Sunday, February 25, 2018

Man's Fantasy


Maybe you feel that somehow we are all spiritually connected. Perhaps there is a spirit-world out there somewhere; it could be up there in the clouds, in the great beyond.

You’re not the only one. People on earth have felt this for a very long time. The story of Man reaches deep, far back into our history, and it is full of evidence that humans have always related to spirits, maybe the souls of dead men and women, maybe aliens from somewhere else, nature spirits or gods, or the One God, or maybe all these notions are just the ghostly products of our overactive imaginations.

If there were, in reality, no spirit world out there, I think we would make one up. We would, if we haven’t already, imagine a pantheon of gods or spirits that sort of hover around and make stranger things happen that we can’t explain.


Our ancient cultures have throughout history brought forth plenary evidence that something freaky is going on out  there, whether it is in our minds, or otherwise.

The myths of ancient Greece presented a scenario of multiple gods who were, in some ways, very much like us. The movers and shakers among them strove to gain attention and favor from the potentates who seemed to be in charge, like Zeus and Hera, or Poseidon and Athena. Although they were thought to be somehow supernatural, those deity wannabees were generally chomping at the bit to outdo each other.

Just like, you know, us schizoid homo sapiens.

Age after age, we love to get off by summoning them up from the pit of our imagination or the abyss of wishful thinking.

Now our long postmodern 3.0 world-narrative has generally relegated these old fogies of the spirit world to the back pages of your garden-variety goggle search.

On the other hand, our historicsl narrative presents testimony from multiple fronts that the spirit world is actually created and headed up by One God. Yet we argue about what the correct name is. Is it allah or jehovah of krishna or lady godiva or whatnot, and who is the true prophet and so forth and so on.

Our postmodern  pervasive intrusive web-babel of electronic media has now given us humans a host of bandwith opportunities to bandy this thing around and make a big deal out of it. Our overactive imagination can now have a field day of competing gods and goddesses, a plenary plethora of super-heroes and heroines, to whom we give our attention and in some cases even our devotion and veneration.

But hey, you won’t catch me fortifying any fan-fixation with the Ba’al or Dagon; I won’t be doing hocus-pokus with the Wicked Witch, nor will you find me hobnobbin’ with Darth Vader or joking with the Joker. Nosiree. I’ve got too much going on to waste time on those misfits. Let Superman and Obie-wan and Wonder Woman and Spiderman handle them. They can waste all the time they want chasing those villains all around the solar system.

Let ‘em play their game of thrones ’til the cows come home. I don’t care if you drag all the dungeons and dragons this side of Hades out to array themselves in full battle paraphenalia to take down whosoever’s in charge at the moment. They can pokemon forever for all I care. They’re probably a bunch of gropers and pedophiles chasing fairy tails in hell anyway.

All this fantasy fluidity is about as useful as a freakin’ fentenyl freeze-pop on a free ferry to fairy land. Something’s rotten in fandom. The likes don’t tell the whole story, y’all. We gotta find a way outta here.

I really think all these dreamed-up deities have been, just like us, screwing things up all along. They don’t know what they’re doing, don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground. When God finally did show up to get us straightened out, they nailed him up on a cross.

I believe somehow we’ve got to rise above all this fantasy.

 I recommend an alternative: faith in Christ resurrection, which would be a better use of our time, and it would solve a deadly problem for you and me.

Glass Chimera

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Stickin' to it.


In the late ’70’s many of us wandered up to a cool mountain town; we were trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Some had survived the excesses of countercultural lifestyle; others were just there to do the college thing.

  By that time, the ’60’s flower-power revolution that had failed to actuate had been appropriated into the Establishment. Now you could buy faux hippie threads from the JCPenney catalog; that reality was really a bummer, but people were buying the stuff anyway.. The free love thing had been commandeered by Hollywood. It seemed like everybody was “doing it.”

Our little group of wanderers and students found ourselves congregated in the mother-earth lap of an Appalachian river valley. We had gravitated here to, as John Denver had phrased it, “find Jesus on our own.”

