Ignite Soul log June 7th. Jesus saves, but James did not. Computer crash, 40 hours of work lost.

The most dramatic but not the most important aspect of the last several days is described in the headline of this post. That's just what happened. Yesterday, late afternoon, sitting at the base of Mount Whitney working
on the finishing touches of the clean 12 chapter Tolstoy gospel translation this relatively unused Dell laptop died. The screen just went blank. Not a new machine but relatively current technology, bottom of the line Dell, why would it do that? Heat? No. Barely warm. Battery? That occurred to me but it was mostly full last I looked and that should not have been it. But plugged it in still, Flickr on the power key and then nothing. Over and over. Yes, James had not save the 30 or 40 or 50 hrs worth of technical work. Removing the six or eight screws and removing the  bottom the hard drive which at least could be removed was not seen. Why? Oh it's probably some chips on there that James could not recognize. So it was really and finally lost. Before opening it, assuming that there was a disk drive from which the data could at least be retrieve, James ordered a $200 refurbished Dell from Amazon.

Seeing nothing inside that could explain the failure James closed the machine back up. Connected power and let it charge for an hour. With no hope or expectation he tried the power again. Nothing, then a Flickr, then completing update of windows it said, and then the machine was back. Microsoft is a horrible company. The world has paid trillion and trillion of dollars for that garbage instead of standardizing on Apple decades to go. The strength of Microsoft was letting  enough people in on the graft that they frightened everyone else into submission.

Anyway, the important thing is that then James saved! So if it crashes again, if now it is flaky, at least 40 hours of work is not lost. Not yet anyway.

And the $200 refurbished laptop has been successfully cancelled.

For now at least.

It is primarily amazing that this process is able to happen at all. These writings and the respective books are well over a hundred and probably more like 150 years old. That with tremendous accuracy software that James has had for years for this purpose on a bottom of the line laptop could be creating an accurate text version is amazing. Having said that so far probably 70 hours of labor to work out the kinks in the automatic recognition process. And probably another 20 or 30  hours left.

However, for the most part it is fairly mindless technical work so the mind and soul are free to study. Which they do by  listening to important texts and articles the same as when James is cycling.

Blinding insight today. Forgive them father for they know not what they do. If Jesus said this. If he said it, was this a put down? Was it a psychotic break? Maybe.

Was it the fulfillment of some religious fanatic delusion?

Something serious and insightfull James has always thought was behind these words.

The trigger for the insight? James doesn't recall. It was probably musing about some things that James considers from time to time, Trump and his fascist machine rounding up James and torturing and killing him. Likely? Possible. Or maybe about James being told he is un welcome in this Mount Whitney Lone Pine area anymore. More on that in a minute.

well James was thinking about something like that and found himself thinking, forgive them, they know not what they do. Is this significant? Yes. James understood more clearly than ever that the head and flesh in charge does not understand what it's doing. And all the anger and fury and dirission, the ridicule, the outrage, will not change that.  Nothing will change it in time. But the fact remains, they know not what they do.

More on the above, now, becoming un welcome in this area. James has been aware of the risk since day 5. Many months ago. There are so few signs so rarely that he has out stayed has welcome maybe that often he is in a place of security in his own being and this is not all together desirable. Every once in awhile something will take him out of this and he's glad. Unsettled but glad.

Someone associated with the community, a small insular self protective community, made some comments the other day that may have been completely innocent or may have indicated, James, don't you have plans to leave yet? Today, an employee in that same establishment offered several tremendous thoughtful kindnesses. Indicating that if the people higher up are getting tired of James being here she has not yet heard. I did not inquire beyond that. It is not my business. My business is to be Christlike, LSGIABeing. To be the incarnation of good. That's your job too. But I know it's mine and for the joy of it that's what I pursue. And if there were not some substantial view that James is being good in this community he would have been told to leave many many months ago. That is for certain. Will it ever happen?

The first two miles out of Lone Pine heading west toward Mount Whitney are very windy with fairly blind turns on a two year old highway road one lane each way. Generally there are fairly good shoulders but rarely can James stay on the shoulder without one wheel over the white line. He has bright flashing lights, is extremely courteous and objective Lee it is safe. But it would be more safe if this slow moving vehicle we're not there at all. It would be safer still if cars were band from the road. Point being we don't set our lives on perfect security.

