................. thinking better of it.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. - Abraham Lincoln
About 4 years ago my wife and I were doing a month long trip from Kent Ct. To Hanover N.H. - At about the halfway point somewhere in Vermont my wife received a call that her mother was very ill and may not make it through the night. We did not see any hikers that day until a hiker was passing us ( nomad ) and he saw that my wife was crying and she explained why - Well long story short his car was parked at the next road crossing and he was going our way,.
I was hiking on Sinking Creek Mtn in VA. It was late afternoon and I was pretty beat up. The trail followed the ridge for several mile and then went down the mountain to the next shelter. I wasn't sure exactly how many more miles it was until the trail dropped off the ridge, but I suspected that camping opportunities from that point until the shelter would be limited. I felt like I had time to put in a few more miles, but i didn't want to get to a point where it was getting dark and I was in a spot with no places to pitch a tent. On the ridge there was one little spot in among the rocks that was just barely big enough to pitch my tent. I considered stopping there but thought also considered going a bit further hoping for a better camping spot. But as I didn't know the terrain, I figured the rocks could get worse rather than better until the trail dropped off the ridge. Plus my legs felt like rubber and more hiking would have been a real chore. I probably stood there for 5 or 10 minutes going over my options in my head and then a young couple comes up the trail. They look at me and asked "are you OK?". I must have really looked bad for them to ask. I explained my dilemma and while they were not going to tell me what to do, having someone else to talk to about it helped clarify my thinking. They hiked on and I camped in that spot and had the best campsite ever. I watched the sun set on one side of my tent and rise on the other. Plus I found out the next day, the shelter I was headed to had a torrential thunderstorm that evening which I could have hiked into. Up on the ridge I was high and dry and above the clouds in the valley below. It helped that I had anticipated the possible need to dry camp and had carried a couple extra liters of water. I won't get into the miracle/coincidence debate, but running into that couple was a fortuitous event, no doubt.
Miracles? I actually met an angel once!
When I was a kid I snuck out of the house one night. Me and my best friend had this dumb-ass plan to hitchhike to Oklahoma City to hang out in the "Paseo", which was the hippy community in OKC back in the 70's. The first night there we scored some acid. I had a very bad trip and 24 hours later I had become completely catatonic -- and my buddy and the guy we were staying with were getting worried. But in my mind, I had spent several billion years in Purgatory with no body, just endless regrets at having wasted my life. Then suddenly my body coalesced around me and I realized I was being carried through a door by two demons who greatly resembled the friends I'd dropped acid with a few billion years before -- only now they were demons carrying me off to Hell. They drug me down a long street as I begged them to please to not take me to Hell. Finally I threw them off and sat on the curb and prayed to God to please give me another chance and this time I would not screw it up. Then I heard a guy ask what was going on and I looked up. He was dressed all in white, with long brown hair and black horn-rim glasses. And the weirdest thing -- he was wearing an obviously fake plastic mustache. The other two guys told him that I'd flipped out on acid the day before and they were taking me to the hospital down the street. He told them he was an orderly walking home from work and that the worst thing we could do would be to take me to the Emergency room -- I'd wind up in jail or a psych ward. Instead he held out two yellow pills and said "take these instead". The instant they hit my tongue I was straight. But the guy dressed in the white hospital scrubs still had a glow around him and he still had that weird plastic mustache. Even my friends talked about the mustache later, so I know it wasn't a hallucination. We went back to the apartment and crashed. In the morning I felt brand new, the best I ever remember feeling. And two days later I was doing mescaline at a Led Zeppelin concert, because even God has a hard time competing with "cool" in the mind of a 16-year-old kid.
Maybe the biggest miracle is that I eventually learned that "cool" was just a synonym for "dumb-ass", and thereby managed to survive adolescence. But you'll never convince me that the orderly wasn't a bono fide angel. Why he chose a plastic mustache as the tip-off, I'll never know. But then I'll also never know why God bothered to save a dumb-ass like me in the first place. That's the real miracle.
