The Void Don't Live Here

Uno
I run through my daily digest of forum threads, blogs, emails, the websites I visit, and I end up still feeling frustrated. Maybe today no one is "talking". There is nothing exciting on any of the sites. Maybe I am just not finding what I am "looking for" here. The question is, will it ever be enough? I mean, how many friends, activities, online forums and virtual friends does one need to have to really fill the void, or is it even possible?
I wonder what is wrong with me. It is not like I should be lonely. I have a husband and two little kids who keep me busy. Most of my friends who are raising their children are too busy to get online at all, or to have a social life outside the home.
I have my dog shows and classes. I have my church, where I can talk to like minded people twice a week. I can go to Sunday School, to the worship service, and to Wednesday night Bible Study, and be surrounded by positive people who are interested in my spiritual life and geniunely care for me.
I have my old friends from high school, my old friends from college (or around the age of college), my former team members from the EC, my old friends from the day practice I was at: everywhere I work, I form close friendships with other women that I can't imagine ever losing.
I have my geocaching friends, including the two women I have become close to, and many others that I see at events about once a month or so. Every day, sometimes several times a day, I am in our local forums, talking to these people, or maybe just watching the threads. I go into the main website forums and sometimes talk there, sometimes make friends with people I have never seen.
I have my enrichment forum, my human-animal bond listserve, my primate listserve, my dog show listserve. I am on the dog breeder's email list and get email from other people I have met along the way in the dog world.
I have my blog, with the links to other blogs of people interested in some of the same things. I have blogs saved on my favorites. I link to other people's blogs off my profile. I have my myspace page and my myspace friends, some I know and some I've never met, and sometimes I link to friends of friends of friends of fellow myspacers. I've had long posts back and forth with myspace people I've never met in person.
I still don't feel socially fulfilled. I have decided that this is because I am a complete freak with some emotional blackhole down inside. Sure, it could be because my husband and I have no real partnership. He pretty much ignores me and I him, or else we are fighting. Sometimes we try to do things together, but it always ends badly. Sure it could be because I don't have that special best friend anymore that I spend all my time with, like the girls of my past. Sure it could be just a temporary phase I am going through, some kind of soul stagnation before the big epiphany. Maybe I just need a soulmate.

Absence

Dos

I go to pick my friend Lara up from work. She tells me I sound sad today and asked what was going on. I told her about the above-mentioned. She says, "Nothing is wrong with you. You're fine. I totally understand what you mean, though. Sometimes I feel the same way. It's normal." We get in the car and drive off, and suddenly I don't feel the void anymore.

It hits me that it is all about presence. I feel lonely because I am not with people. The virtual world does not compare with actually being with someone. I could spend time with the friends I mentioned above, but I don't reach out to them when I am feeling alone. I don't call them when I really need to talk to someone or feel isolated from the world. Sometimes, when I am with those people, the ones who know me but don't really know me, I am not my true self.

I know I am a multi-faceted person. I have many parts to my Self, and I show just a few parts to most people. There are only a few that know all of me, see all my sides. Some friends say that maybe I am not being genuine, or I am hiding things from people, because of this, but I think they just are oversimplifying it. We all kind of do this to a degree, show only the sides of us to others that we think they will accept. Most people just can't accept all my sides because they think in black and white, and therefore my duality of being confuses them. I can't be all bad or all good, but I am little of both. Aren't we all like that?

With Lara, I am free. I am happy. I am able to show her all my sides. I know she will accept them all, because she is willing to demonstrate her duality of being, too. We are both bad and good together. We cruise down the road and my void flies out the open window, as we smoke cigarettes and talk about religion.

I have a captive audience, and I play my favorite songs for her and tell her why I love them. I am tired of telling myself, that was old and boring, but playing them who has never heard them before reawakens my senses and I am able to see what it was I loved about them.

In a way, Lara is like the friend I always wanted but never quite had, the Jack to my Neal. I have written so many entries in my real diary about my longing to have a friendship like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady's, but it didn't really happen. My friends either weren't creative enough or weren't passionate enough for me to have that aspect of a friendship that I craved: the sense of symbiotic creationism.

