CHRISTIANITY IS NOT A RELIGION.

Here is what my gut feelings tell me. “I believe that we have come to the last stage of human history, the final episode before Christ’s Return, signified by God’s abandonment. I call it the ‘God eclipse’”. Combine this with, what I see as the failure of the church to ‘preach and practise THE CREATION WORD’, and, I detect a perfect point for the Parousia to appear.

We don’t know the day or the hour.

Of course, I am aware that this event cannot be pinpointed by the day and hour, as my second cousin, Harold Egbert Camping, tried to do: He should have known better, as a one-time elder in the Christian Reformed Church.

I believe that through my mother’s lineage, the Hielema/de Haan clan has inherited a strain of evangelical zeal. I see it in myself, in 2 of my brothers, one a popular preacher, another set on promoting ‘ethics’ in the international construction industry, whose son, too, has a missionary mind. So has my eldest.

But first some more background. 

Humans, as already has happened with the Tower of Babel, today, through their advanced ‘technology’ have become more and more God-like, and more and more abusive of God’s creation. Drake Thomas, who works on safety at Anthropic, an AI Company, went to X, and tweeted: “Not only is A.I. “not guaranteed” to make a dramatically better future, the odds of failure are terrifyingly high: I think there’s something like a 40 percent chance we get an outcome around as bad as human extinction or worse”.

That is only one example of the dangerous enterprises today’s people are engaged in. Trump is another example, and, of course, the most striking segment is Climate Change, now on track to cause a major disruption in the world’s food supply, this year being a mere opening salvo of what is to come.

More background.

Several writers have commented on the God/Creation issue. Sabine Dramm, in her commentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, summarizes his teaching with this striking sentence: “What Bonhoeffer presents as specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one.”

Dr. Friedman ends his book, “The Hidden Face of God”, with a similar thought: “There is some likelihood that the universe is the hidden face of God”. (The emphasis on ‘is’ is in the original). If this is true, and I think this is, ‘a sin against creation is a sin against God.

The foregoing is completely in line with John 3: 16: Creation is Holy, as Karen Armstrong shows in her book: Sacred Nature. I assert that Creation is more holy than the Bible, as Creation is God’s direct Word, while the Bible is God’s indirect Word.

That really means thatthe church is on the wrong track. It should ‘practise and preach’ the Holy Creation, should advocate fashioning a life style that reflects this belief, no longer following a set of dogmatic doctrines, no longer seeing ‘faith’ as part of life, but making faith all of life. Christianity is not a religion: It is LIFE.

Just as the Old Testament Church – based on the Mosaic laws – got increasingly mired in  legalistic and ritualistic rigmarole, the New Testament church got stuck on the Bible, the written word, basically resulting in the same situation as its predecessor. Both stages ignored God’s Created Word.

A good friend sent me a short book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an indigenous writer and teaching professor of Environmental Biology at the State University in Syracuse, NY. “The Serviceberry” portrays a vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world”. Basically, Christianity is not a church organism, with dogmas and confessions: Christianity is a way of life, an intimate correlation between faith and creation.

The Amsterdam Free University Professor J.H. Bavinck, in his book, “Between the Beginning and the End”, writes: “It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”

It’s impossible for me to picture the New Creation, the world to come: Africa will be there; Canada will be there; Europe will be there, but gone is the Eiffel Tower and the Louvres, but the Seine River will still flow into the sea. Trees will be there, mature ones and saplings. Vast forests, and plenty of animals, and birds, immense in number.

Paint your own picture.

No, Christianity is not a religion: It is a Uniter. Christianity unites God, the World and Humanity. Religion is a Divider, splinters the World into hundreds of different, often competing, factions.

Christ came to bring LIFE, and that to the FULL. (John 10: 10)

Christianity is not religion. Christianity is LIFE!

 

 

WE ARE ON OUR OWN.

I SHALL HIDE MY FACE FROM THEM. I SHALL SEE WHAT THEIR END WILL BE.

