About Me - Part Two

In my last post, I recounted my memories of verifiable history, and thus most certainly are true.  That is what I consider knowledge.  It takes no faith to accept such things.  That is where faith and "science" diverge.  As I mentioned in the last paragraph of that post that my brother and I both went to Seminary. Though I can blame my circumstances and/or myself for my life track after getting a Theological education, the fact is that track is a matter of faith.  I found that I had let my mind (or "feelings") interpret what was not of faith.

During my days in grad school (aka seminary) I met my wife, a "graduate assistant" working toward a degree in medical missions.  Her being a registered nurse turned out to be the bedrock upon which our family was built.  My Masters of Divinity degree was not enough for me to "get a job" in the ministry.  In truth, that process is an act of faith.  After three years as a candidate, preaching at various churches but not ministering as an intern (the best way to get experience!), I "got the message" and sought regular "secular" employment.

While I was seeking a church in which to serve, I worked as a Nursing Assistant at the Nursing Home where my wife worked. She was the lead nurse on second shift and I was on third shift.  Shift change was accomplished by my bundling the three children together and putting them in the back seat of the station wagon and driving to the nursing home.  My wife would come out and I would go into work.  She would pick me up in the morning.  It was a wild three years in which I was granted permission to have Sundays off to go preaching at area churches.  Sometimes, though, I had to work AND preach after zero sleep!

By the time our fourth child was born, I was working temporary jobs looking for work. We finally decided that my best course of action was to get another degree.  This time, it would be in accounting -- based on the fact that I was an Ace math student in High School.  I made it my "full time job" for a full year, getting an Associate of Science degree in accounting at a local Technical College.  Even with the College's help, I was not able to turn that degree into a job.  It turned out that I could not afford to go ahead to a Bachelor's degree, so I sought other work.

I had worked as a security guard while in grad school, so I took another look at the field.  That led to my "career" in the field -- eleven years with one company and nine with another. The first job had started out with third shift and moved through second shift to some first shift work -- and back again.  As assignments moved to part time, I worked part-time as a pizza delivery driver. Drivers actually worked in the kitchen between deliveries, so I learned a bit about the restaurant business that way.  My second son has ended up in the service industry so I have a bond of sorts with him on that. My third son followed my interest in math and now works in a financial services company.  It was during this period that we bought a house.

Based on a painted brick at the crawl space space, the house was built in 1962, making it 55 years old.  It has a large oak tree in the back yard with what appear to be "daughter" trees growing in the fence to the lot next door.  The lot has two entrances, with the corner lot being taken up with another house.  We once had a mailbox to our "neighbors" across the back street.  Oddly, that mailbox was "fire bombed" one night.  I say that because I saw the wooden box burning one morning as I left the house!  Our neighborhood is "mixed" with a historical mansion restored to its 19th century dimensions diagonally across from us.  It had been a plantation home when the rest of the area was the plantation!  Meanwhile, down the street are trailer parks.

My wife's work moved from pediatrics while in school to hospice nursing at the preset time.  She has worked in two hospital systems, a doctors office and finally in hospice care -- in home care of up to fifteen patients.  She puts a lot of miles on her vehicle.  She has served in the church as a Sunday school teacher for most of the last 35 years (currently on hiatus, maybe "retired"?).  Whereas my service was a deacon is lackluster (currently not active), her service has been extraordinary.

We have traveled through much of the eastern United States, from the edge of Texas to Missouri to Massachusetts. We hope to see the rest of New England together this coming fall. She grew up there, though I don't think she has been to Maine.  Our recent journeys have been to the "high points" of the entire Southeast (Dixie) from Louisiana to Virginia, the "boarder states" of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland, and the northern states from Illinois to Pennsylvania.  We slid took a side trip into Texas just to say we've seen the state.

We can say we are "world travelers," since we have both been to Canada (Alaskan cruise for our 25th anniversary courtesy of my brother) and Peru (together once, I've been several times).  Additionally, my wife has been to England and Wales.  Both Peru and Wales were missions trips. Back before my passport expired, my brother and I took a road trip with our mother to Alaska.  On that trip we took the entire Can-Am Highway (gravel and dirt and in perpetual repair due to the extremes in weather!).  I can add Denali (formerly "Mount McKinley") to my "high points" visited, though not climbed!

On our anniversary trip (concurrently my parents' fiftieth) to Alaska, we visited Mount Saint Helens, and saw Mount Rainier from the highway going to and from Seattle.  I suppose, since we cannot, at our age, climb the snow capped mountains, we can probably add Washington to our list of high points that we have visited.  However, hopefully we can take a special trip in our retirement to visit the West coast, Alaska and Hawaii!  That is a dream trip, but one can hope.

After I lost my last job, I searched for a few years without any full time work found, so, when I turned 62, I took "early retirement." The social security check is a bit more than our house payment, so the account that held my employment (and unemployment) checks which paid "housing expenses" doesn't do much else.  I have learned that a self-published book does not sell very well.  Friends and acquaintances don't seem to want to spend even $5 on an eBook copy of a $10 paperback version.  And forget selling the hardcover at $20. By the way, those prices are "bargain basement" and may be my problem there.  Margin matters, and profit motive cannot make a beginning writer a living.

