Cast Die

I think the greatest obstacle to my motivation and accomplishment is confidence. Perhaps overconfidence. It stems from a competitive inclination and quickly becomes an inhibition. I'm a great lover of competition, and yet I struggle mightily with correcting myself when I'm not actually "losing". In those situations where the conditions for victory remain obfuscated by circumstance or the object or opposition against which the game is played is enigmatic. And those situations where my opponent lies within myself - those I always lose. The problem is, once I've acquired some semblance of inertia, even I cannot easily gainsay my own inclination. It isn't impossible, but so much more difficult without outside motive.
When I must practice to better myself, yet without any relative comparison, I fail. I'm overconfident in my abilities and fail in the daily follow-through. One of my most difficult problems with my competitive spirit was that once I knew that I could win, I moved on. Once winning was technically within my grasp, everything else was academic. I knew I could do it; those that mattered understood I was the stronger competitor. That was my youth - never an opponent worth beating.
Except myself.
And now, forcing myself to maintain rigor, to daily accomplish various rituals of living and life, I struggle. What competitive urge forces me to eat a certain amount, exercise just so, or write a certain quantity? The competition rests in the long haul and the terms of ambiguous.
Another of my competitive angsts was in chance. I disliked games of chance and sometimes even games of dull strategem. I loved the knowledge games. Games that possessed not only a breadth of opportunity, but a depth of decision. But life contains its own fair share of frustrating chance, or seeming chance. Why does one child get cancer, and another fly free? Why does one get born into poverty and another wealth? Why does this curmudgeon survive into longevity and this kindly soul find an early grave?
The dice feels weighted against good sometimes, or most ostensibly so when those miseries occur. And the hard part for me is deciding to struggle against myself when I know that my future seems somewhat contrived and chancy rather than directed. There are too many variables.

I used to play a game with myself. I would ask myself impossible statistic questions like: "I wonder who is both the fastest, shortest, and most stylish person on this field?" The problem with questions like these is the weighting of the variables. Is "fastest" the most important? What if the fastest is also the tallest? Or the least stylish? How do you diagram that out? Even one of those seems so arbitrary and subjective. That's how life feels, except with more variables. Each person has a say in my destiny, and so does the spontaneity of factors too invisible for me to ascertain: genetics, environment, and so on.

With all this, how does one maintain motivation towards an uncertain end? It feels like that line in Annie Hall about why Alvie was not doing his homework. "Because the universe is expanding, and eventually everything is going to collapse" was the (inexact) response. That can be how it feels - a bit fatalistic. But then you can so easily get stuck in the rut of doing nothing at all, which is worse, sometimes, than mistakenly taking a wrong step. At least you can learn from a wrong step. And all this is really just a bit of rambling sophistry, but it's interesting to think about those tiny obstacles and factors that stagnate us like flies in honey. When we are our biggest enemy, who will lift us free? I think that's question answers so many others. You can tell a lot about a person by who will lend them a hand, and how many kindnesses come when the dice lands poorly.

LGBTQ in the Church (a meeting on a minute)

Is this Spirit here? Or just high spirits?
Does the Spirit split two ways? Is it a river or a hurricane? Every "leading" eddies and suffocates - which side holds the sense of truth?
How is it possible to exist so divided and so compelled and spirit-filled within the unified body? Is it possible not to? Can we? Do we?
Does anyone know, with shadowless certainty, the Truth? Or even one Truth? In such a multifaceted view, both sides tossing out vindictives and dismissives at the brick-wall-minds of the other side.
The "other side" doesn't value diversity or discussion, acceptance and unity, love, grace, or forgiveness.
Or the "other side" exists in shallow theology, being biblically naive, sitting with sinners, misrepresenting a "holy" God and wholly disregarding a depth of tradition and wisdom and practice of faith.
What middle ground between the spectrum of hell and bigotry? When it's either damnation or discrimination. Where are the enlightened sophists who have risen above the sheeple in middling belief and sit in the golden means of compromise? Surely these possess some Gnosticism worth being? But everyone is so obnoxiously right sometimes, or humbly condescending. Where are the patient listeners? The quiet dialectic?