                                                               Deuteronomy 31: 17

In this week’s blog I venture into – for me – new thinking. It is my gut feeling that new ideas must be offered, new thinking in which God, although ultimately in charge, has transferred his authority over his beloved creation to us, fallible humans. Yes: we are on our own!

My exploration will touch on three fields.

(!) Church teaching

(2) AI

(3) Climate Change.

Let me start with current Church teaching, which often proclaims Rapture, an embroidery of “The Heaven Heresy”, embraced by the greater majority of church attendees, reason why many of the traditional church hymns hail heaven.

Just one example among hundreds.

Among these songs is this super-pious, quite popular “By the Sea of Crystal, Saints in glory stand….. robed in white apparel”, with the final line: “They now reign in heaven with the Lamb of God.” The lyrics are inspired by Revelation 4: 6-8.

What great unbiblical nonsense.

John 3: 16 roars its thorn-crowned head: “God so loved THE WORLD! Jesus died to restore CREATION!

I once heard the late Dr. Lewis Smedes, of Fuller Seminary, comment: “How monotonous, how uniform, how boring: who wants to go in heaven!”. In eternity with 10,000 different butterflies, with 10,000 varieties of tiny insects, every ‘saint’ too will be unique, will dress as their personality portrays, and, with eternity ahead, will, at leisure, explore God’s world.

But, with God out of the picture for now, we are left with God’s legacy: His creation: treasure it, explore it, advance it, love it: become more cosmos oriented, less Bible-centered: Implement Psalm 119: 105. It’s now the way to Salvation. It’s God’s Word for our times.

Another example.

The Old is New again. The Old Testament church organization is coming back: both the US Vice President, and the US secretary of War, promote ‘Back to the Old Testament religious rules, where women are seen as inferior and subservient’. Of course, they jettison Jesus in the process. Too controversial.

Here is a more truth-full line: the conclusion of The Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

This creed, adopted by all Protestant and Roman Catholic denominations, put to rest the Heaven Heresy forever, as well as the Rapture Riddle, totally refuted in that dominant Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus points out that the sinners all drowned, and Noah’s clan was saved, contrary to Hal Lindsey’s Lie in his deeply erroneous book, “The Late Great Planet Earth”.

That 1970 book, first published by Zondervan, sold over 28 million copies and was translated into 54 languages. Rapture took over Jesus, vividly illustrated in the “Left Behind” films and books.

The Late Great Planet Earth illustrates God’s last words to Moses, recorded in Deuteronomy 31: 17, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be”.

The End?

I argue that today these words are fulfilled: In essence God has disappeared, and we are visibly experiencing the End, now a daily phenomenon. Just check the news.

Take a look at AI.

There’s a new book out, written by Robert Wright, dealing

 with the evolutionary significance and geopolitics of artificial intelligence. It is called “The God Test”.

In a New York Times’ interview he concluded that “If there’s no international coordination, if we don’t have significantly more international coordination than we have now, very bad things will happen.”

It is striking that Robert Wright entitled his book The God Test. AI – like the Tower of Babel – is a direct challenge to replace God as the world’s ruler.

Climate.

Jesus warned us to be constantly on the lookout for ‘signs of the Last Days’. Said he: Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.     Matthew 24: 33.

In that same chapter Jesus mentions a long list of perils, many of which we are experiencing now, including fire. Just as AI, Climate Change has the potential to end the world. All our doing. God has no hand in this. We are on our own: God help us.

I SHALL HIDE MY FACE FROM THEM. I SHALL SEE WHAT THEIR END WILL BE.

Be ready. I will give Peter the last word.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. 2 Peter 3: 10.

“If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”                                          Matthew 24: 2

SOME IMPROMPTU IMPRESSIONS.

But first: a solemn statement: I will never use AI in my writing.

We – I – live in apocalyptic times, times that will suddenly convert to the glorious future, accelerated by the erratic actions of one man: Donald Trump. Today, partly thanks to him, the entire world is upside down, is in disarray, is no longer steadfast and predictable, has lost its focus, and teeters on collapse, as promises are perishing, treaties are teared up, earlier contracts are canceled, and stability surrendered.

