December 21, 2006

Winning and Losing

The President recently was on the idiot box – a tool aptly named – and proclaimed that more troops were needed to achieve victory in Iraq. He noted that we are losing the war and that escalation was the necessitated strategy. I will be the first to admit that my memory is hazy, but it seems to me that the President declared that the war in Iraq had ended in victory and that the mission was accomplished. I feel as if we, the American people, are through the looking glass. If we won and victory was proclaimed – though I am still foggy about the identity of the enemy or the perimeters of the mission – then how can we be losing and require clarity as to the nature of the mission. Wasn’t “war against terror” ambiguous enough? I know that I’ve used St. Augustine’s Just War on more than one occasion to illustrate the point. A clearly defined objective is part of that construct. It seems that we don’t have one in Iraq and need more troops to accomplish the end that still remains undefined.

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

I was thinking about the relationship between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. All three of these religions share a common root: the promise made to Abraham by Yaweh (Gn. 12.1ff). All three of these religious traditions derive from the covenant cut by God with the patriarch, a wandering Aramean (Deut 26.5), bereft of future that had faith in the promise made. Sadly we have not learned to come together as children of the same father, members of the same family. The issue was that of land and an inheritance, at least in a penultimate sense. Each tribe – Christians, Jews, and Muslims – make a claim to the territory but have forgotten that all are part of the same family and that inheritance may be mutual.

Family fights over inheritance are the worst. I’ve seen families torn apart by what each thought that their parents would have wanted, or worse yet when the will allows a measure of ambiguity that allows each to attach the force of law to his or her interpretation of the stated intent. Perhaps the real intent is that we live together in peace and harmony as brothers and sisters should (Ps. 133); the idea of being at one in the place of worship stands as the existential metaphor of a life that transcends nation or claim and seeks the greatest good for all. Everybody gets what they need. Nobody hordes because they trust that they will be given in their need as they give to support those in need.

So what does this have to do with a war fought on the pretext of lies? Much in every way, I fear and trust.

***** ***** *****
The issue that stands at the heart of the Abraham story is trust. Abraham trusts God and it is credited to him as righteousness (Gal. 3.6, Gn. 15.6). What does it mean to trust, or to keep faith? Allow me a commonly used image; inasmuch as the Bible has compared the covenant with the people as a marriage, it is valid: is it enough to say that I believe in monogamy and then to claim that I am free from mandates to go and act in a way that belies my confession of faith? How can a person claim to have faith in his or her marriage while committing adultery? Keeping faith is not an act of intellect. It is ethical as much as it is spiritual or confessional. Christians are guilty of having separated faith from action by claiming that justification by grace through faith (Eph 2.8ff) does not require a person to act like they believe the creed that they are confessing.

Abraham trusts God. The sons and daughters of Abraham are called upon to do the same thing. The pressing question is what form that faith should take in the penultimate context of our existence. Shall we become bellicose in our orthodoxy, creating division as we litigate the terms of our parents’ will? Shall we realize that we are three children called upon to share the family’s farm, each taking responsibility for its wellbeing and each investing labor that all may be fed?
***** ***** *****

We are called upon to place trust in our leaders. But this assumes not a blind obedience, but willingness to question as an act of faith. The terms of this war have changed to match the whim of the President who, like a child caught in a lie, changes the terms to match the context in the hopes that his dishonesty will not be revealed. What I find most disturbing is that Mr. Bush claims to have been “in the spirit” (Rev. 1.10) when he made his realizations about the conflict in Iraq, an allusion to the epiphany of St. John the Divine as he envisioned the apocalypse.

And tell lies and the family continues to fight, each child claiming the inheritance of the father whose tears are shed like drops of blood in the land that was once called Aramea…

Ah, But I am only a fool…

December 13, 2006

Double Down

First it was “Mission Accomplished.” Later the word was “Stay the Course.” Now we are going to “double down” as if the dealer is holding a soft 17 and we can make 21 on a big hand. Either way, it is a poor gamble with the lives of our soldiers. The sad reality is that our nation has destroyed the stability of the region by our adventurism in Iraq. Whatever happened to “weapons of mass destruction” or to Osama bin Laden’s supposed connection to Iraq? All of these have been debunked. And this says nothing of our involvement in Afghanistan.

I am an unapologetic leftist. The war was immoral; it was waged on the pretext of a lie and has no clear objective. Without an objective there is no means by which “victory” can be measured or defeat determined. What I find most disturbing is that I see no way out that will not inflict more damage than we have already done. We created a civil war. Hussein may well have been a tyrant, but we have become an army of invasion short of occupation. Our nation has become a latter-day pirate, raiding a nation on the pretext of a lie with no interest beyond lip-service for the well-being of the people whose country has been destroyed.

Cut and Run
I have to concede that the neo-fascists in our nation have won the war of rhetoric. By creating a false dichotomy they have defined the debate to serve their own propagandistic needs: loyal opposition to the war becomes an act of cowardice and any dissent is couched as non-support of “our brave boys in uniform”. The Democratic Party, traditionally a war party, has done poorly in meeting the debate. Leadership by polls is not leadership: somebody has to have the courage to say “No” to the lies that have been told and to challenge the denegation of civil rights in the name on the “War on Terror” and to stand and say it take courage to fix what cowards have destroyed.

I do not believe that there is an easy way out of Iraq. To leave now is to leave a country destroyed. George Marshall – hardly a liberal – understood the need to rebuild Germany following World War II. It was not for the sake of generosity or kindness, but because it was in our national interest to do so. The reality is that doing good helps us to do well. So what is the good that needs to be done in Iraq? We have to admit that we have destabilized a nation by generations of manipulation of the region. Iraq became our friend when Iran became our enemy. We were happy to have the tension between both nations because that polarized their attention. Our CIA put Hussein into power. We are ultimately responsible for his having been put there, much the same way that we are the authors of Agusto Pinochet’s ascension in Chile. We went to Iraq for oil. We have blood on our hands.

Sadly the rhetoric has become the reality. Leaving Iraq now leaves the country embroiled in a civil war that has no certain outcome. It allows for flux that will be inherently destabilizing. We need to leave, but it has to be an orderly withdrawal that places the United Nations in the role of peacekeeper and arbitrator to avoid further deterioration in the region. Beyond this, we have to wean ourselves from our dependence upon oil. The reason that we find ourselves in such a mess is that this nation has reserves that are environmentally sensitive. We are the proverbial NIMBYs: Not In My Back Yard. We will not destroy our land and natural beauty, but are content to destroy a nation to feed our dependence on petrol-chemicals.

Changes at the Root
The word “radical” derives from the Latin word radix which means “root”. At the root of the issue is the essential instability that this addiction creates for our nation. It is in our national interest to use the great power of industry and government to create new sources of energy that are both green and available to all. This is not science fiction, it is a matter of will. Do we have the will to undergo a period of painful transformation to give birth to a new future that creates new markets and employment, allows us to be secure, and to diminish the power that the region holds to blackmail our nation with oil?

This is a bet that I would suggest we take. Hell, we’ll even double down.

