joy unending??????
12.31.04 (3:33 pm) [edit]I remember once when I was in the first grade something one of the Nuns told us when we were having religion classes; she said that heaven is place where there is unending joy. I remember that moment as if it were yesterday, even though it was almost fifty years ago. The inner experience of that statement was one of incredulity, something that I could not comprehend and so my inner reaction was one of rejection. All of my limited experience up to that point taught me that joy was something rare and short lived and it was better not to even begin to hope for such a possibility.
Even today as an adult I still have trouble with that concept and while it is something desirable I don’t know what to do with that desire. I do have powerful experiences of ‘joy’ from time to time and I think if they lasted I probably would have died. My heart seems to swell and enlarge and to encompass the whole universe were I love everyone and everything….and then it goes, leaving me feeling homesick and even lost, sort of like a child left behind by its parents.
When I was in the Navy I spent a year on
I remember the day I left and a few friends came to see me off and how I did not want to leave but had to of course, it was after all a Navy Base. As the plane left and I looked back on the
Perhaps one day I will, and we all will find out true home, the place that mankind longs for in different ways. Sometimes music will bring this feeling out, being with friends, were the love you have for them is an actual pain, because you know the moment will not last, in movies and yes in dancing always in dancing.
Is it possible to have total joy? I am most tempted to atheism when the mystery gets to close, it is like I believe but am afraid to hope too much. To hope that a place will be found for all of us that is truly home, were we will not have to look so hard for a place of rest, and we will not have to take so many wrong turns in truly seeking out heats true treasure. Where we can love totally and where communication will not be difficult or even impossible to attain, where we will all be known. The easy way out would be for me not to believe to just stop hoping, I guess that would bring a certain peace to me…….but I will continue to believe and hope for not only my true home but that all of mankind will also find their hearts treasure.
Peace
Mitch
C.,S. Lewis one of my favorite writers
12.30.04 (3:56 pm) [edit]C. S. Lewis: Public Christian and Scholar
by Bruce L. Edwards
All our merely natural activities will be accepted if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not.
--C. S. Lewis, "Learning in War Time"
ARDENT readers of C. S. Lewis' fiction and apologetics often find themselves reflecting upon an elusive quality they detect in his texts across all eras of his life, a feature they grope to label and to explain to amiable agnostics by such terms as wholeness or symmetry, guilelessness or unpretentiousness.
The effect of reading his work, they would testify, is the sensation of entering into a new order of experience or level of insight, whatever the genre --and yet an effect achieved without apparent contrivance or arduous effort on either the writer's or the reader's part. It is a winsomeness that draws one into a journey with a companion or into a conversation with a gracious host whose salutary presence by turns instructs, delights, challenges, and, always, intrigues.
This is the Lewis who created Narnia, Malacandra, and Glome, who defended the credibility of New Testament miracles, articulated the essence of Mere Christianity, and took us on a tour of Heaven and Hell. But I would also like to suggest to those who are not as familiar with him, that this is also the "other Lewis," the writer of learned treatises on Medieval and Renaissance topics and the vagaries of literary history, theory, and practice.
The same experiences as await enthusiasts of his fiction and apologetics await the student of his scholarly books. They can be anticipated not only in his imaginative and theological works, but also in his literary scholarship in general.
Naming the phenomenon
Two men well acquainted with Lewis' life and work, one who knew him intimately all of his adult life, the other immersed in the gritty details of his texts and biography for more than four decades, can help articulate this phenomenon I seek to name.
Owen Barfield, Lewis' longtime friend and lifetime intellectual combatant, once declared that "Somehow what Lewis thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything." Likewise, Walter Hooper, the principal bibliographer and well-known expositor of Lewis, has referred to him as the "most thoroughly converted man I have ever known."
What then might we call this pervasive quality most of his intimates and many mere readers of Lewis have experienced in their encounters with him? I would put it this way: in Lewis we find a profound sense of integration: an imagination baptized and married to reason and transformed by the revelation of the person of Christ.
My reflection on Lewis' literary career, and my submersion in his literary scholarship, reveal to me a man who refused to compartmentalize his faith or his vocation. Lewis' devotion to Christ and his full embrace of the supernaturalism of Biblical faith leaks out into his prose whether he is writing children's fantasy, or etymologies of obscure Norse words, or framing the cultural milieu of allegory in the fourteenth century.
The scholarly Lewis is also the Christian apologist who gives blithe radio talks explaining the Trinity; the philologist Lewis is also the science- fiction writer who resituates the plot of Genesis on a planet far, far away; the brilliant social critic and urbane essayist is also the scrupulously kind and indefatigable correspondent who answers any and all inquiries from the high and the lowly.
And yet the point I wish to stress is that Lewis' Christian witness is not a "value-added" aspect of his scholarly work. It is not ladled on artificially and sanctimoniously like thick gravy on gristle to cover its tastelessness, nor is it not an isolatable "component" of his work.
It is something naturally embued and discovered as indigenous within every text he crafted. This "thoroughly converted man" offered the academic and the Christian world a scholarship that incarnates the ancient faith in the most disarming yet natural ways.
Moving the World
Indeed, Lewis' consummate rhetorical skill, requisite boldness, perspicacious grasp of time and culture, prodigious memory, bracing wit and humor, these are all present in equal doses without calculation or hidden agenda in every genre of prose and poetry he attempted. Between "the Christian World of C. S. Lewis" and "the Scholarly World of C. S. Lewis," there can be no distinction.
Both were undergirded by diligent prayer and devotion daily by encounter with the word of God. In short, the ethos that Lewis, as Christian scholar, presented in his texts, all his texts, is that of a confident but unassuming man who, in Archimedean terms, has found a place to stand, a man who is ready, albeit with all due deference to his readers' own aspirations and circumstances, to move the world closer to the truth.
To elucidate Lewis' integrative faith and scholarship is to discover what animated him at his very being; we who wish to emulate him as a Christian academic or lay learner must discover, as he did, that revealed truth is central to fruitful scholarly inquiry. By "scholarship" I refer to that endeavor within the academic vocation in which the inquirer marshals evidence in the pursuit of hypotheses or theses and expresses her or his discoveries in the forums of their peers in their disciplines.
Such inquiry is predicated on the effective use of those tools, verbal or instrumental, available to the scholar; shaped by the perspectives and values he or she consciously or unconsciously brings to the task; and judged by the cogency of its argument and its impact on both the practitioners of the discipline and wider commerce of ideas in the culture at large.
By these standards, Lewis indeed is a towering scholarly figure in the world of 20th Century letters, that is, the world of literary criticism and history, and thus an apt choice for such an investigation. Between 1931 and 1961, he published an astonishing number of scholarly works, countless articles and more than five major, seminal works of influence and provocation in literary studies --beginning with the early book that was arguably his magnum opus, The Allegory of Love, published in 1936, whose sweeping and meticulous account of the social, cultural, literary, and linguistic milieu of Chaucer and Spenser's Europe remains today a work of impeccable grace and continuing explanatory power.
Public and private Lewis
How is it that this Lewis, who in addition to this literary scholarship mastered the imaginative and theological genres with which we more naturally associate him, could accomplish these multiple achievements and honors? My simple answer to the question is that the public Lewis was the private Lewis; the believing Lewis was the scholarly Lewis and vice-versa.
