Holy Man

  Wowsers, some C.P.E.s are definitely more trouble to write than others. I think that at least two rough drafts of this thing, plus a couple of false starts, makes this Holy Man essay one of the most difficult I have ever attempted. I do not ordinarily  pay much attention to "writer's block" as an explanation or excuse for why things do not get written; but it certainly seems valid today! Our hectic lives are missing one crucial element, and I keep finding it nearly impossible to discuss.
  We can all agree (I think) that we live in a wild time. It seems that the amount of data, information, rumors, and mindless trivia with which we are hourly and daily bombarded is making the the real into the unreal. It is like an electric charged caffeine buzz, built upon nervous twitch reflex. It is "real" enough, but we forget due to excessive involvement in the mess, that it is a man-made construct. The floating feel, the never ending rounds of input, always spiraling downward and in, it all looks so dire! And like a slot machine junkie, we get so "into" the turning wheels, and the action that we cannot recall the source of it all as we ourselves!
  Along these lines then, can anyone correctly guess where to begin, so to accurately describe America, circa 2015 A.D.? You know what I am talking about, this sense that something very like the collapse of the Roman Empire is being duplicated before our eyes, but in record time! What once took a couple of centuries as far as rot and moral decay goes, to obviously manifest as dire scandals, lies, and double-dealing treachery in ancient history, is being duplicated in weeks or even days before our eyes? Everything culturally American appears to be falling to pieces, pretty much; all at once. And yet, for all the doubt and chaos in evidence, these collapses barely scrape the surface of the sense of things just now.
  The fears of an unknown future, the redefinitions (galore) of what is past, and all this, as part of an unrecognizable present generates a sense of dislocation. It is a kind of dreamy and floating unreality which we here note. Further, all these changes are linked to an inhuman rate of knowledge intake, a regular Niagara of facts, volcanos of quotes and ideas exploding on every side. We gorge upon perspectives, gallop through viewpoints, and exhaust ideals about as rapidly as they can be hatched.
  Very clearly the times, they have a changed, and nearly unrecognizably so. One of the main points to consider is that as things shift away from old norms, they also do so predictably. Any deviant form, any alien ideology, any inhuman misery, all are considered "normal". The short version is that people are nowadays not afraid to claim to have been born homosexual, or that they are in fact "star children" seeded by aliens; or perhaps that they are in contact with some ancient, unruly and invisible power? In our time, to admit being addicted to some chemical, or to have a destructive vice or a perverse love of the dark side, all this blends right in. People are not at all bothered in the least that satanism or witchcraft might be (in this hour) socially "legitimate". Militant atheism in our world barely generates a yawn any longer. So, the wide deviation from the old norms is clear enough, but it is also followed by a severe impossibility, and Ì believe that would be the holy.
  Our era might believe just about any idiotic thing, but the one thing it cannot and will not abide is the idea that what we humans must have more of is "holiness". Now, as a side note to my reader, I promise not to use quote marks again through the remainder of this essay for the word holy. But I did it just the once, to help illustrate how unthinkable, how truly undesired, and unimagined the holy nowadays really is.
  Just listen to what people say; "We need relevance, or we need power!" And let's not forget the needs for education, dignity, a living wage and fairness too, eh? It turns out that we humans have a regular grocery list of all the things which we "need", and those items are the ones which we believe or imagine might make our lives, our culture, our world "better". That list appears to be endless.
  I can, as a plumber however; certainly affirm that I have never once heard another human assert that what we really (and actually) require during this present upheaval is the sacred, what we need is a big dose of the holy. That answer just does not (and predictably so) arise . . . ever.
  And really, I am not even so very certain what the word holy means, except to say it is related to our verb "to cut". So, think of; "To make a separation, to divide", as the idea here; but how or why such would ever arise to the top of the human wish list, in order to make life livable remains unknown, and remains to my knowledge mainly unthought.
  And in this plumbers' opinion, I think holiness has gotten a bum rap. Listen sometime to those Christian shows on T.V. or radio. The holy guys have a regular way of talking. All of the vowels are kinda softened and rounded. Is that a semi-southern accent we detect? The use of the rising inflection? Turns everything into a question? The "indoor" voice is king (queen actually) and holiness becomes a pose, a predictably unruffled outer smiley face gig.
  Part of the pose is a seemingly boundless vault of good advice, mixed with a prudish sort of stance on things "moral". In brief, if that mess is in fact holiness, nobody in their right mind could ever surmise that this is the junk which is what the race requires, ever!
  This radio type of holiness and sanctity tends to posit a rather odd premise. But, nobody really believes it. It proposes a kind of semi-glow-in-the-dark type of looking down upon others. It is an insider's view, a kind of "helpful" and patient enduring of those; the unenlightened and ignorant. In brief it is just another superiority complex. We already have way way too much of that garbage around here. Trust me, it is not more of that which we need. So, we end up with the one thing on Earth which is in dire shortage (holiness) being so wildly misrepresented, and poorly characterized; that nobody could really ever get around to wanting it!
  I don't do well at describing the holy for the same sort of reasons that I usually fail to well describe the real. Uh, the real as opposed to what? And it seems to me there are only two classes of the unreal to consider. There is the consciously unreal, as in the imaginary. And whether we speak of novels or fables, or any fiction worth its' salt, there can be a "private reality" of the mind or heart. Think of the enjoyment of a well told story, the smiles a good movie brings. But, the other unreal is not conscious, and this is our main problem here. In describing unreality of this sort, we have forgotten something crucial. Incidentally, it is also the very same problem in discussing the topic of the unholy!
  For instance; in a dream, you are often too busy, or too involved in the action or the mystery to halt yourself in mid-dream; and remark; "Hey, it doesn't really matter about any solution, since the entire framework of the drama is a fake!". The busy-ness of business as usual helps us forget that the schema, the entire environ in which we are attempting to solve, is one hatched by, and maintained by we ourselves.
  So, if holy corresponds (in this case) to the really real, then it is nearly impossible for me to discuss that reality, with persons deeply involved in their own daily psycho-drama. Is it a work addiction, or money-security fear which seems "realer" than the real to you? Is it girl troubles, or mysterious aches and pains? Whatever it is, while we are in that loop of our own making, the solving-for trumps all other claims.
  Have I lost you? Here is an illustration, go in sometime to a casino, and observe the gamblers as they interact with their machines. They are deeply focused, they ignore all else around them. We observe them mechanically repeating actions over and over. We can clearly see that their reality is a lessor real one than the actual, but they themselves are far too busy to notice such things! These little realities of ours require constant attention, input, and maintenance. These "worlds" are a bit like those folks who "cannot miss" their favorite T.V. show. There is a pattern established, and it "must be" maintained. The inner and small drama has somehow become equal to the outer and actual reality (or seemingly so). And my guess is that the hook, the reason we find such mini-worlds so compelling, and small realities important is an if-then premise. Managing small drama argues that we could (possibly) master realities in general and so, once we get good at it; perhaps we could make the major and actually real "manageable"!
  In the dinky-real, we can filter out the ugly, we can feel better about our efforts as we order our own tiny domains. And this, as the second type of unreality, I think is far the worse of the two, in that we forget that it is we who have built and maintain the sucker. Being so casino-like focused, we end up confusing what we have built with what actually is!
  Do you grasp the concept here? In my book, the holy is precisely of this sort. Whatever holy is, He Is Holy! He is the Is behind Am. Think of the verb "to be", He is that, In Person! The Holy Name, comes out something like "I Am He Who Is". The angels and elders in the book of the Revelation are shouting something. "Holy, Holy, Holy! LORD God, the Almighty, He Who Was, and Is, and Ever Shall Be!" I say that we have no good way in our language to correctly join the elders.
  In Mike-speak, it sounds something like; "He Is, and because of His speaking power, all else which is, also is. But, nothing exists, unless He made, directs and sustains it. There is (literally) no-thing to contrast being to!". There is no "un-being or anti--is". If something is not God, and if something is not part of His creation, then it is either no-thing at all, or yet another lie. And lies will (one day) end. But I wander from my point!
  I say, the one thing we actually need is the holy, or more accurately; He, The Holy One as Author of Is (and there is no "opposite" to Him); it is He we need! The astounding miracle, the whopper grand-daddy marvel of the ages, is that He spoke, and what is, came to be. By His word authority, that which is, coheres and remains and is directed to its' end. The whopper fact which we are unable to notice is the facty-ness of fact, with Him as the sole guarantor. Things are real, but never "of themselves".
  If we return to the image of the dream for a moment, He is the Dreamer, and we are the dreamt, except not. We are the real, in that He (The Real) so says.
  I hope some of this is making sense? What the world needs now is the strong and unshakable, what it needs is the meaningful and the true. What the world needs is hope of significance, and security from all fears. We the weak, we the wishy-washy, we the confused and sad, we the failures, cannot locate within ourselves, nor within creation; the rock solid joy we must have. And so, we stupidly assume that such joy "cannot be real"?
  Therefore, such is obviously not in, or of us, nor is it "part" of our world. It is "cut and made separate". But that doesn't make it unreal. Rather, we are thirsty for The Real (Himself) who is coming into the world! True, it is "cut". Yes, it is "separate" from things as-is, but that is the same as saying; "Hope lives!".
  A tree "knows" that it needs soil and water and sunshine, but it cannot "make" any of them. A man knows that he requires meaning and truth and gladness, and he is like the tree. Something "separate" from him is shown best by its' lack.
  And so, the King says things holy. "Blessed are you hungry, and blessed are you poor", but why? Is there something grand about skinny broke guys that we don't know? No, but the central Rock, the mountain which is unmovable, He, the Personal underwriter of all fact, He the Owner and Guide of every scrap of history, He the Builder and Maintainer of the real; it is He we require. Both the real, and the holy; shout that we must awaken out of our small money worries, we must leave behind our workaholic fables and ditch our ambitious little soap operas. The grand vista of Is beckons! It, the unshakably real, is; because He Is. We, coming to this knowledge, find rest.
  The canoe of life has an outrigger to steady it, and His Name is Jealous! He Personally "takes an interest" in our lives, our deaths, and so too our living again.
  He is so "cut" that death itself is no boundary at all for Him. He roars His fierce welcome-home at His childrens' return from the grave!
  We have no good way to describe holy for much the same reason that we can barely define the real. But without these, life means nothing, history is just a lot of bad people doing stupid things, and death reigns supreme over the hearts' cry for meaning.
  But the Holy One is saying that, that very cry for meaning was placed in there, on purpose by Him, that one day we would find in His smile, and wildly glad embrace, our true home!

