Visions 3

I saw a roller painting a wall whte, later I saw a hand presentng me wth a ring of several five, I think, keys. The interpretation: You are being made pure and innocent again and I am handing you the keys that will unlock and open the doors I am preparing for you. i will not open the doors, but I will lead you to them. Your part is to unlock them open and enter in. I will show you throughout the way which resources you already have and how to use them in order to make my way plain before you.

1986

"Now", says Tron, "May I get on with my tale?" "By all means", says Kenny. We were standing, visiting with Thaddai's mother in her grain and bread shop.  She was telling us that some recent droughts had reduced the harvests, she had to raise her prices and there was scarcity.  Thaddai's father was a maker of pots and vessels, one of the finest in Damascus, so that even the Roman proconsul had become one of his most diligent clients.  But with his death, that income completely dried up.  Thera was pausing, hesitating as though she did not know how or whether to proceed, when a dark shadow came in through the awning.  I looked more carefully, and all I could see was someone veiled in a black mantel edged with gold embroidery.  I could see at its hem a green silken garment, emerald green and the exquisitely sandaled foot of a young woman.  The figure said nothing, but handed Thera a small linen purse that appeared to be full of coins.  She left it on the table, then turned and noticed us.  Then, throwing back her veil, revealing a beautiful dark young woman with eyes painted with kohl., she screamed "Thaddai!", and like his mother clutched and clung to him in a tight embrace.  She was weeping silently.

It's All About Me (of course it is dear, of course it is!) 6

As a species, we humans have really totally blown it.  Climate chaos is upon us.  Europe is broiling under yet another killer heat wave.  Last year on that continent, seventy thousand people perished from heat-related causes.  Our last eleven years have been the hottest in recorded memory.  Here in Canada,as well as elsewhere in the world, killer wildfires have become the norm.  Every summer in major cities the sun gets hidden or turns a ghastly copper-orange, by clouds of health-destroying smoke.  For a couple of days Vancouver had the world's worst  air quality   topping Mexico City, Beijing and Delhi.  Meanwhile, government leaders go on signing and approving deals with the fossil fuel industries, meaning more pipelines, more fuel, more contaminents, more heat,  As if they are completely tone-deaf to what we are doing to our planet, to ourseves, to the entire web of life.  In Europe and in China there is a surge of  renewable energy, solar, wind, etc, but this really reads like too little too late. I could go on, but there is no need to. How did we get this way?  Well, fire has a lot to do wih it.  The Greek myth reads that the titan god, Prometheus, stole fire from the altar of the gods on Olmypus and gave it to humankind, so that they or we would no longer be completely subservient, but become the master of our own lives, our own destiny.  As punishment, he was chained to the face of a mountain where an eagle would come to devour his liver for all eternity. That gift of fire turned us into apex predators.  Meat, till then eaten raw and difficult to digest and rather disgusting, became tasty and easy on the stomach.  We turned from being a prey species into beasts of prey.  Our brains grew, we became more inventive, more adept and more adaptable.  We left Africa for other climes.  In many cases, places of bitter and biting cold, since the ice age was upon us.  Fire helped our paleolithc ancestors adapt and adjust to some of the most hostile climates imaginable.  Even after our prehistoric ancestors were nearly wiped out by cold and pandemics, a remnant survived and went on killing and eating, and taking down trees to warm themselves and survive the bitter cold of Europe, Siberia, and northern Canada.  Our population grew, doubling, tripling, quadrupling and so on.  We cut down more rees, burned more wood, deforested mountains and hillsides, destroying ecosystems, and even then we were starting to foul the very air that keeps us alive.  It never occurred to anyone that we might be a species adapted and designed exclusively for tropical qnd subtropical climates.  No one was about to move back to Africa, or stay in India or indonesia.  Fire made us masters of our destiny.  Fire was the first catalyst to help separate us from God. Our numbers grew.  exponentially.  We continued to hunt to extinction a whole myriad of species of the most magnificent animals that ever graced our planet.  We continued deforesting, destroying ecosystems, and then came agriculture, the big ecological deal breaker.  Most of the British isles and many other parts of the world became deforested.  but we wanted to stay warm and cook our meat.  Bye bye forests, bye bye ecosystems.  Then coal was discovered, and entire cities in Europe became almost uinhabitable from the reulting smog.  Then petroleum game along and gangbusters!!!!! i almost forgot to mention that not long afer, we learned how to split the atom.  Bye bye Hiroshima.  Bye bye Nagasaki.  Hello global nuclear terror.. We could, especially in developed nations, cut our energy demands and needs in half, and with just a few small trade offs and sacrifice, we would be living within our means and climate catastrophe could be forestalled, perhaps indefiniltely. But no one wans to do this or even hear about it.  Prometheus's gift of fire was the gift of hubris, and ever since then, our species has gone its own destructive way, completly engulfed in greed, selfishness and fear, because hubris does not unite humanity.  It splinters, balkanizes and divides us.  Every rat for himself. And now we have this lovely age of narcisism to survive.  i tend to think here of the closing lines of the song by King Cimson, Epitaph:  "Knowlege is a deadly friend if no one plays the rules.  The fate of all mankind i fear is in the hands of fools." We have always  like small children playing with adult size tools and weapons.  This is not going to end well