Fernando Ortega – Just As I Am
An evening pause: A Christian’s prayer, set to beautiful music and performed live 2011. I post a lot of hard rock celebrating sex, drugs, and rock & roll, because the music and performance is great. I post this for the same reason. I wonder how many of my non-Christian readers will be open to listening and enjoying it.
Hat tip James Street.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Untold numbers (including me) have answered the call to salvation with these words in their ears!
If my life had a soundtrack, there would be quite a few songs by Fernando.
I can’t decide if I believe the universe supports miracles, but I definitely believe that it is blasphemy – or at least definition-breaking – to limit the power of G*d. That leads to tension, so I’m a deist on odd numbered days and a theist, usually Christian, on even numbered days. G*d and I have an interesting relationship.
I LOVE these posts for the variety (the one a day or so back with that weird tube was, well, weird, but I didn’t find it comment worthy), so I took up the challenge.
It’s a bit mellow for my taste. I find it impossible to count. I’m pretty sure the melody is 1-2-and-3-and-4-and. That missing beat is usually syncopation on the 3 count, but I can’t count it that way because of the left-hand beat is feels like it is starting on that right-hand beat. I’m terrible at music, so it’s probably just me.
“I can’t decide if I believe the universe supports miracles, . . .”
Well, you’re here.
Interesting that the lyrics were mounted on the scoreboard, but not the score. I looked it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_as_I_Am_(hymn)#/media/File:Elliott_Bradbury_Just_as_I_am.jpg
As suspected, being a hymn, odd timing and lots of flats. Singing is not a gift, and I struggle with hymns. Playing them is slightly easier.
Well, you’re here.
There is that, but so is everyone else. That’s a very slow miracle – 14 billion years – and arguably deist, so it doesn’t really fit the category I have in mind. I’m thinking more the Red Sea parting or walls of Jericho falling type of thing.
It gets mind-bending rather quickly. If one stipulates that G*d _can_ do such things, the question becomes “what happens when it does?”
Is G*d working the butterfly effect backward? For example, 20 years earlier said butterfly landed in the mortar of the keystone of Jericho’s gate, weakening it just enough that it resonates with the trumpets and collapses. Or are the after-effect butterfly effects countered? For example, a minor earthquake where there is no fault line and any aquifer issues that might cause are fixed up without anyone noticing. Or does G*d just ignore physics entirely and there are no butterfly effects?
I find the first option the most plausible, but incredibly terrifying, which, by all accounts, G*d is. It’s the 10th, so God Bless.