Just in time for election season

An ongoing list of the miserable contributions to English by politics:

Fearmongering: In the words of the world's most interesting man, "I do not know what this is." I guess it means you point out the dangers in the perspectives of people with whom you disagree. To say both sides engage in this is to be redundant. Something I learned in Preschool though is usually the party doing the name-calling is most guilty of the act. Just an observation.

Hate- This is far different from anything the word used to mean. It is no longer something you do, but something you are. The sky is blue, the grass is green and my words are hatespeak. If it sounds Orwellian, it's because it is Orwellian. It's usually as a sophomore in college that kids really get a handle on the second meaning of this word. Then it begins to stick in their mouths like peanut butter. This annoys me college sophomores. Stop it.

One of the most interesting contributions I've heard regarding Dualism and the Soul.

Thank you God for this insight by Swinburne. Like all discussions, there will be a counter-argument, and the counter may indeed be convincing. Nevertheless, it presents (among other arguments) a strong case that the idea of a substantially different entity- a human soul- is a reality. I in no way think that dualism as it is perhaps traditionally understood (more a heritage of Greek Pagan philosophy than anything Hebraic) is necessary to the Triune God's reality. We are humans, whatever that means, and God loves us and can do anything. That said, here's the quote:

"It is characteristic of the advance of science that different branches of science have

become integrated with each other, such as optics with electromagnetism. But the
way in which such integrations have been achieved is by supposing that the subject
matter of optics and the subject matter of electro-magnetism are (despite appearances)
really the same sort of thing – physical particles or waves. That involves that
supposing that the secondary qualities by which we originally identify the subject
matter (the colour of the light, and the feel of the heat) do not really belong to the
physical thing, but are an effect of the physical things in us. But when you try to
explain mental things and properties themselves, obviously you can’t siphon off the
mental aspect of them! And so it is the very success of science in explaining physical
events , which makes it immensely unlikely that it will be able to take the final step to
explain the very different kind of events which are mental events."

This is very, very interesting. Think about when you're a child. As you learn, you may occasionally make mistakes concerning your perception of the world around you. You strongly associate the color red with apples, perhaps. This may lead you to think that a fundamental attribute of apples is its redness. That indeed, red is a fundamental thing. As you grow older, perhaps we learn that apples are a particular arrangement of atoms that happen to absorb all the colors of the visible spectrum, but reflects back the red wavelength which we see with our eyes and perceive as the color red.

What I mean is we learn that Redness is not a "thing" proper. Red is a geometrically located segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. Say that the radiation's wavelength is X hertz, then X hertz is what we perceive as red.

Now that's just the problem. As Swinburne says, it seems extremely difficult that mental events will be fully understood as physical properties. The electromagnetic spectrum is a thing that if we were blind, still exists as a wavelength. However, now that we're blind, redness ceases to exist. You could argue that is because we can't physically perceive them, which is not to answer the question at all. Redness still exists, but as a property of the mind.

I'm getting convoluted. As Swinburne says, we discovered more about the nature of electromagnetism when we didn't suppose the physical effect we saw was a property of the electromagnetism itself. Which is interesting, because that's really all science is anyway. The study of the mental effects it has on us, but abstracted in a way.

Electromagnetism has X properties. These properties don't include "redness", but rather a spectrum, a segment of which, we perceive as "redness". Scientific materialism has created the problem of dualism. If "redness" isn't a property but rather a mental perception, than how can we scientifically abstract redness as a thing?

Put another way, for scientific materialism to work, "redness" would need to be an actual thing on the same level as Apple is a thing, the electromagnetic spectrum is a thing, as atoms are a thing, as electrons and protons are thing, as quarks are things, as (theoretically) strings are things, as.... well, actually we can't go much further... there is no fundamental particle, another devastating flaw of materialism.

Put to wit, as soon as "redness" becomes a physically defined theory, then I think physically defined theories cease to mean anything. In other words, the scenario seems more likely that we are absolutely dual substances as humans, or that there is no such think as "material" and we may as well be existing in some bizarre sort of conscious thought. A model not at all irreconcilable to Christian Theism.

Again, it seems that the Triune God may be fundamentally inescapable.

This marks the third and significant avenue that terminates in necessary belief of God. I'd say there are 3 foundational doctrinal categories:

-The Triune God (this includes God the Creator, God the Son as atonement for our sin, and God the Holy Spirit as the sustainer and feeder of our faith)

-Original Sin

-Life everlasting (absolutely true should a "mind" or "soul" be admitted, absolutely possible if we're still only presently material beings)

Via Godelian logic, I think that God the creator is necessary. By the same logic, augmented, I'd say we have to have minds. This latest consideration is as addendum. And should the first two be admitted, it only makes sense that the resurrection is true too. After all, if God is verified in everything else He's said and revealed to us in Scripture, why shouldn't the Resurrection be believed as well?

