The Feast of Corpus Christi

The bells are ringing all over the town.

It's a big Catholic holiday today. There will be a procession, with the local priest leading a throng of believers, or non-believers, whichever they may be.

It is the “Feast of Corpus Christi”, the Celebration of “The Body of Jesus Christ.”

Today's Festival celebrates the Meal which Jesus hosted for his disciples and during which he offered some bread and wine with the alleged words: “Take this and eat from it, this is my body.

Offering some wine in a cup he urged his disciples to “drink from this, all of you, for this is my blood.”

It is reasonable to assume that these words were meant allegorically and not literally.

In the year 1215 A.D. Pope Innocent III decided that during Mass, celebrated by a Catholic Priest, “Transubstantiation” takes place, meaning that the wafer of bread actually and substantially changes into the body of Christ and that the Wine actually and substantially becomes the Blood of Jesus Christ.

Just to be on the safe side, the Catholics further insist that, although the “Essence” of the waver changes into the body of Christ, taste, looks and smell do not change, but remain the same as before.

(That is probably the reason why Luther's Protestants believe that only part of the waver changes into the body of Christ, while the other part remains the waver.)

Neither Innocent 3^rd, nor any other Pope or Priest after Innocent considered this consuming of Flesh and Blood of a human being as Cannibalism.

I think I was in Third Grade of Public School, I was some 8 years old, when the Priest, who taught Religion, told us not to bite the Waver, since this would hurt Jesus, but to let it slowly dissolve against the roof of our mouth, so as not to inflict pain on Jesus Christ.

Even as an 8 year old I had serious doubts as to the truth of this warning, and I wondered then why this man lied to us, when just the other day he told us that to tell a Lie was a deadly sin and you would burn for it, either in Purgatory or in Hell, whichever the circumstances might dictate.

The Catholic Hierarchy seems always to have been hooked on “Hokus Pocus – Abara Cadabra” seemingly in the hope that common folk would be more impressed by this than by the simple truth.

If Christ had been reported just to have said to his dinner guests: Here is some bread and some wine, and each time you partake of either, think of me and of what I have taught you, it would have been less astonishing than the 'bag of magic tricks' the RCC unpacked and still unpacks.

Truly, the more I think about this the weirder it gets.

Bertstravels

shakes his old head in wonder.

The one and only: The GRAND CANYON

The greatest spectacle of them all:

Grand Canyon

I have visited this greatest natural wonder twice.

Both times I came away with a feeling of wonder and awe.

How can you not? Just consider the dimensions:

446 km long, up to 29 km wide and over 1,850 m in depth.

Over several million years the Colorado river cut through the rock,

while at the same time the plates on both sides were lifted,

exposing almost 2 billion years of Geological Development.

For more years than one can count,

the rims and the bottom of this chasm were settled by native people of the area.

There were the Havasupai, the Navajos, the Hopis and the Puebloans 

among others, who lived there,

until Franciscan Missionaries, accompanied by soldiers came during the 1500

and attempted to convert the Natives to Catholicism.

Fortunately these efforts remained largely unsuccessful!

How much more could I tell you?

Better still: Visit the Grand Canyon yourself, because no picture, no story will

endow you with the sense of wonder you will experience.

In  the meantime, let's look at some pictures!

Yes, You read right:

That's 1 Billion and 700 Million years. (Give or take a couple of months.)

Yes, this is your intrepid 'Explorer' and Photographer, 

standing precariously on the rim of this wonder.

Neither words, nor Pictures can adequately describe this land.

It is something one must experience in Nature.

check the people in the right hand upper corner-

Petrified Forrest

During the Triassic Period, Something like 225 million years ago, mighty Conifers graced the banks of the rivers. Floods caused the riverbanks to become less and less stable, until those mighty trees came crashing down. There they lay for years and years until the time was counted in the hundreds of millions of years. All the time the wooden cells absorbed silicates and slowly turned to stone.

...over time, mineral deposits filled and then replaced the wooden cells until,

millions of years later, the wooden tree changed to solid rock.

Please note the line of stone logs running along the comb of this hill. (above)

Hundreds, likely thousands of these petrifications scatter the valley.

Varying sized pieces of this petrified rock litter the county side.

Logs lie scattered around and I simply must descend

to photograph this scenery.

... here are some close-ups of these once mighty conifers,

turned to stone in all their chemical substance.

Of course it is strictly prohibited to remove even the smallest part of such stone.

From the outer bark to the very center of this once mighty conifer,

the stone shows different colors.

The Painted Desert

A member of the Navajos living in this area told me that the name of this flower is

"The Canterbury Trumpet"

I'll just have to take his word for it.

The "Indian Paintbrush"

The "Painted Desert" is part of the American Badlands.

A rainbow of colorful sedimentary layers reflect in varying hues.

The Hopis and Navajos have lived there for hundreds of years. 

The colors of the exposed rock change with the angle at which the Sun strikes the land.

No picture can show you the real beauty of this land.

Montezuma's Castle

Montezuma's Castle was never built as a Castle, nor has it any connection with Montezuma.
Well, so here you have it. These cliff homes were built somewhere between 1100 and 1400 A.D. by the Sinagua People. near what is today Camp Verde in Arizona.
Accessible only by retractable ladders, they provided some security from marauding bands.
Why are they called "Montezuma's Castle" ?
For the same reason that American Natives are called Indians.
Europeans explorers simply did not know any better. They were not "the sharpest knives in the drawer."
Columbus thought that he had arrived in India, and called the people he met there  "Indians."
White explorers found these dwellings in 1860 and thought that they had a connection with Montezuma, although he was born after these "Castles" had long been abandoned.
Anyway, it's fun to speculate.

Welcome to Arizona

It is difficult, maybe impossible, to describe the State of Arizona.

One simply has to go here and visit its many wonders.

My Brother in Law, his Son and I did just that.

Here are some of the many pictures I took during these weeks.

The different colored layers 

speak of the millions of years of  evolution

Hopi and Navajo Territory -...