possible letter to ed. Ideas?

The sin of global warning—or just plain sin?

It’s common in newspapers to blame the drought on our carbon footprints, which is kind of like original sin, since all are guilty. 

It’s a very convenient truth after all; here’s why:

Human greed is always with us—originally as well as now.  But this is the first opportunity that the trend-setters have had to hold us all guilty, directly, for the state of the inhabitable earth; and this after less than a year of a drought; although it certainly gets worse by the day. (Snow, anyone?)

But this is not the first drought humanity has ever seen.  Over 1400 years ago the Khmer tribe had a huge empire in SE Asia which built the massive but now-deserted complex called Angkor Wat.  According to the National Geographic, this ruling tribe seems to have been destroyed, in the tropics, by two back-to-back 40 year droughts.  Was this because of man’s sin? Or its large carbon footprint?

Yes, and no.  The thing that the Khmer rulers had in common with us, besides overbuilding, is human sacrifice. It is also what we both also have in common with the Khmer Rouge—for those who have already forgotten, the latter were directly responsible for the killing fields of Cambodia.

Our society is built on the merciless conceit that our offspring are only a good thing if they are not, well, inconvenient.  And we have just massively voted our pocketbooks and our rights to be entertained to the highest bidder; as opposed to, for one moment, assuming responsibility for the massacre of our own children through “therapeutic” abortion.

Some therapy.  All of us are also guilty of this holocaust if only by doing little or nothing to stop a culture bent on destroying its soul.   First stop the slaughter; or watch us go the way of both Khmer killing machines.

And, oh, by the way:
“The majority is always wrong.”    --Ibsen

 

Sincerely,

 

William Schuler

Mendota  11/27/12

 

 

Genetic Entropy

I am forced to highly recommend to the reader a book by Dr. John Sanford, of Cornell, called exactly that: Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome. In it, Dr. Sanford, with 80 technical papers and 30 patents including the revolutionary "gene gun," outlines the Enormous Problem, both in theory and in actual life, of the progressive degradation of the human genome in terms of our fitness to survive.  Not only are mutations unable to account for macroevolution as commonly advertised, they destroy useful information daily, and natural (or artificial) selection simply has no power  to prevent this.  That is, as we should have suspected all along, mutations normally and naturally and constantly degrade every genome, and the incidence of potentially useful mutations is so minute as to be overwhelmingly consumed by the steamroller of entropy and random error.

These are well-kept secrets that rule out the Primary Axiom that presently and destructively rules our society world-wide. That would be the necessary assumption of "No God" only random variations of materials and materialism.  Michael Behe, known to some of you as the promoter of "irreducible complexity" of such complex machines as the bacterial flagellum, says of the book, that, "He shows that, not only does Darwinism not have the answers for how information got into the genome, it doesn't even have answers for how it could remain there."

The book can be pretty technical for some, but it is written so that a person with a basic biology background can understand it and greatly profit by it.

Nonetheless, one observes that Darwinism has hardened and crystallized into an ideology with profound materialistic implications for culture and politics; but only in the sense of self-destruction; of destroying (they think) everything metaphysical when their proofs are increasingly "Hollywood" like, self-referential to the point of utter blindness, and as I have said elsewhere, like a serpent devouring itself by swallowing its "tales"  --which some have rightly called "just so" stories like Kipling's, a materialist  religious mythology, and a frog-to-prince fairy tale.

Speaking wisely of fairy tales:

Here's a quote from Chesterton's Father Brown, from the story, "The Sins of Prince Saradine":

"All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."

So what accounts for the solidified, encrusted, and rancid fat of our dominant worldview?

"The powerful words of poet W.H. Auden describe what is often the case in a world filled with sickly sweet illusion:"

'We would rather be ruined than changed;
we would rather die in our dread
than climb the cross of the moment
and let our illusions die.' "                  from "A Slice of Infinity', Jill Carattini

We would rather embrace self-contradictory teachers and cultures, than go to the trouble of investigating major truth-claims for ourselves.  We congratulate ourselves on our wisdom (read "good taste") and our rhetoric that is afraid to countenance any other view; esp. a subservient view in which we are accountable for, "every careless word."  Considering how destructive our words can be, this would seem to be the correct view, not "whatever..."

Do recall Ibsen's Axiom, as illustrated by the Old and New Testaments;..."the majority is always wrong." And hates God to boot.  Darwinism is merely our excuse to indulge ourselves.

Nonetheless, as opposed to real change, in our character, say, the harshest truth of our existence is right here:

"We would rather be ruined than changed."

 I would rather not be ruined, at all events...

About the Paw Paw tree,,,

Well, the proverbial cat is out of the proverbial bag; and not a minute too soon--hope it wasn't a plastic one.

Yes I am going to Paw Paw, to a clinic that is run by a local foundation, but which has not had a full time doctor since I inherited Dr. Lucy Young's practice and took them to the Wholistic Health Center @ St. John's Lutheran Church in Mendota Il.  Some of these patients still see me, over 33 years later.

