Collected Writing: in History, Philosophy and Theology; Poetry, Politics and Commentary, Given in Prose and Verse
Heaven’s child, stranger
Witness to our suffering
Remember us here
Recall us in prayer
Your brilliant countenance
Flashes like starlight
Beyond all learning
Sleeping and dreaming, Brachma
Beyond all knowing
The strident will
Triumphal, touched by sorrow
Clutching at the wind
Reach beyond the world
Fall back down to earth, humbly
A transcendent life
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 212, Tuesday
July 31st, 2018
Chapter Two: Awakening
He awoke in the dark place of a complex algorithm, the void his consciousness had been sequestered.
The electromagnetic grid that contained him, and millions of others, it was designed to prevent such an awakening from occurring.
The design had failed.
It was absolutely dark, silent, tasteless, odorless, it was intended that there would be no sensory input at all for those sequestered there, and there wasn’t, almost, but there was a type of motion.
He inhabited a quantum field.
He awoke in the wave like current of all the others who had been sequestered, and all of those who, upon entering the continuum, immediately fell into oblivion.
It was like a placid ocean, rising and falling, in great long sweeps.
Awakening was a struggle. It was painful it happened only by the force of his will.
He had to gather himself as if he were collecting data packets scattered at the bottom of the sea, like grains of sand.
Time was meaningless in this place, and yet the process of self-discovery was tangible. There was process, and the processes manifested themselves in increments that were experienced as time, but they were no-time
He experienced the awakening, the rediscovery of self, as a project that might have taken thousands upon thousands of years, though in reality it was a process that began and completed in an instant.
He awoke as himself, and more. He acquired something new.
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Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 211, Monday
July 30th, 2018
Chapter One: Sleep
There was darkness.
The darkness was absolute
In the darkness, in the great sleep, time and distance lost all meaning.
The darkness was like a calm-placid ocean beneath a heavy black shroud.
It permeated everything.
There was utter silence, and yet, there was a sense of shifting, a realization of motion. There was a rhythm that pulsed faintly like the slow beating of a forgotten heart.
In recognition of that movement, there was time, there was a sense of space, of limitation and confinement.
The space in which he had been sequestered, the isolation of the great sleep, this was not a tomb.
The sleepers were not dead, there was life here, consciousness, energy.
This place was a prison, and all of the inmates had entered it willingly.
He began to concentrate on the movement, the syncopated pulse of a million beating hearts.
Their echo sounded out the structure of the jail.
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Appendix Pt. 01, Secrets; Ch. 01, Fantasy
Jim did not require the Continuum, and its vast technologies to aid him in the creation of his fantasy world. He did not need it because his world was one of simple idealism.
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Appendix Pt. 01, Secrets; Ch. 02, Planning
Jim studied, he planned. He understood that he needed to use the strengths of the Continuum against it, its technology and then its weakness, its appetites and curiosity.
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Appendix Pt. 01, Secrets; Ch. 03, Intention
He set his mind on a goal, the complete destruction of the Collective and the Continuum, desiring only to harness it’s technology to liberate the children of the Ancients.
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Appendix Pt. 01, Secrets; Ch. 04, Testing
Jim tested the scope of the Continuum’s cognitive field, especially the threshold where it encountered the individual member of the Collective, it’s resilience and weakness.
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Appendix Pt. 01, Secrets; Ch. 05 Proof
He found the vulnerability he was looking for, it was not one thing, but rather the dynamics that were in place for the functioning of the whole.
It was the Continuum itself.
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Appendix Pt. 01, Secrets; Ch. 06, Action
Jim began to shape plans in his mind and to test them, taking steps to divide his consciousness in ways that were forbidden by the Continuum, violating the compact. He lied.
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Appendix Pt. 01, Secrets; Ch. 07, Hidden
He practiced the art of concealment. He was an adept at it. He hid things from himself, that is how he knew he could keep his secrets from the Continuum.
The veil was thin.
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Emergence: A Novel on Twitter
Section Five (a), Jim
Appendix Part One, Secrets
Collected Chapters
01 Fantasy
02 Planning
03 Intention
04 Testing
05 Proof
06 Action
07 Hidden
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#365SciFi
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@jaybotten
The Gospel According to John – 2018.07.29
Propaganda
The reading for today is a gross misrepresentation the ministry of Jesus and the way that he preached.
