Many people incorrectly think that frozen fruits and vegetables are unhealthy because they are frozen, but that may not be the case. Frozen fruits and vegetables are good because the produce is harvested when nutrient levels are at their highest, and they are flash frozen shortly after reaping, which means that they are full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Freezing the produce seals in many of their nutrients; freezing does not destroy produce’s nutrients. In addition, frozen fruit also goes well in smoothies and make great fruit popsicles.

Conversely, Fresh produce looks amazing and smells really good, but with fresh produce, the minutes it is picked, the vegetables and fruits lose nutrients. Not only that, but much of the produce in the supermarket is from other countries like Mexico and Brazil, so it has to travel a long distance before it makes it to the self in the grocery store, more than likely a week or. As a result, the fresh fruit and vegetables may have been harvested before it reached its peak nutritional level, and then artificially ripen during transport.

Another benefit with frozen produce is that one can get their favorite fruits and vegetables, even when they are out of season. Furthermore, studies have found that frozen produce holds on to more beneficial nutrients, than fresh fruits and vegetables. After one week, broccoli that was fresh lost 50 percent of it vitamin C. However, after one year, frozen broccoli lost only 10 percent of its vitamin C, and retained higher levels of antioxidants, including polyphenols, anthocyanin, lutein, and beta-carotene.  Frozen produce is also good because you can buy a lot of it at once, and that will help to increase your intake of fruits and vegetables because you do not have to worry about them spoiling.

While frozen fruits and vegetables tend to be healthier, overall, than produce that is picked and allowed to sit for a while, it is also frozen and takes time to defrost. In contrast fresh produce is ready to be consumed immediately. However, frozen produce is less expensive and available even when your fresh fruits and vegetables are out of season. Also, many people like to use frozen mango cubes or strawberries in their room temperature wine, or juice, and sometimes in water to give it a little flavor. No matter if you decide to buy frozen or fresh produce, both are good for you because they are packed with vitamins, minerals, and fiber that provides protection for your body and fight cancer. I recommend buying both fresh and frozen produce so you can get the best of both Worlds.

As long as the Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. The slime with which the Earth was covered by the waters of the flood produced an excessive fertility, which called forth every variety of production, both bad and good.

Among the rest, Python, an enormous serpent, crept forth, the terror of the people, and lurked in the caves of Mount Parnassus.

Apollo slew him with his arrows-weapons which he had not before used against any but feeble animals, hares, wild goats, and such game. In commemoration of this illustrious conquest he instituted the Pythian games, in which the victor in feats of strength, swiftness of foot, or in the chariot race, was crowned with a wreath of beech leaves; for the laurel was not yet adopted by Apollo as his own tree.

The famous statue of Apollo called the Belvedere represents the god after this victory over the serpent Python.

The Lord of the unerring bow, the god of life, and poetry, and light, the Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow all radiant from his triumph in the fight, and the shaft has just been shot; the arrow bright with an immortal’s vengeance; in his eye and nostril, beautiful disdain, and might, and majesty flash their full lightnings by, developing in that one glance the Deity.

Daphne was Apollo’s first love. It was not brought about by accident, but by the malice of Cupid.

Apollo saw the boy playing with his bow and arrows, and being himself elated with his recent victory over Python, he said to him, “What have you to do with warlike weapons, saucy boy? Leave them for hands worthy of them. Behold the conquest I have won by means of them over the vast serpent, who stretched his poisonous body over acres of the plain!

Be content with your torch, child, and kindle up your flames, as you call them, where you will, but presume not to meddle with my weapons.

Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I know give you everything. However, you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting.

I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed: for in the image of God has God made mankind. “

Venus’s boy heard these words and rejoined, “Your arrows may strike all things else, Apollo but mine shall strike you.” So saying, he took his stand on a rock of Parnassus and drew from his quiver two arrows of different workmanship, one to excite love, the other to repel it.

The former was of gold and sharp pointed, the latter blunt and tipped with lead. With the leaden shaft he struck the nymph Daphne, the daughter of the river-god Peneus, and with the golden one Apollo, through the heart.

Forthwith the god was seized with love for the maiden, and she abhorred the thought of loving. Her delight was in woodland sports and in the spoils of the chase.

Many lovers sought her, but she spurned them all, ranging the woods, and taking no thought of Cupid nor Hymen. Her father often said to her, “Daughter, you owe me a son-in-law; you owe me grandchildren.”

She, hating the thought tinged all over with blushes, threw her arms around her father’s neck and said, “Dearest father, grant me this favor, that I may always remain unmarried, like Diana.” He consented but at the same time said, “Your own face will forbid it.”

Apollo loved her and longed to obtain her; and he who gives oracles to all the World was not wise enough to look into his own fortunes.

He saw her hair flung loose over her shoulders and said, “If so charming in disorder, what would it be if arranged?” He saw her eyes bright as stars; he saw her lips, and was not satisfied with only seeing them.

