A Review of The Guarded Gate by Daniel Okrent.

The Guarded Gate

Daniel Okrent is also the author of Last Call, the history and implementation of Prohibition. It was a surprisingly engrossing book, meticulous and completely relevant to the topic, so I was very happy to see that he had written a book on two topics which I'm even more interested in. What's even more interesting is his account of how those topics merged early in the 20th century in one of America's darker chapters.

In his work on Prohibition, Okrent delved into how temperance activists tapped latent racism to boost their case. In this book, he exhaustively (and exhaustingly) documents how the nation's seething nativism and paranoia over the changing population was a problem exaggerated to fit a new scientific solution: eugenics theory.

Eugenics may seem as arcane as bloodletting to the modern, but it was, like bloodletting, once the cutting edge of biological scientific theorizing. It's father was Sir Francis Galton, one of the many, many descendants of the legendarily brilliant and promiscuous Erasmus Darwin, and a cousin of Charles. Without implying causation and careful not to yoke the evolutionary theory directly to eugenics, the author continues. While he does not assign blame, Okrent does presume that the Darwinian Revolution removed the extant moral opposition of the scientific community to thinking of and consequently treating humans as merely an evolved hierarchy of animal life.

To say Galton was a prodigy is as much of an understatement as saying that his ancestor Erasmus was fond of the ladies.

He read at age 2, mastered Latin at age 4, quoted Sir Walter Scott often at age 5 and 6 years of age found him reading the Iliad with exceptional comprehension. He was the heir of substantial family fortunes, to which he had full access by the age of 22. But for apparently not one minute of his life, did he recline in the lap of luxury. His curiosity was ravenous and his method for satiating it was obsessive counting. He explained everything, or at least attempted to, with numbers.

He counted earthworms after rain, mosquito bites, formed equations for what percentage of an audience was attentive by noting and counting movements. No subject was too general or too specific. He even devoted 3 months to the exploration of what constitutes a proper cup of tea.

Galton's American protege, Charles Davenport, was another genius, as were many if not most prominent eugenicists, and many of them came from long established families of wealth and prominence, making their breathtakingly arrogant theories about the benefits of selective breeding perhaps a little more understandable, if not excusable. It never occurred to them to check their privilege.

Wikipedia's entry on eugenics states that in its early 20th century iteration, eugenics was promoted as a way to improve "groups of people" (and I would add society in general) while "new (current) eugenics" focuses on improving individuals, i.e. selecting and even altering embryos at the direction of the parents and is therefore not racist in any way.

It prompted some head scratching by yours truly on the difference between the individual and the collective. Can you separate the goal of improvement of individuals from the goal of improving groups and society? Apparently Davenport could not. It's true that his scientific curiosity was once more objective and, if we might use a characterization that Madison Grant might've, pure. He was, he professed, concerned with the improvement of individuals and did not apply scientific racism to his eugenics study. But as time passed and the passion to make the science a helpful societal tool blossomed, the "betterment of the human race" became paramount and Davenport's studies became a means to an end. His ideological purity was mongrelized and he became an unabashed proponent of "scientific racism."

Some proponents of eugenics theory were overtly racist and xenophobic, but not disproportionately considering the age.

One tireless advocate for immigration restriction AND eugenics was Henry Cabot Lodge, the patrician stalwart arch-conservative legislator from Massachusetts. By contrast, his cousin, Joe (never Joseph) Lee, who was a dedicated, behind-the-scenes proponent of eugenics and racial purity, was also a Boston school board member, philanthropist, father of the modern school playground and avid reader of Karl Marx. He was a textbook early 20th century progressive.

Racism was ubiquitous. It was not 4 decades earlier that slavery was still legal in the US, and even those abolitionists, (also progressives) of the North could not have helped an indulgent sense of having condescended to aid the poor Negro.

However, it is not completely clear who co-opted who, or whether there was any co-opting or exploitation of each other at all in the alliance of eugenicists and xenophobes. They appear to have been quite suited to one another and not at all uncomfortable with the relationship. It was probably either mutual exploitation or a hellacious harmonic convergence.

The list of American icons who at one time or another, or all of the time, in some cases, expressed stupefying racism, xenophobia and classism is sobering.

Beginning with Benjamin Franklin, through Ulysses S. Grant, to Booker T Washington, William Penn, the great suffragist Victoria Woodhall, John Scopes (of the Scopes Monkey Trial), Alexander Graham Bell, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Maxwell Perkins (the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway), H. Fairfield Osbourne (director of the American Museum of Natural History) and so many other notaries, the list of nativists does considerable damage to the idea that the US was ever in even approximate accord with the inscription on the Statue Of Liberty.

But the common cause of xenophobes and genetic planners is striking to me, considering the antipathy between what may be considered the modern incarnations of both anti-immigration sentiment and eugenics. Eugenics, right or wrong, is seen by many as the forerunner of elective abortion. And, in fact, it seems like a fair genealogical conclusion, since Margaret Sanger was a prominent eugenicist, an enthusiastic supporter of Davenport's endeavors and is most well known to us as the founder of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. But modern abortion opponents now are often the same people most likely to oppose immigration. (As they would have it, they are only concerned about illegal immigration, while remaining mostly non-committal on what legal minimums and maximums should be established.) Okrent is careful to note the objections of modern pro-choice advocates who say that if anything, the eugenicists of that era were more comparable to pro-life activists, since pro-lifers typically seek governmental prohibition of abortion or governmental control of "reproductive rights", similar to the forced sterilization policies championed by many eugenicists. But the disregard for human life is common ground that is not so readily ceded by many pro-choice advocates and immigration restriction advocates. There is a shared sense of entitlement. As in, "We are here, so we have a codified right to input into who else can be here." Or, if you like, "Possession (of life, here and now) is 9/10ths of the law."

A Review of Coyote America by Dan Flores

There's a song I like by Western artist Don Edwards.
It begins,

"Was a cowboy I knew in South Texas
His face was burnt deep by the sun
Part history, part sage, part Mexican
He was there when Pancho Villa was young
He'd tell you a tale of the old days
When the country was wild all around
Sit out under the stars of the milky way
Listen while the coyotes howled

Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaw is gone
Geronimo's gone
And Sam Bass is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone

Then he cursed all the roads and the oilmen
And he cursed the automobile
Said 'This is no place for an hombre like I am
In this new world of asphalt and steel'
Then he looked off some place in the distance
At something only he could see
He said 'All that's left now of the old days
Are these damned old coyotes and me.' "

The old cowboy would be happy to know, I assume, that not only are the damned old coyotes still around, they are thriving.
Once only found in the Western United States, they are now howling in every state of the union.
And this in spite of, in fact Flores will argue BECAUSE of, almost two centuries of extermination attempts.
Beginning with Lewis and Clark's first encounter with this American icon which Clark dubbed the "prairie wolf", European settlers were first perplexed by the not-quite-wolf but not-quite-fox who seemed to be a little too comfortable around humans.
The perplexity soon enough turned to a loathing that rivals our commonly held hatred for cockroaches.
The coyote was outright declared a target for extinction by the federal government.
Bounties were set, traps were laid, strychnine factories were built. Later, aerial gunning and specifically designed poisons were put into use, dead animal carcasses spiked with trial-and-error vetted toxins.
Millions and millions of coyotes were killed.

And it was not simply a matter of utility.
Even though there were the inevitable predations that occur when domesticated animals come into direct contact with wild predators, animal scientists in the field even in the late 1800's were discovering by analyzing stomach contents and scat that contrary to conventional wisdom, sheep and cattle did not make up most or even a quarter of the coyote diet. And later, as livestock containment methods and the proliferation of national forests and parks as refuges for coyotes pacified stockmen somewhat, big game hunters, claiming that coyotes were diminishing the elk population and were an existential threat to mule deer were also proven wrong.
But the Great Coyote Wars continued, aided almost from the beginning by good war propaganda.
As settlement of the West continued, the coyote became a symbol of deprivation, cowardice and cunning. Mark Twain, in his charming polemics, gleefully helped a good portion of America unacquainted with the species to hate the coyote with his famous three-page rant in Roughing It. Horace Greeley described it as "a sneaking cowardly little wretch." Edwin Sabin in an Overland Monthly 1938 issue, described it as "contemptible and especially perverse" and "lacking higher morals." And exploring ideas for commercial gain from the killing of coyotes, the Scientific American, in 1920, asserted that although coyotes were not worth the price of the ammunition to shoot them, it was still a patriotic guesture because, "The coyote was the original Bolshevik."

