The Wastelands

A lot of our favorite philosophies, theologies, ideologies arrive as rebellious retaliation of the previous generation’s values. In theology, this often looks like a pendulum of: God is love, God is justice; in culture we are working towards an equilibrium of personal value for all human persons: women, non-white racial opportunity, civil rights options for those with varying sexual preferences, though cultural mindset moves slowly, pushing against a mountainous inertia of bigotry; and our ideologies often gag on war most following a bloodthirsty example, and most feast on imperialism after a brief spat of peace.

This swing has tempered a little as the freight of the internet wakes by, leaving only the opinions and arguments of anonymous naysayers and the burnt-road pathways of those waging new battles – it’s a graveyard, a haunted cathedral, a thousand lasers flying through empty space, never touching. And everyone, opinions or no, wants that flare-up-high of attention, that brief, orgasmic stardom, that glimmer of disgust, anger, joy, or reaction and then out like magnesium, blinding and then gone.

But if you want something lasting, what then? If your appetite is larger than immediate and next, how to whet the sacred hungers? More than many, my life seesaws on a balance, not merely camping on gluttony, but swinging between fasting and feasting. It’s not bipolar, but a antsy flailing for balance, as I stand on the barrel of life and roll down the whitewater rapids.

And happiness can be a drug. Until you’ve found it, you cannot imagine the addiction, the drag, the earnest importance of more,more,more. In the same way running releases endorphins, as sex releases oxytocin and endorphins, as every drug inhibits or multiplies enzymes and neurotransmitters, a fluctuating, dramatic instability of reality. Everything we intake alters internal physiology to some extent, whether it’s food, sunlight, touch, or sound.  

Happiness is strange in that I can’t remember a time I rebounded from it. A cause of happiness might unsettle me if I’m rebelling from the ideologies behind it, and I may even be disgusted by my happiness at gluttony, sloth, or pride at certain times, but from the happiness itself I rarely find myself aghast. I never think, “I wish I had less cause for smiling today” or “today was depressing and I hope tomorrow is a real downer.”

I don’t believe many people truly seek sorrow in permanence, though such people exist. Why? For the same two-second spotlight? For a sympathetic touch or love in passing? There are always reasons. But those are not my shoes. Today, I’m happy. I don’t want to pendulate, or seesaw, or whip back into any other place; I like this one, and here I’ll stay.

Was I always happy? I believe I might have been. But I haven’t found the endless bounds yet. 

Imagining Worlds (Part Deux)

Let’s imagine another world. In our first, we imagined a world where innocents were protected, shielded by spiritual firewalls from harm beyond their ken. That world has trouble with variables as collateral damage might affect a community where the target was one evil individual. You cannot lose a finger without hurting the whole. In that way, bad things might happen to innocents by proxy: a mother losing a son, a community losing an individual.

        That world struggled to maintain a sense of fairness while still allowing room for free will. It’s a tragic element of humanity that free will precipitates ill and not good will. But there are other options of worlds that might offer a greater sense of fairness.

        In our new world, good is defined in a similar fashion as the last, as that which increases life and encourages well-being, family, friendship, kindness, and love. Instead of spiritual firewalls surrounding the righteous (of varying degrees of good), we’re going to assault the core of evil. There are a couple of methods for this: evildoers are unable to consider/contemplate/actuate anything that might affect an innocent. If an evildoer tries to hurt, even by collateral, an innocent, something (god, nature, physical etc) prevents the evil from occurring.

        Some examples: a man tries to set fire to his own house overnight because of depression. The fire either cannot start if there are innocents in the house, or everyone notices immediately and his attempt is thwarted. Possibly his wife wakes up and removes the children from the house. The trick here is: what if the husband dies? That is collateral and hurts those innocent children a great deal. What if the house does burn down? How are the children and wife protected from that sort of evil? Is the burning of the house prevented in general?

        This actually causes a lot of problems within this world at large. Things such as bombs, guns, and weaponry in general could scarcely exist because the possibility for collateral is too great. Also, we run into a similar problem of definitions: is only greater harm prevented and what or who defines greater harm? If an innocent child is incredibly close to their great grandfather, closer even than to their parents, and that relative dies of old age gently in their sleep, that might still cause traumatic pain for a young child. Nothing of great evil occurred, only the natural flow of life. Is the argument here that the child should learn of death? Perhaps death isn’t a great evil, or only in some cases. Maybe we claim that no evil here occurred at all, only sadness, and sadness is necessary and good in some instances. But it is hard wishing sadness of any sort on a child.

Let’s consider other examples. A father is a poor worker, either from laziness or injury, and is removed from his job. The entire family is affected and possibly short on food.  A teenager is tired of life and wishes to end it, poised on the brink of a bridge over dark, turbulent waters – how will his lover feel, his family? How are they affected? A bright new prodigy for sports breaks his ankle and misses a draft; a mother who cannot support her children births triplets instead of a single child; a little child crosses the road when his mother isn’t looking; a father and mother don’t get along, and a messy divorce tears up their children; a teenager gets pregnant due to choices made, but what of the child? Whose life is sacrificed for whose life chances? Just read the news. A million things occur every day that aren’t necessarily evil in intent, but precurse negative outcomes. A simple sickness, a misstep, a series of events that elicits shame, a feeling of negativity – countless pieces of this puzzle that is mankind, and no man is an island.

There was an experiment done by Japanese scientists regarding negativity. A bunch of individuals were told to direct negative emotions at water or ice, and the scientists compared the molecular structure of the water with positive feelings and noticed distinct differences. Our emotions are not isolated within us. One of the great causes for depression and sorrow is loneliness, but our existence never affects only ourselves. But if lightning strikes a tight mob of people holding hands, more than one person will feel the surge of electricity. We find ourselves in a difficult place of limiting actions for everyone due to collateral evil.  I couldn’t jump off a mountain, but not from fear, but due to the horror and trauma it might cause those innocents near to me.

What about a perfect world? Where none of these things mattered? We consider it a breach of free will, but what if evil was impossible? It’s not a breach of free will that I cannot fly, because my limbs don’t support that behavior. What if our human bodies didn’t support evil?

There used to be an argument against the existence of a god based on omnipotence: “can god create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?” The counterargument usually explains that such a rock cannot be created since it is against the nature of rocks to exist at such a capacity. In the same way, god cannot create a square circle because geometrically that is nonsense.  If our bodies could not support any action of evil or malign behavior, the behaviors would not be missed. Seeing birds fly, I might wistfully imagine myself flying, but I don’t actually miss the behaviors because I, myself, have never flown. If evil did not exist, would we miss the opportunity to behave in such a manner?

We enter into a strange theoretical landscape with a perfect world. Is there death? Is there sickness? Is there natural disaster? It is interesting to imagine the status of such a universe and all of the differences that must exist. If there is no death, is there reproduction? There wouldn’t be a need for reproduction beyond a certain point. And is there no bacteria or parasitic organisms? Fungus feast off of detritus, bacteria endlessly splitting without death, animals living an eternity – would the world find itself soon overcrowded with a burgeoning of life? Where would the resources for all this life come from? I suppose from inorganic matter and perhaps the fruit of trees, though when the earth lost its savory richness, what then? A perfect world seems to thrive on a different chemistry. It’s almost unfathomable from the vantage point of a world where everything seems based on little deaths.

But is it plausible? I don’t know. I suppose it seems almost elvish and surreal, where each seeming day might be an aeon and each eternity a day. There wouldn’t be any need for reproduction, really, and merely an endless feasting of Epicurean proportions. 

