One "Son of Man"
So awe hoped the birthing
of G_d's presence, new cauled
in humble manger's smells,
The base and apex of
a starred cave's presents
of all future festivals
Yet abandoned, forsaken to
the crowned world's nails,
every human's cursedness;
Farthest reach of hope
this Apocalypso dancer
crosses our history,
Morning us night-less;
he compassions earth
ever peopling progress,
Emptying the pitiless bottom
zeroing Apollyon
into ever's now Present
Beloved human, Eashoa,
Jesus, child of the masses
point man for us all.
1st pub. in The The Greensilk Journal
In the LIGHT of the Good, the True, the Just,
Daniel Wilcox
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
The Feeling of the Earth: speculative novel starts with Quaker Family on the Oregon Trail, 1842
The Feeling of the Earth
From 1842, when a Quaker family on the Oregon Trail...
till 2066 at MegaLA...includes accurate
American history but from a speculative
angle, where extraterrestrial anthropologists
have hyperdrived here to study this alien race—the human species
1 The 3rd Alien
2 Return of the Tactilization
3 Driven Out
4 Into the Maelstrom
5 Blue Bellies
6 Shut Down
7 The Bushwhackers
8 Orphaned
9 Communion
10 Death and Disunion
11 Down Texas-Messed Way
12 North to Alaska
13 Treasure and Loss
14 1st Flight
15 Boulder Dam High-Scalers
16 Counter Culture
17 Summer of Love in the Haight
18 3 Sons of Abraham, Palestine-Israel
19 Descending Among Us
20 Mars Hub
21 The Limitness of Humanness
22 FeelSire Corporation
23 Epilogue
Chapter One: The Third Alien
Nebraska Territory, 1842
New wheel ruts deeply marred the grassy area near the stream of Clear Creek. The native crouched down and examined long furrows dug deep into the wet ground. Alarmed, he turned to stone and scanned the landscape, holding his breath for a long time. But no human sound.
Only sparrows chittered in clumps of elms hanging over the thin water--rippling, wide and shallow. Pebbles shimmered on its sandy bottom. Eastward, the stream flowed, winding away amongst the grassy loafed hills. No unusual movement. Through tall elms, a flat stone ridge loomed, Table Rock. A squirrel scampered by.
The native bent low and shoved his hand down into one deep mud scar--half a foot deep! He seethed. Those accursed wagons of the pale aliens invading their land, following the wide, flat muddy Nebraskier River westward!
Last year, the invaders had gotten warriors of the Oto drunk on firewater! Stupid tribe, trading beaver pelt for poison drink. Thank you, Great Spirit that my people, the Chaticks-si-chaticks (Men of men), never betray others for drink. We’re not a twisting snake like the Oto.
Only 3 moons ago, lazy Oto thieves had slunk into his village of Weeping Water while he and other warriors were out hunting, the women and children working in their vegetable field. Had stolen his prize ceremonial shirt which his dear spouse had created from large deer hide, a big deer he had shot 3 years ago.
True, I did sell my last catch of beaver to that alien 4 years ago, an ugly2-faced English, but I only did so because we needed supplies, winter early that year. But I won’t sell to those vicious cowards—defilers—ever again!
I, Wore Wolf Teeth of the Chaticks-si-chaticks, swear to it.
He brushed one hand through the single ridge of stiffened hair that roostered up from his mostly shaven head. Then he stood up and swept his gaze over the terrain once more, peering at rock out-croppings, and up a few arroyos.
Peering toward the east, Wore Wolf Teeth wondered what other evils lay back there yet to come this way and curse their lives. Last summer, the hairy invaders had slaughtered over a thousand bison near the very wide, flat, muddy Nebraskier River. Crazy aliens, such evil waste! A day of madness.
Stark images filled Wore’s mind. When he and several other warriors had ridden onto that scene, rotting stink had assaulted them. Hundreds of reeking carcasses of bison lay abandoned on the plains--rich meat rotting and bloating, crowded with skin-islands of flies in the hot summer sun. All that meat would have fed his tribe and others for over a year!
But those aliens had only skinned the shaggy hides from fallen beasts, ignoring, abandoning such a wealth of meat; instead, they had piled hundreds of bison pelts high into their moving lodges and left. Only wheel scars and hundreds of carcasses remained for scavengers.
Greedy scum!
On that shameful day, the sun had blazed hot like now today; yes, the season of sweating. Alert again, he quickly scanned the area here. Nothing. But why had these wagons come southerly to Cleer Creek? Who knows what English are about?! Maybe they found the muddy Nebraskier too undrinkable?
Probably stopped here because of this abundant spring. If his tribe hadn’t settled at the falls westward, this brook might be good, But only if it never dried up. Wore walked over to Clear Creek and scooped up a cool drink with his right hand.
He would return to his village, speak in the counsel and, maybe, they would mount a war party to deal with these new wagon-aliens.
He wiped sweat from his brow, grime from his palm, streaking his forehead and brushed one hand through the single ridge of stiffened hair that roostered up from his mostly shaven head. Then, he knelt and scooped up a cool drink with one hand. Wore stood back up and swept his gaze over the terrain once more, peering at out cropping, the Table Rock, and up a few narrow arroyos. No humans.
Suddenly, a covey of quail swarled up from a thicket and winged over the muddy ruts. He dropped flat, then like a bull snake slithered into close brush, listening for the sound of hooves, or boot steps, or even muffled breathing. Nothing! Only the creek’s gurgle.
But then as he peered out through branches, the sky tore open--abruptly, distorting, and bubbling out, a darkness looking at first like a black globbed mass, like dark spittle on a French trapper's beard, but then widening, widening, widening...until Wore Wolf Teeth inched back with dread.
This deadly vision came from the spirits, not from any bodied foe. Yet the horrid sky omen boded nothing like his good quest dream he had received when becoming a brave a few seasons back on the southern plains.
The dark, translucent bubble continued enlarging until it loomed greater than a dozen lodges back at his village of the Weeping Water. What horrendous spirit up above expanding until it gaped far vaster than a huge thunderhead just before a storm?
Wolf Teeth lay still, at one with the many stones under him. Above, the distorted cavern swallowed the sky--endless, coal black, a dark horror, similar to the murky cave he had climbed down into when a scared small boy.
Out of the cavernous maw charged, stormed, a moving drab-gray monster. A monstrous evil spirit?!
Or is it a severe warning omen to him from the Great Spirit?
Wore didn't know, but for the 1st time in his 23 years, he shivered despite the heat. Even when he had counted coup against the Arapahoe, disdaining their warriors and had to pull out a thrown lance from his bleeding arm, while hanging to the stolen horse's mane, even then he had not been afraid.
No fear then, but so alive and glorious, so triumphant, he and his fellow warriors had galloped across the plains. But not now…now fear ate at his gut like a huge vulture. I’m being truly tested. He gripped his medicine bag hanging from his neck, crawled out of the brush, stood and yelled, "I am of the Chaticks-si-chaticks (Men of men)!
Above, the dark gray spirit hovered pulsating, and behind it the sky, endless tar, a smoked abyss.
######################################################
About 3 miles away, horses of an Oregon-bound wagon train skittered and bucked, one large roan knocking its rider to the ground. Men looked up in shock, bewildered by the sudden darkness. Even the chatter of many children ceased. In the 3rd Conestoga wagon, Neil O'Brian stared up into the blackness and held his breath.
One of the scouts shouted a warning, "Halt!"
But then, just as the sudden blackness had come, the abyss of color vanished and the blazing glare of the sun returned. Almost immediately hundreds of voices from wagons rushed to fill the still air. Neil turned to Naomi, his wife who had come up behind him from the back of their wagon, and said, "Strange. What an incongruity! Suddenly that vast thunderhead dominates the sky, confuses us, then vanishes."
"It might be a sign from the Light," she said as she leaned close to him where he sat, reins in hand.
Before Neil could answer, the wagons in front of them began moving again. He turned and flicked the reins. His wife backed into the shade of the covering and lifted up their 6-month old daughter Hannah, singing softly a Quaker melody.
Neil thought about the strange atmospheric phenomenon, remembering a few texts he had read at law school which had mentioned a similar strange sky a few years back. Sounded like superstition to him, but what could have caused such an atmospheric disturbance?