For, in Lewis' mind, what is true can never be essentially or only the product of private contemplation and certainly can never be relegated to the merely personal; rather, truth is derived as conviction specifically from participation in the public square, the dynamism of a public world where men and women may meet and can legitimately share, debate, and apprehend the truth. "Under Pontius Pilate he suffered": the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a public, historical event, and reports of it must be believed or doubted on the basis of rational, historical grounds.
Lewis could not conscientiously conduct his scholarship on a different basis from that which informed his fiction or his apologetics. Truth is one, and Lewis' preparation, conviction, and determination equipped him to speak authoritatively and faithfully whether he was writing literary history, commenting on trends in British education, or championing the virtues of a pagan poet.
The epigraph to this essay well exemplifies Lewis' personal take on the scholarly vocation and its role in the discipleship of a believer. Drawn from a sermon Lewis preached in October, 1939 in the dark, earliest days of World War II, "Learning in War Time," these remarks address the question, "with the world falling down about me, why should I even think about engaging further in an education or any scholarly pursuit?"
In effect, Lewis' answer is an extended homily on St. Paul's exhortation to the Colossians, "Whatever ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Whatever one has been gifted to do, even if it is skulking about old libraries and illuminating the forgotten worldviews of Anglo-Saxons and their kin, this too could bring glory to God --if done with proper humility and with full-hearted effort. For God is the Author of the World's story and in it there are no miscellaneous facts, minor characters, or unresolved plot lines.
Lewis continued in that address to amplify how the life of the Christian scholar can and should unfold under the discipleship of Christ, and herein one finds Lewis' most sustained statement of the value and nobility of the vocation of scholar. In it he articulates three characteristic features of his scholarship: (1) allegiance to a transcendent order that shapes our witness to the discovery of truth; (2) recognition of opposing propositions and an anticipation of engagement with its clashing viewpoints; (3) evocation of historical perspective whose panoptic vistas save one from local errors:
There is no question of a compromise between the claims of God and the claims of culture, or politics, or anything else. God's claim is infinite and inexorable. There is no middle way. Yet in spite of this it is clear that Christianity does not exclude any of the ordinary human activities. . . . There is no essential quarrel between the spiritual life and the human activities as such. Thus the omnipresence of obedience to God in a Christian's life is, in a way, analogous to the omnipresence of God in space. . . .
"To be ignorant and simple now --not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground --would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen," Lewis continued,
"Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. . . . Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times, and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pouts from the press and the microphone of his own age."
Indeed, he found something quite liberating in being able to speak about the faith from the vantage point of the scholar who "knew his stuff." Who can forget the great lines published in his 1959 address on "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," wherein Lewis, defending the historicity of the New Testament accounts of Christ's miracles, critiques the
[M]an who has spent his youth and manhood in the minute study of NT texts and of other people's studies of them, whose literary experiences of those texts lacks any standard of comparison such as can only grow from a wide and deep and genial experience of literature in general. [Such a man] is, I should think, very likely to miss the obvious things about them. If he tells me that something in a gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour; not how many years he has spent on that gospel.
How far we are from sharing Lewis' notions or motives --or St. Paul's for that matter --is revealed in the punch line of a recent political joke captures well the challenge, perhaps ambivalence most of us face of living out our Christian convictions in the public square of academic scholarship: Have you heard about the politician whose morals were so private he didn't even impose them on himself?
Yes, that embodies it: in fin-de-siecle Western culture, convictions of any sort, especially about religion, may be held but not openly practiced, alluded to but not nakedly declared; for any hint of actual commitment to real principle implies some sort of standard and where standards are, expectations--and measuring rods--follow. The private world of "values" must not impinge the public world of "facts."
Better to avoid the charge of imposing values on others, keeping faith meek and mild, properly private, if you will, than to publicly champion one's belief and risk the inevitable charge of hypocrisy, or, worse, hegemony.
The impotent West
The Church's intellectual schizophrenia at the end of the 20th Century, well explored by writers such as Mark Noll and George Marsden, makes even more prescient Lewis' mid-century prophecy of the coming impotence of the West to speak meaningfully of universals, as does the Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man.
Lewis would not be surprised that Christians would be increasingly relegated to the sphere of the private and the personal, a sphere that seems to shrink daily and by default prohibit as bad taste any public, meaningful expression of faith, especially in one's vocational setting. Many North American, Christians and non-Christians alike, in fact, appear quite nervous about any sort of public faith, about any open alignment of one's scholarship with conviction, purpose, destiny, that would draw attention to themselves.
Pulled, pushed, and pressured on all sides, we learn too well that we are expected to hide, disguise, or confine our faith to more and more private settings. And even then the Church itself is expected somehow to tone down its voice and remain placid and tranquil in midst of attack and disenfranchisement.
In short, we become accustomed to accommodation, to seeking a place where our faith may rest or fit comfortably --where, perhaps, it will neither disturb others nor risk embarrassing questions for ourselves. Lewis saw the chief casualty of the destruction of objective value as the death of the public, that realm in which men and women of good will might indeed investigate, probe, and debate the foundations of what was once called the good life or "civilization."
What was most indispensable about the Western tradition for Lewis was its evocation of a public ground for the training of the young and the managing of responsible cultural change in a society of equals. Through its invention and promotion of alphabetic literacy, the West had given birth to a public world where texts may serve as the landscape where we can objectively wrestle with and resolve matters of mutual importance. The public world, a world available, present, negotiable by human beings, is assumed in the literature Lewis loved best.
The role of civilization
In his criticism as in his imaginative fiction and apologetics, Lewis vehemently denied that facts and values could rest on personal epistemology, an autistic world of ethno-gender specific truths.
The role of civilization in general, and Christian civilization in particular, he would tell us, is to help make public men of private persons. It is to lift men and women out of their provinciality and narrowness into a more expansive realm of transchronological persons, ideas, and ideals, into an arena in which character is built, affirmed, and celebrated as a public good which promote the health of the society at large. Everywhere he abhors coercive ideology, the inner ring, the occultic creed --the making private of the public, or the imposing of the private upon the public while keeping it private.
Thus, one of the greatest things Lewis has to teach us as we enter a new millennium thus these credo: To know the truth I need not be part of an elite or intelligentsia, I need only to be human. In the West m the foundation of all free thought and inquiry is the unique personhood and humanity of man: I am human, therefore I may know the truth.
Access to truth, to the real world, as opposed to the shadows, is the birthright of all. To resist this dilemma, we must follow Lewis in refusing to divorce our personal faith from our public behavior. We must live the faith in and out of our cloisters. We must not retreat from the public square.
While the privatization of faith is something that Lewis, perhaps our century's greatest convert from unbelief, would find it both antithetical to true faith, one doubts that he would cower or cringe at our new century's challenges to Biblical orthodoxy. Rather, Lewis would see opportunity --opportunity for Christians to serve, as he put it, as both "specimens," and as antidotes to chaos, that these times provide.
If we agree that Lewis' life and career exemplify the virtue of rejecting the split between the sacred and the secular, the public and the private that haunts and inhibits so many of us, we can then find courage in sharing his obedience to St. Paul's admonition to "be not conformed to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:1, 2). Lewis pointed his listeners and his readers, his students and his friends, to a stance that integrates faith and life, vocation and confession.
