tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83394446021630913262024-02-28T17:42:10.296-06:00W.T. BrantonUnconventional Theologian • Interfaith Chaplain • Occasional AuthorUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-27059542802035671322023-07-01T15:03:00.002-05:002023-11-04T13:33:42.965-05:00To Understand God, Understand Dog<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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There is nothing more human than to love a dog and nothing more divine than for God to love humanity. Empathy is both innate and learned, a variable talent to be diligently built on and a skill to be lovingly cultivated. Empathy is the glue that holds human society together (sometimes clumsily referred to as “love”), but it isn’t unique to humans, or even primates for that matter. Anyone with warm-blooded pets can attest to that (maybe not as perceivably so in reptiles, fish, and whatnot). Now, all of you cat people out there are probably annoyed that I’ve singled out dogs as being essential companions to the nature of humanity. But I would encourage you to be patient and maybe just stick with me on this. It’ll take less time to explain than lint-rollering the cat hair off your couch.<a name='more'></a>
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Cats have empathy, as do birds, apes, and a variety of other vertebrates. But their empathy begins in their own instinct to nurture each other in their family, herd, flock, troop, etc. For an animal to have empathy for or with a human takes a little extra push on the part of either the animal or the human. Elephants have been known to assist humans in danger, apes have been known to nurture puppies as their own offspring, and domestic cats may even form familial bonds with animals they otherwise would prey on in the wild, like birds and rodents. I’ve had dozens of different pets throughout my lifetime and I can tell you that almost any vertebrate animal (including reptiles) can form emotional, empathic bonds with not only each other, but animals of different species.
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<div class="lquote">Interspecies empathy is a secondary mechanism to instinct.</div>
However, again, interspecies empathy is a secondary mechanism to instinct and natural imprinting behaviors. Chimpanzees often hunt monkeys for food. Many hawks actually prefer to prey on smaller birds than on rodents or fish. And elephants are very likely to charge and fatally trample a human if one stumbles into their territory. Even cats weren’t technically “domesticated” by humans – they effectively domesticated themselves when they realized that befriending humans meant free food and shelter. Dogs are an exception, both by nature and by human design.
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We’ve been genetically engineering organisms for thousands of years. Even before we engineered plants for agriculture through selective planting and crossbreeding, we began “engineering” the wolf through selective breeding. Every domestic dog breed on the planet is genetically descended from the gray wolf and archaeologists estimate the process has been going on for somewhere between fifteen and thirty thousand years (that’s five to twenty thousand years before agriculture). We selected the wolf because of its social and empathic nature and nurtured it into an even more empathic creature that is literally designed to be our ideal companion animal – an “image” of mankind, so to speak.
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<div class="rquote">Dogs innately understand AND share our joy and our sorrow.</div>Dogs recognize human facial features and expression better than chimpanzees (our closest genetic relative in the animal kingdom). In fact, dogs pass the “pointer test” better than apes, which means that if you point to something, a dog will look at the thing you point at, whereas a chimp is more likely to stare at your fingertip than at what you’re directing their attention to. Wolves don’t possess these qualities like dogs, at least not as reliably. For millennia, we designed the dog to be as human-like as we possibly could (short of creating a weird, aberrant dog-man creature). They innately understand AND share our joy and our sorrow, they instinctively protect us and our offspring (even our unborn offspring), and they communicate non-verbally better than many adult humans I know. It’s for this reason that I have always, and with some degree of vindictive spite, claimed that a person who abuses a dog must be soulless, or at least less than human. I stand by that.
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Although it may be difficult to look into the buggy eyes of a pug or the needly face of a chihuahua and see their majestic wolf ancestry, we’ve been crafting and honing the dog for almost as long as we ourselves have been properly what we think of as <i>homo sapiens</i>. We effectively and quite intentionally co-evolved with dogs. They have always effectively been mankind’s “pet project,” no pun intended. Put a toddler in the same room with a dog and you’ll see the instinctive, empathic bond that occurs, even with a dog that might be several times larger than the enamored child. This is why I say that there is nothing more human than to love and have empathy for a dog.
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<div class="lquote">I’m leveraging science into a spiritual perspective.</div>As dog is the image of man who created it, man is the image of God who created him. Yes... as I often do, I’m leveraging science into an existential spiritual perspective. A quote I’ve always loved from 19th century chemist, Louis Pasteur (forgiving his French-ness), puts it quite well: "A little bit of science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to him." If God is everything He is said to be – all-knowing, perfect, all-good, etc. – and humans are a sort of image of Him, then we, in a sense, are like His pet project as well. This is one way to think about the troublesome question of how a good God could allow evil to happen in the world.
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If you’ve ever had a dog, you know the heartbreak of having to look into their big, sad eyes at the vet as they’re held down to get a shot or that dreaded butt scoop fecal sample thing. They look at you as if to say, “How could you let this happen? I thought you loved me?” I don’t mind admitting that just thinking about having my previous dog euthanized after a long, painful battle with cancer almost brings tears to my eyes. It hurts us not only because we love our furry companions, but also because there really is no way to explain what’s really happening and why it’s for their own good. While they understand what and who <i>we</i> are and that we love them unconditionally, it’s still utterly confusing to them as to why we allow misfortune to befall them at all. And there’s no way for us to explain it to them at their level of intellect and understanding. You know, kind of like how we struggle to understand the concept of divinity and the vast, infinitely interconnectedness of the cosmos.
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<div class="rquote">A misfortune today may save you from a tragedy tomorrow.</div>Think about the events of your life, trace them back several steps, and consider how little you knew years ago, versus what you know today. Think of all the shots and butt scoops (... gross) that happened to you during your life and how painful or uncomfortable they were at the time, but how they may have been best for you in the long run. Sometimes the loss of a job leads to the discovery of a better career. A divorce might lead you to find a truly loving and fulfilling partner. A misfortune today may even save you from a tragedy tomorrow. When we grapple with understanding what God has in store for us, think of the dog and how we love them and empathize with them, yet still struggle with our inability to truly communicate just how deeply we love and cherish them in a way they can understand. To understand God, seek to understand dog.
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-80059947841554978422023-05-17T09:52:00.002-05:002023-05-17T09:52:50.150-05:00The Measure of Success<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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Whenever I reflect on what success is or how to define it – particularly how <i>I</i> define it, I find it helps to think about how other people define it and how I could help them do it. As is often the case, we most frequently discover ourselves through the eyes and perspective of others. In the past, or in my past career(s), I measured success the way many people do, which is by how much money I could make. As a teacher in the U.S., if I was dumb enough to measure <i>success</i> by how much <i>money</i> I made, I’d feel like a failure pretty much all the time. So, I find myself having to reframe and redefine the idea of success or how I understand it. And, in doing so, I was reminded of a quote by yet another person who was much smarter than myself, and it helped me a good bit. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, <i>"Success is to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived."</i><a name='more'></a>
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Now, don’t get me wrong, it is true that you can’t please everybody (and that really is okay). I’m sure there are some people that like me or my classes, and some who would be glad to see me dematerialize from the planet. God knows I’m familiar to what it’s like to not be liked, so I can accept that with some peaceful contentment. But for those people that I was ever able to help in some way, to give a new perspective on life in any positive way, or even that were just entertained by me for a brief period... that makes anything and everything I do worth the trouble. I suggest you adopt the same way of thinking, for your own good and the good of everyone around you.
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<div class="lquote">If you measure your success by material things, you’re doomed to perpetual struggle.</div>If you measure your success by quantifiable or material things, you’re really just doomed to perpetual struggle. Money does come, but it also goes much easier than it ever arrives. Status is a hard-earned luxury, but is easily ruined in seconds (reputations, after all, take a like time to build and mere seconds to destroy). And even as far as personal abilities go, well, all it takes is some unfortunate life event to rob you of just about any of physical things you cherish. One car crash can easily rob an olympic athlete of their legs just as quickly as an unexpected lay-off can rob us of our financial stability.
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Even Jesus himself, after literally dying and being resurrected, said hardly jack and shit about all the amazing miracles he performed during his life or how many people he converted. The Buddha didn’t go around boasting of his enlightenment and how awesome it was to be better than everyone else. They both talked to their disciples, about them and their accomplishments under their guidance, and what they all still needed to do.
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<div class="rquote">“It doesn’t matter which direction you move in, just that you keep moving.”</div><p>Even in my line of work, I don’t remember my high school grade point average. I don’t remember my exact ACT score. Hell, I don’t even remember my GPA from college, to be totally honest. What I do remember most (and most frequently) are the people I helped, the people I hurt, and the good times I had with them all. A helpful piece of advice that my father gave me when I was in high school (that I try to pass on at every opportunity) is this: <i>“It doesn’t matter as much which direction you move in, just that you keep moving.”</i>
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So, I leave you with two thoughts to consider, whether you’re just settling in to a new life situation, entering a new one, or just seemingly floundering through the current stage of life you’re in. First, I reiterate what Emerson said: <i>"Success is to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived."</i> And second, I would be remiss as a theologian if I didn’t remind us of what God himself told us in the book of Joshua in Old Testament, when sending his people out to go and live and prosper in the world: <i>“Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for God is with you wherever you go.”</i>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-23846149245273693932023-05-11T08:47:00.002-05:002023-05-11T08:48:35.423-05:00Know People by Their Fruits<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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Imitation is the primary, most fundamental, and essential mode of human learning. We learn our native languages through imitation of sounds and association during the formative years of our lives as toddlers. We learn practical things like etiquette and social norms by first watching our parents, then later by watching everyone else. And we learn ethics and basic morality from observing people around us and how they treat each other. You’ve probably heard that you aren’t judged on your character or intention, but on your actions, and that’s very true. C.S. Lewis once said: “What you are matters more than what you do, but what you do is evidence of what you are.” So, what we are inside (good, bad, or in between) shows through what we do and what we do shapes who we are. In other words, to have virtue is to imitate and practice virtue.<a name='more'></a>
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Aristotle said that virtue is not a single act or a state of being, but forming good habits through repetition. He even compared it to exercise – that it’s hard at first, but once you begin and keep at it for long enough, you start to need and enjoy it, and it eventually becomes second nature, or maybe even first nature if you’re good enough at it. This is a crucial part of Christianity as well, which unfortunately manifested as this catchy and altogether annoying phrase you may have heard that I believe originated (or at least found its popularity) in the cultural wasteland that was the 1990s: “WWJD” (What would Jesus do?).
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<div class="lquote">Jesus was a religious humanist.</div>As played out as that lame catchphrase is, it does communicate the core of Jesus’ message. As I’ve often said, Jesus was a religious humanist. He taught spirituality for the good of people, rather than the good of institutions (e.g., “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” from Mark 2:27–28). So, all of this is a word both of encouragement and of caution. When we’re young, we’re faced with so many new opportunities and challenge, especially in the early adulthood years. But we all still face a lot of these challenges on into out adulthood and honestly, right up until the day we die.
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We learn what it’s like to be a good friend while learning how friends sometime take advantage of our kindness and generosity. We learn what it’s like to be a good employee while learning how institutions can (and often do) take advantage of our dedication and personal needs. We may fall in love and learn what it’s like to be a good partner while also learning how some people can be destructive, both to us and themselves. We even learn how to be good friends and partners through the unfortunate process of being bad ones, some of us leaving a trail of hurt feelings, grudges, and broken hearts through the decades in our learning curve.
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<div class="rquote">The human experience is simultaneously both unique to each of us and common to all of us.</div><p>It’ll be a hard road and a pretty tough learning curve at that. We win some battles and lose others. And, if we’re being realistic, we will sometimes be taken advantage of and other times we’ll even catch ourselves taking advantage of others, maybe without even knowing it at first. But don’t worry about it, just be aware and know that it’s all part of the whole life thing – the shared human experience that is simultaneously both unique to each of us and common to all of us. And that it ultimately helps us to know people by their works.
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Jesus said it much better than me when we compared people to fruit trees: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do we gather grapes from thornbushes? Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” If we can manage to sweep away our preconceptions and our inherent, survival-driven narcissism, then hopefully we can look at people’s fruits objectively and know them by their character as evidenced by their actions.
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-70535328875472381092023-05-04T10:02:00.000-05:002023-05-04T10:02:00.993-05:00Protect Your Potential<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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We all remember that essential childhood wisdom passed down to us from our forebears: “Don’t talk to strangers.” There’s actually a lot to be said about the irony and accuracy of that imperative, given that humans are necessarily social animals and that for centuries , we actually had to avoid strangers who might raid and pillage our settlements. Unfortunately, people today often forget that strangers are <i>potentially</i> dangerous and are too quick to follow them or be misled by them. There’s something in our instincts that drive us to reject the old and familiar in favor of the new and interesting. It’s really a weird, paradoxical and almost nonsensical behavior we all have –we cling to the comfortable and familiar for dear life, but at the same time, we’re so easily enamored and fascinated by new things. We’re not that different from monkeys or even racoons. All it takes to trap us is a shiny new object of perceived value. Sometimes we’ll even cut familiar things away faster than we can even understand new things we’re chasing.<a name='more'></a>
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It’s also how we so often end up with bad leaders in politics, industry, religion, or anywhere. I would even argue that we gravitate <i>more</i> to new people than new things sometimes. With this in mind then, we need to address how and why we gravitate to new people and whether or not that’s generally good for us. It’s pretty hard and laborious work to constantly try and sort out our own good from bad choices (much less others’ choices) and to assess leaders with seemingly good intentions from those with attractive words but no good intentions to back them up. This is why I always encourage everyone to put your leaders to task – make them (whoever they may be) <i>accountable</i>, make them represent you, and above all, hold them responsible. Kindly ignore my natural Gen X instinct to indiscriminately challenge <i>all</i> authority and take this as sincere and objective: challenge authority for good reasons.
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<div class="lquote">"Nobody is a villain in their own story."</div>The world is a rough and unforgiving place. While there are some misleading leaders that are unapologetically out to use and take from us, most bad leaders don’t even start out that way. Most start out in life just like the rest of us, trying to be decent people, working to get by and be safe and happy, finding our way in the world, etc. But some of us with the right opportunities fall into the temptation of taking advantage of people to gain their own advantage in such a challenging world. Fulton Sheen one reminded us that we “must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people.” It’s so easy, when we’re all struggling for our own piece of the world, to forget that and commodify people as we’re taught to commodify things. Nonetheless, the quality of our character is our responsibility and ours alone. And, after all, “nobody is a villain in their own story.”
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Because of this, when I teach classes on morality and ethics, I always teach that the trick in making good decisions is to discern what is good in every situation, every day, at every minute. It can be a lot of work (and usually is), but the truth of life is that change is inevitable, so we have to always watch for change and try to flow with it or get trampled by it. What’s good for us today, may not be tomorrow and what worked yesterday may not even work today at all. And always be cautious of those people that show up in our lives during times of trouble with promises that seem a little too good. People in distress are like blood in the water to people that feed off of self-glorification and opportunism.
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<div class="rquote">We become cash cows for bad leaders for decades.</div><p>In the first few years of our adult lives, we’re particularly barraged and assaulted by people trying to take advantage of us, from financial and government institutions to religious leaders to family and friends. Politicians clamor for youthful votes to stay relevant and maintain their job security. Religious leaders pile on guilt and responsibilities knowing that people are more likely to leave religion as it becomes less of a family necessity. Financial institutions dangle credit cards and student loans in front of us to get their hooks in us while we don’t have a clue what we’re doing so we become cash cows for them for decades to come.
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Young adults in particular hold a lot of power they don’t even realize – the power of nearly unlimited potential, years of potential ahead of them that is theirs to use as they see fit. If this is you, don’t let anyone take that from you. There will be a lot of people who want to use that potential for their own gain, their own comfort, pleasure, or vanity. Like God, we are tasked to look past surface appeal and challenged with seeing into the heart of those around us, to analyze their behaviors and judge their abilities based on their past, their present, and their own potential. It’s obviously a huge topic that I’m only scratching the surface of right now, but I (or rather, old dead guys who were way smarter than I’ll ever be) can leave you with two key pieces of advice above and beyond all else.
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J.R.R. Tolkien, referencing one of his nobler yet less comely characters in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, wrote that <b>“fair speech may hide a foul heart.”</b> And the philosopher Karl Poppper said, perhaps more importantly, that <b>"those who promise us paradise on earth never produce anything but hell."</b>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-15926134526214461472023-04-27T10:10:00.004-05:002023-04-27T10:10:41.827-05:00The Abilities of the Receiver<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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There’s a fancy philosophical saying by ST. Thomas Aquinas that tends to stick with me whenever I’m dealing with people: “Everything received is only received according to the abilities of the receiver.” What that means is that everyone only understands anything in the way they can understand it. It’s a pretty simple principle when you think about it, really. Even Jesus himself did this, Muhammad did it, Moses, the Buddha – every successful spiritual or philosophical leader was very good at recognizing their audience’s abilities or modes of thinking and understanding.<a name='more'></a>
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If someone doesn’t know a bunch of fancy academic language, then more casual talk will help them understand. If someone is a stuffy academic, then if you <i>don’t</i> use a bunch of fancy academic language, they may just not take you seriously, our of professional habit, if nothing else. This is one of the most important lessons I try to leave any class group with. It goes hand-in-hand with another lesson I’m always promoting, which is simple self-awareness.
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If you learn nothing else from me (in a class, on my website, as a friend or even an enemy... whatever our relationship may be), I hope you at least learn the value of self-awareness. Without simple yet elusive self-awareness, we can’t accomplish anything meaningful. And, if it’s good enough for all the major religious founders and philosophers throughout history, it’s good enough for all of us.
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<div class="lquote">We’re not very good at thinking outside of our limited contexts.</div>We humans learn by analogy, by comparing one thing we don’t understand or can’t measure to something we do understand or can measure. And, while we’re pretty intelligent, we’re not so smart that we’re very good at thinking outside of our limited contexts. This is also sort of a message on empathy as well, in case you haven’t figured it out. To be relatable and to understand other people’s “abilities of reception” is more or less what empathy even is.
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As a teacher, I try to remember that to speak to teenagers like adults is to respect them like adults. As a pastoral leader, I try to remember that to speak to someone with compassion is to love them as humans. And I’ve enjoyed learning to understand all all sorts of people over the years – to learn their lifestyles and ways of talking, their ways of seeing the world and processing it, and recognizing their distinctions without segregating them into my own categories, but respecting them as they are, for better and for worse, regardless of my opinions and perspectives.
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<div class="rquote">Work to share other people's successes as well as failures.</div><p>I encourage you to do this too. Don’t care about status because it comes and goes too quickly (like reputations – a lifetime to build, seconds to destroy). Don’t care about material things, because they are fun and necessary, but they ultimately don’t bring happiness, and often become obstacles to true enjoyment (after all, you don’t own things, things own you). And care about money only as much as you need it to live and enjoy life (it may not buy happiness, but it’s a lot easier to be happy when you can pay bills and afford healthcare). Instead, work to understand others and see the world through their eyes, since your own experience is limited to just you. Work to share their successes as well as failures, and their happiness as well as their sorrow, Then, you will have really lived life to the fullest and fully gotten your money’s worth out of this cosmic practical joke we call existence.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-34447412141898662492023-04-24T12:53:00.001-05:002023-04-24T12:53:26.061-05:00"The Secret" to Faith & Preparation<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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Homily – “Faith Through Preparation”
I hate self-help books. Don’t get me wrong, I love self-help, self-improvement, self-awareness... pretty much self-most-everything in general. But self-help books are often just filled with vacuous platitudes that are designed to make us feel better while not actually improving anything and, of course, sell <i>books</i>. So, today I’ll talk about how self-help concepts can help us with the interplay between faith and hard practicality. As I always say, religion is useless if we can’t apply it to our lives in some real and helpful way.<a name='more'></a>
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I could always relate to the apostle, Thomas – also called “doubting Thomas” – because, I don’t know about all of you, but if my friend died and then another bunch of my drinking buddies told me he came back to life, I might need some proof too (but I probably wouldn’t poke my finger in his torso wound). I’ll give you a little insight into my marriage for this topic. I’m very much a pragmatist, naturally practical and logical. My wife is also practical, but she’s much more of an abstract, intuitive thinker. She always “believes” in things she wants to happen and, to be fair, it often works pretty well for her. She’s always telling me to “believe” that something good is going to happen when I’m depressed or feeling defeated.
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Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m always expecting bad things to happen. In fact, if I’m being honest, I struggle with not expecting bad things, just because of my life experience. So, I tend to not believe something good will happen until I can see it occurring. It also comes from being a natural pessimist, I guess.
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<div class="lquote">The "magical thinking" concept was cooked up to placate people and make them buy useless books.</div> Getting back to my affections toward self-books, I also don’t want to give you the wrong idea of something called “magical thinking.” That’s a concept that self-help books often push to convince us that all we have to do to get the things we want in life is believe hard enough, make a vision board, say positive affirmations, and other such bullshit like that. No, I don’t subscribe to all that. Personally, I think the magical thinking concept was cooked up by motivational speakers to placate people into false hope and make them buy useless self-help books. What I <i>do</i> encourage you to do though, is believe that good things will happen so that you align yourself with the opportunities for good things. In a way, this is what faith is also.
</p><p>
There’s an old saying by the Roman philosopher, Seneca, that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” That preparation sometimes has to be mental as well as practical. If you don’t believe something good can and will happen, then not only might you miss it when it comes by, but you also may not even be in the right place yourself to take advantage of it. Imagine if you <i>thought</i> you were walking into a situation where you had to defend yourself or fight for your life, but then only to find out that it was a fun social event, like a party or something. Your entire demeanor, both physical and psychological, would be completely unfit to go to a party without being very awkward and having to take some time to calm yourself down.
</p><p>
This is similar to spiritual faith in that if you don’t believe that something amazing can happen, then if/when it does, you probably won’t notice or even believe it if you do. I heard someone tell a story once to illustrate this too:
</p><p>
<div class="rquote">“Never mind, God. I got this on my own.”</div>A guy was driving to a really important business event that would make or break his career. He drove around frantically looking for a parking spot, worrying about being late. So, he prayed to God saying, “God, please let me find a parking spot! If you do, I’ll stop drinking, gambling, lying, cheating on my wife... whatever you want. Just please help me.” Suddenly, he saw a car pulling out of a spot right in front of him. So, he said, “Never mind, God. I got one on my own.”
</p><p>
I won’t tell you that if you believe in good things that they’ll happen. Again, that kind of absolute investment in thought power is really kind of bullshit. But I will tell you that if you <i>don’t</i> believe in good things, they probably won’t happen.
</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-33455595385577884612023-03-28T19:17:00.004-05:002023-03-28T22:34:30.315-05:00A Recipe for Faith<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6CDYiPcAfpd-YUr-cu-NmyqZBhUOVW2Vy2Jh3i5d9Wp2CEbE6BWWV9GC-yLmjX82g4AVmji10Q4KLqNViRx6PJqPf54UbxKupVPsYlCIIpfq8r_aofJyHP9ahhEfe9q-mGiPl6TZ57UNovXLluOk0MJxviB_mv6DBWqByXBzftvDCshVKY3_doPvp/s320/Chef.png" style="float: right; width: 200px; object-fit: cover;"/>
<p>
Faith is hard. In class many of my theology classes, I define faith simply as “trust.” The reason I do this is to keep the concept simplified so that it can be built on from there with many other concepts. But there’s a more biblical definition that is not only more robust, but potentially more helpful: “<i>The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen</i>” (Hebrews 11:11). This is, in a way, a more difficult definition to process, but maybe more helpful in the long run for those of us to whom faith does not come easy.
</p><p>
I, like most people, can be a bit of a hypocrite on occasion; it’s human nature. I can stand in front of classes, church groups, even an auditorium full of people and talk about faith and define it as trust, as though it were all that easy. Alright, I don’t really ever try to make it sound easy because, if I’m being honest (and I always am, to a fault), it’s never easy for me. Nonetheless, while all that works fine and good for theology, it doesn’t really help anyone on the ground level, practically speaking, where people actually need it.<a name='more'></a>
</p>
<div class="lquote">Lots of trust, some imagination, a splash of stubbornness, and a pinch of delusion.</div><p>
This longer definition actually has some meat on it, something to chew on and relate to, maybe even something <i>operative</i>. So, let’s take that biblical definition and go from there. I have a recipe for faith (at least my current progress, which likely will change over time). It’s a simple, yet often difficult mixture of lots of trust, some imagination, a healthy splash of stubbornness, and a little pinch of delusion. “<i>The assurance of things hoped for</i>,” to me, means that we need trust to be assured that anything will ever happen, and the imagination to visualize or understand what it is that we hope for. “<i>The conviction of things not seen</i>” means that we have to be a little... no, a lot stubborn to have that kind of conviction and slightly deluded to be stubborn about something we can see, touch, measure, or prove in any conventional way.
</p><p>
I struggle with faith because of my secular upbringing and my natural way of thinking, both of which I am mostly thankful for in many ways. But they do cause their share of psychological challenges. After all, everything has a drawback. I have trust issues because of many life experiences with people who have let me down and betrayed me (as many of us have). I have a great imagination, which I owe more to my artistic side than to any great cultivation of virtue. Sure, I am stubborn, but that often works against my efforts for faith in favor of tangible things. Finally and most troublingly, I’m a realist by nature, so self-delusion doesn’t come easy for me – if I can’t see or measure it in some way, my natural reflex and inclination is to be skeptical.
</p>
<div class="rquote">Flaws aren’t barriers to faith, they’re just more like speed bumps.</div><p>
But these flaws and tendencies aren’t barriers to faith, they’re just more like speed bumps. These are things that I have to work against, not terribly dissimilar to how some of us have to watch what we eat because of slow metabolism or some should refrain from certain substances or behaviors if they have addictive personalities or genetic predisposition to addictions. It helps to know that we all do little acts of faith all the time, but don’t realize it. This makes the whole faith thing a good deal more relatable.
</p><p>
We get an education because we have faith it will help us get better jobs or careers. But we never actually know that it’ll help, or that we’ll even make enough money to pay off the crushing debt of student loans. We go on vacations because we have faith that if we pick the right destination at the right time with the right people, then we’ll have a good time. But we never actually know for sure we’ll enjoy it. All kinds of things can and do go wrong – people get sick, travel plans are delayed, and the weather just does whatever the hell it wants to.
</p>
<div class="lquote">Faith is not always rewarded, but it is still worth the trouble.</div><p>
Faith is not always rewarded in our lives, but it is still worth the trouble. Faith is never certain, but it is nonetheless what drives us at our core every day to accomplish all the great triumphs of humanity as well as our individual triumphs in our little daily lives. I once heard someone say that faith is the opposite of fear. While I don’t know if I completely agree with that, it is an interesting way to look at our mental states in terms of faith. We fall into fear so easily, yet have to work (or even fight) to climb into faith. The Buddha said that suffering is inherent to life and it couldn’t be truer. But, like the lotus flower, we are tasked by virtue of our very existence to grow above the slime and filth of the swamp that is the world so that we can open up and flower into our true potential.
</p><p>
I don’t have much more advice at the moment, unfortunately. Perhaps I’ll have more as I get older and wiser. But, for now, I’ll leave you with this notion, again from the Bible, albeit somewhat cryptic (as the Bible often is): “<b><i>Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is</i></b>” (Romans 12:2).
</p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-19626441887204232542023-03-22T18:07:00.006-05:002023-03-28T22:35:01.963-05:00Everyday Idolatry<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnkf6nb8ELdzDIBiBk2gT42J3LmdDyaMXfTS4D2yEJyKqoEXU0zKFhU3axD70_ksMdTBrOQiCrFQiXnn2vw4Kj31VpfqHKg2l8G3fh3bsMTUFbhK6N7V2GvHXMfd_TkO3nVDdXELRHoUvOnzLGAkuRRHKWdDmbnZaSkWvvyX9kxESV6NYvv0TmSa9/s320/Eye%20Engraving.png" style="float: right; width: 200px; object-fit: cover;"/>
Before I begin, don’t get me wrong, our senses are great and all and I appreciate them abundantly. In fact, they’re some of the greatest biological assets we have. It took many millions of years to evolve things such as the lenses of our eyes and the nerves that connect them, the delicate fluid balances of our inner ear that help to both hear and balance standing up, even our squishy skin that can sense the slightest changes in ambient temperature or surface pressure. But, unfortunately, they can also be our worst liability sometimes. They often drive us to overindulgence, making bad decisions from physical/emotional pain or perceived danger, you name it. This is ultimately the purpose of meditation (particularly in Buddhism) – to subdue the bodily senses and clear the mind of their influence to focus on higher ideals.<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
These higher ideals vary by culture and religion, but they’re always generally insight into the world, philosophy of living, justice in society, love, and faith. This is the reason meditation can be so difficult too. Our brains are evolved to only process sensory information and reflect on it. Even creativity can be deceptive, since the brain really only processes bits of our mental inventory of sensory data we’ve collected since the moment of our birth to recombine it in different ways. If you’ve heard of Christopher Booker’s theory of the seven basic plots – that every story of any kind in the world can all be reduced to one or more of seven essential plots, that’s what I’m talking about here too. And, like the old saying goes, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
</p>
<div class="lquote">Our wonderful senses can unfortunately be the greatest obstacle to faith.</div><p>Our wonderful senses can also unfortunately be the greatest obstacle to faith. And I don’t just mean spiritual faith, but even the most basic and essential faith we should have in each other or ourselves. Our senses are what caused the infamous biblical golden calf event, which is classically referred to as idolatry (the disordered worship of images). An ancient people lost faith in a God they couldn’t see or fully comprehend (even though He had just done a whole bunch of miraculous stuff to save them from slavery), so they just decided to make their own.