        Yet in the end, all of these worlds are hypothetical. We could have a perfect world, though we might not know what that entails. The problem is, a lot of us like to keep our imperfect world, but we want those innocents to be untouched. It’s hard, because there is no such possible world. I did, actually, imagine another world, similar to the first two. What if we imagined a world where only the most extreme of innocents was protected while the rest were on their own? In a sense, this world is like an rpg where someone who has just created their character is invincible for several hours until they get their character under control. Is this viable? I’ll leave this open for thought. I imagine at some point it falters under the same stresses of our other worlds. 

Abraham and Isaac

One of the hardest Biblical passages to swallow for me, and I doubt these experiences are mine alone, is the Binding of Isaac. Even reading the anonymous Hebrews author’s comments on faith, even reading commentaries and the various viewpoints that attempt to reconcile the request of a perfectly good, loving, kind God asking a faithful servant to sacrifice his promised son, this passage sits unwell within my gut. Even the story of Job I find more palatable at times, though not reasonably so, than this story. I think the story feels more visceral and relatable than the mythological, archetypal, fabular book of Job.

                The problem of evil is the most difficult of challenges. I grapple with this question constantly and not as doubt but as opposition, as competition, as that foe that subverts directed motion. So I dreamt up a world without. Not a world entirely bereft of terrible things, but a world devoid of evil allowed to target that which is considered good. A couple of difficulties immediately presented themselves.

1.       What determines goodness? Is goodness a spectrum? A black and white? Are there those who are “innocent” and “guilty”, and the innocents are immune to damage while the guilty are laser-sighted and hunted down? Or is goodness and innocence a graph. You can be good but not innocent, innocent and good, or guilty and evil, or varying degrees of each. This graph helps a little, because those same horrors which afflict the overall good might be justified if they also were not innocent. Is it possible to be good and guilty (not guilt-ridden, but objectively guilty)?

2.       Assuming levels of goodness, what does this effectually mean in this world? Is there a standard bar like a height mark at an amusement park: only those of a goodness greater than this height are protected from this level of evil? For instance, a perfectly good human being who has commit no sins won’t even get sick, while someone who has transgressed (whatever standard determines transgression), depending on their level of iniquity, might experience colds, the flu, or even food poisoning. If their sin is great, they might even experience the greater of evils possible (as determined by randomness? God? Natural selection? Nature?)

3.       Who determines goodness? And is it a balance? Common Christian belief argues that sin is final and irrevocable without grace. A murder in cold blood cannot be outweighed by a thousand acts of kindness and giving in terms of eternity, or even a million. But since I’m god of this imaginary world, what do I believe is the most culturally fair, according to conventional philosophical premises? Let’s believe that a contrite and willing soul might eradicate the stain of sin in an earthly purgatory of sorts. A good person might commit an atrocity which dips his/her soul-goodness down into evil for a short time until such time as his/her actions raise that level back into “the safe zone” once more.

At this juncture, everything is so ephemeral and intangible that this world doesn’t even make sense. So I’ll throw out a couple of analogies to add flesh onto the dust of this earth. First, we have to add a standard of goodness. There are a lot of philosophical and ethical measures by which to determine good that sages have discussed for centuries. For ease of conversation, I’m going to suggest a simple utilitarian ethics, and “good” under this system promotes love, life, kindness, care, gentleness, giving, peace, patience, honesty, and integrity. This is all a bit of an oversimplification. World-building is intricate and I have not the time for it in great detail in this thought-experiment.

        Let’s say that in this world, a god decides at the end what is good and what is not, and we’ll define God by that system of good. We’ll pick a god whose entire purpose is computation: determining statistics of good, updating a few csv files on behavior of individuals, and does some server maintenance every once in a while. God isn’t arbitrarily deciding, but is following a clear system of good and evil like a computer. There is no random number generation in the decision making, only a series of variables. God is without emotional capacity in this thought experiment.

       

        In our world, there is a type of game called an rpg, or a role-playing-game. DnD, online role playing games, or single-played versions where the user controls a character in an imagined world and makes decisions. Because this is what we are doing, of a fashion, this will provide some good analogies to our world. In these worlds, there are often a couple types of zones: Player vs Player zones, Player vs Enemy zones, and gladiator zones. Gladiator zones are really just PvP zones that you enter willingly in order to test strength; Player vs Player zones means that you enter at your risk; a stronger player might be lying in wait to destroy you. Player vs Enemy zones are the safe zones, where you can battle beside unknown players and they are unable to apply damage to your character.

        This gives us a good analogy. Let’s give ourselves a spectrum of good. At each level of good (or evil), players are subject to different types of damage. If you are perfect, you are untouchable. If you are almost completely good, with light iniquity, casual evil might befall: light sickness, bumping your nose, stubbing your toe, burning your tongue lightly on tea.  If the black plague hits your city, the chances of catching it are nil. And on down the spectrum: middling people experience middling evils; completely evil persons are subject to manipulation of person and evils embodying the gravest harm. The goal of this system, of course, is fairness. And it isn’t apparent goodness that determines a person, but the underlying statistics of their being. A secret murderer might appear good to his family and friends, but his internal infestation of evil would be great according to the system.

        The system does not take sides. There is a natural selection of evil and good. But there are some problems. Let’s say I’m perfectly good. I’m also a daredevil. So I jump off a mountain cliff with a squirrel suit without adequate training. Do I die? I’m young and naïve, but unquestionably perfect. Am I miraculously saved? Next: I’m a perfectly evil person, and I can do what I want. I get into a truck loaded up with explosives and drive it into a preschool. What happens? All the kids miraculously survive and there is no damage? And what about situations with no criminal intent: it’s an icy day and I’m doing a little distracted driving and my car slips into the other lane and into an oncoming car. Does the system reach out and replace me like a Mario Kart vehicle?

        Imagine it like this: good people possess a semi-permeable firewall spiritual membrane about their being. This firewall prevents untoward activity and negative outcome. A natural phenomenon hits the town, but they are unaffected. There is no chance of them being affected. They don’t even need faith. Abraham walking up that mountain doesn’t need faith – his goodness prevents Isaac’s death, right? And that begs another question, even about that murderer.

        Let’s say that someone is a terrible murderer, in secret (let’s not consider, for the moment, who he’s allowed to murder. Let’s assume this person is very, very bad of heart), but that he’s well loved by a younger brother and his mother and father and family. They are all innocent and perfect. His death affects not only them, but everyone within his perfect community. Is that not an evil befalling the entire population? How can a nuclear bomb strike a city and kill only those who deserve it? The problem here exists that distinction of collateral damage is impossible as long as damage exists.

        So we could consider another world, a world without collateral damage or damage at all. Let’s imagine that world. Nothing bad could happen. Is this the Garden of Eve without the central component: the tree of good and evil? In this situation, we also run into problems. Either there is no concept of evil – I couldn’t steal your waffle. It would be physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually impossible to steal – or evil is prevented. If evil is prevented, if I’m driving a car around and try and force it into another lane, I’m prevented from doing so by “the great preventative rules from the heavens”. In a way, these are like borderline cases in programming. Can I walk over that mountain in the video game? Not if I can’t jump over the fence or if there is an invisible wall bordering the town.

        But my world isn’t working, and I’m not sure how to fix it. And if I cannot fix it, I have to remedy this world in my head, this God in my head with the perfect God that told Abraham to sacrifice his son, with innocents being sexually abused, with refugees from nations being forced out by militant extremists and terrorists, with war and famine and malnutrition for children. I have to reconcile the inequality extant with a God capable of preventing it who doesn’t.  I have to walk with Abraham up that mountain, expecting the sacrifice and having faith that God will provide.

