In the modern industrial era that began about 200 years ago, a zeitgeist god named Kapital rose up to dethrone the god of the former age, Monarchy. Very early on during the Kapital dynasty, the Marx demigod happened along and he figured out that Kapital god had some real vulnerabilities that would ultimately lead to Kapital's downfall.
So the Marx whipped up a revolution that ultimately would dethrone Kapital and replace him with a new god for the new age, Communo. As it turned out, from about 1905 until long about 1989 the Kapital and the Communo were at each other's throats constantly everywhere you look.
But early on during the struggle between the Kapital and the Communo, the Keyneo demigod happened along and detected some serious vulnerabilities within Kapital's corpus that, if infiltrated, would ultimately enable the Communo to sucker punch Kapital into mayhem and oblivion.
Meanwhile, changes within the demographic of Communo's domain morphed him/her into a new multigodural entity. The demigod MediaMad dubbed the new chimera god Statismo. The thing about Statismo is that nothing really matters to him/her. No noblesse oblige, no limits, no antiquated outdated obsolete faith or sentimentalities and for sure no sacred damn cows.
One result of Statismo's evolving infiltrating insidious insurgent machinations was that institutions of the former Kapital and Communo realms began to topple slowly, one by one, two by two and whats-it-to-you, etc. For instance, one sacred cow of the faltering Kapital was that feral relic, the balanced budget, which had formerly enabled Kapital power throughout the the West and sometimes the East by preserving and extending and colonializing the value of Kaptial's four currencies: gold, oil, paper and electrons.
Statismo had determined that the balanced budget had to come down, along with several other sacred damn cows like marriage and family and so forth and so on etcerata etcetera etcerata . This devolution would make the way clear for the New Order. Thus the Kapital Void and also the Communo Cloud could be flooded with Statismo Stato.
Here's the The thing about Statismo revolutionaries: they don't give a damn about budgets, fiscal responsibilities, deficits, profits or prophets. When the gods of Kapital and Communo have completed phases I, II, and possibly III of their deathly video-game brouhaha, all hell can break loose and the way will be clear for Pax Statismo and ultimately his doppelgänger twin Anarcho.
Vive la revolution! But this time with no liberte, egalite, nor fraternite. That was yesterday's news, even in 1789 when this whole scenario was hatched in the minds of neo-platonist-confucianist-ex-post-facto-nihilist philosophers.
But hey, have a nice day! This will take a while. Put your seat belt on. As for me and my house, I'm waitin' on Pax Christi.
Smoke
Friday, March 28, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Fear and Posing in Crimea
Talking heads and journalistic birds,
bobbing in Black Sea swells on Crimean words,
launch up their blustery speculations now
on Putinistic confrontations, and how
the old bear's been backed into a corner, no wiggle room, no loans,
as the world squeals sanctionistic noise and diplomatic moans;
so the West draws its red line in the sands,
no more Ukraine for you Mister Putin; here it stands.
Gone is former glory of the Russian realm,
now no czar, no Lenin, nor Stalin at the helm.
We dismembered their Soviet empire back in '89;
then thinking it some victorious Kapitalistic sign,
we assumed they'd just get it in the blinking of an eye:
the Kapitalist manifesto and the democratic pie--
how to slice it how to dice it-- how, in all this Western fiat money
we'd sweeten Ukrainian bread with IMF honey.
Now we wonder if it be some ghostly rerun, this acquisition,
a la Sudetan land grab or nineteen thirties Rhineland nazi occupation.
But Putin says t'was nazis who yanked those Maidan's strings,
'though we think 'tis from the fount of democracy hope Ukrainel springs.
Now History repeateth not itself; this is no warmed-over fascist rerun;
rather, its the old desperate Russian bear, brandishing his post-glasnost gun,
because his big Soviet one was unloaded, by Ronnie Reagan.
CR, with new novel soon, Smoke
bobbing in Black Sea swells on Crimean words,
launch up their blustery speculations now
on Putinistic confrontations, and how
the old bear's been backed into a corner, no wiggle room, no loans,
as the world squeals sanctionistic noise and diplomatic moans;
so the West draws its red line in the sands,
no more Ukraine for you Mister Putin; here it stands.
