Monday, 23 April 2018

Modern Christians should Not, as a rule, answer direct and simple questions about their faith (Instead, request prior explanation and/ or disengage)

According to what I have heard (eg. in relation to our duty to evangelise for the faith) Christians are generally supposed-to be ready to answer any questions by anybody at any time...

I disagree.

For this to be a sensible thing, we Christians need to be reasonably confident that we understand the assumptions behind the question in the same way as does the questioner. But - in the modern Western nations, here and now - most questions about Christianity are not merely based on ignorance, but on falsehood and misrepresentation.

So if somebody asks Are you a Christian? we cannot, and should not, assume that the questioner understands, even at a basic level, what 'Christian' means, or what 'being a Christian' entails.

Therefore, if you simply answer: Yes!; then you have very little idea what that answer means to a typical modern person, except that it almost-certainly does not mean the same to the questioner as it does to the answerer.

You have, in fact, probably thrown-away the opportunity for genuine evangelisation.

Typically, the average modern person will be asking a 'heads I win, tails you lose' question; and will simply have their prejudices reinforced by a Christian returning a simple answer to a simple question. This is counter-productive.

If not, then what?

When trapped by another's assumptions, we simply-must make clear that our own assumptions are different - that is far more important than a confident, snappy riposte.

Modern Christians have been locked-into a category by mainstream social and professional discourse - therefore we cannot participate in such discourse. We must disrupt that discourse by our response; we must Not simply tick the box or follow the flow-chart...

This Does Not Work.

(Nor is it truly honest.)

What we should do is quite simple - and that is to ask back what that particular person means by their question; and only when we are satisfied that we understand what assumptions lie behind the question, will we answer it.

Something along the lines of "I am happy to answer your questions, but I need to understand more clearly what you are asking me by Are you a Christian, Do you believe in God, Do you believe in life after death, Do you believe in miracles...

Doing this need not take long, a few sentences will suffice assuming that the questioner is sincere. And if the questioner is not sincere, then that fact should come out pretty quickly too; then we can disengage.

Because the above is what Jesus himself often does in the gospels!

When he is asked the wrong question, or the question is a trap, or he gets asked the same question more than once, or people show that they will not believe him whatever he says - then Jesus disengages - he explains what is happening, or moves away, or says nothing...

In your face and unasked-for impersonal preaching, pat answers, prepared answers, standard answers... all these are now useless to evangelists; since modern culture has pre-immunised the population against them - and they are exactly what fulfils the negative stereotypes.

What exactly to do depends on the specific person and the specific circumstances - and if these can be judged well and we answer honestly according to how we understand things here and now and as prompted by intuition and the Holy Ghost... well, then we might actually do some Good.

The incoherence of the 'racism' concept

Racism is one of the most tired and tendentious of all themes; but William Wildblood has some fresh and wise things to say on the matter.

Sunday, 22 April 2018

Introducing Stephen Hayes - a modern English eccentric, Christian, writer, apple-grower...

Over at Albion Awakening, I introduce Stephen F Hayes; who has been enthusiastically pursuing several important and inspiring lines of work (theoretical and practical) for quite a while, while I remained oblivious of the fact.

Such 'discoveries' are a great treat for me - especially when the people are English, since there aren't many such characteristic individuals still active in my homeland.

Saturday, 21 April 2018

Depth of character, strength and integrity; leathery, craggy, strong, warrior-like toughness and individual responsiveness: the kind of wisdom that God most values

William Arkle, a self-portrait done as a young man - and depicting something of the 'warrior like toughness' he valued...

I have extracted and edited the following passage from an essay entitled Wisdom in William Arkle's The Great Gift, of 1977. In this section Arkle explains why this world is well-designed to develop those 'tough' qualities in us that are necessary to our becoming fully grown-up individuals.

So, although God could have made this world a kind of paradise; that would not have given us the possibility of becoming godlike ourselves - we could have remained 'angelic' servants, passively dwelling in permanent happiness, but could not have become sons and daughters of God, ultimately co-workers in the unfolding of creation.

Great strength and a great wisdom and a great love cannot arise if an individual has not passed through the gate into the world of knowledge of good and evil. It is only on the other side of that gate that great strength will be required to recover from mistakes, and it's only on the other side of that gate that great mistakes will be made and great understanding developed in order to recover from those mistakes.

So we can see that the great wisdom of God is shown in him not interfering with the processes of life in order to 'tidy them up', do away with disharmony, abolish those crosscurrents of life that help stir the pot of experience and produce a rich soup of opposing currents, values, desires and attitudes.

Yet, at the same time, Wisdom is certainly not indifferent to suffering; and the fact that lived experiences produce a stumbling and a faltering, and that mankind has at times to be rescued and brought back to a reasonable level of buoyancy again from which further movements and further experiments can be made.

Wisdom is always on the lookout for a situation which has gone too far, and become so negative that nothing of value can arise from the situation anymore.

Then wisdom will try and suggest to an individual who is stuck in such a situation that there is a way out which that individual hasn't yet seen. Thus although our Wise God will stand back and allow people to make mistakes; he will also rescue people from mistakes when those individuals cannot rescue themselves.

We can see that Wisdom is a very deep awareness which is continually balancing-out all the processes engaged in building deeper and deeper characteristics into the individuality which exists in each of the divine children of the Creator.

Wisdom is encouraging each of us divine children to grow into a level beyond childhood, a level which is more mature than childhood, a level of growth in which divine friendship can occur between each of us and our Creator.

Wisdom will forever be observing the balance occurring in experience, particularly at a physical level, in order that this absolute value can be extracted and made use of in every situation.

So that wisdom is not so much engaged in 'easing the burden of life', as it is engaged in the harvesting of the fruits of the burdens of life.

Wisdom develops an ability to see that the harvest in life is not at the level of ease, happiness, bliss and joy... but instead exists in a level of 'beingness' in our nature which is at a very deep level of strength, integrity and selfhood.

So we are saying that the deep wisdom which exists in the Creator's nature, and which we can learn to understand, is a deep wisdom which values not only the individual who is a friend to each other individual, but values the depth of character and strength and integrity, the leathery, craggy, strong, warrior-like toughness and individual responsiveness that each individual can develop in their own right.

And Wisdom recognises that individuality which doesn't have this strength, and doesn't have deep experience, is less valuable.

Although all the divine qualities of heaven are something we must have an experience of, at least a taste of, Wisdom recognises that, these 'tough qualities' need to be understood and lived at this outermost physical level of the universe. they must be appreciated in terms of their opposites.

Firstly, our unique separate being-ness.

Secondly, the objective understanding of values, which produces the ability to understand the real quality and value of all things.

Thirdly, we must achieve that strength and integrity necessary to support both the being and the understanding.

It is here on earth, as it is; that these experiences have been made available for us, and to a degree which they may not be available for us in any other possible form of experience.

From Wisdom, in The Great Gift - by William Arkle (1977)

Friday, 20 April 2018

Joining gangs

It is a temptation to want to join a gang - and it is a temptation felt by Christians as much as anybody. Some gangs of the past were good, overall (e.g. some churches at some times and in some places; some guilds, some professions...).

But the time has come when all the main gangs are bad.

We still feel the urge to join a gang, usually because we are more afraid than ever (whether for ourselves, or our loved ones) - yet any gang we might join that has the power to protect us will actually make us worse, will make us more afraid (of the gang itself); and will not protect us: in this world our loyalty will count for precisely nothing.

This is the existential crisis of this era - the end of all gangs.

We are being forced into a stark choice; and maybe that is no accident.

Different objectives of Eastern and Western religions

In this excerpt from William Arkle's essay Reality (from The Great Gift, 1977) he discusses the difference between the Christian idea of an eternal life that retains our ultimate self-hood; and the 'Eastern' objective of annihilating the self (which is seen as an illusion).

This corresponds to the Christian idea of God as 'outside'/ separate from/ not-identical-with his creation; as contrasted with the Eastern idea of God and creation being an ultimate unity and including ourselves.

Arkle argues that our loving God probably allows people to attain to the Eastern state ('Nirvana') if that is what they genuinely yearn for. But, he regards God as wanting us to become gods - deified selves; and having created reality with that aim.

Within your universe of values you have to discover and find for yourself this more essential and more valuable level, and to learn to separate it out from the less essential and less valuable level, which is your outer personality self fulfilling its needs. The inner, spiritual, essential self is working to fulfil its higher needs, but often it is being prevented from doing that by the activity of the outer personality self, which is grabbing all the attention in order to fulfil its own level of needs. Maslow spoke very clearly about this situation, so if you’ve had the chance to read Maslow’s books you will know exactly what I am talking about.