Lara and I are there, man. We are bouncing ideas off each other and running our sentences into each other's and it just flows between us. Unfortunately, at this point of our lives, we also have our own lives to lead and can't simply drop everything to spend all our time together. We would love to, of course, since we have so much fun and so much in common, and we make grand plans, "let's set aside during the week for creative time, for exercise time, for studying the Bible, for scrapbooking, for geocaching or hiking, for spending time with the dogs," but time is a precious commodity for both of us.

The importance, really, is the creative time, because that is THE thing, the Jack and Neal thing. I am the idea man and she is the creative force, the one who gets it done. I am running my mouth Neal-style and she says, "man, you really need a tape recorder, record some of the things you say" and I laugh at how I've heard that before, and geez what we would have done if Neal had been running a tape recorder when he was talking, only he was much faster, much wilder, much more alive than me, and here's Jack, aka Lara, figuring out how we are going to fit it all in.

And we ride down the highway, as I play my music for her, every now and then throwing in the naughty lesbian karoake version. We ramble on into the night with our spirituality and sensuality riding shotgun, and there is no room in this car for that void.

Presence

The Emergence of the Gnostic Gospels
and its Implications for our Faith


In 1945, an important discovery was made in the caves near a town called Nag Hammadi. An Arab peasant had stumbled upon a large earthenware jar (perhaps the first undocumented geocache? jk!) and smashed it open, hoping it contained treasure. What spilled out was not gold, but 13 papyrus books bound in leather.

The peasant did not recognize the importance of what he was seeing. In fact, some of the pages were burned by his mother in her hearth when she was kindling the fire. At some point, some of the texts left the hands of this peasant and were sold in the black market, eventually piquing the interest of Professor Gilles Quispel, distinguished historian of religion at Utrecht, in the Netherlands, who was able to translate the coptic text. Further translation and relevant discussion has continued from the 1970s to the present day, with the most popular translation being James Robinson's 1978 book shown to the left.

Researchers have dated these books to have been written somewhere between 80 and 200 AD, but some biblical scholars now believe that the most likely date is around 140 AD. During the first and second century, all or some of these books and the teachings within them influenced a certain small portion of the developing Christian faithful, who became known collectively as "gnostics".
As the Christian faith developed, it became important to make decisions on the books that would become part of the New Testament and on the foundations of the faith. With the rising power of the "catholic" faith and orthodox school of thought, these "gnostic" books became ousted and were believed to be heretical. The books disappeared and were supposed to be destroyed by the rising orthodoxy.

Certainly some of the ideas presented in the gnostics texts could be considered threatening for the orthodox believers. In general, the gnostic texts suggested that the path to the Divine was through self-knowledge, which in effect could eliminate the function of the church itself.
In addition, certain books, (i.e. Gospel of Phillip), suggested that Jesus did in fact have a special relationship with Mary Magdalene, which in effect could change the perception we have of Jesus as a divine one free of mortal desires and sin, and placing him more in line with the rest of humanity.

"...the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended... They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us? the Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as I love her?"

"Gnosticism" as a sect of faith asserts that "direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings," and that the attainment of such knowledge is the supreme achievement of human life. The Gnostics as a collective were not much interested in dogma or coherent theology. They cherished the ongoing force of divine revelation, rather than a specific creed.

Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychologist and a life-long student of Gnosticism in its various historical permutations, stated,
…We find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and individual knowledge. This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of man's affinity with the gods....

There are some other ideas out there on what it means to be a "gnostic" in terms of belief, but I want to leave that alone for now. I will say that it seems like there is some conflicting information out there. What I want to focus on is what the gospels themselves mean for today's Christian.

Initially upon reading about the suppression of these gospels by the orthodox christianity in its formative years, I felt misled. I felt that we were not given all the materials by which to determine our faith. We had some of the pieces, and we fit them together and said, "hey, here is the image of God we were trying to create", when really half the pieces were slid under the table, and so the image we got was skewed.

I understand, though, that during this time, a time when the New Testament was being created, when it was being decided which items and books belonged in our faith and which didn't, that decisions had to be made in order to create a cohesive organized faith. Without some kind of system, Christianity might not be around today. There were many choices on directions to go, and although it seems like the reasons for choosing which books belonged and which didn't were arbitrary and subjective, at some point someone had to decide something. In this case, it is theoried to be church leaders in the time of Emperor Constantine who decreed that these texts were non-canonical, and therefore heresy.

