Selections from Devarim/Words in Va-Ethannan Deuteronom 3.23-7.11
Scattered among the peoples – seek God with all heart and soul
Listen YisraEl (all truth wrestlers getting it straight)
The Lord your God is the oneness of everything everywhere
I am Yah El (the Lord your God). I hear the pleas of my people.
I’m bringing you up from the narrow places
Be careful and walk the way I’m showing and teaching you
Now see with your own eyes:
A mountain flaming high into a dark dense sky
A mighty voice speaking out of fire and thick clouds
Becoming ten sounds, ten words
Ten symbols inscribed on two tables of stone
With a strong hand God rescues us from blinding bondage
Out of the midst of fire, Yah (God) speaks with us face to face
And strikes a covenant with us
I am beyond any manner of likeness one could draw or engrave
I show mercy for thousands of generations
Honor your parents and long endure and increase greatly
Sacred is the Sabbath, a seventh day – make it so
(Of course) don’t murder people or be adulterous
Or steal from each other or bear false witness against anyone
Or covet your neighbor’s spouse or home or vehicles or wealth
Ten words Alef, Bayt, Gimal, Dalet, Heh,
Vahv, Zayin, cHet, Tet, Yohd
Impress them in the hearts of your children
Bind them as a sign on your hands and between your eyes
On the doorposts of your house and write them on your gates
(They are your gates)
If you make God your treasure, you’ll find God’s love is on you
Be a nation who has God close at hand
Go the mountain top. Strike a covenant with God.
Inherit the good land
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Angel Fish
I asked the captain of the Icebreaker to lay over for awhile. My men and I leapt into the icy arctic waters wearing drysuits, rubber mittens and booties inside our long fins and even rubber head gear. Only our faces outside our facemasks were exposed to the ice water. Thus we swam across the Arctic Circle.
There’s a cave mentioned in the Book of Genesis, where the patriarchs and matriarchs lie buried, the Cave of Makpela, which means the double cave, the cave inside the cave, an entrance to Eden.
I was missing my old swim buddy. Jack and I went through Navy Frogman training together. He was one of those guys that things always seemed to go right for. He was a great swimmer, a fine athlete, light-haired and light-hearted, wiry and strong. An easy-going, handsome Navy Seal and a very laid back guy. The girls loved him. I was a bit envious. He was raised in Florida and very much at home in the oceans of the world.
I took off the rubber mittens just for a minute to check my depth gage and the knife on my belt. When I tried to climb the roap-ladder back onto the ship – I had to be hauled aboard. I’d lost so many heat calories through my hands in just that one minute, I was nearly out of strength. Learn and live.
We were on our way toward the north pole to the Distant Early Warning Site, riding for a few weeks on this Icebreaker ship that was bringing supplies to the men who manned that station on 18 month assignments in the frigid north. But this was summer and the ship could almost get into shore. Some icebergs in the harbor blocked the way. Good job for Frogmen with plastic explosives.
Hard to believe just a few weeks ago I was in the Caribbean swimming with dolphins, going on deep water scuba dives with Jack, blowing up cliff sides on a deserted island to practice making landing ramps for Marines who would want to hit the beach running.
One day – just for fun –- we re-mixed the gas in our air tanks, lowering the oxygen percentage so if we went way down we wouldn’t absorb too much oxygen and get drunk down there – Raptures of the Deep, they call it – and it’s dangerous. Swimmers have been known to take off their bottles and mouthpieces and hand them to fish passing by.
A mile or so off the coast of St.Thomas we swam way, way down 300-350 feet. We found an old wreck and several thick glass oval-shaped beer or ale bottles that the sailors must have tossed over a century or more before. I still have one. Just then in the deep -- a huge, but gossamer thin angel fish swam between us. It was as big as we were were. I could see Jack’s outline through the translucent body of the angel fish, very cool. The Caribbean water is clear as glass for hundreds of feet; it’s so beautiful.
On the way back to the surface we had to stop about 20 feet down for about 15 minutes and decompress -- letting the compressed air out of our blood streams, back into our lungs and exhaled out into sea. We’d get the bends if we went right up to the surface after being that deep for that long. While we were hovering there waiting, a school of yellow sharks swam over and began to circle around us.
