Ah, to Be a Teen-aged Sperm Cell. . . Not (date unknown)

  Note to the reader; My Pastor at Kirk recently "downloaded" a box of ancient C.P.E.s to me. Some of these are nearly 20 years old. I had a habit of writing these out longhand, and giving him (often) the original. They are now back in my care, and so I propose a morph. Thus far, the clue has been for you that what you are looking at, is an "oldie" has been in the countdown numbering system at the title. Problem: If I have to number all of these things, then I would be able to predict beforehand which of them I intend to someday convey. Since this sounds to me like work; and also since I do this for the fun of it; we conclude thereby that the numbering will disappear. So, your only clue in the future thus that you are dealing with an "oldie", will be the "date" thing in the title. Since I appear to be unable in any case to directly transcribe, and am constantly editing/updating the things anyhow, that "feature" will continue. Thanks for reading this stuff! On with the show.

  So, people are curious, and are all the time "asking" (without doing so) the big "Mike-type" question. Sidling around, and indirectly poking; they would really-really like to know; "So, how come you're still not married?". All this, is very much a suggestive process. Few folks directly come out and ask. We wouldn't want to appear crass or nosy, so we will just be crass and nosy; minus the appearance!
  Typically then, the conversation drifts over toward divorce (?), then it moseys over toward the issue of homosex? Getting no bites there, the discussion wends it's way over to "Well, do you have any pets? How do you feel about barnyard animals?". So, the basic premise of these, is that sex is so undeniably and awfully powerful a thing, that there has to be "an explanation"! Sex is a "god" whom we "must obey" in this line of inquiry, it seems to me.
  So, how best to politely bring up the truth of the matter? How's about this; "If I were a sperm cell, I'd be a really lousy one.", or what about blurting out, "Fighting others, in order to get to where I never really wanted to go, has never made much sense for me."? The way I see it, somewhere in the fine print of the guy contract, is this business of "winning" (key word!) the girl.
  As an outsized sperm cell, I am "supposed to want to have but one thing on my mind, RE-PRODUCE!", and to be honest; I don't. A girl can just hint, or murmur a small section of a hint that "she's not interested", or even more grimly "just wants to be friends". Pow, I'm outta there! Okay, so I heard "No", loud and clear (even if she didn't say it), and sister; you don't have to tell me twice! Adios, aloha and auf wierdersehen. If in single minded success mode, "winning" the girl, is the game, then I'm that poor kid who had to play goalie in soccer because nobody else wanted the job. Allowing four points in five minutes, (severely unwinning) and next seeing the faces of "team-mates" as they "celebrate my success" comes to mind. In brief, I am an astonishingly effective loser. It's one of the few things I actually do well. Women want winners. It's about that complex.
  Who knows what goes on inside women's heads? First demanding a "strong decisive man", while simultaneously they just cannot abide "people who judge"? Next, they look for a "sensitive individual", while stoutly condemning "wimps"? Oh, and then there is security, read as a six figure income minimum (which trumps all claims); while simultaneously insisting that being "materialistic" is verboten? I don't get it. We end up with a tall, dark, handsome, romantic dancer, who is some kind of cross between Richard Simmons and Conan the Barbarian maybe? The guy is in actuality, royalty (a prince!) and is (of course, "secretly") independently wealthy. Did I mention his alarming lack of "emotional baggage"? And insofar as I appear to be the exact obverse of "Mr. Right", and also in that those girls who are desiring to be pursued by "Mr Right"; are consistently also making it also quite clear! Not by the likes of me. I've never "got" what I'm supposed to be doing here! So, when the inevitable rejection shows up, I do the ridiculous thing, and believe them!
  True, it occasionally occurs to me, that perhaps I could transmogrify myself, such that I might somehow become the single minded man of their dreams? That vato who himself is in hot pursuit of success, and also of them? But I get over it. After all, how does one go about becoming something that you are not, in order to please people you don't like? How do you rid yourself. . . of your own self, in order to become what you actually do not want to be, for reasons you don't buy? And, what, by the way, would be the point of that anyhow?
  In our society, it is usually considered mean to call somebody a "loser". I wonder, is it also mean to call yourself one? If it is mean, what then; if it remains yet true? We over here in reproduction-land, are all about success, prosperity, influence, fame and whatnot. In short, we are all about being teen-aged sperm cells, directionally focused upon "one thing". But, if one word summarizes my understanding of fems, that would be the word "mean". Just coincidentally, that word applies to the successful also! Now, since the little fact that the one thing I happen to truly excel at in this life. . . is failure, and that I don't even want to be around mean (successful) people, this makes me (directionally) rather like a sperm cell, but one which just happens to be going the wrong way!
  In my book, success is the license to "look down" upon others, to gloat, and to mock the efforts of the weak and the misguided. To "succeed" is to (ethically) be okay with despising. My alarmingly successful track record of serial collapse, my batting average of .052 has offered me plenty of first hand evidence, of what being gloated-at, is like. In brief (ala' Harry Truman); the buck stops here! I, for one, refuse that "freedom". "Freed winners" appear in public, rarely as they actually are in private; imperious, demanding, "freely" demeaning the little people. In brief, I don't like people of this stripe (and don't see how I could). I strongly happen to believe that becoming one "of them" (the successful I mean) would generate in me much the same fruit. I refuse the "prize", and so, what's the point of playing the game? See? Secretly, we all think of ourselves; "If I had real money, I'd never treat people the same way that this jackass does". And it is "here"(!) I believe, that the real issue resides. Newsflash; you don't change the power of wealth, it changes you! Power twists, it bends you into it's mold. And that pre-shaped mold is looking "downward". Everybody privately assumes that such a thing would never happen to me. I strongly doubt, just "here".