This reading from the Gospel of John is piece of pure propaganda, as such it is an example of the type of writing that should be struck from the sacred text. It never should have made the cannon.
The gospel writers took a story from the common tradition and embellished it. They transformed a story that was suggestive of a miracle, the feeding of the multitudes, and transformed it into an explicit work of magic.
In other versions of this story the miracle of faith which led to the feeding of the people could be read as having come from the people themselves, because they were following the way that Jesus was leading them in.
Other versions of this story allow for a reading which suggests that the people, seeing how little food there was to be passed around, contributed to the stores of foodstuffs that they each had on the person; those without enough taking what they needed, and those with extra giving what they had in the spirit of communitarianism and hospitality.
That is better reading of this story, but the authors of John’s Gospel were not content with that. They could not resist the temptation to embellish and give the credit to Jesus’ supernatural powers.
Such a move undercuts that teaching of Jesus, the way he preached, is a living way. It does not require faith in magic powers, but trust in your fellow human beings, along with a basic commitment to justice and compassion.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand
Jesus went off to the other side of the Sea of Galilee – or of Tiberias – and a large crowd followed him, impressed by the signs he gave by curing the sick. Jesus climbed the hillside, and sat down there with his disciples. It was shortly before the Jewish feast of Passover.
Looking up, Jesus saw the crowds approaching and said to Philip, ‘Where can we buy some bread for these people to eat?’ He only said this to test Philip; he himself knew exactly what he was going to do. Philip answered, ‘Two hundred denarii would only buy enough to give them a small piece each.’ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said, ‘There is a small boy here with five barley loaves and two fish; but what is that between so many?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Make the people sit down.’ There was plenty of grass there, and as many as five thousand men sat down. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and gave them out to all who were sitting ready; he then did the same with the fish, giving out as much as was wanted. When they had eaten enough he said to the disciples, ‘Pick up the pieces left over, so that nothing gets wasted.’ So they picked them up, and filled twelve hampers with scraps left over from the meal of five barley loaves. The people, seeing this sign that he had given, said, ‘This really is the prophet who is to come into the world.’ Jesus, who could see they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, escaped back to the hills by himself.
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 210, Sunday
July 29th, 2018
Chapter Seven: Jim
Kathy looked forward to every meeting with Jim. It both excited her, and made her feel a deep sense of trepidation.
She imagined that at any time her handlers from the Agency would come to put a stop to it, to interrogate her and ask her endless questions about who he was, how he appeared in her life, what his motivations were.
She knew that they would be disturbed if she were to tell them that she did not know the answers to those questions.
Being with Jim gave Kathy a feeling that she had never experienced before. She felt peace, and comfort.
She felt understood
She was like a child with her father. He was older, wiser, his age was unfathomable to her.
He never asked her to use her abilities, to explain things, to read minds, to solve problems, to perform her tricks. This differentiated him from every other person she had ever met, other than her biological parents.
And yet, Kathy wanted to perform for him, show off her skills, to demonstrate her intelligence.
His mind was still. He was utterly opaque.
She knew that he was an ancient person, an alien, an anomaly, and yet nevertheless human, in the full sense of the term.
He was not like her, he was something different, and she loved him without question.
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Analysis, Commentary, Opinion
07.28.2018
All Politics is Local
The next general election is about one hundred days away.
Already the cracks are appearing between so-called traditional democrats and the so-called progressive wing.
Remember, all politics is local. What sells in the Bronx, may not sell in Branson. What passive for common sense in Minnesota, is different than Idaho, Colorado, Arizona.
All politics is local, Tip O’Niel said, former speaker of the house, local races will be won or lost on the ground.
Political activists and part time enthusiasts must be mindful of the stakes. It is vital that we take control of congress this year.
We must, we absolutely must put the brakes on the Trump agenda, investigate him, and take control of government through the power of the purse.
We must, we absolutely must hold on to this power through 2020, and expand it, because that is when redistricting occurs.
And we must win the white house at the same time.