Gone is former glory of the Russian realm,
now no czar, no Lenin, nor Stalin at the helm.
We dismembered their Soviet empire back in '89;
then thinking it some victorious Kapitalistic sign,
we assumed they'd just get it in the blinking of an eye:
the Kapitalist manifesto and the democratic pie--
how to slice it how to dice it-- how, in all this Western fiat money
we'd sweeten Ukrainian bread with IMF honey.
Now we wonder if it be some ghostly rerun, this acquisition,
a la Sudetan land grab or nineteen thirties Rhineland nazi occupation.
But Putin says t'was nazis who yanked those Maidan's strings,
'though we think 'tis from the fount of democracy hope Ukrainel springs.
Now History repeateth not itself; this is no warmed-over fascist rerun;
rather, its the old desperate Russian bear, brandishing his post-glasnost gun,
because his big Soviet one was unloaded, by Ronnie Reagan.
CR, with new novel soon, Smoke
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Nikita Khrushchev!
On February 25, 1956, in the U.S.S.R, Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a speech that later rocked the world. As he addressed the 20th annual congress of the Communist International party, a frigid straitjacket of ruthless Stalinist tyranny that had ruled the Soviet Union since the early 1930's began to thaw. Khrushchev's admission of Stalin's paranoid crimes while terrorizing the Soviet world initiated a loosening of Russian rulership that wasn't fully realized until 1989.
This turnaround had been a long time coming. Khrushchev's revelation of Stalinist-era abuses exposed terrible events and purges that had happened over the last twenty years. Rumors and unconfirmed reports of torturous cruelties had, from time to time, glinted through the iron curtains of Soviet secrecy. Confirmed communists across the world had fallen into the habit of awkwardly denying the Party's murderous mistreatment of its subjects.
In spite of the enormity of his exposé, the dutiful Premier was striving to keep this volatile information under wraps. The comrades to whom Khrushchev was admitting these extreme violations of Marxist-Leninist doctrine were delegates who were ruling the communist world. This speech was supposed to be an internal secret!
Thanks to the Israeli Mossad, (according to David Horowitz in his autobiography Radical Son) the explosive contents of the Khrushchev report got leaked to the world at large. A few months later, on June 4, 1956 the U.S. Dep't of State released it. The New York Times published it. This revelation rocked the world, especially the world of those diehard communists who had been striving since 1917, in countries all across the globe, to liberate us clueless freedommongers from bourgeois degeneracy and capitalist oppressions.
As the Premier of the USSR had let his comrades in on the dirty little secrets of Stalin, he skillfully wove his presentation of the facts into an ex post facto defense of classical Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The Communist Party line was supposed to have been all about the "People," and what the "People" could do together to deliver the world from capitalism into (in the sweet by-n-by of proletarian dictatorship) socialist utopia.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat is what Marx and Lenin had called it. Not one-man dictatorship!
But according to Comrade Nikita, Joseph Stalin had managed to wrangle the at-first disorganized, emerging Communist state machinery into--not what the great theorists had designed for it--but a murderous police state, patterned after Stalin's own paranoia and ruthless control tactics.
Maybe the communist theoreticians should reevaluate their philosophical presuppositions about human behavior. (But that's another can of worms.)
Nikita Khrushchev, a loyal Party man if there ever was one, had somehow managed to morph into a bold whistleblower, although he wanted to keep his little Molotov cocktail of party revisionism in-house. He wisely discerned that this historical elephant could no longer be concealed in the smoke-filled back room of the Soviet household. And so his argument against reprehensible Stalinist legacy was presented as an exposé of "the cult of the individual."
As an American who was four years old at the time of Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956, I have, just recently, come to appreciate his innovative willingness to talk about the Stalinist elephant in the salon room of world politics. My present idea of who this Nikita Khrushchev was, and what he was up to, is markedly different from my earliest youthful impression of the man, which was a fuzzy TV news image of a pudgy fellow banging his shoe on a podium at the United Nations while provocating us yankees with the words, "We will bury you!"