_

Hidden behind a cloud.

Dear God,

Burn me away until I'm nothing but what can't behold you. Who are you? What am I? What is this?

Dear Father,

Bless your name.

Dear Son,

Bless your name.

Dear Spirit,

Bless your name.

Bless you Three in One, One in Three. Ineffable and incomprehensible.

Silence my enemies. Give me justice. Grant me peace.

Bless your servant and give him faith.

Forgive your servant and give him grace.

Love your servant and give him hope.

Dear unspeakable mystery,

Thank you for glimpses of Your glory.

Burn me away until I am yours. Flay me until I am yours.

Your servant is weak and you are strong.

Amen.

The Multiverse, The Trinity, and what the hey is reality anyway?

A quick contemplation of the multiverse:

It is if often implied that God is described in mathematics. I think this is certainly true: it can be a reflection of who He is. But it is certainly not the primary descriptor of who He is.

Nowhere in scripture is it ever even indirectly implied that He is a primarily mathematical being. He is a law-giver, yes. But the laws are typically interested in something far less mathematic. This is, after all, the God whose name, "I AM who I AM" revealed Himself as 3 beings in 1 and 1 being in 3. It's not a mathematic explanation. It's beyond it.

And ultimately, that is one half of the primary message about God in the Bible. One half is "fear what you do not know" and the other half is "what you infinitely do not know, loves you deeply."

It's the fundamental description provided in Genesis where God describes Himself as the Creator. The scientists of today are (in their atheistic moments) not unlike the pagans. The Pagans only believed what they saw. The moon-god, the sun-god, etc. The God of Abraham described Himself by what is Not Seen and what created us and everything which we do see.

He came down from heaven and in unimaginable power pointed His finger at us and said, "Bow before the One you cannot understand who created everything you can." He resists explanation but explains everything.

Godel-like, he validates our system. All our systems. Without His necessity, we are endlessly an aberrant computer program spinning off into an infinity which invalidates itself. Without the God-parameter, we are Wild E. Coyote feeling the nothingness beneath our feet before uneasily peeking down and falling into oblivion. God is the only and necessary terra firma.

And this post has been surprisingly uncomfortable to write. I think any honest encounter with the Almighty is.

And yet, inexplicably, He revealed Himself as human and in love. The person of Jesus is the ultimate resolution to every sickness.

I think perhaps the multi-verse is true. I really don't care either way. It doesn't surprise me that the infinite Creator God would reveal Himself as infinitely creative. It is amusing to see how the God of Abraham is necessary to keep the multiverse model from constructing its own destruction. God is terrifying and huge.

Perhaps in Genesis, he didn't give them a theory of everything. Not in our traditional, scientific sense, anyhow. This seems especially prescient considering the trend in physics that there is very unlikely to be a theory of everything. Instead, He gave us himself, who is the theory of everything. The doctrine of creation is supremely important.

And He loves us individually and deeply. Despite Hawking's protestations.

Dear Lord.

You exist.

Take the pummeling and cling to Him with terrified eyes.

What is there to answer the longing of 6.5 billion hopeless broken bugs who don't know where they came from or where they're going.

I'm concerned about my generation. We are more lost than ever before. We're hurtling towards darkness and we can't even make out our hands anymore. It's getting darker and darker and we're getting more and more sure of ourselves in everything.

And in all the billion fractures you can hear the reservations and second-guesses of 100 mph into the unknown. They creep like whispers out of a chasm. We're out of control and sometimes we sense the terror we should always feel.

We're all on this slide.

Some men of science think that God does not exist because they can't fit him under their microscopes. They cannot see Him because they are looking at his toenail.

A Journey of Peace

A thought I have for what might make a good book.

Travel essays and writing are typically verbose and almost always sentimental or cynical.

Forget all that.

I have my faith in the Judeo-Christian God. I think the whole world reflects different wavelengths of His truth. A part of the character of God is peace. A fount of peace. A good book would be a photographic/essay book about peace. It wouldn't have to be overtly Christian. Done well, it would bleed Christianity as subtlely (and profusely) as Tolkien.

Full moons on the Yangtze, Japanese tea ceremony, a thunderstorm in India, tea in London, spring in central Texas, fall in the Shenadoah, a burning sunset in Africa, a dinner in the Amazon. Not about adventures. That might be a small part of it. But it's not the focus. It would be a tight thesis. If photographed well, it could be extraordinary. The writing would need to be sharp too. Sparse, meditative. No cynicism. I suppose it could be romantic. But this isn't necessarily about the cultures. It's more about how God's peace could be reflected in the culture.