“On our own” turned out to mean: apart from the institutional Church, because it was out of touch with what was happening in the real world and everybody knew it was full of foolishness and hypocrites. Haha.

As the gathering developed, however, our little charismatic experiment turned out to be a little more infected with the ways of the world than we had anticipated. Even though we were a bunch of young bucks and does banded together, raising our kids as a sheltered new testament tribe, showing all the local old-school religious folks what the kingdom of God was all about, eventually after about 20 years it flew apart and we all went our separate ways.

But the failure of men to do God’s will is not the conclusive evidence about the credibility of Him whose crucifixion was inflicted by that same failure, our human failure. Ultimately his resurrection overcomes the crucifixion. The message of Jesus is not about what men do or fail to do; It’s about what he did for us.

By the late ’90’s when our little congregation fell apart, our three offspring had gone off to University, where they got a different view of things, different from the churchified bubble they had been raised in. Long story short: it was good for them to be educated, and all three retained their faith.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, some of us maturing saints—shell-shocked survivors of the great postmodern charismatic reactionary push—began gathering in our homes to “on our own” collectively continue our covenantal search to discern the Lord’s will for us. So we were then, and still now, gathering in our living rooms to read the Bible, pray, and seek God.

As for me and my wife, we have walked a middle road between that house-church body of Christ and another church, which is  a more conventional arrangement for presenting and living out the gospel in society.

This has worked well for us.

By ’n by, all three of our offspring became world travelers for one reason or another. Over the years we have done a lot of globetrotting, following them to various fascinating destinations around the world.

Like for instance, Europe. When we went to that Old World, I began to understand that America is the new kid on the block. Over there, they’ve been doing this Christianity thing for a very long time, about 2000 years.

While it is plain to see that there is a huge institutional legacy of the “Church” in the Americas, the cathedrals of Europe can be seen as indicators of a very different religious experience in days gone by.  Every major city presents evidence of some stupendous religious megalith that dominated European society in a big way for a very long time, until the purveyors of human rationalism came along to challenge their authority.

This Church as a human institution, whatever it shoulda woulda coulda been spiritually, was for a very long time the big kid on the block, the elephant in the room, the megalith institution that dominated  Old World society and cultural In a BIG way.

Those 1st-millennium continental Catholics erected a bunch of huge, monumental edifices. You can find them in every major city and small town.  Europe displays an infrastructure of past religious hegemony on a massive scale. The Reformers later did more of the same.

Case in point. Last year, when we were in Prague, Czech Republic, I snapped this pic inside a cathedral:


So I’m thinking. It’s plain to see, this Christianity thing is much, much larger than what is represented by, say, the quaint quasi-classical structure down on our Main Street USA. Beholding this magnificent structure presents a challenge in many ways: it’s a theological, cultural, architectural wonder!

Who built this thing? Was it erected through the blood and toil and sweat of impoverished medieval slave-serfs? Was it founded upon the heretical  manipulations of indulgence-selling ecclesiastical con-men? What kind of empire were they building here? A corrupted hierarchy of covetous clergy? Does it give glory to God, or to the works of Man?

Now I could speculate vainly about the motivations and corrupt practices of those who went before me as  constructors of what is purported to be the Kingdom of God. I could judge them as users and abusers who took advantage of clueless poor people who probably could barely afford to pay the light bill and keep gas in the cart and the kids in shoes while they were fretting about their deceased relatives in purgatory or limbo. I could conclude presumptuously that this humongous structure is nothing more than a work of vanity and hubris and systemic abuse that was erected by men who were surely just as guilty, just as culpable, just as sinful and suspect as myself. I could condemn them as robber-baron ecclesiastic manipulators who were no doubt serving  Babylon or Rome or the  Pride of Man.

But, sinner that I know myself to be, I shall not so judge them. Rather, I shall admire the building for being, in an imperfect world, what  it should have been, and is generally in retrospect considered to be: overpowering evidence of the human impulse that strives to glorify God.