He admired her hands and arms, naked to the shoulder, and whatever was hidden from view he imagines more beautiful still. He followed her; he fled, swifter then the wind, and delayed not a moment at his entreaties.

“Stay,” said he, “daughter of Peneus; I am not a foe. Do not fly me as a lamb flies the wolf, or a dove the hawk. It is for love I pursue you. You make me miserable, for fear you should fall and hurt yourself on those stones, and I should be the cause. Pray run slower, and I will follow slower. I am not clown, no rude peasant.

Jupiter is my father, and I am lord of Delphos and Tenedos, and know all things, present and future. I am the god of song and the lyre. My arrows fly true to the mark; but alas! An arrow more fatal than mine has pierced my heart! I am the god of medicine, and know the virtues of all healing plants. Alas! I suffer a malady that no balm can cure!”

The nymph continued her flight and left his plea half uttered. And even as she fled she charmed him. The wind blew her garments, and her unbound hair streamed loose behind her.

The god grew impatient to find his wooings throw away; and, sped by Cupid, gained upon her in with open jaws ready to seize, while the feebler animal darts forward, slipping from the very grasp.

So flew the god and the virgin—he on the wings of love and she on those of fear. The pursuer is the more rapid, however, and gains upon her, and his panting breath blows upon her hair.

Her strength begins to fail, and, ready to sink, she calls upon her father, the river-god: “Help me, Peneus! Open the Earth to enclose me, or change my form, which has brought me into this danger!”

Scarcely had she spoken, when a stiffness seized all her limbs; her bosom began to be enclosed in a tender bark; her hair became leaves; her arms became branches; her foot stuck fast in the ground, as a root; her face became a treetop, retaining nothing of its former self but its beauty.

Apollo stood amazed. He touched the stem, and felt the flesh tremble under the new bark. He embraced the branches and lavished kisses on the wood. The branches shrank from his lips.

“Since you cannot be my wife, you shall assuredly be my tree. I will wear you for my crown. I will decorate with you my harp and my quiver; and when the great Roman conquerors lead up the triumphal pomp to the Capitol, you shall be woven into wreaths for their brows.

And, as eternal youth is mine, you also shall be always green, and your leaf knows no decay.” And that is how evergreen trees came to be. The nymph, now changed into a laurel tree, bowed its head in grateful acknowledgment.

That Apollo should be the god both of music and poetry will not appear strange, but that medicine should be assigned to his province, may.

Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, expels diseases, softens every pain; and hence the wise of ancient days adored one power of physic, melody, and song.

The story of Apollo and Daphne is often alluded to by the poets. This is applied to the case of one who amatory verses, though they did not soften the heart of his mistress, yet won for the poet widespread fame.

Yet what the sun in his immortal strain, through unsuccessful, was not sung in vain. All but the nymph that should redress his wrong, attend his passion and approve his song. Like Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise, he caught at love and filled his arms with bays.

The following stanza from Adonais alludes to Byron’s early quarrel with the reviewers:

The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; the obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; the vultures, to the conqueror’s banner true, who feed where Desolation first has fed; and whose wings rain contagion; how they fled, when like Apollo, from his golden bow, the Pythian of the age one arrow sped and smiled! The spoilers tempt no second blow; they fawn on the proud feet that spurn them as they go.

We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing to do? It is to trust Him absolutely and pray on the basis of His redemption.

In my personal life, some things are now becoming clear to others, wrongs of the past that have been committed against me, and people often wonder, “How were you able to make it through and what keeps you going?”

Well, never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step. And past failure may not be on your head, but maybe the people in your life, and community failed you, at some point, in a major way.

I have heard many things like these; miserable comforters are you all! Will your long-winded speeches never end? What ails you that you keep on arguing?

I also could speak like you, if you were in my place; I could make fine speeches against you and shake my head at you. However, my mouth would encourage you; comfort from my lips would bring you relief. Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.

Surely, O God, you have worn me out; you have devastated my entire household. You have bound me—and it has become a witness; my gauntness rises up and testifies against me.

God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me; my opponent fastens on me his piercing eyes.

Men and women and children open their mouths to jeer at me; they strike my cheek in scorn and unite together against me.

God has turned me over to evil men and thrown me into the clutches of the wicked. All was well with me, but he shattered me; he seized me by the neck and crushed me.

He has made me his target; his archers surround me. Without pity, he pierced my kidneys and spills my gall on the ground. Again and again he bursts upon me; he rushed at me like a warrior.

I have sewed a sackcloth over my skin and buried my brow in the dust. My face is red with weeping, deep shadows ring my eyes; yet my hands have been free of violence and my prayer is pure.

O Earth, do not cover my blood; may my cry never be laid to rest! Even now my witness is in Heaven; my advocate is on high.

My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend. Only a few years will pass before I go on the journey of no return. Sometimes it does seem like we are in an alien World, where common sense is lost, but have faith that everything is being restored and you will be fine.