Well, there are a lot of other memories, but those of these two posts just are the high points of my life.  I can write about the specifics in later posts here and at my other blog (https://upstatethoughts.blogspot.com/).  Alternately, any readers can leave a message and I can provide more information.  I hope you have enjoyed this overview of 'What I know' about my own life.

About Me -- Part One

What I know, definitely, without looking anything up:

I am a male of the human race, having thinning white and dark brown hair and lightly tanned skin. I have sired four children of my wife of almost forty years.  The first of our children, now deceased, was born in 1978. He died in 2001.  I have visited his grave almost every month since then.  The other three children were subsequently born in 1980, 1982 and 1984. All three of them have jobs and two of them are married.

From our second born and his wife, my wife and I have two grand sons.  Both have been diagnosed to be on the autism spectrum.  The oldest one is "high functioning" while the younger does not talk, but now is quite curious of his surroundings and knows how to communicate what he wants.  My daughters-in-laws are quite opposite of each other, but I love them both.

I have a copy of my birth certificate, so I know I was born in California in 1953, making me 64 years old as I write this.  My earliest memories are of a short time in which my family lived in western Louisiana. I am not sure how old I was, but I remember my fifth birthday when we lived in north Florida.  I remember when my second brother was born, so that puts a memory in 1958, when I was 5 1/2 years old (also in northern Florida).  About this time, I remember climbing up a very big pile of sand in central Florida.  I drew a picture of it for school.  I remember a rare snowfall in north Florida about that time.

I remember changing schools when I was in the third grade.  That is when I changed my name from "Jimmy" to "Henry," my dad's name. That was in 1963, and so I clearly remember the announcement on November 22nd that the governor of Texas and the President of the United States had been shot.  I remember thinking it was tragic, but I didn't think the President "could" die. I was 10 and an optimist.  In 1964, the four of us boys were thrilled when mom brought home our baby sister.  We helped name her! A few years later, our family moved to southwest Georgia, still only a couple hours drive from our cousins in north Florida.

Strangely, as close as I followed the space race, I cannot directly remember Project Mercury.  I have some faint memories of things like the first space walk.  By the time of the Apollo flights I can remember them vividly. I was in "Middle School" by then, and thought I wanted to be an astronomer.  My dad had bought me a telescope!  I remember the Christmas of 1968, when I was wearing a full cast on my left leg after having been injured in a football game near the end of the season.  I missed getting a Letter jacket by just a few quarters.  I was 15, and soon to be 16. I stayed up that Christmas Eve to hear the Apollo 8 astronauts read Genesis 1 as they came back around from the first visit to the far side of the moon. The next summer, in 1969, I was confined to a tent after "lights out" on Sunday, July 20th, listening to a transistor radio as Neil Armstrong and Buz Aldrin said their first words from the surface of the moon.  We had watched the landing after checking in to Scout Camp.

My Junior Year of High School I had to settle being the team "Manager." I got to assist in wrapping ankles, carrying equipment and carrying water during games.  We almost made the state playoffs that year, and I got my Letter jacket.  Go Green Waves!!  The next year, we changed schools. We couldn't have a football team, yet, but our basketball team that year was awesome! I was in the first graduating class of that year (1970-71).

In our high school days in southwest Georgia, both my brother and I committed our lives to Jesus Christ after having been members of our church for a few years.  We both felt called to preach the gospel and both of us later went to Seminary.  My brother went on to a double-career as a High School History Teacher and long time preacher of a small church in a small town near where we graduated from High School.  He retired from school teaching but still preaches at the same church.  A life-time bachelor, he was married last year!

I will end this trip down memory lane for now, since this blog has gone on for a while.  I hope to post the "rest of the story" soon.

Why? Progressing towards Wisdom

As mentioned in my last post, the "why" of any particular thing is not as clear as the "how." But alas, the questioning of existence is what philosophy is built upon.  A "scientist" can find the "how" and get to know the facts, but a philosopher can search for a lifetime and die in his ignorance.

Sometimes, though, scientists can make logical assumptions and come up with the most probable reason for a phenomenon.  It has been assumed that people have taste receptors for "sweetness" for the collection of sugars to get the energy their body needs to operate.  Likewise, it is assumed we have "salty" taste buds to detect the sodium needed for a proper electrolyte balance in our blood.  "Bitter" and "sour" tastes can be assumed to tell our ancient ancestors whether food was ripened or rotten.  These are not things we can "know" with certainty, but they do make sense to most of us.

The old "survival of the fittest" dogma perpetuates the assumptions upon which much of modern science is based.  This can be applied to plants that are usually "bitter" to the taste.  They contain chemicals that are fatal to insects--and often to larger lifeforms.  Any attempt to eat the leaves or fruit is unpleasant to those foraging for food.  If the warning from the taste is ignored, the offender might even die, assuring that other of the species sought for food will not be so assaulted.

