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.