Even today, there are 500,000 coyotes killed in a year's time, almost one a minute.
And yet, or as Flores has it, as a result, coyotes now stretch from the southern border (and below) to the Yukon and from sea to shining sea. There is now a significant coyote presence in L.A., Chicago, and even Manhattan.
Coyotes excel under persecution.
They possess an autogenic trait that actually increases the size of their litters when they are under stress. Combine this amazing ability with their seemingly preternatural adaptability and a comfort level with humans that seems odd in a wild predator, and it becomes less incredible that patrons spilling out of a bar in Manhattan looked up to see a coyote on the roof, surveying the scene with casual boldness.

Flores does something else in the book that's a little startling. He insists that a given American's opinion of coyotes is often indicative of their opinions on......politics.
He uses the coyote as a locator of a person's position in the culture war.
And it's not a metaphor.
He claims that liberals tend to respect the coyote, while conservatives hate them. He says asking someone how they feel about coyotes is basically the same thing as asking them how they feel about John Wayne.
The conservative-liberal urban-rural divide is even reflected in how you pronounce the word.
Urban liberals tend to use coyot-ee, with the emphasis on the middle syllable.
Rural conservatives tend to use coyote, with the emphasis on the first syllable.
For what it's worth, I use the rural conservative pronunciation, partly because that's how we said it in Oklahoma (so that part checks out), but also partly because coyot-ee just sounds too cartoonish for obvious reasons.
I don't know if I believe that the coyote issue is as divisive or easily associated with a demographic as war or immigration, but I do recognize that there is some truth in what he is saying that I can corroborate myself. My opinion of predators is significantly different than those of most, or so it seems, of my conservative friends. They seem to view any wild predatory animal as a nuisance to be eradicated so that everything can be tamer. And safer.
At the risk of stretching the point along with Flores, and at the risk of giving anyone the opening to accuse me of reductionism, I have to admit I quickly compared the de facto conservative positions on immigration, drugs and civil liberties and nodded to myself.

Moving on, in the latter half of the 20th century, conservationists became alarmed at the rapid decline and imminent extinction of the red wolf in the southeast. The Fish and Wildlife Service believed that an ancient distinct species was on the verge of disappearing. Their solution was to gather the remaining survivors in the wild together with all the red wolves in captivity and breed a strong pure host of red wolves to re-release into the wild and hopefully recolonize their "native" habitat. But first they had to test each of the possible studs and brood canines for genetic purity. To their horror, they discovered that the majority of the "wolves" possessed coyote DNA. In fact, many were reddish full-blooded coyotes. In true bridge burning bureaucratic fashion, they destroyed every one of the impure animals, even the zoo animals, much to the dismay of the zoo officials.
But, as it turns out, the science that first declared the red wolf a distinct species was faulty. Most likely, the red wolves were actually a hybrid of coyote and wolf, much like the coywolves now populating many areas where wolf and coyote share hunting grounds. The fumbling incompetence of wildlife management experts in this instance is reminiscent of the heedless arrogance that in the previous century led the US government to support and subsidize the near extinction of the buffalo.

But maybe the coyote is too much like us for us to ever be completely rid of it.
Flores thinks so.
As a principal deity in the Native American Pantheon, Old Man Coyote seems quite similar to Zeus with a little bit of Loki thrown in.
He is not perpetually exemplary. He's one of those gods that we create in our own image. Which is to say he can be very good and also very bad. That split personality is what makes him like Zeus, along with his ability to appear human, whereas Zeus had the ability to appear animal.
Flores takes an imaginative, almost spiritual look at the coyote and concludes that he is us.
The indigenous peoples have many myths and legends with the coyote as a god, but a very human god. He is the wisest of all, but also often a fool. He is powerful, with sometimes paralyzing weaknesses. He is a trickster, but is constantly being tricked. He is not completely wild, and not completely tame. He'll do what it takes to survive, but often only just that and no more.
Less abstractly, Flores compares the evolution of man with the evolution of the coyote, and pronounces us clueless, if we think we can outmaneuver such a force.

The Wind

I was in my late 20's.
Devan and I had been married for around 4 years.
I worked two jobs, one full time and one part time. The full time job was the breadwinner. The part time job was the insurance provider and hope of a stabler future.
I worked commercial construction during the day, driving to work in the dark morning, falling asleep at stoplights and often having to park half a mile or more from the job site.
I was a hod-carrier (mason tender) and ran the grout pump every other day or so.
The hopper of the pump received soupy concrete from the trough of the cement truck and vigorously forced the grout up through a 4 inch reinforced rubber hose.
Up on top of a high block wall, I either straddled the wall, walked it or ideally used scaffold walk boards. The concrete laden hose, sometimes several hundred feet long, would retract and thrust with every cycle of the pump, roughly every second, and you had to somehow pad the hose at every contact point with the masonry or scaffolding to prevent a hole from wearing through from the constant friction.
Around 3:30, it was time to shut down for the day and I would jog back to my little Ford Ranger and speed home to get a shower and supper before heading back into town for work at the UPS hub at 5.
From roughly 5-10, I loaded semis with boxes.
When my head hit the pillow, sleep was only a matter of seconds out, surging in to pull me out into an irresistible riptide.
Consequently, I had little time for anything that was non-essential to survival, certainly not introspection.
Sometimes, if you ignore the act of simply breathing long enough, the odd arresting moment when silence falls is all it takes to become suddenly aware of what is sustaining your hyperactivity.
We lived in a cramped townhouse.
I was in the living room taking a rare glance out into the parking lot when a passing breeze animated the leaves of a small ornamental bush in the flower bed and then passed through the closed window into my soul.
Spearheads of ripples moved across my consciousness.
Something was happening to me without my direction or summons.
I don't know which direction the wind came from, or where it blew, but it passed through me, invisible and scentless, only apprehended by the dust it stirred.
Genesis 8:1 is the first usage of the word that we translate into "wind."
But the first reference to wind is in the second verse of the entire Bible.
"The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."
In the previous verse, God who created the heavens and the earth is named Elohim.
In the second verse, we translate "Spirit of God" from the Hebrew "Ruach Elohim".
"Ruach" is one of those never-ending Hebrew gifts.
The most physical definition is simply "wind", but it also means "breath" and, most arrestingly, the "function or expression", elsewhere "personality trait" of a rational being.
It is in the second verse of the Bible that God has a thought. And the hateful placidity of the formless deep shivers in response. "Nothing" births something.
The Cause affects.
A dream is dreamed within a dream.

In Job 1:19, the wind takes it's form as "blast" or "tempest" and moves upon the house of the children of Job, collapsing the walls and killing them all.
At the end of Job, the sufferer's questions and agony and anger are engulfed and overwhelmed by the voice of God from out of the tempest.
In Mark 39, God held his breath and the Lake of Tiberius was calmed.
David almost certainly heard the wind in the poplars as the sound of marching and went to battle with the Philistines.
Elijah endured the wind that shattered stones and withered the gourd and was finally taken up by it.
In Acts, Ruach Elohim swept through a gathering of the longing faithful and came to live with us.
I was born in Oklahoma, where the wind never stops sweeping down the lane, dehydrating in the summer and relentless in the winter and where I attended a campmeeting where the evangelist recounted the testimony of an equatorial convert upon reaching God at last, "It's like a cool breeze down in my soul.", a metaphor that strikes me randomly on a humid summer day when a breeze falls from the icy heavens and soothes my fever and prickles my skin.
"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it's sound, but you do not know where it came from or where it is going."

Next time you feel a bitter gale, a driving rain, a hot blast or a cool breeze, remember.