Cause and affect often works out in such a way that the reason becomes apparent retrospectively.  This is where "knowledge" leads to wisdom.  The more we know, the better we are able to discern the reason things happen.  Once we discern the correlations, we can avoid mistakes that may alter our lives so as to provide a better quality of life.  Among scientists, experimentation is based on making assumptions and then testing cause and effect to verify them.

We may never know the ultimate reason behind the way things are, but the more we try to find out, the more discerning we can become.  As we become smarter, it is hoped that we can become wiser.  However, there are no guarantees.

So What Do I Know?

I don't know as much as I wish I did.

Probability can only get you close to Reason.

I can never know enough; and I doubt anyone can.

To Start With ...

Everything has a cause.  This is not the same as saying everything has a reason, though, in the strictest sense, that is also true.  It is not often easy to determine the "why," but he "how" is pretty much clear if one digs deep enough.

That brings me into "controversy" for two blogs in a row!  Let's be honest: controversy gets more viewers.  But that does not deter me from stating unequivocally that there are some things that are true anyway, no matter if other people don't think so.

Professional scientists spend a lot of time researching "cause and effect" to determine ways to prevent certain things from happening by addressing the cause.  In medicine, this means testing to find the malady behind the symptoms.  Once the cause is found, the symptoms can be treated with confidence.  In many cases, the cause can be eliminated or repaired, thus curing the patient.

Other times, though, the search for a cause leads to unwanted conclusions.  That is the predicament of secular science when it comes to "origins." Not wanting to be persuaded by the argument that there must be a "First Cause," which philosophers of old called "God," they choose what seems to me to be illogical: chance.   That is, they believe that all that exists came by some sort of cosmic accident.

The old "constant state" theory had proven too unreasonable, giving rise to modern "creation myths" about everything coming about from a spontaneous eruption of what some even call "nothing" or "nothingness."  The later is a state of nonexistence.  What caused it to happen?  Happenstance is the only thing they can come up with. "It just happened."

Again, I don't have the intelligence--or imagination--of such cerebral giants as Stephen Hawkins, or even Richard Dawkins, so I have to depend upon ancient wisdom that cannot be measured in intellect.  To me, the truth is what we all know instinctively--someone, or something, caused things to come to pass.  To me, the first words of Genesis state it simply: B'reshi bara.  In the Hebrew, the action comes before the actor.  One then reads the next word to determine who was acting.

Literally, "At first, He created."  Who did this? The word describing the Actor in this case is Elohim. That word comes from the root for "Strength." He who we call "God" had to be powerful enough for the task.  In literal "words in stone" the Fourth Commandment confirms that the One who did this was the One Who Is.  The One powerful enough to create the universe was, and  is in a "constant state."  The Creator is that First Cause to which all things are the "effect."

So What Do I Know?

I know there was a "First" Cause.

That First Cause was powerful far beyond comprehension.

Where I came from

Trying to stay neutral on controversial subjects is hard when the "other side" insists on denying basic logic and reason.  It is not hard to see that every living thing comes from other living things.  And not just any living thing.  Each living thing comes from a genetic combination from its parents.  Period.  There can be no exception.

Microbes come from microbes of the very same kind of microbe. Every.Single.Time.  Occasionally, there will have been a unexpected change in the genetic material passed on from the parent organism or organisms, but the change never changes, let's say, a virus into a bacterium.  It is the same way all the way up the "food chain" to humans.  Most of the time, though, the changes are predictable if you know enough about the parents.

The key is in a hierarchy among the genes.  Some are dominant and some are waiting to join up with genes that are like them before they make their appearance in the next generation.  These genes are the "recessive" ones.  For example, I have blue eyes though my dad had brown eyes.  My mom has a mix of pigment that showed her dad's blue eyes (giving her "hazel" eyes). Three of the six of their children had blue eyes, demonstrating that our father had recessive genes for making blue eyes (from one of his parents).

I am an amateur genealogist, and I like to try to trace who came before me in the "chain of life."  No matter how far back in history I might go, I find humans.  There was never a time when a non-human mated with a human to make a human.  It is even more strange to consider how two non-human creatures could produce a human.

Starting with myself, I need only go back 20 generations of unique individuals to reach 2,048,576 ancestors.  Though I have some ancestors in parts of Europe, it is no consequence that the estimated population of the primary country of origin (England) in 1417 was somewhere around two million.  It is just the way it is.  It makes sense.  Everyone knows this kind of thing must be true.

But yet, those who hold PhD's in big universities teach that the chain goes back into the "deep" past to allow the rules to have changed along the way.  They say that all living things, including plants, had a common ancestor that very gradually made the rules up as generations piled up over the years.  They say some of the virus-type things produced fungi and bacteria which eventually produced parallel lines of algea and insect-like things.  From these family lines, they say, came every plant and animal that has ever been.

If they are honest, they use qualifiers like "evidently," "probably" and the like.  They step out on a limb and declare that these things "must have" happened.  Who am I to question them?  Perhaps I just have not seen enough evidence.  Surely there are billions of transitional fossils to prove that the rules have changed over the years.  Well, aren't there?

So What Do I Know?

Biological lifeforms all come from parents. There is no known exception.

Natural laws of propagation assure that the next generation will pass traits on to the next.