Off The Nova Scotia Coast (A short story)

When I glanced over toward the wall the clock had stopped. I realized It was time to wake up and begin traveling to where I needed to visit. I began fidgeting in the dark room eventually finding my watch and discovered it was 4:11 AM.   

I quickly got ready and left the house, stepping out the front door, and looking up where below Heaven, gazing down upon the Earth, I admired the prehistoric bright crescent moon in the sky. Seemingly lonely up there among the stars in her desolation, seemingly companionless but for God, she was the only light in the dark summer evening sky but for the dots of distant alien known stars beyond her.

Soon I was backing out of the driveway on our small dead end street in my small hometown of Brookfield. I spotted a skunk dead on the edge of the lane. I stopped and stepped out and with the glow of the cars tail lights I looked checking now as I wasn't sure what I saw in the dark. The exhaust pipe behind the car was beside me as I turned and walked toward the front of the vehicle where beneath the hood sounded the steady purr of the engine.

Staring around in the darkness I noted that accept for the light of a nearby Church parking lot  and the beams of headlights lighting up the lane ahead that I was among darkness as I felt now a peace here in the night time. Everything was calm at this hour I marveled standing there. I should be afraid, I thought, where I’m going now, but nothing, I feel nothing, no fear. I simply have to do this I thought.

With the window open and driving down the road now I can feel the wind against my arm and face and hair. I marvel driving through the intersection how when I see a bug fly into the windshield it just turns into a splatter of blood. I  heard somewhere it was more likely you'd get more splats at night when moths flew toward headlights. The person I listened to who told me this said that insects fly four to five feet off the ground which is perfect striking distance for passing cars.

I left my small rural town of Brookfield driving past a local cemetery where the gravestones stand quietly there row after row of them. I am on my way east and am heading to the south shore of the province to the the village of Chester. Chester is situated on a peninsula halfway along the coast of Mahone Bay. I knew the town and thought it to be one of the most picturesque communities on earth.

Chester overlooks island filled Mahone Bay, a sailor's paradise, with inscrutable weather patterns, high winds, fog and seasonal tides, making yacht racing competitive and enjoyable there. Boats come from all over the continent to compete in mid-August Race week.

As I drive along on rout an hour passes and I find myself on the Hammonds Plains road which is a short cut on rout to the Saint Margret Bay road.

The reason I was going to Chester was deeply hidden secret that started as an obsession I had.  For a long time I had thought with deep reflection and obsessive wonderment about how three quarters of the earth's surface is covered by water. I was compulsively fascinated how the ocean itself conceals billions of creatures interacting in ways that we will never fully understand. Much of the ocean, I marvel about very frequently, is mysterious like the infinity beyond our planet out there in that great unknown.

I was out of psychiatric medication now for my schizophrenia but I thought to myself I don’t really need it for this journey anyway. I am in control and not the medication I think brazenly even though great danger may accompany this journey.

After twenty minutes I reach Saint Margret's Bay as I come to bends in the road where the craggy twisty formations of the sea came graduating inland. The land formations made for views in the daylight of quiet sheltered coves.

It was approaching dawn after more time had past as I now see a mist rising slowly before me. The windswept coast is met with a coastal wind that comes breezing through my windshield with the gradual lifting of the fog while my nostrils breath in the sea air.

I had made a very secretive purchase two weeks earlier with some savings by buying an old dory boat, an outboard motor, and an old rusting deep sea cable that was 13,000 meters long and rolled up on a crank. I had also purchased a dragging rake with several hooks, four large gasoline jugs full of gasoline, two ores, a canopy to shield the sun above me with, as well as enough water, diet Pepsi, and plenty of food for the journey.

I knew a vague history of what my boat was used for originally before I bought it. Sailing crews on fishing schooners sailed out of the ports of Newfoundland, the Maritime provinces of Canada, and the New England States of America. The ports which claimed most of these crews were Lunenburg, in Nova Scotia, which was near Chester, and Gloucester and Boston, in Massachusetts. 

The sailing crews sailed on fishing-schooners but these schooners also held a number of flat bottomed, high-sided boats, called dories, that were carried for the actual fishing. These dories, like the one I purchased from a man in Lunenburg, originally were from 18 to 22 feet over all.  My dory that I purchased was 18 feet long with an outboard motor attached which was very unusual for these type of boats.

As I neared Chester now the sun had risen in the eastern sky. The revealed fresh colors before me seemed realistically like they had been prepared on a  geniuses artistic canvas. That canvas I beheld was this life revealed in all its indifference, brutality, and grotesqueness, as well as its astounding beauty, possibility, and mind-boggling creativity. It all made for a great wonder at this seismic curiosity as we the conscious beings who love and share in its mystery are left to ask great soul searching questions.

It was hard for me to describe how I felt now looking at this morning light while looking out toward Mahone bays dotted Islands as I parked there on the shoulder of the road. The open waters held a feeling in me deeply captured within the soul. The orange and gold and blue stretched one way as far as I could look and then again in the other direction. As I watched now, it being just past dawn in the morning, everything seemed to change again with rich hues of orange, purple and crimsons.  The rising sun soon then magnificently lit everything up completely just as I came into the village of Chester.

I stopped the car when I reached the wharf beside the front harbor of the town. I had limited permission to keep my newly purchased boat there for a period of time. The weather worn wharf I walked unto now had a few missing planks and might easily have been two hundred or more years old. A rope tied to the pier secured the dory which was twisted and tied in weathered knots. That fraying rope fought with me as I began untying it. The old rope was frayed with knots and resisted my efforts stubbornly in untying it.

I carried my food and supply's to the dory and then sat at the back of the boat. I looked around a few minutes looking up the front harbor and past the harbor front restaurant named The Rope and Loft. After a brief hesitation I then pushed off the wharf and began drifting in the stagnant front harbor.

I hesitated a moment longer, drew in a deep breath, and then started the outboard motor and began cutting a wake through the tranquil morning ocean. I passed the The Rope and Loft restaurant, and then the docked yachts, looking beyond to old architecture there in the harbor, then I scanned in all direction viewing incredible scenic mansions lining the lush green lawns up on surrounding coastal elevations. Hillsides on these peninsulas held immaculately kept estates with panoramic views of both harbors with the views looking unto Mahone Bay itself to its many offshore islands.

