My cat’s brain runs on a very early version of Windows. I can almost see the sensory inputs working their way through his mental programming:
“Oh look, a door is opening. I might like to go out. 
“I don’t want to seem too eager. I’ll take my time. 
“The door is still open. Oh oh! It’s starting to close. 
“Perhaps I should hurry!
“Ow, that hurt! Who shut the door on me?”
I don’t write that to disparage feline intelligence. My point is that even thoughts that seem instantaneous take time to process. There is always a lag between input and output, impetus and consequence.
The lake in front of my home, for example, is a heat sink. It receives its maximum input of solar energy in mid-June. But it continues to get warmer even as the days grow shorter. It won’t start cooling until early fall. The lake’s output is out of sync with the sun’s input. 
In the same way, governments change. But the processes instituted by previous governments keep grinding on.

Massive momentum
Changing institutions is like trying to turn a supertanker. The pilot turns the wheel, but 500,000 tons of inertia wants to keep going straight ahead.
That’s why I worry about those supertankers -- burdened with crude oil, liquefied natural gas, bitumen, whatever -- threading the maze of narrow passages on B.C.’s north coast. 
Still, turning a supertanker is easy compared to re-directing an entire industry. “Even as the global warming crisis makes it clear that coal, natural gas, and oil are yesterday’s energy,” writes activist Bill McKibben, “the momentum of two centuries of fossil fuel development means new projects keep emerging in a zombie-like fashion.”
At the Paris Climate Conference in December, 155 countries vowed to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. At the same time, pipeline projects queued up waiting for approval. McKibben listed 15 in North America alone, five of them in Canada. He could have added dozens more in the Middle East and Central Asia. 
“And it’s not just pipelines,” McKibben continued. “I couldn’t begin to start tallying up the number of proposed liquid natural gas terminals, prospective coal export facilities and new oil ports, fracking wells, and mountaintop removal coal sites…”
Entrenched practices develop their own momentum.

Not just the business world
The oil industry is not yet 150 years old. The world’s first oil well was dug in 1858 near Sarnia, Ontario; Canada didn’t become a major oil producer until 1947, when Imperial’s Leduc #1 gushed on line. 
By comparison, the Roman Catholic Church has built up 2,000 years of momentum. So imagine the task confronting Pope Francis, as he tries to adjust the course of a ship with 1.3 billion passengers. 
My own church is barely 90 years old. Yet it too struggles to overcome entrenched inertia.
I doubt if many of my church’s 2.5 million members and adherents still believe in a flaming hell somewhere underground. Yet its official statement of faith, originally patched together by four denominations, still asserts that “the finally impenitent shall go away into eternal punishment…” 
Ministers must be in “essential agreement” with that statement of faith to be ordained; if they dare change their minds, diehard traditionalists will challenge their ministry. 
By comparison with churches, my cat’s mind works blindingly fast. 
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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
        To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN

Eleanor Geen had a little fun with her response to last week’s column: “Your epiphany column was a wonderful epiphany!”

Don Sandin sent along a couple of his own epiphanies: “As I stood in the shower I was aware of a little flying insect on the wall very near my hand. Under normal circumstances I would have instinctively swatted that little object. Instantly the thought came, ‘I think I’ll let it live.’ 
“That thought immediately took me back to a New York hospital. I was there in a coma for seven weeks. I had had emergency surgery on a ruptured abdominal aorta aneurysm. My status was grim. 
“My wife, Peggy, called in a healer named Jacklyn Johnston. While Peggy stood with Jacklyn in that ICU room sending me healing energy, there appeared in the room Sathya Sai Baba, (a sage who was in India). She said he looked concerned and put his head on my chest. The message she received was that ‘pneumonia was killing him.’ After a while he stepped away, looking serene and disappeared. Jacklyn said that when he disappeared, he saw tiny orange particles disintegrating in the space where Sathya Sai Baba had stood.
The next morning I began breathing on own and my kidneys were functioning. I’m convinced that God had also said, ‘I think I’ll let him live.’”

Laurna Tallman added her own insights: “Epiphanies come out of the right-brain when the over-taxed left-brain rests, in dreams, in day-dreams, in a momentary pause when the speed of cerebral integration has slowed a little. There are other types of ‘epiphanies’ when glimpses of the future arrive in consciousness as words or images or a vague ‘hunch. I think you are generally correct about doing the homework, but that's not an inviolable rule.”
I hadn’t thought of visions of the future or premonitions as epiphanies, but that would certainly fit. 

My reference to Epiphany as a religious celebration prompted Jack Driedger to recall the festivals of his Mennonite childhood: “I was born in an Old Colony Mennonite community in 1926. My parents were devout Old Colony Mennonites. Some holidays we celebrated that some other Mennonites did not celebrate were:
1. An extra holiday at Christmas after Boxing Day for a total of three holidays.
2. January 6 we celebrated ‘Heilige Drei König’ -- Holy Three Kings 
3. An extra holiday at Easter. We celebrated Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, and as well the Tuesday after Easter Monday for a total of three holidays.
4. After Easter (forty days?) we celebrated “Pinkjsten" or Pentecost followed by two more holidays for a total of three. “Pinkjsten” was the day the people who had taken the required classes were baptized. 
I taught in a one room elementary school in an Old Colony Mennonite area where these holidays were recognized. The last school day before a holiday that was celebrated only by Old Colony Mennonites, I asked the pupils before I dismissed them who would be coming to school that day. Nobody raised his hand, so I took the day off and marked that day in the attendance records as follows: ‘School open. No attendance due to religious holiday.’”

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PSALM PARAPHRASES

Psalm 71 is sometimes described as an old man's prayer, but it could equally well apply to a young child. Both are vulnerable and dependent on others. I chose to paraphrase from the child's viewpoint. Every one of us has been a child; only a few of us have been old -- yet.

1   Don't let them make fun of me. 
Let me hide myself behind your skirts. 
2   Comfort me and protect me; 
listen to my fears, and enfold me in your arms. 
3   When I am in trouble, I run to you.
I have no one but you to rely on. 
4   The bigger kids won't leave me alone; 
their greedy hands keep grabbing at me. 
Rescue me from their clutches. 
5   From the time I was tiny, you have been my refuge.
I have always been able to trust you. 
6   Before I was born, I felt safe in your womb. 
As an infant, I rested on your breast. 
You are all I have, and all I ever had.

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
Alan Reynold's weekly musings, punningly titled “Reynolds Rap,” write reynoldsrap@shaw.ca
Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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