Wisdom is a Woman

If you believe in the Bible, especially if you take every word literally, there is an important fact that you may have missed out on over the years.  Just like most Christians will tell you that Jesus Christ was around before our universe was formed (John 1:1-3), there was someone else out there with the Heavenly Father long before the Creation.

This is all from the Book of Proverbs, using the King James version, for those who won't accept any other.  Before the Beginning, there was somebody very close to the Creator, a female called "Wisdom."

Proverbs 7:4 advises, "Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; and call understanding thy kinswoman."

This isn't her first mention, but it establishes wisdom's female identity with certainty.   

Her origins can be learned in Proberbs 7:22...31, in her own words:

"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.  ... When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men."

In all Chapter 8, it's shown how she dwells on this planet, amongst the sons of men, trying to make contact, a frustrating prospect when one is Wisdom and most men are foolish, as she point out early, in Proverbs 1:22.  So very often these same words, in sermons given at churches by preachers, are spoken as if God said them, but it wasn't God who said them. It was the female Wisdom speaking. From Proverbs 8:2-7:

"She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips."

From the beginning of the Proverbs the importance of this female entity is made clear:

"Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee."

And she's just waiting for people to take notice, ready to give them treasures more valuable than rubies, more valuable than anything:

"Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars: She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table. She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.  Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding. " Proverbs 9:1-6

Just like this picture you always see of Jesus knocking on the door of your heart trying to get in, Wisdom is out there, and she's calling out to people who know they don't know everything.  All you have to do is accept her, the same way you accept the Messiah.  She will give you understanding that you won't find otherwise, no matter how hard you search, and she'll tell you EXACTLY what you need to know in order to be wise.  It can pretty much be summed up in two very simple things, but you'll need to read the Proverbs to find out what they are (just keep clicking the arrow pointing right when you get to the bottom of the page).

This, my friends, is straight from the Bible.

White O.J. Simpson Riots

RE: Ferguson, Missouri.  In the past two days I've seen this picture in my Facebook newsfeed more than any other:

It says,"Caucasians are superior to African Americans because we don't act like that."

But I DO remember how white people rioted.  Not about O.J., but about a LOT of other things that really got them stirred up.  I remember clearly how white people rioted when football coach Joe Paterno was fired during the Penn State child sex abuse scandal.  The injustice of it a drove a race of people to this:

I'll never forget that.   And look at the wanton destruction in Huntington Beach, California  because.... the U.S. Open of Surfing was over.  The real action starts about 50 seconds in:

 
 White people were out of control in New Hampshire because...it was the Keene Pumpkin Festival:

As the night wore on, tensions began to build and the Pumpkin Rioting escalated:




 In two days it will be Black Friday, and we'll see lots of footage of holiday shoppers turning into animals as they indulge in the "Christmas Spirit of Giving":




This is how white people riot in West Virginia.  Why were they rioting? Because their football team WON!



And a riot for the Kentucky basketball win!

But, because White Americans kept their cool after the O.J. verdict, it only seems right (to the people who share the O.J. Simpson picture on Facebook) to point out their racial superiority at a time when the whole world is watching a U.S. city being burned to the ground -- not because of a Pumpkin Festival or a sports win, but on account of hundreds of years of hostility and tensions boiling over on a night when a militarized police force, hundreds strong, faced off and lobbed tear gas and other projectiles at non-violent protesters, while at the same time looters and rioters were burning the city down unencumbered.  Last night I watched stores get looted and buildings burned without a law enforcement officer in sight; they were all standing off against the protesters.

Thankfully I have sensible friends on Facebook, too, who are saddened by all of this, and are engaging in dialogue about how we can keep the kind of rioting that we've see in Ferguson (and everything that led up to it) from ever happening again.

You Can Be Happy Again

My cousin David got killed by a train in 1983 when he was 14 years old.  His mother's grief was the most painful thing I'd ever witnessed, and my 16 year old brain told me, "She'll never be happy again."   Several months later, their family's home burned down, and David's father, my Uncle Bob, lost his arm in that fire.  "What more can happen to these poor people?" I wondered.  In October of the next year Uncle Bob joined David in Heaven and my sorrow for his widow, my Great Aunt Mary, the kindest woman I'd ever known, knew no bounds.  "She has no hope of ever being happy again."

For the next few years when I'd see her, she seemed better, always kind and friendly and loving.  I asked her how she managed to get through and she said it's because you don't have a choice... you just keep surviving, and that the grandchildren and new babies in the family helped... I would find that out myself in later years.

Then came a family reunion in 1988, I believe it was.  Aunt Mary, who had been through so much, was all smiles with much laughter... she looked genuinely happy.  She had a new boyfriend, and she was in love.  "Maybe she CAN be happy again!"  Never did I imagine that I would see her beaming with happiness like that. I carried that inspiration with me throughout all the hard times and I always will.