Maybe Nikita was just thinking about starting a funeral home business or something. I don't know.
This was the same Russian leader who, just two years before his world-rocking secret speech, reportedly "gave" the Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainians, whatever that means. And what's up with that, I don't know either but we shall soon find out, after today's so-called "illegal" election in Crimea, eastern Ukraine.
It seems a little odd to me that any popular referendum anywhere in the world could be condemned as illegitimate by an American President and his Secretary of State. I would think that we Americans, the vanguard of the free world, would be all about elections and referenda. Where's Jimmy Carter when you need him?
CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon to be published
This turnaround had been a long time coming. Khrushchev's revelation of Stalinist-era abuses exposed terrible events and purges that had happened over the last twenty years. Rumors and unconfirmed reports of torturous cruelties had, from time to time, glinted through the iron curtains of Soviet secrecy. Confirmed communists across the world had fallen into the habit of awkwardly denying the Party's murderous mistreatment of its subjects.
In spite of the enormity of his exposé, the dutiful Premier was striving to keep this volatile information under wraps. The comrades to whom Khrushchev was admitting these extreme violations of Marxist-Leninist doctrine were delegates who were ruling the communist world. This speech was supposed to be an internal secret!
Thanks to the Israeli Mossad, (according to David Horowitz in his autobiography Radical Son) the explosive contents of the Khrushchev report got leaked to the world at large. A few months later, on June 4, 1956 the U.S. Dep't of State released it. The New York Times published it. This revelation rocked the world, especially the world of those diehard communists who had been striving since 1917, in countries all across the globe, to liberate us clueless freedommongers from bourgeois degeneracy and capitalist oppressions.
As the Premier of the USSR had let his comrades in on the dirty little secrets of Stalin, he skillfully wove his presentation of the facts into an ex post facto defense of classical Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The Communist Party line was supposed to have been all about the "People," and what the "People" could do together to deliver the world from capitalism into (in the sweet by-n-by of proletarian dictatorship) socialist utopia.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat is what Marx and Lenin had called it. Not one-man dictatorship!
But according to Comrade Nikita, Joseph Stalin had managed to wrangle the at-first disorganized, emerging Communist state machinery into--not what the great theorists had designed for it--but a murderous police state, patterned after Stalin's own paranoia and ruthless control tactics.
Maybe the communist theoreticians should reevaluate their philosophical presuppositions about human behavior. (But that's another can of worms.)
Nikita Khrushchev, a loyal Party man if there ever was one, had somehow managed to morph into a bold whistleblower, although he wanted to keep his little Molotov cocktail of party revisionism in-house. He wisely discerned that this historical elephant could no longer be concealed in the smoke-filled back room of the Soviet household. And so his argument against reprehensible Stalinist legacy was presented as an exposé of "the cult of the individual."
As an American who was four years old at the time of Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956, I have, just recently, come to appreciate his innovative willingness to talk about the Stalinist elephant in the salon room of world politics. My present idea of who this Nikita Khrushchev was, and what he was up to, is markedly different from my earliest youthful impression of the man, which was a fuzzy TV news image of a pudgy fellow banging his shoe on a podium at the United Nations while provocating us yankees with the words, "We will bury you!"
Maybe Nikita was just thinking about starting a funeral home business or something. I don't know.
This was the same Russian leader who, just two years before his world-rocking secret speech, reportedly "gave" the Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainians, whatever that means. And what's up with that, I don't know either but we shall soon find out, after today's so-called "illegal" election in Crimea, eastern Ukraine.
It seems a little odd to me that any popular referendum anywhere in the world could be condemned as illegitimate by an American President and his Secretary of State. I would think that we Americans, the vanguard of the free world, would be all about elections and referenda. Where's Jimmy Carter when you need him?
CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon to be published
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Kasparaov: Freeze Russian assets
Listen to this: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/03/12/kasparaov-putin-russia-oligarchs-ukraine
Garry Kasparaov, Russian grandmaster of chess, says freezing the assets of Russian oligarchs will work against the dictator-wannabe, Vladimir Putin. The result of such sanctions would be: those men who wield power in Russia's economy will, with their own wealth at stake, depose or dissuade Putin. They will effectively press the dictator-wannabe into backing off from his belligerent military occupation of Crimea, Ukraine.
In one of the most informative radio discussions I have ever heard, Kasparov presented his case today to On Point host Tom Ashbrook.
His proposal raises the questionn: do those wealth-wielding Russian oligarchs have the power to compel Putin to do anything, or is it the other way around? Does Vladimir control the captains of Russian business, or do they control him? According to Professor Stephen Walt, this radio program's other panelist, it is the other way around: Putin calls the shots, not the titans of Russian business.
Host Tom Ashbrook said they were talking about the U.S. using "banks, not tanks" to compel Vlad the Crimealer to back off. This scenario makes sense to me, a curious American citizen who is hoping this confrontations does not escalate to a world war.
Kasparov compared this present situation to what happened between Hitler and the Allies in the 1930s. He contends that German leaders might have been able to stop Hitler from his catastrophic kamph that ultimately ended in World War II, if the Allies had shown strong support for German resistance early on in 1935-1939. The West's failure to oppose Hitler's bellicose military occupation of Rhineland, Austria and Sudetanland Czechslovakia is what enabled the furious fuhrer's diabolical plunge into full-scale war.
Stephen Walt said the comparison to 1930s Hitlerian sabre-rattling was inappropriate. He may be right, but this disagreement got my attention, because I have been researching the pre-war 1930s for my soon-to-be-published novel, Smoke.
Kasparov says that the West's failure to oppose Hitler early on caused the madman to lose his "sense of danger." The sense of danger is what what would have (will prevent) prevented the tyrant from becoming a full-blown blitzkrieging maniac. If the present Allies, by some weak tolerance of this Crimean power-move, motivate Putin to cast aside his "sense of danger" in favor of military bluster, there could be, in this listener's opinion, hell to pay, as eventually happened in the Europe of 1940. I hope this dispute does not degenerate to such extremes.
Glass Chimera
Garry Kasparaov, Russian grandmaster of chess, says freezing the assets of Russian oligarchs will work against the dictator-wannabe, Vladimir Putin. The result of such sanctions would be: those men who wield power in Russia's economy will, with their own wealth at stake, depose or dissuade Putin. They will effectively press the dictator-wannabe into backing off from his belligerent military occupation of Crimea, Ukraine.
In one of the most informative radio discussions I have ever heard, Kasparov presented his case today to On Point host Tom Ashbrook.
His proposal raises the questionn: do those wealth-wielding Russian oligarchs have the power to compel Putin to do anything, or is it the other way around? Does Vladimir control the captains of Russian business, or do they control him? According to Professor Stephen Walt, this radio program's other panelist, it is the other way around: Putin calls the shots, not the titans of Russian business.
Host Tom Ashbrook said they were talking about the U.S. using "banks, not tanks" to compel Vlad the Crimealer to back off. This scenario makes sense to me, a curious American citizen who is hoping this confrontations does not escalate to a world war.
Kasparov compared this present situation to what happened between Hitler and the Allies in the 1930s. He contends that German leaders might have been able to stop Hitler from his catastrophic kamph that ultimately ended in World War II, if the Allies had shown strong support for German resistance early on in 1935-1939. The West's failure to oppose Hitler's bellicose military occupation of Rhineland, Austria and Sudetanland Czechslovakia is what enabled the furious fuhrer's diabolical plunge into full-scale war.
Stephen Walt said the comparison to 1930s Hitlerian sabre-rattling was inappropriate. He may be right, but this disagreement got my attention, because I have been researching the pre-war 1930s for my soon-to-be-published novel, Smoke.
Kasparov says that the West's failure to oppose Hitler early on caused the madman to lose his "sense of danger." The sense of danger is what what would have (will prevent) prevented the tyrant from becoming a full-blown blitzkrieging maniac. If the present Allies, by some weak tolerance of this Crimean power-move, motivate Putin to cast aside his "sense of danger" in favor of military bluster, there could be, in this listener's opinion, hell to pay, as eventually happened in the Europe of 1940. I hope this dispute does not degenerate to such extremes.