        This is a harder walk. I cannot simply level-up my goodness and make achievements and rewards by following a life-checklist. I will get sick, my relatives may die, but the price was free will and humanity chose poorly.

        Do I struggle with Abraham’s perspective more, or Isaac’s? Isaac the promised son, whose loving father bound him onto the altar and raised the kris above his head. Salvation was found in sacrifice, even then. It’s so hard to swallow all of this. What was God telling us about our world? What should I be learning that I am missing?

        Kierkegaard wrong a novel on an imagined journey with Abraham at this time.  He wrote some interesting statements that have provoked some thought along these lines.

        For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

~ Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)

       

Then faith's paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through his relation through the universal... Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence; and faith is then a temptation.

        ~ Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)

The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac—but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is.

        ~ Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)

        I’m not certain what I think. There is too much here to reconcile in my head that I simply cannot contain it. I read and re-read this passage, and find little that is comforting in my philosophical meditations over it. Earlier I mentioned the ethical standard of utilitarianism. This is the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But this is impossible to know with our angle of knowledge, isn’t it? Without God’s understanding of cause and effect, how are we to know whether our actions will provide the greatest good for the greatest number.

        Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with the concept of peace in the face of evil himself. He wrote:

If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver

        He says that, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”  I think about this in relation to utilitarianism. What if killing Hitler made things worse? Utilitarianism suggests that murder in this case would be a greater evil. And you cannot always know the ends to the means that you practice. So what is ethically good cannot rely on an intellectual void of chance, can it? The end does not justify the means, and certainly the means cannot justify the end, either, right?            

        So that which is good must be based on intention and values, a Quality of sorts, such as that present in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (by Robert Pirsig). This is a great Platonic Form, and our adhering to its designs as closely as we may, knowing only that we attempt to draw nearer to divine perfection in our actions, is good.  Good isn’t actions only, but intent, purpose, belief, and heart that initiate the behavior.

        And I reach the end of the trails of thought, finding myself once more at the beginning. But the beginning offers new paths that I failed to notice before, and I must travel down each, hoping I’ll find the finish line eventually. I have no answers, only rambles and empty thought experiments. Nothing of any particular meaning or anything worth taking away in the long run. There are more holes in these arguments and thoughts than a perforated straw man. It is, in a sense, a red herring, a non sequitur, but what purpose is stream of consciousness save this?

       

Echo

The most mind-bogglingly obvious features of anything are the flaws, when viewed from a critical vantage. Our soul selves harbor needs, wants, and our minute foibles like baubles and broaches of indefinable value. Every time I write, I cringe at the glaring weaknesses of the English language with regards to relational linguistics: love, needs, wants, hopes, dreams - the words falter beneath the scope of what I crave to mean.
Needs. Wants. I wish there was a stratus of grey between these saturated extremes. I'm trying to navigate desires with a shoddy sextant beneath a sky of foreign stars. At least I feel like that's so, though feelings, too, are foreign features in this enigmatic landscape of the soul. Needs I categorize too closely to actual body requirements: food, sleep, water. If asked what I need, I usually reply "nothing." I'm not dying, am I? Sure there are psychological, physiological, emotional, psychosocial, biological imperatives, but are these moment-by-moment needs? Can I survive a day in no-space without these being met?
The next difficulty is "wants". Without the capacity for transforming those crude "scientific" terms into meaningful terms (a hug, a debriefing, a held hand), wants start feeling selfish, rude, and narcissistic. I'm staring into a pond, delighted at the beauty of my reflected face, wanting only to touch up the rippling water and clarify my own existence - how boorish and egocentric. But because these words: "needs" and "wants" are equivocated within my understanding, I cannot dissect my desires, necessities, hopes, dreams, passions, angsts, fears, failures, ennui, listlessness, pain, and tensions into queries and actions aimed at balancing out the terrible into the tolerable.
Christendom has instilled in me a refusal to accept empathy as selfishness, and a nervousness about help, and this bitter misunderstanding has transformed loving-kindness into a farcical facade of pity. Not in hindsight, but at the casual inquiry - I never need, I shall not want. If I'm lying down in green pastures and led beside still waters, either my wants must be illusory or faithless, or out of line with belief.

Problem of Pain Musings - Part 1

The problem of pain, of evil, is a difficult one. It's been grappled with for some time now, and we reach no easy solution. Hypothetically, you can argue that God and evil aren't incompatible existences, and that evil can exist with God in the same universe, but how do you explain that to a refugee from a war zone? A mother who loses a child, a trauma victim, a torture victim, or to someone whose child suffers from cancer or agonizing affliction? 

It's hardest with the children. What have they done, the toddlers, the pre-births, the adolescents stricken with pain from the moment of consciousness until whatever ensues - how is this rectified with a perfectly good, all-powerful God?

I have no answers.

Why do we have a problem with evil and pain, anyway? Biblically, we know sin entered the world through Adam, and with sin, death. Romans 5:12 tells us: Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. This doesn’t console unbelievers and, frankly, doesn’t console suffering believers in the slightest, either. Why? Shouldn’t we know that sin, death, pain, and the horrible entered the world through our rebellion against God? Why do we suffer such angst over intolerable pains, knowing the fault originates in our ancestral transgression? Do we feel blameless for such a distant past?

Partly, it’s the disparity, the randomness, the unFAIRness of who suffers – and who doesn’t - that conceives a self-righteous entitlement and anger. Is it a valid displeasure? Who knows. We live all our lives admitting and hearing that life is unfair, and expect it should be anyway. It’s never our fault that it isn’t fair, like a twisted, alternate, Dunning-Kruger syndrome. But it still should be, right? Equality, in opportunity and person, seems like a righteous aim for a religion of love and impartiality.

Since life is unfair, God must be either malicious and cruel or missing-in-action in deistic fashion – this is our conclusion. Are we right, and are those the only two options? Really, it’s such a difficult and pervasive problem, and even if you theoretically arrive at an understanding, the instant your child suffers from endless pain without surcease, the invectives loosen from the lips.

I’ve been reading Job, and I’m no expert in Job theology (JG – that’s you), but it’s clear right from the beginning that Job is considered a blameless individual as per the story. He’s not a child, and a bit of the powerful symbolism inherent in child-metaphor is removed, but the story is important. God allows, even suggests, the absolute destruction of a faithful follower.

Right from the start, God himself (in the story) says that Job is blameless, and allows (even encourages) Satan to destroy Job as proof of Job’s faith. With Abraham, God tested his faith by asking him to sacrifice his only son; with Job, his entire prosperity: children, home, health, wealth. David as punishment for a sin was chased around the world by armies and lost a son as well; Eli’s entire family was doomed by the sins of a father.

God does not take sin lightly, but we cannot fully comprehend the punishment of sin – how is a baby’s death punishment of sin? Who sinned? Why was this baby punished with death or this child with torture, and not that one, whose parents swindle and steal and murder with a capitalistic vengeance? We have tunnel vision, but why-why-why must the innocent suffer? Are they truly suffering the sins of their parents? Why does it always seem so arbitrary?

I think following this path easily leads to bitterness. When a baby or child suffers, the parent suffers immensely. So perhaps that could be some twisted form of justice over the iniquity of a parent, but even though we see that happening in the Old Testament and we can somehow make ourselves understand it, when the faces of our children and the people we love endure these pains, it’s an injustice, an atrocity. There is a difference, yes, but still none of these answers why, or whether we are right, or what sort of God we believe in that allows these sorts of things.

There are a lot of troubling aspects about the story of Job, but one that has been running through my head is the punishment of others to prove the faith of Job. All Job’s children die, all his servants – and even when Job’s wealth is restored, and he regains children, the originals are not returned. How do you recompense a life?