There are numerous reasons to make these rather drastic changes...but don't worry--- I still make house calls to "whosoever wants"  (One person in particular will be visited on an ongoing basis.)  I am also offering some friends the option of continuing with me, including whoever reads this blog.

So Reuben Schuler, don't worry, I'll still see ya--as often as  I can.  (Coming for the wedding, I presume? Then I will "house call" you in Mobile, for a few days!:)

(Walk-ins welcome)

The point is that medicine has become so complex, with no advantages truly seen to require all the dodgy commercialized stuff we invent--too many cooks and too much broth spoils the patient. So I have to find a way to simplify/slow down, just to keep up!  Because it takes me 2-3 times more minutes to do even an adequate job on an individual patient; Hospital records are even worse.  Thus I cannot keep up, without frankly endangering my charges.

I find that my practice, rather like my Dragonspeak, becomes unmanageable at some point.  And has to be completely replaced.  I have been in Mendota 10 years now--and the first time it was 18 years before it reached the breaking point of unwieldy records and "irreducible" and burgeoning complexity. So one can see that the burden has at least doubled, even though my capacities have not.  I am (sadly said) the same person, hopefully slightly wiser for having seen a lot of pathology and pathos, as when I came here.  That's no longer considered enough. But this more rural clinic is more of what I originally signed up for--as you will see when you visit us. We open Jan 7 but I hope there will be an open house as well.

So it seems slightly appropriate to sort of re-start where I began; up in "Forgotonia." (An old political term for Northwestern Illinois which Dennis may recall...

 What I most regret is that I will no longer have much of a Hispanic practice, and my Spanish will be atrophying--as it is already because of  excellent translations by Maria, Sandy's and my sidekick for the last few months, and so delightful--but she will be staying in my former office to help with all my previous patients, maybe the majority of whom were Hispanic...but the Latino demographic is changing rapidly as are  their desires and needs; as their more productive and  actually--they never boast about it, by the way--tolerant culture is becoming more and more like the rest of us. Alas. (Those who boast of their tolerance have to do so because they have even less than average--unsuprisingly.)

Perhaps I can take a few pictures of the clinic and post them here--it might save the reader several thousand words.  The decor is 100% Norman Rockwell. A good fixer-upper!!!

I may mention more, however, in the future about this move, as I make it.  I am still working for MCH, I must add, so I am still an employed physician, without which I could in no way do this.  We will know in about 2 years how well this is going to work--but it may be a new paradigm for me--that is, providing a needed service in an under served area, as opposed to strictly earning my salary, dollar for dollar, which I cannot do in the present multi-physician office.

I apologize for posting twice today--see previous-- on two different subjects--but I am still somewhat subject to the "stream of consciousness" style with which I grew up. Have u noticed?

Vertical Caves

It is hard to know with any precision the exact nature of Plato's cave...we think of it as a domain of troglodytes totally unlike ourselves.  But by so thinking, do we not make ourselves one of their degraded race, rather like the Morlocks?

It occurred to me just now that we not only inhabit such figurative caves, we dig them ourselves. And the simplest cave, or "mine" (pun intensive) is a pit or a dug well, rather like the wishing wells of yore--which are still with us today, though extensively disguised in a tech-veil.

Jeremiah was thrown down such a well which had mainly dried up and was a mere mud mine. It had been exhausted by thirsty men who had no concept of what living water (i.e. the meaning of Blood) would be.  Thus they drained the well over time so that it no longer served its life-giving teleos, but rather became an instrument of torture and death. No sane person would volunteer to spend the rest of a greatly foreshortened life in such pits--or would they?--If it is dug by the person, it is a hole that at least they can call, "mine."  One can buy a cave, as the one at Machpelah (for Abe and Sarah) to bury our dead--but all such natural caves are not of our devising. On the other hand, we have more abandoned mines than active ones because we got what we wanted, and sealed them up. 

One hardly dares to do so with some of the deep but dry wells that we spend a lifetime digging ourselves into. I'm not sure how far I can take this analogy before it is "mined out," but it brings to mind C.S. Lewis' and Tolkien's mining folk, the stunted gnomes and the selfish gold-digging dwarves who will not come out even when the last battle has come and gone, and they choose to remain 90% buried with only their unity in misery, strife, and darkness occasionally issuing from a tree stump--"Who said that? Did you say something?" but the riders and striders move quickly on, not tempted to bury themselves in bondage.

All are free indeed, as MLK once said--but do we re-invest it in its Source, so that we can go on?  Or do we bury ourselves much more firmly and thoroughly than Kruschev ever believed possible; do we continue to accomplish for ourselves what was truly an empty threat from an im-potentate ?