There are few first impressions fit to be encouraged. The young man seems to be doing the most ordinary thing in the World—photography. Until recently, photography was considered a student medium. Copying or stealing a master’s work was the means by which a student learned the higher art of photography. What does the pupil look for in a master?

I will tell you. The master draws the photograph in his head, and then takes the picture he wants to see, but they do not always come out right, sometimes the scale, lighting, or climate are a little different than the photograph seen by the photographer’s eye. That is how all natural things, and all creatures have derived from the divine intellect.

The master’s idea is comparable to divine intellect. The master is to the student, as God is to humanity. And that is why God says, “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back,” reports Luke 6.30. Know thyself, improve thyself, saith the new.

Photography is, furthermore, autographic: it bears the master’s imprint, his style. The work not only won the astonished admiration of all other artists, but the sheer volume causes others to gaze at the young man in amazement at the marvels he created.

People really admire Randolph’s photography because he witnesses the extraordinary fluidity and spontaneity of the World, and nothing obsessed him more than the Victorian architecture, the color blue and nature.

Randolph is here to witness nature in the process of giving way to the forces of civilization—eternal nature pitted against the contemporary moment of sky scrapers, track homes, and modern architecture. Modern architecture is nice, but looks so incomplete—buildings with no ornate detail and flat roofs, yet the modern work is beautiful. Randolph is just in love with a moment in time.

Victorian craftsmanship employs linear perspective to create the bridge from fairytale land to the real World, and it establishes a geometry where the bridge takes us to a place more relaxing, charming and romantic.

The contrasting of Victorian architecture appears to be a cloud in the sky and is remarkable, the sense of opposing forces, is everywhere at work, in the composition—in the altering rhythm of light to dark established by the grandeur and tri-color scheme that is utilized in the reflections and almost perfect symmetrical balance of the structure and countered by the asymmetrical balance of the composition as a whole.

With the mix of modern and Victorian architecture, there seem to be two points of emphasis, the future and the past, and they are, we feel, somehow at odds. What appears at first to be a simple urban, suburban community, upon analysis reveals itself to be a much more complicated landscape full of wonder and excitement.

Animal forms, human images and geometrical shapes seem to arise out of the design, and an extraordinarily independent  spirit, raised and educated, in a society, that values social conformity, above individual identity, Randolph is helping to make others appreciate the historical flare and modern appeal, and park like setting, of the City of Sacramento and Elk Grove, California. Contrast is very important.

If you do not have contrast, everything just cancels each other out. Like the male models, they are all attractive, but after a while, designers and fashion gurus feel like they are looking at the same man, with blue eyes and blonde hair, or his brother with brown eyes and brown hair, no variety.  It is like only two male models exist.

There is variation in hair texture, eye shape or skin tone. The beauty of variety is you do not know when you leave what is going to be there in the morning. You hope the best. You plant your seed. You work hard, but for the harvest—you have to wait.

There are many aspects the elite like about Randolph. They love the fact that he loves the English classics of our mythological heritage—specifically European strain of humanized theology from Medieval times to the present—beauty cannot subsist without contrariety.

While adequate to the knowledge of his time, would be for the modern reader misleading, however, the way he presents the culture reveals more and more of the truths that they hold in keep for all, and they are best heard when presented this way.

The photographs and the words speak to each in his own language—as they once spoke to the ancients. One of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness, as many others only dry facts without any charm of the original narrative.

Randolph endeavored to tell them correctly, according to ancient authorities, so that when the reader finds his essays and photographs, they will not be at a loss to recognize the reference, they will tend to fix in memory the leading fact of each story, they will help to the attainment of a correct illustration or the proper names, and the photographs and essays (photojournalism) will enrich the memory with many gems of romance, knowledge, and spirituality, some of the work is frequently alluding to conversations that have taken place.

Having chosen photography and literature for our province, Randolph connects the two and gives birth to true photojournalism—one reads with intelligence and the elegant literature of their own day.

There is a sense of coherence by repeating shapes and patterns, and people become familiar with the landmarks, and the idea of community itself, bringing together the diversity of the Capitol City of California, through the unifying patterns of the founders of the city.

The City of Sacramento is made up of different lines, forms, colors, textures—the various visual elements themselves—and the photographs show the audience they work together.

However, on one hand, we sense Randolph’s alienation from his community in the work because of traditional notions of artistic quality. However, in contrast, Randolph is distinguished by the sheer energy and exuberance of his style, the vitality of his color, and the sense of freedom that his photojournalism seems to embody—he also always seems to have fun with it.

Randolph is actually mocked by many serious journalist, who possess preoccupation with money and fame, which most reporters and anchors have, and as a result, Randolph achieves a unity and recognition larger than the comparatively elitist culture than some journalist could ever imagine.