Spectrum of Life

A lot happens in a year, a month, even a day.

I’m married, and I was not.

Arguments regarding LGBT in the church community.

Legal suits in town against the yearly meeting of friends.

I’ve been surprised how quickly people rear up with opinions like king cobras. Beliefs on wedding timing and relationship mantra, or arguments against persons – all with such violent strikes. Less than the content of the arguments, the entitlement and anger with which people defend their beliefs can be appalling. And frightening.

Not that such a righteous anger is always wrong. Au contraire, a righteous anger is often warranted. The scary portion is the direction of the anger targeted towards persons rather than ideas. Rarely is hate an agreeable ideal. Rarely is vindictiveness a moral imperative. It’s that same quality of person that stands outside an abortion clinic killing doctors in the name of Christ (or any higher cause).

I haven’t written in forever, and my first is somewhat angry, itself. Shoot. And that’s what I’ve noticed. Anger begets only anger.   

I think what’s been a joy to see in the passing weeks is that the flipside is also, often, true. Generosity, grace, and mercy often beget similar reactive replies. More than all of the miserable actions, more than all of the hatred and anger and angst of an uncertain people, the generosity and kindness of those loving persons in my community sticks with me.  At the wedding, people jumped into action to help, even without being asked. Whether it was pushing tables outside, organizing books, or grabbing Ems and I a bite to eat, people leapt into action. I couldn’t help but smile. It’s reminded me of all those times I’ve had the opportunity to help my friends, and how it’s never a chore, but a great blessing to be that servant. I remember how lucky I felt getting to look after a friend following a surgery (dental) and just hang out and make sure everything was okay should anything need doing. I feel similarly blessed helping each of my friends when they have to move (packing, and lifting) even if I’m the least qualified person for the task (have you seen these biceps? Most people’s ankles are bigger).  I honestly love it. And that’s what fills me with so much joy. When Ems and I wrote our prayer for the day, we hoped that the day might be filled with joy, and that that joy would be an evident reminder of our beliefs and hopes and joys. Our wedding was.

I hold these two great  scenes in balance, teetering forwards and backwards into each. The anger that bubbles up in reply to such, and the grace I force myself to remember, having been shown so extravagantly where joy is begat. These weeks have travelled fast, and are filled with great and weighty feelings, spanning a sea-wide spectrum of emotions. But I’m happy. I’m joyful; full of joy. There are heartbreaks, and there are moments so perfect I’m brought to tears.

I’m thankful for this and my community. In sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, I’m married to it in my spirit and I love it. I’m learning a lot about community and belief through my marriage already, and I’m only getting started.

Here’s to many more such days, weeks, and years. Here’s to life.

On the Road (with help from Tolkien)

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

I find that as I edit and struggle with the beast of writing I've set to tackle, I consider the road the
script and I have journeyed upon. It's like any life progression, physical, spiritual, or emotional, filled with pit stops and potholes, rivers and rolling roads. Sometimes we stop, sometimes we go, and often we find we've gone nowhere at all, yet progressed forever far.


Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

This is it, Tolkien. It can sound so glamorous. Who tells the stories of blistered feet and damp days? We remember clearer the glories and summits along the way, rather than the sorry days burdened by sun or rain. And then telling tales like this, remembering the sorrows stronger than those. It's a temporal relativity masquerade: in summer, you remember the fireplace, the christmas dinner, the snowmen and snow days; in winter, you remember the green, being outdoors, walks and warmth and sun. But in both you forget the miseries, sometimes, and so it is with the cruelty of editing and writing for me, this week. It sounds glamorous, but I'm stuck in the ruts of a broken railroad. I believe the story is without value, knowing the pacing is poor, the dialogue dismal, the progression pathetic (puns intended), even though I simultaneously understand its meaningfulness to me.

Boundaries of Words

I haven't written in a little while. It's a busy season. Though the failure isn't entirely due to a lack of writing material as I've actually been doing a good deal of writing (or at least editing). I'm writing a story for the Writers of the Future seasonal competition, and editing my story into something worth reading has been a nightmare. I constantly get stuck in a state of being over-pretentious in my writing, elitist without the prerequisite technique to back up that sort of egotistical behavior.