At that time, it was vital that these texts drop from the scene, and I myself am glad that they were stashed away in a safe place and not simply destroyed. I do think there is some cosmic signifigance to the timing of their unearthing. At this point, I think Western civilization and/or Christianity is at the point where we are willing to accept them and look to them for a greater understanding of God, salvation, and truth. Before this time in culture, I don't think our civilization was ready to handle this information, and perhaps these books would have been unearthed only to be destroyed.

This is not to say that our culture as a whole has developed to the point where we are completely open to new and contradictory ideas on faith. If that was so, jihad would not exist and we would not still be hunting bin Laden in the desert. However, on today's society, and particularly in western culture, there is less emphasis on the importance of maintaining strict theological barriers. We marry between faiths, something that was not possible in the time the gospels were written and even for centuries afterwards. We accept that people have different religious beliefs based on a variety of ideas. Even within Christianity, there are so many sects with differing beliefs on so many issues that re-introducing new ideas is not as threatening, even if they challenge some of our most basic premises.

If there was any question on how the ideas presented in the Nag Hammadi library might change faith, one might just look at the success of the Da Vinci Code and if it has influenced the ideas of contemporary christians, since many of the ideas presented in the book/film were drawn from these ancient texts.

When I first read some of the excerpts from Elaine Pagels' introduction to the Nag Hammadi texts, The Gnostic Gospels, I was thinking that the collective ideas presented were reminscent of the trancendalists, or eastern esotericism. The emphasis on approaching the divine through self-knowledge seemed to me to be related to the the eastern religions, and also had shades of Judaic mysticism. That made it all the more appealing to me, since I have been drawn to those lines of spiritual thought in the past. To me, the books found at Nag Hammadi bridge the gap between eastern and western religions, and open a door to a more complete picture of truth, a door I welcomely open.

I long to read and learn more on this subject, so as I learn, so will you.

Can I help you?

This afternoon, I had this amusing interaction with my supervisor.

She was telling me about something she was going to do, and inviting me to join her. She says to me, "I don't know what you're doing right now, but..."

I really wanted to quip, "That's funny, neither do I!"

Which is amusing on so many levels to me.

I could leave it at that, but then you, my reader, would have no idea what that meant or why it was so hilarious to me. So I will elaborate...just a little.

First of all, I had absolutely no plans for the day. In fact, most of my day was filled with making plans for tomorrow. I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants this afternoon when she caught me and I really had not made any immediate plans except to continue planning for tomorrow. Part of this is because I am still out of sorts with this restructuring of my program I am doing, still trying to figure out the best way to get it all done.

Secondly, as most everyone reading this little blog already knows, I really am very new to this particular area of this field. I have been working with this species less than a year. What cracks me up is that it is not that difficult for me to extend my background to allow me to inherently understand what I am doing. Last week, I overheard the new doctor talking about me to the office girl. She was marveling that I had only been working with these guys for eight months, I guess because I came off knowledgable to her. "I guess she's just a natural," she said.

The thing about that is, though, is that if someone has a firm grounding in animal behavior, it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch for them to be able to understand most animals. All animals communicate mostly through body language and some kind of vocalizations, and it is just a matter of determining the dialect, I guess. Initially, I remember trying to figure out what these guys were saying to me, but at this point, I translate without even thinking about it.

Body language is subtle to humans, because we are not trained to look for it, but if you spend a lot of time with animals, it is something that becomes intrinsic and valuable, not only as a source of information, but also in terms of safety.

When I was a kid, I remember people telling me that a horse's ears will be pinned back when it is angry. That is true, but if you wait until the ears are pinned back, it is probably too late to avoid getting hurt. You have to always be watching for the more subtle signs (tension in the body, shift in weight, the flicker of the ear, turning of the head or eye) and respond to those to keep from even being near a horse when the ears are pinned. There is also appropriate response, which is completely different if the horse is a "bluffer" or is truly aggressive. These are skills that become instinctual the more time you are around horses, and in that respect, it is the same across species. I respond to these guys' body cues now without even thinking about it.

Thirdly, I am just making shit up anyway here. The funniest thing about that is that I invented all this work to do just to keep myself busy, and now people ask for it, depend on it, double check it around here. That cracks me up all the time. I have a whole binder of documentation that could be audited at any time, but it is all stuff I feel like I sort of pulled out of my ass. Oh sure, one of my critical documents was an amended form of something that was left behind by a (big name) doctor that used to work here. Since he left, though, no one was using it to document this stuff, but suddenly now that I am using it, it becomes valuable.

