"IT'S PURE EVIL"

There it is then. This week's oxymoron.

I began thinking about this today after seeing "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", the third movie/book in the Narnia series. There are some very good sequences, some departures in a technical sense but not in a spiritual sense; and Lewis' sense of hierarchy, a real horror to the modern, seems to be here somewhat restored. What bickering there is isn't so irritating as in the second film, esp. for those who know the story and the role of Eustace, who was written as a complainer but not as a usurper. It is ironic that this may be the last of the series since we have seen a decline of interest in the project, particularly for those who see this as a sort of art project (or just entertainment to be compared to other entertainments), rather than as a pretty straightforward allegory. Coming up to art house standards of the kind that bears such dismal violent film festival kind of fare isn't really the point, is it? But the competition esp. by Disney is especially fierce this Christmas with a revised fairy tale which no one expects to be "faithful" to the original. Now that Disney is out of Narnia, they are out to beat the competition, of course--including torpedoing their ex-project at least for the time being.

Narnia has survived much worse attacks than from "The Walt"!!!

For my part, if "The Silver Chair" is not made, I won't be without a film version. The BBC version from long ago is of course very primitive on special effects but I would be pretty amazed if any actor I can think of could do a more convincing Puddleglum than was done by the Brits themselves. This, too, should be seen, by you,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

But along the way of this voyage, the semitropical island lair of the White Witch (implied) is described as "pure evil". This presents, to my mind, enormous and insuperable metaphysical difficulties.

Another favorite movies of the Schulers is "The Time Bandits," a post- Monty Python project financed by George Harrison, who also wrote the closing song. Dan asked us to send him the DVD for Christmas--hopefully with extras. The final bit is posited on a long gambit rather on the same lines of the Narnian invasions by men and shape-shifters; it has a "son of Adam" extruded into a multi- dimensional set of worlds and times, who is then escorted by the bandits, who seem to be a species of gnome, once in charge of certain bushes, but stealing a map of the universe that belongs to The Supreme Being has them being pursued inexorably, both by God and by Slewfoot, both of whom want the map, either back to the Creator or to plan a new universe: "Computers! Day One!" (And no slugs)

It's all very complicated but not rich for those who dislike fantasy, silliness, and irony conmixed. The boy and the bushmen are lured into hell by an excellent Satan--Shelley Duvall I think--and at the last are rescued ex machina by The Supreme Being who reduces his opponent to a smoking carbonized statue. The statue breaks up into smoldering pieces of -you guessed it--Pure Evil!!! "God", who is portrayed as a rather fussy businessman, takes over completely , produces a large bin, and declares, "I want every bit of this cleaned up! I don't want any of these pieces left lying about......" So the gnomes work albeit sloppily on cleanup, get back their old job, and are handily, but a little reluctantly, forgiven, but they all disappear leaving the boy in a hellish situation, "without so much as a by-your leave!"

The boy wakes up in his home but his room is filled with smoke; a piece of burnt roast in the microwave being the cause. When the fireman comes out with the appliance in question, his folks open it up to see a charred seething lump and the boy cries, "Mum! Dad! Don't touch it! IT'S EVIL!!!" Which they promptly do anyway, and equally promptly explode. There is a bit more at the end that I won't reveal. But if I haven't spoiled it for you, put that in your queue and smoke it...

I will think about this some more and perhaps add some flesh to these twice-burnt bones. I hope in the meantime that some of you can do your own speculation and perhaps share it here if you like. I trust that you trust that 2011 will be extremely interesting and a blessing at the same time. It's all Pure Gift, I know--and in this I can use the word "pure" without any misgivings whatsoever. Hard to ignore 61 years of so many blessings--starting with Mumsy and Dadsy of course-- DON'T TOUCH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mass

What does the word, "Mass" really mean? Does it derive from the same words as "Michaelmas" (which is really what we just celebrated in the view of some) which literally means, Michael-sent?

Christmas means Christ-sent, of course; One can argue that we are celebrating the conception of the One Sent, with Michael being just the bearer of the tidings of great joy; but the actual birth may have taken place in September, around the Feast of Trumpets, which could possibly be more appropriate for such a birth.

(See "The Journey of the Magi"--"I should be glad of another death.")

insert Chi Roh here

"No man ever spoke like this man."

Yes, I keep coming back to this observation, esp. when I am tempted to look at the writings of others, including my own, as anything but purest speculation. We write as if driven, yet Christ (Yes, that Christ after which Christ Mass is named) only wrote in the sand. It's surely not because he was an illiterate Galilean peasant--how then could he have argued with all those doctors about the Scriptures? No, he chose to be quoted by us, because as far as any can tell, his words are for us. And, "if God be for us (before us too!!!) who can be against us?"

One can "explain" history by materialism alone; yet is that not like trying to 'splain quantum phenomenae with Newtonian tools,with which materialism only appears to be true on a local human level? It's sure no theory of everything, even though millions have made it so in their own minds, usually to maintain their own less-fettered hedonism.

Yet even so, God wants us, apparently, to be Christian hedonists, i.e. to "enjoy Him forever." The true pleasures, per Mr. Screwtape and Mr Lewis, are His invention, and are inimitable and unsubsumable and have their components of sensate desire, but dominate them in the long run. (See John Piper's "Desiring God".

As to Christmas itself, an odd thing has happened to me on the way to the manger.

As a child, I was dominated by my desires to get stuff--giving was kind of a drag, rather like writing thank you notes for socks and underwear. So mine were Newtonian and Darwinian assumptions: you give, I get--I increase, you decrease! Kind of John the Baptist in reverse.

Since then I have been rather inundated by "Theories of Christmas" from Dickens to the "new" atheists and back to Church again. But as a result, I note that Jesus Himself had no reported words about His birth; a physician, who was apparently also a compulsive writer, gave the most commonly used account. So in deference to a scientist that was there--or thereabouts!--I would tend to accept Luke's version as definitive, "good enough", but not comprehensive--as has been said of the Bible as a whole.

But, strangely enough, it is the many tsunamis of opinion that restore a sense of mystery beyond words. "Why believe him rather than the others?" (Beckett)

Well, that's the point and there's the mystery. The gospels are as good an account as we are going to get. Scholarship will neither add nor detract from any of them. Inconsistencies simply relate to the relative views of man and are one of many reasons why the gaps will be filled in only later, as was the case with Isaiah and all the OT prophets.

Question: what does Jesus think of Christmas? Only the denizens of heaven know, and are informed more fully. "Angels long to look into these things." re: human existence.

Therefore one can only, even logically, say, "This too is a great mystery. I speak concerning the church..." concerning its Brideship. The coming in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, which I hope everyone has read--recently(!!!), therefore regains the status of mysterium tremendum simply because the plethora of opinions are all wrong, to greater or lesser degrees. This is the right sort of relativism, rightly applied to our own estate, not God's . And who then can prove otherwise? (seeing as even the revered gold standard of the scientific method and doubly-blinded studies are now suspect--as with the numbers highly specified to maintain our universe, it appears that God has been toying with the science as well--because of scientism, i.e. idolatry?

Well, so much for "Christmas Science!!!" Thanks esp. to Joyce and Dennis and John and Alex for sticking with this sticky wicket of a blog since its inception, and for making it worthwhile and challenging me to rethink my opinions and see and know how relativistic they are. For the records, I see no reason to change what is axiomatic, except the consequences of them surely need fleshing out. And if God deigned to come in the flesh, surely I can be at "present" content with my low estate and poverty of being a carnal and pushy person, and let Christ be in me more and more. Perfection eludeth me, hence the AA saying: "I can't--He can-- so I'd better let Him, eh?"

"REJOICE! AGAIN I SAY IT:RE-JOICE!!!

"oxymoron of the month"

Freeway

Dream as Traum-a Lieder

Didja ever have one of those dreams wherein you're on a wide superhighway approaching a bridge over a river the size of the Mississippi and you start to climb but the road gets narrower and narrower? And the grade becomes steeper and steeper as your car gets smaller and smaller and slower and slower?

I didn't think so. But it ends when you almost get to the top and you realize your car is stuck at the top of a grain bin and your superhighway is a tin tube to a deep dark tank--so you must get tanked! "Every grain of wheat must die".....first....a fitful fearful ferment follows sometimes. Even when I wake to full sunshine...hence this late entry.

The old saying, "yeah, but in the long run, we're all dead," may be be apropos here...since all we see is a tiny fraction of what's over the bridge/tube and we never quite get to the top so that we are once again left with wonder, on the plus side, and dread on the other. Notice how these dreams are almost always cut off just before the most spectacular views and/or the most terrible abysses should appear? Maybe our curiousity IS limited? A bit,a bit...

Define death, then! Doth death, like taxes, evade all formats of relativity? One must assume that either biological death is the end; or it's not. If our deaths are final, as most of the Western world lately seems to assume, then as Gordon Liddy says (yeah that Gordon Liddy--but who would know better than a real burglar?), "we're all just worm food." and life is all sensate satisfaction and avoidance of pain,"full of low sounds and silent fury".

I have gone back to reading Joseph Conrad's short stories, such as "The Lagoon", which with all its brooding may have been a precursor or a postlude to "Heart of Darkness" in which all human aspirations are reduced to one low unlit level which is quickly swallowed up by an omnivorous wilderness, without and within.

"Arsat had not moved. He stood lonely in the searching sunshine; and he looked beyond the great light of a cloudless day into the darkness of a world of illusions." Arsat expects himself to go back to a whole world of enemies to avenge his brother's death and to assuage his guilt for not dying with his brother and having caused that same brother's death as well. "In a little while I shall see clear enough to strike--to strike. But she has died, and ....now...darkness."