Furthermore, I understand that my assessment is considered to be an obsolete way of thinking. I realize, from both my common observations and study of history, that the religious  hegemony of this huge institutionalized Church has been supplanted, governmentally and socially, by the humanistic, democratic and socialistic movements of  the 19th and 20th centuries.

And that’s okay. Shit happens and nobody’s perfect, not even the humanists, who havre proven through their own systemic abuses that human government and politics falls far short of true justice. 

We Christians do need reminders that there are other people in this world who have different fixes than we do for rectifying human injustice and misery. We don’t have to agree with everybody, but we do have to, as Christ and his apostles commanded, live peacefully with everybody insofar as it its possible.

What I am seeing now, in the present predicament of our world is this:

That big guilty-as-charged Churchified juggernaut that sought to order human activity and governance in the last sixteen hundred years—it is being challenged and threatened by a newer Religious juggernaut from the east.

And if I must choose between the two, I’ll go with the one that I know to be true, even though it has not always been righteous. In the end, I think it is better to build upon the testimony of the one who died on a cross and was, three days later, resurrected. It is better to stand with Him than with another religious empire whose plan would be to get us kaffirs all on our knees five times a day.

In his final revelation to those he loves, Jesus counseled his friend John to “strengthen the things that remain.”

So therefore and henceforth, I say unto thee: I’m with Jesus.

The failure of men to do God’s will is not the conclusive evidence about the credibility of Him whose crucifixion was inflicted by that same failure, our human failure. Ultimately his resurrection overcomes the crucifixion. The message of Jesus is not about what men do or fail to do; It’s about what he did for us.

That’s my faith and I’m sticking to it.

King of Soul

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Boomers' Choice (reprise)


Is this world screwed up or what?

Tell me about it.

Nevertheless, there may be reason enough to find happiness,

contentment fulfillment and all that stuff

in the silver lining that highlights those dark clouds.

We baby boomers do have a choice, you know,

about whether to cry in our beer

or find cause enough to rejoice while

we’re here on planet earth.

Have a listen:


Boomers’ Choice:

Well, the boys came marching home from Germany and France

and the bomb had made a blast in in Hiroshima.

We were driving brand new cars; we were waving

stars and bars

and everywhere was another factory.

Back in 1953,

cruising with Dwight E.,

Elvis sang the whiteboy blues,

McCarthy looking under every bush.

In the home of the brave and the free

rolling on prosperity

and all the kids were going off to school.


 

Ten years down the road

another dream had come and gone

and the power of one gun had made itself known.

Back in 1964

big Lyndon opened the door

for civil rights and a bloody Asian war—


young men on porkchop hill

young women on the pill.

At home they said don’t kill;

get a psychedelic thrill.

But the dreams of a woodstock nation

were just an imagination

when the boys came trudging home in ’73.

 

So it’s hey hey ho is there anybody home

and its hie hie hey, seeking light in the night of day:

the dreams of a woodstock nation

were just an imagination

when the boys came trudging home in ’73.

 

Well, it just don’t pay to sob;

guess I’ll get myself a job

selling leisure suits, maybe real estate.

I’m not moving very fast,

just waiting in line for gas

and Johnny Carson gives me all my news.

Back in 1976,

overcoming dirty tricks,

some were moving back to the sticks;

some were looking for a fix.

Ayatollahs on the rise

sulfur dioxide in the skies

and the system makes the man that’s got his own.

 

They say an elephant won’t forget;

let’s play another set.

There’s always another ghost on pac-man’s tail.

Don’t let this boom go stale.

Let’s find an airline for sale

or pop another tape in the VCR.

Back in 1989,

we’re living on borrowed time

getting lost in subtle sin

eating oat bran at the gym.

But there’s an empty place inside

and I was wondering why

these vanities don’t suit.

I’m going back to the gospel truth.

 

And it’s hey hey ho is there anybody home

and it’s hie hie hey, seeking light in the night of day;

There’s an empty place inside and I was wondering why.

These vanities don’t suit;

I’m going back to the gospel truth.