Ah, but I am only a fool…

December 11, 2006

The Seven Deadly Sins

Following my last post – I should never write and publish when I am struggling to sleep; nonsense is the result, and not even my usual caliber of pontification or criticism at that – I thought to take some time and actually write, much as I used to do. Anybody that knows me also knows that I have had a virulent dislike for the holiday season. Partially because of the consumerist frenzy, partially because I become depressed, partially because I am loathe to celebrate simply because I am told, “tis the season to be jolly…” All of that seems rather contrived to me. Call be acerbic, cynical, or anything else that you may find in your lexicon; the truth is that I have little use for the holidays.

Apropos my dislike of holidays, I was given pause to consider the seven deadly sins. Most of us have heard of them, most of us are participants in these, and their opposing virtues as well – simil iustus et peccattor, I suppose – but I would equally suppose that such a listing of virtues and vices runs contrary to a culture that thrives on excess, hedonism, and egocentrism. I am not immune from this, indeed, count the occurrences of the pronoun “I” and one can quickly extrapolate that my universe may not me solipsistic, but it is certainly egocentric. At any rate, here are the seven deadly sins and a brief description of their characteristics (taken from www.deadlysins.com):

  • Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
  • Envy is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
  • Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
  • Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.
  • Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
  • Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
This looks like a corporate mission statement or a description of an American life. In a previous post, I commented on my realization of my gluttony. That was difficult for me. As a nation we consume so much more than we need. As an individual I have put myself in a place that I have had to lose 60 pounds. That is the weight of a small child (hopefully a healthy one). I’ve become aware of just how much the moral relativism that we embrace as personal freedom has been harmful to us – the plural is very intentional – as individuals and as a nation. I think that the Seven Deadly Sins provide a good framework for the discussion.

The truth is that all of these are exercises in excess and that they are all interconnected. One cannot be involved with one without encountering another. We all share these traits, we all, to a greater or lesser degree, find ourselves involved in them. There are no fingers pointing. This is the reality of life. Think about lust for a moment. It is born of greed and involves envy and or gluttony. Sloth, laziness – sadly, my favorite of the sins – has to do with avoiding spiritual or physical work. We dwell in a consumerist haze that blinds us to spiritual development (more later on that issue) and leads us into a fool’s paradise of new-age nonsense or, worse, a diluted embrace of an “Idiot’s Guide” version of a given religious tradition. Think about a person tattooing Hebrew letters onto his or her body to celebrate their Judaism when that selfsame religion forbids tattoos. That is like eating pork to celebrate Islam or, worse, thinking that it is OK to eat faux port to enjoy that “great pork flavor” without actually eating the flesh of the swine. What happened to the greater meaning of the command? It becomes overly literal or impotent and merely metaphorical.

The Greatest Possible Good
I have to confess that I have left theological ethics as a relic of antique religious confession. I find that the art of living in community requires that humans transcend our basic greed and adopt a functional morality that values the “happiness” of the greatest number as its driving principle. By “happiness” I do not mean contentedness or even satisfaction with a person, place, or thing: I rather think of a meeting of life’s needs that the person is free to live in a world that is marked by clean air and water, available food and shelter, freedom to pursue interests and freedom from poverty. This is a culture or society predicated on the greatest good for the greatest number. There is no need of God in this equation, though many may find expressions of the divine in this: “to have done this for the least of these is to have done this for me” are the words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

Happiness is not the fulfillment of desire. Indeed, this is the realm of the construct that we call the Seven Deadly Sins. Pandering to desire, to the passions of the self, drive systems of oppression such as capitalism and lead to violent confrontation. It is an issue of balance, an art to life in community that has to constitute the basis for any moral system that can be ecumenical, secular, and regard an individual or culture’s spiritual moorings. The irony is that pandering to desire leads to greater dissatisfaction and ultimately to despair. This is most evident when one considers the spiritual emptiness of the so-called developed world: we are rich in things and poor in soul. We try to find satisfaction in sex, in excess, in food, in making ourselves into more or less than we are. We are guilty of sin; we have forgotten that we are stardust that has had the good fortune of having become animate and sentient.

Creation Myths and Connection
I am most familiar with the Christian telling of the Jewish creation story. This myth is powerful indeed and seeks to convince us that we share a common origin and destiny: we are dust and to dust we shall return, as the Ash Wednesday Liturgy has it. From our beginnings and in our ends we are dependant upon others. To believe that we are not is to deny our connection to a community that gives us myth, language, means of expression of our thoughts and articulation of our needs. It also reminds us that we are of no ultimate importance in and of ourselves. Dust has not real importance. Neither do the constructs of dust. What is money but a metaphor for wealth that is not real in any absolute sense of the word? Gold is valuable because it is agreed upon as a value. It is nothing apart from that. The only things that we truly need are food, shelter, and tasks to occupy our minds and body.

Pride: we believe that we are more than dust. The question of whether God exists or not is irrelevant to the question: it is what we will do with the reality of our finitude and ultimate disintegration that matters in this moment. The truth is that we are nothing. So why not enjoy the ride? Take what you need, use what you take. Be kind because kindness allows us to live in harmony with one another and serves not only the greater good but “my” good and is in “my self-interest.”

The curious thing is that the Seven Deadly Sins deal not in proscription, but in excess; they counsel moderation that allows enjoyment of life. The exception to this is Pride. It is not that Pride disallows God, but that Pride denies origin and destiny thus making authentic life impossible. If I am free from myself, I am free for other things that allow a greater joy and happiness than I could otherwise enjoy. Just a few thoughts over the holidays… More on that later.

- tDF


OK, Just for Fun I did the quiz to see my favorite sins... No surprises here! -tDF

Greed:High
Gluttony:Medium
Wrath:Low
Sloth:High
Envy:High
Lust:Very
High
Pride:Low