You see, Arsat was both a feared warlord and a thief of his king's wife, all thanatos and eros which clearly caused the death of the "secret sharer" long before he would be biologically dead. So, if death can come before death, can it not only come after death as well, what is known as "the second death"?

We cannot assume it does not--at least not from evidentiary methods that we have or are likely to develop. "Unless a man die......"

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I see that the subject of suffering strikes a chord among my couple of readers. I would say, "Oh, good!" like Mrs. Fawlty but that might be disrespectful to those billions who do suffer considerably more than the all the three of us thrown together-- that too would be an assumption based on little or no evidence at all except the bits we have shared together thus far. (Thanks to Joyce and Dennis for being semi-public sharers on this bog of a blog:)

My job, for good or ill, requires me to inure myself to the suffering of others as much as it requires me not to faint at the sight of entrails. It's a thin line between these three at least: detachment, empathy, and unacceptable callousness. If we did not have some inborn interpersonal and societal reflexes, this would be impossible to do. Think of Asperger's. Think of the sociopath. Think of the portait of the artist as a young man-- namely Dorian Gray.

"It's Complicated" (maybe unsubsumable)

As Joyce can tell us, I was what we could kindly call a social "retard" as a young man, with lots of squeamishness but very little "outer directedness" (Riesman); only a very blighted, erroneous self-awareness. But are we to call subsequent developments inevitable, the result of hard work, or the Grace of God? Given every man's "heart of darkness" (I dare not speak for the other half of the human race here) what defense or hope can there be? This judgment too I will leave to others--but I will say that esp, this time of year, I see life far more as a Gift and a call to both Grace-i-tude and Forgiveness-hood of the transcendent kind, than as a blow in the face or the results of my trying to build a giant bridge from Hell to Heaven. "Be content with such as you have."; "be ye kind"; and "be ye thankful" are all simple messages from the same author, which are so simple as to be unnatural and hence only possible with tankfuls of Mercy and Grace.

And a larger car? "In your dreams!"

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 is not great

"Oh Lord woncha buy me a Meeeeercedes Benz............." Applause, pleez.

To blurb is human; to forgive is impossible...

"_______________'s limitless curiosity will engage and enlighten readers..."

From one of multiple blurbs 'o praise from a recent nonfiction release.

What a funny statement--first of all, I will disregard the tedious and by now somewhat meaningless phrase, "engage and enlighten readers." Since this was penned by another published author, it still seems odd that he couldn't take the time to "engage and enlighten" us more than this!

The other phrase, "limitless curiosity" is, as we all know, "just a phrase." Also overused to the point of no meaning. On the other hand, if it is really meant as is, the implications are profound. First, it implies everlasting life as well as attributes that really could only describe a god or goddess. It implies a kind of omnipotence, yet also limitless ignorance as well. So it describes neither a human being nor the idea of God as the West generally defines the term. Pandora had limits--as the gods most quickly showed her! Her curiousity was abruptly curbed and it is hard to imagine how the rest of her life turned out (jes' kiddin'). What is really implied here is a type of paganism in which one cannot really tell much difference between gods and men. Which makes for great tales--all tall, too tall but not tall enough; esp. not to evince sustained sincere belief. Is this what we now call, "truthiness!"?

The art of blurbization is obviously far behind the state of the rest of the "bozarts" (see H.L. Mencken, a well established bigot yet could probably write better blurbs than these.)

I would suggest one postmodernist interpretation of such hypertonic solutions; blurbs represent a kind of circling of the wagons of those who make similar--however unjustified
--assumptions and also unknowingly produce similar self-contradictions and unthoughtful unhelpful mutual praise. It's about power and reinforcing whatever cultural hegemony such authors assume they have-- and sometimes really do have, along with their contributions of considerable talent and hard work. The blurbs are felt to help the sect, if you will; and to re-advertise the blurbers own books and boost what are probably by this time sagging sales.

The other tribes may object...with predictable and possibly internicine "unintended consequences"......

Please read: "THE TRUTH WEARS OFF" by Jonah ! Lehrer TNY 12/13/10

An open letter to The New Yorker

12-17-10

As a practicing scientist/physician, the new and humiliating paradigm shift for science comes as no surprise to me; although I have to congratulate the New Yorker editorial board for their bravery in presenting this data to a world blissfully and willingly unaware of such bleeding-out of our scientific integrity.

The first and most immediate question is the most apparently practical one: who is going to pay for all this? I cannot but think of the horse Boxer in "Animal Farm" who in the face of an obviously failed pig's paradigm simply declared that he must work harder. My guess is that if our studies cannot be few but many to achieve the funnel effect, and must have larger and larger numbers of subjects--then science in which we can have confidence will become rather like much of our medical and consumer technology, i.e. a luxury that increasingly few can afford.

I have seen this effect time and time again in medical practice, not only the effect of entropy on hype, but also a therapeutic law of diminishing returns. The broader question now is, can science be actually and reliably done by mankind? Is, as you rightfully ask, the scientific method flawed to the core? Do we have enough resources to actually do trustworthy science any more? Or are we lacking something else we cannot see or imagine?

At the very least it demonstrates that the source and sustenance of science is culture, not the other way around. The scientific community is the tail, not the dog, in spite of its vaulting ambitions to dominate every field from politics to poetry to philosophy.

It also suggests what many have long suspected, that it isn't just a paradigm shift that defines and redefines the role and methods of science; there is an unsubsumable (to use Walker Percy's phrase) ethic required to do science that is not only transcultural but supracultural. If science as we currently know it is in thrall to the la belle dame sans merci of cultural norms, then the very definition of science becomes a de facto moot point, and we are back to the purely arbitrary. Which is where your excellent article left it, more or less. Good meat for postmodernists and political junkies!

This has implications for TNY itself. In retrospect, TNY has only been around since 1925, and its founder based its unique contribution on the phrase, "I believe in malice." as per your previous article on this subject.

That may be the critic's go-ahead signal, but it is far more than that. TNY would not even be possible without the advent and assumption of scientific materialism. And like Boxer, the horse that knows not what he does, TNY has participated unknowingly in the demise of its own basic paradigm, which is the same essence as Loren Eisley's famous statement, that one must be sure that no mysterious supranatural foot gets in the door. The TNY has been fastidious to a fault in this regard.

The scientific commmunity at large however is far less united on the principle of "materialism-only, forever and ever amen", than are the editorialists of the magazines we generally read--these family feuds in science are something we rarely hear about because we get much of our information from said magazines.

Spiritual beliefs were supposed to die out after Darwin--but studies done at the dawn of the 20th century and repeated recently showed that a steady 40% of scientists in general would not assume that there is no divine principle at work in the world. Under the surface of well- publicized unity of scientism there are enough personal doubts to put the whole scientific enterprise into a larger perspective which sees the scientific method as an occasionally useful tool, in the nature of a hammer or a saw; not as a life-coach or a master over philosophy etc. There are, obviously, many ways of knowing--but virtually always "in part, through a glass dimly"

Is this then,at last, a "Boxer Rebellion"?

Sincerely,

William Schuler M.D. Mendota IL

To eror is human--but not humane!

Cognitive biases that lead to diagnostic erors (oops):

"Anchoring bias; availability bias; confirmation bias; diagnosis momentum; overconfidence bias; premature closure; search-satisfying bias."

It's obviously only by grace that anything gets done in medicine or science at all! Yet the last thing we will acknowledge in these fields is Grace and Mercy! There are salient exceptions, such as the editor of the Journal of the AMA, as I mentioned in the past. Yet her brief acknowledgment may even so be cultural lip service, or a concession to Muslim physicians.

But Flannery was generally correct, even about the 1950's, that the majority settle for "practical atheism" and that "nihilism is the very air we breathe now." (my paraphrase--was she a canary down the gemeinschaft?)

Will computerrors solve our problems with medical errors? Not so long as they are the manufacture of men! If anything they have compounded the problem by the surfeit of more information than we can even sort out, much less handle in any practical sense. Medicine in particular and in practice is in a great reverse; we are using and being compelled to use drugs that are relatively ancient, because they are cheap and because of the current debunking juggernaut/political bias against newer drugs. The new bottom line: if it's new and expensive, it's gotta go. In this case the tail of politics is definitely wagging the dog of science and medicine--which may be nothing new. At bottom, science and medicine are largely products of culture(s) and their goals are almost always those that the given and current social mileu dictates. No where is this more evident that in hospital boardrooms!!!

Time magazine recently paraded out Stephen Hawking who reasserted his basic atheism; one writer's critique was published: "As I see it, the only handicap Hawking has is his inability to recognize a personal God who created the universe. Someone needs to nudge Mr. Hawking on the shoulder and tell him that the realm of God likely begins where physics ends. Trying to explain God's existence from within the confines of physics reminds me of the saying, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." This brings to mind all the inevitable biases noted above, esp. overconfidence bias and premature closure.

Not that I am fond of the God-of-the-Gaps theory ( or any gap theory for that matter) nor would I rely on such an argument from ignorance, in spite of human ignorance being a true and blatant abyss, which is also relatively devoid of much sense of wonder or thankfulness. Thanklessness and the narcissism from which it springs is not only a universal human bias, it is also frequently a disease that affects adversely every human body part.

The problem with "proving" God's existence is that although there is both a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis to this most basic of all questions, there is no conceivable experimental protocol for something above science from within the small world of pure science.(assuming there is such purity/holiness of science, which is patently doubtful but often used to get grants) Once again, this is not a subsumable entity we are talking about, so when one assumes that the God v no God hypothesis can turn from theory to proven fact,which is stridently trumpeted from the academy, one has to proceed from a huge bias towards materialism--which is precisely what we see in Hawking and Dawkins.