 

Put on your Sarejevo, Mogadishu, Kalishnikov and Columbine shoes,

for the way is treacherous with ruts and rocks.

Yeah, we figured out digits out

before that Y2K could spoil our rout,

but that 9/11 call was in the cards.

Did you consider the question of heaven

before the wreck of ’07?


Will you hear the trumpet call

from the Ancient of Days.

Our way is littered with freaks and fads

from Baghdad through our mouse pads

as the reaper swings his steely scythe

across our wicked ways.

And it’s hey hey ho is there anybody home?

And it’s hie hie hey, seeking light of day.

It’s a dangerous place outside

and I was wondering why.

This world don’t give a hoot;

I’m going back to the gospel truth.

 

  King of Soul

Monday, February 5, 2018

Feb5, 2018


Floating in New York Harbor, this message was found in a bottle:

 

Sorry to burst the bubble here but

What the hell happened at 3 o’clock?


Somebody yell fire in crowded theater?

Thundering herd, caught up in the Smoke and mirrors!

Blindsided by  a Flash Crash?

Blame it on the ‘bots!

Gotta be them damn short-selling ghosties

in the machine

again

Oh . . . what the hey. . .

The last thing I remember, Doc

I slid into the curve.

Downward, I remember

Downward, I can tell you that.

In the winkin’ of  an eye, and suddenly it’s every man for himself—

and the thundering herd turns tail, reverse

like some slumbering bearish curse,

Stampede!

Blind-sided by the ‘bots, or so I’m told.

Or did Jerome grab  the punchbowl

Already?

Did he pull the plug?

Did he pull  the rug

out, already, from under, 

toppling now, asunder

the elephant in our room?

Watch out!

We’re coverin’ our assets here. But it’s hard to hit

a moving target.

So I’ was thinkin’

This is more dire than a bull in a China flop;

caught in a freefall only the ’bots can stop.

Or until the final bell doth drop

Hell! It’s 4 o’clock;

but I’m still in shock.

We didn’t see it coming, from near, nor far!

you know how your assets are?

What about my precious metals?

Now the dust settles:

Dust bowl

Super bowl

punch bowl, where have we landed?

America has disbanded.

Yet the Eagles have landed.

Where the Eagles gather—’tis there the body’s found.

No more Patriot tricks to score touch down.

No, nay, hardly a sound

there’s no more joy in BeanTown;

might Brady has struck out!

Dynasty done, without a doubt.

Who’d’ve thunk it,

equivalent to a Philly gridiron dunk it!

Oh, you couldn’t hear the clock stop

as we watched the black swans flop.

No, we ne’er did detect that long-dreaded pin prick

as it burst our bubble like an e.d.wick,

yet we caught a twit from way, way down

in the beltway, political town

struck dumb now with some eerie Nunez memo

more cryptic than a dreary Ruuskie demo.

But I remember

it was 3 o’clock and then . . .


That’s all she wrote.

 

Glass Chimera

Saturday, February 3, 2018

DeepState DeepThroat DeepSh*t


I suppose the concept of Deep State started with George Orwell. In his fictional explorations of early 20th-century dystopia, 1984 and Animal House, Uncle George presented the scenario of a so-called Big Brother government that wanted to control just about everything, including not only what people do, but also what they think.

Orwell’s real world of the 1930’s certainly presented a dramatic scenario of escalating DeepState dysfunction. Two gargantuan opposing dictatorships were challenging each other over the question of which one would control the world.

The Nazis, who had wrested control of the German gov. machine, had effectively set up a dictatorship of one man, Hitler. He turned out to be a personification of DeepMad. In other words, he was so mad at the world that he desperately wanted to find someone to blame for all the DeepSh*t. He blamed it all on the Jews and the Communists.

The truth is, however, this. We have found the enemy, and he is us.

All of us. But as I was sayin'. . .