Sailboats dotted Chester's waters that I passed by now. I had brought on my trip a handcrafted walking stick. The walking stick had a built in compass at its tip. I needed the compass as I had plans on heading far into open water. I was hoping to head far out to sea at least 32 miles or more off the coast. 

Soon I cut a wake through the sea and land was left behind me as I went into the open ocean. I had to do a lot of research in preparation for this trip in advance. I learned what topographical features were which included mountains, hills, valleys, lakes, oceans, rivers, cities, dams, and roads. The elevation, or height, of mountains, and other objects, was recorded as part of topography. I was interested in how it was recorded in reference to the sea level and the depths of the ocean.

I knew I was currently traveling over a continental shelf less than 250 meters deep while the vast deep ocean plains were between 4,000 and 6,000 meters deep. I wasn’t interested in these petty shallow waters at all but instead I was interested in heading out into the truly deep ocean. I was headed toward a trench offshore which was 32 miles out to sea with the ocean depth there being a mysterious and unfathomable 11,000 meters deep.

The floor of the Atlantic, like those of other oceans, was actually very flat, even in this area of the deep trench. These vast sediment covered abyssal plains of the ocean fascinated me while learning about them in my research. What strange beings might inhabit these undiscovered depths lead me to a profound fascination of this unknown.

The sun met my face as I cut through the waves rolling across the choppy Atlantic. I'd left sight of  land and could look to the horizon in all directions around me. I looked downward to my left looking down into the blue murky endless enormous puddle lying around me as a gentle breeze brought in more salt air and sea smell.

So soft and familiar is this scent that I relax a bit with tears forming in my eyes.

I began thinking back to being on a wharf that overlooked Lunenburg and looking across the harbor four years earlier. I recalled a brief romance there shared over several bottles of wine. I could still picture the Lunenburg shore indented with inlets and coves where we had been.

I recalled a boat trip earlier that day in the afternoon four years ago and the isolated peninsulas seen approaching them from the sea. I pictured the steep hills rising up those shores while looking at Lunenburg on the innermost extremity on her own fabulous peninsula. A town of colorful waterfront, narrow streets, and captivating architecture, full of seafaring heritage.

I remembered how we’d sat drinking the wine on an outward jutting wharf where local fishermen sank their expectant fishing hooks. Gulls had gone flying past white feathers tucked in. There were also the ghosts of those who remained from before. They were there in the luminous silence all around us. Their silent conversations and friendly shouts were all around. They were the spirits of ghosts that haunted the shadows of the wharf as they picnicked there and swam in Mahone Bay hardly casting us a nod where we drank guiltlessly looking lustfully on at one other.

"I'm sorry if my body fat triggers feelings of disgust in you, but I hope you're ready. I'm going to take off my clothes and go for a swim!" I remember her saying as what met my eyes next was her slender waist and navel, sumptuous buttocks, flaring hips, and a convex belly. I recalled what a lovely woman she was to know now sighing in reflection.

Then my thoughts return to my objective as I realize I’ve been traveling for several hours in daydream. This isn't the kind of weather to cause shipwrecks, I think, like the kind of weather where storms rage I try and reassure myself looking around me. The sea is not roaring today but is only swaying back and forth with the tides rising and falling.

Then several more hours pass away nervously as I move deeper out into the Atlantic where all sight of land was gone. I have a lot of time to think now as I bob across the white cresting waves.

One knot was equivalent to one nautical mile and I had been doing a speed of four nautical miles per hour. I had been on the sea for seven and a half hours on a direct course. 

 

As I looked around me now I suddenly realized, and was convinced, that this was truly a hallowed place. As I calculated my speed and then looked at the compass I finally sighed again as I swallowed feeling a lump in my throat.

 

I knew now suddenly that I had reached the deepest trench in the sea. Below me now the sea level was 11,000 meters deep. I shut off the gas to the outboard motor and began drifting silently moving quietly up and down with the current and waves. Around me now where I sat 32 miles at sea there was total silence. Waves crested with gentle splashes and there was also the hull of the boat that now rocked with the rising of a wave and then it fell down again beyond with a splash, and there was the breeze, with the wind whispering, but besides these sounds there was absolute silence around me.

 

I could easily have been in a cold grave underneath me now in the watery depth of the deep ocean. Knowing loneliness I looked around me there on the sea. I realized with melancholy that compared to anything I knew, that this here, where I was, was the loneliest place in the world.

 

Maybe out in the far off depth of interstellar space, if it was ever neared, to drift there among eons of century's of traveling light, maybe, maybe there, absent sound, ones thoughts might know a greater solitude then here, but here on this planet, this was it, this was the most desolate place of them all I thought scanning the open ocean around me.

 

I rocked in the dory in the current. Here now where I am, I realize, no mermaids are emerging out of the 11,000 meters of deep ocean depths beneath me. From distant shores now no sea faring vassals are anywhere in sight either. As I think this to myself suddenly there emerges from the depth strangely and bafflingly, and also very eerily, a series of bubbles rising up to the oceans surface.

 

I look at the bubbles now with great curiosity and fascination, with my jaw dropping open, followed almost instantly then by a raw determination rising in me. I feel a desperate needfulness to know what made those strange deep sea bubbles. I had came here specifically and secretively to discover what lay at the bottom of that 11,000 meter trench in the ocean floor. I knew I couldn’t meet aliens or travel between galaxies but I knew I had to try and know what was down there beneath those waters.

 

I quickly reached and grabbed the jagged hooks and netting used for snagging objects and dragging the ocean floor. I then quickly wasted no time in then attaching the long 12 hundred meter thin almost weightless wire cable end fastening it to the dragging hooks. I then without hesitation tossed the heavy hooks into the water which immediately began to sink slowly toward the bottom as I started unrolling the cable by turning the wheel to allow it to submerge.

 

With the sun flickering on the water the bright blue of air and sky were perfectly visible around me. I worked feverishly lowering the cable, turning the crank, while great globs of sweat dripped from my forehead. I was utterly obsessed with reaching the ocean floor while counting on the cable measurement system the meters of cable now used.

 

I worked tireless for an hour and thirty minutes to near collapse and when just about drained physically, suddenly, with great wonderment, I hit the sea floor.

 

I sat there stunned with a dumbfounded look regaining my wind slowly. After a minute of feeling an awe inspired fascination sitting there an insane look came to my face as I then quickly turned on the outboard motor. Giving the throttle gas quickly I then began maneuvering the steering of the dory moving in the water while dragging the cable behind the boat. The boat proceeded to drag the hooks back and forth as the boat zigzagged over several square kilometers across the ocean floor. I continued to weave back and forth and cut a coordinated path through the deep sea.

