Created by my sweetheart. She calls it Braided Northern Lights.
Showing posts with label Friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friends. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Friday, May 1, 2026
Strange how different are thinkers on morality and literature from post-modern thinkers
Here'a real dialogue with a smart guy who holds to a post-modern life stance
He has earlier declared that all books and morals are subjective and relative.
In a long detailed response, I explain that on the contrary, the study of literature is to find out what the author intended in his work.
Myself, American literature and world literature teacher:
We teachers studied literary criticism for years including the various schools. Our goal is similar to the biological sciences—to find out what is real and accurate.
However in the humanities and social sciences, it's more difficult to get at the accurate meaning than in the hard sciences.
Even in the latter, consider that the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould came to very different conclusions than some other famous biologists based upon the evidence.
For instance, his conclusion based on the facts is that deep time in biology is based in Chance!
He stated that IF reality could come again, the human species probably wouldn't even show up. We humans are here by cosmic “luck.”
In contrast evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and neuroscientist Sam Harris hold that existence, particularly for all humans and our actions would be exactly the same because everything is determined.
Allegedly, according to Harris, even IF the cosmos came again, all of us humans would do exactly the same because we are “puppets” of the cosmos.
Though, as I already said, it is more difficult to find what is true in literature and criminal justice, etc., the reason to study these fields is to find out what is objectively meant.
Subjectivity is to be avoided.
Most people find there is an objective qualitative difference between Shakespeare's plays and popular literature and the media.
For example, some of Ernest Hemingway's short stories are amazingly powerful and complex, far better than most stories, TV shows, and movies. Hemingway scholars are agreed that he hated Christianity, that his famous short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" is objectively brilliant and is a scathing attack against religion.
Post-Modernist:
Although I didn't agree with you on a fair number of things, I had held you in higher esteem than to think you would brazenly try to pass yourself off as knowledgeable about something which you can't fail to know that you know nothing about.
You didn't even want to educate yourself before responding, so you could have plausibly pretended to have known something about it. Instead, you insulted my intelligence by trying to pass off horseshit.
Daniel Wilcox
Hmm...3 universities, 5 school districts, post-graduate work, many years of teaching literature, attending post-grad conferences, etc. all taught us "horseshit."
I'll keep the horseshit;-)
Post-Modernist
Keep digging. My estimation of you just keeps going down. Either you have a problem with honesty, or senile dementia is setting it.
Either way, I'll avoid you in the future, as you're not worthy to debate.
Daniel Wilcox
Understanding the meanings of literature and basic reading comprehension tests don't register "like" or "dislike" but the ability to comprehend the texts.
Students study Shakespeare's plays because they are far better than studying inferior popular writing.
Finding what an author means when he writes is to discover the accurate view. Subjectivity needs to be avoided.
Post-Modernist
Just do me one favor, and answer the question...
Daniel Wilcox
I did answer your question and gave you two specific examples--the plays of Shakespeare and Hemingway's famous short story, "A Clean-Well-Lighted Place."
We teachers taught those for many years.
Please give me the name of a scholar who disagrees and I will read his point of view.
I also pointed out that reading comprehension tests aren't subjective.
We are seeking the accurate meanings.
Post-Modernist
The accurate meaning? According to who?
Are you trying to say that you think the point of literary criticism is to try to figure out what meaning the author was intending the reader to understand?<br>
Have I got that right? I want to give you more than ample rope with which to hang yourself.
Daniel Wilcox
In a short story, one has the author's conscious intent--the themes.
One also has the author's unconscious intent. One can see this very much in Hemingway's writing as I pointed out.
One can also check with the actual statements by the authors themselves of what they meant.
Then we need to remember the perspectives of us readers, our varying cultures versus the society and culture in which the story was created.
This is where most schools of literary interpretation come in.
Then there is also the factor, that sometimes a story (by conscious intent or not) is intentionally ambiguous. Or the story has, intriguingly, contradictory themes.
This is the basis for the outstanding work of Great Books Program which came out of the University of Chicago.
Like in any field whether philosophy or evolutionary biology or literature, there will often be disagreements about what the actual meaning is.
But, except for post-modernists, most scholars do think there is real meaning in the facts, essays, songs,and stories of humans.
Otherwise, why bother?!
Likes and dislikes don't need to be taught.
Remember my original example from the hard sciences--of how Gould's conclusions are very different from Harris and Coyne’s.
Yet all 3 do think that evolution has actual identifiable characteristics; they just haven't reached the point of figuring out which of them is correct, or if there are other possible explanations.
Ditto for literature, justice, and social sciences.
Subjectivity needs to be avoided.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
He has earlier declared that all books and morals are subjective and relative.
In a long detailed response, I explain that on the contrary, the study of literature is to find out what the author intended in his work.
Myself, American literature and world literature teacher:
We teachers studied literary criticism for years including the various schools. Our goal is similar to the biological sciences—to find out what is real and accurate.
However in the humanities and social sciences, it's more difficult to get at the accurate meaning than in the hard sciences.
Even in the latter, consider that the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould came to very different conclusions than some other famous biologists based upon the evidence.
For instance, his conclusion based on the facts is that deep time in biology is based in Chance!
He stated that IF reality could come again, the human species probably wouldn't even show up. We humans are here by cosmic “luck.”
In contrast evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and neuroscientist Sam Harris hold that existence, particularly for all humans and our actions would be exactly the same because everything is determined.
Allegedly, according to Harris, even IF the cosmos came again, all of us humans would do exactly the same because we are “puppets” of the cosmos.
Though, as I already said, it is more difficult to find what is true in literature and criminal justice, etc., the reason to study these fields is to find out what is objectively meant.
Subjectivity is to be avoided.
Most people find there is an objective qualitative difference between Shakespeare's plays and popular literature and the media.
For example, some of Ernest Hemingway's short stories are amazingly powerful and complex, far better than most stories, TV shows, and movies. Hemingway scholars are agreed that he hated Christianity, that his famous short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" is objectively brilliant and is a scathing attack against religion.
Post-Modernist:
Although I didn't agree with you on a fair number of things, I had held you in higher esteem than to think you would brazenly try to pass yourself off as knowledgeable about something which you can't fail to know that you know nothing about.
You didn't even want to educate yourself before responding, so you could have plausibly pretended to have known something about it. Instead, you insulted my intelligence by trying to pass off horseshit.
Daniel Wilcox
Hmm...3 universities, 5 school districts, post-graduate work, many years of teaching literature, attending post-grad conferences, etc. all taught us "horseshit."
I'll keep the horseshit;-)
Post-Modernist
Keep digging. My estimation of you just keeps going down. Either you have a problem with honesty, or senile dementia is setting it.
Either way, I'll avoid you in the future, as you're not worthy to debate.
Daniel Wilcox
Understanding the meanings of literature and basic reading comprehension tests don't register "like" or "dislike" but the ability to comprehend the texts.
Students study Shakespeare's plays because they are far better than studying inferior popular writing.
Finding what an author means when he writes is to discover the accurate view. Subjectivity needs to be avoided.
Post-Modernist
Just do me one favor, and answer the question...
Daniel Wilcox
I did answer your question and gave you two specific examples--the plays of Shakespeare and Hemingway's famous short story, "A Clean-Well-Lighted Place."
We teachers taught those for many years.
Please give me the name of a scholar who disagrees and I will read his point of view.
I also pointed out that reading comprehension tests aren't subjective.
We are seeking the accurate meanings.
Post-Modernist
The accurate meaning? According to who?
Are you trying to say that you think the point of literary criticism is to try to figure out what meaning the author was intending the reader to understand?<br>
Have I got that right? I want to give you more than ample rope with which to hang yourself.
Daniel Wilcox
In a short story, one has the author's conscious intent--the themes.
One also has the author's unconscious intent. One can see this very much in Hemingway's writing as I pointed out.
One can also check with the actual statements by the authors themselves of what they meant.
Then we need to remember the perspectives of us readers, our varying cultures versus the society and culture in which the story was created.
This is where most schools of literary interpretation come in.
Then there is also the factor, that sometimes a story (by conscious intent or not) is intentionally ambiguous. Or the story has, intriguingly, contradictory themes.
This is the basis for the outstanding work of Great Books Program which came out of the University of Chicago.
Like in any field whether philosophy or evolutionary biology or literature, there will often be disagreements about what the actual meaning is.
But, except for post-modernists, most scholars do think there is real meaning in the facts, essays, songs,and stories of humans.
Otherwise, why bother?!
Likes and dislikes don't need to be taught.
Remember my original example from the hard sciences--of how Gould's conclusions are very different from Harris and Coyne’s.
