To the Angel of the Eighth Church

I know an eighth church was never intended. The seventh church, Laodicea, was to have been the very last. It was not.

Many of you are on fire for your Lord, others are colder and colder everyday. Why speak of a lukewarm state anymore? Just as there are hotter and hotter degrees of heat, so are there colder and colder degrees of cold.

Among you are carnal Christians who, though wanting to love their Lord, fail miserably. I've done all I can do for them. The rest is in their hands. Do they really want to be rid of their carnality? Or do they love their sinful natures more than they love me?

I am grateful for the spiritual Christians among you, though I have this against you: take heed lest you focus too much on your spirituality and forget those who are not as focused as you. You could very well join their ranks and suffer as they do, wanting to love me, but unable to do so because of their great love for self. Minister to their weaknesses with the strength I have given you by my Spirit.

Finally, know that I hate those who hate sinners and love those who love them, as I love them.

If you have ears to hear, take heed of what the Spirit says to the Angel of the Eighth Church.

What is Real? Anything?

When I first read about the idea that we might be a computer simulation I thought that it was a bit much and that someone had nothing better to do than speculate about the nature of reality. It's odd that all of this speculation goes hand in hand with cutting-edge technology. If one day, lets say, science perfects teleportation, then that will become the paradigm with which to redefine reality, or what we think reality is.

If one day we're here one moment and light years away in a flash, philosophers might start to wonder if we were ever here to begin with, or if when we got to where we were going would we still be the same person, or would we ever be that person again, if we teleported back from whence we came.

Of course even Plato questioned whether this was the true reality or whether it was a shadow of the ideal model somewhere in some perfect sphere beyond our reach. I've sometimes thought that the apostle Paul must have read much of Plato when he spoke of "looking through a glass darkly."

Please click on the title of this post to read the original New York Times article, Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch, by John Tierney that got me to thinking about the views I've expressed here.

Living between Time

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven (1971) has influenced my perception of life more than I care to admit. The gist of the story is that reality is transformed by what the hero dreams. His psychoanalyst suggests ridding the world of racism. When he dreams about that, he awakens to a world where all of humanity is now gray-skinned. This and many other startling changes are brought about by his lucid dreaming.

Through the years, I didn't consciously think of that novel which I read at 15 or 16. I once caught a PBS adaptation (1980) which delighted me by its distillation into quite a completely different story from what I had imagined it to be. Nevertheless, for about 20+ years I've had the odd suspicion that some elements of life have changed ever so slightly than from what I clearly remember them to be.

One of the earliest occurrences was being completely befuddled at finding that a chord or motif that I had been so certain existed in the Beatles' Hey Jude, did not, in fact, exist. I imagined that I was mistaken, but in my mind I could still hear the other version that I had been familiar with. Now this is before bootlegs became widely available on the Internet and in Greenwhich Village rare records stores. It saddened me that I remembered a version of this famous song, that, in fact, no longer existed, or perhaps, never existed.

Another startling occurrence deals with a book that I have been reading since I was eleven, October the First is Too Late (1966) by the astronomer/mathematician/philosopher Fred Hoyle. I've read this perhaps four or five times in my life. The last time I read it I was astounded by the fact that a encounter between the hero and a historical/mythical person that I had vivid memories of having read many times before, suddenly had disappeared from this only paperback copy that I have always used to reread this story. I tried rereading it in case I had missed this significant encounter, but, alas, it was not to be found. I have a feeling that if I were to read this book again I might either find this missing scene again, or perhaps new ones missing, or--even more perplexing--a scene that I know I had never read during the previous readings of this unique book.

