The Acts Of The Holy Ghost ~ part two

       continued from Sunday, August 11, 2013

~ Act 4 ~

I transferred back and forth between Heaven and Earth several times to chat with our son, Jesse. Sometimes I would talk a bit about Heaven, a few bits about our science. He seemed to absorb some of that. Other times I would just go there and remain hidden, even from him. Here is one episode of what I observed incognito.

Jesse was teaching a group in a small room. With him were Peter, John, Thomas, Matthew, Philip, Judah, and Maggie. (I learned their names based on observing their conversation.)

"I've been working on a new speech," Jesse said as he picked up a parchment. "Here's the thing."

"Here's the thing?" Thomas was doubting that that could be the opening line. "I don't think you can begin a speech to thousands with "Here's the thing."

"OK." Jesse scratched off that line.

John touched Jesse on the arm with curiously loving eyes. "I think your ministry is going great, Jesse."

"Thanks, John."

Peter, a rather butch fellow, asserted himself. "I think we need to move to the next step, m'Lord."

"What did you have in mind, Peter?"

"A rousing speech from a mountaintop. The thoughts you shared with us last week."

Thomas was questioning. "What's the final scene in all this. I'm inspired, but what does this all lead to?"

"Always the doubter, Thomas. But I feel this world is all screwed up. It needs to shake off the old and modernize. A new testament, if I should be so bold. What do you think, Maggie?"

"You're going to listen to a woman?" Peter was like a rock.

"In the new world I envision, women have an equal role."

"Well, I don't cast my pearls before swine," Maggie scolded Peter.

"Hey, that's a great line!" Jesse said. He wrote something down with his stylus.

"Hey, don't fight. Blessed are the peacemakers," Philip chimed in.

"Another great line!"

This went on for some time. After a while, Jesse left the meeting room and went out walking alone on a hillside, looking down and mumbling to himself. I was following him out of sight when this professional-looking (in Judean terms) man approached Jesse.

Jesse looked up. "And who would you be?"

"L.Z. Bubb."

"L.Z.?" OK.

"I was at one of talks last week. Interesting."

"Think so?"

"You're going to mess things up with the establishment you know. And you know what happens to those who do that."

"All I want is equality and treating everyone the same. And for there to be a little justice and mercy. I just believe it gets better." Jesse sounded almost believable.

"Why don't you come work for me? You would be great in marketing. I can make you rich. This philosophical work is nonsense."

"Temping, I don't know ..."

"Think about it." L.Z. Bubb walked away.

~ Act 5 ~

I transferred back to Heaven. The next time I visited Earth I watched Jesse as he was speaking to a pretty large crowd. I just mixed in, so he didn't notice me.

"You're blessed when you think life sucks. Let go and let the One inside you rule.

"You're blessed when you aren't in the top 1%. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for Knowledge. It's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full', you find yourselves cared for.

"You're blessed when you can show nations how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. Otherwise you are just a war monger.

"You're blessed when your commitment to Truth provokes attacks. Persecution drives you even deeper into Enlightenment.

"Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then take the first step and do it for them. Add up the Torah and Prophets and this is what you get, more or less, minus the bullshit.

"Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or other. Don't be impressed with charisma; look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook. These diseased trees with their bad apples are going to be chopped down and burned.

"You've may have been taught to retaliate against your enemies. But I say to turn away from retribution.

"You've heard it was written, 'In the beginning God created Heaven and the Earth'. But I tell you our whole universe was in a hot dense state, then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion starts — Wait! Scratch that.

"I did not come here to you to tell you to ignore the Law. I tell you I'm here to fulfill it. Don't disobey the Law until that happens.

"There is far more at stake here than religion. This Son of Man is no lackey to the Sabbath; he's in charge.

"But if you just use my words in Scripture studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards."

With that, he walked away.

Two men right beside me started talking to each other. "I see trouble brewing," one said. "He's saying on one hand to obey Scripture, but then he's saying it's garbage and that he's replacing it. He makes no sense. He's some kind of a nut." The other responded, "We'll have to keep our eye on him. He is another one of those educated elite snobs who thinks he knows better than God's Word. If he gets a bigger following, The Council must take action."