The Way Of Things

  When you get to be an old guy, your opinions on things begin to be more set. You quit fooling around with pointless, dead end idea projects, and begin repeating yourself. Well, maybe not everybody does so, but if you are a guy, I would guess there is a high probability along these lines.
  Presently, I am 56 years "young" (only old people talk that way), and what keeps cropping up in my brainstem of late, sounds like a serial repetition. On old vinyl records, if there was a bit of damage, they would sometimes "skip", and keep playing the same line in the song over and over. My brain appears to be skipping!
  The interior chatter, that self-talk we do, is topically indexed it appears. For some guys, the loop sequence is "sports", for others it is "girls". One occasionally chats with a gun and ammo guy, or perhaps an automotive lover of some flavor. I am normally able to dip into these private universes far enough to comment, or ask a couple of questions maybe, but basically, I just don't care that much about such stuff. Which introduces my first observation along these lines.  Simply said, whether you are ga-ga over soccer or WWII fighters bombers, very few (if any) people can care about it, the way you do. They might act enthusiastic enough, to get by, but frankly; once the discussion is over, you (not they) are the one jazzed by the talk. Now, the brain guck that resides in me, has almost no appeal at all to others, and I have a tough time even getting the fake "tell me more" request. No, the norm is "Do we have to talk about this?", or even less tactfully, a "You're depressing." squeaks out. That topic orbit which keeps rotating around in my skull is "The way of things".
  Gosh, a guy might imagine others would be all agog to discuss the nature of nature, to shoot the breeze concerning factuality itself, don't you agree? But, to be fair to others, my version of facticity itself, is a tad dire.
  What keeps looping in here is a projection of future America, or of future world. I love looking at all that conspiracy theory material available on You Tube, and whether Billy Bob McGee (or somebody) is in fact; THE ANTICHRIST!! You can see the way of things.
  People are scared, the future looks either plainly bleak, or so alien a world, as to be unrecognizable. So, the way involved just here is to find a trail, to set up markers so that others can navigate through here. Theorists of the c-type, believe that they are offering a service, you see? Now, the little matter that it is a service that only a few folks want, is beside the point.
  What then is the way of things in 21st cen America, how are things? You probably know that in the past, certain persons kept diaries, of their lives. As far as I know, only professional historians ever try reading such material, but clues as to the times, the feel of what life-then was, such is perhaps meaningful to somebody.
  This is not a diary, I can't imagine why people bother writing them anyhow, but maybe, just maybe, some of the feel of our era might leak onto the page? Perhaps a history buff 200 hundred years hence could glean an insight or two?
  On we march! The way of things might best be summed up by a crazy man named Phillip Wylie. He was writing about 60 years ago, and he was speaking of our land. The basic concept is "Mom-ism", as coined by Mr. Wylie. Mom-ist thought, was a kind of inverse (or converse?) to the "fatherland" drivel of A. Hitler.
  So, whereas Germany got lost in a masculine power model, and was all about hard, and tough and fearless, Wylie predicted back when; that a kind of soft totalitarianism, a squishy, feminine police state, was the inevitable result of overthrowing a masculine version of same. The push come to ugly feature here, is that he predicted it, not of Germany, but here. The phrase he invented which I so love, describing that way of things, is; "An iron fist, inside a velvet glove". Ain't that a gem?
  The way of things is what pundit Rushbo calls; "The chick-a-fication" of the nation. It is (ostensibly) all about "sensitivity, tolerance, and inclusion", which is plainly hogwash. It is about those up until you disagree just once with one of these wildcats. Then they will tear your lungs out (politely).  In regal terms, we are building a unitary super-state, but ruled by queens, not kings, it's like that. So, is this the part where you say; "Do we have to talk about this?". The iron fist is there, we have rules upon rules, laws out the wazoo, and the result? Chaos. The velvet glove is showing, soft fuzzy and warm!
  The way of things now is to introduce, "The outrage of the week" through electronic media. A shooting here, multiple kidnappings over there, pubic "servants" caught with their pants down (again) , oh; say an earthquake every now and then? The idea, is to keep chatter alive, to fuel buzz. And the point of that would be? Well, naturally, to introduce yet more laws!
  Nowadays, when a child falls off of a swingset, the police are called in to investigate. When perverts want to "marry" each other, or "change their gender", a cry of "hurrah" goes up? Why so? Duh, to make more rules!
  The way of rules, is that they exist in two forms. There is the codified version wherein one may be jailed or fined, and then there is the "pc" garbage. The pc bilge is normally manned by the young, in that as a maternalist schema, "kids are our heritage". So, they are expected to quickly grasp this week's outrage, run with the ball, and invent on the fly the "correct" (politically that is) perspective. This is enforced through group-think, to the point that people claim that they are ashamed for previously thinking otherwise than this week's up-to-date, "inclusive" concept.
  We are building then, a type of police state yes, but the cop on the beat, is to be you! You are to be the one who is to be all about love and good feelings, and if you're not, then you are "a hater". Okay, it's insane; but one does have to admire the efficiency of the chaos, the remarkable energy of the mental lethargy involved!
  So, the way of things is to value supremely "unity", which is to say; a guaranteed divisiveness is the natural product. Idols function this way. One starts out in favor of love, and then blows the girlfriend away. A person sets out to be humble, and then begins lecturing on "my humility", which is a damnably arrogant thing. In brief, we generate, not precisely, but close to the "opposite" of what we (so to speak) "intend". In Mom-ism, intention is all that matters. The small reality that Hillary has blood on her hands for the murder of an ambassador and his staff, is "obviously!" unrelated to her "good intentions".
  From a Christian perspective, I see things this way. We in America, are sectioning off, we are re-dividing up. The feminists over here, the luddites over there. The Buddists this way, the Bible believers that direction. Each group becomes a "community" which is a way of saying either an enclave, or a ghetto. Simply, we are constructing a series of future ghettos. Oddly it would seem, the prime ethic of unity must generate divisions, and tons of them!
  As Schlossberg aptly said; "We build idols. for our own destruction". This is what American "values" are actually about! Is this the part where you begin with: "You're depressing."?
  Nobody I know seems to be interested at all in this. The way of things is plainly an item to avoid. Now, I don't plan to leave off the cycle just yet, there must be hope . . . somewhere! And in brief, it is not intra-cosmic.
  There is nothing at all in the world, or in us as humans which prohibits "the worst in people" from manifesting. As a genuine "hater" (and "bigot" might I add?) the hope for us, is not from us, it is crashing in from "the outside". But not from outer space!
  The way of things is thus. People are stupid. They believe that the covenantal structure of scripture formats something along these lines.
  Once upon a time, God made (or didn't?) all things. Man screwed the pooch bigtime, and so He "made a deal" with mankind. The deal is roughly speaking; "Straighten up, and fly right (or at least occasionally try to); and if you (as a people) do well at that pointless task, then maybe I will reward you with a pointless heaven". Of course, heaven is this weirdo destination, with people sitting on clouds and forever blissfully halleluja-ing while playing crummy little harps. There are these fat-kid angels hanging around, and so you are supposed to be just pleased as punch to be there?
  The result of the blather is that we derive a destination, that nobody wants to go to, built upon a sketchy demand for having good attitude, which nobody could or would develop. This insane mess is rejected out of hand, and then people congratulate themselves for "evolving". What a bunch of boneheads we are!
  The way of things is that, yes; the covenant is basic. But, it is not "cut" between God and some abstract committee called "mankind". That group is covenantally dead! So, why strike a bargain with a gang of stiffs anyhow? No Sir!
  The deal is between the Father and the Son. This, my friend changes everything! Just listen to the looney hijacking of "love" by the pc mob. By golly, they are all in favor! But, to them, love is a static valuation of "feeling loving". It is like a certain brain drug, which is deemed pleasant. NO! The Father loves the Son, and the Son does all the Father's will . . . gladly, and rightly. That is a huge difference. Love is not a feeling, it is an active service unto the death. The way of things is that the Son is set a task. He performs it, and is welcomed back from that love-unto-death.
  He is crowned, all real estate, every ocean, the sum total of worlds and galaxies is deeded to Him, and He gladly returns the present to His Pop! The way of things thus, is that we have a concrete hope surely enough, but not from here.
  The welcome is for lawbreakers, for failures, for liars, frauds and drunks. The embrace is for those who turn from the path of their destructive idols, to cry out to their Maker for assistance, for friendship, and for meaning! He hears.
  The way of things is that the Guy who invented ears, hears. Who woulda thunk? The way of things is that He has determined to bring in a mighty host from earth, an uncountable and awfully glad "tribe". The way is that no power of earth and hell combined, can halt or frustrate Him in it.
  The way of things is that we keep offering editorial comments to Him as to how better to run things, or how best to govern reality; supposing He is actually serious about the job? The way, the real way; is the way of the cross.
  The hopes and dreams of things finally working right, the Messiah is come! The dizzy ambitions of a new and better tomorrow, all that shattered in one bloody, shameful day of misery, betrayal and pain. And just there, right at the absolute bottom of the barrel, He rotates history, He inverts the pyramid of power, He begins a new creation. The gutless heartless failure is mine, and (God Bless HIM!) He took that package upon His own self, right to hell. And then, He trades the Father's lovely coat of many colors for my rags? He covers me (?) with a right-ness which is not mine, and also, now is considered mine!
  Hope lives, because He lives. Ascending on high, we find that even today, He intercedes for us; and perfects our shabby prayers. The way of things is much more like a volcano for warmth, and a lightning bolt for fun! The way of things a complex dance even the worst stumblebum begins to learn the steps to. The way, a man, or truly The Man, pledging Himself now to us . . and again unto the death!
  But death cannot any longer touch Him. A new vista is opening up, a glad and a fierce, a wild and an old. But what oldsters they are, evergreen, vibrant and finally at peace in their own heads!
  The way in brief, is that the the new creature shall be built, and the foe who is no creator, but merely a bad slave, must "try to" duplicate that many-as-one. That way lay destruction, and out of that destruction comes the Almighty loud shout of Our Captain to wake the dead!
  He is coming, sure as shootin', He is coming, and the enemy is (rightly) terrified. The way of things is that the dragon, unable to kill the child born, and unable to snuff his mother, went to make war upon her other children. Pssst, this is where you come in.
  And I saw the enemy war upon the holy ones, and he prevailed against them, and they did valiantly by the word of their testimony, by the blood of the Lamb, and that they loved not their own lives. . . even unto death.
  Now, that is love! Why is nobody interested in this?