 

Then suddenly and very unexpectedly I seemed to hook something. I panicked immediately realizing this as whatever it was suddenly pulled the boat sideways more then eleven feet. I realized desperately that there was something big and scary underneath in the seas unknown depth below me.

 

I now began cranking the wheel in a state of Insanity pulling up the cable by turning the wheel. I was obsessed, straining my muscles with each rotation, knowing something really big was on the line.

 

I fought the resistance below for over an hour screaming at the top of my lungs as I struggled.

 

“COME ON YOU BIG BASTARD! YOU SON OF A ^&(*%!”

 

I swore mercilessly, cranking furiously, until eventually I slowed in vigor facing a gradual windedness. I continued at a slow almost beaten pace then panting for breath.

 

Then surprisingly after forty minutes whatever it was that was on the hook I realized was now nearing the surface. I peered over the side of the dory into the choppy waters waiting to see what it was I’d snagged with a loss of breath.

 

With wispy clouds coming now out of nowhere in the sky, on that blue clear day, I sat there on that ocean on my dory as the familiar yellow ball of fire sent its light on my exposed skin from above. I watched obsessively looking into the ocean while wondering what unique species, so foreign to me, might now come out from the depths of the sea. Was it an alien being or a hideous mutation from some lightless deep mysterious depth I wondered eerily.

 

Suddenly then, to my ghastly surprise, without any warning at all, coming right out of the ocean at me, God forbid I thought franticly, there suddenly came the most hideous and terrifying creature I've ever laid eyes on. The grotesque beast emerged unexpectedly and had to my horror eight arms and two large tentacles. The tentacles surged forth from the water and reached forward into my boat with these two tentacles fiercely encircling my neck and my leg.

 

The son creature must have been 43 feet long from tentacle tip to tentacle tip I estimated quickly terrified by what I saw. I screamed out in ghastly fear horrified and in a state of terror.

 

“GET AWAY! GET AWAY YOU BIG BEAST! YOU SON OF %^**! YOU KNOW GOOD A %$#@! HELLLLLLLLLLLLP! SOMEONE HELP ME!!!”

 

I was trying to fight off the suction cups now that were sucking on my leg and neck. As I fought the Giant Squid it began crawling forward until half its body mass made it unto my boat nearly capsizing us in the surf. The beast clearly must have weighed over 600 pounds or far more.

 

In the boat with me now the enormous squid moved now, to my revulsion, its hidden jaws moving toward me. Then abruptly, and for some unknown unexplained reason, the Giant Squid stopped in motion and relaxed. With its mighty face a foot from mine I hollered in exhilaration.

 

“WHO ARE YOU GREAT SQUID???? WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?????”

 

Then looking me right in my eyes through its own obviously intelligent eyes, an intelligence that I’ve never seen in any human being, he stared at me for thirty uninterrupted seconds and studied me there.

 

Then for whatever reason, after seemingly finding his answer, he did the strangest thing, the great squid winked at me.

 

I was utterly amazed at this display. Immediately I lost all fear staring at this deep ocean alien like intelligent creature. I released my grip on its tentacles at the same time it too released its grip on my body. The great squid quickly then slid from the dory into the ocean and quietly disappeared into the depth leaving me open jawed there in utter amazement. I hollered out now in exhilaration.

 

“I MET THE GREAT SQUID! I MET THE GREAT SQUID! I MET THE GREAT SEA CREATURE THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL!”

 

I looked around me in all directions and then stood up in the dory and began dancing around in a crazed delirium.

 

“WOO HOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

 

After some time feeling this amazement, and still delirious, I lifted the walking stick. I checked the compass, and found the direction west, and then started the outboard motor, and setting my course, I headed off toward land  smiling ear to ear.

Food for thought (Philosophy)

Real philosophers and their ideas, as they appeared through the centuries, and then my humble commentary after each one.

 

Blanshard, Brand (1892-1987)

 

There are, Blanshard said, genuine necessary connections in the world. A naturalist in ethics, Blandshard held that ‘to call an experience intrinsically good is to say that it is fulfilling and satisfying’. Since he granted ‘that the word “good” has in addition an aura of emotional and associate meaning’, he could ‘keep emotive meaning and also keep it in its place’. A naturalist in religion too, he took ‘the service of reason’ as his religion. ‘That service calls for the use of one’s reason to embrace as much as one can of the reason implicit in the universe, and in its use at the same time to define and harmonize the ends of practical life.’ Blanchards personal demeanor was one of extraordinary graciousness. 

 

(Interpretation)

 

Why are there these ‘necessary connections in the world’ that are intrinsically good. Why when we see worth in an ‘experience intrinsically good’ is it fulfilling and satisfying and does that necessary connection we recognized point even farther beyond toward the possibility of knowing in existence something that is transcendently intrinsically ‘good’ by the neccesary chain of connections This good also has an aura of emotional and associative meaning, as he said, that he could keep, but keep in its place, grounding foundationally emotional meaning as a direct attachment and connection to the ‘intrinsically good’ which makes me ask why are we meant to examine good by our emotional experiences.

 

Questions of life’s meaning arise related to his philosophy. What really might this life be all about given our emotional attachments in discovering intrinsic value to our experiences that we now know. Can we believe in experiences not merely for their temporal sake, but originating beyond that for a far greater purpose. Like can we believe that the source of those experiences transcends us, has a source,  goes beyond our view of our self as mortal, with such experience even having intelligibly at its source. This source then is not us and the interpretation we give reality alone is not the only relative or meaningful one in the universe, or beyond it perhaps, where fundamentally, foundationally might there exist an architect or further truth.

 

With Blanshard being a naturalist in religion the service of reason was his religion. By using reason he implicitly embraced the open ended possibilities of the universe with open mindedness. This might or might not involve him being open to God in some form. He sought to make practical life more harmonies and was also an extraordinarily thankful and appreciative person.

 

 

boat, Neurath’s

 

‘We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components.’ His pragmatism encompasses the social sciences and extends to society and politics: knowledge and life are built without foundations.

 

(Interpretation)

 

We start this life from wherever we’re born, whoever we’re born to. Whatever hardships there are that effect us, whatever time period we’re in, whatever religions dominates the territory we’re in, all matters for our weak foundational underpinnings. The culture, the economy we’re in, our education, all shapes how far out in the open sea we are, and how far from dry-dock, revealing are incompleteness to knowing ourselves, our purpose, us not having the remotest idea what we’re were meant to do, while also not at all aware of what we’re ‘really’ a part of.