  The successful loser thus sets up an "anti-goal", so as to "not become like" the success. He has tasted what that crud tastes like on the receiving end, and vows to never serve up a dish! To his surprise, he finds that the harder he "tries not to become like", the more of his energies he has to devote to said eradication! The yard is overwhelmed with weeds, and the faster you pull them, the more rapidly they sprout! He officially set out to "not be like", and this very action (appears to, at least) spawn those very traits in him! It's very exhausting being a loser.
  True, he occasionally wishes to just reset the whole deal, and simply become another successful teenaged sperm cell, and quit it with all the mental gymnastics. But he gets over it, as soon as he recalls, "I'm not interested in the prize!".
  Some people have hobbies. The successful loser's hobby is somewhere amid all the negation of existence of those anti-types he is ever so busy generating (the weeds) while in the process of not-attaining his ungoal. . .or something like that. As a rule, he is a very busy chap, what with attempting the impossible and all. Frankly he is so swamped time-wise with his inner wreckage, he simply hasn't the extra hours to reformat himself as regular sperm cell (that desirable, and single minded success). Moving forward from that imagined reset point, is a day-dreaming hobby for the guy, but in the end, he is always glad that he can't really get there anyhow.
  So, to return to our theme, how does a true loser explain why he's not married? Does he just allow others to think privately that he is fornicating with every woman he mentions having had dinner with? Does he allow others to assume he is "gay"? Does he allow others to make the barnyard connection? I cannot speak for other losers (that would be a form of winning after all), but in my case, "none of the above" enters as the strategy. Each of the three bad conclusions posits a kind of "secret winning", and for instance, with the homosex crowd (nowadays) "out of closets", and achieving true political clout, for the loser to be aligned there (especially) would just ruin everything! They are the new teenaged sperm cells. No, my strategy has been instead to "suspend". Having thought it over (for decades) I conclude "I don't get it". I don't come down. . . anywhere! If a guy "doesn't fit", it's because he does not, in fact; fit! "Trying" does not begin to deal with the reality here, and "un-trying" only compounds the problem (damned weeds!). If there was a "fix"; it would violate the cardinal rule of failure in any case, in that; by fixing failure you succeed. But then, this would prove to be a worse kind of failing! There are no "good options" here. Do you prefer better stabbing someone, or being shot-at yourself? Uh, neither? If it's all about the loser finding a "destination", you just can't get there from here.
  So, I think that the loser's problem is a (weird) kind of excessive morality. A righteousness of always avoiding mistreating others, and of it's attendant sneering; generates (over time) a hope-less future! When girls say; "Oh, you're hopeless", I often wonder if they ever realize the truth, the sheer facticity of what they just said? It works out as a "standard", of which I suppose He rather frowns upon. A kind of "knowing" develops which is so "deep" that the listener drowns? A wisdom is revealed, so "wise" that it is incomprehensible? We keep generating the reverse of what we intended. Thus, I infer that my "morality" the truly good would find deeply offensive; supposing we ever found any of them, that is. The nice guy loser syndrome is ultimately at war with God, over the very issues of "fair and right". Even the loser ends up realizing that his version of "good" is a mass of abominable nonsense. The loser's moral "high ground" keeps on forgetting one huge item, and that is that he himself (Mr. Loser-pants); is positionally "looking down" at the Almighty!
  The loser refusing to snub a mere man, only to end up blaspheming He Who Is; this is progress? For instance, a "morality of niceness" per se, could never approve of Moses singing "Our God is a Man of War!". Refusing to belittle his human neighbor, he yet absolutely shrinks (in his estimation) the Maker of the neighbor? Brilliant. . .The real answer (in His presence) to; "Why aren't you married?" is; "Because I'm significantly nicer than the Almighty! And even I realize (somewhat) how completely crazy that is. No woman in her right mind wants any part of that action!". A woman would have to be nuts to put up with me. And why (prey tell), should I be associating with those lunatics who fail to reject such nonsense out of hand? What do you take me for anyhow? As a "righteous" standard then, the loser develops a strange kind of "unstable plus boring" persona. It is like a distance generating field which keeps others "safe" (from him!). But you must admit, it does (after all), drive off girls, and we (losers) certainly can't argue against that! At heart, he simply refuses to grow up, in that there are no "good options" to grow up into. Loser status is bad, and winner is worse! The High king disagrees, and so the loser is opposed to God, man, and himself. This is his "normal".
  Our fallen pattern then, apparently always the one bad choice, versus a worse "opposite", it is this mess which kills hope. With no good options left open, having kids, so to generationally clone this mess forward, is an absolutely terrible idea! Shall I bring this mental wreckage forward into the next gen? I think not! The loser succeeds at not making the catastrophe. . .more widespread? A loneliness almost unendurable, while remaining perpetually alienated, is the price of the package. I bought one, did you? It's junk, but it's the best junk I could do. Even I disapprove of it, and so; how much less does the High One welcome the bankruptcy which is me? That's what I figured out, "all on my own". The successful loser learns how to live without hope, and he disapproves of that hopelessness in him too! Two moralities, one living, one dead, His just ain't the same as ours. . . at all!