Fourthly, this job is so vastly different than anything I have done before, it doesn't even feel like the same thing. I remember trying to explain this to the HR lady who was here, but she had absolutely no idea what it is like in the real world, so I couldn't frame it for her in a way she understood (probably because she was weird). A large portion of my jobs with the same title in the past involved a lot of client relations. At times I felt like a hostess, a grief counselor, a liasion between the client and the doctor who was trying to mediate middle ground between their contradictory wishes, a translator ("let me explain what the doctor is saying in layman's terms"), a humane educator, a pet and people trainer, a receptionist and "quote maker". A veterinary technician wears many hats during the course of the day.

Here you just take the client out of the equation. The volume and intensity of real work is significantly less. Cleaning, feeding, surgery assistance, patient care; it's all out the window.

Fifth, my supervisor could really care less what I am doing, as long as I am not bugging her. When I first started here, I had no idea what to do with all this rope. Usually doctors keep their techs on a short leash. We are their "right hand men", literally standing right next to them. They don't work on animals without us. The new docs sometimes get anxious when we are not around, because we hold their hands and help them. When they are not working on animals, we are usually scurrying around right near them, within earshot so that if they suddenly decide they need to look at an animal, they can pull our leash and we'll come running.

When I first got here, I was running circles around my boss asking her if I could help her with anything, but she kept sending me away. I got the drift. I never really work with her, we work independently.

She really has no idea what I am doing most of the time. She never asks me to help her, and I stopped asking her a long time ago.

TFTC!

(Thanks For The Cache)

The other night, I was doing something I have been doing a lot lately, which is to go through blogs of people who have listed "geocaching" as one of their interests. As I was flipping through blogs, I was getting bored easily and moving to the next one. I realized at some point that I was getting bored with the blogs because NONE of them were actually talking about geocaching. Those people had listed it as an interest, but when you got to the blog, none of the entries actually mentioned it at all. Sure, it is interesting to read about other people's lives and what they are thinking about, but what I really want is to hear other people talking about their geocaching experiences.
In thinking about this, I realized that MY blog doesn't really talk about geocaching very much either. I think in the past I talked about it a little, but I stopped doing it because I thought people would find it boring. What if these other people out there who list it as an interest also think the same thing? Maybe their friends are tired of hearing about it too!
At any rate, it made me realize that maybe I should write about it more, but just in a way that doesn't bore my friends to tears.
So this post is going to be one in a series of posts about

REASONS I LOVE GEOCACHING

This weekend I did some light caching on the way home from my dog show. I didn't want to do too much, because my husband was already watching the children so I could show the dog, and I had to keep his coat looking nice. So I saved the two caches that required the most hiking for last, on Sunday on the way home.

Here are the logs from my favorite two of the seven that I found over the weekend:

Karankawa Burial Ground

January 20 by hardings (775 found)

Well, after getting second best at the dog show, we did the second best thing, and went caching. I was saving this one for after the shows were over, because I knew it would be a wet walk and I didn't want to have to worry about grooming up the aftermath. The dog was trying to help me on this one, but I don't think his sniffer was going to go that far. Luckily it was an easy find once we got there. TNSL, left a geocoin we picked up on a trip out west. There were TWO guardians of the cache today, and one, a frog, did not want to get off and had to be encouraged. I have a cousin to the official cache guardian at home. TFTC!

The Deep Dark Woods

January 20 by hardings (775 found)

Found it today with the dog as we were returning home from a dog show. We hiked the about 0.20 mile from the school. As we got to about 230 ft, I saw where the arrow was pointing and did NOT want to go in there after this rain we've been having. At first glance, it looked like a swamp. Then I spied a dry way in and it wasn't too bad from there as long as we watched for mud. Took TB, left geocoin, too bad I didn't look for the special baggie because I could have given to hubby, who has served overseas twice. Thanks for the exercise and the easy find, once you make your way into there!

As I was going to bed that night, I had visions of hiking through the forest in my mind. I was replaying the walk, the excitement as I grew closer to the cache sight, the smell of the trees and the wet earth. I was hunting ammo cans in the woods in my sleep.

Today's reason that I love geocaching: it provides motivation to get out and enjoy the fresh air, combining exercise with the great outdoors.

She's Talking About My Friends!