Glass Chimera
Monday, March 10, 2014
Don't go ballistic like Cain did
I'm a meat-eater, but that's neither here nor there. Some people are not, and that's just fine. You do your thing and I'll do mine. People are different; each person has his/her own preferences. This diversity makes human life much more interesting and dramatic than it would be if we were all the same.
In that ancient great Book--the one that is holy and cherished by millions while it is disdained by others--a story is told about two brothers of long ago, Cain and Abel. Cain was growing crops in the ground; Abel was raising flocks of sheep.
Back in those days, men had not yet figured out how cool they were, so they looked to the supernatural realm for inspiration and faith. Many men and women of antiquity believed in offering a portion of their increase to God. It wasn't like today, when folks don't pay attention to such things because they are, you know, on their own.
One day, these two brothers were offering their sacrifices to God, but, as it turned out, with differing results.The book of Genesis reports that God had regard for Abel's sacrifice, but not for Cain's, whatever that means. The common interpretation of this is that God rejected Cain's offering, but received Abel's. If God did indeed reject Cain's sacrifice, the Bible provides no explanation of God's preference in this incident.
In Christian tradition, writ large and writ small, this event has been for a long time a matter of some study and speculation. Some have inferred that God was indicating a preference for meat instead of veggie or grain produce, or simply an acknowledgement that meat has more protein value as food for us humans. Or maybe God's apparent distinction was based not on the foods being offered, but on some difference between the two brothers themselves. Perhaps Cain had offered low quality goods, while Abel had reserved his best for God. Or it could be that Cain just had a bad attitude. We don't know.
What we can see in this story is that God's acknowledgement of one brother's offering was not the same as his regard for the other. That's about it.
Those of us who believe in God, and in the Mosaic revelation about God's attributes, can derive with surety only one lesson from this demonstrative story about God's preference: whatever God does, he does. Or, to put it the other way, whatever he doesn't do, he doesn't do. There is no need for him to justify his acceptances to us. Who are we to question the One who created all things?
And we have to live with that.
Christians and others who value the Genesis revelation have this awareness of the Almighty's sovereignty, which is absolute because God is the Creator who set all things in motion. Our conception if God is fundamentally different from our view of humans, whom we know to be fickle, inconsistent, generally unpredictable, contentious, and sometimes murderous.
The reality of God's sovereign will was not a lesson that Cain was ready to accept. He got upset about God's apparent rejection of his offering. So Cain killed his brother.
Is God guilty of some injustice here? Is God unjust because he did not receive both sacrifices as equal?
No.
Equality, as venerable as it is, is a human notion. According to our Declaration of American Independence, the God who created Nature also created men and women, and created them all equal. This means that we, as men and women who need to govern ourselves, must form institutions that regard all persons as equal if we want to work together toward societal justice.
Let's accept the human idea that all persons should be equal in the eyes of human law.
But we are individuals; that is important. Furthermore, equality of individual persons is a valuable truth for prioritizing our behaviors and institutions.
Once a baby is born, the wonderful dynamic of that person's unique circumstances--nature and nurture and all that--determines what that person is, who they become, and how the work of their hands and mind is received by others, or for that matter, by God.
But this does not mean everyone's input and output will be equal. In that sense, we are not equals. This inequality affords us a thoroughly fascinating human race, with a beneficial diversity of inputs and outputs, and hence a vast range of incomes and outcomes.
Let us make judicial provisions for equality of opportunity for each person. But equality of income and outcome is ultimately a matter that is determined by each person's use of the resources available to him/her.
If you have something to offer to God, or to the world, do not go ballistic if it is ignored or overlooked. Just find the lesson in that rejection; then go back and try again. You will have better results than if you, like Cain, get mad and kill someone.
