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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 72: The Hard Questions

May 22, 2015

Black Care

Abraham Lincoln battled it before and while he was President. A lot of the world’s great artists battled it all the time; and sometimes battled to the death.

Theodore Roosevelt called it “Black Care”—I wrote about it before:

https://mjarts.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/chronicles-in-ordinary-time-47-black-care/

Today we call it Clinical Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder, Manic-Depression—they aren’t all the same, but they have some similarities. They all lurk in my gene pool [which hasn’t been filtered well enough]. Dealing with Black Care can be awful.

Thanks to the wonder of modern chemistry, I may have passed through another valley. It seems too soon for the increased dosage of Prozac to have worked, but there’s some sunlight in my life today; couldn’t say that yesterday. I still ache all day, I get shooting pains in a variety of places all day long, my feet feel sunburned all the time. My teeth are clenched—I realized I have a habit of pushing on my upper palate with my tongue—it keeps me from grinding my teeth…

Sometimes I get asked how I write these Chronicles [or, I receive spam that looks like someone is asking a question]. Usually they percolate in my brain for a period of time [ruminate might be a better word]; and I get the urge to put the words on digital paper. Frequently the hard part is finding the illustration. I generally don’t draw people in a snarky mood. Too close to home.

People who are very important to me are dealing with a lot of shit right now; and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it besides praying for them, and asking some ‘prayer warriors’ I know to pray as well. Prayer isn’t magic. The Creator is not our magic butler who makes everything work out for us. A lot of the time, I think that when all of the Gears of Life [think of the Lionsgate Movies logo] are turning in such a way that the Creator’s plans work out to our advantage, we sometimes see unexpected, but hoped-for things happen in our lives…Being human, we only consider answered prayer to be “yes”—sometimes the answer is “wait” and we don’t like that answer. We like “no” even less; but by definition, “no” is an answer.

The pain of those close to me is my own pain. This is part of the reason I allow so few people to get close to me. My daughter’s tears at 35-ish set off the same internal alarms that they did when she was 5. Reading about my son’s tears sets off the same alarms. And I don’t want to not hear those tears. Part of the weirdness of being a parent.

I’m currently wading through Augustine; CS Lewis recommended that we should always read from older periods in history, so that we can better understand the present. I haven’t followed that advice too strongly; but my first introduction into ‘theology’ was reading Marcus Aurelius in college. He asked the same questions I was asking. Job, the oldest book in Torah/the Old Testament, something like 4000 years old, asks the same questions.

“How can there be a loving God when this is such an awful place to live?”

“How can a loving God allow all of the hatred and war in the world?”

“How can there be a loving God who allows typhoons and earthquakes to devastate populations?”

“How can there be a loving God who allowed the Holocaust, and who allows the brutality of ISIS and Boko Haram?”

My short answer to these questions is that we have a Creator who has endowed us with Free Will and so values our individuality and respects our right to express ourselves that He allows us to commit all of the stupidity we find necessary to live; in hopes that some day, as individuals, we will come to our senses, and ask the Creator “how should we live?”

Just because people commit crime and blame it on God does not mean that God had anything to do with the crime…God gets blamed for an incredible amount of human misery.

“Torah tells how God caused the Israelites to wipe out nations; God wiped out mankind in the Flood and God sent plagues to the Egyptians. How could a loving God do that?”

I believe that Torah and the New Testament are True, and Inspired by the Creator. I also believe that these books are more like what we term “a journal” than complete histories of those times. These are the journals of the Hebrew people and the early Church. Statements and explanations of what happened; they don’t necessarily explain what the Creator wanted to have happen. I sometimes wonder if the things attributed to the Creator really were the Creator’s wishes…The things happened—David murdered Bathsheba’s husband so that he could get into her pants—it was not the Creator’s will. We are granted an incredible amount of choice, and sometimes we choose to blame God for our own greed and selfishness.

How could God have destroyed innocent men, women and children?

I have no idea what the destroyed nations were like; perhaps these nations were committed to paths of destruction. Human sacrifice [often sacrifice of children] was a very common way to ‘appease the gods’ in ancient times. Animal sacrifice goes on today. For a moment, suppose those nations were like ISIS and Boko Haram? Would our question have a different answer?

Who will the young boys living under ISIS grow up to be? Will they emulate their fathers and uncles? Would it be more merciful if they didn’t grow up at all? This isn’t a question I have been given to answer.

As 21st Century American individuals, we have no real understanding of what it would be like to live under an all-powerful and benevolent Ruler who commands obedience for our own welfare. It’s never happened in recorded history. Even writing the words, “commands obedience” causes warning lights to flash in my head. Growing up with my Dad. The Creator isn’t like my Dad. My Dad, was in some ways, like the Creator.

When the Israelites asked God to give them a king, so they could be like other nations, God’s response was a warning that they really won’t like what happens if they have an earthly King; and yet God gave Israel a King. The Kings of Israel were just as flawed and stupid as the rest of humanity.

We live on a rock floating in space, rotating at 24,000 mph, and traveling around our Sun for a year per revolution. Our distance from the Sun changes over the course of the year; our planet’s tilt, relative to the Sun, and that changing distance cause extreme changes in temperature during that year. At the center of this rock is a molten core of incredibly hot liquid. The surface of our world is a series of rock-plates that float on this molten core—extremely simplified geology. I live on the side of a volcano that is situated in a region that will most likely have a devastating earthquake in the coming decades. I haven’t moved to Iowa; nor to Maui, which would be my preference. There is only so much potential for destruction that my imagination will allow me to deal with.

Given all that we have learned about the non-static nature of the earth, why would we expect it to be static and always nice?

“Because God created the world and called it good.”

The Hebrew word translated as “good” is defined as, “to be (transitively, do or make) good (or well) in the widest sense.” To expect that ‘good’ means ‘perfect’ is projection of what we’d like it to mean. I think ‘good’ probably means something more like ‘sufficient’ than like ‘exceptional.’