Life before Pilate
If I were to describe Lewis myself in a single phrase, it would be this: Lewis was a man who lived his life before Pilate. That is to say, I believe Lewis carried out his daily tasks as teacher, citizen, and believer as one who knew he was always before a skeptical inquisitor, one too often who hides from the truth and masks his fear of knowing the truth behind indifference or the pretense of being on the search --as Pilate in the presence of Our Lord revealed (John 18:37).
This being the case, Lewis looms as a model for us in any walk of life who must find integration and application of our faith in concrete terms. Lewis tried neither to hide nor foreground his faith in his work, yet whatever else Lewis was, he was a man of faith willing to pay the price for his public confession that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. Deplored and despised by colleagues jealous of his scholarly prowess and shamed by his open association with popular literature and "mere" Christianity, Lewis was denied a professorship at Oxford at the peak of his literary scholarship.
As Christopher Derrick, a former pupil and friend of Lewis, has judiciously observed, Lewis was a man willing to "challenge the entrenched priesthood of the intelligentsia." And to do so from within the cloister, at the cost of being thought a traitor by many of his peers, one finds in Lewis an uncommonly valiant and articulate skeptic of the modern era, one forthrightly opposed to the "chronological snobbery" of our times that assumes truth is a function of the calendar and that the latest word is the truest one.
Those who try to read through the entire Lewis corpus confess that they receive an education in history, philology, sociology, philosophy, and theology so extensive and exhilarating that others seem thin and frivolous in comparison. While Lewis caricatured himself as a dinosaur, the last of the Old Western Men, many today see him as a forerunner of what may still be the triumph of men and women of Biblical faith in an age that derides the pursuit of truth and righteousness.
In the year of his centennial, we can offer him no better tribute than to try to walk in the steps of one who earnestly followed the steps of his Lord.
The quotes from C.S. Lewis are taken from Lewis' "Learning in War Time" in The Weight of Glory, edited by Walter Hooper (Macmillan, 1965) and "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" in Christian Reflections, edited by Walter Hooper (Eerdmans, 1967).
joy/dancing/techno
12.29.04 (4:30 pm) [edit]Spent the day with a friend, drove him to for a doctors visit and then we had dinner together afterwards. On the way home I ask him if he like techno music and he said that he never heard of it so I said would you like to listen to some with me…..he said yes and so we pumped up the volume and played some of my music. I really do love techno music I feel like my soul is flying and I am young all over again at least in the dancing department. To my surprise he said that he liked it. I have a bad reputation among my friends for my “bad” and “immature” taste in music. For instance I am told over and over again …..“how can a man you age listen to that kind of music”……well I don’t know I just do and love it. So I just tell them to kiss my butt!!!!!!! And then play something that we can all enjoy like country music.
Music goes directly to the heart and soul and can either cause great joy or sorrow, both of which is important to be able to feel. I remember one day in prayer letting the Lord know that in heaven I am going to dance and not sing; just fly and to huge loops in the sky to techno music………..just the thought makes my blood start to boil……such joy in dancing nothing like it the next best thing to dancing; sometimes just the thought makes me want to die of joy.
Peace
Mitch`
fear/atheism/faith
12.28.04 (4:25 pm) [edit]I belong to a club that is put together so that Christians and Atheists can debate. I have stated in an earlier post that I have for the most part stopped participating in that kind of dialogue since it seems to go nowhere fast. There seems to be a large insurmountable gap between both sides that makes it very difficult to communicate on any real level. Also debate is just that “debate” and is not about truth but about winning.
Also we all bring, or perhaps drag is a better word, all of our issues that make it even more difficult to try to understand each other. Today I got caught up in a “debate” with a man who got me hooked by saying that belief in the Christian God is based on fear, and that Christians are a fearful lot since fear of eternal damnation was central to their belief. When one Christian tried to refute that then the protagonist said that for a Christian not to be fearful, he or she would have to be on meds. Well I was hooked when I read that and tried to dialogue if not debate with the person making the statements.
If someone makes that kind of statement about ‘everyone’ who belongs to a belief system that was left behind, then it points at least for me, to a lot of baggage brought from the past that has not been dealt with or faced.
So I started from my side by simply requesting that if he is talking about his experience of “fear” in his past brought on by his Christian faith then he should simply state it and not project it onto “all” Christians. Well I got an insult back. So I said that I think my observation was valid and why would he not look at it and then perhaps we could talk about it. So I got another insult back. So I asked him one more time how he could be an atheist on rational grounds if his rejection was based on fear; sinse being based on fear his atheism was rooted more in emotion than rational thought. Another insult (sigh) so I dropped it; I know when to back out.
Perhaps I came across too blunt and that put him off, but under the circumstances I did not know what else to say.
I believe that there are “true” atheist, who base their atheism on rational thought and I respect that. Then there are others who seem filled with anger and some with fear, more emotional than rational and I guess I have to learn to respect that also and just leave it. I get more and more tired of it all and I guess it is only a short time before I just drop it and not even try anymore, for debate clubs are for debate, and I guess I see that after awhile debate becomes an endless cycle with no way out. Of course some love it and more power to them I guess.
I am not denying that religion can become evil and when it does many are hurt, but that says nothing about the ultimate truth of said religion; it merely points to our ability as humans to use religion and politics as a way to control others instead of helping them.
Of course the real problem is that I could have also read this guy wrong, which only made the possibility of communication more difficult if not impossible. I suppose real communication can only come about if two people are willing to really listen. Also the setting as to be right, and I guess debate clubs are not the place for it.
Peace
mitch
I
hoping against hope
12.25.04 (2:23 pm) [edit]Hope is an elusive state and I think one that has to be based on choice. Faith and Hope are not based on any particular emotional state though that can be present also but it is not something that should be depended upon. Our emotional states come and go and they are for the most part beyond our conscious control. I suppose that some people are hopeful by nature and others are more pessimistic, so the process of arriving at a state where hope is operative at all times, no matter the outward or even the inner circumstance will be arrived at by different means for each person.
I was in a book store on Thursday and was looking at some books when a title of one particular book jumped out at me and grabbed my attention. The title of the book is “Life is a Vapor”; interesting name yes? Also disturbing for me, and the title stayed with me for the last two days. Is life a “vapor”, does it go by so fast that it really seems like “two seconds”, or will it seem like that when it is over and done with. Well when I think back when I was in my early twenties and now in my latter fifties and the time in between…..well it does seem like two seconds. Sometimes that is a comfort to me and at other times it brings forth a sort of horror and the reminder of how temporary I am, and not only me but everything. Nothing can be held on to; everything passes so quickly that life does take on a dream like quality for me. What a joy it is to exist, to be, to be aware that I am aware….. what a gift; a gift with a high price tag. I am aware of my death, hard to really come to terms with, but am cognizant of the fact none the less. I think it was Sartre who said “when we think upon our death we can only do it as an observer”, sort of like watching a movie.