Now that is your reality; you can’t get out of that, unless perhaps it’s possible to destroy your own ego. I think what some Eastern religions, some forms of Buddhism, do is to take away the separate stance of the ego, which is one of the gifts which the Creator has given to us, and it unifies its own reality with the greater reality, not in the form of becoming a friend of that reality, but in terms of neutralising its own ability to be separate.

This attitude combines its attention and energies with the attention and energies of the bigger system of creation, which we could call the system of the Supreme Being, and, in this way, it seems to destroy its own separate existence and become a part of the Creator’s existence, but I don’t believe this is what the Creator wishes of us, or wishes for us, and if you believe in a system rather than a Creator, I don’t believe it’s the best way of making use of the system.

In the deeply religious sense, I believe that the Creator stands outside the system, and we can have an understanding of his Being in that way. We can make friends with him in that way if our own reality remains a strong and separate reality while we are becoming aware of the nature of that Being we call Creator.

I think it’s also possible to become a part of the energies which are the most ethereal level of creation, and this would be a sensation of continuing bliss, if you like. One would then bask in the rays of the Creator’s creative intention, just like a physical person would enjoy standing under a warm shower, and one could lose one’s reality in that way, in the enjoyment of standing under that warm shower and enjoying its warmth and its activity, and letting go of every other form of reality, every other form of responsibility, every other form of identification.

In that way, one returns to the womb of one’s being, but I don’t think one has actualised or accomplished the purpose of the potentiality which has been given to our being. But on a smaller scale, we have to deal with the overcoming of the outpost of the substitute personality ego if we want to become established in our proper essential higher reality; which is to say, our own essential divine being.

In order to achieve the awareness and the ability to be with our true self, to be according to our true self, to respond with the nature of our true self, we have to learn to eliminate the activity of the outer self, which has taken over the activity of living from our bigger, whole self. But this is a difficult thing to do, and everyone who is trying to do it will tell you the same thing – that it is a difficult thing to do.

How long it will take is not in anybody’s ability to say, because everybody does it in a different way, and takes a different time to do it.

Excerpted from the essay 'Reality', from The Great Gift, 1977.

Thursday, 19 April 2018

Creativity and the family

Note: Perhaps William Arkle's greatest contribution to my Christian faith has been in the area of divine purpose, which is the subject of this essay

By understanding (through direct intuitive knowing) something of God's nature, purpose, and love - or, by hearing suggestions of such matters, and testing them ourselves by prayer and meditation - we are given The Key to this world.

Another Key is the family; which (in its ideal form, readily extrapolated from our own experiences and yearnings) is a microcosm of the whole of reality.

Here, then, is an except from the Divine Purpose essay by William Arkle:

We realise that there are people who are able to conceive of this manifest universe as an outgrowth from some haphazard life which is fumbling its way by accidents from one thing to another. I cannot sustain such a theory since I am aware that the organisation of matter has to reach an extremely high degree indeed before life can even begin a fumbling of any sort. Our time and attention is too valuable to remain in, what are for me, such unproductive fields. We must observe all things, but not limit them to the tangible and the 'scientific', particularly when we realise that our own consciousness is neither tangible nor 'scientific'.

My observations lead me to a purposeful God, a living responsive creative source, whose motives we may begin to discover in the way of our own nature and environment are formulated. Many of these qualities have become so clear to me that I would like to bring them to your notice in a direct manner. To you, my propositions may well be faulty and insubstantial, but I will endeavour to place them before you in an order which seems to me to have some relevance.

Let me start with a simple thing. You will have noticed that those people among us whom we sense to have gone furthest in the development and expression of their nature have shown clearly that they attach greater importance to qualitative matters than quantitative ones. (By this I mean that they can be seen to be concerned to do one thing really well rather than many things less well. They are people who for instance, would rather write one good book than several indifferent ones, who would choose one deeply valuable friendship rather than many semi-friendships.)

They are also concerned to be strong, but not powerful, concerned to add value to life and other people, never to take it away. They try to fulfil themselves in such a manner that they also fulfil others. They appear to gain as much satisfaction from the quality of experience they can afford to others as they gain for themselves. They seem to share their life with others while at the same time drawing out the possibilities of those others. In a word they endeavour to make all things freshly 'new' and thus non-repetitive.

If we call this manifest universe creation, then these people want to be creative within it. They would appear to be the ones who achieve real friendship and who also add creatively to the life about them. They see the value in their creative living in terms of adding to the significance of life, but not in any form of cleverness which may well detract from the significance of life. So they do not seek to be important, yet they have a clear-cut hierarchy of values which would enable them to recognise the best things in people and the best people among things.

Such individuals, if they do influence people profoundly, take care not to do it through any form of power which over-rides the individual wishes of those people, for, more than any others, they value the uniqueness and autonomy of individuals. Every individual is valued as another unique polarity of life with whom an endless variety of expressions is possible. The loss of any individuality is an absolute loss to all living potential, and the diminishment of any individual (in respect of the deepest level of that person’s being) the greatest of tragedies.

Now I have been making this point because what I want to observe are principles which I feel can take us a long way into the understanding of the creative impulse. If we, out of our experience, follow human nature up to its highest expression we get well into the nature we expect belongs to that of the spring of creation. If we then combine with this the situation of the family group, we already have a good motive and a good method of achieving that motive.

The workings of the family group can be observed closely by us, and can be seen to be an excellent way of developing the potentiality of an individual in such a way that the child takes on the reality of its separate existence in a gradual way, and then is encouraged to stand alone.

In the proper family relationship the child is instinctively aware that the ties of childhood must be broken and then, ideally, replaced with an entirely voluntary friendship. I say ideally because it is quite rare for the full cycle of the family to be fulfilled, for this requires a number of mature attitudes which do not often arise. The parents have to be wise, and the child has to be wise, and so too few children succeed in becoming real friends with their parents, certainly in the deep sense of their true being.

I observe that the friendship of true being can arise in our world, but I also notice that so few people are able to demonstrate the characteristics of true being, that it does not arise very often. I must then say that the true friendship of true being is a rare phenomenon and we have much to learn about the nature of this relationship.

From The Great Gift, by William Arkle (1977).

Why are the global elites getting so crazy-careless? - Are they afraid of something looming?

Maybe - as I argue here; but either way, it does provide more favourable conditions for a mass spiritual awakening: a real Christian revival.

Why The Owl Service is best: Ressentiment and Alan Garner

Alan Garner has often claimed to be motivated, as a writer, by anger - which he present as a righteous anger on behalf of others. But the sad reality is that he is all-too-often motivated by ressentiment: Nietzsche's term for a selfish, brooding, envy and spite - resentment, a kind of pride.

My conviction is that Garner began, all-but free of resentment - so in the first two books (Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Moon of Gomrath) it is absent. But it makes an appearance in Elidor as class consciousness - and, for me, significantly mars that book.

But with The Owl Service, which was written next - and perhaps because it is set in Wales rather than Garner's native Cheshire, giving distance - the ressentiment is taken-up into the story; and is overcome triumphantly in one of the best endings of any book, ever.

Consequently, the Owl Service is the summit of Garner's achievement - a 'perfect' (ie. unimproveable) book for older children to set alongside the greatest in that genre.

With Red Shift, the ressentiment returns in force, with endless brooding-on, depiction-of, the problems of a working class intellectual (i.e. Garner himself, or how he sees himself). And the pretentiousness of writing style (belated late modernism - of the Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting type) becomes solidified and inescapable.

His last novel, Boneland, ends with a categorical repudiation (to me, a betrayal) of the vision of his early novels - consigning them to a psychotherapeutic pseudo-reality.

After all, in the end - Garner's great gifts and vision and dedication and honesty are all overwhelmed by his lack of spiritual development - by his spiritual degeneration through adulthood. Since the writing is constrained by the man; how could it be otherwise?

Nobody - through a long life - not the genius artist - not anybody; can escape the malign consequences of rejecting God, of setting oneself against God...

The problem of fuzzy thinking...

...Is a common one for me. Indeed, I seldom seem to have a really clear head, except in the mornings - and even then not always.

It is a difficulty in concentrating, at one level - a tendency for thoughts to drift passively. More insidiously, the thoughts don't properly connect-up - one thought does not arise from another in a linear sequence, but they hop around - sparking and fizzling and doing nothing useful.