I have several major problems with my writing, and one of my gravest is that I like writing in a pretentious manner sometimes. One of my recent stories began thus:

There is something sinister in infinity, and magnificent. The stars cease their winking charade and stare: cold, incessant, pitiless in eternal surround.  Space is not a sea in which we float amongst the heavens, but a hole, an absence, crushing ever inwards.  The fragile veil between us and without: beautiful; the journey into the void: fraught.

            Lost stared vacantly behind as his home, all their homes, receded into a glowing point in space.  He didn’t know why, but watching the vods of their departure made him feel… something.  Maudlin? Solemn?  It was getting more difficult to do that these days: feel.  The echoing thrum and whirr of magical machinery whined behind Lost as a counterpoint to the numbing silence of the stars.  The control room faintly glowed with nurturing light, a laughable counterfeit sun, while overhead, a glass dome glimpsed into forever as the vessel glided through space.  

Of course it is pretentious. Of course it doesn't flow well. And this is still an early draft (the NaNo I worked on this recent November past), but that is often a disclaimer for those who dislike the style (most people) even though I have a secret fascination with it. And my recent story is no different. I can't get it to flow; I can't get it to read like a story because I struggle with wanting it to read like a story. I adore puns and elitist easter eggs, and filled my mythical tale with them, but I eschew simplicity too often. We live in an age where the most read books are young-adult books, and the demographic that is reading them is 35-55. But I find those books shallow. Not out of necessity, and they are not all shallow reads, but because the target requires an easy, limited diction and imagery.

I like rules, but I also like to press the boundaries of words and find out just how far I can stretch meanings and interpretations. So I'm editing, and fighting mostly against myself and my innate tendency to be obtuse.

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?

       

Seasons

I read an article recently on how, knowing what we currently do about our solar system, gravity, and the motion of celestial bodies, it’s well within reason to base physics on an earth-centric system rather than a sol-centered one. The author argued that convenience and long-standing tradition prevent altering modern physics into that arrangement, but that it’s no less valid an axiom of physical phenomena. Whatever the truth behind these arguments, for I’ve not the authority to challenge or back anything within this realm of reason, it spurred my thinking into the contemplation of motion.

I easily imagine the earth revolving around a stationary sun, anchored in spot like a tiny marble in those children’s games where you attempt to fit each ball into place by wiggling a tiny-maze platform.  But nothing (to my knowledge) within our solar system lies motionless. In truth, it’s too easy for me to imagine our solar system as a 2-dimensional platform on which the planets path in slow elliptical ranges around the sun. Rarely is anything so simple.

One of the passages I’m contemplating this week is : “Be still and know that I am God” from Psalms 46. My NASB version says “Cease striving and know that I am God”. Nothing sits still. The sun moves above the greater galaxy and every living body on earth moves with the revolving, rotating, spinning, dreidel of an earth on which we ride. Motionlessness is impossible you might say, as forces of gravity, life, and being exhibit pressures on us every which way, dragging us about like the current, the moon, the wind, the somnambulist beckonings of our subliminal souls. Ceasing to strive isn’t simple stopping, sometimes, but an anti-motion, a counter-motion.

I often contemplate what it takes for meditation, for prayer, for focusing on divinity and the spiritual, whatever it is. There are two interpretations of what meditation as a discipline is: either an emptying, a voidance of emotion, feeling, and thought, or a pregnant patience of being without preconceived patterns of belief that seek to alter the course of the waters carrying us along. Acts of meditation, of fasting, of prayer seem to be definitive attempts at halting and ceasing to strive. But they are not always, and I think we’ve Americanized the concept of each of these into a business proposal, a busyness that inhibits the calm and care behind the practice. We’ve industrialized prayer, we’ve transformed Christianity into capitalism, and Church is a business community sometimes that tries to embody a perpetual motion machine that eventually falters, sputters and dies.