Yet all 3 do think that evolution has actual identifiable characteristics; they just haven't reached the point of figuring out which of them is correct, or if there are other possible explanations.
Ditto for literature, justice, and social sciences.
Subjectivity needs to be avoided.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Friday, April 17, 2026
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Imagine George Fox Interacts with modern nontheist Quaker...
Consider somewhere countless individuals of real history and fictional ones exist and interact, coming together from human history, literature, media, and music.
What would Margaret Fell, William Penn, John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, Elias Hicks, Elizabeth Fry, Joel and Hannah Bean, Howard Brinton, Bayard Rustin have to say to each other?
Make your own educated guesses from your reading, viewing, and listening of past fictional and real individuals coming together to converse, act, and reflect.
Place all of the participating individuals in a particular place and time, a fictional or real setting.
Maybe, also have them talk with and interact with other actual famous individuals of history or the present time. For instance, Huck Finn (Mark Twain's novel), Wolf Larsen (Jack London's The Sea Wolf), and Captain Ahab (Melville's Moby Dick)
meet John Proctor (real individual of the Salen Trials) and Hester (Scarlet Letter).
Then they interact with Mayor Zohran Mamdani or President Trump or former President Biden, etc.
Playing around with time and space is a possible option, too. What if the European explorers didn't discover the Americas or the Reformation never occurred or Muhammad never existed
or the American Civil War didn't take place?
Or the current American political leaders show up in 1859...and meet Rhett Butler, Scarlet O'Hara (Mitchell's Gone with the Wind) and interact with Lucretia Mott and Martin Luther King Jr.?
The possibilities in this imaginative literary lounge are limitless:_).
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
What would Margaret Fell, William Penn, John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, Elias Hicks, Elizabeth Fry, Joel and Hannah Bean, Howard Brinton, Bayard Rustin have to say to each other?
Make your own educated guesses from your reading, viewing, and listening of past fictional and real individuals coming together to converse, act, and reflect.
Place all of the participating individuals in a particular place and time, a fictional or real setting.
Maybe, also have them talk with and interact with other actual famous individuals of history or the present time. For instance, Huck Finn (Mark Twain's novel), Wolf Larsen (Jack London's The Sea Wolf), and Captain Ahab (Melville's Moby Dick)
meet John Proctor (real individual of the Salen Trials) and Hester (Scarlet Letter).
Then they interact with Mayor Zohran Mamdani or President Trump or former President Biden, etc.
Playing around with time and space is a possible option, too. What if the European explorers didn't discover the Americas or the Reformation never occurred or Muhammad never existed
or the American Civil War didn't take place?
Or the current American political leaders show up in 1859...and meet Rhett Butler, Scarlet O'Hara (Mitchell's Gone with the Wind) and interact with Lucretia Mott and Martin Luther King Jr.?
The possibilities in this imaginative literary lounge are limitless:_).
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Friday, March 13, 2026
For my websites of poetry, articles, and fiction
http://www.psalmsyawpshowls.com/
https://shimmeringpebblesinthelightstream.blogspot.com/
http://lastthings.weebly.com/
http://lightwaveseeker.weebly.com/
http://planktonpelican.weebly.com/
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/
In the LIGHT of the GOOD, the TRUE, the JUST,
Daniel Wilcox
https://shimmeringpebblesinthelightstream.blogspot.com/
http://lastthings.weebly.com/
http://lightwaveseeker.weebly.com/
http://planktonpelican.weebly.com/
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/
In the LIGHT of the GOOD, the TRUE, the JUST,
Daniel Wilcox
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Saturday, February 7, 2026
In the start of a new year, take a look at the wise reflections of Quaker Howard H. Brinton
Religion, spirituality, social actions, politics, etc.! so often fail.
All human thoughts and actions, seem given to near constant divisive fragmentation--to one extreme or another; almost always leaving us humans unbalanced, often distorted in our quest for truth.
As Quaker Howard H. Brinton insightfully explained in Friends for 300 Years this fragmentation even happens to renewal movements including the Friends who came into being for the very purpose of regaining the wholistic truth.
Yet the Quaker movement itself has swung amongst 4 different poles, seldom seeming to walk in balance and wholeness.
An excerpt by Brinton:
--
CHAPTER 10
Quaker Thought and the Present
"Through the three centuries of Quaker history the four primary elements present in all religion have at different times exerted their influence in varying degrees."
"During the first century and a half mysticism and evangelicalism were in balance in the group as a whole though many individuals tended to stress one or the other;
during the nineteenth century mysticism and evangelicalism were in conflict, each pressing the other to extremes in the group as a whole, though in many individuals the two were in balance;
and during the past half century rationalism and humanitarianism have assumed greater prominence, sometimes becoming dominant, though here again there are some individuals in whom the four tendencies are in balance."
"The best type of religion is one in which the mystical, the evangelical, the rational and the social are so related that each exercises a restraint on the others.
Too exclusive an emphasis on mysticism results in a religion which is individualistic, subjective and vague;
too dominant an evangelicalism results in religion which is authoritarian, creedal and external;
too great an emphasis on rationalism results in a cold, intellectual religion which appeals only to the few;
too engrossing a devotion to the social gospel results in a religion which, in improving the outer environment, ignores defects of the inner life which cause the outer disorder."
"In Quakerism the optimum is not equality in rank of the four elements. The mystical is basic."
--
Brinton goes on to warn against "vitalism which worships the life-force in its biological sense" and the other distortions of true spirituality.
About the only point where I disagree with Brinton is when he says the 4 qualities "each exercise a restraint on the others."
It is rather that when most open to the LIGHT, the 4 parts of true spiritual reality relate/commune, giving a redeeming uplift of each other.
Read Friends for 300 Years (it has been updated to Friends for 350 Years)
and be not only intellectually enlightened, but raised up in the LIGHT!
Daniel Wilcox
All human thoughts and actions, seem given to near constant divisive fragmentation--to one extreme or another; almost always leaving us humans unbalanced, often distorted in our quest for truth.
As Quaker Howard H. Brinton insightfully explained in Friends for 300 Years this fragmentation even happens to renewal movements including the Friends who came into being for the very purpose of regaining the wholistic truth.
An excerpt by Brinton:
--
CHAPTER 10
Quaker Thought and the Present
"Through the three centuries of Quaker history the four primary elements present in all religion have at different times exerted their influence in varying degrees."
"During the first century and a half mysticism and evangelicalism were in balance in the group as a whole though many individuals tended to stress one or the other;
during the nineteenth century mysticism and evangelicalism were in conflict, each pressing the other to extremes in the group as a whole, though in many individuals the two were in balance;
and during the past half century rationalism and humanitarianism have assumed greater prominence, sometimes becoming dominant, though here again there are some individuals in whom the four tendencies are in balance."
"The best type of religion is one in which the mystical, the evangelical, the rational and the social are so related that each exercises a restraint on the others.
Too exclusive an emphasis on mysticism results in a religion which is individualistic, subjective and vague;
too dominant an evangelicalism results in religion which is authoritarian, creedal and external;
too great an emphasis on rationalism results in a cold, intellectual religion which appeals only to the few;
too engrossing a devotion to the social gospel results in a religion which, in improving the outer environment, ignores defects of the inner life which cause the outer disorder."
"In Quakerism the optimum is not equality in rank of the four elements. The mystical is basic."
--
Brinton goes on to warn against "vitalism which worships the life-force in its biological sense" and the other distortions of true spirituality.
About the only point where I disagree with Brinton is when he says the 4 qualities "each exercise a restraint on the others."
It is rather that when most open to the LIGHT, the 4 parts of true spiritual reality relate/commune, giving a redeeming uplift of each other.
Read Friends for 300 Years (it has been updated to Friends for 350 Years)
and be not only intellectually enlightened, but raised up in the LIGHT!
Daniel Wilcox
Saturday, December 20, 2025
Beauty of Quilting at Christmas
Here's a Christmas quilt to bring beauty, joy, merriness, worship, and thankfulness this Christmas.
It was created by my sweetheart, Betsy. She calls it Christmas Sparkle.
(I've added, Christmas Sparkling Vividly.)
It was created by my sweetheart, Betsy. She calls it Christmas Sparkle.
(I've added, Christmas Sparkling Vividly.)