They rule out God by assumption no matter where the data leads. So the "design" hypothesis means absolutely nothing to them, axiomatically and automatically. Once again we see human will and subrational choices--with some attempt to disguise them by PR and shouting loudly on both sides--in the fore, supported by pro and con sensate reactions to current perceptions and biases; but lacking any unspurious methodology.

TNY has an article just out on the problems of experimental science--will comment later

12-13-10 from Oswald Chambers inter alia

"There is no respect of persons--or nations--with God."

"Behind every face besotted with sin is the face of The Lord Jesus Christ. Behind every downtrodden mass of human corruption is Calvary. Deep within each person is the potential for a life incandescent with God's Holy Spirit. The entire world belongs to Him."

--merely conceptualizing this is virtually and actually impossible.

--virtually and actually, every judgment by humanity of, on, or against God is, at base level, an emotional argument. There is no strictly or even partially rational argument against God. We argue more by induction these days than by deduction--but it still comes down to emotional reactions to life experiences with the agenda based on our preferred assumptions. In psychology this is called, "secondary gain", and no one is immune. We do not ever experience life objectively but are reactionaries in every way, thought, and deed.

--how else does one account for such radically different interpretations of the question of suffering between the authors I have been reading-- Camus, Simone Weil, Flannery O'Connor, and Phillip Roth? (see "Nemesis" by the latter, an interpretation of the polio epidemic of the 1950s)

Apparently it's not about talent, accomplishments, and fame!

(Incidentally, isn't it ironic that Mr. Roth, a strident atheist, is named after one of the first and most potent evangelists who was the first missionary to black Africans?)

The fact that our vision is terminal and terminally limited seldom occurs to the most thoughtful of us. Einstein's theories did not humble us in the least, even though that is the only logical conclusion he or the rest of us could draw. No, our response is typical, to twist honest findings to add to our hubris and our epicurean presumption. The majority, and the majority of every minority, will jump to the conclusion that now we know everything, which gives us the self-endowed keys to the universe, God, and every question imaginable.

Uh, that's not the point......and by the way, how could suffering itself, being a reaction consisting of various sorts of pain, be approached by mere men, as anything other than an emotional problem to be solved by the same means it came about, i.e. emotions impacting the human will, our decision-making capacity? The fact that none of us would even survive childhood without pain here, there, and everywhere is, as Al Gore used the term, an "inconvenient truth." The fact that most of us die in some kind of pain hardly obliterates the necessity of pain!!!

To Ruth Pitter: Magdalen College
Oxford
April 16, 1952

Dear Miss Pitter

It always seems a bit of cheek to send anyone (especially the likes of you) a ticket for one's lecture, unless one could do it in the Chinese style 'In the inconceivably unlikely event of honourable poetess wishing to attend this person's illiterate and erroneous lecture..............'

--letters of C.S. Lewis 1950-1963

EXTENSION LADDERS TO HEAVEN? JUST SAY YES!

The New York Times cannot contain its enthusiasm about tech gifts--none of them any less than $500 a crack. I don't mind suggestions and I don't even mind giving out an apple or two at Christmas ( to go with the orange and the anthracite) however avast ye miss the greatest revelation of all:

"MY DEVICE, MYSELF" (UNDERLINE THAT)

"They are glass, plastic, and silicone. They aren't sentient, (Hal will really cost you) and yet our smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming an extension of us."

(end of statement-- is it under- or over-statement?)

My first thought was, well, a potato masher is an extension of many of us. Yet I never use one. And life goes on.

Rocks and sticks continue to be important extensions of ourselves, and in some areas of the world, people use little else--well, maybe a little hemp... but ONLY to tie the rock to the stick you understand. Thus was the first guitar invented. Now we even have an "Ax Church". All of them extensions of people, not the extentable psuedopodia of the amoeba that supposedly started this whole mess. Amoebas with nuclear weapons, there's a thought!

Do I belabor the obvious? Well of course. I thought I would take a vacation from being entirely obscure.

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For the second time we "extended" our vacation with family to include a short visit to Milledgeville GA, this time to take the tour of Flannery's actual home. They still have three peacocks (actually one peacock and two peahens); no longer free range but penned. Sad. But we bought a made-for-TV version of her story, "The Displaced Person," which as some may recall is the short story of an immigrant family from Poland to the South as an aftermath of the War. It ends badly of course, but the 80 year old priest steals the show. Henry Fonda does the introduction and there is a whole series of these by other authors--ho, Dennis!

This film was actually made at Andalusia, the farm/home of Flannery and her mother Regina; Regina seems to be a bit like the somewhat unsympathetic widow trying to run the farm with residential blacks and transient-intransigent whites. Well you write what you know.

Unfortunately I have read all her stories at least once so no new stories; but I have now the final chunk of letters, many of which were not included in the admirable and timely New American Library edition of collected works. Sally Fitzgerald, a good Catholic friend and writer compiled what we have available into a large book, "The Habit of Being". Not as many as the letters of C.S. Lewis or TSE--3 volumes apiece--so I have a fighting chance to finish these too--eventually. Some of her comments will undoubtedly invade my writing and those few of you that remain may be further exposed to her "causticity", if there is such a word. (There otta be)

By the fly, there is going to be a major FO'C conference at Loyola in Chicago, next Oct. See you there? Ralph Wood, one of Stephen's teachers at Baylor and a prolific author, will be one of the main spealers (did I just say that?)

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Kudos and an old fashunned back slap to Dennis Hall. Jean spilled the beans in her Christmas letter and states that Dennis has been given an actual Apple laptop and he is as happy as a baker's dozen of clams. Other than Keziah and Alathea, I guess I'm the only holdout, I still don't have a laptop. I have been holding out not because I am a Luddite but because I figure at least some of them have gotten more sturdy, lower in price, and more user friendly. Also because I'm cheap and I like to borrow other people's stuff.... We are however getting my mother her own apple--so far she has only "core" techabilities but she is a teachable spirit for sure.

(I guess a hillbilly with an IPhone would be a Techabilly) Tetchin' , ain't it ?

Lynch Mobs

One of the most fascinating aspects of this trip has been meeting Jim Lynch. My Dad has a good friend in Jim; but is also a bit of a co-worker in his artworks. Jim is a fascinating guy, a freelance artist who does both painting and sculpture. He has done large scale work for Disney World, Caesar’s Palace, and numerous Mardi Gras floats and lived in New Orleans for about 5 years doing this. Dad has helped him by photographing his paintings to make prints—which came out quite professionally good—

But Jim is world-famous for building a 62-foot statue of Jesus for a church on I-75 in Ohio. He started work in 2004 and then the statue became even more famous because lightning struck its right hand last June and it burned to the ground, also doing some damage to the church itself. A thousand questions could be raised about this and probably a thousand thousand lessons learned even by individuals who mostly have not seen the statue. But to talk to Jim about it is a thousand times better than seeing the statue, which is, after all, just a statue.

As a giant ”object lesson ” it may prove much higher than 62 feet—and much longer than I-75!!! I am just now going to read Jim’s take on it, edited by my Dad but as yet unpublished. My Dad and my sibs are all published writers but Jim isn’t too good at it—great with visual-spatial though.

The statue is only of the upper half of Jesus— the Renaissance version of Jesus with long mane, perfect for Jim and his long gray locks—and it is supposed to look like Jesus coming up from the waters of Jordan after being baptized by John; Jesus looks like he is grinning from ear to ear and his hands are raised ecstatically in true charismatic style. You can of course see it on the web and youtube has footage of Jesus on fire. (I thought we were supposed to be on fire for Jesus, not the other way around!!!)

The statue did not win the hearts and minds of the townspeople—75% thought it was an eyesore, bad for business, bad for the town’s reputation, and the money better spent on the poor. Funny, these are the same objections registered by the people of Nazareth, and Judas, about the real Jesus.

I can’t help but wonder what Flannery O’Connor would say about this—it would make a great story for her and it recalls other authors who have used similar icons, such as a novel called, “The Gospel Blimp”, which portrays a church and a community chagrined and shamed by this aerial display of bumpersticker theology.

Obviously O’Connor was Catholic and would have a different take on it than an evangelical author—but the irony of O’Connor would be to use the situation artistically to show, shall I say as the madrigal song goes, “ He hath casted down the proud.” New York Times and Salon.com have been completely predictable in the mockery of the whole situation without knowing a single person involved. The Times in particular refused to publish even a few lines of John’s letter of response. The knee-jerk ridicule regarding this and similar “stuff white people don’t like” is over-common grist for significantly desperate comedians, columnists, and all the judges civilization can harbor.

We went from Jacksonville FL back to Milledgeville GA to revisit O’Connorville and to tour her home (Andalusia) where she did 90% of her writing. So it’s hard-and anti-productive to segregate these subjects and people: “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” We shall see more but I may be thinking and writing about this outside this blog more than in it.

The computer is being particularly diific……………

PARAPROSDOKIAN -ISMS

"Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak."

"The last thing I want to do is hurt you...but it's still on the list..."

"If I agree with you, then we'd both be wrong!"

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad."

(I wonder how many other fruits we would leave out, eh?)

"The early bird might get the worm; but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese."

"The evening news is where they begin with,'Good Evening," and then proceed to tell you why it isn't."

(See my Abend Post Post)

"You don't need a parachute to go skydiving; you only need a parachute to skydive twice."

"Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish."

"Always borrow money from a pessimist; he won't expect it back."

And one more Auden-as-critic ism:

"Since he exists historically, not on some timeless Olympus, every critic is, consciously or un consciously, engaged in some polemic. It is wrong to ask about any critic worth reading, "Are his judgments true or false?" but rather one must always ask: "What overemphasized half-truth are they intending to counterbalance?"

This might make aging a little easier........or not: "We exist...to be replaced."

