The Divine Genie

A while back I visited my "psycho-village," as my friend, Ed, calls it. There are several ways I might interpret the word "psycho," but I'm way past quibbling over degrees of insanity.

Anyway, while I was visiting this cranial community, I overheard Three-Fingers McCoy (maybe someday I'll tell you how he got that name) singing the following words:

You got your Almighty God in a aerosol can;
Said you got your Almighty God, now, baby - in a aerosol can;
Spread Him 'round the room,
Spray Him on the band,
Ever'body stomp your feet and clap your hands
For the Almighty God, yeah-na-na-now, in a aerosol can.

Sounds like he's been spending too much time with the Wild God guy. I heard him ranting about magic spells and incantations (sometimes called prayers, worship songs, sermons and Bible verses) intended to conjure up the Divine Genie. I suggested there might be nothing wrong with prayers and songs and sermons and especially Bible verses.

Wild God Guy glared at me and advised, "You're missing the point."

"Part your hair differently and maybe I'll see it," I replied. I never was very good at keeping opinions to myself.

Luckily Wild God Guy chose to let my volley pass, and he responded, "It's the idea that if we say 'these' words, or sing 'those' songs, then God will somehow be required to perform in a certain way." He was warming up as he continued, "Like we can call Him up at will and give Him our list of wishes. And then we expect Him to say, 'Your wish is My command'."

"But what about His promises?" I reminded him.

"Living in the expectant hope of fulfilled promise is one thing. Treating God like a trained doG is just bass-ackward. Anytime we say, think, or even think about thinking that God has to do this, that or the other thing, we're jumping really hard on really thin ice over really deep water. Filled with really hungry fish. Especially when we think He has to do something in response to what we've done."

As I turned to leave, he left me with his usual parting shot, "The God of Creation is a wild God - don't you doubt it for a minute!"

The Heavens Declare...

If you've never visited this site, you should definitely check it out:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Under the heading Astronomy Picture of the Day is this description of the site - "Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer."

Take some time to browse the archives. The site's sights are breathtaking. Powerful telescopes yield unbelievably detailed images of distant galaxies and other cosmic phenomena. Robotic explorers provide startling images of our solar system.

If, like me, you hold or even lean toward belief in some version of intelligent design behind the universe, you'll marvel at the revelation of that intelligence and creativity. I even fancy that the Creator enjoys the chance to show off what He has made. I almost picture Him tapping His foot while He waits impatiently for mankind to develop the technology to see and record it properly.

My experience of the daily astronomical photo has evolved over the years. At first it seemed that every day provided a jaw-dropping, eye-popping peek into the very mind of God Himself. Over time that initial breathlessness slowly faded almost to indifference - ho-hum, another reflection nebula. Images of Mars' surface, taken by one of the rovers or an orbiter, still caught my attention, as did photographs of Saturn and its moons, sent from Cassini. But the grandeur of huge, swirling spirals of stars no longer moved me as before.

Not that I failed to recognize the greatness of the heavens and of the Creator. I just found that I couldn't sit and stare as I did before. It was as though I knew what was coming and chose not to take the time to experience it again.

Then guilt set in. "Familiarity breeds contempt," said one of those voices in my head. Could it be true? Luckily for me the dictionary defines contempt in much stronger words than I would have used to define my feelings. It wasn't that I actively despised the daily pictures; they simply affected me less intensely than before. But is numbness better than outright contempt?

This is one of those questions that sounds deserving of a resounding "No!" But maybe a finite being, faced over and over again with the infinite power and creativity displayed in the heavens, simply cannot take it all in, even over time. Perhaps the "numbness" that I've experienced is really a mechanism for self-preservation.

Or possibly I am experiencing a spiritual counterpart to the ability of the physical body to adapt to exercise routines. With repetition, the body can "learn" to perform an activity more efficiently, thus reducing the effectiveness of that exercise in building muscle or burning energy. Could it be the same with spiritual activities? Is it conceivable that engaging in a spiritual exercise day after day might actually make us so "good" at it that we no longer find it challenging?

