How the world has changed, for better and for worse, over five generations. 

DEAR GRANDCHILDREN, 

You all are successful, with healthy lives, good jobs, happy families and beautiful children; you are loving parents; in a word, you have made it. So why a letter from me, your 93-year-old grandfather? 

I have fond memories of mine! As a kid, ages four to 12, I often stayed with my mother’s parents on their 30-acre farm powered by one horse in the Netherlands. No electricity. A pig, a flock of chickens, a dozen milk cows and some young cattle. My paternal grandparents had a grocery store and, in horse-drawn wagon, called on my mother’s parents periodically, bartering eggs for coffee, tea and soap. Both my grandfathers were elders in the same large village church. 

When my mother married in 1923, her father gave her in today’s currency the equivalent of $200,000 – enough to equip a complete household and for my father to buy a car and the machinery to start his business. 

I remember one particular grade school lesson in 1939; it was the 100th anniversary of the first steam-powered train from Amsterdam to Haarlem. The teacher told us that some people in 1839 called this new-fangled transportation a “devil’s device.” We all laughed: how could that be true!? 

THE UNRAVELLING PROCESS 

When your Oma and I moved to Tweed, Ontario in 1975 from the city, the bullfrogs and birds woke us up. These sounds are gone. In the city you don’t notice these changes: here in Tweed, I do. Things have changed: the economy has priority. We now live in a world where a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive. We live in a world where an elephant is worth more dead than alive, where a whale . . .. 

My grandparents, born 150 years ago – 1870 – in rural Groningen, knew how to live: in community. True, they did not have penicillin and people died younger, but there was genuine fellowship – music, choir, theatre groups, church. With the frogs and birds, that is largely gone. 

James Lovelock, an atheist scientist, now 101 years old, says in The Revenge of Gaia that our planet is fighting back with climate change and melting poles. The economy will keep destroying trees, mining the earth and pulling oil out of the ground, even though we know we leave a worse world for you, my dear grandchildren. 

My generation started this unravelling process. That is my legacy, and I beg you for forgiveness. The short-term thinking of my generation based on the religion of profit at all cost is at the root of it all: now I see that I am the severed tree; I am the dead whale. My generation is the culprit. 

Yet I believe that some of this “living close to nature” is still in you; after all, we are products of our forebears, still partners with the air, soil and water around us. Embrace the natural world around you and in every action work for her welfare. Love the earth; love her unconditionally. Question every one of your actions for its consequences, every step for its ultimate result. 

You are smart young people. When you closely examine what goes on out there, you will re-discover the unity and order, evident everywhere, because everything is connected somehow harmoniously to everything else.

THE LAW OF SERVING.

When you look around with open eyes and minds, you’ll see that life is all about serving. The law of serving is at the heart of every creature. That law makes it possible for the entire world to exist. Every creature, in final analysis, is nothing else but a servant for others. And that happens automatically, as if a mighty hand brings all this in motion. Each being operates according to its nature, but everything together is so oriented that the existence of the one supports the other and maintains it. 

With us humans, service is different – infinitely richer but also more difficult. Humans know exactly what they do and why they do it. As a consequence, humans have much greater opportunity to serve. Every category in society serves the other; a world can’t do without medic- al helpers, but it also needs arborists and food inspectors, and even video-makers and other “new-fangled” inventions. 

The trouble with us humans is that the inclination to only serving our needs is both stronger and more dangerous, promoting our welfare at the expense gauge the needs of others, we also can easily ignore the plight of our neighbours and the care for creation. 

In short: serving is for most of us something we are reluctant to do. That “me first” inclination often overwhelms all other feelings. Given this weakness, we humans have been given a command by God: serve one another, serve creation! This serving, so “naturally” accomplished by all other segments of the world, we have to implement with full awareness. We all are connected from bottom to top to each other and all living matter. 

My wish for you, my dear grandchildren, is that this multi-level serving will be an integral part of your daily life.

Yours, with all my love, Opa 

Bert Hielema, a long-time contributor to CC, writes a weekly blog at hielema.ca dealing with contemporary issues. He has 5 children, 13 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. He lives in Tweed, Ontario.

 

January 26 2022

DISCIPLINE AND WISDOM

King Solomon states as purpose of The Proverbs: ‘ the attainment of wisdom and discipline’, and the ‘acquisition of a disciplined and prudent life’. In verse 7 he writes, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

I try to live by those givens. 