I often feel that I am setting on the edge of a cliff and just waiting. Waiting for what? Well waiting to be able to make that jump into the void, into the unknown. To let go and in trust fall forward into……..what (?)….the arms of a loving God or perhaps into oblivion. Even though I am a man of faith I still have doubts. Sometimes life seems so dark and pointless, we live and then its over and everything in between has no real meaning apart from what I give it; it however does not end there.
For some reason I cannot let go of my faith in God, nor in God’s love for me; not only for me but for all, from the greatest to the least. I suppose it seems foolish to some to believe in God but I find atheism just as foolish I think. I don’t believe because of my desire for an afterlife but out of an intuition that for there to be existence of any kind there has to be “something” whose very essence is existence; whose existence is necessary and eternal, and from that flows all that “stand out” or exist.
To” fall into” is a form of prayer that I have grown into lately, to let go and just fall into the arms of a God that is beyond comprehension, beyond form who is utter ably unknowable but who has revealed “Itself” as love. What is infinite Love? Can I even begin to understand what it means to love on that level? Does it mean that God suffers since from my experience to love means to suffer, to take on the one loved. Just ask any parent what it means to love a child so much that it hurts.
I remember once when I was young that I suddenly got sick for three days. I was well one moment and suddenly I got this high fever and for three days all that I remember was getting hot, the fever breaking, and my mom coming in and changing everything since everything was soaked; this happened every three hours or so. I can also remember that I could sense my mother was suffering way more than I was because of her love for me. So God’s love being much more than any parent’s, must be passionate, intense and will do anything to bring me deeper into its love. I suppose that is why God is not kind. We all must endure life and drink it to the dregs from the cup we have been handed, and I believe that God is not only “with” me but “in” me in a place so deep and intimate that the “me” and the loving “It” seem to disappear.
Parents can often seem cruel to children or teenagers when they do not submit to their tears and pleas since they see a broader picture of life; with God it must be even broader and the mystery deeper. Perhaps we will only know after death the meaning of it all, and while I have trouble believing this on an emotional level on a deeper level of faith, it is stone strong and deeply rooted.
Neither my weakness nor my inconstancy will deter me from this conviction. I think despair is really the easier road to take; to become the cynic is a way of closing myself off from life, and the pain that comes from hoping and loving. The cynic’s and the atheist can laugh at me if they want but I feel that even in spite of the darkness of the path I have the better portion.
Peace
Mitch
charlie
12.23.04 (2:08 pm) [edit]Took Charlie for his follow up visit to the radiation center, to check to see if this treatment cured his skin cancer on the top of his head, which was causing him a great deal of trouble. The office is one of the best I have been to because a great deal of consideration is shown to those who have to wait. On my first visit with Charlie we had to wait till the early afternoon and they offered to buy us lunch (!), I was really surprised at that and pleased that they would be sensitive to Charlie’s needs since he is in his 90’s.
It was a good day for him, he was in a good mood and very peaceful with a smile for everyone. When Charlie is good he is very good and well you all know the other side of the little ditty. When he is “good” it is truly a delight to be around him. He has a very genteel personality, soft spoken with one of the most beautiful smiles you would ever want to see. It did me good to see him in a peaceful mood since he often is not. He told me that he can’t seem to forget anything, or to forgive either, and it really bothers him that he is like that. He once showed me a little booklet he wrote about his brother, the only brother in the family he was close to. I was amazed at how well he wrote, and told him that he wrote like a professional writer. It saddened me that because of his hard life he was never able to reach his potential as a writer or artist. He was a master carpenter and I guess that gave him some real pleasure when he was younger.
I promised to take him to “Krystal” for their hamburgers, which he loves. It is not on his diet but I worked it out with the charge nurse and she said that it would be ok. It is good to be able to give some joy into his life, probably did more for me than for him. In the past I have lost it with Charlie and have said some nasty things that I regret and I feel that this somehow makes some small amends for that.
Over all he has been a good teacher for me. He has let me learn my limits on how much I can take. Has taught me to slow down when I am angry and measure what I have to say, and to also make jumps for his personality problems that can cause some to go crazy. I have learned that underneath that is a really loving and caring person, who really does not know or understand what he does to make others so angry with him. I guess he is trapped in a cycle of reacting that he can’t do anything about; but I can at least try to make his life a little easier for him.
I was talking to some of those I work with and one of them started in on Charlie, and I made some remarks that I guess defended him in a way. The remarks were true but they did not see the whole picture, at least in my opinion. After my remarks another person there named James ask me this question; well then what is Charles true self? My answer was, I think Charles true self was when he was not fearful, angry or just being defensive. Such emotions only constrict our ability to be present to others; it is when he is relaxed, peaceful and even joyful, that he opens up like a flower to the sun, and that I think is when get a glimpse of who he really is. So I can honestly say that I do love him and hope that I can be with him in his last moments, to help him make the transition into the arms of a loving God.
There is a reason we are told not to judge others, we simply can’t, don’t know enough or see deep enough, can’t see into the depths of another’s heart. I suppose that is why God being love is merciful to us all since being all knowing can see into the deepest depths of the heart.
I know how hard it is for me to stay on course, how easy it is to lose it, how I need support and forgiveness of those around me. So why should I think Charlie and I are not a lot alike?
May all out hearts expand to include all others and that we may pray that we all will be one with the Father of lights and love.
Peace
Mitch
openess/friendship
12.21.04 (2:39 pm) [edit]Why is it so hard to be open with others? Why can it be even harder to be open with people that we care the most about? I think one answer is based on the concept of power. To care for another person means that we at some level or open to them, something that can’t be helped. The other has power over the one who cares for him or her even if they are not aware of it. So to approach someone with that kind of openness is a scary thing. People whom we are indifferent to or perhaps just like, cannot do anything bad to us on an emotional level……well it may take something big for that to happen. Rejection is not an issue with everyday friends, but can be when real friendship is involved. I have never turned down an offer of friendship from someone who I intuit is making them selves vulnerable by approaching me. I think it is foolish to turn down friendship….well at least in my experience it has always been worthwhile even if it takes time for the fruit of the relationship to become apparent.
So I guess what I am saying is that I know, that those who love me and have a relationship with me are in some way putting themselves in the palm of my hand, and they can be easily hurt deeply by me if I choose to do so. I choose not to do so, at least not on purpose. If I do hurt someone like that I go to a great deal of trouble to ask for forgiveness. People are important and we should all nourish those who come into our lives and respect the courage it takes for someone to reveal their vulnerable side and also be aware of the damage we can cause them if we abuse that trust.
I also do the same thing when I open myself up to another and because of that I am careful with whom I do that with. I find that relationships also have cycles; some of them negative. To want friendship with say an addict because of my family background is something that I find not good. I think it is sort of a brother thing since I have a couple of brothers who have drinking problems and I was close to them when I was young, and still am actually. My oldest brother who is seven years older than me. and my younger brother who I am close, closer now than years before, but he still drinks….. but is getting better at it because of his children. So I try to cultivate friendships with others that take time to cultivate and I find this enriching. Compulsion is not something that any relationship should be based on. Family issues can be one cause of getting involved in destructive friendships so it is good to look into the past to stay clear of repeating history so to speak.
So one can be open to those who approach them, be there for them, help them but not always be able to become deep friends because of past experiences with certain types of personalities, with a certain range of problems, that are a barrier to any kind of deep relationship; this is sad but true. None the less I can’t take out past frustrations on the one standing before me but can be as kind and as loving as I can be.
