Monday Stew

I reverted to ordering groceries online again last week. For one thing, the walking hasn't been great lately. For another thing, shopping before Easter can be terribly crowded and busy, and I know from experience that it can even be worse than at Christmastime. 

But doggone it, while I was waiting for them to bring my order to the car, the biggest SUV on the planet came and parked beside me. I couldn't see around it. To exit my parking spot, I did a quick check for traffic before I got back in the car after loading the groceries. I inched out very slowly. My goodness, that thing was a monster. There were other spots available, so I was a little miffed that it decided that it had to park right beside me.

This wasn't this make, but let me tell you that I drive a compact SUV, and whatever make it was, it dwarfed me.

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We didn't lose power in the mighty wind of Friday, but some places in outlying areas did. Our neighbours' bbq was turned over, and when we went for a stroll in the park, a tree had been uprooted: not the whole tree but a pretty darn big limb.

Sue took a photo, supposedly of me taking a photo. It was a setup. She never knows what her 365 themes will be and what she will be able to use when.

Meanwhile, I can use it now.

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Speaking of Sue's themes, her photo challenge yesterday was Point of View/Staggering. Having this photo in the vault came in handy for her. If and when I get back to this church, I would like to take a similar photo with my camera, for I rather love the church nestled under the marker. 

What do you call such an imposing gravestone? A monument? I just don't know. 

Anyway, I'd like to take a similar photo, see if I can get more separation between the monument and church, and just maybe eliminate some of the distortion in the building. It won't be easy to avoid distortion because the camera needs to be pointed upward to make the marker look this large. 

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Back to the walk where we saw the broken tree, we were delighted to see little baggies with gifts and messages. One of these gems dealt with the disaster in Ukraine. All were wonderful.

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In this Monday Stew of disparate themes, I present yet one more photo of a recent coffee in the car. For those who are newer here, when COVID first hit us, we took a lot of selfies, many very funny, to share with extended family. Of course, I posted some here. We no longer do that, but we still make sure to take coffee-in-the-car photos.

Our view was rather dull, but I include this photo ↓ because I recently mentioned flooding. There is always a bit of spring ponding in this patch, but this is hardly flooding like we sometimes get and not enough to launch a canoe this year, as they did here, five years ago . The river is running high and rapidly out there beyond the tree.

Examining the Resurrection Narratives

It’s Easter, and I remembered that a few years ago I wrote a comparison of the crucifixion accounts found in the four gospels. 

What astounded me, when I went to look up what I had written, was that I actually wrote two blog posts and not just a few years ago but eight whole years past. I wrote Examining the Crucifixion Accounts on Good Friday of 2014 and Omissions, Discrepancies and Contradictions within the Crucifixion Narratives on Easter Monday. After eight intervening years, which seemed to go by very quickly to this old fella, here I am, in effect, trying to complete the post, for I didn’t get past the crucifixion and into the resurrection accounts at that time.

You have the links (above) if you wish to go and read what I wrote back then, but basically, I found many discrepancies amongst the four crucifixion narratives. The new resurrection material in this post will make it too long to rehash any of the old crucifixion material here, but, in summary, I found that some of the differences seemed, to me at least, to be quite contradictory. 

Methodology

My technique is very simple. It doesn't require a post doctorate degree in theology to undertake a basic comparison. I divided a piece of paper into four columns, wrote an outline of what happened in one gospel, then went to the next gospel and noted its narration, adjacent to the first gospel, and so on.

Like this. ↓

What? Can't read it? Don't worry, I also had some difficulty after setting the chart aside for a few weeks. However, I do own a magnifying glass, and I still had a bible or three at my disposal to refer to once again if and as needed. The point is not for others to try to read it but to see how I went about it.

Normally, we read one account (assuming we read any at all, and most don't). Then we may peruse another gospel at some later time. After awhile, our brains smoosh all of the disparate accounts together into one narrative, or at least they attempt to. However, by outlining the key events across from each other in four columns, as I have done, both similarities and differences can be readily seen.

