Big Dead Tree
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Monthly Archives: August 2015
Ship on Puget Sound
Trail to Waterfront
This is part of the trail down to the waterfront. Lots of big beautiful trees providing a nice shaded not too hot walk.
View of Sound from Lincoln Park
Trees Drying Out
This summer has taken it’s toll on some of the trees in Lincoln Park. You can see from all the foliage that this tree recently was not burned up, but it’s all brown now. Hopefully it will recover when the weather returns to the normal Pacific North-wet Environment.
Lincoln Park
I need to get more exercise. For that purpose, my wife Tina and I went down to Lincoln Park and hiked around for a couple of hours. I took this picture with her standing by the tree trunk for scale.
Crap Day
Bank and grocery trip took five hours, traffic was hell. It was about 5pm, hadn’t eaten since 6:30am, 85°F and traffic stop and creep. Crap on the radio, I was tweaking the radio looking for something better still trying to get home from groceries. Traffic stopped, I didn’t. Rear-ended an Audi, probably doing about 5mph. No visible damage on the Audi except dirt on the bumper, but the Audi’s bumper went over the top of mine and mashed my grill and the piece that is between the hood and the grill, and bent a support member behind that had been previously bent when my wife ran the car into a truck. I don’t have collision given that it’s a 15 year old car. Already funds are tight, not what I needed.
Today’s Daily Bread Bible Excerpt
Here is todays Bible excerpt featured in Our Daily Bread.
Romans 8:18-25King James Version (KJV)
18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
This speaks to me in so much as the present suffering in life seems substantial, but I also know that God’s glory will someday make it seem trivial by comparison.
Right now I’m stressed financially, and having a hard time finding some web development gigs to fill the financial gap, or any other work I can do, and it’s stressful, and the banks of course do everything to make it as stressful as possible since in their view you really have buckets of money, you just don’t want to give it to them. I have to remind myself that everything in this life is temporary.
In prison, I experienced the love, forgiveness, and perhaps in very small part the glory of God. I’ve related my experience in solitary before, and having that weight lifted changed my life. I still have some anxiety over real things, like not having money to pay the bills, but it’s not nebulous, in actionable, and overwhelming like the anxiety that drove my entire life in the past.
But there was another thing I experienced, most of my life I’ve kind of dreaded the Christmas season when the normal programming of radio stations that normally played music I liked would turn to Christmas music.
But after the event in solitary, I found myself going to the prison church, originally on the invite of a couple of other inmates that had befriended me, and when Christmas came around, I found myself singing Christmas songs and hymns and praises to God and feeling a joy unparalleled by anything I had ever experienced in the past and that I think was the glory, light, and love of God penetrating even those prison walls.
And so while I trudge my way through this life’s difficulties and stresses, I do so knowing I will one day experience that again only not in a diluted transient manner but in a direct eternal manner.
Dream Involving Airplanes, Terrorists, and Cloaking Fields
Woke up with only a memory of a small dream in which I was standing near an airport runway and planes were coming in for landing right behind each other.
In the dream I questioned why they would do this because I know they normally keep space between airplanes because one airplane will cause wake turbulence that will make things difficult for the plane behind it, especially if the leading aircraft is heavy and the craft following light. When you’re hitting the air at a high attack angle and don’t have much altitude to allow for corrections, turbulence can be a problem. Usually they allow 2-3 minutes depending upon the combination of aircraft.
Somehow I came to realize that the reason was there was a terrorist threat to these planes and by keeping them closely spaced they could apply a cloaking field around them that would make them invisible to terrorists with portable rocket launchers and surface to air missiles.
I know, totally whack and makes no sense but such is the nature of dreams and maybe too much Star Trek.
Negative Stuff
Romans 6:16-23King James Version (KJV)
16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.
18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.
19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.
20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.
21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.
22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Satan never gives up, or at least some negative energy seems to be overwhelming at times. I am in some financial troubles at the moment, there is light at the end of the tunnel but the tunnel is long and I’m afraid I’m going to run out of steam before I get there.
When these things happen it causes me anxiety. It’s more manageable than the kind of anxiety that I had before I went to prison because at least I know the source, it’s not nebulous, and it’s actionable.
Still though it creates a very great urge to get rid of it and I know how to do that at least very temporary but it’s unhealthy, sinful, wrong, so I don’t want to go there. So I’m trying to find healthy ways to deal with it, aside from the obvious which is to do whatever I can do to try to deal with the source which right now is financial stress.
We all know the wages of sin are death but there are times when it seems like if this is how life has to be then perhaps death is acceptable. I know that’s not a good attitude, I just get so tired of being stressed out. I pray for God to help me find a workable path that is proper but it just doesn’t seem to happen. I know God does things on his own time but that doesn’t help me with things that are externally timed like banks wanting payments.