But remember: All this is part of God’s plan to speed up Parousia.

Even the weather weighs in.

Is it also the unpredictable weather that will speed up the change? Are the global fires the last straw?

The word ‘apocalypse’ really means ‘revelation’; it indicates that the veneer, that flimsy film of civility, that binding bonding of common goals and mutual aims is torn away, and disarray dawns, with personal gain as the aim.

Economic growth.

‘Economic’ growth, has pushed away Climate concerns: producing more tar-sand oil, deeply polluting, suddenly in fashion. Canada is embracing an all-out pursuit of regional and national priorities, never mind tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow has disappeared. Tomorrow brings sorrow. Tomorrows will not follow today anymore. Seize the Day, because tomorrow brings judgement.

Tomorrow? Ignore tomorrow. God is dead. Long live today. Apocalypse? A fable. Close off your minds. Blindfold reason. Make war instead. Peace is for sissies. Peace is so yesterday. War in heaven drowns out peace on earth. Judgement? Unconstitutional. Parousia? Christ coming again? Heaven beckons. The future? The future has vanished. We have used up the future. We now live the future.   The only future we talk about are different dystopian scenarios involving climate, demography, artificial intelligence. The future is now. God help us.

The real Future…..

“The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Acts 2: 30.

This text is a quote by the volatile, the impetuous Peter, the deeply believing, butterfly Peter, the perfect personality for a gifted disciple, popular, political, personal. Think Bill Clinton. Think Obama. Think Justin Trudeau. Think many gospel preachers.

We can’t do anything without God; God won’t do anything without us.

Today, anno 2026-7, is the appointed age to broadcast the gospel through the available media, especially the World-Wide-Web.

Time is speeding up.

Events are going much faster than before: there is an accelerated process going on, unprecedented in human history in its 10,000 years of recorded events. There then was the Ice Ag, and when it receded, more or less liveable conditions replaced the age of extreme cold.

Now we are going the other way: too hot, too dry. The Age of Alteration, the Age of Transition, the Age of Extinction, the Age of Fire, the Age of Purification, the Age of Newness, the Age of Perfection, the Age of Divine Rule, the Age of Ages, the Age of all whom the Lord has called.

It took humanity 10,000 years to live divinely, to live ‘normally’, to live ‘inspired’, to abide by God’s commands, to see and live and breathe and be inspired to abide by the LOVE rule for eternity.

“Many are called, and few are chosen”, is the just verdict of the Creator, now being implemented, at the demise of the age of aberration, at the end of the educational stage of the offspring of Adam and Eve, the stage necessary to prepare the children of God for life in eternity, the life of Integer Vitae, the life Christ lived, a life to the full, as prescribed in John 10: 10, in that Book, the Book of Life.

We are playing Russian Roulette with all the chambers loaded.

Add AI.

Russian Roulette: Sam Bankman-Fried of AI fame, was asked in a podcast: “If you could flip a coin, and it was 51 percent odds you would double the total amount of human welfare and a 49 percent chance everyone dies, would you flip the coin?” He said ‘yes’’.

I think this is a hyperbolic example, but I also think it’s not actually that far off from what a lot of the people building superintelligence believe, too. That they are basically willing to flip the coin.

The odds for Climate Change are no odds anymore. It is becoming inevitable. The Poles are melting. An extreme El Nino is building up. The rice and cereal crops are wilting. Millions will be starving.

The Lord is a gracious Ruler. “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”                                                                                                              Matthew 24: 22.

We now, Anno 2026-7, enter that period of ‘grace’, thanks to the elect.

YES: SOME IMPROMPTU IMPRESSIONS.

HOLY LAUGHTER AT OUR FOLLY.

The One in heaven, laughs. Psalm 2: 4 

“2026 is just the beginning. It will inevitably get worse. It will get worse and worse and worse to the point where I’m afraid, we’ll be passing the limits of adaptation.”