I have three of the most terrific adult children that a parent could ask for. They are all flawed, in different ways than I am flawed; they all have traveled paths I wish they wouldn’t have traveled; and yet I have always tried to support their endeavors to the best of my ability at that time.

My children don’t experience the relationship with their Creator that I experience. I have no idea why, because I never asked for my experience…which isn’t entirely true, because I did ask for this experience; I just didn’t know what I was asking for. I knew that I didn’t know enough about life to live it successfully; three years in college had already made that clear to me. I had no spiritual background or experience, growing up. Asking the Creator of Life to lead me seemed to be a really smart choice when I finally understood the question; I really couldn’t understand why my parents weren’t as enthusiastic about this new awareness as I was. I found they had run from the Church; they never talked about the particulars.

The older I get, and the more I see of life, the more I wonder how my children view me. Someone with some odd beliefs about how Life works; perhaps someone who isn’t as enlightened as they are…

I have been blessed with encounters with the Living Creator for the last 40-odd years [or 40 odd years]. I long ago realized that mine is not a universal experience; and when it is experienced, it often is expressed in a manner that I find very peculiar. Probably as peculiar as my children view me; and as peculiar as I viewed ‘religion’ in my first years of college. I admire a gal at our church who says that she doesn’t have a ‘sarcasm’ gene. I can’t relate, but I admire the concept.

I am bothered that as a parent, I didn’t demonstrate the nature of “belief in the Creator” in such a way that my children would want to emulate that belief. Scripture teaches that my belief is a gift of the Creator. Sometimes I feel like it was a gift given to the wrong person. I can’t see my life as my Creator sees my life. That happens when I get Home.

I believe we are created with Eternal Souls; that Earth is a place where we are intended to learn how to live well with our fellow creatures. I believe there is another ‘plane of existence’ that isn’t tied to bodies and disease and suffering; and that we arrive at that plane when we leave these damaged bodies behind. I also believe that we could do a much better job of living with each other than we do. It’s our greed, our stupidity, our selfishness that makes this world a garbage heap…

We can each become the change we want to see in the world. That’s frequently a statement that is much easier to write than it is to do. I wouldn’t have written this statement in recent days. I thank God for Prozac. Those who manage to get through this life without the aid of chemistry are truly blessed.

piggy back draft 5From “A Dimly Burning Wick” a Hiroshima Diary

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 69: Stumbling Around in the Dark

April 4, 2015

 Easter

 One of my relatively few ‘religious’ images.

     Holy Week, 1973 [if my memory is faulty, I apologize]: our church was getting ready for a sunrise Easter service in Eugene, Oregon. There are two prominent Buttes in Eugene; one had a cross on top that for years was a source of controversy—a religious symbol on City property. I haven’t been to Eugene in a long time, and I don’t recall looking at the skyline nearby; I don’t know if the controversial cross remains. Our church was planning to have its sunrise service on the other Butte—the one without a cross. There were at least two of us college students that asked God into our lives around the same time. The other guy, Greg, had the idea of building a cross that we could install for our church service—tall, free-standing and portable. There was a hole in the concrete survey platform on top of the Butte, and with some encouragement, would suffice for a 4X4 upright. So, during Holy Week, Greg and I built a free-standing cross in his garage—the biggest engineering issue being ‘how to keep it from falling over’.

Our other issue was how to get it up to the top of the Butte? Particularly since a religious symbol of this nature would not necessarily be welcomed by the community…

Brad joined us on Saturday night, and under the cover of darkness the three of us carried the three pieces of the cross—vertical, horizontal and the bracket to keep the cross upright—through the dark, to the top of the Butte; not using the road that would have been easier to travel [the symbolism of carrying the cross wasn’t lost on me]. There was a fairly vertical portion of the Butte—probably Columnar Basalt—that we needed to climb. While searching for a good route, we left the pieces of the cross lying on the ground, in the dark. Having found a route to the top, we then had to return to the cross pieces; which we could not find…

So, the title of this mental meandering—we wandered around in the dark, until we could find our way to the cross.

By the time we returned to the dorm, having mounted the cross on the concrete platform in such a way that it would be very difficult to remove, it was nearly time to take off to join the others of the congregation, walking up the road to the top of the Butte; my first Easter.

Easter is the defining point in history; a highly-controversial statement. I’ll use it in the most secular sense—it defines the time before the Creator of the Universe entered time and space as the infant Jesus; and all that has happened since that event. There are a number of calendars still in use that use a different event as a primary reference point; even though modern Western culture uses “Before|After the Common Era” as the division, in fact, it’s still the same calendar, still the same reference point as “Before|After Christ.”

I’m not big on holidays and religious festivals. When our kids were small, I joined in with the celebrations because it was a part of my children’s culture; I struggled with Santa Claus [Saint Nicholas] and the Easter Bunny. How did the concept of the Crucifixion become a chocolate rabbit?

I believe that all of my days should reflect both Christmas and Easter; if they don’t, I’m playing a game. I have no idea how well I’m accomplishing that goal. I’ll find out when I get Home.

There are a multitude of ideas as to the meaning of the Cross, and Jesus’ crucifixion. For a highly theological and very good summary of the thinking of scholars of the Church, I recommend this article by Conrad Hilario:

http://www.xenos.org/essays/christian-doctrine-substitutionary-atonement

I believe that if we are honest with ourselves, we are all broken and stumbling in the dark. Not all the time, perhaps only on our bleakest days. I also believe that there are a lot of well-intentioned, but hard-hearted people who try to shame other people; people that have different beliefs and belief systems. The best and the brightest of the Church have never been able to come up with an explanation that all could agree on; I won’t try. I believe that Jesus is the defining point of history; however, I don’t have a ‘rule’ by which one addresses the subject of Jesus.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself [looking for loopholes], so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

At which point Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. To put it in a more contemporary context to American society, the story today should probably be that of the Good Muslim.