Friday, December 12, 2025
a "son of man" present
A "son of man"
So, awe hoped the birthing
of G_d's message, 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 cruel nails,
every human's done wrongs;
Farthest reach of best hope
this Apocalypso dancer
crosses our tragic history,
Morning us night-less;
he compassions earth
ever peopling progress,
Emptying the pitiless bottom
zeroing down apollyon,
bringing ever's new 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, the Kind, the Caring,
Daniel Wilcox
So, awe hoped the birthing
of G_d's message, 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 cruel nails,
every human's done wrongs;
Farthest reach of best hope
this Apocalypso dancer
crosses our tragic history,
Morning us night-less;
he compassions earth
ever peopling progress,
Emptying the pitiless bottom
zeroing down apollyon,
bringing ever's new 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, the Kind, the Caring,
Daniel Wilcox
Monday, November 17, 2025
Can the Lamb’s War ever make a difference with Muslims, Jews, Christians?
Can the Lamb’s War ever make a difference with Muslims, Jews, Christians?
For over 10 years, Russian Orthodox Christians including its leader have strongly supported Russia’s horrific invasion and slaughter of innocent civilian Ukrainians.
Opposing Muslims are engaged in the constant murder of untold numbers of Sudanese, and many thousands of Nigerians.
Muslim HAMAS refuse to lay down its terrorism, slaughter, raping, stealing, lying, abusing, killing continuing its slaughter of the last 40 years.
Rightwing Jewish Israel refuses to share and repent of its own past terrorism Even now Israeli settlers attack innocent Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, destroying their old olive trees, burning cars, abusing killing (while the Israeli Army stands by doing nothing!)
And countless Americans in this 21st century support these various sides in their immoral and unjust slaughters.
The tiny voice of Quakers (and other Christian pacifists) still are convinced of the truth that all war is evil and are committed to nonviolence, peace, sharing, meticulous honesty, opposition to false ideologies (whether of the Right or the Left).
But most of the time, the present seems unhopeful.
The 100 -year-old grievous injustice and tragedy—indeed evil-- Palestine/Israel is so very complicated, with both sides guilty to various degrees of blame.
However, though at least many Jewish Israelis are committed to only defense, and totally oppose the slaughter of Palestinian civilians,
but HAMAS and other Palestinians are up to 80% committed to HAMAS’s massacre of Jewish civilians, (even infants and children) Of October7th and other forms of injustice.
The important phrase, by George Fox, “the Lamb’s War” sounds great, but countless evil failures since the 1600’s are in the ‘devilish’-details of how grossly committed every nation is to putting itself FIRST, and thus justifying every war.
There are no quick answers for the extremely complex situation. For instance, I did live in Palestine/Israel in 1974, worked on a Jewish kibbutz, stayed briefly with a Palestinian family who befriended me in Nablus, and have read extensively books by both sides, etc.
For a somewhat balanced history which shows both Jewish and Muslim terrorism in the last 100 years, read Righteous Victims by Historian Benny Morris.
Conscientious peace-seekers try to live out the “Lamb’s war.” This includes the Friends School in Ramallah, nonviolent Palestinians at Bethlehem Bible College, etc.
Eli Chacour, a Christian priest, as documented in BLOOD BROTHERS, his memoir, has spent years practicing the Lamb’s war. He gives out the Good News to all, runs a high school of several thousands, for all peoples--Christian, Muslim, Druse, Jew, Atheist.
Chacour's father, a Palestinian said that they needed to love
the Jews (when the Jews were escaping to the M.E.) but later
the Israeli army kidnapped him and Chacour's brother
and dumped them in a foreign country, then they blew up
their Catholic church and drove all of them
out of their town. Chacour and others have never been allowed by the Israeli government to return to their home! Yet Chacour still shows Jesus’ love to the Jewish people!
In years past, the famous “Brother Andrew” tried to bring Jew and Arab together. He even visited a few HAMAS leaders and shared Jesus’ way.
Most Palestinian Muslims and Israelis Jews refuse to truly seek just peace.
Tragically, many American Christians support one side of war or the other.
Books worthy of reading:
Righteous Victims (900 page fair history) of Palestine-Israel in the last 100 years
by Benny Morria
Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh and Anthony David
Blessed are the Peacemakers by the former assistant mayor
of Ramallah (don't remember the name right now)
Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour
We Belong to the Land by Elias Chacour
Peace in the Light of the Lamb’s war,
Daniel Wilcox
Opposing Muslims are engaged in the constant murder of untold numbers of Sudanese, and many thousands of Nigerians.
Muslim HAMAS refuse to lay down its terrorism, slaughter, raping, stealing, lying, abusing, killing continuing its slaughter of the last 40 years.
Rightwing Jewish Israel refuses to share and repent of its own past terrorism Even now Israeli settlers attack innocent Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, destroying their old olive trees, burning cars, abusing killing (while the Israeli Army stands by doing nothing!)
And countless Americans in this 21st century support these various sides in their immoral and unjust slaughters.
The tiny voice of Quakers (and other Christian pacifists) still are convinced of the truth that all war is evil and are committed to nonviolence, peace, sharing, meticulous honesty, opposition to false ideologies (whether of the Right or the Left).
But most of the time, the present seems unhopeful.
The 100 -year-old grievous injustice and tragedy—indeed evil-- Palestine/Israel is so very complicated, with both sides guilty to various degrees of blame.
However, though at least many Jewish Israelis are committed to only defense, and totally oppose the slaughter of Palestinian civilians,
but HAMAS and other Palestinians are up to 80% committed to HAMAS’s massacre of Jewish civilians, (even infants and children) Of October7th and other forms of injustice.
The important phrase, by George Fox, “the Lamb’s War” sounds great, but countless evil failures since the 1600’s are in the ‘devilish’-details of how grossly committed every nation is to putting itself FIRST, and thus justifying every war.
There are no quick answers for the extremely complex situation. For instance, I did live in Palestine/Israel in 1974, worked on a Jewish kibbutz, stayed briefly with a Palestinian family who befriended me in Nablus, and have read extensively books by both sides, etc.
For a somewhat balanced history which shows both Jewish and Muslim terrorism in the last 100 years, read Righteous Victims by Historian Benny Morris.
Conscientious peace-seekers try to live out the “Lamb’s war.” This includes the Friends School in Ramallah, nonviolent Palestinians at Bethlehem Bible College, etc.
Eli Chacour, a Christian priest, as documented in BLOOD BROTHERS, his memoir, has spent years practicing the Lamb’s war. He gives out the Good News to all, runs a high school of several thousands, for all peoples--Christian, Muslim, Druse, Jew, Atheist.
Chacour's father, a Palestinian said that they needed to love
the Jews (when the Jews were escaping to the M.E.) but later
the Israeli army kidnapped him and Chacour's brother
and dumped them in a foreign country, then they blew up
their Catholic church and drove all of them
out of their town. Chacour and others have never been allowed by the Israeli government to return to their home! Yet Chacour still shows Jesus’ love to the Jewish people!
In years past, the famous “Brother Andrew” tried to bring Jew and Arab together. He even visited a few HAMAS leaders and shared Jesus’ way.
Most Palestinian Muslims and Israelis Jews refuse to truly seek just peace.
Tragically, many American Christians support one side of war or the other.
Books worthy of reading:
Righteous Victims (900 page fair history) of Palestine-Israel in the last 100 years
by Benny Morria
Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh and Anthony David
Blessed are the Peacemakers by the former assistant mayor
of Ramallah (don't remember the name right now)
Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour
We Belong to the Land by Elias Chacour
Peace in the Light of the Lamb’s war,
Daniel Wilcox
Thursday, October 16, 2025
HOPE from Friends Journal about Ramallah Friends School
Don’t miss reading the new article in FRIENDS JOURNAL on Ramallah Friends School about how differing peoples can bring new hope there.
FROM
Growing Hearts of Compassion
By Cliff Loesch
A Quaker Witness in the West Bank
FRIENDS JOURNAL (Go to that magazine to read the article.)
Brief quote: “This past April, I visited Ramallah with a group of eight people from the United States and England who assembled with the common goal of serving as a Quaker pastoral presence for the Ramallah Friends School (RFS) community during these difficult days..
“…four different students reported on the visits of the teams to each of the four villages and summarized their findings. One of the presenters was Waseem… He told me that the first people their team spoke to in this village were the priest, an Orthodox Christian, and the imam. The basic message they heard from each of these religious leaders was, “We are friends! We spend time together! Our congregations do things together! We celebrate each other’s festivals!” This was really good news to hear….”
Don’t miss this hopeful article by Quaker leader Cliff Loesch in FRIENDS JOURNAL.
In the Light of Hope, Good, Equal, True, Just,
Daniel Wilcox
FROM
Growing Hearts of Compassion
By Cliff Loesch
A Quaker Witness in the West Bank
FRIENDS JOURNAL (Go to that magazine to read the article.)