Now that I am a widower, living alone, I am more in charge of my life than when my wife of 67 years was alive. She still lives in me, but, for a long time, she suffered from dementia and spent the last 10 months in a Long – Term facility locally where I visited her every day.

It has always been my aim in life to attain wisdom and discipline, very much encouraged by my spouse. I regulate my time rigorously: I get up at 7.30, have a healthy breakfast, prepared in a slow cooker, of organic oats, add fruit, and have 3 cups of rooibos tea, followed later by 2 cups of coffee. (I had kidney stones a couple of times. Not recommended).

At 11 o’clock I start to prepare a hot lunch, soup from the freezer on Sundays, while, on most weekdays, I eat homegrown potatoes and vegetables – no meat – with a healthy mix of gravy, onion, garlic, tomato, olive oil, and once a week either rice or spaghetti with sauce.  In the afternoon a large bowl of yogurt sweetened with pear sauce or maple syrup and one slice of bread for supper. I now love cooking and experiment with different recipes. O yes, a piece of chocolate daily!

Invariably I exercise on my treadmill, stationary bike and rowing machine every day in the winter or walk for an hour in the nearby forests. In bed at 9.30. O yes, I have an afternoon nap. I always read aloud a Psalm before breakfast, and pray. After my morning meal, I type in a 500 words meditation, based on the lectionary of that day. 

There you have my daily routine, which also consists of a week-long ‘write and scratch effort for my weekly 800 words, blog. I always have a few books on the go, many from my own collection. I hardly watch TV, but read the New York Times, the Guardian and the Globe and Mail.

My family.

I have 5 children, 2 in the USA. My 3 Ontario ones, living in Toronto and beyond, visit each week, in turn. My daughter and her husband come every other week; she also phones me at 9 am and 5 pm without fail, and supervises my shopping. My USA daughters phone and try to come as often as possible. 

Then there is the ‘fear’ of the Lord.

 The word ‘fear’ in that text, is subject to misinterpretation. “Fear” there does not indicate ‘being afraid’ or ‘shrinking away from God’. It actually indicates the opposite. Maimonides, the great Jewish sage, categorized the fear of God as a positive commandment, as the feeling of human insignificance deriving from contemplation of God’s “great and wonderful actions and creations.” 

To update this well-known, often recurring, text, and incorporating Bonhoeffer’s thinking also, equating creation with God, my attitude toward life, my goal for eternity, is “living in total admiration, contemplation and knowledge of God’s creation, as the starting point of understanding and wisdom”.

There, in a nutshell, is the prescription for my LIFE. I do believe that Jesus came, not to bring a religion, even though we have now The Christ-ian Religion. No, in descending to earth he wants me to fully experience being human, following his example through all phases of life, from baby to infant, to toddler, to boyhood, teenager and adult.

It is telling that, as an idealistic twelve years old teenager, he tried to reason with the professors of religion at the Jerusalem School of Theology, where later Paul too received his advanced schooling. It is significant that, as an adult, he never repeated that dialogue. Instead, he condemned their teaching in no uncertain terms. He learned young in life the pitfalls of religion, which killed him.

. 

What else did this 12 years old teenager, teach me?

What Jesus learned in 3 days of give and take while his parents were frantically searching for him, also taught me a few things about myself.

For one thing: I, too, was formed in my youth. There I received the foundation of my life. After Jesus’ exposure to ‘theological teaching’ he forever stayed away from the temple-school and their learned professors, knowing full well that ‘religion’ and ‘tradition’ kill, just as it did Jesus. 

Today ‘religion’ kills creation, which I see as the embodiment of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and fully redeemed through Christ.

That’s why that text, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction,” I try to rule my life.

January 19 2022

THE ROAD TO HELL, OR….

“But something darker and deeper seems to be happening as well — a long-term loss of solidarity, a long-term rise in estrangement and hostility. This is what it feels like to live in a society that is dissolving from the bottom up as much as from the top down.”

That’s a quote from David Brooks in the New York Times January 14. He cites a wide range of facts and figures, from increases in traffic deaths, accelerating murder statistics, a rise in violent and irrational behavior, and general lawlessness. He does not understand why.

Well, I do.