The Un-New, Un-Man

  It was only yesterday that I figured out that "SCOTUS" is an acronym for Supreme Court of the United States. I was more familiar with the terms "the court" and "the Supremes". SCOTUS  is like POTUS (President of the United States) but it had not previously occurred to me to call them that. This week, they produced "rulings" on two key issues, and although it might be kinda fun to deride them as traitors and whatnot; I (as usual) am mostly noticing those items not being said. To me, it is more interesting to look over the blueprint, to get an idea of what is being built, rather than to just add my voice to the rants about "development ruining things".
  In the first place then, over in facebook land, I noted, early on; the divisions clearly appearing. Some sort of war between patriots and skittles perhaps? Clearly, we are a land divided, and a house at opposition to itself. The political spectrum of left to right, we might have correctly guessed, but what I found surprising was how consistently the male to female views sharply differed. I will be quoting none of the posts found, neither those agreed upon, nor those I found to be plainly insane. But in large terms; the fem-left skittles group was very glad indeed that the five kings dressed in black had authorized homosexual "marriage" across all state boundaries. They appeared to think that some sort of redux of the 1960s era civil rights struggle was being played out? The patriot, right-guy perspective was more to the effect that the court had begun inventing laws out of thin air, and that the unconstitutional abuses represented by such actions cannot possibly bode well for the future of the republic. So, besides the divisions noted, one is looking backward to a glorious struggle, and the other was looking ahead, to grim consequences. But, when I analyze things this way, I normally search for an unspoken, and third option.
  If you would like to try it sometime, one must "listen for" what is not being said, but what is yet being implied (especially in the assaults launched) by the respective "sides". One must learn to hear the quiet, in order to decode the third view, by words unspoken; in my assumed position.
  So, in the first case which the court heard, do you hear the silence on the status of citizenship? Bad "decision" number one of the week declares it is now "legal" that the government may find "criminal" those who "fail to purchase".
  The topic of the case has to do with health insurance, but that is moot to my point here. Regardless of whether we discuss a product or a service, for any government to be able to force purchase of anything, upon anyone; is the work tyrants love best. The roaring quiet just about here, is centered upon the legal fiat which redefines citizens, so to create "criminals" out of thin air. The "neo-crime" of "failure to purchase" (logically at least) creates the "right" for the ruling class (also out of thin air) to fine, detain, jail (or worse) such "neo-felons" at their leisure. It is a hammer which might someday fall, it is an arbitrary and unjust enforcement of raw power we see. The commerce clause was written to protect citizens from just such federal excess. The feds were never to be entrusted in this fashion, and so the founders chained future political ambition of coming rulers. That safeguard is now history.
  R.I.P. to the Constitution! The silence prevailing here, is that we are (apparently at least) in an unannounced post-constitutional phase? The quiet prevailing here, is the lack of eulogies for the deceased, our beloved document.
  Now, as an aside; in my opinion the logical and obvious fix to the problem of the uninsured, is to make provision for doctors and healthcare institutions to simply refuse to serve those that they deem to be bad financial risks. If no ability to pay is found in the buyer, then the obligation to serve should be a matter of conscience for providers. Thus, the internal motivation for purchasers of said insurance is for their own peace of mind, and financial stability. Duh?
  SCOTUS decided instead; to build an underclass of "neo-criminals", which technically becoming "lawbreakers", can (nowadays) "lawfully" be rounded up whenever Uncle feels the need to apply some political pressure. Such "helps" nobody, but the governing class, as it gathers unnatural powers to itself, so to grant the "legal" privilege to persecute, detain, and (ultimately) to "disappear" those it finds slow to obey. That monstrosity is what we are just now seeing being built.
  Now the silence just here, at the gathering of "powers-unnatural" is what sounds loudest to my ears.
  The other "ruling" which grants nationwide sanction to sodomy as an "equally valid form of married union", is of a different kind than merely creating "criminals" out of nothing. It is a much worse overstep, in that it redefines by statute, the creature "man".
  Many of the Christian comments I have seen posted repeat (correctly) that marriage is the union of one man with one woman. And as far as a definition goes, this works. But what goes unsaid (often) is that "the creature man" is not, and never really was. Or to rephrase, the Biblical view is that "man" was the two as one, not the one as one. The West has come, through a torturous process, to view the creature "man", as an autonomous and "atomic" individual, and any grouping thereof as ancillary, and frankly unrelated. The elevation of the one over the many thus, as a presumptive identity; necessarily reframes "the image".
  The original (and true!) working definition of "the creature" was that the two were joined as one. The union comprised of individuals covenantally bound to each other, proposes something like a "compound entity", or a "many-which-is-one" as the "reflection and depiction" of the True; Many-Who-Is-One. With this sort of view then, union (marriage) is so basic to the identity of "man" as "image", that to distort or forget such is to reject formally creation. Such must finally deploy as a fully blown denial of The Creator.
  Think with me, is it "coincidence" alone that the next gen is "pretending at" atheism, or are they in fact playing their true hand? Homosexual "marriage" can never be "additional to" the genuine article, in that it is formally at war with it! And listen to the quiet just here. Don't you sense also the big silence concerning the congruence of hatred for "religion", with love for "diversity"?
  Gruesomely enough, all of this is bad news indeed, but I have yet barely begun! The flat denial of YAHWEH, behind perverted sex generates a necessary power vacuum. Evict Him, and it not like you get nothing, you get altogether too much! And that; formats as far, far worse. When the Living God is denied, the "empty space" is always, always filled, but not with freedom. Look instead for the miserable, and for the deceitful and murderous.
  Recall that when the faith was new in earth, it in those days displaced and drove out "the gods"; those ancient foes of all that is decent, true and right. Those agents of chaos did not disappear, but instead they were chained in darkness. And as our fem-left, and backwards-focused skittles neighbors make "progress", they rejoice that they are casting off the restraints and narrow mindedness of old? Uhm, newsflash, this just in: Those restraints were in place for good reasons!
  In the bad old days, when those ancient enemies of God and man had fuller sway, life was not "better and free". It was the new blueprint, it was the Biblical Gospel which brought into earth, the fruits of education, progress, emancipation and compassion to a hard, cold and brutal environment. The shape of that new building was that the original "compound entity" (the original couple) now served as template for a much larger, grander and widely inclusive "new creature". The new blueprint includes the many, those drafted in from around the world (and across the age!) joined into one new "man" (well, woman actually). So then, the covenant between the Father and the Son is graciously inclusive of an uncountable host rescued from the wrath which is surely coming. The true image, in which the question: "Which is supreme, the one or the many?" is resoundingly answered with "Yes and Amen!". And this, my friend; is the Real McCoy.
  The enemy though, has his own sad and sick mock-up of what is being built. An anti-god, sending his un-messiah, to coerce through lies and fear, a mob of the confused. This, the un-new, un-man which is presently in the process of being slapped together, is a hopeless and insane project. Built with duct tape, baling wire, and plenty of chewing gum to hold the construct together, it simply must collapse under judgement as its' certain destiny. The thing being constructed partakes of the three elements of all idolatry.
  The flesh is "strange", and purposely attempts to defeat the marriage union. So we look for fornication, adultery, and perverse sexual practice being promoted. The next is a world sweeping kind of power trip (being on the "winning side" of history) so to defy the True King in His Majesty. And the final element is a direct and unmediated linkage into the spirit realm. The idols of old, functioned just this way, and the un-new un-man has no choice but to likewise construct.
  The quiet, just about precisely here; in this neighborhood I find to be deafening. What SCOTUS did this week, was to ratify two of the three legs! It justified arbitrary and despostic powers of the state, and next; did what it could to shatter the marriage union. It voted "Yes and Amen" to the world and to the flesh. The missing element is those ancient foes I keep bringing up, and bondage to them. And here, is the real quiet; the truly silent aspect of the postings.
  These official and legal declarations are spiritually functioning as a "summons", a calling-for to entities long enchained in darkness. Did any of the posts on either "side" mention that part of the deal? These "rulings" function as an attempt to raise from the depths, those vigorous and disgusting ex-persons of old! They, now enraged at the short time that they have to operate within, indeed bodes ill for mankind.
  The Christian testimony defending lawful union ought occasionally mention such things, don't you think? Where is the sound of it? Why the roaring silence?
  Now, as a man, I cannot say for certain whether we are indeed near the end of the age or not. I mean by this, at 56 years of age; I might see the return of Messiah before dying, and I might not. But, I can say with some confidence, that the two major signs which must precede that appearance (the great apostasy and the revealing of the son of perdition) have not (to my knowledge) yet occurred. Therefore, our standing orders have not changed.
  The reason it is "taking so long" for the return  of The Christ of God is simply a matter of His own honor. He has sworn to His own harm, upon His own dignity; to not lose a single one of His children. Each and every one of those boneheaded rascals (of His) shall most certainly be spared! Not a one of them overlooked nor lost, so He guarantees . . . Personally! For this, He makes time. The children of Israel, in their long march, never went faster than the slowest toddler, or the old and weak could go. Leading, He never out-paced the woman great with child.
  So then, we are freed to plead the blood of The Lamb upon our unhistorical, and skittles enhanced neighbors! Who knows how many of them will be turned out of the way of destruction and judgement by His generous hearing of our calls for aid? Who can count how effective our interceding might finally prove to be?
 Being on the wrong side of history, means (plainly) to be found a foe, traitor and fraud in that great and terrible day, by Him-Knowing. We knowing (somewhat) the terror of the Almighty, wish that mind wrecking fear upon no man, no matter how far he is sunk in the mire of that other, and doomed construction project.
  As for the devils, they are hammered toast. We have been sheared off from their destiny, by the good and generous meddling of The True King in our affairs. Bringing light, He Is Light!
  He is going to light up everything and everyone! Our choice then, as humans; is plain. Either we shine in and with Messiah Jesus, or we burn . . . alone. Regardless; everybody gets lit up!