And yet, although dependent on external stimulation, I feel cut off from it. Because when thoughts are merely being-triggered, and don't amount to anything sustained, then one is (pretty much) stuck inside the buzzing confusion of the mind.

Of course, some extreme event or disaster will summon the energies - but that is just another version of passivity...

What I want is for thought to come from me, from the real me - and for that thinking to obliterate the gap between myself and everything else.

When this desired situation arises (or is, somehow, induced) then there is a sense of omniscience... not of 'knowing everything' but that everything being-thought is real. Everything I think IS.

This is to participate in creation, working from my own small but distinctive corner of creation.

It's rare; but that is what I am supposed to be learning to do.

Wednesday, 18 April 2018

What is the greatest imaginable gift?

Excerpted from The Great Gift (1977), by William Arkle:

If we achieve the ability to observe clearly from the ground where this imagination is free and relatively unconditioned we can begin to ask ourselves the question, "What is the greatest and most valuable gift I would like to be given?"

We should take a long time to delve into our whole private universe to come-up with the best possible answer. I think that the answer we would find we arrived at would be that the greatest and most valuable thing we could ever wish for is 'Ourself'.

We would find, I believe, that, when we had become satiated with all the immediately beautiful and delightful things that our imagination first of all thinks it would like, such as 'the heavenly life' with all the attributes of peace, beauty, serenity, love and bliss, then, and only then, might we begin to realise that there was something we might learn to value even more.

This deeper value, I feel, would be based on our realisation that we were not able to use and develop our independent creative and responsible faculties in such a heaven.

Now these independent creative responsibilities require all our integrity and effort to function properly because, if we look at them, we will discover that there is only one thing which they want to be engaged in, and that is the discovery and expression of 'the impossibly beautiful and valuable thing'.

Our real independent spirit is not truly interested in doing the possible beautiful things, although it does them as a proper part of its natural and responsible behaviour. This spirit is more truthfully always preparing to take a deep breath and try to do some wonderful thing that it can only aspire to and cannot already achieve.

This is a fact which stems from the truth of our Being which reflects the nature and attitude of the Creator.

I shall now turn the tables and say that, if we next use our independent imagination and put ourselves in the place of the Creator, there is nothing we will be able to come-up-with as a more worthwhile thing to create than a means of bringing into existence some other real independent beings with whom we could enter into creative living as friends and sharers of one another’s experience.

And then we can look at what we consider the nature of friendship to be, and find out why it becomes such an important part of our experience.

We have a deep desire to share our independent imaginative and creative living with other independent beings.

To bring an impossibly beautiful thing within the scope of our expression is a very desirable achievement, but to be able to share the values of the achievement with other independent sources of appreciation and valuation, such as another person who is your friend, is even more desirable.

We feel that to get the greatest benefit from our creative endeavours we must share the fruits of the endeavour with others.

From the essay Creative Friendship.

Tuesday, 17 April 2018

On 'being musical'

I am a fair bit above-average in my 'musicality' although I've never performed any instrument to a significant level: that is, I hear what is going-on in music, and it affects me quite powerfully.

This is a plus when it comes to the appreciation of good music, well-performed - but is, under normal circumstances, more of a curse.

For example, a powerful memory of childhood (still with power to alter my mood) is the leaden misery of attending church; mainly due to the miserable hymns, miserably performed.

Even as a young child, I only liked a few hymns, and I only liked these when they were performed well - by which I meant with sincerity and dedication...

To hear bad hymns, or to hear any kind of hymn drearily intoned at about half the proper tempo and with a further rallentando at the end of each verse, and with an indeterminate-number-of-beats gap between verses... To hear a sluggish and rasping church organ, or fluting and over-articulating boys choir...

All this for me this was not-merely not-enjoyable, but actively unpleasant: a kind of moment-by-moment torment.

Even nowadays - music is seldom 'background' for me; in the sense that when I dislike it, it makes me feel worse.

In sum, I find it all-but impossible to ignore music; and since there is a lot more bad music than good, and a lot more bad performance than good; this does considerable net-harm to my mood.

People who don't really appreciate music, people whom music does not-much affect, will find this pretentious or feeble-minded; but so far as I can tell it is hard-wired - and I am stuck with it.

And, quite likely, it is an impulse towards my greater than usual desire for solitude: by avoiding other people, I avoid their music and the almost-inevitable depressive effect that has on me.

Monday, 16 April 2018

Dreaming Sleep and Death/ Hades/ Sheol

It strikes me that dreaming sleep (of the usual, broadly nightmarish or bewildering kind) is often like the 'underworld' death as envisaged by the Ancient Greeks (Hades) and Ancient Hebrews (Sheol) - that is a 'demented', passive state of very partial awareness - with perplexity as the dominant emotion.

In sleep; life happens-to-us and we strive, and fail, to make sense of it, and to cope with it. Our minds are porous and connected with the dream environment - we are like the 'gibbering ghosts' of the underworld.

In dreams the environment affects our mind - and our mind affects the environment in a reciprocal causality. We are acted-upon rather than acting: there is no freedom in a dream...

The gift of Jesus is to be born-again, to waken from this unending nightmare - awaken to resurrected eternal life - that is by incarnation to be separate from the environment and act to act in free agency from it; to be alert and conscious and creative in relation to the environment rather than swept-along passively, uncomprehendingly, in perpetual bewilderment.

Dreaming sleep is a temporary death - although modern Man assumes that death is a non-being much like deep sleep: unconsciousness and oblivion, rather than the underworld, nightmare state of dreaming sleep. But by dreaming sleep, of the nightmarish/ bizarre/ confusing/ helpless kind... we can know what it is we are being rescued-from.

Jesus came to rescue Man from the inevitability of the underworld nightmare of death - by resurrection; and with the offer of a gift of life eternal, which is a creative state of divine being.

(But death is necessary: to be reborn we must die; and death is bitter vinegar, as well as purifying hyssop.)

Centrality of the Holy Ghost (i.e. Jesus)

We are born as children of God, thus have within-us that which is divine.

As such we can recognise, we can know the Holy Ghost - which is divine.

Indeed, the Holy Ghost is Jesus Christ himself, which he sent after his ascension; as is expedient for us because the Holy Ghost is universal; available to all Men.

To believe in Jesus is the same as to trust, have faith in, and to love the Holy Ghost. (And vice versa.)

This, everyone and anyone can do - no matter what their personal circumstances.

Because all have a divine self, and all have access to the Holy Ghost.

And this is to be 'A Christian'. A real Christian.

(Even if when you have never heard of Christ; even if/ when Jesus is misidentified or misunderstood explicitly...)

Because what Men say, what Men teach is contingent and cannot be 'controlled' (even if God wished to control it).

What is needed must - in contrast - be certain, universal, immune to Men's wishes or abilities, and the uncertainties of circumstances.

What is needed must not depend upon prior knowledge.

And what is needed must be sufficient (even if it is not optimal).

Obviously so: Jesus loves us and is the creator and sustainer of this world; and he would surely not have left us with anything less?

*Why* do we need to know that the people who run the world are evil?

Not, I hasten to add, in order that they might therefore be stopped... That is a different matter of probabilities and choices involving multiple 'other people' as well as God's plans.

The real reason is essentially twofold - first that we be not misled; and secondly that if our discernment cannot detect the ruling evil, then we are ourselves deficient.

I mean that when a person cannot detect evil when they encounter evil; then there is something seriously wrong with them. Often this wrongness is self-inflicted (people do detect evil - at first, but over-ride their own alarm systems, ignore the evil - and end-up denying evil, hence serving evil).

But if we do not recognise the evil of the powers of the world, then they will divert us away from God and from Jesus Christ. In a thousand and more ways; evil powers will consume our attention, effort and time in thinking/ feeling/ doing things that are not what we ought to be doing.

Yet, knowing the evil of the powers of this world is only a beginning. It does not make us right, of course.

But it is - for most people - impossible to function as we should function in this world (which is, after all, a world in which a single, vast, linked, totalitarian bureaucracy and social manipulation system penetrates everywhere and into all human affairs) unless we understand that the world is against us: that what the world wants for us is the opposite of what God wants for us (including that the world wants us to deny the reality of God).

This is the flipside of economic/ political/ legal globalisation and the vast expansion of the mass/ social media... In the past people didn't need to know much about the nature of powers of the world (which were local and limited in scope, anyway). Now we pretty much have-to.

It used to be possible to be 'neutral' about the motives of the Big Powers and Top People, or at least to ignore the issue... But now we can only choose between regarding them as overall-Good, or net-evil.

And upon that decision may hinge our eternal destiny.