Over the next decades she would marry the man who brought happiness back to her life, she would travel to Ireland, she went skydiving in Las Vegas at the age of 60+... so many happy things.... so many happy times.  She became the inspiration of my lifetime, and she always will be.  Because of her I was able to hang in there at times when I really didn't want to because she had taught me that no matter what happens, you can be happy again.

The past three years were hard on her... in her 70s she fought and won a battle against Stage 3 lung cancer that she was told she had little chance to survive... her son-in-law was killed in a motorcycle crash... the wife and baby of her grandson died during childbirth.  No matter what she was going through, she was there to comfort and console and offer hope and love and smiles to everyone who loved her and needed her support.

At 4:00 this morning Aunt Mary left this planet, left a very big family, and I know there are many people that I'm related to right now that wonder if they will ever be happy again.  I know that they can be.  My Aunt Mary taught me that.

Obama Reacts to Election (video)

President Obama SERIOUSLY needs to start watching his back. Just look:



'Twas the best political moment of my lifetime - the RE-election of Barack Obama. Republicans may have taken control of the Senate, but the moment captured in the video above, well, it's like Fred Astaire sang, "They Can't Take That Away From Me"



Now it's deja vu all over again, two years that will likely be wasted on expensive, pointless Lewinsky Benghazi and Whitewater Birther investigations, all the while Al Queda Isis will be plotting to kill Americans (and everyone else) while Republicans waste tax money and precious time vying for an impeachment that they won't get.  You can't say I didn't warn you...


 

P. S.  It's also 2010 all over again... we saw what Republicans didn't accomplish when they took control of the House during the Tea Party Revolution... they failed to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, cost the economy $24 billion with a needless government shutdown, and even in the Senate minority Republicans managed to block expanded health benefits to Veterans.  Look forward to more of the same.

MAJOR Shake Up

Thursday, October 16, is the International Shake-Out for earthquake preparedness, brought to us by the U.S. Geological Survey and other natural disaster agencies and organizations. Millions of people, companies, schools, and households will probably be holding an earthquake drill for the first time and learning what to do in the event of an earthquake.

It's a good time to talk about the earthquakes that have been swarming in Oklahoma.

National Geographic tells us that from 1978 to 2008, Oklahoma experienced an average of one earthquake a year of magnitude 3 and higher.  But look what's happening now... from one a year to around 3000.  This graph was made in July of this year:

 

Let's look at today's Oklahoma (and southern Kansas) earthquakes from the USGS website, which only lists earthquakes measuring larger than 2.5 on the Richter scale.   The orange dots are the earthquakes over the last 24 hours.

 

The yellow dots are the earthquakes that have happened over the past 7 days.  The bigger the dot, the bigger the quake, and you can't see all of the dots because some of them are laying on top of the others.

 

Now here are the Oklahoma/Kansas earthquakes of the past 30 days.  The white dots are the quakes that happened more than a week ago, but in the past month.

A quote about an Oklahoma insurance salesman from the National Geographic article titled, "Oklahoma Grapples With Earthquake Spike—And Evidence of Industry's Role" :

"Kahn, who opened the Lynnae Insurance Group in 2002, said he sold earthquake coverage to two homeowners during the first decade he was in business. During the past six months, he sold more than 125 policies."

None of this is a coincidence, it's a direct result of "Underground disposal of wastewater from fracking."  If you don't know what fracking is, learn about it here.  If you don't understand underground disposal of wastewater, click this link and learn what that means. 

There are few states that give the green light to any sort of drilling, mining, and fracking the way that Dick Cheney's Wyoming does.  

The reason I think they should really leave the earth's surface in Wyoming as intact as possible is because there's this huge cauldron of boiling magma underfoot, a supervolcano that's overdue for an eruption, and should it erupt it would be the end of the world as we know it.  I do not exaggerate.  

See the tiny little ball of magma at the right of this picture?  That's the Mt. St. Helen's eruption in 1980.  See the two gigantic cauldrons of magma on the left of this picture?  That's Yellowstone, in Wyoming.  And in the Wyoming primary election back in August, a Republican candidate for governor named Taylor Haynes promised to open Yellowstone National Park up for mining, drilling, and fracking.  Thankfully, Taylor Haynes lost the election to a smarter candidate who opposed the idea, but Haynes still picked up 30% of the vote in a state that's virtually completely dependent on the oil and gas industry.

So participate in the ShakeOut on October 16 and learn to protect yourself, learn about fracking, contact your representatives, and find out about the Yellowstone Cauldron. 

Here's a whole, captivating movie, praised by scientists and movie lovers alike, that will show you what is basically overdue at Yellowstone, "A true story that hasn't happened yet" (though the movie was made before they found out in 2013 that there is 2 and a half times more magma than they thought there was when they made this movie).

See you at the ShakeUp Earthquake Drill on October 16!  Tell your friends!  And ask them to demand an end to Fracking and irresponsible oil industry practices!!!