It doesn't seek to set anyone on a pedestal. It seeks to shine a light on different diamonds and see how they catch.

A quick pensee (from work!)

The Deconstruction of Narrative

How Naturalism, in addition to the challenges of circularity and normativism, naturalism also faces another challenge to its foundations. Naturalism, fundamentally, cannot contain narrative. Obviously, in this framework the humanities are destroyed.

Causality

Our ability to form narrative, is perhaps a huge proof of God's existence.
Are ultimate conclusions about causality impossible? E.g.- narrative (even the most self-critical), require, by necessity, tunnel vision. If it wasn't tunnel vision, it would be as Mary Midgley said- we would be indiscrimenant fact gatherers without any conclusions at all about causality. X would not cause Y which causes Z. There is only X. X is all there is at all moments past and present. We would, essentially, be dead. We would be the same as a mirror that reflects the sky or a mountain. We would reflect nothing but the randomness and meaninglessness of reality. No thought, no conclusions, no logic, no reason, no emotion, no mind, no body even. We would be an empty recording. A mute phonograph. Narrative is an aberration. Beyond an aberration, it cannot exist.

Yet, naturalism is an epistemology of only observable causality. It undermines itself in this way in addition to the problems of circularity and normativism.
Additionally, if we are a result of purely naturalistic causes, then our conclusions are deterministic and will forever be impossible to rise above as Dawkins would like. our conclusions are not, then, based on an apprehension of logic or a larger pattern, but mindless noise. If this is so, then the conclusions are void. Natural cannot be all there is. It's logically impossible. Ergo, Godel.

The argument from evolution is unalterable too.
Godel's God is inevitable from many routes. They all lead to it. These are all the problems of Spinoza.

If a room only costs the Ritz $75/night… A Hampton Inn is probably only like $35/night….
If this is so, you could offer free stays for families, requiring a dinner at the hotel restaurant, which will almost undoubtedly hit over $50.

So a hostel with cheaper rates for more people and free for over 10…. Then you could make good money.

Interesting to note that a summation of the naturalistic response to the problems of circularity particularly, is: Well, though that approach is indeed rigorous and completely obedient to the rules of logic and reason, it isn't REALLY essential. And by essential, we really mean, its resolution is not necessary for us to live how we want, experiment with what we want, and basically do what we want for the remainder of our ultimately meaningless days. But this isn't rigorous, academic, or any other thing. The modernist experiment produced some fantastic results, but was ultimately driving a car it didn't really own on a very short road ending in a boulder. It gave them a good perspective on some things, but they wrecked the parent's car. Some (Dawkins?) have refused to acknowledge this. Are we in a state of widespread denial?
The above may sound polemic, and perhaps even angry. But it's actually not. It really seems to be the conclusion of a set of values.

Naturalism- No intrinsic meaning, no narrative, etc. If there is any meaning or narrative, it is essentially man-created. This isn't atheism at all. It's very Greek. Except that we (some. the great perceivers) are gods among men. John Dewey, Einstein, Dawkins et al. Are our gods and the masses remain the men. Indeed, it is absolutely Greek. One of the paradigms in ancient Greek were that the gods were arbiters of some kinds of power and may sometimes influence or rise above the influences of fate. Ultimately they were still ruled by the forces of fate. In the modernist paradigm, the hazy laws of nature are the new wheels of fate. In all this, the shadowyness, the altars to an unknown god, are very interesting. Very familiar sounding.

Hawking's bubble universe= Greek.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/11.57.html?start=1

Quotes.

"Modern atheism is in many instances the product not so much of antireligion as of religion’s replacement of the God of Abraham with the god of the philosophers, and the subsequent rejection of that ersatz god by other philosophers. "

"Absent our sin and God’s judgment and redemption, it is not surprising that people came to dismiss the idea of God, not because it is implausible but because it is superfluous and, yes, boring."