It does not take much of Bible knowledge to grasp what is really happening. I call it the Matthew 24 syndrome: it makes fascinating reading. Jesus has the prophetic eye and the intrinsic insight that lends credibility to his words. He can spot the trends and, knowing human nature, directly extrapolates what sinful humanity will commit to in the future, which is now unfolding. 

Today we have reached the plateau of human ingenuity, and with natural resources depleting, and all elements, air, water, land, under increasing stress, it’s downhill from here. As Seneca observed 2,000 years ago, “Increases in growth are sluggish but the road to ruin is rapid”. 

Today we are on that road. C.S Lewis pinpointed it accurately when he wrote: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

That’s the road we have taken, the more traveled one, when we, 150 years ago, chose the exploitation of the earth as our gateway to prosperity. Now we are, undoubtedly, on the path to perdition. 

Matthew 24.

Matthew 24: 6-8 mentions ‘wars and rumors of war, famines, earthquakes: the beginnings of birth pains.’ 

Look around: Today Russia threatens Ukraine. China threatens Taiwan. Iran threatens Israel. Global Heating threatens the entire world. When unity of purpose is needed to combat the pandemic and climate change, the United States is a house divided. 

Matthew 24 paints a scenario that has an uncanny resemblance to today. Yet, our society, both business and politics, lives in a bubble of illusion, believing that, by tweaking here and there, we can continue our way of life as if nothing is basically off balance.

Unpredictable times?

It is said that we now are living in un-predictable times, given the pandemic and climate change. The final 2021 issue of The Economist, editorializes that “The era if predictable unpredictability is here to stay”. 

Nothing is further from the truth. This assumption would have applied to the  year 1900 when, after 100 years of solitude, the unfolding of the next 100 years, caused hundreds of millions of violent deaths. Now we know exactly what will be in store for us: ever worsening economic, social and climatic conditions, without any chance of improvement. As C. S. Lewis coined it 60 years ago: we are on the road to hell, and nothing can possibly deter us. Any effort to soften the impact through technology or chemical solutions, through Artificial Intelligence or military options, will simply backfire and cause more deterioration.

Brace yourself. 

Already the Southern Hemisphere, Australia and South America, where the summer of 2022 has started, the heat is building up and droughts accelerates. Last year’s La Nina – supposedly having a cooling effect – still made 2021 among the hottest ever. Now, with 2022 and the onset of El Nino, hellish heat is a safe prediction. Says Matthew 24: 21:

“For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” That’s a sure prediction.

Earthquakes.

Scientists warn that, as the world heats up, to expect more earthquakes. And true: every day we read reports how the Ring of Fire around the Pacific is rumbling and roaring. Here too there are biblical predictions: Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament repeatedly warn of an enormous earthquake, especially in Revelation 6 and 11. 

What must we do?

The entire Bible has been written with this very end in mind. Matthew 5: 48 translates “teleios” as perfect: “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”. Teleios points to the new creation, points to ‘perfection’, now not yet possible. The root of ‘teleios’ is ‘telos’, which means ‘end’ or ‘goal’. Our aim in life must reflect pure and permanent living, loving creation unconditionally: Only that prepares us for eternity. The alternative, the easy road, the prevalent one, advertised a thousand times per day, causing social conditions David Brooks does not understand, is the road to hell, now clearly outlined. 

Remember the murderer next to Jesus on the cross: conversions are possible!

WWJD?

JANUARY 12 2022.

Each Saturday morning, I receive an email from John Mauldin, a financial forecaster. He is an entertaining writer and I usually read his predictions. For some reason finances interests me, and, although I am a cautious investor and quite conservative, I, at my stage in life – born in 1928 – am more interested in the return of my saving than return on them. 

In his missive of January 8, 2022, he starts off with: “Some evangelical Christian groups wear cryptic little “WWJD?” pins. It stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” That’s a good question to ask when you face a moral dilemma. The economic dilemma, while different, becomes clearer when we ask what certain mortals will do. That will be our framework as we consider what 2022 will bring.”

John Mauldin is, I think, not an informed Christian, which is evident from the   paragraph I quoted where he sees Jesus as a moral teacher, having little to do with everyday life, such as economics: there the question what Jesus would do, is irrelevant, so says John Mauldin, and with him almost all others.

Still, “What Would Jesus Do?” is a relevant question. John the Baptizer, in a spat of uncertainty, sent some of his followers to Jesus in a quest for his genuine origin. Jesus’ simple reply was: the sick are healed, the dead raised. In other words, “With him the Kingdom that John had so fervently proclaimed, had come.” 

