As of Yet Untitled

I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—

Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,

The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness

And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

- Randall Jarrell



We insist on believing that there is meaning to and relief from our pain. It must end, there must be a way to be, a place to go where somehow we can find a way to make it stop and when finally at that place there will be something, some thing that will make it all obvious. There will be gifts, a magical, mystical power, maybe wisdom, bestowed and we will see so clearly how it was all worthwhile. A newfound sense of freedom is what I have always hoped for. A certain knowledge what would one day gloriously catapult me into some other as of yet unimagined way of being, some other as of yet unimagined way of seeing, some other as of yet unimagined way of living. An existence of joy and freedom – I will rise up with wings like eagles, I will run and not get weary – a profound release, an incredible lightness of being.

And then sometimes I resign myself to those words of Mr. Jarrell. Those thoughts are not true. That place of freedom and lightness of being does not exist, it will not come. This is just pain for no discernable purpose and this is just darkness for no other reason than the fact that pain breeds darkness.

I used to think those thoughts, and sometimes I still do. Mostly I exist in paragraph one but sometimes I slide into paragraph two. I’m learning to live with ambiguity.

For Where Your Treasure Is

There your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:21.

There is an interesting dichotomy between body and soul. As an aside, or perhaps more accurately as a precursor to what I am about to say I have long pondered what exactly is the soul. What is that thing, that substance that defines the human soul? I have come to a conclusion that the soul is comprised of numerous attributes all culminating in that which is the essence of the person. One might call it the Self, the Center, the Christ. The Logos.

The attributes that define the Self, the mental and emotional, the unseen attributes, you cannot actually locate within your physical body but given a little thought you know it to be there nonetheless. You cannot see or hear your emotions or your thoughts, all that makes up your non-physical existence but that does not make them any less ‘there’. That we cannot view them underneath a microscope does not make them any less real.

As an aside this is where our scientific thought fails us in so many ways, or rather I should say this is where the notion that science reveals all truth fails us. Science declares that in order for something to be true, let us use the word ‘fact’, it must be observable and repeatable given the same set of external criteria, which is to say that if all factors in an experiment remain exactly the same every time than every time I should get the same results. Scientific fact. The truth. So let me ask, is that they way emotions and thoughts work? Hardly. Can I view emotions and thoughts in a laboratory on a petrie dish, define the physical conditions and know with confidence that my test will yield the same result time and time again? Hardly. Yet we know that thoughts and emotions exist. We know that humanity is comprised not only of material but also that which is immaterial. No scientist would dispute that.

But that’s another story for another time and let me get back to my original thought which was the dichotomy between body and soul.

That which ultimately decays and dies and that which lives on forever.

Our mental and emotional systems are meant to operate. If they are shut down for years and years they do not wither and die as will a physical body part. Use it or lose does not apply to that which comprises our souls. The pressure of non-use builds over the years, like a pressure-cooker. Steam building up in a closed container, it does not dissipate but rather increases in strength, searching, straining for a way out until one day it explodes. The pressure finally exceeds the level at which the heart and mind can bear and the result is bursting forth of contents, most probably in a very destructive and ugly mess.

Use it or face the ugly consequences would be a more apt way to describe the phenomenon.

There is a good reason for this.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Free Your Mind

And the rest will follow.

Sometimes when I’m driving at night on a dark highway in the pouring rain I can’t see a thing save the lights of the car ahead of me. In those times I always have the same thought which is “if this guy in front of me drives off the road I’m going right off the road with him”. Because the only thing keeping me on the road between the lines is the tail-lights of his car. In the driving rain and darkness I have no peripheral vision. To the left, to the right and above me is blackness and I am concentrating too intently on that which is in front of me, which amounts to nothing much more than his lights.

That’s a perfectly fine way to get home safely on a dark, rainy night. It is however a hell of a constricting way to live a life.

Tunnel vision would best describe my manner of living for all these years.

*****

There was a dream, and one day I could see it. Like a bird in a cage I demanded that somebody free it.

I have to admit that I’m not a big one for listening too closely to song lyrics. I generally prefer instrumental music and even those tunes that I have liked over the years it’s always been more about the music underneath the lyrics.

But every now and then…

*****

Let us say that you have a child, a boy but really it doesn’t matter. The key is that you have a child and this child is over eighteen years-old making him legally an adult. For arguments sake we’ll say that this child, this boy is twenty-three. Legally an adult, too young to have matured fully. In fact very far from having matured fully (as anyone with a 23 year-old son knows). Anyway…

The 23 year-old son has cancer that requires chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is not a pleasant experience as we all know. Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, energy loss, etc. Unpleasant. To the max.

