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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 68: We Aren’t What We Think We Are

March 31, 2015

Imagine a baseball stadium…

stadiumI’m not really a science guy, but I’m fascinated with science; I find that my generic understanding of science helps me to understand the Universe, which means that science helps me understand the nature of the Creator.

As I understand it, if an atom was the size of a baseball stadium, the nucleus would be the size of a baseball, and the electrons of a water molecule would orbit somewhere within the confines of the stadium structure. Quantum mechanics, and that concept which is sometimes, but not necessarily accurately called ‘Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle’, proposes that the act of looking for a particle actually changes the location of the particle—so I’ve indicated the Hydrogen atoms as amorphous ‘star’ like images. When you look to find them, they will most likely be somewhere else…

The rest of the volume of the stadium is empty. Electromagnetic forces and nothing solid. We are made up of zillions of atoms; consequently, we are made up of zillions of packets of empty space and a ‘few’ atoms. And yet, we believe ourselves to be made up of solid material. The apparent solidity is caused by the electromagnetic forces within the atoms.

We aren’t what we think we are.

So, what are we?

A question that has been asked for Millennia. One of the aspects of living in this cyber-era is that we have a tendency to believe we know so much more than our human counterparts of the last centuries. There are a lot of ‘factoids’ that we now know that people in the past did not know; but that doesn’t always mean we are all that much wiser…

I believe that we are eternal souls attached to bodies. Each of these bodies start with two cells, which when combined, divide and subdivide, and replicate each other; in the process creating a chain of DNA that provide all of the instructions for making an adult human being over a dozen or so years; with a certain hair coloring, a specific eye color, a particular skin color—all of the externals that give us identities. The little whorls on your fingers that are totally unique to you [at least as far as anyone has been able to determine]; the shape of the folds of the ear, which may also be unique to you. A zillion atoms, each with a unique DNA structure that can identify YOU even after death.

And the soul? People have been looking for the soul for centuries. People have tried to weigh the human body at death to see if one’s weight lessens as the soul leaves the body.

Perhaps the soul is found in all of those packets of ‘empty’ space within our atoms…

People tend to get very anthropomorphic about the nature of God—they believe that God has to look something like us, or some other created being. Torah [the Book of Genesis] states that we are made in the image of our Creator. If God was human, it would be reasonable to expect that our bodies are made in the image of the Creator. We make images based on our imaginings; these created images symbolize a larger idea.

Creatio_of_AdamDid Michelangelo really believe that the Creator was an old man with a beard, supported by a number of other beings? No. However, at this time in our history, painting the Creator as something more like E.T. wouldn’t have made sense to people. Michelangelo loved the human body, and felt that the human body could be the epitome of creation. I never took any Art History classes in college; and I don’t think in the same manner as other people think. Symbolism sort of escapes my attention unless it’s incredibly obvious. I’m not sure what attributes of the Creator Michelangelo intended to portray by portraying him as a guy with a beard. From reading The Agony and the Ecstasy, a biographical novel about the life of Michelangelo, the Pope who commissioned the painting of the Sistine Chapel was surprised by Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Creator; he expected someone more harsh and demanding.

I believe the Creator is far closer to pure energy than to human beings; that ‘created in His image’ refers to our ability to create, to imagine, to bring our imaginings into fruition. Not being of the Energy that created the Universe, we have to create using tangible or visible materials; and our creative efforts require sweat, work, and the determination to overcome obstacles. Or not.

We are never required to create; we can go through an entire lifetime never having created anything. I think I’ve met people like that—a lifetime of following instructions for the assembling of ‘pieces’ that someone else created. A lifetime on ‘the assembly line’—is this wrong? Probably not. However, I don’t believe this fulfills our potential as images of the Creator.

When I create the images I use in these mental meanderings, I’m not actually creating anything beyond an idea. Photons of light are absorbed by the retinas of your eyes; and electrical impulses travel up your Optic Nerve into your brain. Somehow [no one really knows how], these impulses get translated into a visual image.

This is the interior of your brain…

grady's brain

Microscopic webs of tissue that connect and reconnect and somehow incorporate to form an image. That bright web is a portion of a thought. Note: there are no flat screen TVs in your brain. You [ideally] have two small holes in the front of your head; they are similar in nature to the shutter in a camera. Light contacts cells in the retina—the back of your eye—and those cells send electro-chemical signals into this mass of tissue [it’s really grey] located on the top of your spinal cord. Folded layers of cells sort of like a sponge [the ocean kind of sponge]; somehow those cells present the world in your brain, as if you are looking at a flat-screen television. When I think of him, I have a ‘video’ in my brain of my Grandfather slowly dancing around the dining area of our family cabin; listening to Norwegian folk tunes on the record player. No one ever filmed this image; and yet I have a portion of the video in my ‘little grey cells’ [Inspector Poirot].

