Latter Day Saint

So now I'm going to go Mormon.  Surprising only if you have not been following along. 

7/3/17 Email:

Various family and loved ones.

I hold that all religious truth is subjective. We are judged by God alone.  No two people experience God in exactly the same way.  I am done with arguing creeds and doctrine except in the privacy of my heart.  I am open to people, not to ideology.

 If any live the Christian behavior James described. I will consider them "of God" as their lives proclaim.  The local LDS people I know are of God by this standard and by many others.  I am completely certain the Christ they worship is the very same Christ I was raised to worship and worship now.  It is, after all, The Church of Jesus Christ, really.  I expect to join the Saints as fully as I can for the love and sake of my nearest children and grandchildren.  This move would be impossible except for a very generous gift of faith from the Holy Spirit which bridges all contradiction.

On a daily basis we can only act locally and must choose from what is possible locally. I forsake none of my current Christian brothers and sisters, pastor or congregation.   This is a "both-and" choice, not an "either-or" choice.

I consider that no sect or religion has exclusive access to God.  Emnity for those we consider in error is simply hateful behavior no matter how anyone reaches that conclusion.  Hate is evidence for the existence of Satan.  I have not considered him real for many years but you are welcome to your experience.

I judge none of you and love all of you. I pray you not judge me and I know some have and others will.  I must act in my interest and as God permits me to do. Everyone must take responsibility for their own soul.

I do not love you all equally as might be the ideal, but I love you and can not lie about such matters.  I hope to set no example except for service.  This was not a competition and everyone of good will wins.

I will care for Julie because that is who I am.  That behavior was cemented as I watched my parents care for each other and for the dear ones they could care for.  I expect to spend what life remains caring for others as I am capable.  The LDS organization is particularly well organized in this regard, as in many other ways.  I expect my abilities will be fruitfully applied and I will serve as God would have me.

We will be fine.  This is not a call for help.   It is a prayer for peace.  You may forward this as your heart advises.

In the Risen Christ,

David

8/24/17  The more I learn the scarier converting to Mormonism becomes.

Edward and me.

Do I have the alpha male thing?  I have led, managed, administrated and inspired folks.  Blazing forward, earned my keep.  Don't follow well for very long.  Both loyal and occasionally not.  Very trustworthy.  Capable of serious betrayal and living with it.  I will die with plenty of secrets.  Very good at getting people to trust and teach me.  Can pick brains, which requires the full opposite of dominance.  Simultaneously firstborn and a younger brother, can switch modes instantly.  I would have been a good double agent.

Bought Julie a tiny Chih tzu pup purebred with papers.  Neither of us with much real dog experience.  Bought what the breeder showed us without seeing both parents.  Much later learned the trick to buying promising pound animals.  Good ones go fast.  Put in your name while the animal is still in isolation, waiting for an owner who may never show.  Takes persistence as does any good thing.  Never did that.  Too late smart.  We die with so much experience and capability.

Named the pup Edward after my father's older brother and not his favorite. An obscure trick on the dead.  I have a fondness for scrappy, independent animals.  A little like my first wife, Tweet.  I came by the skill sort of honestly.  Owned a toucan just like the fruit loops bird for half a dozen years.   Simultaneously had multiple sneaky cats.  The bird can defend himself during the day.  The cats attack at night when the bird is blind.  Panics the bird even in a big strong cage.  The bird needs its own room with a door.

That long beak is quite a weapon and the toucan knows how to attack anything it can see.  Wild birds are always feisty with each other unless they're mates.  You do not want to watch ducks breed if you don't enjoy violence.

If you're standing in a doorway with a big bird flying toward you, stop.  The bird can tuck in it's wings and fly through narrow gaps.  If you move, the bird cannot correct in time and collision results.  So I learned how to deal with animals generally, on their terms.  I understand how they think.

But babies, puppies, are different.  I have so little experience with babies.  Babies, and puppies, cannot be allowed to have their own way, must learn to be submissive.  I did not know that when Edward came along.  Julie was damaged in ways I did not appreciate.  So Edward never got potty trained.  Ignoring the problem always makes it worse.  In that way Edward became my problem.

Must finish this story another time.

Falling

First seemed my father's world eclipsed.
Even with my youthful protest,
merely tarnished late.
Those massive foundations,
the ground I built my life upon,
will surely pull through darkness back.

Where steel-bound solid rock had seemed,
now black and sulfurous sand revealed.
That meteoric world was never in our orbit.
Flush and bright,
so very far outside the mean
we dreamed ourselves.

Devouring illusions,
reversion's law reclaims us.

Casualties of War and Memorial Day 2017

Generations raised in peacetime never comprehend past carnage.  Freed from witnesses, belligerence always rises again.

My church hosted a silent prayer vigil on Memorial Day 2017, specifically for Casualties of War.  A slight expansion on the formal purpose of the day.

First arriving, I prepared the sanctuary.  Brought the last of the iris. Lit the candles.  Made impromptu welcome signs.  Propped open the main doors early.  A vase of nearly spent dark flowers graced the entrance table.

Yet nothing prompted purpose.  I found a broken pencil.  Carved a point with my box knife.  Roughly printed these words and placed them beside the vase. 


"That I may not go unmourned,

That some would plead my maker
mercy on this soul.

That some might grieve and say
I did not have to die so soon."


It's not a poem I remember, not much of a poem at all.  Scrawled in moments, perhaps some stranger's plea preserved. Did I read it somewhere? Does it matter?