That was the first time I heard of an organization called 'The Council'. After that, I returned to Heaven.

~ Act 6 ~

A later time I went back to Earth hidden from Jesse's view. Jesse and some of his followers were out walking and came across a disturbance. A group of men (one of whom I recognized to be a member of the Council) was holding John and another man (both barely dressed) in their possession.

"What are you doing with John?" Jesse asked without fear.

"These two have conducted themselves in the way of Sodom. We found them fooling around in the olive garden. They were sampling each other's pits. They must be put to death!" said one.

By the context, I figured out what 'way of Sodom' meant. Then I was surprised by what Jesse said and did next. "The old law is dead. Let them go!" Jesse and his men grab John and his companion away from the men from the Council. "Let's scram!"

With that Jesse and his group of followers ran away with John and companion, safe from the Council.

continued in part three

Update 2013/09/01: parts one through four combined

© Copyright 2012, 2013 Philip Thrift

The Acts Of The Holy Ghost ~ part one

The Acts Of The Holy Ghost

a barely biblical tale

by Philip Thrift

© 2012, 2013 by Philip Thrift

Cloudversed Publishing
cloudversed.com

~ Intro ~

So much has happened over the past year that I wanted to record as much as I can remember.

My name is H.G. Taylor. The H.G. doesn't stand for anything, though. I have been with my loving partner, Harold B.D. Lord, for ten years. It turns out his middle name, B.D., doesn't stand for anything either. To our friends we are Harold and H.G., or Lord and Taylor.

The name of our planet is Heaven. I refer to it as our planet because in the story I'm about to tell, there is another planet I will be writing about. More about that later. For now, it is enough to say that Harold and I are happily married and living on Heaven. Harold is a research physicist who operates a supercolliding particle laboratory, and I am a coder who develops apps for a mobile software company. We have two houseboys: Michael, the cook, and Gabriel, the gardner.

I will begin my recollection at the beginning, which was one year ago today.

~ Act 1 ~

Harold and I were in bed reading. I don't remember what I was reading, but the glowlight from my tablet was beginning to make me sleepy. I put the tablet down and turned to Harold.

"I've been thinking, Lord."

"Now what, Taylor?"

"Let's have a son."

"That again. I'm too busy with my physics research. You know my lab has the biggest particle accelerator anywhere and there's a conference coming up."

"Yeah. Harold's Hadron Collider, they call it." I was being a bit snarky. "Your little kingdom." I became serious. "And I want him to be yours, I mean with your, uh, stuff. You know, 'Thy kingdom come'?"

"Oy."

"Here's my idea: That other universe that you discovered with that collider of yours, the one with a planet they call 'Earth'. Suppose we find a surrogate mother and have a son. That would be an interesting experiment. We can bring him back here to our universe after his surrogate mother raises him."

"You know with the technology I've developed, due to limiting energy consumption, I can only make a limited number of material transfers back and forth between our universe and theirs."

"Ohh, explain it to me again. It gives me goose bumps on my balls."

"The device I created that lets us access this another universe also lets us transfer matter between ours and theirs. But due to the Interuniverse Commerce Conservation Principle, there's a limit to how much can be transferred in a certain amount of time. That means we can transfer only a few of us back-and-forth for a while, and then that's it. So we have to make the right decisions. And there's the difference in our time dimensions, a scale factor of ..."

"When you talk physics, it gives me a big hadron."

Harold looked down at my lap, just to check. "If I go along with this, I want him to call me 'Father'."

"And he will call me 'Dad'," I said.

"So what do we do?"

"We find a suitable mother on Earth. In that country they call 'Judea'. You've sort of showed an interest in them."

"Don't be cute. Yes, here is the app you made for me that connects to the lab and let's us see what is going on in Judea." Harold turned his tablet so I could see. "With the integrated Noodle Translator, we can hear what they say in their own language. They are very religious. They believe in a deity named 'Lord'."

"Hey! That's your name! Tomorrow, I'll take some of your 'kingdom come' down and impregnate her."

I took out a beaker from my bedside table drawer. I was prepared for this. "Ready?"

"Now? I have a headache." Harold wasn't convincing.