Sunday, 15 April 2018

Falling out-of-love with cricket...

My earliest blog (that wasn't merely a repository) was about cricket - it was called The Doosra, and was somewhat focused on the question of how this method of bowling was being attempted by a new breed of offspin bowlers.

I came late to an enjoyment of cricket - it was the summer of 1992, the 18th June, second day of the Lord's Test Match - and I was listening to Test Match Special on the car radio as I drove back to Glasgow in Scotland (where I then lived) from an overnight stay in Kircudbricht. I think the only reason I was listening is that - in this rather remote part of Scotland, Radio 4 Long Wave was the only accessible channel, and that was broadcasting cricket...

My original interest was to discover what 'leg spinner' meant; and this proved surprisingly difficult! But after that my interest in cricket grew rapidly, and was mostly focused on the craft of spin bowling.

(I can't do it myself; and never have been able to bowl or throw without shoulder pain - even as a kid; so the interest was purely theoretical. Indeed, I was permanently put off playing cricket as soon as we were compelled to use a hard leather ball instead of a tennis ball, from about aged 10 - due to repeated finger injuries. Yet the fact that in India and Pakistan (especially) they uses a duct-taped tennis ball for cricket up to semi-professional level doesn't seem to have impaired their prowess one whit.)

Anyway, my love of cricket became integrated with daily life - and (as for many people) reached its peak in the famous 2005 Ashes (i.e. England versus Australia) series; then had a second peak when England won the beat Australia-at-home in 2010-11.

When T20 (20 overs per side) cricket was invented, I at first enjoyed it a lot; although I immediately saw that the bowlers should be allowed five overs maximum, each, instead of the current four, if the game was to retain the proper balance.

But domestic franchise T20 cricket (led by the Indian Premier League; IPL) became a vast money spinner, as a monochrome slugfest of about 8 runs per over or more; while 50 overs-per-side one day cricket and 5-day test match cricket have dwindled.

Currently I find the IPL unwatchable - a huge, dull, fake; and test matches duller and more depressing with each series; and am only really engaged by good 50 over cricket in the context of a five match competition or the World Cup...

For me the decisive moment was the year the Doosra was banned - 2015. (Especially the banning of the world's premier spinner - the immaculate Saed Ajmal.)  It was banned (rather than modifying the laws of cricket to accommodate this delightful innovation, as had happened often in the history of the game) essentially because the batters found it too hard to deal with when trying to hit sixes, and it limited the colossal run totals in T20...

Anyway, I have fallen out of love with cricket. The essence of cricket is personality; and the longer forms of the game provided unmatched opportunity to see personality unfold in a competitive context. Cricket really could be a microcosm of Life. But with its commercialisation and simplification, that has ceased to be the case - and cricket players in context of actual matches have become almost as dull as tennis players, swimmers and cyclists; and nearly as thuggish and graceless as footballers...

Plus, political correctness has, and it took a long time, finally penetrated and permeated the heart of cricket; destroying truthfulness and integrity, and making everything beautiful into a political/ bureaucratic attitude - as it always does...

I still watch in hopes - and there are still highlights (the England versus New Zealand series recently was good, far better than The Ashes - although the 'crowds' watching were tiny). But the fact is that the love has dwindled, the magic has all-but gone.

Saturday, 14 April 2018

Favourite poets of the twentieth century from the British Isles...

John Fitzgerald and I come up with two lists of our personal 'greats' but with zero overlap! John's choice of authors is modernist and 'epic'; mine, traditional and lyric.

Just goes to show the richness of choice...

It was ancient legalism that killed Jesus (as it kills all Goodness, now)

The following is edited from Lecture 5 of The Karma of Materialism (1917) by Rudolf Steiner and translated by Owen Barfield

It was also inevitable that an ahrimanic [i.e. Satanic-materialistic] code of law should be particularly in evidence and concentrated, so to speak, at one particular spot on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha [i.e. the death and resurrection of Jesus].

Such circumstances did not prevail everywhere, but in this one place the social structure was completely ahrimanic.

Therefore the appearance of its very antithesis - the appearance of a God - was for this society the most hateful thing that could happen, it had to be eliminated...

Two things in particular brought about this social structure. First, the kind of thoughts that had evolved out of Judaic law, were so saturated with ahrimanic forces that by means of them there was no possibility of grasping the fact that a God could come so close to man as was the case of Christ Jesus. This was something Judaic law had of necessity to reject.

Secondly, the Romans were also responsible for the death of Christ Jesus; they were a powerful and efficient force in establishing the external side of the social structure. One cannot imagine a more powerful example than the social structure created by Roman Imperialism, particularly at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet at the moment the Mystery of Golgotha is enacted, Pilate, the representative of the strongest earthly power, proves a weakling when faced with spiritual power. He is incapable of coming to any insight or to make any decision about what is to happen.

This phenomenon of satanic materialism is therefore connected with the Mystery of Golgotha... it took place at a time when mankind was least able to understand

In earlier times the advent of Christ would have been understood, but when it actually happened it was not understood.

Note: Rudolf Steiner's idea of 'Ahriman' is a demonic being/ set of beings - roughly similar to the concept of Satan is the character of The Devil - a demon whose distinctive tempting of Men is this-worldly materialism, legalism, denial of the reality of the spiritual; who works by-means-of procedures and laws, organisation and systems; and who typically works-via emotions such as fear, resentment and demotivation.

Clearly, the ahrimanic has been The rising ideology in The West since the modern era (post 1600s) and since about 1800 is now globally dominant in the form of the single-interlinked, expanding totalitarian bureaucracy.

Steiner's point is that the timing and placing of Christ's life was such that the reality of the Son of God could not be acknowledged by either of the dominant institutions.

The Jews could see no further than that Jesus transgressed The Law - that was the whole of their perspective (just like any typical modern official with her standard practices, or the PC Thought Police and their many and multiplying taboo words/ facts); the Romans regarded stability of their systematic regime as the priority; and Jesus as having provoked a dangerous, albeit irrational, response from the Jews.

Both Jews and Romans were blinkered to any genuine and significant spiritual realities; such that it was either impossible or irrelevant that Jesus might be exactly who-and-what he said he was. Contrary evidence was by definition false; all eye-witnesses were by definition fools or manipulators.

The 'obvious' and apparently unavoidable, conclusion for Jews and Romans alike was to 'eliminate the problem' - by killing Jesus.

So, despite that all the people involved in the death of Jesus had free will, and any of them could have chosen Not to kill him; in an era of established and accepted Ahrimanic dominance it was almost inevitable that Jesus would be killed by 'the authorities' one way or another, living in that place and at that time.

(And this was why the death by murder of Jesus could be fore-known, prophecied - despite the free will of Men.)

The many lessons for today are obvious enough...

Friday, 13 April 2018

How these evil times brought me to Jesus

I think that if I had been born into less evil times, I probably would never have become a Christian.

The reason is that I have always had an ethic of truthfulness - that was what I tried hardest to live up to. And this was a reason why I studied science and became a scientist...

What if I had been just left-alone to get-on-with my science? - as the previous several generations had been

- Well, then I would never have realised the incoherence of my convictions; I would never have become a Christian.

Thus the evil of the world, the increasing evil of the world, brought me to a point of clarity and choice that otherwise I might never have reached.

Read the whole thing at Albion Awakening...

Atheism isn't the problem: A-Jesus-ism is the problem

Atheism is the disbelief in God, which really means the lack of 'faith' in God, which really means not trusting God...

Of course modern atheists actually deny any kind of deity whatsoever. But that is really just a symptom of a very temporo-spatially-restricted metaphysical incapacity - the inability or unwillingness to think-about first things.

From the Fourth Gospel (written by the Beloved Disciple often called John) it is clear that if we have Jesus, we have everything - and Jesus is with us each directly in the person of the Holy Ghost.

Jesus is what brings eternal life - Heavenly life as children of God destined to a similar quality of divinity as Jesus himself (if we want it); and it is Jesus in whom we must have the same trust as a loving child of loving parents. A trust based-upon direct personal knowledge, personal contact of a spiritual kind.

It's really very simple, and is there for the asking. But we must ask. This gift is not forced-upon us. Heaven is only for those who want to be there, who love to be there.

(Historical evidence suggests that such persons may be a minority, and perhaps a small minority. This self-exclusion is very sad indeed for those who love the self-excluders. They will be missed greatly, and the gap they leave cannot be filled. All we can do - but this would should do - is try to ensure that they make their decision based on truth about the nature of the gift.)