Brief quote: “This past April, I visited Ramallah with a group of eight people from the United States and England who assembled with the common goal of serving as a Quaker pastoral presence for the Ramallah Friends School (RFS) community during these difficult days..
“…four different students reported on the visits of the teams to each of the four villages and summarized their findings. One of the presenters was Waseem… He told me that the first people their team spoke to in this village were the priest, an Orthodox Christian, and the imam. The basic message they heard from each of these religious leaders was, “We are friends! We spend time together! Our congregations do things together! We celebrate each other’s festivals!” This was really good news to hear….”
Don’t miss this hopeful article by Quaker leader Cliff Loesch in FRIENDS JOURNAL.
In the Light of Hope, Good, Equal, True, Just,
Daniel Wilcox
Monday, September 29, 2025
Human History is Mostly an endless TELL of what NOT to do...
Our moral sensitivity about good versus evil on various actions didn’t come to us via tradition, revealed religion, our taste buds, the desire of our eyes, or some personal quirk, and certainly not from human instinct or matter and energy.
Moral concern, moral realism, is a transcendent “ought,” not a subjective “like” or “dislike.”
When it comes to the moral compass we are talking objective, transcendent truth. (Well, many humans are).
Other millions of modern people claim that morals, like personal preferences, are subjective, relative whether of the individual or a group or a nation.
But I wouldn’t characterize my own moral struggles of the last 67 years as battling over what I like or dislike. For instance, I like salmon, but can’t stand cow tongue (which I was required to eat as a kid growing up in Nebraska because we got over half a cow each year from our grandfather, and had to eat even the rubbery tongue and the gross tail). To each his own, when it comes to “like.”
In contrast, immoral actions (and attitudes) such as slavery, war, torture, molestation, rape, inequality, oppression, prejudice, greed, lust, promiscuity, jealousy, gossip, theft, lying, dishonesty, porn, obscenity, profanity, coveting, jealousy, selfishness, egotism, gossip, human sacrifice, cannibalism…most people will agree, (at least when these actions are done to them) that they are wrong.
In most cases of human moral choice, humans of the present generation don’t need to reinvent the moral wheel of truth. We’ve had the basics of moral realism since the some society’s early bronze age rules, and the Jewish 10 Commandments,
since Buddhism’s moral precepts, since Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, James, and many other passages from other holy books for thousands of years!
Where is the failing then?
In the carrying out of the moral truths, in the applying of the truths we expect others to observe in how we ourselves behave.
True sometimes, our moral blindness leads us astray such as when the Christian leader Robert E. Lee, for instance, spoke of how we should love our enemies as Christ said, yet was himself largely responsible for hundreds of thousands of humans being slaughtered, and many hundreds of thousands being wounded (and by devout Christians in the North who refused to let Southerners secede)!
What was their excuse?
Lee did this in defense against the invading army, the Union forces who invaded his state, his county, his home (even stealing family treasures).
Or when Christian Americans slaughter nearly half a million human civilians and declare this justified!
Or when Christian manufacturers put Bible verses on the barrel of assault guns which are used to kill others! Or when...
Or when ‘revealed religious leaders state that they should love their enemies personally, but that they ought to hate and destroy their enemies for God and country.
Yes, there are multi millions of cases back through religious histories including creedal Christian history which show humans of good will who violated the most basic of moral laws because they did it in the name of Jesus or...
And then there plenty of modern secular leaders who claim there are no moral truths.
In contrast, there are flawed moral leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. who state moral law is transcendent (fMLK—"I’m here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Yes, eternally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate. Yes, That’s right. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. (Amen) It’s wrong in America, it’s wrong in Germany, it’s wrong in Russia, it’s wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it’s wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, (That’s right) and it always will be wrong.
"(That’s right) It’s wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. (Yeah) No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it’s wrong. (Yes) It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It’s wrong in every age and it’s wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute….And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself. (Amen)… This universe hinges on moral foundations… God has made the universe to be based on a moral law.” from “Rediscovering Lost Values”)
How can we know--prove--for sure that some actions are inherently evil, some transcendently good?
We can’t, unfortunately. We can’t prove the truth of moral realism. We can’t know. Not in the sense of factuality such as that 1,000 plus 1,000 equals 2,000 or in the sense that we can verify that the earth is a sphere, not a flat land.
In fact, even more disconcertingly, there is some experiential evidence which seems to deny the truth of moral realism.
But (with the exception of some hard Atheists, some Augustinian-Reformed and Islamic leaders), the vast majority of humans at present do think slavery is inherently evil—that the claim and act of “owning” another human being as a tool, as an object (rather than a person with inherent worth) is very immoral. Such an institution as slavery denies equality. But we need to keep in mind that for thousands of years equality wasn’t considered truth. Even as recently as 150 years ago famous Calvinist theologians such as R.L. Dabney wrote extensively (even after the Civil War ended!) showing that there was nothing wrong with slavery.
Furthermore, secular leaders and scientists have long held that “equality” doesn’t exist in nature, that existence is based on “survival,” this most famously stated in the theory of natural selection.
Simply observe how cats treat birds or what happens when dogs, even on leases spot each other in the street—seldom any equality. It’s usually about power, not sharing.
Even in the Jewish Bible the law emphasized that if an owner of a slave beats his slave so the slave dies a couple of days later, there is to be no punishment of the owner because the slave was his “property” Exodus 21:20-21 NAB
And the Torah emphasizes that a Hebrew slave owner has the right to pass slaves down to his kids (Leviticus 25:44-46 HCSB. But what then?
If there is no basis for objective ethics in nature and religious books often give the wrong answers, how do we go about living morally?
We discover and moral truth in a way like a tiny coral lives atop a coral reef:-)
In this existence we billions of human primates are but small finite coral on a great barrier coral reef which holds back the onslaught of Nature’s typhoon rampages, human instinctive desires bloated by selfishness and pride.
Deism, Fundamentalism, Friends-Brethren, key Scriptural passages on moral realism in such as 1 Corinthians 13, the Sermon on the Mount, James, etc.
Of course, this coral reef perception/awareness isn’t always upward and beautiful. As cited above, spiritual blindness can mislead us such as when Christians over the centuries have slaughtered millions of other humans in the name of Jesus Christ (such as when creedal Roman Catholic Bernard of C., who was known as the speaker of love called on Catholics to slaughter in the name of Jesus and when Martin Luther called on the princes to kill, slay, and “wash their hands in the peasants’ blood.” And, when most Christian leaders burned heretics at the stake, etc.
And, currently when “born-again evangelical Christians” advocate immoral actions in the name of politics which are contrary to Jesus’ clear moral truths. Still, over all in every generation, some humans do experience the blessed hope of moral realism and share moral good actions and oppose all the immoral and unjust actions.
Let’s take a more specific look at the issue of equality and how I ended up, a tiny living coral in the early 1950’s coming to a strong stand for equality, even though so many millions of Christians during that time actually were very against equality. And, even today in the 21st century the Russian Orthodox Church opposes human equality and justify the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian civilians!
It’s all about looking backward down the reef of moral realism.
Secondly, this question is one of theodicy, too.
We could ask why God didn’t supply humans with accurate moral guidance from the beginning some 200,000 years ago?
But then, God. also didn’t give us knowledge of disease and how to overcome it, and thus protect billions of humans from excruciating deaths in epidemics such as the Black Plague.
For whatever reason, God requires us human primates to seek, and study, and find solutions on our own. Moral realism is a ‘coral reef’ experience to be sought with reason, experience, intuition, and history.
Like Martin Luther King pointed out, “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him.”
In the LIGHT,
Daniel Wilcox
Moral concern, moral realism, is a transcendent “ought,” not a subjective “like” or “dislike.”
When it comes to the moral compass we are talking objective, transcendent truth. (Well, many humans are).
Other millions of modern people claim that morals, like personal preferences, are subjective, relative whether of the individual or a group or a nation.
But I wouldn’t characterize my own moral struggles of the last 67 years as battling over what I like or dislike. For instance, I like salmon, but can’t stand cow tongue (which I was required to eat as a kid growing up in Nebraska because we got over half a cow each year from our grandfather, and had to eat even the rubbery tongue and the gross tail). To each his own, when it comes to “like.”
In contrast, immoral actions (and attitudes) such as slavery, war, torture, molestation, rape, inequality, oppression, prejudice, greed, lust, promiscuity, jealousy, gossip, theft, lying, dishonesty, porn, obscenity, profanity, coveting, jealousy, selfishness, egotism, gossip, human sacrifice, cannibalism…most people will agree, (at least when these actions are done to them) that they are wrong.