REBUKE

That became clear in two everyday examples. When the mother-in-law of his disciple Peter fell ill, Jesus ‘rebuked’ her illness and she was healed. When the experienced sailors, his fishermen disciples, were caught in such a severe storm that they feared for their lives, Jesus ‘rebuked’ the wind. “Rebuking’ points to a severe dressing down, and a return to the original status. “Rebuke” in these two cases were examples of  human-physical and atmospheric conditions that had been brought about by the integral influence of The Evil One on all of life. Today, for instance, the Covid occurrence originates with “The Prince of this World.” In 1John 5:19 we are told that, “The entire world is under the ‘control’ of the evil one”, including wars, holocaust and pandemics. Our economic system, at the root of our environmental eschaton–inducing eclipse, is caused by ‘the evil one’. In ‘rebuking’ the wind, for a moment, New Creation conditions were called into being, because Jesus is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. His kingdom is not a moral affair: his Kingdom embraces all of life. John 10: 10 tells me that, “The thief (Satan in this case) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I, Jesus, have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

There we have it: Jesus came not to teach us morals, not to live ethically: he came to teach us how to live, and that to the full.

How to live?

Dr. Sabine Dramm, in summarizing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, singles out his one overriding conviction: “Specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one.” In his essay, Dein Reich Komme, (Your Kingdom Come), Bonhoeffer writes, “He (Christ) does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other worlds beyond; rather, he gives us back to the earth as his loyal children.”

Indigenous teachings,

We can learn an awful lot from the original, ‘first nation’ people in the world. On August 13 1992, almost 30 years ago I bought for $27.95 The Wisdom of the Elders, a series of 50 mini essays exploring the age-old wisdom of indigenous people word-wide: they all see the world and what it contains as holy. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is another great example of earthly wisdom, a regimen we have failed to adopt, to our great disadvantage.

WWJD?

What would Jesus do if he were around today and faced with Covid and vaccination? There are a lot of church people who refuse the means of science in connection with the current epidemic, probably the first in a series. 

God has given us our bodies as our personal possession to treasure. He also tells us to love others as ourselves. Vaccination is a good example of this love: by protecting ourselves, in the best possible way, admitting that the shots are not perfect, by these injections, we confess our love for our own bodies, while also providing a measure of defense for others, both expressing our communal love as the Bible commands. 

WWJD? Christ, in everything like us, except for sin, with a body susceptible to disease and, yes, death, would submit his holy body to these preventive elements, these vaccinations, of course.

January 5 2022

The Second Coming 

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yeats (1865-1939) Irish, Christian, wrote this magnificent and prophetic poem some 80 years ago. Today, in 2022, it’s back in fashion, and rightly so. Yes, I too, am looking forward to the Second Coming.

Take an honest look around. Year 2021 ended on a sour note: the pandemic still galloping, the weather still walloping, the mood still mind-stopping, the politics still palliative-popping, opting for mere phoney gestures. 

I am a reader: books, magazines, (Economist, New Yorker, Christian Courier), newspapers, (Globe and Mail, New York Times, the Guardian). Very little TV – the odd soccer game. 

Movies? I read the reviews, haven’t seen one in years. Here are some snapshots from the movie Don’t Look Up. The reviewer – a climate scientist – tells me that it is a satire. In the film a comet is discovered, a planet killer which will smash into the earth in six months. The professionals are dead certain but their insight is ignored. One knowledgeable observer, interviewed on National TV, screams “Are we not being clear? We’re all 100% for sure gonna fucking die!” 

Comments the reviewer: “I can relate. This is what it feels like to be a climate scientist today.”

Two astronomers are given a 20-minute audience with the president (Meryl Streep), who is glad to hear that impact isn’t technically 100% certain. Weighing election strategy above the fate of the planet, she decides to “sit tight and assess”. Desperate, the scientists then go on a national morning show, but the TV hosts make light of their warning.

By now, the imminent collision with comet is confirmed by scientists around the world. When political winds shift, the president initiates a mission to divert the comet, but changes her mind at the last moment when urged to do so by a billionaire donor with his own plan to guide it to a safe landing, using unproven technology, in order to claim its precious metals. A sports magazine’s cover asks, “The end is near. Will there be a Super Bowl?”