 

Our inability to fathom completely knowledge's reach, even with the best of educations, puts all of us on the open sea. We never just know the nature of who we are and what we’re a part of here. I doubt we will ever finally figure out for our self an even slight resemblance of the person we really are now in this life however self-evaluating of our self we are be it we’re forty-seven, my age, or we live to be ninety-nine.

 

We never truly get what this earth in the sky is all about unless we accept nursery rhymes. Many of us do accept ancient story’s absolutely in one form or another as final authorities.

 

We are like sailors regardless of our opinions and beliefs. We can be blown over on our ship by a breeze or a wave as we fumble to maintain ourselves in accordance with mental and physical and spiritual processes. This is the uncertain reality we’re a part of now which is also wonderful really if pure potential and open possibilities intrigue us as journeyers before the open ended unknown. Maybe one day we will find ourselves in dry dock but the people lost at sea need understanding, not arbitrary judgment, for their confused thought. 

 

 

Bolzano, Bernard (1781-1848)

 

Bolzano developed a special logico-ontological atomism directed against radical skepticism and subjectivism.  The objectivity of knowledge had to be secured by the existence of non-linguistic entities (ideas, propositions, and truths) independent of human beings and prior to cognition. His major work contains various contributions to logic and semantics concerning the relations of compatibility , derivability, and consequence, the deduction theorem, and the logic of classes, entailment and probability.

 

(Interpretation)

 

‘Non linguistic entities’ ‘prior to cognition’ existing prior to us people as ‘ideas, propositions and truths’ this fascinates me as I wonder where ideas, propositions and truths come from.  In philosophy ‘objectivity’ is the concept of truth independent from individual subjectivity (bias caused by one's perception, emotions, or imagination.) Objectivity then is how things really are regardless of opinion.

 

According to Bolzano knowledge had to be secured as being real and not merely created or imagined linguistically by us. This knowledge itself he found was independent of human beings and existed prior to cognition, before our thoughts could instead create this knowledge, recognizing it, organizing it, or before our thinking processes could at work interact with this knowledge in any way making it what it is. So Ideas, propositions and truth, he is saying, predated our humanity and was prior to us at work regardless if linguistically we were here to describe this knowledge. Yet why would this knowledge exist so suited for our discovery.

 

He also talks about the relations of compatibility and so by association how this knowledge seems to be suited for us, being possibly made in order to create derivability and consequence, and curiously all this has an unusual probability factor that we’d come to know it. The question is if knowledge transcends us in this way, while it is meant for us, what are its real origins beyond us.

 

Boyle, Robert (1627-91)

 

Boyle is well known as a scientist but underrated as a philosopher. He was interestingly, lengthily, and with more philosophical sophistication then the admiring Locke a commentator on topics such as atheism, atomism, epistemology, God’s existence, miracles, natural laws, qualities, and scientific method. Emphasizing experience over theory Boyle refused to construct global theories. Boyle’s universe involved God at every stage as creator, designer, sustainer, and frequent intervener. For example, God ’almost every moment in the day’ works ‘Physical Miracles’ by forming ‘Animals of such a Compounded nature, as the... Laws of matter and motion, would not without a peculiar interposition of God, be able to produce.’ None the less, in science appeal to God was inappropriate: all ‘intelligible’ explanations must be in the terms of minute corpuscles of matter and their motion.

 

(Interpretation)

 

Part of capturing the genius of being alive, in this ingenious mysterious physical world, is articulating the full gravity of the mystery so as to pay it its do reverence. Boyel’s universe involved a recognition of there being a God that he knew exists behind the mystery of life. I too have this recognition of God, though without being a scientist or philosopher. Overarching all our lives is a reality that is very seismic, with understated potentiality; a vastness feebly underestimated no matter how high we set our sights on the sublime. A  grander picture and perspective then we can see and presently gauge operates in our world and beyond that in all likelihood. Story’s about Noah's Ark and the parting of the Red Sea myths, told as miracles, performed by God, for God are perhaps seen merely as human beings needing to find the miraculous, when we’re already staring it in the face, because our minds are dulled, uninspired, unfocused, unreceptive to the miracles of far greater immensity in the physical world and the motion of celestial body’s.

 

‘God almost every moment in the day’ works ‘Physical Miracles’ according to Boyle, ‘by forming ‘Animals of such a Compounded nature, as the....Laws of matter and motion, would not without a peculiar interposition of God, be able to produce.’

 

Miracles are abundant and operate plainly in sight, for instance the brilliant life in the worlds great oceans, or in our human experience of being conscious searching persons. Miracles exist in our time here and now and also potentially after our deaths.

 

With science he says that all ‘intelligible’ explanations must be in terms of minute corpuscles of matter and their motion. Boyle was both a scientist and a believer there exists a God and felt no pressure to bend his loyalty to one side or the other.

 

Boethius, Anucius Manllus Severinus (480-526)

 

Roman patrician, Master of the Offices under the Italian king Theodoric, later accused of treason and magic, imprisoned at Pavia, tortured and executed; an early eminence in the tradition of Latin philosophy stretching forward to Kant. Besides commentaries on Cicero, Porphyry, and Aristotle, essays on logic, and short treatises on the Trinity, we still have from him textbooks on his quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, intended for his own darkening times but destined to serve all the Latin Middle Ages. In prison he wrote the incomparable Consolation of Philosophy, which contains a famous definition of eternity as ‘perfect possession all at the same time of endless life.’

 

(Interpretation)

 

‘Perfect possession all at the same time of endless life.’ If Heaven exists, and many people believe Heaven is as real as the earth is, how will that perfect possession of time, ‘perfect possession all at the same time of endless life,’  and maybe a full recognition of all that is good all at once, a mindboggling scenario,  be there experienced. How is it to be decided by God what to really present to us in endless life if it is true that He so loves us enough to open the door forward into this place of His great love for us.

 

Sight, sound, taste, feeling, our hearing, might be the senses we know now, but what happens if when what freely is given to us appears very differently to us. What will the endless creative love of an eternally creative and limitlessly loving Being be like, if that is Gods true character and nature like people come to understand in faith is real. How might we experience our future in a place not of thorns, thistles, snakes, wars, viruses, pathogens, chance, ferocious wind storms, famines, and the angry distorted perceptions that mankind has while struggling irrationally in the world. Heaven would deny evil entry and secure all peace, clarity, and direction of mind.