As ancient and unrelatable as that story might seem, we’ve been doing this for millennia.
</p><p>
We shape our identities and social status around corporate branding, we imitate and nearly worship celebrities and royalty, we devote decades of our lives to the pursuit of money, and we even throw all our trust in on science. If you’ve followed my writings at all, you’ll know that I’ll be the first to defend and promote science. While science is a truly great and noble discipline, the simultaneous truth is that it also doesn’t have all the answers and never will.
</p><p>
<div class="rquote">Idolatry is losing faith in something we know to be true in favor of something more convenient.</div><p>That’s what idolatry is really all about – losing faith in something we know to be good and true in favor of something that is more fun, easier to understand, or sometimes just more convenient. As a younger and more atheistic man, I idolized a few different things. But, later (after some introspection and a few life experiences), I realized that it was because theological and philosophical things were simply too difficult to understand and too abstract to deal with in a practical, everyday sense. Logic and material reason were the only things that made sense to me until I learned to dig deeper into human potential. We all do this, worst of all, with people.
</p><p>
Couples most often cheat on each other, not because they find someone more attractive or fall in love with someone else (though that does happen), but because things may get difficult in the relationship and they seek affection or catharsis with an easier or more casual encounter. As a people, we most often turn to destructive dictators, maniacal tyrants, and corrupt liars with rich promises when a government is in turmoil or economic downturn.
</p><p>
<div class="lquote">The solution to all this certainly isn’t easy, but it is simple.</div><p>The solution to all this certainly isn’t easy, but it is simple, and something most religious speakers and educators don’t encourage us to do, but I will now do that very thing. Scrutinize everything. Question everything. Accept nothing at face value... even God. I often say in my theology classes that while spiritual concepts can (and should) never be proven empirically, they should always make sense, or be reasonable. The same goes for people. We may not always like a person or understand everything they say or do, but if they are reasonable and genuinely care for you, they are probably at least worth listening to. As the philosopher Karl Popper said, <b><i>“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.”</i></b>
</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-5889561937246742062023-01-12T21:39:00.013-06:002023-03-28T22:35:43.028-05:00What is Human, What is Christian, & What is the Point?<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOrcySHf2iuiCbykB5e4jw7uYfz5EJp_MdR7IspAJvTgvglTeU5cToh4w1FSzclA1iTVgFp9NwcX6swKi2S1HpxGqiq3kiQ1AZAwXXrIs4LAV5_YRw6Q_mAsJfASkJQJ-2i4RggxtgyvWyMnS627IrdA6ghIVR8LssK2YhG2KpvaXnMcTop0qVZDZI/s320/world_religions_graphic.png" style="float: right; width: 200px; object-fit: cover;"/>
I’m going to talk here about what is distinctively Christian and how it’s what should also be distinctively human. This is not to say that all humans should be Christians, but simply (and perhaps more profoundly) that what it means to be Chrisitian should be the same as what it means to be human – to put both humanity AND Christianity to task, so to speak, which I will never shy away from.
<p>
There is a running theme in the Christian Bible about judgement. Whether it’s judgement from some prophet, from the messiah, or from God himself in the end times. The purpose of these themes is more to give people goals, ideals, and principles, rather than to instill fear or submission.<a name='more'></a> This passage sums it up decently well:
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: .25in;"><i>
He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth (Isaiah 42:2-4).
</i></div>
</p>
<div class="lquote">Other religions share similar philosophies and ideals as Christianity.</div><p>Many other religions share similar philosophies and ideals. Buddhism teaches compassion in the presence of suffering while keeping yourself pure and rising above turmoil amidst corruption. Islam teaches submission to higher ideals beyond and pride/ego while focusing on care and investment in one’s community. Hinduism has long taught people to see past self-interest for the good of society and supporting each other to bring order to chaos. Judaism, ever since the days of Moses, has prioritized bringing those who are lost or suffering back to safety, while honoring people by honoring higher ideals. Even various breeds of Paganism taught showing respect to the forces of nature helped to strengthen society against the adversity of the world.
</p>
<div class="rquote">Look behind the institution to find the causes of great tragedies....</div><p>People throughout history have understandably accused religion of being the source of turmoil and violence. While I completely see that way of thinking, given religion’s bloody and corrupt past, I still disagree with such a statement. Rather than religion, we have only to look behind the institution and will quickly find all the usual suspects that cause great tragedies – human agendas, politics, greed, and fanaticism.
<p>
The hard truth of it is that any time someone does harm in the name of Christianity, it is not Christian. But, likewise, any time there is harm done by humans for ANY reason, it’s not even authentically human. As Michael Curry earned no small amount of notoriety for saying: <i><b>“If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”</b></i>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-45855502502724130332021-08-26T09:00:00.134-05:002023-03-28T22:38:04.877-05:00Making Religious Choices<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjphjyyC-YbZmDK2OmxybuGHzzIyS9jroFX__wo2Q0GtRHsEymjonClE_Lm5b6niD2uKDJoT1-B5sYZXHLbUIHvhVgsjWwn8pj-CnN9NUei1ixQdMGBzbFillyNn-NLPdIk5swtyJT9SyNfK5TJTCMVXD8G8jwNrrMKjgLPmRdnMXZx8JGa7iMF1-cB/s1600/zdeneksasek200100083.jpg" style="float: right; width: 250px; object-fit: cover;"/><p>
There are phrases in Christianity (really in ALL religions) that some people find off-putting, and there are reasons for that. Some of the phrasing in the Bible or sometimes just popular catchphrases in Christian culture can really sound painfully exclusionary, limiting, or even bigoted. But that’s not originally how they were meant to be read or used.<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
I remember growing up as a very young kid in south Alabama – a heavily Christian area, specifically Southern Baptist – the thick of the Bible Belt. However, I was raised in a secular, non-religious home, but the extended family was all rigidly and most stereotypically negatively Baptist. So, I grew up hearing a lot of the popular catchphrases like, “Have you found Jesus?” (honestly, even to this day, I didn’t know he was missing), or the infamous, “The only way to heaven is through the church.”
</p><div class="lquote">I still have a hard time with black and white perspectives on religion.</div><p>
Even as a child, I found a lot of this exceedingly uncomfortable when I would think about the fact I didn’t even know much about religion at the time or who this Jesus guy even was, or <i>especially</i> wondering why Jewish or Buddhist kids were supposedly going to hell just because of the culture they’re raised in. Even as a religious adult with a lot of theological knowledge banging around my cluttered head, I still have a hard time with these reductionist, black and white perspectives on religion. The world just doesn’t seem that simple or easy to me, I firmly believe it shouldn't to you either. If it does, I don't know... maybe you should get out more?
</p><p>
And, more importantly, that’s not what all those Bible stories are really about anyway. They’re about making tough choices and taking a stand on those tough choices. There is one story in particular that I'll use as an example. In it, King Solomon prays to God to consecrate the newly constructed Temple of Jerusalem, the ultimate "House of God," so to speak:
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: .25in;"><i>
Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the Temple in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart.
<p>
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built. Regard your servant’s prayer: O Lord, heeding the cry that your servant prays to you today; that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house. Hear the plea of your servant and of your people when they pray toward this place.
<p>
“Likewise, when a foreigner comes from a distant land because of your name and prays toward this house, then hear them and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel.”
</i></div></p>
<div class="rquote">We're faced with so many delimmas every day that just being alive is stressful.</div><p>
So, Solomon prays that God will answer the prayers of anyone, even pagan foreigners, so that everyone would know his power and goodness. This making-a-choice thing can be exceedingly and constantly difficult – we’re faced with so many moral, ethical, and practical dilemmas every day just by being alive. It’s stressful. If you've ever seen the sitcom, <i>The Good Place</i> (a fantastic show in its own right), these day-to-day complexities were enough for the powers that be to want to erase all of existence. Kind of understandable, right?
</p><p>
But the hard choices involving religion (or a selection/commitment to religion) isn’t so much picking the “right” religion or rolling the dice on the right god to worship. It was mostly about taking a stand for what’s right and sticking with it – sweeping away the worldly distractions that turn us from making good decisions:<br><i>
What will people think of me?<br>
How much money will it cost?<br>
Is this good for my reputation or career?<br>
How much will this hurt or embarrass me?<br></i>
</p><p>
I’m not going to give you some profound and easy answer to religion or who’s going where in the afterlife, because I don’t have it (and neither does anyone else, no matter what they claim). What I will do is leave you the easiest bit of wisdom I’ve found and let you interpret it as you see fit, not to redefine what you believe, but maybe to redefine what the concept of “God” is:
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Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious, rude, or selfish, and love does not brag. Everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.<br>
(1 Corinthians 13:4-6; 1 John 4:7-8)
</i></div></p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-40118892497741174512021-08-19T09:47:00.048-05:002023-03-28T22:39:56.585-05:00Happy Enough for Today<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirOjLJCzdW_7o8tqFo3PN6d04wnPhgPyR8Rrr6AEsPi1p8CyiKU-58r2-7epdnOOY8sAch7PBc5Q4b_KJh2kKQibM7ekd0UIr3UA_ckKZJzz9g2Eneg1fmuZ6U4KN-XsWWKc0HSUDYf6-cuF_7dBFN34DhqE75lGux6pfHWlTbPIxiEIbi2UTY6cyh/s320/cat%20skull.png" style="float: right; width: 200px; object-fit: cover;"/><p>
A few years ago, there was a stray cat that regularly wandered around my neighborhood. Now, I’m not a big fan of cats, per se, but I am <i>generally</i> an animal-lover. So, I’ll occasionally feed a stray animal or pet them if they’re sociable. This cat though, was particularly sociable, so much so that we started allowing him to come in the house for off and on, for maybe an hour or two at a time, just to hang out with us, lay on the couch, and generally do house cat stuff.
</p><p>
One of my many lesser qualities is that I tend to think in terms of investment and return when it comes to time. It’s not that I <i>commodify</i> my time, but just that I tend to not invest time in something if I think it won’t last for very long. That’s my problem, and it’s exactly what I hope you can avoid doing. So anyway, this cat....<a name='more'></a>
</p>
<div class="lquote">Cat's land on their feet, but not without some dissatisfaction.</div><p>My wife and I, and sometimes the kids, would occasionally bicker innocuously about the cat – whether we should keep letting inside, how angry I would get if it started peeing on things, if we should take it the vet to get shots and make it our pet, etc. About the time I was starting to actually seriously consider keeping this cat, he started showing his wild, stray-cat side. He started clawing at the couch, doing that awful things cats to where they beg to be pet and then spontaneously bite the hell of you... you know, cat stuff. It got bad enough to where one time when he bite me particularly hard, I grabbed him by the scruff and tossed him outside. Yes, cats <i>do</i> land on their feet, but not without some dissatisfaction.
</p><p>
The point of this otherwise irrelevant story is that the whole time the saga waged on, I noticed that I actually actively tried <i>not</i> to like the cat, specifically because I knew that it wouldn’t be an animal that we could or would even want to keep around permanently. Why invest the time and emotion into something that may just be a pleasant visit from a cute animal today if that animal might disappear or turn up dead tomorrow? For that matter, why invest time in anything that won’t last. Well, it turns out that turning up dead happened about as quick as I’d imagined.
</p>
<div class="rquote">I realized that the cat finally ended up in the house after all.</div><p>No, I don’t irrefutably know what happened to the cat, and no, I had nothing to do with its likely demise. But, since my stepdaughter has a penchant for collecting lab specimens and animal skulls (you know, like teenage girls do), this next leg of the story is especially ironic. The cat eventually stopped showing up altogether. I naturally <i>assumed</i> it was hit by a car or whatever usually happens to stray cats. Then, one day I was out checking the mailbox (which is next to a drainage ditch), and looked down to see a cleanly stripped, sun-bleached cat skull in the nearby trench. This wasn’t all that unusual since we have a lot of stray animals and particularly racoons, so there are plenty of scavengers leaving remains around. I didn’t think much of it and just picked it up to give to my stepdaughter to add to her collection. It was only later that I stopped and realized that the cat had finally ended up in the house after all.
</p><p>
Humans have survival instincts built into our DNA that drive us to collect things, to keep things, and to preserve any comforts we attain. It’s like a nesting instinct that drives us to establish and protect our home and family. Most mammals have it and we’re no different. But we often have a habit of taking it too far to where we try too hard to preserve status quo, and we stress about maintaining it and fear losing it. That’s ultimately where the very common fear of change comes from. We’ll even cling to a familiar discomfort rather than risk an unfamiliar improvement to our situation.
</p>
<div class="lquote">Compassion isn't a long-term virtue, it’s a choice in brief moments.</div><p>The message behind all this is simple in theory, but complex in practice. We live our lives, and we do it with joy and passion. And if something doesn’t stir passion in you, then find a way to do it that does. And passions often don’t last for long periods of time, but are stirred in moments, subside in difficulty, and are rekindled with effort and diligence. Just like it’s the long term goals that drive our big decisions and it’s the small pleasures that drive each day, sometimes passions, interests, or just happiness in general is momentary. Like the Buddha taught, all life involves suffering, happiness is fleeting, and the only remedy for the darkness of life is compassion. Compassion is not a long-term virtue that you can exercise, it’s a choice in brief moments of accepting the reality of the present and looking to improve it for the next while enjoying what you can of it.
</p><p>
A lot of people don’t know this simple fact, but I find it very liberating: we’re not meant to be happy all the time. Happiness, at best, is a ray of light slicing through cloud cover, not a constant barrage of scorching heat (which would effectively be quite unhappy). If you have a furry little friend one day, don’t bother over whether or not you’ll see him tomorrow or if a coyote will tear it apart and leave you the skull in a ditch next week. Just enjoy what you have in the moment, subdue the temptation to expect any particular thing in the next moment, day, week, or five years. Focus on whatever good you have at hand and let the bad shake out on its own.
</p>
<div class="rquote">Assume others are both vulnerable enough to need compassion and strong enough to offer it.</div><p>Be safe and be understanding. Always assume that others are both vulnerable enough to need our compassion and strong enough to offer it to us. Just focus on what's in front of you today and let tomorrow be a tomorrow-problem. As Jesus taught, perhaps one of his most difficult lessons: <b><i>“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?</i></b> (Matthew 6:25-34)”
</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-16758889369886584042020-01-16T13:49:00.032-06:002023-03-28T22:40:51.295-05:00The Greatest Things are the Smallest<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMyVJz7-HP74TvUqrC5l9lA7VIv7mRQvciPuU2Yj9-dASSkV03A0CKFRfCAWwih6HVHlntTT798JsWICcZABlmQwwtifyWecgsG5L4GCTaTVUhULYeAhyMpmIVDbMEaFeRNM1XpcxMveFPDB87y8LBI2YeyHnG2jpgw_TdWzlGkazvRVYU0_EFyILw/s320/Hammer%20Head.png" style="float: right; width: 190px; object-fit: cover;"/> <p>
My mother died somewhat young and unexpectedly when I was twenty-one. Among other affects that event naturally had on me at that young, her death inspired me to have a “seize every day” mentality. Before then, I was pretty lazy, didn’t care where I was going or how I would get there, and generally was pretty aimless. I wasn’t without any drive or ambition, mind you, but I was altogether without direction and in no hurry to find it. While I was still in college, this still-germinating mentality manifested as career ambition.
</p><p>
A couple of years and a lot of diligent skill developments later, I graduated college, started a business, and even invented new things and innovated lots of new technical processes in my field. All in all, I was fairly successful in terms of business, careers, and finances... you know, until I became a teacher and decided that fulfillment and knowledge actually mattered over that stupid old “money” stuff.<a name='more'></a>
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My mother, professionally speaking, was not such an industrious or successful person. She didn’t graduate college. She had no real career to speak of. She didn’t travel extensively and she wasn’t all that worldly. But she was easily one of the most generous, selfless, and loving people I ever knew. She seldom considered herself and when she did, she never did so before considering others.
</p>
<div class="lquote">Sacrifices I made caused my relationships to suffer, distanced me from friends, and trained me in self-destructive work habits.</div><p>In the process of my new-ishly found, youthful ambition, I often lost sight of what really mattered in life, firmly believing that career ambition should be the top priority of someone my age. I sacrificed a lot in terms of comfort and the usual things people sacrifice for material success. But, more importantly, the bad sacrifices I made casued relationships to suffer, distanced me from friends, and trained me in self-destructive work habits.
</p><p>
At some point later in my career, I realized that, as a husband and father, I was getting painfully deficient in many ways. I spent more time on work than I did with my wife. My stepchildren were getting older and I was missing way too much of it. So, someone asked me recently, when they found out that I changed careers so drastically, if I made more money teaching than I used to (which, to be fair, is a pretty foolish question to begin with. Nonetheless, they were surprised when I told them no. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that it was a private school student from a wealthy family who asked me that question....
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<div class="rquote">A genuine human success and everyday hero who brightened the lives of others.</div><p>Obviously I didn’t become a teacher for the money. If I had done that, I would be dumb enough to not be worthy to be a teacher at all. I did it to reconnect – or more accurately, to connect for the first time – with what was most important in life. This maybe nostalgia walking, but although I accomplished far more than my mother did in a professional sense, I don’t consider myself nearly as successful as she was at being a person – a genuine human success and an everyday hero who brightened the lives of people around her.
</p><p>
So, if you’re looking forward to what colleges you might attend, what careers fields you want to conquer, what kind of income target you have, what kind of titles you hope to carry to your name, or whatever, just remember the little things in life, and help teach others to do the same. Big things may drive our life decisions, but the little things are what get us through each day of that life. As Jesus said: “Whoever does the least of the commandments and teaches them to others will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19-20). And, I would be so bold as to add that “you will also be remembered as great to those that knew you.”
</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-90335280584636494292019-09-21T22:25:00.002-05:002023-02-27T22:11:43.268-06:00Why EVERYONE Needs Religious Education<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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“Wisdom cries out in the street. In the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out. At the entrance of the city gates she speaks.”</i><br>(Proverbs 1:20-21)
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5C05of4gTMGczP-XNo5PFJbX8y2hoRJTpywQhBSboMMwPA4pUii4CRSaVStSBS-3X2pRRoaPakSUs3qEF3oN7oGW3beyKW0ZyhQs23kRvnsS1RCbSFBVp0j10_M1rg5neHoj7qr7_sXQ/s1600/emmaus.jpg" style="float: right; width: 250px; object-fit: cover;"/>
Religious education is something that usually is reserved for only a select few. It’s most often in private schools as a requirement for kids of all ages. Other times it might be offered at churches for particularly inquisitive adults seeking meaning and knowledge beyond what normal services can typically offer. To an even lesser degree, religious education of a truly rich and insightful caliber is often reserved for a select, privileged few who can afford to attend seminary colleges or pursue an anthropological course of study at universities. But, shouldn’t everyone have access to this knowledge, chance to explore, and opportunity to ask difficult or even strange questions? Should religious leaders and educators shy away from the dark corners of religious convention or the complex ideologies that toil behind the curtain of church institutions?<a name='more'></a>
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<b>Leaders and Teachers:</b> It’s only by avoiding education that we propagate doubt and division. By dodging the hard questions, we don’t have rehearsed or comfortable answers to, we instill a greater fear and confusion in those that look up to us for pastoral and knowledgeable guidance. Being a successful teacher and pastoral leader has little to do with your knowledge and education, and even not too much to do with your experience. It has everything to do with your willingness to open yourself up to the unknown at every moment of every day—to take a new journey that you didn’t know was there to take, and likely didn’t bargain for. You have to not only keep asking your own questions and be prepared to be wrong (a lot), but you have to be willing to step down from the podium and join your students or seekers on their particular journey of curiosity, no matter how strange, confusing, or even painful it might be. You don’t need answers, but you do need courage.
</p><div class="lquote">"Wisdom cannot be taught, only demonstrated"</div><p>
<b>Seekers and Students:</b> Never be afraid to ask your spiritual leaders tough questions. Today’s seeds of unsatisfied curiosity can easily germinate into tomorrow’s bitter angst. We live in a diverse world, full of uncertainty, that necessitates an intimate understanding our identity more than ever. You owe it to yourself to demand answers, and at a lack of sufficient attention, to seek until you find them. Jesus himself was a teacher (rabbi, (Heb.) “master [as teacher]”), and he spread his message two ways. He taught through relatable stories, facing every question that was asked of him with bravery and conviction, and he demonstrated what he taught in his actions. He knew, just as countless sages before him, that wisdom cannot be taught, only demonstrated. You should expect no less from your leaders and teachers.
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<b>Everyone:</b> We are here among our fellow humans to coexist by making distinctions, not judgements. Because of our finite, squishy, little brains, we can only see so much at one time, and our thoughts are guided by our material needs, immediate desires, cultural biases, emotional baggage, and social pressures. Only God, in His infinite presence and understanding, is truly fit to judge, and thankfully, we don’t know what those judgements are:
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“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?”</i> (Matthew 7:1-4)
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</p><div class="rquote">My most fulfilling moments were those when I had no answers at all.</div><p>
During my time teaching both adults and teenagers, I’ve seen a lot of the same manifestations of curiosity and eagerness to learn. I’ve filled the mental reservoirs of those who were thirsty for raw knowledge. I’ve cluttered the minds of those who scratched the surface only to find an entirely new world underneath the façade of our dismal preconceptions. And, I’ve gently opened the minds of those who thought they could learn nothing past what they were already determined was the reality of the world, based on their justifiably wounded perceptions in our culture.
Knowledge is my right arm, humor and satire are my sword, and humility is my shield. Compassion is my armor, and I have no helmet, because I can’t understand another’s journey without sampling it for myself and relating through my own weaknesses. All that aside though, my most accomplished and fulfilling moments were those when I had no answers at all, but merely walked with someone along their journey for a short time, sharing their pain, confusion, and thirst to know. We have to hate ourselves just a little bit in order to ever truly love ourselves, and without loving ourselves, we are all but useless to all others.
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There are discernible and crucial differences between reaching adults versus youths. Take these observations, not as criticism, but as sincere understanding and a way to ask yourself hard questions, both teacher and seeker alike:<br>
<ul>
<li>Youth seeks to understand and belong to a world that is intimidating and hostile to it.<br>
Age is compelled to prove what it already believes after a hard-won battle to claim those beliefs.
<li>Youth seeks acceptance for what they’re discovering about who they are.<br>
Age wants comfort in the ways it’s accustomed to.
<li>Youth is troubled by ignorance it desperately seeks to overcome.<br>
Age is burdened by knowledge it would rather leave behind.
<li>Youth seeks to avoid the follies of its ancestors.<br>
Age is compelled to justify the mistakes of the past to make them easier to live with in the present.
</ul>
</p><div class="lquote">We are not projects, but components of each other.</div><p>
Always know your motivations. Live your life for yourself, but cultivate it for others. Seek knowledge where you can find it, but don’t let pride turn your heart to stone. Learning is not a process one can finish, but a softening of the mind to be malleable and receptive to more and greater things all the time. Teach by living, correct by example, learn by failing, and above all, guide others with nothing less than love. We are not projects, but components of each other, through which we can heal ourselves by healing others. As Martin Luther once said:
</p><div style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: 0in;"><center><i><b>
“One becomes a theologian by living, by dying, and by being damned, not by understanding, reading, and speculation.”</b></i></center></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-44320816826497266652019-07-24T09:29:00.003-05:002019-07-30T21:07:29.351-05:00The Odyssey of Theodicy<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJQkt9K5JaEjl_La0ZvUiX8ObAX9sGMPTf4NQYjmwTlmMk4K9BIbX2NfSumD0tugCdcugk2ijqEhQykfnM_puRtdMohEnZbq5xsjw7kaCLT9eqTaLN_qR7QXYkROS8fc1jmISFkvl1mdo/" style="float: right; width: 250px; object-fit: cover;"/>
<p>
I don’t do this very often (in fact, I can’t remember ever doing it, and can’t imagine that I might do it again because I usually think of this sort of thing as artsy and pretentious), but this article was inspired by a recent dream, coupled with a common question that people ask about things like religion, all-powerful God-ness, and prayer <i>very</i> frequently. In this dream of mine, God (yes, the Almighty, big “G” Daddy-Pants, Creator of all the cosmos Himself) appeared to this group of folks that I was a part of, as a young kid of around the age of ten or so.* The purpose for his modest apparition seemed to be to attempt to explain himself and his motives to humans so that we might understand him a little better. He talked about one thing primarily, which I’ll give you a shiny ten-dollar word for in a moment, and that was why he doesn’t always seem to do what we humans think is “good.”<a name='more'></a>
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As he spoke to the crowd, people would occasionally interject with questions that indicated that they had difficulty understanding his explanations. This likely reflected a bit of the old axiom that the “will of God is unknowable” to us monkey-brained little human critters. So, as the Almighty (in child form) reduced his language to simplicity, he also seemed to get somewhat sympathetic to the people’s dejection of grappling with mortality, injury, and the general misfortunes of material existence. He started to “change his mind,” so to speak, on certain topics—for example, on questions of natural disasters and disease, he tried to concede and agree that he would intercede in future ordeals and possibly prevent them. But, each time he conceded on any point, he would quickly start to decay as he spoke, shriveling and blackening, and exposing teeth like a rotting corpse. And, when he realized it happening, he would kindly apologize and reverse his statement, causing his face to rejuvenate once again. Kind of gross and more than a little odd, I agree, but that’s what you get with dreams: crazy-go-nuts symbols and subconscious metaphors. In any case, this made a solid point in the narrative, which was that the compromises of limited, material perspectives deteriorate the concepts of transcendence/divinity,** which in turn relates to a very old philosophical and theological problem called “theodicy.”
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<div class="lquote">What’s Big G doing up there anyway, if not taking care of stuff down here?</div>
<p>
Theodicy is defined by our old buddy, Webster, as “defense of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.” That’s as good a definition as any, since the word itself translates from Greek to “justice of God” (<i>theos</i>, “God” + <i>dike</i>, "justice"). It relates to some pretty severe questions that most spiritual leaders in just about any of the big religions of the world have trouble addressing, assuming they don’t just dodge or botch the issue up entirely. But, before you think I’m getting too big for my intellectual britches, it is justifiably a hard issue for me as well and one that can’t be addresses adequately in a quick conversation. If there is a God (or gods), then why would He let bad stuff happen? Why do good things happen to rotten folks and bad things happen to awesome folks? How does religion and the idea of a caring/loving God explain things like a tsunami that kills thousands of innocent people, or allowing millions to be slaughtered in concentrations camps during an unjust war? Does God even answer prayers, or do things just happen all William Nilliam in the world? What’s the point of praying to an omnipotent deity if you can’t avert terrible things from happening? Above all: <i>What’s Big G doing up there anyway, if not taking care of stuff down here?</i>
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To answer... well, I won’t say <i>answer</i> those questions, but I’ll say <i>address</i> those questions, I’ll go back to the dream bit and how my sleepy subconscious translated a decent response. The little God-kid shared a bit of insight on two rules that he followed as deity. Rule number one was that he could not do anything that was a logical contradiction. A logical contradiction would be something like having a square-shaped circle. This is logically impossible, since to have what is properly defined as a circle, you need an equidistant, round, two-dimensional figure, and if you properly called it a “square,” that would mean that it was of course anything but round. This brings up some more philosophical conundrums right away though, like: If God is all-powerful, then you can’t say there's <i>anything</i> He can't do. But, logical contradictions are a little different. To say He “can’t do” something might be the wrong phrasing. Let’s say that God <i>won’t</i> perpetrate a logical contradiction in the same way that I say you “can’t” jump off a sixth story balcony. You obviously <i>can</i> jump off whatever you damn well please, but the consequences of that (rather ill-advised) action would be that unfortunate fall to a sudden, unfortunate, and altogether goopy death on the sidewalk. So, maybe God could make a square circle, but the consequences might be that squares became no longer what we know to be “square” and circles would no longer be round, or some such nonsense. Just tuck that into your brain folds for the moment and I’ll come back to it shortly.