The latest occurrence of this personal phenomenon was when I recently learned of Ingmar Bergman's death. This stunned me more than you'd imagine, as I distinctly remember reading that Fanny and Alexander (1982) was his last film. I never heard anything else about Ingmar Bergman until this past month when all the news agencies reported his death at a ripe old age. Now the confusion may be that, yes, this film was in fact his last film, and his Swan Song, as far as feature films are concerned. He, however, continued making other kinds of films, mostly for Swedish TV. Now as much as I loved his work, and as much as I have immersed myself, obsessively at times, you'd think I would have read at least a review or two in the ensuing years, but that was not the case. Not until he died did I see anything in print in any of the major film or cultural media about this singular director. To my mind, this was indeed proof, that the reality I remembered quite certainly that Bergman died some time in the early 1980s, had, in fact, changed.

These are only two glaring situations in my recollection that illustrate this point. There have been, in fact, many others, including meeting people that no one else remembers, but I remember them because they left a huge impact on me. I always ignored these inconsistencies with other people's memories until I was able to reveal to relatives or close friends things they had said to me, 20 or 25 years ago, that upon some reflection, they admitted that they very well could have said that, but it was long gone from their memory. This gave me some assurance that if I remembered statements or situations in family member's lives or in those of close friends, perhaps I remembered other realities that others no longer remembered at all.

I'm not sure what this phenomenon is called. I thought briefly of how fascinated I used to be with the concept of déjà vu until until I read that it had nothing to do whatsoever with a mystical reality, but rather that it was caused by a trick of the mind. For years I often had episodes of déjà vu and they delighted and perplexed me greatly. Since learning that this phenomenon is a trick of the mind, I no longer experience episodes of déjà vu .

Recently I read in the New York Times that one major cosmologist believes that we change our evolutionary and cosmological past by what we collectively choose to remember or imagine it to be. This was both startling and comforting. I'm still looking for this recent quote, but, it seems to elude me the way other memories or recalled incidences have done for more than 20 years.

Perhaps one day I will remember that I wrote this post, but will find that no one read it or recalls it, and even more problematic, I will find no copy of it either here or in my hard copy binder of blog posts I've written.

Temporal Mechanics

If you live in the past you will die there.

If you live in the present you will live out your life normally.

If you live in the future you will live forever.

Simple Pleasures

God disappears behind the shocking white clouds and the heat of the mid-afternoon sun. When I find any shade worth pursuing, he reappears and I'm grateful for the gentleness of his shade. The entire country is experiencing a heat wave and unbearable humidity. I've felt heat like this before and it's humid all summer long, here in South Florida.

For years I've wanted to document what I see around me, especially as I look up, as well as around me as Callisto and I live our simple pre-Sabbath lives. Suddenly, with no strong intention to own one, a free camera phone appeared in my hand last night--courtesy of ATT's upgrades--and I was able to capture the blazing white ecstasy of a Floridian summer sky this afternoon. The search for other people's close approximations of what I see daily has come to an end, and for that I am grateful.

Suddenly I'm reminded of Bob Dylan's lyric, "She's got everything she needs. She's an artist. She don't look back." While I can't claim to be an artist of any kind, but I'm learning not to look back at what was and at what might have been.

Last week I talked with a Buddhist for the first time in my life. I mentioned I was a Christian and that I wanted to know what was worth sharing about the Buddhist vision of life. The simple response, was "there is no past. Life begins from this moment on." I understood this to mean, in the context of the larger conversation, that whatever regrets or expectations or anything, really, that had gone before, ceases to have ultimate value from this moment on.

I was once guilty of "living in the past" and loving it. I couldn't understand those who considered it less noble than living in the present. While we can't completely ignore the past--at least I cannot--I'm realizing that more and more people live for today and for the promise that tomorrow brings.

If you live in the past, you will die there.

So much time was spent hiding from the heat, that fifteen minutes before the sun set, I knew I had to get out and about if only to have the luxury of being able to return home again. There were restaurants still open where I might run into old friends from town, but their conversation probably wouldn't be very conducive to enjoying the Sabbath. I opted, instead, to order some Chinese food at the local take-out and head home.

On my way home I did get an invitation by phone to see Marc Anthony & Jennifer Lopez' new movie, El Cantante. These friends know I go to church on Saturday morning, but I don't know them well enough to explain why I don't accept invitations to movies on Friday nights. Simply, I said that I had a standing order tonight.

