Gospel of Pragmatism

[David Merrill]

James Roland will survive for some 800 years through his monumental artwork alone. He is going to be treated with radiation therapy for Merkel Cell Carcinoma soon and your hopes and prayers for complete remission are appreciated!

[David Merrill]

I improved the high tower safety a bit:

People would step out on the abutment to let others pass:

[David Merrill]

The big improvement was on the "Bridge to Nowhere".

You can see the Golden Rectangle brace ready to install. I think of the Castle as my Stairstepper because just getting the power up there is a workout up and down spiral staircases.

There you have the brace ready for me to weld on a Fibonacci Spiral that will fly upward to the left and weld to the steel below about fourteen feet below the Bridge. The brace already keeps the catwalk from shaking side to side! I will build the rock wall up around the steel and then put a steel balcony out there, and hinge the Golden Rectangle/Fibonacci Spiral so it gates out onto the balcony. There will be a small table in the middle for snacks and drinks.

That is the only art that I will contribute and since the spiral and rectangle are found in nature exactly as I construct it here, it is not really art but mimicking or plagiarizing. So then, like you see above in the last post, everything will mimik James Roland's artwork - Jim Bishop CASTLEBUILDER. I will instruct even the masons working the walls to shift position so that nobody can lay claim to any significant part of the final work.


Regards,

David Merrill.

[David Merrill]

Lately I am integrating how I became owner of Castle Church into The Gospel of Pragmatism.

[David Merrill]

Here is a pretty scene - the Castle Church in the snow!

[David Merrill]

I enjoy the precept that one might find the imaginative and rational mental reflex, combined in the right balance will stimulate Biblical Prophecy.

Here is some Crosstalk from A Course in Miracles:
Dear ACIM students;







Both Thursday and Saturday were exceptionally stimulating classes for me. A couple students who attend Christianity Explored were remarking how wonderful Saturday was for them too. On Page 645 we began the final Chapter of the Text:

Chapter 31.

THE FINAL VISION

I. The Simplicity of Salvation



T-31.I.1. How simple is salvation! 2 All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. 3 The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. 4 And that is all. 5 Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it to be true? 6 Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult. 7 How hard is it to see that what is false can not be true, and what is true can not be false? 8 You can no longer say that you perceive no differences in false and true. 9 You have been told exactly how to tell one from the other, and just what to do if you become confused. 10 Why, then, do you persist in learning not such simple things?

T-31.I.2. There is a reason. 2 But confuse it not with difficulty in the simple things salvation asks you learn. 3 It teaches but the very obvious. 4 It merely goes from one apparent lesson to the next, in easy steps that lead you gently from one to another, with no strain at all. 5 This cannot be confusing, yet you are confused. 6 For somehow you believe that what is totally confused is easier to learn and understand. 7 What you have taught yourself is such a giant learning feat it is indeed incredible. 8 But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn or too complex to grasp.

T-31.I.3. No one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them, could ever doubt the power of your learning skill. 2 There is no greater power in the world. 3 The world was made by it, and even now depends on nothing else. 4 The lessons you have taught yourself have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains to obscure the simple and the obvious. 5 Say not you cannot learn them. 6 For your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your will is not your own, your thoughts do not belong to you, and even you are someone else.

T-31.I.4. Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? 2 Yet you have learned more than this. 3 You have continued, taking every step, however difficult, without complaint, until a world was built that suited you. p645 4 And every lesson that makes up the world arises from the first accomplishment of learning; an enormity so great the Holy Spirit's Voice seems small and still before its magnitude. 5 The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him. 6 You who have taught yourself the Son of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches you!

T-31.I.5. Learning is an ability you made and gave yourself. 2 It was not made to do the Will of God, but to uphold a wish that it could be opposed, and that a will apart from it was yet more real than it. 3 And this has learning sought to demonstrate, and you have learned what it was made to teach. 4 Now does your ancient overlearning stand implacable before the Voice of truth, and teach you that Its lessons are not true; too hard to learn, too difficult to see, and too opposed to what is really true. 5 Yet you will learn them, for their learning is the only purpose for your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world. 6 His simple lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, because they call from God and from your Self to you.