Then Neil returned to contemplating their future, about their chances in the Oregon Territory. He was glad they weren't staying here on endless, treeless plains-- Nebraska Territory. Not that it didn't have potential, but except near creeks, it was too dry. No wonder some commentators called this a vast desert.
What a contrast to last week when they had camped back near the Missouri River where the land stood thick with tall timber—heavily forested bluffs, luxurious.
His horses followed 3 Prairie Schooners in front of their wagon, and there were 13 behind, as they rolled alongside the wide river of the Platte (he knew the word meant 'flat' in French, coined by the early explorers). Also, more and more, the rolling hills of the eastern Nebraska territory now lowered, the land flattening, turning to prairie, seemingly endless plains.
Holding the reins with one hand, Neil took a swig of warm water from his canteen. He momentarily contemplated whether the French term was the best name for the wide river, or if they should have kept the Oto Indian word, Nebraskier, meaning "flat water."
He wiped sweat from his face with his forearm again. So blazing hot! Such a contrast to the downpour of five days ago that had created a muddy mess. This excruciating heat wasn't great either and the air seemed to exude moisture. His shirt clung to his chest and back, utterly drenched as if he had taken a dunk in the nearby river, though the water didn't look deep enough to get baptized in if he was a one of the Dunkers, not a Friend.
The horses plugged along the hoof-punched mud trail; he tied the reins to the post, yanked off his dripping shirt, wiped his face and arms, and wrapped it around his neck to ward off more sunburn there.
Below his left rib, he noticed the large scar from the battle in Tennessee against the Cherokee. It welted livid against his dark tan. Jagged memory--he again saw his partner holding a small bloody scalp, a child’s and whooping with delight, telling Neil how they'd get rid of all of the red vermin, cursed aliens.
Neil cussed! Banished that bloodied memory. He flicked the reins so the horses bounded ahead, pulling him closer to the forward wagon. He could hear the chatter of children inside, and thought of his own baby and Naomi behind him within their wagon. She had stopped singing. Had heard him curse.
Scanning out across the shallow water on his left, he tried to see the far side of the river. Then he turned back and looked to see what Naomi was doing. Their baby, Hannah, lay wrapped tightly in a thin sheet, asleep on a Quaker quilt covering their small mattress that rested on packing crates.
Naomi sat behind the infant, peeling potatoes, her blouse damp against her bosom and pleasingly open at the neck, her long mahogany hair a tumble of wrap on her head, a few wisps clinging to the sweat on her skin.
"Hey Love,” Neil said, “how about bringing me some tea?"
Naomi looked up at her man, and smiled. “Sure, Neil.” She reached down under the side of the mattress and pulled out a large stone jar. Then hefted it up, tipped, and poured out brown tea into a glass mason jar.
Naomi was proud of her man, though sometimes now, she wished she were still in Philadelphia and teaching at Penn Quaker School, not out here on this rough trek, not missing her deceased parents. And that he wouldn’t sometimes curse.
She edged forward holding onto the crates so as to not spill any liquid as their wagon rocked and jostled over uneven ground. One wheel slid into a deep rain-rut and the wagon lurched. But Naomi caught herself with a hand against one of the stays of the fabric cover.
Neil grabbed the reins calming the horses as they righted the wagon and plodded on again. He felt her hand on his bare shoulder, turned and looked down into her luminous eyes, great with kissed closeness. Wanted to swoop her up into his arms, but he only visually caressed her, with intensity into her irises, and took the tumbler from her calloused hands, and turned back to watch the horses.
She let her hand linger on his shoulder, then slid it down his side and mischievously pinched him. He sloshed his tea, some slurping over the rim and landing on his legs. He grabbed for her hand but she had retreated. He hollered back over his head, “Just you wait, you’ve got yours comin’ later you ornery sprite. Is that kind of tomfoolery proper for a school marm?”
Her gentle laughter came to him as she picked up their 6-month-old daughter, no doubt holding her close, probably giving her to breast. And he thanked the God above for his wife.
Then in a lawyer-like moment marveled that he still was using high-falutin’ literary terms such as ‘sprite’ and ‘tomfoolery’ out here in the wild west of Nebraska Territory where so many pioneers and trappers couldn’t even write basic prose, let alone reference allusions.
Should he have stayed in Rhode Island and finished his law courses? But then they wouldn’t have had many exciting times crossing to Missouri! Of course, then they wouldn’t have had to bury her folks and the 216 other dead he had interred in St. Louis, dead from the pox, while waiting for spring to head out west.
And that other death—back in Tennessee, his friend holding that dripping scalp of the little Cherokee savage he had scalped…No! Don’t think of that.
Think of his sweetheart behind him in the wagon. Image him with Naomi; she in her sedate Quaker dress, but all heat and passion hidden within. What a wedding night! He grinned. Created their little one.
Better not dwell on that. Maybe if they hadn’t decided to go west, they could have settled in Providence after their wedding and shown her his small village where he grew up? Gotten her a small frame house, and she could be tending their daughter and walking down to Penn's Dry Goods...
Instead, they had fought Indians in Tennessee--mainly Cherokee; afterward, many corpses of the savages, their lodges burning from their arson, and a child’s dripping scalp in his friend’s hand. Guilt drowned him. Stop it!
Neil looked ahead at the wagon in front of him and wondered how long before they reached low falls of Weeping Water where they would begin to look for a camp site. Hopefully, they wouldn’t encounter any Pawnee or Oto.
A horde of flies circled him and he batted at them. His horses were sweating profusely, too, and these endless flies seemed to have swarmed up from Egypt, compliments of Moses. Speaking of the Good Book, he now heard Naomi singing a scripture passage to their daughter. She was versing something about being kind to the aliens in your midst.
Yeah right! Neil grimaced. Sometimes Scripture was downright stupid! Savage aliens! That’s what these redskins were. They deserved no mercy!
Natives would attack and slaughter families in their farms, even way lay whole wagon trains without warning. Massacring women and children! But his friend’s bloody trophy seared his conscience. Get off my back, God; that only happened because they attacked first!
Furthermore, Indian women would mutilate the bodies worse than their warrior husbands! Neil glanced over toward clumps of box elders by the river; feeling conflicted between his lawyer self and his commitment to the Society of Friends with his wife, he frowned, spit, and tried to think of something else.
Again, Neil swung at the flies swarming around him and their horses. Hmm...well, he supposed if he were a savage, then white folks would seem like aliens, too. Then the small bloody trophy in his laughing buddy's hand, dripped into his conscience, a stark vivid script on the wall of his mind, but he cursed again and argued the guilt down. Why would God emphasize they had to care for alien natives?
He flicked the horses angrily to speed them up as he realized he had fallen back a few yards. What about the German immigrant in the Ohio valley who we had found with his entrails torn out of his body and then his very intestines wrapped all the way around an oak tree, tied there by his own guts left to bleed to death slowly. Savage torture! To hell with the dark aliens inhabiting open land. They deserved whatever they got and more
The wagon in front of him stopped again!
"What now?" Neil asked, wondered as he stood up and stared ahead. If the wagon train kept stopping, they wouldn't make it to Chimney Rock for days, and then they might get caught in early snow before they got to pass over the Rockies.
Neil waited--hopefully not hostile natives. Out here they were likely to attack. Taking off his brown hat, he wiped sweat and grime from his forehead. Then glanced up toward the glaring sun and ran fingers through his damp hair.
He turned back to the hooped opening behind him. Inside, below in muted light, on their mattress sitting on top of kegs and large trunks, Naomi nursed Hannah. Neil grinned wide remembering the rambunctious night only 15 months ago, right after they had seen the justice of the peace and had a small Quaker wedding where they exchanged commmitments. The Friends used no clergy for that.
But then he bit his lip as other images which crowded in--the shallow grave he had dug for her parents, their skin all pocked up, only 2 of hundreds of people who had frenzied to death in the epidemic that had descended on St. Louis for months.
So many thousands crowded together in that town, prepareing for their long journeys across the west on the Oregon and other trails. At least though neither he nor Naomi had gotten the Missouri plague.
Shouts interrupted his remembrances; coming at a gallop, a scout dashed up to the wagon in front, waving his beaver hat to emphasize his shouting.
Quicky, Neil looped the reins on a wagon stay, jumped to the ground, and rushed forward.
