Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

"Man, by the Fall, fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over nature. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life, be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences." - Sir Francis Bacon "These are the days of miracle and wonder..." - Paul Simon ----------------------- Yes, there are times that the natural world outflanks us (Covid-19 anyone?). That is our lot this side of heaven. Yet God has given us great gifts through the arts and sciences to, in some part, restore our dominion over nature: My children have never feared getting polio. One of my son's friends has the heart of another person beating inside of them. Drone ships  in the middle of the ocean  catch nosecones of rockets in big nets when returning (!) to the earth, and serve as  landing pads for spent stages of the same. Autonomous robots deliver packages to people. Fossil fuel consumption is not needed to power ...

I could probably write a lot more about this, but at some point I need to wrap it up. In the  first part of this I thought about the fact that "freedom" and "connection" is my lot as a human. I cannot be free without being connected to something. In the second part I thought that there were degrees of freedom and that a freedom connected to God and my neighbor is the greater freedom. The lesser freedom is when I am connected to the world system (that is opposed to things of God), the flesh (which is the part of myself that pulls me from him), and the devil (who is the real, personal being who is the author of lies and energizes the world system and my flesh). As I thought about this connected freedom I could not help but draw parallels to the only being in the cosmos that is ultimately connected and ultimately free, namely, God himself. His connected freedom among the members of his divine being, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, form a union of eternal, unbroken ...

In part 1 of this line of thinking I tried to explore the concept of being free and connected at the same time. It seems that we choose freedom and, along with that, there is a corresponding slavery or service. I am, as a human, never free in the ultimate sense. God is the only one who is truly free and the freedom he experiences is one that, from and into eternity, does not have a corresponding service. Yet, the freedom that God experiences is perfectly expressed through connection. Connection in the three persons of the Trinity itself. What a beautiful picture of the Trinity it was as the  the dancers, though connected, saw a freedom much like the one God sees! I may be reading too much into this but, in the Amazing Stories episode, the two dancers moved in front of the stained-glass picture of Christ, his eyes fixed on the Father as he prayed for strength to face the cross chosen for him. What a startling picture of the three persons of the Trinity moving in a concert of freedo...

One of my favorite shows of all time has to be Amazing Stories which I started watching in the 1980's. I have been watching the reboot of the series on AppleTV+ and just finished the fourth episode. Towards the end of the story one of the characters remarks that some dancers she had been watching with her daughter were "so connected yet so free". That phrase struck me. I would think that freedom and connectedness were antithetical to each other. But, as a Christian, this rings true because it describes my position as a son of the earth, son of a man, and a son of God perfectly. As a human, absolute and total freedom from every burden is never to be my lot. Even thinking about what I am constrained to do I find myself in servitude more often than not. I need to eat. I need to drink. I need to sleep. I need to do a lot of things while I am in my earthly body. I am a slave to those physical acts. Now I can choose to free myself from them. There have been plenty of people tha...