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<div class="rquote">Brutality and suffering are unavoidable, logical truths.</div>
<p>
Rule number two from God-boy was that he couldn’t do good all the time, or else there would be no good. This rule was a little more abstract than the first—one of those “if you never have a rainy day, then you never know what a sunny day is” sort of concepts. But, more so than that, what this idea speaks to one of what one person sees as “good” in their perspective versus what is “good” in a broader, global, or even universal perspective. Basically, it means that if you are good to everyone all the time, then you are good to no one ever. Think if it as a statement of material existentialism. Despite what B.S. <i>The Lion King</i> might imply, lions can’t live without brutally slaughtering and devouring a zebra here and there. People can’t exist without eating other animals and plants, animals can’t live without eating other stuff, and even plants can’t grow without feeding off the nutrients provided by decaying, dead animals and other plants. Yes, the “circle of life” is pretty brutal, but it’s part of how things work, it’s what made us what we evolved into today, it’s what makes the world go ‘round, and it’s an unavoidable (perhaps even by God) <i>logical</i> truth.
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In the <i>The Matrix</i>, a computer program (“Agent Smith”) fairly accurately and bleakly describes why perfection can’t exist in this particular reality:
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“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered? Where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops</i> [of humans] <i>were lost. Some believed we</i> [the computers] <i>lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering.”
</i></div><br>
In a way, he was right. We are, at least partially, defined by our sufferings, as well as our pleasures. Without the various sufferings and successes we experience throughout our lives and the memories of such—each contrasting the other and helping to define how we perceive and understand the world—we wouldn’t really <i>be</i> anything, at least in a sense of our brains and consciousnesses. So, not only can the natural world not function without death and pain, but we humans can’t even really comprehend with our squishy thinking organs what perfection, bliss, or utopia would really be like, at least not in a way that we wouldn’t get sick of eventually.
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<div class="lquote">Could God make a rock so heavy that He couldn’t lift it?</div>
<p>
Here’s another old philosophical thought experiment question: <i>Could God make a rock so heavy that He couldn’t lift it?</i> To answer that, I’ll give you the last bit of the dream story. The God-kid ended his public address by saying that while he had two rules to follow—the first being no logical contradictions and the second being that he couldn’t do all good all the time—rule number one was, in fact, <i>the same</i> as rule number two. This means that, like Agent Smith said, to have a world that was all perfect all the time would actually be a logical contradiction in itself. So, again, to say the God “can’t” do all good all the time is more to say the He <i>won’t</i> because it would defy the very rule and structure that existence is based on (maybe even unraveling existence as we know it as a result...?). It’s also <i>sort of</i> like how if you designed a video game based on racing cars, you wouldn’t program the cars to randomly take flight, or else the rules that govern the game’s internal reality would be useless and nobody would play your lame, floaty-car game (well, not for long anyway). So, I would say no, God could not make a rock so heavy that He couldn’t lift it, because if He did, it would contradict His own God-ness as well as the heaviness of physical rocks and perhaps "crash the game," so to speak.
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At this point, you might be wondering why I didn’t give you any feel-goodies about prayer, or God’s goodness, or other such things. Well, I’ll admit, I’m not the best at the feel-goodies. But, if you look at it in this way, it does, at least sort of, explain what God and goodness is all about. Bad things happen, good things happen, and what we “deserve” doesn’t always pan out like we think it should. You might have a rainy day ruin your favorite outdoor event, but in the grander weather patterns of the globe, it might have had to happen to prevent a catastrophic hurricane on the other side of the planet. People hurt and kill other people for no good reason. It is terrible, but the truth of it is that we all have our own free will to do whatever the hell we want, so free will is an unfortunately double-edged sword in and of itself.
</p><p>
All these things don’t mean that whatever your deity or deities of choice are must be uncaring or non-existent, any more than the game programmer who doesn’t make race cars shoot into the air doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like the idea of flying cars (because really, who doesn’t like the idea of flying cars?). In fact, the ancient pagan religions used these to <i>justify</i> the existence of the multitudes of gods in their various pantheons, which is where we get a lot of the philosophical inspiration for stories like <i>The Iliad</i>, <i>The Odyssey</i>, and the classical myths. The biggest difference back then was just that the gods were usually petty and temperamental, causing both good and bad events on a whim (or, more often, out of jealousy or anger). All this really means in today's context is that to try to understand big issues, we have to realize how small we are in the big scheme of the cosmos.
</p><p>
By all means, believe, pray, and hope. But, understand and remember that the world is bigger than you, me, or any single person. Hell, things are even much bigger than that, since our planet is just a very small “pale blue dot” in the nearly incomprehensible expanse of the universe. In this way, our smallness and insignificance can comforting in a things-are-bigger-than-they-seem kind of way.
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<hr width="33%" align="left">
<div class="fnote">
*This was a bit similar, and perhaps inspired by, the way God appeared to Moses in the film <i>Exodus: Gods and Kings</i>. To be totally clear, while I liked the idea of this movie, its actors, and all, it was honestly not very good and I don’t recommend watching it.
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<div class="fnote">
**To again use a film reference, this could be compared to the movie <i>Dogma</i>, in which a couple of angels seek to unmake creation by proving God wrong (or at least proving Him to be fallible)—the same basic effect, I suppose.
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-9322438294553601462019-06-06T22:59:00.000-05:002019-07-30T21:07:20.099-05:00Acknowledging Ignorance<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
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There’s obviously a whole lot of political upheaval lately over various issues, not the least of which is civil rights, gender issues, and sexual legalities. But, what I intend to argue here, while indirectly addressing some of these important issues, is that these issues aren’t actually the ones that are being fought about. I hope that has either intrigued or enraged you already, because then maybe you’ll read on....<a name='more'></a>
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There are three basic concepts at work when it comes to rights, actions, freedom, and other such aspects of society: morality, ethics, and law. Contrary to what a lot of folks might think about these ideas, they are not at all the same thing, <u>nor should they be</u> (although they do often overlap, kind of like a Venn diagram). They are three distinct and unique aspects of human society and are all very important to each other. But, it’s when they are conflated and confused that we get some of the greatest injustices, persecutions, and what is so appropriately called “altruistic evil,”<sup>*</sup> being evil things that we do under the assumption of justice, peace, or social correction.
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<div class="lquote">Most often, we fight over how we define terms and what category an issue falls into.</div>
To justify what I wrote earlier about what we are and are not fighting about, when we do argue, debate, or battle each other over social issues, most of the time, what we fight over has far less to do with the issue itself and far more to do with how we define terms (like what it means to be “human life” or even simply what “morality” is) and what category these issues fall into (i.e., morality, ethics, or law). For example, when it comes to socio-political stances like being “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” one can actually be both at the same time, but under different contexts. For example, one could be morally pro-life while being ethically and legally pro-choice. And, being "pro-choice" also doesn't necessarily mean "pro-abortion." It’s really all about making proper and healthy distinctions.
</p><p>
The term “morality” is the one that’s often used as sort of a scapegoat, at least as far as I can see, in politics and arguments over social justice. In fact, morality is a concept that is <i>least</i> at stake when it comes to laws and social justice issues. When you’re thinking about what is moral (“good”) or immoral (“bad”), you have to first ask yourself: Who’s morality are we talking about? Morality is often subjective, that is, subjective to one’s particular situation like religious stance, cultural background, or opinions. There are, perhaps, a few objective concepts in morality, but those are few and far between and ultimately not the issue here. And, even if they might be objective, nothing (I mean NOTHING) in terms of morality is absolute. I’ll demonstrate:
</p>
<div class="rquote">"Absolute" is just an ideal that real life just doesn’t live up to.</div>
<p>
Here’s an objective moral principle—killing people is bad. We know this is an objective concept because of the very simple idea that we ourselves do not want to be killed. So, sure, I’ll concede that killing people is objectively “bad.” But, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that even that very stark example is not absolute (meaning that it was, is, and always in every circumstance will be the case). Is it morally acceptable to kill someone attacking your child in order to protect your valuable offspring? It is acceptable to kill in warfare to protect your home and family? These simple examples show how "absolute" is just an ideal that real life just doesn’t live up to.
</p><p>
There is always some conceivable circumstance wherein something bad could actually be something good, and vice versa. So, morality then becomes less a measure of what action is good or bad, but whether our intention is good or bad. Even still, if I say “killing people is bad,” then, if you want to get all litigious about it (in terms of abortion, or example), then what is a “person?” Although I won’t get into bioethics and the definition of what a person is, I mean only to show that depending on how one person over another defines what a “person” is can make all the difference of how morality is assessed. This, though, is really where ethics comes in.
</p><p>
<div class="lquote">If morality is a measure of intention, then ethics is a measure of action.</div>
If morality is a measure of intention, then ethics is a measure of action. While morality is subject to so many personal variables, making it largely <i>subjective</i>, then ethics can be thought of as slightly more (although not <i>absolutely</i> objective. Ethics is a concept that basically makes it possible for folks to live peaceably among each other. It’s what keeps us, despite our subjective differences, operating in society in a healthy and productive way. If something determines the quality of your action being supportive or destructive to your community (work, school, family, etc.), then it’s likely an ethical issue. You could say that the definition of the word “person” is an ethical issue, but it’s really more what you <i>do</i> with that definition. Do you use that definition to define a law? Is that law based on an objective ethical principle or a subjective moral one? Can that law justly apply to everyone, from every cultural, religious, and circumstantial position? Does the law limit, oppose, or impose subjective actions on everyone’s part, even a single person? Could you possibly ever know the infinitude of diverse circumstances in which the single law is applied???
</p><p>
So now, it sounds like law is it’s very own thing as well. Law is very simply a measure of control. It’s a social device that we invented to limit, prohibit, and/or punish certain actions that we as a collective society deem as unethical. Notice that I didn’t say “immoral,” I said “unethical.” Sure, morals and ethics often overlap, but not always. Why is it illegal to kill someone? I would argue (historical precedent aside), that it has little to do with the fact that it’s immoral and has more to do with the fact that, ethically speaking, it’s bad for humans living in society together to kill each other (to say the least). Theft is not illegal because it’s one of the “Ten Commandments” of the Judea-Christian tradition. It’s illegal because the law is designed to protect the individual’s right to property ownership.
</p><p>
If you’re not with me still, here’s another example. A drunk driver runs a red light and is killed by another driver passing legally through a green light (who survived the crash). Well, if killing a person is illegal because it’s immoral, then the sober driver should be charged with murder. There’s all sorts of complexities there, obviously, but the point is that, while the surviving driver may feel guilt or remorse over a regrettable situation, they objectively did nothing illegal, unethical, or even immoral. On a lighter note, insulting someone is typically immoral and unethical. But, thankfully, it's not illegal. Given the amount of F-bombs I've dropped in my life, I'd be locked up for fifty to life at this point.
</p>
<div class="rquote">Acknowledge your own inherent and enduring ignorance.</div>
<p>
Circumstance and intention make all the difference, and is nearly infinite in individual complexity, and unknowable to any one person who is outside of the situation itself. It may be illegal to steal food from a store, even if it is to feed a starving child, but I wouldn’t call it immoral, even if it is still <i>technically</i> unethical(?). Just because it’s technically legal to pay minimum wages to some exceedingly hard-working and hazardous jobs, that doesn’t mean it’s moral or even ethical. Ultimately, just because you have the right to do something, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Inversely, just because you don’t have the (legal) right to do something, doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. And, just because <i>you</i> consider it immoral within your own subjective perspective, doesn’t mean it should control the actions of others whose circumstances could be incalculably different than your own. Acknowledge your own inherent and enduring ignorance, because it’s the only thing we can all count on throughout this wild ride we call life.
</p>
</div>
<hr width="33%" align="left">
<div class="fnote">
*Altruistic Evil was so well-characterized by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book, <a href="https://www.amzn.com/080521268X" target="_blank"><i>Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence</i></a>.
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-8268521381972309172018-11-13T05:38:00.001-06:002018-12-20T14:56:03.216-06:00What's Wrong with Predestination (in Less than 1,000 Words)<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZb7PhnhtR4aqCWJ4ZRYcH6mroV9BEt6M9NRhNcgA-3Xf5cptCzW7OjWHUJVQ872wmaWViIITDP9QgtDFYLLURa_XTkNKN2It__scZK8IRLnPkg3n4AhJkwJ9rUW3m_l1iaZEFWQNUjWI/" style="float: right; width: 300px;"/>
<p>
As a theology teacher who also happens to be witlessly crass, people tend to gravitate to me specifically to ask difficult questions that other folks don’t like to deal with. One of these is the theological idea of creation, which, unbeknownst to many people, leads inextricably to another common religious problem—predestination. Predestination is something that most people who are “supposed” to believe in or who <i>think</i> they believe in, usually fall into one of three categories. They don’t actually <i>understand</i> it, they don’t <i>like</i> it, or they don’t actually <i>believe</i> it. So, rather than explain the whole creation and predestination mess, I’ll start simple and explain along the way. And, if you think this is blasphemy, don’t worry, it’ll probably be a blast for you too.<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
<div class="lquote">Yes, dinosaurs existed. And, yes, our planet is 4.6 billion years old.</div>
To start with, I’ll explain the theological idea of what is called “creation.” No, I don’t mean the creation that evangelical creationists or young-earthers talk about. I’m talking about the theology of why the universe exists and the philosophical question of how everything came to be from an original nothingness. Yes, dinosaurs existed. No, the <i>Flintstones</i> was not a documentary. Yes, our planet is some 4.6 billion years old. No, it didn’t pop up all in an instant of sparkly God magic. To illustrate what I am saying about creation, I’ll use what I call the analogy of the author.*
</p><p>
An author writes a book. He has to write every single page. The characters in the book (assuming, in this analogy, that they're sentient) know nothing about the author firsthand and exist only inside their own timeline, unaffected by the author's timeline. The author is likewise unaffected by the time and events of the book, but creates the whole universe himself—first in his mind, then on the page—and is responsible for each page's creation. When the book is complete, he knows all at once (in a perfect, timeless moment of knowledge) everything that happens in the book he wrote, be it on page two, page twenty, or page two-hundred. The author is, in the perspective of the characters of the book, omniscient and omnipotent—the God of the book world.
</p>
<center><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0gqKhEl64bZps0rdKYgh_opGacb-HEo2sp8J0z9QY-K2Dhlc7T0YZvsJsAL3PU5M2orISDu0C11jeiznAuVGAEYz4MKf9D8pDSJBwEcBTr_GVZxcETnDZ9C5GDfAgceLfbH4gszvWaME/"></center>
<p>
This model effectively explains the proper and traditional Abrahamic (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) theology of divine creation. Rather than God creating the earth in a fixed point in time (like many evangelical creationists believe), He creates (presently) all of existence at every moment, essentially holding everything in being by force of creative will—Himself being absolutely necessary and everything else being merely contingent. Also, God (like the author) exists (relative to the book) in an eternal, transcendent state, which is wholly outside of created time, space, and matter.
</p>
<center><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEIkvyBCYZhXCJPYiPkFn0Fc8XoaBuGQpCdc8Lxk4Cz_1mlvgzZifsGNJ-fjuHx0eRms_hT2P6OyxdXKVOYgjmCOolKSeFN9JdPRFYMGo1XGyfJkkwVanxEA9q-xrgF49RKM1Y808llb8/"/></center>
<p>
With this in mind, we come to questions over destiny, fate, and other such difficult philosophical topics. Predestination is one in particular that has been a thorn in the side of theology for some centuries. Predestination is a Calvinist Protestant idea that basically means that all of our actions and destinies (in terms of the afterlife) have already been pre-decided for us by God. It also means that no matter what we choose to do, we cannot avoid, nor in most cases even determine what we’re ultimately destined for. So, the question that most people ask right away once they understand the basics of predestination is this: “If our destinies and afterlife have already been decided for us, then why bother with anything at all?” Well, that’s a real damn good question.
</p><p>
The debate over predestination really comes down to whether or not the Author (God) writes every action of every character (person), or if the characters have free will. In other words, does this analogy of the author hold up 100%, or does it break down at the level of the characters being able to direct their own actions? Did God write the whole book, right down to every detail of what the characters do, or did He just make the characters and allow them to act out their own lives, like playing a game of The Sims with the AI turned on autopilot? If we do not have free will, then predestination makes sense, because God is literally like the author of a book and has pre-written everything we do. If we do have free will, then predestination doesn’t hold up, because, although He <i>knows</i> what we will do (because of His transcendent omniscience), He does not <i>determine</i> what we do the same as an author writes characters' actions in story.
</p><p>
<div class="rquote">It doesn’t mean that we’re all totally rotten, just kind of that we’re the reason we can’t have nice things.</div>
Under the Calvinist doctrine of Unconditional Election, the theological concept of Original Sin also collapses, which is ironic because if it's fundamental position in the Bible, coupled with the fact that protestant Calvinist traditions consider themselves <i>solo scriptura</i> (i.e., "scripture alone is sufficient for salvation"). Original Sin is (and has been since the ancient Jewish traditions) the theological explanation for how free will affects naturally good creations—that it corrupts them through the choices we make that are anything less than good/perfect. It doesn’t mean that we’re all totally rotten, just kind of that we’re the reason we can’t have nice things.
</p><p>
This whole explanation isn’t to denigrate humanity. In fact, I would categorize myself as something of a religious humanist. It’s just to say that, like the Christians would say, humanity is intrinsically imperfect and a little broken (though not beyond repair), and like the Buddhists would say, life invariably involves suffering that is a direct result of our imperfections (although there are ways out of it). Since we’re intrinsically broken, suffering little hairless apes, we clearly have free will and the ability to vary that suffering and brokenness. So, although there may be a transcendent, divine source of creation, which totally makes sense to me in the analogy above, and He mostly likely <i>knows</i> what we’re going to, that doesn’t mean He <i>dictates</i> what we’re going to do. If that were the case, then truly the question remains—Why bother doing anything at all?
</p>
</div>
<hr width="33%" align="left">
<div class="fnote">
*This analogy was inspired by one formulated by Stephen M. Barr in his article, “Modern Physics, the Beginning, and Creation.”
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-35455213250114622012018-10-03T16:40:00.001-05:002018-10-04T18:58:03.542-05:00The Gypsy & the Thief - A Thirty-Three Short Story<center><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvp0M3ikVGy5kKVyzUUTwFXFTjTfLi-ryhC02uYZeig35zHeAmIZ_iJalDaNMk8Aqn_oMG-Dp4jsCT_R7RjSfaVLGN4RZQJIgP2QwdDI9VYFMKwFde1SoUwA-jRny_nL91s8MhXzI9zfI/s550/gypsy_%2526_thief_header.jpg" style="border: 3px solid #000000; padding: 0px;"></center>
<br>
<div class="preface">
"The greatest of convergences sometimes start with the humblest of beginnings. Today's snake in the grass could become the apple of your eye tomorrow. Even evil itself can give rise to good, and enmity to love."
<div style="text-align: right;">-Randolph Midian</div></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<p>
Maria pulled her hair from across her face. It was stuck over her eyes from the sweat that was now pouring down, despite the December night’s chill. “You insufferable jackass,” she grunted through clenched teeth, grasping at Taber’s hand to help pull him from the frigid muck of the swamp.
</p><p>
Taber, in a fragile attempt to hide his terror and mounting dread of the monstrous thing that was struggling to free itself from the mud, cut back at her with a sarcastic grin to cover his fear, “I bet you only say that to the fella’s you really like, eh doll?”<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
Despite Taber’s inappropriate humor, Maria did find him unusually attractive. Maybe it was the awkward confidence that hid his innate cowardice, or maybe it was just simply being in common peril. In any case, she tried to remain practical. If they were going to survive whatever had just attacked them, they would have to work together, even if she decided to ditch the poor fool in the dark woods when it was all over.
</p><p>
Though she was not cruel, she figured him for little more than a common thief who had already nearly gotten her killed, and probably deserved whatever this mess was that was probably his fault anyway. As Taber regained his footing on the muddy ground, she could not help but wish she had never taken the job that led her out into the backwoods of Massachusetts.
</p>
<center>...</center>
<p>
Two days earlier, a large painting was dropped, crashing to the hardwood floor with a loud crack and evoking a strained cringe from Maria. “Damnit! Watch what you’re doing, boys!” she shouted at the workmen, as they scrambled to lift the seven-foot portrait.
</p><p>
They grunted bitterly, “Sorry, Miss Bond.”
</p><p>
Maria rushed over and bent down to lift the dust cloth and examine the damage. The bottom of the elaborate, French-style frame was now cracked almost to the edge of the canvas. She ran her thumb along the fissure and sighed in frustration. At least the artist was not around to add his complaints to the whole debacle. “Just get it loaded up on the truck, and try to act like it’s expensive,” she snapped.
</p><p>
Maria Ann Bond was typically a patient and generally compassionate woman. At thirty-nine years old, she was a particularly attractive yet commanding presence with her dark eyes and hair, and curvaceous figure. Although she had never been married, Maria often had men eating out of the palm of her hand. She mostly enjoyed it, only occasionally taking advantage of her natural beauty, which some men playfully referred to as “beguiling.” But, she most often took it for granted and remained otherwise focused on her own interests amidst a flowing current of hopeful admirers.
</p><p>
Her immigrant parentage—a Spanish father and Romani mother—shaped her features in exotic curves, giving her face an almost mystical allure. Her mother had also imparted a smattering of customs from the old world, most of which had faded away into childhood memories. A working girl through and through, Maria mostly ignored the female conventions of the 1920’s, instead preferring fitted shirts with sleeves rolled up, practical pants, and short fedora. Although not the picture of traditional femininity, she was nonetheless an icon of womanly power and smoldering sexuality.
</p><p>
She had made her own way working in freelance acquisitions, collecting historical art and artifacts for museums and collectors around New England. Although her unconventional sense of style and assertiveness made her few friends in a male-dominated field, she was often sought out for her talent to track down obscure pieces as well as detect forgeries.
</p><p>
Currently, Maria was on a job to curate pieces from an eccentric painter in Boston. Richard Pickman had been fairly renowned in the height of his career for his lifelike portraits, but had fallen out of favor for the grotesque nature of his stranger pieces. He had recently disappeared, but by then had been so recluse that no one noticed for some time, at least until the estate that had commissioned his last portrait called in the debt.
</p><p>
He had painted a large portrait of a wealthy and distinguished attorney named Bennett Truman with a woman that was presumably his mistress. The piece had been completed for many months, but Truman himself had apparently passed away during that time and the executor of his estate was only now collecting his outstanding commissions. The Old Bridgewater Historical Society subsequently purchased the painting as part of their local archives collection, along with other items from the estate.
</p><p>
Once the movers had loaded the truck, Maria took a moment to look the canvas over. She pulled back the cloth and was somewhat disgusted. It was not clear whether or not it was the subjects of the piece that were unsettling or simply that the artist was incapable of making an image that was not somehow tainted with subtle undertones of the macabre.
</p><p>
The man was stiff and cold, wearing a pressed blue-gray suit, one hand in his pocket and the other bent to his side. His expression was flat and unfriendly, made no warmer by his seemingly flawless, stern features and perfectly combed hair. The woman at his side was a stark contrast to his statuesque presence—a lithe and seductive creature, and likely much younger. She was lustfully draped on his arm and her long, black hair draped over her shoulders like silk. Her scarlet lips matched her dress and were curled into a sardonic smile. With her exotic features, dark eyes, and over-sexualized posture, she embodied the stereotype of a shameless mistress.
</p><p>
“Rich folks...” Maria grumbled cynically, dropping the cloth. She turned and jumped down from the truck, failing to hear the soft breathing coming from the shipping crate behind her.
</p>
<center>...</center>
<p>
The day before Maria visited Pickman’s studio, the shipping manager at Stonewall Couriers sent an urgent telegram to his good friend in Boston.
</p>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: 0in;">
PROF. TABER SWAN THOMPSON<br>
ST. JOHN’S SEMINARY, BOSTON, MA<br>
BIG SHIPMENT. ART. TOMORROW, 2 PM. BOSTON TO BRIDGEWATER.<br>
-MAC<br>
DEC 14, 1926
</div>
<p>
Professor Thompson taught at the seminary college and, although he generally liked what he did, it did not pay well, nor was it remotely as exhilarating as his moonlighting profession. When Taber was not droning through classes with the Catholic Church’s next generation of collars, he orchestrated the occasional extracurricular acquisition—all sorts of things, but valuable art and artifacts were his specialty.
</p><p>
Through paid informants who monitored orders through different couriers’ offices, Taber collected tips on shipments of valuable pieces that were sent through the Massachusetts area. He had various methods, from those as simple as doctored paperwork to those as involved as stealing delivery trucks. Through a network of private buyers across New England, the sly professor had amassed quite the small fortune for a man of thirty-two. And, he decided that this most recent tip falling on his birthday was a fine opportunity to commandeer himself a handsome gift for his thirty-third.
</p><p>
The next morning, around nine o’clock, Taber met his long-time friend, Mac, in the shipping warehouse. There were already some large statues from other studios being packed into crates that were headed to the Bridgewater Museum. Taber looked them over while Mac made some tactful alterations to some of the shipping documents.
</p><p>
“Where’s the truck headed first?” Taber asked, as he slid his hand over the cold surface of a carved marble beauty’s breasts that were half submerged in excelsior. The statue was an imitation Greco-Roman style rendering of a nude girl with a melancholic expression.
</p><p>
Taber looked younger than his age, with careless brown hair, thin build, and clean-shaven features that frequently shifted between stoically stern and boyishly thoughtful. Even when not lecturing, he dressed in the same unassuming collared shirt and tweed jacket. His green eyes were bright and alert, but his attentions sometimes ran childishly short, as indicated by telltale drooping eyelids and a twist of the mouth when his interest waned.
</p><p>
Mac answered without looking up, “It’s headed to some painter’s studio. Some broad put the order in for that other stuff too, said it’s all getting’ loaded together and sent to the museum this afternoon.”
</p><p>
Taber, realizing his mind had wandered and his hand had come to rest on the delicate contours of a statue’s breast, slid his hand away. The disinterested twist of his mouth straightened as he asked, “A girl ordered all this stuff?”
</p><p>
“Yeah,” answered Mac, rubbing his oily forehead, “She’s curating for the society, I guess. Hot little number, nice rack too. When she came in yesterday, she was real brassy. You know, like you like ‘em.”
</p><p>
Taber scoffed, “I don’t usually get involved with women I’m stealing from.” He smiled with one side of his mouth, “Not that I’m against it, but they usually don’t take kindly to being on the wrong end of this kind of work.” The professor turned back to the open crates, “What’s a woman doing working this business anyway?”
</p><p>
“Pants and hat,” Mac added dryly.
</p><p>
“What?” asked Taber.
</p><p>
Mac finally looked up, “She wore pants and a hat. Any broad that dresses like that is usually all business—you know, prudish.” The gruff man grinned, “That is, until you get ‘em in the sack. If a broad dresses like a man, she’s just achin’ to be un-dressed by one.”
</p><p>
Taber raised one eyebrow and frowned with the same side of his mouth that had just smiled, “Eloquent as always, old buddy.” He put his hand on the edge of the open crate and examined it, “How about we put this young lady here in a bigger crate? I think I’m going for a ride on this one. I’ve got a driver waiting in Bridgewater. All I have to do is open up the museum doors from the inside after everything gets unloaded, then we reload everything onto his truck. Then, pay day.”
</p><p>
Mac scratched at his beard, “It’s a long ride to Bridgewater.”
</p><p>
“It won’t be comfortable,” Taber added, “but it’s a surefire way to avoid hassle. Hopefully it won’t be more than a couple hours.”
</p><p>
As Taber looked the crate over, out of the corner of his eye, it looked as though the statue was smiling at him. “Wait,” he said, pulling his hand away. The marble face he would have sworn had been somber and forlorn only moments ago, now looked quite satisfied, even bright and happy. “Hey, Mac,” he called out, his eyes fixed on the statue, “this statue... wasn’t it... sad a minute ago?” He turned his head away, keeping his eyes fixed on it.
</p><p>
Mac looked up again, “I don’t know. I didn’t really notice. So, what? She worth less if she’s happy?”
</p><p>
Taber rubbed his eyes, “I must be tired.”
</p><p>
The two men set about their work to pack Taber in with the statue and fix a release catch inside. By the time Maria arrived, there were about a half-dozen crates of all sizes, seemingly nailed shut and loaded into the truck, one containing a marble statue of a smiling girl padded alongside an uncomfortable professor. “Good damn thing I’m not claustrophobic,” he thought, also thankful that the winter chill kept him from sweating too much inside the crate.
</p><p>
Later that afternoon, once everything was loaded up and Maria had finished examining the painting, Taber made every effort to stifle the sound of his breathing. Through the gaps in the wood planks, he got a candid glimpse of her, but quickly reminded himself not to ruin a good job with unprofessional ideas.
</p><p>
The movers finally closed the back of the truck and the rocking of the vehicle lurching forward was comforting to Taber in his padded tomb. At least he might be able to fall asleep for a while during the drive. So, he nestled himself in as comfortably as possible, the crate supporting him vertically, and tried to doze off.
</p><p>
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Maria mumbled to herself as she flipped through her acquisition documents. “Statues from Europe, vases and silver from the west coast, and this huge portrait from some crazy local artist.” She looked over at the truck driver, as if to prompt any insight he might have, “None of this stuff is historical to the Bridgewater area.”
