{"id":98481,"date":"2023-01-31T22:14:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T05:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=98481"},"modified":"2023-01-31T23:41:54","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T06:41:54","slug":"a-terrestrial-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/01\/a-terrestrial-paradise.html","title":{"rendered":"A Terrestrial Paradise?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Hawaii's<\/a>
The Laie Hawaii Temple (LDS Media Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two new items went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Come, Follow Me<\/em> \u2014 New Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 7, February 6 \u2014 12: John 2\u20134 \u2014\u00a0\u201cYe Must Be Born Again\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Once again, Jonn Claybaugh generously supplies a set of helpful notes for teachers and students of the Church\u2019s \u201cCome, Follow Me\u201d curriculum.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The New Testament in Context Lesson 7: \u201cYe Must Be Born Again\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

In the 15 January 2023 Come, Follow Me<\/em> segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, Foundation volunteers Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Martin Tanner discuss New Testament lesson 7, covering John 2\u20134: \u201cYe Must Be Born Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other segments of the 15 January 2023 radio show can be accessed at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreter-radio-show-january-15-2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can listen to the Interpreter Radio Show live each and every Sunday evening from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640.\u00a0 Or, if you prefer or if K-TALK doesn\u2019t reach your area, you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same program in either case.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Looking from Maui to Moloka\u2019i, across the Lahaina Roads\u00a0 (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Strolling just above the surf at Ironwood Cliffs on the Kapalua Bay Trail, it\u2019s interesting to see evidences of the forces that made the island of Maui and that are now very slowly unmaking it.\u00a0 Beyond, across the strait known as \u201cLahaina Roads,\u201d is the island of Moloka\u2019i.\u00a0 Whales are clearly visible there at this season.\u00a0 Both Maui and Moloka\u2018i \u2014 as well as the nearby islands of L\u0101na\u02bbi and\u00a0Kaho\u02bbolawe and the now submerged shield volcano west of Moloka\u2018i called Penguin Bank \u2014 are parts of a much larger geological unit called \u201cGreater Maui\u201d or \u201cMaui Nui.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just below us on the trail, though, it was easy to see the lava produced many years ago by the oldest of Maui\u2019s two main peaks, the much eroded West Maui Volcano.\u00a0 And it is being battered by surf.\u00a0 No longer being created, it\u2019s being worn away.\u00a0 As the tectonic plate on which the Hawaiian Islands sit, the Pacific Plate, moves to the northwest \u2014 at an annual rate of about 2.75 inches or seven centimeters \u2014 they leave behind them the stationary \u201chot spot\u201d that formed them.\u00a0 Kauai and O\u2018ahu and the other islands age and begin very slowly to decay under the onslaught of rain and wind and, far and away most important, under the pounding of the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 Necker Island, located about 430 miles northwest of Honolulu, rose at one point about 3300 feet above the ocean and was roughly the size of today\u2019s O\u2019ahu.\u00a0 Today, it\u2019s little more than a rocky ridge.\u00a0 Its highest point is roughly 277 feet above sea level, its length is 0.8 miles, and its width at its very widest point is well under seven hundred feet.<\/p>\n

Maui\u2019s eastern volcano, Haleakal\u0101, is dormant.\u00a0 However, it still rises to more than ten thousand feet, and it\u2019s still thought capable of erupting; its last recorded eruption occurred in 1790, which is, geologically speaking, the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
In this view of the \u201cBig Island,\u201d Mauna Kea is clearly visible toward the north, Mauna Loa is plainly visible toward the south, and Kilauea appears a little less obviously to the east of Mauna Loa. The rising undersea volcano and future island formerly known as L\u014d\u02bbihi is circled offshore. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the real geological life in Hawaii today continues in and near the southeastern-most of the islands, the so-called \u201cBig Island,\u201d itself named Hawaii.\u00a0 Anybody who has been paying attention to the news of late will be aware of the fact that Mauna Loa erupted in November and December of 2022, and that Kilauea is erupting as I write.\u00a0 Further, underwater and offshore to the south southeast of the Big Island is the active volcanic seamount formerly known as \u201cL\u014d\u02bbihi.\u201d\u00a0 In 2021, in its wisdom, the U.S. Geological Survey adopted for it, instead, the more ambitiously Hawaiian name of \u201cglowing child of Kanaloa,\u201d or Kama\u02bbehuakanaloa<\/em>.\u00a0 (Kanaloa<\/em> is the Hawaiian god of the ocean.)\u00a0 Somewhere between ten thousand years from now and a hundred thousand years from now, Kama\u02bbehuakanaloa will emerge above the surface of the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 That\u2019s probably sufficient time for real estate salespeople and condo developers to devise a way of dealing with its somewhat unwieldy new name.<\/p>\n