On Ritual (date unknown)

  Have you ever watched people? My friend Ron calls himself a "people watcher", and as a psychologist/counselor he is pretty good at it. He will go to the mall, or perhaps some type of gathering . . . and watch!

  Ron is all the time talking about how repetitive the behaviors of humans are. And whether it is a tantrum or a smile the given person favors, they keep at it; and repeat the action. People do the same kinds of things over and over again, have you noticed? For instance, I am constantly losing or misplacing things. In serial fashion; I execute flawlessly the placing of a tool, or a piece of paper, so to three minutes later; have to "find". The routine manner of our personal rituals can drive a person crazy (why do I keep doing that?), and yet the repetitive is by in large what our lives are made of.

  Now, people will tell you that they personally hate ritual, but that is simply untrue. What we humans hate is "empty" ritual. Our usual goof of equating ritual to pointless actions, and to thereby denounce ritual itself is just lazy thinking. The fact that we are able to detect the fine nuance of ritual itself, so to correctly identify a poorly executed one, or one which has over time become meaningless; points out not a hatred of repetitive structured behavior, but an expertise in it!

  For us to be able to detect the shallow and rote, to grasp the perfunctory and disinterested actions of others is much more along the lines of a wine connoisseur's ability to sniff a slight variance in bouquet. His super sensitive nose and palate do not mean that he hates wine, it means he hates bad wine! And when it comes to ritual, we are like that also.

  Now, some might make the observation that the previous paragraphs are pure rubbish. That person might strongly dislike attending stylized, ceremonial public events. Baptisms, weddings, inaugerations and such like stuff might be a source of crashing boredom. So what? And the what is that they believe (wrongly) that they thereby dislike ritual. Such "official ritual" is but the tip of the iceberg!

   Ron will tell you, our lives are flooded with a repetitive and serial repeat feature. We cannot "hate ritual", for nearly all we do is ritual! Our lives are swamped, soaked and steeped in these patterns of over and over again, for years and then decades. We err, if we come to think that our personal and private rituals (since not public and staged) are not ritual.

  Think of an action, I don't care which, and "behind" it, lay ritual! Just ask people, they will insist that there is a "right way" to brush teeth. One lady I know seriously believes that there is a "proper way" to load toilet paper on the wall mount (it comes over the top). Try sometime eating a banana with a spoon in front of people, and observe their reactions, you are not doing it "the right way"!

  When somebody cuts you off on the interstate, what rises up in you? "What an idiot! Where did this moron learn to drive?!" In his breaking of driving convention, he is violating ritual, and we the experts can tell in a moments' time, he is doing it wrong! The ritual behavior of practicing the rules of the road, are normal, wholesome and sane, to break it is weird, dangerous and stupidly crazy. The ritual and meaning are not the same thing, more like neighbors.

  Our meaning is linked to serial actions. It need not be healthy or wise, it can be ritual alienation, or depression. Ritual violence and ritual sadness (and worse) can lend meaning for us. We keep doing the same kind of things, over and over, we believe in ritual.

  In my opinion, there is no good method to estimate just how much of our daily lives are ritual, but my guess is 90% minimum. You see, there is no "spontaneous" platform to stand upon, outside of ritual, to look backward from, so to examine the thing by.

  So, if meaning is the load, ritual is the wheelbarrow we carry it in. One person brags; "I work out five times a week!". Why? That one believes in strength, it gives her meaning. Another says; "I'm a vegan!". Ritually then, barbells and celery stalks are to make life better. We love to compare and contrast rituals between us, much as I traded marbles or baseball cards when a boy. We are looking to build an ideal set of marbles and ritual. Oh sure, we "correct" those with bad or destructive repetitions, because we are (if you'd like to know) quite knowledgeable about such things. So there is an inside and an outside to ritual.

  Inside the ritual, there is "nothing wrong with it", but viewed from the outside, it clearly needs to come to a halt! As a kind of rule of thumb then, ritual itself makes no distinction, as to whether ritual is desirable. It only "attaches". Exercising five or ten times a week is as valid as shooting up, as viewed from within ritual, and people know this, so they are constantly busy with the meta- ritual of correcting your bad habits.

  I don't much care for Freud, Jung or Adler. The psyche and why it chooses to defeat or frustrate its' own best interests seems normal enough to me. And all this "depth work", and years long counseling sessions are trying to assert that people's real words are not what they really mean, and that we need "to get to the root causes"? What a snoozer. 