</p><p>
Ed Nadam, a tall, lanky fellow in his forties with an unshaven face and balding head, looked over at her through his clouded spectacles, “I just drive the truck, lady. They don’t tell me about what I’m haulin’ usually.” He sniffed and turned back to the road, “What about your boss? Maybe he knows.”
</p><p>
Maria, accustomed to being dismissed as a professional, stifled her reaction to snap at Ed, simply sighing, “I am the boss—an independent curator—and I couldn’t begin to tell you why this stuff would go in the Society’s museum. The only thing they all have in common is that they all belonged to this Truman fellow.” Her temper cooling, she flipped back to the front page, “Looks like everything was sold off by the executor, Nadia Sherell.” She blew aside the bangs that hung over her left eye, “Must be the tart in the painting.”
</p><p>
Clearly not wanting any part of the ordeal, Ed shrugged his shoulders and silently excused himself to the sole task of driving the truck. As they approached the road to turn towards Bridgewater, they were stopped by a man putting up wooden blockades. He said there were some fallen trees up ahead and that the road would be closed throughout the day.
</p><p>
“Damn,” snorted Ed, “We’ll have to go down through Easton, the long way ‘round.”
</p><p>
Maria, not knowing the roadways very well, asked, “What’s wrong with that? It’s not too far out of the way is it?”
</p><p>
“At least an hour or so extra.”
</p><p>
It was already mid-afternoon and Maria, realizing her hopes of a quick job were lost, slumped her shoulders in resignation. “Alright,” she groaned, and settled into the seat, pulling her hat down over her eyes.
</p>
<center>...</center>
<p>
A while later, the truck hit a bump and jolted both passengers awake, Maria in the front cab and Taber nestled in his scratchy wooden coffin. Maria, who had been lulled to sleep by the rhythmic banging of the engine, rubbed her eyes, yawning, and asked, “Where are we?” They were on a bumpy, dirt road in the woods, pocked with divots and exposed roots.
</p><p>
“We, uh...” Ed stammered, “well, I ain’t sure. I had to take a different road back out of town. Looks like we’re comin’ near the swamp soon.” The nearby ground was beginning to show signs of the standing water and murky pools indicative of the area of the Hockomock Swamp. It was a fairly large area that most locals knew for its reputation of strange animal sightings and old folktale myths.
</p><p>
Maria looked at her watch, shocked to see that it was nearly five o’clock. “You mean we’re lost?”
</p><p>
As Taber regained hazy consciousness in the darkness, he quickly realized by his dry mouth and full bladder that the drive must have been longer than he expected. He groaned and shifted his position, barely able to move. “Don’t tell me they’re lost,” he mumbled under his breath.
</p><p>
Taber looked around for any signs that might indicate their progress. However, all he could see in the dark cabin was a faint ray of late-afternoon light from the gap around the door. Squirming uncomfortably, he suddenly realized the crate seemed to be getting tighter. Assuming he must be tangled in the excelsior, he tried turning his body to loosen himself. But, the crate only felt smaller with every twist of his trunk.
</p><p>
“Great,” he thought, as he rolled through the range of logical possibilities. His train of thought was interrupted though, by a slow sound of creaking boards and splintering wood. The planks actually began to push into his back and cut into his shoulders. It was slow, and utterly defied reason, but somehow the wooden crate seemed to be actually getting smaller, threatening to smother him.
</p><p>
When Taber’s brain finally allowed him to accept what was happening, he snapped out of confusion and groped frantically for the inner catch to release the lid. He turned it and the crate fell open, spilling its contents. Taber fell over onto the neighboring crate with a crash and the statue fell on top of him, its arms posed so they supported its weight but also pinned him down. He panicked for just a moment because of the noise, but quickly realized that there was no way it could be heard in the front cab over the already clamorous rattling on the bumpy road.
</p><p>
In the dim ray of light, he could just barely make out the large painting. The dust cloth had fallen off along the way and the two faces seemed to glare at him condescendingly. His need to relieve himself began to nag heavily and he pressed his legs together, not knowing how long it might be before the truck stopped. Taber realized all at once how stupid he had been and that he would have to put things back together quickly to avoid getting caught.
</p><p>
He pushed against the statue, but it was far heavier than expected. He grunted and strained, but could only seem to shove it to one side or the other. The more he struggled, the more packing fibers he seemed to spread around, making an even bigger mess.
</p><p>
“Can’t even lift up a statue? You never were very good at anything,” a bitterly dissatisfied, patriarchal voice crept through the heavy air, like a subtle whisper.
</p><p>
The hair on his neck pricked up as Taber’s eyes shot around the cabin, looking for who might be stowing away with him. “Who’s there?” he asked in a half-whispered shout. But, there was no reply.
</p><p>
He looked around, but the only focal point his eyes could find was the portrait and its hauntingly realistic faces. They both peered at him, almost moving in the faint illumination. The man, previously staring out blankly with a cold gaze, now almost looked as thought a grin was creeping at the corners of his perfect mouth. Although the face was different, it very vaguely reminded him of his grandfather, or perhaps some other relation he could not place. The woman, who had already worn a derisive grin, now seemed to be laughing through slightly parted crimson lips.
</p><p>
“I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” he thought, struggling with the statue, “I’m going nuts.”
</p><p>
Taber finally gave in to his hopeless situation and rolled the statue off to the side. He tried to scramble to his feet, but something held his ankle tightly. Assuming he had lodged it in between the crates, he tugged at it. But, when he looked down he was stricken with horror to see the statue’s cold, stone hand was wrapped around his foot. The statue’s face had also changed, now a maniacal grin full of exposed marble teeth, and was turned staring up at him through lifeless eyes.
</p><p>
Panicking with reckless abandon, Taber fell over and started banging on the wall of the cabin. Maria assumed the noise must be the road getting bumpier, but Ed knew right away that something was amiss and slammed on the brakes. They had been the only vehicle for miles, so there was little risk of blocking any traffic, even though they were now surrounded by swampland on both sides of the narrow road.
</p><p>
Maria asked what it was, but Ed ignored her, instead jumping down from his seat and running to the back of the truck. Inside the cabin, Taber felt like he was clamoring for his life. It was too dark to see much, but he felt another cold hand grip his other ankle like a vice pressing his flesh between stone fingers. With no more pretense of secrecy and only basic survival driving him, he called out for help.
</p><p>
The same voice that had seemed to whisper to him earlier now crept into his mind again, “It’s time, Taber. Thirty-three... I find all of you on your birthday.”
</p><p>
Instinctively glancing up at the painting again, he saw the man in the picture that had been so plain and straight-faced now scowling menacingly with a hateful snarl on his thin lips. “For God’s sakes, open the truck!” Taber screamed as loud as he could.
</p><p>
The failing light of dusk flooded into the cabin and nearly blinded Taber’s darkness-adjusted eyes. Ed peered in and, seeing the stranger, called out to Maria.
</p><p>
Taber, still in a panic, rubbed at his eyes and looked down to see the statue, still lying on its back, but with no look of maniacal intent. It again had a soft smile and gentle eyes, and its hands were still only half raised in a casual position as before. The cuff of his pants, however, was snagged on one of its hands, the statue’s thumb poking through a rip in the fabric. He stammered and motioned to the thing that he would have sworn threatened his life only moments ago.
</p><p>
As he tried to collect himself, blinking in the light, Maria looked Taber over and asked in disgust, “Why the hell is there a librarian in the back of the truck?”
</p><p>
Taber cleared his throat and tried to scramble to his feet. “I’m not a librarian,” he answered defensively, “I’m a professor. I... well, I don’t know how I got here.” Pausing, both in a daze from the shock and in swift contemplation of formulating a convincing lie, he continued, “I was at the Stonewall warehouse and someone attacked me. The next thing I knew, I woke up in this crate.”
</p><p>
Maria frowned skeptically and leaned against the truck. “Seriously?” she asked, “You mean someone stuffed you in with expensive antiques and you don’t know why? Why didn’t you call out to us earlier?”
</p><p>
“I, um... I just woke up. I tried to get out myself, but then,” Taber wagged his finger at the statue, “I would swear this thing had a hold of me.” He yanked his leg away, tearing the bottom edge of his pants. “I know how that sounds. But, it... well, something happened. I guess it was too dark to tell,” he stammered, having much more confidence in his lying than the insane truth. He looked back over at the painting, but it too had seemingly returned to normal—the man’s face was again cold and stoic, rather than angry and menacing. In that moment, he remembered the voice had said something about his birthday.
</p><p>
This reminded him of something he had not given a second thought to in many years. Although he had never been close with his family, or even his parents, he had always heard vague stories, which he never lent any credibility to, of strange or even dangerous events happening on their birthdays, usually around his age. He only dwelt on the thought for a moment though, quickly deciding to come back to reasonable pursuits.
</p><p>
Maria sighed, still suspicious of the new discovery. As a curator of often valuable items, she was used to people trying to swindle her and could not help but smell a rank scam brewing. She looked at Ed, who had already lost interest, and asked, “So, what now?”
</p><p>
“You’re the boss, lady,” Ed grunted.
</p><p>
Lighting up a cigarette, Maria opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted.
</p><p>
“Could I ask,” Taber spoke up, “given the circumstances, if I could just have a lift to the next town?” He winced and rubbed the back of his head to support the lie that he had been attacked, “I’ve been through a lot today, and I’d rather like to see about getting back home.” Hoping to maintain an opportunity to at least keep close to the goods, he put on his best squirrely, academic persona and was already calculating how he might salvage the debacle. “In any case, if you’ll excuse me, I must’ve been in that crate for some time and need to relieve myself.”
</p><p>
Maria rolled her eyes, “Fine. Go ahead. I guess we’ll bring you, but you’ll have to ride in the back, again,” she pointed at the statue, “with your girlfriend there.”
</p><p>
As Taber scuttled off to find a tree amidst the marshy ground, Ed called out from the front of the truck, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
</p><p>
“What?” Maria asked, getting sorely annoyed with the delays.
</p><p>
“The tire’s busted,” Ed said with some confused resignation, “it’ll take a few minutes to fix it.”
</p><p>
Maria sighed more heavily, puffing on her cigarette. The truck rocked slightly as Taber hopped back into the cabin, calling out, “Alright, do you think we could get moving now?”
</p><p>
Maria’s head poked around the corner as she glared at him from under her hat, “Looks like we’re not going anywhere just yet, professor.”
</p><p>
“Taber, my name’s Taber,” he said confidently.
</p><p>
“Well,” Maria exhaled, resting her hands on her hips, “whoever you are, how about you get off your skinny ass and go help...”
</p><p>
As she stared Taber down, a pair of stone arms reached out from the dark of the cabin and wrapped around his neck. The twitching limbs pulled him in and began to constrict, cracking at the joints and shedding marble dust. Taber gasped for air and groped wildly at them as his throat closed, pulling at the stone in futility. Maria could hardly believe her eyes as the cigarette fell from her gaping mouth.
</p><p>
She leapt into the truck to see the statue, seemingly crawling on its knees and leaving chalk marks on the wood floor. Its face was contorted into a fiendish grin and wicked scowl as it crept backwards, dragging a struggling Taber towards the dark recess overlooked by the painting. Maria saw a hammer on the floor out of the corner of her eye and grabbed it. Allowing little time for disbelief to set in, she instinctively rushed over and smashed the hammer down on the statue’s arm, cracking it and sending shards of marble flying.
</p><p>
She struck it a second time and its left arm broke off and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. As its other arm loosened its grip, Taber slid out underneath and scrambled away, still gasping for breath. The statue fell backwards, slowly moving its stiff limbs to steady itself. Maria and Taber both backed away and jumped down off the truck as the stone girl rose to its feet. The statue reached out with its remaining arm and lurched forward, moving in unnatural jerky motions, like a marionette on strings.
</p><p>
“What the hell is that?!” Maria yelled at Tabor, assuming he must be responsible.
</p><p>
“I don’t know,” he stammered, watching the statue in horror.
</p><p>
Hearing the commotion, Ed came around the corner and saw the statue, its maniacal face turning in twitching motions. “Holy Mother of God!” he exclaimed rather flatly.
</p><p>
In the rocking of the truck, the painting fell over with the portrait of Truman and his mistress facing them. The painted figures slumped down from the canvas, as though invisible bodies were weighing the cloth down from behind, and started to stretch out. The figures seemed to be moving, pushing against their canvas barrier and trying to push through.
</p><p>
“Nope,” said Ed, with an almost calm resolution as he slammed the door shut and pulled down the latch, locking it tight.
</p><p>
Maria and Taber, who were still stricken with terror and amazement, looked at him, stupefied.
</p><p>
Ed looked back at them and grunted, “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t want nothin’ to do with it.”
</p><p>
Taber shouted, “What were you moving, Maria? That’s impossible! Is has to be some kind of trick.”
</p><p>
She cut him off, “Me?! You’re the one who just showed up out of nowhere. What were you really doing back there anyway? And, what did you...” She stopped, glaring at him, “Wait, how did you know my name?”
</p><p>
“What?” he said defensively, “I... you said it, just then, when you opened the door.”
</p><p>
A slender stone arm crashed through the door, lunging in between them and sending wood splinters flying. They looked at each other, silently suspending their argument, and backed away. Ed ran back to the front of the truck and grabbed a tire iron, saying to himself, “No, no, no. Nuh uh. I don’t want none of this.”
</p><p>
They all backed away from the truck cautiously. Maria turned again to Taber, “You were trying to steal this stuff, weren’t you?”
</p><p>
“What? No... I told you, I was, uh...” Taber was losing the grip on his own theatrics amidst the turmoil, “Oh, damn it. Fine, I was going to. But, I still don’t know what that thing is.”
</p><p>
The sky was growing darker by the moment as the sun crept below the horizon. The arm reached down and groped for the latch, then the door swung open. The statue leaned forward and fell off the truck, its heavy feet plunging into the dirt. Where its right arm had been broken off was now a dark, vaguely corporeal limb vaguely like an arm terminating in elongated fingers. It reached up, pointing a shadowy claw at Taber and began to advance with plodding steps.
</p><p>
Ed came behind it and cracked the tire iron over its head, breaking off a chunk of its chiseled hair and face. Maria threw her hammer at it, but it only cracked against its chest, superficially chipping the surface. Ed smacked it again across the back, sending it toppling to the ground. The statue fell on its hands and knees and began to convulse with loud grinding noises.
</p><p>
Ed backed away and they all looked in astonishment as the thing began to break apart. But, underneath the stone exterior was a full shadowy figure that seemed to direct the statues movements. As each chunk of marble fell away, the thing underneath seemed to erupt out, bulging and swelling as though being released from its constraints.
</p><p>
Whatever it was though, was almost not real. It seemed to vibrate and blur, like it was either a diabolical figment or a flitting dark shape in a photograph. Their eyes began to hurt just looking at it, and the more they tried to make it out, the less they could see it clearly.
</p><p>
Its arms elongated and engorged, growing huge and sprouting claw-like appendages. Its torso broke free from the stony vessel and swelled to a muscular, hulking form. The cracked head shattered to pieces and what was underneath opened into a gaping ragged maw full of crocodile-like teeth. Although it seemed only half-real, its eyes were solid enough, bulging at the sides, lifeless, and black as death.
</p><p>
As the horrid spectacle unfolded in a matter of moments, a thick cloud of acrid, sulfurous stench washed over them, choking them and burning their eyes. Whatever the thing was, its presence assailed every sense, even seeming to thicken the air around it and causing their ears to ring like they were under pressure in deep water. Ed, who had been the most collected up until that moment, ran at the thing madly and took a swing at its misshapen head.
</p><p>
It made a dense thud sound and seemed to not affect the phantom as it jerked itself up to a slumped, bipedal posture. In the failing light and corrosive presence of the thing, Maria and Taber could barely see straight, much less fully process the indescribable creature that stood before them.
</p><p>
Before Ed could realize the futility of his effort, its huge arm reached up and grabbed him by the neck. As he grasped at its twisted claws, it effortlessly slammed his head to the ground and twisted his neck with a loud snap. The beast looked up at Maria and Taber with singular intent and started to approach, stepping on Ed’s lifeless head and cracking it under its massive weight like an egg.
</p><p>
With untraversable marsh on either side of them and only a narrow dirt road under their feet, they stepped close together and looked at each other, whispering simultaneously, “What do we do?”
</p><p>
Maria pushed him away, “What good are you anyway?”
</p><p>
Before he could answer, the beast launched forward, leaping from the ground and sending clods of dirt showering against the truck. Maria shoved hard against Taber, knocking the wind out of him and sending them both to the ground in opposite directions as the thing sailed in between, barely missing them and taking a clumsy, sliding tumble to the ground.
</p><p>
Taber growled through clenched teeth, “Oh... thanks, I think.” Regaining his senses, he looked up in time to see the beast shaking its bulbous head and looking up at them. “Time to be brave, I guess,” Taber mumbled, as he scrambled to his feet and ran back toward the truck. He ran alongside it, hoping to draw it away from Maria.
</p><p>
The beast bounded after him. Instead of leaving footprints though, the thing left black scorches on the ground, like its presence was corrosive to everything around it. Just as Taber turned to see how close it was, he was nearly face to face with it, its hot, sulfurous breath choking him. It reared back its monstrous claws and lashed at him. He fell to his knees just in time though, and the beast plunged its terrible limb straight through the wall of the cabin. Taber crawled underneath the truck and tried to make his way back to the rear.
</p><p>
An otherworldly hiss emanated from the thing as it struggled for a moment to free its claws from the hole it had punched into the truck. Taber crawled frantically out from underneath and Maria grabbed his hand. “Come on. We’ve go to get out of here before...” she shouted, only to see that the thing was already free as it turned its head around the corner, its mouth drooping open and dripping foul ichor.
</p><p>
“I have an idea,” Taber said in a hush as he stood up beside her.
</p><p>
“What could you possibly...” she started to ask, but the beast lunged towards them again.
</p><p>
Taber then pushed her aside and leapt backwards, falling into the marsh and sinking up to his waist. The beast, too bulky to react, again lurched forward and over him, and toppled past him into the swamp, also sinking nearly halfway into the mud.
</p><p>
“You insufferable jackass,” she grunted through clenched teeth, grasping at Taber’s hand to help pull him from the frigid muck of the swamp.
</p><p>
The sun was nearly down and they had only fading light to see by. Behind Taber, the beast thrashed and slung mud in every direction, trying to claw its way out of the mire. It grabbed hold of a small tree that nearly cracked in half in its grip as it tried to wrench itself out. They both took a step back as they looked on in horror. Taber, never a very genuinely religious man, rhythmically crossed himself in the manner that he had so often emptily done at the seminary, while mumbling, “What in God’s name is that thing?”
</p><p>
Maria, at a loss for what she was even witnessing, remembered something her mother had taught her as a child and, like Taber, rhythmically performed it. She murmured an odd phrase in another language, pointing with her index and little fingers.
</p><p>
Taber looked at her and asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
</p><p>
Before she could answer or even fully understand why she had done it, the thing in the mud howled, the sound echoing painfully inside their skulls, scraping like rusty nails. It flailed violently as the marsh slowly sucked it down further. Vines and roots began to crawl and slither like snakes, wrapping themselves around the beast’s thrashing limbs and immobilizing it while dragging it down.
</p><p>
Maria looked at Taber, as awestruck and confused as he was, “I... I just remembered something my mother taught me when I was little. It’s an old gypsy thing, in Hungarian I think, something I was supposed to do if I was ever scared, when I thought there was a monster in the closet or...”
</p><p>
“You mean you did that,” Taber asked, pointing at the beast that was slowly being constricted by creeping vines, “with a gypsy trick?! That can’t be true. That would be ridiculous!”
</p><p>
Maria, still doubting it herself, turned to him with a scowl, “Oh, right, like a demon-monster... thing attacking us in the swamp is just perfectly normal? Like any of this isn’t ridiculous?”
</p><p>
Taber started to argue, ignoring the fact that she was distractingly attractive as she yelled at him. But, before he could open his mouth, they heard loud creaking and snapping from the swamp. The beast was struggling ferociously and grinding its jagged teeth across the roots that were coiled around it.
</p><p>
“Magic or not,” Taber said, “Whatever it is, I don’t think that’s actually going to hold it.”
</p><p>
Maria turned and saw Ed’s crushed body in the road and was still grappling with the reality of their situation. She looked back at Taber, “I don’t suppose you have a gun, or anything useful, huh, professor, thief... whatever you are?”
</p><p>
Taber, knowing he had nothing of the kind, subconsciously patted his jacket, saying, “No.” Then, he looked back at the truck. “But, I may have an idea. It’s probably crazy, but it might work,” he said cautiously, then mumbled under his breath, “at least for you.”
</p><p>
“What?” Maria asked, but Taber took off toward the back of the truck.
</p><p>
“Quick, this way,” he called out, motioning for her to follow. When she got to the truck, he pointed around the other side, “Get to the wheel and start the engine, and leave the door open. When I call out to you, drive the truck into the swamp. Just jump out before it goes off the road.” Then, he took off away from the truck.
</p><p>
“That’s crazy!” Maria yelled out, “And, the tire’s flat!”
</p><p>
“Don’t worry,” Taber yelled back, “that won’t matter.”
</p><p>
She sighed in frustration, thinking he must truly be insane or a total jackass. Nonetheless, she ran to the wheel and started the truck.
</p><p>
Over the roar of the engine, she could not hear the snapping of the overgrowth as the beast broke free from its bonds. Taber, who had run out a distance from the rear of the truck, kept his eye on it, though. He jumped and waved his arms around, yelling for its attention.
</p><p>
The beast ripped through the last of the vines that held it and splashed its way to the solid ground of the road. It clamored up on its thick legs, leaving the water behind it steaming with vile toxicity, and broke into a run. Tabor took off back towards the truck too, slipping just past the beast as it approached. As it turned its massive body in the dirt, it slowed just enough to give Taber a brief lead. When he reached the truck, he vaulted up into it and ran to the back, ducking underneath the painting and turning it towards the entrance in front of him.
</p><p>
Seconds later, the beast leapt into the cabin, throwing itself headfirst through the painting and into the wall. Taber yelled out as the beast crashed into the pile of crates where he was crouched, and Maria hit the gas as hard as she could. The combined force of the motor with the beast’s massive weight and momentum forced the truck forward.
</p><p>
Maria, shocked that the plan had worked at all and forgetting that Taber must still be in the cabin with the thing, sharply jerked the wheel once it reached full speed and jumped out. The truck turned and skidded on the flat tire, then rolled over just as she leapt out. It toppled off the road backwards and splashed into the marsh with the thing inside.
</p><p>
The back door must have shut itself with the momentum of the thrust. She saw the walls bending and creaking and could hear the beast inside thrashing around wildly trying to free itself as the truck sank backwards into the swamp. Maria suddenly realized Taber must have shut the door himself from the inside, whispering, “Oh God, he’s still in there.”
</p><p>
Something grasped her shoulder from behind, startling her. She spun around and reflexively swung a punch directly into Taber’s jaw, sending him to the ground with a thud. “Ow!” he cried, in a muffled voice as he cradled his mouth, “And, I thought you might be happy to see me.”
</p><p>
“How did you...? I thought you were inside?” she stammered.
</p><p>
Taber crawled to his knees and coughed, “The hole. It punched a hole in the side. I crawled out and shut the door from the outside.” He got to his feet and smiled, his cheek already swelling, “Pretty clever, huh?” He looked over her shoulder just in time to see the headlights of the truck submerging in the murky water of the Hockomock Swamp.
</p><p>
Without thinking, Maria wrapped her arms around him, simply thrilled to be alive. She quickly came to her senses and pushed him away, “You ass! You could’ve told me what you were doing.” As she thought more, she continued, “And, you were going to steal that stuff!”
</p><p>
Taber smiled again, “Well, I was. But, it looks like no one’s getting it now. Besides, we’ve got a long walk to town still, I would guess. I might not seem so bad after a few miles together in the dark, right?”
</p><p>
Maria exhaled, looking around. She had no idea how she would explain the situation to the Society, or what happened to poor Ed. “Fine. But, I’m seeing you in handcuffs when we get to town,” she said, turning to walk.
</p><p>
Taber raised one eyebrow and smiled with one corner of his mouth, “Alright, doll. We’ll see.”
</p>
</div>
<Center><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdB7uslLs6Z8ScGJaEKm7DndOaX-SAYNjuRPZzreP4qdwQ5Xvgu9dF8SIW4FDMwGj1cGW71yL1D3RQOgrk2hyAid606r30EOEzY_U22XqdWiPs0sQUJuVhPRRgYlGUCDm4qgEaUEtJwJs/s200/gypsy_and_thief_end.png"></center>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 80%;"><center>For Diana, my beguiling gypsy.<br>
Happy Birthday</center></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-63684599859454183532018-09-10T00:57:00.000-05:002018-09-10T08:13:15.912-05:00American Idol(atry)<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCevejPVHPkQw52H_muycJwlvR0lMWVdNycQ1VYZhMZ0-g7a9TrPleUU1g8YAzMdZwHxCOCjfGDr-fNEWFGNs7VpoAFOgefIOKzchK2D5pm_7Ve9OhYjKHTL3Rnw4V_X-kyFA2HikVYuQ/s250/bob_calf.jpg" style="float: right;"/>
<p>
If you were raised religious in the Western world, you’ve likely at least heard of the term “idolatry.” It’s all over the Old Testament, mainly talking about golden calves and whatnot that our ancient ancestors worshipped to ward off misfortune and inspire material prosperity. And, as such, we’ve come to associate idolatry with things like statues and gold, with popular culture even making the occasional theological joke (like Kevin Smith's Mooby the Golden Calf—a satirically accurate splicing of Mickey Mouse and the McDonald's franchise). But, the concept and problems with idolatry are really a lot more than just the simplified notions we have today that usually range from the seemingly innocuous golden calves of the Bible stories to the terrible bull statue-ovens of Moloch that the ancients roasted their own children alive in. There's the direly important quest to find a mate to make everything in life better (to <i>own</i> the golden calf), the ongoing "rat race" for status (to <i>appease</i> the golden calf), the insatiable battle for fame (to <i>become</i> the golden calf), and so many other things that are really just a hell of a lot of work for nothing.
</p><p>
So, this article is about conducting oneself in a world full of images and likenesses as well as their makers. It’s about recognizing the importance of transcendence. And, it’s about seeing the greater purpose of life, the universe, and everything.*<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
Idolatry is composed from a familiar term, “idol,” from the Greek word <i>eidolon</i>, meaning “image,” and a not-so-familiar Greek word, <i>latreia</i>, meaning “worship.” So, it literally means to worship an image. Well, when I put it that way, most of you who are of the Jewish, Christian, or especially Muslim persuasions are probably scoffing at the mere suggestion that you might be guilty of such a rank heresy or grave sin, right? “There’s no golden calves here. I remember my Sunday School stories,” you might say. Or, “I go to church every week and worship a quite definitely intangible and invisible God.” Well, I’m sure you do, and that’s good for you. But, just as so many people misunderstand the broader meaning of the term “idolatry,” so too they often misunderstand the meaning of the term “worship,” and even more often, the term “faith.” So, I’ll explain more so those of you who are already so far up on your high horse that you can barely hear me can maybe slide down its leg and bump your naughty bits on its knees a little.
</p><p>
Worship and faith get conflated and confused. Worship often gets mixed up with “idolize” and faith gets mixed up with “belief.” Although I might casually idolize someone like Ronnie James Dio for both his amazing musical skills and his unshakable rocker confidence in the face of an almost childlike height, as well as the most epically receding hairline the heavy metal world ever saw, I certainly don’t <i>worship</i> him.** While I might believe in my wife in the general sense that she’s generally awesome and can be trusted in a myriad of ways, I wouldn’t say I have <i>faith</i> in her the same as I would a higher power.
</p><p><div class="lquote">To worship something is to praise it as a creative force in your life.</div>
To worship something is to praise it for its power as a creative force in your life—to cultivate what it gives you so you can offer it back to the One who created it. It’s almost like, in a way, how you give your small child a box of crayons and paper, and a few minutes later they come back grinning from ear to ear with a multi-colored scribbling that vaguely looks like a bat holding a tree with your name underneath it. You made that kid, you gave him the crayons and paper, and turned him loose to scribble whatever indiscernible doodles he could produce, and you loved it anyway. We do the same thing in religious worship. We take what our Creator gave us, stick it together with Elmer’s glue and yarn, call it things like “liturgy” and “cathedrals” and “rituals,” then run back holding it up high, grinning from ear to ear like the little happy monkeys we are, hoping God will love the macaroni duck we made Him.