As for Cain's fate after his crime, God spared him the death sentence, and allowed him to wander away to the land of Nod, east of Eden, where he took a wife. Perhaps her feminine influence, coupled with the Lord's chastisement, mellowed him out a bit.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon to be published
In that ancient great Book--the one that is holy and cherished by millions while it is disdained by others--a story is told about two brothers of long ago, Cain and Abel. Cain was growing crops in the ground; Abel was raising flocks of sheep.
Back in those days, men had not yet figured out how cool they were, so they looked to the supernatural realm for inspiration and faith. Many men and women of antiquity believed in offering a portion of their increase to God. It wasn't like today, when folks don't pay attention to such things because they are, you know, on their own.
One day, these two brothers were offering their sacrifices to God, but, as it turned out, with differing results.The book of Genesis reports that God had regard for Abel's sacrifice, but not for Cain's, whatever that means. The common interpretation of this is that God rejected Cain's offering, but received Abel's. If God did indeed reject Cain's sacrifice, the Bible provides no explanation of God's preference in this incident.
In Christian tradition, writ large and writ small, this event has been for a long time a matter of some study and speculation. Some have inferred that God was indicating a preference for meat instead of veggie or grain produce, or simply an acknowledgement that meat has more protein value as food for us humans. Or maybe God's apparent distinction was based not on the foods being offered, but on some difference between the two brothers themselves. Perhaps Cain had offered low quality goods, while Abel had reserved his best for God. Or it could be that Cain just had a bad attitude. We don't know.
What we can see in this story is that God's acknowledgement of one brother's offering was not the same as his regard for the other. That's about it.
Those of us who believe in God, and in the Mosaic revelation about God's attributes, can derive with surety only one lesson from this demonstrative story about God's preference: whatever God does, he does. Or, to put it the other way, whatever he doesn't do, he doesn't do. There is no need for him to justify his acceptances to us. Who are we to question the One who created all things?
And we have to live with that.
Christians and others who value the Genesis revelation have this awareness of the Almighty's sovereignty, which is absolute because God is the Creator who set all things in motion. Our conception if God is fundamentally different from our view of humans, whom we know to be fickle, inconsistent, generally unpredictable, contentious, and sometimes murderous.
The reality of God's sovereign will was not a lesson that Cain was ready to accept. He got upset about God's apparent rejection of his offering. So Cain killed his brother.
Is God guilty of some injustice here? Is God unjust because he did not receive both sacrifices as equal?
No.
Equality, as venerable as it is, is a human notion. According to our Declaration of American Independence, the God who created Nature also created men and women, and created them all equal. This means that we, as men and women who need to govern ourselves, must form institutions that regard all persons as equal if we want to work together toward societal justice.
Let's accept the human idea that all persons should be equal in the eyes of human law.
But we are individuals; that is important. Furthermore, equality of individual persons is a valuable truth for prioritizing our behaviors and institutions.
Once a baby is born, the wonderful dynamic of that person's unique circumstances--nature and nurture and all that--determines what that person is, who they become, and how the work of their hands and mind is received by others, or for that matter, by God.
But this does not mean everyone's input and output will be equal. In that sense, we are not equals. This inequality affords us a thoroughly fascinating human race, with a beneficial diversity of inputs and outputs, and hence a vast range of incomes and outcomes.
Let us make judicial provisions for equality of opportunity for each person. But equality of income and outcome is ultimately a matter that is determined by each person's use of the resources available to him/her.
If you have something to offer to God, or to the world, do not go ballistic if it is ignored or overlooked. Just find the lesson in that rejection; then go back and try again. You will have better results than if you, like Cain, get mad and kill someone.
As for Cain's fate after his crime, God spared him the death sentence, and allowed him to wander away to the land of Nod, east of Eden, where he took a wife. Perhaps her feminine influence, coupled with the Lord's chastisement, mellowed him out a bit.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon to be published
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Balancing Contentment and Discontent
Paul of Tarsus, a founder of what has come to be called Christianity, spent most of his life promoting--not himself--but the work of another person, Jesus Christ. In so doing, Paul built a foundation of faith upon the redemptive cornerstone that Jesus had laid at Calvary. That foundation has been expanded and strengthened over the last two thousand years, and is now known as Christianity.