Meet Your Old Friend, the Multipurpose Monkey
By Meredith F. Small, LiveScience's Human Nature Columnist
posted: 18 January 2008 12:56 pm ET

A macaque is a really good, general purpose, sort of monkey.
Macaques are also the monkeys that people know the best. When 5-year-olds draw a picture of a monkey , with its smooth body, long tail, tiny ears, and impish face, they are drawing a macaque. We know these animals well because macaques are also the quintessential research animal. The polio vaccine was first developed in macaques, various contraceptives and pharmaceuticals have been tested on macaques, and they were sent into space before apes or people.And now, a macaque is walking on a treadmill and thinking hard to make a remote robot walk, a technique that will hopefully be of use to the disabled in the future, Duke University Medical Center researchers recently announced. But lost in all this service to humankind is the fact that these are really great monkeys, and they have an important place in nature; they are a lot more than lab animals.Macaques are the most geographically widespread primate after humans. But unlike humans, their adaptation to a variety of places is natural, not cultural. Various species of macaques are found in deep forests, on mountainsides and at the beach. They incredibly agile — they scurry across branches high in the canopy and leap tall buildings with a single bound, and they can run really fast when scared by a predator or motorcycle. In other words, macaques know how to stay out of danger. But the real reason macaques are so successful as a species is because they eat just about anything. Flowers, leaves, fruit, insects and whatever an unsuspecting tourist might bring to a temple in Asia. Hard candy? Sure, love it. Potato chips? Monkey favorite. The monkey will also take your ham sandwich and cookies while he's at it.And they are smart, maybe not as smart as chimpanzees, but still very smart. Especially in the social realm. Their lives are full of intrigue, Machiavellian moves for power and concern for who is doing what with whom, just like people.They are also socially intelligent. I once watched a low-status female Barbary macaque worm her way up the tightly held female hierarchy simply by grooming the babies of high-ranking females. She did it quietly, opportunistically, and pretty soon she was one of them. Macaques, especially females, also know more about the bonds of kinship than any human family. Macaque society is matrilineal in every sense; females eat together, sleep together and bring up their kids together.And those bonds are significant. I've seen Barbary macaques form a phalanx behind a female in trouble, and the closest kin were right behind her with more distant relatives farther back, all of them screaming in support. In fact, macaques, not chimpanzees, were the first animals to alert researchers that kinship held the evolutionary key to just about everything primates, including humans, do. We share genes in common with kin and so we should help them over others, even when that preference puts us at risk.Macaques also teach us something about genius. On an ordinary day on Koshima Island, Japan, a young female macaque named Imo picked up a piece of sandy sweet potato and washed it in the sea. Some time later she grabbed a handful of rice and tossed it on the waves also to get rid of the sand. Pretty soon, her recipe for salt potatoes and rice passed from monkey to monkey, demonstrating how culture might have spread among early humans.Maybe soon, we'll see robots washing potatoes for lunch while macaques lounge in beach chairs nearby, thinking really, really hard about that salty potato.

OH GOD Not Again

Geez.
Just the other night, out with my friends, I was talking about how I had been able to make my sin go away just by naming it (see post entitled "Oh God")

Well, guess what? It's ba-ack.
And it's badder than ever.

Of course I am analyzing it. This little crush has to be more than just pure physical attraction. I know it's more. Why is it happening, I want to know. I am trying to find some cosmic significance to it. I am not sure if it is some kind of sign, or if it has some kind of ramifications for my marriage. For instance, what if this is God's way of opening a door? I pray a lot about God's will regarding my marriage, wanting him to make it very clear to me what I am supposed to do about it (e.i. forgive my husband for being...less than perfect...or leave him) and I am still not sure. It would pretty much take a beating over my head to convince me what I was seeing was in fact a sign and not something I imagined into being a sign. I am so confused.

Last time I wrote about my crush, I was writing about the tenderness in his smile and the compassion he shows for his animals, and how that turned me on. This time, it is still those things, but it is more. It is the way he slows down when I address him, and walks shoulder in shoulder with me, turning his head to look me in the eye. It makes me feel like we are partners in caring, like what I am saying is valuable and important, like we are working together on it. It is the way he works close to me when we are in the same room, standing almost more than comfortably close while talking to me while we work on a joint project. We are together. We are working in unison. We are of one mind. We are partners. This is what his body language communicates to me. That is very appealing to me. I am at that age, or maybe I have changed in such a way, that allows me to see that is truly what I am looking for.