But he does it because he has to and he experiences all there is to experience with a round of chemotherapy. Sick as dog and bald to boot.

And just as he is starting to feel better, getting his strength back, getting his hair back, getting his 23 year old life back the doctor tells him he needs to undergo another round of chemo.

And your son, your child, that walking, talking, living and breathing PIECE of you says thanks, but no thanks.

Ah, you say, nobody would do that. No rational, intelligent, reasonable human being would make such a decision when his life is on the line.

Clearly you have never, ever encountered a 23 year old boy.

Some might say I should be using the term ‘man’ when referring to a 23 year old male person. I would refer you to my previous sentence.

What would you do? Well here is what (at least most of) you would do. You would tie him up, in chains if you had to and you would physically drag him to the hospital if you had to. There would be no question of letting him make his own decision. He’ll die without the treatment, you are his parent, there is but one option and you will not stop until you see him sitting in that chair, hooked up to that I.V. drip. And you will do it again, and again and yet again if you have to. And nobody but nobody would question you for your guerilla tactics.

But what if that sickness that your child carries around is a sickness of the soul? No less potentially lethal and manifesting itself in a hundred different ways simultaneously.

You know that the only potential “cure” is going to be with a healthy and continuous dose of psychotherapy (and medication if necessary).

What does a parent do in this situation?

And at what point does it become ok for the parent to ask the child to sacrifice themselves in the interest of saving the parent?

Because as any parent knows the loss of the child takes the parent also.

You Are Not What They Say You Are

I can read all the books about creativity that I want, it ain’t going to make me creative. Although it can help me to know that potential exists. What I need is to dig in, push past the fears and see what’s in there. I need to push past the fears and clean out the muck. That feels the most relevant right now. Too many thoughts born of holding them all in for a lifetime, never letting them out, always doubting them, doubting myself. Let them loose, examine them, see what they’re made of, be inquisitive rather than disdainful of them. Discover what I am made of.

I do not think that You are anything like they say You are. I sense You as a force, an energy, shimmering unseen to our naked, physical eye. And yet consuming every square inch of what we call ‘space’. Flowing through and impelling everything that is. The life force that holds it all together. And part and parcel of that energy is all that we think and feel, our mental and emotional energy and that which includes our capacity to both love and hate. It includes our capacity to create anything and everything that I can bring into being from my mental and emotional energy.

I think You are there and here. “Out there” and “In here”. Not a stream but THE energy that glues all that is together. That which connects me – however indirectly (and yet so directly) to the smallest particle of matter in an ocean on the other side of the planet and in outer space a million miles away.

The Christ. I AM the way, the truth and the life. I have long puzzled over this statement. But it is the answer… when we come to discover the question. After a very long and arduous and intensely personal struggle.

The Christ. The Center. Somehow this points to the very core of ourselves, the center of the human being. Of course I can never be sure, at least not right now but it seems rational that You would exist in material form if my theory of “every idea and expression of idea points to something that already is” is true. And I sense that it is. It would make sense that You had come in human form to show us that the way to You is somehow the way to our true self, the center of our being. It is both the path to me and the path to You. I could never quite put my finger on it but it makes sense to me now.

It is both interesting and rather sad that as I reach for You and (I think) get ever closer to You the more ‘out there’ people would take me to be. But the fact is that the more I reach for You and the closer I get the less ‘out there’ I become.

*****

It is very odd to be headed somewhere and not have the slightest idea where. I still have this idea that I should be ‘doing’ stuff, ‘accomplishing’ things. What I haven’t the slightest idea. Making money? Curing cancer? Saving lives? I don’t know.

I wonder if that isn’t quite true. I suppose it can be true if that is what I choose. But in the end that which I accomplish doesn’t help me much. I’ll be dead as will everyone that is to come. So much distraction comes from without and it is so hard to close my ears to it. So hard to shut it out and not allow myself to fall for that which others impose on me as necessary. Do I let society define what is important for me? Do I let the people around me dictate what I should or should not be doing. Does somebody else get to determine what is good or bad, right or wrong, useful or useless?

Striving after wind.

Is it not true that anything that flows from me, represented in the way that I choose to represent, done in a such a way that I am capable of representing, does that not automatically make it good? Simply because it is a work of my hands and my mind and my heart brought into being by me… the image of God.

I have been wanting to say this for a very long time: You are not what they say You are.

Collateral Damage

I am in awe at the power we possess to alter our reality with our minds. Let us talk about the power of denial. To me the word ‘denial’ has a very negative connotation, as if we willfully and wantonly exercise our power of denial to rid ourselves of something that is plainly obvious to us, something that is right in front of our noses that we simply choose, consciously (there’s the kicker) to ignore for some selfish, self-serving (read ‘evil’) purpose.