Jesus did not mention anything about spiritual laws in the above statement; nor did He mention Church sacraments or other rules. In the Book of the Prophet Micah is the following passage:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

If we could all manage to do this, we could change the world.

Be the change you long to see. If that change involves harming other people, think on it for a while longer.

Jim_Della

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time: Non-sequitur

March 14, 2015

Dr.WatsonWhy does one blog… I write as a somewhat therapeutic aid to living with a broken body in a broken world. Therapists frequently suggest ‘journaling’ as a way to deal with one’s inner world. I did that years ago; and the journals are all buried; hopefully no one will ever read them.

This form of journaling is different, in that I hope it will be read by someone dealing with the same sort of crap that I deal with. Or someone who is amazed as I at some aspect of Life.

As a blogger, WordPress filters a whole lot of “Feedback” that apparently arrive to my address. Four-digits every time I check; no matter how often I visit my ‘dashboard’. Tomorrow there will be 4-digits, even though I just deleted 4-digits. Normally, I see huge volumes of spam in the “Feedback,” which I’ve come to expect. Every time one posts something on the internet, the Universe seems determined to respond with garbage.

Today was different. I found stuff in my “Spam” folder that may not be spam. My mental picture is that there is some soul who is sending out marketing spam because that’s their job; and in the midst of doing their work, they happen across my blog. I don’t know if that mental picture is accurate. One gets accustomed to phrases repeated over and again–this stuff I realize is somewhat-more-creative spam…

For those who have written appreciative comments in the past, from the computer of some spam-producing company, I apologize for not sifting through the spam. I don’t have the energy to sift through 4000 comments, looking for real ones. I appreciate the real comments that get sent; whichever ones those might be.

I’ve been trying to understand life for something like 6 decades; I’m not done yet. Hopefully I can be of some assistance to another soul.

Blessings, Marty

Mikey avatar 3

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 66: Story

February 25, 2015

My new gallery at Artistically Social:

https://www.artisticallysocial.com/users/mjartscom/gallery/

Marty Jones’s Stock Media: http://www.pond5.com/artist/mjarts

I started this illustration career in order to tell stories…

KQ1From my 20 year old, unfinished children’s book, “The King’s Quest”

But life doesn’t always work out the way we plan… Rarely?
My own projects have almost always had to wait their turn until I take care of income-producing projects.

One of my favorite musical artists is Stephen Curtis Chapman, particularly in his recent, middle years…
“And it may feel like 40 long days in a hard driving rain
Or 40 years in a dry desert sand
But when He’s finished we will see a beautiful tapestry
And know that nothing has been wasted in the end
Oh, and God will, He will finish what He started
No thread will be unwoven
Nothing will be left undone
Every plan and every purpose
That He has will be accomplished
And God will finish what He’s begun”

From “Finish What He’s Started” Steven Curtis Chapman

The back side of a tapestry doesn’t always look the same as the front side:

tapestryUsed without permission from
http://www.textiletextbooks.com/textilemania/u_4/u_4_3.html

 Sometimes the story of my life feels like this:
yarnI forget where I found this image; my apologies.

The story of our lives.
Bible teachers for a hundred years have talked about how here on earth, we only get to see the back side of the tapestry of our lives; when we get Home, we’ll be able to see the front side; and we will be amazed.

This has been an unpleasant ‘week’ for me [it started last week]; pain and weakness to the point where I haven’t been able to concentrate on work. The FEAR [False Evidence Appearing Real] is that I would be stuck in that state—still functional, still able to pass time; and pretty-well only being able to pass time. I’ve been either sleeping on my waterbed fully-dressed, or lying on our well-insulated couch under layers of clothing and blankets. My sensory nerves are mostly shot; I rarely feel warm, I feel the absence of cold. With enough insulation, I can feel what probably is ‘hot’ but to me is pleasantly warm. The ‘warm’ signal will drown out some of the pain signals.  I soak through the inner layers of clothing with sweat, which I can’t feel until the dampness cools down.
I love watching movies, and our library is great—thousands of movies that I can watch for free. But I want to do more than watch movies for the next years of my life.

I want to do more with my life than merely pass time—this is one of the fears that most people my age and older come to. “Waiting for God” as one BritCom called it.

I want the story of my life to have meaning. I am coming to terms with the idea that my life won’t be the story I wanted it to be. When I’m more faith-filled, like right now as I’m typing, I can live in the hope that the mess on this side of the tapestry will look far different when I’m Home; and that the mess will tell a story. I believe that I am designed for Eternity, and that this life, even if it contains 40 years of pain, will only be an eyeblink in the span of Eternity.

…and that my reaction to the tapestry I will be shown will be more like this:

Audrey red

…without the dress. I’m a blue jeans kind of guy…

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 64: Plagues and Bubbles

February 20, 2015

More marketing: my new gallery at Artistically Social:
https://www.artisticallysocial.com/users/mjartscom/gallery/

Cassiopeia A exploded“This new view shows a more complete picture of Cassiopeia A,  the remains of a star that blew up in a supernova event whose light reached Earth about 350 years ago, when it could have appeared to observers as a star that suddenly brightened. The remnant is located 11,000 light-years away from Earth [64,620,618,408,000,000 miles].” 
http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/image/nustar140219a

Enders Game, Starship Troopers, Wing Commander…

Take the best and brightest of our children, send them into space, and teach them to be warriors.

Don’t teach the best and brightest of our children to be Explorers and Discoverers; I mean what can there possibly be in this Universe that we need to learn?

 

CS Lewis feared that we humans would launch ourselves into space, and then begin to infect the rest of the galaxy with our brokenness.