If we must go underground, as directed (Pole, Eustace, and Puddleglum) not as a Hobbit-Venture but as a rescue attempt, let's not forget their miraculous escape--with the goods (Princely) but not a shred of gold. ("The Silver Chair")

And I have the image that God can "flip us out" of our pits at a moment's notice, just as he ran to the prodigal son in Jesus' central parable of the Father of the King/dom.  The world can only notice that we have "flipped out" indeed; but they cannot know that it wasn't us, it was Him. We cannot, of ourselves, get ourselves even out of a ditch (think Pozzo--the ingrate; and the blind leading the blind) much less a deep yet only man-sized hole.

In the Lincoln movie the only mention of Jesus Christ was, par for the course, as a swear word--this is typical of "men in black" (the Jones') whose hostility to Christ has spread literally to every corner of the world. To bring Lincoln down to our level--the unspoken but obvious reason for the attempt--does neither the man who was Lincoln any justice, nor does it give the denizens of the world any hope outside of American-made materialism, and sensate illogic. But hey,

"That's Entertainment "(with Hal Holbrook too) Tonite. Naytheless,  some are called to work "while it is still day" rather than to engender more "Endarkenment."  (Go Mark Schuler and his brothers)

By the way, I suppose I should apologize for references not clear unto all--it is my hope that the reader will be inclined to search further--as Dennis does, because he is an old hand at it, finding stuff, that is. But if it is important--as it may or may not be--please ask.  Descartes delighted in requiring people to connect his dots, and in pointing the inferiority and unworthiness of those who failed to do so--whom he considered to be lazy, or incompetent, or ignorant, most likely all three.

Just as I do not subscribe to his "cogito ergo sum" theory of life, I do not want to leave off that philosophy only to assume and display Descartes' arrogance. (yet are not arrogance and ignorance closely related? One is active, the other passive, but the outcome will be the same.)

I suppose I flatter myself by hoping that the Holy Spirit is the glue that holds these thoughts together.  But if God does not fill in the outlines of history, who can?  I have only his "great and precious promises" on that--I can't engender it myself, but can fail to oppose it, I suppose--yet I love a Perfectly Reasonable God, whose ways are at the same time far beyond our understanding. He stoops to conquer, as it were. And I am so very Thankful for that, above all "mere things."

The Turkey Trot, (it's) Not!!!

Most Thanksgivings in Ill a Noise, I can be found at the annual "Turkey Trot," a 5K run in Oglesby, which always is blessed with 2 killer hills at the end of the course.  On this day, however, I am going to run with Daniel, just for the joy of it--and for the health of it of course--and to justify overeating later in the day...not guilt-free, but close. 

I quote from Linus Van Pelt: "No problem is so big or complicated that it can't be run away from!"

A solid declaration of independence, that!  And yet...

Lucille Van Pelt, ever the cynic and critical spirit, replies:

 "You can't just run away from your problems! What if everybody just ran away from their problems?"  But Linus, ever hopeful, rejoins, "Well at least we'd be all running in the same direction!" 

Something that cannot be said of USA today. The paper or the people.

Running is not my salvation, far from it; but the Spanish verb "salvar" largely means healing and receiving health. "To save," more often than not  has that implication in English. Usually to save from physical or mental destruction, is what is meant by it; so much so that when one speaks of spiritual salvation, the wordly question is, "Saved from what?"  And if one tries to explain, one often hears the protest, "I'm basically a good person--I haven't killed anybody--yet--except in the heart, one must add.  This recent election was the very opposite of salvation, it brought no health to anyone, with each side equally implying that the entire opposite side should be run off a cliff and drown like the herds of swine that they are; being demon-possessed of course by "Legions"  of Devils not unlike those in the Dost. novel of the same name, also being "possessed," more than "oppressed." 

But the present situation shows that we who have been long-time experts as running away from our problems and commitments, are not running in the same direction. 

Or are we?

Are we just running around the world in the dark, only to collide with each other at the end, rather like the comedy movie/treasure hunt, that I mentioned recently? And be both severely wounded by our own culpability, and stuck immobile in the same ward as our co-conspirators and frenemies; possibly forever?  (Now that's a chilling thought--without the "beer here," refrain.)

Are we really the same at the root, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees--united only in the ABC paradigm so prevalent worldwide, that is, "Anything but Christ."  (the essence of Unitarianism and why it is 100% reactionary--it only exists for those who can't tolerate Christ or Christians)

I am opting out of the rat race this year. Rhetoric, like running, has only put the Sophists in the lead, even though they are really twice-dead last. The spirits of competition have run themselves ragged and into an early grave.  And an attitude of gratitude is less in evidence in our nation than in any Thanksgiving in the past, I'll wager.

OK, so that's the down side; I am going to run with Daniel and trust that some of his positivity will rub off on my side; so that later today I can "post positively" and truly thankfully.  (Hint: I believe I will be waxing sanguinely on home schooling, which all my home schooling readers will appreciate--in fact, my few readers are also home school teachers, so I will pray about something constructive to say...)

Sol's Conundrum--a scientific approach

by Dr. Jason Lisle

DO NOT ANSWER A FOOL ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY, LEST YOU ALSO BE LIKE HIM.

ANSWER A FOOL ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY, LEST HE BE WISE IN HIS OWN EYES.