The trail guide trotted toward him shouting agin; the short French Canadian, with that trapper's hat. Pulling up, he said again, "We got problems; one of our scouts hasn’t returned. And there’s horse tracks up ahead; probably Pawnee. Some of 'em are passive these days, but they attacked a train a few weeks back. Get out yer rifle ‘n stay eagle-eyed." Before Neil could answer, the Frenchie giddied his horse and trotted on to the next wagon behind.
################################################################
After their tachyon ship flung out of hyperspace, bursting from the bubbled warp into this blue wonder of a world, Uzx mentally felted all this amazing surface water! His own world had none. And grassy undulating plains, bluffs, and real surface streams below. He felt deep inner desire to skxxx in meditation.
"Oh such tactile wealth!" his skin yelled in joyful anticipation. "What luxuriating wonder." He virtually caressed the strange plants growing up from the grassy terrain near flowing streams. "And so much water visible above ground--zzhg!" He smiled; he would tactile for many rotations in skxxx.
So what if this is a small planet rotating a minor yellow sun. True, data feeling into him from the ship emphasized there were also no great technocities here--no extensive statistics to be analyzed and statted; and the conscious inhabitants were only skinny primate, many illiterate, and missing tails! And of a limited intelligence at that.
But still, what a marvel; this world and its main intelligent species showed promise for anthropologizing. He grinned wide and shifted his feel on the instruments. Data came in on one of the primates below. The earth alien was spying up at the ship using only his visual percepters and the aural lobes in his head.
Probably not a threat--obviously incapable of distance-feeling, only has basic self-consciousness, pre-literate, dark-skinned, strong energy level and brave, but strangely overly filled with dread.
The native's four-legged mammal-rider shook itself and hoofed the ground. Not dangerous, but tactilely fascinating, especially the long main of hair on its neck. The horse stopped moving and lowered its head to a shallow stream where it had been drinking. It was restricted by a cord tied to one of a few tall many-limbed plants--ah yes, the term, trees. "Thanks for the identification, data director," Uzx felted to the ship’s computer center.
Uzx virtually skinned the horizon. A few points to the south over the terrain many other primates were vocalizing so loudly, he was surprised that the dark-skinned one couldn't hear them. These aliens seemed to have no inner means of communication. Rather embarrassing--yakking loudly like a bunch of pxzlzs! And they were moving in primitive conveyances.
Neither did these other human aliens have that stiff hair ridge on a shaved head or dark skin like the first earthling. Instead, they wore fiber coverings over their longish hair hair; and some of their male faces sprouted heavy bushed hair below their sense organs and intake orifices. So much bare skin would have been off-putting if he weren't a scientist. Uzx briefly reflected warmly on his many tail brother and sisters, thoroughly covered in luxuriant fur.
Back to work, Uzx quickly accessed 139 different mental states. Most were upset because one of their leaders had found tracks belonging to the lone native's mammal. Now the leader was riding his mammal back along the primitive conveyances shouting out warnings. So much loud clucking!
Rather oddly funny. Uzx's skin laughed. The leading primate hadn't even taken a moment to stick his multi-pronged appendages into feel the semicircular shapes of the tracks in the rich loam of the muddy soil that he was yelling about. What a waste of tactile!
Musing, he considered options; maybe he should quantum those primitive gunpowder tubes attached to their waists or held by some in their hands. Oh, he could do that later after his complete survey and all the data collection finished.
Shifting on his large feet, he adjusted the back support of his tail, still intrigued that the alien primates had no tail and such tiny feet!
Focused again back to the terrain where the first earth being still hid, but ignoring him, Uzx virtual felted many small finning creatures in the surface water of the shallow creek. What would they skin like when he actually touched those primitive life forms? What would his own planet of Orxx be like if it had surface water and such creatures, too?
Uzx touched the data flow and the weird slimy creatures flapped their fins in panic and zipped about in the stream. What a strange amazing world so diffferent from his own and from other planets he had studied. Oh thanks to the All-Ultimate that he had careered as an alienologist. Surely, no other sirehold compared.
Next, he scanned with his skin across the landscape to where thousands of large shaggy four-legged creatures congregated at a much larger body of surface water, a river. Uzx considered feltdentifying into one of the herd for his 1st skxx, but then remembered the bloated carcasses he had accessed from the hiding native's mind. He remembered his own great sire's wise quote: “Forefeeling leads to felthood."
So, cautioning himself--his felting into the large beasts might start a stampeded, Uzx widened the range of his felt-sensing for more input. Thankfully, the scanning ability of their research ship's data director was nearly endless.
Later he would focus on one of the alien families, probably the one of only 3 in the 3rd primitive wagon back in the line of human travelers. Why such a measly-sized family?
Only one infant! And not safe in a maternal’s pouch, because she was a primate, didn’t have one!
Yet her curly-bearded mate and she nursing a tiny infant within under that vegetative gray-white covering intrigued him. Her husband his mate showed more erudition than any of the others--some were illiterate like the native 3 miles away! Her male was conscientious and ardent, and spiritual, yet skeptical--fascinating. A worthy in depth study.
But the alien had a tragic grieving past. Uzx uploaded his brain memories for storage.
Too bad there were no earth marsupials nearby. Later later, he would flash-point down to that southern continent that seemed to have the most, but not one intelligent self-aware; see what genetic similarity they might have to his own species on Orxx, whether the All-Ultimate had created them with the same basic code on this far distant small planet.
Then he brought his star ship into a very low circling pattern, scanning through the possibilities for an enclone via the data director. Eliminating flyers (though very intriguing), and low-intelligent reptiles.
He needed a creature with fur, non-intrusive, maybe even a bit fun--Ah there, he felted a furry, smallish--actually tiny--mammal who tunneled and was mostly ignored except by the winged ones. It would be perfect for his 1st feeling of this planet, despite the creature's stupidity, or rather because that would make the inclone mind-meld less intrusive or difficult.
Below in their burrow, its inhabitants suddenly scurried about sensing an invasion of their sanctuary. A fairly large male collapsed in a tunnel near the surface mound in the tall prairie grass.
Then it awoke a genius.
################################################################
Wore Wolf Teeth lay still like rock even after that demon of dread had vanished from the dark sky above. Now only intensive blue remained and the hot blazing sun. Not a cloud in the sky.
He peered through various holes in the thick brush, and waited and waited, but the monstrous thing didn't return. Nowhere was the huge black tunnel or the dreadful spirit that had come lunging out of it. Slowly, Wore snaked backward ignoring abrasions and cuts on his stomach and legs from shards of rock and thorns.
But then he heard the distinctive noise of slow-moving hooves. He shut from his mind the strange spirit and focused on what he did know. A rider was coming this way, secretively. Not an native. Extricating himself from the heavy thicket, Wore ran silently through the elms to the flat stone ridge of the Table Rock...
To be continued
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
From 1842, when a Quaker family on the Oregon Trail...
till 2066 at MegaLA...includes accurate
American history but from a speculative
angle, where extraterrestrial anthropologists
have hyperdrived here to study this alien race—the human species
1 The 3rd Alien
2 Return of the Tactilization
3 Driven Out
4 Into the Maelstrom
5 Blue Bellies
6 Shut Down
7 The Bushwhackers
8 Orphaned
9 Communion
10 Death and Disunion
11 Down Texas-Messed Way
12 North to Alaska
13 Treasure and Loss
14 1st Flight
15 Boulder Dam High-Scalers
16 Counter Culture
17 Summer of Love in the Haight
18 3 Sons of Abraham, Palestine-Israel
19 Descending Among Us
20 Mars Hub
21 The Limitness of Humanness
22 FeelSire Corporation
23 Epilogue
Chapter One: The Third Alien
Nebraska Territory, 1842
New wheel ruts deeply marred the grassy area near the stream of Clear Creek. The native crouched down and examined long furrows dug deep into the wet ground. Alarmed, he turned to stone and scanned the landscape, holding his breath for a long time. But no human sound.
Only sparrows chittered in clumps of elms hanging over the thin water--rippling, wide and shallow. Pebbles shimmered on its sandy bottom. Eastward, the stream flowed, winding away amongst the grassy loafed hills. No unusual movement. Through tall elms, a flat stone ridge loomed, Table Rock. A squirrel scampered by.