But if you look around, reading Mary Oliver and opening your eyes unto the apparent divinity of surroundings, the creative hand of the God whose calligraphic brush painted the beaches and careful mosaics formed the mountains, I think a motionless can be embodied, though everything spins about, above, around, and here, sometimes, peace is found. In the flowering, fruitful, fullness of uncluttered patience.

2015

I've intended writing much more, but failed in the busyness of the season. NaNoWriMo which I need to finish reading (and writing someday); Christmas; Maryland visit; engagement; exhaustion; funeral; friends - everything. I remember telling someone over summer that life might cool down and settle once fall arrived, but relationship is a whirlwind of life and excitement and busyness that has led into endless summer activity through autumn and into winter. I'm reading less, writing less, playing guitar less, and seeing more people more often.
But I'm excited. 2015 is looking to be an incredible year, and perhaps just a mite fantastic. Perhaps soon I'll get to writing more.

I finished ~51k words for NaNo and though it has more that needs fixing than I should keep, I actually think I enjoy portions of this novel. More than anything, it requires character and embellishment - it's so difficult writing meticulously in such a short period of time with so many other life-requirements. I'm not a good first-time writer. It takes me so long to write anything worth reading.

Perspective

It’s all a matter of perspective. In another world, I believe a me with 10% less resolve might have fallen greatly into a devastating quantity of temptation. So many times I’ve skirted the edges of failure, lack of motivation, and deceit with begrudging kindness, patience, and morality. And yet, a 10% better me might avoid countless obstacles I’ve struggled over, and pass temptations and trials I’ve so foolishly leapt into headlong.

I pray I’m learning as I go, that I might eventually be the better me.

But really everything is a matter of perspective. You can be angry, or pensive, realizing how little anger solves. You can be impatient and cruel, but kind words and love in adversity effect far more substantial good.

Even a little tweak on perspective changes a good deal. Water, for instance, is necessary for survival. It hydrates us, floats our necessary vitals along lifelines throughout our bodies, gets nourishment and resources into organs and cells and out. It keeps the temperature of the earth within reasonable averages. The advantages of water are endless. Without water’s extraordinary properties, we couldn’t exist. And yet, water is devastating. Water floods, pours down and carries vehicles and houses away, seeps through cracks in the roof and decays wood, erodes stone, pools through our apparel and chills us to the bone. Water is as devious as it is necessary, crawling into every nook and applying a natural entropy.

Oxygen is the same. Without oxygen, our cells suffocate and die. Without oxygen, most living creatures on this earth cannot exist. And yet, oxygen rusts metal, and increases the rate of entropy in a great many things. Injected straight into our bloodstreams, it’s murder.  Too much oxygen and not a reasonable balance can overwhelm our systems. Liquid oxygen is an explosion waiting to happen.

It’s all a matter of perspective. Existence is tentative. Why be angry? Why be cruel? Is not nature and the rest of humanity cruel enough? Where has that brought us? Countless innocents are dying or refugees or are abused by other humans – what have we ever gained with hate?

Listening to Christmas

Listen. The sky-sluice unleashes its floodgates and the waters rivulet over the eaves and down the drains. It's all the same as those plastic chutes, racing marbles as children do, tiny marble-droplets of rain rolling down my windowpanes, Is the world different or just the same, with off-hued glasses removed, revealing the world in plain light? The birds warble and dive between the stormy night trees and the bats weave and dart among the leaves, and the weather is just right - a bit cool, I believe.
And nothing special, nothing wise, nothing crazy outside our lives rears its groundhog head, nor casts a shadow over this pre-wintry twilight light, whose full moon hides behind scraggly clouds. It's a bat night, if ever there was, and the hazelnuts pay no mind. But Christmas time, sing the homes, covered in uncharacteristic light and humming with sounds of chords and words of snow, though none shows (not here - we've green instead of white).
It's give and go says every Christmas show, but I've a mind to share and stay, and I've already given everything anyway, so here's my soul, my heart, my life. I, too, can give like Christ, at least in my own way. Gentle, gentle, hold me now, the evening begins its sway. Let me let you let us sleep and tomorrow we'll engage the day.