“This is not just about the climate, but civilisation buckling under the weight of its own complexity. Given worsening inequality, political polarisation, falling fertility, resource shortages and global conflicts, Wilson argues that we are hurtling towards the same end as ancient Rome, the Mayan civilisation and every other sophisticated society before us.”

RELUCTANT.

This week I was reluctant to start a new post. Something held me back. When I left rural Tweed, now some 17 months ago, I took along about 100 books, almost all non-fiction, as I knew that at Martindale an extensive library would provide me with lots of fiction to choose from. 

Why reluctant?

The editors of this Bonhoeffer book chose as an opening statement his prologue to the year 1943 (he was hanged in 1945) in which they selected as introduction his foray entitled Of Folly. I was struck by this, because it is exactly ‘Folly” that dominates our time, exemplified by Donald Trump.

Here follow some excerpts of Bonhoeffer’s words.

“Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, but against folly we have no defence. We shall nevetry to convince a fool by reason, for it is both useless and dangerous. This much is certain, that it- foolishness – is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. The fool will be capable of any evil and, at the same time, incapable of seeing that it is evil. We may as well abandon all attempts to convince the fool. The Bible’s words that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Psalm 111: 10) tell us that a person’s inward liberation to live a responsible life before God is the only real cure for folly.” So far Bonhoeffer.

Our folly.

Donald Trump is not the only person afflicted with folly.  We also have been fools. We have been warned. Repeatedly. Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) was a famous Swedish scientist and a founder of physical chemistry. He won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was the first to explain how carbon dioxide warms the Earth. That was more than a century ago.

James E. Hansen is an American climate scientist and former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In 2006, Hansen was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. Now Hansen works as Director of Climate Science in Columbia University. In his keynote at ATLAS25 James Hansen warns of the dangerous feedback loops of Earth Systems Tipping Points (ESTP). Hansen’s research and statements have been a controversial talking point among the science community, the media and even some of IPCC lead authors. Hansen’s message is clear – We’re running out of time.

El Niño.

The developing strong-to-super El Niño event will significantly disrupt global environmental conditions by raising global temperatures, shifting rainfall paths, and causing widespread ecological stress through intense droughts, floods, and marine disruptions. The situation is dire and unacceptably dangerous.

And then there is AI, the modern equivalent of the ancient Tower of Babel.

Now, mid 2026.

Today we see the result of our fight against the earth, which, actually, is a fight against God. Bonhoeffer was dead-on when his conclusion in his Ethics, was that God is synonymous with his creation, just as Shakespeare and J.S. Bach, are known to us through their legacies, their artistic output, their inspired creations. That also applies to God: The entire Bible emphasizes God as the Creator of the earth, God’s cherished work of art, fashioned to sustain and enrich and amaze humankind into eternity, forever and ever.

We, the human race, the so gifted creatures of God, the crown of creation, the summum of artistry and the culmination of God’s shaping capacity, we, resembling God in many ways, created in his image, capable of miracles, now extremely exampled in AI, we have gone the way of all human effort: Self-delusion, self-glorification, self-deification, and our Fall, our suicidal self-immolation, is now all too evident. Fools, we are. Already there are voices of idolatry. AI ethicist Eleanor Drage believes that to thrive alongside artificial intelligence, humans need to recognise AI’s “humanity”, and by that she means AI’s deification.

Laughter in Heaven.

“The One in Heaven laughs”. What do we think? Where are we going? Take on God? Challenge Him? Try out who is superior? Maranatha, Lord, Show them. What is wisdom? The fear of the Lord. Love God, love creation.

FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS TO CHAOS TO COSMOS.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Genesis 1: 2.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth … ” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Revelation 21: 1

A few days ago, at breakfast time, I asked a table companion: “Describe the world today”. His one-word answer: Chaos.

“Chaos” was what God saw, when, ‘in the beginning’, peeking through the darkness, He detected total disorder, suggesting unpredictability, intimating structure-less matter, masking mass without meaning.