"I can make the headache go away," was my reply. Let me just say that after a few minutes the beaker had all the content it needed.

"Well that's taken care of," I said. I'll put it in the fridge and take it down in the morning. Got the syringe handy too."

"I want Gabriel to go with you." Harold was getting authoritative again. He called up Gabriel on his tablet. "Could you come in here please?" In a couple of minutes Gabriel came into the room.

"Yes, Lord?"

"Taylor is going in the morning on a little mission. He'll fill you in. Be an angel won't you and go with him?"

"Yes, Lord."

That was the beginning and ending of that day. The next day Gabriel and I transported to Judea, Earth.

~ Act 2 ~

"What a dusty place. Who chose this again?" Gabriel looked around.

"Harold. Who else. Turn on your Noodle Translator app. It will let us speak and listen to these people in their own language."

There is one aspect of the Noodle Translator — or NT — from my company that I need to mention. It translates words between Earthly and Heavenly languages (in this case), but it attempts to translate them semantically. So there may be some confusion in NT translations in words and phrases between two languages.

"So we are supposed to find a pretty but pure female to implant the Lord's stuff. You got the cum-tainer?" Gabriel asked.

"Yeah. And a syringe. I want you to do the insemination. I want to keep my hands clean."

"Bitch."

A young woman appeared, pushing away some hooting and hollering young men who wanted to get it on with her, from all appearances.

"Scram punks!" Gabriel shouted. Gabriel is a massively-muscled dude, so there was no question they would run away. And they did. I stayed behind a bush, out of sight from the two of them.

"Thank you." Mary was grateful.

"No problem. You must be a good woman, not letting those punks have their way with you."

"I have a boyfriend. I'm keeping myself for him."

"I respect that. Do you believe in the Lord?" Gabriel was being sly, speaking to her in her terms.

"Oh, yes. I love the Lord," Mary replied. Only Gabriel could see me from where they were standing, and I gave him a thumbs up.

"My name is Gabriel."

"Mary."

"I don't know how best to explain this to you, Mary, but I am an angel of the Lord." I had planned with Gabriel before we transferred here how we would talk to the people in this land, in a way they would understand. They wouldn't know anything about M theory and a planet in another brane. (They didn't even know they were on a planet.) "And you have been chosen to bear his son. And you will name him 'Jesse', because he is the Lord's gift to you, and you will raise him as your own here on Earth."

"Are you kidding me?"

"It will happen in your sleep tonight. You won't feel a thing."

"I don't know what to say. What will I tell Joseph? That's my boyfriend."

"Go home. Get Joseph drunk and put him to bed. Then go to sleep yourself. In the morning, tell him you two 'got together' last night. He'll have to marry you soon before you start showing or people will stone you to death. But keep it your secret and let him think it's his."

"I am so blessed! To have the Lord's son! I'll do as you say."

So that's how Jesse was begotten. That night, Gabriel did what he said he would do: He sedated Mary with a zapper and impregnated her in her deep sleep with the syringe filled with Harold's cum. After he did that, we crossed our fingers and returned to Heaven.

~ Act 3 ~

I'm jumping ahead thirty weeks now, about seven months. First, I have to explain the time differential between Heaven and Earth, or really between the times in our two branes. In our universe, one week corresponds to approximately one year in the universe containing Earth. That means that as we view events on Earth, they appear to us to go by like a fast-forwarded video.

Harold and I were in bed, and I turned to him. "It's been thirty years, in their terms on Earth, Lord, and our son Jesse has grown up handsomely."

"But look at him: He's lousy at his pretend-dad Joseph's carpentry business, spends his time reading scripture and philosophy, wanders around mumbling to himself, gets into arguments with religious people ... and he still lives with his fucking Earth parents! His younger brothers have already left home to make it on their own. I thought by now with my genes he would have wowed that planet."

"Maybe its time for me to go down to Judea and have a good talk with him."

"That's a terrific idea. Go down tomorrow morning. But this will be a shock to him. His mother has kept our role in this a secret from him. And she wouldn't be able to explain it, anyway."

I transferred to Earth, alone this time. Jesse was wandering around in a field, and I approached him.

"Holy Ghost!" Jess shouted. That's how the NT translated it to me.