</p><p>
To have faith means simply and purely this: to trust. We trust people and things for various tasks. We trust the U.S. Postal Service to make sure our packages arrive at their intended destinations three days late and beaten into a crumbled pulp. We trust our printers to run out of ink and jam up every time we need to print boarding passes or movie tickets at the last minute. So, faith is a different kind of trust than just all that mess. It’s an implicit and absolute trust. Faith is the kind of trust a baby puts in its mother by instinct and necessity. It’s the kind of trust in which we fall backwards with our arms crossed and eyes closed and just know that we’ll be caught, or perhaps allowed to fall into a soft down comforter, or a kiddie pool of Jell-O, or whatever tickles your particular fancy. This is why faith is so important to religion—we are expected to put our absolute trust in a God who created us and all the other stuff we need to live and get through this wackadoo circus we call life.
</p><div class="rquote">We trust in friends to get us home drunk, but we have faith in a higher power to hurdle us safely towards our destinies.</div><p>
So then, we trust in good friends to get us home drunk, but we have faith in a higher power to ensure that we can hurdle safely towards our respective destinies for the best. We idolize our favorite role models to entertain, teach, or inform us, but we worship our Creator for giving us all the stuff we need to enjoy the stuff we want and need. But, why do either one, and why is it important? Well, in concept, imagine that you’re a painter and you’ve just hung your finest masterpiece in a gallery showroom. You’d be pretty pissed off if everyone came by and admired your work of art and threw money at it, but never actually paid you a dime or even acknowledged you as the originator of the work. Likewise (not to hit too close to home in the digital age of copyright disregard), if you were a musician who made your greatest song ever and people took it without ever paying you a dime and shouted off the mountain how great it was, but never credited you for a moment, you’d also be pretty unhappy.
</p><p>
Properly placed worship and faith condition us as people in a vast world full of potential stuff to worship and have faith in. If we find ourselves trusting absolutely in things that are temporary, fleeting, or purely material, then we could actually be <i>worshiping</i> them, perhaps unintentionally. The usual suspects here are things like money, our own bodies, sex and other sensual pleasures, status and the pursuit of fame, institutions, or even other people. But, alas, money runs out, bodies break down, sensual pleasures become boring, status seems relative, fame fades, and pretty much everything in this world is just sort of, well... flimsy and fleeting. So, what are we to do?
</p><p><div class="lquote">We need purpose to survive and succeed.</div>
This is where the real purpose of religion comes in. It gives us something permanent and transcendent to aspire to—a greater purpose that is worthy of worship and faith. We humans have a lot of great qualities, but while we’re filled to the brim with exploratory aspirations, symbolic ingenuity, and endless wonder, we’re also painfully deficient in the one thing that keeps every other animal in a harmonious balance with their environment, which is contentment. We always look up and out, then further up, then yet a litter higher than that, for better or worse. So, as a species (although not always as individuals), we need purpose to survive and succeed.
</p><p>
Images are a shadow of their creator, and similarly all of creation is a shadow, or a vestige, of a transcendent Creator. This isn’t to say that it’s an old, bearded guy in the clouds that made the world 6,000 years ago or anything so silly as that, but rather a divine source of all of existence at every moment in time. If we are to understand anything further about the painter, then we have to look beyond the painting. If we are to truly enjoy the music, then we have to seek out the musician for more great songs. If we hope to know more about what it is to be human, then we have to look beyond the simple problems of the human condition.
</p><div class="rquote">An idol is just an image of a greater and more perfect original.</div><p>
An idol is just an image of a greater and more perfect original. We too are images. But, who is it that which we image? Do we worship ourselves, putting faith in the things that come to be and pass away, just as we do, or do we seek out the larger and more permanent things—divine things? I’ll close this piece with a bit of text that I wrote long ago as a brief philosophical exposition on a passage from the Gospel of Matthew:
</p><p>
This is to whom the greatest love should be turned. There is the person or thing to which your heart and mind are inclined (a person or thing that you love), that is your beloved, and there is the One which made your beloved, the One from which the very essence and existence of your beloved flows, emanates, and owes being to. Without the One from which your beloved originates, your beloved would cease to be entirely, or cease to have ever been (as time itself is a creation, inseparable from matter, and owing its existence to the One who created it), or at the very least, depending on the degree of the deficiency of origination, cease to be in the same form or state in which you came to know him, her, or it. Therefore, to whom do you owe your first and greatest devotion?
</p><p>
This is not to diminish the degree of love and devotion one owes to a person, because as the Creator must love the creation in order to sustain it, so also should the creations love each other insofar as they praise the creative work of the Creator.
</p><p>
Therefore, this is why the greatest of laws are said as such: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39).
</div>
<hr width="33%" align="left">
<div class="fnote">
*It’s a little more than “42.”</div>
<div class="fnote">
**Or, his memory. Rock In Peace, Ronnie.
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-10160768858300310942018-09-06T20:02:00.000-05:002018-09-06T20:02:49.618-05:00A Requiem for St. George - A Thirty-Three Flash Story<center><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIYyHLcC1mFizs8M5qsyuayTrTAT7DfbCc_RlP4orSDK1VSdLgSb4Mo3Fp4l8RinqPaEjrTPYPrAp97vdnUuP17UBQDyy9lgHqmTjo-qPt9M6EweQuqWspcAZoHQ_oH20XkMIL4Fd-SnY/s550/gregorys_Story.jpg" style="border: 3px solid #000000; padding: 0px;"></center>
<br>
<div class="preface">
"Within every good man is a demon of sorts—lurking fears, temptations, and greed that he carefully keeps at bay. But, sometimes all it takes to turn the man into his demon... is a monster. St. George killed the dragon, but what did he do in the years to come? What dragons haunted his dreams and lurked around the corners of his feeble, aging mind?"
<div style="text-align: right;">-Randolph Midian</div>
</div>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<p>
“I hope you’re comfortable, Uncle Lewis,” he said dryly, exhausted as he stretched his stiff back and braced himself against the cold, masonry wall. He was not quite so able-bodied as he once was. Although, for a man of sixty-eight, Gregory Stonewall was unusually spry—he made sure to keep himself in decent shape. He was a survivalist, an enthusiast of preparation, as he might call himself. Uncle Lewis made no reply and Gregory sighed, “Alright, I’ll just get the door,” as he gently closed it on rusty hinges. “No need to thank me,” he grumbled.<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
He hated the shrill noise those old doors made, but he simply had too many more important things to do than worry about oiling hinges. As he walked down the hall, the pale florescent light fixture that hung overhead blinked and buzzed. Gregory reached up and tapped on the bulbs, grunting under his breath, “Shoddy workmanship. Not like the old days.” The bulbs flickered for a few moments and finally normalized.
</p><p>
His steps echoed down the empty hall. It was lonely, quiet, and clinical, but Gregory did not mind. He had grown accustomed to it after being there for so many years. His fingers tapped methodically against his leg as he walked—a compulsive habit of counting his steps that he had developed since altogether retreating from social life. “Nine steps. Nine divided by three is three. Three plus three is six. There are two units of three in six… three and three. That’s when it came, the thirty-third year,” he thought to himself, with no conscious effort. Numbers were important. Everything was important, every event holding some significance. All he had to do was observe causality and connect the dots from one to the next. That’s how he survived, after all.
</p><p>
“Good afternoon, dad,” Gregory announced jovially, as he knocked on another door, “at least, I think it’s afternoon, give or take a few hours.” Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “Uncle Lewis didn’t have much to tell today. The old boy never did have much to say though, did he?” Pulling another door open with a rusty squeal, Gregory smiled through his scraggly beard, “Let’s go then. It’s story time.”
</p><p>
After some laborious lifting, Gregory was leisurely wheeling his father down the hall. As he walked, he knocked on a few other doors along the way, “Good afternoon, mother. Hello there, Nathaniel. Stunning as ever, dear Amelia.” He kept smiling, as was his habit. It was to keep cheerful thoughts flowing through his head, to crowd the memories out.
</p><p>
“I have a specific problem, dad. I’m hoping you can help me figure it out,” Gregory said, cheerfully. “You see, I need to know what size it was when you came across it.” His brow wrinkled as his thoughts started to wander involuntarily. He pressed on under some strain, “I have a theory I’m still trying to work out. I think it’s gotten larger over time, but I don’t know how fast it grows.” His teeth started to grind as he began to lose control of his thoughts, “Of course, there’s no need to talk about it in the present tense. I did kill it, after all. Of course, I killed it. You believe I killed it, right, dad?”
</p><p>
Despite his attempts at levity, Gregory’s train of thought barreled out of control. He stammered as he could no longer see his current surroundings, but instead, the stony ground of the worksite beneath his feet from thirty-five years ago, “Of course I did. I remember how…”
</p><p>
With only a few utility lights barely clinging to life overhead against the night sky, it lumbered in place, the huge beast, vaguely bipedal but altogether inhuman. It turned around at the sound of the engine roaring to life. Gregory, gasping for breath and mad with fright while climbing into the cab of the giant machine, tried desperately to get a better look at it in the dark. Although the quarry was veiled in a thin wash of light, even when he should have caught a glimpse, the thing seemed always just out of focus, like a photograph taken in motion, a slightly blurred phantasm. It was real though, real enough to tear that poor security guard in half like a ragdoll. Blackness pressed in around Gregory as he frantically resisted the shock and tried to remember how to work the controls of the excavator.
</p><p>
The beast saw him though, taking heavy, crunching steps on the loose stones. Gregory had no time left. He grabbed a lever, any lever, and jerked it sharply in the direction of the thing. The spear-like arm of the great machine lurched into full swing, almost tossing Gregory from the cab, as it crashed into a drum of diesel fuel, then into his intended target. The collision sent pungent fluid splashing over the beast, the twisting steel sparking flames that instantly enveloped it. It howled an otherworldly sound that echoed from every direction. The thing stumbled, clawed blindly at the flames, and flailed like mad until crashing through a wooden enclosure.
</p><p>
Gregory flashed back, still wheeling his father into the examination room. The bright spotlights hummed, drowning out the sound of the creature plummeting down the mine shaft that still echoed through his mind. He had begun unconsciously whistling to the tune of “Whistle While You Work.” Shaking his head, he smiled again, “Sorry, dad. Got lost in thought. Best not to dwell on it, though. Never know when it might come back. Don’t want to end up like all of you, after all.”
</p><p>
He dragged a long steel tray off the gurney and slid it onto a steel table. “Now let’s put you back together properly, eh?” Gregory said, as he carefully turned a withered, grinning skull upwards to meet his gaze. Having been interred for over thirty years, the remains of William Stonewall were relatively well preserved. Gregory kept them all well preserved.
</p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-75350446181484692282018-07-09T09:00:00.000-05:002018-07-09T10:37:26.115-05:00Wisdom, Wigs, & Witch Hats<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-4KfLeG8j0FmvUVv0mhC41JrDJxQ6C2yIGmtwvIyQmFYmtRdAIMmkA2jhIWsaP8ChnkNbWt_A1_yL2C_wN9abo8J3uvV-XOlpjXhrRnBSSTXi1YxnyxjEjAuayqN6TMi72AwzHtKHYQU/s325/wigs+and+witch+hats.jpg" style="float: right; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;">
<p>
It’s easy to disagree on what a “mystical” experience is supposed to be, and all of the major traditions of the world propose different ideas of what it might entail. But, by understanding the differences between the ecstatic magician, the churchy charismatic, and the misty new-ager, it’s not too hard to see how they’re all fundamentally very similar. Aristotle believed the “Golden Mean”—the perfect middle between two drastic extremes—was where the best of anything could be found. Courage was at the middle point between cowardice and recklessness, for example. Taking that basic idea though, we can also see where truth and virtue lie between extremes like “the materialist [and] the magician,” as C.S. Lewis would say.*<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
Throughout my younger years, I often swayed clumsily between the stances of arrogant atheism, lazy agnosticism, and even gullible mysticism, much like a freshman college student trying to stumble his way home from the bar. They all have their appeal, especially to our younger sensibilities, when we’re full of piss and vinegar and want to fight on the front lines of... well, anything we can get behind. These fires typically burn out pretty quickly though, in terms of the long haul of life, and the longer the haul, the more we might start to see how folks aren’t really that different after all. In fact, we’re usually just standing in front of a mirror of one sort or another shouting insults at our own shortcomings and defects that we don’t want to look at—the rosacea of our religions, the muffin top of our morality, maybe the beer gut of our bigotry, or perhaps the pimples of our prejudices. Yes, metaphors can be gross.
</p>
<div class="lquote" style="width: 200px;">The churchman criticizes the mystic for indulging in psychosis while the mystic criticizes the churchman for pandering to convention.</div>
<p>
But, this article isn’t a political or even a particularly religious statement. It’s a statement about observation and practice. Even if your nose is clean and you’ve never pointed an audacious finger at someone else (and good for you, I guess—go ahead and throw the first stone or whatever), you’ve at least <i>heard</i> of it happening. The ardent churchman criticizes the mystic for trafficking with spirits, or indulging in psychosis or other such things. This is understandable when we look on Youtube and see folks flaunting elaborate costumes and acting out theatrical pageantry in ways that just look sort of silly. But, that’s an extreme. The eccentric mystic also criticizes the churchman for pandering to capitalism and convention. But, when we look at someone with a hundred crystals dripping from every appendage, then look back at the opposite end of the spectrum at televangelists with their equally elaborate hair that looks like a glued-on Pomeranian and multi-thousand-dollar suits, the two might start blurring together.
</p><p>
Just in my playful descriptions of these two paradigms, you’ll notice that it already sounds prejudiced, if not outright degrading. But, the point is this: now that we’ve conjured up images of the exaggerated, we can see that one man’s witch hat is another man’s elaborate toupee. For the moment, we won’t even care as much <i>what</i> they believe as <i>that</i> they believe in something, and believe in it with such enthusiasm that they go all in on it, wear it on their shoulder, and shout it off the mountain. Now, since it’s so easy, and certainly not unfair, to connect these particular colorful characters with theatrics and chicanery, I’ll bring the extreme... extremes, a bit closer to a moderate home that more of us can likely relate to.
</p>
<div class="rquote">They’re seeking a mystical experience that gives their life purpose.</div>
<p>
Some of us may look at a person sitting quietly in a church pew, praying a rosary or reading a Bible passage, and see a reverent activity in progress. Others may look at the same event and see a person who is submersing themselves in delusion, be it in “wrong” beliefs or in “wrong” practices. Some of us may look at a person in a Buddhist temple, sitting silently in meditation and surrounded by smoking incense, and see someone reverently seeking enlightenment through mental and spiritual discipline. Others may look at the same person and see someone who has followed “pagan” traditions, or is merely deceiving their senses with chemical stimuli.
</p><p>
These two modest examples are, regardless of their particular theological and philosophical goals, people engaging in fundamentally the same practice. They’re seeking a spiritual or mystical experience—one that gives their life purpose or meaning. I would even argue that the ardent materialist, when engaging in a sociological or scientific endeavor, is engaging in roughly a similar process. Although perhaps not a “mystical” pursuit <i>per se</i>, such a person would still be engaging with all their mental and physical faculties in something that gives their life meaning, or is at least meaningful to them. In any case, the abstract pursuits of our longings don't generally produce measurable results, but nonetheless have genuinely mystical effects on us, whether its praying with scripture, meditating in solitude, performing ancient ritual, singing with a choir, or whatever. So, we can now start to make a more patchwork quilt out of the practices that people undertake and blanket it over a pretty broad variety of stuff.
</p>
<div class="lquote">We’re all just acting out the fact that we are<br><span style="font-style: normal;">homo sapiens</span>,<br>the “wise man.”</div>
<p>
Whether you’re trying to reach up to God, reach out to the spiritual forces around you, elevate your mind and spirit to enlightenment, or just acting out your beliefs in more material, perhaps even theatrical ways, we’re all kind of doing the same thing, in a manner of speaking. We’re all acting out the fact that we are <i>homo sapiens</i>, the “wise man.” We’re all seeking wisdom and enlightenment in one form or another. In fact, some people have suggested that since we’re so inclined to the wispy, unexplainable aspects of the cosmos, that we would more appropriately call our species <i>homo spiritualis</i>, or the “spiritual man.” If you’re raising a cynical eyebrow at this notion, just remember two things: 1) it’s a broad generalization of the whole species, and 2) there has never been a civilization in history without religion in some form or another.
</p><p>
It’s in our nature to be spiritual. Our very use of spoken and written language is a representation of our ability and propensity to utilize abstract thought. That being said, whether you’re Lewis’ magician or materialist, or a gullible mystic or a lazy agnostic, you’ve got something in your DNA that pushes you to look up, down, and all around for something a little more than what your regular old senses provide. You want... no, you <i>need</i> some kind of meaning or purpose, and it’s what sets you apart from the moo-cows and kangaroos. However, we live in a big, diverse planet full of different languages, cultures, climates, and traditions. So, the way we search for meaning would naturally be very different, but in a way, still fundamentally very similar in terms of what we're searching for.
</p>
<div class="rquote">The way we search for meaning is very different, but still fundamentally very similar.</div>
<p>
In one part of the world where pigs were hard to clean and cookery wasn’t too reliable, it’s understandable that they might have been deemed “unclean” by one tradition, while on the other side of the world, people ate those delicious bacon factories like they were going out of style. In another part of the world, where the climate was cold and gray, it was pretty normal to wear heavy, elaborate robes during worship ceremonies, while in other parts of the world, it was so hot and humid, that worship and ritual was always done outside wearing next to nothing, because no one wants to soak their finest church clothes like they just did jumping jacks in the attic.
</p><p>
Even those things are all details, though. The fundamental similarity is that we all want purpose or meaning. Some of us engage in elaborate rituals in funny hats, while others gather around campfires dancing and beating drums. Some of us spend hours in meditation, clogging up the AC filter with incense smoke, while others pour through ancient tombs and sacred texts, seeking the wisdom of the ancient bearded guys who came before us. And, some of us dance with snakes and babble ecstatically while others simply look longingly to the stars and theorize about what lies beyond the veil of our sensory limitations. We all seek wisdom and think mystically, in one form or another, so we should all take a moment to suspend our more obvious differences and seek out our more elusive but fundamental similarities.
</p></div>
<hr width="33%" align="left">
<div class="fnote">
*C.S. Lewis, <i>The Screwtape Letters</i>.
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-46637772043613223542018-07-06T16:11:00.000-05:002018-09-06T16:56:43.936-05:00The Devil of Dorset Street - A Thirty-Three Short Story<center><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi88YcnwWykISFZTe9XagtUYjbydW76PKvqD5qLlFK5DT8GBDIDKa4VSrUCVUP1FgGOpIQ-m5KDj7soEE786_os0f6E2VdYErClAf6NAcnCCDQgbG7m1cSNUdxLppAdwYMknRvck7TpsfU/s550/Devil_of_Dorset_Street.jpg"></center>
<div class="preface">
“This little story is one of mystery, murder, and blind vengeance. It involves three siblings in the East End of 19th century London working for a eccentric doctor to improve the community and do their father proud. History may be missing the details, as it often does, but the truth is much darker, much more... <i>entertaining</i>.”
<div style="text-align: right;">-Randolph Midian</div>
</div>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<p>
Wiping the sweat from his brow, John Wallace tried to rush through his otherwise delicate work. It was difficult to see though, as the moon shown barely a sliver and his only illumination came from the ambient gas light several yards away in the nearby street. He wished he had not worn so many layers, but he was not accustomed to working so late and the normal chill of the September London air seemed less so than usual. Perhaps it was the stress of the job getting to him, though.
</p>
<p>
“That Truman bloke better keep paying like he promised,” John grunted under his breath as he fumbled with his task. He was pressed for time and tried to quiet his panting to avoid being disturbed. Although a butcher by trade, John was not particularly skilled with a knife, despite having been at the business for many years. Nonetheless, his recent night shift assignment carried a promise of significant overtime wages and he was more strapped for money than ever. His younger brother and sister were burdensome, but even into their adulthood, he still felt a deep sense of responsibility for them since their father had died when they were children.
<a name='more'></a></p>
<p>
He paused and wiped his brow with his sleeve again, grumbling quietly to himself in monologue, “It’s all for the best, John. The money’s good. Do it for old dad. Do it for Jacob and Jackie. Truman’s good for it.” A fine spatter of blood streaked across his face, sending droplets into his right eye. “Ugh,” he groaned softly, rubbing at his face. The conditions of his night job were far less favorable than the already toiling conditions at the butcher shop. Nonetheless, he continued, quietly reminding himself of his motivations as he worked.
</p>
<p>
Finally portioning out the cuts of meat his employer had requested after what seemed like hours, John sighed in relief and wrapped them up in paper. He methodically wiped his hand with a rag from his back pocket and packed up his butcher knives into an old leather case that had once belonged to his father. He never knew the case for what it had actually been though, which was a clergyman’s travel case for mass. Though the vessels and altar cloths had long since been discarded by Vicar Michael Wallace after he abandoned his holy orders, the case, which was simply sturdy and practical, had remained in common use for some time, carrying tools and anything else he might have need of.
</p>
<p>
After John had haphazardly tossed his knives into the case, he carefully laid the packs of meat inside next to them. Though the packs held little value for him, they were apparently of great worth to the eccentric Doctor Bennett Truman—so much so that John estimated he could pay off all the family debts within the next two months. He pulled himself up to his feet, dusted off his knees, tugged his hat down over his brow, and headed off towards Truman’s office. The case gripped tightly in one hand, John pulled his gloves back on with his teeth as he rounded the corner from Hanbury Street to Wilkes, nearly running into Jacob, who had been wandering the neighborhood looking for him.
</p>
<p>
“Oi, John. I been lookin’ for you all night. Been at the job?” said Jacob at an uncomfortable volume with little discretion to his name.
</p>
<p>
At thirty-one, he was only about two years younger than John. However, he had always been a good deal slower than most folks, and he was what his older brother often affectionately called “thick.” Even his appearance spoke of an unkempt and inattentive man of much younger and more reckless years. His hair was straw yellow and shaggy, always slightly matted, and his clothing was functionally thoughtless at best—plain trousers and an often-stained shirt. He wore shoes that squeaked and idly parted the front sole with his toes whenever he sat still for more than a few minutes. Although he was not a bad-looking fellow in general, his face did betray his mental handicaps behind a boyish façade with a slight drag that gave away an almost childlike ignorance.
</p>
<p>
John shoved his brother lightly against the wall. “Shush, Jacob,” he said quietly and with a professional calmness, “I did the job already. Going now to drop off Truman’s packages.” He glanced casually around the street and took a step back from his brother, “These are hard times, you know. If you got a good job, you don’t want to go announcing it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, now do we?” He leaned in to Jacob with a tired half-smile and whispered with his hand dramatically blocking the side of his face, saying with a comical hush “Besides that, ‘tween you and me and the wall here, I ain’t that good a butcher. All the boss would have to do is talk to another shop across town and we’d be out of a job in two shakes.”
</p>
<p>
The two men were almost polar opposites in appearance, almost as though John were the father and Jacob the son. While Jacob’s appearance smacked of a young stable hand, which was his part-time job during the day, John was more shabby-genteel, with waistcoat and long-ago-pressed black trousers. He had a slim but respectable wardrobe that he took great care of, but after so many years of wear, now shown several holes and fraying edges.
</p>
<p>
Although John did value his appearance, his wages allowed only for second-hand, moth-eaten vestiges of gentry. Even his hat was worn nearly through in places and his dark hair was so infrequently groomed that it stuck out from underneath when he failed to maneuver it carefully enough underneath the brim. His face still bore the worn countenance of a patriarch though, with a sculpted nose mounted between chiseled cheekbones and heavy brows that would produce a menacing gaze were it not for his nurturing smile. His labors and stresses had put many more years on his face than the thirty-three he would claim in the next month or so.
</p>
<p>
Jacob shoved his brother back playfully, chuckling, “Oh, stop it, John. I bet you’re the best butcher this side o’ London.
</p>
<p>
John smiled contently. Jacob’s kind innocence never failed to comfort him and bring his mood up from whatever concerns weighed on his broad shoulders. He continued to walk, nudging his brother with his elbow to follow. “There’s also the, uh, element of discretion too, remember? Our employer, he ain’t the most up and up, you know?”
</p>
<p>
Jacob twisted his face in confusion, “But, he’s a doctor, ain’t he? I mean, he needs them cuts o’ meat for his studyin’ an’ such.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, yeah. That’s what he says, and it ain’t our business past that. And, the work itself is good work. But,” John said, slapping his brother affectionately on the shoulder, “you know the bobbies won’t see it that way. They got rules against this kind of, well, stealing.”
</p>
<p>
The brothers chatted casually while walking for several blocks. While Jacob had a bad habit of neglecting where he was going and subsequently getting lost, even after growing up in the streets of the East End, John very carefully studied his surroundings at all times. They were heading for Doctor Truman’s office to get paid, but it was a rather secluded location, looking only like a modest home to the casual observer. The doctor claimed to need his privacy and that not having a public practice allowed him more time for research.
</p>
<p>
They stopped in the street at the first flagstone of a short walkway that led to an old two-story house whose exterior was so neglected that most passersby assumed it abandoned. John turned to his brother, saying thoughtfully, “Now, you just wait outside here, okay?” Jacob started to protest, but John swiftly cut him off, as if expecting an argument, “It’s just for the business, Jacob. It ain’t anything personal, honest. The doctor’s a strange bird and I don’t want to risk getting him jittery.” Jacob nodded sheepishly and planted his feet on the sidewalk. John patted him on the shoulder with a smile.
</p>
<p>
After John knocked a special code rhythm, the front door opened abruptly and he was greeted by a cold and accusing face with dark eyes peering sternly at him from behind gold-rimmed, amber-tinted spectacles. The doctor was a comely man, by general standards, of perhaps a well-preserved middle age and of an always stiff posture and unforgiving countenance. His skin was almost unnaturally perfect, free from crease or blemish, as if his aversion to public activities and nearly unmoving features sustained his statuesque appearance.
</p>
<p>
Doctor Truman jabbed at John with a sharp and insincere greeting, “Good evening, Mr. Wallace.” The corners of his mouth quivered almost too subtly to notice as he made a futile attempt to alter his expression to match the social convention of his words. “Please, come in,” he said flatly, as he stepped aside and gestured his guest into the sitting room. His blue-gray suit was finely pressed and looked like it was fresh from the tailor, totally unmarred by fade or wear. With every movement he seemed to effortlessly adjust his posture and garments like each passing moment was carefully rehearsed and flawlessly executed. Although his manners were technically impeccable, his presence was painfully unnerving and his stare both chilling and discomforting.
</p>
<p>
Meanwhile, Jacob, still out in the street, had drifted into idle pacing in short order. His attention span seldom allowing for more than a few minutes of committed watchfulness, he was already kicking loose stones idly around the sidewalk and clicking his tongue impatiently. A while later, the sound of the front door closing brought him back to soldier-like attention. “John!” he thoughtlessly exclaimed while waving.
</p>
<p>
John sighed, rubbing his forehead, and hurried out to the street to quiet his simple-minded brother. He carried his tool case in his left hand, now somewhat lighter, and a small leather bag in the other. “Come on, Jacob,” he said in a hushed tone, “let’s go home.”
</p>
<p>
Jacob, finally remembering the discretion his brother had urged, forced his voice lower, “You get paid?”
</p>
<p>
John held up the bag and shook it to make the coins inside jingle and smiled to reassure him.
</p>
<p>
With an exaggerated frown, Jacob replied, “It don’t look like much. Did he shortchange you?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, no, dear brother,” John said in a comically erudite manner, unable to suppress his excitement as he opened the bag to show Jacob his spoils. “M’lord hath indeed paid handsomely… for a job well done of course.” From the small opening shown several gleaming gold sovereigns.
</p>
<p>
Jacob’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he stammered, “Th- that ain’t what he promised… i- is it, John?”
</p>
<p>
“Way more than he promised,” John replied proudly, tucking the bag into his jacket, “But, the good doctor says he’s got some more jobs for me and he called this a ‘retainer’ of sorts. And,” he clapped his arm over Jacob’s shoulders, “he said he’d like you and Jackie to help out too.”
</p>
<p>
Jacob grinned, but then wrinkled his brow and said, “Oh, that’d be great. But, we don’t know nothin’ great ‘bout butcherin’. I don’t even know how to pack the meat up proper, and Jackie… well, you know she’s so excitable.”
</p>
<p>
“I know, I know,” said John, with calming reassurance. “I told the boss that too. But, he insisted that I have help, to ‘spread the work around’ he said. I’m not sure why, but for this much coin, who’m I to ask? Besides, I’ll teach you everything you need to know, and the doctor ain’t too particular as long as he gets the cuts he’s looking for and we keep it all under wraps.” John paused for a moment, then cautiously added, “I, uh… I also already brought Jackie along on the first job, you know, last week.”
</p>
<p>
“What?! You took her, and you didn’t tell me?” Jacob exclaimed, genuinely hurt by the exclusion. He was the middle child after all and naturally had always felt somewhat alienated in one way or another, despite his brother’s best efforts to the contrary.