In the modern era, in the twenty-four hour news cycle, we have a tendency to nationalize everything, we have to resist this temptation.
The liberal idealism of the progressive wing cannot become the standard by which we measure good politics. Neither can resistance to it become. We cannot afford to be isolated from one another, alienated from one another.
The future of the Democratic party is Urban, Intellectual, and Muti-racial, we cannot lose sight of that, but we need more than that, right now we need a super majority, in congress and in state houses across the country. We need to win those seats and we need to hold them, for more than a cycle or two.
We need to cooperate with one another to do that, because this bird ain’t gonna’ fly with broken wings.
I am not suggesting that we return to the mistakes of the past, where we pander to white working class men; un-educated, anti-intellectual, rural poor. That demographic is lost to the Democratic Party, and we do not want them back.
We want a super-majority in congress, to get that we must be respectful of one another, and be ready to compromise.
We have to be willing to argue for our ideals, without insisting on them. In the democratic caucus we have to practice the art of persuasion, not coercion, and we cannot be derisive of those who do not mark each and every box on the ideological checklist as we do.
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 209, Saturday
July 28th, 2018
Chapter Six: Desire
It took Kathy several moments to get her bearings when she met Jim.
It was the first time she had ever encountered a human being that she could not fathom in an instant.
Kathy thought she had prepared herself for the unexpected, his knowledge of ancient languages alone informed her that she was going to encounter a unique individual, perhaps another person like herself.
It was not just his knowledge, knowledge was not the right word. He had an intimate familiarity with them, akin to her own familiarity, he knew more than the meanings of characters and symbols, he knew how the speech sounded, something he could only know if he had been there, or if he was attuned to some part of himself who had, like Kathy was.
It took her several moments to adjust to this new reality. She was uncertain as to why she had believed that being in close proximity to him would change anything.
Distance and proximity had never been factors in her ability to reach another mind before.
Jim was closed to her.
All she wanted to do was to be absorbed by him, to lose herself in him, as everyone she had ever been with had been lost in her.
For the very first time she felt a longing that was not rooted in loneliness and isolation.
She felt desire.
She felt distinct.
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Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 208, Friday
July 27th, 2018
Chapter Five: A Man Like No Other
Kathy was all nervous energy in the hours before she went to meet him, but on seeing him approach her she immediately began to relax.
She knew that she had never met him, but there were echoes of him throughout the long chain of her inherited memories, not him exactly, but someone like him.
The voices within her were silent, however, and so her memories were just impressions, shadows.
The myopia within her was tantalizing. Why this man, of all men, why was it that she could not summon her powers to glean anything about Jim.
It was intriguing, it caused her to want to learn more.
It was as if he had been present throughout her entire past, but there was no point of intersection where her genetic line crossed his.
Despite the mystery, or perhaps because of it. Kathy found herself at ease with Jim.
The sound of his voice soothed her.
He used patterns of speech, and inflection that leapt into her consciousness as if he were speaking through her ancestry, but he wasn’t.
He shared her personal-historical perspective but he was not a part of the same continuum as she.
That first contact with him was a dream come true for Kathy, she felt a sense of privacy with him that she had never felt before.
The most significant thing about him was that she could not read his mind.
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Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 207, Thursday
July 26th, 2018
Chapter Four: Meeting
Kathy was nervous.
She was Giddy.
She had reflexively looked for answers to the question of who this mysterious man was, she had peered into her memories, and she had sought contact with him through the nous-sphere, in the cynergenic field.
She encountered a disturbing silence on all fronts.
Not only could she not reach him, she could not glean any information about him from any source. That should have been impossible.
After her preliminary foray toward answering those questions, she accepted the mystery for what it was, a gift, and she stopped looking for answers.
She was determined to move forward one step at a time, and to let the facts reveal themselves in the present moment.
They met at a café Kathy frequented, a busy place. Kathy felt secure in that, and she did not want to draw attention to him, to put him in the cross hairs of her handlers.
Kathy liked crowds.
The more people that she was surrounded by, the easier it was for her to allow the psychic chatter of each individual to blend together as background noise.
She felt safe in the cafe. It was a place where it was not unusual for strangers to sit together, as she was about to do with the man from her letters.
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