Threads of Understanding: The Journey Home

By Alan Ernst

As the book is titled Threads of Understanding, so are we-each life a strand that, in total, forms a world population determined at any one time by a collection of censuses. Whether or not we know at any specific moment what that total might be, we estimate or are in flux with a rash of opinions.

Much of our life in how and what we think are based on opinions to which we feel entitled that in turn have become fact. As many of our opinions are based on emotions, personal or that of family history, with values set accordingly, we hold them important; thus substantiating the influence they have to the here and now of our personal circle of circumstance. Perhaps opinionated fact would be a better term, for it abounds in about every social interaction we are faced to deal with.

Yet for the most part, we seem to concur with the fact that life is too short, and whether or not William Shakespeare assembled those words in phrase of understanding similar, we continue to think and say in a myriad of ways those words some speculate originated back in the seventeenth century. Is life too short, or again is that an opinion to which most would classify as a fact?

Challenging everyone to think beyond opinion, the intent of this book is to provide those threads of understanding to which reaches far beyond that of our emotions and senses. Shake the burden of discord we find of life and that of how we feel and think about ourselves and others.

While religions and that of seeking perpetual days of happiness seem foremost to finding meaning in life, reading this book will hopefully bring you the understanding to change the norm and in fact given time change how we live with a new appreciation of life itself and the meaning for which was intended. Though living together, we are each on our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638440208

Book preview

cover.jpg

Threads of Understanding

The Journey Home

Alan Ernst

Copyright © 2021 by Alan Ernst

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Anomalous Beginning

That Which You Call Me

Who Are We?

Up Till Now

Understanding

Mindfulness within Chaos

That of Right Conduct

Moving Forward

To those living and those arriving later:

Blessed be the day when all mankind see as one.

Preface

I know you’re out there somewhere, somewhere, somewhere; I know I’ll find you somehow and somehow I’ll return again to you.

The above phrase comes from the opening line of a song of the same title by the Moody Blues rock band from the year 1988. Presumptuous to say they coined the phrase, the intended thought had to do with a man’s search for that girl who is now only a memory, the relationship that had never gotten explored…

I, on the other hand, took to heart the words of that song as a personal mantra and quest forever looking for that which I still have yet to find in the physical form. Whether they are out there and it was not in my current destiny to find them, my intent now is to flush out the commonality to which we all are. Perhaps with what I will share with you in this book, to the extent people read it, the simplicity of what has been preached in an onslaught of words before me will take on the meaning for which it had been intended. Desperate as I see it, we need to end cyclical divisiveness that permeates the core of society in part challenged to agree on what life is about as well as what is to come thereafter.

As venues of violence, protests, and legalized criminality are becoming the norm, filled with mistrust between the many propagated by the few for reasons most don’t even understand, I feel pressured by a hopefulness that it is time to tell you what has been in my heart since early manhood and even longer should one understand the soul.

As sentient beings, our days unfold in a series of what-ifs. This is life, in fact, for most of us. Call it fate or that of decisions, motives to which only we knew or hastily made, it becomes who we are. The undeniable truth is that we are each a personal story. But why are we so different from the get-go, each challenged in our own way? If each is a personal story, where does our story end? Better yet, where did it begin?

The myriad of drugs advertised on television suggest that we are the same; just take this for that and that for this, and all might be well. By golly, we might just take all of them and, voila or ta-da, I am perfect. Not! Kidding aside, we are not that of test-tube babies, though in instances we might be that of guinea pigs and in no way will ever be earthly perfect. No! Difference has meaning, and to know the meaning will make a difference

My story began growing up in a middle-class family with a foundation nurtured during the fifties and the sixties. Like most, us so called baby boomers had the opportunity of learning from the Greatest Generation, our parents and others who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II or whose labor helped us win. In our lives, we have probably seen more change in the world than others who came before us. Children today listen to our stories yet roll their eyes looking for the nearest ubiquitous screen seamlessly offering knowledge better than ours at a faster pace. Where is this pace leading us when in fact chaos makes us shelter in place? Churches, which were meant to bring us together, have become churches tearing us apart. Governments for and by the people have become institutions alike, in that they alienate more than unit. The good people watch open-eyed to see those of lesser values clawing to reach the top without knowing they were on the mountain of the damned.

Ever and ever we seek gratification without effort, purpose without understanding. We take drugs like they are candy and look back on the result of our lives like the trashed bodies that they have become. Yet are they who we are, in reality, or have we missed the point of who and why we are?

Knowing that history tends to repeat itself, my hope is that as I understand, you will understand. Events from the past need not be events of the future. Only we can change that.

As great writers skillfully use the languages they have at hand to artfully tell tales of truth and fiction, luring our minds through the psychological tendencies that we have to misconstrue truths and open us all up for opinions, my intent is to keep it simple and to the point. The genocide of concepts that many understand, though less willing to share, needs to stop here. Distortion beyond recognition is the result of man’s interference reauthoring generation upon generation that which was taught but perhaps explained with too many words.

My hope is to explain the simplistic and to guard against interpretation. Helping each other, we will eventually see as one.

Part 1

Anomalous Beginning

Earth is that location to which each of us are placed at birth. But what does it mean? Earth, this place, us here and now. Science would say we are just another species of animal, Homo sapiens, and to get over it. In kindness or to pump up our ego, they might even add that unlike other animals, man is capable of self-reflection. Wow, thanks! That seems simple enough. An evolved species, resulting in time over the millennia since the big bang theory. But was the big bang indeed the beginning, what we know now and observe to exist, or could there be that which was before? Would any scientific theorist step forward in support of such an idea as a maybe or would the majority quickly dispel the concept as a no? We need to question this; I did. It is an underlying premise for what I