Before others arrived, I prayed an hour.  Fittingly and properly, Memorial Day commemorates U.S. fallen soldiers. Sometimes we forget the wounded, the civilians, the horrific losses of our enemy (now our friend).  Casualties all.  Worthy of being remembered.  If only that memory were immunizing.

According to the Garden - 2017

The garden reveals plant lore continually.  I have been schooled by tomatoes (and many other plants), for several Idaho summers.  Prepare beds well.  Use supports, twine and tomato clips, for anything resting on the soil will be consumed by others.  Corrugated cardboard also works to isolate tomatoes from the ground if it stays dry. And on and on every season.

My grandmother had these problems figured out in some different but equivalent manner.  When we mostly ate from kitchen gardens many people knew how to grow their food.  Mostly they did not record that knowledge.  One learned as a child by doing chores, practiced as youth with your own plots.  Growing stuff was common knowledge, therefore without much market value.  Farmers know as much as anyone.  As much about the land, the crops, the animals. Where land is free, requiring only an army to drive off it's inhabitants, farms multiply, production increases until the market collapses. Forget the railroads, electrification and the rest. Common farming knowledge has no value without land.  City folks or more successful farmers are quite happy to buy that land, for very little if the farmer has had a few bad years.  Skip forward a few generations.  Can kids grow anything today?

So, an old man, I garden.  I learn.  Someday this knowledge might come in handy.  But that is the rationalization.  I grow stuff because that is what people have done for 5000 years.

Confining Cinnamon

Cinnamon, my almost Maine Coon cat friend, rebelled at a shock collar. You might think me cruel, but Cinnamon figured out how to get across the radio wire clean within a day. Back and forth. Speed is the secret. Go too fast for the device to even register a boundary signal.

Now in the neighbor's yard. Now under a parked car. While I watched she went and sat in the middle of the street as if she were really stupid. When I went to get her she ducked under a car. She let me crawl halfway under that car after her. A few more like that and she considered my loyalty sufficiently demonstrated. She never gets close to the edge now. She just does not care to. The yard is her territory. She hangs out there with me. When it is winter she watches me from the closest window. 

If we are both outside and she isn't sleeping, she will sit ten feet away and watch me. She stalks the ducks, and knows they are too fast for her. They pretty much ignore her too. Probably remember the squirrel laughing at her and feel much the same. They know exactly how far she can jump and stay just over the line.
Occasionally she charges. She gets within a foot or two, but they have exploded into the air. They settle in the stream, flying all of fifteen feet. If you were a cat you would enjoy watching them too. But you would not waste energy. She accepts the score.

She will sit on the front porch and watch what happens on the street. For endless hours. You cannot beat the attention of a cat. Often she sleeps nights on the stairs so no one can get to me without stepping on her. We look out for each other. She is not a junior partner. I belong to her.

written on Facebook 5/28/17

What I Write vs. Might Write

Stories are the most efficient way to transmit thought between people.  The essay is nevertheless what I write here.  Story is all innocent adventure, pretends pleasure, fascinates through characters.  Essay implies purpose, has a job to do.  Story is the original indirect attack, denying significance while floating you over the falls.  Essay is obvious, demands attention.  Story insinuates itself, beckons to the casual listener.  Essay hits you on the head, tells you right up front what it wants.

Stories comfortably carry their loads, float them through narrative.  Stories situate themselves within life.   Essay is immediately present, story is deniably pregnant.  Story can be subtle, can disguise discomforting, dangerous thoughts beyond a censor's sensibility.  Stories often pretend other purpose.  Essay leads with sharp blade and thunder, cuts through objection, seeks to throttle doubt.  Stories pretend, meander like old streams oblivious to purpose.  Stories are not above flowers and butterflies.  Essay scuds along in tight paragraphs fairly bursting with supporting sentences.  Essay takes logic's straight path to conclusion.  Stories distract, indulge their author's eccentricities, take you by surprise.

So why do I not write stories?  Or poetry?

Economical poetry, so much with so few. Blank verse I will venture. Rhyme and meter require real work.  Troubadour I am not.

Twitter taught succinctness.  The 140 character format favors parsimony.  Trim thought's expression to the bone.  Comb through tangles, sieve distraction. Render smooth and slippery to the ear. . . .

revised 8-22-17

That Thin Veneer Disguising Feelings

May 24, 2017, mid-day:

Email received. . . .
 
"The funeral service for Rich Kirkness has been changed to Wednesday, May 31st.  The time is 2:00 p.m."



The evening of the same day:


My perfectly unconscious reaction

To: (various people in my Lutheran church congregation)

I'm just randomly copying a selection of church taste-makers. That is why you received this email.  I assume we talk about this, whatever. Crazy idea.

I suggest Trinity host a small fruit desert bar at Rich's funeral.  He was quite excited with the frozen Three Berry Blend from Costco.  Unsweetened Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries.  Almost ordered me to get some. Hey,  plastic cups and spoons. Or nice stuff.   Melting punchbowl of fruit, dipper.  Paper napkins.  Waste container.  Good with whipping cream, whipped cream, sugar, chocolate sauce - like liquid box of chocolates with the Hershey chocolate sauce. Seriously good in small doses. Have not tried honey. You will know anything else.

Might work served in the narthex at the church before the funeral service, Let's think about not policing the sanctuary.  Letting people sip on something so intensely Rich might help them feel better.  We're talking adults here, not spilly children.  Not expensive, not lots of trouble.  Fabulously hospitable.  

Pure Richard Kirkness Bliss.  He will get such a kick put of it. Amen.