 

Beyond all this what if the divine skies we will in the future float upon is terrain that encompasses brilliant vistas and incomparable settings. Places of extreme peace, tranquility and intense beauty, of creative interest, unfolding, along with a kind of hope accompanied by indescribable joy, peace, Holiness, that now, as things are, we fail to, and fear now to, even dare hope might exist. Now our efforts at envisioning a place of that kind of good are blocked instinctively to comprehending what real good awaits us in ‘endless life.’

 

 

 

Bohr, Niels (1885-1962)

 

Danish physicist and Nobel prize-winner. (1922) Bohr made important contributions to atomic theory and nuclear physics and, indirectly, influenced the rise of molecular biology. Much to his surprise he found that his early belief that experience is basically ambiguous was supported by ‘hard and solid’ scientific evidence: concepts firmly grounded in facts divide into mutually exclusive or ‘complementary’ groups all of which are needed for stating what we know, though the use of any particular group rules out the use of the rest. According to Bohr different cultures, different concepts or attitudes within a particular culture (truth and clarity, love and justice), and different methodological approaches (mechanism and teleology in the life sciences) are related in a similar way. Bohr believed that the problems created by the paradoxical status of human beings—they are part of the world and yet put themselves outside of it when claiming to possess knowledge—are resolved by using complementary descriptions instead of single ‘objective’ frame.

 

(Interpretation)

 

He is saying experience is open to more then one interpretation and can have different meanings is really what Bohr meant by saying ‘experience is basically ambiguous.’ His theory was supported by hard scientific evidence. A concept, (which is an abstract idea or a general notion,) can be firmly grounded in fact but divide into exclusive (excluding or not admitting other things) or complementary groups. Concepts are needed for stating what we know, though the use of any one concept by any particular group can rule out the use of the rest.

 

According to Bohr different cultures have different concepts or attitudes within them. Those concepts and attitudes are things like appreciations of truth, clarity, love and justice. I think he’s saying that all over the earth we in different cultures can deal in different truths, clarify reality differently, pursue love in unique ways, form different ideas of pursuing and creating justice etc..

 

Bohr seems to believe that in different cultures we pursue ideas common to us all, but in often different ways, which creates a paradoxical (seemingly absurd or self contradictory) status of human beings. We’re all part of the same world pursuing basic ideas but all claiming, each of us, that our ideas are perfect and the only legitimate approach to the truth.

 

I think Bohr believed that the problems created by the paradoxical status of human beings—they are part of the world and yet put themselves outside of it when claiming to possess knowledge—are resolved by using complementary descriptions instead of a single ‘objective’ frame. Which is to say instead of saying that we alone only know truth, absurdly in the only demonstrable and legitimate way, we look for our complementary descriptions so we look for ideas that are producing the same truth, clarity, love, justice etc.. That’s my interpretation anyway. lol It’s probably not right.

 

Bergson, Henri-Lois (1859-1941) 

 

French philosopher of Anglo-Polish extraction who worked mainly at the College de France in Paris. Bergson is famous for two main doctrines while later in life Bergson turned his attention to morality. He claimed that universal benevolence could never be achieved by starting with group loyalties and making the groups ever wider. Group loyalty always required a contrasting out group, and could be transcended only by a qualitative leap of the sort taken by mystics in their love of all mankind.

 

(Interpretation)

 

I absolutely believe in this sound reasoning of Bergson. Universal benevolence (The quality of being well meaning, having kindness) can not be achieved for instance by Christian missionaries seeking to convert the world by that approach alone being used. It might be a good approach to teach people about Jesus Christ, I think so personally.  Yet seeking to convert others is also taking group loyalties and trying to make the group ever wider which regularly creates an ‘out group.’ That out group, seen from the group loyalty, then often loses value if one doesn’t love humanity universally. Like for instance when dealing with an atheist dictator ruling over an oppressed nation, or where there is another religion in a country, in these circumstances others are seen as the out group. So often enough they don’t conform to the Christian group and become the out group and therefore they aren’t seen with well meaning or genuine kindness. That is what unfortunately realistically occurs in imperfect people and so the outsiders miss out on receiving real benevolence. To transcend the problem is not to demand simple group loyalty, or sameness of belief, in order to be accepted, but to love everyone, all of mankind, universally, like in how the mystics showed in their love of all mankind. People by the mystics example are loved regardless if those other groups of humanity are of the mystics own group.

 

Wherever people are they are dealing with ideas and they are loved in spite of them in my opinion. Whether or not a person has the ideas of another man of opinion, as we all tend to dabble in opinions and truth claims, is irrelevant. A belief, as it seems to a man, is a belief that he has it all sorted out in this world. Competing ideas in human cultures are irrelevant to his surety he knows what constitutes the truth. What’s fundamentally important is wherever we are, whatever condition of thought we’re in, is that ultimately we’re loved, whether we know it or not, and not cast away or forgotten by our merciful God.

 

The Christianity I accept loves everyone no matter what the persons ideology is. A misuse of Christianity, in my strong opinion, is denying for instance gays and lesbians their own friendly places of worship to experience friendship with God. Another error in religion is in suggesting women should have less authority then men in the church. The God I believe in accepts all people with equality and not through an outdated ancient standard where men are distinctively the true authorities. In the case of gays and lesbians to suggest to them that for thousands of years of human history there hasn’t been the same normal kinds of attractions that they know now as normal and common to the human nature and experience is terribly unreasonable.

 

Jesus Himself spoke no condemning or unloving words towards any such people.  People in this world are often facing great hardship in their lives wherever they live in the world, and it could be anywhere. The language of God for humanity is love for all people wherever they are in this world.

Late at night on a lake

It was late at night and I was staying in a cottage on a lake in the Annapolis valley. Loons in the tranquility, swimming in the water,  sounded with their eerie, beautiful,  tremolo calls, diving and resurfacing on the calm waters surface.

 

An over hanging expanse of distant stars, with their majestic dignity, with the probability of existent worlds around them were visible above where I fixed my eyes. I looked outside and upward through the cottage window where I was located there by a pristine lake between the surrounding forest.