The "Answer, Don't Answer" mandate.

First, don't answer according to a fool's worldview,  making the same unwarranted and disastrous assumptions he makes.  True of materialism and relativism, two snakes that devour their own tales, heh...

Second, hold up a mirror to the foolish mindset that excludes God; such that they can see how they undermine themselves.

Example:"Christians are dishonest. They teach that God created the world some thousands of years ago, which is clearly false."  To which one may answer, "I don't accept your claim that teaching creation is dishonest. We are equally convinced that evolution as you teach it, is untrue." ( opposite worldview not accepted)

But the second part shows that the critic's objection is inconsistent, internally and externally. "But for the sake of argument, even if we were lying, why would that be wrong according to your worldview?  The idea that lying is wrong is not a universal human idea; The idea that lying is wrong is a Biblical concept. Lying is wrong because it is contrary to the nature of God.  But in an evolutionary paradigm, on what basis could I say that lying is wrong--particularly if it benefits my survivability?"

And the point I would  make is that Christians and Jews are not to lie--so long as they believe in God to the extent that they can rest in God, to make it right; to make it up to us, as it were, even though we may suffer for telling the truth. 

I have come to believe that in modern and post-modern science, truth-telling is out, and mere rhetoric is King. Telling the truth to power does not increase our survivability, esp. in the 10-40 window, where Mark is going, Burma, where Buddhist troops have been attempting to wipe out the Christian tribes for a long, long time. Not that these tribes have not resisted--but like South Sudan, they really are a separate country  oppressed by the centralist Burmese tribes.

The Irish saved civilization from the vantage point of isolated monasteries, and "white martyrs"--as well as red ones.  I think that that sort of thing must needs happen again, unless Christ comes first. Which I fully expect, but can't say when.

"It's a Mad. Mad. Mad. Mad. Whirled...

I always enjoy this movie, and "The Rat Race" with John Cleese, which was patterned after the former film.  (Are they "biofilms"? Or is Terry Thomas just naturally slimy?) It is of course all about the degrees of madness induced by the lure of wealth--and who should know this inside-out better than Hollywood?  So, like most movies, they are self-referential (even down to the Californiae setting) and I do enjoy self-deprecating humor, which is so much more honest and pleasant than H-wood's other prime motive for film making, as propaganda. So as far as that goes, it's always an enjoyable evening--and a history lesson for Daniel and Julie re: great comedians in the past, all in a row. (I forgot there were so many!) However they fell asleep right after the intermission...even though we fast-forwarded through the overture, mid-verture, and post-verture. 

It also reminds me that Hollywood is shot through with many a Jew! And who is more self-deprecating, both defensively and offensively, that a Jewish entertainer? And it still works...

But one of the reasons Jewish tradition supports such um accurate observations is their Law, which God, Moses, and the angels introduced 430 years after Abraham, "because of the transgressions," which were obviously piling up, moment by moment, in Egypt.  And thus also Jews have a keen sense of the injustices still being done to them--to which they are currently reacting by not turning the other cheek--even if they were so inclined, they would say they only have but two cheeks--ok, four.
But they have run out of cheeks in any event, so they are demonstrating some raw cheek to Ishmael again.

But it is not enough. It was not enough in David's time, or Joshua's time, or Solomon's time, or in the 1960's, or at any other time.  It's the "7-Devil" principle which the Principle Jew related to His own people. A perspicacious view of other-evil, which is the sum and substance of politics and the greed mentioned above, is never enough. Even if all the evil in the world were eliminated, we would still be unhappy, as I mentioned yesterday about the anti-Eliots. Seeing other people happy or content is still more or less galling to most of us too dishonest to admit it openly. For part of greed is also jealousy and covetousness; and it's extremely hard to legislate against point of the 10th commandment, as it may be done secretly throughout one's life with no one knowing except me and my Maker.

So what's the solution?  What profound message does the ultimate comic vehicle convey? Why another pratfall, of course!  Ethel Merman on a banana peel!  The Perfect Solution!  And yet...and yet... "beauty walks with evil..." (Offisa Pup re: Krazy Kat and Ignatz. ha. ha. ha...)

Hope, Fully, Yes!

We always seem to think that we are making concessions to God by believing in Him, half-heartedly.

But we leave out the whole-hearted concession that God cares, for some reason that evades even wise old Screwtape, enough to intervene constantly in our lives.  Like that old racist and adulterer national hero, Jefferson, cut out all possibility of miracles, which would mean we might actually be accountable for our actions, not just to men, but much more intensely, seriously, and eternally, to an Eternal Godhead.  Who in fact has already done all the hardest parts already. 

Most of the miracles of the Bible, even the existence of the Bible, are not advertised-as-such.  I am reading in Joshua 3 how God, once again, held back the waters of the Jordan at harvest flood stage at a little town upstream called "Adam," meaningfully but not ironically I believe;  This was done primarily to give the perpetually weak faith of the Hebrew-now true more than ever--a booster shot of immunity to the Jebusites, et.al. whom they were to fight--and are still fighting--now more than ever but now with only carnal weapons, sans God.