We aren’t alone in the Universe; it’s statistically improbable [impossible]. There have been visitors to our planet from other parts of the galaxy. Why haven’t they ever come back to contact us? Perhaps it’s because we have The Plague. I often wonder if there are giant billboards in space, somewhere beyond Pluto’s orbit, billboards that say “Do Not Enter—Quarantined—Plague-Infected”

Lewis’ theme has been used in movies like “The Day the Earth Stood Still” [the original]—the peoples of Earth are given the warning, that if we don’t stop our stupid violence, there will be consequences, delivered by the civilized species of the Universe; and the robotic guardians they have created to control their own violent tendencies. Lewis also contends that there are two kinds of civilizations in the Universe—“fallen” and “not fallen”—two mostly-religious terms that rely on the concept of a Universal Morality. “Not-Fallen” civilizations in which Free Will is always used in what we would describe as a ‘moral’ manner. No harm comes to another through malice or greed. Those “Fallen” civilizations such as our own will also have their Redemption stories, stories similar to the story of Jesus, the Messiah. The Creator taking a physical form, and dying some form of cruel death as punishment for making the claim to be God. And by that death, individuals can be redeemed and made whole again.

We know that humans tend to believe in “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” ignoring Gandhi’s prediction that such behavior will leave the world blind and toothless. Anyone who has raised children is aware that this behavior tends to be pre-programmed, along with a ton of other ‘behaviors’—the beating of our hearts, for example. Negative behavior can be curbed by training; it can also be intensified by training. When a child learns that they have the power of choice, the child learns the concept of “no,” the concept of disobedience.

Right now, half-way across the world from where I am sitting, there are some thousands of guys who believe that torturing and killing human beings on camera, in a brutal manner, is completely okay. That somehow by exterminating people, who apparently have committed the ‘crime’ of believing something different than they, will somehow bring about a betterment of society as they see it. That society will either live in constant fear of doing the wrong thing, or they will live as monsters themselves. The numbers of those guys increase daily, as we go about killing them off, raining fire from the sky. Kill a bunch, and a bunch more crop up. They need to be eliminated; but in eliminating them we become monsters ourselves because of the ‘collateral damage’. We kill innocent civilians when we kill the monsters, and we somehow justify it. Our plague. I don’t have the solution.

The Cross is about forgiveness, rather than punishment. I have The Plague. I’m a recluse, I prefer solitude to having company; I know that I need the input from other people to become more than I am now. I’ve never cheated on my wife of nearly 40 years; the only woman I’ve ever had sex with. The last time I hit someone in anger was something like 50 years ago [a note to my kids—this may not be entirely accurate]. My last traffic ticket was something like 20 years ago, when we shut down traffic on Mount Hood… I am not a good person; I am a cautious person. The Plague rules my heart; I don’t give my body permission to act out that Plague. But in my thoughts…

By the Grace of God I am not the monster I could be; and it’s not of my doing. I was brought to the understanding that I could act like a monster if I so chose; I simply haven’t had/allowed the provocation. I am no purer than any other human being. I learned that I don’t have to let the monster part of me be in control; I can give control of my broken self to the Creator that made me. I am forgiven for sometimes wanting to be that monster.

Some people choose to live in a ‘bubble’—protecting their minds and their hearts from the Plague that swirls around them. It’s easier to avoid the Plague when one avoids the places where the Plague lurks. They raise their children in a Plague-free environment to spare their children from the disease; often their children don’t appreciate the protection—it’s cool to be daring and adventurous.

I wander in and out of the ‘bubbles’—not that I’m daring or adventurous; I simply find the protected bubble to be confining. I also find the unprotected bubble to be made mostly of illusions. There is little there that lasts. I walk a broken road, and that road sometimes beats the crap out of my body. My soul is free, and that is the important part.

the universe in his hands_1

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 62: Where is the Hope?

December 26, 2014

While I occasionally go through and reply to comments I receive, I don’t reply to every one of them. It’s possible that many of the comments I receive are well-crafted spam; my hope is that the ones from ad-generating sites are sincere; and that the sender has taken a break from generating ads to reading stuff  that I write.

Thank you for your comments, even if I don’t reply to them. My hope is that my writing is an encouragement to people who think about the same stuff I do; and who go through similar challenges. This life is too difficult to go through on one’s own.

angel.grief_mjIn the 1890s, noted American sculptor, William Wetmore Story, created
the Angel of Grief monument for the future grave site of he and his wife in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery.  A number of replicas of the Angel of Grief—also referred to as the Weeping Angel—can be seen around the country in various
cemeteries.

I know, a dreary image for Christmas Day…

I was reading yesterday about Christmas in Baghdad. Before we invaded Iraq, Christians, Jews and Muslims all celebrated the time of Chanukah and Christmas. They may have lived under a dictatorship, but they felt protected. During this season of Christmas, children ask their parents whether Santa will be able to find them, now that they have fled their homes…

“In 2003, when the Americans invaded, there were an estimated 1.5 million Christians living in Iraq. Today, experts say, there are fewer than 400,000, many of them on the run from the Islamic State.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/world/middleeast/iraq-christians-ousted-by-isis-celebrate-christmas.html?_r=1

Saint Nicholas does not forget the children of War; even though it must seem like it. Children mostly live in the present; the past and future are somewhat vague.

I believe it is important to realize at this time in our lives, that Mary and Joseph had been on the run from a King who was killing babies, when they found themselves at the manger in Bethlehem. A time probably similar to today, when viewed from outside of America.

Are we thankful today, in America, that our cities aren’t overrun by the horrors of war? Or do we expect that freedom from war is our birthright?

Do we in America realize that we are the cause, or major contributors, of many of the wars fought in other countries over the last 50+ years? Today, children are being killed by American drone strikes.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. [John 1:9-13]

Joseph and Mary were given information by an angel about the unplanned child that was to be born. Shepherds and more angels arrived to confirm the identity of the baby. In time, astrologers from the East confirmed the story again. The Light had come into the world.