 

I had been drinking Crown Royal whisky earlier that evening and now I lay awake. In the absence of us being here, I thought thinking there, without this order that we know, with us not being here on the earth,  what else might there be beyond us and without us here. If we are to assume there to be still remaining a force at work responsible for other places, like our Earth, yet in the absence of our Earth existing here, if Earth somehow disappeared, what might that mean about reality and what really lays beyond us.

 

What If in other words we assume a force exists as a builder and master of creativity not singularly focused on Earth and not all about us in this place. If this kind of creative force is really actual, which it might be, and has a highly complex inventive nature far beyond the scope of what we’ve seen brilliantly revealed already in our world what else could there be. What if this power is inventive and delights in its impressive work then would our existence as earthlings matter at all if we were removed entirely from the sky.

 

I wondered laying there what If this dark corner of the Milky Way had no Earth, no upright man, with us not here creating symphonies, building cities, writing encyclopedias, creating novels with different realities, there being no ministers delivering sermons on the perceived nature of a higher power, what overarching experiences would a fuller picture, without us in it, be like.

 

This is a curios question for me because we tend to see ourselves as the center of all and everything with us being all there is that is existent or at least relevant. And we don’t have any actual certainty to dismiss the idea that this larger creative order isn’t likely either. What if our reality here isn’t completely the end all picture of relevance but really might everywhere else have great importance also to bare on the puzzle of this seismic mystery.

 

Can we really say existing here in this unknown existence that all this we’re a part of hasn’t a designer responsible for the order of nature in the universe. Can we trust with certainty that something else besides randomness isn’t really responsible for all that we know.

 

The common assumption in education is from specifically scientific knowledge, and science is truly a great approach to approaching the unknown with reason, but does scientific calculation and discovery alone account for the only valuable or believable formula for approaching all of reality. The atheistic agenda strategically forced on children's minds in schools isn’t adequately knowledgeable enough to tame the universe and its unknowns. The model is premature because the actual truth of the picture, the full picture of our lives, who and where we are, remains open ended. As we are here now on this planet there is far too much mystery surrounding us. That unknown, whatever it is that lays out there, that frontier has not been tamed or settled by us, not even close. Space just sits there vacant and vacuous while haunting us with its ghosts and possible aliens and who knows maybe God perhaps in those unending unknowns.

 

Our life could really exist here surrounded by an infinite realm of aberrations. It could mean a great departure of what is normal, real, or expected. Perhaps we are living among spiritual chaos all around us. Life could alternatively be oversaw by an evil genius watching diabolically our present struggles and progress with impunity. There could be a God of intense unfailing love and mercy above our lives watching us and ready to reward us in grand inestimable ways. There could be instead a Being who's only fascination with us is in building creatively by constructing types of inhabitable worlds with all kinds of ingenious and randomly created and unleashed terrors. This Being simply watches us face these challenges, us this Beings creation, as we wrestle through the maze often hopelessly.

 

I believe in a merciful God overarching our lives. This is the picture of things I trust in but what are we a part of even if what I think is the truth really is the truth. This that we know now is just the tip of the iceberg and not the general or complete picture of everything there is at all.  The generalization of our picture, the picture being known somehow infinitely as a picture, really would need to extend into infinite realms not ever seen by beings like us in order to really know enough about the unknown to know what is really real. Those reaches are so incalculably far removed from us though to know.

 

We can’t say that the unknown is not really out there with beings of an infinite variety. There are possibly unending and unique schemes of logic and truth out there, like strange overarching rules, weird laws governing not space time but perhaps breaks in it, holes in space itself, outer gardens, and mystical hidden paradises, elsewhere dark evil galaxies, competing legions of demoniacs, and Angels of great goodness, maybe places never conquered by anyone, never intellectually tamed for anyone’s final understanding.

 

We aren't perhaps now in the end all of places being here where we are. The lands existing all around us are perhaps not simply a mysterious Heaven and Hell to know. Though evolution is observable and testable it might be by its negotiating arguments yet still be seeing, in its brilliance, an incomplete present picture. Based on its rational this perspective might overlook being in a place where nature gets put into motion and progress by a master scientist unlike any mortal currently known.

 

Dare anyone say this but we yet might have an imperfect model of understanding. As we live nurturing our self-satisfied appetites with truth claims we may be over certain about the truth as usual.

 

What if there was an absence of the uncertainty we know in this life. In this uncertainties absence what if a finally revealed explanation of the truths surrounding our lives brought with it unequivocally a total certainty of good in life, not only merely of hope for the good, but with a certain knowledge offering us a plainly and obvious awareness, known in truth, that life is really made for the good.

 

That kind of certainty then might mean for us that reality is known totally, without any doubt, that concepts like justice, fairness, the good, are known to ultimately exist as more then merely theories to organize our lives with randomly but as intelligent ideas prepared for us long before we existed and dabbled in their pursuits as conscious thinking beings. The “good” we realize therefore then completely exists transcending us with ultimate reasoning and explanations of a good as the overarching plan of our existence.

 

For us knowing this in this way as a truth then would be a knowledge that a fair plan for our fate exists, and if completely revealed, what really exists,  bringing a knowledge and a certainty of a real and total good for us that really is overarching our lives.

 

This kind of hope in a good world now opposes the former scientific view that saw more then merely an uncertainty to life but also presented a hopeless picture prematurely.

 

I strive after the good in life who I believe in as an existent, yet veiled, mysterious, half hidden power, and I trust that this power does really exist as a merciful, fair, God.

 

To know that this good holds all things ultimately in His plan with certainty and that He will reveal to us final happiness, future fearlessness, in a state of eternal joy and painlessness, for me is believable drifting here in the unbelievable realm of reality on planet earth among the cosmos of possibility. Instead of thought and experience merely pointing to a planer and architect of life deceivingly, like some suggest saying our lives are surrounded by absurdity through their skepticism, the greatest joy will be to fully know God as an existent, fair, and just with Him revealing Himself fully and totally so that everything in motion and in life will work out for the good.

Wherever life is harsh and hope is grim

I recall how I used to watch television on PBS while alone and dealing with the effects of schizophrenia. These shows had political experts weighing on political topics like when I watched the long running interview show Charlie Rose. In reflection upon viewing this show, and others like it that also gave political interviews, the idea of American exceptionalism was of interest to me.  

 

American exceptionalism is the belief that the history of the United States is inherently different from that of other nations. This belief claims that the US has a unique mission to transform the world.