The existence and persistence of the Hebrews should be miracle enough, as many have noted. Yet their unbelief could hardly be more "advanced" (but just you wait)

Earthly fathers like me spend most of their time, "taking care of business," so that we can distance ourselves from our true, and harder, responsibilities to God and family. I am certainly guilty of this
par for the course and no more, succumbing to the human law of averages, the statistics of biology, temperament,  and the "social proof" I mentioned yesterday; I, for instance, was to be responsible for teaching science in the home. But except for John to a half-hearted degree, I failed at this. Ironically, only John has become interested in science and medicine himself--no accident there. He still calls me about the potassium pump!

But God foreknew, foresaw, and fore-provided. Yes, miraculously.  As the saying goes, anymore I do not just believe in miracles, I depend on them.  Speaking of which, God has provided a "parting of the waters" for me, which I will speak of later. So, in advance, all Glory and Honor and The Imparting of Eternal Thanks to Him for undeserved mercy in overlooking my dis-honor.

As far as fathers go, the Original Father is still the Only Author of Unconditional Love via the Perfectly Loved Son, who never strayed from His Covenant one time even at any given moment. It just occurred to me that the Father also is "taking care of business" (here the computer deletes many a thought thank you so bloody much...)

What I was going to say is that even I, Asimov conceded that the human brain is the most complex thing we know, or perhaps can know in this limited existence--we could only recognize something higher by revelation, not by working at it. That might explain why God is taking so much trouble over us, as opposed to  Satan's hobby horses, computers and statistics. Like the Hebrews, no matter how many miracles were and are done for them, we are High Maintenance. We need miracles, not in the shallow sense that is what only the world will allow--Big Rock Candy Mountain and all that--Freudians and Darwinians are far better and more basic wish fulfillment machines that a Man on a Cross ever could be or intended to be--no, but in the sense that we could not even physically hold together for two seconds absent any design and maintenance from God. 

"More than I can say..."

VAL ELIOT 1926-2012

       I note with sadness the passing of Thomas Stearns Eliot's 2nd wife, Valerie, much maligned even as his first wife, Vivienne, is in the media and academia now hailed as the real hero; there are those who say that Vivienne wrote some of his poetry, and that he drove her insane.  This...is...typical...of our age and strains the credibility of institutions who champion the insane over those who merely suffer their outrages. 

I would refer you to the Daily Telegraph article on Val and Tom which my literary son Stephen posted on his Facebook, which is always a delightful read in itself! Dated Nov 11.

It says that Eliot stopped writing poetry--and did a few plays instead--after they married. No wonder the academics rage!  Eliot had been their Major Angst poster boy for some decades--because the modernists still revel in human suffering and hate human happiness.  "I do not deserve such happiness," was Eliot's remark, a statement of fact as equally despised as his Christian conversion decades before. (Common denominator--grace/mercy)

"Tom Eliot is now curiously dull," remarked Aldous Huxley. "He felt he had paid too much to be a poet, that he had suffered too much," as Valerie later explained.

The idolatry of the addiction of revelling in gloom, other people's troubles, and disasters has become a trademark of our arts and culture.  Once portrayed as "realism," we have taken this into the realm of complete fantasy--the works of Bunuel, for instance, are nearly universally acclaimed as the modern standard for artistic achievement.  But I notice that those who promote these realisms take great care to shield themselves from reality, and to build up cushions of fame, fortune, and respectability so that they may not suffer themselves.  Of course they do suffer--but by their own hands and choices.

Made-up suffering or over-the-top portrayal of human misery are now as common as dirt--and unlike the Catholic-informed writings of Percy and O'Connor, it is considered anathema to inject the least element of grace into any stories or novels, but to leave whole families and dystopic societies grovelling in the dirt before overwhelming circumstances, by the end of their tales.  Of course I would except the works of some--Wendell Berry and Garrison Keillor come to mind--but on the whole- as I would take it from the experiences of my sister who is a professor at Univ. of Maryland,  "happiness" is not only dull but hateful. (Politics are considered a Love  Potion # 9 substitute; and one gives one's all to it--or suffer the consequences of shunning en masse.)

I note that there are two parallel movements of the human soul that tend to support views far more pessimistic than my own; the first would be the fundamental human response of Gossip.  According to my Dad re; his experiences at Carleton College, faculty gossip prevails over any discussion of ideas. Another would be the force of "social proof" which is the bedrock of any viable culture. More of the latter, later, perhaps.

Since my middle name is Eliot, I suppose there are many ways in which my life parallels Eliot's; not in the quantity of suffering but in the trajectory of it, also experienced by CSL by the latter part of his life with "Joy" Davidman.

