God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  When a Blackhawk helicopter crashed into a commercial passenger jet on January 29, 2025, newly elected President Trump came to the podium to offer the expected condolences and clarify new information. He surprised the nation by suggesting that DEI (Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion) may have had something to do with the crash. By the time he addressed the nation he had obviously been briefed that the two Blackhawk pilots were women. The suggestion to anyone not half asleep is that women shouldn’t be flying helicopters because they are not as fit as men. Which leaves the question, would they say the same about a Black or Latino pilot? A kerfuffle on The View TV show arose when the women began to discuss the new press secretary for the Trump administration, blond, 25-year-old Karoline Leavitt. At some point Joy Behar exclaimed that she got the job because Donald Trump thought she was a “10.” That actually got Behar fired from the show. As a comeback, Alina Habba, Counselor to th...

A dive into Hebrew Bible metaphors that we can apply today I am often inspired in my writings by things I heard in adult Sunday School class or in a sermon. Last Sunday the topic in Sunday School was George Friderick Handel’s Messiah. We heard the soloist sing the passage in Malachi 3:2, 3: “But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” (All passages are NKJV, biblegateway.com) I love to study biblical metaphors. Refiner’s fire…a process in which the impurities of an ore are burned away, changing the nature of the ore, leaving the pure substance like gold or silver. We discussed how fire is good…it cooks our food, gives us light, and keeps us warm. It has the capacity to drastically change the substance of what it burns. It can purify metal, sterilize or cauterize a wound, or turn a house into ash. Fire has to be...

On Tuesday mornings, I join a Zoom Bible study called Text Talk, led by my former Citrus Heights ELCA Lutheran pastor. The topic this week was Jeremiah 36, where King Jehoiakim sliced and burned the prophetic scroll dictated by Jeremiah the prophet to his scribe Baruch. Sources:  2 kings; 2 Chronicles; Jeremiah 31-39; Lutheran Study Bible notes; biblegateway.com; Wikipedia. Backstory and timeline 721 BC, as prophesied by Isaiah and others, Northern Israel fell to Assyria. Her people were removed to Mesopotamia, and foreigners were imported into the region. This squelched national identity and made it impossible for captive rebels to stage an escape. Nor could Judah decide to ally with the north to strengthen resistance to invasion. It was genius, really. So, the towns and villages of Judah were the remnant of the people of Israel. 640 BC:  8-year-old Josiah became king of Judah in Jerusalem. Under the tutelage of faithful priests, he initiated reforms, trying to discou...

The Dark In the global quest to understand the occasional, mysterious lights or floating objects in the sky, we’ve come a long way. Public attention to the topic began in 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted what the press later called “flying saucers” skipping across the sky. That was followed up in June by the infamous Roswell incident. Additional public pressure and reports engendered a series of Air Force investigations—Projects Sign and Grudge, Project Blue Book, The Robertson and Condon Reports, and the establishment of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), all to sort out whether those events were swamp gas, weather balloons, or something otherworldly. The military and Pentagon tried hard to dismiss interest in the topic of UFOs, all the while allegedly squirreling away crashed vehicles. The public cried out for “disclosure,” the real truth about the lights in the sky and the odd poltergeist activity that followed close contact. Then there were books about alien abductions. The pu...

   Image from Pixabay I was raised Catholic. Children are trained in the dogmas of the faith, but we were never encouraged to read the Bible. Who needed it? We had the priests, the magic of ancient rites and rituals, the sacredness of Transubstantiation, etc. It was all there in one package. So, when I got to college, I had never heard of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But there was a movement afoot called the charismatic renewal and things were about to change. In the 1960s priests, nuns, Episcopalians, Methodists, Anglicans, etc. were speaking in tongues and prophesying. In 1965, I was swept up into that movement. But that was long ago, and today the knowledge of these gifts and how they function needs to be renewed. Below is the New Testament passage that describes the spiritual gifts: 4 There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works a...