Yes I do believe in miracles, In the case of trail magic the act of kindness and the person in need is not random, but coordinated by God to meet the needs of the person. The giver is inspired to the time and location. It is one effort, anything done in love is coordinated directly by God and is God, God is indivisible.
Group hiker feeds (since that was also mentioned) gets human organizational structure involved, which gets in the way of the free flow of Love. Still it does let some love flow, but not as it could be if we just acted individually according to our hearts, as organizational structures block the free giving of the person to conform to organizational rules. But the organizational structures do allow a way to give when a person might not trust that they are capable of giving directly from their heart to that of another.
I believe in God and miracles......... One friday morning Oct.9th 2009 I was at landing strip pre flighting for a morning flight. I strapped in revved up and took off reached about 170 feet and hit a down draft that slamped me into the ground. Upon waking in the intensive care Sunday night. The nurse spoke to me and said "From what I hear God saved you for something in your future". Being drugged up all I could do was smile as I looked at her. It was later that I learned that I had suffered a L1 burst fracture, along with two other cracked vertebra. The doc told my wife that I would never walk again. I learned later that night when the surgeon arrived and doing a check with a ball point pen of not having any feeling until he worked his way up my body to touched my belly button.....
My wife told me that the firemen & resue squad that day were in full force a mile away doing a fireman's day event at a elementary school when the call went out of the crash..... Where I had crashed was not visible from the highway or did anyone live nearby...... A man on the way to work saw me taking off and stopped along the highway to watch, he saw me go down and called 911 and waited to direct fire-rescue to where I was....... The spine surgeon who operated on me was walking past the emergency room on the way to his car that friday morning when the rescue squad called the hospital. He stayed at the dispatch desk directing the rescue squad and was waiting when they reeled me into the room. He had started the process of lining up the MRI and have operating room on standby waiting for my arrival. My entire time I was dependant on God.
I believe as their were too many coincidences that came into play that day to be anything than God's working for my good. Not to mention everyone says I should have died from such a height in the crash. I am not as good as I was before the crash, I have some numbness in my left leg and toes but I don't take life for granted any more... I have always been religious and considered myself a christian although some would disagree. I know today I am a born again christian. I'm still trying to find my purpose ,but best of all I can walk and I intend to start from springer this spring...
I believe also and although I was spared injury in what could have been a very serious car crash the greatest miracle I have seen involved someone else.It was also an airplane crash.Two guys departed the local airport overloaded with fuel and gear on a hot day in a small Cessna 150.The pilot could not get sufficient airspeed to keep from making the classic "departure stall".The miracle was that the airplane impacted the ground upside down but the pilot and passenger were virtually unscathed because the cockpit and fuselage lay in the only spot in a ditch for miles around such that the inverted wings suspended them in the hollowed out ditch;thereby protecting them from injury.It was as if an invisible hand had laid the plane in the ditch upside down so that the passenger compartment would not be crushed.I will never forget that sight!
I don't believe in miracles, and I don't believe a supernatural being would help you find your keys, yet at the same time some ten year old with a full life ahead of her gets killed by a stray bullet from a thug firing into the air in a show of machismo, several blocks away. Because either they are both to be blamed on jesus/allah/god/vishnu/thor, or neither of them are.
The being said, I've experienced a few aha! moments on the trail myself. My most recent one was a poop story. I was on the foothills trail (which is also white blazed) in SC. It came to a point and sort of doubled back onto itself over a switchback, when by body suddenly decided it was time to void three days of camping fare. I was RIGHT AT the point of the trail where it turned. I took off in the woods through the pine barrens, and found the only large tree that I could, and did my thing. I headed back to the trail, and couldn't find it. I stumbled around, even went back to the tree and tried going downhill towards the trail (since it was a walk up to the tree). I resorted to the GPS but coverage wasn't great, and I wound up walking on the wrong path, back towards where I had come from. After a a few hundred yards I ran into the only other crowd I would see that day, which I had seen the night before at an adjacent camping area. The sight of them told me I was on the wrong path.