So, what are some of the things that I observed?

Who went to the tomb and what did they see and hear?

In all four gospel accounts, one or more women went to the tomb on the first day of the week. John mentions only Mary Magdalene while the three other gospels also mention Mary, mother of James. Mark also ad­ds Salome, and Luke refers to Joanna and also “others.”

The stone was rolled away in each gospel, and in each, either an angel or two, or a young man or two, were present. All beings, whether identified as young men or angels or whether there were one or two, were described as being bright in appearance. 

In Mark a young man was sitting inside the tomb, but in Matthew one angel was sitting outside on the stone that had been dislodged by an earthquake. However, there were two men standing inside in Luke while in John, Mary Magdalene saw two angels seated inside after the two disciples went back home. It was then she was surprised by Jesus who talked to her.

Did you catch the differences? Depending on which gospel one reads, there were one or two men or angels. They may have been seated or maybe have been standing, and they may have been inside or outside.

It seems significant that had Jesus spoken to Mary Magdalene one the way to tell the disciples, as recorded in Luke, that the other writers did not know about it. It was a significant moment after all, but 

only Luke knows abut it. As we shortly see, Matthew reports a different appearance by Jesus to Mary.

Also of note is that Matthew describes that an earthquake caused the stone to move. Oddly enough, Matthew was also the only one of the four gospel writers to report an earthquake in the crucifixion  stories when Jesus died. He knows about two earthquakes that the other three writers don't report.

 

 What were the women told, and what happened next?

In both Mark and Matthew, the women were told to go and tell the disciples about the resurrection and that Jesus would meet them in Galilee. In Mark they were too afraid to actually do this, but in Matthew they ran to inform them. Matthew also records that Jesus appeared to them on the way, and he repeated the angel’s message to meet him in Galilee. 

There are no instructions recorded in Luke, but when the women told the disciples about the resurrection, they didn’t believe them. Then Peter ran to the tomb, saw the linens, and wondered what had happened.

John also tells it a little differently. He writes that Mary went to tell the disciples, and that Peter and the and "the other disciple" ran to the tomb. John records that the other disciple believed. The significant difference as that after they both left, Mary remained and was crying, and it was then that Jesus appeared to her. 

To be clear from the above, there were differences among the accounts. The women didn’t tell the disciples in Mark, but they did tell in in the other gospels. Also, two of the gospel writers don't mention any appearance by Jesus. The two that do describe the appearance tell it differently. Matthew writes that Jesus appeared to them on their way to tell the disciples. Luke, on the other hand, has Jesus appearing to Mary and consoling her in the garden by the tomb, after the two disciples had left.

What about the post resurrection appearances?

Although I will write a little about the post resurrection appearances, they aren't particularly important to what I am concerned with in this post because they are not really describing the same events. It is possible, I suppose, that all could have occurred. Or none for that matter. 

Mark ends abruptly, or at least the original Mark ends that way, the last twelve verses being seen as a insertion by later scribes who felt that a fuller ending was in order. Most recent editions of the bible will add a disclaimer something like this one in the NIV translation: "The two most reliable early manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20." 

Meanwhile, Matthew adds a story about the authorities bribing the guards to keep the resurrection quiet.

Luke doesn't write about the bribes but does describe an experience that two followers had when Jesus appeared to them while walking along the road to Emmaus. After the two returned to Jerusalem to tell the others, Jesus appeared to the whole group. The location in Jerusalem is interesting, for we were told earlier that Jesus had instructed them all to meet up in Galilee. One other thing that surprises me quite a bit was that Luke is the only gospel to describe an ascension.

Finally (yes, here we are at long last), the Gospel of John is the only one to contain the Doubting Thomas narrative. He also describes the encounter with Peter on the Sea of Galilee: the one in which Peter tried and failed to walk on water. A salient point is that, in John, the disciples were in Galilee and not in Jerusalem as they were in Luke.

What do I conclude?