  His morality isn't like ours. Ours, mostly a finding of ways or reasons to "not do" something or other, which (incidentally) we'd prefer to do; if we could do so secretly. His, on the other hand appears largely as a kind of joy in dancing, a freedom in love, a loyalty to the end. His place has these really juicy pears (see?), which crunch! He's crazy about good wine, "toasts to health", and song. See? His morality, isn't about "not-doing, or not-being", His is about living, and thriving. To do so, He (apparently) "forgets Himself". And here is our best view yet (this self-forgetfulness) of precisely my premier area of inexpertise. How does one "not remember" the pain of never being "good enough"?
  My system is all about dying in a "mildly tragic" fashion, and might I add, in a swift and painless manner? His, is about embracing the lonely, dancing with the sad; and taking their place of grief and guilt upon His Own Self, so to free them. He greets death, but never as a friend, and that is basic to the difference between us. View then, two worlds crashing into each other. One is "tragically" going down, one is rising, ever rising from the ashes, glad and (now!) unkillable! Those worlds really have nothing to do with each other, unless the risen One (Himself) takes some interest in ours. He has.
  The successful loser is busy (very!) keeping himself unattractive enough to guarantee distance, so as to limit the potential damage (which is within him), being visited upon others. In his refusal to make things yet worse, he "fails to aggravate" the bad situation of life, which is never the same thing as "progress"; but it is better (it  would seem) than the other choice! So, in the long haul; losing is about not-living. This strategy itself collapses in the face of the Son of Man; The Living One! If my goal was to "prove" that I'm not "good enough" for women, that usually proves to be an absurdly simple task, and they heartily concur in the estimate. Yet, it (the ethic of failure). . .fails in His presence. If I say, "Stay away, I'm a monster", to a girl, I can get a fair amount of co-operation; and she promptly bugs out. Apply this however to the I AM (that Am), and the sucker blows up in my face! Instead of friendly co-operation, and Him leaving me alone (as He ought), He essentially responds with; "So, you think you're a monster eh? You should see it from My side, you don't know the half of it Bub!. . . AND I love you.". See? He ain't playing fair!
  Do not we all very clearly recall the parent drill; "We would all be so proud of you, if only you'd. . . (become a lawyer or a doctor, or such)". The loser concludes; "Apparently then, you are not proud of me now? So you are waiting to be proud? Uh,. . . keep waiting?". Our human rules are very, very clear just here; acceptance comes AFTER achievement. That is what success IS! My morality, has (oddly) become more "righteous", more "righteous" than His? How in blazes did that happen anyhow?
  How can He "not see" what I am? Even human girls can see, what a bad bet I am; how come He cannot? What is wrong with Him anyhow? Just how desperate is this Guy for friends? Why can't He just do His job, and get around to rejecting me like every other person on earth? Is He blind? My anger only makes this wretchedness worse, when I begin to rant at Him about Him growing a spine, or whining "When do You ever get around to doing Your job anyhow?". Apparently, my thinking has made even God out as just another ineffective loser nice Guy? Swell. The Dude is thereby crashing in on my turf? This is outrageous!
  This swift motion of His to "take my place away" is where the loser loses at losing. Egad, the Loser is become some sort of ersatz winner, based upon the Champion King's astonishingly good track record? I was right! God is become like blind Pappy-Isaac, and switches the blessing. The elder brother walks away empty handed, and rat boy (Wrestles-with God) gets the inheritance. I "belittle" Him? I "look down" on the true Son? And He does not immediately blow me off planet? I'm doing to Him, what I swore I'd never do to any other man? I've become a "winner", and it's awful!
  The authoritative command resounds; "Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up!", that is what I was expecting of Him. Expecting Him "to deal with" those insoluble mysteries of the psyche. Passing on hard-but fair advice, or of well conducted and informative talks, on "how best to deal with women"; that's what I expected. or at least something along those lines, you know; stern but sound counsel! I tell you, The Man is ruthless; and is taking my place! Literally true, He hijacked my gig, of being "the world's biggest failure", by "failing" at Almighty levels! View, with me; The Father turning His back on, rejecting His "wayward Son". Of course, the King was framed, and had done no wrong, and yet was punished for it nonetheless! He, the One rejected as "failure" is the Champion "Loser" of all time! That is definitely "not playing fair"! His knife drives directly for the heart. And in His capturing of that, all-else comes with. It "has no choice" but to surrender.
  He's a genius you know. And my little self-consistent world collapses. He remains standing, and offers His hand, for me to stand up again. . .with Him! My smug expectation of being eventually able to force a rejection from every-body (including Him!), just folds up and dies at Calvary. In The King of Jews, serial refusal has been refused, and my death-system died! Net result? Hope lives. Or better yet, He lives.
  Patiently He endures. . .even me! Finding Him Who Is, (or more accurately, being found of Him) we (incidentally) find we who were, and are; and who we shall be anew. Today, we are rather like amnesiacs who have forgotten mainly our home, our identity and to which family we are of. Patiently He endures. . .even us! In the world-coming those newly-named, recently welcomed home, "remember" (for the first time!) themselves amid their kin. In that glad day, shaking off their "enchanted sleep", they awaken "then" (in that coming "today") really for the first time. And I tell you, those sons are just damned glad to be there! Toasts to health, glad song, crunchy-juicy pears, good wine, dancing princes?
  So, you think it will be a marvelous fiesta of light; an immense hall filled with the fiercely glad eh? You should see it from My side! You don't know the half of it Bub. . . AND you are loved!