"what we have here is an attempt to communicates"

Captions from TNY

"I saw the most fascinating picture of a celebrity getting a cup of coffee today."

"Tonite I'll be performing a monologue about where I like to shop, my hair color, and something my mother did to upset me."

"It's not a word I can put into feelings."

Woman, upset, speaking to husband, "It's like you haven't heard a single thing I've thought!!"

Two upscale moms in the park, with children: "We believe in the concept of public of public education."

Middle-aged woman in class, to guru: "You say life is about suffering, but isn't it also about complaining?" (wull, if one really must edit TNY, I'd say it's compulsory! See previous post about TNY's founder who said the difference b/w TNY and the Luce's empire was, " I believe in malice."

"An anniversary present? For me? Well, thank me very much!"

Moo latte.......

AUDEN-A-CITY

Mayhap I should explain that I am in The Den of Auden, which some would say is a Den of Iniquity, but nonetheless, when in Auden City, do the dew as the scholars would do. (We currently have 100% humidity hereabouts, Mobility City-wise.)

And, contrary to Alice Cooper, school is never out for School-ers an' Schule-rs.

"Always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth."?

"Trofimov the eternal student"?--- never graduating or getting a "real job." ? Let the reader decide; and beware!!!

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& let it also be known that this missive is my second on a laptop and my first with a wireless maus. A little difficult with a hypersensitive keyboard but no bane for the reader with a limited time frame! Thanks Mark for the lone and borry of yer keybored, apologetics to Walter Kelly, esq. inter alia and et all. (I kent beleeve I et the hole thing!!!)

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& science interlewd: No black wholes from Geneva Accelerant; just a bit 'o antimatter; and no God Par Tickle neither--so far as Ive herd. So the earth is still safe from science so fur, Hiroshima and the Holocaust notwithstanding. Complete annihilation continues to elude us.......

Mar ladder.........kresch!!! (The sound of one Menorah, falling)

W. H. Auden's contribution to "The New Canterbury Pilgrims"

"As he reaches adolescence, every boy and girl today begins to notice two phenomenon: official religion and religiosity. Official religion is not the same as conventional religion. A conventional Christian is someone who does not distinguish between his faith and culture;he believes in the Nicene Creed as unquestionably and in the same way as he believes that no gentleman wears a celluloid collar."

"An official Christian, on the other hand, is someone who, for various reasons, like setting an example for the young or doing business in his community, attends the rites and recites the formulas while knowing perfectly well that he, personally, does not believe in them. In the boarding schools I attended, chapel was compulsory for the masters as well as the boys, and one very soon realized that many of the former were definitely not Christians but that attending chapel was a condition of their employment. One could not call them hypocrites because this was a open secret which they made no serious effort to conceal"

moore latter

AS GOOD AS YOU--COMPARED TO WHAT?

I probably should let you know that my unwriting has been unintentional but our internet connection is down about 90% of the time, hence not out, but unpredictable in regards to usability.

I am writing this in the office, where I should not be just now, already being on vacaciones. So I am going to try a reverse of previous trends, and do more entries on my way to Mobile, Jacksonville, and back. It seems Mark left the larger of his two laptops so we are borrowing it on this trip. My time seems to be becoming increasingly compressed and I do yearn for more freedom. Even as "retirement" recedes further and further into the future. If I were in France;and if France were franc-ly solvent, I'd have a lot of "free" time--but now, tanks to Sarkovsky, maybe not until next year. Hypothetically. So where's the nanny state when ya need her, huh?

"Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Not you anymore." -Dilbert, the humorous approach of Catbert to the delightful evil of downsizing.

I also need a union, apparently. Guess what? This fall I get a report card (or maybe a re-tort card) based on my popularity with my patients. Here's a question: do public school teachers now get graded by their students? According to CSL in "The Abolition of Man", we should be there already. Dennis, is this allowed in silence by the teachers' unions?

Of course there have always been suggestion/complaint boxes which are generally unused because there is no visible response to them. Risible responses perhaps but not visible to the naked eye. But is there truly any advantage from going to populism from paternalism?

I guess it was my rather vain hope that those who practice practical science would not have to evolve into practitioners of "popular science." Apparently the thin veneer of "objective science" has worn out its brief welcome. The public in general still worships the oracles of science, seeing as they see little other option thanks to militant ideological scientism; but uneasy is the head that wears the crown. If one is a pretender to the throne of God, people will expect you and me to be God.

This is a large part of why America and the West have become so unhinged and unstable. A little god pops up, demonstrates he is no god at all, and there are thousands more hungry for his throne and hence for their own destruction in turn.

Just gimme 5 minutes of fame, that's all I want. ((No, no, gimme shelter, "that's what I want" --from "Money", an early cover song by the Beatles, immediately contradicted by "Money Can't Buy Me Love." (Honesty quickly displaced by a half truth which is far more popular and self-congratulatory)


Actually I have bent over backwards to stay out of the public eye. My desire is to do my work quietly in my office, and let people vote with their feet. I find advertising a complete waste and have never spent a dime of my own money on it. Honestly, I do not appeal or cater to the movers and shakers of Mendota; I find a sizable portion of them pretty rude and insatiable and actually less open to reason than the poor, who are far less likely to sue, as was pointed out forcefully in the Book of James.

Nothing new here, then. I will let you know what "grade" I get--at this point nothing is hidden anyway except for God Himself--so my level of risk/overexposure is low; and having so few regular readers is a regular advantage. At my age esp.

May I again suggest Mark Schuler's Facebook photo gallery for an intimate look at the Schulers, for what that's worth. Much of it is quite funny (esp my comments of course!) Or maybe ya just had ta be there.........

Write if ya get work--or keep yer job--and just remind 'em what "men without chests" (CSL) would say: "I'M AS GOOD AS YOU, MATE!!!"

overheard at the mall:

"Every man is brutish in his knowledge."

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo DaVinci, Thomas Jefferson (and Edison and Selleck) and Albert Einstein."

(And Napoleon was nasty, brutish, and short,too)

"The pen of the scribes is in vain." (well, that's that then.........

Last night Flo and I had a chance to watch a movie about the Nickel Mines tragedy. In the first place, I must disclaim any ability to explain any of the events of that day; I only have my suspicions based on a very necessarily narrow ability to comprehend what is clearly beyond my experience and my ability to reason.

If the reader wants more information or is not familiar with this schoolhouse massacre of Amish girls, I would encourage a re-visit at least to the facts of the case and the facts re: the Amish response.

Columbine may have set the precedent; but I am reminded of an even earlier event which was the overt act of the son of a psychiatrist on a group of praying (on their own, and student-led,lest anyone be contemplating a late call to a lawyer) high school students in, I believe, Paducah KY. John and I were "on the road again" returning from Florida with the great gift of my parents' Camry. (thanks again, M + D, we really used that car to the max.) I was actually planning to stop in Pensacola because of a well-known revival at Brownsville, but this was not at all what I needed. My Mom was very concerned about my stopping there because of the recent murder of an abortionist in that area, by a "pastor" no less, not too long before. Probably that influenced my decision to go straight home.

But that was not to be either, and possibly my folks would have been even more appalled by our actual visit. On our way we heard about this strange attack on radio news, and it was my intention to stop somewhere overnight and go to church in the morning, as was our habit anyway when travelling as a larger group. Some would say this was a coincidence, but I am convinced to this day that the Holy Spirit had His say, and that John and I were privileged to see up close the response of a small church to a great tragedy. But I did stop and stayed Saturday night at a hotel in the vicinity. Curiosity? That may have been the initial draw--God can use our weirdest and most natural feelings which are in fact pre-designed/fabricated , for those who can accept the "hard sayings" of nature. But then...

We were allowed to go in--but the media was not; even though there were certainly plenty of them in the parking lot. I can't even begin to summarize or do justice to what went on in that closed service, nor even to my feelings about it, then or now. As I read this morning in Jeremiah 8 this AM, the pens of the scribes are useless and false in times like these.

My recollection however is that the response was almost identical to that of the Amish towards the perpetrator and his family...

We had a chance to personally talk to Ben Strong, the pastor's son who was the leader of the prayer group, and who actually not only knew but had previously tried, with some success, to befriend the shooter. (the shooter in Nickel Mines was a milkman known well by the Amish and attempts had been made to befriend him by the Amish prior to the massacre.) Ben was the person in the prayer group who did not run but actually came directly up to the boy with the gun and disarmed him not by force but by just the right sort of persuasion--and not only saved other students but probably prevented a suicide as well.

Ben later became a pastor; no surprise there; but as it turned out, John and I had a lot in common with him musically, and he plays a dynamite sax! And we talked more about the joys of music than about his actions or the event just a few days prior. He had said it all in his brief message, which I recall only in substance, not in any details.

.....................................................

It is hard to write the right sort of commentary about this, but I consider these to be modern day parables in action that do, in fact, invite a personal response. Is genuine forgiveness of our trespassers-against-us emotionally or rationally possible? Probably unaided reason or flesh or family values would have to say, no; as the Amish father also said, at least in the movie, we have every right not to forgive. This of course, is largely what we have seen very clearly in our latest election cycles; hence I can say with confidence that such ensamples are not the province of religion qua politics either-- in fact it is so far beyond our capabilities that we have no power even of imagination to go beyond our daily fleshly and--dare I say-- "spiritual" lives to broach the essence of them.

But to see it played out in person and to see ordinary weak people guided "into all Truth" not by abstract principles but by God's Sovereign Spirit going beyond even His own Law that He set up--it is that which causes me to gasp--and to cry out like Jeremiah and Moses and Nicodemus, "How can such things be!!!???