And then we hear nothing about Emmanuel—God With Us—for something like 30 years. We hear that as a pre-teen, Jesus [God With Us] spent a lot of time in the Temple once, astounding the religious leaders of the day. There are stories about events during His life, but they haven’t been adopted into the Protestant Canon. One day Jesus arrived at the Jordan River, near the town of Bethany, where John the Baptist was baptizing followers of the Lord. John identified Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God. Jesus knew He was the Sacrificial Lamb from the beginning of His ministry, probably from before that time.

I have to admit, I’ve lived in a metropolitan city for most of my life; the concept of ‘sacrificial lamb’ doesn’t have a lot of personal meaning for me. I buy meat from the store; we no longer make sacrifices of animals to show reverence. However, there seems to be a sense of justice running through us that says ‘crime requires punishment’.

Jesus was not a Christian, He was Jewish. Most of His followers were Jewish. Jesus said that He hadn’t come to start a new religion; He’d come to heal the broken-hearted, the wounded, the ones who knew they weren’t sufficient on their own. He taught for three years, He was crucified, died and was buried. Three days later He rose again from the dead; and said that we too could rise from death.

Jesus’ followers, after Jesus had gone, were Jewish. Eventually they had to deal with the Gentile Problem. People were coming to hear about Jesus, and they weren’t Jewish; it was decided that the Gentiles did not have to become Jewish in order to follow Jesus, and did not have to follow all of the Jewish laws. This concept worked for something like 300 years; and then an Emperor made Christianity the official religion of his Empire. Things started getting messed up.

The Creator knew that The Church would change radically over the centuries, and that the presence of the Holy Spirit would be sufficient. We are not saved by Christianity. We are saved by the act of the Creator on the cross. Jesus did not claim to be a great moral teacher; Jesus claimed to be the Creator of the Universe. He either was the Creator of the Universe, or He was a lunatic. Or He was one of the most inventive and persistent stories ever made up.

Hope.

Theological debates abound over the nature of God and the Universe; I have my own heretical ideas.

I believe the eternal and infinite Creator of Universe became Man to give hope to the human race. We have a Creator that knows our weakness, who knows our insanity, who knows our greed.

The Creator of the Universe endured all that humans could do to demean the soul and the Spirit; and as He died on the Cross, He said, “It is finished.” All that was Needed was Done. The Gospels state that when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, waiting for His betrayal, “an angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him…being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” [Luke 22:43,44]

I am of the opinion that Jesus was given, in the Garden, the foreknowledge of all of the hatred and cruelty that would be done ‘in his name’ through the centuries that would follow; and this caused Him the anguish that only the Creator of mankind, in all its Grace, could feel. A human being can only sustain a certain amount of mental anguish without breaking; I am of the opinion that He only knew the True Significance of His impact on history at the end.

The Creator of the Universe has a vision for the human race that is so huge that He was willing to endure death on a Cross in order for an idea to get planted in the hearts and minds of Jesus’ followers.

The idea that the walls that divide people can come down; that people can make peace. The idea that Light had come into a very dark world; and that all who receive this Light can become children of God.

“…That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

tree

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 60: Wounded

December 8, 2014

Michelangelo's_Pieta_Legion
I came to Christ in college; I had no religious upbringing. Christmas was ALL about Santa Claus and presents. When it came to the historical event that divides our time and space into BC and AD [yes, I know CE is more politically correct], I understood Michelangelo’s image of The Pieta [above left] before I understood the image on the right– Michelangelo’s The Bruge Madonna. I understood the Cross before I understood the stable—but that isn’t entirely accurate, because after 40 years of study, I can’t say I understand either very well. Jesus was killed by the people He came to save…although it is more accurate to say that Jesus chose suicide by crucifixion rather than execution by religious zealots. There were 10 legions of angels waiting to protect Jesus, had He desired for them to be called up.

Raising my three children at this time of year was always an exercise in trying to reconcile the two images below; the two men in the red and white suits:

nicholas
We parent-types make Christmas a magical time for children, a time of lights and parties and presents. I have no real complaint against the concept, except that the concept we experience today was mostly created by Madison Avenue; and has little to do with Jesus of Nazareth, born in a barn to a homeless couple named Mary and Joseph…

Granted, the Christmas tree my wife and I no longer install nor decorate is an old tradition; supposedly the work of ancient priests attempting to bring the pagan tree-hugger world closer to the Christian world. Saint Nicholas was a real man [at least as real as any historical accounts are believed to be, in this skeptical world]; a bishop who was known for giving presents to the poor of his congregation. I talked about Saint Nicholas and explained that Santa Claus was a mispronunciation of his name; that Christmas was about giving; and that the celebrating the birth of Jesus was intended to be a year-round event; not something that only happened in December.

I still remember the Christmas morning when my kids discovered a pair of grooves in the slush on the driveway, and a number of vaguely circular depressions. It really did look a lot like the remains of a reindeer-drawn sleigh having landed on our driveway, and I swear on a stack of whatever, that I had nothing to do with the illusion. I believe in a Creator who has a strange sense of humor…

And then there’s the idea that Jesus was probably born in the Spring, according to those who study such things…

My first Christmas church service happened when I was 22 years old. I had planned on going to a candlelight service at First Presbyterian Church, downtown. A beautiful sanctuary filled with carved wood panels that I can’t imagine being built by the carpenters of today [I was one]—truly a labor of love by skilled craftsmen that probably won’t be duplicated again in the future. I’ve carved wood; the amount of time invested in such work could not really be justified in today’s economies.

1stPres
I had missed the bus [it happens a lot, in my life]. An African-American woman at the bus stop invited me to come to her church [in a part of town that I had been trained was dangerous for white folk to go]. A joyous multi-racial celebration; but as the service was going into its second hour, and showed no signs of stopping, I excused myself, vaguely unfulfilled. The experience hadn’t been what I’d hoped for.