   

Coming, Come, Coming #16 (date unknown)

  We prefer (I suppose) to find a label for things. It is a clumsy thing to have to say to someone, "Hand me that thing-a-ma-jig over there.". You inquiring; "Which?", indicates a faulty labeling on my part. And; "You know, the doo-hickey thing right in front of you", is not really a very helpful clarification. For good or ill, we love labels so as to better grasp "what things really are", or more pointedly "who" (that we imagine) you are! Words descriptive of persons like "creative, surly, shy," and similar tags might be somewhat less confusing, but they keep leading "in and up", or would that be "narrower and finer"? That is; we would actually prefer to find out (but prefer to not directly ask), if you are a "liberal, conservative, or a whack-o". We won't (usually) rest until we find out how "best" to (secretly) classify you.
  The keen insight of this particular C.P.E. is that; if labeling works as a three flavor choice, then (possibly) a time function might be used in a diagrammatic fashion, so to reverse-label we ourselves, as those "three-ist biased label applicators". Time, (it appears to me) seems to be nicely dividable into three natural classes. We have first, the past, then that constantly disappearing present, and finally the future. We, simultaneously having the three "political" labels just now noted above, might possibly be able to align the two categories? And if this be carried off correctly, mightn't this shed a bit of light on both those we label, and also upon ourselves; as those-labeling?
  Further, I propose to use an actual time based event, with it's three perspectives, so that we don't wander too far off into abstract land. Concretely then, someone once told me that there is no "zero" year on timelines. I haven't a clue why this would be true, but if it is; we would proceed forward in time from 1 B.C., to the following year, 1 A.D., is this even correct? Beats me. Zero-year (regardless here of the date of Christ's actual birth), would correspond in my idea as "the present". So then, B.C. (no, I still refuse to use B.C.E. and C.E.) in this illustration would be "the past", and you can guess the rest of it.
  So then, the whacky missing year at the middle of time corresponds thus (a bit) to one of the three political options. Let's talk about that one first. Words like "radical, unpredictable, loose-cannon" and such like; are describing a class of individuals that we don't normally feel safe around, in that they are (we believe) "politically unreliable", they possess "whack". By this we mean that when it comes to "choosing up sides" (left/right), these folks appear to be permanently on vacation, or consistently voting "none of the above" in elections. As such, they are either "ruining the inertial mass of collective progress" (liberal), or they are failing to dig in their heels, so as to "take a stand, to turn back the forces of chaos in the land" (conservative). Failing to join either "side", they are in the middle, which time-wise corresponds to "the present". Ya with me so far?
  The present, as in "Come" is a mystifying thing for us. Looking forward, all history-past (apparently?) leads up to "it", but the width of "it" remains so narrow as to defy measurement? Or looking backward, as we recall "the moment", we keep finding that for all time future, we can clearly set apart to remember this width of zero-wide time, so to recall a given moment (the '"now" we refer to here). That is normal enough, isn't it?
  So, for our historical example then, the year-zero event would be the birth of Messiah, regardless of His actual date of birth, okay? So "whack" prevails just (at this then-present) "now". Mary is confused by the visitation, Joseph is about to divorce the girl, the empire is in upheaval over a census, Herod wants to murder the kid, low-life shepherds are suddenly acting like a gang of zealot prophets, bigshot PhD's are doing overland pilgrimages to visit a foreign newborn, and the young couple escape on foot in the middle of the night, for their lives; chaos is erupting! That present "whack" moment in question had been predicted, from as far back as the eviction from Eden, it had been ratified by Word, underscored by both promise and threat, foreshadowed by sign, ceremony and festival. It had been typified in men's lives, and the whole Israelite nation awaited it. Yet when in the moment-present (which we discuss) it finally did arrive, who recognized it as the centerpiece of history? Answer, nobody! Well, that's a bit harsh, those informed by God through sign (the star), and by visitation (the angels); at least attended the event. But how much of it, which we (now) "get", they at that moment "got"; I don't know. So, to the politically "unreliable" element, (whack-o) we apply the label, because chaotically they belong in neither camp. Kinda sorta, this works as a "present" time function then. It would correspond to the middle word "Come", in today's title.
  Likewise, the first "Coming" element would refer to those looking "ahead"; those calling themselves (this week) "progressive". On the calendar, this would be B.C., those awaiting the day. A kind of spirituality-minus-fact prevails here, it seems to me. The actual and real time events are never crucial in this Coming. It's the feel of things, the drift, the big ideas which prevail here. Martha says to Jesus "I believe you are the Coming One". She was prepared to accept a non-specific, and generalized resurrection, in an ill-defined and hazy future. The harsh and crass matter of a brother stumbling back (!) out of his recently hewn grave (the then present ex-stiff) was simply not on her radar. She is a "liberal" in this sense. Interested in building co-operation, for a collective action of the many "for us to all get behind", here we see the big picture of growth, of security, of even the having of a future to discuss! Looking "forward" in time, gives drift but not detail. For detail, we look "back". In this model then, the first "Coming" in our title is a bit like the hints and whispers given in the O.T. about "that great and terrible day", which is forward of us in time.