We can all be channels of God’s love if we allow it to flow thru us. Much of the worlds pain is based not having someone in their lives who care and listen to them. This is not easy that it why a deep prayer life is needed in order to see Christ not “in” others but Jesus as “one” with the other. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves that is a commanded, commanded because it is difficult
If not impossible without the healing touch of God’s love in our hearts; without empathy we cannot see things from any other perspective but our own and this creates barriers that are impossible to overcome unless a broader focus is developed.
I am writing this because I have worked in this for years and it has been an interesting journey for me and rewarding…..so if it comes across that I am preaching I am not……just talking to myself.
Peace
mitch
the wheel
12.20.04 (3:37 am) [edit]The wheel keeps turning and there is nothing that I can do about it. From moment to moment the conditions of my inner life change and while I can be in a good centered mood in the morning, were all is right with the world…… there is a good chance that it will be something totally different by early afternoon or even before. One word from someone or something can go wrong at work and suddenly a ‘good’ day becomes a ‘bad’ day. I don’t think that anything can be done about that; such is reality I guess. Sometimes I feel like the wheel has no center, like the spokes that line the inner part of the wheel don’t connect to anything inside, like there is no center but only chaos with bits of good and bad floating to the surface of my awareness. Of course when I am in the thick of ‘something’ I am not sure how aware I really am. Personality constriction that comes about because I am struggling to just stay afloat in the plain everyday-ness of life is not a form of consciousness, but a limitation that keeps me from experiencing life around me and being present to others.
When this happens and I am ‘awake’ enough to deal with it I try to just stop, focus, get perspective and then move on. This however does not always happen since my ‘center’ is hidden away somewhere under the waves of my agitation. Luckily someone ‘out there’, separate from my own inner chaos will say something that is helpful in bringing me around, or at least start the process that will get me grounded.
Where is God in all of this? Where is God when life is chaos, when the world seems full of suffering, when the center does not hold as they say and things fall apart? Well God is simply there of that I firmly believe. Perhaps that is what has kept me sane all of this time when my inner world seems to want to swallow me and devour me. Even if I lose touch with my center I am never out of touch with my deepest center which is God, who sustains and loves me no matter what I feel, emote or happen to believe at any one time. There is a part of me that is permanent some call it the soul, and the life of the soul is the eternal one who has revealed ‘Itself” as love no matter what information tempts me to believe the contrary. I read something once that said God is not “protective” but is “provident”, that ‘It’ has revealed itself as ‘Father” who journeys with us through life and that no matter how things look our life has meaning, so no amount of my own inner fragmentation or the chaos and suffering of the world will stop that.
So I do have a center but it is based on something eternal, something who is love but not kind, a Father who will do anything and everything to not only bring me home but all of mankind…..this I have come to believe but cannot prove nor do I try to.
Peace everyone and I hope you all have a peaceful and joyous season……and please don’t go crazy.
Peace
mitch
confidence in God by Father de Caussade
12.19.04 (2:32 pm) [edit]—Confidence in God Father de Caussade
The less the soul in the state of abandonment feels the help it receives from God, the more efficaciously does He sustain it.
There is a kind of sanctity in which all the communications of God are luminous and distinct; but in the passive state of pure faith all that God communicates partakes of the nature of that inaccessible darkness that surrounds His throne, and all ideas are confused and indistinct. The soul, in this state of obscurity is often afraid, like the Prophet, of running headlong against a rock. "Fear not, faithful soul, for this is your right path, and the way by which God conducts you. There is no way more safe and sure than this dark way of faith." "But it is so dark that I cannot tell which way to go." "Go wherever you please; you cannot lose the way where there is no path; every way looks the same in the dark, you cannot see the end because nothing is visible." "But I am afraid of everything. I feel as if, at any moment, I might fall over a precipice. Everything is an affliction to me; I well know that I am acting according to abandonment, but it seems to me that there are things I cannot do without acting contrary to virtue. I seem to be so far from all the virtues. The more I wish to practice them the more remote they seem. I love virtue, but the obscure impressions by which I am attracted seem to keep virtue far from me. I always give in to this attraction, and although I cannot perceive that it guides me well, I cannot help following it. The spirit seeks light; but the heart is in darkness. Enlightened persons, and those with lucid minds are congenial to my spirit, but when I hear conversations and listen to discourses, my heart understands nothing; its whole state and way is simply an impression of the gift of faith, which makes it love and appreciate those principles, truths, and paths wherein the spirit has neither object nor idea, and in which it trembles, shudders, and falters. I have an assurance, I do not know how, in the depths of my heart, that this way is right; not by the evidence of my senses, but by a feeling inspired by faith. "This is because it is impossible for God to lead a soul without persuading it that the path is a right one, and this with a certainty all the greater the less it is perceived. And this certainty is victorious over all censures, fears, efforts, and all imaginations. The mind vainly cries out and seeks some better way. The bride recognizes the Bridegroom unconsciously, but when she stretches out her hand to hold Him, He disappears. She understands that the Spouse to whom she belongs has rights over her, and she prefers to wander without order or method in abandoning herself to His guidance rather than to endeavor to gain confidence by following the beaten tracks of virtue.
Let us go to God, then, my soul, in abandonment, and let us acknowledge that we are incapable of acquiring virtue by our own industry or effort; but let us not allow this absence of particular virtues to diminish our confidence. Our divine Guide would not have reduced us to the necessity of walking if He had not intended to carry us in His arms. What need have we of lights and certainties, ideas and reflections? Of what use would it be to us to see, to know, and to feel, when we are no longer walking but being carried in the arms of divine Providence. The more we have to suffer from darkness, and the more rocks, precipices, and deserts there are in our way; the more we have to endure from fears, dryness, weariness of mind, anguish of soul, and even despair, and the sight of purgatory and hell, the greater must be our confidence and faith. One glance at Him who carries us is sufficient to restore our courage in the greatest peril. We will forget the paths and what they are like; we will forget ourselves, and abandoning ourselves entirely to the wisdom, goodness, and power of our Guide we will think only of loving Him, and avoiding all sin, not only that which is evident, however venial it may be, but even the appearance of evil, and of fulfilling all the duties and obligations of our state.