It is really very simple - terrifyingly so, in a sense... And of course it changes everything - just as being the loving child of loving parents changes everything by contrast with being a feral child, or the resentful child of coldly-exploitative parents.

It changes everything - forever.

Thursday, 12 April 2018

We are currently being driven towards a new form of consciousness, a new way of thinking

When Owen Barfield writes about 'the evolution of consciousness' - he is talking process that is driving human development.

Barfield is not, therefore, regarding consciousness is something which respond-to historical change; but the opposite. So, he is saying that it was a change in the consciousness of Western Man that drove the scientific revolution and 'materialism': first consciousness changed and then science arose...

And therefore Barfield is contradicting any idea that 'modern Man's different way of thinking is a product of the scientific revolution. He was also contradicting the idea that the change in consciousness was due to natural selection. Rather Barfield is stating that changes in consciousness have been driven-by the unfolding of a divine plan (or 'destiny') for Man.

(A plan/ destiny aiming, ultimately, at the divinisation or theosis of Man - Man becoming a god (or full Son of God, as the New Testament terms it), with a god-like way of thinking.)

The development of new forms of human thinking is something which has (again according to Barfield) happened several times in human history, and indeed prehistory. However, in the past the changes in consciousness were driven at an unconscious level and required only the passive acceptance of Men.

Currently (at least since the Romantic movement of the late 1700s), and for the first time, we are experiencing an unconscious drive towards a new kind of consciousness that will not happen unless and until it becomes conscious and chosen.

So, our current situation is that we are being driven 'instinctually' (unconsciously) towards a new consciousness / a new way of thinking. But for it actually to happen requires that we become 1. consciously, explicitly aware of what is going-on; 2. then accept this destined change, but; 3. not just accept it, because we need also to; 4. actively embrace and work-at creating this change in ourselves.

In sum; the modern situation is that we must each, personally, want-to ally our-selves with the destined change in thought and consciousness, and must make efforts to make these changes in our-selves.

Or... it will not happen; and because we cannot go-back to an earleir state of consciousness (any more than an adolescent can become an actual child again), we will remain 'stuck' in the current phase of alienated consciousness - the problems from which will continue to be cumulative.

So far, very few individuals have done this four stage process of theosis - and the great majority of people in the West remain entirely unconscious of what is going-on behind-the-scenes.

Nonetheless, at an unconscious level - the instinctive drive towards the next, and final (because divine) qualitative development of thinking continues; and leads to many undesirable outcomes.


What Is An Electric Vehicle? −

What is Electric Vehicle?

Vehicles / March 18, 2018

A new study by consulting firm Arthur D. Little (ADL) claims that the benefits of electric cars, both environmental and economic, are lower than others, including UCS, have shown. However, the differences are largely due to questionable assumptions about battery replacements and the use of electric vehicles as a gasoline car replacement.

What they get right

EVs on average have lower overall greenhouse gas emissions and lower costs to fuel than gasoline cars now, and these benefits are likely to increase over time. This is the conclusion of our report and also the ADL analysis. In our report, “Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave”, we found that the average electric vehicle results in about half the climate changing emissions than a comparable gasoline car, even when the manufacturing emissions are included. The ADL study finds a lower benefit, about 20 percent, due to assumptions discussed below. However, they also note that the emissions savings will likely grow over time as electricity generation becomes cleaner, consistent with our findings.

What they get wrong about emissions

The ADL analysis and the UCS analysis of greenhouse gas emissions is largely the same except for two factors: battery replacement and the need for a replacement gasoline car to accompany the electric car. These two factors account for nearly 40 percent of the ADL estimate of emissions from a battery electric car and therefore are critical to understanding the benefits of electric vehicles.

The ADL study assumes that all EVs will need a replacement battery after seven to ten years of use. The study cites the fact that “this is consistent with the warranty that BEV manufacturers offer on their vehicles’ battery packs” to bolster this claim. However, by analogy, gasoline cars would be expected to need a new engine and/or transmission after the expiration of a five-year powertrain warranty. We don’t know what the true lifetime and failure rate for electric car batteries are, especially for today’s second generation battery systems since they’ve only been on the market for a few years. But assuming a battery replacement at 7-10 years is a 100 percent failure rate for the battery system. Making this assumption would require some proof, and yet there’s no evidence that this is the case for battery lifetime.

The largest factor inflating the ADL estimates of emissions is the assertion that drivers of electric vehicles would require a replacement gasoline car for about a quarter of all miles driven, because electric vehicles are driven fewer miles per year than gasoline cars. This questionable assumption is critical to the lower electric car benefits seen in the ADL report: it increases their emission estimates from an electric vehicle like the Nissan LEAF by 28 tons, while the baseline estimate of LEAF manufacturing and electricity use only totals 69 tons.

Source: blog.ucsusa.org


Phnom Penh

A mixture of Asian exotica, the famous Cambodian hospitality awaits visitors to the capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Situated at the confluence of three great rivers, the 'four arms' of the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Bassac, form right in front of the Royal Palace. Phnom Penh is the commercial, political and cultural hub of the Kingdom and is home to over one million of the country's estimated 11.4 million people. It is also the gateway to an exotic land...the world heritage site, the largest religious complex in the world, the temples of Angkor in the west, the beaches of the southern coast and the ethnic minorities of the northeastern provinces.

The fortified city of Angkor Thom, some 10sq km in extent, was built by Angkor's greatest King, Jayavarman VII (ruled 1181-1201). Centered on Baphuon, Angkor Thom is enclosed by a square wall 8m high and 12km in length and encircled by moat 100m wide, said to have been inhabited by fierce crocodiles. The city has five monumental gates, one each in the north, west and south walls and two in the east wall. In front of each gate stand giant statues of 54 gods (to the left of the causeway) and 54 demons (to the right of the causeway), a motif taken from the story of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk illustrated in the famous bas-relief at Angkor Wat. In the center of the walled enclosure are the city's most important monuments, including the Bayon, the Baphuon, the Royal Enclosure, Phimeanakas and the Terrace of Elephants.

The National Museum offers very interesting exhibits of more than 5,000 artifacts, including an eight armed statue of Vishnu (from 6th or 7th century), a statue of Shiva (9th century), and a statue of Buddha dating from pre-Angkor period. Visitors can also see a statue of King Jayavarman VII (1181 to after 1201), who reconstructed the capital and Angkor Thom that was pillaged by Cham warriors in 1177. Jayavarman VII is the king credited with establishing a network of roads in Cambodia, using innovative building techniques to raise them above the level of swamp and building sophisticated bridges. Also on display are pottery and bronze pieces dating back to the periods of Funan and Chenla (4th to 9th centuries). A massive population of bats estimated to number more than one million, flies out from the museum's attic and circles the capital city of Phnom Penh before sunset and constitutes a spectacular sight for tourists. While Museum authorities want artifacts protected from bat droppings, wildlife advocates want these bats protected as well.


National Health System

Certainly one of a reasonably fundamental subsystem from the National Health System (SKN) is really a healthcare financing. The absence or no funding within the administration of optimal health and wellness efforts along with other programs, is among the primary reasons for not achieving health development goals that people want. Why don’t you, just about all activities in development cannot be denied, requires funding and charges. Some key elements in health financing should be considered include:

* The amount of health development budget supplied by government and sector donations.

* Degree of effectiveness and efficiency useful (functionalization) from the existing budget.

Therefore, health policy reform inside a country ought to provide an essential focus for health financing policy to guarantee the adequacy, equity, effectiveness and efficiency. Planning and sufficient health financing plans can help the federal government inside a country so that you can mobilize financing sources, rationally allocate and employ it wisely. Health financing policy that prioritizes equality and pro-poor would let the achievement of universal access. Inside a broader aspect is considered the financing in this subject has led to social and economic development.

Health service itself recently become very costly in civilized world as well as in third world countries. Unneccessary Use of health services rich in technology is among the primary causes. Another cause may be the dominance of healthcare financing with cash payment mechanisms and weak capacity in the treating of sources and services itself. WHO offers the focus of health financing strategy including key issues, challenges, the primary purpose of policies and action programs generally have been in following areas:

* Growing investment and public spending in health,

* Organizing the achievement of universal participation and strengthening permeliharaan illness,

* Development praupaya financing schemes including social medical health insurance, excavation

* national and worldwide support, strengthening of regulatory frameworks, and functional interventions,

* Developing policies according to scientific fact and knowledge,

* Monitoring and evaluation.