Repetition is not necessarily boring, but when you have 200 people, all across the country, repeating the same limited perspective that they call reporting, it causes the audience to look down as if in contemplation of man’s fate, as there is a lack of original conception. Blind impulse is Nature’s highest wisdom.

We make our great jump, and then Nature takes the bandages off our eyes, piercing his heart, blood falls in a rush to the floor, and its red becomes a gigantic foot print, to dramatize the horror of this scene—beauty itself was a function of proper proportion and justice.

Repetition often implies monotony, but there is a beauty found in the sterile World of suburban life and good, honest behavior. Some even say there are Illuminati symbols and occult enchantment in the body of work. And the man, in the background, in the red sweater, how ironic.

If you know Randolph, and know of his journey, the images and word may present a different story to some, than it would to others who have never heard of him. The photographs are all symbolic and there is yet another story echoed, and crying out for justice.

It is meant to capture the rhythm of his life, executed out of his experience, even now, your imagination is working, trying to dig deeper, and that is the purpose–there is an unbelievable story waiting to be told–but it is very true, and he is reaching out as if continually striving to escape the dark inferno beneath.

One’s impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch of flowers; the perfume was most agreeable, but they were occasionally an inconvenience. Therefore, all people are rogues, until we find them honest. Creativity is the ability to bring fruition, or produce, whatever it imagined or envisioned.

However, it is also much more. I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors; which is, to write upon nothing: When the subject is utterly exhausted, to let the pen still move on; by some called, the ghost of wit, delight to walk after the death of its body.

When a man can say what he likes with the certainty that every word will be reported, and can speak to those around him as one manifestly their superior, he always looms large. When one is in a great deal of pain, and suffering, daily, and others know this, and they can help, but instead choose to be jealous, the person who suffers happily is truly blessed.

Do what one may, there is no getting an air variety into a court circular. There is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one’s sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse. Clarence’s way [of reporting the court circular] was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and businesslike; all I say is, it was not the best way:

COURT CIRCULAR.

On Monday, the King rode in the park.

On Tuesday, the King rode in the park.

On Wednesday, the King rode in the park.

On Thursday, the king rode in the park.

On Friday, the King rode in the park.

On Saturday, the King rode in the park.

On Sunday, the King rode in the park.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. In order to produce a work of art, the artist must be able to respond to the unexpected, the chance occurrences or results that are part of the creative process. In other word, the artist must be something of an explorer and inventor. The artist must always be open to new ways of seeing.

True respect, true value lies not in words: words cannot express it. The silent awe, the humble, the doubting eye, and even the hesitating voice, better show it by much than, the rattling tongue of saucy and audacious eloquence. And if we are to appreciate art or the World, we must be willing to open ourselves to new ways of seeing as well.

Many of us think, almost without question, that we can trust the reality of what we see. However, seeing, as we say, is believing. You are surrounded by sights, sounds, odors, tastes, and touch sensations. Which are you aware of?

The first stage of perception is attention, the selection of incoming messages. There is little doubt about the importance of attention. Think, for instance, about an airplane pilot, who fails to notice that the flaps are not down, before landing. This error caused a major air disaster at Detroit’s airport in 1987.

Cecelia Crocker’s body provides her with a constant reminder of the most traumatic event of her life—one that she does not otherwise remember. At only 4 year old, Cecelia Crocker was the lone survivor of a 1987 plane crash that killed 154 people aboard and 2 on the ground near Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Bodies covered with plastic bag laid strew across the highway, where the plane came down in Romulus, Michigan. A phantom man, the hood of his robes obscuring his face, is sometimes seen walking peacefully along the pathways. Seconds later, the image disappears, transported back to another dimension in time.

Attention—selective attention refers to the fact that we give some messages priority and put others on hold. Psychologists have found it helpful to think of selective attention as sort of a restricted access, it seems to prevent others from passing through. This may be why it is very difficult to listen to two people speaking at once. Typically, you can tune in one person or the other, but not both.

Richard Senate, now a well-known psychic researcher, stayed at the mission for a time in the Spring of 1987. When senate arrived at the mission, his interest lay in archeology, not ghost hunting. However, an encounter in the middle of the night, during his stay at the mission, permanently broadened the man’s scope of interest.

It was after midnight and, although he was extremely tired, Senate was unable to sleep. Thinking that a snack might help him fall asleep, he made his way outside, into the courtyard and toward the mission’s kitchen. As he walked he noted a figure coming toward him.

This did not surprise Senate at all, as there were many archaeologists staying in the isolated buildings, at the time. However, when the image drew closer to him, Senate’s curiosity was piqued. The people living in the mission tended to dress in ordinary street clothes, while this person wore a hooded robe. Stranger still, whoever the guy was, he was carrying a candle.

Then the image abruptly vanished. The figure had come within roughly 12 feet of Senate before inexplicably disappearing. There were no bushes behind which a practical joker could have hidden, no buildings he could have slipped into. As Richard Senate stood and stared in amazement, he realized that he had just seen a ghost.