In most cases of human moral choice, humans of the present generation don’t need to reinvent the moral wheel of truth. We’ve had the basics of moral realism since the some society’s early bronze age rules, and the Jewish 10 Commandments,
since Buddhism’s moral precepts, since Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, James, and many other passages from other holy books for thousands of years!
Where is the failing then?
In the carrying out of the moral truths, in the applying of the truths we expect others to observe in how we ourselves behave.
True sometimes, our moral blindness leads us astray such as when the Christian leader Robert E. Lee, for instance, spoke of how we should love our enemies as Christ said, yet was himself largely responsible for hundreds of thousands of humans being slaughtered, and many hundreds of thousands being wounded (and by devout Christians in the North who refused to let Southerners secede)!
What was their excuse?
Lee did this in defense against the invading army, the Union forces who invaded his state, his county, his home (even stealing family treasures).
Or when Christian Americans slaughter nearly half a million human civilians and declare this justified!
Or when Christian manufacturers put Bible verses on the barrel of assault guns which are used to kill others! Or when...
Or when ‘revealed religious leaders state that they should love their enemies personally, but that they ought to hate and destroy their enemies for God and country.
Yes, there are multi millions of cases back through religious histories including creedal Christian history which show humans of good will who violated the most basic of moral laws because they did it in the name of Jesus or...
And then there plenty of modern secular leaders who claim there are no moral truths.
In contrast, there are flawed moral leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. who state moral law is transcendent (fMLK—"I’m here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Yes, eternally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate. Yes, That’s right. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. (Amen) It’s wrong in America, it’s wrong in Germany, it’s wrong in Russia, it’s wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it’s wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, (That’s right) and it always will be wrong.
"(That’s right) It’s wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. (Yeah) No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it’s wrong. (Yes) It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It’s wrong in every age and it’s wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute….And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself. (Amen)… This universe hinges on moral foundations… God has made the universe to be based on a moral law.” from “Rediscovering Lost Values”)
How can we know--prove--for sure that some actions are inherently evil, some transcendently good?
We can’t, unfortunately. We can’t prove the truth of moral realism. We can’t know. Not in the sense of factuality such as that 1,000 plus 1,000 equals 2,000 or in the sense that we can verify that the earth is a sphere, not a flat land.
In fact, even more disconcertingly, there is some experiential evidence which seems to deny the truth of moral realism.
But (with the exception of some hard Atheists, some Augustinian-Reformed and Islamic leaders), the vast majority of humans at present do think slavery is inherently evil—that the claim and act of “owning” another human being as a tool, as an object (rather than a person with inherent worth) is very immoral. Such an institution as slavery denies equality. But we need to keep in mind that for thousands of years equality wasn’t considered truth. Even as recently as 150 years ago famous Calvinist theologians such as R.L. Dabney wrote extensively (even after the Civil War ended!) showing that there was nothing wrong with slavery.
Furthermore, secular leaders and scientists have long held that “equality” doesn’t exist in nature, that existence is based on “survival,” this most famously stated in the theory of natural selection.
Simply observe how cats treat birds or what happens when dogs, even on leases spot each other in the street—seldom any equality. It’s usually about power, not sharing.
Even in the Jewish Bible the law emphasized that if an owner of a slave beats his slave so the slave dies a couple of days later, there is to be no punishment of the owner because the slave was his “property” Exodus 21:20-21 NAB
And the Torah emphasizes that a Hebrew slave owner has the right to pass slaves down to his kids (Leviticus 25:44-46 HCSB. But what then?
If there is no basis for objective ethics in nature and religious books often give the wrong answers, how do we go about living morally?
We discover and moral truth in a way like a tiny coral lives atop a coral reef:-)
In this existence we billions of human primates are but small finite coral on a great barrier coral reef which holds back the onslaught of Nature’s typhoon rampages, human instinctive desires bloated by selfishness and pride.
Deism, Fundamentalism, Friends-Brethren, key Scriptural passages on moral realism in such as 1 Corinthians 13, the Sermon on the Mount, James, etc.
Of course, this coral reef perception/awareness isn’t always upward and beautiful. As cited above, spiritual blindness can mislead us such as when Christians over the centuries have slaughtered millions of other humans in the name of Jesus Christ (such as when creedal Roman Catholic Bernard of C., who was known as the speaker of love called on Catholics to slaughter in the name of Jesus and when Martin Luther called on the princes to kill, slay, and “wash their hands in the peasants’ blood.” And, when most Christian leaders burned heretics at the stake, etc.
And, currently when “born-again evangelical Christians” advocate immoral actions in the name of politics which are contrary to Jesus’ clear moral truths. Still, over all in every generation, some humans do experience the blessed hope of moral realism and share moral good actions and oppose all the immoral and unjust actions.
Let’s take a more specific look at the issue of equality and how I ended up, a tiny living coral in the early 1950’s coming to a strong stand for equality, even though so many millions of Christians during that time actually were very against equality. And, even today in the 21st century the Russian Orthodox Church opposes human equality and justify the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian civilians!
It’s all about looking backward down the reef of moral realism.
Secondly, this question is one of theodicy, too.
We could ask why God didn’t supply humans with accurate moral guidance from the beginning some 200,000 years ago?
But then, God. also didn’t give us knowledge of disease and how to overcome it, and thus protect billions of humans from excruciating deaths in epidemics such as the Black Plague.
For whatever reason, God requires us human primates to seek, and study, and find solutions on our own. Moral realism is a ‘coral reef’ experience to be sought with reason, experience, intuition, and history.
Like Martin Luther King pointed out, “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him.”
In the LIGHT,
Daniel Wilcox
Friday, August 29, 2025
Presence Transcends
Presence transcends
Drowned in family tragedy, despairing, distraught--
that morning earlier;
thus down encumbered,
he came to worship meeting, but not speaking
of his family’s severe circumstance, kept that hidden;
But in the midst
of open expectant communion, Transcendent Light, broke through tragedy— when another Quaker suddenly started singing,
a cappella spiritual chorus--
a deep songing deepening within;
intense meaning lifted us gathered in invisible communion--
vivid encouraging Hope;
That sacred chorus didn’t negate shattered-glass
lives, nor end countless distraught
circumstances and heartaches--
but
Oh, what Hope
Fulled us up within.
In the Light of the Good, the True, the Just,
Daniel Wilcox
Drowned in family tragedy, despairing, distraught--
that morning earlier;
thus down encumbered,
he came to worship meeting, but not speaking
of his family’s severe circumstance, kept that hidden;
But in the midst
of open expectant communion, Transcendent Light, broke through tragedy— when another Quaker suddenly started singing,
a cappella spiritual chorus--
a deep songing deepening within;
intense meaning lifted us gathered in invisible communion--
vivid encouraging Hope;
That sacred chorus didn’t negate shattered-glass
lives, nor end countless distraught
circumstances and heartaches--
but
Oh, what Hope
Fulled us up within.
In the Light of the Good, the True, the Just,
Daniel Wilcox
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
The Nature of Human Children
What is an infant?
Don't ask theologians or become entangled in illusions and delusions, long-winded metaphysical splits/spit;-) of religious thinking. Even some Quakers in the U.S. and Britain have been adopting Augustinian untruths about young humans!
Let us, instead, realize each baby is a gift from the Light.
Human beings at birth are neither divine nor depraved. A baby is a natural offspring of a primate species. Uniquely, she has the potential to grow spiritually--to seek the Good, the True, the Just...and to create herself and bring newness and improvements into existence. Human primates have been created with a sense of morality and transcencence.
What a wonder each infant is!
I recently held my 6th new born grandchild. Experientially, the moment was blessed. How perfect her tiny living body. What a true gift from the Light.
But a little later, when she got hungry, wow, what lungs and what a puckered face she suddenly developed!
I must admit, I don't think something called a "soul" enters a baby at conception, or for that matter anytime later.
At conception a new life begins with amazing characteristics from the genes of her/his ancestors. At conception, the life appears to have no awareness. But brain wave activity begins early in the womb.
Even after birth, however, a baby is sort of an eating and pooping blob;-) She has awareness, but probably not much except she wants to be fed, and fed now!
Then gradually her awareness grows month after month. Finally she becomes self-conscious. Then later her sense of conscience develops.
Finally, an awareness of her finiteness and the mystery of existence comes into her consciousness.
No, a baby doesn’t come into the world a walking, talking, mentally active philosopher/theologian/moralist/saint.
On the contrary she is a living breathing consciousness at the most simple level.