Implementation of health financing strategies inside a country is forwarded to a couple of fundamental things namely sustainable financing of priority health programs, a decrease in cash funding individuals, get rid of the cost barriers to gain access to health services, equity in use of services, improving effectiveness and efficiency of resource allocation and excellence of services sufficient and acceptable to service users.

MOH Proper Plan 2005-2009 mentioned that improving healthcare financing is among the four primary strategies the department additionally to mobilizing and empowering individuals to live healthier, improve public use of quality health services and improving surveillance systems, monitoring and health information.


strings and branes

A brane is any of the extended objects that arise in string theory. A 0-brane is just a point particle, a 1-brane is a string, a 2-brane is a membrane, a 3-brane has three extended dimensions, etc. More generally, a p-brane has p spatial dimensions.

In the low energy effective supergravity theory of a string theory, p-branes appear as black holes, where the singularity is not just a point but a p-dimensional surface.


Legal Procedure for Creditors in the UK!

Late payment legislation in the UK requires the private and public sector to pay within 60 days and 30 days respectively. It allows for additional fees if the compensation amount does not cover the claim costs.

You must remember that if the contract has a provision for late payment interest, the statutory right to interest and the right to reasonable debt recovery costs will not apply. An enterprise may decide to contract for reasonable recovery costs in case of late payment. When the case goes to the court, the creditor may recover from the court some of the costs and disbursements incurred.

The law deems a payment late when it is made after the last day of the credit period, agreed upon in a contract, either in writing or orally. In cases where no credit period has been agreed, the legislation sets a default period of 30 days after which interest can run along with the principal. Where no credit period is agreed, the principal debt would become due from the moment the service is performed or the goods are delivered.

Some contracts stipulate that the price be paid in full before the delivery of goods, or performing of service. If the debtor has failed to pay before that, the statutory interest starts to run after the day on which the service was performed or the goods were delivered.

Generally, the legislation does not give a right to interest unless part of the service is performed, or some of the goods have been delivered unless contractually agreed. The parties may make a provision in the contract to agree otherwise. In such case, the contract would provide for a substantial remedy as well.

Most businesses will hire a debt recovery agency in the UK to obtain their money rather than filing a case straight away. Legal proceedings are time consuming and reaching a settlement out of court is always a better option.


Mattis Pledges Support for Iran Protests

Iran Focus

London, 10 Jan - The US Defense Secretary James Mattis has stated that the White House does not have any issues with the Iranian people, only with the Regime.

He also stated that the people of Iran clearly also have issues with the Regime, citing the widespread protests that broke out in the final days of 2017 as proof.

He said: "I think it's very important that we stand up and say that we understand the Iranian people. Our beef, if we have one, is not with the Iranian people. It is specifically the same regime that the Iranian people, clearly, are fed up with as well."

While speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Mattis echoed other US politicians by voicing his support for the protests.

He said: "So the most important thing, I think, is it's up to the Iranian people what form of government they have, and to say we believe that they should have the kind of government they want, and, right now, the regime senses that they've got a lot of people who aren't buying this revolutionary regime's act."

These protests are the results of years of economic hardships for the Iranian people, brought on by the Regime’s corruption and regional meddling, that has disproportionately affected the young and the working class.

When the draft budget for 2018 was released, showing increased funding to the Regime's terrorist Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) while cutting subsidies to the poor, the protests broke out.

Protesters have been chanting slogans like "death to [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani", "death to the dictator", "[Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, shame on you, leave the country alone", and "People are paupers while the mullahs live like gods".

Some were also chanting for a restoration of the Pahlavi monarchy which ruled until the mullahs took over in 1979.

Mattis said: "Clearly the Iranian people aren't buying this revolution or export of their terrorism, or whatever the revolutionary regime people want to call it. They're not buying it there at home. We're not buying it internationally."

The IRGC has blamed foreign enemies of the Regime (i.e. the US, the UK, Israel, and Saudi Arabia) for instigating the protests but the people who started the protests are Iranians living in Iran who cannot tolerate the Regime’s oppression anymore.

The IRGC has also claimed that the protests have been quashed, but that is simply not true. At least 50 people have been killed and 1,000 arrested during these protests and their revolutionary spirit is not going away.

Iran – the Portrait of Khamenei and Khomeini Was Set on Fire

Iran: Kian Tyre factory workers protest overdue wages

Iran Protests- Jan 4, 2018- City of Isfahan


Report: Stress a key factor in causing bee colonies to fail

  • Scientists from Royal Holloway University have found that when bees are exposed to low levels of neonicotinoid pesticides - which do not directly kill bees - their behaviour changes and they stop working properly for their colonies. The results showed that exposure to pesticides at levels bees encounter in the field, has subtle impacts on individual bees, and can eventually make colonies fail.

    "One in three mouthfuls of our food depend on bee pollination," said lead author, Dr John Bryden from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway. "By understanding the complex way in which colonies fail and die, we've made a crucial step in being able to link bee declines to pesticides and other factors, such as habitat loss and disease which can all contribute to colony failure."

    "Exposing bees to pesticides is a bit like adding more and more weight on someone's shoulders. A person can keep walking normally under a bit of weight, but when it gets too much – they collapse. Similarly, bee colonies can keep growing when bees aren't too stressed, but if stress levels get too high the colony will eventually fail," added Dr Bryden.

    "Our research provides important insights to the biology of pollinators," said co-author Professor Vincent Jansen. "It is intriguing that the way in which bees work together is the key to their success, but could also contribute to their decline and colony failure."

    The research was funded as part of the £10 million 'Insect Pollinators Initiative,' set-up to understand the causes of pollinator declines and safeguard future pollination services.

    "Pesticides can have a detrimental effect on bees at levels used in the field," said co-author Dr Nigel Raine. "Our research will provide important evidence for policymakers. The way we test pesticides, the way we assess their impact on bees, and the way we manage pesticides can all be improved."


What UBuild offers

Of course you can rely on UBuild Kit Homes to go one step further than just using steel frames for the Kit Homes, we use zinc-coated steel. The steel structural systems including floor frames, wall frames and roof trusses are all engineered, with state of the art software to ensure the required structural strength, accuracy in measurements and limited wastage of materials.

Utilising the latest in steel frame fastening technology to assemble frames and trusses, UBuild Kit Homes uses 1.0 mm thick ZINCALUME® steel, fastened with the patented Henrob™ self-piercing riveting system, or Buildex® GX® frame screws, known for their superior strength.


There’s Hummus Among Us

As long as we’re talking about pitta breads, how about things to put on/in them?  Since my pitta bread don’t always puff up when I tell them to (even when I shout at them very loudly), I may have to admit that I often come down on the side of “on”-them-things out of necessity.  And, if you go to the trouble of making your own pitta in the first place, wouldn’t it be nice to have an “on”-them-thing worth raving about?  For me, that’s hummus.  Or when I’m feeling a bit less lazy, roasted eggplant and tahini dip.  But most of the time just hummus.

Now you may be wondering why hummus is rave-worthy.  After all, it’s kind of a boring beige color most of the time, and the stuff from the store can be hit or miss.  This is why making hummus at home is so worth it.  You can add sun-dried tomatoes, roasted peppers, or roasted garlic to jazz up the flavor.  And after the pulverizing is over, you have a blank beige canvas to decorate with everything from olive oil, to spices and herbs.

Unfortunately, as an avid practitioner of the non-recipe cooking approach, it’s a bit difficult for me to give you exact measurements for what you should put in your hummus, so please take the following recipe as a suggestion.  Google backs me up that there are a million different ingredient ratios for hummus, and that the following is a good middle-ground.  Perhaps more importantly, you should make a hummus that is delicious to you, so go wild!

Simple Hummus
2 cups cooked chickpeas (see below for cooking instructions)
1/2 cup chickpea water (from cooking)
1/4 cup tahini
2-3 medium cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt or to taste
Juice of 1 lime or lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
To garnish: olive oil, paprika, ground cumin, dried oregano, and diced fresh parsley.

First, in a mini food processor, pulverize the garlic, olive oil, and about 1/4 cup of chickpeas and 1/4 cup of chickpea water.  This should disperse the garlic better than just chopping and adding it in at the end.  Next I add the rest of the ingredients, except a bit less salt, and pulverize again.  At this point I taste the hummus.  It may need more salt, tahini, lime juice, or liquid.  I like my hummus to be smooth and not too dense, which means plenty of food processor action and sometimes extra liquid.  When you’re happy with your hummus, spoon it into a bowl and smooth out the top.  To garnish, drizzle some olive oil over the smooth top of the hummus; this helps keep the hummus from drying out.  Finally, sprinkle any or all of the spices on top.