Once home, I enjoyed the simple pleasures of a Weight Watchers Chinese menu and found it lacked zing, but at least it was free of starch, sugar, salt and all the things that give Chinese food its flavor. I was thankful for the healthy meal, nevertheless.

I read a chapter from The Great Controversy and was grateful that I still had an interest in reading a book that some, or many, Adventists stopped reading decades ago. I took what I could from it and then settled down to my progressive time travel film retrospectives I now closely associate with Sabbaths in the early 21st century.


Happy Sabbath to you in whatever decade you happen to be reading this.

Deserted Island Opus: Frustrated Excellence

Cecil Taylor, the Avant Garde pianist who was one of the challenging and challenged practitioners of Free Jazz during the 1960s, tells of a time in his life when no one cared to hear his music and therefore he was without a recording contract once again, as well as, without any scheduled performances. During the day he worked at whatever nickel and dime jobs he could to survive, but at night he came alive when he gave the most exotic sounding pianist concert imaginable for an audience of one, himself.

What little I've heard of Cecil Taylor's music I've enjoyed immensely. Of course, when he was composing his perplexing free jazz pieces I was but a child and his music would have sounded like noise to my untrained or unchallenged ears. I wish I could have somehow have been in the next apartment or in front of his summer building as he nightly played his liquid songs of frustrated excellence, with the appreciation that 30 years of persistence have granted me in returning time and again to the austerity of Free Jazz.

Sometimes you have to live your life or work at your art or craft even though there may not be anyone to take note of what you have to give to life. If, like Cecil Taylor, you are the only one who wants to listen to or who is able to listen to a piano that is played upside-down, and inside-out, then do so and relish each quixotic note that your fingers, or your voice, or your words, or your actions produce. If there is no one to take note of the work of art that is your life or your art, then enjoy the serenity and the tranquil independence of your Deserted Island Opus, in spite of the absent audience. Someday they may very well regret that they were far away when the place to be was right by your side, enjoying as you enjoyed what you contributed to life.

Designing your Own Eternity

"As a man thinketh, so is he." Proverbs 23:7

"If death is not extinction, what might it be like? That’s a question the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died five years ago, enjoyed pondering. ... Although his reflections were inconclusive, Nozick hit on a seductive maxim: first, imagine what form of immortality would be best; then live your life right now as though it were true." -- Jim Holt, Eternity for Atheists, New York Times Magazine, 07.29.07

Yes the Bible says this and the Bible says that. I'm grateful for what it says, and more importantly, for what it doesn't say. It leaves out so much information. So much the better. We have minds and we have imagination. Let's use them creatively to make eternity the wildest, most regarding and incredible reality we want it to be for ourselves, and for those we love.

My own version of eternity is a bit like this. And it keeps on changing all the time.

This may sound bizarre but I've had this thought forever. Death is so ugly to many of us that I want the luxury of dying in heaven. Yes that's an oxymoron. But let me explain. If you die in heaven, you will live a second later. In a way this is the most perfect kind of death. Virtually, of course, it is a non-death. If you're dead for only one second, are you really dead? What constitutes death, anyway? My ideal death in heaven would be in a coffin of light. When I awake, right beside my coffin of light, is my smiling savior, who gave me the luxury of being dead for only one second, in--of all places--heaven itself.

I'd love to travel back in time once I've entered eternity and sample, first hand, all the major moments of past human history, including the very creation of the universe. I'd also like to travel into the far future. But not just any future, but the future as it might never exist, had God not intervened in some future point in time. Anything unpleasant I'd witness I'd want to forget an hour after I had witnessed it.

Living my eternity as myself, would be very familiar, perhaps too familiar. I'd like to live as another person, perhaps one of my friends, or even my parents, and get a unique perspective of people I loved and wished I had understood and loved more perfectly. Let's say I'd live as someone else for a thousand years, then as myself for another thousand. I'd never run out of different people to experience through the miracle of living as their very selves.

