Sunday, November 9, 2014

Thirty Days Without god.

Around seventy years after being defeated by Christ, the Devil struck back.  Glass had been around for some thirty-five hundred years prior, but not until around 100 C.E. did the devil realize the potential.  In Egypt the Serpent guided the lonely glass-maker’s mind towards forming the molten silicon dioxide into a barrier between the world outside and the home.  Other materials had been used before, but never one that offered such a high-fidelity to the world outside.  One could get a sense of the thing, without the trouble of being subject to it’s forces; nature was being corralled. It took another fifteen-hundred years for the damage to be total.  By the early 17th century, most European homes had glass windows.  

We can now mistake the view for the goodness.  We can look out at a fabricated beauty, free from heat, or cold.  Free from bugs, wind, and stench.  We can isolate ourselves and still pretend we exist.  

I don’t believe time exists, but I am quite fantastic at wasting it.  

And so.  Thirty days ago I deleted all the gods of time from my phone.  Facebook and games.  It only takes me, on average, fifty-three seconds to begin and finalize a bowel movement.  My phone has extended this otherwise brief and refreshing action into a decade of miserable minutes.  

It was a pathetic gesture.  The importance I gave the role that games on my phone had in my life was perhaps overblown.  But perhaps not.  I’m not against fun; against leisure.  But leisure and fun should serve a function.  Restoration, building relationships.  Sitting on the toilet infinitely upgrading some bullshit serves no goodness.  The Devil’s glass-gods were pretty secure in my hands.  

This plays into a much larger narrative in my life.  The question of purpose or destiny.  Sometimes my vanity torments my lack of global importance.  I love science, and the devil knows it.  I’m no Werner Heisenberg, and that pisses me off.  Maybe if I learn my multiplication tables, I could change the world?  So I replace the games on my phone with a few false starts in the Khan Academy early math program.  

The glass keeps me inside.  The phones keep our heads down, eyes averted.  Kids these days.  

With no games on my phone, I started reading a little more.  It’s more difficult than it used to be.  My brain has been subtly rewired.  More difficult to focus.  I started praying a little more, but that’s harder too.  I don’t trust my prayers in the synagogues and street corners.  So I cling to established liturgy.  It at least serves as a scaffold to hang my thoughts on.  

To be honest I didn’t make the full thirty days.  At day twenty-something I download Star Wars tower defence.  

I wonder if I should cut off my phone that makes me stumble; drop it “accidentally” into the toilet and then order the new iphone.  I promise to at least open the glass window while I waste my time here.  Because time doesn’t exist.  

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Truth.

Philosophical Skepticism teaches us that we can be sure of nothing.  Not even that.  But my human experience has led me to rest on one surety; Truth.  Behind everything there seems to be a root Truth.  Everything depends on it.  Take any thought experiment, or experiment experiment back far enough and we shall find Truth.  But perhaps it's more like infinity; we can never reach it, but we can get closer.  

The error that so many ex-Christians make, so many militant atheists, is that because it "seems" wrong, or because they don't "like" it, or because "that G-d is an asshole", they simply write it off.  But they forget about Truth.  Regardless of our thoughts on the matter, "the Truth is out there."  We are foolish who do the calculations, and proclaim the sum to be “unreasonable, and therefore false.”  Truth is belligerent.  It does not rely on our belief.  It Is (I Am).  Even if our understanding of it evolves, and will never hit it exactly center, shouldn't we endeavour to run towards it?  To wrestle with it?  To shake our fists at it?

Often times the compulsion for me probably comes from sheer stubbornness.  I am given little proof, or rather, I am aware of little proof, to persist in my belief.  

On my morning walk I was moving through this.  It occurred to me that the desire to doubt fully, to question to a conclusion, seemed to come from "somewhere".  And for this morning, that was the voice of G-d.  Even taunting me "Seek and ye shall find."  I don't depend so much on the promises of finding something anymore.  I breathe only for the seeking.

There is a Truth, and how ever terrifying It may be, I choose to run towards It.  

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Trend and Turmoil.

{BEWARE the VAGARY}

We vexed ourselves.   Correction:  I vex myself.  Or, I am suffering from the condition of being vexable.  I think you know what I am talking about, really.

Driving home from a family camping trip, I saw another one of the bastards.  Pants low, scowl on his face.  I smiled at him like a good neighbor through the protection of my windshield and was met with suspicion.  Rightly so.  My heart was dark with judgment.  All the furry of a life of timid weakness rushed into my mind as I lost several minutes of drive time to imaginations of pulling my family-filled minivan over and raining my fists of thunder into his face. Of course for the purpose of teaching him that he should be full of love and forgiveness, not suspicion and revenge.

Mankind vexes me.  I vex me.  Lost in the sea of my mind, I oscillate from external hatred to inward hatred.  I am the wicked.  It's like I hate them in advance for what I am about to feel towards myself.  Does that make any sense?  No.  Try again.  I swiftly drift from a trained cannon of judgment to on the world, to myself.  I should not grow so angry at people, as loathsome as we are.

I like tall ships.  Beards.  Butchers.  Bow Ties.  Seriously, that was accidental.  But 'O How Trendy it is!  And I hate them all who made it so, I guess I wanted to keep it small and private.  Then I hate myself for caring.  I should love beauty for beauty.  The clothed lilies don't mind if the popularity of good font-type is increasing.  Or decreasing.  How then am I so infinitely concerned for the momentary dumbness of we-all?

Christ is my Salvation.  The peace in wild that I love, the glory of a well kept beard, the incessant smiles of my children, the trees of the field...all Beauty from Him.

Now the pizza man is here and I have to go tip his ass off because sometimes this is a shitty world and I'm too timid to go punch the bad-guys in the dumb faces.