The native bent low and shoved his hand down into one deep mud scar--half a foot deep! He seethed. Those accursed wagons of the pale aliens invading their land, following the wide, flat muddy Nebraskier River westward!
Last year, the invaders had gotten warriors of the Oto drunk on firewater! Stupid tribe, trading beaver pelt for poison drink. Thank you, Great Spirit that my people, the Chaticks-si-chaticks (Men of men), never betray others for drink. We’re not a twisting snake like the Oto.
Only 3 moons ago, lazy Oto thieves had slunk into his village of Weeping Water while he and other warriors were out hunting, the women and children working in their vegetable field. Had stolen his prize ceremonial shirt which his dear spouse had created from large deer hide, a big deer he had shot 3 years ago.
True, I did sell my last catch of beaver to that alien 4 years ago, an ugly2-faced English, but I only did so because we needed supplies, winter early that year. But I won’t sell to those vicious cowards—defilers—ever again!
I, Wore Wolf Teeth of the Chaticks-si-chaticks, swear to it.
He brushed one hand through the single ridge of stiffened hair that roostered up from his mostly shaven head. Then he stood up and swept his gaze over the terrain once more, peering at rock out-croppings, and up a few arroyos.
Peering toward the east, Wore Wolf Teeth wondered what other evils lay back there yet to come this way and curse their lives. Last summer, the hairy invaders had slaughtered over a thousand bison near the very wide, flat, muddy Nebraskier River. Crazy aliens, such evil waste! A day of madness.
Stark images filled Wore’s mind. When he and several other warriors had ridden onto that scene, rotting stink had assaulted them. Hundreds of reeking carcasses of bison lay abandoned on the plains--rich meat rotting and bloating, crowded with skin-islands of flies in the hot summer sun. All that meat would have fed his tribe and others for over a year!
But those aliens had only skinned the shaggy hides from fallen beasts, ignoring, abandoning such a wealth of meat; instead, they had piled hundreds of bison pelts high into their moving lodges and left. Only wheel scars and hundreds of carcasses remained for scavengers.
Greedy scum!
On that shameful day, the sun had blazed hot like now today; yes, the season of sweating. Alert again, he quickly scanned the area here. Nothing. But why had these wagons come southerly to Cleer Creek? Who knows what English are about?! Maybe they found the muddy Nebraskier too undrinkable?
Probably stopped here because of this abundant spring. If his tribe hadn’t settled at the falls westward, this brook might be good, But only if it never dried up. Wore walked over to Clear Creek and scooped up a cool drink with his right hand.
He would return to his village, speak in the counsel and, maybe, they would mount a war party to deal with these new wagon-aliens.
He wiped sweat from his brow, grime from his palm, streaking his forehead and brushed one hand through the single ridge of stiffened hair that roostered up from his mostly shaven head. Then, he knelt and scooped up a cool drink with one hand. Wore stood back up and swept his gaze over the terrain once more, peering at out cropping, the Table Rock, and up a few narrow arroyos. No humans.
Suddenly, a covey of quail swarled up from a thicket and winged over the muddy ruts. He dropped flat, then like a bull snake slithered into close brush, listening for the sound of hooves, or boot steps, or even muffled breathing. Nothing! Only the creek’s gurgle.
But then as he peered out through branches, the sky tore open--abruptly, distorting, and bubbling out, a darkness looking at first like a black globbed mass, like dark spittle on a French trapper's beard, but then widening, widening, widening...until Wore Wolf Teeth inched back with dread.
This deadly vision came from the spirits, not from any bodied foe. Yet the horrid sky omen boded nothing like his good quest dream he had received when becoming a brave a few seasons back on the southern plains.
The dark, translucent bubble continued enlarging until it loomed greater than a dozen lodges back at his village of the Weeping Water. What horrendous spirit up above expanding until it gaped far vaster than a huge thunderhead just before a storm?
Wolf Teeth lay still, at one with the many stones under him. Above, the distorted cavern swallowed the sky--endless, coal black, a dark horror, similar to the murky cave he had climbed down into when a scared small boy.
Out of the cavernous maw charged, stormed, a moving drab-gray monster. A monstrous evil spirit?!
Or is it a severe warning omen to him from the Great Spirit?
Wore didn't know, but for the 1st time in his 23 years, he shivered despite the heat. Even when he had counted coup against the Arapahoe, disdaining their warriors and had to pull out a thrown lance from his bleeding arm, while hanging to the stolen horse's mane, even then he had not been afraid.
No fear then, but so alive and glorious, so triumphant, he and his fellow warriors had galloped across the plains. But not now…now fear ate at his gut like a huge vulture. I’m being truly tested. He gripped his medicine bag hanging from his neck, crawled out of the brush, stood and yelled, "I am of the Chaticks-si-chaticks (Men of men)!
Above, the dark gray spirit hovered pulsating, and behind it the sky, endless tar, a smoked abyss.
######################################################
About 3 miles away, horses of an Oregon-bound wagon train skittered and bucked, one large roan knocking its rider to the ground. Men looked up in shock, bewildered by the sudden darkness. Even the chatter of many children ceased. In the 3rd Conestoga wagon, Neil O'Brian stared up into the blackness and held his breath.
One of the scouts shouted a warning, "Halt!"
But then, just as the sudden blackness had come, the abyss of color vanished and the blazing glare of the sun returned. Almost immediately hundreds of voices from wagons rushed to fill the still air. Neil turned to Naomi, his wife who had come up behind him from the back of their wagon, and said, "Strange. What an incongruity! Suddenly that vast thunderhead dominates the sky, confuses us, then vanishes."
"It might be a sign from the Light," she said as she leaned close to him where he sat, reins in hand.
Before Neil could answer, the wagons in front of them began moving again. He turned and flicked the reins. His wife backed into the shade of the covering and lifted up their 6-month old daughter Hannah, singing softly a Quaker melody.
Neil thought about the strange atmospheric phenomenon, remembering a few texts he had read at law school which had mentioned a similar strange sky a few years back. Sounded like superstition to him, but what could have caused such an atmospheric disturbance?
Then Neil returned to contemplating their future, about their chances in the Oregon Territory. He was glad they weren't staying here on endless, treeless plains-- Nebraska Territory. Not that it didn't have potential, but except near creeks, it was too dry. No wonder some commentators called this a vast desert.
What a contrast to last week when they had camped back near the Missouri River where the land stood thick with tall timber—heavily forested bluffs, luxurious.
His horses followed 3 Prairie Schooners in front of their wagon, and there were 13 behind, as they rolled alongside the wide river of the Platte (he knew the word meant 'flat' in French, coined by the early explorers). Also, more and more, the rolling hills of the eastern Nebraska territory now lowered, the land flattening, turning to prairie, seemingly endless plains.
Holding the reins with one hand, Neil took a swig of warm water from his canteen. He momentarily contemplated whether the French term was the best name for the wide river, or if they should have kept the Oto Indian word, Nebraskier, meaning "flat water."
He wiped sweat from his face with his forearm again. So blazing hot! Such a contrast to the downpour of five days ago that had created a muddy mess. This excruciating heat wasn't great either and the air seemed to exude moisture. His shirt clung to his chest and back, utterly drenched as if he had taken a dunk in the nearby river, though the water didn't look deep enough to get baptized in if he was a one of the Dunkers, not a Friend.
The horses plugged along the hoof-punched mud trail; he tied the reins to the post, yanked off his dripping shirt, wiped his face and arms, and wrapped it around his neck to ward off more sunburn there.
Below his left rib, he noticed the large scar from the battle in Tennessee against the Cherokee. It welted livid against his dark tan. Jagged memory--he again saw his partner holding a small bloody scalp, a child’s and whooping with delight, telling Neil how they'd get rid of all of the red vermin, cursed aliens.
Neil cussed! Banished that bloodied memory. He flicked the reins so the horses bounded ahead, pulling him closer to the forward wagon. He could hear the chatter of children inside, and thought of his own baby and Naomi behind him within their wagon. She had stopped singing. Had heard him curse.
Scanning out across the shallow water on his left, he tried to see the far side of the river. Then he turned back and looked to see what Naomi was doing. Their baby, Hannah, lay wrapped tightly in a thin sheet, asleep on a Quaker quilt covering their small mattress that rested on packing crates.