Take the Seven
Deadly Sins Quiz

December 08, 2006

insomnia

that your mind races like a formula one in some European classic and it continues to accelerate spinning beyond the redline fueling the need for rest but disallowing the reality of rest so I sit here like a condemned man awaiting his fate the green room having been prepared and time which normally is fleet and winged seems to have come to a standstill as I await a rest penultimate though it may be that seems to be longstanding and distant like Tantalus standing chin deep in sweet fresh water with beautiful fruit only an inch from his fingers both drawing away as he nears them to satiate his needs and appetites but only tormented by their proximity and distance ironic that there is something of a brutal irony in the fact that I am sitting typing and cannot find a moment to rest my mind is rushing racing like an Indy car over Memorial Day thoughts rushing and saying precious little worth thinking much like the news of the past several days much like listening to our president stating that if we don’t pull out of Iraq we will not be victorious much like his response to the bipartisan report suggesting that his adventurism as only cost the lives of too many combatants and innocents leaving a blood trail a stain of guilt and a metaphor for our insatiable appetites for petrochemicals and yet I am loathe to admit that I would not even be typing were it not for plastics and energy produced at the cost of the environment is that an irony or an act of hypocrisy I don’t know the church called this a double-bind original sin that is damned if you do and damned if you don’t if I am equally damned then fuck it I’ll have a good time but at what cost I was thinking about the past a few days ago dazed and confused fucking my way though an office having become something of a joke an initiation rite for new female employees of a certain age it really did not matter how many women I did at that time don’t you hate that expression as if a person is simply something not someone that is done do me cream me fuck me oh fuck me for having been such an ass during those days truth is that I didn’t have sex with half the women that my reputation might have suggested but I was a kid in a candy store in a diabetic coma in a stupor induced by excess and my mind continues bush is an ass that has no idea what the hell is his doing in Iraq and does not seem to appreciate that we this nation are the cause of terror why do they hate us because we destroyed the order of the world a novo ordo secularum that is vastly inferior to the clear and present oppression that we are ghost writers to we put Hussein into power we put the Shah into power we have been playing poker with smaller countries as part of our chess match with Communism checkmate but the bluff still goes on like Texas hold’em the river has been dealt and we are still playing the cards without regard for the man the cat is crying at my feet he chased me out of the bedroom and attacked by foot as I walked past he is a good puss cat like women you never know what makes them happy but sure as hell can tell when they are pissed I love women but do not understand them but that is part of the charm I admire and adore women but cannot claim to understand them I walked into the coffee room at my former workplace one day and overheard a conversation between two women one that had slept with me the previous week and another that had not who said that she wanted to fuck me I walked in when she said this and could only reply and so you shall my dear but never did no I never did morality confuses me why is sex a bad thing but killing on a massive scale makes for statesmanship unless you are on the wrong side of the battle in which case it becomes a war crime it seems that the whole dilemma is somewhat relative there are no absolutes left in this world Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat bad for the heart I really hate the true spirit of the holiday who really cares that it is an arbitrary declaration of the early Christian church in response to Saturnalia to have a child born of a virgin another ironic statement chastity in the face of accusations of harlotry I don’t grasp the contradictions of the Christian faith which I used to profess and now have regressed to a gentile agnosticism that is disinterested in the question because it is difficult for me to find relevance in the whole issue of God I hate insomnia the problem is

October 31, 2006

Cause and Effect

I have never been a proponent of the idea that there is always a clearly defined and discernable cause and effect for any event, action, and so on. Too many variables, known and unknown, tend to cloud the calculus to trust the results absolutely. I believe in chaos, albeit a limited chaos – similarly, I believe in finite freedom of the will but that is an arcane theological issue concerning eschatology and faith – that clouds the judgment and disallows a purely empirical assessment of primal cause and ultimate effect.

Science is largely built on logical detached observation: its central article of faith is (relatively) objective observation. Heisenburg drilled holes in that supposition when he noted that the presence of an observer changes the experiment. What we know we have either reasoned out by having criticized the observation and established the relative predictability of a result to a given action. Ultimately, however, we don’t know. We trust in experience and in the maxims that describe the experience of others that have made similar observation. Our experience, while not absolute, allows existential certainty that a predictable result will follow a known cause. I let go of an object and it will fall toward earth: gravitation is observed and works. One might argue that the elemental forces of nature are immutable, perhaps even absolute. One might be correct in the assertion that an object dropped will always fall in the presence of gravity, or even that both objects will move toward each other in a manner that reflects the mass of either. But one cannot absolutely prove this, whether for fault of language or experience the possibility remains that it may not be so, however infinitesimal that possibility may be.

The human heart is a whole other thing. It has a logic all its own that defies simple cause/effect relationships. Why should this be? Are not our emotions the results of a physiological response to a stimulus? I hear a phrase or see an event. My brain processes that event and responds, based on its programming: the sum of my experience and the value system inculcated into that heart and mind. I hear that my wife wants a divorce and my heart breaks, as it has on two occasions. My daughter tells me she loves me and I feel a “warmth” that is simply ineffable. A car cuts across my path while cycling – as happened today – and I feel anxiety followed by relief. These are predictable. It is the events of the heart and mind that defy prediction which are difficult.

This brings me to my real concern today. I remain confused by the depth of emotion that I feel and the way that this seems only to intensify as I grow closer to 50 years of age. Jung once postulated that NTs (intuitive thinkers) become more feeling and sense oriented as they age, as if the psyche is seeking a balance. The same is true for other types, SJs (sensing judgers) become more imaginative and willing to let things be open, and so on. This is difficult for me as I am painfully aware that emotions pass, but the havoc that they can create remains long after the feelings have dissipated into the mist.

As an NT, I have always looked for order, even an order that is predicated upon chaos – I am intuitive, my mind can be wrapped around that idea – and I fear that this has been a quest that will never be completed. There is a part of me that has always felt that it is the journey, not the destination that causes the sailor to cast of the dock-lines. I have never felt that there is an ultimate meaning to life – Westminister Catechism be damned – and that we are not blessed with the vision to see beyond the context of our lives. Thus, all observations are by their nature narrow and parochial, subject to revision and in need of constant correction, or not ( I have to leave that possibility open, if I am to be an honest fool).

The problem with any strong emotion is that once it is past you are left with results that you could not have predicted because the chaos of the human heart and mind is greater than the ability to reason forces of nature.

Ah, but I am only a fool…

October 27, 2006

The Great Wall of Bush

Have you ever heard the old joke about Mexican Olympic atheletes? Why has Mexico never won a gold metal in the summer games? Because any of us that can run, swim, or jump are already here! I can tell that joke, being Mexican. A white guy tells it and it becomes racist. Double standards... I doubt that we will ever outgrow them. Speaking of double standards, here it the summary of a bill signed today by "W" proposing that we partition the southern border of these United States.

109th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 4083
To direct the
Secretary of Homeland Security to construct a fence along the southern border of
the United States.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 19, 2005

Mr. GOODE (for himself, Mr. HUNTER, Mr. GINGREY, Mr. HAYWORTH, Mr. ROGERS of Alabama, Ms. FOXX, Mr. BARRETT of South Carolina, Mr. JONES of North Carolina, Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey, Mr. TANCREDO, Mr. NORWOOD, Mr. DEAL of Georgia, Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky, Mr. SULLIVAN, Mr. BROWN of South Carolina, Mr. WILSON of South Carolina, Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas, Mr. CULBERSON, Mr. POE, Mr. CARTER, Mr. ROHRABACHER, Mr. RADANOVICH, Mr. HOSTETTLER, Mr. SESSIONS, and Mr. KING of Iowa) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security

A BILL

To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to construct
a fence along the southern border of the United States.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Border Security Improvement Act'.

SEC. 2. CONSTRUCTION OF FENCE ON SOUTHERN BORDER.

Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1103 note) is amended--

(1) by striking `Attorney General' each place such term appears and inserting `Secretary of Homeland Security';

(2) by redesignating subsections (c) and (d) as subsections (d) and (e), respectively;

(3) in subsection (b), by striking `subsection (d)),' and inserting `subsection (e)),'; and

(4) by inserting after subsection (b) the following:`(c) Construction of Fence on Southern Border-

`(1) IN GENERAL- In carrying out subsection (a), the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for the construction of a fence along the entire southern border of the United States.

