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.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
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.