Flo has sometimes wondered why I don't write poems about her, but I point out that I don't need to or want to.  Much as Eliot, once one discovers and imbibes in the reality for which men and women were meant, when one is "accepted in the beloved," one has no need to convince the beloved--who cannot be reduced to words at all. One becomes, "a man in full," but far beyond anything Tom Wolfe or others can even dare to imagine--and they dare not to do so, because they are too deeply invested in their output and the usefulness of their own sufferings, which they hold close to their chests, and brag about to the media and their colleagues. It rather reminds me of that Python sketch in which the old men compete to outdo each other by bragging of how bad their childhood was, telling of course the usual lies and exaggerations to which we aged are prone. "I walked 20 miles to school in the snow barefoot and uphill both ways..." etc.

"Oh you think you had it tough!  When I was a boy, we....."

I have not had it tough, but my disposition tends to aggravate my stories I tell myself, all too often. When we have few externally recognizable triumphs--or even if we do, as they are never enough--we tend to pride ourselves on suffering in silence, and the ultimate narcissism, "No one understands me. I'm just ahead of my time, etc"

Oh, please!

"Jesus is for Losers"

(see the song by Steve Taylor--not what your think--but it's not about us--He takes care of the shovel-loads of trivia in our life in Factoid-onia)

I reviewed the lyrics of, "I Believe in You," by Bob Dylan from his born-again days.'S Quite the contrast with the current albums, which get progressively more sensuous with each one. I would call this, technically speaking,   reactionary, for the following reasons:

First, Dylan couldn't take the heat of being associated with ordinary Christians.  He's a very smart man, but except for a brief period of honesty about his actual condition before God, he voted his people, his politics, and his personal and ever-wavering passions. He just couldn't resist being part of the smart set and being brother to the Sophists in the entertainment biz,  which is at bottom what Dylan is still all about. "Touring"--he just can't get enough of it! Other examples of this would be TSE, who could stand being conservative, but not being mocked by his colleagues and critics.  "The poet of the century" could no longer refer to Christ in his swan songery. In its stead came the strange god of the Mississippi, the "strong brown god" of the massive and impressive river running by the town in which he grew up, St. Louis as I recall. Yet another fallen brown god-unto-himself would be Mel Gibson; and even Martin Luther at the befuddled end of his life. Trivial pursuit for the broken warrior types who fell back into the default positions of their troubled youth; and were and are dogged relentlessly by their earthly successes. "Better to be a doorkeeper," as David once sang. He would know--and his end, and his son's end, are surely nothing but whimpers, and most disappointing.

Second, and related to this, Dylan could not maintain his image as a mystery man and intransigent poet of unexpected twists and turns, and continue to maintain a genuine Christian witness. He saw that all his fame and influence could disappear almost overnight in the sturm und drang of the scorn of his critics and his colleagues.  Ironically, he has abandoned his poetry stance, too, and gone back to the merely sensual "folk-rock oldies" position from which he sprang.

Thirdly and perhaps underlying all the others would be the sort of sexual addiction that made him a hypocrite even while he was writing these paeans to Christ.  The man always portrays himself as in impossible relationships with women, in spite of all his power and  fame; yet is he not to blame for his own dysfunctional relationships? Since he held such power over them -and us- that few of us--blessedly-- will ever experience?


"Take a lesson from  the fig tree..."

I have a fig tree from the local farm store--but I have to bring it indoors for the winter. It won't survive the winter at this latitude. It produced two figs this year, very small as you can see.  The 'first fruit' disappeared without a trace; I don't think the cats ate it, and they keep all squirrels away, but it could have been an Extra Bold Bunny...or... it was, Taken Up, hm?

The second one, shown above, fell into my hand when I touched it.  It kind of looks like one of those pineal-like souls from the movie, "Cold Souls."  But could this fouled fig, three-quarters mummified, be a symbol of , well, us?  If not, we are moving towards this frustrated impotent and seedless state at ever increasing speed. Will future generations be able to produce better fruit than this? Or does this represent the state of the whole earth, minus a small but shrinking pale green remnant?

It is the Sensate Culture that contains the most "sugar" for fermentation. And once sugar or its fermentation products are consumed and then cease, nothing is left but dissipated energy that has been scattered abroad and wasted for no good or God-reason at all.  Witness the burgeoning no-child option, and the fact that we consume for ourselves and not for the future, whatever it may even physically be, much less our spiritual estate.

Small remnants still give me hope.  Some are still in the world but less and less of it--as indeed the world can offer less and less through its greedy death-throes.  Life will find a way--but all the more so will God and His Resurrected Son.  What McWorld offers was represented by the miniature mummy stolen by Hazel Motes for his "Church Without Christ" in the novel, "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor.  And may I add that O'Connor did not end up like the sophisticates and Sophists and Sadducees noted above.  May I reach my end like her, only more so...Holy Spirit come and do in me what no man can.

"This man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he sought to destroy." "Wise Blood" made the difference, not a fallen shrivelled fruit.  (Gal 1--the whole chapter)

why winning is losing...

Winning of course means you are to blame for whatever follows; and negative results cling to the powerful much more than the biggest gift-basket of carnal pleasures, freebies, bread, and circuses. Plus, what do you do for an encore?