`(2) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS- There are authorized to be appropriated $2,000,000,000 to carry out paragraph (1).'.
And my longstanding question remains... how many hungry children could be fed with $2,000,000,000? Are strawberrys and inexpensive labor for jobs that we really don't want to do anyway presenting that much of a risk to National Security? To tell you the truth, were I to enter the United States for nefarious purposes, I'd cross at Niagra Falls. If I were trying to do so clandestinely I might drop myself offshore and enter on either coast.

But we'll have our own fence...



But I am only a fool...

October 13, 2006

What Can One Person Do?

It feels self-indulgent to be writing about weight loss when the world has decided to take itself to hell in a hand basket. Anybody that knows me knows that my mind is generally working on more than one level. I think in terms of both the macrocosm and microcosm. All things in an organic system are tied together in a cause-effect relationship. Think about it: cancer begins as one cell. Healing can begin with one person. No, I am no megalomaniac: I have a healthy ego, but it is not that swelled. I believe that we are more powerful than we believe.

There are two basic mistakes that one can make cycling. Pick too big a gear, pick too small a gear. Put more plainly it is to overestimate or underestimate ability, capacity, resources, and so on. I’ve made the same errors riding. Pull too small a gear on a hill and your legs spin out, pull too big a gear and your legs burn out. I’ve done this as recently as miles 60-70 on the last century I rode. What I needed to know is realistically what I could do. I needed to know what I could and could not do. I needed to know my strengths and my weaknesses.

So what does this have to do with the systematic dismantling of civil liberties, the harm that the current administration is doing to the environment, the disparity between the rich and the poor? It means that I have incredible power to effect change. So do you. The greatest error is not to risk the life-change that is required to make change. It is a funny thing: The only way that I learned my limitations was to force myself to my physical resources end. I was so damn tired that I could hardly stand. I wondered, when was the last time I was so damn tired from the struggle for peace and justice that I could hardly stand. There was a time that I was not only an endurance athlete, but deeply involved in the struggle to make the world a better place by making my little corner into a better place altogether.

Once cell can begin a cancer that leads to the death of the organism; one person can begin the change that heals the world. I have an errand to run. I’ll take my bike rather than driving and save a bit of gas, get some exercise, and – almost as a side effect – do that small bit to heal the planet. It may be just a bit, but great things are made of such small bits.

Ah, but I am only a fool…

October 12, 2006

One Hundred and Two Miles

tDF following the Harvest Ride for Literacy

There are times that a goal which is distance needs to have milestones, way-markers that allow a person to see progress toward a goal that is too distant to comprehend. For me, losing nearly sixty pounds is a goal that is too large to comprehend. Just losing weight can be easily accomplished. But that is really not the goal. The goal is good physical health. That means a change in lifestyle. Food, my favorite vice, needs to be seen differently. I can’t use food as comfort. I can enjoy my food, but I cannot become a glutton. Equally the word “exercise” had fallen out of my lexicon. It has to become part of lifestyle.

So, to make an attainable goal I decided to ride a century. That is one-hundred miles on my little bike. I did it, with a caveat. I rode over 100 miles, but did not complete the course. I took a wrong turn that resulted in my taking about 20 miles more than I should have before the second to last rest-stop. I found the second to last and realized that I should have been at 65 miles and was at 87. That would mean that I would ride over twenty miles over the distance of the century plus the 15 mile round trip to and from the staging area. I decided to use the SAG vehicle for the last part of the ride. Now, my 87 plus 15 was 102 miles. It was a century, but not the century that was defined.

Elevation for the Harvest Ride for Literacy

I am doing it again in February. I made several mistakes on this ride. The Harvest Ride for Literacy was a course marked by serious hills (Category 1 Climbs: >5% grade for 6-12 miles). This was not a good “first century”. The worst of the hills were between miles 60 and 70. They really knocked the wind out of my sails. I truly believe that I could have finished the course, but would still be recovering from the physical stress placed on my body. I under-trained, especially on hills. In the past I was an excellent climber. At 6’1” and 185 pounds I could leg-press 650 to 700 pounds, on a bet I once got 800 pounds up (and never want to do that again!). Needless to say, hills were not an issue. I did serious weight work to get that power in my gams. Now I am not in a gym but am wondering about running and jump-rope.

What is the point of all of this athletic nonsense? It has to do with discipline to make a change in life. I am committed to this change, as I am to others. Riding a century is a metaphor for other achievement. Do you know how to ride a century? It is really simple. Get on the bike and turn the pedals for 100 miles, approximately 31,875 times at 85 rpm.

Ah, but I am only a more toned and thinner – 228 pounds! – fool!

September 24, 2006

A Thicker Fool than I Like

There is comfort on my couch. It never says “no” to me and is always there to welcome me like a lost and well-loved friend would. It never judges me, but instead accepts me just as I am, or – more honestly – as I have allowed myself to become. My couch is my most enabling friend: my couch contributed to my allowing my once athletic frame to have become more than ample. I learned that, according to any definition, that I am obese. Obese. Obesity is something that this former endurance athlete could never in his wildest dreams have imagined as a fair description of himself. I have difficulty using the word in the first person. Here it is: I had become obese.

At my worst I weighed 245 pounds. I am six foot, one inch with a moderate frame. I should weigh 190 pounds to be on the high side of healthy. I was carrying 55 pounds more than I should have. Just to put that into perspective, to lose one pound of weight a body has to burn 3500 calories beyond what is necessary to take in to maintain life. To get to my healthy target, 188 pounds, I would have to burn 1,995,000 calories. [See correction below] Now, what causes me shame is this statistic: to maintain life, a person can do well on about 2000 calories per day. The calories that have gone into making me obese could have fed a person for 997.5 days. This is nourishment lost to a hungry world. The calories that must be burnt to lose my middle-age paunch could have sustained another for 2.7 years.

Here is another way to look at it: I love MacDonald’s Sausage Mac Muffins. They have 370 calories in each. The weight that I have put on is equivalent to 5,391 of these sandwiches, nibbling a bit on number 5,392. Now, what does a sausage Mac Muffin cost? I would tend to buy these when they were on sale two for $3.00. That is $8,088.00 in calories that just hang over my beltline and shorten my life. No, I am not blaming MacDonald’s. There is only one person ultimately responsible for my choices: Mea maxima culpa.

I’ve thought about this much. We use the image of obesity as a metaphor for our country’s hunger for oil. Yes, this needs to be changed. We need to wean ourselves from our gluttony for resources that harm our environment and create a gross disparity between rich and poor. But I have to start with me and my gluttony, for oil, for my little snacks, for all of these things that are comforting but ultimately deadly. Long term changes mean a change in life. These are more easily imagined than accomplished. It is one thing to have a lofty goal and quite another to be about the mundane activities that bring the goal to fruition. The difficulty is that milestones, way-markers, and accomplishment are measured not by one sudden explosion of accomplishment, but in imperceptibly small increments. Trend lines may waver, but the trend is what is important. Motion toward is the prolegomena to having crossed the line. I have decided to change my way of life to be healthy in all facets of life. I have made tentative steps in these directions and have retreated into the comfort in my less than salubrious lifestyle.