I had by this time experienced a Presence appearing in my life. Sort of like a door was being opened in a stuffy building—suddenly the environment was fresher. Nothing outwardly different than the moment before, but I became aware that I was no longer alone in the environment I found myself in. Of course, there was absolutely nothing I could point to, for someone else to see. It was an experience. These experiences don’t happen often, and rarely at the times I hope they will. However, they have happened for 40 years… These experiences prove to me that there is a Life beyond the one I live, and beyond anything I can imagine. These experiences tell me that words in books about the Creator are True…

…and, I believe in a Creator who has a strange sense of humor…

The opening words of the Book of John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

I have a music collection that I label, “Songs for Broken People”. Songs about surviving, about enduring, about overcoming; about Peace. I play these songs every day as a way of training my mind. Voluntary brain-washing; my brain needs continual washing, and it has little to do with germs. Several years ago I read these words of Tim Hansel:
“Most people who live with chronic pain or chronic problems have a hard time being happy. That is to be expected. Although there are moments of laughter, nothing seems to stay.
“Joy, on the other hand, is something which defies circumstances and occurs in spite of difficult situations. Whereas happiness is a feeling, joy is an attitude. A posture. A position. A place. As Paul Sailhammer says, “joy is that deep settled confidence that God is in control of every area of my life.”
“If we are to have this kind of joy in our lives, we must first discover what it looks like. It is not a feeling; it is a choice. It is not based on circumstances; it is based upon attitude. It is free, but it is not cheap. It is the by-product of a growing relationship with God. It is a promise, not a deal. It is available to us when we make ourselves available to Him. It is something that we can receive by invitation and by choice. It requires commitment, courage, and endurance. –Ya Gotta Keep Dancin’

Christmastime has come once again, and once again I find that I’m out of step with the society in which I live. There are a bunch of people outside of the United States of America that have very little reason to celebrate, this December. Celebration becomes a difficult choice when there is nothing material to celebrate—death by disease, death by soldiers, death by drones, death by the people down the street; homes flattened by war or natural disaster. Much of the world is having the stuffing kicked out of them, and we Americans complain about the stuffing in our Christmas turkey—we consume in one evening meal more than many consume in a week. Each day we dispose of enough food to feed most of the world—because it’s no longer ‘fresh’…

I’m not sure if I never learned how to celebrate, or whether the ability to celebrate was removed from me by the life that wears me down. Not sure that it matters, since the result is pretty-much the same. My kids provide me with reminders about the importance of celebrating. I am thankful for my kids, because they have taught me so much about Grace, and love, and courage and endurance. I’m still learning.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Adoration

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 59: It isn’t supposed to be this way…

November 24, 2014

sorrow

‘She went into the situation armed with an 8th Grade Biology class and a belief that the world is a decent place…’ from the movie, “trust_” The story is of a 14 year old girl, wanting to be older and less awkward [as we ALL are at that age], who becomes friends with “Charlie”, a compassionate ‘friend’ on a teen chat site. Charlie starts out being 16, but during a couple of months of ‘relationship,’ turns out to be in his late thirties, and he’s a sexual predator.

In the world I grew up in, predators were creatures in movies. The odds of running into a predator in Portland were pretty slim. In Corvallis I learned that predators could live in the dorm with you. A jilted lover who murdered a girl with a knife; and the scarier, in-house ‘security patrol’ who traveled the hallways at night, armed with whatever weapons they had handy. The murderer was a mixed-up kid whose intelligence was larger than his maturity. The farm kids who were out to ‘shoot a varmint’ were more scary, in my mind.

I encountered evil in Eugene.

A brief encounter, probably no more than an hour total. I realized that something other than my physical body was in danger; my soul was being threatened. I know now that my soul wasn’t really in danger; my Creator was at my side; but at the time, I was terrified by a guy dressed in white who apparently had tracked my movements across campus. Without GPS, which didn’t exist.

The Internet is, in my opinion, ‘Free Will, Writ Large’—there really are no limitations on what one can do via the Internet, thanks to the digital revolution that occurred while I wasn’t really watching all that closely. I used to think I was near the forefront of digital illustrators—I started drafting in Wordperfect Draw—something similar to Microsoft Paint, but more versatile. I still use some old graphics programs that are similar to GIMP; the ‘magic’ in digital art comes from the .psd file—computerspeak that allows one to create multiple transparent layers in a single image. The digital version of Walt Disney’s illustrators & animators creating paintings on transparent plastic sheets. I watched a Pixar biography tonight, and realized that I was doing a tiny version of their own experimentation with my own work. Seeing how far I could stretch the abilities of ones & zeroes to create an image. However, in the time that I was experimenting while trying to earn an income, digital art blew right past me. The growth of ideas has become exponential; as a result, incredible achievements are being accomplished by brilliant teenagers who don’t have the patience for the classroom. As a result, an intelligent child can learn how to create a bomb. A not-so-intelligent child can learn how to brutalize people more effectively…

We now live in a world where everyone is everywhere all the time; and the outcomes, sometimes, aren’t so good. Beheadings in the Middle East have been occurring for millennia; today they are filmed and broadcast around the world as public statements. A kid with access to a computer can learn all of the things their parents did not want them to know until they were mature enough to handle the psychological trauma that can accompany such knowledge. Our government can spy on us in ways that we never imagined; and there really isn’t a concept of privacy any longer. There will probably come a day when people’s DNA information is put on file at birth; ‘for our protection’. Police have DNA matches on serial criminals they cannot find, because they don’t know who the DNA belongs to; they simply know that the DNA belongs to a person who is a predator.