"Hi, son."

"Huh? Son?"

"Thirty years ago I was here and visited your mother, Mary. Have you ever wondered if Joseph was your real father."

"What the hell are you talking about? I know Mother has always said I was 'the Lord's gift', but ..."

"Your real Father is the Lord in Heaven. 'Harold' is his name. 'Harold B.D. Lord', actually. I'm his partner, H.G. Taylor. But you can call me H.G. Or Dad.

"Wait. You're saying my Heavenly Father is gay. I have two gay dads? That's just great. But I'm not gay." The NT again was taking words that he said in his language and putting them into mine.

"He's worried about you."

"Well that's a fine howdy-do. Here I am, thirty years old and don't know what to do with my life. And all this time my real father didn't take time to help me out."

"Things not going well with Joseph?"

"Carpentry's not for me. I'm still close to Mother of course, but never that close to what I thought before this moment was my dad. I've mostly been wandering the countryside, teaching scripture on the side. I got some big ideas for changing things up, but I don't know."

"Lord and I have been watching you from Heaven. You've always been as sharp as nails. But I have something to reveal to you."

"Anything to get me out of my doldrums."

"Lord and I didn't have you just for a lark. We knew you would be special, and you would have something to offer the whole Earth."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Begin a ministry to shake up this place. I'll help you out here and there. Just a few tricks, mind you. But people will listen. You'll draw huge crowds."

"I do have a few radical ideas I've been working out, and I'm no good at manual work. They'll crucify me out there though."

"Nonsense. They'll listen!"

"Tell me about Heaven. And Father." At this point in Jesse's mind, he was thinking of those names in his own terms, not for what they really were.

"It's not like what your scripture says. It's a world of science."

"What's that?" The NT didn't provide a word he could grasp.

"The closest your world has come is the Greek, Democritus: 'Everything comes from atoms and void.' We have built on that."

"I've read about Adam and Eve," Jesse puffed.

"Not 'ADam'. 'ATom'!"

"I'm so confused."

"There's so much to tell you, Jesse."

Before returning to Heaven, I went into a little explanation, though allowing him to keep thinking that 'Lord' was his Father in Heaven, and I was Lord's Spirit and Comforter.

I'm done writing down my recollections for this week. I have to get back to work now, but I will return next week to tell you what happened next to our son, Jesse.

     continued in part two

Update 2013/09/01: parts one through four combined

© Copyright 2012, 2013 Philip Thrift

The Trojan Horse

Chris Christie could become the Trojan Horse from the Republican Party. He is being branded (by clueless pundits) as a "moderate" and could dupe a lot of no-information voters into voting for him, but if he were to become president would unleash a hoard of rabid-right Republicans to run the government.

On Snowden vs. Manning (again)

I consider Manning to be a hero because the way I see it he saw that real atrocities had occurred (the killing of innocent Iraqis) and exposed this. This is a true public service and I believe he had truly noble motivations. I hope he gets acquitted.

What I think about Snowden is this: He went into the latest NSA job (via Booz Allen Hamilton) with the intention of taking out data on PRISM. (This was after he became a Ron Paul supporter.) I haven't learned anything about PRISM that I didn't believe to be the case before. (WIRED had an article on NSA's capabilities in March, 2012, just without the name "PRISM" of course.*) So Snowden (who had certainly read the WIRED article) just wanted to dump on Obama, or he became one of the black-helicopter Ron Paul drones, or both.

It surprises me that some (some Tea Party types + some clueless liberals) want to make Snowden a hero. Also, it seems to me that more people are agitated that NSA might have captured their gmails than are upset that Iraqi innocents were killed. There's something perverse about that. I hope Snowden goes to jail, and Manning gets out.

(I wrote a poem about this last month: Snowden is no Manning.)


* This was written in March, 2012. Read this, and think of all the people "shocked" (like "Louis" in "Casablanca") to find out about PRISM this year:

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails‚ parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital pocket litter. It is, in some measure, the realization of the total information awareness program created during the first term of the Bush administration‚ an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans privacy.
Wired 03.15.12

TOE·NAIL

Theory Of Everything · Nature's Algorithmic Implementation Language