Naomi sat behind the infant, peeling potatoes, her blouse damp against her bosom and pleasingly open at the neck, her long mahogany hair a tumble of wrap on her head, a few wisps clinging to the sweat on her skin.
"Hey Love,” Neil said, “how about bringing me some tea?"
Naomi looked up at her man, and smiled. “Sure, Neil.” She reached down under the side of the mattress and pulled out a large stone jar. Then hefted it up, tipped, and poured out brown tea into a glass mason jar.
Naomi was proud of her man, though sometimes now, she wished she were still in Philadelphia and teaching at Penn Quaker School, not out here on this rough trek, not missing her deceased parents. And that he wouldn’t sometimes curse.
She edged forward holding onto the crates so as to not spill any liquid as their wagon rocked and jostled over uneven ground. One wheel slid into a deep rain-rut and the wagon lurched. But Naomi caught herself with a hand against one of the stays of the fabric cover.
Neil grabbed the reins calming the horses as they righted the wagon and plodded on again. He felt her hand on his bare shoulder, turned and looked down into her luminous eyes, great with kissed closeness. Wanted to swoop her up into his arms, but he only visually caressed her, with intensity into her irises, and took the tumbler from her calloused hands, and turned back to watch the horses.
She let her hand linger on his shoulder, then slid it down his side and mischievously pinched him. He sloshed his tea, some slurping over the rim and landing on his legs. He grabbed for her hand but she had retreated. He hollered back over his head, “Just you wait, you’ve got yours comin’ later you ornery sprite. Is that kind of tomfoolery proper for a school marm?”
Her gentle laughter came to him as she picked up their 6-month-old daughter, no doubt holding her close, probably giving her to breast. And he thanked the God above for his wife.
Then in a lawyer-like moment marveled that he still was using high-falutin’ literary terms such as ‘sprite’ and ‘tomfoolery’ out here in the wild west of Nebraska Territory where so many pioneers and trappers couldn’t even write basic prose, let alone reference allusions.
Should he have stayed in Rhode Island and finished his law courses? But then they wouldn’t have had many exciting times crossing to Missouri! Of course, then they wouldn’t have had to bury her folks and the 216 other dead he had interred in St. Louis, dead from the pox, while waiting for spring to head out west.
And that other death—back in Tennessee, his friend holding that dripping scalp of the little Cherokee savage he had scalped…No! Don’t think of that.
Think of his sweetheart behind him in the wagon. Image him with Naomi; she in her sedate Quaker dress, but all heat and passion hidden within. What a wedding night! He grinned. Created their little one.
Better not dwell on that. Maybe if they hadn’t decided to go west, they could have settled in Providence after their wedding and shown her his small village where he grew up? Gotten her a small frame house, and she could be tending their daughter and walking down to Penn's Dry Goods...
Instead, they had fought Indians in Tennessee--mainly Cherokee; afterward, many corpses of the savages, their lodges burning from their arson, and a child’s dripping scalp in his friend’s hand. Guilt drowned him. Stop it!
Neil looked ahead at the wagon in front of him and wondered how long before they reached low falls of Weeping Water where they would begin to look for a camp site. Hopefully, they wouldn’t encounter any Pawnee or Oto.
A horde of flies circled him and he batted at them. His horses were sweating profusely, too, and these endless flies seemed to have swarmed up from Egypt, compliments of Moses. Speaking of the Good Book, he now heard Naomi singing a scripture passage to their daughter. She was versing something about being kind to the aliens in your midst.
Yeah right! Neil grimaced. Sometimes Scripture was downright stupid! Savage aliens! That’s what these redskins were. They deserved no mercy!
Natives would attack and slaughter families in their farms, even way lay whole wagon trains without warning. Massacring women and children! But his friend’s bloody trophy seared his conscience. Get off my back, God; that only happened because they attacked first!
Furthermore, Indian women would mutilate the bodies worse than their warrior husbands! Neil glanced over toward clumps of box elders by the river; feeling conflicted between his lawyer self and his commitment to the Society of Friends with his wife, he frowned, spit, and tried to think of something else.
Again, Neil swung at the flies swarming around him and their horses. Hmm...well, he supposed if he were a savage, then white folks would seem like aliens, too. Then the small bloody trophy in his laughing buddy's hand, dripped into his conscience, a stark vivid script on the wall of his mind, but he cursed again and argued the guilt down. Why would God emphasize they had to care for alien natives?
He flicked the horses angrily to speed them up as he realized he had fallen back a few yards. What about the German immigrant in the Ohio valley who we had found with his entrails torn out of his body and then his very intestines wrapped all the way around an oak tree, tied there by his own guts left to bleed to death slowly. Savage torture! To hell with the dark aliens inhabiting open land. They deserved whatever they got and more
The wagon in front of him stopped again!
"What now?" Neil asked, wondered as he stood up and stared ahead. If the wagon train kept stopping, they wouldn't make it to Chimney Rock for days, and then they might get caught in early snow before they got to pass over the Rockies.
Neil waited--hopefully not hostile natives. Out here they were likely to attack. Taking off his brown hat, he wiped sweat and grime from his forehead. Then glanced up toward the glaring sun and ran fingers through his damp hair.
He turned back to the hooped opening behind him. Inside, below in muted light, on their mattress sitting on top of kegs and large trunks, Naomi nursed Hannah. Neil grinned wide remembering the rambunctious night only 15 months ago, right after they had seen the justice of the peace and had a small Quaker wedding where they exchanged commmitments. The Friends used no clergy for that.
But then he bit his lip as other images which crowded in--the shallow grave he had dug for her parents, their skin all pocked up, only 2 of hundreds of people who had frenzied to death in the epidemic that had descended on St. Louis for months.
So many thousands crowded together in that town, prepareing for their long journeys across the west on the Oregon and other trails. At least though neither he nor Naomi had gotten the Missouri plague.
Shouts interrupted his remembrances; coming at a gallop, a scout dashed up to the wagon in front, waving his beaver hat to emphasize his shouting.
Quicky, Neil looped the reins on a wagon stay, jumped to the ground, and rushed forward.
The trail guide trotted toward him shouting agin; the short French Canadian, with that trapper's hat. Pulling up, he said again, "We got problems; one of our scouts hasn’t returned. And there’s horse tracks up ahead; probably Pawnee. Some of 'em are passive these days, but they attacked a train a few weeks back. Get out yer rifle ‘n stay eagle-eyed." Before Neil could answer, the Frenchie giddied his horse and trotted on to the next wagon behind.
################################################################
After their tachyon ship flung out of hyperspace, bursting from the bubbled warp into this blue wonder of a world, Uzx mentally felted all this amazing surface water! His own world had none. And grassy undulating plains, bluffs, and real surface streams below. He felt deep inner desire to skxxx in meditation.
"Oh such tactile wealth!" his skin yelled in joyful anticipation. "What luxuriating wonder." He virtually caressed the strange plants growing up from the grassy terrain near flowing streams. "And so much water visible above ground--zzhg!" He smiled; he would tactile for many rotations in skxxx.
So what if this is a small planet rotating a minor yellow sun. True, data feeling into him from the ship emphasized there were also no great technocities here--no extensive statistics to be analyzed and statted; and the conscious inhabitants were only skinny primate, many illiterate, and missing tails! And of a limited intelligence at that.
But still, what a marvel; this world and its main intelligent species showed promise for anthropologizing. He grinned wide and shifted his feel on the instruments. Data came in on one of the primates below. The earth alien was spying up at the ship using only his visual percepters and the aural lobes in his head.
Probably not a threat--obviously incapable of distance-feeling, only has basic self-consciousness, pre-literate, dark-skinned, strong energy level and brave, but strangely overly filled with dread.
The native's four-legged mammal-rider shook itself and hoofed the ground. Not dangerous, but tactilely fascinating, especially the long main of hair on its neck. The horse stopped moving and lowered its head to a shallow stream where it had been drinking. It was restricted by a cord tied to one of a few tall many-limbed plants--ah yes, the term, trees. "Thanks for the identification, data director," Uzx felted to the ship’s computer center.
