Random Thought #29

Got this in an email from my mom. I liked it so here it is. Helps us remind ourselves that we need to become more like little children


About the Song...

While at the mall a couple of years ago, my then four year old nephew, Spencer, saw kids lined up to see Santa Claus. Having been taught as a toddler that Christmas is the holiday that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, he asked his mom, "where's the line to see Jesus"?


My sister mentioned this to my dad, who immediately became inspired and jotted words down to a song in just a few minutes. After putting music to the words, and doing a quick recording at home, he received a great response from friends. He sent the song off to Nashville without much response, except for a Christian song writer who suggested adding a bridge at the end of the first chorus. My dad then asked if I wanted to record the song to see what we could do with it.


I listened to the song, made a few changes to the words to make it flow better, and we headed to Shock City Studios. It was at the studio where Chris, owner and producer, rewrote the 2nd verse and part of the chorus... with goosebumps and emotions high, we were all hopeful and felt like we had something special. The demo was recorded in just under 2 hours and sent off again to Nashville ... still no response.


Then 2 weeks before Christmas last year, my cousins Greg and Robbie decided to do a video to see what we could accomplish on YouTube. The first day we had 3000 hits and it soared from there. We received e-mails, phone calls, Facebook messages from people all over asking for the music, CD's, iTunes, anything... we had nothin'. After a couple of meetings with Chris following the amazing response, we got serious. We headed back into the studio this past spring... this time with guitars, drums, bass, pianos, choirs... the real deal.... and here we are today.


Getting iTunes set up, a website put together, and loving that thousands upon thousands of Christians have come together... remembering the true meaning of Christmas. Out of the mouths of babes come profound truths that many adults can not understand. Hopefully Spencer's observation will cause people all over to reflect on the love of Jesus, and that one day we will all stand in line to see Him. We are most thankful to our Heavenly Father to have this chance to share our music with you.


Merry Christmas everyone.

http://www.youtube.com/user/beckykelleySTL

Random Thought #28

Never use any words or sentences that contain words that make the idea absolute. What a contradictory statement. I violated the content of my sentence in the very first word of it. LOL. Dunno why, but that popped into my head today at work. I know...strange.

Random Thought #27

No more disposition to do evil, seek for treasures in heaven and not for treasures on the earth, live in the world, but not of the world, seeketh not her own, when you are in the service of your fellow man, cast aside your nets and bear up your cross and come follow me. These are all statements that describe a changed heart. They are descriptions of attributes that someone has who has forsaken the world and chosen Christ. I am by no means perfect, but I can honestly say that I've had a change of heart. I think one of the biggest and most definitive tests to see if a man's heart and thoughts are in the right place is to see how he responds to the challenge of leaving everything behind and following Christ, would he have even a shred of a second thought? The thing is, if you have any care whatsoever for the things of this world, you would have that second thought. If you despise this world and the things of this world, you are anxious to get rid of it. You view things differently. You see things in this earth as temporary and we only abide them so as to exist in peace and harmony but we have no affinity towards these things. We care not for them. Many would say they fear death, the Apocalype, the Second Coming of Christ. Others would look forward to all of these things. We are described as a peculiar people because we don't fit in. That's a good thing. We should stick out like a sore thumb. We probably think people of this world are weird because they have weird attractions to things of this world. They love things and money and do not fear God. We sometimes look at them and raise our eyebrow as if not understanding how they could think or act that way.

I used to be big into Twitter and would keep up to date on all the latest happenings of the tech world, but nowadays, I have completely quit Twitter and have no desire to return or get involved at all. The Lord has blessed me with other ways of staying relavant in my field so that I can support my family, but its just a means to an end. It means nothing to me. I often spend much of my days studying and learning about other more important things. I have no earthly aspirations. It means nothing to me. Many would say that I'm strange or peculiar, but I find it perfectly normal and those that will backstab and step on anyone to get more power, fame, money, advancement in this world make no sense to me. They are missing something.

I've also found that as I read and study more, the world makes more and more sense and I can see how mankind has corrupted everything and will eventually self-destruct. Its like I have "eyes to see and ears to hear". I know there is much I still don't understand, but I feel like I have a worthwhile purpose and direction and I'm happy. I think the Lord is also happy, because I'm happy.

Random Thought #26

My thought tonight comes from a number of unlikely sources:

Richard Feynman
Martin Lowrie Hofford
Hugh Nibley
My Family

1st - Richard Feyman. If you don't know Richard Feyman was a world-renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist. I've been engrossed in his lectures as of late and one particular piece of instruction caught my attention as he was talking about gravity. He was talking about how everything attracted everything else and got to talking about the tides and how the moon's pull on the earth affected the tides. Without going into too much details, basically we know that there are 2 tides a day, morning and night. I'm not sure which one is high and which is low but basically when the moon is closer to the earth, there is a stronger pull (guessing high tide is at night) and the other side of the earth is further away and therefore has a weaker pull (guessing low tide in the morning).