  Heck, fights are about important stuff! The dishes were not washed and then dried and stacked properly! Now you're pushing buttons, them is fighting words! It is the "little things" that matter, and not because we are "small minded". It is because ritual is so humanly central, so dreadfully significant! Meaning itself is at stake. Those blockheads in Washington could not balance a girl scout troop budget, and an impending collapse of the economy . . . gets a yawn and the channel changed. But junior (once again!) "forgetting" to take out the trash? It is the stuff of high drama. 

  We ritually demean ourselves for having a poor sense of priorities just about here, but I see it differently. It is precisely the little things that matter most to us. This brings me to my final point.

  If the repetitive, the consistent, the dependable means anything, it means that we ourselves are fairly predictable. We ought to think about this occasionally.

  The 20th cen existentialists wearied their unfortunate pupils with their sad (and stupid) claim that life itself is inherently meaningless, and that actions per se are "absurd". They tried (very diligently!) to find that platform outside of ritual, so to view ritual by. These washed up ikons of cerebral horsepower were by in large ignored, and rightfully so. People know better than that.

  If anything, life is thronged, crowded, and jam-packed with meaning. You can't get away from it! The real challenge would be to correctly identify just one "meaningless" thing. It is a regular stampede of meaning down here. Admiring the daisy waving hello in the wind, watching the ladybug crawl up the stem, the sound of children's laughter, we are swamped in meaning! And from the inside, none of our rituals seem wrong to us. That is our problem here.

  Douglas Hofstater wrote once of a record player. The sound coming from the disc was entitled; "Music to smash record players by". The idea is great! The vibrations and squeaks which would cause screws and glues to come unfastened are being played over the speaker, and just that sound is what wrecks speakers! Well, I like the idea in any case.

  What we require is a ritual to break ritual by, a way to come out of our meaning, so to grasp the truer, better, faster and higher meaning. We need a way to shed ritual in order to grasp the real McCoy. We require a pattern to break patterns by. And to simply "hate ritual" and clamor for spontaneity and newness is itself the dullest of all rituals. Our syllogism; "Ritual gives meaning, and meaning is good, therefore ritual is good" is unbreakable from the inside.

  Perhaps this will help you see more clearly why I am a Calvinist? We are called alive, and things are spoken into being. Creation is the original miracle, and resurrection is like it, but moreso, so to speak. The call is out of death, and into life, and the living respond by trusting the Caller. That real McCoy, the higher faster meaning is along these lines.

  Ritual so completely defines meaning in our lives as humans, it is so overwhelmingly present; that it would require a super-natural ability, a strength from clean outside the world to overcome it. For us alone, there is no intracosmic solution, we are swamped unto death in ritual. But we are not alone. Ritual itself needs to die, but we unaided have not the strength to kill it, for all that we do only builds it. We are not unaided.

  So, if the Gospel preaches an alien righteousness, I am speaking of an alien ritual. The call is out of death, and then those living are called to lay down their lives. The apostle says: "I die daily". God is come to meddle in our ritual!

  Sanctification can never ever mean "getting my act together", or picking up new habits which are (somewhat) more wholesome. It is a glad acceptance of the loss of what we hold dearest, it is the loss of "meaning"!

  Friend, when you are pushing up daisies, nobody (including you) will give a rip about your fixation with toilet paper directionally rolling out. When you become Purina worm chow, not a soul on the planet will care if you dried dishes "correctly".

  The glory of Gospel is that we are being called into that freedom today! The living no longer "believe in" morals or politics or principles. They have entrusted all that meaningful freight to the Only One who could (or would for that matter) carry it safely. These many meanings of our lives we pass into His keeping, and have come to instead believe The One Meaning, He-Himself.

  We sought freedom from ritual, and tried to pretend that we did not care for it. That whining refusal only became our new ritual. There is no way out of this trap, unless we be carried in Another's arms right out of our world.

  Now, let's talk about the cross!

Pagan Pride Day (date unknown)

  Wait, wait let's go back and read that headline again. Does it really say; "Pagan Pride Day"? Reading the article, surely enough down at Young Park the event will be an all day "celebration of paganism" this Saturday!
  I think it was C.S. Lewis writing somewhere amid his essays to the effect; "Paganism cannot ever make a true revival". Now, not being quite certain that he did indeed so say, I would yet like in this C.P.E. to wax eloquent upon what I deem to have been his intention.
  In Mike-speak then; Once upon a time, in the vast forests of central Europe, dwelt clans, tribes and families of "barbarians". Their world was a dangerous one, clearly inhabited by spirits. Spirits of the dead, mingled with nymphs, ogres, trolls and such, were held at bay by the local expert, a shaman or sorcerer or a healer of some kind. The norm was that by ritual, or omen, or elixir; with due caution (plus some helpful magic and circumspection), life was made manageable. Really, it was just common sense to deal with the spooky threats of this sort by employing professional expertise!
  The later (and alien to those forests), concept of a single "super-God", who by His power, made and sustained all, and then arrived upon earth as a man (?), would have appeared to those pagans as not only incomphrehensible nonsense, but blasphemous! The Christian faith as it swept Europe, drove off (mainly at least) the gods, ogres, and phantoms which had made life previously so risky. And so, for those lands to revert to pre-Christian status, so to "revive paganism", can't actually happen, we know too much for that.
  It might be a bit like when you were very young. If perhaps you believed that airplanes went aloft via magic, that might be fine for a three year old mind. But the later information about airfoils, lift, drag and whatnot; have permanently altered your view of flight. You, at this stage, cannot return to the young view of magic. Well, you can, but not in good faith.
  I think it was along these lines that Lewis wrote, and we can appreciate his tidyness and brevity of expression, compared to mine. But I am fairly certain that the newspaper in the 1950's never posted in England a "pride day" of this sort. So, we are in a different position than he. I decided to investigate. After all; the event was free to get in!
  By my one day exposure to the phenomenon, the "revival" of paganism reminds me of our public image of pirates and Vikings. Have you noted in movies or in literature how adorable, witty and cute these people are portrayed to have been? They appear to be a very musical folk and are quite the dancers too? Pirates and Vikings are a bit like the pagans I met.
  Flash forward in time a few centuries, do we look forward to handsome clever depictions of our modern day Crips and Bloods? Will there be musicals featuring Muslim suicide bombers dancing their way toward destiny?
  The brutal and psychotic, the murderous and treacherous, the vile and repugnant nature of these ancient gangsters is forgotten, and their image rebuilt. So too, the pagans.
  The dread of crossing paths with the dead, or an evil spiriit, the appeasing of the gods with blood, the servile obediance to the shaman, all this is forgotten. It is all sunshine and daisies we view in the mod pagan. If ancient pirates are akin to thug drug lords of today, then ancient pagans are like our diagnosed paranoid schizophrenics. Every avenue must be guarded, "they" are out to get me! On one hand, the rape, murder and pillaging of old are forgotten, and likewise the short lives always lived in fear that "the powers" might be angry conveniently disappears!
  By my sampling then, the revived modern pagan is an almighty eclectic chap. Dipping in here, taking a snippet there, adding a dab atop from about four or five ancient cultures as fancy dictates, they imagine the cleaned-up, fun, and sassy thing they sell is the real deal.
  Now I did say "chap"? Actually, the majority of the pagans I encounterd were young women. All of that magnet-for-girls stuff was clearly in evidence. Face it, most modern marketing is directed toward a feminine customer base, and this same selling technique was quite evident at pride day.
  Are you in need of jewelry, incense, wall hangings or perhaps herbal formulas? I know just the place for you to shop. Powders, potions and cremes are all linked (at least, in the mind) back to a "goddess" type of theology, and inevitably to witchcraft. But, the main thing to note is that all of these products and services are not designed to ward-off, or to protect from rogue spirits. They are intended to draw . . . humans! It is mainly about gaining power over other people via these earthly tinctures, these incantations and crystals. So, when these gals are talking; and mention the word "spiritual" they have a soul thing in mind, and ordinarily to cause mine to shine brighter than yours; for a price. So to "draw".
  Thus, there is a cut and paste effort. The Egyptian, Norse and Celtic, are woven loosely in with the ancient Native American as an amalgamated world. The Druids of old show up disguised as modern Wicca, and this hodge-podge is all bundled up as a "new and fresh" marketing angle.
  The other main item I noted from the event was "the invisible 100 pound rule book". I engaged in conversation with three or four gals at seperate booths during the afternoon. As each made their pitch for what they sold, there was a surprisingly uniform rationale as to "why" this revival was so very important, timely and necessary. Each woman had apparently read the rule book, for they all sounded much similar in their reasoning.
  Don't you see? We are all about simplicity and getting back to nature! We cast off the hypocrisy and bigoted mean-ness of the past. And although not one of them mentioned the church, we need not be psychic to gather which "institutions of the past" ought be overthrown. We are all about freedom and expressing our unique individuality (in remarkably uniform ways).  I think the 100 pound rulebook in reality, only contains one rule. It reads something like; "Be yourself", or perhaps "Get free of the past". They didn't show me their copies, but there must be one humongously long footnote to the rule!
  If in similar fashion, we read the U.S. tax code as; "Render tax to whom tax is due", then the remaining 70,000 pages of the code would be a comparable footnote.
  Likewise then of neo-paganism, I heard mention (at length!) of the fabulously complex nature of their footnote to the simple rule of "Be free". The add-ons, the qualifications and provisos, the delimitations, exceptions and clarifications the ladies recited were astounding.
  My final assessment, after thinking it over for a few days, is that these folks are too cute, by half. The suggestive and sexy, the "strong girl" theme is apparently oblivious to what ancient idol worship was. The saleswomen were very clear on distancing themselves from any ancient religion. Zero mention of those monstrous demands for blood and slavery. There was no notice taken at all of the three legs of all idolatry. And whether old or new, the three are remarkably uniform across the age.
  In modern speak, we would say; "Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll", but only if we recall the wealth and power of musicians.  The three are the sensual (normally linked to an "ideal" feminine youthful appearance), the money plus power (of "greatness"), entwined with an alcoholic or narcotic (unmediated) link to the realm of spirits. The apostle calls it "The flesh, the world, and the devil", and who am I to disagree? My point is that ancient pagans were in servitude to local gods, which we would name demons. Furthermore, the modus operandi was uniform. Break the lawful marriage bond, be dazzled with gold and power, and link directly to the spirit realm. It was a very bad idea. But the revival of paganism has forgotten this crucial matter.
  To build a sexually loose and "free" culture celebrating the ideal feminine, to market with hopes of riches and greatness, and to suggest that herbs or amulets or channeling can get you directly in touch with "powers" has all been tried before. It collapsed under the weight of the truth of Jesus Christ. Those freed from their ancient chains would surely scorn this modern folly to rebuild that prison of ignorance and fear. In brief then, what is revived is the hate associated with the word "primitive"
  We used to view those sunk in the old darkness as primitive, but now it is applied to "Bible thumping" you and I! It was into that old pattern our brave Captain stepped.
  So come with me to Calvary to view the rage and spite which some would revive. This you would rebuild? Whipped, disfigured, spit-upon is He. Naked, alone and friendless He Be. This travesty of all that is decent and right is precisely how the "enlightened" treated the Mighty Maker when He came to call. See Him, and know yourself, your true self, and despair of your rule keeping and damnable cleverness! He alone is free, and thank God Almighty; He calls for me!
  You see? All our lives we tried to straighten up, to make ourselves "presentable". All our efforts are to cover up our smell, and to appear strong. The rendezvous point, the agreed meeting place of the supper, is where we are found. I ask is there anything lower than a cannibal? And just here we are found, we eating His flesh, the Lamb of God! Do you see? The meeting place is at our lowest, our worst; not where we would like, those moments we imagine ourselves to be young, smart and strong. The intersection with Him is our failure, not our mastery!
  And this unstoppable love shall roll over, and collapse (once again) all the man made (woman selling) superstitions of the day.
  His-story reads: "Messiah wins, bigtime!".