This is the only charge You lay upon Your children, O divine Love! all the rest You take upon Yourself. The more terrible this may be, the more surely can Your presence be felt and recognized. Your children have only to love You without ceasing, and to fulfill their small duties like children. A child on its mother's lap is occupied only with its games as if it had nothing else to do but to play with its mother. The soul should soar above the clouds, and, as no one can work during the darkness of the night, it is the time for repose. The light of reason can do nothing but deepen the darkness of faith: the radiance necessary to disperse it must proceed from the same source as itself. In this state God communicates Himself to the soul as its life, but He is no longer visible as its way, and its truth: The bride seeks the Bridegroom during this night; she seeks Him before her, and hurries forward; but He is behind her, and holding her with His hands. He is no loner object, or idea, but principle and source. For all the needs; difficulties, troubles, falls, overthrows, persecutions, and uncertainties of souls which have lost all confidence in themselves and their own action, there are secret and inspired resources in the divine action, marvelous and unknown. The more perplexing the circumstances the keener is the expectation of a satisfactory solution. The heart says "All goes well, it is God who carries on the work, there is nothing to fear." That very suspense and desolation are verses in the canticle of darkness. It is a joy that not a single syllable is left out, and it all ends in a "Gloria Patri"; therefore we pursue the way of our wanderings, and darkness itself is a light for our guidance; and doubts are our best assurance. The more puzzled Isaac was to find something to sacrifice, the more completely did Abraham place all in the hands of Providence, and trust entirely in God.
light/darkness
12.18.04 (6:55 am) [edit]I have found that if I use something dark to mediate on then dark thoughts will come up…no duh …..right? Dark thoughts don’t necessarily mean that they are false, sometimes the darker things in life can ‘seem’ to be more real and also more in control. The underbelly of life, that seems sometimes to have a choke hold on humanity in general, and me in particular at certain times in my life, if not seen in perspective can lead to despair…..which is just another trap that needs to be avoided.
The metaphor of the struggle between ‘light’ and ‘dark’ is based on observation and will either lead me to think or believe that the dark is winning since it seems to be the easier road to take, sinse it is mostly based on immediate satisfaction of ones desires or ambitions, and usually does not take much self-reflection to accompolish. In order to live in the ‘light’ I have to live in the open so to speak, to allow the light to reach the dark corners of my soul so that I can do something about it, and even more importantly, to allow grace to do its work. I can always come up with good reasons for doing the most awful things, and have them (reasons) all lined up, and can surround myself with them as a protection from the light that would show them for what many of them (the reasons) are.
The more I hide from the ‘light’ the harder it is for me to accept the ‘truth’, since truth will throw me back on myself in self-reflection and then I will have to deal with the pain of my own inner darkness. The darkness grows the more I throw it outside of myself onto others, the more I can vent my anger and self-hatred onto others the more comfortable I will feel, for a shorter and shorter period as time moves on; for I will then fool myself that I am dealing with ‘things’ so to speak. How do I know this? By my observation of others; on how they treat me, and how they relate to those around them, and from that observation I have come to the conclusion that I do the same thing. If it were not true I would not be able to discern that process in those whom I observe. It is much easier to read the other than to look inward, for that will only show me that the darkness that I see in others is in reality only a reflection of my self, a self that I perhaps do not want to gaze upon. When that becomes a habit I can find myself getting involved in all kinds of negative cycles not only in my relationships but also in my work situation. The more blind I become the more the world becomes a place of conflict, both on the defensive and the offensive front.
The road that leads to the light is narrow because I have to deal with myself first and don’t have the broad field of all the ‘others’ to project on to. I don’t become scattered by becoming trapped in the hearts and heads of those around me since I stay in my own heart and head; not looking outward but inward. When that happens, the looking inward I find that since I know my own darkness I am no longer forced to deal with it in others and by that fact I am free to see their beauty and light which is also present. In fact the light is more powerful than the darkness since I know from experience that the most hardened person on the outside who seems at war with everyone, will respond to the feeling of being seen, heard, and loved and accepted. Empathy and compassion can only flower when self knowledge is the center from which it flows from, anything less than that is sentimentality only and no long term friendship, or really any kind of relationship can survive without it.
So yes the inner darkness that we all have to deal with, not only on the individual level but also on the collective, is one that we really have no choice in taking if we wish to survive. For we choose collectively to ignore it, and refuse to grow in this way, we will simply be back into a tighter and tighter corner until we respond to the call for change. I think we are already in a tight spot as it is and hopefully we will learn, slowly perhaps but learn we must.
As a Christian I believe that it is only grace that can give the strength to began this difficult journey, but one that in the end will cause the world to flower and grow and to stop this slide we seem to be going in at this time.
In the light people are treated as subject; the darkness causes others to become mere objects to be used and discarded.
Peace
mitch
"Alien" the movie
12.17.04 (4:30 pm) [edit]I remember going to see the movie “Alien” when it came out many years ago and found the movie very interesting it its presentation of the alien. The alien was both a parasite and also the perfect predator once it reached it full growth, which did not take long. No childhood or adolescents for these creatures, just the fast track to being the world’s best predator. Good news for it, since it was at the top of the food chain; not so good for us since we became number two being displaced from our former placement. We also seemed to be their favorite snack and also the preferred place for them to reproduce themselves; a nasty painful procedure for those unlucky to have an egg deposited down their throats.
I could never bring myself to look upon the alien as evil since it was merely following its nature to the hilt. It was made for hunting, was strong and fast, and there was a lot of them since they seemed to be more insect than anything else I could figure. They seemed intelligent for sure, but I am not aware of anywhere in the movie were they were shown to be capable of any kind of choice in how they could react to any one circumstance toward their prey. Well they would not kill a human that had and egg that would develop into a queen, and I suppose any human with the egg of a drone would probably be spared; again instinct, intelligent yes but no choice was apparent.
In the movie there was also the innocent child complete with white blond hair; innocent blue eyes and a lovable cuteness, the perfect symbol for innocence I guess. The child and the alien have something in common at least in my opinion. The innocence of the child is not something that is based on any kind of choice; the innocence of the child comes from a lack of experience and will change as the child’s experience of the world deepens. Some children lose their innocence sooner than others. So the child is neither good nor evil; that will come later when the ability of choice develops. So in the movie the alien and the child are innocent in a sense, they just were what they were. The child has something over the alien, and that being growth is possible and the ability to choose will develop if enough intelligence is present. I think one of the reasons the aliens kept being put off was that they did not have the cunning of the humans, that is necessary to be able to come up with plans that are unexpected.
The aliens were born by eating through the chest cavity of the human host, and in the process not only causing a great deal of pain but destroying its host as well; just like many insects in the way they give birth to the next generation. Pure instinct capable of thought but limited in their choices on how to act or make plans. To me the aliens are the perfect metaphor for the rage that we humans have locked up in ourselves that is often seeking some outlet to express itself, and in the process leaving chaos and destruction in its wake. It is like our involvement with war the world over, the process of war seems to take on a life of its own, destroying those who give birth to its destruction, and once it is born it takes on definite course for growth dragging those behind who gave it birth in the first place.
Many of our diseases are believed by some to come from our own ‘dis-ease’ with ourselves, our self loathing and self hatred, which we not only project onto others but turn in our ourselves that damage our immune systems and leave us open to sickness. Also the way we seem to like those things that shorten our lives, the foods we eat, the drugs and alcohol we ingest in large quantities, the way we continue to smoke and how the young also indulge even though they know the detrimental effects it will have on their health later on. These kinds of things point to the real alien force that is destroying us, the cut off portions of our own souls that we do not wish to own.
I certainly have my share of the above and it seems at times a losing battle, but I struggle on. I wonder why so many people have trouble with the thought of original sin; it seems apparent that there is something not quite right with us.
Peace
mitch
the rage within
12.16.04 (10:21 am) [edit]I have mentioned in some of my others post about how I have dealt with anger most of my life, and I suppose that there is nothing unique with that since I guess most of us have certain passions that we deal with all of our lives. I would like to talk about ‘rage’ and how I was first introduced to my own little ball of immense energy that has a tendency to rear its head when the conditions are right.
