I have made a hat

I figured I’d stop posting all my stuff on the main blog.

If you wander through here, well, deal with it.

Here I stand; I can do no other.

I have thought, more than once, that being an atheist, or at least an agnostic, would be much more intellectually comfortable.

I have rejected the obsessively legalistic, judgemental, self-righteous religion of my childhood but despite the many damages and difficulties of that approach to religion I find myself unwilling to, and even unable to, reject faith altogether.

Call it an opiate, a crutch, or a habit if you will. All I know is that within me there is a powerful recognition of the divine. To phrase it in the way it comes naturally to me; the spirit bears witness.

Pascal’s Wager, that one should wager God exists, even though his existence cannot be determined through reason, because so living benefits the individual and loses them nothing, reasonates with me.  Also, I find it fascinating that a similar argument was posited in the Islamic world about 600 years before Pascal’s notes were published. A similar thought was also introduced to the Indian world through writings in Sanscrit by Vararuci.

There is nothing new under the sun, hm?

The Looming Inevitable

February Memories

Eleven years ago in the early morning hours of a cold February day I received a phone call. It was one of those calls that earned early morning ring tones the reputation they so richly deserve. My younger brother was in the hospital in a town about 45 minutes away. He had been driving home from Seattle with his best friend and there had been a crash.

 

My brother and his friend had lived in each others pockets since they were about three. They had seen each other at school every day, played sports together, and attended church together their own lives. The most prevalent memory I have of the two of them is their shared laughter.

 

That night, my brother was sleepy so he stopped for a Mountain Dew as he turned off the freeway and headed for home. Just a few minutes after that he fell asleep and the truck left the roadway. My brother’s friend was killed almost immediately because the impact of the crash damaged his heart.    

 

When we arrived at the emergency room we learned my brother’s injuries were relatively minor. He just had some cuts and bruises. The major damage, it was immediately clear to all, was not medical in nature. The following hours and days blurred together with necessary arrangements, tears, and shock.    

 

Though it may sound melodramatic, I think in some ways my brother died that night too. It’s been about seven years since my brother has had contact with our family. Eight years ago he married. I am choosing at this point not to criticize his wife or his decision to marry her, but in light of the subsequent events it is hard for me to think well of her. It is also hard for me to accept that he decided not to contact or support our mother in anyway during her ongoing cancer battle. He also chose not to attend our grandfather’s funeral.

 

The place where my brother’s friend died is marked with a small white cross. I drive by it almost every time I go to visit my parents. Last weekend as I went past I noticed there were flowers.  I found myself sobbing. Not just for the loss of his life but for the havoc wreaked in his family and ours.

 

I miss my brother. I’ve had people inquire as to why I don’t hunt him down and force a conversation. I suppose I could do that but I don’t really believe it would bring any kind of meaningful relationship or closure.  I’ve wondered if it might be easier if he were dead as well. I don’t know. If I thought he was happy, living with joy and thriving, it might be easier. If I could believe he was doing well I think it would be easier for me to accept that he made a choice for the benefit of his marriage or emotional well-being or…something.  Instead, all I know is that he is alive in the world, suffering, and paining my parents with his silence.

 

My mom’s brain tumors continue to proliferate and an optimistic outcome stubbornly refuses to make an appearance. In light of that, the situation with my brother is especially heartbreaking to me. I look into the faces of my precious babies I think it would kill me if they decided to cut me out of their lives. Even more than I want my children to know my brother I want my mom to have some kind of reconciliation with her son.

 

There are lots of thought paths that branch from there; the aftermath of love, loss, mourning, grief, guilt, and selfishness. I’m not a supporter of driving while drowsy or kicking people out of one’s life without a very good cause. I’m going to stop there. I feel the need to go hug my Things.

 

 

 

La la la, she sang to herself

La la la

I need a vacation

Madeleine L’Engle is best known for her children’s books.

But this is her work that speaks the best to me.

Pharaoh’s Cross

 It would be easier to be an atheist;

it is the simple way out.

But each time I turn toward that wide and welcoming door

it slams in my face, and I- like my forbears- Adam, Eve–

am left outside the garden of reason and limited,

chill scienceand the arguments of intellect.

Who is this wild cherubim who whirls the flaming sword

‘twixt the door to the house of atheism and me? 

Sometime in the groping dark of my not knowing

I am exhausted with the struggle to believe in you, O God.

Your ways are not our ways. Your ways are extraordinary.

You sent evil angels to the Egyptians and killed;

you killed countless babes in order that Pharaoh,

whose heart was hardened by you (that worries me, Lord)

might be slow to let the Hebrew children go.

You turned back the waters of the Red Sea

and your Chosen People went through on dry land

and the Egyptians were drowned, men with wives and children,

young men with mothers and fathers (your ways are not our ways)

and there was much rejoicing at all this death,

and the angels laughed and sang, and you stopped then,

saying,“How can you sing when my children are drowning?” 

When your people reached Mount Sinai you warned Moses

not to let any of them near you lest you break forth

on them with death in your hand. 

You are Love, and you command us to love,

and yet you yourself turn men’s hearts to evil,

and you wipe out nations with one sweep of the hand

-the Amorites and the Hittities and the Peruzzites-

gone, all gone.

It seems that any means will do, and yet-

all these things are but stories told about you by fallen man,

part of the story (for your ways are not our ways)

but not the whole story.

You are our author,and we try to listen and set down what you say,

but we suffer from faulty hearing and loss of language

and we get the words wrong.

Listen: you came as one of us

and lived with us and died for us and descended into hell for us

and burst out into life for us: 

Do you now hold Pharaoh in your arms?

l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness

Imma pirate

After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics

If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so’s,
Futility and grime,
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do,
Or the atoms in our brains. Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
Wherein a lover’s kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one’s neck.

Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel
For, year after year, it repels
An ageing suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.

Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet Euclidian space:
Exploded myths – but who
Could feel at home astraddle
An ever expanding saddle?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude’s extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.

by W.H. Auden

You got science on my poetry!

Or is it the other way round?