I am a follower of Jesus Christ, the Creator of the Universe poured into a human being, to the extent that a human being can hold Eternity and Infinity. I believe that the incarnation of Christ happened so that we could have a picture of what a life of Grace and Love and Freedom could be like. There are a lot of theological beliefs that accompany that picture; at the moment, I’m thinking about all of the evil that exists in the world. Most of that evil comes from people not that unlike ourselves. How can a “Loving God” allow such evil to occur? Where would a “Loving God” stop that behavior from occurring? Today I also watched a biography of Richard Pryor, whose father was a pimp who abandoned his family; whose mother was a prostitute; and who was raised by his grandmother, the owner of the brothel where his mother worked. Pryor’s comedy was ‘white bread’ until the seventies; when the young people of my generation started protesting the hypocrisy that was rampant in American society. I remember the conversations in college. The anticipated outcome from our ‘honesty’ was NOT a society where the government is run by corporate America, for the benefit of corporate America. Ironically, Wall Street was fed by the ‘entrepreneurs’ of my generation, who learned that morality can simply be a word that some people use to get what they want.

But it wasn’t supposed to be that way.

One of my mentors, Steve Brown, posted this on his website:
“The law reflects the parameters of God’s desire—not the parameters of his love. When those two get confused, then the law is used improperly.”

The Law of Moses and the subsequent books of the Bible were written to show us how things could work; teaching a society of slaves to live as a free people. One of the reasons that the Creator did not want the Israelite people to have the King that they wanted, in order to live like other people, was ‘you won’t like the outcome.’ Jesus was born around the time when the Roman Empire was at its height; and the Roman system of roads could provide reasonably safe passage through much of the world. Once again showing people a Way of Life. Foolish creatures that we are, we turned it into Rules for Living. Free Will does not like Rules. We aren’t meant to live under Rules; we are meant to live under Freedom; freedom that does not exploit the freedom of others.

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 58: The Examined Life

November 24, 2014

valley of the shadow_crop

Yesterday, I thought I’d seen it all
I thought I’d climbed the highest wall
Now I see the learning never ends
And all I know to do is keep on walking
Walking ’round the bend singing

Why, why, why
Does it go this way
And why, why, why
And all I can say

Is somewhere down the road
There’ll be answers to the questions
And somewhere down the road
Tho’ we cannot see it now

Somewhere down the road
You will find mighty arms reaching for you
And they will hold the answers
At the end of the road

Oh, keep on walking

Somewhere Down the Road Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick

“Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say that the greatest good of a man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living — that you are still less likely to believe.”

Plato, Apology

Possibly the one advantage to living with pain for several decades is that it has given me a lot of time for examining my life. When all one can do is get horizontal in the dark, and hope that whatever method of pain relief one is using will kick in soon, one has a lot of time to think… I’ve spent a lot of time examining my life, and I have decided to cultivate faith in things that many people are unable to see; ideas they can’t understand.

One of the things I’ve learned is that I can’t fix people. The most that I can do is provide an environment where ‘fixing’ can occur, if someone is inclined to becoming ‘fixed’. Most of the time, we aren’t even aware of being broken. I think there are probably a lot of house pets that would object to the concept that the trip to the veterinarian ‘fixed’ something that wasn’t broken. It was merely inconvenient. ‘Fixing’ a human is far more complicated than some minor surgery.

I started realizing that the world is really messed up while I was in high school. High School, particularly an all-male high school in the sixties, was so different from high school today. At a guy’s high school in the sixties, if a food fight developed in the cafeteria, a coach simply went up to one of his players throwing food, and decked him. End of food fight. No counseling, no lawyers, no fuss. There were switchblades in my high school, and chemistry students making explosives [contact explosive on the legs of the teacher’s desk, which went off when the teacher slammed his briefcase onto his desk—probably the last time he ever did that to get his class’s attention].

During my senior year, I started reading stuff I never would have thought to read, and had to start writing essays on “Appearance vs. Reality as Demonstrated in Kafka and Camus.” I was also introduced to transcendence, in the form of “The Man of La Mancha”:

“I shall impersonate a man. His name is Alonso Quijana, a country squire no longer young. Being retired, he has much time for books. He studies them from morn till night and often through the night and morn again, and all he reads oppresses him; fills him with indignation at man’s murderous ways toward man. He ponders the problem of how to make better a world where evil brings profit and virtue none at all; where fraud and deceit are mingled with truth and sincerity. He broods and broods and broods and broods and finally his brains dry up. He lays down the melancholy burden of sanity and conceives the strangest project ever imagined – -to become a knight-errant, and sally forth into the world in search of adventures; to mount a crusade; to raise up the weak and those in need. No longer will he be plain Alonso Quijana, but a dauntless knight known as Don Quixote de La Mancha.”
“I’ve been a soldier and a slave. I’ve seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I’ve held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no brave last words, only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning “Why?” I don’t think they were wondering why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams – -this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all – -to see life as it is and not as it should be.”

Being mostly a geek through my childhood and high school, my behavior stayed within certain boundaries because life worked better within those boundaries. In college, I learned that there really aren’t any boundaries. By the end of my sophomore year, I spent a lot of time in depression—like Senor Quihana, my brains began to ‘dry up’ as I witnessed man’s inhumanity to man in Vietnam, and in Chicago, and at Kent State… “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams–this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all-–to see life as it is and not as it should be.”

During my third year, at a different college, I discovered my Creator; and I learned that the idea of ‘life as it should be’ wasn’t simply some sort of behavior that my parents had tried to instill in me. One can instill behavior in another person, either in a positive way, or by coercion. To discover a way of living life that transcended behavior, and for me, was the beginning of a journey on ‘the road less traveled’. The vast majority seek a different road.

There are two people in my life who I wish I could help. “Help” in this context means to see life through my perspective. Seeing life through my eyes would not ‘fix’ them; their bodies betray them in ways that are similar to my 30+ years of pain. I’d like them to know that there is a reserve. That no matter how many times they find themselves stumbling on their paths, no matter how many wolves are waiting in the wings, Goodness and Mercy are always following them, protecting their souls. I believe their souls are protected, even if they don’t believe they have souls. Somewhere down the road, they will learn this. In the span of Eternity, our lives here, no matter how broken, are like the blink of an eye. We are as eternal as the stardust from which we are created.

