Power Outage

The other night our power went out quite unexpectedly. With no bad weather in sight, we're still in the dark as to the reason for the outage. It happened right before dusk and lasted 5 hours, so we hauled out our hurricane supply box and lit all of our candles and operated by flashlight until we finally just gave up and went to bed. (Of course, then the lights came on!)

Builderman has a gadget that I used to tease him about. It's called a "cyclops headlamp" and he originally bought it for camping but found it's really handy in a number of situations. I coveted his light the other night, as he was hands-free with light shining wherever he looked. Hard to have a conversation when you're blinded by the light, but nevertheless, I want that which I used to mock him about.

(I thought "How ridiculous - CYCLOPS headlamp ?!?") Granted, I won't wear it all over town but who cares what you look like in the dark?


It's a major inconvenience to be without power. And I've been pondering this for a couple of days now. I dug out a quote that I haven't read for quite some time as I thought about how accustomed we are to all the high-tech gadgets that keep us plugged into the world.

John Taylor wrote these words in 1979 and they are more true today than when he wrote them.

The computer makes us fantastically more able to calculate and analyze.

It does not help us to meditate.

We have instruments to enable us to see everything from the nebulae to the neutron – everything except ourselves.

We have immeasurably extended our gift of sight but not of insight. For that we have the same equipment as the eighth-century prophets.

Potentially the same, but actually poorer, for while we have been so busy extending one aspect of the knowing and telling self, we have allowed other aspects to atrophy.

We have built ourselves up into power transmitting stations, but as receiving sets we are feeble.

John V. Taylor “The Go-Between God”

I want to be a better receiving set, how about you?