  The other "Coming" then, would (time-wise) refer to the "opposite"; those surly "conservatives". If our illustration here is workable (and we wonder), then we would suppose that this final grouping would direct us "backward". Conservers appreciate those hard fought historical battles wherein a man, or a small cadre of friends made huge changes for the better in lives and nations. Frequently, they retell the glories of mighty conquests of old; which dragged from tyrant hands our precious freedoms. They repeatedly discuss freedom plus responsibility as a kind of recipe we ought apply in this present "whack" era of ours, so as to achieve "real progress". The pointing finger of "Coming" thus, usually asserts that we are (at present) stupidly "taking for granted", something or other, or to that effect. Oddly, as classifiers of persons, we ought take notice just here of an oddity. The original "called-out-ones" (church) were a sect of Judaism. But if our phrase is "Coming, Come, Coming", then the "missing aspect" here is the future of conserve, as it were. Simply, the grand insight of the founding fathers of faith was to divide "the present". That predicted great and terrible day of the LORD, was split into a two stage affair, or perhaps it was to simply elongate and enlarge "the present" such that "day" becomes a 2000 year-plus "moment"?
  Anyhow, the second "Coming" appears to be reverse formatted! The conserve group is looking back, at that horrid bloody tree, and the sheer facty-historical-ness of it all. But ought not a forward look prevail just here? And I don't mean a forward look as the liberal proposes, that squishy, good-feel, non-specific environment of growth to come, but a precise and new specific whack moment ahead? And the ultimate whack-chaos episode of the Almighty manifesting in Person (armed for war for instance), certainly qualifies! If our original missing year-zero corresponds to "whack", then (from this perspective) the Coming unknown year-x (the Return!) is predicting "future-whack", and this lines up with He as The Actual-Factual. So, oddly then, these folks ought be the one's guarding the future, but certainly appear to be pointed in the wrong direction!
  Little Jack Horner, sitting in corners, inserts thumbs into pie, or so it is said. Odd boy, that Jack is; but from his point of view, at least he gets the whole pie! After all who would want a piece after the kid just got done cramming his thumbs in there? We keep choosing to tag others as 1/3rd of the pie-ers. At least Jack is smart enough to claim the whole thing! And this is my brainwave here. We in a private and unannounced super class of combined-three, much prefer to identify others as 1/3rd-ers. They "must be" conservative, "have to be" liberal, or "obviously" are whacky, but as a classifier, this fractionalism conveniently does not apply to myself! Ain't that handy?
  From here then, we can see the way of it. The Christ of God, the One expected, shows up on and in-time, He recalls, and is patient. In brief, the Guy is "holy". We speak, along with the elders; "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord GOD (the Almighty) who was, and is, and is to come!". Holy is formatting as an "Is-over/in-time", and so the whole pie is in fact the correct view, while remaining (to us) inaccessible, we the deeply un-holy.
  This can only mean for us that (at minimum) hope is real! The very same hard-logic factual approach the conserve demands, is cast "forward" into the "second" Coming. That "day" will hit like a bear-trap, bam, whoosh, it's done, so it is the ultimate chaotic "whack". It means the "wisdom" of this age has been inverted. In that "first day" the conservatives, and liberals joined ranks to kill and toss the body over the fence. The zealots feared Him, and reproached for His not "going far enough". He, walking in integrity, is hated by all the "wise-pie-guys". Insulting the (only) perfect man, they lose the power to "define" (correctly) anything, and in their hatred are themselves defined! He walking in  loyalty, the conservers are ashamed, Him walking in peace, the liberalizing are silenced, His walk in an author-ity which serves the lowly, the zealots go hang themselves. . .
  Coming, Come, Coming is for our welfare. In our daily weaknesses and failures, He reminds of the once-for-all transaction (whack), rehearses His Own track record of care for us (conserve), and Personally guarantees a wholesome and lively future (liberate).
  Our puny "wisdom" has us meanwhile over here trying to "forgive ourselves", while simultaneously "forgetting" the past; so as to "create (one of many possible) a future" for ourselves. Our lousy "wisdom" hates Him, and all He brings. . . and for no good reason. Then we turn clean around to accuse Him of unreasonableness? It is this very malice of ours which is the main evidence against us as persons.  And moreover, in and of our own selves we are both unwilling and unable to even admit the evidence exists?
  We are forced then, by our own fallen nature; right into this self justification, plus this labeling of others as "the problem". Unless He heal, unless He give sight, unless He secure our way, life really is a meaningless and destructive (pointless) mess. And that would be true, if it were indeed the case that we ourselves were alone. Newsflash; we have never been, are not now, and nor ever shall (actually) be alone! The central brainwashing at Eden, was that our high treason cut us off from Him. He never agreed to participate in that hallucination.
  In horror movies, "zombies" are "the living-dead". To them, (to zombies, that is) the "dead-living"  would be an alarming development. Believers are born twice, and die once. Zombies are born once, and die twice, there can be no real and lasting friendship in such an arrangement. So, in the living arrangement, besides hope making sense, love too lives, because He does. Here, trust can grow, because of His impeccable track record. We thus (the re-born), are an abomination to the "world". And we "feel-for" them, we welcome them into sanity, out of their fractional pie-isms. We "think the best" of (and for) them, in that they are (at present) us, as we were. Corpses never volunteer for anything! We trust Him, for them, entrusting their lives into His sane goodness, His Almighty wholesome-ness.
  These three remain, faith, hope, and love. We trust forward unto our true homeland, also looking back to recall His stellar track record of friendship, so thus to be strengthened, in tackling the chaos which is just now erupting (again). . . with a welcoming smile and a warm embrace.
  He is making us more like Him, the Holy One! He Who Was, Is, and Ever-Shall-Be, it's His-story after all. The "stretching of whack" (that Presence amid the chaos of fact), is being predicted "forward", as a kind of "place" we were "destined-for", from "prior to things". Net result?
  He is building a cadre of the fearless and glad, a throng of the confident doers, those remembering ever after the sweet moment He first embraced our sadness. This new-ness; unto "the aion of aions". We would likely call it "time-cubed" or some such.