As she grows in the next 6 to 7 years in her consciousness, self-awareness, and her moral conscience develops with a sense of ought, then she will become a moral and spiritual individual who acts. Sometimes she will fail, sometimes "miss the mark."
But even then she is still an innocent child struggling to function and to understand and to fulfill needs and desires and hopes, and the demands of the big people in her life.
Is not this the stage that Jesus referred to when he said those who enter the Kingdom of God must do so as a little child? And where he said to people to let little children come to him for of such is the Kingdom?
And this was my own personal experience—when so young. I don’t remember being a sinnig child that many religionists claim all babies and small children are.
Instead, as far back as I can remember, I had very deep desires to do good, to be good, to know God and to love him. And I had a lot of childlike wonder questions about God, life, others…always asking why about everything:-)
Of course the slither of wrong thought, wrong action, wrong living does come to us all, but not yet.
A child's awareness will grow if she is introduced to God and is shown her responsibility to share, to think of others and their needs, even though she still doesn’t voluntarily give outwardly if it is to her own privation.
Finally, the moral consciousness kicks in mid-childhood. At each given moment, there will be a tussle between her babyhood past (all spontaneous need and desire) and her adulthood future (potentially all give and bliss).
At that moment by moment juncture—that possibility moment--she must make continual ethical, spiritual decisions. She is finite and so will make mistakes and fail. She is learning in her emotions, her mind, her conscience, and her body as she moves through time.
Her choices are a much more complicated version of the way she learned to walk and to talk 3 years earlier--by trial and error.
But now a new possibility rears its ugly or saintly head. If she doesn’t continue to develop holistically, widening outwardly her care, her helpfulness, her compassion, then she slows, stalls, or even regresses backward to a total need/want level.
However, since she isn’t an infant but has the outer body and will and growing mental ability of a 6 or 7 year old, her regression hurts herself and others.
To try and fulfill life as a growing child, by returning to the barely conscious self-focused life of an infant actually distorts life and will bring harm to others to varying degrees.
Continued growing, in contrast, takes her through new stages of human development and new challenges. Each developmental advance brings new ethical and spiritual choices—either good or bad, advancing or regressing or a combination of both.
As anyone knows, when climbing a mountain, the higher one goes the more dangerous the climb becomes—not because the action of climbing mountains is evil, or because individuals who climb mountains are depraved sinful beings, but because the very nature of going "higher" also offers more options of choosing.
Some of the ways are wrong, even could cause one to plummet to the bottom. Some of the ways are right, and lead toward the peak.
When a small child cries when she hungry or grabs another child's food that doesn’t show she is sinning.
On the contrary, that is how G_D created children. If a 4-year-old child throws a tantrum and takes her little brother’s bottle because she thinks she isn’t getting enough attention from her parents, while her action is wrong and to be corrected, she hasn't failed because she hasn’t developed enough in her conscious awareness and moral conscience to make altruistic decisions.
However, if at 8, she hides her little brother’s medicine, because she wants all the attention instead, this is very wrong because by then her mental, moral conscience has developed enough to know that her action isn't the right way to get attention.
And, besides, by this point she should be widening her compassion and care for others out beyond her own needs and desires.
If at 18, she steals her younger sister’s boyfriend to build up her own ego, very deep wrong has occurred. By 22, if she joins with her countrymen and demonizes another country and lies, steals, and kills the enemies, we do have actions of evil;
just as if in contrast,
she joins an outreach organization such as Habitat for Humanity or World Vision and sacrifices her time, talent, and money and inspires her younger sister to do so as well; then we have actions of goodness.
Then the two sisters think of a way to get other people in their neighborhood, school, and city to get involved. One such inspired girl, about 13 years of age, raised thousands of dollars for starving, hurting people in a far off country.
See how the moral growth of human beings happens. A human being is in process from simple surviving to becoming the liver of moral truth.
Now that is the beginning of good news. Reminds me of several of Jesus’ moral speeches...
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Let us, instead, realize each baby is a gift from the Light.
Human beings at birth are neither divine nor depraved. A baby is a natural offspring of a primate species. Uniquely, she has the potential to grow spiritually--to seek the Good, the True, the Just...and to create herself and bring newness and improvements into existence. Human primates have been created with a sense of morality and transcencence.
What a wonder each infant is!
I recently held my 6th new born grandchild. Experientially, the moment was blessed. How perfect her tiny living body. What a true gift from the Light.
But a little later, when she got hungry, wow, what lungs and what a puckered face she suddenly developed!
I must admit, I don't think something called a "soul" enters a baby at conception, or for that matter anytime later.
At conception a new life begins with amazing characteristics from the genes of her/his ancestors. At conception, the life appears to have no awareness. But brain wave activity begins early in the womb.
Even after birth, however, a baby is sort of an eating and pooping blob;-) She has awareness, but probably not much except she wants to be fed, and fed now!
Then gradually her awareness grows month after month. Finally she becomes self-conscious. Then later her sense of conscience develops.
Finally, an awareness of her finiteness and the mystery of existence comes into her consciousness.
No, a baby doesn’t come into the world a walking, talking, mentally active philosopher/theologian/moralist/saint.
On the contrary she is a living breathing consciousness at the most simple level.
As she grows in the next 6 to 7 years in her consciousness, self-awareness, and her moral conscience develops with a sense of ought, then she will become a moral and spiritual individual who acts. Sometimes she will fail, sometimes "miss the mark."
But even then she is still an innocent child struggling to function and to understand and to fulfill needs and desires and hopes, and the demands of the big people in her life.
Is not this the stage that Jesus referred to when he said those who enter the Kingdom of God must do so as a little child? And where he said to people to let little children come to him for of such is the Kingdom?
And this was my own personal experience—when so young. I don’t remember being a sinnig child that many religionists claim all babies and small children are.
Instead, as far back as I can remember, I had very deep desires to do good, to be good, to know God and to love him. And I had a lot of childlike wonder questions about God, life, others…always asking why about everything:-)
Of course the slither of wrong thought, wrong action, wrong living does come to us all, but not yet.
A child's awareness will grow if she is introduced to God and is shown her responsibility to share, to think of others and their needs, even though she still doesn’t voluntarily give outwardly if it is to her own privation.
Finally, the moral consciousness kicks in mid-childhood. At each given moment, there will be a tussle between her babyhood past (all spontaneous need and desire) and her adulthood future (potentially all give and bliss).
At that moment by moment juncture—that possibility moment--she must make continual ethical, spiritual decisions. She is finite and so will make mistakes and fail. She is learning in her emotions, her mind, her conscience, and her body as she moves through time.
Her choices are a much more complicated version of the way she learned to walk and to talk 3 years earlier--by trial and error.
But now a new possibility rears its ugly or saintly head. If she doesn’t continue to develop holistically, widening outwardly her care, her helpfulness, her compassion, then she slows, stalls, or even regresses backward to a total need/want level.
However, since she isn’t an infant but has the outer body and will and growing mental ability of a 6 or 7 year old, her regression hurts herself and others.
To try and fulfill life as a growing child, by returning to the barely conscious self-focused life of an infant actually distorts life and will bring harm to others to varying degrees.
Continued growing, in contrast, takes her through new stages of human development and new challenges. Each developmental advance brings new ethical and spiritual choices—either good or bad, advancing or regressing or a combination of both.
As anyone knows, when climbing a mountain, the higher one goes the more dangerous the climb becomes—not because the action of climbing mountains is evil, or because individuals who climb mountains are depraved sinful beings, but because the very nature of going "higher" also offers more options of choosing.
Some of the ways are wrong, even could cause one to plummet to the bottom. Some of the ways are right, and lead toward the peak.
When a small child cries when she hungry or grabs another child's food that doesn’t show she is sinning.
On the contrary, that is how G_D created children. If a 4-year-old child throws a tantrum and takes her little brother’s bottle because she thinks she isn’t getting enough attention from her parents, while her action is wrong and to be corrected, she hasn't failed because she hasn’t developed enough in her conscious awareness and moral conscience to make altruistic decisions.
However, if at 8, she hides her little brother’s medicine, because she wants all the attention instead, this is very wrong because by then her mental, moral conscience has developed enough to know that her action isn't the right way to get attention.
And, besides, by this point she should be widening her compassion and care for others out beyond her own needs and desires.
If at 18, she steals her younger sister’s boyfriend to build up her own ego, very deep wrong has occurred. By 22, if she joins with her countrymen and demonizes another country and lies, steals, and kills the enemies, we do have actions of evil;
just as if in contrast,
she joins an outreach organization such as Habitat for Humanity or World Vision and sacrifices her time, talent, and money and inspires her younger sister to do so as well; then we have actions of goodness.
