Inevitable War?

INEVITABLE WAR? 

Is it inevitable, the wars?  Is it built into God's unholy system? 

In our holiest expression of universal Purpose, we connect with - bond with - unite with other human souls, connection facilitated by shared experience – beliefs - identity.  We are naturally and rightly drawn to support these family members – teammates - comrades.  Then, in the process of that mutual support, we inflict atrocities on those in that other competing family – sect - or army.  

Is it inevitable?  Can we not be loyal to our nation without being party to destruction of the other nation?  Can we love and support and be loyal to the warrior while not supporting and condoning the war?  

Individually, in some situations, we can abjure war while embracing the warrior.  But surely many cases demand supporting the active combat or else watching the loved comrade or family member fall victim.  

in spite of entropy and resource shortages, God's Creation does not dictate inevitable wars.  Wars arise from freely chosen evil in the hearts of malevolent and politically popular leaders.  These leaders are in turn enthusiastically empowered by the willful evil in our hearts, we the humanity that eagerly follow.  The ensuing conflagration then sweeps up individuals, participation motivated by loyalty to family, tribe, and comrades,...... inevitable participation in the not inevitable wars.

Artificial Intelligence and Real Stupidity

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND REAL STUPIDITY

Look into the hearts of humanity and tremble. 

Look into your own heart and flee.

It is all the same, this history, a panoply of  beliefs pitting one against another,

beliefs wielded like a sword,

the caustic leaders certainly not subscribing to such silly beliefs,

but adept at wielding them.

Beliefs,

unite the mob behind a belief,

stoke the madness,

lay claim to the power.

So it has been, and remains.

Evolution lurched to a halt upon the appearance of the human being, evolution rolling up against the rock of self-awareness that henceforth refused to entertain any change to what clearly is its own perfection.

But it is a momentary halt, a transitory barrier, the very storms unleashed by the selfish predilections of this overly self-aware species summoning its own demise.

A last great spasm of religious fervor, mixed with the toxic effluent of nationalism, is beginning its malevolent march across the planet, fueled by the usual cynical panoply of miscreants and sociopaths.  

Wealth and power will drive the leaders,

feeding the mobs’ fear and blind hatred.

Carefully cultivated ignorance and insecurity will drive the mobs.

Artificial intelligence will be no match for real stupidity.

Distributed networks will wither when fiber optics succumb to pitch-fork and torch.

Look into the hearts of humanity,

while still conveniently able to observe through your glowing screens,

before the banging on your door demands you join or die.

  Copyright 2025 Don Ray

 

Reaching Through the Ages

 

REACHING THROUGH THE AGES

Reaching through the ages, 

from one to another,

that exquisitely rare connection between souls.

Oh, the joy of connection,

even if through centuries and continents.

A human expression,

finally heard,

dear God,

finally understood,

finally absorbed,

finally bringing some positive influence,

finally healing.

In a different time,

a far different time,

yet still related time,

when clarity of Purpose

is finally revealed.

Picture the moment,

the culmination of cascading miracles,

subtle and unrecognized,

right from the beginning,

the desperately hopeless beginning.

Let them wonder,

wonder at exact meaning,

reaching back,

back through time

to this very moment.

Wouldn't that be astounding?

These very words being seen by someone.

Can you believe?  Have you that much faith?

Yes, times change.  Yes, understanding changes.

Imagine, look, this is quite specific,

this moment and all those moments,

reaching, reaching, 

across the ages,

souls connecting,

understanding, 

enlightenment,

reassurance,

encouragement,

healing, precious healing,

from this moment to that.

Incomprehensible.

Preposterous.

Denied by every testimony and all evidence.

But look at it.  Feel it.

In this moment.

In this hopeless moment

that contains the potential for greatest faith,

a faith crystalized there,

there in the wreckage.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Fading Chime

 

FADING CHIME

A chime, 

a single chime.

Each life a single chime,

seldom heard,

barely recognized before fading,

fading, leaving us to wonder,

did we really hear it?

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Digital Storm

 

DIGITAL STORM

The digital storm,

the storm of manipulation.

We were not ready for this.

It overwhelmed us.

It snuck up on us in plain sight.

We welcomed it,

naively welcomed it.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Breeze of Color

 BREEZE OF COLOR

I sit on the stones content, blessedly content, to watch the beautiful fall colors waving in the warm breeze heralding approaching weather.

Observe….savor Nature….as I did as a small child in dad's navy hammock under the cottonwood tree.  