 

I have heard many persuasive reasons to support this belief that the US has a unique mission to transform the world which I respect greatly. There is the US as the preserver of free speech, a defender of democracy, a protector of human rights, it’s the USA using its vast military to police the world, so there are many good reasons to support such a view. People also often believe America's history and special mission gives it a superiority over other nations.

Another observation that I wonder about, and if it is not closely related, is if supporting this exceptionalism belief is the Christian religions influence in America and its close religious connection to Israel. Seen by many people in the US the Jewish people are the chosen people of God. This belief is foundationally based on the teachings of The Old Testament scriptures. From this scriptural belief does America as a Christian nation believe it has a special religious connection of faith with Israel as the ‘chosen people of God.’ Does this special relationship exist and does this supportive relationship in America’s view of itself allow citizens there to see themselves as special in Gods eyes just like Israel.

  I wondered about this and what really is happening in global affairs based on this special religious connection if there really is one. Is what’s going on between these countries anything of particular strategic importance.  I have the opinion there is a strategy from this relationship shared between them that much I get from watching political experts talk on different political talk shows. Do Americans see themselves as on the side of good therefore if true. I think I know myself that they do see themselves this way too. A lot of the time, imperfectly, that may very well be true that they are on the side of good in my opinion, for numerous other reasons too, so I believe it.

How does an average person, beyond these global politics and global strategies for peace and stability in the world, healthily look at other outside nations on people’s there that are not in this arrangement or that are not in any way friendly toward them however.

Do religious people here suspect outsiders in other nations because of their learned ideologies and political views. Do we commonly determine that the others are godless and even evil because of their religion. Do the nonreligious here, alternatively while looking at hostile foreign governments and their citizens, reject those multitudes value differently based on values of patriotism or nationalism.

What about looking differently and a great deal more favorably on the billions of peoples in other countries around the world however. Is it not true that some people are seen by us on some level as good or evil, friend or foe, with whoever is making the distinction making it hastily and even irrationally. We seem to produce far too easily a gut level visceral fear of others, and an appetite of anger, hatred, and violent intension toward others common to the human condition. It is a hasty dismissal of them and departure from seeing in them dignity, value, and a hope for the good in what they are in the world. This judgment is self-interested, sometimes nationalistic, regularly it believes Gods favor is with us but is it from good or from evil. 

I believe that God loves all people everywhere on this Earth regardless if the wind of doctrine for those people there is damaging to their own perspective of life or even if it is hostile to our own. I suggest that God is big enough to see their error of perspective they have and forgive it. I think that God can and does forgive human vulnerability from the effects of these doctrines at play because we people in general are not all great choosers of our way through this chaotic information competing life. With rouge and imperfect understandings all of the time effecting us we always face missing thought and information. There are no perfect people nor are any of us remotely close to it.

In the case of any American or Canadian person who instead of being born in America had been born in Iran would by being born in Iran naturally there shout the exact same rhetoric taught by the Supreme leader of Iran. How then is it his or her fault the way he thinks, the errors he knows there, with such overarching naturally fed ideological processes effecting his life through those persuasive beliefs.

If God exists, which is my belief, and He sees more clearly then our swift judgments, our lack of insight, with a real fairness that we can’t easily see the world with, what might that mean for humanities real value. He is God and that is why despite our reasoning He asks us to love each other and that love includes everyone and is intended for us all.

We are all loved in this world, all of us, in my opinion. If Christianity doesn’t teach that or really believe it then Christians are wrong. The very terms of existence are irrational when it comes to knowing absolute truth. Maybe some minds come nearer to the truth but life has always been lived with us facing an incomplete puzzle, extremely incomplete, with most pieces missing, and knowledge very limited for us as we look around in confusion. Ideas themselves usually are the ideas closest to ones proximity of reality which therefore create a view which isn’t normally capable of traversing distance and to knowing the full picture.

Is it fair for all of us that those ideas nearest ones reality do not always just necessitate the truest or most just form of all ideas. To judge the person wherever they are who is near such limited awareness unfairly is irrational. The human condition presents ideas imperfectly to all of us wherever we are by the way. To judge others on ideas found in that environment alone, and to put a kind of arbitrary condemning responsibility on him/her in their choosing such a path by those limited ideas, is unreasonable and cruel. By imagining they could have, in all their human vulnerability, willed themselves to a different understanding to another way is absurd.

 Choosing another more accurate path is almost impossible when the whole world, as we know it, is seen through our distinctive culture, with us experiencing life directly and distinctly through that vantage point. People interact and develop variations of thought in life expressed to them there where they are, because where they live are the dynamics of multitudes interacting and making graduated changes across history and over time. These dynamics gradually influence the present day reality for people. Why while these others live in distinct territories in countries around the world do we have cause to judge them through such an imperfect lens with them being viewed this way because of human natures great irrationality. We even believe that those who we judge constitute being seen as evil itself as these other people we suppose are in distinct opposition to Gods favor. These kind of prejudices are suited for ancient, earlier, far more ignorant times. We now know the world is round and we also how ideas are spread.

 

In this inability to understand reality with fairness evil preys on us. To believe that God weighs out our fate, deciding our eternity, on the answers we come by always, only sparing limited numbers of us for no other reason then us happening upon the right sermon, one we may hear only by being in the right country at the right time, is the most irrational and unreasonable assumption to make about a good God who knows all ideas, and sees all possibilities, unlike us who judge each other very crudely. God sees far beyond our mortal limitations of what’s possible and what real struggles each mind knows in this life.

 

God can have mercy on all of this world and He really does love humanity. I believe however mired in the irrational and the unjust people can find themselves that they are loved. Wherever lives are oppressed; wherever life is harsh and hope is grim; wherever a way to a better future existence seems impossible; God can and will make it possible for people to hope and inevitably for them to find a good future with Him.

God has spoken

No person can live inside another persons mind to know another persons thoughts and their unique journey that they undertake through the world. If anyone could know my mind, and get inside of my head, to understand the way I see and interpret reality, they’d there discover that I can think in some areas of my thoughts in ways that are accurate, sometimes insightful, and in these kinds of cases, I believe, with thoughts founded on reason, faith, and rational philosophical argument.

 

Also however though, anyone privilege to knowing every idea conceived of in my mind would see a mind sometimes agitated, and sometimes very mistaken with unsound judgment, in specifically the area of thought related to communications technology.