The next day, Senate inquired as to who it was he had seen in the night. Senate was informed that he was certainly not the first person to encounter the image. It seems that in the early 1800s, people at the mission observed a routine which included rising just after midnight to pray.

They carried candles to light their way. Presumably the specter that had startled the sleepless Senate had simply been a remnant from long ago.

This is not the only ghost story from the area. There is a wonderfully spooky old legend about a woman, who was killed by her husband, it is said that her headless apparition can still be seen riding across the property.

What makes this old tale a bit more convincing than most is that many of the witnesses to her ghostly ride have been members of the military, who were stationed at the base of the mission.

Military police have even pursued the wraith in four-wheel drive vehicles. Despite their apparent advantages, the MPs were not able to catch the phantom—she rode her steed over a hill crest on and vanished into thin air.

The Mission La Purisima Concepcion has now been incorporated into a California State Park. Rangers and other employees of the park report that, no matter how many times a day they straighten it, a particular bed in one of the mission’s bedrooms will not stay neat. Staff can repeatedly tidy the rooms and smooth the blankets on the bed, only to return a little later and find the bedclothes in disarray—with the distinct outline of a human body impressed on it.

Park Ranger Steve Jones has even seen a misty apparition in that room. Although the image is slightly transparent, it is clear enough for Jones to make out an old, long-haired man wearing a gown and sitting on the bed. The ranger’s research indicates that the manifestation is probably the ghost of Father Mariano Payeras, who died in that bedroom in 1823. Presumably his spirit is responsible for the strange outline workers so often find on the bed.

Have you ever felt overloaded when trying to do several things at once? Divided attention arises when you must divide your mental efforts among tasks, each of which requires more or less attention. Distributed responsiveness is related to one limited capacity for sorting and thinking about information. For example, 24 November 1892, Kate Morgan pregnant, distraught and alone checked into the Hotel del Coronado as Lottie A. Bernard.

The luxurious hotel had only been open for four years, but had already established a sterling reputation; then as now, their guests’ comfort was of paramount importance. Many people on staff remembered noting how unwell Lottie seemed, and several offered to arrange for whatever medical help she might need.

Kate “Lottie” Morgan rebuffed all offers of assistance. The last time she was seen alive, Kate was wearing a shawl over a black lace dress and dabbing at her eyes with a hanky. At 8.30 the next morning, Kate Farmer Morgan’s lifeless body was found on an outside staircase, leading to the beach.

As soon as the authorities tried to notify her next of kin, they realized that Kate had used a false name. Rumor, innuendo and gossip spread faster than a storm moving across the bay. A coroner’s inquest determined that the woman’s death had been the result of a pistol shot inflicted by her own hand with suicidal intent. Local reporters, however, suspected that there was considerably more to this case than had been discovered, up to that point.

In the 8 December 1892 issues of the Los Angeles Daily Times, a journalist, Randolph Harris, penned the following provocative phrase: Dark mystery surrounds the suicide of unknown girl at the Coronado Hotel. Meanwhile, because no one came forward to claim it, Kate Morgan’s body was hastily buried in a poorly marked grave on 13 December 1892.

Many people report feeling inexplicable cold spots and hearing strange gurgling sounds, in the first floor computer lab, which is thought to serve as the maid’s quarters, during the early days of the hotel.

Because Kate’s image has actually been seen, she is easy to identify. Most often her ghost either floats through the hotel’s hallways or stands at a window, looking out as though watching for someone. Her presence is also credited with causing both telephones and televisions to malfunction.

Nearly 100 years later, in the summer of 1989 Alan May, a San Francisco lawyer, surprised himself by becoming thoroughly obsessed with both Kate Morgan’s life and death. He embarked on a year-long study of the case. At the end of his investigation, Alan May had not only found convincing evidence that the young woman’s death had been murder rather than suicide, he had also turned up proof that he himself was Kate’s great-grandson!

The chain of events which led Alan May to that conclusion began with a casual remark from a colleague to the effect that there was a ghost at the Hotel del Coronado, and that sent Alan May on an amazing genealogical odyssey.

The bullet that killed Kate Morgan did not match the gun she was found holding; the angle at which the bullet entered her head would not have been possible from a self-inflicted gunshot; and suicide would have made it virtually impossible for her body to have fallen into the position in which it was found. With very little effort, Alan May came to the undoubtedly correct conclusion that Kate Morgan’s death was an unavenged murder.

After checking with an unofficial family historian, Alan May was shocked to discover that he grandfather, Alan Mayer May—the man whose name he himself bore—was the baby boy whom Kate Morgan had left with the minister’s family before she rejoined her husband in his traveling poker scam. Kate Morgan was, therefore, Alan May’s great-grandmother. No wonder she had chosen him to solve the mystery! Motives also play a role in your attention.

The eye functions not as an instrument self-powered and alone, but as a dutiful member of a complex and capricious organism. Not only how but what it sees is regulated by need and prejudice. It selects, rejects, organizes, discriminates, associates, classifies, and analyzes, constructs.