David

The next morning:

Perhaps just save the desert idea for my own funeral  

(To the same recipients, having considered the absurdity of the previous.)

The iced fruit with chocolate sauce must be one of those deserts God is served after a particularly fine day.  Certainly the Mormon God, physical body and all, would appreciate this treat.

Currently, on a promise to my Daughter, reading the BoM.  Unusual style, somewhat hypnotizing when listening through earbuds.  Too strange to read for me, raised on King James.  The style in 2 Nephi is almost recursive. Takes the longest time to go the smallest distance. I'm making embarrassingly slow progress.

I have never met such cheerful young adults, the two female missionaries that helped me plant flowers yesterday.  To send young women to convert me must be cheating.   I should tie a rope around my waist and toss you the end.  Please hang on. 

Perhaps it's all feeling, that is why no one inside notices the peculiar things.  (All religious literature has claims that outsiders find peculiar.)  Consider the practice of re-experiencing full immersion baptism in proxy for one's ancestors under dramatic circumstances.  Repeatedly.  A full-sensory religious experience.  Not just tucking your head under the bathwater.  What do others make of this?  Must make my way through more apostate literature.

Jonathan Haidt describes religion as "binding and blinding."   I'm getting a real feel for the blinding part. 

I also better understand how quickly every Saint is reduced to choking up when delivering their testimony.  Don't think William James reported this.  Must reread "The varieties of Religious Experience."

Also, James goes through the full logically persuasive case for Christianity in "The Will to Believe," pretty much fails entirely, and his conclusion turns on how it just "seems so right."   Logically impervious.  A stumbling block to we Greeks indeed.  Faith does not consider what you fix it on.  Just works.  How can we think to know anything?

We must be heading for another Great Revival in America. So much social anxiety.  Perhaps we are there, just not seeing it for being in the middle of it.  Martin Marty's project on Fundamentalism says fundamentalism shows up necessarily during highly uncertain times.  What, no work in the future?  About as uncertain as possible.

Thanks for following along.

in Christ, David.

Generational Differences

I read that the generations younger than mine have very different views about many things.  Millennials respond differently than the WW2 generation, the Hippie generation, the Gen-Xers.  Every generation frames life differently.  Every generation responds to different messages.  This is what I hear.

The people who think this way are mostly younger.  Some older people know this to be false from their experience.  Many older people believe the young are corrupted and decadent, simply wrong.   We are really all the same.  Differences are incidental and ephemeral.  Generations can hear each other. It is possible.  All mature people can understand motion pictures. 

All children everywhere experience the world as though for the first time.  Parents rarely like their children's music.  Children rebel and leave home.  The world is forever going to hell in hand baskets.

Every generation's common experiences are superficially different.  People are born into poverty and others into riches.  Some generations grow up and fight wars. Others are bored, some simply wiped out. Despite this, my experience is that people are and have always been the same.  There are no races.  There are no giants.  There have never been elves.  There are no born criminals or saints.  People are all "human." 

Every life recapitulates every other life in so many ways.  There is nothing new under the sun, as the prophet wrote.  Every emotion you will ever feel has been experienced by others both contemporary and historic. There are no new answers or perversions.  Not everyone learns this basic fact.  Thucydides drove the stake home for me fairly late in life.

Religion always comes back into fashion.  The most powerful priests are always old.  The young always doubt. 

The Writing Beast

I am compelled to write.  Why is that?  Why, particularly when I agree with the sentiment of Ecclesiastes 1:9:

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

Every idea which can arise in the human mind has been thought, spoken or written many times before.  That is my assumption.  Originality is overrated, perhaps impossible.  Reformulation and restatement is all we can hope for.  Countless ideas are nestled deeply in the culture we inherit. We stumble upon  old thoughts and mistakenly believe we express them for the first time. We restate ideas in our time.  Others restate them a bit differently.  

First, writing is my method of thinking carefully.  Setting down naked thoughts makes errors and shortcomings more visible.  The process of rewriting grades the road, modifies the syntax and listens for images.  I may write a thousand words to craft several hundred in the final draft.  I follow thoughts where they lead and filter out the irrelevant later.  Often I discover what becomes the central point sifting through tangents and eddies. I write to discover what comes out.  As I rewrite I push all the unused sentences to the bottom.  I have learned to erase very little.  Often something I previously rejected resurfaces, with a few changes, as just what I need.  I save this detritus along with each of several drafts.  I may return to a subject and find them waiting.

Our Greek fathers first put ideas into writing, a form that coincidentally lived after them.  Before that, ideas were forged and sharpened in debate with associates.  Socrates belonged to the last generation to hold discourse more accurate and useful than any written work. Some ancient texts read like lecture notes.  They were set down to remind speakers of points to hit along the way.  They read like outlines rather than finished exposition.

and impossible to validate.  I write to demonstrate, first to myself, that my head works, that my process is accurate.  We write to prove we understand.  We publish so others can decide if we do understand. 

I started this exercise as a poem.  Poetry is one damn lot of work.  Perhaps some day I'll complete the verses.


Fragments, then sentences
flow onto the glowing surface
probing paths which never lead
to the destination which sat me down
and pushed the button. thoughts
now recoiling from exposed concreteness
worms squirming for any shadow's relief.

Once again, writing.
Taking courage from the blank space
not every previous piece completely failed
at every level. Hopeful, optimistic process
may birth a timeless truth freshly stated
might expose my foolishness in a new way
or establish my uncertain feel for some
concept the ancients beat to death.
May not strike every note false,
could resemble worthy discourse.