Personally, this is something I’ve been contemplating a bit over the course of my life. I lost a little brother at birth, as my mother suffered from pneumonia and was forced into labor too soon.  My brother, Jonathan, was not developed enough, and the medical technology at that time was insufficient to support his underdeveloped lungs and heart. He would have survived if the same occurred today.

In momentary evaluation, this is a tragedy, and I think it was, and perhaps still is, though one far removed and numbed for my family over time. The hidden blessing, one only seen four years later, was my little brother Sam. My parents only wanted three children, and if Jonathan had been born, my parents would have been content with those three, but his death meant another try, and the hardship of years without child. It took four years, and when they had a child finally, they named him Samuel because they asked long of God, and a child was delivered.

It would be heartless of me to say that every evil is justified by subsequent goods, and not honest. But in this case, I cannot diminish Samuel’s person by wishing Jonathan had survived, nor can I forget that Jonathan did die, and how difficult that was. When referring to life, saying: the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away feels cruel, terrible, and unjust. But Samuel has been a great blessing to our family and to countless people, and though Jonathan would undoubtedly have been as well, we have Samuel, and not he.

This is a tangent, of course, and one specific to a case of mine. It does not answer the problem of pain, but only shows one of my experiences with seeing the other side. There is often grace and mercy to follow when the hurt is great, but not always for the one who suffers. This is another facet to the problem of pain which hurts like stones in the gut.

To Be Continued

Ostriches

I’m duped, baffled. I feel as effective as a tree holding back the sea breeze from the mainland. Perhaps, if someone hides directly behind me, I might provide a modicum of shelter, but even so my tree is scarce, boney and bare. The sea breeze isn’t always terrible; on summer days it cools the world, and at nights pulls the heat out over the waters. But storms rise from its mystical depths, and its ferocious rains batter the mountainsides. Against these I, too, am battered.

Life can be hard, joyful, beautiful, and cruel. Everything is like an Escher painting, and my words follow a non-Euclidean progression, a backwards-sideways mumbo-jumbo whose incomprehensibility offers no solace for the wounded. Is there solace for the wounded?

But this is me. Some people can form massive, thin sheets that block much of the stinging storm, or towers that blot out the sky and shift weather patterns, or vast hillsides that form a rain-shadow against the mightiest of winds, but I am made for one small frame at a time, and even then I do little to stop the rain and the cold from getting in.

Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand from fear, but swallow sand and pebbles to help them digest. I keep telling myself that, but who am I fooling?

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/08/ostriches/ ‎

Summer 2

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/summer-2/ ‎

far away and all too near,

my thoughts dress a thousand shipwrecks -

shattered stained-glass windows

collected into a graveyard

of a colored cathedral smashed in our laps;

and through this pastel mass

I dance on magic toes that float

above every little death the sea holds.

an apology to the wind, I deny

its grasp on me, no one my master be,

I'm over the clouds the ocean breathes.

how silver and august the marine waves -

don't chastise me for flying defiantly

through a beautiful world whose spirit

comforts me, and carries me ever home

Summer’s ever so busy. People bustling like bees, believing this to be the season of flowers, nectar, and dreams. And I’m behind where I thought I’d be, and ahead. Every day breathes so carefully, like a child behind a late-night couch where their parent watches tv, knowing they should be in bed, but needing, feeding on the closeness and love of unknown proximity. Life is tilting, and every time I shift my feet, everything else shifts. But I’m thankful.

Everything is a balancing act, and I’m trying to decide how to best navigate the things in life I need, want, and provide. And which should be first? I always consider my giftings as the most important, but that should not always be so. Perhaps never so, over my own needs. But what do I actually need? Most things are just wants. Other than food, water, sleep, warmth, and hope, what do I actually require for survival? My hope is in Christ, I’m well fed, sleep is iffy lately, but I’m certainly getting almost a REM cycle a day (maybe), and summer keeps me very warm. Everything after that is wants, cravings, and it feels greedy and selfish to ever expect those over provision for other’s wants. But perhaps this, too, is even not always so.

There is too little that is black and white that we try conforming into that dualistic picture. When we see greys and colors, we mentally try to collect them into black and white boxes for easier compartmentalization. Ems and I discussed this for a moment after watching Les Mis, when contemplating the suicide of Javert. When black and white justice acquires some semblance of grey, when Jean Valjean displays kindness, mercy, and humanity, Javert loses his pedestal of righteous judgment. His divine purpose is twisted, and his entire life’s compartmentalization is unboxed, and like the Greek story of Pandora, all his fears and nightmares are released.

Little is actually black or white, but that’s still what we pretend to see. I, in particular, want a simple trigger clause for activity and love, though such things cannot be applied. If so-and-so situation is this, follow this list of directions; if so-and-so does this, reply with these exact words. I don’t want to be a machine, but I sometimes internally fancy a set of machine instructions. What a silly world I’ve constructed for myself.

And summer is ever so busy with the musings on such topics, and the movements of life. Life is dancing, running away, and flirting with my consciousness in such a way that I’m ever confused, bemused, and craving more. 

Paradox (only maybe two cents)

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/paradox-only-maybe-2-cents/ 

There is a lot of paradox in life, or seeming-paradox. Immediately, you wonder how can God be good, and the world so rife with war, agony, injustice; how can non-time create time from particles that exist pre-particles, and when do such particles start moving if there is no time? Why not (what is) before? To become the greatest, we must be the least; to see, we must be blind; to truly live, we must die – we love and hate these dichotomous paradoxes, and we claim to understand them, but they are hard questions, hard callings.

And even as we are called to faith, we are called to press our doubt, to seek out furtherance of our understanding of a God who is beyond knowing. No one has seen the invisible God, yet we are called to seek and to find God. Religion was made for the boundless, but I am a creature of chains, fences, and guarded borders. I can’t always tell when I’m called to move beyond the containment and into glory, or to stop, kneel, and lay beside the stillness of the waters, resting in the lushest of grasses.

These questions are hard, no? I had one troubled person tell me once about his own interaction with the question of divine intervention and a perfectly good God. He said, if every time an accident was about to occur, God reached out a hand and prevented it, a semblance of free will would be revoked every time an atrocity was occurring. The problem with this is, why does God fix some things and not others, and this is also a frightening pathway into a very deistic view of God, a view incredibly commonplace in American religious culture: God exists, but he’s sleeping, or distant. And this is not the God I believe in.

Another viewpoint is that God works through the hands of his followers, which means that every time I witness a terrible situation, more of the guilt lands in my hands. That’s not particularly a comforting picture, but perhaps it’s closer to the uncomfortable truth.

Yet we often claim God for the good things, as though God had his fingers in every blessing pie, but ask why God isn’t around for the bad things. It’s easy to see God in the valleys, the wildflowers, the rivers, the dance and the music of the world, the beautiful – how do you see God in the hospital room in the gaunt face of the afflicted, in the suffering, in the malnourished? How do we bring God’s love there?