Descending from Whitney this morning heading into town and just entering upon this windy dangerous blind curve area a pickup truck responsibly pulled in front of me and then pulled off the road on to the shoulder in no way that seemed to be aggressive. Tourist, thought James, not happy about that. James came along side the vehicle as the driver was getting out and said, I'll pull ahead of you and stop on the shoulder. The driver was glad with this reply. Turns out it was not a tourist but a handsome Rancher woman that has lived in the area her whole life. She was very polite and reasonable and appropriate. And I think she was telling me what was on her mind. That is, she may be among locals that are furious with James staying in the area but although the tendency might be there they haven't come down on that conclusion yet. Part of her livelihood is raising and training horses and donkeys and burrows. She went on at some length about that and I suspect she could tell that my interest and admiration and gladness at what she was sharing was very genuine and very deep.

But all of this she was telling me because she wants me to become more safe for me and I suspect to be less of a concern for the local drivers on this dangerous stretch of road. She was selling me at some significant detail and insight on the advantages of getting rid of this vehicle and or primarily using a peck mule or donkey or horse. She knows of government programs that would actually pay me to secure such an animal and she said she would gladly train it at no charge.

She pointed out how with such a means of transportation all of my stuff whatever  that it could easily be packed into very remote and beautiful and isolated areas around here much more so then I can currently access. And there was part of my soul that was extremely glad with all this.

Aside from telling her of my genuine appreciation for her concerns, and gladly acknowledging that we have a mutual acquaintance which could be away for me to access her kind of offer, I told her honestly that currently my call was to continue using the vehicle that I am.

But also genuinely I told her I was glad to know of her concern and that of others that live in the area and that I would work even harder to reduced any danger to myself and others. That when I felt I could I would even allow my right wheels to go off of the paved shoulder onto the dirt.

James has expressed numerous times that people, presumably locals, sometime show tremendous courtesy in making a wide sweep around the vehicle which is easy to do. But a courtesy none the less. But that sometimes others, seemingly local are gratuitously nasty blaring their horns when there's no obstacle in sight.

With this wonderful encounter today James received another insite that he should not have needed to be prompted on. But it seems that he did need the prompting. This is a small old un changing community. James has chosen to be as unobtrusive and good a citizen as he has seen to do.

But was James considerate enough to have the thought, James, your presence here is reasonably making local people less comfortable in driving these roads than they were before. Yes, you are perfectly within your legal rights and you are extremely careful. But don't you want to do anything you reasonably can to reduce any diminished enjoyment by them of their environment? This encounter with the nice lady today raised that question and the immediate answer to James was, yes! And there are things he can do, and he's already doing and glad of it. A little bit inconvenient? Yes. So glad he is to see the opportunity and take steps.

Very much a related issue but prior to the encounter with the lady. Last night or this morning this popped into James mind. Because of James periodic awareness that by all local standards James has been in this area well beyond what is expected and may be asked to leave or there may be clear signs that his become un welcome.

For most of the decades James has been on earth being anywhere where he is un welcome, which has been most places, is agony for him. Less so these last 20 years but still a factor. So even a month ago when the thought occurred to James that he might be becoming un welcome in this area his inclination was, well, if that becomes clear, I'll leave.

What is becoming ever more clear to James is that, no, he will not. That would be un kind to the local people. James has been and is ever more a really good soul in this community. In every respect. Nothing is being hurt by his presence, no good is being diminished and good is actually being increased. So if for whatever reason that James can imagine he becomes clearly un welcome he will leave only when told to or asked to.

Clear this has been to James for weeks now.

Coming to mind only in recent days however is the realization that Jesus, someone who James studies to learn from, seems to have told his disciples, go into a town and if they tell you to leave do so. He did not say, go into it town and see if you're welcome. Go find a town where you're welcome. This is not what he said. Jesus assumed that right Lee so that the disciples would be a force for good, for joy, for goodness. And that they should not deprive a town of the opportunity to react in some way that they could be clear about and take responsibility for in dealing with this good force. Including telling them or asking them to leave. What a great learning opportunity to introduce good into environments and to allow the environment to react however it reacts. The opportunity for learning about itself and good immediately and overtime is there by created.

And most importantly, mentioned in an earlier post, a tremendously important Insight came to James. What is our work? Where is the meaningful work? Well certainly it is to pioneer a joyful way of being in the material hell that is now absolute certainty for the future survivors. What does this mean for James? I'm not sure. But I'm glad to see that is the question I need to answer.

So what is this challenge for us? To begin now living the environment we are handing to the children and grandchildren so that we can learn how to live joyfully within it, even if briefly. No? And what is their environment? Material deprivation, totalitarianism, police state, poverty, prison, torture, Global Wars, basically the masses in the movie Elysium. Or Hunger Games. I'm serious, aren't you?

Our challenge is not, not, not, not, primarily to learn how to survive in this material hell. Survive? When the f*** are we going to learn that survival is not life. Joy is life. Suffering is much less important.