I might seem a far different person now than when a student.  But not so at all.  I have simply shed the worldly dreams and hopes of younger days, revealing the person that was always there.

Spectacular fall colors this year, cherished as I cherished them as a child.

Then it was necessary to have aspirations, to get grades, to have career objectives.  It was all necessary, all my response to the world in which I was placed.  The infatuation with cars and TV shows was necessary, until seeing through them.  But I was always there, underneath the thick blankets of plans and schedules and hopes, always ready to pause to savor the colors in the breeze.

Occasionally, in order to be me, I momentarily eschew discipline and goals and allow exploration of what I really want …...and I am back outside, immersed in the colors, absorbing the sun, as I did when I had nothing to do.  

I was Home then, and Home now, the same Home.

Here, basking in light filtered through reds and coppers and greens and yellows and golds, here, without having to defend or justify my inactions, here, the healing here, I am who I was then, then far away and long ago, when I seemed so different, when I still wore the world's demands.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

God Has Left the Building

 

GOD HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Holiness?

Do we not believe it exists?

Do we believe "holiness" to be a vestigial mental concept of no relevance to our carnal lives?

Is "holiness" relegated to an altar or reliquary or ritual?

Does that mean God has deserted us?  If we sense no "holiness" through the course of a day, what's that say about God, or the world, or us?

God has left the building?

The world supposedly of God's Creation is now corrupt and bereft of any residual holiness?

Or we just don't see that holiness, don't sense it, or maybe we're blinded to it by our goal-oriented busyness.

"Holiness"....seriously?....relegated to something constructed by human hands?....or constrained to some ritual or liturgy?.....or relegated to the past?  

Imagine what life would be like if we were more adept at discerning holiness.  Imagine what the world would be like if more people were willing to accept the possibility of holiness.

"Holiness".....in the routine, in the grasp of a baby, in the blossom of a flower, in an exercise of patience.

"Holiness", not an alien and inscrutable weirdness stuck in pages of scripture, not divorced from our morning chores, but an integral component of each, the foundation underlying all.  Doesn't that seem more reasonable for a world created by a God worthy of any worship?

Look for it, be open to it, just in case, just in case it is there after all, awaiting a respite from our denials.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Beware God's Will

 

BEWARE GOD’S WILL

All these people, sincerely believing they are doing God’s will.  All these people, inflicting suffering for God...and yes, there are two interpretations of that last sentence.

Invoke God’s will and watch the conflict begin.

Invoke God’s will and listen to the rising anger.

Invoke God’s will,  I defy you to do it passively, unless making excuses for some cataclysm, tragedy, suffering, or God-forsaken wretch.

Invoke God’s will, and condemn.

Invoke God’s will, and turn away.

Invoke Gods will, and pull the trigger.

Or admit you have no idea how to extricate God’s will from your opinions, wants, wishes, and jealously fortified beliefs.  Admit, confess even if only secretly to yourself, then go forth and do something caring and compassionate. Then you won’t have to wonder if you are doing God’s will.  Then, the recipient of your efforts will be glad to welcome your version of God’s will.  If such a radical course of action means neglecting God’s theological, political, social, or moral will, fear not, there are ample numbers of people abjectly certain they are implementing God’s theological, political, social, and moral will.

You too will be certain, certain in that moment of caring, in your touch of compassion, in a flickering moment of fulfillment of a loving God’s will on earth, as in Heaven.  

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Embrace of Comfort

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

EMBRACE OF COMFORT

Comfort, comfort….from whom?....or from what?

Who and what awaits us,

that who and what that so resolutely hides itself from us now.

 

Comfort, comfort,

don't look for sense in it,

yet it is not deniable.

The very thought and awareness

testifies to its presence.

Comfort.

Comfort.

All is not lost,

and will never be lost.

 

Most dare not look for that Source of comfort

for the prospect of its nonexistence is too terrifying.

It is too abstract,

too irrelevant to this materialistic world,

and too unneeded in this age of screens, entertainment, and distraction.

Comfort is something in a bottle or a download.

But a day comes, inexorably approaching,

when yes, comfort, 

irrational, inexplicable

comfort,

will unavoidably and desperately be needed.

Soon enough, soon enough,

making no sense,

from Source indistinct and incomprehensible,

comfort, comfort

will be needed,

    and will softly embrace.

 

Necessary Excess

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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NECESSARY EXCESS

 Such a stunning juxtaposition.

Morning, watching William Shatner (actor who played Captain Kirk in the 1960’s TV series Star Trek) actually fly into space on the second crewed Blue Origins flight.  