Created. Such a strange concept in today’s scientific world. We learn so much and the learning costs us perspective. The explanations imply that we are machines of some sort, with predictable outcomes. We grow from the joining of two microscopic cells, in much the same manner as all life on this planet exists. Because we are grown, rather than manufactured, there are flaws; there are limitations. I believe that enough generations have passed to cause more flaws to occur. There has been enough contamination to the original strains that more of us are susceptible to breakage; more of us that experience life as it was not intended to be. Bad design? Perhaps. Perhaps it is simply that the raw materials are so fallible. And we are taught that life can be guaranteed. It can only be guaranteed to bring trouble.

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 57: we are all mortal

October 8, 2014

“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet.
We all breathe the same air.
We all cherish our children’s future.
And we are all mortal.”
John F. Kennedy

My daughter-in-law [11 days from now] has cancer. Surgery has just been done; more treatment will be required. Being diagnosed with cancer, a month before one’s wedding, is bad; major surgery 12 days before the wedding dampens the joy a bride and groom are supposed to be able to feel at this time. Fortunately, further treatment can wait until after the wedding. The discussions with oncologists may not be able to wait… It’s challenging to think about the joy of weddings—two families becoming one larger family—in the midst of cancer.

“In 2014, an estimated 232,670 new cases of invasive breast cancer were expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S., along with 62,570 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.”
http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics

A friend of mine, who started as a client, is in remission from liver cancer; and his current health challenge may be a result of his treatment. He is angry with god; he doesn’t accept the idea of a god who allows people to suffer. For me, the problem with his concept is that the Creator doesn’t create cancer. We do. We, the human race; specifically the human race in the 20th Century… we are a cancer.

“Cancer is a group of diseases characterized by uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells…”
http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-036845.pdf

Uncontrolled growth and the spread of abnormality. Not that I’m a big fan of ‘normal’…

we are all mortal

Over two thousand nuclear weapons have been exploded in our shared atmosphere or in our shared oceans or in the earth itself. Particulate matter from these tests falls onto the soil of the earth, or upon the surface of the oceans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJe7fY-yowk

“As of 1993, worldwide, 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions (including 8 underwater) have been conducted with a total yield of 545 Megaton(mt); while the estimated number of underground nuclear tests conducted in the period from 1957 to 1992 is 1,352 explosions with a total yield of 90 Mt.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests

In World War II cities of Germany and Japan were fire-bombed by allied forces.

“In a meeting with the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Air Vice Marshall Harris enunciated his boss’s policy: “We shall destroy Germany’s will to fight. Now that we have the planes and crews, in 1943 and 1944 we shall drop one and a quarter million tons of bombs, render 25 million Germans homeless, kill 900,000 and seriously injure one million.”
“The bombers pounded Germany with 48,000 tons of explosives in 1942, and with another 207,600 tons in 1943. Night attacks escalated, targeting Germany’s most populous regions: the Ruhr, March to June, 1943; Hamburg, July to November, 1943; Berlin, November, 1943 to March, 1944…”
http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/WW2/bombing%20raids.htm

German forces, determined to stamp out ‘undesirables’ destroyed Warsaw.

“The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.”
—SS chief Heinrich Himmler, October 17, 1944, SS officers’ conference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_destruction_of_Warsaw

Cancer does not come from the Creator.

 

According to the laws of physics, there is no darkness; there is the absence of light. There is no cold; there is the absence of heat.
Perhaps there is no evil on earth, only the absence of goodness. There is a spiritual side to evil, and there is a greater spiritual side to goodness. However, physics has little to say on this subject.

Somehow we assume that our planet is self-sustaining; that all of the debris from thousands of bombs is somehow cleaned from the atmosphere. The garbage in our air does not go into space; it goes into the soil and into the oceans.

However, we have also polluted that part of space inhabited by our planet. This is essentially the same view of the earth as the idealized view above. The planet earth is in the center, underneath the dots:

space debris

Debris plot by NASA. A computer-generated image of objects in Earth orbit that are currently being tracked. Approximately 95% of the objects in this illustration are orbital debris, i.e., not functional satellites. The dots represent the current location of each item.

Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island. Chemical pollution, depletion of the ozone layer, those who believe that mankind is not significant enough to affect the environment.

If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t he stop us from doing all the damage we do?

Where would he start? Stop all of the scientists who learned to split the atom? Stop all of the generals, all of the politicians who feel power is more important than people? Stop all of the children who pull legs and wings from insects, for their own amusement?
We were created with Free Will—the ability to make choices about what we do. The science community, who in their search for knowledge decide to do that which is very unwise to do. The military leaders who decide that ‘collateral damage’ creates ‘acceptable losses’ in wartime. Leaders who decide that carpet-bombing is the most effective method of dealing with civilian militia on ‘the other side.’ There are no more ‘non-combatants’.

Greed, addiction to power. “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

In one century, mankind in his ‘wisdom’ brought the world to the brink of destruction during the Cold War [which really hasn’t ended], have destroyed huge amounts of wilderness, plowed-away the American plains, caused the extinction of thousands of creatures on land and on the sea and in the air. In today’s news, war rages over much of the earth; ebola is killing thousands of people; with no end in sight. During the 20th Century, political and ideological zealots killed hundreds of millions of people for not looking at the world in the same way that the zealots see. Fourteen years into the 21st Century, I don’t see much improvement.

I am becoming of the opinion that most of the behavioral injunctions written in Scripture were the Creator’s effort to enable the human race to survive long enough to create the wonders that have come about in the last 114 years.

Wonders are being created every day. We just have to make the time to see them.

Some quotations to end with:

It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.
Albert Einstein

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller

Everything difficult indicates more than our theory of life embraces.
George MacDonald

 

 

 

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