What? Movies Again? #17 (date unknown)

  So, what is it just now about the MARVEL franchise anyhow? These guys appear unable to make a money losing movie. Everything the ex-comic book people do, keeps coming up roses earnings-wise the past few years, it seems to me. As a boy, I can recall reading the 60's version of MARVEL comics. Newsflash, this just in; they weren't that good. The old Spiderman comic books had all these side bar notes by Stan Lee. Very distracting to read, I always thought. I have no memory of any X-Men roaming around the comic book universe back when Richard Nixon was bombing Hanoi, but they may have been around. But supposing that they were, they never were at that time; a "hot" item for geeks like me. The movies about the X-ers the past few years have made several small mountains of money, and my guess is that there is a cultural nerve somewhere they have struck, which has captured the popular imagination.
  So, if it's about imagination, the first thing to imagine, when watching these films is to "get" the big idea. First of all, nobody in the show prays. Not a church spire ever appears in the cityscape background, and it is very much as-if there never had been any sign or trace of the Almighty stepping into this world. This movie world is a "sanitized" of God (or any memory of Him) universe. And of course, the reason being is that such a scenario allows the hero (or anti-hero) the room to step up to fill the "vacancy". The mutants in these flicks become (for all practical purposes) gods themselves.
  Stepping back from that scenario a bit, we find that not a shred of this makes any sense at all, unless we a priori, swallow the Darwinian model of "up-ness". The shift-up from ape to man, kinda begs the question of from man to what-next? Here, (and here alone!) change is always for the better, and "mutations" thereby are uniformly beneficial "survival-wise". Never mind that in the actual (and real) God-infested, church spire ridden world, the screaming majority of mutations, either weaken or kill. Do not notice that!
  But do notice this; I've kinda been mulling over this basic idea for most of my life. The way the thing functions, is that if the basic idea remains as undeclared background (this inevitable up-ness I mean) then it is not normally questioned. When it shifts to the foreground however, it quickly becomes "crazy". Sometime when you are just fabulously bored, try Googling "Transhumanism Nanofibers". The speculation having to do with fibers dropped from airborne tankers which infect your brain, such that you are programmed, is kind of sad/amusing to read. It's like the homeless guy I met one day, who believed that the C.I.A. was listening into his brain. So, in this fashion then, the new-first item to imagine, when such movies are playing, is to picture Nietzsche. . . not going insane, like he did in the real world. His Darwinian man-to-over-man crud, leading directly to the Third Reich; for instance (in this scenario); just "didn't happen". So then, it's this type of "reality" forming the big picture we require, in order to make sense out of the X-ed out "flawed heros", which keep dragging in those big movie bucks. In this down-economy, we (apparently) require to hear something. And if that something is about men evolving "up" (under tremendous duress); facing nearly impossible odds, then it's trans-humanism made simple; and thereby is seriously loony.
  Thinking some about all this, if the next step "up" on the evo-tree is a sort of meld, we are being presented a fearful future for mankind or what's left of it, after they get done "fixing" things. If, so to speak; we are "calling for" super-human capacity, then X-Men answer that call. And so, the way this is done is a type of fusion of magic and science, to yield highly improbable ability, or super-competence in individuals. A new thing in Earth, a cadre of "new-men" capable of handling the immense pressure the future presents; tends toward the forgetful, it seems to me. What is forgotten, is that all this has been repeatedly tried in the past, with disastrous results. All of this "novelty" is normally linked to the destruction of the (backward) past, so doing away with "dead tradition". Newness, or novelty itself, from this perspective is hailed as "creativity", and we are not supposed to ever ask whether the drink is poison. Never mind that it is deadly, this is the stuff that sells!
  Not to get too awfully far off track here, but glance over at the huge market for "energy drinks". We old-fashioned humans are moving too slowly for the fast-new world! So, rather than slowing the pace of things, we try instead to hop-up our own metabolism! Meth, and coke and any other illegal "speed" all answer the very same problem of pace likewise. We not-quite-up humans are the ones who require the boost in this model. Whether it be strength, or knowledge, or some proposed super powered mutated morph of human-kind itself, this is the "project", at which the aim is always being taken. And as it always has, ever the siren call commands; "keep up!". Call it magic, call it science, call it evolution, or interfacing with computer AI, none of the particulars much matter. The "up-slope" is itself the imagined and is what is  "set" here. Acceleration up; this is the "given". So, man-plus-something, as he "ascends" (on his own steam) is in our time, formatting (again) as the "other religion'. The god spot being unaccountably vacated, we note "man-up" (that soon to be god), proceeding to fill the gap.
  The disturbing state of mind which we presume to be present in those believing this stuff, is at first scary! Like dealing that homeless guy who "knows" that the C.I.A. has tapped his brainwaves, we find the details  difficult to pay attention to; until first we examine the "why-of" why he thinks so. The assumptions here are more important than the conclusions. The specifics of conclusions; depending upon just which nut is talking at the moment, never outweigh the common basic thrust of the transhumanist view, which is itself plainly nuts. For instance, contrary to the mutation X-Men scenario we are just now discussing, the main difference of the transhumanist theory here as "evolution", is that it is not so much "advanced" by mutation, as by augmentation. So, a kind of sloppy thinking prevails here, to the effect that digital processing, the internet, and super computing are supposedly, in that future to be (ideally?) linked or fused into the "meat machine" of the human brain. In some hideous future or another, the upshot of such a world would yield a type of "eternal life", insofar as one's persona could (supposedly) be "downloaded". So then, the horrendously bad track record of this same (uppity) "progress of man" material is always presented as-if we as a species, have never yet once attempted this? Never mind that this very thing, this arrogance, and "rising" theme is the salient feature of all events past. Apparently, we are to infer that ignorance of history is an "evolved" trait then?
  And yet, to be blunt; this tendency of ours (we Christians I mean) to look down on this type of material, and thus to simply discount it as insane, I believe misses the point. The crazy details, the entire paranoid conspiracy angle in all of this type of thing, the "global elite, those rascally Tri-lateralist, international bankers" and such stuff we simply scoff at. We "know" that the real problem is delusion, not some conspiracy built by some committee of unidentifiable bad guys. We reject this transformation of human kind theory not so much in the details of the lunacy as rather in the basic premises and assumptions. We buy the truth of the Image in us, and in them. We buy that man is becoming something new, but that new thing would be His Image renewed in us, never our own version of uber-competence. We, those originally built in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, plus having dominion over the world system, we the wrecked, recognize in us the marred Image. Our goal is not to "get back to" Eden, but to shoot right past it!
  Ever since Eden, it has been fallen  mans' "project" to put something into ourselves, that would (supposedly) make us "go up", to become "greater, stronger, and smarter". What has been uniform, has never been the specifics of the scheme, and so; as such are not crucial to the discussion. It is the directional aspect, it seems to me; the uniformly "upward" trending which is to build an enfolded multi-man, or to design a magician capable, or find a way via downloading a life consciousness into a data bank, which coheres. All of these are attempted escape from our true nature (those soon to die) consistently proving to be the theme. The religion of man is, has been, and shall remain being all about transformation out of our actual (fallen) position, so to (on our own) transcend death. The religion of man proves mostly to be about power.
  Essentially then, we believers disagree just here. Ultimately, life isn't about acquisition. The glory, light, life, and excellencies of Him calling, simply must be acknowledged, or sanity cannot prevail. The only working option to Him at center, is me at center, and we have tons of evidence just how well that fiasco has worked in the past! So the dispute is here, and is not really over transformative theory per se. Man is (in fact) being joined together into what the Apostle calls "the new creature". An entirely new type of "thing", this "wife and companion" for the Son, is being gathered from across the age, and around the world. An uncountable throng of individuals, who are nonetheless "one (new) man". The satanic deception all along has been that we could, and would of ourselves; "somehow" carry off the project! See, the transhumanist monstrosity, is but the latest installation of the same old thing. And from the very get-go, it was (and is) a hopelessly bad idea. There never was a chance of it getting off the ground.
  This self elevation makes about as much sense, and is of the same kind as the enemy's original premise, that of a proposed "equality with God". There never was a whisper of hope that this ragingly insane premise ever (once) made even a little sense. And in the details of it, in the convoluted "explanation", by which the tale is told, just exactly "there" the many have historically been deceived. But the deceptive thing has never been that power (of itself) is either a good or bad thing. Rather, it is that capacity and ability is never a naked or abstract thing. It is always and ever joined to the Regal Majesty and to His stunning brilliance. In the prayer, we say "Thine the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, ever-after!". If such talk were only all about power, then it would also be all about "legitimate" murder. Recall our human track record! Where we believers differ here is not that we deny a transformation, but that that He owns it! Transhumanism, on it's very best day, is nothing but a second rate, slap-dash attempt to mimic what He is (indeed!) building. We proclaim Him, and the Glory of Kingly-He, as All Powerful. He who defending and loving life, is the actual and sane topic. We and our future are secondary to The Majesty on high Himself, hobnobbing with; and drawing to Himself, the low upward. He, at center, and we drawn there, that's the reality here.
  If "man-plus" be our theme, it remains man-plus-Messiah! It is man-plus forgiveness, man-plus an alien righteousness, freely given to cover our shameful failure(s). And it is man-plus victory, for one day, we the low (then raised) shall triumph over the enemy and all his slaves. We shall be raised above, with and in Him, joined to Messiah soon to be "supervisors" for angels! My guess is that our ancient foe once upon a time got a glimpse of this coming reality. I am guessing it was this which proved to be the final straw, the last "insult to his dignity" by which he lied to himself, and himself embraced the lie.
  Before you lie to anyone else, you must first "justify" it inside. The details, the scary predictions, the convoluted reasonings of this inner collapse never matter as much as the base treason, and flight from the real which is necessarily involved in any such thing.
   We, standing in the broad daylight of His Glory, we are the "scary ones" now!