Cooking Chickpeas
Chickpeas are some of the easiest beans to cook because it’s hard to overcook them.  The one thing you do have to remember to do (in addition to turning the stove off eventually) is soak them overnight first.  I recently started using just-cooked and still-warm chickpeas to make hummus, and I think the hummus was smoother than cold or canned chickpeas.  To soak the chickpeas, put them in a non-reactive bowl and cover them with at least twice their volume of water.  I usually cook 2-3 cups of dried chickpeas at a time and use them to make a few batches of hummus, chickpea patties (like non-deep fried felafel), or put them on salads.  To cook the chickpeas, drain the soaking water and rinse the chickpeas thoroughly.  Then in a medium or large pot, cover the chickpeas with two times their volume of water again and turn the heat on high until the water reaches a boil.  Then turn the heat down to maintain a simmer, and let the chickpeas cook until very soft.  This could take 1-2 hours depending on the freshness of your dried chickpeas and how long you’re willing to wait for softer chickpeas.  Save some of the cooking water for making hummus!

Biscuits with Cheddar and Kale

This has got to be one of the crazier baked goods I’ve made lately.  Perhaps I’ll rationalize it by saying there’s pretty much nothing I won’t do to get rid of 2 cups of cooked greens.  I was also intrigued by the idea of biscuits that don’t contain butter (even if the reason they don’t contain butter is because they instead contain two cups of grated cheddar cheese).  Normally I try to only post recipes here that I know I would make again… this one?  Not so sure, at least not with kale.  The earlier versions of this recipe look more promising: the Cheddar and Mustard Greens version from Food in Jars and before that the Cheddar Scallion and Cheddar Chives recipes from Local Kitchen and Epicurious.  So while I will most likely never make these biscuits again with kale, I can’t get the thought of a caramelized onion and swiss chard version with a super-sharp cheddar out of my head.

Biscuits with Cheddar and Kale
(Makes 10-12 biscuits)
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons salt (or a bit less)
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
2 cups of cooked and finely chopped kale
1 cup milk + extra if needed

Begin by finely chopping the kale and cooking it in a little bit of oil until tender.  It is hard to know exactly how much raw kale will equal 2 cups cooked kale, so I just cooked a very large bunch of it and it was scarily close to 2 cups.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F before preparing the rest of the ingredients (grating cheese etc.).  Mix together the flours, baking powder, and salt and then add the grated cheese.  Next add the cooked kale and mix to distribute the greens evenly (they like to clump together).  Add the 1 cup of milk and mix the dough with your hands to try to form a single cohesive ball of dough.  Add more milk (1/4 to 1/2 cup) bit by bit if the dough doesn’t hold together.  When the dough is holding together nicely, use a spoon to scoop 10 to 12 portions of the dough onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.  Bake the biscuits for 18-20 minutes until golden brown.

Molasses Crinkles

It is almost the end of October and still the days are so hot as to drive me indoors during the middle of the day.  While this (what seems like abnormally hot) weather has been a near miracle for all the summer plants I started from seed in August, it does make for quite the shock when Christmas rolls around at just about the same time that my East Coast trained brain thinks it’s the beginning of Autumn.  So this year I’m flexing my holiday muscles by pulling out the molasses and pumpkin spice flavors ahead of schedule, starting with a recipe for molasses crinkle cookies from my Great Great Aunt given to me by my Grandma.

Aunt Madge’s Molasses Crinkles
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks), at room temperature
4 tablespoons molasses
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
2 1/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
Pinch of salt

The original instructions are as follows: “Drop by teaspoonsful on greased baking sheet.  Bake in a moderate oven.”  In case this isn’t quite enough direction, start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees F.  Cream the butter with the sugar and molasses, and then add the egg and mix it in.  Combine the dry ingredients (spices, flour, baking soda, and salt) in a separate bowl or on top of the wets, and mix the wet and the dry to combine.  Now drop the cookie dough in teaspoonsful on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (or greased, if you prefer) and bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes depending on their size.  Eat with a mug of cold milk and think happy holiday thoughts.

Pecan Sandies

This is another installment in the Women in Physics cookie extravaganza.  Jen requested pecan sandies, and I was only too happy to oblige.  Unfortunately, I made them on a week when she was off gallivanting across California with her parents, so consider this “take 1”.  It’s probably good that I have an excuse to make these again because an accidental substitution of normal granulated sugar instead of powdered sugar had a surprisingly strong effect on the cookie’s structure: instead of adorable cookie mounds, they were flat as a pancake.  Thankfully, covering a cookie of any shape in sugar is a popular move, so no one cared that the cookies were the wrong shape.  Except for me.

This was the first time I could remember even eating pecan sandies, so in case you have suffered from cookie deprivation as I have, let me explain what you’re in for.  Pecan sandies are like sugar cookies, but more moist and with the added interest of buttery pecans.  Add to that a covering of granulated sugar on the outside that sort of caramelizes during baking.  This may be my cookie discovery of the year.

Pecan Sandies (An attempt on the recipe from Buns In My Oven)
1 cup butter (2 sticks), room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar (for less flat cookies, use powdered sugar)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans
1/4-1/2 cup granulated sugar for coating the cookies
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Beat the butter and sugars (not the sugar for coating the cookies) in a medium bowl.  Add the egg and vanilla and beat again.  If you aren’t as lazy as me, you can mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt) in a separate bowl and add them to the butter mixture, or, if you’re me, you can pile all the dry ingredients on top of the butter mixture and give them a halfhearted stir before beating everything together.  Chop up the pecans and add them to the batter too.  Finally, roll the dough into balls about an inch wide.  Dunk each ball in the extra sugar and roll it around to coat it in sugar thoroughly.  Place the cookies on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes.  The edges and bottoms of the cookies will just be golden and the smell will be divine.

Pitta Bread

There’s something wonderful about using bread as a spoon.  In Ethiopian food, for example, spongy rounds of teff flour “crepe” are used as a lining to the plate (in order to absorb any stray sauce) and as the utensil of choice.  Pitta bread seems equally versatile, as it is stuffable, scoopable, and (if you’re a pitta heathen like me) a quick “plate” for pizza toppings.  If you’re intimidated by large yeast-leavened breads, let me introduce you to a quick yeast-leavened bread that you cook on the stove-top.  That’s right, you don’t even need to turn on the oven.

This recipe is extremely flexible.  I have used white flour, whole wheat flour, white whole wheat flour, and am currently using half white and whole wheat.  The dough will act a little differently in each case.  Often with whole wheat dough you want to let the dough sit for 5-10 minutes before kneading or adding more water/flour in order to let the flour absorb the water.  You also may need to add a bit more or less water depending on the water content of the flour and the air humidity.  White flour is probably the easiest to work with the first time through.

As a final note, don’t be depressed if only some or even none of your pitta puff up.  They are still delicious without the gaping whole in the center.  I have made batches of these when they all puffed up and batches where only one or two puffed up.  The scientist in me would like to be able to say that I have tested the parameter space of pan temperature, flour composition, and dough hydration to be able to puff my pitta consistently.  Fortunately, there is absolutely no motivation to do this as the pitta disappear quickly in either case.

Pitta Bread (Adapted from The Complete Book of Greek Cooking)
(Makes 8 medium pitta bread)
2 cups flour (white, whole wheat, or a combination)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon olive oil + a drizzle
1 cup slightly warm water

To make the dough:

  • Mix all the ingredients except for the extra drizzle of olive oil in a medium mixing bowl.  The dough should be slightly sticky, as in you touch it and dough sticks to your finger when you pull your finger away.
  • Let the dough rest for 30 minutes or so (sometimes I only wait 10 minutes when I’m feeling particularly impatient).
  • Then knead it for somewhere between 2 and 10 minutes (my kneading often falls closer to the 2 minute side).  By the end of the kneading, the dough should only be the slightest bit sticky and shouldn’t stick to your finger when you touch it, but it should be soft and easily stretched.
  • Form the dough into a ball and place in a clean bowl (or just make sure all the dough is removed from the bottom of the bowl you mixed everything up in).  Drizzle a bit of olive oil over the ball of dough and rub the olive oil around to keep the dough from drying out.  Put the oil-covered dough back in the bowl and cover the top with a damp kitchen towel.
  • Place the bowl of dough in a warm place in the house (ie. the kitchen counter by the stove) for about 1 hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.  Whole wheat flour dough may not quite double or it may take longer.