Conscientious Rebel

I have been in revolt my entire life.
Roughly the first half I spent in rebellion against God. The second half has been a more careful insurrection, against anything I perceive as being wrong, particularly if that wrong is widely accepted and/or taught.
As a child and then as a teenager I was extremely conscientious, even fearful. I was afraid to do anything that in my limited understanding might even possibly be wrong. I walked the line, not out of a desire to do good, but out of mortal dread of the consequences of doing anything wrong. This is not to say that I never did anything that I thought was wrong, but they were "lesser," secret sins. Contrary to Martin Luther's admonition to sin boldly, I sinned timidly, and asked for forgiveness not at all, only occasionally sought a guarantee that I wasn't doing anything that would send me to hell.  And while fear of consequences may bring many who lack understanding to a point of reckoning, it is no substitute for forgiveness and living gratefully.
When I was converted, I was scuttled in a bottomless grace; grateful, euphoric and eager to show my love for my Savior.
After a time however, the fearful part of my phsyche reinflated, displacing gratefulness with a cold legalism and I shot back to the surface where lashed a storm that still has not abated.
If a fish is a person who lives on grace, I am a dolphin.
I can only remain submerged in grace for so long until my mammalian lungs burn with the need for the oxygen of real world, merit based reassurance.
I have often joked that the teenage rebellion against the establishment that so many people engage in was also mine to experience, just delayed a couple of decades.
But my rebellion is driven by my conscientiousness. It's not that I look for every opportunity to be set apart, it's that so much of the time, the crowd, the establishment, the status quo is wrong. And it is not sheer coincidence. If an idea or practice is widely accepted, it is often because it holds within it an insidious element that appeals to fallen human nature. In addition to that inherent virus, popularity itself has a corrupting influence. There is a dangerous unity in the pulse of the mob. Even good propositions, such as the Church, can be become unrecognizable powers for evil when left unquestioned.
There is also a deep personality trait that spurs my rebellion.
I don't remember the exact age, but somewhere around 8 years old, I made a self discovery. I was conversing with someone who has also been lost to memory, and was suddenly struck by a realization that I often said yes, nodded or otherwise offered affirmation or at least acceptance of things said with which I did not necessarily agree. It seemed lazy, and weak.
Why am I pressured to go with the flow and, more importantly, why do I give in to the pressure?
It's perhaps an unusual thought for an eight year old, but it was and is an integral part of me: the guilt of doing things the easy way. Even at that age, my conscience was overactive, and in charge. Then, as now, I've little doubt that I overcompensated for that perceived weakness. In fact, only a few short weeks later, as I recall, someone asked me why I always had to challenge everything that was said. I have since learned to choose my battles more discriminately, but I am still driven to challenge everything, driven by my conscience to be a rebel.
My Dad, who was also crucially involved in my spiritual development, was influential to my own development of independence. I distinctly remember him recounting a conversation with my Mom, who told him that while she could not say that he was always right, she could definitely say that his thoughts and conclusions were always his own.  I took that to heart, particularly since it reinforced my own determination not to be a follower, as difficult as it might be.
And then, as if I needed encouragement, I began reading after Kierkegaard, and was electrified by the following:
"Moreover living as the individual is thought to be the easiest thing of all, and it is the universal that people must be coerced into becoming.
I can share neither this fear nor this opinion, and for the same reason.
No person who has learned that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all will be afraid of saying it is the greatest."
There is always a danger with being your own man. The danger lies not in a greater likelihood of going wrong than if you were in larger company, but in becoming arrogant. And, while my recalcitrance is a matter of conscience, I cannot deny that I sometimes find a perverse pleasure in being THAT guy. In moderation, it's harmless gratification, but it always bears watching.

What Is That To Thee?

Raise your hand if you saw conservatives react to the recent student walkout in protest of mass shootings and in support of gun control by urging us to focus more on the root causes of these tragedies, specifically bullying.
If you're anything like me, your initial reaction was agreement, then mild surprise since the last you might have heard from this particular person on the subject of bullying was that kids these days were just too soft.
There seems to be a pattern in the culture war these days.
Whatever we might call the opposite of the Left, (the Right, conservatism, etc) it is almost obviously being led around by the nose by the Left.
The Left makes a move, the Right reacts.
One of the most jarring examples of this is the overall loyal opposition's response to the many character issues with President Trump; for example, the Stormy Daniels story. Many, conservative, even right wing evangelical responses could almost have been plagiarized word for word from good old southern Democrats defense of Bill Clinton's character issues, with "media" standing in for "right wing" in the phrase "vast right wing conspiracy."
 (In fairness, there were those who supported Bill Clinton, considered his infidelity insignificant, who now feel the same about Trump. They seem to feel that character is not something to be considered in a political leader, and they definitely have a point. To expect integrity from power brokers is foolish, but my argument here is with the overwhelming remainder of the population which seems to at least pretend that their chosen champions are not high paid thugs.)
But there is a much larger group who felt deeply that Bill Clinton's liberalism was an assault on traditional American values and that his loose moral character was proof of that assault, who now either completely dismiss the scandal swirling around Trump as a pack of lies, or, more likely, simply see it as insignificant in the big picture.
At any rate, they certainly do not see Trump's character as proof of an assault on traditional values. Many of the same people who cheered the impeachment of President Clinton as a a fit reprimand for his behavior now have apparently no qualms saying that they will continue to stand behind president Trump 100% regardless of his dalliances.
 Is this just fighting fire with fire, tit-for-tat, or is the Right being led slowly, unconsciously but surely down the path of moral relativism by the Left?
Another possible example is the Right's subconscious acceptance of the blurring of the gender roles lines. The result of part of the radical feminist agenda that ostensibly wanted to equalize the sexes was to actually lower women to the point that it was perfectly acceptable for a woman to get down in the dirt and mix it up with the boys. While the Right is still more or less insistent that gender is binary and distinct, they seem to have quite willingly accepted that part of the feminist agenda that allows them to fight women the same way they fight men.
Someone may protest that this is some political fragment of the Socratic method, trying to point out hypocrisy or inconsistency, as one conservative mouthpiece used to delight in "illustrating absurdity by being absurd." (And, yes, there is hypocrisy, inconsistency and absurdity in spades on the Left.)
 Or perhaps they may even consider it strategic, using the useful parts of the Left's agenda against them.
Still someone else will doubtless say that women have become just as coarse as men and so we must deal with them accordingly. I won't argue that. I will simply point out that they have in fact capitulated on what used to be a key point of traditional values, the ideal of gentlemen placing women on a pedestal (whether or not individual women were actually treated as such.)
In fact, much of the conservative and libertarian single male response to the #metoo movement was downright bitter towards women in general, indicating that a significant portion of the non-left male population is quite willing to accept the reality of a gender war.
The pattern that emerges is one of nothing but reaction.
It is an inherent weakness of conservatism: that of being forced to continually play defense. After all, the aim is to "conserve." When we are relegated to trying to preserve a culture that we feel was better, the wagons will always be in a circle.
While conservatives may recognize that not everything was perfect back in the good ol days, most of them just wonder why things just can't be like they used to be.
But whether or not things were overall better back when, it must be acknowledged that time will never stand still. It carries on ceaselessly and carries society, and culture, along with it.
What to make of this?
The problem is not a new one.
It's one of the fear that "they" will win, while not being certain of what is at stake, and not even certain of who they are, since we have certainly lost track of who we are.
It's one of trends and fighting trends.
It's one of missing the trees for the forest.
It's one of fear at the loss of identity overwhelming the virtue that ever made that identity valuable.
It's one of being too concerned with things out of your control, and making deals with devils you think CAN control things, or at least limit the damage to things until such time as they relinquish control back to you, back to us, the rightful overseers of culture.

My solution to this problem of losing track of what we are fighting for will come as a surprise to practically no one.
Stop worrying about "we" and "they."
Your concern over the culture has almost certainly distracted you from your greatest concern: yourself and your relationship with the truth.
We tell ourselves every vote counts, but don't seem to realize that our individual adherence to the highest standard we can attain will go a lot farther in preserving what we treasure.
And don't concern yourself when "they" fight dirty, because...




"If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
 Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
 And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:......
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
 And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!"
Rudyard Kipling

The Individual Christian

"Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it."
-Soren Kierkegaard.
Christianity is harmed by the incessant attempts to yolk it with "us, them, we" or any personal pronoun other than "I".
It invariably leads not to closer brotherhood among believers, but to sectarianism, pride and judgment.
As an individual, a Christian is more likely than most to be humble, peaceful and understanding.
As a collective, or as a demographic, we can tend to be proud (of our Christianity), hostile (to anyone or thing perceived to be hostile to us as Christians) and judgmental (to anyone who does not hold our values).
As the individual Christian, we have a better sense of who we are in relation to world, and to God himself.
As "Christendom", we tend to find safety in numbers, establish insular subcultures, and hide behind our own theologians and teachers.
Christians lose something of the peculiar shame of the Cross when Christianity becomes accepted, respectable, a movement or even, God forbid, official.
We become quite at home in the world, and even begin to claim portions of it as our own. And become quite defensive and even combative when we feel that holy ground is being invaded.