Uzx virtually skinned the horizon. A few points to the south over the terrain many other primates were vocalizing so loudly, he was surprised that the dark-skinned one couldn't hear them. These aliens seemed to have no inner means of communication. Rather embarrassing--yakking loudly like a bunch of pxzlzs! And they were moving in primitive conveyances.
Neither did these other human aliens have that stiff hair ridge on a shaved head or dark skin like the first earthling. Instead, they wore fiber coverings over their longish hair hair; and some of their male faces sprouted heavy bushed hair below their sense organs and intake orifices. So much bare skin would have been off-putting if he weren't a scientist. Uzx briefly reflected warmly on his many tail brother and sisters, thoroughly covered in luxuriant fur.
Back to work, Uzx quickly accessed 139 different mental states. Most were upset because one of their leaders had found tracks belonging to the lone native's mammal. Now the leader was riding his mammal back along the primitive conveyances shouting out warnings. So much loud clucking!
Rather oddly funny. Uzx's skin laughed. The leading primate hadn't even taken a moment to stick his multi-pronged appendages into feel the semicircular shapes of the tracks in the rich loam of the muddy soil that he was yelling about. What a waste of tactile!
Musing, he considered options; maybe he should quantum those primitive gunpowder tubes attached to their waists or held by some in their hands. Oh, he could do that later after his complete survey and all the data collection finished.
Shifting on his large feet, he adjusted the back support of his tail, still intrigued that the alien primates had no tail and such tiny feet!
Focused again back to the terrain where the first earth being still hid, but ignoring him, Uzx virtual felted many small finning creatures in the surface water of the shallow creek. What would they skin like when he actually touched those primitive life forms? What would his own planet of Orxx be like if it had surface water and such creatures, too?
Uzx touched the data flow and the weird slimy creatures flapped their fins in panic and zipped about in the stream. What a strange amazing world so diffferent from his own and from other planets he had studied. Oh thanks to the All-Ultimate that he had careered as an alienologist. Surely, no other sirehold compared.
Next, he scanned with his skin across the landscape to where thousands of large shaggy four-legged creatures congregated at a much larger body of surface water, a river. Uzx considered feltdentifying into one of the herd for his 1st skxx, but then remembered the bloated carcasses he had accessed from the hiding native's mind. He remembered his own great sire's wise quote: “Forefeeling leads to felthood."
So, cautioning himself--his felting into the large beasts might start a stampeded, Uzx widened the range of his felt-sensing for more input. Thankfully, the scanning ability of their research ship's data director was nearly endless.
Later he would focus on one of the alien families, probably the one of only 3 in the 3rd primitive wagon back in the line of human travelers. Why such a measly-sized family?
Only one infant! And not safe in a maternal’s pouch, because she was a primate, didn’t have one!
Yet her curly-bearded mate and she nursing a tiny infant within under that vegetative gray-white covering intrigued him. Her husband his mate showed more erudition than any of the others--some were illiterate like the native 3 miles away! Her male was conscientious and ardent, and spiritual, yet skeptical--fascinating. A worthy in depth study.
But the alien had a tragic grieving past. Uzx uploaded his brain memories for storage.
Too bad there were no earth marsupials nearby. Later later, he would flash-point down to that southern continent that seemed to have the most, but not one intelligent self-aware; see what genetic similarity they might have to his own species on Orxx, whether the All-Ultimate had created them with the same basic code on this far distant small planet.
Then he brought his star ship into a very low circling pattern, scanning through the possibilities for an enclone via the data director. Eliminating flyers (though very intriguing), and low-intelligent reptiles.
He needed a creature with fur, non-intrusive, maybe even a bit fun--Ah there, he felted a furry, smallish--actually tiny--mammal who tunneled and was mostly ignored except by the winged ones. It would be perfect for his 1st feeling of this planet, despite the creature's stupidity, or rather because that would make the inclone mind-meld less intrusive or difficult.
Below in their burrow, its inhabitants suddenly scurried about sensing an invasion of their sanctuary. A fairly large male collapsed in a tunnel near the surface mound in the tall prairie grass.
Then it awoke a genius.
################################################################
Wore Wolf Teeth lay still like rock even after that demon of dread had vanished from the dark sky above. Now only intensive blue remained and the hot blazing sun. Not a cloud in the sky.
He peered through various holes in the thick brush, and waited and waited, but the monstrous thing didn't return. Nowhere was the huge black tunnel or the dreadful spirit that had come lunging out of it. Slowly, Wore snaked backward ignoring abrasions and cuts on his stomach and legs from shards of rock and thorns.
But then he heard the distinctive noise of slow-moving hooves. He shut from his mind the strange spirit and focused on what he did know. A rider was coming this way, secretively. Not an native. Extricating himself from the heavy thicket, Wore ran silently through the elms to the flat stone ridge of the Table Rock...
To be continued
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Meditation on Shimmering Palms and Floaters
Meditation on Shimmering Palms
On more days and nights, an invalid,
In pain and loss, I often just want to go...
Unconscious;
But then, again, I stare out
To the wind and sun
From our upstairs
Window;
There towering above, 2 lone palms
In sight from my weak haven,
Swaying in that blue expanse
In a lively coastal wind,
Their mop-tops of slender fronds
Shimmering
Like flashing magnesium flares
From brilliant reflecting
Sunshine.
Those two undulating sentinels dance
over/above my fading consciousness,
Ailing awareness--
Two unconscious messengers,
While I lay here filled with sacred
Remembrance, mindful
Of my former festive living,
Becoming, and doing...
Yes, the wonder of being a human primate
Living!
but finite so brief,
This
Gift,
this Present
Shimmering--
Then we’re gone.
Only the Center, the Light
Everlasts.
-Dan Wilcox
--
FLOATERS--a poetic reflection on autumn, the season,
and late life
I, often spent to despair,
For lost hope yearning;
Tried for years to rescue others
Caught in those tangled news hours
Of hellish hate, intolerance, despair,
Wrong right-leftist spinners,
Those creedalists and secularists
Both deniers of the morally real--
Their abyss of modern sheol winter.
Stop!
Abandon this somber cellared lament,
this dirge,
Instead, listen to hope!
My sweetheart suggests,
Let’s visit
A coastal winery!
Say, I do,
We do.
Hobbling with walker out,
She drives along a winding river valley,
We arrive, expectant,
Hoping for zest;
Then, listening to soft music,
Sipping small glasses of moscato and merlot
Enjoying a glad refreshment day,
Mellow and casual,
Light of heart,
Carefree, contented
In California’s autumn’s wonder
Below tall sycamores and elms;
After Thanksgiving before winter;
We bask in 86-degree warmth,
When unexpectedly a slightly curled
Leaf floats down before
My eyes,
And lands gently on my lap,
A died wonder for us to behold;
Then another drifter
Lets go from a large limb above,
A deep rust-brown leaf spattered
With light tan highlights and vein-lines,
Descends in front of us,
Swaying back and forth,
Languid,
Lightly
Floating down
Inches away from us,
Landing nearby
On the lawn;
I lay with my head way back,
Gazing up to the sky's azure blue,
As other gifts let go every few moments
From high above,
Swinging wide and gentle,
Falling beauty in slow motion,
Floating, swaying;
I realize—here, now--
With this Present--
I could die free, released.
In the LIGHT,
-Dan Wilcox
On more days and nights, an invalid,
In pain and loss, I often just want to go...
Unconscious;
But then, again, I stare out
To the wind and sun
From our upstairs
Window;
There towering above, 2 lone palms
In sight from my weak haven,
Swaying in that blue expanse
In a lively coastal wind,
Their mop-tops of slender fronds
Shimmering
Like flashing magnesium flares
From brilliant reflecting
Sunshine.
Those two undulating sentinels dance
over/above my fading consciousness,
Ailing awareness--
Two unconscious messengers,
While I lay here filled with sacred
Remembrance, mindful
Of my former festive living,
Becoming, and doing...
Yes, the wonder of being a human primate
Living!
but finite so brief,
This
Gift,
this Present
Shimmering--
Then we’re gone.
Only the Center, the Light
Everlasts.
-Dan Wilcox
--
FLOATERS--a poetic reflection on autumn, the season,
and late life
I, often spent to despair,
For lost hope yearning;
Tried for years to rescue others
Caught in those tangled news hours
Of hellish hate, intolerance, despair,
Wrong right-leftist spinners,
Those creedalists and secularists
Both deniers of the morally real--
Their abyss of modern sheol winter.