But our power of denial is in many instances a tool for survival and it enables us to actually alter our reality to such an extent that we can truly forget things as if they had never happened.

This is an amazing and useful tool of adaptation that we possess. The power to make ourselves forget something as if it never happened, to fragment our minds, split off that part of memory that we do not want and simply make it go away.

Problem solved.

Well, not really. For it is an amazingly useful power and at the same time an enormously destructive power. The power we have over our own minds. This ability we possess to simply make part of ourselves go away, oftentimes never to be heard from again. Amazing and tragic all at the same time. Amazing that we can do this in order to save ourselves and tragic that we find ourselves in situations that it must be done in order to save ourselves and even more tragic in that this power to slice off and away parts of ourselves closes us off to vital parts without even knowing it. It is not possible to slice off and do away with parts and pieces, e.g. painful memories without also slicing off and doing away with some of the good stuff too.

I sort of think of it as chemotherapy for treating cancer. While it is necessary to run this toxic medicine through the body to kill off the cancerous cells, there is no way it can be done without taking with it many of the good cells. There is no discernment.

We could call this ‘collateral damage’. We got the bad guys but unfortunately we had to kill numerous innocent civilians in the process. But the good news is we got the bad guys. But the bad news is…

More and more I am convinced that we are separated from God in that we are separated from ourselves. He isn’t gone, we just cannot see Him because the place where we can find Him is inaccessible to us.

I read Jungian psychology and I read it because it has become plain to me that Dr. Jung was on to something very vital and central to his psychology is the idea of circumambulation of the Self. We are looking for the center, for the Self, for OUR Self. I absolutely and positively would not dispute because it is right on the money for me. However there are questions as to whether he considered the Self to be that one thing for which we are searching, i.e. the Self as God.

I finished a book recently, The Living God and Our Living Psyche, What Christians Can Learn from Carl Jung by Ann Belford Ulanov. And I do believe that this very smart lady hit the crux of the matter when she states that the Self is not God but that part of us that knows God.

I just love it when I stumble across the words for that which I have to that point been unable to put into words.

It Makes No Sense

You wait for Heaven as if it’s some far off place yet to come,

Yet the Kingdom of God is within you.

You deny what you are as a person,

You call your humanity sinfulness,

Yet you are made in the image of God.

You present God as a lover of rules and regulations,

Demanding that we stay within His boundaries, laws and restrictions,

Yet in the same breath you say that the ‘truth’ will set me free.

Which is it?

Do I live under a set of laws?

Exist only within the boundaries?

Or do I allow myself to be free?



Dear Linda McMahon

I realize that you are running for governor senator in the great state of Connecticut and I understand that in order to win the office you have to have your name out there and you have to spend a lot of money, energy and time in order to persuade people to vote. However Ned Lamont Linda McMahon you do not have to call my house EVERY DAY FOR TWO WEEKS to ask for my vote when I already told your campaign worker that I would certainly consider voting for you on election day. Seriously Ned Lamont Linda McMahon once I have spoken to your volunteer (ok I'll give you two phone calls) kindly check my name off your list and move on to the next person.


I do not need a phone call every day to have you remind me that election day is Tuesday and that Richard Blumenthal is the devil himself and that I should vote for you because you are better than ALL OF THE OTHER CANDIDATES OUT THERE. You're the only one with integrity, you're the only one that isn't motivated by greed, you're the only one who wants to see the great state of Connecticut be the best state EVER!!

Not only that Ned Lamont Linda McMahon but your phone calls do not identify you on my caller ID, which tells me Ned Lamont Linda McMahon that you don't want me to know it's you calling because then I might be inclined to ignore the phone call.

I guess what I'm trying to say Ned Lamont Linda McMahon is that because you have crossed over the line into harrassment YOU CANNOT COUNT ON MY VOTE THIS COMING ELECTION DAY NED LAMONT  LINDA MCMAHON

Take that Ned Lamont  Linda McMahon.

Additionally Linda McMahon and Ned Lamont and all of you other politicians out there who actually think that your robocalls are a good idea and that I would actually stand there and listen to your ten minute recorded phone message THEY ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA AND I WILL NOT STAND THERE AND LISTEN TO YOUR TEN MINUTE RECORDED MESSAGE AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL I VOTE FOR YOU IF I RECEIVE A RECORDED MESSAGE FROM YOU.

In closing Linda McMahon you have guaranteed that I will cast my vote for the Devil Himself Richard Blumenthal.  Thanks for helping me make my decision.