My thesis will premise,
The world recreates itself in every child,
We grownups porter shards of word-hoard
until we falter. By what art can we know
how faithfully we transmit our part?
Only by writing can we discover if we
got it or simply cooked up what might pass
for truth on a dark night.


And so I posit the inevitable, innocent effusion
of derivative and duplicative restatement
in contemporary clothes ad infinitum
Nominally searching for one original idea,
we half-wittingly draft restatements
of our assimilated culture's foundational assumptions
for all to view and judge by what degree
we miss the mark
and muddy sacred heritage bequeathed,
obscuring every concept through
perception's foggy glass. Then trickster memory
forms sentences masquerading as original
thought in fact restating timeless concept.

Originality is overrated, perhaps rare,
perhaps a fiction to keep us moving,
mistaking old thoughts in stylish hats
for the real thing.


Did we understand?  are we successfully
shouldering some scrap of intellectual
inheritance.

The likely ignorance of readers
will fail recognizing original thought
however accurately restated.
The clear idea we so boldly, poorly parrot.
All-round confused, we sense originality.

As I was saying, the world recreates in every child

Mature faith and finely-graded comprehension
subtlety of movement, carefully tested assumption
varieties of ignorance, suspicion and hate
highest art, deepest faith, what never works
all winks out at each soul's passing.
The basics repeat, crawl, toddle, walk, run
Isolation, helplessness, parenting, society
individuals variously bound-up in the whole
language, communication, interdependence

We learn by falling, learn from pain, dislike coercion
converge on the normal gait because bodies
cover the most distance with the least energy
exactly the same way, always, without observation or example.
We grant fire respectful distance through burns endured.

Questions yield answers. Right answers, wrong answers,
many answers, no answers, choices, differences without
distinctions, nonsense possibly intentional. Lies and truth,
complementary and contradictory, paradox,
faith maintained in the absence of evidence.
The bedrock of one's own experience. Authority.
Innocence, the-first-time, first love, first heartbreak, rejection
repetition, routine, satiation, boredom, work, sweat, rest, indolence.
Novelty, sensation, pleasure, intoxication, loss, grief, death.

We select milestones, enshrine and enrich explorers, saints,
discoverers, leaders, rulers, battles,
inventions, debacles and defeats.
Culture is immense piles of stories and objects,
sung by parents to children, celebrated . . . . . . .

Surely, good Sir, this longish litany leads some where?
To some lesson worthy? Your welcome wears thin so lacking
reputation, so unlettered, so contemporary.

The words seize life, dearest reader,
they would write themselves
most generously.  Very well.

I write to think more clearly. 
To face ideas on the page
where they will sit still. 
Writing to recognize my own foolishness.
Writing to demonstrate that I have learned
something that feels important.
I rarely write to convince anyone
of anything.  I have learned
no one who would benefit
from my experience will absorb it.
I know how impossibly stupid, deaf and credulous
I was in my twenties.

I remember how strong and irresistible
sex is, what tales we will
invent to render others willing
to come to our beds, how they
will transform kindness into
a perception of being loved
when the evidence is so very thin.
I remember how weak I can be,
how careless with the hearts of others. 
I know these feelings and drives
exist to perpetuate the species. 
I marvel at their power to make
me consider throwing away real love and loyalty. 
I never actually fathered children. 
I escaped being yoked
to unsuitable, unstable women.  But only barely.
I missed the satisfaction, trials
and joy of natural children.

I have always known there are enough children in the world
because I was a surplus, inconvenient child.

I know I was sired by young people from strong Lutheran families,
families that worked with Lutheran social services
to place me with another strong Lutheran family.
In so doing I inherited the social, cultural and physical
advantages my birth parents would have given me had
I not had such poor timing been born.

I expected to be vaporized in an atomic explosion.
I was stupid enough to believe in free love, to be exceedingly
careless with the feelings of others and with my own.

I had a serious argument with God.  I sensed that no God
worth following could be cruel enough to condemn
the vast majority of His children to perdition.
I was not imaginative enough to understand
the subjectivity of Truth.  I was too blind to see God
at work in every religious tradition.  I had no concept
how much strength believers could receive from their faith
and their churches. Not that my parents did not plead with
me in every possible way.  I lost faith and nothing anyone
would ever say ever resurrected my child's faith.
I would not participate
even though I was so well socialized Lutheran
that every way I rebelled against that tradition
failed to serve me.
 

Wars start when the veterans of previous wars grow old
When heroes and cowards boast of Glory
When veterans finally lock away their nightmares.
The young can always be incited to war and glory
For the futility and obscenity of war are difficult to render pornographic
The disillusionment of war is does not transmit well culturally.
War looks promising to those who never lived one
to warrior professionals, to armament industrialists
to the insane, to the greedy past enlistment age,
to politicians on the flimsiest pretext.

War appeals to civilians treasuring an imagined history
of suffering and oppression who can be stirred up to
imagine the satisfaction of revenge and retribution.

2013.

My Fall From Faith and Recovery, Sort Of

Christian Doctrine, what the church believes, teaches and confesses, fills many volumes, distinguishes subtle concepts from each other and is too voluminous and complex to be of much practical interest to non-professionals.

Asked what we believe as church members, most would reach for one of the several creeds the church has formulated over the two millennia since Christ's time. The creeds are precise summaries of Christian doctrine, formulated to answer basic questions.  Christian creeds in use today start simply with the relatively brief Apostles creed and become increasingly detailed as new questions arose and were answered.