Stop!
Abandon this somber cellared lament,
this dirge,
Instead, listen to hope!
My sweetheart suggests,
Let’s visit
A coastal winery!
Say, I do,
We do.
Hobbling with walker out,
She drives along a winding river valley,
We arrive, expectant,
Hoping for zest;
Then, listening to soft music,
Sipping small glasses of moscato and merlot
Enjoying a glad refreshment day,
Mellow and casual,
Light of heart,
Carefree, contented
In California’s autumn’s wonder
Below tall sycamores and elms;
After Thanksgiving before winter;
We bask in 86-degree warmth,
When unexpectedly a slightly curled
Leaf floats down before
My eyes,
And lands gently on my lap,
A died wonder for us to behold;
Lets go from a large limb above,
A deep rust-brown leaf spattered
With light tan highlights and vein-lines,
Descends in front of us,
Swaying back and forth,
Languid,
Lightly
Floating down
Inches away from us,
Landing nearby
On the lawn;
I lay with my head way back,
Gazing up to the sky's azure blue,
As other gifts let go every few moments
From high above,
Swinging wide and gentle,
Falling beauty in slow motion,
Floating, swaying;
I realize—here, now--
With this Present--
I could die free, released.
In the LIGHT,
-Dan Wilcox
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb's War by historian T.L. Underwood
Another fascinating study in early Quaker history, especially related to the Light and the peace-making actions of early Quakers.
"By examining the Quaker/Baptist relationship in particular, Underwood seeks to understand where and why Quaker views diverged from English Protestantism in general and, in the process, to clarify early Quaker beliefs."
from Amazon review
At the start and in the midst of the tragic English Civil War, the early Quaker movement arose.
This Oxford-history deals with those early Quakers and their conflicts with the Church of England, the Puritans, and other nonconformist movements, especially the early Baptists.
from Amazon:
"At first, the Quaker movement attracted some Baptist converts, but relations between the two groups soon grew hostile. Public disputes broke out and each group denounced the other in polemical tracts...
Underwood contends that Quakers and Baptists had much in common with each other, as well as with the broader Puritan and Nonconformist tradition.
--T.L. Underwood, professor of history, University of Minnesota
"By examining the Quaker/Baptist relationship in particular, Underwood seeks to understand where and why Quaker views diverged from English Protestantism in general and, in the process, to clarify early Quaker beliefs."
from Amazon review
At the start and in the midst of the tragic English Civil War, the early Quaker movement arose.
This Oxford-history deals with those early Quakers and their conflicts with the Church of England, the Puritans, and other nonconformist movements, especially the early Baptists.
from Amazon:
"At first, the Quaker movement attracted some Baptist converts, but relations between the two groups soon grew hostile. Public disputes broke out and each group denounced the other in polemical tracts...
Underwood contends that Quakers and Baptists had much in common with each other, as well as with the broader Puritan and Nonconformist tradition.
--T.L. Underwood, professor of history, University of Minnesota
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Peaceable Kingdom LOST: Paxton Boys and Destruction of Penn's Holy Experiment by Professor Kevin Kenny
from Amazon:
"William Penn established Pennsylvania in 1682 as a "holy experiment" in which Europeans and Indians could live together in harmony. In this book, historian Kevin Kenny explains how this Peaceable Kingdom--benevolent, Quaker, pacifist--gradually disintegrated in the eighteenth century, with disastrous consequences for Native Americans."
"Kenny recounts how rapacious frontier settlers, most of them of Ulster extraction, began to encroach on Indian land as squatters, while William Penn's sons cast off their father's Quaker heritage and turned instead to fraud, intimidation, and eventually violence during the French and Indian War."
"In 1763, a group of frontier settlers known as the Paxton Boys exterminated the last twenty Conestogas, descendants of Indians who had lived peacefully since the 1690s on land donated by William Penn near Lancaster. Invoking the principle of "right of conquest," the Paxton Boys claimed after the massacres that the Conestogas' land was rightfully theirs."
"They set out for Philadelphia, threatening to sack the city unless their grievances were met. A delegation led by Benjamin Franklin met them and what followed was a war of words, with Quakers doing battle against Anglican and Presbyterian champions of the Paxton Boys."
"The killers were never prosecuted and the Pennsylvania frontier descended into anarchy in the late 1760s, with Indians the principal victims."
"The new order heralded by the Conestoga massacres was consummated during the American Revolution with the destruction of the Iroquois confederacy. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States confiscated the lands of Britain's Indian allies, basing its claim on the principle of "right of conquest."
"Based on extensive research in eighteenth-century primary sources, this engaging history offers an eye-opening look at how colonists--at first, the backwoods Paxton Boys but later the U.S. government--expropriated Native American lands, ending forever the dream of colonists and Indians living together in peace."
PEACEABLE KINGDON: LOST By Kevin Kenny, Professor of History at Boston College
"Kenny recounts how rapacious frontier settlers, most of them of Ulster extraction, began to encroach on Indian land as squatters, while William Penn's sons cast off their father's Quaker heritage and turned instead to fraud, intimidation, and eventually violence during the French and Indian War."
"In 1763, a group of frontier settlers known as the Paxton Boys exterminated the last twenty Conestogas, descendants of Indians who had lived peacefully since the 1690s on land donated by William Penn near Lancaster. Invoking the principle of "right of conquest," the Paxton Boys claimed after the massacres that the Conestogas' land was rightfully theirs."
"They set out for Philadelphia, threatening to sack the city unless their grievances were met. A delegation led by Benjamin Franklin met them and what followed was a war of words, with Quakers doing battle against Anglican and Presbyterian champions of the Paxton Boys."
"The killers were never prosecuted and the Pennsylvania frontier descended into anarchy in the late 1760s, with Indians the principal victims."
"The new order heralded by the Conestoga massacres was consummated during the American Revolution with the destruction of the Iroquois confederacy. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States confiscated the lands of Britain's Indian allies, basing its claim on the principle of "right of conquest."
"Based on extensive research in eighteenth-century primary sources, this engaging history offers an eye-opening look at how colonists--at first, the backwoods Paxton Boys but later the U.S. government--expropriated Native American lands, ending forever the dream of colonists and Indians living together in peace."
PEACEABLE KINGDON: LOST By Kevin Kenny, Professor of History at Boston College
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Blessing, Not Killing
Waiting by their front door,
For their romantic hug,
He's expectant,
Her eager lover,
Next to their 3-year-toddler;
Returning with groceries,
She enters front-packing Huggies
Above her plump-growing belly;
Blessed, expectant
3 years ago, 2 became one equals 3,
Ago
And now 4
'Amore'
What a wonder conceiving each new life, humans get to experience in marriage!
Such a powerful, blessed photo of an infant in the womb at about 16 weeks.
What a contrast to the U.S. modern delusion of "abortion rights."
HOW ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS?
Especially for the youngest, tiniest humans, the infants in the womb.
What also needs to be emphasized is that the mother is the individual to decide (NOT the GOVERNMENT) in tragic cases of her life being endangered, of biological errors such as her infant having severe physical deformity, and, of course, in worse cases involving rape and abuse.
In the LIGHT of PRO-LIFE,
Daniel Wilcox
For their romantic hug,
He's expectant,
Her eager lover,
Next to their 3-year-toddler;
Returning with groceries,
She enters front-packing Huggies
Above her plump-growing belly;
Blessed, expectant
3 years ago, 2 became one equals 3,
Ago
And now 4
'Amore'
What a wonder conceiving each new life, humans get to experience in marriage!
Such a powerful, blessed photo of an infant in the womb at about 16 weeks.
What a contrast to the U.S. modern delusion of "abortion rights."
HOW ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS?
Especially for the youngest, tiniest humans, the infants in the womb.
What also needs to be emphasized is that the mother is the individual to decide (NOT the GOVERNMENT) in tragic cases of her life being endangered, of biological errors such as her infant having severe physical deformity, and, of course, in worse cases involving rape and abuse.
In the LIGHT of PRO-LIFE,
Daniel Wilcox
Monday, November 11, 2024
Transcendence--Part 2
‘Liberal’ Christians admit Jesus and the NT authors were mistaken, but in so doing they are trying to pole vault up a steep incline while sliding down the slippery back slope of increasing doubt and skepticism. If the NT isn’t historically accurate about such a key doctrine as the return of Christ, many ask, how could one rely on Scripture's accounts of Jesus rising from the grave, ascending into heaven, etc.