Whatever the answer, I sort of miss the "oooos and ahhhhhs" of spiral galaxies, cosmic dust-clouds, and the like. On the other hand, it still amazes me that there are volcanoes on Io.

Grammar Knows Best

"Grammar's not your Grandma, it's your grammar!" This little ditty introduced a short song and animation demonstrating the proper use of some part of speech. And many of us listened because, in the days before cable, we had little choice but to wait through “Grammar Rock” for the next segment of our favorite cartoon.

Sadly, Grammar Rock never shared the screen with Punctuation Rock. And so, no one ever sang the praises of the Oxford comma, that little punctuation mark before the word "and" at the end of a list:

Grammar Rock taught the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech.

Textbooks advise that the Oxford comma is optional but recommended. Sometimes, they say, it will be necessary for clarity. I submit the following line as corroborating evidence:

"The market also provides an array of fresh produce, seafood swimming in tanks and baked goods."
-- credited to Cecilia Chan at the Arizona Republic, as posted on AZCentral.com

One stroke of the pen, or lack thereof, completely changes the meaning of this sentence. It could have described a market that sells such items as produce, seafood, and baked goods. Instead its words define “fresh produce” as “seafood.” And apparently we should expect to find this produce/seafood swimming not only in tanks, but also in baked goods.

Even Grammar knows that seafood is not produce. And I'm sure that Grandma will agree that nothing good can happen when seafood swims in baked goods.

Daily Bread...

In the course of their Bible reading, a married couple ran across Ezekiel 4:9 - "Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself."

"This is amazing," the man said, "We've got to try it out!"

"But it doesn't give us the amounts of each ingredient," the woman objected.

"Well, we'll just use equal portions."

And so they did, and when they were through they had a loaf of something that was not much like anything they had ever called "bread." But they didn't give up - they decided to continue experimenting, and eventually it grew into sort of a contest between them to see who could come up with the better loaf of bread using God's ingredients.

"Maybe the list is in order like the ingredients on a label," the wife thought, and so she made a lot of attempts using different proportions of ingredients. The husband decided he would try the historical approach and so he researched and found that "beans" might refer to carob, so he tried powdered carob.

Meanwhile the wife thought that perhaps the storage jar was actually a sprouting jar, so she experimented with sprouting the grains. Not satisfied with any results thus far, the husband delved in further and discovered that the loaves were probably baked in a clay oven fired by acacia wood. He did his best to duplicate this process.

The wife was by now trying every possible combination of sprouted and unsprouted, ground and whole grains.

Finally the man gave up. "I quit," he announced one day. "I've just decided that the Bible was talking about dry, smoky-tasting flat blobs of grainy stuff. I'll get used to them, somehow."

"Wait," his wife replied, "I have one more idea to try out."

"What is it?" her husband wanted to know.

"I'm not ready to tell you - let me just try it first."

And so she went into the kitchen, mixed up her ingredients, did all the necessary punching and waiting and so on, and finally put the loaf in the oven - the kitchen one, not the clay monstrosity in the back yard - to bake. All through the day the husband was tantalized by the delicious smell as the bread rose and as it baked. It was quite different from any of the batches either of them had previously mixed-up, and he couldn't identify the source of the improvement, although it seemed somehow familiar. Finally the bread was done, and together they removed the pan from the oven, and then the loaf from the pan. It looked perfect - rounded nicely on top and browned to just the right shade.

"What did you do to it?" the husband asked.

"Just wait - let's see how it slices."

Oh, and it sliced just perfectly. Inside the bread was evenly fine-grained and not at all rubbery.

"How did you do that?" the husband demanded.

"Just wait - let's see how it tastes," she replied.

It tasted even better than it looked and smelled - hearty whole-grain flavor and melt-in-your mouth texture.

"OK," the husband said, "What's the secret? This bread is just the best ever - it's like manna or something."