How did this one man, Paul, make, by his life's work, such a lasting impact on the whole world? For starters, he traveled all over the eastern Mediterranean teaching and expounding one very important message, which eventually became known as the Gospel. While he was doing all that, he endured, and survived, a myriad of dangerous situations. Paul was an adventurer who got into trouble just about everywhere he went, went through life constantly misunderstood and misinterperted, came perilously close to death on several occasions, suffered through shipwrecks, snakebites and being the object of riotous mobs.
He was a nonviolent revolutionary, whose life mission was to enable the world to be delivered from doing bad shit.
And yet, in the midst of all that Paul said and did to establish the work of Christ in this world, do you think he was a happy man? Did he go into eternity with a satisfaction that he had done the best he could to live what he believed?
In a letter to his friends in Philipi, Paul wrote:
I heard a pastor speak about this morning. His sermon, using Paul as the example, was all about contentment and discontent. There is a tension, you know, between these two--being content or being discontent. It was a very good teaching about learning to be content in this life. Of course, we all want to learn this principle, don't we? as Paul did, or we will spend our life being miserable.
And who the hell wants to be miserable? Not me. So yes, I want to learn that lesson that Paul learned, and wrote about--that lesson that was passed down through a couple of centuries and was renewed in my hearing this morning when Mickey expounded on it.
I want to be content in this life. I mean, who doesn't?
So there I was sitting in church this morning hearing encouragement through the mouth of a contemporary preacher about the wisdom that Paul had recorded in a letter two centuries ago. It was encouragement to learn more about finding contentment. That's good advice.
On the other hand, Karl Marx taught that religion was the opiate of the people. If I am accepting, through my faith in Christ, contentment, I am copping out? Should I, instead of cultivating contentment, allow my periodic discontent about the injustice and cruelty of this world propel me to burn zealously in this life as an activist to stop injustice and end violence and prevent the cruel exploitation of helpless people and eliminate the income inequality gap? So I'm thinking about this tension between desiring contentment, and allowing discontent to become a productive motivator to make life somehow better. Paul said he had learned to be content, and yet he was not content to sit on his duff and watch tv or surf the net (just kidding), but rather he allowed a little personal discontent about the sorry state of this world to motivate himself to go into the world and try to change it for the better.
Meanwhile, while I was listening to Mickey's lesson about Paul's contentment, I remembered the subject of the last article that I had been reading this morning before I closed the laptop and drove to church. It's called "The Winter of our Discontent". You may want to check it out if your are interested in economics--real economics, not this hyped-up QE stuff that the Fed has been dishing out since 1987.
Of course, the article by Eric Parnell that I just linked above for you doesn't really have much to do with Paul of Tarsus or learning to be content. But what's curious to me is that the spiritual lesson and the economics article, both of which I encountered this Sunday morning, were both dealing with the tension between contentment and "discontent."
And that got my attention. This is the kind of incidental interlude that contributes greatly to my cognitively dissonant celebration of life! I want you to know that I can be content about what the Lord has given me to do in this life, while still appreciating the motivational value of a little discontent and disruption every now and then.
Now go; be well and prosper, but don't get too comfortable with our success.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, to publish soon
How did this one man, Paul, make, by his life's work, such a lasting impact on the whole world? For starters, he traveled all over the eastern Mediterranean teaching and expounding one very important message, which eventually became known as the Gospel. While he was doing all that, he endured, and survived, a myriad of dangerous situations. Paul was an adventurer who got into trouble just about everywhere he went, went through life constantly misunderstood and misinterperted, came perilously close to death on several occasions, suffered through shipwrecks, snakebites and being the object of riotous mobs.
He was a nonviolent revolutionary, whose life mission was to enable the world to be delivered from doing bad shit.
And yet, in the midst of all that Paul said and did to establish the work of Christ in this world, do you think he was a happy man? Did he go into eternity with a satisfaction that he had done the best he could to live what he believed?
In a letter to his friends in Philipi, Paul wrote:
". . . I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need."