It does not so much mirror as take and make. Nature is health; for health is good, and nature cannot work ill. As little can she work error. Get nature, and you get well. In other words, the eye mirrors each individual’s complex perceptions of the World.

Seeing is both a physical and psychological process. We know that physically, visual processing can be divided into three steps: reception, extraction, inference. In the first step, reception, external stimuli enter the nervous system through our eyes—we see the light.

Next, the retina, which is a collection of nerve cells at the back of the eye, extracts the basic information it needs and sends this information it needs and sends this information to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual stimuli.

There are approximately 100 million sensors in the retina, but only 5 million channels to the visual cortex. In other words, the retina does a lot of editing and so does the visual cortex.

There, special mechanisms capable of extracting specific information about features such as color, motion, orientation, and size create what is finally seen. What you see is the inference your visual cortex extracts from the information your retina sends it.

God saw that the light was good. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning—the first of the day.  And God said let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.

So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse sky. And there was evening and there was morning—the second day.

And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds, and it was so.

Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as sign to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give the Earth light.

God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on Earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkens.

Seeing, in other words, is an inherently creative process. The visual system makes conclusions about the World.  It represents the World for you by selecting out information, deciding what is important and what is not.

What sort of information, for example, have you visually assimilated about the United States of America flag? You know its colors—red, white and blue—and that it has 50 stars and 13 stripes. You know, roughly, its shape—rectangular.

However, do you know its proportions? Do you even now, without looking, what color stripes is at the flag’s top, or what color is at the bottom? How many short stripes are there, and how many long ones? How many horizontal rows of stars are there? How many horizontal rows of stars are there? How man long rows? How man short ones?

The point is that not only do we perceive the same things differently, remembering different details, but also we do not usually see things as thoroughly or accurately as we might suppose.

If seeing is a physically creative process, psychologically it is even more so. If you wanted live in a peaceful World, for instance, you would be nice to people, treat them with respect and tell them good things, and concentrate on unity. However, the context in which you see things has a lot to do with how you see it.

Everything you see is filtered through a long history of fears, prejudices, desires, emotions, customs, and beliefs—both your own and the artist’s. In the Marine Corps War Memorial, the flag becomes the symbol not merely of the nation, but of freedom itself.

The flag has been turned into a prison. The flag, during the Civil Rights,  was made to record the World, to give visible or tangible form to feelings, to reveal hidden or universal truths, and to help us see the World in new and innovative ways.

And though we might all agree that the World is real, what we understand about it is very different. You need to be able to understand why you like it and how it communicates to you, which is known as visual literacy.

Many of you assume that you understand what you see, but the fact is that most of you take the visual World for granted. Those of you born and raised to watch TV and use cell phones and the internet are often accused of being nonverbal, passive receivers, like TV monitors themselves.  You are dependent on social media, TV, and it has made you the mass media generation, and you are not necessarily becoming visually literate in the process.

The idea of daring to represent God has been, throughout the history of the Western World, aroused controversy. In seventeenth-century Holland, images of God were banned from Protestant churches, as Peter Saenredam’s stark architectural rendering of the interior of the Church of Assendelft attests.

The image of God is His Word—that is, the Bible—and statues in human form, being an Earthen image of visible, Earthborn man [are] far away from the truth. One of the reasons that Jesus, the son of God, is so often represented in Western art is that representing the son, a real person, is far easier then representing the Father, a spiritual unknown.

God was nude. God is a quandary that is really his own. God is depicted here as the powerful but aged father of all, a father, less merciful than cruel. The scene is the second day of Creation, and God holds a pair of compasses as he measure out a delineates the firmament, imposing order upon chaos.

The creator of the World was not experiencing a particularly happy moment. Creation represents a double bind: One the one hand, to create or make something—for example, a World, or an image—is limiting, because it set boundaries upon the imagination. On the other hand, the imagination is defined by its ability to create. God is distinctly ambiguous.

An image of God, painted 400 years earlier, is much frailer, younger, and apparently more merciful and kind, and certainly more richly adorned. Indeed, judging from the richness of his vestments, God values the World more than the new God.  The newer God despises the material World—the World in which things get made, and that is why American is currently experiencing an $18.2 trillion deficit.

However, the God 400 years ago, admired and trusted the material World. He celebrates a materialism that is proper right of benevolent kings. Behind God’s head, across the top of the throne, are Latin words that, translated into English, read: This is God, all powerful in his divine majesty; of all the best, by the gentleness of his goodness; the most liberal giver, because of his infinite generosity.

God’s mercy and love are indicated by the pelicans embroidered on the tapestry behind him, which in Christian tradition symbolize self-sacrificing love, since pelicans were believed to wound themselves in order to feed their young with their own blood if other food was unavailable.