My couch is still my friend, but I have another friend that has been helpful to me, as well: My road-bike. I have lost 13 pounds toward my goal of 55. It is a start, a modest one, but it is a beginning. I am trying to ride at least 150 miles per week and have entered a Century, the Tour for Literacy (money raised goes toward local literacy efforts). I am still leaning how to eat less and how to find other means of comfort than my couch and snacks. There is no quick solution. I have begun to wonder how I can raise $8,000 or so for local hunger projects (that seems fair to replace what I consumed), but that is still in the dreaming stages.

Changes come, but they come in very small steps. And my couch still welcomes a slimmer frame, eating celery instead of cheese.

Ah, but I am only a fool...

Correction to the previous post: This proves that I am a better wordsmith than accountant! There is a gross error of addition in the above posting.

  • To lose one pound, a person has to burn 3500 calories beyond what is necessary to maintain current weight. In my case, I have to take in about 3600 calories per day to maintain my current weight. To lose about two pounds per week I have to burn at least 500 calories in exercise and cut out at least 500 calories in meals. So far so good...
  • Now to the error of fact... I was 57 pounds overweight. 57(3500) equals 199,500, not 1,995,000 as I noted!
  • So... 19950/370 calories in each Egg McMuffin equals 539 of the luscious atery cloggers, not the 5000+ that I noted. Still, that's lots of money for fat: $808.78.
  • Now... The calories that I have to lose could sustain a starving person for 100 days, not 2.7 years.

My errors in addition aside, the point remains... We have way too much and others have way too little. Maybe there is a realistic way to raise $1000.00 for local hunger. - tDF


September 14, 2006

The Fool is Back

I took another hiatus from writing. In the past I have used my blog as a sort of on-line catharsis and place to share the world – which is entitled to my opinion! – to my meandering beliefs. I had come to a point where I had nothing to say. It is not that there was not much to think about, God knows that the current state of politics creates situations that are in and of themselves satiric. I just felt that I was needing to be silent for a bit.

The silence is broken, for better or worse.

There is an account in Genesis of the creation of the world: it begins in silence. That silence remains while all is formless and void; darkness caresses the waters and the winds whipped them into chaos. There was no commentary, simply the silence of God. And then God spoke…

That act of speaking was what began creation. It is significant that this is not creatio ex nihilo; it is an ordering of a preexistent, albeit chaotic, environment. God speaks and land appears, darkness and light are separated, and life is made possible. Language is too powerful to be trivialized. Words have power that we all too often underestimate. They create and destroy, even before violence and healing can occur.


For better or worse, the fool is back.

March 22, 2006

I Love Questionnaires

I was reading Rolling Stone magazine and came across an advertisement that caught my eye. I am less impressed with the solicitation to apply for yet another credit card (more on that subject later) as I was with the format. I thought that this would make a good entry to return to the on-line community following the somewhat disjointed series of postings that I’ve made since January, when I moved.

My Name: Pablo

Childhood Ambition: To be a studio musician or a rider in the Tour de France; I also recall dreaming about singlehanding a Luders 30 around the world.

Soundtrack: Whatever I am listening to at the moment… too much good music to limit myself to one type. If I had to select one type of music it would be either Jazz (Bebop or Free Jazz), Seventies Rock, Blues, or the Beatles.

Retreat: My mind. Wherever I am, I can take refuge in my strong imagination. Sometimes, though, it is hard to come out. I can become very insular, even passive. The downside is that my mind and inner world can become as sheltered as a tomb. That is the problem; it becomes a terminal rest, passivity is the hallmark of death.

Wildest Dream: This is where I cease to be ironic and become simply contradictory! My wildest dream is to be more proactive, less passive and to find the passion that used to drive me.

Proudest Moment: My proudest moment was when I first looked at my daughter, R, when she was born. There she was, a perfect little person that I swore to love beyond all things. She is my love and life. So is A, my younger daughter.

Biggest Challenge: Life

Perfect Day: Has eluded me.

First Job: Clean up boy at Galletti’s Fine Meats. I learned about beautiful food there, all the while cleaning up an Italian Butcher Shop.

Indulgence: Maybe my problem is that I don’t indulge myself!

Last Purchase: Here is a thriller: Kitty litter and two mice for Cuddles (my snake).

Favorite Movie: It would be a tie between Chinatown and Talk to Her.

Inspiration: To be a man worthy of my children’s love.

My life: is improvised well beyond the changes played.

March 16, 2006

DSL Has Been Down

I'm writing from my desk at school. My DSL has been down and I have not been able to post for the past several weeks. I never realized how much I've come to depend on the interenet for everything: work, fun, bills, research. Not having access to the web has been like having an arm incapacitated: I miss reading blogs, playing my games, listening to music, and so on. I have been tied to my desk because I cannot access information from a remote site. Worst of all is not being able to access email. This is supposed to be resolved today, and I am looking forward to reconnection. It has been "iffy" since the end of January. I miss my DSL.

February 25, 2006

Treasure in Earthen Vessles?

I was a Lutheran Pastor for nearly twenty years. I have several years of advanced theological training. I feel competent in making a critique of what often passes as the Christian faith. I do not pretend to speak for any denomination. My thoughts are mine alone.

Personal Salvation?
I am disturbed by the idea that the event of the Christ was simply to effect personal salvation. It would be ignorant to dismiss the centrality of the incarnation in Christian theology; indeed, St. Paul speaks eloquently of God’s value of the individual as the object of grace. While much of the NT speaks about the establishment of a covenant viz a vie the sacraments as a participatory metaphor that symbolizes the salvific intention of God, it is not the end of the intention of this divine metaphor: salvation is the beginning, not the end, of the eschatological reality.

What is the eschatological imperative? It is to be Christ for the world. I am not speaking the double-talk of the new age self-justification. To my mind, this is spiritual masturbation: so much self-pleasure with no love or intention of sharing community. To be Christ for the world is to lose one’s self for the sake of the world. This is what the myth of the incarnation of the logos bespeaks: God comes into the world to be broken by the sin – becoming the curse – that even the deepest fractures of the human heart may be healed by the brokenness of the Christ. As Christ is raised, so to shall humanity be raised in the likeness of the Christ. It is significant that the risen Christ still bears the prints of the nails: the wounds did not heal; they remain as Christ returns to bear the brokenness of humanity to the perfection that is God. This act perfects God and gives birth to hope where once there was despair. Why, then, do we speak of personal salvation? Look at the myths of the fall. Our individual parents were cast out of the garden, out of a place of harmony and peace. Individuals must be welcomed back to the garden if they are to live lives that are not bound up in their lust for their own welfare.

Lust for Self-Preservation
Gandhi was a rather pointed critic of the Christian religion: Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ." I do not believe that Gandhi is the ultimate arbitrator of the truth of Christianity. I do believe that it is a fair critique of the practice of the faith in Western Culture. The Christian religion is not a doctrinal system as much a covenant between God and humanity, a promise made between the lover and the beloved.