How can the Christian religion be true and accurate about anything else?
After all, the bar of requirements for historical writing has been set very high in the modern age. All things, people think, need to be factually accurate, inerrant to be of real value. So religion, the spiritual, and the transcendent all need to be judged with the measuring tools of science.
A compass of accuracy needs to discern the geometric lines of theology and faith, to eliminate and banish any heresy that deviates from the factual.
What a very high raising of the TRUTH bar for us thinking humans to catapult over!
The nature of truth is a difficult subject bar none (to throw in a word play to lighten this heavy post;-)
The difficulty of hope versus illusion-delusion (false hope) and reason versus despair (false reason) is a very high bar indeed. Can any hope of the transcendent be found at all?
Millions of humans think not. So they quit 'pole-vaulting' and settle down on the ground of Materialism/Atheism/even Nihilism and Subjectivism/Relativism. Such thinkers include Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne, Yuval Noah Harari, Sean Carroll, Brian Green, etc.).
In striking contrast, many other thinkers and scientists created the ENLIGHTENMENT/Deism/generic theism, etc. Their new outlook based in reason and the scientific method--Not revelation--managed to clear the bar of required evidence.
All of them strongly hold to modern evidence--evolutionary biological, geological, astronomical, rational--but don't think such evidence proves that Reality is meaningless, subjective, etc. Instead, they think that Reality is ultimately transcendent, moral realism is true, all humans have inherent worth, etc. They state they base their hope in reason and cosmic regularities, Life itself, etc.
In the LIGHT of the True, the Good, the Just, the TRANSCENDENT,
Daniel Wilcox
SIDE NOTE:
on more historic difficulties for Christianity, Judaism, and Islam-- 'revealed religions' of doctrinal claims Another difficult raising of the bar of religious hope came 1,500 years after Jesus, in the time of Galileo and Copernicus.
The Creedal Church claimed supreme understanding and control in all matters. Yet a minority of scientists contradicted the teachings of the Church and, allegedly, the Bible. They claimed to have proved that the sun doesn’t round the earth each day; indeed, the earth is not the center, not the focal point of all creation as Genesis claims.
Soon science increased its evidential findings--our sun is actually only a very minor star, Not the Center of Reality.
Contrary to the Scriptures’ statement, “God made the stars also,” in actuality, those stars are cosmically vast than our puny solar system. We are on an edge of a galaxy, which is one of millions of other galaxies!
So much for the literal understanding of the Jewish Bible, the New Testament, the Quran, and common sense!
Scratch!
Of course, multi-millions choose to twist the plain text in the sacred scriptures. They argue Genesis describes the creation of the sun on the fourth day from the perspective of God’s Spirit at the level of the surface of the planet looking up!
So God looking up from planet earth's surface does make it seem like the sun comes after the earth rather than before. What has happened? A dense, heavy cloud of vapor had hidden the sun during the first 3 days. The sun finally appeared above the earth on the 4th day.
There is a very bad case of Not only 'scratching' but of cheating!
But the verse in Genesis doesn’t speak about the sun appearing from behind fog on the fourth day; on the contrary, it says: “And God said, 'Let there be light in the vault of the heavens to light up the earth.' And so it was. And God made the two great lights…” (Genesis 1:14-16)
Other religionist wrote of a dualistic existence, where science concerns itself with the observable and the factual but religion concerns itself with the spiritual and moral. Many theists of the present time manage to make this philosophical leap.
Then the discoveries by Darwin and many other scientists that life proceeds not by a sudden miraculous creation 6,000 years ago, but by a combination of cosmic luck and survival of the fittest over millions and millions of years.
Later in succeeding years, other scientists tabulated their technical findings and showed the earth came about 4 billion years ago, not 6, 000, and the universe has existed at least 16 billion years! This setting of the sacred bar careens outrageously high so that only the most blind, or most compartmentalized, or the most irrationally determined can leap the bottomless chasm up and over the cosmically high bar of hope.
Good grief, what convoluted hypocritical rhetoric!
Multi-millions of human beings have 'scratched'. Been Disqualified.
How can the Christian religion be true and accurate about anything else?
After all, the bar of requirements for historical writing has been set very high in the modern age. All things, people think, need to be factually accurate, inerrant to be of real value. So religion, the spiritual, and the transcendent all need to be judged with the measuring tools of science.
A compass of accuracy needs to discern the geometric lines of theology and faith, to eliminate and banish any heresy that deviates from the factual.
What a very high raising of the TRUTH bar for us thinking humans to catapult over!
The nature of truth is a difficult subject bar none (to throw in a word play to lighten this heavy post;-)
The difficulty of hope versus illusion-delusion (false hope) and reason versus despair (false reason) is a very high bar indeed. Can any hope of the transcendent be found at all?
Millions of humans think not. So they quit 'pole-vaulting' and settle down on the ground of Materialism/Atheism/even Nihilism and Subjectivism/Relativism. Such thinkers include Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne, Yuval Noah Harari, Sean Carroll, Brian Green, etc.).
In striking contrast, many other thinkers and scientists created the ENLIGHTENMENT/Deism/generic theism, etc. Their new outlook based in reason and the scientific method--Not revelation--managed to clear the bar of required evidence.
All of them strongly hold to modern evidence--evolutionary biological, geological, astronomical, rational--but don't think such evidence proves that Reality is meaningless, subjective, etc. Instead, they think that Reality is ultimately transcendent, moral realism is true, all humans have inherent worth, etc. They state they base their hope in reason and cosmic regularities, Life itself, etc.
In the LIGHT of the True, the Good, the Just, the TRANSCENDENT,
Daniel Wilcox
SIDE NOTE:
on more historic difficulties for Christianity, Judaism, and Islam-- 'revealed religions' of doctrinal claims Another difficult raising of the bar of religious hope came 1,500 years after Jesus, in the time of Galileo and Copernicus.
The Creedal Church claimed supreme understanding and control in all matters. Yet a minority of scientists contradicted the teachings of the Church and, allegedly, the Bible. They claimed to have proved that the sun doesn’t round the earth each day; indeed, the earth is not the center, not the focal point of all creation as Genesis claims.
Soon science increased its evidential findings--our sun is actually only a very minor star, Not the Center of Reality.
Contrary to the Scriptures’ statement, “God made the stars also,” in actuality, those stars are cosmically vast than our puny solar system. We are on an edge of a galaxy, which is one of millions of other galaxies!
So much for the literal understanding of the Jewish Bible, the New Testament, the Quran, and common sense!
Scratch!
Of course, multi-millions choose to twist the plain text in the sacred scriptures. They argue Genesis describes the creation of the sun on the fourth day from the perspective of God’s Spirit at the level of the surface of the planet looking up!
So God looking up from planet earth's surface does make it seem like the sun comes after the earth rather than before. What has happened? A dense, heavy cloud of vapor had hidden the sun during the first 3 days. The sun finally appeared above the earth on the 4th day.
There is a very bad case of Not only 'scratching' but of cheating!
But the verse in Genesis doesn’t speak about the sun appearing from behind fog on the fourth day; on the contrary, it says: “And God said, 'Let there be light in the vault of the heavens to light up the earth.' And so it was. And God made the two great lights…” (Genesis 1:14-16)
Other religionist wrote of a dualistic existence, where science concerns itself with the observable and the factual but religion concerns itself with the spiritual and moral. Many theists of the present time manage to make this philosophical leap.
Then the discoveries by Darwin and many other scientists that life proceeds not by a sudden miraculous creation 6,000 years ago, but by a combination of cosmic luck and survival of the fittest over millions and millions of years.
Later in succeeding years, other scientists tabulated their technical findings and showed the earth came about 4 billion years ago, not 6, 000, and the universe has existed at least 16 billion years! This setting of the sacred bar careens outrageously high so that only the most blind, or most compartmentalized, or the most irrationally determined can leap the bottomless chasm up and over the cosmically high bar of hope.
Good grief, what convoluted hypocritical rhetoric!
Multi-millions of human beings have 'scratched'. Been Disqualified.
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