The Way ofThe Bump (date unknown)

  Note to reader; I have (apparently) developed the habit of rewriting these old C.P.E.s as I transcribe them off of old photocopies laying around the house. I shall endeavor to remain more or less true to the original here, but as usual; I find my normal writing to be often too dense and cryptic. It needs a bit of folksy fluffing up! So then, onward we sprint.

  There is a circularity to things, and one thing feeding off of another, in turn re-enforces the first. For instance, some people (often men) become millionaires as motivational speaker types. They, for a hefty sum; will come to a hall or an event so to "inspire" others (you, I mean) such that "we learn to" successfully overcome what I deem "the bump".
  The bump is all around us, and in us. Most notably perhaps, it is evident in the heart, and by this; please infer in the essay, that I refer to "our want-to". All day, we put up with co-workers who are ever trying to do the very least that they can, in order to get by. They do not want to work diligently. At the grocery store, people are surely found able to wheel out their cart, and also way too "exhausted" to return it. My room needs cleaning, and the oatmeal needs boiling, and exhaustion, or stress, or worry or some other interference "prohibits". It is a three inch high Mount Everest we behold.
  The reason we call it the bump, is to compare the phenomenon to those darned speed bumps found in parking lots. I enjoy watching low-riders drive over such bumps. It, this supreme slowpokery; reminds of how we ourselves are. The wreckage of the suspension system on a Monte Carlo is a bit like the wreckage in us, don't you think?
  The "want-to" in us is broken, and instead of gliding over tiny obstacles, we keep finding "excuses, forgetting and exhaustion" as the way to not-do. The way of the bump is our irresponsible nature in all it's glory. We "want very badly" to be let off the hook, and for someone else to lead. Motivational speakers are paid to attempt to override this strong "not-want" in us, so to furnish with a "new-want" to become leaders. The sketchy results of their "work" are normally covered by yet more excuses and forgetting on our part. Just here, we view the damage wrought at Eden. Our hearts are wrong, our wanters are wrecked; and it shows!
  Have you ever enjoyed the spectacle of a low-rider in the Albertson's lot? It is downright comical watching the ever so careful and slow approach to "Mount Speed-bump". But this unwillingness to begin is not nearly so humorous when found in people. Like the guys I work with, as they ever so slowly approach the "tough" job of digging a two foot deep hole, to find the water line, it makes me want to shout at them, "Get the lead out of your ass!". Or, on my other job of part-time janitor, the guys "not noticing" that huge pile of boxes that we are being paid to move! Out "want-to" is busted, and no number of coats of paint can hide the problem. It is in us, it is around us, and to some degree at minimum; is us!
  People will gladly inform you, "You shouldn't make a mountain out of a molehill", and they will soberly inform you that the lackluster and lazy man nonetheless "has his heart in the right place". And so, we can safely infer that like lowriders ascending the three inch "mountain", we normally are in fact making mountains of molehills. Moreover, this demonstrably proving that our hearts are not now, and never were "in the right place".
  All of this is fairly common as a conversational matter, especially if the target of the comments is not present. We wish we were different, but the problem here never does go away. No amount of scolding, or it's opposite, the dreaded building of "self-esteem", ever begins to put a dent in our block-heart behaviors. No stressing of "accountability and communication" ever appear to return a single shopping cart; or get one hole dug.
  In it's simple form, we might thereby ask; "How can I make myself want . . . what I do not (in fact) want?", and in any case, why would I want to?. Those reputed to be the zealous, those, the fired-up, them, the happy and efficient, are reputedly that way, but let's just face it; I'm not. Moreover, I don't really want to be like them, but supposing I could somehow counter this un-desire in me, of what use is the mere advice "to become exuberant, joyous and whatnot"? It just bounces off. You'll really notice this in church if ever you go.
  I don't think you could pay me enough to be a Pastor, I see the bump all too clearly. All of this gutless "you-first" stuff, the excuses and foot-dragging of the reluctant sheep, how do you go about shepherding them? The ever so slow ascent of Mount Gossip, the overcoming of the tremendous inertia to begin even the very easiest of tasks, these slow-poke baby steps would drive me bonkers!
  And it is just here, that we view the so-called "cure" being so widely slathered on. From the lips of the exhausted, out of the mouths of the forgetful, comes the stellar answer? It kind of sounds like; "And, if we all just (you fill in the blank as you please here) and were held accountable!". If "we-all" just did, or did not, something or another, then poof and kapow, all of this collective lead in our butts would mysteriously disappear? Please, stop the madness.
  You see, the disease in us is spread from heart to mind. We are impaired, and as such, we gladly endorse the shallow and stupid, and have "issues" with believing the rock solid and true. We believe in ghosts, and doubt the times tables. From there, it spreads to the soul, and we find we are simply overwhelmed with the pointless and busy, so to ever put off living until "tomorrow" (retirement). Next, it spreads to strength, and we end up vainly hoping to gather the "oomph" to tackle those really big jobs, while freely admitting we are (just now) too tired to even pick up the trash on the floor right in front of us. In all this, we numbly keep right on thinking that the overcoming of the bump is something we can (or perhaps could?) do, if-only, and if-only; off into a perpetually never arriving future.
  This puny "over-coming" (which never actually happens) is in a sense then, the Western and Christian "thing". This enormous amount of talk (this essay included), that never ending coaching, and all the inveterate planning through an infinite series of "meetings" makes me mentally ill. It is shameful in my estimation, that low-riders are far better at the task of bump surmounting, in that they are at least rolling!
  Somehow, we know. We know that our hearts ought be afire, and that they are not. But where the thing goes blank is how to get there, from here? We get downright silly, and await some "grassroots" type of "groundswell", in which the many are (collectively) fired up. Ah, then things will change! But (conveniently enough), it is never me who changes. We, along these lines; pray for "revival". In it all, that same "you-first" gutlessness, and the serial excuses made, for why "the message isn't getting out" (and such blather) always very conveniently indeed, lets me personally (but never you!), off the hook. And it makes me want to puke.
  Like so many surfers, we are paddling about in the water, awaiting the next big one. Consistently, and purposefully, we "forget" that He is the wave, He is the fire! Our ordinary "solutions" to the bump are thus abstract and impersonal; thereby impotent to change the want-to in us, much less to change the world.
  Very roughly, it might be like me telling you; "You ought be more thoughtful", while never mentioning that thinking is about something! You might or might not end up being thoughtful as you solve a problem, or puzzle out an answer, but thoughtfulness is the result of thinking not the cause! And this bizarre backwardness of ours, this half-wanting of what we want-not, is formally insane in my opinion. The firing of the heart is a contractual affair, a covenantal and oath swearing thing, and so rotates squarely upon promises given and received. In brief, the center of heart-fire, is He in Person, and specifically His trustworthyness. Do you see?
 This can only mean one thing, The Trust-ed One . . . trusts! Ergo, He is trusting me! Gosh, doesn't He (of all Persons!) know what a bad bet I am? How could He trust me to do the right thing, or be the right kind of man? And the new thing is by our trusting Him, we first begin to be trustable ourselves. Yes, and we give Him our center, yes, we hand over our want-to, believing He will not prove to be yet another finger-pointing, foot-shuffling, excuse maker. He proves true!
  The upside of Sanction is blessing, and of course, the downside is curse. Armed, dangerous and furious, He comes! Furious at what? And it is precisely here, here at want-to; that we begin to see anew. It was my gutlessness, my wimpy irresponsibility, enjoined by the entire world sunk in this very mire; which He comes to deal a death blow to. Now, a new fire is kindled in us, in that the death-coming, came! Our (we the believing I mean) shattering has been Personally and contractually intercepted! Lawyers are involved, it is real. So then, that constant dread of ours of "being held responsible", this is very "off the hook" thing, which we all our lives we tried to build (and could not) also died!
  God the Almighty, He is no wimpy nice Guy, no ineffective excuse maker (like us!), not that ever! No sir, He took the bit in His teeth, and rode right into flames to shield His kids. No incompetant boob of a leader (like some we could name), He "takes the initiative, and forces the solution" home. Sanction is plainly saying; "Break faith with Me, and you die". He, in our place died, and graciously, with Him, we too died! In Him, we have new wanters, new hearts!
  Zeal is like thought, it is about something. We are not zealous about zeal, we do not love love, nor do we trust faith. These pitiful zero sums of ours can only build the cage. Meanwhile,  He comes to kick down the doors!
  Clearly then, from Adam we inherited a "wait and see" approach. We very strongly desire to see the results before we believe the promise. We want-to have our cake, and eat it too! We remain blind to this backwardness itself in us, and that is the norm, which is being overthrown. Ever afraid to get in over our head, we await competence prior to doing the work. Yet, it is only by the doing that competance ever begins at all. To await competence, is to forever postpone; and we did so, because we wanted-to, while never noticing that our "want-to" has (apparently) been wrecked!
  Ask the true-hearts, they will tell you. "In the midst of my floundering, and in the very process of being overwhelmed, I found a strength to endure, which I knew not I had. It was the gift (His Gift), of the Son in us, and ever with us!" A new thing is in the earth, and so our infection of laziness and stubborn refusal to get involved is being reversed. In brief, we are (with His aid) beginning to want-anew. And though we might well appear to be "zealous" to others, it was never zeal we desired, but the Captain Himself. The hungry man does not want "appetite" but food! We the lonely, desire the person, not a "mindset". He finds us and He, in Person; is changing hearts, renewing them to want-again. He-afire, He-alight, He the desire of the ages, proves true; so the true-hearts say.
  But, be warned, this new thing very much appears to the "still forgetful" to be a dangerous and downright unwholesome "trend" indeed. This new going-up, appears to those standing upside down, to be a going down, and so to them is a loss of freedom, a sacrifice of individuality. And until they too are called awake, it simply must remain the supreme form of "un-want" in them.
  And so we valiantly strive for a downward mobility in their eyes. We reach as amateurs for mastery of the low and simple. At the bottom (which is in reality the top) we find our minds being likewise freed to think well of Him, and so too of others. And be honest with me, wasn't that the hardest portion of the bump all along?
  He the Infinite and Invisible, hears our weak call in time
     He the Eternal King, stoops to enter our dim shed
         He the lawfully rejected, gladly accepts
             He trusting to the death, we now trust
                  This, the pattern, this our prayer
                       He finding us, we finding true desire
                           To live!
                               At peace
                                  With the uncountable throng
                                      Made anew!