Rainy Day Women #151

And now for something.......else......(a gain)

Speaking of less fragmentary verse, here's a lil' pome that made the rounds at NIU circaz 1968. To wit and ahem:

"I was feelin'

so bad

I ast my family doctor jus' what I had.

I said, Doctor (doctor)

Mr. M.D. (doctor)

can you tell me (doctor)

what's ailin' me? (doctor)

And he said:

'Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah....yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...

Indeed

all you really need is

Good lovin'!!! etc.

--The Jung Rascals, as told to Ed Sullivan

Promised Poem 'o Promise

I did promise some time ago to share--or threatened to share--some piece of poetry from the remote past.

This is actually the last poem I wrote, probably around 1988 on a visit to Phoenix during the dry season--actually there's not much else, climate wise; but it wasn't cool at this park; intolerable actually; and the only shade was this mesquite tree--more of a large shrub actually, as described herein.

One other hint: this meditation was the result of a variance in the Gospels, or so it seemed at the time. Did Judas die by hanging or by falling and herniating? The answer is probably both/and but there are other considerations: The first line actually refers to the lame man going "through the roof" to get to Jesus and the last line to the Festival of Booths and to Peter's mountaintop proposition to Christ.

As best I can remember that is...............

"Akel Dama"

There's a hole in the roof.
Why don't you send up your man to fix it?

The ground squirrel sprawls under the Australian mesquite
as if to straddle the entire adobe wall
and crush it beneath his silent gnashing of teeth.
Tiny birds, tinier leaves, flecks of sunlight
converge and the cavity is evacuated.
The seed pod is broken
its contents consumed

and you want to stay here?

Each tear is
preserved in the eyes of God

Each seed
dies drooping from the mouth of the earth

Each booth tilted and
pierced by its very foundation.

HIPPY HOLLOWED [MEN] EVENING!!!

Dearest Editor Editing to y/our heart's content:

While I appreciate the schoolchildrens' letters to you on censorship, it might be better to put this in a larger context. I grew up in an ultraliberal home where we had all the books mentioned and a whole lot more. But as I grew older, I realized that while nothing, for instance, of a sexual nature was taboo, there were many many books and topics that were not at all welcome. And the more I see of, shall we say, "book clubs" (euphemistically called) and the more I study the human brain, the more I realize that censorship is something that we all do, all the time! It's still only as one caterpillar said, "The question is, who is to be master, that's all." To call exhibit A book selection/censorship a travesty is merely to try to elevate enculturated tastes to the plane of an ethical issue, which, while commonly done, has no scientific or rational basis. As Carroll implies, it can rise to no more than a Grade B political gambit.

This was pointed out forcefully by Aldous Huxley in "The Doors of Perception" as well as by implication in "Brave New World"...... we all have massive built-in filters that, by nature and nurture and choice, are the universal operational censors of the most open-minded (sic) brain systems. There are many books and magazines that we will rarely see even in large libraries or on sale at Borders--books which I hesitate to even mention because their very names elicit irrational rage in every level of our current version of "civilization". [ thank God for the internet--so far]

There is no inherent rational or scientific basis on which to gore someone elses's bull. But history shows that when one book is let out of the closet, thousands more go into recycle bin of the perceptions of men. And as usual, those who try so hard to loosen certain bodily and other cultural inhibitions are automatically censoring a vast array of other now-taboo subjects, thereby creating a vastly more inhibited empire than the one they supposedly displace; or subject to what is clearly "shunning", in the most postmodern and puritanical sense of the word.

It is clearly up to the reader to examine his herd of bull(s) and figure out the implications of the preceding....BOO!!!

YOU KNOW,YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW, LIKE, YOU KNOW? like maybe you do, already:

Just to keep it simple:
(A) Mark is now in Thailand. The whole story including his video blog is on his facebook site. His photographs are quite impressive, as I might have expected. Enjoy!!!

(B) Due to Uber-Business including many continuing med ed requirements, the posts on this blog have gone to seed! Just as many of you expected! (All two or three of you) Other Aspects Neglected include: music, recrational reading, sleep, sanity--all the little stuff.

(C) I just ate two sugar free chocolate peanut clusters and am now going home. If you want to know what I will eat for breakfast just ask--after the fact--you/I never know..........BUTTERFLY EFFECT!!!!!!!!

Mission Statement

From he who is called to utter non-sequiturs and non-starters; and who knows why?

For those who may not know the substance of "The Cocktail Party" by TSE, I will attempt to here recall it, having read it only once probably 10 years ago. But unlike most plays, it totally took me by surprise. It starts out in a common manner most rude about a small circle of friends who are being hosted by a couple whose marriage is most dysfunctional. So far, so much the usual. In fact its prologuish note is the predominant note of almost every contemporary genre of art in the Western world. Scratch almost any sitcom and you will, to mis-phrase H.L. Mencken, find the fundamentals of decay, disorder, and dysharmonics; everybody dissing everybody every minute of the media day. Is there no remedy?

And why does this nest of brooding vipers not even reflect "real life"; and why does art not imitate "real life" according to the apologetics of the wise? Working decade after decade in a hospital, what strikes me again and again is how little the actual course of life follows, shall we say, "House" or "LA Law." Life unfortunately imitates art in various crude ways; just as most "culture" while being produced exclusively by people (?) for the purposes of social control, has almost every individual by the throat, so it is that culture provides its own vultures too, as a snake devouring its own self starting at the lowest end. Anal,eh? The seeds and eggs of destruction are both hidden in our cosy "love nests." (Never go to bed with the cockatrises) (Or ligers)

But I editorialize....

To be simplistic about it, the tale of TSE probably reflected his own considerable marital difficulties and the problems of diffidence (dry art, dry salvages?) towards those who needs be closest to our hearts. One of the younger female guests, an aspiring actress, Celia, who is being wooed by a future producer, becomes disillusioned by the unhealthy relationships even among the wisest among the elite. Act 2 is, I believe, a reunion in which it is discovered that Celia has forsaken all and gone to a savage isle as a missionary; and suffered a martyr's death most cruel and quite graphic by Eliot's standards. By Act 3, the marriage has been mysteriously restored by Celia's postmortem influence. This is not a story of Christian conversion, although by the time this was written, Eliot had suffered exactly that, tho we know not whether this was by desire for restoration of culture and tradition, v.s. actual contacts with a God not just literal but hyper-real. But it seems to be an uncharacteristic portrayal of the source of all love and truth and higher orders impressing themselves upon a lower order--i.e. most of us and I certainly would include myself.

My life has had the characteristic of self-centeredness and bookishness. And perhaps this was also the case with Eliot and his first tortured wife. There is even a movie that takes Eliot to task for, well, repressing her and institutionalizing her. Yet the strongest influences on my soul have not been philo-sophers or soph-ists or soph-o-mores (less would be more in the latter case) but those who have sacrificed such things and agendas as these for, well, relationships; the more substantial and genuine and durable type above all. Not sublimating, as Freud saw relationships and art itself; but another form of sub-sumation, in the Percian sense of the word--see previous blogs about Percy, Walker.

I realize I have not blogger'd for over 10 days now. However this is not because I want to sacrifice but because I have been inundated with doctor-patient relationships. So much so that I had to put aside my Advanced Cardiac Life Support re-cert and many other things as well, including any exercise. But the other major relationship that is taking a major turn in my life is the imminent departure of our son Mark to the mission field. He will live in Bangkok but will be going to remote areas while learning one or two new languages. As most of you know, Thailand is not stable any more, and there are riots, some deadly, and bombings going on in Bangkok as I speak.

The advent of Skype into our lives couldn't have come at a more opportune moment!!!! (insert grin emoticon here)

He will be leaving next Tuesday, and hopes to be working with children. He leaves behind a significant other, namely Allison Ryan, who writes for our local paper. So for those who pray, please do!!! For them both, for safety and to be Spirit-led, if I may use an overused but significant phrase.

I will come forth with more thoughts this weekend, if I have time. (Prognosis:Guarded)

"If it's not too personal a question!!!" --Mandy, Brian's Mum

I think this is a Dennis question, since Dennis once helped me find out if the sky from Mars was a whiter shade of pale. I think he said it was a lighter shade of blue.

A two-pronger:

[A] Why is it that we never see the center of the galaxy? The theoretical pictures from outside our galaxy make the nucleus look blindingly bright, and we are a lot closer to the center than the point of view of these depictions, which are in turn probably--fancifully?--based on our views of other visible galactic whirls and clusters. The Milky Way is as dense or as bright as it gets? Why don't we have better pictures of the center of our galaxy? Is it too close!?

[B] Has anyone tried to picture what a sky, night or day, might look like from a vantage point in the very center of our galaxy?

ode to a local lat

"Liger, liger, learning lite

in the lunches of the bite."

(From news item on the proliferation of ligers. El Tigre del Norte sends his salutations)

Items for future consideration:

Departure of Mark Schuler to Bangkok; which currently is host to bombings and street riots.

T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail Party"

"Nicer people with better morals"

9-21-10 THE DOVE EMERGES FROM ITS COOP

Fatigued as I am, I thought it might be one opportunity to get to the crux of the most recent blogs; besides, I am leaving soon for AZ to visit Daniel and so probably won't be going on line much untill after Oct. 4, FYI.

To finish up about the dove/coat. The point which I hope is getting through is that no one would mistake a dovecote for a dove! The two are related but not the same thing at all. I thought some of the pictures of elaborate gingerbread dove dwellings were interesting but not so arresting as the doves who might live there, and the level of complexity of a single dove is far above the most Rube Goldbergian birdhouse imaginable. The latter is designed and built and put outside by a man. The former is a product of a far more powerful complexity than we who put up houses--even of worship-- can comprehend.