As I have discovered, however, creeds were created as a way of identifying those who preached something to the contrary more than they were to tell parishioners what to believe.  The Nicene creed from 325 has a particularly troublesome history.  It is a compromise that very few really liked.  It was finally imposed by military force 200 years later.  The protracted war of orthodoxy waged by the Emperor Justinian destroyed Roman cohesion in the Western Mediterranean and hastened the collapse of central Roman authority.  The Goths and Visigoths just got the blame a long time later.

Most English translations of the Nicene creed do not adequately represent the original concepts expressed in Greek.  These described what we now call the Trinity, the concept that one God could simultaneously be three distinct personalities.  Although fundamental doctrine today, the idea expresses a paradox -  truth which seems to contradict itself.  3=1 and 1=3, not easy to understand on any level.

I must plead guilty of reading a good deal of the history of antiquity in the last few years. I have worked my way through most of Jaroslav Pelikan's five volume history of the development of doctrine since Christ.  I find the debates and disagreements interesting, which may reflect the large amount of discretionary time I have discovered in retirement as well as my insatiable curiosity.  I have regularly attended a Lutheran church during the past several years.  Before my move to Nampa, ID four years ago I had avoided doing so for nearly 50 years.  One of my first questions on picking up (or resuming) some intellectual activity for me is to wonder about it's family history.  The adventure has shed light on how I see God as well as how I regard the significance of many "ordinary" church practices.

I was educated in the Lutheran school system from the first grade through several years at Valparaiso University.  In my early twenties I had a fairly good grasp of the Christian story and considered it true for all practical purposes.  As my world broadened to include the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement as well as life as a young adult, I stumbled over a question which seemed to make the very existence of God highly unlikely.  Not an uncommon path for young people.

I knew that many varieties of religious practice claimed to be the real thing exclusive of all the others.  Churches mutually considered all others misguided at best to completely evil at worst.  I also estimated that Christians of all varieties  were a small fraction of the total number of humans through history.  What sort of creator being would select a small number of his identical creatures for Paradise while condemning the majority to Damnation?

This question of essential fairness led me to conclude either every faith was legitimate or none of them were.  How all of the mutually contradictory religions could be true was beyond my comprehension.  So I concluded that the faith of my fathers was pretty much a story without a point.  If God existed, he was not making his preferences, or presence, known to mankind.

This seemed to render churches as merely gatherings of variously deluded folks. If one were to honestly avoid pretense and hypocrisy, then churches were to be avoided.  So that is how I set off on my adult life, an un-churched non-believer.

So where does this long story lead?

I think the very core of Christian faith has nothing to do with creeds or even much to do with God.  To me, the only concept is to live the Golden Rule.  Not an easy practice, but one I have come to respect and put into practice.  "Treat others as you wish to be treated."  Sounds so simple .  How does that work?

If you want to be an aggressive, nasty person them stop reading.  You hardly need my advice.   Do not direct your ill will in my direction ether.  I bite back.  Take your life somewhere else.

First, there is no point in treating people badly through carelessness or by intention or through anger.  None whatever, as I will show.  Anger is particularly unfortunate because it comes from a very primitive part of our brains that cannot be said to posses intelligence at all.  Anger makes you stupid.  You will behave very badly when angry.  If you experience anger, withdraw until the anger and the fighting hormones settle down.  Treating people badly creates fear and resentment which last a long time.  Someone you have treated badly is not likely to respond with love and tenderness some time later.  The lesson about you has been learned.

Treating people well involves a bit more of your time, but their experience runs from positive to pleasurable.  People treated well are so much easier to live with.  If someone does not respond well, back off a bit, let them settle down..  Stop associating with people who are in the grip of some delusion that they are just fine alone, or surrounded with sycophants.  These people are likely to be persistently unhappy, fearful and possibly wounded.  If you must interact, do so very deliberately.  When someone is unhelpful or nasty, not much point in prolonging the encounter.

Treating people well makes your life so much easier.  The time you spend on them comes back to you in good, productive ways so very often.  And what does it cost you?  You must stop really caring about who is right in some disagreement.  Defuse it, let the righteousness go.  Our positions are rarely beyond compromise.  It is sometimes good if the other person thinks they won.  The next day it hardly matters who won or lost.  You just live the day that comes up next.  There are no true wins over those who spend a lot of their time in your life.  You win, you get turned off just slightly in the other's perception.  This adds up and can explode.

Needless to say, booze or drugs do not let you off the hook.  If you are an angry drunk, you are probably a terribly damaged person just below the surface.  Normal people tend to recognize and avoid angry people and wall them out of their lives.

Treating people well does mean you do what you agree to do.  Without being asked, if possible.  My experience is that just doing it takes so much less time and energy.  Fighting about something means it does not happen soon and will not go away.  You will be in constant conflict.

I had better explain about human capability before going further into what you may regard as fantasy.   Homo sapiens, you and me, are incapable of doing anything consistently, nothing ever works the first time as you think it should.  You will sabotage yourself and break just about any rule.  You will know the taste of defeat if you live a while.  Without exception, this is true by age 60, maybe a lot earlier. 

You are a unreliable animal.  You came innocent and fresh into this world to replace tired, worn out experience.  Your term of service is nearly over.

God's Undectable Fingerprints

I am a Christian.  I believe, confess and teach Christianity.  Christianity is my inheritance, a safe and durable edifice.  Christianity is how we Roman successors understand and deal with Ultimate Meaning and Purpose.