Hollering At Hillsides (date unknown)

  There exists a truly dumb pop song from back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The title is something like "Kung Fu Fighting" by that renowned artist, Carl Somebody-or-Another. The song does for music, what cotton candy does for health food. Unfortunately, the sticky feature of spun sugar is all too likely a comparison, and once such "music" is filed in the parietal lobe (or where ever such things reside), the sucker is very difficult to evict. It is kind of like "Ding-Dong The Witch Is Dead!" from Oz, once in; it is nearly unremovable. Likewise, those T V or radio advertisements you so strongly dislike, are also nearly unforgettable. And one of the recurring themes in these essays is a glue-like statement, by Mr. Faithful You Know Who. It involves faith, it uses mountain imagery, and frankly I find it flatly ludicrous. Ludicrous, and also just about impossible to eject out of the brain.

  As a boy growing up in Albuquerque, the scenery to the east of the city is the Sandia (Watermelon) Mountains. And no, watermelons do not grow there. Large granite shields face the city, and as a short vato; I truly loved those mighty chunks of rock. Is it multi-millions of tons we view, or more than that perhaps? These champions of sturdiness, are rooted downward and inward to much more solid rock below. A direct strike by an atomic bomb would not remove them. Damage and scar them yes; remove them no. With this in mind then, set aside this reading for a moment and conduct an experiment or two will you?

  Take a penny or a nickel, and find a flat smooth surface. Carefully balance your coin on edge, and without puffing any air upon it, nor shifting the table it rests upon, talk to it. Yes, I said talk to it! Say, "Fall over sideways", and repeat your efforts until you find success. Uhm, that didn't work? Well maybe the coin was a tad hefty after all, try this instead. Find a cotton ball, and remove a tiny pinch of it and set it beside the stubborn coin. Talk to the cotton. Repeat after me; "Move 1/8th of an inch south.", until the little rascal begins scooting all over the table. . .  Call me when that begins, will ya?

  Now, after you get really really good at knocking over coins, and hoisting fluff, try next talking to the megatons of granite rooted into bedrock, east of Albuquerque and hoss them monsters over somewhere into the mid Pacific for me, will ya? And when that big splash occurs, we might (then) first affirm that you possess "small faith". Does this make any sense at all for you? 

  And like Kung Fu Fighting, I can neither enjoy the thought, nor rid myself of it. "If you had faith (and apparently, I don't then?) as small as a mustard seed, you'd say to the granite Watermelons, 'Be tossed 3200 miles', and they would obey". Uh, sure Pal. Huh? Uhm, not to appear crass or such Sir, but is your mind working . . . at all?
  Which (prey tell) of the mightiest arch-angels (ever) has done likewise, and just precisely; when was that? Which of the holiest of all the saints (or any congregation of them for that matter), once carried out this big splash rock toss? I'd ask; "If nobody could, nobody has, and none shall, whom exactly qualifies as "the faithful" here, which we are discussing?". Furthermore, this big splash (did we mention the resulting tsunami?) is the beginning point, the entry level to faith? And not to appear blasphemous or anything, just when did God; the Almighty Son Himself; even ever do any such thing? I'm just curious.

  We end up with a category called "the believing" which is a null set. By this "standard of faith" then (no person performing it ever), none thereby "have faith", am I reading this right? And that being the case, remind me again (I'm so forgetful!) why we are talking about this? 

  Further, this is a core teaching to "good news" you say? Well, the way I read this message, the central axiom apparently is that I don't have what it takes to please the Almighty, if by pleasing; we mean "belief" as defined. In short, by this standard I'm just not good enough (and I heartily agree!), but how does this qualify as either news, or good? I don't get it, and likely never shall. Carl, how does that song go again?