Gravity Bob

  I was going to call this C.P.E. "Gravity Steve" originally. Dr. Hawking will just have to change his first name to Robert at some point; now won't he? Have you seen the recent Gravity Bob (Hawking) movie? Don't bother, if you have not. Gosh, but I hated it! A typical chick-flick is ostensibly about "relationships", yet if you'll note; that ain't quite so. Truth said, it's more like people being "on the verge" of relating.
  For some unknown reason, women consistently find this sort of thing to be entertaining, a kind of "almost relating", in which the parties emerge with a bunch of unsaid doubts, and all kinds of conflicting emotion. I have yet to plumb the depths here, and cannot imagine what it is, that is at all satisfying about viewing such material. I mean, if they would just toss in an exploding helicopter or two, or maybe a running machine-gun battle occasionally (maybe), then it would be watchable. But all this near-miss, almost saying what you mean stuff is just no fun to watch. In brief, the movie "Theory of Everything" stinks on ice! Altogether too much "almost connecting" for my tastes.

  So anyhow, "Gravity Bob" a.k.a. Stephen Hawking is (in the movie) all about developing a T.O.E. (theory of everything), but we are not supposed to notice that he never seems to get around to it? Or something. Along the way, he dumps the wife who has been taking care of him for a quarter century. She; washing, feeding, and changing the diapers of an overlarge and ill-mannered baby for decades, he drops her to chase the skirts of the nurse? Simply brilliant; Doctor Hawking! Gravity Bob may well have an outrageously high I.Q., but who cares? He has his little cadre of worshippers, and everybody around him is busy knocking themselves out, so that he can keep his "terribly important dream" alive? Yawn.

  This kind of thing, in my opinion, is just altogether too like the modern mess, of which one's "dream cannot be denied". Friends? Family? Your sworn word? All of those are just more trash to kick out of the way, on your self-centered crummy path to "true happiness". To top this off, if you'll do a short Google search, the nurse gig didn't fly either! She ended up being some kind of gold-digger, crazy woman who liked to beat Gravity Bob up; behind closed doors. So, in real life (not in the movie version) he ditched the nut. We are left with the guy who knowing "nearly everything", apparently knows nothing of human kind?
  Don't get me wrong here, it is not as if I profess to understand women or something. My ignorance of the fem ways, are to some extent (apparently) similar then to the good doctor's? But in fact, the wide array of topics of which I know very nearly zip about; I tend to view as an advantage! We need not pretend at knowing it all. Ignorance is only a handicap, if you allow it to be one!
  So don't bug me with the math involved, I wouldn't be able to follow "knowing it all" in any case. Yet, as a believer in Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews (the sign on the cross read), I have a very different "take" on gravity, than does Bob and his fellow brainiacs. I don't know much at all concerning T.O.E.s. Heck; the last I paid any attention to any of this material, the spin (then) was still all about G.U.T. (grand unified theory). Be that as it may, the single feature of the four forces which both T.O.Es, and G.U.T.s deal with, which constantly kicks the butts of genius types; is gravity. To unify theory, somehow, somewhere gravity has to fit in, and the stinker consistently refuses!
  It's kind of odd isn't it, that we can have unspoken ideas rolling around inside us, for years? The thing is never said aloud, but it's still filed "in there" somewhere, apparently awaiting the day it be announced aloud? Today is the day. So, along these kinds of lines then, my "theory" of gravity is thus necessarily linked to speech.
  In the best analysis I am capable of, the Nazarene speaks reality into existence, but more pointedly, His  continuing Word, is the glue which holding things together, also directs them to appointed ends. To an atheist like Gravity Bob, this type of view is simply nonsense; but what we usually fail to grasp, is that in such a system as Bob's, the True Voice is being actively suppressed and denied, in order to supplant same. . . with another voice! And isn't it irony itself, that Gravity Bob (new-speaker extraordinaire), is mute? Or worse yet, that the new "voice" in question is a cheapie low-ball robot voice? See? The reason I begin with speech, when discussing gravity, is that at some point a "genius" is required to "say-so", to utter and then "prove" the breakthrough orthodoxy. So, the first church of science has it's own "infallible words", spoken authoritatively by it's "saints". And whether the church of Hawkings can ever own up to it or not, the speaker in their cult is not in fact Gravity Bob, but none other than Sir Isaac Newton!
  Recall that in his own era, Zack's inverse square theory of "attraction of bodies" was widely ridiculed as "occult". The entire premise of "action at a distance" was deemed by the (then) science geniuses as absurd. Yet Zack spoke authoritatively, and Zack won the day. His gravity idea is that a universal "force" is always attracting. And it is just about here that I get off the bus. Zack never had the data we do, concerning the movements of galaxies at the remote end of visibility. Gravity Bob and company (the big-bangists), keep insisting upon a colossal "boom" at the outset of things. But Bob & Co. looking at the telescopic data, consistently fail to deal with the most alarming aspect of the expansion cloud; and that simply is, that the galaxies distant are at this very hour continuing to accelerate away! Recall that a rocket under steady thrust, continues to accelerate. But when boost is shut down, it would be a very strange thing indeed; for that coasting ship to continue to gain velocity! So, if Gravity Bob's one-time boost (the boom), is said to have quit boosting x-billion years ago, and yet his "rockets" (galaxies) are to this day still building speed, what ever could that mean? Gosh Gravity Bob, how can "un-thrusted acceleration" be? Oh, I know! It is because the bangists are still using the Newtonian premise of action at a distance! It (gravity) only and ever "draws", pulling in, thus saith Saint Zack! That said; in the bang-ist model then; the boom and only the boom, could possibly be doing the accelerating. But if Zack was only looking at the up-close feature of gravity, not even he could have accounted for an un-thrusted acceleration. He was unable in his day, to note the far-distant view, but if he could have seen what we see, might not he see "out-go" as the inverse and corresponding half to 'in-fall"?