Boredom is perhaps the environment of hell.
It is similar to Chaos, because it is the state of an unfocused mind.
It is the inverse of the excitement of countless possibilities. It is the despairing certainty that every one of those potentialities will end in disappointment.
Every child has known the horror of boredom, as well as they have known the exasperation of an adult who scolds them for being ungrateful, as any adult would be profess to be profoundly grateful for a moment's peace in which boredom might be a welcome change to busyness.
This is hogwash on the part of the adult; partly because busyness is the unconsciously agreed upon crowning virtue of adulthood and would never be so easily traded for a mess of potted boredom, and partly because even in an adult's "leisure" time, he would be terrified to encounter boredom as he did as a child: that ennui, that dissatisfaction with all things and no remedy for it, not entertainment, nor opiate, nor sleep, nor sex, nor any other stimulation that a grown-up engages in when his mind has reached the end of that ultimate high, the Validation of Work.
Boredom is not quite merely the absence of stimulation, it is a tangible thing: a paralyzing banality that leaves a mind stricken and sometimes in search of renewal in the strangeness of the new and unfamiliar and even unappealing.
If we were created with purpose, there can be few pains equitable to purposelessness.
A child avoids this void in any number of ways, almost all of which are more honest than the ways adults avoid it. The dishonesty of adults in their frantic attempts to escape from boredom is motivated by guilt. An aimless child may be scolded, but an aimless adult is judged, and pitied.
Equating boredom with damnation may seem hyperbolic, but only if you have forgotten what boredom is, and think of it as free time when no one expects anything of you.
It is the opposite of freedom.
It is the state of mind so bereft of the excitement of possibility that it imprisons itself. And self imprisonment is the most hopeless of all jails.
Kierkegaard said Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, thus pointing out the silver lining back of the cloud of the Unknown.
The bleakness of Boredom's cloud is the certainty that a distant star has exploded somewhere in the universe that will at last drag every ounce of meaning across it's event horizon.

Greatest Fear

Like the white tail of a fleeing doe is caught in the corner of a headlight beam, there is a fear, at odd intervals, that crosses my mind, almost gone before I recognize it.
"What if I, in spite of everything and of all people, should become an atheist?"
It's an old dread, the Fear of No God, the Realization of Nothing, that first stole over me in a Christian bookstore at the age of 17.
I had recently come to know God, important to note since prior to that introduction, my greatest fear was that He DID exist.
I must be unwittingly bound to consider the worst. In everyday matters, I rarely deal in worst case scenarios, because that extreme perpetually beats on the walls of my lowest mental dungeon. Consciously, it's warden makes no admission of those muted howls.
But the fear of nothing had it's humble beginnings in my earliest remembered nightmares, which featured exceedingly common sights, such as the the fabric of my blanket, in sudden and inexplicable dream like fashion, growing very, very large. Awakened by my own screams, I could never explain why non threatening, inanimate objects became sinister when enlarged. It was much later when I realized that it was not the size of the objects, but it's implication to MY size. Which was, obviously, that I was really very small and growing smaller (as in the dream I always was frightened awake while the thing was yet growing) and, if left alone, I would surely fade at last into nothing.
In Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, the protagonist, Gabriel Syme, faces a similar fear when meeting Sunday, a God type.
"The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walked across the inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday grew larger and larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when he was quite close the face would be too big to be possible, and that he would scream aloud. He remembered that as a child he would not look at the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it was a face, and so large."
The fear of a man who does not know God is that God's greatness will diminish himself and that the self opposed to God will never cease shrinking.
My young nightmares are troubling because I was so young and still under the protection of Adamic innocence. Syme was a grown man and thus seemingly responsible for his unfamiliarity with God. But Syme was also a fictional character, representative of the yet innocently ignorant child: a child under God's protection is not the same as one who has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and been bought back.
But with the fear of diminution, of irrelevance, there is something in common with the choice not to believe in something greater than the self.
Nietzsche speaks: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looks. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?"
Nietzsche was as terrifyingly honest as an atheist may be, grappling with the stygian fear of causeless effect, of meaningless existence. Yet, as honest as an atheist may be, he still does not recognize how deep the abyss is that stares into his soul, for though he says that "Hope, in reality, is the greatest of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.", he also insists that although "To live is to suffer," still, "to survive is to find meaning in the suffering."
Hope, then, is evil because it is false and yet meaning is still attainable. Such a titanically irreconcilable statement is understandable when you begin to understand that there is no such creature as a living nihilist. True nihilists are far more rare than Scotsmen of the same fidelity, for all true nihilists are dead, and by their own hand.
It is my personal belief that your greatest fear must stand as the gainsaying of your chosen purpose.  Therefore, I believe that nihilists must somehow find comfort in utter meaninglessness, and be really terrified by meaning and purpose.
Now that I know God, and am found in Him, the fear that He does not exist is also the fear that the self I surrendered to Him will also cease to exist. In that fearful fancy, some dim and distant star is imploded which will quickly drag every ounce of meaning across it's event horizon.
C.S. Lewis imagined that Hell is a very confined space. In The Great Divorce, an inhabitant of Heaven explains the geography of Hell. "All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World."
As small as it is, it continues to shrink; a very intuitive speculation, corresponding conversely with Hubble's Law. Listen to the visitor from Hell's objection and the citizen of Heaven's response
"It seems large enough when you are in it, sir."
"And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good. If all Hell's miseries together entered the consciousness of yon wee yellow bird on the bough there, they would be swallowed up without trace, as if one drop of ink had been dropped into that Great Ocean to which your terrestrial Pacific is only a molecule'"
Consider then the horror of being trapped in oneself, in one's Hell, the fate of continuing to shrink, but never to cease.
That is the fear that I face, that love has not yet cast out.
Logically, if God does not exist, the fear of Hell should disappear along with it. And yet, the fear persists.
Cessation, I fear, is the greatest myth of them all.





"He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, which wore a strange smile. "Have you," he cried in a dreadful voice, "have you ever suffered?" As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only in the blackness it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?"

A Plain Account Of Myself

The Christian heroism (and perhaps it is rarely to be seen) is to venture wholly to be oneself, as an individual man, this definite individual man, alone before the face of God, alone in this tremendous exertion and this tremendous responsibility...