How much more absurd must it be to confuse the Person of Jesus with a church building, plus minus congregation/organization! We cannot compare the Person of Christ with any other person, assumption, presupposition, system, theology, philosophy or especially the many religious and political movements and theories we have gotten going.

Vladmir of "Waiting for Godot" asks his friend Estragon: "Surely you're not comparing yourself with Christ!!!???" To which Estragon wails,"All my life I've compared myself to him!!!" The results speak for themselves. If we merely compare ourselves with Him and sit on it, as do the two tramps in this play, we end at a malign stasis; a state which fascinated Beckett but one which he would not allow for himself. Doesn't pay the bills y'know......write on!

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a collection of essays about great men of history. After it was published, someone asked him why he didn't include Jesus Christ; to which he replied, (my paraphrase), "Jesus is not a mere man."

Sometimes it takes a pagan view from outside of our religious boilerplate to reveal that we, our emperorships, have no clothes. "No man ever spoke like this man!" Comparing ourselves to Christ will only lead to despair, as will merely emulating Christ, as in that sad, incomplete, and man-centered phrase, "WWJD?". Anything we will do but come to Christ on a personal and vulnerable and needy level i.e., the way we actually are. We prefer our culture, our morals and ethics hand-made, and our imperatives at our level--but still in the endgame impossible since no one lives up to their own values, much less those of society, much less to those imperatives of God which are made simple enough for a child to follow and for intellectuals and judges to completely miss and abjure.

On the other hand, as far as philosophy, I am not saying anything not already said by perfectly competent philosophers such as Kirkegaard or writers like Muggeridge, O'Connor, and Percy. Yet I am continually amazed at how secular (or religious) people, very intelligent otherwise, completely miss their main points. I have a collection of essays about Percy that doesn't even mention God, much less Christ! If there's any doubt, read their interviews and their letters of the authors themselves and eschew mere commentary.

To balance this out, no one should construe the above to mean that religion and/or politics and/or philosophies of men are useless. They do hold society together, and far more lives have been saved than burned by having some guidelines instead of chaos, with which the French continue to experiment ! So the controversies that erupt among us like sore boils on Job do serve a practical purpose, just as they did for Job in spite of coming right out of the pit of hell! We do not know what will come of these conflicts; but one thing I do notice is that Job himself never figured any of this out. And when he did face his Creator, suddenly he had nothing to say!

Hence I am quite convinced that very little of what I have written here will make any difference one, five, or ten years from now: "Well, that passed the time!" "But it would have passed anyway." (Estragon) "Yes; (hesitates) but not so quickly!"

But if even one of those 3 one-sentence statements about Christ is true--everything will burn and be forgotten except that. So this is worth spending some time and attention on a rather important matter, albeit one that if we manipulate or control it to please ourselves, we will never move from theories about friendship to friendship itself. We will be as stuck as the tramps in the play, with our faux-faith intact but rotting in the barn.

All have faith; all have religion; all have commitments and appetites; no one can escape politics, esp. not his own.

But as Calvin said while contemplating his Dad's hammer, "The temptation to misuse these things is terrific!" Let us not abuse Christ by telling him he is a liar i.e. subsumable under man - made categories or imperatives. Why not do the one simple thing He asks--meet him on the road to Emmaus on His terms; even if it takes some time for our eyes to be opened;and know Him; "as if for the first time." -TSE

THE MAIN THING IS...NOT A THING ATALL

Answer: a dovecote is a painted dove.
(question-see previous post )


This is but the beginning of sorrows...

I am breaking up what follows simply because it is so hard for people to read dense text; but also I want to KEEP THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING, at least once.

It is far less than clear to me (or to thee as I suspect) as to God's reason for encouraging me to continue this blog. But I will say that when I am clearest, people don't like it. I must also be in debt to Dennis again for taking a second look at my Emperor's clothes closet--I was wondering how long it would be before anyone challenged me on this; but like "iron sharpens iron", it helps to take the clarity challenge--seriously. So let me be serious for a few paragraphs.

**********************************************************

For those who may have come in late, Dennis took me to task for introducing the religio-political axis again, and not being philosophical enough--and I can be both, indeed! Too much so, "O yes"

This comment was sparked by 3 very short notes--not original with me by the way--saying that Jesus is "all in all" even though the details of this are just what we need and not a speck more; --but much less than we demand. If we half understood what we have already been given-- with much more clarity than the human mind can stomach or apprehend....

But, as with the observations on the doves, I got these three observations brought to my mind "on the road" and they stuck to me well after the journey-- something which most of my thoughts do not survive. The first ("everyone will disappoint you but Jesus") was actually something said by a physician friend who graduated from Johns Hopkins and then took off doing all the things I had well enough been afraid to do. But this borrowed discovery gives me freedom from having to change people, if you draw this out to its corollaries. Most of us are very lame at logical extensions, as Descartes often pointed out, irritably.

However, I must point out that exactly where I departed most from religion and politics, I am accused of failing my stated purpose. "How can such things be!?"



&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&


Again this is not original with me (what's original with me is not very original, either) I have never made a systematic study of logic. But the idea of a "category mistake" is a crucial one because it is being used ever more than ever in the present day, with predictably sad results.

Back to the rock/Rock illustration from last week--as it was explained to me, in far fewer words, to put God and a rock on the same plane, is like saying that a food tastes "yellow" or "green" (Green could suggest any thing from mint to brussels sprouts to a place in Wisconsin) To say that as green is to the eye, so is mint to the tongue, is a poetic device employed in literature, not in any logical categorical sequence. We are then talking about two different sensory systems, even though they belong to the same body. This is the source of a lot of the "guilty by association" mistakes we make, sometimes deliberately, which is at the heart of the religio-political axes currently being ground in our country.

(It is amusing to me how political people accuse others of different persuasions of telling us "half truths". Heck, yes! That's actually a lot more than can or should be granted to any one of us! Either side, or any side, speaker included, would be be excellent if we were one-tenth of one percent right--Einstein's estimate.

Put both parties together and you get the whole truth and nothing but? Make me LOL!!

Is philosophy worth more than politics? Not according to Sartre! But O I digress.

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Next up: some examples. Hint: the dove is to the dovecote as Christ is to the church.

Happy Isaiah 53 Day!!!

Doves in flight--odd or evening?

What's the difference between a dove and a dovecote?

As I was running to the 3 sycamores today, I saw more doves on the wires than I have ever seen in one place. Like all non-raptor birds, as I ran they would fly a couple of poles down, then again, and again before finally giving up and going somewhere I can't get close to them. It did indeed induce a sense of peace, as doves are known to do--and they were entirely silent in their flight.

But it brought to mind that words are not the same as communication, and communication has a subset called clarity. Silence speaks louder than words oftimes, less is more, etc.

So I must in a way repent of "many words" in many contexts, and a stream of consciousness approach foisted on my friends, like Dennis who observed that I (I wasn't trying Dennis, honestly) was pretty hard to follow. (not really intended either) But I take take no comfort in what I might say, "Well, that's just the way I am." uttered with the utter confidence of a prophet, implying the corollary, "And I'm agonna stay that way too!"

(Hint: never tell God what you will never do)

I think my "style" is just that; and like one of the many old shoes that I am loathe to give up because it's so comfortable. In fact, I would say my style is quite out of style because it reeks of nostalgia for my childhood, and has many obscure and sometimes pleasant associations that are frankly opaque to even my closest friends. It is, at times, "sentimental existentialism"--which sounds oxymoronic, but is actually the primary existentialism of our time--meaning now, and world-wide.

God does not do nostalgia.



"Here the MS breaks off", and toad tracks begin. ("O bloody 'ell!)

ERRATA, BY CATEGORY

This Just In:

"However, another poem written in 1948, "In Praise of Limestone," implies that while there is an ongoing tension between agape and eros, there is also the possibility of a reconciliation between the two. The poem's opening evokes Auden's 1930 love poems with its focus on a rough limestone landscape that appeals to "we, the inconstant ones". In the poem's schema the characteristics of a landscape reflect a certain type of person , such that the average "inconstant ones" appreciate the limestone landscape because, although it is solid rock, it also, "dissolves in water" so that,"beneath,/ a secret system of caves and conduits" permeates it. Both landscape and lover play at permanence but are subject to transience and change. Other types of people appreciate other landscapes, so the "saints-to-be" prefer the "granite wastes" because they are solid and constant, and the "Intendant Caesars" prefer clays and gravels because of their malleability. But there are still others, whom the poet calls "the really reckless"....

"and a packet o' gravel please." -Mandy

Except for that last irrelevant and irreverent remark, the rest is from a paper that just came out in "Christianity and Literature" called "Turn her desperate longing to love":W.H. Auden, Denis de Rougemont, and Lyric Love Poetry", by Stephen J Schuler. Or just Steve as he is known around these parts; or, alternatively, "Rogue Cheddar".

I am thinking in particular about that insulting phrase, "We, the inconstant ones"--there is evidence of course that limestone creations such as giant stalagmites and stalactites (ground and ceiling you see) can be formed and deformed very rapidly. So that the calcium deposits on my faucet and my clay "watering worm" are not exactly among the "permanent things" (Eliot/Russell Kirk)

Even so----What do you mean, "inconstant," W.H.? Speak for yourself!! I tithe on mint, cumin, dill, cilantro, and pumpkins !!! So. Am I too full of holes and tunnels? Swiss, not All-American?



I mean--I'm a man of constant sorrow. How then am I inconstant?

This goes back, indirectly, to yesterday's post. The responses were excellent. But the solution to the riddle is not necessarily theo-logical but just logical. It is called a "category mistake" ; in which I, for the sake of argument--or rather, winning an argument, place two things in the same category and one of them doesn't belong, even though I wish it did; and if I do realize my mistake, I hope no one notices. These are not usually intentional but mostly subliminal; we hope however that the conflating of things that are not exactly bedfellows, or of the subsumable with the unsubsumable stuff, will win the day; however, that's about all one can hope to win....