Cool website if you're interested in Feyman's lectures - http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/

2nd - Hugh Nibley. As most of you know, I've been doing some heavy Nibley reading. Again, without going into much detail, he basically states that the ancients (especially the Egyptians) always looked to the cosmos to understand their place in the world. They were especially fascinated with the problem of how does one make it from this world into eternity (i.e. Resurrection). That's why they were so nutty about funerary stuff. Anyway, there is a basic drama (and this is basically the point that Facisimile 2 in the Book of Abraham is pointing out) that describes the Resurrection process. Its called the Re/Osiris drama. Osiris represents the deceased and Re (his father) represents the sun (more specifically the morning version of the sun). They think that the setting of the sun represents the journey into the underworld (dying) and the rising of the sun represented bringing the dead out of the underworld and back into mortality (albeit immortal).

Tons of Nibley Literature - http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/authors/?authorID=2

3rd - Martin Lowrie Hofford. This fine gentleman was a very intelligent evangelist and was the author of the text of one of our hymns, #165, Abide with Me; Tis Eventide. I couldn't find much of a history on this guy but the basics are here for you to know.

4th - My Family. How is this all related you ask? Well, I was giving my girls their bath, but figured I'd let them play around a bit first in the tub. After they had played around a bit, I started singing various songs quite loudly and changing a few words in hopes that my lovely wife would come up from whatever she was doing and help me with the bathing process. I sang stuff like "The girls have need of willing parents who wear the worker's seal, come help me give the girls a bath, put your shoulder to the wheel". Well, one of the songs I sang was Abide with Me; Tis Eventide. It went something like this. "Abide with Me; my lovely wife, the girls are almost done. I need some help to get them clean, oh please, please darling come".

Anyways, as I sang that song, I thought about that song and the actual words and everything just clicked. I had no idea what eventide was. You know how we just sing the songs and don't think much about the words, well since I have been doing this Nibley and Feyman research, I realized that even tide meant evening tide. Its almost night time and is watching the evening tide, and is begging the Lord for his companionship, perhaps even the Holy Ghost to remain with him. Quite beautiful really.

The funniest part is that this came to me as my girls were making some serious tides in the bathtub at night time. How ironic is that!!

Random Thought #25

I was in the shower the other day and right when I was about to shampoo my hair, I saw the body wash and shampoo just on the other side of the glass*Sigh*, maybe in the future.

Random Thought #24

So I was reading over the last couple of days about how light works and a little bit about Quantum Mechanics. I didn't realize this at first, but Quantum Mechanics is just another word for how light works.  Quantum in physics is defined as "the smallest quantity of radiant energy, equal to Planck's constant times the frequency of the associated radiation" Quanta is the plural form of quantum and therefore can be simplified as groups of photons, which is the essential building block for light. Therefore, Quantum Mechanics is nothing more than the study of how light works. I'm especially intrigued with light because whenever you begin talking about matters that deal with God, there are always references to light.

In understanding how light is produced, light is made up of photons. Some believe that it is a stream or particles (photons). Others believe it comes in a wave of photons. Latest theory is that it is a combination of the two. What is a photon and how are they produced? To know this, we have to understand the structure of an atom. An atom is basically a nucleus (protons and neutrons) surrounded by electrons that orbit the nucleus in various orbits. Some elements have a different number of electrons, but as the elements get more complex, the higher the number of electrons. When an electron gets excited, it jumps to a higher orbital. When that electron settles back into its original orbital, the packet of energy released it a photon.

So how do you excite an electron? Apply heat. When you light a light bulb, you heat up the elements with electricity. When you make a fire, you heat up the wood, etc., etc. So getting back to the particle theory of how light is transmitted, in order to find out exactly how light is transmitted, we have to observe it. The problem is that as soon as you view the electrons, you excite them so you never know exactly where the electron orbit is. This is important to us because depending on the distance between the original orbital and the excited orbital determines what color (frequency) the emitted light is. So basically, just by observing the electrons, we aren't seeing them in their original orbits, but have to study them within a range of uncertainty. That's where the wave theory comes into play. Since we can't study the electron (particle) in exactness, we have to measure it within a range. So we find that light is transmitted in particles (photons that are released from excited electrons) but that they are found within a range (waves).

So why does any of this matter? Well, I was watching a video on wormholes and think that this theory that applies to the very small atomic level, could also apply to the cosmic level as well. See, everything has a particular orbit in space, just like electrons have particular orbits around a nucleus. At the same time, Einstein's theory about time and space was that the plane was actually curved (similar to how an orbit is shaped). Wormholes work as a shortcut between two distant parts of the expanse of space when the space/time continuum is bent. Think of drawing two circles on a piece of paper and then folding that paper in half. The circles overlap each other and provide a shortcut from one place to the other. When the paper is flat, the distance could be considered an object's normal orbit, but when its curved, a wormhole exists and can allow for not only travel over great distances, but also time travel, as you are traveling not just through space, but also through time.

Just a bunch of theories but needless to say, I love studying Quantum Mechanics.