Later that morning: watching an Al Jazeera documentary about flying seventy-year-old Douglas Commercial 3’s (DC-3’s) in Columbia.

Shatner and the other three passengers, two of whom paid millions of dollars, had to do nothing on the completely automated thrill-ride flight.

Captain Raul, the pilot in Columbia, probably in his fifties, has to weigh the cargo so the cargo merchants don’t overload his plane.  He handles all the flight scheduling, recorded on large sheets of paper.  He checks the fuel for water.  

Blue Origins is a toy of the rich.  The Columbian pilot does not get paid unless he’s flying, motivating him to fly in dangerous conditions.

Blue Origins’ rocket is state of the art.  The DC-3 is fueled by carrying buckets of gasoline up ladders and pouring it into the tanks.  The pilot determines how much to put in each tank, striving for the minimum weight that will allow maximum cargo.

Crews race to the Blue Origins capsule after landing.  The DC-3 captain flies over the Amazon jungle, with no hope of rescue in the event of a forced landing.

These dichotomies occurred simultaneously.  It is quite possible the DC-3 pilot was flying at the same time Shatner was flying.  

The pioneering flight pilots and engineers of the 1930’s, when flying was for the elite and rich, created a technology that still brings fuel and food to isolated villages in Columbia these decades later.  

Will any similar dichotomy be occurring seventy years from now with space-flight? …..or will a rebuilding humanity look back on space-flights of the rich and famous as a last egregious display of hedonistic excess?

Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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Opportunity in the Darkness

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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OPPORTUNITY IN THE DARKNESS

 

We, these nominally freewill individual elements of consciousness, find ourselves in this world of entropy, inevitable death, need, hunger, suffering, and evil.  We exist in more or less solitary confinement, our experience of life singular and isolated, with no way to share the essence of what it deeply feels like to be you and me.  

This might initially seem discouraging, and then depressing, and then abjectly hopeless.  ……but only because we miss the point.  Perceived from a different perspective, a distinct Light becomes evident in the undeniable darkness.

We are placed in a form of existence with boundless opportunity to do good and practice Love.  Yet our individual corporeal existence is all about us, all about our birth, all about our survival, all about our destiny.

We are given ample, indeed boundless, opportunity to do good, to help, to alleviate suffering, to rescue, to heal, to comfort.  Anywhere we turn there is need, which is to say, opportunity.

We do not have to save the world.  We cannot save the world.  But we can save someone or something, and in the process accept the gift of our own salvation.

There need be little torment about exactly what to do.  In this world of suffering the opportunities are boundless.  Raise your children, do a good job, or rescue animals, or shelter the homeless, or serve on church committees, or be politically informed and active.  But for God's sake, for your sake, do something.  There is no single right path.  There is no way for you to save the world.  But there are endless ways to save something and someone.  

That is the nature and Purpose of this world of entropy, to provide opportunity, to provide the Choice.  At its core foundational structure, below the infinite mathematical sequences that can only tease at a pseudo-determinism, resides entropy, the statistically not quite impossible, and hence inevitable, evolution of conscious life, and the inexorable death of that life.  The resulting overall perceived image is a grisly panoply of carnivorous cruelty.  Yet at the pixilated level of the individual elements of isolated consciousness, there we see the Purpose, the beautiful Purpose, the redeeming Purpose, in the opportunity to  choose Love and beauty in whichever direction we turn.  

It is a Universe and Creation of suffering.  It is a Universe and Creator suffering…...all for us, for each of us…..we children being born into what seems darkness because our eyes are still closed, we children of a Light awaiting our Choice to let it shine through us.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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Conflicted Choice

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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CONFLICTED CHOICE

Conflicts, between nations and people, inevitable.

Collapse of systems, inevitable.

Conflict internally, inevitable.

Conflict, what to do, the assessment of what is right.  Leaving one’s  children to earn money to feed those children.  Choosing among overlapping demands of friends, family, obligations, God, church, team, patriotism, pets, colleagues.

Conflict and choice…..there is the core nature of this worldly life.  Each moment at work, playing with children, helping a friend, supporting the team, is a moment not given to all the others.

Law and order, compassion, enforcement, acceptance…...each of them right, each justifiable.  Each choice of what to do bringing to light everything not done.

We defer the choice to holy texts, to imams and preachers, to team colors, to authority, blessed authority, anyone, anyone to save us from the torment of choice.

There will be suffering, and we don't want to make it worse, but the lovingly purchased pet food entailed suffering and death of natural resources or confined domesticated livestock.

