PSALM 8
(For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David.)

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

An acknowledgement of the grandeur and splendor which is God’s – how great and mighty he is; and how enormous the greatness of his glory which spans over the entire earth and above the very heavens themselves.

From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

The contradictions inherent in God is a great mystery; that from which is weakest comes the greatest source of strength: Praise, praise to God for his creation, silencing even the foe and avenger. The praise unto God that flows even out of the mouths of children and infants, holds a power sufficient to overcome all opposition, proving once and for all how needless to walk in our own strength, when we have such an abundant source of strength from God so readily available.

And, ultimately, the purpose it serves is to bow us human beings down, to accept our place in creation, by giving praise to him who created it all. That he may be exalted, and we humbled before him.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

David must have sat, like Abraham, and watched the starry skies at night, beholding the greatness of the universe and the enormity of his creation. And yet, they probably didn’t understand just how vast it was… that beyond this little world where they sat, there were enormous expanses of void; the first of which was crossed only in 1969 as man landed on the isolated rock called “the Moon” for the first time.

And beyond that, planets strewn over this vast expanse; and beyond that, one hundred thousand years of distance as the very light itself travels, with a hundred million stars in a great, enormous disc of light in what we call our galaxy… and beyond that, billions and billions of galaxies in enormous galaxy clusters with distances too far for the human intellect to comprehend; groups of galaxies making up the landscape of the universe itself, with vast, vast expanses glittering like precious gems on the beaches of the endless sea.

What is man that God should be mindful of him? A little coal-based human being, living on a rather insignificant planet, near a rather insignificant star, towads the outer end of one of the spiral arms of a galaxy among billions of others?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

And yet these little coal-based life forms, created from dust and earth, has been put among the ranks of angels and heavenly beings, with a glory bestowed on us far, far above and beyond what we deserve.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

Not only so, but man has been ordained ruler of the earth, and put in a place of responsibility for the entire planet and everything that lives upon it. All the animals, the flocks and herds, the environment, the whole planet itself, is subject to the rule of us.

How difficult to rule even over a few individuals at work! Being manager over others is not an easy job, and not to be underestimated. How, then, to rule the entire earth?

And what an appalling job we have done so far. Only now, after centuries and millennias of mismanagement, is it becoming apparent what we have done to our world. Pollution, environmental disasters, mindless manipulation of the genetic code of our world in order to score a few more dollars, have burdened the planet to the point where it is becoming readily understood that from now on, most careful management is required to keep things going. And how much we little coal-based individuals need the wisdom of God to do this job!

Ultimately, this must be the lesson learned: That without the wisdom of God, we cannot manage our planet: By the time we fully understand the consequences of our actions and find measures to remedy those, it may be too late. We, too, must find our proper place in the scheme of things and subject ourselves to the rule of the one who created Everything. Only then can we become just and wise managers of our planet.

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

This, then, is the springing point. Will humanity acknowledge God and his majesty, or deny it? Thereupon hangs the very future of our existence. To bow down to his majesty, assuming our rightful place in the world, or to boldly march into oblivion?

I guess it’s time for us to decide.

I have noticed, during the course of conversations with people around me, that they, in general, do not readily understand my love of freeways.¹⁾

Whenever I do say that – I typically express a little sigh and say “freeways are freedom!” – people give me that kind of worried look, as if I just happened to mention that kids ought to carry guns to school, or that Joseph Goebbels was a really nice guy, all things considered. I do not understand this reaction; it is as though people regard freeways as some great evil, sprung out of the necessity of urban travel, and the world would really be a much nicer place if we could all abandon them altogether and use just horse and carts instead. There are, undoubtedly, those who share those feelings to the very letter.²⁾

But, when you think about it, what could be nicer, than after a long, tedious drive on a narrow road, trying to pass some slow driver ahead, looking for that hole in the traffic ahead when you can accelerate and pass and be on your way – what could be nicer, than to suddenly see the road opening up, widen into two or more lanes in each direction; and to let the car finally stretch its legs? To let each and every driver find his own pace and merrily sail along, undisturbed and with ample place for all?

