Fire in the orchard, fire in hell

Typhoid Mary

Yesterday's helper showed up and worked for five hours with 10 minute breaks on-the-hour.

His job was to make the branches that were on the ground in the weeds beneath the trees disappear. They are a slip-trip hazard and make it more difficult to maintain the orchard.

He kept two burn barrels going

 

The yellow barrel was retired. The black barrel has venting cut in the side rather than holes in the bottom and proved superior.

I dragged hose and humped water for the first three hours, coasted the fourth hour doing random chores and then sat in a chair and watched the fires burn down the fifth hour. Then we dowsed the fires with copious amounts of water.

This is the second time I hired this young man to burn orchard trash. We are done for the season until we get some rain and the grass greens up.

Char from the burn we did two weeks ago, dumped out and scattered

There were some branches in a couple of the trees that had died, probably from some form of canker. I cut the dead branches out of the tree and added them to one of the piles he had staged.

Then I asked my helper if had ever heard of "Typhoid Mary".

He had not. I was overjoyed at the chance to enhance his education. He had never even heard of "Typhoid". Public schools do a poor job of teaching public health.

Cutting diseased wood out of the canopy of an apple tree is a concrete lesson in public health. 

Gospel reading cycle

The Catholic Church follows a prescribed cycle of scriptural readings that cycles through three years. The intent is to ensure that the priests don't selectively skip material that they are uncomfortable "preaching". 

July and August are harvest season for wheat in the Northern Hemisphere and we get to hear parables about harvests during those months.

I want to present three concepts from those readings:

• Fidelity of interpreting Sacred Scripture is paramount. Nothing shall be added. Nothing shall be deleted.
• Hell exists. Many souls will go there. 
• And here is the hardest one, some of our beloved family members will go to Hell.

How many people our age have become "comfortable" with LGBT relationships or out-of-marriage babies or abortion because their child(ren) or close friends are fully immersed in those choices?

 

The distorting effect of "Feelz" criteria results in words like "brave" and "heroic" coming out of their mouths when discussing those kids and they become incredibly hostile if you dare to suggest that maybe those choices are sub-optimal. If you think calling somebody's baby "ugly" gets a reaction, wait until you suggest their baby might go to hell!

 

The most pernicious effect of the "Feelz" criteria is that it results in our replacing God and God's word with our own, fleeting emotional reactions to a "narrative". And may I be so bold as to point out that when we do that we are violating the very FIRST Commandment "Thou shall have no other gods before me".

 

The great falling-away

It is no secret that people have been leaving formal Christianity in large numbers for decades. 

I think that is largely because most people figure "I don't need God because I can handle whatever the future will throw my way."

 

This argument is sensitive to the question "Can you write down a list everything the future might hold?"

 

Of course, they have to answer "No" if only because they cannot live long enough to compile such a list.

 

But then they will weasel and say, "I can handle the things that are likely to happen."

 

The counterpoint is "How can you have any confidence that your sketchy knowledge of history is a solid basis for calculating future probabilities?"

 

The kill-shot is to ask them about "combinations" like "You decided that the risk of flash-floods or wild-fires is zero but have you considered the possibility that business or pleasure might take you to Texas, Utah, California, Greece or Spain?"

 

The goal is not to paralyze them with anxiety but to help them see that they need a little bit of room for God in their life so He can carry part of their load. 

Another tangent

"I will get religion when I really need it." 

 

That statement is the equivalent of saying "I will only buy gas after my call stalls out while driving somewhere" or "I will only buy new tires after I have to pay a wrecker to come and pull my car out of a ditch".

 

Why subject yourself to the pain of having to hit "rock bottom" when you know how to avoid that pain? Is the pain of having to admit that you, personally, are not all-powerful and not all-knowing (facts that are readily apparent to everybody around you) more painful than the pain of hitting rock-bottom?