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When Christ returns, any transhumans about will be taken along with the humans.
The question, I suppose, is whether we might not produce changes in the body that would be so significant that it would effectively separate the soul from the body. That just would be the death of that human person. Any organism that continued to live after such a change would be a zombie.
^^ Ahh, an intresting thought indeed Mr Craig.
So what does God do?
A lovely day here in the Valley. Sunny, clear, a little warm though with the small reminant of winter still giving things a good balance.
The view coming home, this might bring fond memories for those of you who have visited:
its hard to tell, but the mountians up the top of the road are still a touch snow capped. i have no idea how to make it look as awesome in a photo as it does in real life, so you just have to imagine this long road fading up into the himalyas being really really lovely.
so anyway i feel really blessed today. apart from the lovely weather and stuff, i just got home from church where i met again more wonderful people and so far have added to my schedule a weekly mens breakfast bible study. ah and also there is this special guest french lecture guy who is an astrophysist's and speaking next week somewhere too, how exciting!
(and after another few rounds of small lice type animal removal from my head they are mostly gone now too. though this time they also made it down into my beard, once again i am clean uncle!)
in other less great news, i read this in the paper last week in a review about kathmandu:
5000 children are living or working on the streets, 10000-15000 women and girls are trafficed to india anually and 7500 are trafficked domestically for commercial sexual exploitation.
lunch: powdered corn from pieces of news paper:
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let me take a few moments to explain how this came to be on the menu. there is no power so we cannot really cook anything, well we can, but there is also a gas shortage and we have almost finished our last cylinder. though even if was possible to buy another one, we also have no money. so that explains the dry instant food. now add on top of that the current season, known as dry season. this season lives up to its name, as there has also been no water in the pipes for over 3 days. so we need to eat our uncooked dry foods from things that do not require water to clean, hence the paper 'plates'.
it perhaps could sound a little troubling. but its not. no one even thinks twice about it, and after you add a little chilli and salt, was really delicious. infact, we even started cooking by fire, and all the children got to bust out their village stlyes! you can see above dev's sister making pop corn. yum!
welcome to kathmandu. (check compassion for more info)
speaking of the valley, recently also i have been exploring more of our side of it, two of the boys here are awesome runners, so we have been taking regular trips around the various back roads and up into the hills here. I push them quite hard too and they keep up, its amazing what young kids can do. Though we have only been doing runs around the 10k mark, its still quite a challange, as I notice my slightly aging body taking longer to recover than theirs. very enjoyable to say the least though.
in other news, i went to a white person church this past weekend. was great. well, it was the most white people i have seen in over a year. it was also great getting to speak fast, fluenent, english, complete with all the terms of speech that only a native fully understands. i also met this awesome american guy who has been living here for over 10 years, so hes going to teach me some secrets of the city as we plan to meet up for coffee this week. great to have a new friend!
eek, just read this in the nepali paper: "88 hours a week power cuts with effect from Monday". thats 10-14 hours a day of no power so soon in the year, things not looking good for the dry season. (though india is ment to send some power up this way soon)
also "A group of Nepal police officers are being investigated for operating a butcher's shop from their station and slaughtering goats when they should have been fighting crime."
in other not so funny news, one person dies every 90 seconds from the poor mans disease TB. You know, the thing we started curing 100 years ago. Turns out there is no point curing a thing if the people that it affects also have no money. "The distribution of tuberculosis is not uniform across the globe; about 80% of the population in many Asian and African countries test positive in tuberculin tests, while only 5–10% of the U.S. population test positive."
in things i have been doing news, i have just re-launched the vocab learning website we made 2 years ago. now with nepali added. this should come in handy this year: http://drvocab.com
in other nepali language learning news, there is a construct in nepali to talk about people as inanimate objects. you use it when talking about people that you own, like when you barter about your daughters wedding, you refer to her just as another one of your belongings, thus droping the animation referer. but the reverse is also true, so you can refer to a rock as an animate thing, you would do this for example if you were going to worship said rock and wanted to talk about it(now aka him/her).
other intresting and less questionable facts i have learnt recently include the word for 'the day after tomorrow' and 'the day before yesterday'. pretty handy words those are. also there are two words for 'shelter', one meaning 'shelter from the sun' and the other 'shelter from the rain'.
intresting eh. for all their quick handy short words, they still don't have enough time to make toilets for the majority of the country.
also 800 million people in india live on under 50 cents a day. how does this kinda stuff happen?