"There is indeed irony in the fact that some who think of themselves as theists eagerly embrace deconstruction’s operative atheism. The reason for this is that among other things that deconstruction deconstructs is an older form of Enlightenment rationalism that excluded religion from the company of rational discourse...[T]here is [an] atheism of putative theists who peddle religious truth claims that are true for you, if you find it useful to believe them true. "

"Eternal life is the fulfillment anticipated by all that is good, true, and beautiful in this life. . .[M]ost of us, and especially the great mystics more than most of us, have moments of encounters with the good, true, and beautiful in which we are moved to say, 'Ah, it must be something like this'... The Christian proposal is that in Jesus the unknown has made itself known in the finitude of space and time. "

- Richard John Neuhaus

"Human beings find the life they live unsatisfactory with uncanny consistency, even human beings who live in comfortable circumstances where there is little objective reason for them to complain. This satisfaction can take the form of an intuition that the world we know is transitional, and the people in it are on their way to somewhere else. "

"In this view, it seems to me, the moral calculus of the world is very like a complex logical system, of the sort that Kurt Gödel noted would necessarily produce undecidable sentences, statements whose truth value cannot be decided within the system but must refer to something outside. As several commentators have pointed, this is how Aquinas’s Five Proofs work: no "comprehensive account" of the world, either in physics or ethics, can explain itself. The books will never balance, in other words, if we look only within the world. It is the burden of American Babylon, and perhaps of Fr. Neuhaus’s ministry, that we can get quite a lot done in history precisely because we know there is a way out. "

- John J. Reilly

The God is Powerful

He's like a flood. Everything. Every thought, atom, infinitesimal fragment of matter, quasar, galaxy, universes if more than one, limit of the time-space continuum, something is responsible for it all. God. Great God.

There is fire in these endless equations. Fire in every breath. Suffering is everywhere.

Vanity vanity. He raised the dead.

Oh God Where Are You Now?

In every breath. In all our strained breaths.

Psalm 77

The devil is hard on my face again. This will be a long battle.

Would the righteous to remain.

God, why this uncertain existence?

"As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything."

We are veiled.

Oh Lord, touch me now.

Long and ponderous into the mist. Is my reason everything? Can my mind so easily compass the universe? What a lie! What a lie!

Fiercely, fiercely deny the end. It is not so.

Let all things their creator bless. And worship Him in humbleness. Oh praise him, alleluia. Praise, praise the Father praise the Son. And praise the Spirit three in one. Oh praise Him, Oh praise him... Alleluia... Alleluia .... alleluia..

I'm a wretch! Turn away from me. Turn away from me. Turn away from me.

His clothing was aflame.

Turn away from me!

O Lord...

Then, there came a word, of what he should accomplish on the day then peter spoke to make of them a tabernacle place a cloud appeared in glory as an accolade, they fell on the ground a voice arrived the voice of God the face of God covered in a cloud....

Fire. Fire. Fire.

What he said to them, the voice of God, my most beloved son. Consider what he says to you. Consider what's to come. The prophecy was put to death and so will the son.

Lost in the cloud a sign: son of man, son of God!

My God, my God, my God, my God, My God almighty. You are my God. Apart from you, I want no other.

If you are false, reality is not real. My life, my vision, my sight, my world, my universe is tied to you.

I don't know what this world portends.

Shadow am I like a suspicion that's never confirmed but it's never denied.

More like the absence of something.

I can sense the void by the sound of the air rushing in.

Thou rushing wind that art so strong, ye clouds that sail in heaven along, O praise him, Alleluia!

Will it ever be on earth as it is in heaven?

Oh my God

Lord I believe, in mercy grant me grace. To know thee blessed savior more and more, I can do naught without thee, show thy face. Spirit help my unbelief.

Totus Tuus.

Amen. Forgive me, Lord. Amen.

This is Me.

"Were you always interested in religion?"

"I can't remember when I wasn't. My sisters and I had to go to Sunday school and all that, and then we had to go to a church camp, a little Presbyterian church camp. In Pittsburgh the Presbyterians are real high-church -- it's a social thing -- and I despised it. But this was really low-church, Fundamentalist theology, and the first ideas I'd ever heard. It was metaphysics for children. It's the only metaphysics that people do teach children, and then you spend the rest of your life looking for something that good. You see undergraduates trying to study philosophy, and that's not it. Then they try psychology, and that's not it. They find it in literature, and they find it in poetry. I was going along happily without it, and then in college I hit theology and said: 'This is it. This is it.' " And so it has been.

-Annie Dillard

Dear Father

I'm a broken man. My soul is a pile of splinters and shattered consciousness.

This world we have been born to is more terrible and beautiful than any imagination.

Why do we have eyes to see color? A brilliant palette with which all creation has been painted. And why should we see it? Drops of rain explode light into a rainbow bowed over the earth. Why? Why should this splendor be wasted on people too weak to trust you? What is the color of ultraviolet or infrared light? Our visible spectrum is just like our existence. It's a glimpse on the median of infinity. Looking either direction there are colors unimaginable. Evidence of an invisible God who has revealed himself in the small sliver of our existence, still too great and complex and patterned for our comprehension.