By the way, "conflate" can mean to amalgamate--but equally often may mean, "confuse."

courtesy of:"Confuse-a-Cat, LTD."

What's the problem...

....with this question:

"Can GOD create a rock too heavy for him to lift?"

Incidentally this question was raised by a Mendota teacher to his 5th grade class...are ye smarter than a fifth-grade teacher?

EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING LEADS TO DEATH

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.



!!!



EVEN JESUS (DEATH I)

EXCEPT JESUS (DEATH II


"I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE...")

(I + II =III)

EVERYTHING WILL FAIL YOU BUT JESUS

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EVERYONE WILL DISAPPOINT YOU BUT JESUS

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Erratum Magnificum, mea culpa....

From William Faulkner, "The Sound and the Fury":

"I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field reveals to a man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

This came to me at work, unsolicited--like most of them--by Email from a scientific site which comes up as an article about the effects of 20 minutes of hypoxemia (low oxygen in the blood) and is under the rubric of "Tech Support" Now it all makes sense; but I'll have to make it up as I go 'long.

Now it is true indeed that we should not waste our breath; that much we will assume for the moment. Faulkner, "Count No Account" did keep on breathing until his last breath, in spite of his many "faux faulks".

And it is true that the effect of hypoxemia is usually bad, as perceived by those of us who value our breathing parts very much. Parting would be such sorrow! But it is also true that not only hypoxemia but anoxemia, like gravity, will get us in the (proximate) end. So why bother with artificial ventilators, which is the apparent opposite of the point of the scientific article? Zounds, sounds like another scientist at the end of his tether, like HG Wells.

The dialogues of Beckett reflect that of Faulkner and--why not?--postmodern "science": "No use struggling." "No use wriggling." "One is what one is." "Nothing to be done about it." But Frank Zappa still sang about it-why so? (Is it a reflex, like the gastrocolic?)

I suppose this is why philosophers don't get much funding; while artists are "idols" and the successful artist can be one of the richest people in the world. (George Soros thinks he is a philosopher--but he sure didn't earn that kind of money in philo-sophistics. But doesn't it appear that Faulkner equates esp. political philosophers in the same category as fools? Sartre would, no question-- yet the proles must rebel, even so! That is, absurd.

What caused me to expound on this theme is the irony that, as soon as I finished my comments on "The Plague" it came to me through the BBC that English hospitals are now seeing staph infections from the third world resistant to ALL antibiotics. So we may be, worst case scenario, on the cusp of another Dark Age, even darker than the last one. And it may take more than the Irish--even or esp. Beckett and Joyce and Yeats et all--to save civilization this time around. Yea, tho I walk through the valley of shadow of death, the hands of our still primitive sciences may yet also be tied. This is the struggle to which Camus semi-hopefully referred, somewhat like the end of "The War of the Worlds"-- which did not end there but vaulted irrationally beyond Design to chaos, "The World at the end of its Tether." Actually it was Wells at the end of his exceedingly short tether but...

"Let it pass, let it pass...."

"It would have passed anyway." "Yes; but not so quickly!" --Waiting for Godot.


But wait! There's more....either deadly more or Dudley Moore, we shall see, won't we, Didi?


(They do not move.)

SOZO THERE!!! GUTEN HEALTH SCIENCES TO YOU, MEINE FREUNDE

I suppose a holyday is as good a time as any; and better than most; to try to finish my chronicles of medical school. Since no one has commented on these, they may only be of interest to me--but it would help if I could bring some closure to the project.

On July 24, I ended by commenting that I was doing independent study for a semester while waiting for the fall entry into U of I. The reason for doing so is that at that time one could take the same test everyone took at the end of the first year, on the "basic sciences," such as physiology and anatomy. Fortunately as I said no cadavers were harmed in the making of this medical student--but fortunately also for me, the test was entirely written. I have some natural test-taking abilities so this was on my side--but I also buckled down.

But after all that preparation, I missed the test! I went on my previously described vacation, but in planning it, Andrea used a German calendar--which she did all the time--to plan our time off. But it was a week late! I was enjoying Vera Cruz while the test was being given. So I returned to Chicago to be shocked into the reality that the time of testing was over, and so I flunked not just a little, but 100%!

This falls into that category of awful dreams wherein you can't remember your locker number, your teacher's name, your homeroom etc. And when the test is passed out, you realize you studied the wrong book or even the wrong subject, or didn't study anything at all. Anybody besides me had these "traums"? The German word for dream seems to fit here, in the sense of traum-a.

Except this was all too real.

So I started the first year of medical school--again-- comforting myself coldly with the idea that I would still learn new stuff, and would have Medical Boards Part One, the test of fear that is done at the end of the second year, down cold. But still I felt that I had largely done my first year abroad in vain. (But I did learn my Spanish and have been using it ever since--such that about one third of my patients are Hispanic--another unforeseen benefit.)

And as one TNY cartoonist famously said, "And here a miracle occurs.........."

One of the first courses I started was the one that couldn't even be offered in my school in Mexico, due to poor finances of the students and of the school, to wit, Histology, the study of normal cell structure. U of I did provide a very heavy microscope and prepared slides which I would lug around Chicago like unto Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness" with his portable bone density machine. And as in the movie, I felt like FAILURE was written all over me and the dumb microscope.

After a month or 6 weeks of this, there came a surprise announcement that the first year test, the one I missed, would be offered again! Now, I had not said a thing; I was far too ashamed of my/our error to even "traum" of asking the authorities of the biggest medical school in the USA to allow me a "make-up exam." But apparently a few other students had missed the exam, and petitioned the Schulmeister to re-offer the exam, which they then did! Probably they either had better excuses, maybe illness, or maybe they just made something up. It reminds me of Charlie Brown on his pitcher's mound when Lucy conveniently reminds him that he is a hypocrite, as is everyone else (excepting herself, the queen of Crab): She said, "You're no different than anyone else, Charlie Brown." To the which (witch?) our glum hero replies, "Yes, I am! At least I feel guilty about it !"

But this is what happened, when I took the test: I found that there were a lot of photomicrophographs of clusters of organ-specific cells on the test! Thanks to my Dad, I had some experience with doing actual photomicrographs of amoebas, a freshman biology project which co$$t him a lot of money in those days!

It was a few more weeks before we got back our scores. The deal was, if a student answered at least 50% of the test questions correctly, s/he could go right on to the second year. Guess what I scored?

51%!!!!!

Now from a learning standpoint this was perhaps not the best thing to happen to me--but in point of fact, had I not gone to the second year, I would not have interned with my friend Steve Humowiecki and hence I might never have met, much less married, Flo. This alone would have been enough to endure any prior or subsequent humiliations, "as it is this day."

Oh, it's all a coincidence, right!? (depending on one's grid of understanding and a priori assumptions) But had I not been humbled enough to have to go back and repeat everything, I would never have ;earned any histology--a small yet huge gap in my education--and I certainly would not have gone over the 50% mark.

Did I pray about this? Not that I recall--I wouldn't have known how--that came later when I faced even more viscerally grueling attacks--but even when I did, I only prayed the segments of the Lord's Prayer than I could remember. Those prayers were, frankly, not answered; at least not in the way I wanted or could have anticipated. But ultimately and slowly I learned that God is gracious enough to give us what we need--even if it takes years of apparent silence--and not what we want. Thank God.

I like to write, obviously; but never in my strangest "traumen" could I have made up such a thing as the above. Art imitates life--because life is a lot more prodigal (generous) and profuse and inimitable and interesting than the most elaborate fantasy ever. Taking on idol #2, Science has no explanatory power in any individual cases such as these because it is based on statistics and probability. If sciencia would stop trying to be the theory, nay, fact; as we are now told; of everything, we would be somewhat better off--yet our basic problems would not be altered at all. Bring down one idol, men will put 2 in its place, as happened eventually in the saga of the golden calves; so is it to this day.

I realize that this may seem overlong but as the song says, "the half of which has never yet been told." I have left out numerous details which are apropos to the subject and my experiences, which all seem to fit together seamlessly in hindsight, and you know what they say: "Hindsight is 20/20." Sozo!!!

(questions always welcome "'round these parts")

Hoc THIS!! Add THAT!!

Seemingly random thoughts. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. One thought upon another-but does one thought invariably lead specifically to the next one?

Does it appear to us that ad hoc propositions lead to post hoc fallacies? Like I just did in the previous sentence?

We like to take credit for things we enjoy and want for ourselves or our loved ones. Which brings to mind Thoreau--paraphrased: "If I knew there was a person coming to my house with the express purpose of doing me a good deed, I should run for my life!"

I think this is more of an issue for famous people who have second thoughts about their fan base. To me this was always amusing but mostly theoretical! Loneliness is really more the problem for most people, and the thing we flee the most, eh Eleanor Big Oil Rig Bee?

Thurber cartoon: irritated-looking woman ice skating, speaking to a man in a sled hitched to 6 basset hounds: "I said,'The hounds of spring are on winter's traces, but let it pass, let it pass!'" Needless to say, no matter how you try to "trace"--harness for those of you not used to archaic usages--even an infinite numbers of basset hounds (horrors!!!) you will find yourself sitting on the ice until it melts, and then what? That's what!!!

This would be typical committee work. Apolitical action committee--o don't we wish!--accomplishment.

When I think about it, this kind of thinking--ad hoc to post hoc dys-logic--is far more common than mere logic. For instance, did you know that ugly defendants are at least 22% more likely to be found guilty by the average jury, than the good-lookin' among us? Bless their hearts.