God is caught up in the collisions of two cultures. Honesty is the best policy—I always find it so. I lost forty-seven pound, ten by being honest this morning.

However, it is all gain, it is all gain! A man who loses forty-seven pound ten in one morning by his honesty is a man to be envied. If it had been eighty pound, the luxuriousness of feeling would have been increased.

Every pound lost would have been a hundredweight of happiness gained. You had better be an honest person than half a rogue. His Solitude with Us. When God gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.

As you journey with God, the only thing He intends to be clear is the way He deals with your soul. Are we alone with Him now? Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet al our intellectual questions and get along with Him.

I declare to you that the LORD will build a house for you: When your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will rise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom.

God is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish this throne forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, as I took it away from your predecessors. I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever.

And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth, and it was so. A season is a period of the year that is distinguished by special climate conditions.

The four seasons—spring, summer, fall, and winter—follow one another regularly. Each has its own light, temperature, and weather patterns that repeat yearly.  Spring is supposed to be mild weather with a lot rain, not too hot and not too cold. Summer is supposed to be warm and sunny, with little rain.

Fall is supposed to be cool, with mild sun and clouds. Winter is supposed to be cold, with cloudy gray skies and a lot of rain. This is to keep the planet healthy and in balance.  God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. Thus, the Heavens and Earth were completed in their entire vast array.

As long as the Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Peaceful was the night, wherein the Prince of light, his reign of peace upon the Earth began; the winds with wonder whist, smoothly the waters kist.

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, who now hath quite forgot to rave, while bird of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. Oh, magic sheep! Oh, comfortable bird that broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind till it is hushed and smooth. He cared for the forests and rivers.

Finally, he continued, look round the World and choose whatever you will of what Earth and seas contains most precious—ask it and fear no refusal. This only I pray you will not to urge. It is not honor, but destruction you seek.

Why do you hang round my neck and still entreat me? You shall have it if you persists—the oath is sworn and must be kept—but I beg you to choose more wisely.

They obeyed, and led forth from the lofty stalls the steeds full fed with ambrosia, and attached the reins. Then the Father bathed the face of his son with a powerful unguent, and made him capable of enduring the brightness of the flame.

He set the rays on his head and, with a foreboding sigh, said, If you are my son, you will in this at least heed my advice, spare the whip and hold tight the reins. They go fast enough of their own accord; the labor is to hold them in. You are not to take the straight road directly between the five circles, but turn off to the left.

Keep within the limit of the middle zone, and avoid the northern and southern alike. You will see the marks of the wheels, and they will serve to guide you. And, that the skies and the Earth may each receive their due share of heat, go not too high, or you will burn the Heavenly dwellings, nor too low, or you will set the Earth on fire. The middle course is safest and best. And now I leave you to your chance, which I hope will plan better for you than you have done for yourself.

Night is passing out of the western gates and we can delay no longer. Take the reins; but if at last your heart fails you, and you will benefit by advice, stay where you are in safety and suffer me to light and warm the Earth.

The agile youth sprang into the chariot, stood erect and grasped the reins with delight, pouring out thanks to his reluctant parent. Meanwhile, the horses fill the air with their snorting and fiery breath and stamp the group impatient. Now the bars are let down, and the boundless plain of the universe lies open before them.

They dart forward and cleave the opposing clouds, and outrun the morning breezes which started from the same eastern goal. The steeds soon perceived that the load they drew was lighter than usual; and as a ship without ballast is tossed hither and thither on the sea, so the chariot, without it accustomed weight, was dashed about as if empty.

They rush headlong and leave the travelled road. He is alarmed, and knows not how to guide them; nor, if he knew, has he the power.

Then, for the very first time, the Great and Little Bear were scorched with heat, and would fain, if it were possible, have plunged into the water; and the Serpent which lies coiled up round the north pole, torpid and harmless, grew warm, and with warmth felt its rage revive. Boots, they say. Fled away, through encumbered with his plough, and all unused to rapid motion.

When hapless Phaeton looked down upon the Earth, now spreading in vast extent beneath him, he grew pale and his knees shook with terror. In spite of the glare all around him, the sight of his eyes grew dim.

He wished he had never touched his father’s horses, never learned his parentage, never prevailed in his request. He is born along like a vessel that flies before a tempest, when the pilot can do no more and betakes himself to his prayers. What shall he do?

Much of the Heavenly road is left behind, but more remains before. He turns his eyes from one direction to the other; now to the goal whence he began his course, now to the realms of sunset which he is not destined to reach.

He loses his self-command, and knows not what to do—whether to draw tight the reins or throw them loose; he forgets the names of the horses. He sees with terror the monstrous forms scattered over the surface of Heaven.

Here the scorpion extended his two great arms, with his tail and crooked claws stretching over two signs of the zodiac. When the boy beheld him, reeking with poison and menacing with his fangs, his courage failed, and the reins fell from his hands.