This life is just a sliver of light. A sliver of the true inexplicable magic of truth. An evidence that we can only dimly perceive. We translate that invisible spectrum into what we can see, as our gracious God translated himself into mankind; the word become flesh.

When one opens his eyes, everything is a reflection of the God. Mighty God. The best utterances of splendor we can only hope to lay like gravel at his feet to walk on. The thunderous utterance and fire and crackling smoke and tender whisper and weeping man. Resplendent. Everything is ordered, woven like a deep and unimaginable pattern.

Imagine peering through the eyepiece of a telescope, perceiving endless galaxies of scale beyond imagination. Then quickly take your eye of the telescope and place it over a microscope and witness the endless scale sink into infinity. There is no scope, no edge we can see. We are mankind on an island in infinity, loved by a God who met us here in our infirmity.

Why does a butterfly bat its wings when it lands on a flower? I suppose there is some reason? But why does it appear to me so lovely? A peaceful fanning of its colorful delicacy. There is no reason for me to care about it. No reason for me to take delight in the electric green bug crawling across the velvet brilliance of a zinnia. No reason for me to feel staggered by the dashes of red cardinals streaking across green grass and see tomatoes redden from a small green to a plump ruby color. To see a seed explode into leaves of okra and watch the flowering blossom of jalepenos emerge into the searing kiss of its fruit.

The universe is staggering. The deeper we peer, the more its complexity and beauty and elegance and richness unfold on itself like an undulating explosion. It never grows simpler, but reality endless outgrows our best metaphors and cleverest phrases. Our imitations of reality are broken and endlessly striving for the glory we know exists.

Why should blue be blue? Why should an atmosphere grow deep blue and grass rich greens? Why is it such a pleasant complement to the profusion of color we can behold? Why shouldn't our eyes have missed the color of the skies completely? We see more than we need to. We see less than we want to. Why this situation?

Dear God. This universe is more than I can imagine. It is beyond imagination. It has grown beyond our creativity. It has outpaced our science, infinitely expanding as it is.

Why have you given us this striking wonder? Dear Lord, we don't deserve it. Why have you given us this theater to exist in? Our endless rebellion and your endless pursuit? It is the same story, played by countless actors on a stage as wondrous as our aspirations. We long for your perfection. And on our better days, we glimpse it.

I am rubble and dust. You know my frame LORD. You scooped me from this dirt and mud and breathed in me life.

I don't even know what that means, exactly. But my, how I know it.

I did nothing to deserve this. Nothing.

One of my first experiences with despair

Was as a young child. I have no idea what movie it was... I think it starred that guy from The Mighty Ducks.

The premise was something to do with him adopting a kid? Honestly, I have no idea what the plot was. All I remember is one scene.

The man was drinking milk that had gone sour and was turned lumpy. He tried to pretend that it didn't bother him. He poured the lumpy milk into his Fruit Loops and sadly ate the milk with a face of determined satisfaction poorly veiling his misery.

For some reason, this struck me as infinitely painful. Something in his helplessness and being beyond all help, removed as he was in the film, tore my heart in two. It's a bizarre recollection, but one I have never forgotten and deeply effected me. It's the same agony I feel when I find my faith threatened.

This is an interesting thought. I see people who suffer and I want to help, but often I cannot. Is this scene of lumpy milk our lives? Our stout-hearted refusal to accept our sad situation my faith?

No, I don't think so. I think a life without faith is this scene of lumpy milk? But Christianity is the recognition of our soured milk and our helplessness. We have faith in a God who reveals our suffering to be a blessing for others, and promises a land flowing with (fresh) milk and honey.

It's not a cleverer theology. But it's the right one, I believe. That's the truth.

I am somewhat bewildered

By Marilynne Robinson's identification as a "mainline protestant."

"All of the traditions have their gift to give to the larger phenomenon of Christendom. But for the mainline Protestant tradition, intellectual culture is a huge part of it," is a statement I have no difficulty agreeing with. I identify myself as Lutheran, but I allow for error within this denomination as well as a particular strength it can offer. The fact that if falls within the larger umbrella of "Christendom" is essential. I do not, for example find other religions as satisfying to the necessary tenets of faith.

I mean that human sanctity is not the starting point. How could it be? By what authority can human life be possibly derived? It can only be found in Christ. In a God that loved us so deeply he gave His one and only son for our redemption. There isn't another religion- no other analogue- that so profoundly demands this sacrificial attitude as its only possibility of existing.

We are only Christian, only redeemed, only aware of this possibility, through a thoroughly unconditional sacrifice and revelation of that sacrifice.

What discomforts me about Marilynne Robinson's words are that she does not identify this as her starting point. For a person of faith, I can imagine no other beginning.