Water has always held a special fascination for me. Waterfalls even more so. I've sat in front of falling water displays in major cities of the world and each time I contemplate the water that falls yet doesn't fall since it keeps on falling, I envy it. In eternity I'd like to be, not part of the waterfall, but I'd like to be the falling water itself. I'd love to experience the sensation of falling, yet not falling.

If He has the time, I'd like to spend a million years talking with God, non-stop. Laughing with Him, playing baseball with him, walking through invisible forests of anti-neutrinos with Him.

I'm happy and I'm grateful that I'm in the process of imagining and experiencing eternal life right now.

Finally, I'd like to know what you'd like your eternity to be like. Share it with me. We just might live our fantasies if we imagine them with the greatest of intention.

Religious Conversion inside of Second Life

More and more people are leaving traditional churches and seeking more ideal or unique religious experiences. If you've never visited Second Life (a 3D online digital world which is imagined, created and owned by its residents) you owe it to yourself to see where more and more of conscious humanity is gravitating to.

No doubt one day soon, if it hasn't already happened, someone will have a religious experience while in Second Life. Think of the advantages of being able to pray and worship with other religious Second Life inhabitants as opposed to going to a brick and mortar church down the street or in another part of town.

A temple, church or mosque inside of Second Life has no screaming children. People do not cough or sneeze uncontrollably while they are in Second Life. If they do, they are behaving in an affected manner by imitating Real World peculiarities. In a Second Life religious environment there is the familiarity of your own home, because technically you are still in your own home. Of course, if you log-on from your laptop, your environment can be anywhere you wish it to be: in a plane, on the beach at dawn, in a quiet garden, in an ancient library surrounded by even older forests.

If you are not able to kneel in the Real World, your Second Life avatar can kneel for you for as long as you wish to continue kneeling in the house of worship of your choice.

Perhaps when it becomes possible to upload personalities and memories successfully, people will, in fact, live out their lives, or continue a kind of virtual life-after-death inside of Second Life.

"Jesus is nicer in Second Life." -- Anonymous Second Life Christian.

Relevant Links: Second Life, Jewish Magazine in Second Life, Faithful build a Second Life for religion online

New 21st-Century Religions

Who experiences new religious groups first hand and lives to tell the tale? I had such an experience the other day.

I couldn't inquire too much as the invitation to attend this service was almost out of the blue. As I experienced the service or meeting and met the people afterwards I was impressed about how similar it was to another service or meeting I had attended months ago. I couldn't put my finger on the name at the time, but it was so similar to what I was experiencing that I wanted to alert the leader of this group, a young man named Alberto, that others were handing out flyers with information that seemed almost identical to this new group's ideas. It astounded me later on to find out, that Alberto, in spite of his youth, was not only the leader of this new religious group, but was also its founder.

What I liked most was the immediate friendliness of the group I was visiting. Whenever I inquired about the name of this group I was attending I was strangely engaged in conversation, but it was such friendly conversation that I didn't care to find out their name. I'm not sure if I'd find them again; the city is so big and disorienting at night and sometimes late in the afternoon. They gave out no cards with information. They met in rooms that were half-exposed to the fresh air and always near city centers.

Much to my surprise when the service was coming to a close they asked me to say the final prayer. I was careful not to pray a typical Christian prayer as I would in my own church, but I had noted that they mentioned God in their service and no one else. The last thing I said as I closed my prayer was about how we all wanted something that made life more fulfilling and worthwhile. It felt odd not ending my prayer as I normally did, by saying "in Jesus' name." I knew that would cause divisions in such a cohesive group. So I simply ended my prayer with the word, Amen.

I will probably never find this enigmatic group of people again in spite of their warm acceptance of me and their friendly and enjoyable meeting, but at least I experienced it one time in my life.

It made me appreciate my own religious beliefs and especially the privilege and joy of ending my prayer by saying "in the name of of Jesus, Amen."