I am Christian to my core.  I have faith.  I have both strong faith and no faith.  But averaged out, I have sufficient faith to face death without fear.  I have enough faith to banish guilt.  I behave like a Christian.  I am saved from the consequences of my sin.  Whatever you might mean by "salvation," I have it.  God loves me, so I can love others.  I am a lay theologian by personal preference and by education.

So that is the faith part.  I also strongly doubt the existence of a Supreme Being of any kind.  I do not believe in God as provable fact, certainly not as Christianity describes Him / Her.  That is the "no faith" part.  Well, not quite. My non-belief simply does not matter.  Yes, you can smell paradox in the air.  Paradox proves nothing.

I have read Christian history and doctrine.  I have studied as carefully and as thoroughly as I am able.  I can explain the how and why, the meaning of Christ's life, death and resurrection.  I know the story.  I also know what is not in the story, the elephant in the room if you like.  One thing is missing.  The Big thing.  The thing we never talk about.  I recognize what is conspicuous by it's absence.  No fingerprints, not anywhere. 

I cannot find God's fingerprints.  I cannot see evidence of God's action and intelligence.  I cannot hear His Voice.  I cannot distinguish any sign of God's influence in history.  Everything looks exactly like the horrible, illogical, profane mess people make in the normal course of life.  I see practically infinite complication, paradox and mystery.  I see humanity as I have come to understand it, humanity as Thucydides describes it.  The God of faith makes a difference in the way things happen.  God should have his thumb on the scale, favor His people, speak through the Prophets and Evangelists.  Scripture is the inspired, Holy word of God.

Except scripture does not read with any constancy.  God is everything but the same, omniscient, omnipotent, all-knowing, Alpha and Omega being we describe Him as.  The God of scripture gets really angry, God punishes entire peoples.  God's faithful are forever chasing harlots and setting up idols.  God sets up problems that only He can solve.  The entire concept of predestination and election is complete nonsense and contradiction, and conspicuously undetectable.  Predestination is the bastard child of the Greek concept of Omniscience.  And God so Loves our misbehaving, awful selves that he sacrifices himself for us.  And then un-sacrifices Himself.  Descends to Hell, visits for a few days then ascends into Heaven after materializing a while on Earth. Heaven and Hell are real places without locations. Or possibly just concepts.  This fellow who hung with harlots and tax collectors.  What was he doing for three days in Hell?  Hanging with old friends I suspect.

Polygamy, slavery, circumcision, patriarchy, punishment -- all there as much as you can handle.  Jews are God's chosen people forever and the People who rejected and killed God Himself in the Person of Christ.  The Bible cannot be understood without endless notes and commentary.  The Bible must be interpreted as prophecy, allegory, prefiguration, metaphor and simile.  Every literary device was employed to mash up the Hebrew scriptures with what became the New Testament's multiple narratives.  The Cannon?  What counts and what does not?  Only provisionally settled centuries later, apocrypha everywhere depending on location.

The meaning of Jesus' life and death are so unclear that it takes centuries to develop orthodoxy. Except there are multiple orthodoxies, great schisms, sects innumerable, reformations and counter-reformations.  Burnings and purges.  And the Pope?

There is, in theory, one constant and unchanging Apostolic message.  But countless flavors of heterodox Christians have existed from Apostolic times.  The Arians did not disappear, we just moved out of their neighborhood. Poor Marcian, whose mouth is overstuffed with other's words and carrying uncomfortably the condemnation of history.


I have read a bit of the history of Christianity and Christian doctrine.  I would have liked to find those fingerprints..  I would like to see God's handiwork in what we call religion.  I would like to find God's truth.  I would like to find something except battles to the death.  Just bitterly opposed people arguing and, often by default or accident, orthodox or apostasy. I see lots of misunderstood dead guys.  What should I expect?  It's people.  We are all just humans skittering across endless fields of ice.

I am too ignorant or too stupid or something.  All I see are people with axes to grind and opponents to conquer and personal vendettas to pursue.  I see lots of thinkers, lots of debate, lots of killing.  I see lots of polishing, lots of convenient or inconvenient changes.  I see Bishops arguing with Bishops, thinkers exploring every possible interpretation of what amount to ghost stories.

But I do not see inspiration.  I do not see God's authorship.  I see lots of knotty problems created by trying to fit strange thoughts into preconceived categories.  Lots of paradox and inconsistency created by language, logic and just craziness.  Lots of miracles.  Lots of Authority.  I do not see much originality.  There simply is no evidence of anything Divine.   It is all faith.  It is belief and faith.  It is the total absence of meaning and evidence all the way down.  There is no foundation whatever.

Reason and logic, that quintessential Greek skill set, serve well in ordinary circumstances.  We are enveloped, however, in things not amenable to logic and reason.  We live in an alien universe where reason, language, anything we have is insufficient to explain very much at all.

Christ lived in a time when education meant becoming conversant with the culture of the Greek Golden Age.  Paul pointed out very clearly that the mystery of Christ was not something which could be "explained" by Greek reason and logic.  Greek postulates are responsible for Christian paradox and almost infinitively complicated explanations.  Theologians haAnd then un-sacrifices Himself, rises from the dead, mmer contradictions into apparent consistency.  We do not need to know the answers.  But the obsessed, in particular, must know that answers exist.  Or simply believe they exist.