Pensive with Mark Strand

It's a reflective night, a pensive one, and as nano's left in its tiny coffin of tags, margin, and punctual bounds. I'm mulling over poetry, and the nutmeg and cinnamon sticks of my mentality perfume the dreamy air. I am Mark Strand in these stanzas, tonight:

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
(Mark Strand - Keeping Things Whole - Reasons for Moving)


We are all scattered pieces of a shattered whole. None of us, as yet, perfect, I'm fairly sure. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. I feel this, sometimes. Stronger in the retrospective melancholy of hindsight, where I am here and there and now and not. Nano is finished, but my story is undone. And in the void, spilled treasures of fae gold are left ashen. How I remembered these memories differently. A puzzle, once vibrant, stained in salty water that no longer matches its master - how will I ever arrange these cardboard cutouts again? If your life is remodeled, you cannot walk through the same doors, slide over the laminate in your socks, or ride the banister into the grand hall.



And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
Mark Strand - Lines for Winter

Stories

Well, ladies and gentlemen: I'm near finished. I haven't written nearly so much this month as previous attempts at NaNo, but I'm glad to have gotten as far as I did, and I think that writing this story has taught me a lot of things about character driven story writing that I hadn't considered before. What's actually strange is that as I'm writing this story about knacks and magicks, I find myself mentally balancing the characters as if they were heroes in an online game. "Hmmm, that chararacter is tad overpowered. I'll have to balance that out with some great weakness" as though each character pulled from a limited pool of resource points, and tallied these into their character.
And this is an odd nanowrimo in another way in that I won't finish the story. Every other attempt at the novel writing event concluded with a finished product. The first year, it was a fairy-tale mythos that was the lousiest thing I've ever written ever. The second year, I attempted a Lloyd Alexander-esque piece, and met with some limited success. This is my favorite thus far, for obvious reasons: the first sucked, the third was a split piece that ended up being a bit of a mess (sorry Matthew), and this one is unfinished, and doesn't count yet. The third year, I co-wrote a mystery-dystopian with Matthew, and... well... I like the plot!
It needs a lot of work. They all do.
But it's interesting to look back over each year's renditions and compare the stories with my life experiences at those times, looking at my journal entries and such. It's interesting what you write based on what you've read, what you experience, and how you feel at different stages of existence. It explains a lot, seeing some of the characters that have written novels over the centuries: Poe, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Donne, Keats, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and so on. Authors, and artists in general, are often peculiar personality. Perhaps we all are, and we merely shift the lens of scrutiny upon these individuals like historian peepers scouring the tabloid wikipedia for tidbits of juicy non sequitur from these artist's lives.
Writing is an adventure. I find out more about myself each time. It's a foray into wisdom, if you'll allow your external inspection become introspection. And motif, metaphor, themes, and beliefs all surf the rocky waves of the ocean we brave to create, whether we skim the tips of the salty surf in schooners, or flounder like a hound treading water. This is how I examine my life