</p>
<p>
“I know,” John continued, “I’m sorry. We weren’t sneaking behind you or anything, and I didn’t want to leave you out. Honestly, I didn’t plan on taking her at all. It just turned out to be in a different part of town, one Jackie knew better, and she begged to go. You know how it is when she gets something into her head.” He gripped Jacob by the shoulder firmly, “I promise though, you can do the next job.”
</p>
<p>
John’s younger brother lit up as his frown turned instantly upward, “Really? All by myself?”
</p>
<p>
“Well,” John answered, “I’ll have to go with you, show you the ropes and all. But, yeah, you can do the work yourself. It’ll be just like portioning a pig, like I showed you in the shop a while back.” He patted the lump of coins in his inside breast pocket, “It ain’t exactly honest work, but I think you’ll enjoy it.” Nudging Jacob with his shoulder, he added, “And, aside from the coin, you’ll be doing old dad proud, won’t you?”
</p>
<p>
Jacob grinned wider, excited to think of working with his brother and of all the money they would make, “Yeah, dad would be proud, wouldn’t he?”
</p>
<p>
Throughout the rest of the month the Wallaces enjoyed the spoils of John’s new night job. He still toiled away at the butcher shop while Jacob worked as much as he was allowed at the stable, and Jackie working as a part-time maid at a lodging house. While John still felt responsible for them ever since losing their father in ‘sixty-eight, the three of them actually looked after each other quite well and even managed to keep each other out of trouble, which was no small feat in those days. Attractive young women like Jackie were often pressed into working the streets, but John always did everything in his power to see that they had at least enough money to keep a bit of bread on the table, and Jacob had quite literally beaten off with a club more than one aggressive advance to his younger sister over the years.
</p>
<p>
Jacqueline Wallace herself was no delicate creature though. Despite her thin and graceful frame, she was lithe and energetic and within her burned a roaring passion that, on calm days, manifested as an almost theatrical flair for the dramatic and, on particularly tumultuous days, showed itself in rebellious, if not violent, expressions of temper to those that crossed her. She always managed to hide her willful passions behind a demure mask of femininity—an easy thing to do with her creamy skin, smooth bone structure and long, dark curls that were prone to fall playfully over her bright and welcoming eyes. She had always been the baby of the family and still owned the title at the age of twenty-four, with her older brothers always wrapped around her delicate yet deft little finger.
</p>
<p>
Doctor Truman requested three other night jobs during September and they were outside the district, further south of the East End. Expenses were paid in advance, and the good doctor always paid more than he had promised on delivery of the product. On one occasion, John attempted to find out a bit more about his employer. However, the only information he could cautiously extract from the stoic figure was that he was a physician from Devonshire that had left his practice there, coming to London to research the “ailments and pathology of the unfortunate urban commons,” as he himself phrased it. Given his generous wages and the Wallaces’ current living conditions, that was enough to satisfy John’s curiosity.
</p>
<p>
Although the Wallaces had heard spotty rumors of their own wealthy relatives, most of which had immigrated to America, they themselves lived in the manner typical of the “unfortunate urban commons.” The three of them shared a very small residence that was owned by the butcher who employed John. It was a minimal and shared space, but it was more than some others had. Life generally hung by a thread until Doctor Truman seemed to appear out of the fog like a specter.
</p>
<p>
John did not know why he chose him in particular, but as he had already told his brother, he did not consider the details to be any of his concern past delivering the orders and getting his wages. In those days, an honest day’s work for a good wage was too valuable to question, even if it was technically a night’s work, and not terribly honest either. The Wallaces thought it for the greater good though, considering what had happened to their father, and John tended to dissuade any rousing doubts from his brother and sister with his patriarchal influence and touting the credibility of Truman’s dignified title.
</p>
<p>
One night, towards the end of September, as the autumn chill was starting to set in, Jackie burst in to their common room, her face alight with mischief and the day’s paper waving about in one hand. “Look it, boys! We made the paper!” she squealed with wicked glee.
</p>
<p>
John, who had just gotten off work at the butcher shop and was still changing out of his stinking work clothes, walked over confused and grabbed the paper out her waving hand. He murmured out loud as he read the headline, “What? They printed a letter. Who wrote this?” Continuing down the page, he began to read a letter that was sent in to the paper and reprinted for the public, “Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me… I am down on whores and shant quit….” His eyes grew wide and flamed with rage as he flung the paper across the room, nearly smacking Jacob with it.
</p>
<p>
John rushed upon Jackie like a mad beast, grabbing the giggling young woman by both arms and screaming, “What the hell have you done, girl?! You wrote in to the paper? What were you thinking?”
</p>
<p>
Jackie stifled her impish laughter into an intimidated whimper, “I- I didn’t give any names up. It was just a bit of fun, you know? They keep printin’ about how active them stupid coppers are and I jus’ wanted to….”
</p>
<p>
“Do you know what you could’ve done?!” John roared at her as his grip tightened and he shook her. Her hair fell over her face and he flung her back to look her in the eyes, “You gave them Jacob’s name! And, you used the word ‘doctor’! That could give away Truman and we could lose the job! Are you daft, girl?”
</p>
<p>
Jacob, who shrank into the corner as he often did during any argument amongst them, picked up the paper, mumbling, “She put my name in the paper?” He sheepishly spoke up, pointing at the print, “Oh, it’s ok, John. She didn’t write my proper name, just my nickname.” As he looked back at the paper, he mumbled to himself, “Can’t say I fancy the title though…”
</p>
<p>
Jackie smiled innocently at John, “See? Jack don’t care none,” and tried to wriggle out of his grip. “Jack” had been Jackie’s nickname for Jacob since they were children. Although John never used it, Jackie called him by that name exclusively, both as a term of endearment and with a subtle edge of sibling mockery.
</p>
<p>
Just beginning to come to his senses, John loosened his grip on her arms. He shook his head, frustrated, and growled through his teeth, “Jackie, why would you do this? Do you even understand what you’ve done?”
</p>
<p>
“I jus’ wanted to shake the police up a bit. They been so puffed up over these jobs of ours, sayin’ they’re ‘gettin’ close’ and they’ll ‘catch him any day’ and all that rubbish,” Jackie proclaimed, waving her arms around mockingly. “They don’t have no idea,” she shouted defiantly, with the spark of madness in her eyes that flared up any time she became overly excited. She calmed herself again in an attempt to look apologetic, “Please don’t be cross with me, John. It’s only a bit of fun. It don’t give them nothin’ to work on, after all.”
</p>
<p>
Jacob, who had slowly and without any notice of his siblings shrank back into his corner in a seated position, added softly, “If dad were here, he’d say the Wallace devil would come for you, Jackie.”
</p>
<p>
Jackie scoffed and stuck out her tongue, “Oh, come on, Jack. Don’t you think we’re a wee bit past dad’s old stories?”
</p>
<p>
“I just mean... I don’t know,” Jacob mumbled, “Anytime you put family in the way of it. That’s why dad told them stories.”
</p>
<p>
Fuming, his mind racing through possibilities and trying to regain his paternal composure, John sat down in his rickety wooden chair and rubbed at his forehead. The creaking of the chair coupled with the mention of the “Wallace devil” brought back memories of his father sitting him down in in his old chair and telling him stories. John believed it had always been merely some old folktale that his father had twisted up a bit to be a family legend, likely just to scare the children into sticking together and minding their parents. The story went through a slightly different iteration every time his father told it, almost as though he had a hard time remembering it himself. The basic premise of the stories, however, always remained the same.
</p>
<p>
The Wallace family was said to have a devil, a sort of boogeyman, that always watched them, waiting to snatch up any unsuspecting victims. As most stories went, a witch or some other villainous character (the stories varied on who exactly) had sent this devil as a punishment for the sins of some distant ancestor. It watched every child as they grew up, remembering their deeds, and when they became an adult, at a certain age, it would take them and eat them if they had been bad. Being “bad” usually was represented in the tales by acts of disobedience to parents, being cruel to one’s siblings, stealing, and other mischievous things that were painfully commonplace for most children.
</p>
<p>
John’s mother, who had died giving birth to Jackie, never knew much of the stories as they were unique to their father’s side of the family, but apparently went quite far back in history, as his father claimed. Where the stories differed though, and the reason John was particularly put off from the mere mention of them, is in the passionate way his father told them to him specifically, as well as the personal details he included. He seemed to have left such disturbing details out of the stories he would tell Jacob and Jackie, saving them in earnest for John, being the oldest and most responsible of the three. According to Michael, especially when his children would misbehave and scoff at stories of the Wallace devil, he himself did not believe the stories when his parents told them to him either—that is, until the day he supposedly met it himself.
</p>
<p>
Michael claimed to have encountered the Wallace devil in 1858 when he was thirty-three years old. He was the vicar of a small church on the outskirts of the Whitechapel district at the time and John was barely three years old. As the story generally went, he was heading down to the river to bless a newly constructed cargo ship, although occasionally he thought he might have been going to the shipyard to administer last rights to an ailing laborer—his memory of the details had always been dodgy. Regardless of what sent him there, he always rushed to the more frightening parts of the story, when he was attacked on a moonless night by a large, diabolical monster, with huge arms, long claws like a lion, a head like a great crocodile, and eyes like death, black and lifeless, like a doll’s eyes.
</p>
<p>
Michael said the beast killed two other men and nearly destroyed a small warehouse trying to get to him. He claimed to eventually escape it by luring it to a large loading wench on top of a roof, which the beast became tangled in and swung off in a ravenous fit of rage, sending it plummeting into the waters of the Thames. It splashed and howled, but being entangled with the thick cargo rope bonds and weighted with the heavy wench pulley, quickly sank beneath the surface while being carried away in the current.
</p>
<p>
As John became older and more skeptical, he began to question the more fantastic elements of the story, asking if it could have been a wild animal that somehow got into the city or perhaps a person trying to scare him. The more his son dissected the story though, the more Michael seemed to swing to extreme, superstitious explanations, almost as if the memories haunted him with some obscene guilt. He claimed it was a devil sent from hell itself to take him, and that it was the encounter, shaking him so violently to the core, that caused him to give up his collar and exile himself from the Church. He had believed himself unworthy and that the beast was proof of God’s judgement of his sins.
</p>
<p>
John came back to his senses, having fallen into a bit of a stupor thinking about the possible damage Jackie had done with her dramatic indiscretions. Jacob and Jackie were still arguing, she with her fiery temper alight and gilded with mischief and he with a simplistically base grasp of language and rhetoric unsuccessfully trying to take up John’s side of defense. Their older brother pushed himself up from the creaking chair and said, “Wait now, just hold on.”
</p>
<p>
The two childlike adults stopped mid-breath and looked at their brother. John, having regained his composure, continued, “Jackie, this letter is totally off, foolish beyond what I can even say.”
</p>
<p>
Jacob pointed at his sister and cut in, “See, Jackie! I told you, you was out of line.”
</p>
<p>
Jackie slapped his hand away in an instant like a cat swatting at a bird and sneered at him, “Oh, shut it, Jack. Let me...”
</p>
<p>
Waving his hands calmly downward, John interrupted again, “Hang on, Jacob, just hang on. Yeah, she was out of line.” He picked the paper back up and straightened it out to look at the printed letter again, saying, “But, this letter’s got folks and the police thinking there’s some single bloke out there running around like a madman, not us three doing good work for a doctor,” he paused for a moment and looked back up at them, “and for old dad.”
</p>
<p>
Jackie smiled wide and gleefully launched herself onto Jacob, wrapping her arms uncomfortably around his neck from behind, “See boys? I do have brilliant ideas!” She squeezed her arms together as Jacob’s face reddened and his eyes bulged. He pulled at her wrists, but Jackie playfully held him tight without regard to his breathing, adding, “And, see there, Jack? You’re famous now! How ‘bout that?”
</p>
<p>
John sighed and dropped the paper into his chair. His judgement on Jackie’s mischief was only half genuine. He was really still quite anxious about the whole ordeal, but also understood that the damage had been done and there was little to do but turn his siblings’ energies to a more productive ideal. As long as no disapproval from the good doctor fell on them, they should be safe.
</p>
<p>
The next day, John received a telegram from Doctor Truman asking for his “immediate audience,” in his typical manner of formality. John, assuming the worst repercussions from the newspaper incident, rushed to the doctor’s residence, fully prepared to issue the fullest and most sincere apology and do anything to provide reparations and keep his lucrative night job. He was shocked upon entering Truman’s office though, when he was unusually well received.
</p>
<p>
The doctor not only praised John’s most recent deliveries with singular enthusiasm, but also commented on the outstanding work of his sister in “public misdirection” with her letter to the paper. John, somewhat dazed by the unexpected turn of approval, chose not to tell the others, for fear of them taking it as glowing encouragement and pushing Jackie in particular to further carelessness. Not only did Truman offer his approval, but he also gave John and his associates another job to be completed as soon as possible, even going so far as to recommending that he give his brother more chances to put his hand to the trade. So, John took the doctor’s word to heart and hurried home to discuss the matter with Jacob before getting straight to work that night.
</p>
<p>
The next weary morning, the two men came home after the night’s work, both somber and somewhat defeated. “Jacob, I don’t know what to say,” John sighed, following his little brother into their modest room. Jacob was silent, ashamed, as he shuffled to his bed and sat down, staring at his feet. John was always easy on his brother though, in part because of his dullness, but also simply because he had always been protective of him since they were children.
</p>
<p>
“I’m sorry, John,” Jacob forced out in a meek voice, “I got nervous, and didn’t know what to do.”
</p>
<p>
Rubbing the back of his neck while lowering himself into his chair, John was mostly glad Jackie was out at that moment, as she tended to rib Jacob harder than he could sometimes tolerate. “It’s… it’s probably fine,” he said in resignation, “The first one was... well, I don’t know. At least you didn’t get caught. And, the second one will probably be acceptable.” John lifted his tool case and set it on his lap as he patted it, “I’ll just have to see what the doctor says about the product. Leaving the apron, though... that was real thick.”
</p>
<p>
The next day, the doctor did reluctantly accept the Wallaces’ delivery. Although he was not terribly pleased with Jacob’s skill at butchery, he claimed he could make use of the meat in his research nonetheless, making the strange comment, “I suppose the spirits are always willing, even if the flesh is weak.”
</p>
<p>
The doctor’s next job though, would be the last and, oddly enough, he required that it be done specifically by John on the night of November eighth. His reasons, which were not very forthcoming, supposedly had to do with certain chemical compounds that he was preparing and something regarding planetary alignment. The date carried no immediate significance to a simple butcher at first, and the ambiguous explanation seemed unusual for medical science, but John’s mind was simply more fixed on the matter of his employment. He was particularly concerned that the doctor’s real reason for it being the final job was due to his brother’s sloppy work and thought of little else except trying to get back in Truman’s good graces, at least until he arrived home with the news.
</p>
<p>
“The eighth?” Jackie exclaimed, with a gasp of dramatic desperation, “You can’t do a job on the eighth, John. That’s your birthday.” She stomped her foot and slammed down the hairbrush that she had just been dragging through her dark curls, “You know I always do somethin’ special on your birthday! And, it’s your thirty-third too.”
</p>
<p>
John, remembering the date that held little importance to him personally but was always auspicious to Jackie for some reason, replied apologetically, “Right, I forgot. Sorry, Jackie. But, you know how the doctor is. He’s very specific. And, after the last job, we’re lucky to get any work from him at all.”
</p>
<p>
Jackie argued and pouted over the issue for a few minutes, but the reminder of little to no extra wages during the month of October put the issue to rest. Things were always tough in the city, and winter was the toughest. The autumn chill was steadily wrapping its boney fingers around the East End. The poor and the hungry only stood to get poorer and hungrier, and Doctor Truman had offered to pay double his usual wages for the final delivery of meat specimens. So, the Wallaces all agreed that John should handle the final job and hoped the doctor might have more of his strange work for them in the future.
</p>
<p>
A few weeks later, John found himself packing his tool case and wrapping himself in hat and scarf for a cold night on the job. Jackie, who had just come in, stopped him, “John, are you sure I couldn’t come ‘long with you? I know it’s a delicate thing and all, but I’d like to have a hand in makin’ dad proud, you know, one last time.”
</p>
<p>
“No, Jackie,” replied John, sympathetically, “we already talked about this. It is a delicate thing, and we don’t want extra hands in the job that don’t need to be, just in case.” He patted her on the shoulder and smiled, “Don’t worry, you’ve already made old dad plenty proud. I think we all have.” Looking back at Jacob, and still holding Jackie’s shoulder, John added sternly, “Just see to it that neither of you go writing anymore letters, though. That last one nearly did us in.”
</p>
<p>
Jacob looked down at his hands that had been fidgeting with his dilapidated shoes and murmured, “Sorry, John. I just wanted in on the fun is all.”
</p>
<p>
John shook his head and tugged his hat down to his brow. He sighed and headed out into the alleyway. It was just after midnight and the night was bitingly cold with a light rain having just started to prick his face like frigid needles.
</p>
<p>
He had already chosen a mark for the job. John though, had stretched the truth for his siblings, telling them that the doctor had specifically ordered them to target the unfortunates for his research. John thought it lent credibility to the job and served the purpose of convincing Jacob and Jackie that the work was “good work.” In truth, the doctor had issued no such particularities. In fact, Truman made a strict point of nondisclosure between the two of them—he made the orders and John filled them, and that was the extent of the information they exchanged.
</p>
<p>
The largest source of nagging guilt for John—while he believed without question that the work itself was an upstanding project—was what Truman might actually be doing with the deliveries. While it was true that he did use the phrase “ailments and pathology of the unfortunate urban commons,” it was in no way in a compassionate context. The doctor was always cold and distant, almost spitefully stoic in a way, although his manners, in a strict sense, were impeccable. Nonetheless, if ever John were to begin to question the doctor’s motives or agendas, he would simply remember his father and that the end justified the means.
</p>
<p>
Michael Wallace, although once a respectable clergyman in a small parish, fell on desperately hard times after Jackie was born. He had already given up his collar a few years prior to his wife’s death, supposedly stricken by a kind of mania after his encounter with the “Wallace devil,” which he told no one of save his immediate family. Whatever it actually may have been that drove Michael from his faith, he could barely enter a church from that time on and took to doing odd jobs as a general handyman around town for his meager wages.
</p>
<p>
When his wife died, he was desperately afflicted with grief. John, who was only nine years old at the time, had to grow up quickly just to help the family survive. Their father took to drinking to escape his grief, occasionally screaming out in a drunken stupor from nightmares about the devil. With his drunkenness, his work suffered and so did the family. What little money they had went first to the bottle, then to prostitutes, which their father began to frequent in the hopes of filling the desperately empty hole left by the death of his wife.
</p>
<p>
John remembered well the night his father was killed. He was thirteen and Jackie was barely four. He was at home looking after his brother and sister, already exhausted from the work of keeping the house. Their father came in stumbling drunk with a woman holding him by the arm. She was completely sober and seemed to be leading him rather than the reverse. Although he had often come home with women, John would never forget that particular one, a strangely enchanting, if not haunting, image.
</p>
<p>
She was dangerously beguiling, even to a thirteen-year-old, like no other woman he had ever seen in the city. Her long, black hair seemed to dance around her shoulders like wine pouring from a bottle. She wore a spotless, scarlet red dress that her body moved seductively under, like a snake gliding insidiously beneath a silk sheet. Her face was exotic and tanned, like no Englishwoman he had ever seen, with dark eyes and a seductive smile that she mockingly tilted in John’s direction one final time before sequestering into their father’s room with her staggering benefactor.
</p>
<p>
The next morning, John went cautiously into his father’s room to wake him, hoping he would be sober enough to go to work. What he walked into though, was a sight that gripped his soul and would be burned into his memory for the rest of his life. His father lay, still half clothed, spread out lifelessly on his bed. The sheets were soaked red with his blood that had poured from a nearly perfect, razor edged gash across his neck. His eyes were still open, glazed over, and staring blankly upward, fixed in a look of terror. The pockets of his trousers were turned out, all the drawers in the room dumped onto the floor, and the window left open with a cold breeze blowing in through the dingy curtains.
</p>
<p>
John thought of that image from his childhood every time he set out to work for the good doctor. Truman asked for certain parts for his medical research—research that had something to do with curing what plagued the struggling people of the East End. For John, there were no plagues worse than drunkenness and whoring women. That was the good work he knew he had to do, and it took little convincing to also talk Jacob and Jackie into the idea. Any doubts they had about it were even more easily resolved with a minor distortion of the facts involving what the doctor had specifically asked for and what he hoped to achieve with his research.
</p>
<p>
As John passed the butcher shop where he toiled in the daytime hours, he saw something inside the darkened window out of the corner of his eye. Stopping only briefly out of unconscious reflex, he nearly dropped his tool case at what he thought he saw. There was a woman in a scarlet red dress standing inside at the huge chopping block where the owner kept a cleaver embedded and ready for use, her long, black hair draped gracefully over her shoulders as she stared out of the window. He pressed his face against the glass, straining to see, but suddenly realized that it must have been a trick of the shadows in the rain. There was only the block and cleaver, behind which hung a red-stained butcher’s apron and pair of dark gloves.
</p>
<p>
John shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. He assumed it must be nerves and fatigue getting to him. Ever since late that afternoon things had been peculiar and confusing. He had heard noises that no one else heard and glimpsed deceptive figments out of the corner of his eye. Embarking on that final and most important job, it was no wonder his nerves would be shaken and whatever minor disturbance tugged at his mind during the day would only be exacerbated. He resolved to ignore the phantom along with any other illusory distractions that might arise and press on unhindered.
</p>
<p>
The job itself turned out to be easier than John had even intended. His mark lived just off Dorset Street in a single-room flat and was known for being loud and a heavy drinker. When he arrived at the corner of Dorset and Crispin, John used a vantage point that he had already staked out to watch for passersby. He saw her in the street talking to a neighbor for a few moments, then she headed towards her room alone, presumably for the night. Like clockwork, John casually strolled down the street and into the courtyard. He spoke to her in his most unassuming and friendly tone, offering to pay her the money she had just asked to borrow from her neighbor in exchange for her services. She accepted his offer and the two were safely inside her room in no time.
</p>
<p>
Shortly after John set to work on the hapless woman with his sharpest knife, a light scratching came from outside. His victim had already been silenced by a swift slash across the throat, but he paused for a moment to make sure they were alone. There was an old coat hanging over the window as a makeshift curtain and John pulled it aside to peek through. There must have been a strange fog that came in with the rain that night, because the foul smell of sulfur suddenly crept in, singing his nostrils. As John looked back at the woman laid out lifelessly on her bed, he felt an unexpected surge of energy rise through the core of his being.
</p>
<p>
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as sweat broke out all over his face in an instant. “You’ll never do it again,” he growled instinctively through his teeth. John was normally a well-composed and pleasant man, seldom losing his temper nor even speaking without thoughtful consideration. But, the meticulously woven curtain of his composure fell away in that moment and revealed the animal lurking underneath the kind face of John Wallace.
</p>
<p>
Launching himself across the room, John became a ravenous vulture landing on a carcass, his knife a vicious beak tearing through still-warm flesh, his fingers the rending claws holding his feast tightly, pulling pieces apart. “You’ll never do it again!” The words erupted from between the gaps in his stained teeth sending spittle in a mist over his quarry. Unlike the previous jobs, which he executed methodically, if not necessarily skillfully, this was an act of passion. He ripped and tore apart what once was the resident of the tiny room, painting its walls and soaking the bedsheets with crimson spray. The delivery requests of the doctor were little more than a nagging suggestion in the back of his reeling mind as it spun wildly out of control.
</p>
<p>
Blood began to saturate John’s coat and pants and the spatter began to mix with the sweat that poured from his face. His eyes burned like fires from hell as every thrust of the knife ripped deeply into the woman in red that haunted his memories. It was an act of violent retribution against a phantom of John’s mind enacted on an innocent, one that continued in grueling ferocity until his actions were halted suddenly by a raucous banging on the door.
</p>
<p>
The sound was strangely arrhythmic, like an odd number of monstrous clubs pounding on the old wood planks, nearly breaking them in. John panicked silently as he knelt over the bed, blade in one hand and a fistful of mangled flesh in the other. Then, the knocking moved with an inhuman swiftness, up along the outer wall, to the roof, over the window, and around the back until it was over the bed, just above his head. It paused for a moment, then there was an enormous crash from the outside that sent dust and debris trickling from the ceiling.
</p>
<p>
John’s breath was rapid and although he kept his body frozen still, his mind raced and he panted uncontrollably. All in an instant he wondered if the police had found him out, if the letters had given him away, or if maybe even the doctor had set him up. But, he also tried to process the wild nature of the attack on the structure—sounds that could not be human, perhaps that were not even physically possible. A low growl rumbled through the air itself, like the hissing of a crocodile and rolling snarl of a lion echoing from every direction. The stench of sulfur enveloped him like thick fog and his instincts drove him to a mindless urge to run.
</p>
<p>
Knife in hand, he leapt to his case, carelessly dumping everything he had into it, and dashed to the door, thrusting it open and almost ripping it off its rusty hinges. John held his hat down with one hand, running at full speed, and slammed into a figure that was lurking just outside. She cried out in a loud shriek as they both fell to the cold, damp ground. John quickly pushed himself up and saw Jackie under him, stricken with a look of fright.
</p>
<p>
“What are you doing here?!” John bleated out.
</p>
<p>
Jackie, just realizing that her brother had knocked her down, started to laugh and said, “Getting’ a bit messy this go ‘round, eh brother?”
</p>
<p>
John threw himself to his feet and looked back over his shoulder. Throwing a wild-eyed gaze back at Jackie, he asked again, “What the hell are you doing here?! Did you follow me?”
</p>
<p>
“I just wanted in on the fun,” she asked, raising to her feet and trying to knock the dirt off her dress. “Looks like you did that whore a dirty one,” she added with a grin and a fiendish glint in her eye.
</p>
<p>
Jacob also emerged sheepishly from the shadows a few feet behind her, “Sorry, John. We just wanted to see you work this last job, maybe help out again.”
</p>
<p>
John wiped the sweat from his eyes as he panted, “No, no... you don’t understand. There’s some- someone or something out here.” He looked around the otherwise empty courtyard frantically.
</p>
<p>
Jackie looked around, but saw nothing more than he did, “What are you on about, John? You lost your nerve?”
</p>
<p>
A wisp of smoke curled upward through the light mist of rain from behind Jackie. John leaned around her to see the stones of the courtyard seeping up a thick, black ichor that sizzled and seemed to corrode the ground. The sulfur smell again permeated the air and Jackie twisted her face in disgust as she spun around to see what her brother was staring at, “What’s that awful smell?” Jacob too stepped back and snorted in disgust.
</p>
<p>
In a matter of moments, the sludge and spreading decay ate away at a large section of the ground, stones crumbling like caked sawdust in a fire. Jackie had to jump away to avoid the blackness that consumed the footing underneath her as an enormous, twisted limb erupted from the acrid debris. It was like the arm of a huge ape with long, sickle-shaped talons that came crashing down on the solid ground just before another like it came slinking up through the black corrosion. The terrible appendages dug deeply like iron spikes into the stone blocks of the courtyard and hoisted the massive bulk of an inhuman head and shoulders.
</p>
<p>
It was already difficult to make out what the thing was in the flickering gas lights from nearby Dorset Street. But, as it wrenched itself from whatever hellish void it originated from, the lamp flames wavered inside their glass hoods from an inexplicable wind and snuffed out, leaving only clouded moonlight to illuminate the dreadful scene. Jackie was petrified with shock, groping behind her for Jacob’s arm, and tried to mumble something to her brothers through quivering lips. John squinted and desperately tried to focus on the thing.
</p>
<p>
John strained his gaze to see what his eyes were fixed on, but the thing only became harder to look at. As it climbed to a vaguely bipedal position like a lumbering primate, its whole form seemed to oscillate and pulse, like it was blurred, a phantom seen just out of the corner of the eye. The harder he tried to make it out, the more unfocused his eyes became, straining in a pained effort as one looking at a bright source of light. It was a half-real specter, fully present, as the ground cracked under its immense weight, only not fully observable, like a diabolical flitting shadow in the misty rain.
</p>
<p>
Under the dim crescent of moonlight, they could just barely make out the grotesque and hulking form. The gaping maw full of sharp teeth dripping foul ichor, like a monstrous crocodile, the bulging eyes, black and hollow like death—like a doll’s eyes. The air was choked with a terrible, burning sulfurous stench that assaulted every sense, even invading their mouths with an acidic sting. All in a moment, years of skeptical disbelief fell away in crumbling shambles under the impact of the spectacle that loomed over him and John whimpered softly, “The Wallace devil...”
</p>
<p>
The beast’s jaw drooped open slowly and let out a long rolling hiss that again echoed from every direction and seemed to scrape at the inside of their skulls. John, finally freeing himself from shock, grabbed a stupefied Jackie by one arm and darted down the alleyway, calling Jacob to follow. He was pulled in the opposite direction and nearly knocked off his feet as Jackie resisted. Turning his head to call out to her he looked back just in time to see the beast’s huge claws already clamped down on her arm. She screamed for just an instant until it swung its other gargantuan arm around and clasped a hand that was almost vaguely human in shape over her entire head, the force knocking the breath from her chest.