Back to that prophetic poem.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

Poetry often baffles me, because my limited intellect fails to grasp its deeper meaning, so, when I try to struggle with these last lines, ignorance has priority, and question pile up. Does ‘stony sleep’ point to us, oblivious to the real time? Does ‘rocking cradle’ refer to the Christ Baby? Does the rough beast mean the ‘Antichrist’? Does ‘slouching’ indicate incomprehensible indifference? Is that film a sign for today, how half-heartedly humanity is responding to planet-killing climate breakdown?

What is sure….

What is sure is that World leaders underestimate the rapid, serious and permanent ecological breakdown. 

What is sure is that the Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed. 

What is sure is that climate scientists face an even more insurmountable public communication task than the astronomers in the movie Don’t Look Up.

What is sure is that climate destruction is unfolding lightning fast as far as the planet is concerned, but glacially slow as far as the news cycle is concerned.

What is sure is that ‘reciprocity’, total interdependence between us and creation is the basis for life after The Second Coming, something we must aim for now.

What is sure is that The Second Coming is rushing on. Rather than being delayed it will accelerate. The brute reality is that it will be there, sudden, without warning, unannounced, unexpected, amidst optimistic opinions by the officials.

THE VERY LAST MARRIAGE

Earth we are. The Creator fashioned us from the earth. By “earth” I mean the planet’s very superficial soil covering, that shallow layer of earth on which we live, and on whose health and wellbeing and original composition we depend for our continuation. 

That very same earth is no longer earth as such, because its biological composition has been altered: a gram of that plain dirt no longer contains the millions of microbes necessary to function as earth: where the earth goes, so do we, and the PANDEMIC is just one sign.

The earth also exists because the biosphere exists; and the biosphere is intimately linked to something the Russians discover to be the biotic pump. As I understand it, the biotic pump is the creational mechanism that makes the breathing of the earth possible. It accomplishes an exchange between the Amazon Rain Forest Mass and the Siberian-Canadian North Boreal Forests, with their immense variety of specimen, breathing and inhaling the oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle, and generating generous rainfall everywhere. That process stops when we slash these tree masses, producing atmospheric rivers and lakes, instead.

A CALL TO BASICS.

Dr. Barry Commoner was a celebrated professor of biology whom I call a modern-day prophet, because he coined the four laws of ecology some 50 years ago, rules for life necessary to LIVE. 

I place these laws at par with Scripture, for the simple reason that these laws have stood the test of times, and affirm what also is found in the Gospels.

They are:

(1) Everything is connected to everything else; 

(2) Creation knows best; 

(3) Nothing ever disappears; 

(4) There is no free lunch. 

Sometimes it is easier to remember important issues when they are put into song.

Here’s my musical version of these laws, based on the familiar melody of, “All people that on earth do dwell, SING”.

(Everything is connected)
All people that on earth do dwell,
sing to the Lord, his ways foretell.
Remember earth, air, sea and tree
Are all a part of you and me.

(Creation knows best)

Creation knows the ways to go
God bred it in its natural know,

We therefore must inquire of her
To see where we go right or err.

(Nothing disappears)
Nothing will ever disappear
It lingers on, it is now clear
The oil we burn creates much ill
And causes universal kill.       

(No free lunch)

There is no free lunch to be had
The bills are due: they will be bad
Our children must pay this great debt
We robbed them of their safety net.

We robbed them, left them in the lurch

No wonder they have left the church
We wasted, stole, their future need
Please Lord, forgive us our great greed.

RENEWAL IS EAGERLY WAITING 

Isaiah 62: 4, tells us that “The land will be married.” 

The usual explanation is that Christ and the church are united in marriage, but Revelation clearly states that in the New Creation there is no altar, no church, no Bible, no human marriage either. Here’s what Revelation 21 says: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

This to me suggest that there will be One Last Marriage, “the marriage between the ‘earth’, the ‘land,’ and the human race”: God’s Holy Creation will be intimately united with: “the chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” (1 Peter 2: 9). 

Belonging to God really means that we are one with the earth, the ideal situation where we truly live with and in the Holy Land, united in an eternal union with the holy people of God. Genesis 3: 19 really tells me that we are ‘earth and to earth we shall return”, united in marriage as the Holy Nation.

THE VERY LAST MARRIAGE is the perfect union between God’s Holy Creation and the Holy Nation, automatically observing the Laws of Ecology.