The crux of the faith is to be free from the need to be saved. If I am free from myself, I am free to be love for others, especially for the unloved.

This is the key article of the doctrine of the incarnation: God transcends God’s self to be for humanity. In this way, the individual is freed from self-preservation to be for the other. Sadly, this has not been the case for most of the history of the Christian faith. Much of the faith becomes an article of self-justification and thus a sullen caricature of itself.

God is Love
I have, for years, been haunted by a small – only five short chapters worth – epistle in the NT, First John. In this short letter the author, an anonymous writer influenced by St. John’s mysticism, writing about 90-120 C.E., writes the words: beloved, let us love one another… for God is love. The proof of faith is not intellectual ascent. The proof of faith is love for one another. And this love is not limited to those that share our faith, it is not a love that excludes, but seeks to love all as sons and daughters of the same parent. So this say? It tells me that there is none that can be outside of the love of a God that has become broken for the sake of love. That is a profound realization, one that changes the self with the beautiful and terrible knowledge of God.

The difficulty with truth is that once you have encountered it you are changed. You can no longer claim ignorance and are now held hostage by its demand to change.

I believe this is why most Christians have degraded the depth of their creed and have settled for a lesser eschatology; another word for this is original sin. We have made God over in our own image; we have made God into a source for my eternal life without considering the depth of love that drove the eternal to embrace the now. Consider that most Christian evangelism says nothing of a duty in love to care for the needs of all flesh. If God is love, and we are the disciples of the Christ, how, then, can we stand apart from this demand to love all? This terrible truth means death, not eternal life.

Justification by Grace through Faith
God justifies, that is God puts us right. We are free from the need to be for ourselves. Faith, then, is the act of living as if we are free. It is the strong word of God that says no to all that would imprison us, including wealth and self-satisfaction. That I would have criticized the so-called theologians of liberation for their confusion of ethics and eschatology. Now I am not so certain that this is a valid critique. I do not believe that we are the force that brings the Kingdom of God to the earth. I believe that we act as if God reigns and that God’s reign is defined by love. Dostoyevsky put it well when he wrote: “hell is the inability to love.” Augustine, as well, when he said, “Thou beholdst the Trinity when thou beholdest love: for the lover, the beloved, and the love are three.”

This is why I am not a Christian. I love the Christian myth, but feel that this is beyond me. I believe, help my unbelief. I think that too much dilution has taken place. We have lost ourselves in a sea of things and self-satisfaction, on both the materialistic and metaphysical levels. Perhaps Gandhi was right: there are precious few Christians. Prayer has to be transformed into action. Creed has to find articulation in life. Poetry has to become the muse that inspires life, like YHWH playing with the dust, forming it into a body and inbreathing life and then declaring love for the dirt that had infinitely greater potential than dirt could imagine. It became the dwelling place of the logos. Perhaps it is a treasure in an earthen vessel?

February 21, 2006

From It to Thou - Part 2

Beyond the First Person Singular
Forgive the awkward grammatical image: What has hurt us and has created us is the drive to assert “my” right to live over and against “your” right. Buber would have called this an “I/It” relationship. The other is a means to an end, an obstacle to overcome. Think about the epithets of warfare. The enemy is never thought of as human. The enemy is a “gook,” “heretic,” “nigger,” “fag,” and so on. The uglier the epithet, the greater the fear. Really, what have to fear in each other? Why do we need to be the greatest at the expense of the other? I would suggest it is our fear of extinction that drives the engine of hatred.

So Why Are We So Afraid?
I am amazed at the cost of warfare; finances aside – money has no value except that which we have assigned to it – the real cost of warfare is in lives lost. There is precious little that is worth anything: We have time and our life, nothing more. We use resources and leave a legacy of consumption in our wake. We cling to life with terrible tenacity, but will as quickly dispose of life. What has struck such fear in our hearts? Why are we so afraid?

I think that it is part of our evolutionary imprinting that has made us into creatures defined by competition. We are accustomed to the struggle. We long for the bitterness of victory and defeat. Life devolves into a win/lose dichotomy. Competition, from my limited perspective, bespeaks fear. We compete because we are afraid of loss. I do not accept the notion that competition drives progress. That makes for good capitalism, as it implies a profit and loss equation: somebody wins; somebody else loses. The cycle is not ascending: it is circular. Times and names have changed. The periphery has been altered, but the essential equation of hunter and hunted remains. We remain in fear of a perceived enemy that shares more in common with us than we dare to imagine. In a real sense, we are afraid of ourselves. The mirror frightens us.

Is Conflict the Only Impetus to Evolution?

Conflict has, without a doubt, created intelligence. Consider the predator: predatory animals must be intelligent. They have to rely not only on the weapons at their disposal, but an innate intelligence that allows them to hunt, capture, and consume their prey. The idea of a food-chain has driven evolution, especially human evolution. We developed from a simple ape that began to develop tools, later developing a brain that allowed the creation of theology, art, philosophy. But is this the only impetus?

I posit that the next evolutionary development is one that moves beyond confrontation with our fear. The ultimate fear is of our own finitude. We face the immensity of a universe that is both infinite and infinitesimal and find that we occupy a very small bit of space and time. We are momentary expressions of life that possess self-awareness. To overcome our fear of finitude is to accept the reality of our own extinction. This is not an issue of God. It is an issue of acceptance of a godless universe that is beyond our comprehension.

God, Religion, and the Spirit

It is almost an excurses that is necessitated: it is not that I do not believe in God, I do not believe in the God that is the necessary parent for lost and fearful children. There are moments when even the most courageous of us requires a moment of spiritual comfort. This having been said, I do not believe that a world come of age – to borrow a phrase from Dietrich Bonhoeffer – requires a God that is there to hold humanity’s hand as it crosses the street. What God, then, do we worship in a godless universe? I believe in God as the ultimate source of all life and as the connection that holds us in a community that exists in space/time. I find great beauty in the myth of the incarnation: a God that transcends the eternal glory to experience the finitude of the creation (using that term advisedly). This is the God that seeks to lead by experience of the most deeply seeded human fears. This embrace of our fear allows God to be the God that both is and exists. A humanity that has come of age requires a myth that allows us to face the darkness as adults.

God becomes human. The eternal become finite. Our minds allow us to imagine an infinity and beyond (apologies to Georg Cantor) and in so doing suggests that we, at least in the realm of imagination – intuition? – move beyond what is merely sensed and can only be spoken of as metaphor. The human mind embraces the infinite and infinitesimal. In so doing it embraces that which can drive the next great cycle of evolution: an awareness of a common destiny with the whole of the cosmos, God and creation meeting in the arena of the mind.

February 10, 2006

I AM an Introvert… And Glad for It.

We introverts are a put-upon clan. We live in a world of noise, cluttered by the racket made by a world that confuses content with quantity: verbiage rather than substance. We are not shy, just reserved. We are not without social skills, indeed ours have to be more finely honed as we live in a world that is, by its nature, hostile toward our preferred way of being in the world. However, why would we care what the world thinks? Our impressions are born within and do not seek to be validated from without. It is good to be an introvert. Moreover, not only an introvert, but also an INTP. Damn, life is good.