"Well," she replied, "I added a teaspoon and a half of yeast."

"You did WHAT?" he sputtered, spitting out a bite of bread as though she had just informed him he was eating the forbidden fruit.

"I added a little yeast," she repeated.

"But the Bible doesn't say anything about yeast! There isn't any yeast in that verse! What in the world made you think you could add yeast?

"Well," she hesitated, "to tell you the truth, I've sort of changed my view of the Bible."

Now the man was totally incensed. "You WHAT? Don't you realize that the Bible is God's inspired Word - without error? What the heck do you mean you've changed your view of the Bible?"

"Umm," she mumbled nervously, "I decided maybe it isn't a very good cookbook."

Thoughts, like dogs, sometimes stray...

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. --Groucho Marx
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Dog is man's best friend. --anonymous
Diamonds are a girl's best friend. --Jule Styne and Leo Robin
However, in the event of a divorce, the girl often ends up with both...
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You have to forgive Fifi - she thinks she's human. --Annoying Dog Owner
Maybe so, but I don't let humans jump on my lap and lick my face, either.
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I've never owned a dog that thought it was a human. I have, however, owned one that thought I was a dog. Every time we went for a walk together, Chipper, in classic dog fashion, would mark a particular street-light pole as his own. Then, before agreeing to continue on our journey, he would look at me expectantly. I swear he was hoping that one day I would get with the program and mark the pole as he had so carefully demonstrated. I never did.
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Cody turned 15 a month ago, one day after our 29th wedding anniversary. He was six weeks old when we bought him, so very soon he'll have lived with us for a full 15 years.

Sometime before this last birthday he was diagnosed with cancer. Our vet gave him a matter of weeks or possibly months to live. Although he is obviously in discomfort without regular doses of vicodin, his health has generally improved since his diagnosis, possibly due to the antibiotics he is also taking.

"I guess he didn't read the biopsy results," the vet said at his last visit.

Cody is nearly blind and almost deaf; even his sense of smell is failing. He spends a lot of time sleeping and occasionally needs help to get to his feet after a long nap. But he still finds it within himself to wag his tail when someone touches him. He loves Pam's voice students and just can't get enough of them when they come over for lessons. He plays little games with us, and he can even tell his favorite joke - chasing his tail and then waiting expectantly for the laughter he used to hear and love. I'm not sure what his payoff might be, now that he's deaf, but he still performs.

This is his favorite time of year, when the beautiful weather allows us to leave the back door open so he can go in and out as he pleases. He loves to sleep on the patio, right outside the door. In his younger days he would chase birds when they landed in his yard, but now he can't see, hear or really even smell them. Sometimes, though, he growls and shuffles huffily off into the yard, maybe even barking in his old-man's croak. I think when he does that, he's pretending there are birds around. And, of course, pretending he has just scared the bejeepers out of them.

Yup, he's definitely better than diamonds!

My Village

“Carl, you’re really starting to piss me off!”

The words shouldered aside the gentle hubbub of street noise. They surprised me, taking a pinching hold of my ear and jerking my head around. I didn't recognize the voice, nor did I know anyone named "Carl" who might live in the little village. Obviously I had been away for too long - at least two new residents had slipped in during my absence.

The rest of the crowd around me was familiar, if oddball. A few citizens of a fictional Arizona town nodded and smiled in my direction, but the genetically-engineered, superhuman space-warriors and the heavily-armed wolfriders from some fantasy world ignored me completely in favor of menacing each other with dark glares. I was suddenly jostled sideways by a wave of folks trying to avoid ending up under the feet (or worse) of a passing pair of dragons, who, for reasons only dragons might know, had chosen to walk rather than fly.

To my left, down an alleyway I had never explored, a sudden rattle of gunfire provided a surprisingly fitting syncopation to the odd music snaking smoke-like from an upstairs window ahead of me. A trio of poets finishing each others' couplets, and Three-Fingers McCoy, an old blues-singer, added lyrics to the strange mix.