For those that are blind, a ‘picture’ of the world still forms; the image is probably more like looking at an infrared image, in black and white: objects in relationship to other objects—maybe something like a map. Some of those objects are connected to sounds; some objects are connected to smells. Texture becomes important in ways that we sighted people tend to ignore. Most of my sensory nerves are damaged; texture, taste, aroma are somewhat meaningless terms to me—my own form of ‘blindness’. Thankfully, my eyes still work, even though they don’t work like they used to.

We aren’t what we think we are.

We aren’t yet what we can become.

 

 

 

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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 63: Small Town America

January 26, 2015

Freedom of Worship-dwg

My version of Norman Rockwell’s
“Freedom of Worship”

   I don’t know a lot about Small Town America; I’ve lived nearly all of my life in Portland, Oregon. Portland used to be much more like Small Town America; the site of my uncle’s farm is now 5 miles from a major shopping center, and a mile away from suburban housing. When I was a kid, the fruit and vegetable guy drove his truck through the neighborhood; milk got delivered to the houses in the neighborhood. My grandmother lived in a small town in Eastern Oregon, we went there frequently. If my father had had his plans for his life, he would have been a wheat rancher. Economics and human greed stole that dream from him. I was shipped out to Eastern Oregon on two occasions, in order to learn farm life.
I didn’t learn much.
I grew up a city kid.

Much of my time is invested in watching a lot of DVDs—background sounds while I draw; it used to be VHS videos. I’m back in a “West Wing” phase. The fictional characters are heroes of mine. One of their shortcomings is that they, too, are city kids. They don’t comprehend Small Town American life; and a large part of our country is Small Town America. I watched a faith-based movie tonight that reminded me of my past; and at the same time, our present. The faith-based lifestyle is much like Small Town Life. Churches are communities; the expectations for life and living are very similar.

I sometimes fear that urban America and Small Town America will never understand each other—the mindsets are so different. Ultimately the goals are very similar—life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness; how one achieves these things are very different, depending upon one’s perspective. I know that the faith-based way of life is a place where those differences can be met; it’s hard to communicate this when the urban world thinks that religion is the problem. I am able to see the difference between faith and religion; apparently others can’t see that as clearly.

I have adult children that apparently think I’m delusional. That I see something that doesn’t exist. This is the only explanation that makes any sense to me; I’m not annoyed by the notion, more a frustration that my life hasn’t been the example I’ve wanted it to be. I’m not done yet.

How do I effectively communicate the fact that there is a Creator, an Infinite, Eternal Creator who loves His Creation enough that He would enter time and space in order to show us how to live. A statement more than a question. Free Will and Arrogance have prevented that message from making any comprehensive headway in life for very long. But the Message keeps growing and expanding, in spite of our incomprehension.

I was a witness to a joyous event this weekend; the retirement from public service, of the man who is probably the most influential person in my life. He led me to Jesus. He didn’t drag, or push; he simply was himself, a person of integrity and caring. He believed something I found to be preposterous, and he shared that belief in me. His friendship was enough for me to follow him down a Path from which I have never left. Brad led me to a ‘burning bush’ [I often wonder how many people before Moses passed by that bush? Or was it lit for Moses alone?]; he led me to a “Damascus Road” where I got knocked of my horse… Some sort of metaphor. It wasn’t Brad alone; Brad had friends, his friends were sincere.

The Path hasn’t been fun in these last years. I don’t know what ‘last’ really means; I can’t remember this Path ever feeling ‘fun’ for very long. But I’m thankful, Brad, that you gave me the opportunity; even if you don’t know what you did.

 

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

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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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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 55: Defining Ourselves

August 17, 2014

Medicine BottleI wrote about this subject not long ago; [Chronicles in Ordinary Time 47: Black Care] I still don’t have any answers. So why am I writing about it again…
A comic genius died this week, a man who was one year and eleven days older than I am. A man I’ve never met; a man I’ve spent hundreds of hours with over the last 40 years. A man who made me laugh. Making me laugh isn’t all that easy.
Parkinson’s apparently was the straw that broke his will. Or not; ‘why’ probably isn’t our need to know.