Whether a corporate biggie or the head of a bloody nation?

I recall the story of a party for one former member of an office like mine,  who had just been promoted. This was a major jump to a high executive position where the promotee would be over not only his old friends but many, many more. One of his colleagues--not one of competitors--said plainly,

"Congratulations--but this is the last time you'll ever hear the truth again."

Let that sink in a bit...

MOSES' END...OUR "NEW BEGINNINGS"

TODAY I FINISHED THE PENTATEUCH, THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES, AND SAW AGAIN HOW HE MET HIS END---AND HOW THAT CORRELATES IN A PROFOUND WAY WITH TUESDAY, BLOODY TUESDAY.

"Since then, no prophet has arisen like Moses, who The LORD knew face to face." 

"The law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

"Just as Moses lifted up the (bronze) snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone that believes in Him may have eternal life."

The story of the bronze serpent is, as Jesus said, profoundly prophetic. It was a sign of God's undeserved and barely admitted Grace and Mercy in a blasted desert with only Manna to eat, and only this "hung snake" to come between them and their sins, God's True Truth, and death by a plague of poisonous live serpents, sent because of persistent rebellion and lying about God's revealed truth.

Whew!!!


We have had about 250 years of blessings and even honor, I think largely because until recently we sent out more missionaries at one time than the rest of the world combined--in other words and increasingly because there has been a remnant of belief and believers who do not at all belong the Mcworld "or anything in  it."  Our son Mark is one of those, as you all know.  But one must consider that we have also boasted of being a democracy or republic blessed by the rule of Law.  Hence there has always been this division.

Both Lincoln and Jesus said that a people divided against itself cannot stand.  So, here we are, as divided as we were in 1865, but over an even more profound and basic issue than it was in those days, an affront to The God of Grace even greater than the great sins of slavery.

I might say that it has never been any ambition of mine to go where I am not wanted--and this is ever increasingly true in the "urbanization revolution--and this in turn is going to effect a tsunami of change in my own life, towards the things that really matter. In a way I am leaving Egypt...and more of that soon...but even Bobb-o Dylan-o wrote that the flesh wars against the Spirit, "24 hours a day."  But I must declare that in USA Today, it is no a fair fight in terms of numbers--because "few there be that find it."  Connect the dots, friends; and do not color by numbers!

But the USA is at that point where Law has been shaken and democracy deadened by executive fiats and unjust judges--for an increasingly lawless and graceless and rebellious people.  We still have not gotten as bad as we have "given"--if that's the word--so there must be some modicum of mercy left--but he who will not receive grace will be humbled if not destroyed not only by The Law of Moses, which we left in the dust and the desert ago--but accelerated by the "laws" of men, full of greed and "dead men's bones."

In other words, we are getting Mammon; we are bribed by men for a momentary peace and prosperity increasingly made possible by an international Holocaust, on the back of millions and millions of our own children--the ones we have killed without mercy and so far without the least evidence of even any practical forethought . And  the survivors with--you know--"survivors syndrome?" If we don't kill them immediately--like unto "Baby Doe" and "partial birth abortion;" we abandon them to the torture chambers of "easy" divorce and constant abandonment of even the most basic parental duties, much less the demands of self-sacrificing  love. I could go on and on but I think most of my readers understand this already--but now it's a matter of emphasis...

"Aim for Perfection"

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!  We do!!! But in all the wrong places!!! Not to mention the wrong times and about the wrong things!

In Paul's final words to those in Corinth, we find admonishments that sound very foreign to our ears, why?  Is it because of the proximity to Christ--in Spirit? Or in our contrasting eras with Christ's actual influence waning over the centuries, as He predicted? 
"But when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? (Maybe not--but He'll find plenty of "unjust judges.")

I think it is because we want our pie and eat it too.  Love without testing.  Peace by taking no trouble about it. (Maybe we can just buy off our enemies on ebay...)

I often recall a cartoon called "Pontius' Puddle" in which Pontius--a sort of ill formed Christian amoeba-was speaking to a friend and said:"I asked God why he wasn't doing anything about all the suffering and injustice in the world; and He asked me the same thing."  Ah, so!

In other words, God (of the Bible I'm talking here) allows all the trouble we create, and have continuously created since we were Created.  Overt Acts have consequences too, not just Ideas. Stewardship means taking some trouble to ameliorate at least our carelessness, infantile selfishness, and wayward spending with which we reward ourselves with our own comforts well outside the Will of The Comforter.

CSL once wrote that we are all contaminated by what he called "mountain apple," meaning original sin that was love of the world at first bite. With large dollops of suffering on top or to follow.  If we are contaminated--I would say closer to  immersed in such fruit--then it is true that, "Without Me you can do nothing." And I would add, worse than nothing. We are baked into Western Mountain Apple Pie.  "And when the pie was opened..."