Jung’s Typology of Personality
I am a proud INTP. Yes, we are the rarest of people. We are those whose motivation is drawn purely from within. We live in a world of intuition, able to think in terms of metaphor and to see shades of meanings. We live in a rich world of thought and we see endless possibilities. We are the dreamers, the creators, the philosophers and the architects. Ours is a world of potential that does not require us to be tied to any dogma or any tradition. I like the Webster definition of introvert: “the state or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life.”

It seems that the artistic mediums to which I have been most attracted – photography and music – are the sine qua non of the INTP. It is not surprising that I prefer music that is harmonically iconoclastic (Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Gerry Mulligan) to music that is linear or predictable. I like Satie because his music just doesn’t care about expectations. It is for its own sake on its own terms. Very much as I am.

Socially Astute
I have always said that introverts live in two cultures; the larger extroverted American culture and, what is more important, the culture of our minds. I have learned to be very flexible, how to speak and survive in an extroverted world, all the time wondering if they have ever savored a moment of silence in their lives full of noise that they confuse for content. I wonder how they live in the din and how they can parse out what is valuable for the excess of verbiage. I know how to speak and how to live in the world, so much so that many people think that I am extroverted. But my energy is drawn from within. I love a moment alone, to listen to Bach on the cello or enjoy a beautiful poem. It is not that we are anti-social; I think that we are anti-intrusion.

I admit that I have a mighty need of time alone. This feeds my soul and allows me to find the energy to be in a world of sensory assault.

I am an introvert, and proud. I am self-sufficient without falling into the myth of the solipsism. I am able to be with others and content to be alone. I am the paradox. I am an introvert.

January 30, 2006

What does life mean?

lI teach high school special education. Today, in health class, I asked my class to tell me what is the meaning of life. This is a hard question, one that has flummoxed wiser people than me for generations. Here are some thoughts that my kids shared in their papers today.

Some of Your Ideas About the Meaning of Life.

“…I’m afraid of dying young and I also like to make my parents happy.”

“I will not regret my life at all. I need to know myself. Who am I?”

“The purpose of life? The question confuses me.”

“Most people hate life. I don’t; I love life. I think everyone should live life to the fullest every day.”

“The meaning of life is going to school and having fun…”

“I want to live my parents’ dream, to be someone in life.”

“…you never know what can happen, you might end up dead and in a ditch.”

“The purpose of my life is for others. I’m afraid to die. I wish I can be young forever.”

“I see no meaning in life or living because I regret my life… All I do is deal with it.”

“I think the purpose [of life] is to help people that need help or to talk to… a lot of people tell me I am an angel because I am there for someone when they need someone…”

“…to go to heaven.”

There seem to be a few nascent philosophers in the class!
-tDF

January 23, 2006

On Hiatus

I am in the process of moving to a new and more beautiful place. Even though I live in a small apartment, it is a lot to pack! Shall be in touch in February.
- tDF

A thought for those of you still reading from Monty Python. I want this song sung at my funeral. I don't want a religious service; I want a really good party with great food, great drink, great music and this song.

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth
See you all after the move to my new place, on the beach in Ventura!

January 19, 2006

An Interlude: Stream of Consciousness

one hundred suits all the same to be worn on consecutive years until they wear out or until I do and I shall buy several bumbershoots so I may be arrayed like a proper gentleman ready in the face of the rain that falls eric satie and ambient music speaking not to the immediate consciousness but to that which dwells behind words ambient is not necessary background but context And I shall drink absinthe dancing with the green fairy communing with the images that only the wormwood and the gall can reveal those dark murky moments in the subconscious Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun The Mess Around Ray Charles and Ornette Coleman COLTRANE Yes Coletrane spoke the truth about God, life, death, and discovery of a meaning beyond Satie Yes and I will wear my suits and walk in the rain wondering where I left my keys and if I am in key or if my life is a syncopated stumble where others march never hearing never hearing never hearing the beat of a different drummer I saw a young man taped to a tree the other day Several students watched him as he was bound I cut him free from his bounds with my car key It should havebeenamomentofgreatermeaning but meaning is as meaning does, so Aristotle would have it so much of how we think is posited in what is effected at the expense of affect – a child drumming her fingers in the dark sauntering and singing at the top of her lungs in a casual blues on a Thursday afternoon while the moon is full and high in the sky how horrible that the sun shone in the middle of the night, ruining our fun and that was odd if a maid swept with all her might; if I slept through all the night if you were not consumed with such dreadful fright I needed to do a load of dishes and clean my shoes I should have done laundry but I drank a glass of wine instead this young man was taped with binding tape to a tree nobody asked the tree what it thought – can we discern the deepest thoughts of plants and trees I was reading my cookbook I just thought to take a break to sauté a mushroom or to learn to use a program on my computer –is software the same as a program – I like the Japanese Iron Chef better Julia Childs meets Hulk Hogan lamb battle Chairman Kaga and Sakai dancing with poulet frances to a danse macabre complete with fiddle folk music enfusing life lost in stale classicism are all innovations considered to be vulgar at first who is to say what makes I love venison but could never hurt Bambi’s mother art and who is to say how art develops into a style that is discernable call it a double standard but it is as it is or is it as it does who does is done will do will have done started a dialog in cyberspace with people that I don’t know but call friends intimate strangers dancing in the dark on the back of electrons to music unknown that exists without the benefit of sound is music sound or is sound the metaphor a similie an image of paradise lost found mortgaged and mamachinationsandlostdesirefindingthattheyarelostyetagainde accessible but only experiential but will not climb the cats jump and meow they want food but god gave them music and they did feast and sing and celebrated the beauty of communication beyond the bounds of species but went with insatiated longing unrequited hunger like unrequited love is a bitter thing yet beautiful unless your heart is broken Like a sonata for strings played out of tune no longer well tempered as a clavier but broken like my heart shattered like class on a sidewalk slicing the flesh and leaving blood behind a print of one that has passed this way before a sly shadow that stands between death and life calling us to question what is real and what is or is not on a Thursday morning howling at the moon with a madman holding a lantern at noon shining it in my face telling the truth that there is no truth – contradiction paradox parabolic reasoning reflection refraction reality reason gone awry Words And the rest is silence like Chaucer on the streets the wife of bath in rap bitch use vulgarisms in place of thought and profanity in the stead of wit what is art if not offense what is obscenity if not a break from the norm a devaluation of valued cliches apotheosis of necrophilia and lust for a glorious past that never was howling at the moon like a loon with a spoon singing out of tune and sinning against the will of a god unknown that makes agnostics of us all can we ever really know was Heizenburg right how can observe the truth if emperical method changes the experience and experiment and then there is the issue of my shoes yes I will buy one hundred suits all the same to be worn on consecutive years until they wear out and I shall buy several bumbershoots so I may be arrayed like a proper gentleman ready in the face of the rain that falls

January 14, 2006

From It to Thou - Part 1

Maybe Hegel was onto something when he suggested that history is cyclical. He tended to see this as an evolution, a development to a higher consciousness that moved from East to West. From Asia to Europe, the development of humanity, pace Hegel grows from superstition into philosophy, from basic implements to technology. I have never been overly enamoured of Hegel: I do believe that history is cyclical, but I find it difficult to equate progress with the passing of time.