 

In regards to the radio and the television my irrationality in relation to the basic purpose of these modern devices needs to be reasonably interpreted for people to explain how these technologies effect me, and others with this illness, and where my illness comes into this in my struggle sometimes with understanding parts of reality.

 

An ill mind can stay stuck on kinds of problems related to false beliefs experienced through using technology because these beliefs seem overwhelming real to us.  It’s not that experts couldn’t plant microphones in the radio and put cameras in the T.V, and it isn’t that the larger public of Canada couldn’t conceivably embark on an expedition to torment our mental health, and watch every facet of our personal life, those things are quite possible to do in nature, but the question really should be is it reasonable to believe it likely.

 

To that question though, which is an easy question with an easy answer for a normal functioning mind, in an ill mind it’s never an easy or even ever a solvable problem that has a final conclusion.

 

Having wrestled myself  chasing these delusional theories, by my facing these kinds of false conspiratorial beliefs of the TV, I know that they send an ill person with schizophrenia endlessly chasing irrational possibilities for the meaning of the conspiracies. There of course are no explanations because the belief is of course false with us nonetheless endlessly being agitated by these stupid beliefs. Laugh at us if you think that’s hilarious but its not funny for us we really suffer through the fixed beliefs.

 

With actors seemingly made to resemble the person with schizophrenias likeness, with the facial gestures of news anchors being clues leading to further suspicions of the media watching us, when voices on the radio seem to be following our lives, the struggle through madness is quite debilitating.

 

But what I don’t understand about mental illness is why people out there without mental illness so strongly hate people like us so much. Why is our illness so mysterious and strange compared to other illnesses? I have explained on this blog what happens with this illness and like any illness this illness should be recognized as a chronic illness. Yet I doubt that mind of the public will ever change toward more acceptance and understanding and so I’m not optimistic about better understanding and that’s disappointing. The last thing we people with this illness need is more rejection and marginalization.

 

Now I digress. A logical person is right in asking the following question. What reasoning and arguments made by a person with severe mental illness can really be trusted. In relation to any theories, speculations, related to religious beliefs particularly, with those beliefs coming from someone like me, how might my thinking have any extraordinary prophetic insight from God when at any given time I could be lost amidst a delusion. So how could that understanding, when claiming prophetic insight as a claim, be trusted.

 

Knowing these facts, It is obvious how unwilling, and close minded, people are going to be toward trusting certain kinds of authority sources, especially a source like me when I claim to have authority to know what I’m soon going to profess I know. I figure that on a scale of 1, being the least trustworthy, me as a mental patient, and 100, being a great orator and distinguished scholars opinion, any opinions or claims I make will be the 1 on a scale of 100 as someone having mental illness. But nonetheless God works in mysteries ways and I’m claiming that He has communicated something numerous time to me.

 

I know God as a friend and because He really has spoken to me I’m going to say what He revealed to me in our interaction. For one audience, particularly, the Christian Biblical audience, your idea of God will be based obediently and unbendingly on the Holy scriptures. You will likely resist this revelation from God even if it came from The Pope himself, but falsely so. The strict obedience to the Bible seems to leave little hope of possibility that Gods reach and love is bigger then your opinions, or even the Bibles, when it comes to who has a future with God.

 

So here is what that revelation is. God has opened my eyes to know a truth related to His real love for all people everywhere and with great all-encompassing equality of love for them all. He has made me aware how in each persons journey, in their unique culture, in whatever religion they belong to there, how wherever they reside on this earth, there is an opportunity to know God from those distinct experiences where they presently are.

 

I understand from God that this love is for Muslims, Hindu's, Christians, Buddhists and all religions of searching people everywhere in this world. It is not that some religions are not better then other religions, or that one religion is not the true religion, it is that Gods love is for all people.

 

The nature of the world is a place of uncertainty with competitive explanations while people aren’t equipped to sort through a mountain of ideas and are therefore being challenged by many sophisticated, comforting, consoling and hopeful messages of different kinds.

 

This revelation has revealed to me that people can meet God there where they are and He will not leave them in their hour of need. Where ideas are fair, where they are charitable, where love and peace and justice and the good are found, there God can speak through anyone. The message however is not specifically about finding a religion it’s about people knowing Gods love for them wherever they are and whatever mistakes of thought and ideas they have fallen into. The message speaks to strangers anywhere else in the world by letting them know we are free to love them  regardless if they are of our click.

 

I feel a true freedom now from Gods love shown to me to not hold any suspicion for others anywhere based on the doctrine they are taught there where they reside. I am free to love people of every kind, everywhere that they happen to reside, and this love is without favoritism, exclusion, or exception, now that my God has lifted the former burdens of how to look at my brothers and my sisters in the world.

 

Believing once with suspicion of others, being in judgment, God fearing, and following the thinking of others by following in truly human footsteps, I have become instead now freed from the suspicion they modeled. I now can see humanity as of equal value with me so I'm free. I can love freely, with a clear and guided conscience that isn’t losing sight of anyone, and to whoever suspects a total form of love with an uneasiness of trust and wants the wrath of condemnation instead on his fellow man, you clearly will not understand this message of love which is a real one from God.

 

I watched a documentary with dad recently about the US invasion of Iraq seen from the perspective of four Iraqis. They were such lovely people the Iraqis they featured on the documentary and they had endured unbelievable suffering in that countries upheaval. They were Muslim, I'm not sure which of them were Sunni and which were Shia Muslims.

 

One woman as a girl was hit by shrapnel that blew a hole in her cheekbone, went through her nose, and then tour out her left eye.

 

One of the men also had miraculously escaped being executed by ISES after being forced to lie down in a trench with his friends as one after another the men were shot by an AK-47. It was awful what ISES did cutting off peoples hands with meat cleavers in the streets and the daily executions they committed.

 

That kind of madness is from evil, its demonic, its not of any genuine religion that nears the truth of love and the good. These Muslim victims were human in every dignified way, absolutely and totally, with beautiful hearts, deeply wounded and troubled as they were, and they are loved by a merciful God. You or I can go to any place on this Earth: Russia, North Korea, The Sudan, anywhere at all, wherever religions are, and find such humanity if we overturn stones and really look at people through compassionate and fair eyes.

 

If it were true that the only hope in this world is in finding one religion for humanity at large why should this grim chance at a bright future really be a persons only hope in this confusing chaotic world. This is not a reasonable path, for so many can’t reasonably find this way, so why should it be the only way to knowing a just, all knowing, compassionate God. God has spoken this to me and I believe it is the truth.