Every season is love

It's not been a month for blogging, or journaling on many days. It's difficult to find time for extra writing when novel writing is already the struggle of the month. After writing 1700 words, sometimes I don't want to immediately rush into writing for myself, and even when I do, I often don't have the time to do so. And because of this, journal time gets tossed out the window, blogging gets flush down the toilet, and novel writing takes the fore.
It's a beautiful time of year. The cold of winter has arrived and it's no longer the portion of fall with brilliant colors. Fall is so short, sometimes. It comes back for a few days of Thanksgiving and for Halloween, but the interim is all winter's edge and the hunger of darkness.
Every season provides room for complaining. In winter it is too cold, too dark, or too rainy for far too long a time; in spring, the colors only arrive at the end, and really spring is winter in disguise. Spring, too, is rainy, and the snow hasn't melted off the mountains for hiking, and the allergens flourish. Summer is beautiful, but sleeping is often difficult when the sun refuses to set and the warmth lingers after dark, and the wetness of the air, and the constant sweating, cloying weather. Fall brings lovely colors, but dies too swiftly, entering eagerly into winter's deathly embrace. Fall suffers the same pains of winter, and worse knowing it has only begun and you've many months left to go.
If you want to complain, there are always points worthy of complaint in each month. And yet, you can also celebrate the differences, and there is ample opportunity for such blessings and thanksgiving. Fall is beautiful in its colors, and resplendent in its holidays: chanukah of the lights, thanksgiving with its cornucopia of colors, family, thanks, foods, and the warmth of togetherness; halloween with its candy, and the entire season full of pumpkin, apples, harvest, corn, turkey, fireplaces, cider, chai, and maple.
Winter arrives with the advent of Christmas, and what better holiday is there than that? Shortly after, you celebrate the new year, and the greens and the reds of christmas join Janus' two-faced nervousness about the impending days. There is valentine's day, the day of love and single-angst, stuck in the center of the northern-hemispheres cold, and st. patricks day celebrating green in a season of white and gray. Winter is full of snow, rain, lovely mountain peaks and early morning fogs. It is the best time for snuggling by a fireplace and reading a book, and drinking warm tea and lighting candles.
Spring is a blessing of verdancy, as the first snowdrops peak their heads out from the frost, and the deciduous trees tentatively turn out leaves, and the evergreens shake their white-fur coats from their sleeves. The animals emerge and the birds begin to return, and the fogs and lakes lie in cold beauty as the world remembers colors and light. Wildflowers come to life on the mountainsides, and the butterflies and bees remember life.
Summer is the time of life, the blooming of full flowers: lilac and lavender and rose, and the sunflower season and time where everyone is outdoors enjoying each other and the world.

The Other Side

There aren't always a multitude of paths, but often. And at these crossroads, an easier road and the harder options. The easier road isn't always better, nor the harder always worthy of the journey. But there the easy sits, parallel to the spiky pit, and the rivers are bluer, the sky clearer, the grass greener on that rise, while through these ruts I claw.
And it's beautiful for the summit, splendid for the crawl, but what does the other side look like?  In those twinning times, where I dream I stole to the other side, I wonder if I was strong enough, or was there joy enough like this life?
What if I'd picked the harder trails? I could have chosen any life, and this I took in stride.

And even happier than can be, I'm stuck with wondering who else I could have been. How much better can I be?

Wayside Writing

There's always a sacrifice with priorities, it seems. Writing elsewhere consistently means this forum for release gets neglected, and journal time often takes second-string to novel writing, which fits into the corners and cracks of daily life. The same is true of anything. I've been strung thin with sleep since daylight savings, and I'm struggling to recover some semblance of rhythm (mostly the circadian sort). The weather gets chill, and foggy mornings and nights issue forth from over the hills, seeping into the valley like a tidal pool for the receding surf of clouds.
I was contemplating slowness the other day. I often believe everyone's definition of slow is quicker than mine. People who consider their molasses lives are slugging along, and I see these racing by - even snails on airplanes are moving fast, indeed. Living in a small town or country does not necessitate slow, but only suggests it. You can bring the city anywhere you please, if you spurn nature-living.
I once believed in this, the pen-ink dream, and cleverly devised brilliant lines schemed in gold and green. Brilliant, by-the-by, with diction not unlike effigy, clairvoyant, melancholy, where clear voyage into future sight was a crude and morose mimicry of gentility and aristocratic flair.
Now I pray those same breaths don't suffocate me, for some while. When these beliefs do not drown, they fly so elegantly, fluttering with vestigial wings.