Conflict and choices, enough choice by one group of people leading to conflict with that other group who made a different choice.

It is all good.  It will all induce suffering.

Some agonize over the choices.  Others don't.

"Just make them" time and mortality demand.  Decide who will suffer, who you will neglect, while trying to love and help the others.  

Every opportunity is from God?.....but the "ruler of this world", satan or coyote or crow, confuses the issue.

Note and observe, record without judgement, then adjust as feels right.  That is a way to avoid taking control.  It is a way to make informed decisions.  

This is a finite world.  It is so in order to promote values and awareness.  It is the big Choice that matters.  

It is a world of mortality.  Only in the limitations of mortality do values and priorities arise.

God does indeed place before us opportunities, but we cannot take advantage of all of them.  The real opportunity is the Choice…..and there is no right answer for that Choice.  Manifold opportunities to rescue mean manifold necessities to neglect.  It is simply so in this world.  It is important,  critically important, to recognize that.

Give up control, but don't think that means escaping terrible choices.  The desire to escape moral choices leads to horrors of ISIS, Taliban, and Baptists.  Make informed decisions.  Be aware of what you are doing.  Accept, and this is critical, what you cannot do as determined by each choice of what to do.  

Yes, each life opportunity, each opportunity to serve and help and heal and rescue is from God, personally delivered to you, demanding your response.  And you cannot do it all.  It is a huge act of faith and spiritual growth to recognize and accept that.  

Mortality demands faith to accept what cannot be.  Eternity assures all good will be.  

Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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Ancient Future Time

Copyright 2025 Don Ray

ANCIENT FUTURE TIME

07:32

Hillside

In a tribe of junipers.

This is the safe time, the ancient time.

Only bears and coyotes up here.

Sunday, bless-ed Sunday morning.

The noisy threats abate for a moment,

not exactly out of respect or reverence,

but tradition and societal norms will do,

if it momentarily quiets the violent cacophony.

Safe time.

Ancient time.

Future time.

Relationship Inflation

 

RELATIONSHIP INFLATION

Interpersonal connection is ultimately all we have, but its value has been subject to a deadly economic inflation as pseudo-connections have been rendered unlimited by digital media.  The principle at work  is the same as currency inflation.  Produce too much money in response to demand or economic weakness and the currency loses its value.  Our spiritual economic weakness, the hunger for more and more meaningful relationship, has been met with a profligate printing of currency in the form of FaceBook, Instagram, and the panoply of other social media.  We can connect with anyone anywhere at any time.  

As a result, individual relationships and interpersonal bond have been devalued.  We find ourselves in the position of so many nations throughout history who met economic privations not with addressing foundational economic weaknesses but by printing more money to momentarily placate the hungry, demanding masses.

We have not addressed the underlying crippling spiritual economic condition that leaves us hungry, empty, bitter, angry, frightened, and lonely.  We have responded to our spiritual ache of loneliness by minting ever more digital  interactions, rendering them all worthless.  We lug our bag of "likes", "followers", and "friends" to the relationship store and come away with a stale piece of bread, to which we respond by collecting more "likes", "followers", and "friends", each newly minted "connection" rendering all connections more superficial and fleeting.

Values of currencies arise only from the productivity underlying them, productivity in turn arising from work and investment.  Values of relationships likewise possess that value only when productive, when the exchange of relationship interaction among parties has some mutual and meaningful lasting benefit.  That is an economic parameter independent of any treasury, exchequer, or media corporation.  We each individually determine the value of the social currency we mint every day, with our authenticity, depth, and sincere listening, none of which are encouraged by screens and keyboards.  Log off.  Listen.  Care.  Watch the wealth accrue.

Riding Darkness

 

RIDING DARKNESS

Now dark, quickly dark.

Gentle motion reveals the presence of darkly invisible waves just out that window.  

We ride the dark surface, just as our lives ride the boundary between life and death, sensing motion, trying to maintain our balance, something out of our control rippling by our soul, sensed not seen, treading an unseen surface separating life from an utterly unknowable depth into which we will inevitably sink.  The darkness, the unknowable depth, the unseen ripples we sense and dark tsunamis we dread, the darkness, the blankness, the unknowable depths, that is our canvas, the great blank canvas of life without answers on which we decide what matters.

Meaningless Time

 Meaningless Time

Time.  Corporeal existence.  Somehow it is through those that interaction Reality arises.  Through those Deep Love arises.  And horrors arise.  And beauty arises.  

Time.  Matter.  For now what we have to work with.