For “15 minutes” the American public is going to be all concerned about depression. It’s a normal response; how one responds to a situation that is foreign, not part of our experience; one doesn’t really understand, and one can’t fix it. My guess is that if they are like myself, people suffering from Depression don’t talk about it all that much. I talk about it here, because this place is fairly anonymous; I could be a 14 year-old teenage girl… But I’m not.

I’m watching “Pay It Forward” as I write; probably not the best movie to watch when I’m in this kind of space. Or maybe it is… Haley Joel Osment just asked, “Is the world just shit?” And he just found out that it isn’t, always. There are lights in the darkness.

I’ve been on anti-depressants since the 80s or the 90s; for most of that time, I’ve thought of them as something that helps me sleep. I can prove it by the dosage I take. But, they’re still a chemical that affects the brain; they’re still an anti-depressant. Prozac got added, a year or so ago; maybe two years. This one I know is for the Depression.

Why is the Depression here? I do not know. My kids don’t know this, I never talk about it. I had an alcoholic uncle; he was a real SOB. A very controlling Dad; my kids know about him. Implies something about my grandparents. Genes.  How much of what we are is genetic? I think maybe we aren’t controlled by our genes. I think they are a powerful influence, but I think we can be larger than our genes. Sometimes it requires some assistance.

“I think some people are too scared, or something. I guess it’s hard for people who are so used to things the way they are – even if they’re bad – to change. ‘Cause they kind of give up. And when they do, everybody kind of loses.” Pay It Forward [2000]

I believe we can be more than our genes because I have had some success in getting past myself; getting outside of myself. Being the person I am, I’m going to attribute this to the Spirit of the Creator at work in my life. I’ve never been seriously suicidal. Meaning, I’ve never made an attempt. I’ve contemplated it a lot over the years; I know how I’d like to do it, if I ever got there. With my body “dissolving” the idea tends to seem more worthwhile…The ‘problem’ is, that there’s always a new day when I wake up. This should not be presumed to mean that I wake up in the morning feeling good; I suppose the event may have happened some time in the past, beyond my memory [and I just remembered an instance]. There were mornings at our family cabin. My bed was under the roof, at the end of the stair opening; from my bed I could see the fireplace. In the morning I would wake up to the sound of a crackling fire, the smell of woodsmoke, the knowledge that my grandfather was following his normal routine of making the morning fire to heat the cabin…

For years I’ve awakened each morning feeling crummy; my CPAP machine hasn’t helped. While each new day feels bad, I know from past experience that this probably isn’t the way I’ll feel all of the day. Some days it’s most of the day, and those days are the difficult ones. I get through these days because I am aware that the alternative will hurt my family; and that isn’t an acceptable solution.

I was writing a friend the other night; while writing, I described myself as a sort of ‘monk’. A monk with a wife, with kids and a home and a job. My wife added the label, “a Contemplative.” That works, too. A long time ago I gave my life back to my Creator; an odd thing for an atheist to do. I’ve made an effort to not become religious; and in spite of my efforts, I seem to have become really ‘spiritual’ compared to the people I know, that don’t give much thought to spiritual matters. I find myself coming away from conversations about Life, asking myself, ‘how did I become so darn spiritual?’ It certainly wasn’t my intention. And since I don’t have any answers, unlike so many religious people I’ve known over the years, it seems like an inappropriate allocation of ‘spiritual’. I sort of think of myself as being similar to Ellis Peters’ “Cadfael”—the soldier who became a monk in the 1100s, having grown tired of war during the Crusades—but I know nothing about herbs, and have never seen a murdered body; and I’m not very adept at solving mysteries. But I think about ‘God-stuff’ all the time. Being a commercial artist by trade gives one a lot of time to think. A lot of art is repetitive, and it doesn’t require continual thought to accomplish a task.

I’m doing Physical Therapy to help with the effects of the neuropathy; I’ve never been a guy who is into fitness. I find that I’m needing to ‘write’ a new definition for myself. I’m a guy who has defined myself by my work for four decades; willing to abuse my body to accomplish work-goals. That definition isn’t working anymore. I’ve purposely stopped looking for new work, in preparation for ‘retirement’—whatever that means. I can’t yet imagine not working.  I think it means that I’m going to start working only on projects I’m interested in, rather than taking whatever project comes along that will pay something. And I’m learning how to get interested in taking care of my body. I know that I’m supposed to reverse the last two sentences.