Write til' you drop

A name can be an identity, or the barrier between you and one. Your name is the sohl-reason for your being. But it is not your being. It's a fly tied to the fishing line, and even forgetting, you've not lost everything. 
Sometimes, I think I enjoy sentences without knowing, or caring, how they connect. I often relish writing the words, feeling the taste and texture of them, with an appalling apathy with regards to overarching structure. I love words; I love sentences; sometimes I don't desire any greater tapestry than simply marveling at the few strands of thread I'm twirling in my fingers. 
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/28/specials/dillard-drop.html
Annie Dillard has a remarkable essay on writing, and I've read it often to remind myself why I continue writing. I don't expect to sell my sanity and soul into this, but I do have some small passion for it. 
I often glance at my works and see only the skeleton of artistry, the meatless bones, and I wonder if I'll ever have time to clothe them. I've swirled up the dust of creation, but Adam looks like a halloween dry-bones or those crab shells left by sea gulls on the stones by the ocean. 
I jump from topic to topic, considering a new sentence that inspires me, even if its connection to the last is tenuous, or non-existent. I'm sewing non-sequiturs in patch after patch on a dirty rag, and hoping it will hold together if the patches are pretty enough. And the patches are beautiful, but the motif is all spontaneous confusion.

The River Why and Why

Ems asked me what my ideal schedule would be like, and I've been considering that, with regards to the coming month and time in general. In the book I'm currently reading, The River Why by David James Duncan (a re-read), Gus, the main character, moves out of home after high school into a cabin on the river and writes up "The Ideal Schedule" for his life. He even calls it that.

His ideal schedule is: fish for 16 hours, sleep for 6, eat and do what needs to be done in the extra time. After living thusly for a short while, he realizes how despondent he’s become – and why? Why is the question of the book. He realizes that his ideal schedule is lonely and purposeless.

One of the reasons I have difficulty articulating ideal schedules is that I tend to tackle personal obstacles as they arrive. I don’t consider myself a spontaneous person; it’s more like I plan to eradicate any despondency as it arrives, immediately, and then move on to what I want or need to get done. I also struggle with the concept of ideal. I’m not an idealist, and I think that my post on perfection explains a little of my confusion over what “perfection” even is. What is a perfect day? I have no idea, and no inclination to rigorously discover that quality. It’s too ephemeral.  I just live, love the best I can, work the best I can, and try to maintain a healthy, happy self when I’m melting in the crucible.

So I’m still trying to find balance between self and others in this newness of life. Mostly, self gets stuffed into an over-full closet of to-do, but that’s part of the discovery of the “other” the quality of loving and being loved in addition to understanding being an entity, of itself, in relationship. It’s a learning process, and I always feel way behind. I’ll need more journal time to find my soul.

Perfection

Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

there is none righteous, not even one;

there is none who understands,

there is none who seeks for god;

all have turned aside, together they have become useless;

there is none who does good -

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

for by grace… and not of yourselves…

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.

I think, growing up, I grappled with the idea of perfection all the time. I was, and am, something of a perfectionist when it comes to my being. If I sacrifice time and effort into an activity meaningful to me, I expect nothing short of excellence, of perfection. My competitive spirit always found comparison with those performing better, or those persons who were smarter, faster, stronger, more able.

Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

My perfection was an odd one. If an activity meant little to me, perfection was (is) unnecessary. With homework assignments, or games that I disliked, I rarely tried harder than what was necessary to do “well” or “above average”. But how does one spiritually acquire perfection? We’re constantly showing our efficiency at failure, myself in particular.

I remember once having an argument with myself about what perfection even meant. It means a life without sin, no? And sin means “falling short”, and its original use was in archery when the draw fell shy of the target. Sinning isn’t overshooting, or hitting the target and just failing to hit the bullseye – sinning is knowing that your arms simply aren’t broad enough to reach the target; the distance is behind your ken.

My argument was, could I simply lock myself into a room, and quarantine my iniquity from the world, and live a perfect life in seclusion? But I always came around to the idea that sin, and lack of perfection, wasn’t simply *not failing* but also striking the target. You cannot live perfectly by refusing to draw the bow in the first place.  “But I never even shot an arrow – how could I have fallen short?” It was an argument that always left me a bit miffed; a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” sort of frustration. It was a catch-22 (thanks Heller), no doubt, and I felt the fall like a cancer within me.

Grace is a miracle. But it doesn’t make me perfect. I’m feeling particular imperfect lately, having been sick, and looking at my writing and wishing it better, and noticing all those places in my life where I feel like a spectacle of imperfection. We all are, perhaps, but that doesn’t relieve the feeling that we’re in glass houses, and everyone is witness to our weakness.