Entitlement Rant

Our culture has really adopted, and swallowed whole, a sense of entitlement. In Christianity, we say a few words and claim an entitlement of love, grace, protection, hope, and kinship with the creator of the universe; in friendship, we imagine our contract of mutual care ensures an entitlement of mercy, grace, forgiveness and love, even when we grossly overstep our bounds without remorse.
I hate this word, and equally I despise its connotations. Sanctification does not come from an empty proclamation of faith, but from an abiding belief. If your personal convictions of immorality and choices are stronger than your belief in the divine, your faith is empty. Are you not Judas, trading sanctity for coins? If your desire to sin, to cross the line, to ignore the laws of righteousness are stronger than your faith, what IS your faith in? Yourself or Christ? And if God does not grant you justice, can you really blame him? If you decide morality, surely you can impart your own justice? If you have set yourself up as your own god in life, aren’t you to blame for its misfortunes?
Friends, too, do this same thing. “I don’t mind lying, betraying my friends by abusing their trust and kindness, but I consider it a personal affront if my friends return the favor.” Entitlement then conceives an anger, a bitterness like that Blake spoke of in the poem A Poison Tree.
Let’s say for a moment you’ve made a mistake with someone whom you love, or claim to love. There are some options: confess the mistake and root out the mistake before it flowers and grows, or conceal it, nurture the mistake and water it until a poisonous tree grows up betwixt the love, and when it is noticed, your entitlement claims it is the other party’s fault, or tries to conceal it again. You see, those people will find out those things eventually, whether you will it or no. Perhaps you’ve chosen to conceal it, and when they find out, you pretend that you thought they knew all along, and so you initiate another lie to replace the first. You are the Johnny Appleseed of Poison Trees.
So, who are you, then, having planted so many poisonous trees amidst your relationships, to claim entitlement in these relationships? Perhaps if you had behaved respectably yourself, you might merit a little grace, a little forgiveness, a little kindness, but having behaved atrociously can you expect the other party to protect your abuse of their love?
As a simple example, if you lied, can you really feel entitled to know the truth your friends carry when you’ve lied? If you haven’t kept a secret, can you feel entitled to be told them? Entitlement is foolish, but I’ve seen it so many times throughout my life, often coming to the fore in passive-aggressive self-righteousness.
I know that as a friend and someone who loves, it is my job to forgive and love, even if I’m hurt. But there are limits. If a friend lies to me, or betrays my trust, even having forgiven them, I’m less likely to trust them in the same capacity, the same circumstance as before. And if I’m betrayed twice, or they justify their betrayal, doubly so.
If you were a knight and betrayed the knight’s code, can you really expect the all-knowing monarchy to protect you when you find yourself in trouble? Especially if you are unrepentant of your trespass, and perhaps continue to break the code daily (without remorse)?


On the flip side, there are many around me with enduring kindness, endless selflessness that I cannot help but return. Love is contagious. When a friend hugs me, I want to pass on that hug to the next person I see. When a person shares a truth with me, heals me, listens or speaks reassuring words, or comforts me in pain or sorrow, I can’t help but be a prism for that light.

If I'm hurt, this doesn't mean I'll deliberately be vindictive and full of vengeance, either. I hope I'm the very opposite. But it does mean I won't leap into making the same mistake twice.

I was thinking about entitlement today, and just was disgusted with its use. I think passive aggressive natures are my least favorite, and I’m no stranger to acting them out myself. So this was a bit of a rant. And so on.

But I know that in the end I need to be more forgiving, more graceful in reply. It's a vicious cycle otherwise. Instead of repaying with vindictive hate, anger, revenge, or petty cruelty, I need to be loving and patient, even especially when those who have hurt me know what they've done, and may even continue to exacerbate the circumstance. But even as I love them, I'll likely protect myself from future pain; even as I love them and extend the grace of God their way, if I choose not to return to them first when I need comfort or love, it is this, the poison tree, that stood in the way

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/entitlement-rant/ 

Flux

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/flux/

I read an article recently on divorce, whose author suggested that America's concept of marriage is tremendously skewed into believing you are marrying an instant of a person, a daguerreotype. People change, year by year, day by day, moment by moment, and if you love someone as an instant, as a trophy mounted on the wall, it's no wonder that divorce rates skyrocketed. There's no value in a person as a person, but only a value in the haloed, sanctified idol we’ve replaced them with.

I’ve never been in a relationship before (until now!), but I can’t tell you how excited I am to change, and see change moving through us as we grow in relationship, Christ, and simply as persons.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said that no man ever steps in the same river twice. He invented the concept of “flux”, the constant shifting of things, organic and inorganic. There is a hint of truth in his words, in that things are constantly changing, new molecules pass down the river instant by instant, and experiences mold the clay that makes a woman or a man. But there is some quality, a consistency of being, that stays.

Life, being, persons, everything is in flux, perhaps, and it is this which makes the “daguerreotype love” so precipitous, and enduring love so beautiful, even divine.

Your first love for somebody can last ... but it changes too after promises have been made and time as passed and knowledge has come.
Wendell Berry (in Hannah Coulter)

At the same time, the rustling zephyr canters

Through the leaves of trees and pushes clouds

Across the countryside, a gentle scythe over wheat

It transforms fields into a great, golden sea;

And a newspaper tumbles like a wheel of weed

Down soggy streets whose only light bounces down

From building window to window until it drowns in the road

And makes alchemy of oil, puddles, and spilt drinks;

And the clever man tips back his tumbler and taps his feet

To the beat of the jazz hands stumbling up the bass, down the piano

While a hundred classy customers celebrate with feast and dance;

And the same stars rise, climb, and fall where a boy sits

In the hospital and glances out the screen, remembering

That in the relativity of things, the heavens are a great eternity

Tonight was soccer night, coffee night, and the beginning of the weekend. There is nothing like soccer to end a week – I wish every night ended thus, sometimes: the adrenaline, the friends, the grass between my toes, the goals, the smiles, the joy at understanding how to run and kick and play.

The Cowled Mount

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/the-cowled-mount

At times like these, I feel I’ve unfettered feet, and more than perhaps two. I’m a centipede, marching mind thinking a hundred things, estranged from my own wandering shoes. I found the glory within, crawling over the pass and seeing the mountain, wearing no hood or cowl to match its name, but gleaming like a frozen font, a spike, a rigid canine, a snow-leopards ear. A valley swoops beneath me, the very land removed from under my rolling toes, and the curving wyrm of the land is like a Chinese dragon colored in wildflowers, a royal carpet sliding towards the sanctified Olympus.

And seeing that vision, the pinnacle of creative mass, I understand the inertia of love and the gravitas of sacrifice and sanctification, if only a little. I can feel the weight of it on my dreams, the deep, heavy sighs of the earth and I imbibe of the grace therein. I need everything, the nearness of it all and the prescience of divinity.

Tonight is the last day before my last best friend is married off. I found the most beautiful road in Newberg (well, I’ll hedge that with a ‘one of the’), and drove along a ridge facing Mount Hood, vineyards and grazing livestock filling the periphery with the perfect ambiance. I wonder whether my words are a subtle injustice, a slight on the majesty of creation. Does poetry only detract from true creativity, and music only a cheap substitute for the orchestra of creation? I cannot believe this to be true, as a general rule, but sometimes I cannot collect any words that portray the mountain, that harness the motion of the river, that captivate as surely as the woods, the rain, the clouds gloomy and playful over the starry sky.

I want to sleep, but my body fights me; I want to eat, but there, too, I’m refused; I want to imagine worlds and write poetry, to sing, play guitar, dream, and write beautiful things, but I’m stymied by an incessant farewell-love. It’s that inhibitive time where nothing can be done until I’ve done what must be done. I’m not the parents, but I feel as though I’m surrendering J and S to each other and to another place, just as I did Matthew, just as I did A and S, just as perhaps I’ve done countless times before, though each time with a greater piece of my heart to offer up.

So here I am, staring down a bag of chips and wondering if my pacing mind will focus enough to finish reading a book, or whether I might just sleep instead. I fear I’ll be stuck in a pasture without sheep to count, dear Olwen, but perhaps this is how all vigils should progress, in existential-quandaries of beauty, peace, and letting go.