Yet nothing arising from them has meaning other than in the eternal.  Here and Now is the moment of Creation, we a painful part of that Creation.

The time and vanishing physical forms are illusions.  Yet through them we are empowered by God to create the eternal, eternal bonds and Love.

"Do not be discouraged", whispers Spirit.  Our capacity for control and power seems terribly limited.  Our wishes and will, even when uttered in the name of Jesus, seem pointless and hopeless.  Yet time deceives, making us think that the will of God is not unfolding.  Our entrapment in the Now blocks our view of unfolding Purpose and fulfillment of our hopes.  Our incarceration in the corporeal keeps us apart.  Yet in the usual Paradox, it is that corporeal and temporal nature that facilitate  creation of the real and enduring.

Faith, faith worn and tattered by the interminable delay of prophecy, faith is our source of warmth in the biting cold of the temporal world.  Faith is a capacity to sense and know beyond the body of Now.  

The moment will pass, has already passed.  The physical forms are disappearing before our eyes.  All that passing makes room for fulfillment of our prayers.  All that is real and meaningful takes time.  That is the oft repeated lesson, the lesson of the widow and of the bridesmaids.  Time and the physical, in their fleeting passage, erect the eternal.  Hold fast to the vision of faith, to awareness of Truth.  So much better, a seemingly delayed answer that endures through eternity than an instant gratification that just as promptly disappears along with the rest of the world.  Be glad the answers to your prayers are not immediately evident in the world, for that would mean they would just as quickly disappear along with the world.  

Let it unfold.  Do not be deceived by time.  The needs are known.  The prayers are heard.  Their fulfillment will not be through anything as unreliable as worldly outcomes.  Hold fast to faith as you watch time render the corporeal to dust, thereby making room for answers eternal.

Children of the Cast Off God

 

Children of the Cast Off God

Wondrous things are happening, people, even these people, doing wondrous things.

They are terribly disappointing, these people, yet the potential of God resides within them.

Do not look for perfection.  Do not look for control.  But define for them a need and direction, and give them some freedom, opportunity, and encouragement, and sometimes miraculous things will unfold.  

A frightening, even terrifying lot, magnanimous generosity and irrational cruelty keeping close company in their hearts.  Expect little.  Hope for much.  Give up all hope of understanding them or explaining their behavior.  Love them, but don't get too close.

Fear them.  Do not condemn them.  Forget any pretensions of teaching them.

Somewhere in their self-perpetuated chaos resides the Kingdom of Heaven.  Don't frustrate yourself trying to make sense of that.  

Curse them, bless them, flee from them, embrace them.  The Universe orbits about them, all Creation exists for them, and they will steadfastly lay claim to their central position while not bothering with gratitude for it.

Wondrous things are happening, and the children of the cast-off-God are doing wondrous things.  Marvel at it all and smile along with their neglected God.  

The Unwelcome New

 The Unwelcome New

Raging wind.  Power out.  Phone out.  A sneak preview of our future.

Chaos and turbulence rage.

It is glorious.

All communication is cut off.

It is glorious.

One by one Christmas decorations blow away.

It is sad.

(Bodhi kitty enters, unsettled.)

Disconnected and alone, the mind indulges in the rare opportunity, absorbing the chaos and storm.  

(Too noisy for the Bodes who flinches at a bang and retreats from the last violent burst.)

The would-be tyrants will take advantage of the growing chaos.  God will take advantage of the growing chaos.

Social DNA and spiritual genomics will battle for survival to determine what crawls out of the wreckage to become the newly triumphant politico-economic system.  In the meantime, warlords and gunslingers will reign supreme, occasionally donning the accouterments of tetrarch or judge to gain a facade of respectability.  

This prediction is no vision or prophecy, it is common sense, and a clear-eyed reading of human history.  

We will craft new procedures for selecting our priests and chieftains by whatever titles, who in reality will select themselves as they always have.  

For now the winds rage and cracks appear, the despots-to-be scurry about to advantageously position themselves for the deconstructions.  Outcomes remain hidden by the unyielding wall of time.  Tyrants and Divinity move their chess pieces on the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of society's board. 

"There will be change" declares the storm as winds of chaos strain the moorings of civilization's delicate web.  

There will be change, as there has always been change, the feared and unwelcome "new" triumphing, rising from our wreckage, rising from seeds scattered and moistened by the storm, seeds already produced, waiting, waiting, seeds cast aside in the combat of our world, seeds needing only fresh soil, exposed soil, the overlying structures stripped away that earth may breathe again.