Then the two sisters think of a way to get other people in their neighborhood, school, and city to get involved. One such inspired girl, about 13 years of age, raised thousands of dollars for starving, hurting people in a far off country.
See how the moral growth of human beings happens. A human being is in process from simple surviving to becoming the liver of moral truth.
Now that is the beginning of good news. Reminds me of several of Jesus’ moral speeches...
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Danger of the Cliché, “to love”
Christians for many centuries, over and over, have stated, "God is love." Most famously, St. Augustine said, "Love God and do as you like."
All this sounds so good, so pious, so wonderful,
but, tragically, like so many philosophical and moral assertions, the devil is in the details:-(--
not the God of Jesus.
The same St. Augustine of the famous "love" quote supported the persecution of other Christians, torture, killing, etc.
Augustine abandoned his common-law wife of 10 years, with plans to marry an aristocratic Roman lady instead.
From 300 A.D down through hundreds of years of cruelty, abuse, intolerance, injustice, and slaughter to the present, 2025, Christian denominations in the name of "love" have committed horrific actions.
Millions of humans have been slaughtered, burned, hanged, shot, bombed, and drowned--all in the name of Jesus and this religious ideal of Christian "love." A Roman Catholic leader. Bernard of Clairvaux, often called the apostle of love called forth the 2nd Crusade!
A more recent American case is that of devout Christian soldier Stonewall Jackson who ordered the death of many thousands during the American Civil War. And the chaplain of his army, the famous R. L. Dabney, not only strongly supported this ‘Christian’ war, but American slavery, even publishing a study after the Civil War defending enslavement!
They gave all thanks to Jesus Christ and God for their killing successes, and yet at the same time, emphasized the importance of love to God and others. Read the excellent and powerful biography, Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier by John Bowers.
In a secular sense, General Jackson was a great war general! And what a devout believer and how personable and kind to those of his own kin and group.
But what a ruthless killer of others, and in his killing, he gave all the praise for his winning battles to the Christian God! He often prayed, worshiped, and read his Bible in the midst of lethal fighting!
Not that Christianity has a corner on these strange demonstrations of "love." When I lived in the Middle East, I visited a Palaestinian restaurant. On the wall was a sign which listed all the characteristics of love in Islam.
Yet, then (and in the past and now)multi-millions of Muslims quote the Qur'an and the Hadith to justify slaughtering enemy civilians.
“So it goes.”
(quoting the satirist, Kurtr Vonnegut).
And check out secular history. Humanists who reject religion for all its horrors, also, often define "love" as a worthy human goal, yet their actions are contrary to love, too.
Here’s a minor example of how “empty bucket” the word “love” is. Back during my university days (late 60's), Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlavsky came to the University of Nebraska to do a poetry reading. Allen kept emphasizing that "love" is the answer to the world's problems.
I, a naive, college student from a small village in southeast Nebraska was impressed,
but an older student and former beatnik told me, "Don't to be deceived."
Later I learned how deceptive these new age leaders' talk of "love" was. One of the young girls in our college group was, allegedly, left pregnant and alone by Orlavsky who moved on with Ginsberg to their next poetry readings.
Young men of other worldviews tried to persuade us that a man could have multiple relationships with women and it was "love."
Forget all the tragic results of these "love" affairs.
And since then, all manner of distortions continue to be put forth as "loving" up to 2025.
Thinkers have even claimed the intentional carpet bomb killing of hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, including children, fire fighters, doctors, etc. is an action of love and justice!
And more and more, acts of euthanasia, abortion, lust, etc. are said to be expressions of love!
Indeed, the devil is in the details. Evil hogs them.
Why is it God always gets left holding the bag of evil?
Enough of the very bad news!
What is the nature of true caring--the kind that doesn't result in hell on earth?
The great Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh gives some very good clear examples if you wish a definition which isn't centered in the New Testament. However, since I am a Friend of Jesus, that is where I find my understanding of what love is.
Check out Luke 10:27. Jesus said, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."
Well, the problem is still in the details again though, because most of the leaders, warriors, slave-owners,abusers, immoral and unjust individuals etc. of the last 2,000 years have claimed to believe Jesus' words, indeed have done their evil with this verse on their lips, praying to Jesus and reading the Bible as they did their horrific deeds.
So, we need to go deeper.
A lawyer questions Jesus--sounds legalistic doesn't it--asking exactly, "WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"
(Remember, in Jewish culture, men wouldn't even eat with Gentiles!)
Jesus reverses the thinking of humans such as that lawyer by giving the Parable of the Good Samaritan, pointing out we should be loving like a heretic and national enemy and show active compassion and practical deeds of help including personal involvement, the giving of our money and our time.
This is a continuation of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 38-48) where he even contradicts such Jewish heroes as David and says that we should love our enemies.
And so his followers wouldn't get the wrong idea (like so many later would despite his very words), Jesus emphasizes that "loving one’s enemies" means practical actions on our part.
For instance, if an enemy nation conquers you and its soldiers abuse and execute your people and these killers demand you behave as a servant by carrying their military bags for a mile, then you are to offer to carry these enemy killers' things for another extra mile!
When enemies "HATE YOU, BLESS THOSE WHO CURSE YOU, PRAY FOR THOSE WHO MISTREAT YOU.."(Luke 6: 27-38).
Of course, for most of us (like Jesus' disciples who wanted to kill the Romans and call fire down to destroy the Samaritans, etc.), we need even more directions of what the word "love" actually means and so the N.T. provides many more definitions and examples. The best is 1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient,
love is kind
and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly;
love does not seek its own,
is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. (NASB)
How can we possibly love individuals of HAMAS or Iran or Russia!?
Muslim jihadists?
Criminals who rape, abuse, kidnap, murder?
A co-worker who lied about us so that we lost our job?
One way is to remember as Martin Luther King cautioned, we aren't called to "like" evil doers, but are rather called to show them benevolence in order that they might turn from their evil ways.
This is Jesus' walk, what it means to be Friends.
To love everyone into the realm of the LIGHT--the GOOD, the TRUE, the Just:-)
In the LIGHT,
Daniel Wilcox
but, tragically, like so many philosophical and moral assertions, the devil is in the details:-(--
not the God of Jesus.
The same St. Augustine of the famous "love" quote supported the persecution of other Christians, torture, killing, etc.
Augustine abandoned his common-law wife of 10 years, with plans to marry an aristocratic Roman lady instead.
From 300 A.D down through hundreds of years of cruelty, abuse, intolerance, injustice, and slaughter to the present, 2025, Christian denominations in the name of "love" have committed horrific actions.
Millions of humans have been slaughtered, burned, hanged, shot, bombed, and drowned--all in the name of Jesus and this religious ideal of Christian "love." A Roman Catholic leader. Bernard of Clairvaux, often called the apostle of love called forth the 2nd Crusade!
A more recent American case is that of devout Christian soldier Stonewall Jackson who ordered the death of many thousands during the American Civil War. And the chaplain of his army, the famous R. L. Dabney, not only strongly supported this ‘Christian’ war, but American slavery, even publishing a study after the Civil War defending enslavement!
They gave all thanks to Jesus Christ and God for their killing successes, and yet at the same time, emphasized the importance of love to God and others. Read the excellent and powerful biography, Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier by John Bowers.
In a secular sense, General Jackson was a great war general! And what a devout believer and how personable and kind to those of his own kin and group.
But what a ruthless killer of others, and in his killing, he gave all the praise for his winning battles to the Christian God! He often prayed, worshiped, and read his Bible in the midst of lethal fighting!
Not that Christianity has a corner on these strange demonstrations of "love." When I lived in the Middle East, I visited a Palaestinian restaurant. On the wall was a sign which listed all the characteristics of love in Islam.
Yet, then (and in the past and now)multi-millions of Muslims quote the Qur'an and the Hadith to justify slaughtering enemy civilians.
“So it goes.”
(quoting the satirist, Kurtr Vonnegut).
And check out secular history. Humanists who reject religion for all its horrors, also, often define "love" as a worthy human goal, yet their actions are contrary to love, too.
Here’s a minor example of how “empty bucket” the word “love” is. Back during my university days (late 60's), Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlavsky came to the University of Nebraska to do a poetry reading. Allen kept emphasizing that "love" is the answer to the world's problems.
I, a naive, college student from a small village in southeast Nebraska was impressed,
but an older student and former beatnik told me, "Don't to be deceived."
Later I learned how deceptive these new age leaders' talk of "love" was. One of the young girls in our college group was, allegedly, left pregnant and alone by Orlavsky who moved on with Ginsberg to their next poetry readings.