There’s probably a Disney song about this. 

Gatsby Fortress

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/gatsby-fortress/ ‎

I’m reading The Da Vinci Code, which I never got around to for whatever reason (I probably eschew popular books out of some intrinsic literati-hipster tendency within me), and even though I have mixed feelings about the book, I always get a little excited about cryptography.

The information age has not only engendered a paranoia, but also a plethora of sensitive information that we throw around over wireless, free for any hungry recipient to grab. Sure you can log on to your online user account in the coffee shop, but my computer in “promiscuous mode” can also catch every request you make to the server and, if the request isn’t carefully encoded, peal it apart. Recently, the HeartBleed fiasco revealed a technique for reading through a whole bunch of what should have been carefully guarded server data, including countless numbers of users’ passwords and login information. The first generations of cryptography were relatively simple, but we’ve had to develop more and more elaborate systems to protect a very different kind of information.

As happy as cryptography makes me, though, it also imbues a certain sadness, a longing for a world where security wasn’t so requisite. A missionary came back to our church when I was a child, and told stories about living in rural Russia, and how he frequently had people enter into his house in the wee hours of the morning and yell for a feast and drinks to share, and the owners would happily oblige, even if it meant bustling about the kitchen and waking up everyone at 2am. No one locked their doors, because community was an axiom, and no one feared the robber or the Raskolnikov.

This sort of living always seemed beautiful to me. Matthew and I used to always have this argument about socialism/communism where I would say that, on the barest of levels, I admire these theories. A major problem is a lack of motivation to work, and the required bloody revolution, but I’d always argue that I wanted to be a communist NOT for the politics and revolution of the proletariat, but for the root word: community. I wanted to be a six-home communism, and, in all actuality, Amish.

Now, I don’t actually think I want to be Amish, at least not right now. I admire the community aspects, but I think I’d miss the travel, the motion, the technology of modernity, but there is a beauty in the close-knit community, in the comfort of neighbors that don’t require locked doors and hidden lives. America has cultivated this dream, this American Dream in us that says: “you can go from zero to hero; from ashes to riches”, and be the Bill Gates, the Gatsby, the next magnate, but I think that our media and this theory have isolated us. By telling us of the American Dream, it has set every person against his neighbor, against his family and friends, and marked them as stepping stones into a higher future.

We view our God as father, mother, sister, brother, friend precisely because our culture has stolen those concepts from our worlds.

I wish there wasn’t a reason for security because I wish people trusted each other. Every day the news reveals stories of shootings saying those people sitting next to you in the classroom aren’t safe; we hear stories of break-ins and murders telling us our neighbors and families are ever on the verge of insanity; we’re told we live in a dangerous, scary world, and we must overcome it. I’d rather live in a beautiful world, and together enjoy it. I decided a while back that that was my world, but the shadows and ashes of paranoia still cling tight to my every day. I’ve got passwords, I’ve got secrets, I’ve got layers of deceptions prepared in case my emotional fortifications are brought to their knees.

And I think what I look for most in friendship, in people I can love, is finding people who I can open the doors of my castle to, to whom I don’t mind showing the unswept corridors and dusty rooms of my ugly life. Wouldn’t it be great if this was everyone? Or if I actually didn’t have so many locked rooms in the first place?
What if my life was a field and not a fortress, a forest with flowers instead of fortifications and fear?

Unexamined Life

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

(1 John 3:9)

1 John 3 is a bit of a roller coaster, from statements such as: no one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

and statements like: Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

But the first, as I read it, frightens me a bit. How easy is it to fall  into a pattern? It's like the Veggie Tales episode with the Rumorweed that grows with every consecutive lie. What began as a "white lie" must be fed until it's larger than life, and this is sometimes true of our other spiritual failings. 

Somehow, it's easy to hear what Paul says and choose which passages I like better based on how they make me feel:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

and then:

For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.

It's pretty obvious: now that we are under grace, our lives should not practice that of sinfulness, but that of righteousness and faith. And how shall we live that? In love, grace, generosity, understanding, and opening our eyes to the needs of the world and those around us. Yet, often enough I find myself using Paul's words as a hidden subliminal justification for wrongdoing. If Paul struggles with sin similar to how I do, and Paul was such a fantastic apostle, then how bad am I doing, really?

But that kind of thinking is backwards. I'm not trying to follow Paul's example, but Christ's, and even listening to Paul's words, I shouldn't be trying to match his level of sinfulness, but his dedication to service and love. And I don't believe I'm the only one justifying my actions with obscure logic.

I had a roommate in college who told me a story once about what he named "morning illogic". He said that after a long night of homework - and this roommate was certainly not a morning person - he'd hear his alarm in the morning for going to class and, reaching over to shut it off, would think to himself, "I didn't eat lunch yesterday so I can't go to class" or, "I forgot to shave yesterday, so I won't make it to class" and without actually following through on these ephemeral musings, he'd roll over and fall back asleep.

This is what we do, I think. Having chosen a peculiar path, we make justifications for our actions which make a semblance of sense, or carry a grain of truth. It's like a rotten apple with a healthy skin, and as long as we only look at the skin and don't examine the fruit closely, we don't have to swallow our logic when it's thrown back at us. 

The terrible portion about this is, once this rickety scaffolding is constructed, we go on living our lives wallowing in sinfulness like pigs, far too anxious about reexamining our faults. Often, we alter our religious axioms to fit God into our beliefs rather than fixating our faith on God. 

If God doesn't love me for who I am, he wouldn't be God, because God is love. So, God must support what I am doing, if he loves me.

Errr... no. That's not how it works, and that's not how any parent would think. But too often we are molding God into imago a'dam, rather than molding ourselves into imago dei. Every time we begin our internal arguments with "God must" or "If God doesn't", we are refashioning God in our likeness, and that's no longer God at all.  

And then it's easy to continue living lies; living in sexual immorality; pushing others down to elevate oneself; stealing; boasting; committing idolatry with ourselves and materials. After all, the image of God I manufactured supports this, so it must be right. Too often, we never even get close to examining our actions, rather preferring to continue in the status quo.

But as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. I'd go one step further and say that the unexamined life is wrong living, and falling far, far short.

she painted pieta's every night

finding hope in the love 

between mother and child

and every eve before falling to sleep

she left just one piece incomplete -

tonight it was Mary's eyes

unseeing as Jesus reached his tiny

hands up beneath her empty face -

tomorrow, it will be Yeshua's lips

agape in a shocking vacuum of space

despite Mary's loving embrace,

what does he see?

and each careful illustration found

some lurker in the backdrop, lost

hamlet with a ghost behind;

nietzsche closing his eyes, seeing nothing;

or archimedes, wondering

if he'd found all the answers

Existentialism

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/existentialism/

There are a lot of words running around in my head, and little that’s cohesive. I’ve been contemplating what life is, means, and the purpose thereof. The words of Solomon rush to the forefront first:

Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know they are doing evil. Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God. For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few. For the dream comes through much effort and the voice of a fool through many words.

When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it; for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow! It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Do not let your speech cause you to sin and do not say in the presence of the messenger of God that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry on account of your voice and destroy the work of your hands?  For in many dreams and in many words there is emptiness. Rather, fear God.

 (Ecclesiastes)

I’m not sure why these words immediately overwhelm me, but that there is a despondence in Solomon’s voice that is never far when walking the path of existentialism. That road is long, and not wrong, though precipitous at points – what road is not?