I was sort of a runt in my early teen’s until I was 17, and because of that I grew head to head with my younger brother who grew along a more normal time line. The teen years were not good for our relationship, we were at logger heads more times than not and we fought a lot over just about everything. I remember every time my parents went out we would fight to see who is in charge. These fights would go on for a long time and for the most part I would win them; reason being I got very focused when I got angry and my brother did not, he just lost it; I think I have a colder nature that he does. My best trick was to get him in a head lock, after that that was all she wrote. Of course he being stubborn would not give up (sigh), so I would get him in a choke hold till he got blue and then let up the pressure, he would hit me so I would tighten the hold again….the myth of Sisyphus all over again…..choke, let go, get hit, choke again, let go get hit over and over again. Well we both sort of enjoyed it I guess since we did it all the time. My little sisters would sit around and cheer both of us on, they loved it…..the vixens. Of course we never really hurt each other; for instance I never hit my brother in the face and neither one of us ever kick each other were any damage could be done or great pain be inflicted. Such is brotherly love I guess, fight yes, punch yes but now real damage was ever done.
Now I had to be pushed into a fight, I never wanted to go to the mat with my brother but he always picked at me. I often tried to ignore him and I found out one day that would have been better to just fight him instead of letting the anger build up. Or perhaps it was a good thing, since what happen has served me well throughout my life in dealing with my own issues with rage and how I relate to it.
So this is how it happen. My brother was really on my back for about a week, pushing all my buttons as only a family member with a death wish can do, and I tried to deal with it maturely; well at least I thought I was but found out otherwise. I was in the bathroom cleaning up in front of the mirror minding my own business when little brother walked in and said a snide remark, and in a tone only he could get with his voice; I think he practiced in front of a mirror or something.....also the sneer that would enrage a saint, and I was no saint. When he said what he said something happen to me that was new and at the time energizing, an inner explosion that was both very painful but at the same time had a cold quality to that made me into a force for destruction and chaos. When this happen my brother got this uh oh look on his face and started to back away from me; there was a long nail file on the shelf in front of the mirror, I grabbed it and screaming turned toward my brother, he took off but I was right behind him, he did not have a shirt on and I slashed out with the file and connected with his back making a bloody line of about 6-8 inches. He ran screaming towards the living room where my parents where since it was a weekend and my dad was home.
As soon as I saw blood I guess I came to my senses and was paralyzed with horror at what I had done to my brother. For a short time I actually wanted to kill him, to hurt him and make him pay for all the pain and frustration that I allowed him to cause me. I went back into the bathroom and sat down and started to cry; tears not only of remorse, but also because I had just lost a certain innocence that I had before the event and could recapture. I experienced something in me that was powerful and in some ways pleasurable at least for the short time that I experienced it. I could hear my dad coming down the hall to get me, I could tell that he was very angry at what at happen and I expected the worse, but I did not care. I was just sitting there with the bloody file in my hand crying my eyes out in sorrow over the act of violence that I committed on my brother. My dad came in with his belt off ready to give me a good whipping and I was prepared, in fact I think it would have been good to have been punished; I wanted to be. However when he saw how upset I was he comforted me instead of punishing me. He really did not know what to with me but he just put his arms around me and told me that my brother was alright, the cut was not too deep and left it at that.
My brother gave me some peace for a few weeks after that…..hmmmmmm I wonder why?
After this experience I realized that I was going to have to deal with my brother, and the way I dealt with the frustration that flowed from our relationship in a different manner. Rage seems to be a permanent resident in my unconscious and it still from time to time tries to come through too strong. However in the past my rage was sort of bundled up into a tight ball and hidden from my conscious mind now it has a room all to itself with large windows for ventilation and the door has a lock on the outside, so I am aware that it is there, and can be dangerous if I take it for granted. Once it a while I will feel its power surge thru my body and the images that come with it while violent, no longer shock or scare me since it is merely letting me know that it is still there and its energy can be useful if used properly. So to not be afraid of my anger was the first step I had to take to tame the rage within. I think humans are dangerous, and the more we are out of touch with our more primitive feelings and emotions the more we can one day be controlled by that rage that can lash out at others for no apparent reason. Road rage is an example, something we read about all the time. Or when someone goes “postal” at work everyone is surprised for they seemed so quiet and gentle……well none of us is that; we can only be truly gentle when we know what we are doing and not just being nice….. just being nice has its place but it often based on strongly repressing on a regular the frustration that come from just living. Energy has to be used or dissipated if not there can be trouble. Self knowledge and not fearing our inner world is a big first step towards living a better life with more balance to it.
I am thankful for that experience with my brother; also for the fact that he was not seriously injured. I also came to the conclusion that even though I often "hated” him with my emotions…..I really loved him with my deeper feelings. Family life is like that. We are now very close and no more fighting.
Peace
mitch
after the foster home
12.15.04 (4:13 pm) [edit]In my first post called “Earlier times” I related about my experience of being put into a foster home for a year when I was two. I would like to continue that story and tell about what happened right after my parents came to pick me and my three brothers up. I was small of course (3 when we left) so the sequence of events could be jumbled up a bit, nonetheless they are how I remember them.
We went to a house that for someone my size seemed to be quite large. We were escorted into the kitchen and my parents being in a festive mood made up coke floats in those special coke glasses that are made for them, and gave each of us one. I was in a state of shock since we were taken out of the home so quickly, but being a child I really enjoyed the floats. My parents were of course delighted to be have us back and I think that they rented the large house for a very cheap price from some people they knew. I was later told by my oldest brother who was 10 at the time that my parents found out that the money they left to be spent on us was being misused, so they came and got us. Well after the floats we were taken upstairs to bed. The house had two staircases up to the second floor; one from the kitchen near the back door, and the other from the large living room, which had a large spiral staircase. Upstairs had three large bedrooms (if I remember rightly) and one small one connected to the large bedroom over the kitchen. That was the room they put me in.
It was a little overwhelming for me to suddenly be thrust into such what was to me a strange environment, to be sure and it took quite awhile for me to be able to go to sleep. Well I did go to sleep; one of the good things about being a child, sleep was usually not a problem. The next day I explored the place and was taken by it since it was so large and beautiful. In the living room there was a large piano that I found and attempted to climb up on the stool that was in front. It took a couple of attempts but I finally got myself up and sat down and tried to figure out what this large beautiful object was. It did not take me long to try out the keys and was delighted with the noise that it made; actually I think I made a great deal of noise since my mother came and got me off of the stool after a time. She let me play with it for awhile so she was thoughtful in allowing that. After that I would always go for the piano when no one was around and played it quietly after that.
We were there for over a year that much I know, but for a 3 and 4 year old time is not a big issue….. unless it is meal time. Sissy and the twins were born there, all three in one year; Sissy is only 11 months older than the twins. I remember both times when I came into the dining room and I would find the new crib or cribs there and that would be the first time I would hear of it, that I had any sisters on the way.
We spent one Christmas there and I remember lying in bed and waiting to see if I could hear Santa coming to leave gifts. Like I said above I could not stay awake long and was soon asleep until the morning. It was a good Christmas that year since I was back with mom and dad and I have fond memories of it; the food, relatives coming over and lots of sweets.
