained contact with Eula so, reports from Nancy have managed to keep her in my thoughts throughout adulthood … again however, peripherally.  Eula remained in her family home in a community named Greenville, a wide spot on a Pennsylvania roadside, far too small to have its own post office.  Her obituary states that she’d been a member of the Greenville Church of the Brethren for more than 80 years. She and Cousin Nancy shared Greenville memories that I am certain no one else remembered. And, in speaking with Nancy, I have been the occasional “secondary” recipient of that very old news.

Then, I see her obituary … and I realized something.  Eula Allison was, very likely, the very last adult to remain from my childhood … even if she was present only peripherally.

Perhaps I have reached that point in life, where there are exactly zero adults to turn to …

I will begin this post with this assumption; God created man, just as described in the book of Genesis. 

Following that assumption … man must have been created in a sinless state.  The book of Genesis reports that he (man) had direct interaction with his Creator (God), which could not have been possible, if from the outset, man had been beset by sin.

And God, assuming that He is omnipotent, could have stopped right there. He could have created mankind as a kind of “Stepford wife”, forever compliant to His will … the inhabitant of a world without temptation.  If that were the case, every one of us would have seen and interacted with the Creator and would have enjoyed a single, world-wide religion, based upon absolute truth.

But that is decidedly not how it happened, and perhaps that was simply not the scenario that God intended.  Instead, He did two things that do not, at first glance, seem to make much sense.  First God granted man free will (the right to choose) and second, when it became necessary to banish Satan from Heaven, God chose to banish him to earth … why not, I wonder, to mars, or Jupiter, or some far away galaxy?

Then, as if to confirm the hazards of these options, God gave His creations a single rule to follow, they were not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We all know how that turned out …

They did eat that fruit and, as a result, they were cursed and deprived of perpetual care … more importantly, they were removed from God’s holiness.  Man had to work for a living … and it wasn’t long until the first murder occurred. Man’s propensity for untruthfulness, envy, greed, lust, and anger were all unleashed.  Eventually, when evil prevailed everywhere, God used a flood to eliminate all except a single family. From the flood survivors, a nation was established, and with that nation laws arose … for dealing with both God and with man’s sin.

Do you think that any of this caught an omniscient God off guard?  I doubt it.  I do not believe that He called his minions into heaven’s conference room to ask, “What are we going to do about this?” I believe that, before man’s creation, He knew that man would fall and that some means of redemption would be needed.

That redemption then, was to be a part of himself; God made flesh … and in the manner of the Jewish law, that “God-man” became a sacrifice for the sins of mankind … a sole path back to God … in a word … salvation. 

Did God, from the beginning, expect that all of mankind would choose this means to come back to Him?  The Bible clearly answers that question:

In Matthew 7:13, the Bible it says this (and I paraphrase), “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that enter therein.” And, in Matthew 7:14 He tells us, “… straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it.”

So, what is the takeaway?  I believe that, from the beginning, God knew that relatively few of His created beings would seek Him.  Perhaps we can assume that He is content with that.  When all is said and done, God’s true believers are those who are drawn to Him. Those who possess an innate desire to follow Him … and that, as it turns out, is going to be far from everyone.

One night, I believe it was August of 1957, I decided to “sleep out” on what we called “the island.” It was an island in a little creek that flowed behind our house. To be honest, the creek had long since changed its course, and only on rare occasion did this place become an honest to goodness “Island,” completely surrounded by water.

At 2AM, having no luck with sleep, I crawled out of my tent and walked to the garage. There, I retrieved my bicycle and headed downtown … actually, in Clearfield Pennsylvania, we called it “over town” … I have no idea why.

In Clearfield, two bridges cross the West Branch of the Susquehanna River … and I no longer remember the route that I followed that morning, but, I eventually found myself peddling up Front Street … the air warm, the smells sweet, the darkness gently modulated by light from the occasional street lamp. As I arrived at the intersection of Front and Market streets, I looked up to see another cyclist, just clearing the Market Street Bridge … I waited. In short order, we were sitting front wheel to front wheel … greetings were exchanged.

I didn’t know this particular kid all that well … but, it seems that he couldn’t sleep either and had chosen, like me, to ride “over town.” We’d seen each other in school … but the time before was hazy. That night, in Upper Witmer Park we sat on the swings. What was it, that thirteen year old boys talked about? I have no idea, but we did talk, and when enough had been said, we proceeded east on Market Street, then north on Second to the end of the Nichols Street Bridge. There, in the glare of a streetlight, we saw the largest moth … or something … that either of us had ever seen …

It’s funny what you remember …

I remember none of the trip up Nichols Street to Turnpike Avenue, but I do remember parting, at the point where I turned up Martin Street and he continued on Turnpike to McBride.

That meeting would change something. I would hang out in his third story bedroom, and he would hang out in mine. We would conceive of adventures together, we would set up an intercom, across the one quarter mile that separated out houses, and … he would be drawn to my interest in amateur radio. I’d met Jan Clifford Hubler … and there would be much to follow …

Was it a perfect friendship?  No … but … in the end, I stood above the grave of a friend and a lifelong memory.