Science progresses and nothing is new under the sun.

Science that dabbles in the metaphysical and the untestable is inherently soft. It sticks more as a language or idiom that quickly or easily describes something, rather than a satisfactory explanation.

e.g. psychoanalysis. It's almost thoroughly discredited by now, yet persists. It lingers as a shorthand that can express facets of our existence. Everything from "Freudian slips" to "Oedipal complexes" and "Ego/Id" to the cryptic nature of dreams. It's convenient, and therefore works on some level. I would suggest it functions on the same level as the Middle Ages concept of the bodily humors. It's total bunk, but a colorful descriptor.

It's myth at its truest. A descriptor that is less concerned with truth (though it may indeed be true) than it is with being archetypally pleasing.

Perhaps this is increasingly true of nature/nurture and even evolutionary descriptors. Maybe there's a lot there. Maybe it's just very colorful.

A Fine Thing

It's a fine thing to become a worse poet and be given a new soul. Some have chosen to pass over acclaim for better things.

Weeds and Thorn

Take your staff in your hands tightly,

And on my word, strike it rightly.

On my word, and don't stray an inch,

Or we'll take this rope and with a cinch,

Arrest your freedom and all your hope,

We'll steal it, like thieves, with this rope.

On three, 1, 2- Now you've done it,

What'd I say? I warned you. Now get

You're hands behind you and your head turned low,

You sneered our help? We'll make your back glow,

With our lash's poisonous kiss,

Whispering in your ears a dreadful hiss.

3 days in this pit, now how do you feel?

Tell you what- listen, we'll cut you a deal.

Our orders are a burden we've carried by our backs,

Down to you, and we'd like to unload our packs.

So listen and obey, and I promise, we swear

We'll loosen our grip, give you some air.

Don't you know, we have masters too?

Something above us, we're not different than you.

A curse lingers on us all thick in our lungs,

We're all in a fight, ever since we were young,

To get to the top? For some, to do our job

To do what we feel. We must do our job.

So, enough child! Strap this yoke on and plow.

Heels in the earth, food by the sweat of your brow.

That's the way, good child. Fate carries the willing,

Drags the reluctant feet. That will fetch a nice shilling,

Good work. Persist and you soon may fasten your own

Fine yolks to others working the fields that you've sown.

Balance in your skull what I'm telling you,

We're all cursed, we have masters too.

Beacons of Science

Take up your pen, brother

And with your quill sting!

Don't mind the slow and rhythmic

Breath of the great Beast,

who's heart you've pierced

With the venomous ink

Dripped from your feathered fang!

You and I, brother, are a family

Of this great light, can't you see it?

You can't see it? It's the bright,

Shining truth we carry to

The pagans; darkened masses.

We are the trustees, stewards of

The gods: Mathematics and sensuality!

You and I, discovered in like fashion,

This great power! Like demigods of old,

We are made half-holy by this knowledge,

Precious to man. With lances

Of truths and breastplates of our

Self-righteousness, we impale!

Skewer the demagogues who sought gain.

We grasped this power like coal-miners,

Carved from dark earth, sooty

By our efforts. And like men,

Hold it in glory of our strength,

Take up your pen brother!

And wield that quill still!

Don't mind the quieter breath.

Like Achilles, in my rage

I rail against the falsehoods of men!

By my anger brought lowly

And writhing in the dust like

The ones I've slain, my soul quivers.

Sunk to the undergloom- one last truth:

Woe to the one whence judgement comes!

Unfinished

Sweet roses and all that wheat

In the baker's pantry all white with flour

Could make you snow blind

We got lost between the trees past that

far, distant hedge,

just beyond the edge,

of our home's garden.

The roses are sweeter here,

And our belly's less full.

It's the cost of adventure you said.

And so is the cold earth for our bed,

mossy and wet- an explorer's bed.

I can't get a piece of that delicious

Fruit on the savory berry bushes grabbing

The ground and our socks with their prickly fingers.

I've tried twice now and the pain still lingers

on my bleeding, stuck fingers.

I miss the orange butter sauces

Of our home's modest larders,

Couldn't we go visit the baker now?

Watch him tie the dough into bows,

then toss it into the brick oven which glows

Red and coal-blackened orange?

Courage, courage little child

Remember your heart's more wild

Than the biggest beast that's loping here

Your face braver than their fiercest sneer.

Still I wish, bigger brother

We could go home to mother

And father and delightfully imagine

In safety: the dragon and its dark, dark cavern.

Orange butter sauce dipped in Ice-creamy

Snow melts which have the effect of

going snow blind in all the white light.

I haven't got a piece of it, that delicious

fruit. The savory berry bushes grabbing

the ground and our socks with their prickly fingers.