Christianity took shape in a Greek world.  The fundamental Greek postulate was that existence is reasonable, that God operates and can be understood logically.  Jesus was extraordinary by any standard.  Jesus was a Jew and he spoke from within Jewish tradition. He was regarded as a very learned Jewish scholar, certainly not a Greek cosmopolitan.  Christ happened, he left only the experience of contemporary Jewish witnesses.  What "really" happened? Does it matter?

Jesus left a lasting impression on his followers. That Jesus life and death IS significant beyond those first witnesses is that their transformation was transmissible.  What Jesus' followers understood and taught about Him readily transformed others.  That capacity for transformation and transmission continues to this day.  Sort of like a social virus.

But what did Jesus mean?  How are we to understand His significance?  We have a few fragments in the language Jesus spoke, Aramaic.  Most of what we know from that first generation, what we now call the New Testament, was written in Greek by observant, educated Jews.  They wrote what made sense to them as classically educated people, products of Greek culture.  Much about Jesus was difficult to describe in Greek.  We are left with what the writers could only describe as miracles, happenings which contravene logic, mysteries.

Those who started this "Christian" thing were people who considered themselves observant Jews.  They were educated in the Greek manner and the Jewish manner if they were educated at all.  What we recognize as Christianity today was sorted through their sensibility.  What an impossible situation. 

For the first 300 years Christianity was not the product of scholarship.  Rather it was a consensus of disciples, referring back ultimately to Jesus' first followers.  The first comprehensive analysis of Christianity comes from Augustine, 300 years after the fact.   Thanks O'Donnell for the idea.

What to make of this unusual character Jesus?  We have a polished, diverse collection of thoughts and practices 2000 years later.   You get to choose if the story bears any resemblance to "actual fact."  We know of early Christian belief from "apologies" written to distinguish "true Christianity" from "falsehoods."

Your opponent never understands your ideas.  That you disappear is sufficient.  Unless they dig you up and consider it worthwhile to burn your heretical bones posthumously.  So much thought spent answering your critics, who were mistaken anyway.  Who is driving the bus?  Is anyone driving anything?  Not apparently. 

Does it matter?  No.  Religion is for unity.  Religion is for fighting over, for uniting large groups of people in common practice, for control, for winning, for explaining the inexplicable.  For disposing of inconvenient, dangerous ideas.

Religion is for answering impossible questions.  Religion is for giving birth and death meaning.  Religion is for the sacred stuff, the mystery.  Religion is for fighting superstition and for reinforcing superstition.  Religion is a social tool.

Humans need answers.  Religion supplies answers.  Religion has tremendous social utility.  Priests and Rulers need tools to move people or to stop them. Organization trumps anarchy.  God's inscrutable ways are responsible for what happens.  God is the antidote to chaos.  If not God actually and precisely, then the concept of God, the threat of God, the fear of God.

God, who may actually exist, has been silent for a very long time, perhaps forever.  So far God is not detectable by any reproducible means.  What we now call physical laws have no practical exceptions.  The dead do not come back to life in our experience.  Time does not run backwards.  But we can live as though we matter, as though there is something beyond death.  That is sufficient.  The story is what matters.  The story, impenetrably complex and infinitely detailed.  The story fills an entire lifetime with plenty left over.

Christian practice and tradition have functioned effectively for two millennia based on faith and assertion.  Proof has never existed beyond the words of witnesses.  One must conclude that proof is not required.

What is required?  Nothing.  Has the secular enlightenment eliminated faith?  No, faith works very well, thank you.  Faith is miraculously effective.  That Christianity exists in so many mutually hostile forms speaks for faith.  Can another Great Awakening be very far off?

It is all a matter of faith.  We can deal with the black emptiness.  We can live.  We can function.  We can worship and praise.  We can manage the fact of our own existence.  We can give randomness a veneer of purpose.  We can be different from animals.  We can be civilized.  We can live together. It is all people have ever had.  Religion is our inheritance.  Religion works.  There is no other answer.  Go ahead, look, philosophy is no help.  Faith is the only game.  Faith will rise again. 

So this is where theologians come to rest, the muddy bottom which gently buried the fossilized past.  By the time one understands enough, one also understands how little it matters.  One must get on with life, happy or sad.  There is no starting over.

I am a Christian to my core.  I act like a Christian.  I believe, teach and confess the story according to Martin Luther, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America flavor.  I have faith.  My incredulity is irrelevant.

Not Deathless Prose or Doctrine

Nothing in this blog has any particular value apart from the purpose it served when written.  I make no pretension of originality.  I think re-invention is just as much fun for subsequent inventors as it was for the first to publish the idea.  I have no educational pedigree, literally no degree at all.  There is no reason to take anything I write seriously.  I find this thought very liberating.  I pay no debt to posterity.  I expect to vanish without a trace.

Any casual reader of what I have written may sense deep internal problems within the assembly.  I am aware of many examples of inconsistency and contradiction, to say nothing of just outright poor writing, in this collection. If anyone bothered to read this, they could add many more.

That's just fact.  Everything approximates some idea of mine at the time it was written.  Thoughts often evolve over time in any brain not locked down by ideology. I do not consider the effort worthwhile to polish or refine pieces more than a few days old.  There is always something else to say.  Nothing is ever the final word.  I am not writing for publication, or even expecting to be read at all.  I write for myself.  I write to develop ideas in my head.  Sometimes I am pleased with the result.  Sometimes there are only fragments of ideas stillborn, only ramblings and waste, my ignorance confirmed by my own hand.

Still, each idea seemed worth expressing when I wrote it.  Time is my enemy.  I am not responsible to any editor or audience.  It is what it is.  What I have not sampled in this life are the only things I could possibly regret.