This passage isn’t as popular as the more poetic Ecclesiastes 3, with a dichotomous sequence of times for everything, but I think it speaks of the oddness of this experience we’ve suddenly discovered ourselves mired in. It’s a territory of emotions as wide as the world, with mountains as tall as the depths of the seas, and even though we dream of flying, we forget what the secret was on waking.

-Chloe- “When I dream, sometimes I remember how to fly. You just lift one leg, then you lift the other leg, and you're not standing on anything, and you can fly. So what I want to know is, when I'm asleep, do I really remember how to fly? And forget how when I wake up? Or am I just dreaming I can fly?"

-Sandman- "When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget."

-Chloe- "But that's not fair!"

-Sandman- "No."

(Brief Lives – Neil Gaiman)

Then my existential journey wanders. I start wondering whether I’m stepping in the right places, or following in Christ’s footsteps properly. I used to play a philosophical game with myself, wondering whether I’d ever lived any “perfect” days. It was a common Sunday School understanding that no one, save Yeshua, is perfect. But how many days could I go without sinning? And is simply “not sinning” good enough? Or does “living perfectly” require a significant motion in the other direction?

Could I fail to live perfectly simply by not living at all? If I locked myself into a room and prevented myself from engaging in any negative thoughts, or lying, or behaving cruelly to those around me, does that day fall short of perfection simply by virtue of having not moved?

Paul said that walk of Christianity was a race – so simply standing still isn’t wandering down the wrong path, but it’s making no headway towards the finish line, either. Does that make it… sinful? If sin is simply falling short, motionlessness might be falling short also, right?

And this thinking goes round and round.

Next, I contemplate Micah, the famous words:

He has told you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justice, to love kindness,

And to walk humbly with your God?

To love kindness; to do justice; to walk humbly with my God.  This, too, I’ve contemplated over these last weeks, days, hours. Christianity today is a puzzle of beliefs, with everything hinging on a “God is relationship; God is love” factor that suddenly implies that God “must love everyone” and so anything that makes up a person must be “good”.

This concept stuffs God into a small box of “if God doesn’t appreciate what I’m doing, he must not be Love because My God would love what I was doing”. And this sort of thinking is such obvious bullshit that I’d immediately dismiss it if it weren’t so prevalent in our culture. And the second aspect of this is, one we fail on one portion, we assume that we’ve permanently failed, and if God can forgive us for the beginning, why should we stop now?

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

(Romans)

Yet there are those consistently making concessions to their “God image” they’ve designed imago adam, until there is nothing respectable, nothing fearful, nothing remotely righteous about the God of dust we’ve breathed ourselves into. Whenever you start saying, “this is who I am so God must be satisfied with that” then you are fooling only yourself.

God destroyed whole cities of unrighteousness with nary the bat of an eye; God opened up the earth and swallowed countless Israelites for their faithlessness; God killed two people in the new Church just for lying about money. Our God is a consuming fire, not a penpal writing little hearts on Bible leaflets and hallmark cards with cute verses to cheer you up.

I was also contemplating community, and our world. The culture of our day is an unbelievable mess. The convenience of technology has eliminated the need for community, because your friends can talk to you in video conversation from forever away, or email eliminates the need of heartfelt letters sent in slow-haste along postal lines (though I love letters dearly, and would prefer to long-distance communicate this way).

But there is no staying, no holding force that knits a community together. Churches have become businesses, linked on Sundays in a single building as a concession for community, but the personal nature of communion has been eviscerated from our services, and the raising of voices beside everyone you love is lost in a crowded vacuum of who, who are you?

This may just be me, an introvert stuck in a great emptiness, and no hands or inertia moving me.

I long for an Amish-type community where everyone lives, labors, and loves in a small place, understanding the depths of happiness that derive from hard work beside friendly souls and the gatherings of those you know every day in a small town.

We’ve created a crowded room if individuals instead of a family, and that’s what our media and culture create also.

The real problem, of course, is me. Why engage in existential and philosophical musings, anyway? If a problem exists in every friendship, it’s likely the reason is yourself. I should have known that – what was I thinking? There was once a study which resulted in the naming of an effect called the Dunning-Kruger effect, where individuals vastly overrate their own abilities and fail to recognize genuine skill in others. I see this in myself, knowing my weaknesses are many.

I was asked, once, what my love languages are, and though  I think the question is a bit of a silly one – because what occasion have I had, as yet, to love like that? – I realized that my language of love with friends is that of quantity time.

Quantity time? Not even one of the original list – what a psychological hipster. (quality time; service; words of affirmation; touch; gift-giving) None of the others apply to me. I don’t find myself desperately trying to serve others to express my love, or effusively thanking those who offer their service for me. The same is true of gifts: I hate giving gifts, because I’m always self-conscious, so I avoid it. And I always try to return gifts I’ve been given, because “things” don’t matter to me. Touch is important, but not something I overemphasize to a great degree in my friendships; words of affirmation are important to me, and perhaps this is a close second in my love languages. Quality time is fine, but I really don’t care what is being done, as long as the duration is sufficient.

I’d rather spend five days with someone doing nothing than one day with someone doing everything, every time.

This makes the long distance relationships in my life nearly impossible to maintain. With Matthew, we talk every day, sometimes twice, sometimes more. With other examples, generally I find that I grow less and less attached to the people the less we communicate. Eventually, I don’t consider them at all – they are nonentities in the timing of my life.

See? It’s definitely a personal problem.

I remember when I used to play games with my older brother, I’d always get frustrated whenever he started over before beating a game. I didn’t understand the waste of struggle, the waste of playtime, in “trying something new for fun” instead of “beating the game”. To me, beating the game was the only source of fun. In a way, this personality quick carried over into my interaction with life. I hate starting over – I hate moving somewhere without finishing everything in the previous place.

This is a very ambiguous state, because how can you “finish everything” in a particular place? I think the real truth of it is, I don’t make friends easily, because I don’t understand the purpose of “half-way” friends. Why have acquaintances at all? What use are they to me? The sort of people you say, “hi how’s the weather” to, and then move past them to grab your tea or coffee or whatever – this isn’t relationship. So why have it at all?

I only want deep, lasting friendships, and so the very idea of starting over pains me, because I hate to see everything I’ve invested in get burned away to chaff. People assume the technological inventions we’ve made circumvent that necessity, the necessity of removing that which you love in a place, but it doesn’t. It slows the poisonous decay, but only barely, and probably makes it harder in the end.

That’s my existential crisis of the day. What do I do? Where am I? What should I be doing? And how is it so easy for everyone else to say goodbyes? I think because they don’t realize that to me, it’s actually a goodbye. 

More Philosophy

Do not ask the Lord to guide your footsteps, if you are not willing to move your feet - Anonymous

I may be stumped until the end of the month with writing. I need to be reading again. It isn't writer's block, it is 'writer's tired mind'. 

I had an interesting discussion about the infinite, today.

I commented that extreme statements have always been hard for me. I once wrote in my journal, asking myself if I'd ever lived any perfect days. Not days that were better than any other day in the history of mankind, but days without sin. Is it possible? Have I gone any days in my entire life without any sin? I'm not even sure. How could I even verify that? I think that my discernment sucks, because sometimes the line between sin and not-sin can be fuzzy at times. 

Then I got to thinking about what a perfect day might even look like. What does it look like to live a perfect day? I don't think any such philosophizing is getting me there, and I wonder if Solomon had it right with his directions to live happy and to seek out those things which bring you joy, when you are living with faith: Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.  (Ecclesiastes 9)

It's a philosophy sort of week, I suppose.