The horses, when they felt them loose on their backs, dashed headlong, and unrestrained went off into unknown regions of the sky, in among the stars, hurling the chariot over pathless places, now up in high Heaven, now down almost to the Earth. The moon saw with astonishment her brother’s chariot running beneath her own.

The clouds begin to smoke, and the mountains tops take fire. On a regular basis, volcanoes hold us rapt for days when a steady stream of smoke or a series of tremors indicates that something big is going to happen.

However, it is not often that a volcano stages an intense, long-term drama, as fascinating as the one that occurred on Iceland’s island of Heimaey in the first half of 1973.

The episode unfolded at such a pace that we were able to watch a mountain forming right before our eyes. The pace also allowed intrepid islanders to leap into the breach o save the town of Vestmannaeyjar.

The eruption began on 23 January 1973, and continued for more than five months. It started with a fissure on the eastern end of the island, a rift that would eventually extend about two miles and from which lava shot at an initially alarming rate. Some 3,500 cubic feet of molten rock and tephra (the residue of airborne volcanic emissions) were spewed every second.

A cone began to rise, and within two days, it was as high as a football field is long. (Today, this cinder cone volcano, called Eldfell, which means “Fire Mountain” in Iceland, is more than 650 feet high.) The lava kept flowing, the hill expanding. The townspeople, living less than half a mile away, started to fret.

Most of the island’s 5,300 residents were safely evacuated in the first several days, but as the eruption subsided, many locals decided to return and fight. The fields were parched with heat, the plants withered, the trees with their leafy branches burned, the harvest was ablaze! However, these are small things. Great cities perished, with their walls and towers; whole nations with their people were consumed to ashes!

The forest-clad mountains burned, because of the major drought, there was no water to put of the fires. The sky was crowned with clouds. The World on fire, and the heat felt intolerable. The air he breathed was like the air of a furnace and full of burning ashes, and the smoke was of pitchy darkness. Then, it is believed that the people of Ethiopia became black by the blood being forced so suddenly to the surface, and the Libyan desert was dried up to the condition in which it remains to this day.

The Nymphs of the fountains, with disheveled hair, mourned their waters, nor were the rivers safe beneath their banks; Nile fled away and hid his head in the desert, and there is still remains concealed. Where he used to discharge his waters through seven mouths into the sea, there seven dry channels alone remained.

The Earth cracked open and through the chinks light broke into Tartarus and frightened the king of shadows and his queen. The sea shrank up. Where before was water it became a dry plain; and the mountains that lie beneath the waves lifted up their heads and became islands. The fishes sought the lowest depths, and the dolphins ventured as usual to sport on the surface.

Even Nereus, and his wife Doris, with the Nereids, their daughters, sought the deepest caves for refuge. A system was devised whereby seawater was pumped onto the creeping lava flow, which stopped it just shy of the town’s harbor area. Given a crisis, the islanders did the best they could.

They harnessed the energy of the cooling lava to heat water and provide electricity—thus, a disaster with a silver lining. Thrice Neptune essayed to raise his head above the surface, and thrice was driven back by the heat. Earth, surrounded as she was by waters, yet with head and shoulders bare, screening her face with her hand, looked up to Heaven, and with a husky voice called on Jupiter.

“Oh, ruler of gods, if I have deserved this treatment, and it is your will that I perish with fire, why withhold your thunderbolts? Let me at least fall by your hand. Is this the reward of my fertility, of my obedient service? Is it for this that I have supplied herbage for cattle, and fruits for men, and frankincense for your altars?

If neither of us can excite your pity, think, I pray you, of your own Heaven, and behold how both poles are smoking which sustain your palace, which must fall if they be destroyed. Atlas faints, and scares holds up his burden. If sea, Earth, and Heaven perish, we fall into ancient Chaos. Save what yet remains to us from the devouring flame. Oh, take thought for our deliverance in this awful moment!”

Thus spoke Earth, and overcome with heat and thirst, could say no more. Then Jupiter omnipotent, calling to witness all the gods, including him who had lent the chariot, and showing them that all was lost unless some speedy remedy were applied, mounted the lofty tower from whence he diffuses clouds over the Earth, and hurls screen to Earth, nor was a shower remaining unexhausted. He thundered, and brandishing a lightning bolt in his right hand launched it against the charioteer, and struck him at the same moment from his seat and from existence!

Phaeton, with his hair on fire, fell headlong, like a shooting star which marks the Heavens with its brightness as it falls, and Eridanus, the great river, received hi, and cooled his burning frame. The Italian Naiads reared a tomb for him and inscribed these words upon the stone:  Driver of Phoebus’ chariot, Phaeton. Struck by Jove’s thunder, rests beneath this stone; he could not rule his father’s care of fire, yet was it much so nobly to aspire.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live righteous and virtuous lives, as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the Heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. However, in keeping his promise, we are looking forward to a new Heaven and new Earth, the home of righteousness.

So then dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.

He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the unlawful men and women, and fall from your secure position. However, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.