Freeways do precisely that. Away with the dull drugdery of single lanes! Away with the tedious and ineffective sharing of the road, forcing each and everyone to adjust to a common speed. No, freeways weren’t built for that – hats off to you, my merry companion on the road; for you may now drive slowly and I may drive faster, for here is room for both!

Freeways were built for easiness of travel. With no traffic lights to disturb, no intersections to avoid, the freeway arches forward through the countryscape like a great drawbridge over raging seas. Hit the cruise control and relax, my friend; we shall soon be at our destination, for here we traverse the land with swiftness and with ease.

Freeways were built for comfort – to undisturbedly roll through the countryside, and meandering like great rivers through urban landscapes; and how easy it is to find a gas station, a restaurant by the side where we can eat, or a motel for weary travelers. The freeway accomodates your every travel need; turn the steering wheel but ever so slightly onto the exit ramp, slow down to a gentle stop, and you’re conveniently parked at a welcoming Burger King or Motel 6.

Freeways have a natural place in our society. They make up the grid that allows us to travel from one end of the country to the other with supreme ease. They isolate throughbound traffic on express routes that cut right through the surroundings, and with that delightful isolation comes freedom; freedom to travel, freedom to do business, freedom to relocate to the ends of the earth and still keep in contact with old friends and family.

Or, as the Germans might put it: “Frei zu fahren – frei zu leben”. So come with me, my friend, and drive on freedom way.³⁾

¹⁾ Probably one of the best sentences I’ve ever written.

²⁾ Even in my own family.

³⁾ Yup. I’m insane.

• Color film
• Gunpowder
• Trains
• Mowed grass
• Newly baked bread
• Coffee

What else?

I’m not really tired, I tell myself. And I don’t feel like I want to go to sleep. Although I notice that I’m making a lot of speling errors. Gosh, it’s more difficult to write than I thought.

Filed my taxes tomorrow. Can you say that? Mixing imperfect and future tense in the same sentence is always fun. It evokes a feeling of timelessness. If it hasn’t happened yet, can I still know that it is going to happen? And can I use the imperfect in that case to denote an action which already has been completed, just not carried out yet? I mean, it’s not like it will not have been done, one day.

Vocative is cool, by the way. Read up on it today again. (The letters don’t seem to come out as I want them to.) Locative, however, is more trouble than it’s worth, and can be readily replaced by prepositions. I had written town “temporal” on a preposition in my word list, but I’m not sure why, or if it’s a temporal locative declension (?) or not. It should be, given that time is merely a dimension in space-time and can easily be mapped to something ridiculously conventional, probably using (gah! spelling) c, i, or possibly both.

I think I’ve written before about i. Or c. Or possibly e, i and pi. (Pie is good.) But c wasn’t in it. I think that’s how Einstein wrote it: t*c, or something. Time multiplied by c equals a distance somewhere. On an axis. The fourth axis. It could be imaginary. An imaginary axis, but that’s ok, because God sees everything, even imaginary axes. (The plural of axis is axes, isn’t it? Hebrew has singular, plural, and dual. Jerusalem – Yerushalam – somewhere became dual, Yerushalayim. Kind of like that error message in php when they expect a class namespace qualifier, which is two semicolons.)

Past midnight. Whohoo! I wonder what declension really means.

Okay, I’m tired. Time to fall alspeell. apseell. asleep. Yep.

PS. Noticed the time zone is wrong. Need to fixe that. Fix that.

PPS. Couldn’t fix the timezone. I wonder why. Must be something with WordPress, or the web serber. web server. Anyway.

PPPS. Cabbage? Who eats cabbage on a burrito?

What if everyone was good? What if no misunderstandings took place? If everyone’s intention was to do good instead of evil?

There would be…
…no passwords
…no passports
…no borders between nations
…no customs or security checks
…no hackers
…no spam
…no security cards
…no license plates on cars
…no log-in screens
…no war
…no military
…no police
…no weapons
…no crime
…no dictators
…no hunger
…no torture
…no fear

*sigh*