Soren Kierkegaard
Preface to Sickness Unto Death

A good part of my contemplative beard stroking has had to do with the objectivity of truth. In an age where the sides in moral disputes are often picked according to one's political affiliations and favorite decades, the lines drawn up hard based upon whether you prefer the 1950's (or any era prior to that) or the dizzying contemporaneity of the last second, it seems that so much of what we say we believe is either rooted merely in the discomfort with change or the impatience with inertia.
Conservatism being more often the champion of what is supposed to be Christian values (indeed, the two designations have become almost an inseperable demographical duo), it has leaned hard on the objectivity of truth; as have I.
It has been and is still important to me to have a fixed point of reference, without which one must wander with the predictable aimlessness of a snowflake in search of the ground on a very windy day.
With it, one may, probably will, still wander but at least knows it came from above and is headed for below.
I have often taken issue with American christian conservatism, partly for being intractable, nationalistic, xenophobic, authoritarian and partly for being too much like the moral relativists they claim to oppose, especially when justification is needed for a compromise.
But as it is presumed that I as a Christian must hold more in common with conservatism than liberalism, in the popularly slightly erroneous definition of the terms, I accept that presumption for a jumping off point.
There is such a thing as absolute truth that is objectively true. God, in fact, stands as the Absolute Objective Truth. God has many attributes, but all of them are shot completely through with a truth that ultimately cannot be adjusted, not to say that it will be completely attained. In fact, it won't, thus the scriptural apologetic His ways are past our finding out.
In hoisting the banner of objective truth, it may be supposed that I would find subjective truth to be the gospel of the Adversary. What is supposed, however, is not completely accurate.
I have referred to a fixed point of reference.
The importance of this monolith is found not only in the fact that it doesn't move, but also in the fact that due to its immobility, by it we know where we are. I may be on one side, you on the other, coloring our perception of course, but more importantly for my purposes here, casting each one of us in a unique relationship to it.
I have also referred to snowflakes. Quite apart from the current perjorative sense in which it's generally meant, I would like to take from this comparison the one-in-an-existence distinction that snowflakes enjoy.
Every last one is distinctive, bearing the signature of divine design.
As do we.
Bearing these distinctions in mind should make us appreciate the unique position in which every one of us stands in relation to the absolute.
There are several aphorisms that apply: Be your own man, Think for yourself, Don't be a follower.
My aim in life is this: To take all responsibility for myself upon myself.
No Christian would dispute that at the final Judgement, there will be no one to advocate for you before God, unless of course, you have chosen to be represented by Christ, which will entail holding nothing back from your Lawyer. In exchange for His representation, He asks that you stand in integrity before Him, so that He may plead your case unabashed to His Father.
You must give an account of yourself.
To do so, you must shoulder an enormous responsibility.
Think and believe for yourself, recognizing what a grave concern it is, while recognizing that not thinking and believing for yourself is a sin.
Here is where I begin to differ from conservatism. It's in the term itself. Taken literally, it is to "conserve" what is reckoned to be good and beneficial to​ society. The "good and the beneficial" is often, almost always, in fact, embedded in tradition, in creeds, and in the wisdom inherited from the previous generations.
But, the problem anyone faces when conserving is the problem of stagnation ​and rot. Wisdom can't really be inherited. Wisdom is subject to a 90+% inheritance tax. It does not transfer from parent to child. Customs, ideals and traditions are tax free and even times accrue interest.
Wisdom is manna from Heaven, and we all remember what happened when proactive Israelites tried to conserve leftovers.
There is also a sense in which conservation can contribute to the laziness and irresponsibility of consecutive generations. There is a good comparison to be drawn here between trust fund babies and second, third, fourth and so on generations of a movement. A loving parent will have to fight the temptation to cushion the life of the child. A loving parent knows that wisdom is self-activated. Telling your progeny to do this, and not do that, to avoid mistakes and heartache is as natural, and helpful as a passenger who knows where the destination is telling the driver what turns to make. It will get you there once, but if the driver has not driven it himself, looking for landmarks and orientating himself, he will likely never find it again.
Much has been said by more learned and familiar men than I about Rene Descartes, with some vanguards of Western Christianity even declaring that the delicate philosopher introduced a virus into that institution.
But there is a courage in what he did that I can't help but admire. He burned down the suppositional structure of epistemology and sifted through the ashes until he found the indestructible grain of existence.
A man must have belief, before all.
Belief in something precedes all logic, as a foundation underlies a structure.
That belief itself must be personally attained and attested.
How easy it would be, even under the most severe and technically legalistic system, to lay the responsibilities for oneself upon another. Slavery is a comfort to those who fear anxiety as the dizziness of freedom, to paraphrase Kierkegaard.
Freedom is euphoria only if a man chooses to be free. If a man is lazy, freedom is a burden far more ponderous than chains.
"Free thinking" has often been derided as irresponsible and gratuitous. It has been maligned as a way for a heretic or a fool to justify his heresy or his foolishness. And, it often is.
But truth shows her paradoxical colors here, as in all things worthwhile. "Free thinking" can be a way astray, but it is the ONLY way to the Truth.

Unsafe

I'm going to make a suggestion to potential readers that I really hope you will take seriously. If you are a person who has a generally positive outlook on life, a person who doesn't have to try to find the good in things, a person who sees life as good with a few hiccups, I would suggest you not read this. There are a couple of reasons. The first is that you may entirely misunderstand me and begin regarding me as a malcontent. The second is that it will likely be a waste of time for you.  In suggesting that you pass on this one, I am not suggesting that you are wrong, or naive. In fact, it could be that you have life figured out while I'm still hopelessly befuddled. You can read this first sentence, and then see what I mean, and decide for yourself whether to continue.

"To think unimpeded and remain optimistic is not possible. Let a man face facts as they really are, and pessimism is the only logical conclusion."
"Once grief touches a man he is full of reaction, he says spiteful things because he is hurt, but in the end grief leads a man to the right point of view: that the basis of things is tragic."
Oswald Chambers

I offer this scenario. Someone, be it a KGB agent in a gulag, a confused kid in a high school in Columbine, or a run of the mill militant atheist, places a gun to my head and says "Renounce your faith in Jesus Christ or die now." I would not hesitate. If there were no reasoning with the threat, or possibility of disarming him, I would say "Absolutely not. If that is the way of things with no third choice, then kindly be swift and spatter brain matter on yon wall."
But suppose the threatener asks a second question, specifically "Why? Why do you choose to die instead of renounce your faith in Jesus Christ?"
I would answer, quite simply, "Because God sent his Son to die to save me from my sin and the penalty of it."
Supposing again, for the sake of my point, that the agent of death poses a third question. Perhaps he's genuinely curious, or perhaps he's a sadist, denying my pathetic request to do his deed quickly.
"Let me ask you this. You say you choose to die within the confines of the two choices I have given you because God sent his Son as an act of Mercy to save you from your sin and the penalty of it. I would ask you, as the holder of the gun, if you could lay aside (as Chambers and the author of Ecclesiastes did) that one event. That one cataclysm that you did not, in fact, witness for yourself, and only believe happened, I ask you to disregard as I ask this third question. I ask you, in your experience as a human, with the things that you have learned, the experiences you have had, the sights that you've seen, the unpleasantness you've suffered, the things you have seen those you love and the world at large go through, in this context alone, would you say that God is kind? Would you say that He is gentle? Would you say, as the Scriptures say, that He is tender?"
My answer would once again be quickly forthcoming "What are you, crazy? Of COURSE not. If I must base my answer on my experiential observational life, I tell you that God is less kind gentle and tender than  yourself with a loaded gun at my head."

(Optimist, if you're still reading, you were warned.)

After all, what have I observed? I was born causing great pain to my mother. My memories of childhood are depressed and lonely. I married a woman who underwent horrific childhood trauma and still suffers from it today. I have a chronic disease and a stressful means of paying my bills. But enough about me. Every day, children are abused, the weak are exploited and tortured, sickness and disease ravages millions, famine is rampant, demigods rain terror and death down from the skies and erupt it from the earth. Sickness of the mind tortures many, leading to lives of quiet desperation, loud desperation, and suicide.
"What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted....and in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain."

Chambers says that the root of things is tragic, the ecclesiastical preacher says that life itself is vanity.
More and more, the question becomes not why would I choose to die, but why would I choose to live?

As I grow older, there is an excerpt from a children's book that becomes sadder, more relevant, and paradoxically more hopeful.
Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are shipped off to the English countryside to escape the incessant German bombing of London, while Mom stays behind in the danger zone and Dad fights in the War. In the expansive manor, there sits a wardrobe which temperamentally allows access to a magical world the inhabitants call Narnia. After some time in Narnia, the children are given to understand the way things stand. Narnia is under the control of an evil tyrant. But there are a faithful few who eagerly anticipate deliverance from a person named Aslan, who will depose the tyrant and restore the land. So far, so good. But then it is somewhat casually mentioned that "Aslan" is, in fact, a lion.
Susan voices an immediate concern that must be on all of their minds, with the possible exception of the childlike and credulous Lucy.
"Is he quite safe?"
The startled Beaver's response is the lifeblood of my middle aged faith.
If I may paraphrase, "Safe?! .....................Are you quite mad? What did I just say? I told you, He. Is. A. Lion! Of COURSE he isn't safe!!!!"
A lion is a man eating beast, a cunning hunter, a savage and mercurial killer.
What Beaver has just told them has terrifying implications.
Implications such as: this "Savior" could fasten his massive jaws around your throat and end your existence. He could tear you limb from limb and eat your flesh while you still breathe. He could toy with you endlessly, allowing bursts of false hope, only to dash them with his corralling roar.
More to the point, given the difference in perception between a human, a Narnian and this Lion, even his benevolence will likely be inscrutable. His offer of life will seem sadistic and controlling. His very nature will be to us savage, brutal, manipulative, narcissistic and unpredictable. His very helping paws have claws in them. His voice issues from between fangs.
So, at this point, I imagine Peter and Susan are thinking, "Yeah, no. The land is under siege by  a cruel dictator and you're telling us our only hope is a killing machine. We can just go back to the lamp post, walk through the wardrobe and be done with it. Oh, wait. England is about to be overrun by the enemy. Well, this is just bloody fantastic.
Lion or Hitler? Maybe we should just flip a coin!"
Of course, you know what Beaver says next.
His next sentence is quite possibly the most contradictory statement possible given his previous utterance of "He's a LION, course he isn't SAFE!"
But.................................. He's good."
What?!
He's good?!
Yes, He's good. To my finite understanding, He is beyond finding out. He is a cosmic sadist, a cold and distant ultimatum, an Entity that knows me intimately and yet allows cruel things to happen to me.
To my faith, He is goodness that is so beyond my comprehension of goodness, kindness that outstrips the kindest human I've ever known, gentleness and tenderness that would make the most awestruck, devoted mother a faithless, abusive caretaker.
Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.