Chaos is the opposite of ‘cosmos’, whose foremost feature is being ‘rule-based and having a law-full order’. God/Cosmos embodies empathy, personifies proficiency and predictability. That long Psalm, 119, is an ode to God’s greatness: “Righteous are you, O Lord, and your laws are right”.

Today Chaos dominates and causes crises galore, and that in a world coping with dangers so immense that the globe is on fire, because we, all 8+ billion of us, have become estranged from God, estranged from creation, estranged from reason and common sense.

How to re-constitute Cosmos.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, himself a victim of lawlessness, unceremoniously hanged by Trump’s predecessor, Adolf Hitler, ventured an audacious definition of God, equating God and the world as one. I fervently endorse his strategy, as it makes ‘theology’ a daily, intimate part of LIFE, totally in line with Jesus’ message, “Choose Life, and that to the FULL.”

Karen Armstrong, in her powerful book, “Sacred Nature”, writes that God is present everywhere in the natural world. Again: take note Theology: Wake Up! The Bible will no longer count in the renewed Creation to come, when the Chaos we created will become the Christ-centered Cosmos.

History simply is Chaos become Cosmos through God, become Chaos, through us, and become Cosmos again, through Christ.

The laws of Ecology.

God, in his wisdom, has built into the laws of creation that

nothing ever disappears,

that nature/creatin knows best,

that everything is connected to everything else, and

that nothing comes free.

A world on Fire.

Today God’s judgements are at work. Unavoidable. One Hundred Percent Guaranteed.

Genesis describes how ‘in the beginning’, untold billions of years ago, God saw chaos. Psalm 33: 9 simply says: “God spoke and it came to be”. And Creation was conceived.

Unbelievable. Unexplainable. Beyond conception. Far above human reason. God spoke and Chaos became Cosmos: a chaotic mass, became a rule-based, law-governed entity, livable perfection, which God called ‘good’ seven times.

And then, miracle of miracles, he deeded this perfection to us, the human race. Genesis 9 confirms this in a solemn covenant.

Then what? Sin. Sin?  What is S.I.N?

Sin is taking God’s name in vain. That has nothing to do with God’s name. I am known by my name: Egbert Drewes Hielema. I try to live up to that name. God, however, is beyond. Beyond a name, beyond a portrait, beyond conception. God, in his goodness to be known, left his name on every created item: the earth and the fulness thereof, the air, the seas and what they contain. We know him first by his creation, that wonderful book, that entity, the Cosmos.

However.

Due to our lack of environmental discipline, Ocean heat threatens to destabilize sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, causing massive eruptions of methane contained there, highly flammable, in the form of methane hydrates and free gas held underneath these hydrates. 

Now we are in the era of AI, the zenith of human ingenuity: “We are racing into the unknown. We are creating technologies we cannot control,” is just one of the warnings.

In building ever more advanced AI, we may be creating a new type of being – and this could be the most consequential thing our species has ever done. Yet we have essentially no plan for how to navigate this process ethically. That, by any reckoning, is insane. Are we creating a kind of being that matters morally? Are AI systems conscious, in some way? And, if they aren’t now, might they become soon?

Questions.

If these systems matter morally, the implications are staggering. Would we need to pay Chat GPT for its services? Would they deserve a voice in how they are governed? If even some of these answers are yes, entire industries and legal systems would need to be rethought.

No wonder we prefer not to ask. And when forced to consider it, those industries will likely move the goalposts, always setting the bar for moral patient-hood just above wherever AI systems happen to be.

“If you respect nature, nature will respect you.” This is the ancient wisdom of many Indigenous people.

Robin Wall, in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, quotes Joanne Macy: “until we can grieve for our planet, we cannot love it – grieving is a sign of spiritual health.”

Prayer is needed, prayer for Parousia, prayer for Christ’s return.

Pray without ceasing. Pray for the Cosmos to come. Today.

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

                                                                        Revelation 21: 5.

TA PANTA.

Ta Panta is no baby talk, imitating a 2-years old trying to say something. If it is Greek to you, you are correct: the words appear in that precious passage of Colossians 1: 15-20, of which verse 16 says: For in him all things were created: “All things” = Ta Panta.