(Better get my teeth straightened--alls I wants for Christmess id I mean iz....)

Science is supposed to help us out here. But did you know that my old girlfriend was accepted by Chicago Medical School on the basis of her cute photo? So,like, I really, really trust science to be honest forthright and objective.

It turns out that Western science has become really creative and thus turned in on itself as well as going about upside down. Science has been hitched to so many absurd wagons, it has caught wagon disease! At this point in spite of many real accomplishments, science and health so called have been caught up in the entertainment industry. The cover of "Discover" magazine has the same come-on format as Glamor magazine, without the girlie picture, in its place being some galaxy or other. One reader did bring them to task about the hype/blurb far exceeding the content; but I find that many of the "science" numbers are this way. Especially via the Internet--and the next day, you can't even find the article; I think they broadcast it to Alpha Centauri immediately.

There is a lawsuit underway against Big Oil in Louisiana--about the Big Spill, right? No, about the oil companies causing Katrina to be more ferocious than usual! This is in legal limbo because all the judges are afraid to make a decision!!

(please see the article about the appalling appointment of Frances Collins, the Genome Project go-to guy, to head of the NIH, in the current TNY. Collins has expressed doubts about medicine being changed by knowing more about your risk factors. People pay little enough to the ones they already know about. And designer drugs? To fit your lil' ol' DNA? Who is gonna pay for that, in our wildest dreams?. If you think Viagra is expensive at ten dollars a pill; already I am being forced to read about relatively ineffective drugs for cancer that cost ten grand a pop! Goombye insurance!!)

These of course are Issues (about tissues and don' u cry, baby) whose causation is a matter of history; but dimly seen and interpreted through ad hoc glasses by post hoc reasoning at best. More later about them, and about the difference between disease and dysease. Hint:at least one of them is good fer ya! Stay cheerful, the best is yet to come (perhaps)!

9-1-10 Dashboard Confessional II

For all those who were concerned about my "history of present illness", as we in the biz say, I thank you all for your "thoughts and prayers." I am still struggling a bit but will see an ENT Friday and hope to find some new gambit to make these minor league plagues (more agues than plagues- don't worry it's not contagious!) less disabling. But as the 3 Hebrew kids would say, "But if not............"

On another but related theme, as long as I am speaking of dis-ease, please allow me to be a bit transparent, even though I risk offense. I was very impressed yesterday by the article by Dr. Oliver Sacks in the most recent TNY about his own malady, which probably accounts in part for his intense interest as a neurologist and as a great writer, for unusual brain-based syndromes, in his case something called prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, sometimes even very familiar ones. But please note that he was not willing to share this information until recently, when he became personally sure that it was a congenital syndrome and not subject to alteration by mere will power. I greatly urge the reader to access this article!

My problem, and the problem most people will readily confess to, is an inability to remember names and/or connect them to faces, esp. when it is appropriate and important to recall them, i.e. in the grocery aisle!

There should be a name for this, eh, Dennis, my research bud?

Greater illnesses than these are those of a spiritual nature, because they do not affect just a few people but all of us, in varying proportions. For my purposes today I speak of the related malaisii of jealousy, resentment, and the base problem of pride. Some of my readers may be able to relate, and some perhaps not.

Most of you know that I have struggled with the roll (drums, please) of music in my life, in particular in my spiritual life, since for the last 30 years, I have been part of many worship teams at several churches. The problem has been two-fold: while drumming I am concentrating on technique not God; secondly, that immediately means that I "do my own thing," i.e. showboating; hopefully everyone knows what that means; but if not, by it I mean cramming in every trick and lick and riff that occurs to me at that moment, and not really being even a team player--which should be a warning sign for every musician who has trouble submitting to the team and its leader. The third problem is that I have been increasingly aware of the problem, but literally unable to do anything about it, as if when I played the worst in me would rush to the fore and take over automatically;while there have been a few breakthroughs lately, due to an excellent and kind worship leader, Gary Marini, for the most part the adage, "simplify, simplify,simplify" has been in my mind but not in my heart or will.

There's no way to shorten this, sorry, but I will tell you that I semi-voluntarily resigned as chief drummer to allow some younger men to take over; thirty years should be enoough, right? In the secul/art world they won't accapt you if you are over 30 and that's when I just got started! The level of acceptance, personally and musically, in the churches I have been privileged to serve, has been high indeed! Especially when one considers that I have been playing musically "in the flesh" for almost all of those decades, and as a Pharisee to boot;as previously described here. Talk about tolerance! "There it is then."

But the other part of my resignation sans "resignation" was the fact that, because of my defaulting on relationships and being unsubsumable and frankly incorrigible as a music person, the sad fact is that I exhausted the deep well of tolerance at long last, and was rejected from the team. Ever since, I have had problems entering in to worship without jealousy and resentment in my heart. On the other hand, since I wasn't really worshipping on stage either, jealousy merely replaced pride and a kind of addiction to drumming, so I was no further along by resigning; in fact the true motives of my heart were now duly dragged into the light, though I was loathe to admit it even to myself, much less to anyone else. And I didn't have the luxury of blaming my brain or heredity as Oliver Sacks has; 'tis really a matter of "habits of the heart"; bad ones, that is!!

But what has happened to the good is that, through a men's group on Tuesday mornings, I ended up forming a real friendship with Gary--who is impossible not to like-- by going out to breakfast afterwards and talking not just about music but about everything, so to speak. I recall when Gary first arrived as music leader and a new Christian, I proposed we go to lunch; but my plan was to "tell him how it is" with worship teams. To share, so to speak, my 30 years of experience, interpreted through my negativity. Thank YOU LORD he did not take me up on that! I was the one that needed to learn from him as the leader of a secular band, Selby Street, for many years.

I finally got to the point recently wherein I began to wholistically accept the fact that my function on the worship team was to be a friend and a support to Gary, who is doing a job as leader which is much,much, much harder than it looks! This did not clear up my feelings on the matter, however! I was still convinced that ageism, my "race card", was the main problem, not me or my rotten attitude!

But I did finally get around to asking God to do what I was unable to do, that is, to break my mental chains of addiction every bit as bad as Marley's chains of material addictions (the ghost; I don't know about Bob) , in the last analysis made acutely painful due to my own injured pride and unjustifiable addiction to my Sunday morning "fix" i.e. addiction to being on stage and to the sound of the drums itself. My prayer was to get through just one worship service without resentment, just to focus on Him, not on anything or anyone else--which after all is the whole point of doing it at all!!!

God did it! but not without some irony--we don't usually do old songs, since that style is unfamiliar to most younger musicians and is also, frankly, harder than it looks! No excuse-- but-- at the very point when I felt totally surrendered with joy restored, the team began to play, "Victory in Jesus" For the first time I actually felt the victory!

The irony of this is that, years ago, this was my "signature song" in which I would really "cut loose" as it is a great song to do in the shuffle style to which I would add jazz stylings. This song was a particular point of pride to me, as I had it down pat to the very last and least beats.

So what happened? This is not yet known to Gary, but the very next Tues/yest, he was asking me to play in Sept; not as a replacement for the regular younger drummer in absentia, but just spontaneously with no urging from me. Coincidence? I think, not so!! God knows our hearts, and He certainly knows when and if, "I surrender all!!!"

Some about Suffering

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.... the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God... because the creature shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought -- but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Indeed the whole creation groans until now.....

And he that searches the hearts... knows what is the mind of the Spirit because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose." Romans 8, selections.

Thanks for your response Joyce. ( please see my most recent post and Joyce's very stimulating observation.) You are certainly correct that I know only certain fragments of Catholic theology. I suspect that my daughter-in-law Grace will now more than I do about it soon since she is reading the Summa Theologica.

What I do know about it is what I can glean from First Things. Do you ever read this? I understand that the founding father, John Neuhaus, held the belief that hell contains no human persons/souls and never will. Is this the "butterfly effect," of which you were speaking?

I quite agree that all suffering is somehow redemptive but I am unclear as to the mechanism. It is frankly way beyond me...having an eclectic approach to theology probably doesn't help; but it is my view that each organ of the Body has its own function and one of the functions of the rest of the organs is to try not to alter the particular gift/duty of any particular other organ. When this happens, disease is the result. The body fights against itself as is the case in lupus rheumatoid arthritis, and many others including cancer. But I do quite expect that the Whole Body and The Bride will be quite impressive!!! And the problems of discord and suffering will be sorted out.

Suffering and sin is a Gordian knot which no man can untangle. (or dissect) Certainly the "friends" of Job tried hard enough. My recent sufferings are more to be reckoned as trivial compared to the sufferings of other people, but I do believe they were instructive once again to help me re-sort my priorities. Otherwise there would be no point in mentioning them. "Therefore brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh -- if you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live."

How this actually works out in practice seems to be a moment by moment experiential and, as it seems only to us, experimental and perhaps existential (in the Kierkegaardian sense) process beyond our control; I can know about such matters but faintly and not intellectually. How it really looks to The Father and The Son is more the province of the Spirit as it moves and interprets the word of God/Logos. Perhaps this is why theology in itself has some very natural and supernatural limitations. Certainly God uses theology in the lives of almost all people but it has to be merely a stepping stone to the real thing, as Paul asserts when he affirms that we see through a glass darkly. I personally am quite looking forward to being "swept away" in the very near future and I'm quite sure I will be leaving most of my theology and my thought patterns behind. Even the stuff I'm reading now is mostly(all?) dust in the wind compared to the Persons of the Godhead. At my age it is getting a little bit tiresome to be arguing, and I certainly would not be dogmatic about any of the above even the particular application of the above Scriptures to anything and anyone.

"There is is, then. Too many notes...." (I trust no one is taking notes on any of this)