Something I'm working on

Kenny had always wondered if he would wake up if someone broke into the house at night.
Or during the day.
He never considered the housebreaker might sit down at the edge of his bed and gently shake him awake.
His first thought was that he was sick and someone was here to help him. That was why he didn't reach for the Springfield XD 9 mm that hung on a nail above the nightstand.
He couldn't remember how, or if, his last trip had ended.
Was he in the hospital?
No. His blue acrylic throw with the huge horse was wound tightly around his hips and the familiar blue nightlight glowed from the bathroom.
His first impression of the man seated on the edge of his bed was of a caretaker with a bedside manner, perched lightly so as not to disturb the patient, perhaps to take a temperature, or administer medicine; very calm and reassuring. 
Kenny lay still, his eyes half open, waiting for the dream to end, or the memory to come back...
It started to seem odd that the man remained silent, his gaze narrow and expectant, his left hand on his left thigh, his right on his right hip.
Seconds passed, and clarity began to dissipate the confusion in Kenny's sleep numbed mind, but with the clarity came a different level of confusion, and with that confusing clarity came fear.
As the last bit of sleep paralysis faded from his mind like breath from glass, the alarm must have flashed in his gray eyes.
For before his triceps could even begin to tighten to lift himself to a less compromising position, the housebreaker shook his head slightly, just a barely perceptible twist: a warning.
But it was too late. Kenny's reflexes had reached his brain, and the recently awakened organ was not fast enough on the turnaround. He couldn't stop it any more than he could open his eyes while sneezing. The man moved. It didn't seem as if his movement was sufficient to cause the shocking impact in Kenny's throat, but Kenny's arms flailed to his throat. His mouth opened in a simultaneous attempt at gagging and screaming, but he could do neither.
He lay flat on his back again, mouth opening and closing. Finally, air rasped through his larynx in a shocking groan He retched, dry heaving, then bile filled his mouth. The convulsions brought no response from the housebreaker. Kenny rolled slowly to his side, and raw, burning bile dripped from his mouth. He gagged and spit again. He stayed on his side, his mind stumbling through a list of very limited options.
He rolled his eyes upward. The Springfield was gone. He was in no position to use his feet to kick. The blue horse blanket was tangled around his legs.
The man let him lay that way for some time.
Kenny finally rolled onto his back.
The man spoke.
"Kenny, you are about to die."
Kenny exploded into a useless flurry of arms and legs but stopped when he found the barrel of a revolver somehow inserted into his mouth.
As Kenny fought to control his instincts, the man removed the barrel and placed it firmly on his lip just under his nose.
He continued, "There is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent it. Every man dies, mot never see it coming. But you will. And it is a gift."
Tears fled from Kenny's eyes, sobs surged against clenched teeth.
"I'll give you a minute to accept it. Don't struggle or you wont know the exact instant. You won't be ready..."
Kenny lay still, his mind exploding in supernovas of desperate confusion. There was nothing rational to do, so his mind began to consider the irrational. The man shook his head. "Don't. Please. For your own sake"
Kenny's mouth opened, silent sobs escaping, shaking his body.
"WHY?!"
The man nodded. "That's it. Accept it. And I'll tell you why."
He slowly reached in to his left pocket and withdrew a pocket watch. Opening it, he laid it on the night stand, with the clock face facing them.
"Look at the watch."
Kenny looked. It was a simple brass case with a Roman numeral dial There was an inscription on the upper side. # 35 33 34.
Then, the man reached into his shirt pocket and took out a curling wallet size photo. With a slightly tremulous hand, he held it inches from Kenny's face.
Recognition was instantaneous, and Kenny was fighting for his life again. His left arm lashed out and was blocked but he used the opposing force to shove himself to the other side of the bed, rolling off the side, and scrambling to his feet, fighting loose of the blanket. He crashed into the bathroom doorjamb, Legs churning, he pulled himself upright and lunged toward the doorway that led out into the living area, but the bed slammed into his shins, pinning him against the wall next to the closet.
The man stared across the bed, the revolver held low but steady in his right, the photo still in his left. He shook it slightly, urging Kenny to look at it again.
"You are about to die, Kenny. There is absolutely nothing you can do to change that. I just want to give you a chance to die the right way. When you're ready. Are you going to accept it, or do I just shoot you now?:
The look in the man's eyes was surreal. Concern was evident, even poignant. It was as if he simply had no choice, and was being as considerate as possible.
Kenny said nothing, and didn't move.
The man laid the photo face up on the bed between them. With the gun still held steady, he bent and retrieved the watch where it had landed on the floor. He laid it beside the photo.
"When the second hand reaches 12, you'll have exactly 5 minutes. During that 5 minutes, I want you to think about what is going to be happening when that second hand is on the other side of 12 after the five minutes is up."
Kenny stared, uncomprehending.
"Don't say anything. Don't talk. It will distract you from your thinking. Think about whether you believe in life after death. You have five minutes, starting............now."
Kenny spent the first 30 seconds still considering a method of escape. Once again, the man seemed possessed of a preternatural knowledge of his thoughts.
"I'm telling you, Kenny, that you will die. Any attempt to escape will only cut your life shorter."
Kenny began to sob again. The man fell silent.
Thoughts of hellfire as long rejected as thoughts of hearing the ocean roar in a seashell, he frantically tried to focus on. It hadn't seemed likely for such a long time, but.....now, he was being forced to consider a practical impossibility. Could there exist the smallest chance that seconds after the bullet crashed into his brain, he would still exist, that his mind, his........soul, yes, soul would still be alive, would be.....somewhere.
Kenny was not a proud man, not even stubborn really, and he began to accept the idea quickly. But then, he wondered frantically, would he just be dead if he refused to accept the enormous possibility? If he accepted it, there might be a reward, but if he refused, mightn't he just be dead? Cease to exist?
You could live forever, but you could only die once. If there were hellfire, wouldn't he just be burned alive and then be dead?
Now he looked at the clock. Three minutes had passed.
This wasn't fair. No one could answer the biggest question of their lives in five minutes with a gun pointed at their head.
The man spoke again, softly. "If you're right, then you will simply die and never feel anything again. But, if you're wrong......"
The new wrinkle threw a fevered desperation into Kenny's tortured mind. Only seconds longer did his wagering continue, before he threw over any idea that did not encourage him to play it as safe as possible. He began to beg, aloud, for his soul's destiny. Swearing, sweating, shaking, sobbing, he promised the Man Upstairs that he wassins, his freaking sins, his, anything he did that God didn't like, and that if he were to live, he would never do anything again that God didn't like. He would pray all the time and read the Bible through and go to church and- "OH GOD I SWEAR IT!!! I SWEAR ON THE BIBLE, ON MY MAMA'S GRAVE, ON MY LIFE, I SWEAR!!

Letter From Kappus

If you've read Rilke's famous letters to Kappus, a year or so ago, my cousin Blake Hunt messaged me and suggested a writing exercise for both of us: a hypothetical letter FROM Kappus to Rilke, in particular the letter preceding Rilke's most well known sixth letter to Kappus.

The first letter you'll read is Rilke's actual sixth letter and then you'll read what I imagine prompted Rilke to write his stunning sixth letter.

"To Franz Xaver Kappus

Rome, December 23, 1903 

My dear Mr. Kappus, 

you should not be without a greeting from me when Christmas and if you, in the midst of the feast, your loneliness heavier wear than usual. But if you then realize that it is big, so you can look at its ; For what (so you ask yourself) would be a solitude that would not be great; there is only a solitude, and which is large and is not easy to wear, and there are almost all the hours because it would like to exchange it for any more banal and cheap commonality against the appearance of a low compliance with the second best, With the most unworthy... But perhaps these are just the hours when loneliness grows; For their growth is painful as the growth of the boys, and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not make you mad. What is necessary is only this: solitude, great inner solitude. Walking in and not meeting anyone for a long time - that must be achieved. Being lonely as a child was lonely as the grownups wandered around with things that seemed important and great because the big ones looked so busy and because they did not understand anything about their actions. 

