We wish a happy birthday to Geraldine McGuinn who lives in Carlow, Ireland: Siobhan Dunleavey who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland, and Debbie Green who lives in Honiton, East Devon. Enjoy your special day, Geraldine, Siobhan, and Debbie, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.
Today, Regina Mullins asks us to celebrate the life and death of her dear friend, Marie Farrell, who died one year ago today, aged 50 years from aggressive cancer. Marie, who was born in Galway was an only child. Though she never had children of her own, she worked as a Child Care Officer and spent her career advocating for the needs improved welfare of disadvantaged children. Regina and Marie were the closest of lifelong friends, and Marie was a bridesmaid at Regina’s wedding. Her loss is still greatly felt by Regina. One year on. R.I.P. Marie.
My song today is ‘The Times they Are-a Changing’. This song was written by Bob Dylan and released as the title track of his 1964 album of the same name. Dylan wrote the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the time, influenced by Irish and Scottish ballads. It would be interesting to know what Bob Dylan thinks about the past year when the Covid-19 virus has crossed the world in a pernicious cloak of indiscriminate death.
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Times will always produce change whether it pertains to fish, fowl, animal or human, or any creature which inhabits the land, sea, skies, or underground. That in essence is the core message of ‘evolution’ as expounded by Charles Darwin (1809-82), the English naturalist, geologist, biologist, and author of ‘On the Origin of Species’ (published 1859). Darwin’s proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors is now widely accepted, and considered a foundational concept in science
In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called ‘natural selection’, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in ‘selective breeding’. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by being buried in Westminster Abbey.
When his theory was initially expounded, many believers in God found the theory incompatible with Christian tenets. However, I am both a believer in the theory of Darwin, and also in the presence of a supreme being, I know as God who I believe created the heavens and earth. Two vital things need to be accepted to make both beliefs compatible in my mind. First, I accept that ‘time’ can be measured by more than one method and means, and secondly, scientists identify Darwin’s evolution theory as being the ‘process’ by which changes over time are explained, ever since the ‘Big Bang’ theory was universally accepted by academics. Science can postulate and can extrapolate how the process of all life (ie the ‘Big Bang’) came about, but science cannot state what/who instigated the ‘Big Bang’ that led to the creation/existence of the world as we know it today.
Here is one paragraph copied from a scientific paper of recent years:
‘The Big Bang Theory' is a cosmological model of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. The model describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of extremely high density and high temperature and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large -scale structure. Crucially, the theory observes that the farther away galaxies are, the faster they are moving away from Earth. Extrapolating this cosmic expansion backward in time using the known laws of physics, the theory describes a high-density state preceded by a singularity in which ‘SPACE AND TIME LOSE MEANING’ (the capitalisation of the last five words has been done by me).
The choices we have as thinking and rational individuals is whether we are more or less inclined towards the Christian story of ‘Creation’ or the scientific story of ‘Collision’, or can both stories be merely different chapters, written by a different hand, in the same Saga?
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Change is the one constant in all our lives. Indeed, change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past for confirmation of their present are certain to miss out on their future. The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change their future by merely changing their present attitude. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the course of history.
Change is always upon us, and for many, it is frightening to be taken out of one’s comfort zone of familiarity. It can seem incapacitating and deeply threatening, yet we can choose to embrace change as a challenge to make things better than they were, and move forward as a consequence. Constant change is necessary if we are to grow as a person in size, knowledge, and experience. Nothing stands still. Everyone who stands upon a rotating planet is by inference constantly on the move, and just as changes in nature are often imperceptible to the human eye, as they happen, we know that all plant life is constantly in the process of growth, even while the gardener sleeps.
If my greatest achievement in life is to be the man who founded the process of ‘Anger Management’ during the early 1970s, I can tell you truly, that advantageous method of work came about from my own life experiences, while being able to eventually harness and manage the anger states in the body of my youth in the most positive of ways. In short, I learned how to make my ‘anger’ work to my benefit! It took me a long time to learn how to manage my high anger levels until I was able to first discern the presence of anger in me, and then be able to distinguish between the anger which was natural and healthy to express and that harmful anger which needed to be expressed in a more acceptable form. Everyone thinks of changing the world sometimes, but few think first about the merits of changing themselves. Recognising and changing my own angry behaviour in my youth and learning how to make my ager states positively work for my own benefit, and understanding the process of that change, enabled me during my early thirties to introduce a verifiable and beneficial process to the world called ‘Anger Management’. Where others had successfully worked in reducing and better managing the unacceptably high levels of aggressive behaviour in some angry people before me, I founded a systematised method of how best to ensure that positive changes are more quickly brought about and are then reinforced and maintained. My process ensures that positively changed behaviour does not regress.
For instance, without progress of positive behavioural change being reinforced and maintained within a new lifestyle, all change runs the risk of being merely temporary instead of more permanent. Consider: there is less merit in a dieter losing three stone in weight in six months if when they stop dieting, they do not maintain their good dieting behaviour, and instead gradually return to their bad old eating habits. Such failure to ‘reinforce’ and ‘maintain’ their positive changes in behaviour will simply mean they put back all the weight they temporarily lost, plus more besides!
Given the past year of pandemic virus spread of Covid-19 across the world, changes of an unpleasant and restrictive nature have been forced upon all of us in varying degrees and with different resulting circumstances. We will all remember these changing times for the way we experienced them. If the entire human population of the world has learned one thing only from the changes we have had to endure during 2020, it is this. Changing circumstances in the environment oblige us all to change our behaviour, and if we do not, our behaviour will change us. It will change our environment and the world around us; and not for the better! This is the constant law of ‘changing times’, and the natural law of all time. Global warming of the planet, and the rise of Covid-19, and its different strains that inevitably follow are merely the most recent of warnings to mankind. Take heed, please.
Love and peace. Bill xxx