There are things that we did and things that we laughed about, that today … few survive to remember …

A Testors Glue commercial (and … if you were “cool,” you could recite the whole thing) …

The recorded promotion for a carnival sideshow that could be heard from his bedroom window (we could recite that thing verbatim … until I would see him no more)…

And Mad Magazine … “Two Game Wardens,  Seven Hunters,  and a Cow” …

A carnival stripper named Bubbles Darlene … we never did find out how much she took off … because we never paid to go inside …

White belts, white bucks, and white knit hats … yes, long ago, all three of those were totally “cool” accessories … and equally totally essential …

The amateur radio “novice era” … May KN3OMD be long remembered … but of course, he won’t …

A trip on an old Vespa motor scooter … with a victory lap around the town square in Andover, Ohio … All the way to another state … Wahoo!

Mile high ice cream cones (or pretty close) … when Jan had the good fortune of working in a dairy store …

A state policeman … who … could not arrest others for “things that he would do himself”…

Someone who, as an adult, even more than Elvis, had to do absolutely everything “his way” …

One who mourned the loss of his only son (sound familiar)?  But the circumstances were entirely different…

Someone who, when “his way” yielded far too little retirement income, followed another guy’s lead … it seems that he had discovered a way “out” …

And that “out” was an exit indeed …

Now please …

Fast forward sixty-five years … The date is 19 August 2022. I am watching two young men on the swings in Upper Witmer Park … and … in that moment, I am remembering a summer night, long ago.  My mind flashes over the good and the bad … mostly the good … That’s how one remembers “a friendship” …

I recently saw where an old acquaintance had died. For the sake of his privacy, we’ll just call him Homer.

In 1960, Homer and I shared an interest in amateur radio. He lived just across the way from Louie, radio callsign K3KYY, who ran the Dixon Bar and Grill, in DuBois PA. As underage kids, we often dropped by the Dixon Grill, where we drank free Coca-Cola and listened to Louie; always ready to talk about radio.

One evening, Louie reported that Homer had acquired some extremely high end equipment. To be honest, we didn’t know what it was, but if Louie thought it was great … we wanted to see for ourselves. We made our way across the main drag and up a side street to Homer’s second floor apartment, his radio room required another climb, to a small attic.

The radio was indeed a thing of beauty … a Collins 32S-1transmitter, as I remember.

It was the first Collins “S-Line” component that I had ever seen.  Homer proudly advised that Collins radios were undisputedly the “top of the line;” their “new” cost being a jaw dropping six hundred and twenty dollars … that’s somewhere near six-thousand dollars today.

I should note that Homer was not the wealthy man … he drove a delivery truck for Oscar Meyer, the wiener people.  For Homer, we understood, this to be an incredible acquisition. During his show and tell, he carefully warned us not mention “price” in front of his wife. His story was that he had purchased the radio used for thirty-five dollars.

Risky business for sure … and in light of his recent obituary … maybe she finally found out!

I began writing for pleasure in 2014. Sometimes I wrote to preserve something dear; other times I wrote to vent my frustration. Recently, while searching for a old file, I began reading my earliest stuff. I liked some of it, but I also realized that things might not flow smoothly, if it were placed side-by-side with my more recent pages and posts. So, I decided to build a “file museum,” a home for the “Way Back” files. This post will have multiple pages, you may choose to stop when you’ve had enough, or you may select the next page to continue.

In any case, you have arrived; welcome to the “Way Back” museum.

Let’s test the concept, select two below to continue:

I am living in life’s November.  And, while I generally deal quite well with that, I will get a little nervous when they start pulling out the Christmas decorations.

Apologetics is defined as “reasoned arguments that justify something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.” 

Often our interest in apologetics springs from a desire to square Christianity with our human logic. A common and rather simplistic starting place is with the Bible itself; consider the following top level facts:

The Bible contains sixty-six books …They were written by forty different authors over a period spanning 1500 years …

Most of these authors never met the others, allowing almost no collaboration …

The biblical authors were spread across three different continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe) …

The Bible was written in three different languages (Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic) …

The authors completed works, when placed together, tell an integrated and coherent story of man’s creation, his initial relationship with God, his fall, and God’s carefully designed rescue mission, intended to return man to fellowship with Him …

This introductory exercise in apologetics quite often stops here. There is, however, another example … an instance where proven fact authenticates the Bible.  Many Biblical authors also wrote “history in advance”, something we call prophecy.  To date a great number of biblical prophecies have come to pass and, when they have, they have always been fulfilled exactly as predicted. An example from our own time is the establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948. This event fulfilled a 2,500-year-old Bible prophecy …

This is a very quick look at apologetic thought.  The fact is, the more you know about the Bible, the easier it is to find logical reasons to believe that it is true.