T-31.I.6. Is this a little Voice, so small and still It cannot rise above the senseless noise of sounds that have no meaning? 2 God willed not His Son forget Him. 3 And the power of His Will is in the Voice that speaks for Him. 4 Which lesson will you learn? 5 What outcome is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond all doubt and question? 6 Can it be your little learning, strange in outcome and incredible in difficulty will withstand the simple lessons being taught to you in every moment of each day, since time began and learning had been made?

Saturday we revisited Christmas reading at Chapter 15; Section X; The Time of Rebirth:

X. The Time of Rebirth



T-15.X.1. It is in your power, in time, to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son. 2 For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them. 3 Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. 4 But here it is the Holy Spirit's function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. 5 This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. 6 Yet you know not how to do it. 7 Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate [your] birth through Him. 8 The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. 9 Release me as I choose your own release. 10 The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.

T-15.X.2. The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. 2 For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. 3 What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer you? 4 And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift you offer me. 5 I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. 6 Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. 7 And by this limitation you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you.

T-15.X.3. We who are one cannot give separately. 2 When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. 3 For in our union you will accept all of our brothers. 4 The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. 5 Give it to me, that you may have it. p324 6 The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. 7 And by your acceptance of it, you offer it to everyone.

T-15.X.4. It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. 2 It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. 3 It seems like many, but it is all the same. 4 For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. 5 What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.

T-15.X.5. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. 2 Yet it [is] necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. 3 When you are willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. 4 The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. 5 This is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must make. 6 You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. 7 Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. 8 Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. 9 And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love. 10 If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. 11 Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. 12 For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. 13 And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.

Continued

[David Merrill]

_________________________________

Below the Line:


Referring to the wonderful and supernatural experience of formDenial, Projection, Integration and/or Transmutation. Here is an interesting video journey by music. First just enjoy 46&2 (Tool) by school children. Then examine the lyrics. Finally analyze what is behind the evolution of the human spirit into global unity consciousness and compare that to what the ACIM text describes as the Holy Instant. The song even describes exactly why we are taught that one must find the kingdom of God in each other, not alone. What I describe below is the Holy Instant as the quickening of certain chromosomes bringing about certain coherence between heritage and destiny in a substantial grid matrix.



One might look deeper into the linguisticsand etymologyredemption and forgiveness. You have all heard me say, When heritage and destiny are coherent there is peace.this MilestonecathedralsBill of Exchange citing the Charter for the Freedoms and Exemptions Granted to PatroonsI salvaged the Castle

[David Merrill]

Two heritages converge into one destiny. This is my family's coat of arms in the Great Hall!

[allodial]

I have long believed our creativity and creative abilities to be part of the inheritance. Forgiveness is important for enjoying things constructively rather than destructively especially in social settings. Even if alone like a hermit, bitterness can poison and is best gotten rid of through prayer, fasting, forgiveness, etc. There is too much good, clean fun to be had to hold on to bitterness.

Case in point, I get to enjoy photos of a quite amazing, joint creative effort. Re: architecture, it definitely beats looking at yet more cookie cutter shopping malls, casinos and apartment complexes, I'd say.

[David Merrill]

When heritage and destiny are coherent there is peace.

Thank you Allodial. That is a significant contribution. The people having fun are the beneficiaries all right.

[David Merrill]

On Easter Sunday a reporter came up to the Castle for a light-hearted travel clip.

https://youtu.be/ecEpb3gD-ak

[lorne]

That Castle is far out, man! I would like to visit someday. What can be conceived can be created.

[David Merrill]

Yep! Touching it is much different than looking at photographs. I am going up tomorrow after Kingdom Builders at church.

Life is very interesting!

[David Merrill]

Thank you for the opportunities Jim!




This is not art however - it is replication of nature. This Fibonacci Spiral and Golden Rectangle are found in the 61.55% intersections of the pentagram. The mathematics is found throughout all life. Since the purpose of the trust is to protect the Castle art from state and other seize engines.

[lorne]

We finally had the opportunity to visit the Castle recently. Amazing! Congratulations to Jim Bishop.