Meanwhile, back at the northern climes, the Soviets were setting up a dictatorship of the proletariat, even though their founding dictator was dead; Karl Marx had dictated the idea that working folks could manhandle the world away from all the rich fuddyduddy lords and ladies who had been running it for so long, and everybody knew that certainly the proletariat could do a better job of running the show.

Now that's an idea whose time has come, the arc of history and all that. Or so they thought . . .

In the ’30’s the whole damned world was torn apart when the Dictatorship of Hitler tangled with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Oh, and there was a third one—the Dictatorship of an Emperor—Hirohito in Japan, not to mention Mussolini and his goons. Between these four, they pretty much dragged the whole damned world down into a fricking apocalypse preview. Unlike wars of old, such as was conducted by the ancient Greeks v Persians, or David v Goliath, or old dusty militarized monarchs of Europe sending their clueless vassals out to perish, the 20th-century version of warfare was exponentially more destructive than the carnage inflicted by men of old, wielding their legendary sabres and muskets and cannons and those old-school versions of techno-destruction.

Well, by 'n by, we Allies managed, through much blood and toil and sweat, to put an end to all that dictatorial bullsh*t.


It was no easy job, but we collectively mopped it up in the late ‘40s, '50s and thereafter.


But that was just one small historical step, as it turned out, in all the blood, sweat and tears that was yet to come.


Now understand this: there's always a lot more deep stuff going on than we, in our pea-brains, can fathom. That said . . .

By ’n by, a new generation comes along and now all these kids still wet behind the ears are growing up with a TV in the living room, and they’re watching the world through the lens of Edward R. Murrow and Eisenhower and Kennedy and Cronkite et al, and by the time the baby boomers get out and about where they don’t have the restraints of mom and dad tellin’ them what to do all the time—in other words, college—by that time, they had figured out that they knew enough about the world to change it—the world, that is—(haha!). And so they got out in the streets and made a big mess of things until finally Nixon got the message and brought the boys home.

Well, by the time the boys came marchin’ home again hoorah hoorah—this was early ’70’s—the DeepState had gotten the idea that Nixon was a brick or two shy of a load, and so they set out to show him a thing or two by pressing the delete button on his power trip.

And this is how it happened:

That whole protest wave that so confounded Johnson and Nixon—it wasn’t just about the war. No, it was about much more than that. It was supposedly about free love and maybe some free pot and maybe even free food, as the diggers had been trying to do out in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there was a lot going on in America behind the scenes.

That free love thing, you see,  wasn’t really so simple as just shackin’ up; it was also about getting kinky. So when  the reporters who broke the DeepState Watergate dam—Woodward and Bernstein— devised a pseudonym for their DeepState informant, they came up with the nomen DeepThroat.

This development, which attempted to document the infernal workings of unbridled unjustified politics in the white house, was thereby associated in the public mind with the kinky side of the sexual revolution, as represented by the porno movie of the same name which was inspired by a nymph who had turned kinky because she used her mouth for sexual purposes and they called it DeepThroat.

Hence, DeepState, DeepThroat. There's always a lot more deep stuff going on than we, in our pea-brains, can fathom. 

What the Americans did not understand was that the whole DeepState, DeepThroat thing was slowly devolving us into a pit of moral, political and economic depth beyond our ability to rectify all the deep troubles associated with same.

Now since that time, our preoccupation with all this dysfunctional politics and sex has sunk us deeper into political and sexual irresponsibility. This dystrophy has, along the way, blinded us to authentic responsibility, and ultimately imprisoned us in a yet another very deep quagmire. Yeah, I say unto thee, 'tis yet another pothole of even deeper dysfunctional distress:

DeepDebt, trillions and trillions of it.

Nevertheless, in spite of all that, ya gotta find a ray of hope somewhere. I don’t know about you, but my prescription for our dystopian dillemma is quite simple, maybe even simpleminded:

God bless America.

And if you believe that, I've got some deep canyon real estate in Arizona I'll tell you.

What's better is: In God we Trust. But with all the deep sh*t that’s going on, such blessing and trusting could require a higher power for the fulfillment part of it, and maybe even some DeepFaith. 

 

  King of Soul