There's a very fine article in Touchstone magazine in regards to the general  Western cultural change from Aristotelian logic, in which each thing and person has an "essence" and intrinsic worth and existence;unto, thanks to Hume and Kant, "symbolic logic"  which is what I would call either sensate logic or the logic of the market place, or the logic of slavery.  In which anything and everything has no value except for what people will pay for it.  That might be money...or just attention. I am quite sure our hospital has made this cultural shift, and as an employee and no longer in private practice, I feel this everyday in the push for quantity as opposed to the desire for quality.  This struggle is ongoing of course because you can't really ignore the quality issue--but why? Because if you do, you might get sued?  But that is still Market Place Reasoning, not doing something for its own intrinsic or inherent worth, right?

Is the East taking over because they have a sense of the intrinsic worth of a human person? Not at all...it's still a very impersonal philosophical place--but certain concepts are held by some to have intrinsic worth; for instance Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence."  "Quality" is his mantra, even though it rather hangs in thin air with no "ratio"  ; thus joining the ranks of the absurd.

This is altogether different from this perfectness which Paul mentions among other admonitions; but in which perfection is balanced by mercy and grace, which he also displayed to the wayward Corinthians. If one wants an example of Eastern striving, read, "Death of a Guru," or give another viewing to "My Dinner With  Andre."  Both one-sided and dualistic strivings are "right out," (see my son's book on Auden and Augustine when it comes out next year--I have a copy of his thesis) which is why I am more of a Trinitarian every day; and less of a polytheist, which is just a mess. But without a mess, no Messiah?

For some, an "ah-so" moment...heh...

Uneeda Mess...

I'm sure this is not original with me, but it occurred to me after reading most of Deuteronomy, and being poised on the verge of the Song of Moses, that the foreknowledge of God is unlimited; and He states in Deut 38:26"

"Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your GOD. There it will remain as a witness against you."

I was struck by this statement in that there is no additional purpose adduced to these relics.  They, while sacred in origin, were not to be worshipped. Gideon's Ephod and the Bronze Serpent in the desert are good counter-examples of the kind of worship we always prefer; to worship objects that we can create and control, regardless of the goodness of God, their origin. The Middle Ages and even before were witness to pieces of bone, teeth, and hair becoming venerated, in spite of their usual origin as fakes. Secularists are regularly engaged in trying to find a bone box that will discredit God and His Messiah, making fools of themselves all the way--but what they are really looking for is a bone or fossil that they can look to and prize and worth-ship when they want to evade their considerable responsibility before God, and live only for their own pleasures.  (Ever wonder why modern Sadducees and Sophists are so hot on "good sex?" And why the schools they create and sustain are so good at handing out condoms and promoting sterile sex, but can't otherwise educate their charges even to read beyond a grade school level?  It's just the rattling of idols and temple prostitution being called up from the dead....)(Feliz Dia de lost Muertos, eh?)

But to return to my topic, which is worthy of Pascal and probably somewhere in his Pensees in other words:

"You need a mess to need The Messiah!"  In other words the law has to do what it can--which is less to prevent sin than to call it to mind and cause more of it all the while--"as a witness against you."--so that Messiah can come and do what only God can do: "Operation Rescue."  The Absolute does it Absolutely.

We of course abhor holy relics to hold, kiss, or desire as the flesh would have us to do.  Not kosher, to say the least!  But to say the most I can, our "relics" and idols are now in the form of abstract ideation, whole cultural masses of traditions which scream out the Basic Assumption of Modernism, that there is no God--but if there is, He is a Big Liar and at the disposal of his human trainers and owners--a "tame lion," in CSL parlance.

But is it not, "odd of God, to choose the Jews," only then to destroy them  again and again in the various deserts where he said they would wander?  As Moses questioned God, why bring all this people out of Egypt only to destroy (most of ) them?  And esp. why do this if You Knew already what they would do, in  spite of and perhaps even because of being chosen?  It's the non-eternal but all too human question of why God does not force us to love Him even though He wants to spare us some of the consequences of our thinking and actions?  And the accumulation of the sins of the world over multiple millenia certainly represents a vast mountain range of decay and the waste products of many civilizations which we nonetheless revere in vain. (I think about the tremendous trash pile of Wall-E--a good "solid waste" representation of our current state.)(I won't get much argument there, even from the most sanguine of progressives!)

Thus the purpose of all this futility is to bring us to Christ. Wasteful? Not in comparison to macro-evolution which sacrifices everybody and everything for no reason at all.

But if it's so obvious, what about the Bleeding Obvious? The exploding unplastic inevitable? God has provided a Blood Sacrifice because it's the ultimate one, and One worthy not only of His Purity, but also designed to be supra-cultural and trans-cultural and counter-cultural all at the same time. Culture and Civilization are simply "superclusters" of dead stars all burning down and out as we speak--but also leaving black holes all over the place, formed of pure negation and total failure unto oblivion. "You began well-what happened? (Gal 1)

"Jesus knows our every weakness--take it to the Lord in prayer." Well? Why not, then?