Thorns in the Cushion

Embarrassingly, I never know whether to fight something or let it lie. The question to accept rebuke (most especially a personal indictment) or strive beyond it is a difficult one. To look at one's capacity and decide whether to attempt expansion or to sagely avoid destruction is in no-wise a mathematic determination. I think it has mostly to do with pride or alternately "cajones."

Is it possible, by belief, to step over deficiencies? American Idol suggests otherwise. But perhaps they have reached a sublimer artistry than the crude masses can comprehend. Perhaps all that really matters is your confidence. If you are lucky, your expression lends itself to more, or just smarter, people.

But it's more complicated than that. I think. Dog gone you Thackeray. Dog gone you.

A Couple Thoughts

I picked up and skimmed a copy of the Hobbit the other day. Functioning on the edge of my brain like some marginal residue leftover from a pleasant dream, was an emotion triggered by this book- and consequently Beowulf, old English as a whole, Edmund Spenser, C.S. Lewis, Japanese lanterns, G.K. Chesterton, and Arthurian legend.

Those are the obvious thoughts. There are more operating beneath and around them like a wallpaper, but are harder to identify. Perhaps there is an avenue in late-romanticism, post-impressionism, its fascination with the Far East and the Chivalric similarities to those movements. But grounded in something more concrete- more terra firma.

I saw a blurb the other day. A critic was reviewing a book that discussed ethics with the suggestion that, like money, ethic/morality is a castle we build in the sky and live in. It is fictitious and illusory but because of our common agreement, it becomes a meter that we can all build with.

That idea is interesting, but terrifically flawed, and the critic is the one who makes the observation. And it's probably the observation that undermines all deconstructionists, which is what the book's author ultimately was. A dollar is an idea and nothing more. However, what it represents is not. And that's really the crux of everything. A dollar 100 years ago might have represented a day's hard work for an unskilled laborer. Today it represents about 10 minutes of work. The work- the underlying principle- is unchanged. A meter is a subjectively determined unit of length. The length itself is unchanging.

Applying this to morality needs more precision. What was modesty 100 years ago is not modesty today. The underlying principle, which is adultery and lusting, remains the same. People get sloppy. Whether I use metric or English, the building won't stand unless I obey the underlying principles of physics. Whether I use dollars or euros, the workers won't work unless they're paid a fair wage- unless I observe the underlying principles of the matter.

And this is what the critic observed. He suggested that what we, as a society observe as "law" is perhaps an instrument to sense or gauge the underlying reality of things. When we come up with a law for anti-trust, that is an instrument for feeling out the fundamental truth of "fairness". Therefore, the underlying reality of morality or ethics is absolute and exists over and against us. Societal observations on this truth may be imprecise or outright wrong, like bad instrumentation, but the underlying principle does not change.

And now in an act of alchemy, I will wed these disparate themes into a salient whole:

The Hobbit, through Tolkien, grew out of a fascination with the roots of things. It's interesting to observe that Hobbits live in the ground. Tolkien loved old English, etymology, and the idea of language. All those things are concerned with genesis. They all look for the foundation of things and are an observation of how little things have changed. Tolkien was fascinated with the solidity that echoes throughout time like a bell- the eternal. In finding the roots of a word, or the roots of myth, he takes a hammer and sees how the meaning echoes. He listens for its fidelity. So when he names a sword "Sting" it is unlike the nickname for a WWF wrestler. It sounds immediately like the hot needle of a wasp bringing agony to a larger opponent. It sounds like a pin that could prick the belly of a monster and bring to it doom. The Hobbit, like "dollars" grasped at something beneath us. Something true. Tolkien's philological empathy helped English to act as a conduit of these verities that a sloppier author would blithely pass over like a beachcomber looking for sand dollars when jade, and emeralds, and doubloons, and crimson rubies lay buried. In his linguistic savvy, Tolkien brought along a metal detector. And his excavation yielded us quite a booty.

Through Tolkien, I find new gems of the older linguistic heritage. Like a forest path, it leads to fields of meaning and significance. Through him, a newfound appreciation for Beowulf, Gawain, and by extension, Arthurian legend. It's like a world where each path leads to other paths, and throughout them is this sensing of the firm, the underlying sameness, the truth. Some are perhaps closer than others, but all carry some observation of something far larger than themselves.