I heard a pastor speak about this morning. His sermon, using Paul as the example, was all about contentment and discontent. There is a tension, you know, between these two--being content or being discontent. It was a very good teaching about learning to be content in this life. Of course, we all want to learn this principle, don't we? as Paul did, or we will spend our life being miserable.
And who the hell wants to be miserable? Not me. So yes, I want to learn that lesson that Paul learned, and wrote about--that lesson that was passed down through a couple of centuries and was renewed in my hearing this morning when Mickey expounded on it.
I want to be content in this life. I mean, who doesn't?
So there I was sitting in church this morning hearing encouragement through the mouth of a contemporary preacher about the wisdom that Paul had recorded in a letter two centuries ago. It was encouragement to learn more about finding contentment. That's good advice.
On the other hand, Karl Marx taught that religion was the opiate of the people. If I am accepting, through my faith in Christ, contentment, I am copping out? Should I, instead of cultivating contentment, allow my periodic discontent about the injustice and cruelty of this world propel me to burn zealously in this life as an activist to stop injustice and end violence and prevent the cruel exploitation of helpless people and eliminate the income inequality gap? So I'm thinking about this tension between desiring contentment, and allowing discontent to become a productive motivator to make life somehow better. Paul said he had learned to be content, and yet he was not content to sit on his duff and watch tv or surf the net (just kidding), but rather he allowed a little personal discontent about the sorry state of this world to motivate himself to go into the world and try to change it for the better.
Meanwhile, while I was listening to Mickey's lesson about Paul's contentment, I remembered the subject of the last article that I had been reading this morning before I closed the laptop and drove to church. It's called "The Winter of our Discontent". You may want to check it out if your are interested in economics--real economics, not this hyped-up QE stuff that the Fed has been dishing out since 1987.
Of course, the article by Eric Parnell that I just linked above for you doesn't really have much to do with Paul of Tarsus or learning to be content. But what's curious to me is that the spiritual lesson and the economics article, both of which I encountered this Sunday morning, were both dealing with the tension between contentment and "discontent."
And that got my attention. This is the kind of incidental interlude that contributes greatly to my cognitively dissonant celebration of life! I want you to know that I can be content about what the Lord has given me to do in this life, while still appreciating the motivational value of a little discontent and disruption every now and then.
Now go; be well and prosper, but don't get too comfortable with our success.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, to publish soon
Saturday, March 1, 2014
shifting on the sands of rhyme
Here's a line in the sand:
surf breaking there, here shifting strand.
Out there swells planetary ocean;
it rolls in with universal motion.
This continent begins here, between my toes
with little grains that stretch to grandiose shows:
mountains untamed beyond cultivated grass,
miniscule creatures in habitats vast.
Who formed this strand I think I know;
It wasn't Michelangelo. No,
it wasn't Newton or Sagan or Copernicus.
'Though they played their part to show us
the dynamics of this present shifting locus,
it's no result of human focus.
Nor do our carbon-laden spewings
amount to any significant doings.
Our refuse is but momentary trash
sliding up on shores of civilizations past;
it comes, it goes, but no one knows
what bosons do beneath atomic shows.
If we think it's in our power
to determine planet emissions of any given hour,
then I've got some beachfront land to sell you
in Arizona; here, let me tell you.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon
surf breaking there, here shifting strand.
Out there swells planetary ocean;
it rolls in with universal motion.
This continent begins here, between my toes
with little grains that stretch to grandiose shows:
mountains untamed beyond cultivated grass,
miniscule creatures in habitats vast.
Who formed this strand I think I know;
It wasn't Michelangelo. No,
it wasn't Newton or Sagan or Copernicus.
'Though they played their part to show us
the dynamics of this present shifting locus,
it's no result of human focus.
Nor do our carbon-laden spewings
amount to any significant doings.
Our refuse is but momentary trash
sliding up on shores of civilizations past;
it comes, it goes, but no one knows
what bosons do beneath atomic shows.
If we think it's in our power
to determine planet emissions of any given hour,
then I've got some beachfront land to sell you
in Arizona; here, let me tell you.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon
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