And if one day one realizes that their occupations are pathetic, their occupations are frozen, and are no longer connected with life, then why not look more like a child than upon a foreigner, out of the depths of their own world, Own loneliness, which is work itself and rank and profession? Why would a child want to exchange wise, non-understanding, against defenses and contempt, since non-understanding is aloneness, defense and contempt, but participation in what one wants to divorce with these means. 

Think, dear Lord, of the world that you carry within yourself, and call this thinking as you please; It may be a reminder of one's own childhood or longing for one's own future, but be attentive to what is rising in you, and set it above all that you observe. Your inner life is worthy of all your love, you have to work somehow and not lose too much time and too much courage to clarify your attitude to the people. Who says you have one at all? 

I know your profession is hard and full of contradiction to you, and I foresaw your complaint and knew that it would come. Now it has come, I can not soothe you, I can only advise you to survive, if not all professions are so full of claims, full of enmity towards the individual, so to speak, with the hatred of those who are dumb and grumpy The sober duty. The state in which you must now live is no more burdened with conventions, prejudices, and errors than all the other classes, and if there are some who show greater freedom, there is no one who is far in himself And spacious and related to the great things that make up real life. Only the individual who is lonely is placed as a thing under the deep laws, and when one goes out into the morning that raises, or looks out into the evening, which is full event, and when he feels what is happening, So all the standings fall from him, as from a dead man, even though he stands in the midst of pure life. What you, dear Mr. Kappus, should now learn as an officer, you would have felt the same in each of the existing occupations, and even if you had been looking for easy and independent contact with society alone, Have been spared. 

It is so everywhere; But that is no reason for fear or sadness; If there is no common ground between people and you, try to be close to the things you will not leave; Nor are there the nights, nor the winds that go through the trees, and over many lands; Nor among the things and among the beasts are all the events of which you are allowed to participate; And the children are still as you were as a child, so sad and happy, -and if you think of your childhood, then live again among them, among the solitary children, and the adults are nothing, and have their dignity No value."

My imaginary letter from Kappus

The book was returned to me, in a state that suggests it was serving as a riser for some large, animated child clad in exceedingly coarse cloth. As to your sentiments regarding the Italian mail service, I can testify to a similar level of Austrian inefficiency. In Verne's wildest conjuring, might not he have created a method of correspondence that did not rely upon disinterested mortals.

This new station of mine makes a mockery of the romance of the soldier. The idea that there can be anything poetic about the life of a soldier is either proof of the skill of certain writers and bards or of the willingness of so many readers and hearers to be so misled. The routine is destructive to the very ambition that led me to seek out this particular vocation in hopes it would be favorable to finding myself while it attended my material needs. The shock of the unfamiliarity that was at first so invigorating has dulled now that I discover how quickly everything becomes contemptuously familiar. I have at least though realized some success in my quest to quiet my mind. But I am finding even that quietness discomforting.

For I am finding the solitude you value so highly a burden. I realized sometime last week that I was thinking of solitude as an end in itself, despite my best intentions. It's very difficult not to romanticize solitude, in the brooding light of the lonely surface of the deep before the Spirit of God began to trouble it. And perhaps that is more appropriate than I realize. For I am finding solitude anything but an end. It is instead the most restless place I've ever been, a void very like the one which languished for untold eons before God Himself, in all His arbitrariness, chose to disturb the hateful placidity at a time of His own inscrutable choosing. I can recognize the value of this existence only as a forge, the minutes falling like the hammer, sleep as the cooling sand pit.Although I see nothing taking shape, (indeed, my mind feels like less of a useful tool all the time, my soul seems at times to be molten) and my faith in your faith and even my doleful conviction that hardship must be useful, if only as a foil for ease, is being beaten out, day after day, with no sign of being re-forged. I fear this lonely crucible of time will find out in me a worthless piece of ore, a slab of slag with a fatal flaw, and that I shall be cast aside or at last beaten into nothing, a final shower of sparks that flies up and fades down and leaves the smith with empty tongs.

This disappointment is all the more bitter, as I have always intuited that if I could escape once more to the starkness of childhood, where everything fell easily into it's category, where even exceptions reinforced the rule. I accepted things with an assurance I am sickened to now suspect as mere complete credulity-the emptiness that gnaws like acute hunger at the realization that home was an illusion .God was more than just a given. I swear that he spoke to my child's mind. I swear it by all that I know to be true. But I have lost him. I have lost him to a confusing melee of facts. I know that if God exists, he cannot be the simple God Always On My Side that I felt as a child. That God has too much against him, too many inconsistencies blindingly obvious to the powers of observation that he ostensibly gave me, and he is far too weak to stand to be crucified by the logic with which he constructed my mind. Is memory so false, or do humans simply cease one mode of existence before passing into another. (Does a larvae really die instead of transforming?)

I can tell you that not a single foundational stone of my childhood is unmoved. Nothing is the same. I have sought that singleness of purpose, even trying to forget myself. I know that I am an exceptionally self aware person, and have no reason to doubt the charitable when they say that the key to happiness is self forgot. I have tried to believe that the increasing awareness of the world around me and my exact relation to everyone in it was, in reality, itself an illusion. That manhood had brought a sort of fever to my soul, clouding vision and populating the world with things that weren't really there.

But in the dark silence, the solitude is only loneliness. The spectres of doubt refuse to dissolve, and I am accompanied, always, by what I hope is fear of the darkness but dread is nothing.

The Darkest Night of the Year

Monday, December 21, 2009

The Darkest Night of the Year

There are plenty of people around who will be happy to tell you the celebration of Christmas is a farce, rooted in pagan rituals and bedecked with all sorts of trappings of non-Christian customs; Christmas tree, evergreen wreaths, Santa Claus.
FYI, the Christmas tree custom is said to have been derived from pagan tree worship. I wasn't surprised to learn this because ever since I was a little tyke, I have felt an irresistible urge to genuflect every time I passed the lighted tree.
The evergreen wreaths and boughs have a similar origin, and Santa Claus, well, now he's something else altogether.
Old Saint Nick, we call him.
Well, of course you know that "Old Nick" is another name for Satan.
There you go.
Christmas is a big tree-hugging orgy culminating in a midnight visit from the devil himself, who breaks character by giving things rather than taking them and inexplicably drops down the chimney instead of rising from the frozen ninth circle of hell.
(Wait, the frozen ninth circle . . . . cold, North Pole, I've found another connection! And you have the striking, eerie similarity between "ninth" and "north." In fact, you only need interchange two letters to reach the same spelling.)
And the crowning glory of the 25th of December haters is the very date itself.
December 21st marks the winter solstice, a day that has held such significance for so many non-Christian cultures that I couldn't possibly name all the different rites and feasts. Essentially, it has to do with Dec. 21 or 22 being the shortest day of the year, and the turning point for lengthening days. Stonehenge, Sun gods and some ancient Greek festival dubbed "Festival of the Wild Women," all figure in, among many, many other pagan icons.
So, I say, what a glorious wonderful day to celebrate the earth-bound birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior.
In the midst of all the secular and even satanic ritualistic high days, December 25th sets a holy fire burning, raining light down like a certain mysterious "conjunction of planets" over 2000 years ago.
Beset like the oppressed Jews under Roman rule, we struggle here in the darkest night, the longest eclipse we can remember, longing for the coming of our Redeemer.
And in the middle of the darkness a spark is struck, and suddenly, the darkness is only a foil for that beautiful, blinding fire that grows and pulsates and will one day consume the whole new earth with it's brilliance.
"-and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last." said nephew Fred "So, a Merry Christmas, Uncle!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
"And a Happy New Year!"

The Things Which Are Not

Darkness, because daylight hides the unknown.
The moon, because the sun cannot be looked upon.
The worst, because the best is yet a lie.
The sigh, because the song will end.
Violence, because peace is fragile.
Savagery, because civilization is the refuge of cowards.
Chaos, because order is a prison.
The unspoken, because words have spaces in between.
Broken, because perfection is an illusion.
The awake, because the dreaming must awaken and the awake must soon fall asleep.
The present, because the past and the future are non-existent.
The mystery, because the obvious is treacherous.
The lament, because the ode must never hit a false note.
Death, because life slips away.