I suppose that my overall meditation is this:\u00a0 In my ever-advancing old age, as people who meant a great deal to me and whom I love have passed on, the sentiment expressed in the hymn has come to mean more and more to me:<\/p>\n

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
\nThe darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
\nWhen other helpers fail and comforts flee,
\nHelp of the helpless, O abide with me.<\/p>\n

Swift to its close ebbs out life\u2019s little day;
\nEarth\u2019s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
\nChange and decay in all around I see;
\nO Thou who changest not, abide with me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If there is anything at all that might be termed something like a terrestrial paradise, I suppose that the Hawaiian Islands might come close.\u00a0 They are beautiful.\u00a0 Their climate is delightful.\u00a0 Their breezes are (mostly) gentle.\u00a0 They are, today, fertile and rich with life.\u00a0 But they are unstable.\u00a0 Biology and geology have taught us that there is nothing immutable here on earth.<\/p>\n

The Hawaiian paradise began as barren volcanic rock emerging from the sea.\u00a0 It will end as barren volcanic rock crumbling into the sea.\u00a0 In the meantime, human corruption exists here just as it exists everywhere else.\u00a0 (Ever seen Hawaii Five-O<\/em>?). And sickness and death are here, as well.\u00a0 An old cemetery abuts the road just a couple of miles from where I\u2019m sitting right now.<\/p>\n

There is no earthly paradise.\u00a0 Not yet, anyway.<\/p>\n

And there is no natural paradise in outer space.\u00a0 Pre-Copernican astronomy assured us that, in the superlunary world, beyond the sphere of the moon, all was changeless perfection.\u00a0 Orbits were perfect circles, the crystalline spheres were made of a perfectly transparent celestial element, a quintessence unlike the four changeable elements familiar to us here below.\u00a0 But Galileo and comets and sunspots changed all that.<\/p>\n

Our hope for paradise must be fulfilled elsewhere, or not at all.\u00a0 As the author of the epistle to the Hebrews put it in chapter eleven, speaking of the ancient saints:<\/p>\n

13\u00a0<\/sup>These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

14\u00a0<\/sup>For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.<\/span><\/p>\n

15\u00a0<\/sup>And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.<\/span><\/p>\n

16\u00a0<\/sup>But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Posted from Ka\u2019anapali, Maui, Hawai\u2019i<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Two new items went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: \u00a0 Come, Follow Me \u2014 New Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 7, February 6 \u2014 12: John 2\u20134 \u2014\u00a0\u201cYe Must Be Born Again\u201d Once again, Jonn Claybaugh generously supplies a set of helpful notes for teachers and students of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22910,22901,34032,34038,5385,2061,22928,482,2619,34023,34011,34026,23276,34029,34005,34002,34017,34014,22931,34020,18568,22952,34008,18752,22955,22937,22934,23014,22946,34035,4786],"class_list":{"0":"post-98481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-abide-with-me","8":"tag-big-island","9":"tag-born-again","10":"tag-copernican","11":"tag-copernicus","12":"tag-galileo","13":"tag-haleakala","14":"tag-hawaii","15":"tag-hebrews","16":"tag-hebrews-11","17":"tag-ironwood-cliffs","18":"tag-john-2","19":"tag-john-3","20":"tag-john-4","21":"tag-kamaehuakanaloa","22":"tag-kanaloa","23":"tag-kapalua","24":"tag-kapalua-bay-trail","25":"tag-kilauea","26":"tag-lahaina-roads","27":"tag-lanai","28":"tag-loihi","30":"tag-maui","31":"tag-maui-nui","32":"tag-mauna-kea","33":"tag-mauna-loa","34":"tag-molokai","35":"tag-necker","36":"tag-necker-island","37":"tag-paradise"},"yoast_head":"\nA 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