Fish in the sea won’t usually attack anything their size or bigger. Those sharks looked plenty big to me. Underwater everything always appears about one fifth larger than it really is. Maybe they were just four feet long, but they looked strong and menacing -- and they were sure checking us out. We slid the large metal air tanks off our backs and, wrapping the straps around our right arms, held them as shields. before us. Behind us, we gripped each others’ left arm drawing our backs together, moving our fins gently to stay in place. Let those ugly monsters circle round and round. If they attacked, all they’d get would be a mouthful of metal – I hoped. We definitely had each others’ backs.
I looked over at Jack. The man was smiling. When you smile underwater ocean water gets inside the face mask and that looks pretty funny. I couldn’t believe the guy was smiling.
Five more minutes seemed like an hour to me. I kept looking at my watch. But we got out of the water and climbed up on a waiting ship where the sailors were holding loaded rifles to shoot at the sharks if they attacked us. I didn’t think those bullets would have done anything at that depth.
Legend has it that the Cave of Makpela is where all babies who die go; where warriors who die in noble warfare go; and where all martyrs go at death. This is their gateway home.
Swimming underneath an iceberg is something you never forget. It’s like a gigantic crystal with the sun rainbowing through the ice in a magnificent color spectrum. You just didn’t want to blow up these babies. Also, in the arctic during the summer, sunset and sunrise are the same thing at the same time. It never really gets dark.
It was fun up there. I goofed around with some native Eskimos in their hunting kayaks who lifted their javelins as if they’d found a huge strange sea creature coming up out of the water. We laughed and laughed together -- the only language that we shared. They invited us to their igloos to meet their kids and wives.
But there was a gnawing in my gut and an emptiness. Just a few weeks back on a Saturday afternoon Jack had gone with a date to the white sand beach and beautiful blue waters of Magen’s Bay in St. Thomas. A freak thing happened. A white hammerhead shark, a really big one -- somehow found its way into this popular swimmers’ beach – hungry, and struck – of all people -- my swim buddy. He cried out. His girl and others began to run in to get him. But Jack shouted at them, “No, don’t come in. Don’t come in.” And he was struck again -- and again. And killed.
And I wasn’t there to cover his back. Immediately they sent me away to the Arctic to blow up icebergs because my swim buddy was killed in St. Thomas and there was nothing I could do about it.
The whole team went out to Magen’s Bay the next day and went into the water with weapons and found that big hammerhead and killed it. They found Jack’s arm inside the shark’s belly with his Rolex underwater watch still on his wrist running just fine.
Did you know that Iceland is green and Greenland is white and icy? Who woulda thought that?
After clearing the way for the Icebreaker, I forged some orders to get us out of there and caught us a flight with some Air Force pilots heading back to the States. When I got back to our base in Little Creek, Virginia, one of Jack’s girlfriends hit on me a little – I was the closest thing to him she could find. She was very attractive; I wanted to go with it. But we felt like siblings and neither of us could get into it.
There’s a cave mentioned in the Book of Genesis, where the patriarchs and matriarchs lie buried, the Cave of Makpela, which means the double cave, the cave inside the cave, an entrance to Eden.
I was missing my old swim buddy. Jack and I went through Navy Frogman training together. He was one of those guys that things always seemed to go right for. He was a great swimmer, a fine athlete, light-haired and light-hearted, wiry and strong. An easy-going, handsome Navy Seal and a very laid back guy. The girls loved him. I was a bit envious. He was raised in Florida and very much at home in the oceans of the world.
I took off the rubber mittens just for a minute to check my depth gage and the knife on my belt. When I tried to climb the roap-ladder back onto the ship – I had to be hauled aboard. I’d lost so many heat calories through my hands in just that one minute, I was nearly out of strength. Learn and live.
We were on our way toward the north pole to the Distant Early Warning Site, riding for a few weeks on this Icebreaker ship that was bringing supplies to the men who manned that station on 18 month assignments in the frigid north. But this was summer and the ship could almost get into shore. Some icebergs in the harbor blocked the way. Good job for Frogmen with plastic explosives.