</p>
<p>
John dug his heels into the cracks between the stones of the street, yelling as he pulled, “Jackie, no! Come on!” Jacob fearlessly launched himself onto the beast’s great arm. He felt her body jerk and twist as she tried in vain to pull free of the thing’s iron grip. The beast looked down at her, tilting its head in animalistic curiosity. Then, it lunged forward with inexorable force and flung Jackie aside by the head, ripping her arm from the socket and sending her body crashing into a nearby brick wall effortlessly, like a child tossing a ragdoll. It swung its other arm, flinging Jacob in the same direction and sending him into the wall headfirst with a loud crack of his skull against the bricks.
</p>
<p>
John fell to his feet in horror, watching his beloved family crumple to the ground in lifeless heaps. The beast dropped the Jackie’s arm into a puddle and slowly turned its misshapen head towards the cowering figure on the ground. While it had flung Jackie as one would carelessly toss aside a discarded garment, it now peered at John from the abyss of its dark eyes with a singular and thoughtful intent. He kicked madly, still struggling against the paralyzing shock, and scrambled to his feet. A predator seeking its prey, the beast leaned forward and lunged towards him hungrily with its hideous maw agape, bellowing noxious, acidic fumes. John turned and ran.
</p>
<p>
Turning the corner onto the desolate street, John grabbed a lamp post to avoid slipping on the wet stones. As he fled, he looked around hopelessly for anyone who might be passing by. But, it was late, and even the whores he would have pleasurably cut down were no longer walking the streets. He shoes beat down hard on the sidewalk and he looked back just in time to see the beast bounding after him, running half on its enormous front claws and half on its hind legs, but almost shifting violently in and out of focus. In the distance, John heard a woman scream at the sight, but the spectator obviously fled as soon as she had uttered the sound and was nowhere to be seen.
</p>
<p>
Halfway down the block, John spotted an alleyway and turned down it, the soles of his shoes skidding on wet stone as he nearly lost his footing. There was a ladder that led up the tall building with no other perceivable means of escape. He flung off his coat in the hopes of better maneuverability and jumped up several rungs of the ladder to grab the highest one he could. The sound of plodding footfalls pursued close behind as he clamored with all his strength up the cold, wet iron bars.
</p>
<p>
Clawing his way desperately to the roof and struggling to hold on by the tiles slicked with rain, a crashing noise erupted from below. The thing was climbing up after him, digging its powerful claws into the bricks and twisting the iron ladder as it pulled itself upward towards it prey with focused intent. Stone and iron seemed to crumble under the beast’s touch rather than break, instantly rotting away under its corrosive presence. In seconds, it vaulted its huge form up onto the opposite neighboring roof, peering at him menacingly against the dark of the night sky. Before John could think of what to do, the thing launched itself clear over the alleyway at him. Without a conscious thought, he let go of his grip on the tiles and slid off the roof, just catching himself with one hand on what remained of the mangled ladder, dangling two stories up.
</p>
<p>
The beast crashed through the roof entirely, plummeting through the ceiling and the second floor, sending a plume of dust and wreckage into the misty air above. It howled, not an anguished cry from the fall, but a frustrated roar of mad voracity. John knew the thing was probably not dead, but merely slowed down, if he was lucky. Using the slick wetness of the iron to his advantage, he clumsily slid down the twisted bars while rust scraped and sliced his hands open along the way.
</p>
<p>
When he got down far enough, John let go and fell on the hard, stone ground. His ankle folded over sideways under his weight, making a horrible crunching and popping sound as bones broke and tendons snapped. He choked back an agonizing scream, clapping his hand over his mouth in an attempt to not alert the beast to his location. Leaning against the wall, soaked and limping as the intense pain shot up his leg like lightning, he tried to pull himself to his feet to get away. Able to do little better than a half-crawling limp, John dragged himself moaning out to the street and was greeted by two figures a few yards away standing rigidly statuesque side by side under an umbrella.
</p>
<p>
John wiped the sweat and water from his face, straining to make out who it was in the dark, when a familiar voice spoke to him. “Good evening, Mr. Wallace,” the sharp and cold voice of Doctor Bennett Truman ripped through the chilled air like a knife.
</p>
<p>
As he clamored to his feet as best he could, confused by the encounter, John made out the stern outline of the good doctor in his usual perfect, blue-gray suit and ever stoically accusing face. One hand was comfortably in his pocket and he held the umbrella in the other. At his side was a strangely familiar, inexplicably young and attractive woman holding his arm, stroking it lustfully. Her long, black hair draped elegantly around an exotically beautiful face and over her scarlet red dress that flashed against the blackness.
</p>
<p>
“It was only a matter of time, you know,” the doctor continued in his unnaturally flat tone, “Your work was good enough. And, the product was, as you can see by tonight’s results, quite suitable for my special work.” Truman cracked an unnerving half-smile for the first time, saying, “Your father was right, though,” he casually motioned towards where the beast had crashed through the building, “My hand reaches all the Wallaces in the end, when they’ve served their purpose.” The woman at his arm grinned maliciously with bright crimson lips as he spoke, “Call it a birthday gift—all of your deeds repaid in kind, and perfectly on schedule.”
</p>
<p>
John stood limping, his mouth agape in muddled fear and bewilderment. He almost did not notice the sound of breaking glass showering down to the nearby sidewalk as the beast slowly emerged through the window of the downstairs shop it had crashed into. Ignoring the pair of onlooking figures completely, it lumbered towards its prey with heavily plodding steps. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw it raise a giant clawed arm silhouetted against the softly moonlit sky.
</p>
<p>
The doctor and his companion turned together and began to slowly walk away, their footsteps tapping sharply on the street and echoing through John’s mind, as Truman said, “Happy thirty-third birthday, John.”
</p>
</div>
<Center>THE END</center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-82224921508611965472018-06-18T16:52:00.000-05:002018-07-09T10:14:34.370-05:00Freedom, Drinking, & Evolution<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnrhmSx9DSQV66O0LYzBNEJ764XbPiCD2y6h0DG_zEG1jeTKmQk2dCrzH8ArHFpsSS9TSeVRacBKqvB0D7hDaMeuV7YzejlYB8Ocnkpd1gh2z7-XszIjBA0n-hC9RlTYPzOw0XmS05Dg/s250/half_empty.jpg" style="float: right; padding: 0px;">
<p>
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of folks (including myself) say this or that about what they “believe” based on how they grew up, what their family did or didn't force on them, or the particular hand the world dealt them throughout their life. While this is totally natural and very understandable in a humanitarian sense, it really doesn’t do much for our overall psychological well-being and stability. So many of us choose (or choose to accept) our current value systems—culture, religion, social principles, etc.—based on what is essentially just a subjective reaction to our environment, rather than a conscious or thoughtful action on the part of what we objectively think about reality.<a name='more'></a>
</p>
<p>
“My parents made me go to church, so I really hate it now,” is a real common negative reaction. “I come from a family of democrats, so that’s how I’ve always voted,” is a fairly normal kind of political stance. Another type, which most of us don’t really consider, is this kind of thing, “I grew up watching football all the time, so I’m a huge fan.” Not all of these things may seem like what I would call “value systems,” and while some are far more important than others in a moral or social sense, they and others like them are all heavily formative to the kinds of people we are. They play an important role in our morality, how our time is spent, our careers, our friendships, our judgements of the world and people around us, and sometimes aspects of our lives as subtle as what we eat and drink.
</p>
<p>
<div class="lquote">There are basically two types of drinking a person does—active drinking and reactive drinking.</div>
Speaking or drinking (alcohol, that is), this whole concept is kind of like drinking. And, well, even if it’s not, I’m still comparing it to drinking to make my point. Situational detail aside, there are basically two types of drinking a person does—active drinking and reactive drinking. For the moment, let’s set aside the unfortunate yet all-too-common problem of alcoholism, although I’ll come back to it shortly.
</p>
<p>
Active drinking is the best kind of drinking one can do. You might also call it social drinking. This is when we drink because we want to. It includes drinking good-tasting beverages, largely your high-quality beers, fine wines, and sugary or festive mixed drinks, perhaps with a dainty umbrella or piece of bacon stuck in. It also includes celebratory or traditional drinking of just about anything (be it it fancy brew or filthy swill), like having champagne at weddings and baby showers, beer at a barbecue, wine at snooty art galleries and formal events, or whatever else you like at parties and such. Active drinking is really just another way of honoring the timeless human convention of sharing social communion over food and drinks. It’s festive, fun, and socially healthy, in moderation, of course.
</p>
<p>
<div class="rquote">We all fall victim to reactive behavior from time to time.</div>
Reactive drinking can be the worst kind of drinking one can do. Regardless of what you think about what I’ve written so far, I think we can all agree there’s a huge difference between having a few customary beers with friends and family at a wedding and drinking a bottle of whiskey by yourself while mourning a recent divorce. This kind of drinking, regardless of type or quantity of the beverage, is really no different from the abuse of medication. Anyone who’s experienced the loss of a loved one, failed relationships, or even just despair over anything that’s important to them, has likely done this. It never really helps, isn’t very healthy at all, and almost never ends well for anyone. We all fall victim to it from time to time, but we also have to acknowledge that it’s the result of reacting to or trying to cope with something that life threw in our path.
</p>
<p>
Incidentally, reactive drinking is often what leads to detrimental things like alcoholism, drunk driving, and generally doing stupid things we regret later when our friends tell us about it. Nonetheless, diving too far into the dangers of irresponsible alcohol consumption are beyond the scope of this article, so I’ll just leave it as a side note and move on to the real point.
</p>
<p>
Drinking to forget our problems, sources of pain, or personal failures is a mostly natural reaction, but it’s not healthy or productive. Likewise, it’s perfectly natural to choose opposing or complementary value systems to indulge our stewing dissatisfaction or ease our desire to fit in and make us feel successful, respectively. It's perfectly natural, but not usually healthy or productive. Regardless of being healthy or productive though, I’d like to point out a different quality that’s wrapped up in the whole equation, the conceptual quality of freedom and slavery.
</p>
<p>
<div class="lquote">Choices are choices, whether they’re active choices or passive acceptance.</div>
Choices are choices, whether they’re active choices to do or think this or that, or passive acceptance where we idly accept doing or thinking this or that instead of choosing not to. You’ve probably heard that not making a choice is choosing not to choose, or neglecting to act is choosing to stand idly by while something happens. Evolution is characterized by critters reacting to their environment—some of them dying off or failing to reproduce under certain environmental conditions while others survive and pass on their adaptive features through reproducing more offspring. In this way, all organisms are kind of slaves to our environment, with the exception of modern humans, which pretty much as a species said, “Screw this environment noise. We’re inventing agriculture, air conditioning, shoes, and refrigerators.”
</p>
<p>
Us humans, by adapting technology and such, have somewhat freed ourselves from merely living in reaction to our environment, slaves to every heatwave, blizzard, or drought that came along. In doing so, we freed up our time from that pesky task of surviving, allowing us to create works of art, literature, philosophy, Netflix, and jelly beans. To bring this back around to our value systems, the same applies to living simply in reaction to other value systems. If we just choose whatever beliefs or practices that our parents or culture imparted to us, then we’re kind of slaves to custom and acceptance, following along blindly to ease our social transition into this or that demographic. Likewise, if we merely choose whatever beliefs or practices that are in opposition to what we stand against, then we’re kind of slaves to the actions of others.
</p>
<p>
Religion, politics, and all sorts of organizations have perpetrated some atrocious things over the years, but it’s really nothing new. Those things have been going on as long as people have been around. The moment two mouths started talking, the argument was born, and all institutions are controlled by humans with mouths that tend to argue and screw up a lot. But, neither successful visionaries nor revolutionaries operated only on a reactive stance. The American Revolution wouldn’t have been very successful if we had driven away oppression and then just stopped. We had to have had a visionary ideal to pursue in the revolution, and subsequently work at building it in the process. The same goes for our own little revolutions every day and in every choice we make.
</p>
<div class="cquote">
“Strange that we defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights.”<br>-Kahlil Gibran
</div>
<p>
If you choose to defy this or that belief system just because your parents forced you into it, or because some jackass may have deceived you or given the institution a bad name, then you’re really just allowing yourself to be a slave to your environment. What’s really difficult is to share core, fundamental beliefs of any kind with a complete and total wackadoo and be able to distinguish between your sensible approach to that value system and their, well, wackadoo approach to it. If you can choose your value systems <i>regardless</i> of what any other person thinks, rather than <i>in spite of</i> what they think, them you’re truly free. When you’ve truly freed yourself from convention and spite, choosing to act rather than simply <i>re</i>act, to be free to think independent thoughts rather than be a slave to others’ opinions, then perhaps you too can be free enough to create things like literature, Netflix, and jellybeans.
</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-83997355469118920482018-06-05T17:47:00.000-05:002018-07-09T10:14:47.596-05:00Demons: The Inner, the Outer, & the Downright Silly<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-6dJ_CpUvigwlaEAvV_Na3mXC4ImWB28lzeyhHEZKriF66RVFf46SW3ka7gnVr8fashpH6LlOYPiDLYJR42mfrGaVao0y0rbsJeEDH8JM6uRSQkbC9jGGd6cgcBXmIz6th_cF4YRyyA4/s300/demons.jpg" style="float: right; padding: 0px; margin-left: 10px;">
<p>
Demons, devils, fallen angels, imps, djinn, trolls, oni—there isn’t a culture in the world that doesn’t have a name for what it considers to be a malicious spirit of some kind or another. The word, “demon,” itself evokes different images and ideas for all of us based on our particular upbringings, cultural lenses, religious affiliations, and even entertainment. Most folks in the vein of modernity will say that demons are, at best, only metaphors or psychological phenomena or, at worst, the archaic remnants of unenlightened superstition. Some clergy will still say that demons are very real spiritual persons—monsters that stalk us every waking (and perhaps sleeping) moment of the day—constantly seeking to orchestrate our ruination through subtle manipulation of our moral faculties. And, of course, there’s everything in between. Regardless of what you believe about the concept of “demons,” it’s a real presence in our world and culture, whether mythically, spiritually, physically, or merely psychologically.<a name='more'></a>
</p><p>
The inner kind of demon is something I think we all, regardless of religious or cultural background, can agree is a very real and dangerous animal. Sometimes it’s nagging guilt over past mistakes or wrongdoings, perhaps it’s some kind of emotional trauma that’s resulted in a long-term personality shift or insurmountable bias, or maybe it’s a deep and subconscious fear that drives us all to do all sorts of nasty things like hate, discriminate, subvert, and oppress. All of these things and more represent thoughts, emotions, and other psychological phenomena that simmer over time in the stew of our mind until they coagulate into an almost tangible and always destructive form—our inner demons.
</p>
<div class="lquote">Most of us almost automatically dismiss demons as fictional and silly.</div>
<p>
It’s nothing new, and countless folks with many more and more appropriate letters behind their names have written exhaustive volumes on such psychological constructs. So, I bring this topic up here not to revisit what’s already been better articulated elsewhere, but to present it in the context of what we might think a “demon” is. When we hear the word, especially in today’s world of cultural secularism and CGI movie monsters, most of us almost automatically and even subconsciously dismiss it is fictional and silly. But, think of it in terms of how the people of the ancient world might have.
</p><p>
In our enlightened, Wikipedia accessed world, where we can answer almost any question (no matter how ridiculous or obscure) by glancing at a smart phone for thirty seconds, we tend to have the misconception that there were no dissenting opinions, no disbelievers, and no critical atheists in the “superstitious” and “uneducated” ancient world. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The great Greek philosopher, Socrates, was sentenced to death in the 4th century BC, in part, because he was accused of atheism. Although he cleverly argued against the charge, his lifestyle and history were defined by one who thoughtfully and critically doubted absolutely everything he came across. That being said, there are many ancient stories and scriptures that were written specifically to be metaphors for the purposes to teaching about and coping with very real human problems.
</p>
<div class="rquote">It’s easier to tear down a physical wall than to dismantle a psychological one of our own making.</div>
<p>
Humans being the material animals we are have inherent difficulties dealing with abstract concepts. We like to see an obstacle in front of us in order to physically overcome it. It’s much easier for us to tear down a physical brick wall with a sledge hammer than to carefully dismantle a psychological one brick by brick and accept that we built it in the first place. This problem is as old as humanity itself. So, it’s not surprising that some of the ancient stories of monsters and demons at least address (if not <i>represent</i>) the inner struggle of man with himself. In a psychological sense, it’s much easier to analyze and overcome our inner turmoil if it takes on some sort of visualization or comprehensible form. Even if you believe in the presence of real demons as spiritual or bodily monsters, there’s a bounty of wisdom to be had from reading stories about them in the context of the demons we create for ourselves. More often than not, a story doesn’t have only one meaning—it has layers of meaning from the physical to the psychological to the transcendent—even if the author didn’t intend for it to. This is just a manifestation of the astounding complexity of the human brain.
</p><p>
However, I very seldom, if ever, seek to completely dispel the spiritual in favor of the material, or vice versa. So, I also don’t intend to idly dismiss the notion of outer demons absolutely in favor of the inner ones. It’s far more profitable to look at everything in life as a potentially whole system—inner and outer, real and metaphorical, spiritual and material—else we risk limiting ourselves to a myopic, bigoted, and altogether uncreative worldview. That being said, demons of the “real” sort, or malicious spiritual entities, are like everything else of a spiritual nature. They’re neither provable nor disprovable through empirical or scientific faculties. They’re not matters of fact, but matters of believe, the same as you can’t (regardless of what some might think) <i>believe</i> that the world is or is not round, because it’s a proven fact—you either <i>know</i> it or you don’t. Demons in the conventional sense, at least as of our contemporary scientific resources, can’t be matters of knowledge because they aren’t measurable, physical bodies—you either believe in them or you don’t.
</p>
<p>
You might at this point, very justifiably, be wondering why we even consider the outer demons if they can’t be physically perceived or taxonomically catalogued. The point is that they all get dealt with in roughly the same way. If you choose to believe in the personal presence of spiritual evil, whether it be Lucifer, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, or a host of wicked little imps constantly clawing at your psyche to do evil and wreak chaos in the material world, there is always, in every culture of the world, an accompanying remedy for every monster that ails the human person. Many Judeo-Christian traditions still perform ritual exorcism to drive a troublesome devil from the body while some other cultures of the world even invoke possession by good spirits to drive out evil ones. In almost every case though, the remedy involves the addition of positivity to drive out or counteract the negativity (much like medicating a disease).
</p><p>
Martin Luther, the father of Protestant Christianity, once said:</p>
<center>
<div style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 120%; text-indent: 0px; width: 85%;">
“The best way to drive out the devil... is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.”
</div></center>
<p>
With cultural icons like <i>The Exorcist</i> having burned images in our mind of ichor-spewing, bone crushing demoniacs, such a suggestion sounds rather silly. If you ever did encounter someone exhibiting symptoms of a supernatural invasion, the last thing you might think of is to make jokes about it. But, this idea is a very old one, and similar in a way to the notion behind the tradition of the gargoyle.
</p><p>
The architects and artists of the ancient world have been constructing images of hideous monsters for centuries, not just to represent spiritual evil, but to repel it through fear and mockery. This isn’t much different today with how we weave stories and make films with ridiculous rubber monsters of all sorts that vaguely represent what we imagine a “demon” might look like in the flesh. Television shows like <i>Tales from the Crypt</i> and <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i> made a routine tradition of whipping up a new and more fantastic (and sometimes incredibly silly) demon-of-the-week. While we tend to see these stories as just entertainment, they’re really expressing an indescribably old human compulsion to put comprehensible form to abstract ideas of evil, dread, and malice.
</p><p>
Even the silliest of demons on the screen and in books are the most feared and hated parts of ourselves made manifest in a form that not only embodies abstraction, but makes it something we can comprehend and ultimately defeat. More often than not, we defeat these things through mockery. While we may not make humorous jokes directly about representations of evil, we nonetheless best it in battle or invoke a higher power to aide us in its defeat, and in doing so, humiliate the demon through its pathetic loss to a higher and greater good, be it our own or our affiliation with the divine.
</p>
<div class="lquote">While fighting smoke is a futile effort, throwing water on the fire itself is pretty effective.</div>
<p>
Again, I urge you never to totally discount the spiritual in favor of the material or the metaphorical. Doing so would be the proverbial “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”—the spiritual demon (be it real or fictitious) is both evil personified and what gives us the means to overcome evil. It’s a form for that which we can’t easily perceive without form, and therefore have tremendous difficulty in facing in battle. While fighting smoke is a generally futile effort, throwing water on the fire itself is pretty effective.
</p><p>
Maybe demons are just inside our heads in the form of our own fears and self-destructive tendencies, clawing at our subconscious to urge us into vice and despair. Maybe they’re actually clawing at us invisibly from the aether to bring about the ruination of our souls through temptation to sin. In any case, they can only be dealt with and dispatched by a humble and respectful acknowledging that they are present in one form or another. Demons are like diseases—they have to be understood but not indulged, defeated while not contracted. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
</p>
<center>
<div style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 120%; text-indent: 0px; width: 85%;">
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. The devils are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
</div></center>
</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-63141755051383792312018-05-28T18:18:00.000-05:002018-07-09T10:14:57.934-05:00Rolling Ones (and Living With It)<div style="text-indent: 0.25in">
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe2emwql38L7mJPUe_obxbw-_1mleYnkp9fPN7gnSS9QKZGabYFjOf3VMH09XUMATd1YL6Np_YjVOZ8UnDASaC7lg_PbKYNdT0RSvT7QWn4PRmm8MoC2lFeMQQTOvY9Fc7JIh3nKB1V1g/s1600/dice_fumble.jpg" style="float: right; width: 275px;">
Those of you who aren’t of the nerdly persuasion, the terms “rolling a one” and “rolling a twenty” colloquially refer to the usual effects that rolling a twenty-sided die in a tabletop role playing game has—a stroke of extremely bad or good luck or act of skill, respectively. While it’s becoming not only culturally acceptable to be a gaming nerd, but even respectable—thank you, the internet and <i>Stranger Things</i>—in the days when I was tossing around oddly shaped dice on a plank of plywood propped up on sawhorses in my friend’s backyard shed on Saturday nights, such a past time wasn’t considered dinner conversation, if you know what I mean. Nonetheless, there’s been all sorts of other phrases that we’ve used over time to represent inexplicable strokes of good or bad luck. If you’re having a great streak of luck, then everything is “coming up aces.” If things are going particularly crappy for you, then life is “giving you lemons.”<a name='more'></a>
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<div class="lquote">When life gives you lemons...<br>get a new life.</div>
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Along with all of the turns of phrases we have in the English language to describe luck and the superstitions we’ve contrived to explain its nature and origin, we’ve also come up with all sorts of personalized ways of dealing with it, some more or less comforting than others. There’s good luck charms, activities and habits that supposedly bring better luck or ward off bad luck, and even some folks who use asinine approximations of theology to explain why bad stuff happens to good people, saying totally and often callously uncomforting things like, “the Lord works in mysterious ways.” Regardless of how you look at luck and whether you see it totally random, something mystical, or something divinely providential, I think we can all admit that there are times when even the science of mathematics and statistics seems to be outright defied by how many times you can roll a one on any kind of die. That’s the point of this article. I’m not talking about figuring it all out, but rather how to cope with it. When life gives you lemons, get a new life.
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Now, I think you can tell already that I don’t have all the answers to the problem of luck. If I did, you can bet your ass I wouldn’t be writing articles for my little blog website for free. But, as someone who’s rolled a number of ones in my short life, I am something of an authority at least with coping with them (albeit sometimes poorly). That’s what it’s all about really. I was teaching a theology class once and vainly attempting to discuss the exhaustive topic of providence (a topic you can read more about <a href=“http://www.wtbranton.com/2017/07/providence-unpredictability.html” target=“_blank”>here</a>), when an elderly woman spoke and said something that I, in my often cantankerous disposition, might often look down on, but that’s worth some fair and deeper consideration. She said, “once I realized that everything that happened in life was God’s will, my life got a lot better.”
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<div class="rquote">Life often just sucks, but we still live in it and keep doing our best.</div>
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Again, while we all get our torches and pitchforks at the ready, this sounds dangerously similar to the good old “Lord works in mysterious ways” line of BS that we’re all tired of hearing when we get passed over for a job in favor of the hiring manager’s over-privileged cousin or when an innocent loved one is dying of cancer. But, whether you believe in a higher power or not, whether you even believe in luck itself or just think the cosmos is one long series of random events causally rolling from one act of chance to another, what the lady in question was really referring to was a matter of perspective. Notice I also made mention of the fact that she was elderly. This wasn’t to just paint a vivid picture of the social dynamic, but rather to say that someone who was over twice my age and has rolled at least twice as many undeserved ones as I have can still fully internalize a concept, any concept (in her case, the plan of a divine higher power), and find a way to come to terms with the fact that life often just sucks, but we still live in it and keep doing our best.
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<div class="lquote">Water flows around the rock and eventually wears it down to a tiny pebble that tumbles away.</div>
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To clarify, this woman didn’t, on one random day of her life, just wake up and realize that God was at the wheel of her life and suddenly had nothing but good days (I asked, just to make sure, and she confirmed that she did, in fact, still have many crappy days after that). All that really happened is that she realized she wasn’t in complete control of everything in her life. To be realistic, again, regardless of your spiritual beliefs, she’s not in control of most of what happens to her. Once this realization sank in, which may have had to do with living enough years and experiencing enough gains and losses (both deserved and undeserved) to have run the full course of the life experiment, she was able to simply live with what happens and bend around it. Like the saying goes, be like the water, not the rock. Water flows around and over the impassable rock and, eventually and with much effort and tenacity, eventually wears the rock down to a tiny pebble that tumbles away in the water’s current.
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This is easy stuff to hear, say, and repeat to others. But, it’s really hard to fully internalize. When you’ve worked painstakingly hard for something and just don’t get it, when you’ve “earned” something and it seems to slip away just as you can almost taste it, falling through your fingers like water and landing effortlessly into the lap of some undeserving turd who seems to get everything they want just as easy as breathing, then you realize that grief, anger, and despair tend to rule the day. I get it, really. The real challenge is the internalization of reality.
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Anyone who thinks they’re in control or has everything locked down just the way they want it is always in for a surprise, sooner or later. The strongest house can be swept away by a hurricane, burned to ash by wildfire, buried in a mudslide, or swallowed in an earthquake. The healthiest person who exercises every day and takes all the vitamins can still fall victim to disease or infirmity without any warning. I still remember throwing out a large box of vitamins and all sorts of supplements that belonged to my mother shortly after she died in her forties of a totally random brain tumor. Again, whether you believe that a higher power has plans for you that you couldn’t possibly comprehend or manipulate, or if you materialistically observe that shit happens and sometimes you really can’t control it, you’ll all eventually realize that you have to go with the flow or continue to be defeated. Or, maybe not. The point is that you never know.
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<div class="rquote">Does God have it out for us?<br>Is the Illuminati behind it all??</div>
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How many times have you played Monopoly, started out with everything in your favor, and rolled ones every time you toss the dice, ultimately landing you in jail with the smug jerk you didn’t even want to play with owning the Park Place stretch when all you could ever get your hungry hands on was brown town and one of those miserable railroads. It happens. Some of us are born with everything and just get more, some with nothing and somehow manage to keep losing, while others are born with a little more of this, less of that, or have to work twice as hard at one thing than another person, and so on, and so on. Does God have it out for us? Is the Illuminati behind it all? Does Mickey Mouse own our souls <i>already</i>, and we don’t even know it?! I’ve been wrong before, but I don’t think so.
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Statistics and probably can be whatever it wants to be, but I can tell you that in practice, sometimes you roll a totally inexplicable one hundred twenty-three ones in a row. It doesn’t make sense, it’s not fair, and it’s not right. It simply <i>is</i>. If you couldn’t get your hands on Boardwalk no matter how hard you tried, then own the hell out of Baltic and Mediterranean. Fix the ghetto up with a bouncy house and a snowball stand. Take it where you can get it and wash over the rocks of life to get around them and/or wear them down until they tumble away under the force of your unbreakable will. It's not about accepting defeat and giving up the fight, though.
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<div class="lquote">It's about enduring what you can't control to remember to fight another day.</div>
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Life is a battlefield (and so is love—thanks, Pat Benatar). Never forget that despite all the comforts of modern civilization, we still all have to fight, at least in some way, for what we want, and even for what we need. While we may not have to club other primates over the head for a bush full of berries in order to survive the harsh winter, we do compete for jobs to pay for our essential needs, for desirable living space, and for desirable mates. So, the insidious temptation of passive resignation and, well, just plain giving up isn't the way to go about it. But, the problem is that even the strongest and most resilient of us can get hopelessly beat down by rolling successive ones for a length of time. There's nothing like a mean and unforgiving streak of undeserved bad luck to suck the fight right out of you and make you just want to roll over and give up the ghost. It's about enduring what you can't control in order to make it through the day, to remember to fight another day and that you can still fight.