Several things happened: The previous times I've had the sudden urge to clean out Aisle #2, I usually just take the poop kit and leave the pack at the edge of the trail. This time I took the whole pack, which was good, because being lost in the woods with a poop kit and nothing else could be bad. The GPS was on and tracking me, even though I had done that section before. I would have eventually seen the trails divide again, but it would have been another half mile or so before the resolution was good enough for me to figure it out (trails on GPS units often don't match actual tracks on GPS units!), so running up on those two people saved me some time and headache. I seriously could not have chosen a worse place to go, I could have walked in any direction for like 330 degrees and not run into the trail all day.
Please don't read my blog at theosus1.Wordpress.com
"I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Thank God for Search and Rescue" - Robert Frost (first edit).
Well, I'm FAAAAARR from being a religious expert. But I think the answer to questions about why people do bad things (or, in your example -- stupid things that cause bad results -- ) , it comes back to free will. So, if you DID believe in miracles and a supernatural being, your argument would still be correct -- just in the different direction. I mean -- as you said, the SAME supernatural being that helped me find my keys -- that is helping ironbutt on his amazing journey -- is the same being that gave that idiot you mentioned that pulled that trigger the free will to do it.Originally Posted by Theosus
I don't think comparing whatever intervened in my keys turning up -- or, better yet in Ironbutt's or Five Tango's stories -- to that tragedy of the idiot pulling the trigger is a good analogy. Because in finding the keys or especially Tango's story, there's no human making a decision.
In other words, I'm saying that the good "miracles" , "trail magic" -- whatever you call it -- might be indicative of "someone up there" looking out for us, while the bad is the result of that same power granting us all free will.
On the other hand, there are plenty of bad things NOT caused by free will, but rather natural things --- fires, floods, earthquakes...
well, Life is Complcated!
Einstein almost certainly didn't say that according to this source.
The linked site goes on to say: Reichenstein asks Einstein about Arthur Liebert’s theory that uncertainty and indeterminism in quantum mechanics allows for the possibility of miracles. Einstein replied that he could not accept the argument because it dealt “with a domain in which lawful rationality does not exist..."
I don't believe God grants me a miracle to help me find my keys, or punishes me by making me lose my keys. I think both are up to me.
That assumes you have free will.
I don't believe God grants me a miracle to help me find my keys, or punishes me by making me lose my keys. I think both are up to me.
And if you do, is that not a miracle?
Miracles: mans attempt at rationalizing phenomenon for which he can't explain. Nope. All events are coincidental.
This is likely to go south soon. It does not have to. Allow those that believe in an invisible friend to share in our joy and we will let you debate it with God when you see Him.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. - Abraham Lincoln
Well said. For He boiled for our sins. For thine is the Pasta, the Sauce and the Meatballs, forever. Ra'men.
Please don't read my blog at theosus1.Wordpress.com
"I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Thank God for Search and Rescue" - Robert Frost (first edit).
Don't forget the Cheese 'N Rice.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. - Abraham Lincoln
I have a family member who listed Pastafarian as his religion upon admittance to the hospital recently. Learning something about the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster was a hoot.
I think most events are caused by other events. You know, the 8 ball falls in the side pocket because of the way you hit the cue ball. Which is probably why those events that just seem to happen out of the blue, for no apparent reason sometime seem miraculous.
I don't claim to belong to any faith, but I still pray every time I end up walking along an exposed ridgeline in a thunderstorm.
Well, at least we DO know that Einstein believed in God because of one of his famous quotes ... "God does not play dice" -- this was his response to the randomness introduced by quantum mechanics. Many other scientists said he was wrong -- "God DOES play dice". Of course there were some that said "God doesn't exist"....
I don't think Einstein was religious in the traditional sense. Even non-believers use the word "god" for want of a better term, now and then.
His reference to god and dice I think was more to say, "No, there's probably a reason that happened -- even if we don't know it yet." He spent his life searching for reason.
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