All of the buildings lining the streets boasted fresh paint - not in single colors, but in wild murals ranging from photographic to abstract. An industrious crew of finger-sized gardeners tended a collection of bonsai growing in front of a restaurant that served such delights as Mexican black beans and blue corn in coconut curry over wild rice.

Fishermen and koi-fanciers sat discussing the merits of fish as either food or pets. Over their heads stretched the shade of diverse trees hailing from far-flung deserts, forests and jungles alike - not to mention quite a few from places no one could name. And not too surprisingly, some of these latter trees talked among themselves, gesturing emphatically or gently, as the tone of their conversation required.

And sitting all alone in the grassy-green of a little park, an odd man conversed with himself in many different voices. I've heard him many times - he endlessly insists to himself and anyone else who will listen that God is wild, unfettered and uncontrollable. His concept of God neatly excludes him from attaining the title of theologian. Not that he cares.

This odd little village, of course, lives only in my imagination, but every resident, every tree, every sound, every painting, right down to every dish on the menu of every restaurant, represents a tale that I would love to tell. Even Carl and his anonymous antagonist. And the number of unshared stories is growing - again, consider Carl and whoever it was that he might have pissed-off.

And I worry that I might not be taking proper care of the village, that I don't lavish enough attention upon its denizens. I’m afraid that if I don’t write about them, they’ll someday pack up and move away, looking for a place where they’re better cared-for.

It isn't just that I would miss their company, although I certainly would. There are other unsettling matters to consider. Much as I like everyone in my village, there are plenty of folks in there who wouldn’t be above carting-off more cargo than they actually own. In fact, I would have concerns about anything that’s not nailed-down tightly. And in my head, that’s a lot of stuff.

Besides that, I worry about who might move in to take their place. I’m really comfortable with the Eddy Campbells and Lacey Thompsons and even the Wild-God Guy. I’d hate to find a crop of lima-bean tenants growing where right now I’ve got sweet-corn. Or, worst-of-all, I'd hate to drop in for a visit and find only a ghost town.

And that, in a nutshell (or maybe a nutcase) is why I want to take my writing career to another level.

Casualties of a Bloodless Revolution, Part III

I believe that an industrialized worldview affects our concepts of spiritual matters in much the same way as it shapes our thoughts about food, work and other areas of life. Spirituality in America has become something of a competitive marketplace where consumers and suppliers meet to exchange cash or other currency for products and services. Just as goods - from fruit to electronics - travel from around the globe to fill our shelves, so do the world's religious philosophies find their way into our spiritual bazaar. And we have the unique ability and opportunity to pick and choose just exactly the amounts and kinds of teachings that appeal to us.

Thus we are encouraged to think of church or other religious meetings as a sort of delivery-system for spiritual goods, services and information. Sitting in neat rows, we face the spiritual suppliers onstage and wait, if not eagerly, then at least dutifully, for the payoff on our investment of time, money and inconvenience. But spirituality is not about delivering a supply of "God-stuff" to a demanding public.

I don't think that our meetings should be formed into symmetrically-placed and evenly-spaced lines of customers. Instead they should naturally take the shape of organically-imperfect circles of everyday spiritual people bringing baskets of knowledge, insight and experience to share with each other. Inefficient? Yes - in the sense that it is less efficient to craft a beautiful chair with hand-tools than to bang-out thousands of seating-units in a factory. Messy? Undoubtedly - in the sense that there might be a bit of organic, living soil clinging to a garden-grown carrot. Imperfect? Only to the extent that education fails should a music student spend an hour learning why his instructor is moved by Scriabin, rather than counting the number of notes in one of his compositions.

The Digital Revolution seductively offers a promise of renewed community - and not only renewed, but vastly improved. Digital communities are worldwide, immediate, and built around any interest or combination of interests imaginable. In fact, if there is no online community that caters to your own set of parameters for fellowship, it is literally child's play to start one yourself. But beneath the surface, the digital world secretly is at work assassinating those few fragments of true community that survived bloodless slaughter at the hand of industrialization. Perhaps "assassinating" is too strong a word - the damage done by digitization (and by industrialization before it) to authentic community is largely unintentional.