It was just before the next Christmas that we moved; Christmas Eve I think. I think my parents had to make a choice to either have good Christmas for us or pay the rent for the house for January. Well they decided to move and again friends helped them out. This time the house was way in the country and only had three rooms. The middle room which contained a large table and a pot belly stove which was used for cooking as well. I remember how cold it was when we got there and how fast the stove warmed the room up. On the left was a bed room and to the right of the center room was what seemed to me some sort of living room. I remember waking up and going into the living room and finding many gifts for all of us.
I loved the house since it was primitive, out in the country, and we spent a lot of time together. I remember one day going into the woods with my two older brothers looking for box turtles. We had quite a collection of them and keep them in a pen in the yard and I would spend a great deal of time just observing them.
Across from the house their was a storm cellar and I can remember one night running for it with the rest of the household, on the way to it I saw a funnel in the distance but did not know what it was. The cellar frightened me because of the dankness of the place and the number of strange insects that I never saw before. My parents played games with us and we all calmed down a bit. The storm did no damage to us and we went back into the house.
I also have another memory of me being in one of the fields that was just cultivated (the house was on a farm that our friends owed), and suddenly my mother was screaming at me to run. I did not know what the problem was but I started running, well as fast a small almost 4 year old can run over up turned dirt and planting ruts in the ground. My mother’s friend came up just when I was getting too tired to keep on going and grabbed me and carried me to the fence and got me over to the other side. I later found out that there was a big sow the farmers owned, that was very mean and it cannibalized its young all the time. It also killed small animals and ate them. What happened is this, I was within my mother’s sight, she saw the sow in her pin see me and break out of the pen and came right for me. My mother was afraid that the sow looked upon me as food, a morsel I guess, and after she screamed for me to run she went to the truck and got her gun. By the time I was over the fence my mother shot the sow and killed it with one shot. The farmer who owned the sow was not upset about the incident but was thankful that I was safe. Well we had lots of ham and bacon for awhile after that.
Like I said it was primitive there but it was a good time for the family since we did spend a lot of time together. I was sorry when we left and moved to Desoto.
Peace
mitch
primitive I am
12.14.04 (1:49 pm) [edit]When I lived in
We would go to war with other groups and fight, but no one ever really got hurt we weren’t that far gone. One day we were fighting a group when they broke away and ran into some saw grass. Saw grass is a tall green plant with sharp sides to it which could cut your bare skin if you were not careful. Well they ran in the grass and hunkered down and stayed there. So the kids in my group lined up, there was 8 of us I think, got our clubs and someone yelled, “ready aim throw” and we threw our clubs into the saw grass. We got some hits, there were some tears but in the end we all went down to swimming pool and played together. I think what keep us in control was the fact that grownups were simply around, sort of a mitigating influence on us…..the fear of punishment also helped on a more conscious level……I have often wondered what would have happened if say no adults were around for some reason, how far would we go. Morality is not highly developed in young children so without guidance it could have gotten ugly.
I remember year’s later reading the book the “lord of the flies” which is about a group of children…. from almost toddlers to teenagers and the effect it had on them to be left on their own without adult supervision. . It is not a book to read for pleasure but more for insight into our more primitive impulses that our being part of society keeps under checks most of the time. The cartoon TV show “recess” sort of deals with this in a humorous manner, you have the grade school kids who have a king of the play ground more or less benign, and then the pre-schools kids who can come across a little more malign, very primitive and in one episode a little scary. Of course this is TV for children and does not go as far as it could go if it were a cartoon for adults.
Even as an adult, an old adult (56) I still get that primitive wanting to go to war and hit someone over the head feeling…. it is like just holding onto a sword or spear propels me back thousands of years to some primordial ancestor who had to be that way just to survive. The problem today is that kind of thing is not needed anymore but the propensity is still there.
Knowing that about myself I can understand why we have so much war today; there is a deep part of us that longs for it, irrational yes, harmful to humanity yes, self destructive yes……but none the less there. I wonder if we will ever be able to channel that primitive force within into something constructive and healing instead of destructive and wounding.
I think one reason I still love heavy metal music even at my time of live is that the primitive beat still allows me to somehow channel that feeling into movement, allows it to come to the surface so that I can express it. The more primitive the music the more I seem to like it, the deeper the base guitar and the harder the drums beat the more I can fly with the music and go into a trance sort of. I don’t loose touch with reality or anything, but music for me has a lot of power and I am sure that I am not unique in that. I also love other types of music and each is used to get me in touch with other areas of my live. Some allow me to feel the softer more tender sides of who I am and I find that just as helpful as heavy metal. Perhaps this shows that I am not that integrated in my inner life and need music to help me get in touch with that; in other words I need help. I am more comfortable with the more aggressive types of emotions so they are more readily available to me but the tender side of me is more hidden, at least on the level were I can feel it; when I do it is very healing for me. People do not experience me as angry. I think the reason for this is that I am aware of my tendency to get angry,, so I work on it and that self awareness allows me to use it in a constructive manner and if I fail to apologies if I said or did anything stupid. People are more aware of my tender side than I am, being unaware of it much of the time, it sort of leaks out and other feel it around me….strange isn’t it?
Peace
mitch
one dream/three installments
12.13.04 (2:56 pm) [edit]While I pay attention to my dreams, I really have no choice, since they are so vivid and I have them every night; I don’t spend a lot of time writing them down since it would take up a large portion of my morning to do so. However many of my break throughs in life have been brought about by dreams, so I would not like to recount one dream I had but it came in three installments, one installment following in proper order after the one before.
1st dream:
In this dream (a lucid dream) I found myself in a deep void, surrounding by complete darkness and nothingness and I was just floating there. There was complete silence and for some reason I felt completely at home and not the least bit afraid. Which in the dream I found interesting to no end; I was just there and was pondering why I felt so much at home, like it was where I belonged. The darkness was not menacing in anyway, sort of like an old friend I guess. Then what seemed at an infinite distance I began to see geometric forms moving together like the second hand of a clock in a clock wise direction. The designs formed a perfect circle in the outer ring but in the inner ring they resembled bits of a puzzle that needed to be put together. I thought was does that mean? Then I woke up.
2nd dream
Two nights later I found myself back in the void looking again at the forms. This time the forms broke up and formed doorways that were made of fire and I found myself flying through them.
3rd dream
In the third dream I found myself at a great distance looking at the forms again, I was circling them, I could see my hands in front of me as I flew and there was no sound or wind to be felt or heard. The forms started to go together in a perfect circle, everything fit. Then the circle shrunk and had the look of something dangerous like a mine that you would find in water; in other words it looked powerful and perhaps dangerous. It suddenly came toward me at great speed and stopped just in front of me like it wanted something from me. In my mind I said “shall I touch it????.....I suddenly reached (an impulse?) and put my hands around at and when I did that I said “Oh my God” and woke up.
This dream in three parts has haunted me for years, not in a bad way but sort of in a nostalgic feeling sort of way, like I would like to be able to go back there and maybe even stay…..don’t know. I have a few more dreams like that I may also share at a later time.
Peace
Mitch
the rope ride
12.12.04 (4:26 pm) [edit]Ft Gulick, and army base in the