I do most of what I do by routine; if I have a routine, I don’t need to think about it all that much. So now I’m working on making new routines; and it’s amazing, when I step out of myself, to see how difficult it is to make new routines. And how difficult it is to think of myself as the guy who takes better care of myself…

 

Della p7dwg

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 53: The Nothing

July 22, 2014

I’m addicted to movies; I have been for nearly as long as I can remember. My two favorite places to be, when I was a child, were the family cabin in the foothills of Mount Hood; and the movie theater. While I devoured books, I also loved to see the illustrations come to life on the silver screen. I became an illustrator because I was born at the end of the Golden Age of Illustration, when ‘adult’ books came with illustrations. The works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, Howard Pyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Illustrators like N.C. Wyeth, Frederick Remington, and countless others. My hope was to join that fraternity of illustrators who brought the Classics to life. I’ve come close, in that I illustrated a Korean version of a Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia.” I hoped for others; the company went out of business.

Scandal_P21Watson, Holmes, and “The Woman,” Irene Adler

 Our granddaughter visited us from Colorado, for close to a month. We haven’t been around her for that length of time since she was 3 years old; she’ll be 12 soon. Among the movies that was watched was the 1980’s classic, The NeverEnding Story. I have always been touched by the dialog at the end of the film:

G’mork: Foolish boy. Don’t you know anything about Fantasia? It’s the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.
Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?
G’mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.
Atreyu: What is the Nothing?
G’mork: It’s the emptiness that’s left. It’s like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.
Atreyu: But why?
G’mork: Because people who have no hopes are easy to control; and whoever has the control… has the power!
Atreyu: Who are you, really?
G’mork: I am the servant of the power behind the Nothing. I was sent to kill the only one who could have stopped the Nothing…

We suffer the attacks of The Nothing—the killer of hopes and dreams. My neurological challenges are an example of the Nothing. The Nothing is nearly everywhere one looks; and one has to make a special effort to see that The Nothing hasn’t killed off all of the hopes and dreams. The high school girl who invented a flashlight powered by the heat of one’s hand…towers in the desert that will one day be filled with water, sucked out of the air…the earth is also teeming with dreams that can come true, if they are allowed to flourish.

One of our most treasured National Monuments stands in New York Harbor:

Liberty“Mother of Exiles.”

I am the son and grandson of immigrants to this country. My mother was born in Norway, my paternal grandmother’s parents were still speaking Swedish when they baptized their daughter here in Portland. My paternal grandfather’s line goes back to Nottingham, England, back in the 1600’s.

Being a son of the American Legion, and all of the God and Country messages that go with that heritage, I grew up respecting that statue in New York harbor; welcoming those who came from Europe, Africa, and lands to the East. Some, more welcome than others…

Those who keep track of such statistics report that there are over 50 Million refugees on this planet, the largest number since World War II. Half of these refugees are children, many of whom will end up in the human trafficking “industry”. Thousands of these children are reaching our border from Central America; that portion of the Americas that our government has been screwing with for decades, helping to overthrow democratically-elected governments that weren’t to ‘our’ liking…As with all of our “Wars On…” we have created problems, rather than solving them.

I was discussing this with a friend last week, who mentioned the importance of protecting our borders; and how when our country can’t even feed our own people, we can’t afford to feed refugees.

It isn’t that our country can’t feed our citizens; the reality is that those with the power to do so WON’T do what it takes to feed our citizens, to create jobs that will enable the populace to thrive. The Stock Market is at all-time highs; Robert Downey Jr. [“Iron Man”] is the highest paid actor in Hollywood, earning $75 Million/year to make comic book movies.

There are close to 400 Billionaires in the US. #100 owns around $4 Billion. Each of these individuals could donate/collaborate/invest $1 Billion [I hear that it’s possible to get by on $3 Billion], and create a $100 Billion fund from which new companies could be created; companies that would create something like the WPA and CCC, and rebuild our country’s infrastructure. The problem isn’t lack of money, the problem is lack of WILL.

I have trouble with the concept that this country of immigrants is just too selfish to open its doors to refugee children; children who didn’t volunteer to be born into the slums, ghettos and gang-infested countries of this continent. Gangs that were trained in American jails before they were deported. The selfishness isn’t on the part of the people; the selfishness is that of those who have the power to create positive change, but don’t have the guts to do it.

There are those who mention the concept of “pitchforks and torches” as a way to facilitate change. I can’t think of any way in which pitchforks will actually work. Homeland Security now has its own arsenal.

Ashes of Hiroshima

 

 

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