It was somewhat meaningful to me to complete the project that I began so long ago. It affirmed to me what I had heard from scholars about the accounts differing from one another. Just as I had once done, with the crucifixion accounts, I discovered differences in these resurrection narratives. For me, it indicates that there were various stories circulating in those times that could not be stringently verified after four decades. It seems most likely to me that the four different writers heard different accounts and also that some may have added their own events that suited the narratives that they wished to tell. I suspect that Matthew's earthquakes and John's walking on water events fall into the category of writers improvising. Of course, that is just my own speculation.

 

Leftover Photos

I sometimes put images in my Blogger folder, like the old books from yesterday, and either forget them or don't find a reason to use them for awhile. Sometimes, they just aren't very good. Maybe more often I care to admit  

This ↓ is another version of the canoe club at dawn. It's okay but it was my second photo and not the image that I really had in mind. I didn't post it along with the other photo because I didn’t really want comparisons between the other photo and this one. I wanted each to stand on its own merit or lack thereof, as the case may be.

When I posted grandpa's lunchbox a little while ago, I didn't include this ↓ photo. It seemed so separate from my baby booties than I left it unpublished until now.

Here's an alternate image of the candle that you saw last Saturday. I ran it through a filter but then decided that I liked the unfiltered version best. Not that I hate this version.

I've posted other books and my dad's old bible, but I didn't get around to posting Sue's collection of Mary Oliver poetry books.

Finally, after I posted photos of the old St Patrick's church not long ago, I put two of the photos together into a diptych.

Of course, I have other leftovers in that folder, but these are the most recent ones that I have neglected. As for the older leftovers, I will either get to them, or I won’t. 

My Loose Head

"John, you'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on!"

My mother spoke those words to me on more than one occasion, for I was always always an absent-minded boy. The fact that I always was this way leads me not to worry overmuch about my forgetfulness now that I am in my golden years. When it comes to posts and photos, I have all of FB, Blogger and Flickr, and I sometimes lose track of what I have done where. My brain is a busy place with lots of traffic after all.

So, it was that I was caught by surprise to see today’s photos in my Blogger folder. I scrolled back through old posts twice to make sure that I hadn't posted them already. I came up empty both times. Of course, it is possible that I could have skimmed past them, for I am prone to do that too. It's like taking a list to the grocery store but skimming past some items and coming home without them. At least I am told that this happens to some people.

Here they are – old books. I like both versions but have printed the monochrome one, and I like it framed and on the wall. But yeah, the coloured one probably looks better when both versions are seen together. That's why I often doesn't post both versions on Flickr, at least not concurrently, because each needs to be seen and appreciated on its own. They are different images after all. But here on Blogger, I often do post both versions since they are part of the story and not so much just images to stand on their separate photographic merits as on Flickr.

If you have seen them before, I will thank you to kindly move along without drawing it to my attention. It would be a kindness.

Flashbacks

A local fb person re-posted a 6-year-old photo of mine. 

Back in 2017, we had local flooding. It didn't much matter in our park, but some homes were affected.

While Sue and I were sitting in the carpark by the boat launch one day, a couple came by and launched their canoe from within the park, right from beside the footpath. It was a unique event, so I took the photo. To give you an idea of how high the water was that year, the normal river is back behind the second row of trees in the above photo, and quite a few feet lower too.

Re-editing it according to a whim, I made the photo b&w but kept the couple and their canoe in colour. Selective colour like this is considered kitschy by most photographers, and for the most part, I agree with them, but every now and then, it suits me to do it.

Two years later, in April 2019, the water was also high, but not like 2017.  It's the same pond but just a little to the left of the first photo. I like my original processing well enough that I haven't felt the need to re-edit this one.

It's not flooded like that this year, not even close. There was hardly more that a puddle last time I checked. If I get around to it, I'll go and grab a current photo and post it at the end of this post.

As I scanned through other April photos, I went all of the way back to April 2015. While I didn't find more pond photos, I did decide to edit this ↓ photo of the Ashton General Store. I can't say re-edit in this case because I never bothered to process the photo in the first place.  Once again, I was moved to convert it to b&w, but I was not moved to use selective colour this time. I could have left the ice cream strawberry and the sign, green, but I do think that would have been quite tacky.