  Now the paragraphs above are the normal brain furniture and clutter I have to ordinarily navigate, concerning the mountain faith thing. Or in simpler terms yet, the topic just does not file, and I usually do my best to generally ignore it. As a recurring theme over the years, I have attempted to deal with the teaching in a variety of ways, but uniformly those have been to deduce some "principle", or to infer some "truth" out of it, but not obviously in it. Such like truths perhaps point back to the cross, or highlight the glory of God?
  The short version of such efforts, is that I (like most believers); am still "reading into" the Kings' words some "secret message", rather than reading the message itself. And for all I know (not much), this type of reading between the lines; rather than reading of the lines, might well be the best we can do? But why or how the chucking megatons of rock is being applied, eludes me. So then, having not the faith as a grain of mustard seed (with nary a hillock pitched), I muddle on as best as I can.
  On a somewhat related note, it appears that I am not alone. Having viewed a couple of those christiany type faith movies lately (you know; the ones critics hate so strongly?), "faith" as a topic is pretty unfocused. We get a television type crisis, which the viewer is quite confident shall be resolved somehow in the next 37 minutes or so. The mention of Jesus, of the cross, and of forgiveness just sort of hangs there, from the believers' work belt as this odd multi-tool. It hammers every nail, trowels every slab, and plumbs every wall, and remains mainly undefined and invisible.
  In those movies, faith is much more like magic, plus a heavy dose of providence. It remains a very very remarkable set of coincidences running rapid fire, mixed in with a society of which about 8% of the population appears to work for a living. The norm is a gang of folks who enjoying life, having leisure, money and whatnot are yet dissatisfied. So everybody has tons of free time to sit around practicing on coin knocking, and fluff tossing until they get good at it, and uniformly they all do so?
  Faith ends up an undefined but desirable activity which though impossible, isn't beyond the reach of anybody? What? The enormously powerful lever which makes the thing go, is something called "free choice". Though the lever is never quite explained, nor just how one goes about freely choosing to launch mountains is discussed, plainly faith is stated to be "a choice"; and that is all. No wonder I'm a Calvinist eh?
  Todays' brainwave then, is to pretend. Let us imagine for a moment that we do not have to sift through twenty centuries worth of blather and muddleheaded nonsense in order to hear the King as He speaks. Nor do we need to sift amid the nonsense I have arrived at in the above section of this C.P.E., in order to drop for the next fifteen minutes, any conclusions previously heard or arrived at, on the topic. We are free to listen, free to understand the Man!
  The scene is Him heading into Jerusalem, but this is the day after. The day after what? And there is one, just one day, upon which the comments rotate. Preachers call it "The triumphal entry" in which the city seems to (for once!) acknowledge her rightful Sovereign.
  He comes cruising in on a baby donkey! It is the inverse, the upside down of an Alexander on a war stallion, it is the flip side to a Caesar upon a golden chariot, and it was predicted. The town is going wild! He goes to where? To hobknob with royalty over at Herods' house, or to rally the movement down at the town square? Nope, He goes into the temple, and as a one man gang, evicts forcibly the money changers, and the profiteers selling live animals.
  See? It was a racket they had going on. The yearly return to Jerusalem for animal sacrifice, and the feasting was in the Law of Moses. But face it, who is going to drive a herd of animals overland a hundred miles in the desert? So, people would bring money instead, and buy the sacrifice, and the grub for the feast in J-town. Guess what, the price just went up. Guess what again, not everybody is using minted coins, and the "fees and surcharges" for exchanging bullion or raw silver just this week went through the roof.
  Paying nine dollars for a burrito at the state fair is actually a good deal, in comparison to what was going on then. Because, surprise surprise this whole crooked enterprise also was (partly) so costly because the temple authorities were getting a big cut of the action! He pees in their collective Post Toasties, and singlehandedly shuts the money factory down. The crowd goes wild!
  So, it's the day after that, and at breakfast time, Him not wanting a nine dollar burrito, or a seven dollar corndog, He hunts up the nearest fig tree. It is not yet bearing fruit, so He curses it to death. Sounds kinda extreme to me, but that is what happened. The 12 take a picture and post it on Instagram. His comment about mountains and seeds is the response to them being stunned by the ex-tree, recently become firewood. The "fig tree" The King is searching for fruit upon, is barren, and is to be removed . . . soon!
  So, in this context then, the "mountain" (God's dwelling place) is to be demolished! Remember poor old Jeremiah? All of that "unpatriotic" talk of his about how the forever covenant was being broken, and thereby how those planted "forever" in the land would be swept away to captivity? Hey, where is his love for the flag? Or think of the talk of our King, when He was in the temple? It's future rubble, it is all coming down! "Not one stone left atop another!", He unpatriotically asserts.
  For us Americans to hear this type of thing, we would need a God loving, flag waving, patriot to suddenly start talking about this "land of the free" becoming a radioactive parking lot for the Chinese in the future. This America lover, this admirer of the exceptional (and greatest!) nation, predicting the land becoming some kind of third world dump, is the idea. The champion of the constitution, and quoter of "our founders" suddenly found selling condo rentals in Somalia and Bangladesh, as more desirable places to live? It is intended as a shock.
  The mountain pitched into the sea, is the unthinkable! Israel was forced to think; "Isn't God on our side? Aren't we the special people? Hey, even He lives here, its' gotta be a special place!". The seed to mountain thing is along those lines, and is clearly a "Hell No!" type of answer.
  As for the tiny seed, clearly the King elsewhere links the mustard seed right back to Daniels' prophecy of a "world king" (Nebuchanezzar then) as a tree growing up, in which the birds shelter. Instead of some sequoia, or mighty oak, it is a garden herb! The True World King is a Gardener! The "tiny and insignificant thing" is "planted", and kingdoms fall, mountains are torn from their roots, traditions perish, whole nations tumble.
  One low born rabble rouser, one penniless trouble maker is bumped off, and the entire course of history shifts? Yes, and amen!
  Faith is here, not over in coincidence, magic, or choice. "Believe this, and something happens in you", that is the drift of the message. The missing key here, is participation (I mean ours), in this epic uproar.
  To speak to (as that rat L.B.J. used to say) "my fellow Americans" for a moment, faith is not about "restoring standards". Faith is not about holding dear our history, nor "being concerned" (whatever that means) about our future. When we say things like; "I am concerned for our nation", that is faithless drivel, stop it!
  Our true nation is believing Israel, that remnant into which we have generously been joined as aliens and strangers. And that nation can never die! Start there.
  And not to wax too lurid, the rightful Judgement against all un-right ought be visited upon the powerful, the haughty, and the wicked. If, for instance; my personal guess that the dollar is about to go the way of the Dodo, we participate! His folk, bold, glad and fearless! Is that us, cowering behind our I.R.A.s, and stockpiles of guns and food? His people, denouncing high treason against the True King, where ever and when ever it occurs, do we suddenly get all forgetful about the murder of millions of babies when it is personally convienent?
  Our "tiny seeds" of participation in the kingdoms of this world, becoming The Kingdom of our God, and of His Christ . . . are accepted! They are welcomed, they are allowed to become pivotal, and significant!
  The calamity of 70 A.D. in Israel is intended to point forward in time. No earthly empire, no merely human tradition, no "way of life" is permanent, they are all Johnny come lately, flash in the pan, affairs. And as He pitches them all into the round file of history, He is pleased to use the "insignificant and low", He employs the "nobodies and losers" as they join hands in that mighty good dance, to rock the world to its' foundations.
  Faith as a topic, this hollering at hillsides; we might illustrate as follows. A 50 million ton train is roaring down the tracks. Four engines and a hundred-plus cars, all derailed . . by one loose spike in the tracks? Or perhaps, that mighty big train being altered in its' course by one controller pushing one button, to shift the tracks? Huge results come from small changes, and the hour by hour attitudes and choices we make, have enormous repercussions at the end of things.
  Or think of a busy commercial airport, jumbo jets, airbus giants all being "told what to do" by that one guy out there in the orange jumpsuit with the flashlight? With a flick of a wrist, and a nod of a head, thousand ton aircraft taxi about, just as he says? The enormity of results is surprisingly linked to the tinyness of cause, this we believe.
  It is the cumulative effect of "the little things" which make the world, either for better or for worse. As we go along in life, we remember that, and participate! So yes, choice is involved, but nobody of themselves "chooses" to resurrect himself out of death, and into life. Yet, as living men, we (now freed!) choose freely life, or more appropriately, The Living One!
  The tiny calamities, those puny nations and half baked empires tumbling, all point forward, to a world, nay, a reality (!) crumbling. The day is coming. The King is coming! To be found a traitor in that hour, we wish upon no man, for the sheer terror of it.
  Now, lets' talk about the cross! Away from this kind of context, finding forgiveness means nothing. Being saved is a null set. If there are no consequences, then if I like my sin, there is no reason to flee it. What if I don't care if I am forgiven, and frankly refuse to lay down my revenge, what then? The Tsunami from on high hits one day, and it is unsurvivable, that's what.
  The tidal wave has a name, talk to Him. Trust Him when He says He has you covered. Like Bush 2, we are freed thus to say, "Bring it on!".
  That is what hollering at hillsides is about, in this plumbers' estimation. Our saying "Amen, come Lord Jesus" could trigger a global financial meltdown? Hey, why not, bigger mountains have been flung by smaller seeds than that! And He is the One giving the courage to ride that wild wave! Yep, that's faith for ya.