Young men of other worldviews tried to persuade us that a man could have multiple relationships with women and it was "love."
Forget all the tragic results of these "love" affairs.
And since then, all manner of distortions continue to be put forth as "loving" up to 2025.
Thinkers have even claimed the intentional carpet bomb killing of hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, including children, fire fighters, doctors, etc. is an action of love and justice!
And more and more, acts of euthanasia, abortion, lust, etc. are said to be expressions of love!
Indeed, the devil is in the details. Evil hogs them.
Why is it God always gets left holding the bag of evil?
Enough of the very bad news!
What is the nature of true caring--the kind that doesn't result in hell on earth?
The great Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh gives some very good clear examples if you wish a definition which isn't centered in the New Testament. However, since I am a Friend of Jesus, that is where I find my understanding of what love is.
Check out Luke 10:27. Jesus said, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."
Well, the problem is still in the details again though, because most of the leaders, warriors, slave-owners,abusers, immoral and unjust individuals etc. of the last 2,000 years have claimed to believe Jesus' words, indeed have done their evil with this verse on their lips, praying to Jesus and reading the Bible as they did their horrific deeds.
So, we need to go deeper.
A lawyer questions Jesus--sounds legalistic doesn't it--asking exactly, "WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"
(Remember, in Jewish culture, men wouldn't even eat with Gentiles!)
Jesus reverses the thinking of humans such as that lawyer by giving the Parable of the Good Samaritan, pointing out we should be loving like a heretic and national enemy and show active compassion and practical deeds of help including personal involvement, the giving of our money and our time.
This is a continuation of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 38-48) where he even contradicts such Jewish heroes as David and says that we should love our enemies.
And so his followers wouldn't get the wrong idea (like so many later would despite his very words), Jesus emphasizes that "loving one’s enemies" means practical actions on our part.
For instance, if an enemy nation conquers you and its soldiers abuse and execute your people and these killers demand you behave as a servant by carrying their military bags for a mile, then you are to offer to carry these enemy killers' things for another extra mile!
When enemies "HATE YOU, BLESS THOSE WHO CURSE YOU, PRAY FOR THOSE WHO MISTREAT YOU.."(Luke 6: 27-38).
Of course, for most of us (like Jesus' disciples who wanted to kill the Romans and call fire down to destroy the Samaritans, etc.), we need even more directions of what the word "love" actually means and so the N.T. provides many more definitions and examples. The best is 1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient,
love is kind
and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly;
love does not seek its own,
is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. (NASB)
How can we possibly love individuals of HAMAS or Iran or Russia!?
Muslim jihadists?
Criminals who rape, abuse, kidnap, murder?
A co-worker who lied about us so that we lost our job?
One way is to remember as Martin Luther King cautioned, we aren't called to "like" evil doers, but are rather called to show them benevolence in order that they might turn from their evil ways.
This is Jesus' walk, what it means to be Friends.
To love everyone into the realm of the LIGHT--the GOOD, the TRUE, the Just:-)
In the LIGHT,
Daniel Wilcox
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Monday, March 10, 2025
Reflection on Pessimistic book of Ecclesiastes, (so contrary to witnesses of early Quakers)
Ecclesiastes 1
New International Version
"Everything Is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
Other skeptical thinkers for 2,500 human years have claimed similar hopelessness.
OR
have suggested illusionary images of Death...
Such as that each of us billions of humans when we die are like
billions of waves that roll in on the Pacific Ocean tide...
BUT a series of waves of the tide of the ocean are TOTALY Non-sentient, NOT Aware,
Don't have deep life experiences and stories, Don't have a keen sense of MORAL REALISM, OUGHT, the IDEAL.
A wave or dead leaf are only physical objects.
Lifeless.
Billions of the waves and leaves can come and go--and except brief impersonal life in the case of a leaf, NOTHING LIVES NOW
ALL is LOST!!!!!!!
HOWEVER in the case of all humans
(and maybe a few other cases of higher animals?
ALL MEANINGFULLNESS
of humans is
LOST:-(
Our bodies mean zilch!
BUT to LOSE OUGHT, AWARENESS,
Our Stories and all that we have learned in 78+ years,
HOW Despairing, How Absurd.
......
So, that's why billions of humans, including Quakers hope for AFTER LIFE.
Otherwise, we as a species are in reality, a ZERO, Nilhism. :-((
All the facts of Life say, No existence after Our Brain ceases.
Just reflecting on all of this, seems so impossible to imagine or understand!
How can
Each of us PERSONS
be ONLY " mere breath, mere vapor" as the Teacher claims.
Most of my consciousness, every moment, thinks I won't become ZERO!
But I was with my dad when he died. A ccouple of hours later, the attendents came into our living room, rolled
his stark lifeless body onto a sheet, picked up the roll of bones and skin and hauled it out.
BUT Billions going back at least a million years experienced this same anguish, same absurd irrational
and No longer EXIST--),
were only transient vapor
like the Teacher of the Old Testamen/Jewwish Bible claimS.
My last gasp for MEANING and HOPE is that G_D--U.R. is far more AWARE
than any intelligent physical species in the vast Cosmos.
!
And that G_D
Is EVERLASTING INTELLIGENT PROCESS who will carry billions
of brief intelligent moral individual lives in its memory!
I know this is a 'hail, mary'-Hope (very unlikely based on all known science :-(
IF the TEACHER
is correct, then I agree with the philosopher Albert Camus that REALITY IS
ABSURD!!
IF Reality and Life came about by CHANCE or DETERMINISM
Camus stated that he Rebels against this Reality
and
EMBRACE OUGHT (that which is NOT subjective, NOT relative like most atheists and anti-human nihilists Claim.
In the HOPE of the LIGHT,
Daniel Wilcox
seaquaker@gmail.com
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/
Writing Websites: http://psalmsyawpshowls.com
http://seaquaker.com
New International Version
"Everything Is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
Other skeptical thinkers for 2,500 human years have claimed similar hopelessness.
OR
have suggested illusionary images of Death...
Such as that each of us billions of humans when we die are like
billions of waves that roll in on the Pacific Ocean tide...
BUT a series of waves of the tide of the ocean are TOTALY Non-sentient, NOT Aware,
Don't have deep life experiences and stories, Don't have a keen sense of MORAL REALISM, OUGHT, the IDEAL.
A wave or dead leaf are only physical objects.
Lifeless.
Billions of the waves and leaves can come and go--and except brief impersonal life in the case of a leaf, NOTHING LIVES NOW
ALL is LOST!!!!!!!
HOWEVER in the case of all humans
(and maybe a few other cases of higher animals?
ALL MEANINGFULLNESS
of humans is
LOST:-(
Our bodies mean zilch!
BUT to LOSE OUGHT, AWARENESS,
Our Stories and all that we have learned in 78+ years,
HOW Despairing, How Absurd.
......
So, that's why billions of humans, including Quakers hope for AFTER LIFE.
Otherwise, we as a species are in reality, a ZERO, Nilhism. :-((
All the facts of Life say, No existence after Our Brain ceases.
Just reflecting on all of this, seems so impossible to imagine or understand!
How can
Each of us PERSONS
be ONLY " mere breath, mere vapor" as the Teacher claims.
Most of my consciousness, every moment, thinks I won't become ZERO!
But I was with my dad when he died. A ccouple of hours later, the attendents came into our living room, rolled
his stark lifeless body onto a sheet, picked up the roll of bones and skin and hauled it out.
BUT Billions going back at least a million years experienced this same anguish, same absurd irrational
and No longer EXIST--),
were only transient vapor
like the Teacher of the Old Testamen/Jewwish Bible claimS.
My last gasp for MEANING and HOPE is that G_D--U.R. is far more AWARE
than any intelligent physical species in the vast Cosmos.
!
And that G_D
Is EVERLASTING INTELLIGENT PROCESS who will carry billions
of brief intelligent moral individual lives in its memory!
I know this is a 'hail, mary'-Hope (very unlikely based on all known science :-(
IF the TEACHER
is correct, then I agree with the philosopher Albert Camus that REALITY IS
ABSURD!!
IF Reality and Life came about by CHANCE or DETERMINISM
Camus stated that he Rebels against this Reality
and
EMBRACE OUGHT (that which is NOT subjective, NOT relative like most atheists and anti-human nihilists Claim.
In the HOPE of the LIGHT,
Daniel Wilcox
seaquaker@gmail.com
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/
Writing Websites: http://psalmsyawpshowls.com
http://seaquaker.com
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
"Son of Human" Jewish reformer's own chosen name; Honored each December
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
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
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.
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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
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