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If you believe a higher power is driving the bus, then trust it and know that everything that's happening is supposed to happen, whether you understand it or not. If you believe things are totally random, then try to roll with the dice and adapt to the changing currents of causality. We're all losers from time to time (myself very much included). So, the trick is to own whatever you are in the moment—if you keep losing, then just live it up like a loser until things get better. Redefine your definition of what a good day is—if every day seems kind of bad, then "bad" days just become "normal" days by definition, and anything above that, anything at all, suddenly becomes a good day. If you can’t slay the dragon, then sneak out with some of its treasure and laugh all the way home. If life gives you lemons, get a new life. I’m still working at it myself. But hey, if you can’t do, then teach, and if you can’t teach, then teach gym.
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8339444602163091326.post-1753458274124873922018-05-22T14:11:00.000-05:002018-05-22T17:20:13.103-05:00Proper Burial: FREE Sample Reading<div class="preface">
Out of the goodness of my heart (and because I like to sell books), here's a sample of my new book, <i>Proper Burial</i>. I hope this whets your appetite for more mystery and madness.<br>
(The doodles aren't in the book. They're just here on the website, for flavor.)
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Introduction</div>
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The story you are about to read I cannot personally verify through my own resources or faculties. It was told to me by another, altogether reliable party who swears to its authenticity as though he experienced it firsthand, although I must admit that I do not understand how he came to have such a detailed account given that he is wholly absent from the narrative himself. Nonetheless, I have written it down from a rather lengthy interview with him in which he provided almost all the particulars of a nearly omniscience quality.
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These particulars were impressive enough that I assumed that he either was relating the intimate points of an actual event he was somehow privy to or that he was quite insane, but still weaving a thread that was fantastic enough that I dare not neglect recording it. There was an unusual mood about him though, almost as if the story held some personal interest for him, yet he always remained as emotionally detached as someone who was dictating a performance on a distant theater stage.<p>
<a name='more'></a>In the vein of theatrics, while I have painstakingly recorded every word that fell from his lips, there are obviously some details that were missing from his account—some of the characters’ thoughts and feelings, sights and sounds of the environment, and the like. These details I have attempted to augment into the story myself in order to give the reader even a small taste of the presentation as it was related to me in its full dramatic breadth. As the translator of a foreign manuscript may paraphrase idiom and insert grammatical features as are necessary to interpret the original author’s intentions, so too I have embellished these minor features in order to tell relate the spirit of the story as accurately as possible.
A sensibly inquisitive reader is likely wondering at this point who this original storyteller was. For my part, I can hardly give more account of him than he likely could of me. We did not know anything of each other before our first meeting and he seemed altogether uninterested in the topic until our parting of ways at the conclusion of the meeting.
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I received a call one Saturday morning from my father, who had read a classified ad in a local newspaper that he thought might interest me. I myself never read the paper and never would have heard of the ad if he had not told me. The listing was a request for a personal biographer to record the memoirs of a person by the name of Randolph Midian. The details were scant—only an address, phone number, and the compensation simply listed as “to be determined, commensurate with experience.” My father, of course, knew that I was still trying to break into the field of writing and journalism, and that I had already experienced more than a few failed attempts at publication. So, at his advice to start smaller and scrape up some experience, I skeptically took down the information from the ad and decided to look into it.
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That same afternoon, I called the number and a young woman answered with a kind and overly accommodating manner. As soon as I mentioned the name from the ad, she immediately told me that he was anxious to get started on the project, that I was the first to respond, and that I should get started right away. When I asked what the pay was, the woman said she was only helping him with his appointments and did not know the details, but promised that he would address the matter as soon as I arrived.
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For a time after I hung up the phone, I seriously considered calling the whole thing off. It felt strange and I really did not have the time to waste on more dead-end opportunities. But, ultimately, I needed any opportunity I could get, even if it was a long shot.
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The next afternoon I headed out of town. The address was no short distance away—about two hour’s drive at best. When I arrived at the address, I felt sure I must have made a mistake when I drove up to a retirement home nestled in the wooded recess of a country highway. Not entirely remote, as there were a few houses and stores in the area, it was nonetheless a discouraging site in terms of my hopes of cashing in to some notable agency or even an influential independent benefactor.
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After parking and apprehensively strolling into the front office, I gave my name at the desk. The orderly gave me a strange look, as if I had fallen prey to some practical joke that I should have realized already. A moment later, a woman rushed up to the desk and gently grabbed me by the arm, telling me that “Randy” was waiting for me and could not wait to get started. Before I knew what happened, I had been hastily dragged down a desolate hall and led into a small, dingy room that smelled thickly of medicated ointments, stale air, and other unpleasant clinical odors.
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxiG2YZCW01uDX06iObQZS0mQWOD_XI60io5Jej1CeU0bwW5RVqG23e8VMkscHBq4q2X2CIqmHXPrHUYW72lhG9P1bjk14CzMvuQmCEGPh0BgHI1iLJv80HWJwv851ZpgPBbew5Lc4pnk/s250/intro_image.jpg" style="border: solid 2px #000000; float: right; margin-left: 10px; padding: 0px;" />
There was an ancient man sitting in an old armchair by the window that jumped up to greet me with an unusually spry vitality to his old, creaking limbs. He was a blotchy, shriveled old Caucasian, nearly hairless and thinned framed, presumably well into his eighties by my estimation. He smiled widely with thin lips and grasped my right hand with surprisingly firm grip.
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Without so much as an introduction, the old man only asked me if I was ready to get started. I stammered for a moment and said that I needed to discuss the details of the job first. Releasing my hand, he turned back to his chair with a wave and told me that I could name my price after he dictated to me for a while and that he had to get started right away. “Every moment counts, after all,” he said breezily.
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I was taken aback, to say the least, by the whole odd meeting. However, assuming that he might be stricken by a bout of dementia, senility, or some other ailment of his advanced years, I sat down at a small table nearby and pulled out my notepad in what seemed to me at the time an act of courtesy in light of the possibility of offending a confused old man. At the very least, I figured I would get a notion of how bad off the situation was after I heard him talk for a little while. If the old fellow was feebleminded, I at least knew I could get off the hook by naming too high a price, assuming he did not ramble on too long.
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From this point on, I must confess that my usual practicality eluded me almost entirely. The old man, despite his decrepit appearance, spoke fluidly and coherently, spilling out his narrative faster than I could write it even in my swift, sloppy style of personal shorthand. I could scarcely pay attention to what he said at first for trying to write down as much as I could, but it was not long before the story seemed to make itself clear in my mind, almost like watching a film.
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What he told me was no memoir, as his ad had claimed. Rather, it was some kind of narrative. I do not know if he intended it as fiction, if he thought it was a true story, or even if, though my own good sense prevents me from believing it, the story was actually true.
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At this point, there is little purpose in retelling more details of my encounter, strange as it was. What I will say is that after a length of time which I would have scarcely believed had passed, not only had I forgotten the issue of payment, but somehow felt as though what I was writing down was the most important thing in the whole world at that very moment.
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Without further delay, I present the story to my reader as it was presented to me, with only superficial embellishments of style and negligible additions of ambient details. I myself hope that it is truly a work of fiction, though I cannot say for sure one way or the other. What I leave you with now, in addition to this narrative, is what the old man left me with at the conclusion of his dictation. This is one of many stories. Why he chose this particular one to tell me first, I cannot venture to say. But, he has urged me to a future return visit for him to dictate another such work, although he would not so much as hint at its nature or contents.
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W.T. Branton
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Prologue</div>
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Untold centuries ago, a lone figure crouched down with bare feet on the naked dirt floor of a small underground room. It was a cellar, well hidden beneath a humble and unassuming mudbrick house above. There were crude beeswax candles all around the perimeter of the room, lining the walls and illuminating it with a dim, yellow glow. He was busying his hands with some redundant, yet meticulous task that he executed with the utmost focus and precision. Every few moments, he paused to pull up the sleeves of his dingy linen shirt, making it even dingier from his fingers which were covered in rich, red clay.
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Mutterings of rhythmic verses poured from his cracked, flaking lips, pausing only to allow an occasional deep and methodical inhale. The man’s curly black hair began to slump, weighed down with hours’ worth of saturated sweat. He had been at his curious task for hours already, though his concentration was stoic and resolute, almost totally beyond distractions and nearly unyielding to physical or psychological fatigue.
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As his fingers worked a clay object at his feet, they cautiously dared not slide too large a quantity of material in any direction too quickly. Rather, he gradually and methodically slid his hands over the curvatures of the thing little by little, moving only the thinnest layers of moist clay slowly into carefully premeditated contours.
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The man had scraped this particular lump of clay from the nearby river with his own hands. As he worked, it seemed to become more and more ruddy in color. While the unabated mutterings continued, he paused his handwork for a brief moment to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. A smattering of dark, crimson drops trickled onto the dry dirt floor from his fingertips, all of which were carefully sliced open under the nails, seeping blood into the clay as he worked it.
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There was a sound from above and he looked away quickly for a reflexive glance at the roughly hewn staircase behind him. But, there were no beams of light slashing through the shadow from the cellar door above being disturbed. The distant noise had only been a bird calling out from a tree above ground. The man shook his head in annoyance, but quickly refocused his gaze to his ongoing task and continued murmuring to himself.
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He dipped his hand in a shallow water dish at his side, leaving behind a fresh cloud of blood that bloomed throughout it as he sloshed some over the side. Flicking his hand, he then spattered some pink droplets onto the clay piece to keep it moist and continued working. As the crimson cloud spread throughout the water, far above ground dark clouds began to slowly creep across the afternoon sky like blots of ink.
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Several esoteric items and ornate tools lay carefully placed about on a nearby table. They were set aside for the next task at hand though, which would take place later at a very specific and meticulously calculated hour of the night. The man had been planning this particular undertaking in secret for a very long time—all necessary components were finally in place and the celestial bodies were finally in their proper alignments.
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Only about one month earlier, the man sat under a thatched awning that reached out over a rough dirt street a few feet from the roof behind him. He was in town for a brief interlude as most of his time was spent in his home workspace, which was more quiet and secluded. As he watched people walk by, busy with the mundane goings on of day to day life, a kind of unusual infection festered inside him. He lamented that fact, but for now simply tried to watch the scene ahead.
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Two men across the street rattled on debating the purchase price of some paltry object. One man claimed the price was too high out of a combination of his impoverished need of it and a slant of genuine greed. His petty greed was made all the worse by the addition of that contemptible and insurmountable poverty.
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The other man claimed the price to be fair out of a combination of his ever-gnawing anxiety for paying the wages of his workmen and a slant of genuine pride for the craftsmanship of his business. His selfish pride was made all the worse by the addition of that contemptible and unceasing anxiety.
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The man watching them knew all too well that the conversation would end the way most such conversations ended, with one or both men conceding defeat under the superficial title of “compromise,” all the while taking with them yet more contempt for both of their respective plights. It was an endless cycle of affliction begetting enmity and enmity begetting more affliction.
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“Disgusting,” the man grumbled to himself with a disapproving frown. Sitting on the ground against the wall, his arms were wrapped around his bent knees which he peered over through his low hung eyebrows. He did not actually despise the two men personally (or even know them for that matter), nor did he even despise their behaviors. Instead, he pondered deeply and philosophically into the nearly endless well of causality that led them to the heated dispute and brought them to the abhorrent and useless existences they now squandered their scarce living moments on.
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He thought about the impoverished buyer and his struggle to support his family, as well as his father’s struggle before him. He also thought about the business owner and his struggle to make the fortune his father could never accumulate in the family business and how he too would pass into obscurity just as forebears, forgotten and unaccomplished. They were both after money, but not really the money itself. They were after the money that would hopefully somehow buy them more time.
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Time, he thought, was the most precious commodity in the whole of the cosmos, and it was also the one thing that was so easily stolen, lost, and clumsily squandered in the mindless scramble to attain more of it. What do we really have if not time?
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A door creaked open a few buildings down the road and a young woman staggered out, her clothing disheveled and hanging off one shoulder while she struggled to piece the articles together. She sniffed as if holding back tears and as she looked around to see if anyone was watching, a fresh bruise was spreading out underneath one of her eyes.
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From behind the woman, a man emerged in the doorway, doughy and glistening with sweat, throwing on his filthy shirt. He had a disgustingly proud smirk pulled across his flabby lips. The young woman looked back at him as he held out a small cloth bag and tossed it on the ground. She sighed and bent over to pick it up. The fat man slapped her backside and laughed proudly to himself, then turned back inside and slammed the door.
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The man across the street watched her collect herself and scamper off as he finally broke his calm expression and snarled silently, lowering his head further to avoid arousing attention to his smoldering distain. He could hardly bare to watch anymore of the mundane late afternoon spectacle unfolding before him. However, his churning disgust for the inane buzzing of the passersby receded for a moment when he spied two other of his unfortunate inmates in the prison of physical temporality.
<p>
A woman was walking in his direction, casually commuting to some unknown and equally unimportant destination as the one she currently occupied. At her side, with his tiny hand in hers, was a young boy of no more than four years old, toddling along at his best pace to keep up with his mother. For a moment, the man remembered his own mother. Her long, dark hair used to feel like silk when it brushed against his tender cheek as she embraced him. It was the last time he felt the genuine and unadulterated care of another human being.
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The man furrowed his brow as they walked by. “Just an animal instinct,” he thought, diminishing the tender memory into a withered and meaningless vestige in the deep recesses of his malignant mind. She was gone now, dead for many years. Now he believed the truth, that no love was truly unconditional, no care was without hidden cause, no kindness without selfish agenda, and no friendship without material profit. Life had taught him such things the hard way and humanity never failed to remind him of the frigid details of its machinations.
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To this man, humanity was diseases and mortality was the cruel infection that festered inside him as well as every other person that walked the earth. Even a supple moment of kindness would never fail to be followed by tenfold moments of torment. There was a way out though, he thought.
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He had discovered a way to cure this disease. Through methods long forgotten, long suppressed, and even punishable by death if his primitive and narrow minded fellows ever knew he even possessed the knowledge of it. Even his teacher had been too arrogant and consumed by the praise of glory to attain its secrets.
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The man had heard of his former mentor’s recent demise in Terracina, though he did not mourn him. He saw his teacher as just another casualty of human vanity and, consequently, cultivated in himself a more philosophical perspective on the event: “It was only a matter of time. His pursuits were that of the common animal, like most men, and he squandered his precious time on those pursuits. The coin of temporal existence fell from his purse and went to the ravenous masses of men that remained. His personal glory and elaborate faith betrayed him just the same as did his delicate mortality.”
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The clouds that had gathered in the afternoon had cleared away since his painstaking task was completed. Underneath a bright full moon with every star alight in the night sky above, the man washed his hands clean in the water trough outside the house above his subterranean workspace. All of his preparations were made and the hour was drawing near. He wrapped his fingers with cloth, bandaging the wounds he had inflicted on them earlier in the afternoon.
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His hands trembled as he went about his task. Not having eaten in days, he fought the trembling bodily weakness by force of will alone. The fast was crucial to the work and he had tried to condition himself for it for months. With hands bandaged and his will fortified by determination, the man threw open the wooden door to the cellar and walked down the stairs with a resolute march.
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There was a long period of meditation, sitting alone in the dark stillness of the basement. When he had reached a state of mental clarity and calm, the man lit dingy oil lamps and candles all around the room and proceeded about his obscure work.
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He was miles away from any other houses or buildings as it was necessary that the work be done in solitude and total secrecy with no delaying intrusions or bothersome questioning. Hours passed as the man toiled away in the basement at his strange labors. Sounds of his voice would murmur rhythmically from the doorway and were occasionally interrupted by loud commands in an antiquated dialect that most had long forgotten.
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Wisps of smoke curled out from between the boards of the cellar door, the smells of exotic resins and rare, burning herbs saturating the air even to the exterior of the house. Unbeknownst to the man working below, a large swarm of verminous creatures was collecting around the perimeter of the building—rats, beetles, spiders, and all things that crept and crawled from the ground heard the silent calls of the unnatural disturbance that brewed in the cellar. The man could even feel the worms that erupted one by one from the exposed earth beneath him as they crawled up and writhed over his bare feet.
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In the dark and early hours of the morning, he finally completed his work. Sweating and exhausted, drained of almost all his energy, and struggling to stand, he mustered the last of his physical resolve to bolster himself. It was the time for strength, not weakness.
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Before him, in the dim candlelight of the cellar, amidst a tangle of strange geometric lines and symbols scratched into to bare ground, there was something squirming in the dirt. It was not of this world, but the man had somehow called it up from the raw salts of creation by his sheer determination and the skills of forbidden and long forgotten arts. The thing he had conjured, now manifested in the flesh, was poised beneath him vaguely like a coiled serpent, awaiting his supplication.
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The man peered down at it in awe. Though he had accomplished many strange and perverse marvels under the tutelage of his former mentor, none could compare to what he had called up from the unknown, chaotic void, which was now before him at his mercy. His vision fluttered on all sides, as if the walls around him were vibrating and just slightly out of focus.
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGQZsXJJW8MAdJJBNrApnj6BuukUs6rAw35HNUvsSDlYaDhum57ilt2nLYAcsrJEZi0YqRqlpjhWaM2nEFSUqZNP0cD4kRQxMMDtYWhJfHMyII3Rduk5dT5CEnOYLBSaeglZv_FDwkqVg/s250/prol_image.jpg" style="border: solid 2px #000000; float: left; margin-right: 10px; padding: 0px;" />
Looking at the thing seemed to make the visual anomalies worse. But, when he looked away, the thing itself started to almost blur into a nebulous shadow. So, he fought all natural instincts and kept his gaze fixed on it for fear of it vanishing altogether. The humble room that he occupied now forcibly merged in a tense struggle between the material world he had known and the dark places normally beyond human reach and comprehension. He composed himself, still trembling from weakness and exhaustion, and kept his ultimate goal at the forefront of his mind.
<p>
The man knelt down and spoke to the otherworldly thing in the circle. It tilted a misshapen, eyeless protuberance as he spoke, like an animal twisting its head as if trying to process the sounds he issued to it. When he had finished, the thing gave an ambiguous nod-like gesture of understanding and compliance.
<p>
Then, it reached out with a single, gnarled appendage as if to hold him and demand his attention. He leaned in to it as it gurgled a series of alien noises that vaguely resembled distorted human speech, but would be unrecognizable to any normal human ears as it seemed to echo from all directions in the air. Somehow though, the man comprehended what the thing was communicating to him.
<p>
He furrowed his sweat covered brow and made a smug frown of sullen acceptance, then nodded his head once, as if approving of some harsh and altogether dire condition the thing had proposed to him. Then, he leaned down to a tall, lidded clay jar that stood near his feet. The man knocked the lid off to the ground and pulled out a rolled-up parchment on which he had scrawled a long series of strange words and arcane symbols in a dark red ink.
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He spread the page out flat on the ground between himself and the thing, which watched his every move curiously and twitched with every slightest draft of air that blew across it, its newly materialized flesh painfully adjusting to the physical elements like an exposed wound. The man unwrapped the bandage from his right index finger to reveal the freshly scabbed over wound underneath. Fresh blood seeped out as he purposefully dug at the wound with his nail. Bending down to the writings, he swiped his finger across the page, smearing a crimson wet streak over it.
<p>
The thing crouching in front of him convulsed and twisted as if suddenly stimulated by the man’s grotesque actions. He stood up with blood trickling down from his hand and whispered softly in a long-abandoned dialect and with a mournful resonance, “Thirty-three.”
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<div style="font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;">
Chapter 1: The Letter</div>
<div style="text-indent: 0.25in;">
On an uncharacteristically warm day, December 16th, 1998, an inexplicably unsatisfied woman sat at her desk during the slow drag of a midafternoon work day in West Haven, Connecticut.
<p>
She rubbed her temples rhythmically and stared downward, idly fixated on a tiny, dark brown, congealed speck of unknown origin that had been adhered to the “T” key of her keyboard since before she could remember. Pondering over whether it was a drop of over-sugared coffee or splattering of soda and the physics of how it could still be there after months of typing over it, she realized that her mind needed something, anything to think about other than work, which she presumed to be the cause of the lingering headache she had been desperately attempting in vain to ignore all day.
<p>
Glancing back up at her monitor in the hopes of seeing a time that at least had a three in front of it, all the taskbar clock had to offer her was a disappointing 2:04 pm. A sigh of defeat crawled out from between her lips and she slid back into her chair. She thought to herself, “This damn chair probably costs more than a month of my rent.”
<p>
It was not that she particularly disliked her job. The pay was good enough and the hours and vacation time were nothing to complain about, but she still wondered what exactly she was doing with her life and thought that there had to be something better the world had to offer. All the while though, she also knew that she had painful little uniqueness about her to offer the world in return and accepted her station with a begrudging resignation.
<p>
A whining, nasally, female voice, dripping with the brothy pretense of cubical-bred office chattery, crept around the corner, “You doin’ alright there, Ash?”
<p>
“Ash” fought with all her internal reserves to hold back a visible shudder, secretly clenching her teeth. She mostly wondered silently after three years of walking past a nameplate on the door with “Ashley” boldly emblazoned on it in bright white inset letters and politely being corrected about name preference on several occasions, not to mention the fact that not a single other individual in the office presumed to shorten her name in such a presumptuously playful way, why Gretchen still managed to persevere in annoying her with an attempt at forcing an awkwardly imposed sense of comradery.
<p>
Few things in Ashley’s professional career at Formian Insurance plagued her like the bubbly terror that was Gretchen Swift. Quite pleasant at first glance, this coffee and vending machine snack fueled menace was a rather simple character—the type who still cherished her high school yearbooks, presumed an inappropriate depth of friendship after the simplest of introductions, and never failed in her mission to edge her way into any conversation that went on within earshot, so long as it was not work related.
<p>
Everyone with the slightest bit of insight could assume that she was masking some degree of deeply repressed insecurity and loneliness. Most, however, lacked the level of divine tolerance needed to look past her miraculous talents for making embarrassing comments and singing dull birthday songs to ignore their evolutionary urgings to cull her from the herd of humanity. With superficially positive intentions and deplorably awkward interactions, her life was preserved solely by the simple fact that the unspoken code of office politics and 1990’s American workplace sensibilities demanded civil treatment of coworkers, and generally frowned upon an informally imposed death penalty.
<p>
Regaining the bare minimum of her office banter etiquette, Ashley slid back up in her chair, conscious of the small favor of her shoulder-length, blond hair that tactfully concealed the twisting jaw muscles that would otherwise betray her stewing frustration. She looked over her right shoulder, just enough to be polite, and replied, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just trying to shake off a headache.”
<p>
The plump woman who leaned in Ashley’s office doorway, not to be so quickly deterred from any and every attempt at time-wasting social engagement, uncomfortably pressed the issue with a playful slant and mischievous smile, “Must have been a late night with Eric, huh?”
<p>
Further annoyed at the presumption into her personal affairs and wanting more than anything she could possibly ever remember for the perpetually blushed face with tightly drawn back, frizzy brown hair to just miraculously vanish forever from the face of the planet, Ashley rolled her eyes back over to her monitor to act as though she was being interrupted from something important. “No... just a headache,” she replied with a less than concealed, patronizing edge, “and me and Eric broke up six months ago.” She hoped dearly that the mild amount of nuisanced tone she risked would deter any further conversation. But, there was no such luck.
<p>
“Oh, that’s right. You’re with Glen now. I totally forgot. He’s the one that met you here for lunch a couple of times...” Gretchen began to yammer, but the lingering pain in Ashley’s head suddenly became the pounding of a jackhammer to the front of her skull that seemed to dutifully respond to the babbling sound slinking through the doorway. The encounter had to end.
<p>
Ashley finally sliced into Gretchen with a genuine scowl that wrestled with a painfully forced smile in response, “Yep! I’ve got to finish reading this underwriter update real quick, though. So, I’ll see you in a little while.”
<p>
Gretchen, totally oblivious to her own unwelcomed trespasses, shot back cheerfully, “No problem. Feel better, girl!” and bounced off down the hallway towards her next hapless, cubicled victim.
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqaIf82-FPHS7-UVhaLPvlM4UiQEaxsGnIerqU75pN6uMTtD1i52CQcnVvxQn9ftqeAQAXD5Y8wvO3QnnjMbh-tymNkwPI2JklaSoGEVYqqD6WmpE_EcGX9-8Vors_8oBk_V5ufH7SRkA/s250/ch1_image.jpg" style="border: solid 2px #000000; float: right; margin-left: 10px; padding: 0px;" />
In the privacy of her own dismal space once again, Ashley shuddered, more visibly this time, and leaned forward again to rest her head in her hands. She only hoped to garner a few more minutes of genuinely oblivious reprieve before actually having to work again. The mere idea of looking at the droning text of an actual underwriter update turned her stomach sour and the possibility of focusing her complete attention to such a task was well beyond the realm of likelihood at the moment.
<p>
The pounding subsided to its previous lingering state and made way for the name that Gretchen had carelessly tossed back into the musty closet of her memory. “Eric.” The name rolled around her head for a few moments as Ashley's thoughts wandered.
<p>
They had been together for a little over two years and the breakup was fairly messy. She had mostly blamed him for the relationship not working out, because of his distance and lack of sensitivity. Lurking behind the forefront of her immediate accusations though, was always a still-festering sore of some unquantified regret and a certain residue of guilt over a fault she could not consciously identify.
<p>
Did she really blame him? Did she really not pay enough attention to him, like he said on that last day when emotions had cooled to a slow simmer and all the filthy truths and hidden opinions untethered by affection came leaking out in begrudging murmurs from both sides? She did always have trouble actually getting close to him, kind of like Luke before him, kind of like most men she had been with for the past several years.
<p>
As her mind fell deeper down the hole of grating questions and needling uncertainty, she came to herself again and shook her head, as if trying to physically shake off the memories. Her headache kicked back at her at once like an angry mule, throbbing harder than before. “Damn it,” she thought, “maybe there’ll be something distracting in the messages. Feels like this day won’t ever end.”
<p>
Discreetly tugging her feet out of her shoes underneath her desk, taking extra care to keep her head level so as not to further agitate the pounding beast trapped inside her skull, Ashley reached across her desk and grabbed the stack of papers and envelopes out of the wire mesh bin. She flicked through a few yellow phone message papers and some plastic-windowed white envelopes she knew to be nothing of unusual interest. Just as she had thumbed past the last bit of paper in the stack with certainty that there would be no savior to be found in her hand to rescue her from the monotony, she saw an unusual envelope.
<p>
It was not the same old, cheap stock, white paper addressed to “Formian Insurance.” It was an off-white envelope with a preprinted return address, “Law Office of Mitchell Middleton” from Hartford, Connecticut. It was handwritten addressed in blue pen to “Ashley Stonewall.” Though not all that alarming, it was strange to receive anything that had the appearance of being personally addressed to her at the office.
Eager for anything to break the flow of the day, being otherwise just like every other Wednesday, she opened it. The letterhead matched the envelope, very official looking but in traditional typewriter print, as evidenced by the slightly offset line spacing and font:
<p>
<div style="font-size: 90%; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
December 11th, 1998</div>
Ms. Ashley Susan Stonewall:<br>
<div style="text-indent: .25in;">
Following the death of your mother, Irene Elizabeth Gates-Stonewall, on December 2nd, 1998, and in the absence of a last will and testament on record I am writing to inform you of the distribution of estate hearing…
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<p>
It was signed by hand in the same blue pen as the envelope, “Mitchell Middleton, Attorney at Law.” Ashley read through the letter with all its complex formalities and cold legal language, but processed almost nothing of it after the first sentence as her mind began to wander into a cold and empty space, almost emotionless, but also confused and mechanical. She had no idea that her mother had died.
<p>
Ashley felt almost nothing. In fact, she suddenly felt so little that the previous emotions that had recently been stirred over her breakup with Eric seemed to have fallen away completely and everything was inexplicably numb. She thought for a moment that she should feel something, but still there was nothing there. Still holding up the letter but not actually looking at it, Ashley, her thoughts swimming in an ocean of fragmented memories from early childhood, suddenly realized her gaze had wandered and was unconsciously frozen on the “T” key of her keyboard once again.
<p>
The weight of the emptiness pressed down on her and the only thing she really felt was lightheaded and a little dizzy. The narrow window to her left that usually afforded her some meager reprieve from the tiresome dullness of the office now only bombarded her with blinding sunlight that seemed to agitate her headache even further.
<p>
Ashley wrestled in her head over inane practicalities, almost blindly ignoring the obvious weight of the news she had just read. Would her current project be affected? Would anyone passing in the hallway notice her not working for a length of time? Could she afford to take time off? Did she have enough vacation time built up to take time off?
<p>
She pressed her palm against her forehead and sighed audibly, realizing herself and the reality of the situation. It was time to go home for the day.
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