  The old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon began with Rocky rolling down a snowy hillside. The faster gravity goes, the furiouser it gets. Zack would have liked Bullwinkle I think, and surely would have grasped the beauty of Rocky's downward roll. Just at the brink of going over, the plucky flying squirrel stabilizes, assisted by Bullwinkles' touch! So then, my (entirely unsubstantiated) "theory" on the matter, is that gravity, linked to the Speaker, is more of a "field" than a directional "force". Minus mathematics, there is yet room in my "theory" to accommodate galactic recession, in that as a range limited field, both ends might well accelerate! In this model thus, things would both move faster as they fall "in" toward center, and likewise they would move furiouser as they fall "out" of center. Further, my "theory" predicts that the True Center, must needs be one and same as The Speaker. So, in reality, gravity isn't "about abstract laws of nature". Rather, it's the aroma, the whiff of the Captain's scent! Gravity is a dim whisper of the stronger reality, that of Him drawing His friends, and He driving His foes, it's both; because He is both.

  The draw and the drive, the pull and the push of gravity, this is what is missing from the Newtonian understanding, And I believe it this (partially, at least) which best explains why all T.O.E.s crash and burn. Committed to a draw-only gravity, they are working with something like half of the truth! And so, in a draw-only version of gravity; Gravity Bob keeps coming up empty on the unification drill, and this repeat failure of his, drives me further off! The net result of bad draw theory is that it irritates people!
  So, gravity in my definition is just "folks". People really do matter, for good and for ill. It is your family, your church, your neighbors, which are "close and nearby". So, what do we do? We defend, and build-with, we sacrifice for, and patiently endure their nonsense, and such efforts format as the pull. And this pull (which always is pulling in), continues to strengthen ties, it builds upon the existing and set foundation, so to "gain mass". So too, the broader our net is cast, and the wider the span between folks, the less we sense the pull, and the more we begin to notice the push. By the time we consider a large scale "America" for example, there are clearly two Americas to consider. One of which we are drawn to, and the other one we find to be repelling. As push increases, we wonder "How can people even be that way?". And the wider the sample, the more this gap widens.
  So then, something like a social gravity is "in" us, and to the extent that we even remember the existence of a "Pakistan or Singapore", our inner gravity becomes almost exclusively "push". At that remote range, one must actively "try" to recall that, however damned strange those foreigners be, they (somehow or another) are yet human! So it is that very thing binding us together, which is the same; we find to be driving off "outsiders". A social field, and not some cohesive uni-directional force is what is in us. So, my "theory" is predicting that some parallel of the same reality which "in here", is "out there" also! What after all would the other option be?
  If asked, which is of premier value, the individual, or the community, clearly the Trinitarian answer is "Yes". Neither a unique valuation of individuals, nor it's opposite, some communal one-ness of the group, as supremely worthy, can (of themselves); solve here. The Three Who Is One, remains "undivided individual", harming neither, blessing both. Gravity, on it's very best day is a subtle whisper, a dim hint of the Really-Real Himself, as is all else.

  Gravity the symbol, Him the reality, we note He then; the True Center calling "in". We find the faster we go that direction, the furiouser it gets! What began in us as a limping or halting crawl, soon becomes a brisk pace, so to one day become a mind-bendingly rapid sprint homeward! Further, to those to whom He declares "I never knew you", they are at first nudged away, then they march off on their own; soon to be forcibly flung away into "outer (darkness) parts". Hell, gets progressively worse in a view such as this, and likewise heaven becomes an ever increasing sum of fierce gladness! Both accelerate like bodies necessarily driven. The further away they go, the faster they get, and likewise, the further pulled in, the swifter the sprint into His arms! Gravity, is about the call, Him speaking "Come near, Son"; and it's about that pull being so Almighty powerful as to overthrow our guilt, all grief, our sad serial failure patterns, triumphing even unto death and hell themselves! Gravity is about His Verbal rejection of the person, "Be gone stranger!". With Him, it's a both/and, not an either/or.

  Have you noticed? The big-bangists always portray being "drawn in", as a bad thing? Black holes are those inescapable gravity wells. Danger Will Robinson! Don't go there! But, what if a chap one day, up and realizes he no longer wishes to escape what (Who) is at the Center, eh Doctor? What then to do? And over in ancient Israel, there was a ceremony for those ex-slaves, which upon being freed (if the slave desired to remain), the ear would be pierced. He renouncing "freedom in the abstract", was thereby proclaiming a new and undying loyalty, in the concrete. A hole blown right through the ear, perhaps signaling a "permanent hearing"? The slave, now freed, testifying to hearing (with his body) the voice of the master speaking words, "Remain then friend; for your true place is here!".

  That's reality for ya' Gravity Bob! Being drawn in to the center, is a "certain death" surely enough, and it is also the portal into a love stronger than death. The picture is Moses and all Israel walking purposely into the sea-parted (certain death!), so to emerge (mysteriously) on the other side. We get knocked down, and we get up again.