So continuing further we arrive at romanticism. Romanticism's main aim, above all else, was expression. It sought to say and was not particular about what. This can be outrageously fortuitous or evil. But in every respect, it is louder. And so some of these romantics latched on to the earth and spoke it loudly. They guessed at truths and proclaimed them boldly. It's not surprising that they had an interest in the Far East. The world was growing smaller and a discipline obsessed with expression is always hungry for new ways to say something. It's easy to see why they clung to the marvelous minimalism of Japan. In it, they found a new medium perfectly suited to the aims of Romanticism. It stripped all away but the meaning- the spirit or essence. It turned down all the channels in a mix except the one that you want everyone to hear. It is a form of amplification.

So, in the ways that this minimalism branched from traditional romanticism or served it, it still accomplished the thing that great art always can. It observed a fundamental truth. It was a seismograph that looked deep into the ground, felt reality, and conveyed it to us in a language we can understand.

So in conclusion, I certainly don't like every example of any of these mediums I've mentioned. Some are outrageously bad, or dangerously wrong. Yet, at its best, they sound like a clear chime that resonates, like a tuning fork, somewhere deep inside my soul. Sometimes it sounds much like the peace that God declares for us. The peace of which He alone is source. It echoes throughout time, throughout language, and throughout cultures. Sometimes dimly, but there is always an element of it there. After all, He built everything. As C.S. Lewis (another who was fascinated with the terra firma) suggested, the best evil can do is distort truth.

Tolkien served as a door to these larger treasures. I can't help but feel the old thrill of traveling again to the hole under the Hill and finding Mr. Baggins' coat pegs hung with the colored hoods of unexpected guests now emptying his larders of cakes and ale. There's something pleasant about the earth there.

One Cinquain

Coffee,

Robust and fresh.

Searching, hoping, wishing

For employ, I really need my

JAVA.

Sacrimonious

Sometimes I get a bug (the parasitic kind that cause itching) to write a post based purely on a word I inexplicably have in my head.

In this case, it is sacrimonious. Which isn't in fact a word at all, in the Merriam-Webster sense. And the two words it's ostensibly derived from "acrimonious" and "sanctimonious" carry none of the meaning the bizarro word, "Sacrimonious" carries in my mind. Yes, I capitalized it that time. It has, now in my personalized dialect, attained the status of "proper adjective" which isn't a designation that exists in the common man's English.

So having discussed, in an odd manner, Sacrimonious' etymology, one might ask, "What does it mean?"

Great question. While I can't provide a definition per se (a phrase I always italicize) I can (a word I don't always italicize) use the word in a sentence. I have provided the following example for illustration,

Boy 1: Hey Peter! They're showing back-to-back-to-back monster pictures at the dollar theater! Wanna grab a snow-cone with the gang and check it out?

Peter: Davie, can't you see I'm busy editing an abstract for my on-spec submission to Science Daily which hopes to resolve the seemingly irreconcilable principles of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. I don't have time for the Sacrimoneous representation of science you proffer with enticements of snow cones and such like.

Davie (formally, Boy 1): You are rotten!

As you can see, Sacrimonious, while always capitalized, is not bound by traditional ideas of spelling- whether spoken or written. This unnamed dialect is challenging for some, but the more confidence you have about its usage, the more liberating it becomes. Also, please note the lack of the proper interrogative punctuation in Peter's rhetorical rejoinder. This is a further example of the unique dialect's capacity.

I hope you have appreciated this obtute exposition.

A Psalm.

Let's with clapped hands make,

The heavens ring, like tolling bells,

Peals of joy fill the valleys

Like rivulets the one who tells,

How the tresses of golden-haired sun

Bowed, its raiments collected,

Like the train of a pious nun.

And I saw deer in the meadow kneel.

The dogs will get more than scraps,

The table broke and the food,

Spilled everywhere on the ground,

Is easier to eat dirty and crude.

Always after my tail to gobble up

It, my conscience and my neighbor.

The patchwork, which I rudely cobble up;

Is poorly gauged for all this gravity.

But this wine beaded on the floor,

Tastes best, saved for last and worst.

Let her lap it up- the whore.

How happy she seems! and the sun too...

Let the peals crack off cliffs and the mouths,

of empty canyons. The bells sound louder.

They don't mind you who belittles.

The dogs enjoy their vittles.

Throwing open the shudders

And unsettling this musty air. This area has fallen into some neglect. Here, spiders have woven their webs, snagged their buggy morsels, and left their nets to the dust. Here, only cobwebs and stagnant air.

So I'm here to open the windows a' la Secret Garden and hoping to chase out the boring.

I am in Hawaii. Specifically I'm on Hawaii. What I mean is I'm on Hawaii, in Hawaii- I'm on the Big Island named Hawaii, from which the archipelago's name is derived.

Ok well, we're shipping out now. High adventure on the south of the island and later, the infinite cosmos from a mountain peak. Vistas and galaxies, ho!