While the building remains, it is no longer a general store, It's too bad really, for it was the store owner's dream, but the landlords decided not to renew their lease. (That's the story as I remember it, which may or may not be correct.)

In searching for more April flooding, after I posted the above photo of the General Store, I found that we returned the next April, in 2016, and I took some interior photos. I liked these well enough and did not need to reprocess them. (I would have posted them identically back then.)

As for a current photo of the park area that was flooded back then. No. Just no. It was cloudy and rainy and just plain miserable out there yesterday.

A Photo Conceived

Many a time have I walked past this site and not bothered to take a photo, but I did this time.

It was pretty well a trial photo with the intention of returning at another time if I thought it had potential.

With the tree trunk in the foreground and the canoe club in the distance, I thought it did, indeed, have potential.

My concept was to use my wide angle lens to get more of the old tree in the frame and to take the photo in the early light when the lights in the canoe club might still be on.

They were, and, even better, unlike the above photo, the river was dead calm.

15mm, 2 seconds, 100 ISO, f8, 6:02am

The photo came out close to what I had envisioned, which certainly does not always happen. To some extent it is unfortunate that the wide angle lens also renders the building small, but I knew that would happen, and that is just the way that it goes. I do like how the building is well centered and well framed by trees and branches.

I may return with other lenses to get closer photos, but I am pleased to have pulled this one off to the extent that I did. It is certainly not always what happens.

Bribing the Electorate

Just over 20 years ago our provincial government sent every family a $200 voting bribe. It worked; they won the next election. It didn't buy my vote, however: not after they slashed spending and programs for four years, which certainly included cuts to the school system in which I taught.

I gave the money away to good causes although I forget now what they were. I may have sent half to World Vision or a similar charity and half to the local Food Bank.

I had voted for that Conservative party in the previous election, but that was the last time I marked my ballot for the louts. Although they also won this next election, they found themselves out of power for more than 10 years after that.

Now they're in control again and up to their same old, vote-buying tricks, and I am going to mention some of them.

The previous Liberal government had planned to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour in 2018 (or 2019, not sure), but when the Cons came to power, they killed the raise. It was too extravagant. Suddenly, with an election looming, they have decided that, by golly, a $15 minimum wage is a darn good idea. The delay of 3 years meant that low wage people had to endure 3 more unnecessary years of  trying to scrape along.

There are several toll roads in the province. Now, as an election looms, it is time to stop those pesky tolls. Look, it may or may not be the right thing to do, but if it is now a good idea, it was probably a good idea 3 years ago. In my opinion, this is not doctrine and policy driving their decisions but cynical vote-buying.

Finally, there is the thing that sticks in my craw most. It used to cost drivers $120 to renew our licenses for 1 year. We'd get a sticker to affix to the corner of our license plates to indicate that we were all paid up.

With an election coming up soon, it is, lo and behold, a marvellous idea to dispense with those fees.

Not only that, but we obtained a rebate for renewal payments made in the past two years. So it came to pass that I recently received a $240 cheque in the mail.

Naturally, I deposited it. But almost immediately I donated it to the cat lady who does an incredible job rescuing cats and kittens. She has recently trapped two colonies and had them all neutered, vaccinated, microchipped and other health issues taken care of.

She will try her best to rehome them, particularly the kittens. If adult cats are feral, she has farmers who will keep them, and she will provide the food.

She does all of this through donations and online auctions; her efforts are not supported by any government funding.

Once again, I don't know if waiving license renewal fees is a right or wrong thing to do. However, if it is the right thing to do now, it was the right thing to do 2 years ago. It's not just an impending election that should drive policy. Even if it is the right thing, actually rebating drivers for past fees, is nothing but a gimmick in my opinion.

It is so obviously, a vote buying ploy, that I refused to allow the bribe to assist me in any way. Contrary to their intensions, however, it only reinforced my resolve to cast my vote for their opposition.