The same ‘Panta’ expression also appears in the above text, ‘everything’. But… yes, the eternal ‘but’: but something has changed since Jesus created ‘all things’ perfectly. Now, in describing the world situation 2,000 years later, these same ‘all things’ need total renewal: Jesus added an affirmation, such as ‘You can bet your life on this: that renewal is coming.’

Long ago, God, in his wisdom, or perhaps in his foolishness – The Bible does use that term somewhere – gave creation to humanity. Psalm 115: 16 plainly says: The highest heaven belongs to the Lord, but the earth he has given to humanity. God trusted us to do the right thing.

This text reminds me of 2 Corinthians 12, where the apostle Paul recalls an unforgettable experience: He was somehow allowed to have a glimpse of God’s abode, and, in his words, was lifted up to ‘the third heaven’.

In Paul’s understanding, the heavens consist of three parts: First ‘the air’ in which we live, that section under the ozone layer; then the second ‘heaven’ where the stars and planets play their parts, and beyond there, the third heaven, there’s where God lives in ‘inapproachable light, who nobody can see and nobody has seen’. (1 Timothy 6: 16).

That’s why the English translation of the Lord’s Prayer is incorrect: In the Greek the word ‘heaven’ is plural, correctly translated in the French, German and Dutch version of the prayer the Lord taught us. The true reading therefore, is: Our Father who art in the ‘heavens’.

Back to today, where the vexing question is: “Is AI, Good or Bad, a sign of the last days?” I wonder, what role is AI going to play in Ta Panta.

The short answer: A lot.

AI will replace God. Try to, anyway. Look at the latest: a warning that the effects of A.I. could be “larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame.”  

Actually, AI and its effects, reminds me of the New Creation, and also of Genesis, the conditions in the aftermath of the Fall.

Before the Fall, the human pair simply ate from the great variety of the fruits, available from the multitude of trees present in Paradise. Felt hungry? There is a cure for it, hanging out, begging for consumption.

BUT.

That ‘but’ again. Adam and Eve, in their impatience, in their lack of reverence, in their lapse of gratitude, in their failure to reciprocate, in their omission to respond in kind, by displaying a degree of superiority, they offended the Giver, the Creator.   

The result?

Paradise lost. Trees Gone. Their access to perfect living vanished. Agriculture ascended. First digging up the earth, now done with monstrous machines.

The glaring irony is that, before the settlers came, the prairies supported millions of buffaloes, eating prairie grass. We now ‘cultivate’ that same region to feed cattle. Stupidity in spades.

So, how will this foolishness end?

Are the indigenous Hopi people correct? These native Americans have a prophecy that the 4th world, which is us, would end in fire.

The Father, in the beginning, called Creation ‘very good, seven times. Now, in the End, in Revelation 21, surveying the world scene, Jesus discovers that everything, ta Panta, has turned from good to bad. He sees that the very air, every drop of water, each molecule of earth, has become contaminated, and need to be made new. While I am writing this, the sky is an ominous orange, due to forest fires. Is this a sign of the end?

There is hope!

Revelation 22 pictures – as in the beginning – how fruit trees each month offer a different menu. One of the most intriguing texts of the Bible, is found in this very last chapter: On each side of the river stood the Tree of Life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

Made New?  Not new, but re-newed. How? And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” Google tells me that Earth is home to approximately 3.04 trillion trees. This breaks down to about 422 trees for every living person. However, this number has been heavily impacted by human activity, representing a 46% decrease from the roughly 6 trillion trees that existed before the dawn of human civilization.

I believe that the longevity of early humans, measuring in hundreds of years, was due to the rich air we need every few seconds. Just imagine the hundreds of trillions of leaves accumulating, doing their medicinal function.

A very good friend sent me a new book by Robin Wall Kimmerer: “The Serviceberry, Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World”.

Robin Wall is a true prophetess. She, more than almost all preachers, describes  the biblical approach to living in these last days, where war, heat, pollution, dominate.

Fortunately: He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”