I have had so much enjoyment and happiness.  I overcame the bad stuff as long as I'm here.  I will die and return to dust quite soon, but probably not in the next instant.  I cheated as little as possible and, on my own terms, won big time.  Thanks, Oh my real or imaginary God, thanks for the opportunity.  Thanks for life, Mom and Dad.  I am truly grateful.

ADHD, Depression and Drugs

When you lose confidence in your instruments, and the situation does not resolve very quickly, you are about to fly into the ground at full speed. Disoriented, you can no longer understand it's a cockpit problem.  I have been in analogous situations, less the corkscrew crash.

I got lost going to an appointment several weeks ago (after dark) for two hours because I was convinced Google was headed for the wrong place. So yesterday, going to the same place in daylight, I did not use Google until the very end. Only 20 minutes late.  By the way, I think I finally need that cataract procedure.

Saw the shrink this morning and got meds changed which should help.  "Old" sneaks up and does odd things.  Different stressors shift moods around and may call for drug adjustments.

I have no problem kicking back alone.  But I cannot accomplish anything without my psych meds: antidepressants and stimulants and tranquilizers.  Once I worried my thinking might be significantly altered by the stimulants and tranquilizers.  Now it is just a matter of survival.  I use the least amount of anything that keeps me functioning and not yelling at people.

Perhaps we have talked about the Elephant / Monkey metaphor for our brains from recent psychology.  Elephant is the part of your brain that does not talk.  The elephant knows how to operate your vehicle, ride a bicycle, feel happy or sad. The elephant makes most of your day-to-day decisions based of stereotypes.  The elephant makes decisions very quickly, something like your pets do.  Takes complicated questions and reduces them to something he has answers for, sensible or not. The elephant understands the world in terms of stereotypes.

The monkey rides the elephant.  He speaks for himself and verbalizes for the elephant.  The monkey is lazy and he is slow.  The principal task the monkey does is to fashion a credible story for why everything the pair do together makes perfect sense.  Rationalization happens without even thinking.  The monkey justifies your every action to yourself and to other people.    So the elephant takes care of most day-to-day living.  The elephant passes questions to the monkey that elephants cannot answer with their methods.  The monkey can do logic and philosophy.  So the elephant drives your car.  The monkey tells him where to turn, knows where home is and all that.  Once the elephant gets the map internalized he can go almost everywhere without waking the monkey.. Got it?  Kahneman.

So the problem with getting lost was the monkey falling asleep while pretending to be awake.  I was not in danger as the elephant is an extremely experienced, safe driver.  But I was just lost and burned a half - tank wandering around.  The thought I might need Ritalin never crossed my mind.  I carry it around for such occasions.  But everything seems exactly the same with or without. Until the elephant notices bad behavior and pops Ritalin, I'm liable to do less than fully controlled stuff if it involves logic or speech.

I have been using Google maps and navigation for a long time.  Once in a while the details are not right. So I know it is not perfect Now that I use it on a cellphone I can barely see in the dark, now that so much content gets pushed at me, I have physical issues hitting the right spot on the screen or navigating past all the junk.

The elephant has moods.  The elephant needs mood drugs, antidepressants, anti-psychotics.  When you drink alcohol the elephant gets bold and sloppy, can't drive well, and the monkey mostly goes to sleep.  Marijuana appears to make the monkey and the elephant feel really well.  It does not affect the elephant's reflexes, so the elephant has no problem driving if he can force the monkey to keep one eye open and pay attention. 

Imminent Danger will focus the monkey pretty well.  I worked for years quite successfully in normal industry without Ritalin.  But terror was always somewhere deep in my brain, making me pay attention.  TERROR. Terror of being leveraged out over Hell's pit, in danger of losing everything pretty quickly if I did not perform.  So I did my homework and never flubbed a meeting or a presentation.  If your boss watches for years and always sees you deliver under pressure he might trust you with more responsibility.  And did, often enough.  One fuck-up is all it takes to crash.  At least that is how I had it wired up.

Terror wears out your body.  Finally, at 55, I was not interested in living with that much constant stress.  I took my name off the list.  There is always hope if you have not scratched your own name off the list.  Goodby career.

If the monkey has trouble paying attention or staying on task, which is ADHD, the monkey needs stimulants like Ritalin or amphetamines to make the brain's executive center work normally.. If the brain's executive is weak, you cannot stay on task,  You just drift around, little of this, little of that, nothing really ever gets done.

So, going back to the first example, the monkey conclude the instruments lie.  The elephant can still do complicated  u turns and backing up and watching out for traffic.  So you stay safe but, because the monkey is thoroughly confused, does not know what to do, you stay lost.  Having been to the place, the monkey says he will remember.  But he just gets lost again because when he found the place the first time after two hours, he was too frazzled to remember carefully.

It's not that I'm getting too old to remember.  If I don't go through the memory drill I have never remembered.  Pity I learned the drill after I retired.

I am on pretty much all the antidepressants I can handle.  I take Ritalin to feel normal and to accomplish anything.  I was customarily not taking Ritalin in the evening because it keeps me awake.  So at church council meetings at 7:30 pm I was not perfectly reasonable and I shouted at people.  So I've tucked in my head and now take Ritalin in the evening so at least I can sit quietly and pay attention.  Then I have to cancel out Ritalin's effect with tranquillizers to sleep.

So the solution appears to be to keep the ritalin levels up when I need to do something.  Then use the tranquillizers to cut the edge on the Ritalin and get to sleep.

We keep on until we cannot.