For the closest thing to this elusive group and its unbelievably friendly people, please visit the following site and/or address: Church of Religious Science http://www.rsiftl.com/,
1550 Ne 26th St, Wilton Manors, FL 33305, (954) 566-2868. This group is not as friendly as the one I attended, but it is very 21 st-Century and offers people in the community more, judging by the devotion of those who attend in numbers, than the local Adventist or Christian churches down the street.

Other links worth trying for the intrepid: New Thought Denominations, One Spirit Ministries

Encounter with a Spirit-Filled Man

Rolando first caught my attention in a Sabbath afternoon hour of prayer. He came with his Adventist girlfriend and her daughter from a previous marriage. We all welcomed him with sincerity knowing that he possibly wasn't of the Advent faith.

After that initial contact I noted that no one ever befriended him and this seemed to cause his Adventist girlfriend concern. When I took it upon myself to approach the man, I could see her gratefulness by her friendly manner every time she saw me every time we met.

I learned bits and pieces of what he believed and it fascinated me while it alarmed others. In a small study group in which the pastor was present Rolando mentioned that he had studied metaphysics before he had become interested in Christianity. I was the only one in the group that responded positively to his statement.

Later that week he told me he was in the process of reading the entire Bible and that he was making great headway. I envied the man for his thoroughness and lamented by obsessive detail to footnotes and meditating on just one verse which causes by complete reading of the Bible to proceed very slowly.

Yesterday, again I noticed that no one was engaging him in conversation after church and that he was walking around looking for someone to talk to. I took it upon myself to approach him and greet him, if nothing else. The conversation we had was mostly him talking and I'd pipe in bits and pieces that I felt were of value. As he spoke I was concerned that perhaps someone more traditional in Adventist beliefs should be talking to him, but I quickly asked God to help me say the right thing. As he spoke of his attendance at other Christian churches I found myself trying to carefully present the value of the Advent message. In part I did it for his Adventist girlfriend whom I knew would appreciate someone saying positive things about her church of choice to a man that was becoming more and more important in her formerly single life.

What Rolando told me would, no doubt, alarm most Adventists in attendance that morning at my conservative/mainstream Adventist church. He told me that in a church which he couldn't quite identify he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands by the minister of that particular church. He described that he himself had not fallen to the floor as had others when similarly touched on the forehead. But he assured me that the realization and the enhanced spiritual altered state of consciousness that he experienced then and continued experiencing for days after that were the most life-changing and gratifying experiences he had ever encountered.

Years ago I myself would have run away or excused myself as courteously as I could after having heard him talk of this Spirit gift or Spirit baptism.

He told me that he came to his senses in the midst of his heightened sense of being with the realization that even though he'd like to only focus on this awareness of the Holy Spirit he realized that he had duties to his fellow man and their problems, as well.

He told he that having been a communist he had immersed himself in Marxism as well as philosophy and metaphysics when he lived in Cuba. But, he said, nothing compared to the joy and excellence of being immersed in the Holy Spirit experience.

I shared with him what I could courteously about my visit a year ago to a charismatic church. The only complaint I cared to tell him was that the Christian rock music used almost non-stop in the service was too loud for my ears. He said that it was probably a good idea to have Christian rock to keep the young people coming to church. The church was full of young people so perhaps his statement was valid.

I wanted to tell him of my experiences with the Holy Spirit. We exchanged cell phone numbers so perhaps one day soon we'll get the chance to have another conversation like the one we had yesterday.

When his Adventist girlfriend showed up and said they had to go home to lunch, he thanked me and told her about the incredible spiritual conversation we had been having. It was more me listening to his experiences, but perhaps that was more important. I did very little witnessing or evangelizing and what little I shared about Adventist authors I had read in the past few years, was of interest to him.

Now my question is this. Is this man and his experience of Holy Spirit baptism as valid as that of the Spirit-filled Adventists in attendance on this past Sabbath morning? Or, more alarmingly, is it more valid that anything I've encountered in my many years in the Adventist movement?

I'll need to study more, pray more and encounter more people who claim they have a valid experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.