To cook the bread:

  • Use a clean kitchen counter or a sheet of parchment paper as a surface on which to roll out the dough.  Make a little pile of flour on the surface (~2 tablespoons).
  • Start by separating the dough into 8 pieces.
  • To roll out a piece of dough, roll it into a ball, squish the ball into a little bit of flour on either side, and then flatten the bread into a thin (1/4 inch thick) disk using your hands.  You could use a rolling pin if you wanted, but that’s just one more thing to wash.
  • As soon as you’ve rolled out 1 or 2 pitta breads, turn on a stove-top burner to medium under a heavy cast-iron skillet or frying pan.  I’m never quite sure when the skillet is hot enough so the first pitta bread is rarely perfect.
  • When the skillet might be hot enough, place a pitta bread on the skillet and let it cook for 30 seconds.
  • Then turn the pitta bread over and cook for 1 minute on the other side.  At some point around here air bubbles should start to form in the pitta.  You can help them spread throughout the cooking dough by putting a slight pressure on them using a spatula.  Be careful not to rip the surface of the dough though, because once that happens, the puffing is over.
  • When the air bubbles get big (or if the air bubbles never happen and the other side looks nice and browned in places), turn the pitta over again.  The total cooking time should be about 3 minutes, although it will be longer if the pan isn’t hot enough.
  • Keep the cooked pitta bread warm in a kitchen towel on a plate.  This also keeps hungry people from walking into the kitchen and eating them without you noticing (although in that case you may want to sew bells to the kitchen towel just to make sure).  I encourage the cook to eat the sacrificial first pitta bread slathered in butter and sprinkled with cardamom-sugar.

Hot Stuff! Sriracha and Hot Pepper Pickles

Over the last few weeks there have been an increasing number of hot pepper experiments.  After making a batch of salsa verde to can, I made another with extremely spicy jalapenos that turned out to be too intense for the intended purpose of making enchiladas verdes.  And then this weekend, I attempted to make Sriracha with a combination of mystery peppers and jalapenos/serranos.  Turned out some of the mystery peppers were habaneros, and the Sriracha sauce turned out more like a very delicious hot sauce that is only tolerable in extremely small doses.  Thank goodness I learned what a habanero looks like before making the pickled hot peppers or they might have been completely inedible to my weak taste buds.

Sriracha (hot pepper garlic sauce)
(Makes 2-5 half-pints)
I followed the directions for making Sriracha here pretty much to the letter, except I only ended up with 2.5 half-pints instead of the expected 5.  This may have been due to the fact that I had the heat up too high as I was cooking the sauce down, but this was absolutely necessary as I had a fan blowing air away from the pot and out of the kitchen so that we could breathe properly while preparing the ingredients for the hot pepper pickles.  So yes, a word of warning: the sauce will fill the air with awful pepper and vinegar fumes if you, like me, try using extremely hot peppers.  While I may be hot-peppered out for the moment, I do want to try making this recipe with only jalapenos, in which case the fumes may not be so bad.  As a hot sauce, this is one of the first I’ve really liked, so I foresee much tinkering with the recipe next summer.  Another thought on making sriracha: I’ve seen recipes that involve fermenting the peppers before the sauce is cooked and pureed, which may lead to a more authentic Rooster Sauce than the more simple recipe I tried.  And as always, an immersion blender makes it all so much easier, no matter what recipe you follow.

1 pound hot peppers
9 medium cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup distilled white vinegar (5% acidity)
1 cup apple cider vinegar (5% acidity)
3 tablespoons honey

To make the sauce:  Prepare the hot peppers by cutting off the stems and chopping them up into smallish pieces.  WEAR GLOVES to protect your hands from the hot pepper oils!  Leave in the seeds if you want to make the sauce spicier (perhaps if you only use jalapenos).  Prepare the garlic by peeling the cloves and crushing them with a flat knife.  In a medium pot, combine the chopped hot peppers, garlic, salt, and vinegars.  Bring the pot to a boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes.  Take the pot off the heat and blend the mixture until smooth with an immersion blender (easily done right in the pot) or traditional blender/food processor (harder, and it may be easier when the sauce has cooled a little bit).   With the sauce in the pot (again), bring it to a boil.  You are now ready to can it!

To can the sauce:  Follow the more detailed directions in the recipe for dilly beans, with the following specifications.  Fill the half-pint jars with sauce leaving 1/4 inch of headspace at the top of the jar.  To process, boil the half-pint jars in a hot water bath for 15 minutes.

Pickled Hot Peppers (Adapted from Canning for a New Generation)
(Makes 4 half-pints of pickles)
Enough hot pepper rings to fill 4 half-pint jars
1 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar (5% acidity)
3/4 cups water
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
4 cloves garlic, peeled

To make the pickles:  Cut up the hot peppers into rings about 1/8 inch thick and discard the stems.  WEAR GLOVES when handling the hot peppers!  Rinse the pepper rings in cool water to get rid of some of the seeds and set aside for the canning stage.  Peel the garlic and set aside for the canning stage as well.  Bring the rest of the ingredients (vinegars, water, salt, and sugar) to a boil in a pot and then take off the heat and proceed to the canning stage.

To can the pickles: Follow the more detailed directions in the recipe for dilly beans, with the following specifications.  Fill each half-pint jar with a clove of garlic and one fourth of the hot pepper rings, leaving one inch of headspace at the top of the jar.  Pour the brine into the jar leaving 1/2 inch of headspace at the top of the jar.  To process, boil the half-pint jars in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.  The hot pepper rings will shrink as they cook in the hot water bath, leaving ample space in the half-pint jars that is only full of brine.  Cooking the hot pepper rings in the brine before packing the half-pint jars would help solve this problem, and for an example of this method see the recipe for banana pepper pickles.

Charred Tomato and Chile Salsa

To finish up the series of summer salsas, here is a tangy and slightly sweet tomato salsa that is just as easy to make as salsa verde: you roast everything and then blend it to death.  Peter wishes it had more smoky flavor, but I’m glad it didn’t.

Just when I thought I was cut-off from canning until holiday gift-giving, my grandma sent me 12 half-pint jars.  Thank you grandma!  Perusing Canning for a New Generation and Food in Jars, I’ve narrowed the future contents of these jars down to:

  1. Strawberry jam with Thai herbs
  2. Sweet red pepper relish
  3. Spiced apple butter
  4. Pear and ginger preserves
  5. Concord grape jam
  6. Peach-plum ginger jam
  7. Sweet-spicy cucumber pepper relish
  8. Pear ginger ginger jam
  9. Peppered balsamic fig jam
  10. Sriracha sauce

Clearly I have to decide between these 10(!) recipes eventually, but as the weekend is still a little ways away, I don’t have to commit just yet.  If you must know, my preference is slightly wavered towards Sriracha sauce (the amazing spicy chile condiment), pear and ginger preserves (I’ve promised myself that only one pear recipe this year is sufficient), and either sweet-spicy cucumber pepper relish (if I have enough cucumbers from the garden) or concord grape jam (if I happen upon concord grapes in a moment of weakness).

Charred Tomato and Chile Salsa (from Canning for a New Generation)
(Makes 5 pints of salsa)
5 pounds tomatoes
10 jalapeno peppers, preferably red (8 ounces)
12 cloves garlic (2 ounces)
3 small onions (1 pound 6 ounces)
1/2 cup cider vinegar (5% acidity)
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar

To make the salsa:   Prepare the tomatoes by cutting out the stems and cutting the tomatoes in half.  Prepare the jalapenos by cutting off the stems and cutting the jalapenos in half length-wise.  Peel the garlic cloves and cut the onions into quarters.  Set the broiler to “high” and line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Place the tomatoes cut side down on the baking tray and broil for about 10 minutes, until the skins are blackened in patches.  Move the tomatoes to a heat-proof bowl.  Then broil the other veggies (jalapenos, onions, garlic) until black in places.  When the other veggies are done, put them in a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients.  Now comes the only annoying part: when the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, peel off the skins, keeping only the blackened parts of the skins (this adds flavor).  Combine all the other ingredients in the pot (tomatoes, black bits of tomato skins, vinegar, salt, and sugar) and mix.  If you have an immersion blender, use it to blend the salsa in the pot.  Otherwise, use a conventional blender or food processor to blend the salsa.  Whatever the blending method, return the salsa to the pot and bring it to a boil for 5 minutes.  The salsa is now ready to be canned!

To can the salsa: Follow the detailed instructions for canning in the recipe for dilly beans, with the following specifications.  Fill the sterilized pint jars with salsa leaving 1/2 inch of headspace at the top of the jar.  Process the jars in a hot water bath for 40 minutes.