Hard to believe just a few weeks ago I was in the Caribbean swimming with dolphins, going on deep water scuba dives with Jack, blowing up cliff sides on a deserted island to practice making landing ramps for Marines who would want to hit the beach running.
One day – just for fun –- we re-mixed the gas in our air tanks, lowering the oxygen percentage so if we went way down we wouldn’t absorb too much oxygen and get drunk down there – Raptures of the Deep, they call it – and it’s dangerous. Swimmers have been known to take off their bottles and mouthpieces and hand them to fish passing by.
A mile or so off the coast of St.Thomas we swam way, way down 300-350 feet. We found an old wreck and several thick glass oval-shaped beer or ale bottles that the sailors must have tossed over a century or more before. I still have one. Just then in the deep -- a huge, but gossamer thin angel fish swam between us. It was as big as we were were. I could see Jack’s outline through the translucent body of the angel fish, very cool. The Caribbean water is clear as glass for hundreds of feet; it’s so beautiful.
On the way back to the surface we had to stop about 20 feet down for about 15 minutes and decompress -- letting the compressed air out of our blood streams, back into our lungs and exhaled out into sea. We’d get the bends if we went right up to the surface after being that deep for that long. While we were hovering there waiting, a school of yellow sharks swam over and began to circle around us.
Fish in the sea won’t usually attack anything their size or bigger. Those sharks looked plenty big to me. Underwater everything always appears about one fifth larger than it really is. Maybe they were just four feet long, but they looked strong and menacing -- and they were sure checking us out. We slid the large metal air tanks off our backs and, wrapping the straps around our right arms, held them as shields. before us. Behind us, we gripped each others’ left arm drawing our backs together, moving our fins gently to stay in place. Let those ugly monsters circle round and round. If they attacked, all they’d get would be a mouthful of metal – I hoped. We definitely had each others’ backs.
I looked over at Jack. The man was smiling. When you smile underwater ocean water gets inside the face mask and that looks pretty funny. I couldn’t believe the guy was smiling.
Five more minutes seemed like an hour to me. I kept looking at my watch. But we got out of the water and climbed up on a waiting ship where the sailors were holding loaded rifles to shoot at the sharks if they attacked us. I didn’t think those bullets would have done anything at that depth.
Legend has it that the Cave of Makpela is where all babies who die go; where warriors who die in noble warfare go; and where all martyrs go at death. This is their gateway home.
Swimming underneath an iceberg is something you never forget. It’s like a gigantic crystal with the sun rainbowing through the ice in a magnificent color spectrum. You just didn’t want to blow up these babies. Also, in the arctic during the summer, sunset and sunrise are the same thing at the same time. It never really gets dark.
It was fun up there. I goofed around with some native Eskimos in their hunting kayaks who lifted their javelins as if they’d found a huge strange sea creature coming up out of the water. We laughed and laughed together -- the only language that we shared. They invited us to their igloos to meet their kids and wives.
But there was a gnawing in my gut and an emptiness. Just a few weeks back on a Saturday afternoon Jack had gone with a date to the white sand beach and beautiful blue waters of Magen’s Bay in St. Thomas. A freak thing happened. A white hammerhead shark, a really big one -- somehow found its way into this popular swimmers’ beach – hungry, and struck – of all people -- my swim buddy. He cried out. His girl and others began to run in to get him. But Jack shouted at them, “No, don’t come in. Don’t come in.” And he was struck again -- and again. And killed.
And I wasn’t there to cover his back. Immediately they sent me away to the Arctic to blow up icebergs because my swim buddy was killed in St. Thomas and there was nothing I could do about it.
The whole team went out to Magen’s Bay the next day and went into the water with weapons and found that big hammerhead and killed it. They found Jack’s arm inside the shark’s belly with his Rolex underwater watch still on his wrist running just fine.
Did you know that Iceland is green and Greenland is white and icy? Who woulda thought that?
After clearing the way for the Icebreaker, I forged some orders to get us out of there and caught us a flight with some Air Force pilots heading back to the States. When I got back to our base in Little Creek, Virginia, one of Jack’s girlfriends hit on me a little – I was the closest thing to him she could find. She was very attractive; I wanted to go with it. But we felt like siblings and neither of us could get into it.
For Jack Gibson of sacred memory
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