For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together

There was a Christmas special run on Focus on the Family years ago called The Innkeepers Dream. It was about a gregarious, humorous devout innkeeper swamped during the census. The entire play is a monologue. It is Ahkim, the innkeeper, telling his friend Julius about the most magnificent dream. He dreamed he'd been patronized by a young couple named Joseph and Mary in town for the census. He also dreamed that later that night, he went up into the hills to deliver some food to his brother in law who was a sheperd. There were angels. And the angels told them that Messiah was born and lying in a manger in a stable. The innkeeper was dumbstruck when his was the inn and the stable to which they were directed. He was deliriously happy when Joseph told him that he could hold Messiah. But first he wanted to go in the inn to bring out more blankets and fresh water. That was when, he told his friend, the dream ended. Then, he saw a pitcher of water and fresh blankets sitting by the door, waiting to be delivered to the stable. Manheim Steamrollers beautiful version of Silent Night plays as the dawning realization steals over him that the most stunningly incredible dream he has ever had, that anyone has EVER had, has come true. 

Imagine that.

I'm not what you'd call your average optimist. I have a saying, It's always darkest when you have your head stuck in the sand. Meaning, don't pretend. Sometimes things are horrible. And I've also never been a big fan of the Well, it could be worse, look at THAT poor guy bandaid. For one thing, if I say that about THAT guy, and he says it about someone else, SOMEWHERE down the line, there's gonna be some poor soul who says Well, yeah, it's bad, but at least-- and then he looks around to find he's the last one in line. Then guess what? His only comfort, his ONLY solace is Christ.
And what a solace! It's as if things were really as bad as they could ever get. And they were, for all of us. Because of the gulf fixed between us by sin, we were bound for a fate more horrifying and despairing than any nightmare.
And then, a plot twist. And now, our wildest dreams cannot account for the glory to be revealed in us.

There is so much expectation these days, perhaps more than ever, of the return of Christ. And it does indeed seem that conditions have never been more favorable. Seems like the perfect storm. But, you know what, if He doesn't return for another million years, it DOESN'T MATTER!!
WAKE UP!! Your dream has come true. 

To A Hammer...

A pair once as well crafted as youth could fashion, with enough young untested muscle to pad the artistry with an untried, tentative masculinity: a perfect storm of potential.
Now near the completion of two-thirds of a life characterized by hard, unskilled labor, the potential seems realized, if amused at how. The muscle has swollen in the web, looking like excess, but in reality only just enough to perform daily duties. The half inch scar from a dull accident with a dull machete on a dull, hot afternoon, once a dull white, is now a duller brown.
The fingernails still bitten down from nervousness, from economy of time management, from distaste of white, from disregard for hygiene.
Stress shows on the inside edge of the thumb cuticle; a gnawed, picked rawness that gets tucked under the palm in certain circumstances.
They look strange when hanging in pictures, unnatural, uncomfortable with idleness, cocked at an angle inconsistent with the curve of the forearm, ready for they know not what, apt tools of a restless mind.

Only You Can Prevent Ignorance

http://www.businessinsider.com/drudge-report-trump-2016-7

I have blamed conservative media for the rise and inexplicable failure to fall of Donald Trump's political viability.
I now double down on that accusation. I've linked to an article about one of the most interesting figures in modern media, Matt Drudge.
The title of the linked article is The Man Who Could Have Stopped Donald Trump.
The information offered in the article does not provide ironclad proof that Drudge alone could have spared us this torturous dragging out of a very bad joke, but it does indicate that there was certainly no attempt at objectivity on Drudge's part during the interminable 2016 primary season.
Matt Drudge is an interesting side effect of the internet. He is not a journalist. He is a news aggregator. He provides links to articles that usually support his narrative and sometimes provides the links with his own titles, often from quotes within the article, often from his personal conclusions drawn from the article.
I encourage you to read the article. It's very informative, and, from my perspective, damning, even though it seems as if it must have tickled Drudge's vanity since it was on his very web page that I first saw the article. And well it might puff the chest of a man who takes pride in his power to mislead. The Pied Piper could take piccolo lessons from this guy.
Here's a pertinent quote from the article.

I can only speculate as to Drudge's justifications for refusing to link to any article that cast Trump in any light that did not capture the essence of the illusion of the no nonsense Dirty Harry. Perhaps it was genuine belief in the billionaire. Perhaps it was crony capitalism. Perhaps it was a victory lap around the fallen walls of of the liberal monopoly of news. Perhaps it was only a Pavlovian hobby. Doesn't really matter. What is certain and what he even seems quite proud of  is that visitors to his website received only one side of the Trump story.
Now, what should we make of this information? First, we must establish that news is a product. Successful news networks, websites and aggregators treat their customers in a way that encourages return business. They give the consumer what is more likely to be consumed, and more importantly, digested, with no danger of uncomfortable heartburn or acid reflux.
Of no concern at all to the provider or the consumer is the clarity of the environment which is adversely affected by the excessive flatulence that such a diet sorely lacking in nutrients and fiber produces.
News has always been a product to be consumed and has always been subjective. Even if it were just you telling your friend about the Dallas Cowboys game, you wouldn't say they lost by 6 points.  You would say  they almost won. But now, just like cars, phones, emojis and football franchises, you can literally find the news product that suits you to a T and reinforces your views. And sometimes it's a very subtle shading that sells the consumer. The National Enquirer is the obvious snake oil salesman. If it were a car dealership, it would be called Honest Abe's Luxury Autos Under 1000$. Nobody's buying there unless they only HAVE a thousand dollars and 0 credit (ibility).
The respectable capitalists don't insult the consumer's intelligence. There are no outrageous claims that can easily be discredited like HILLARY CLINTON IS HONEST or DONALD TRUMP RESPECTS VOTERS INTELLIGENCE.
No outright lies be told. The good ones are simply very skilled fact selectors.
Of course, Drudge nor anyone else is under any obligation to tell me the truth. Caveat emptor. That is the first lesson I take from this. I'm responsible for the information I take in, and more importantly, I'm responsible for what I believe.
The very first thing to do is to know what you believe. That I tell you to do this BEFORE you consume information indicates of course that I posit that there are transcendent guiding principles that need no input.
I'm pretty sure someone will read this and roll their eyes and mutter Yeah, don't confuse me with the facts.
Let me clarify. You don't need facts or outside information to understand that people have inherent rights. You don't need facts/outside input to understand that asking the innocent to give up rights because of the actions of the guilty is wrong.
Where information comes into legitimate play is maybe knowing that a certain person in question has violated the rights of others, and so forfeited some of his rights
I'm aware that someone reading this may have some beliefs that directly oppose mine. That's perfectly fine. I have enough confidence in my core beliefs and enough confidence that those who earnestly seek truth will find it.
The next step, I believe, is shrinking your area of concern.
If news is only a distraction for you, carry on. I wouldn't presume that news about your city council meeting would be nearly as entertaining or expertly packaged as news about the UN Security Council. Some people watch news instead of soap operas. And that's fine, too, although it does imply that if the news you're viewing is as entertaining as fiction, it might conceivably BE fiction, or at best, "loosely based on a true story."
However, if you consume news FOR the information it professes to contain, and are the sort who then sometimes acts on that information, here are three good reasons to  think local.
1) You will never know all the information about any situation that involves anyone or thing apart from yourself. You may be an eyewitness to a crime, but you would still only have your perspective to rely on. But it stands to reason that the fewer degrees of separation between you and the situation being reported, the firmer grasp you will have on the facts. Every time the information goes from one person to the next, it gets filtered. Sewage can become drinking water, and vice versa.
2) I mentioned a city council meeting as opposed to a UN meeting. Another important difference between the two is you can actually ATTEND the next city council meeting, but if you tried to attend the next UN meeting without an invite, you will be met by men with guns that are far more functional than that miserable knotted symbol of peace that stands outside the UN building.
You can have an impact.
Some (not all) politics IS local.
3) You'll sleep better at night. Less obsession about things outside your control and more actual action taken in matters that are small enough to be affected by you will quiet your mind and strengthen your resolve.

Now, I don't expect you to leave off following national or global news. But, I would encourage you to try to keep it in perspective, balance it with local and state news, and, most importantly, let your conscience be your guide.