"It is so easy to be seduced by the good to the neglect of the best, until both the good and the best perish." EM Bounds.
yesterday i read this^^ oh mister EM Bounds, i know exactly what you mean. infact i wrote a short poem recenly that sounds very similar to this.
ps: like the new font?
"ok ok now we just need some rice trees to feed the sheeps. you know what I mean right?" "yup yup" I reply "we need hay to feed the goats".
Ahh how literal and weird translations never cease to amuse me.
oh so i just had a new experience. i was delivered my morning coffee just recently.. which my indian father loves to do each morning. but this time instead of letting me drink it in a daze as i slowly wake, he stood there watching. my curiosity piqued. i look in the cup. black as usual, no problem. what could it be. i smell, yup nescafe.. still nothing unusual so far. tentatively i take a sip. bam. what the! lemon! he has put a whole buncha lemon juice in our coffees this morning. he smiles lovingly back at me as i look up in shock. but actually, they complement each other really well. i recommend you inform your morning coffee provider to make the necessary adjustments. my two other favourite coffee additives are chili and cardamon.
no other news really though, i just wanted to share that funny story, also study is going well:
oh actually, check out: www.compassionbengal.com. its an awesome new project of a good friend of mine.
I love it when old guys get worked up, check out this following passage from Pascal in his Pensees. I imagine him writing each line and stopping in exclamation 'gah!' as he shakes his head and he proceeds to write the next, each with increasing rapidity:
"I can only feel compassion for those who are distressed sincerely by their doubts, and who regard it as their greatest misfortune. These spare no effort to escape from the situation, but instead make their search their main and most serious business. But I feel very differently towards those who live their lives without giving a thought to the final end of life, and who are unconvinced by the light that they have, but instead neglect to look elsewhere. These don't decide an opinion from mature reflection, but merely accept opinions out of credulous simplicity or those, which, though obscure, do posses a solid and unshakable foundation. Their neglect in an issue that should vitally concern them, for it deals with their eternal destiny and everything they have, fills me with more irritation than pity. I am not saying this out of pious sentiment. On the contrary, I mean that people ought to feel like this from the basic principles of human interest and self-esteem. It calls for nothing more than what is apparent to the least enlightened among us.
We do not need to be high-minded to realize that there is no true and solid satisfaction be had in this world. For all out pleasures are mere vanity, while our misfortunes are infinite. Death dogs us every moment. In a space of only a few years we will inevitably be bought face-to-face with the reality of eternity, which for those who have neglected it will be eternal damnation with no prospect of happiness.
There is nothing more real than this, nor more terrible. We may seek to put on as brave a face as we can, but what lies in store at the end of the most successful career in the world is only this. Let people think what they like, but the only good in this life lies in the hope of another life. We are only happy in the measure to which we anticipate it, for there will be no misfortunes to those who are completely assured of of eternal life. But there will be no happiness for those who have no knowledge of it. Clearly it is a great misfortune to be in such a state of doubt. But it is at least an indispensable duty to seek and inquire when we are in such a state. It is the man who both doubts and yet does not seek who is most miserable and most wrong. If, in addition, he feels smug about what he openly professes, and even sees it as a source of complacency and smugness, which he blatantly professes, then I can find no terms to describe such a creature.
Whatever can give rise to such feelings? What reason is there for rejoicing when we cannot look forward to anything but unmitigated misery? What reason is there for vanity in being plunged into such an impenetrable darkness? How can arguments like this even occur to any reasonable person?
"I do no know who placed me in this world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am deeply ignorant about everything. I do not know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is, or the very organ which thinks what I am saying, which reflects upon everything as well as upon itself, and does not know itself any better than it knows anything else. I only see the terrifying spaces of the universe that imprison me, and I find myself planted in a tiny corner of this vast expanse without knowing why I have been placed here rather than there, Nor do I know why this brief span of life has been allotted to me at this point rather than another in all the eternity of time that has proceeded me and all that which will come after me. I see only infinities on all sides, enclosing me like an atom or like the shadow of a fleeting moment. All I know is that soon I shall die, but what I am most ignorant about is this very death from which there is no escape."
"Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me. Perhaps I may find some insight in my own doubts, but I do not want to be troubled. I do not even want to put out a hand to seek for it. Instead I shall go without fear of foresight and allow myself to be carried off helplessly to my death, uncertain of my future state for all eternity"
But it is a glorious thing for true faith to have such unreasonable man as their enemies. For instead of being dangerous to it, their opposition only helps to establish it. For the Christian faith consists almost entirely in establishing these two truths: the corruption of human nature, and its redemption through Jesus Christ. I maintain if they do not server to demonstrate truth of redemption b the sanctity of their lives, at least they show admirably the corruption of human nature by having such unnatural attitudes...
He goes on.. but I won't, although I have just realised instead of typing it all out, which I admit was fun, I should of just google'd it. And pow! here they are: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/pascal/pensees-contents.html.
Been listening to this recently that mike linked me to: http://www.disciplemakingintl.org/media/series/series_list/?id=2
Also my fingernails have been growing really fast this last month. I'm sure way faster than normal. Anyone else notice this?
A mango farm: 
it starts to make sense:
good can no longer be the standard.
we need to drop good.
to forsake it.
there is only one way now.
and one path to get to it.
we need to reset our eyes. renew our mind.
there is a sacrifice to be made.
i'm afraid it is good.
it has to go.
its reign was long, and indeed it was nice.
but it passed the time and now but a second remains.
in this last flash we need the best.
we need the most. we need more.
and for that all else we must pass by.
deny good! take best!
so today i have roughly 2 weeks of visa in nepal left. What to do? Well, we will get to that in a few minutes. First some news and stories.
So i went to a bank to open an account. Walking in past the (security) guy causally holding the 12 inch gorkha nife. I learnt some funny things about banks here. First they won't give you foreign currency... they only give to locals... a little annoying. Second, they have no such thing as 'withdrawal forms'. You have to write a cheque to yourself. This led to a confusing situation since I told them 'of course I dont need a cheque book, no one uses them these days'... turns out nepal made a system to keep them in use. You also do not require any id for withdrawing and anyone can get your statement by just asking.
We installed our first illegal bike modifications last week. A lovely under the seat set of speakers and accompanying mp3 player. This will add another edge of awesome to those long trips to the village.
Orphanage news in short: With the arrival of winter we have started 6am runs with the kids. All my coffee recently tastes spicy since I bought beans and we only have one mortar (which we grind everything on.. including the chillies). All the kids got caned recently with my big bamboo cane. We fixed the table tennis table, painted it green and I think all my lice have finally gone.
Ok so I ran out of time to write this, anyway here it is in brief: a few days ago I got accepted into a uni here and will begin studying nepali in a one year course starting in feb. This means I get the cheap study visa!
We are off now on a trip down to the border to pick the girls up from India. Exciting. I hope it goes well.
so i was going to write again about my recent adventures, tell you about the funny things that have happened recently, things like finding my shower taps in bodhgaya mildly electrified or recounting tales of gypsy encounters whilst camping in a bear forest in the kashmere' mountains. But this time i decided against another round of story telling. Instead, rather than presenting recent events, i will present recent thoughts. Here goes:
ok sorry, this is a bit of a let down, as i actually wont be presenting recent thoughts..... i kinda never finished writing them. This is what has led to the delay in all posting related activities. so i have benched that idea and will proceed with the small talk stuff.
it is getting cold here. Himalayan winter type cold. a few months back i was in Varanasi. then i traveled by various modes of transport up to Leh. thats quite far away. Rainy time is a hard time of year to travel up that way. anyway, now i am back in Kathmandu. the cold place. we harvested some rice and we made a building.
recently some western people were talking to some other western people in another place. about giving. one person was like 'man people dont like giving money, tell them to give things instead, thats way easier and better'. here is how i feel about this: is the stigma regarding giving money so huge? like 'we cannot give you money since we dont really trust you, i bet you are just a fat guy in an office lounging back smoking two cigars at once, or wait, perhaps you are just so so poor that you will just waste it since you are also uneducated. wow i know, how about take our crap instead eh. i once bought this thing to fulfill my life and now only the new thing will, so here, take my left overs. when i think of giving stuff that wont affect me i dont consider my former opinions or even your conditions so much....'
ok sidetracked a little. so anyway people ask, what can we send you? like stuff wise? i reply, awesome! the things we need are food, clean water, shelter, education and love. here is our po box number.... like really, you thought it was your wall mart dvd player that we need?
anyway, i have a quiet two weeks here till cherie and catherine arrive to check out the place for a bit. i should get around to finishing my other post thing. perhaps it can be a little less cynical.