I'll likely continue reading Mary Oliver and fall asleep, and hopefully some of these questions dream with me. I'm even dreaming about this story, lately. I think that of each of my novels, this is the messiest. It is still better than my first year's, and more advanced than my second year's, but I was probably a little overambitious with the mystery plot.

Five Steps Back, Four

Aimed and Aimless Thoughts.

Ever since I started writing, I realized I'd finally found myself an unwinnable game. Or, perhaps, a game I could not surpass everyone in - there is always room for improvement. Another aspect about this game that, perhaps, suits me particularly well is its individuality.  It's also a bit embarrassing. I was always a bit of an individualistic player. I love team games, but I don't believe that they inspire my competitive drive. Since the team relies on me as only a small portion of the victory or defeat, I don't feel as though I need to better myself exponentially. I'm usually more than content simply matching the mean skill level.
Not so with individual games. But the strangest part about my competitive nature is that once I win something, I don't really care about it any longer, win or lose. I know that I CAN win. I don't have to try to win any longer. That doesn't mean I don't try to win, it just means I don't TRY to win.
The difference is spectacular.

Writing is different. It inspires my individualistic cravings for competition and betterment, without having any actual competition - or at least any concrete competition. And the first thing I learned in this competitive marathon, a marathon that may well last the remainder of my life, was that I'm awful. Simply. Awful.
For every discovery I gleaned, improvement I bled for, each sacrifice made, I fall behind five steps. It's like being thrown out of a plane with a sewing kit and cloth. Every time I sew together a piece of my parachute, I fall slower? Maybe? But I'm still falling. More like it, it's rowing a canoe upriver, a white rapids. I'm actually going backwards with each stroke, but eventually, my arms may get strong enough to make headway. (I should have just pulled to the side and walked upriver, huh?)
Now, though, I've improved. Instead of one step forward, five steps back, I'm only retreating four steps.

The same quality of rowing upriver sometimes affects other aspects of my life, and some I've been enduring recently. In church today, the discussion was on vulnerability, clothing yourself in righteousness, openness in the church, the family of the church body. How many things are there that we internalize rather than sharing with our church body, and how often is the church body helpful in overcoming these things? How often does the church body help rather than leave us hanging, or, worse, judge us for our failings?
Things such as anger, shame, depression, panic, pornography, psychological disorders, difficulties in marriage, relationships, the home - none of these are things I struggle with at this time, but how many people do, and don't feel open to tell the church? Or, having told the church, feel judged or "prayed at" rather than aided in the healing process, the grace and mercies of God?

One thing I was thinking about, in relation to this, is the short story "Franny" by JD Salinger, where Franny and Zooey are discussing the short prayer of the Tax Collector in the gospels: "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner." Actually, they are talking about it as a repeatable phrase, and as a way of praying without ceasing. Sometimes I wonder if this is a good way to avoid temptation, to refocus on God with all your might.

Midnight Sophistry

It's a night for useless philosophizing, and I, the eternal sophist. When it comes to actual writing, important writing, or important aspects of my own existence, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps this stems from my competitive nature. When I watch a movie like Ender's Game, I constantly find myself thinking: "I could beat him, let me play." What arrogance is this? Who am I? But even if I couldn't, my heart would try.
But I know my motivations, and my drive, and I know, too, that if that was my heart's desire, I may very well win it, against superior forces. Such is the power of conviction.  And now, sitting here contemplating pieces I've written and examining them, I find them pierced with errors like arrows, more wholly holey than a frayed web, and less useful.
What is perfect writing? I'm stuck in a platonic mindset where the mere existence of a story implies a perfect story.What is the perfect story? What is the perfect song? Are there an infinite number of perfect stories or perfect songs? Perfect paintings, perfect sculptures or vessels, the perfect art.
Then I think to myself, can there be more than one? Two sculptures, both perfectly done?  This is a mind-bending mental-yoga-preztal seen through a bent-mirror-prism-raindrop-stainglasswindow. Because, to my thinking, unless the sculptures are 100% equally perfect, how can they both be perfect? Is perfect like infinity? The numbers between 1-2 are infinite, mathematically. What about 1-3? Double infinite? No, just infinite. But it's double the infinite as between 1-2, right? Right? So can both paintings be perfect, but one be "double perfect"?
Even if that were true, what is the most perfect perfect? Can there be one? Or, like infinity, can you always add one more? You see? A sophists night.
But instead of getting wrapped up in all the cognitive gymnastics, I'm struck by this fierce competitive desire to acquire the most perfect perfect something, whatever it is. I'll never get there; that's beyond my ken. Yet, the intense craving stirs in my gut most mightily. How can I aim for less than perfection? It's like the quote by Les Brown, famous motivational speaker: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
Oh, let me hit the moon.

Life Garden thoughts

There is a game called race for the galaxy, a card game, where every turn is a gambit and a sacrifice. While I've only played this game a few times, I suspect it offers a keen insight into my every daily decision. Every day, I have choices, many, and in order to realize these opportunities, other sacrifices must be made. If I want to spend ten hours drawing, I cannot also spend ten hours playing guitar. If I sacrifice time going out with friends, I cannot read all I wished to read.
Sacrifice makes it sound somehow morbid, or a horrific truth. Like I'm shivving myself and stepping over lost opportunities as the paving stones to preferred ones. But you can't walk in every door, and explore every room - the manse of life is vast. Still, the perfectionist in me, the Christian in me, the sage and philosopher, the fighter and lover, the finder and the seeker, the sower and the reaper in me all ask whether the path I've chosen is the best path, the most right path, the most Christ-like path. It is a utilitarian internalization that is asking if this will bring the greatest good for the greatest quantity.
So while I sit munching on the harvest of my deeds, wondering what might have been if, instead of swiss chard, I'd sown rhubarb, instead of squash, pumpkin, instead of tomatoes, peppers.

Did I have time to plant more seeds? Did I water them each enough, or are these stunted plants? Harvesting life is none so clear, sometimes.
Should I probably be writing NaNo instead of this? Yes.

Squalls and Serenity

I had a post prepared regarding an interesting abortion article I read today. But I'm entranced by the rain, and my words tumble through my fingers in incoherent patterns. It's the clapping of a thousand tiny hands; the swishing of new seas, without names, sloshing across blackened streets; whispers of wind whisk the water into waves, rippling into rising mists. What was I contemplating? The deaths of unborn infants? Les enfants mortalis?

Why such somber notes while these tiny percussions plummet to patter against the slanting roof, drizzle down the gutters, and puddle and pool across the green grass? Waters collecting into droplets, streaking down the windows into pools along the walls, forming runnels in the grass towards rivulets in the roads, gurgling into drains against the curbs and stagnating in rainbow-swirl pools on sidewalks and where the road dips and deepens. Sugar maples slap their branches against the walls, the oaks jettison browning leaves, dogwood whispers with the whimpers of butterfly wings, and the regal pines ruffle,  but stand proud against the prevailing winds. 

An excellent night for philosophical dialogues while sitting under fleece blankets and sipping ciders. One of my roommates and I, we discussed determinism and predestination, miracles and divinity, Christendom and creation, stories and mythologies, culturally infected beliefs and ideologies. I've missed long philosophical dialectics full of witticism and crafted hypothesis. I could linger long into the night on such musings, if life permits. Tonight, life does not permit. Humbly and thoughtfully, I retreat into the darkness of the room, and listen once more to the rain's storming outside these screens. Makes me want to set up tarp and tent, and sleep beneath the soggy heavens, snug against the bristling winds and tearful clouds.

Oh, I wish I lived in a log cabin with a loft and could listen to these sounds until morning. The power flickers. We'll see who succumbs first: the storm or the electricity. Let the tempest of this night commence.