But regardless of intent, the result is unchanged - industrialization and digitization have overwritten historical definitions of community. And the resulting villages based upon these new definitions are often "blessed" with more than their fair share of idiots. And these are the villages that are raising our children.

Digital communities are as impersonal as they are global. They are anonymous, allowing members to hide even the most basic of information - first name, physical appearance, etc. They are isolationist - members of a community may live in the same house and not even know that they meet online every evening. They are artificial in their criteria for inclusion and exclusion - it isn't that we must learn to get along in spite of our differences, digital communities make our differences totally invisible.

Living is often little more and nothing less than moving from accident to accident on a time-tested and traffic-worn course. Technology has served to lessen the number and blunt the effect of life's accidents by straightening, flattening, lighting, cushioning and mapping the track of life. This allows us to view our walk through life as a trip, not a journey. The importance of a trip is wrapped up in the destination; the best part of a journey is the road. And often it is the accidental, unpredictable nature of our progress that makes the journey interesting.

Industrialized and digitized communities tend to extend the extremes of conversation, sometimes acting as censor, sometimes as promoter. Communities arranged around a closely-defined set of criteria often remove the possibility that Uncle Joe will say something totally inappropriate over dinner. On the other hand, anonymity encourages outrageous behavior. Online discussions tend to diminish the chances of accidentally finding, in the midst of a hot debate over politics, that you both love to sit out at night hoping the invisible end of your fishing line will somehow connect with a great big catfish. Virtual conversations fail to teach us that no one, no matter what they may look like on the outside, is any more ugly or beautiful than they are on the inside. And these are just a few, rather obvious arguments.

Science long ago identified three basic ingredients vital to plant growth - nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. It was believed, in classically reductionist fashion, that plants could thrive when supplied with only these three elements. This turned out to be nowhere near the truth - plants require a vast number of "micronutrients" as well. No one has yet identified all of these micronutrients, nor the quantities in which they are required. Similarly, scientists once thought that protein, carbohydrates and fat were the only components of food that were necessary for human nutrition. Again, they were sadly mistaken. And as with plant nutrients, scientists have not yet unraveled the mysteries of human food.

Community and relationships are much the same way - we have not yet even begun to identify the mysterious benefits of feeling a human touch, hearing a human voice, seeing a human face, smelling a human smell. We can't even guess at all of the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual "micronutrients" absorbed simply by being physically close to other people. But we are beginning to believe that these indispensable "somethings" exist. It is impossible to reduce human interaction or shared experiences to a convenient string of zeros and ones.

Both the Industrial and Digital Revolutions provided and continue to provide a great many measurable and very real benefits, and these gains seduce us into blithely viewing every change as beneficial, or at worst, as an acceptable price for progress. And while neither the Industrial nor the Digital revolutions are necessarily bad things, when we believe that life is industrial or digital, we bleed a lot of blood for a return on a fool's investment.

In "In Defense of Food" Michael Pollan recognizes that not everyone can afford a diet of good foods rather than industrial nutrient-packages. He calls this situation shameful, and I agree. But he goes on to advise that those who can afford a diet of real foods should adopt that diet. In this I see a parallel with technology in other areas of life.

Most of us cannot simply "drop out" of our technological world, nor by doing so would we significantly help ourselves or anyone else. But to the extent that we are able, we need to be aware of and even to draw more boldly the dividing line between lifestyle and life. Life is much more than a list of ingredients that can be synthesized, extracted, rearranged and packaged for superior absorption and enjoyment. Nor is life a series of zeroes and ones that may be stored, manipulated, reproduced and transmitted at will. Life is a strange and wonderful stroll that might be made a little more enjoyable by a nice pair of walking shoes and an iPod. But we lose a great deal of joy and purpose when technology fools us into outpacing or drowning-out our companions.