Santayana and Willful Ignorance
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The question is not whether we have become cleverer, but whether we have become wiser. I am typing on a computer. I recall a time when a computer called the Univac was used to forecast the outcome of the 1964 presidential election. Bearing in mind that I was a very young fool at this time, I was struck by the faith in technological progress that was being touted at the execution of a good statistical model and a machine the size of a small building that ran the calculations. Truly, there has been little progress in the theory of computers. The basic theory remains the same: a switch is turned off or turned on. What has changed is the application of the theory. We have become more proficient at turning switches off and on. We have miniaturized and hastened the process. But the process itself remains much the same as it was when the first computers were conceived.

What we have missed is the ability to develop morally and spiritually. I will make a statement that may sound cynical: I do not believe that we are physically capable of moving beyond the immediately perceived pragmatic need of the faction of humanity that is in power. We have developed – evolved? – as predators. The act of predation is to find weakness and to exploit it to the advantage of our faction, our tribe, our need. Identity, power, and intelligence have all been as deeply seeded as our DNA to create us as we are. St. Augustine would have called this original sin: hubris and egoism that disallow selflessness. I am not convinced that history is a process of evolution. I believe that it is a cycle of destruction and rebirth that will continue until we ultimately destroy ourselves. It is not a lack of intelligence. It is a lack of vision that will be our demise.

Conflict that Drives Evolution
The study of history is a study of conflict. This is a given that requires little amplification. The engine that drives progress was defined when we were little more than small apes in competition for limited resources; we ate meat and the proteins caused our brains to grow so we could learn to hunt, kill and eat more meat. This biological necessity has become the mother of warfare, capitalism, politics, religion, and even philosophy. All are predicated on a conflict of needs and opinions, competing visions of meaning or competing for a scrap of food: progress remains a process of elimination, just as definition is a process of exclusion.

The great irony of humanity is our ability to live a nightmare and to dream such dreams of beauty and wonderment. It is the gap between day and night that causes our darkest fears to drive our lives while our deepest dreams remain unrealized. Who among us, liberal or conservative be damned, does not want to live a life of peace and joy? And yet we cling tenaciously to penultimate and finally insufficient dogmas that serve to promulgate the evolutionary conflict. There will be one winner. And when that last person is standing, she or he, too, will die. For what? A doctrine? A life-style?

Diogenes’ Lantern
I have shone the light of Diogenes’ lantern on my face and I have to say that I have failed the test, too. I am not such a cynic as all of this implies. The fact that I dare to dream, and belong to a species that dreams, says that there is yet hope. The evolutionary imperative toward competition must be altered. The competition has to presuppose that there is one humanity. We are not liberal, conservative, communist or capitalist. We are not of a race or of a sexual proclivity. We are human, first, last, and always.

What does history teach us, what is the lesson that we must learn and have, as a whole, failed to grasp? I will be presumptuous and hazard a guess: It is to see that we share a common destiny.

Beyond the First Person Singular
Forgive the awkward grammatical image: What has hurt us and has created us is the drive to assert “my” right to live over and against “your” right. Buber would have called this an “I/It” relationship. The other is a means to an end, an obstacle to overcome. Think about the epithets of warfare. The enemy is never thought of as human. The enemy is a “gook,” “heretic,” “nigger,” “fag,” and so on. The uglier the epithet, the greater the fear. Really, what have to fear in each other? Why do we need to be the greatest at the expense of the other?

January 10, 2006

More to Life than Sex

I HAVE BEEN AMAZED At the number of hits that my blog has gotten in the past several weeks. A quick perusal of the search strings shocked me, however. There are folks that love poetry and have searched poems that I have quoted. There are those that have searched liberal politics, social ethics, and other ideals that I hold dear. The most active referrer was, by far, was this: http://www.blogwise.com/search?q=sex. Yikes.

Keywords Chosen Quickly
I suppose that I could have been more circumspect when I selected the keywords to associate with my blog on Blogwise. I put “sex” on the list naively. I was thinking that this is part of being human. My blog is an exploration of my humanity: of loving and loss, of politics and play. It was never intended to be an erotic blog. I have no difficulty with eroticism. Sex is good; it is full of emotional connections and has deep spiritual overtones. It is no mistake that all religious traditions have much to say about it. As a theologian, sex is a natural area for thought and discussion. Nevertheless, this is not porn! Out of twenty-five referrals today, 21 of them had to do with sex. I can only imagine what type of dance the fool might be doing!

In all fairness, let’s look at all of the keywords that I listed: music, life, sex, philosophy, god, mid-life, rock, jazz, death, theology, blues. Music and life were ahead of sex. Philosophy and God also got listed, right up there with mid-life, rock, jazz, death, theology and the blues. There has got to be a song in this. I think that in my mid-life that I am facing a curious turn in the road. But, come on people… sex is fun to do. Reading about it is just not the same. Besides, who wants to read about the sexual misadventures of a 48-year-old high school teacher? Who even wants to think about their high-school teachers having sex? I just did it (no you perves… not sex!), I just changed the keywords to read “liberal” where sex was and to include “politics” before “philosophy”.

Desire and the Will to Power
I think that the interest in sex as a prurient theme has to do with power and domination. The language of competition is used (scoring). Much of the language surrounding sex is violent (banging, screwing) and ultimately dehumanizing (doing him/her, getting some). The person becomes an object of an action rather than a participant in a shared experience. This is true whether a person is trying to dominate or control or is being humiliated and seeking to be controlled.

Control is predicated on a need and a desire to feed the ego. This differs from asserting one’s humanity. To assert humanity is to find joy in being physical, spiritual, intelligent, and in community. This means that we also recognize and celebrate our fellow humans. Some is sexual, to be certain. Most is not. Power is not evil. A will to dominate is and is ultimately a sign of weakness and fear. Love casts out fear. Love is powerful stuff. Make love, not war.

There is nothing wrong with physical pleasure. The question that needs to be asked is whether my pleasure is hurtful to another. This is as true for the food that I eat as it is for the people with whom I am physically intimate. It is a myth to say that my body is mine alone. It is the means by which I live in community and through which I encounter other people. We are somatic spirits. It is simply inconceivable to say that my physicality is divorced from my humanity or from others.

Happiness and Joy
These two words have regularly found their ways into my musings. While they are similar there is a significant difference in nuance and derivation: happiness has to do with luck, happenstance. Joy has an object and finds itself in relation to something or someone else. Happiness is concerned with luck and good fortune; it tends to pander to the ego. Joy reaches beyond the ego to stand in relation to another.

People, there is more to life than sex. There is joy.

Stacy's Image.  How appropriate! tDF
Ah, but I am only a fool…