He stops what he is doing and asks me questions, tells me his ambitions, and I share mine. We both have some of the same background and desires in our work life, both ambitious and compassionate people. I imagine him and I running off together to start our own animal sanctuary, one that focuses on rehabilitation and humane education. We would fill water buckets and clean cages together, while discussing our behavior management plan and our global presence. It is a nice fantasy, but then I think about his two little girls and my two little boys, and all the people we would hurt on the way out and that pretty much kills the fantasy.

I wonder why I met this man now, this man who seems to share so much of what makes me fundamentally who I am. I wonder if there is a reason that he stops his work and stands there, watching me cross the parking lot and smiling. I wonder why that makes my heart beat faster and I smile back before turning my head.

It is kind of funny to me that in the book I just got finished reading, Night Swimming, the main character goes through something kinda like I went through recently when I put this man out of my head for a while. When I dropped the fantasy of being with him, I was able to just be myself and get to know him. I was more relaxed because I wasn't obsessing, and we reached a place in conversation I had never been with him, one that allowed us to become more friendly. I had forgotten about him (although yeah, I was still watching that ass), but I had put it aside and was working on myself, my projects. By doing so, though, it made our friendship grow.

I wonder what the purpose is of this crush that seems to have nowhere to go, of the meaning of the feelings bubbling up inside me, yearning to escape. It is some kind of fire, maybe my own burning bush.

Get your mind out of the gutter! I didn't mean it like that! Out of the burning bush, there came a message. What is the message this situation is trying to tell me?

I wish I knew.

The Relevance of "I"

Yesterday evening, I didn't want to go out. I was so stressed out that I felt exhausted and unable to move. I almost backed out of my plans with my friend. I am so glad I didn't, though.
I don't think the night was supposed to go this way, but it ended up being such a low-key evening, but with elements to it that put a smile on my face. The company was great, just a small intimate foursome, and the conversation hit on all my favorite subjects. Through the banter and the unexpected elements, we explored some of the age-old questions: What is truth? What is beauty? What is "God"? What makes men and women different? How do we determine how to live our lives most completely? How do we apply reason and logic to questions of faith, or should we?
Some of the highlights of the evening for me involved the unexpected interaction with two women who seemed to be there to teach me something. The first woman and I danced together, randomly, when I was coming back from the restroom. She wanted to tell me she thought I was beautiful. She asked me some personal questions and took off my coat, telling me I had the moves, that I was "simply sexy". I wasn't really sure of this woman's intentions, because she told me she was a mother but in the same sentence seemed to be flirting. It was odd, but I am glad it happened because it made me feel good inside, and think about what beauty is.
The other woman was a gorgeous, intellingent black woman who asked if she could join our group because we were "having the best conversations". She reminded me of what it was like to be strong and ambitious, and to never settle for less than you deserve. She also made me think about the definition of beauty.
Mostly, though, what I got out of the night was a return to "me". It is so easy to lose one's identity as a mother. You mean nothing more sometimes to your family than someone who can take care of others. Your needs or desires have no function here. I know so many women that lose themselves here and I don't want to. Sometimes, without a determined effort, I start to. I had sacrificed my desires all weekend for my children. I had forgotten there was this other part of me, the "I", that belonged out there in this world, too.
I want to explore more the idea of retaining one's identity, and why it is important. For now, though, I have to run back to my children, and forget...who I am...for a little while.

Indy, this one's for you....

CHECK YOUR PREMISES Part Two

When I think a little more about why what the preacher said about existentialism bothers me, I think about my friend Mari.
Mari has interesting views on many issues, including religion. I think about something she told me once, and how it is related to this idea. She said that "Sin is what we decide it is." Sin is subjective. It is something that the individual believes takes him away from God, and what is considered a sin to one person might not be the same for someone else. Even with that being her opinion, she still lives what appears to be a moral lifestyle in accord the "absolute authority of God".
If we take a subjective approach to our faith, that it take away the absolute morality inherent in God's word? Can't one believe in a subjective truth, even where it comes to "sin" and a moral framework, and yet still adhere to the absolute values set to us by God?
So I did a little deeper, and encounter the existenial theists.
One of the more prominant "faces" of existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard, was, in fact, approaching it from a Christian viewpoint. In Kierkegaard, the singularity of existence comes to light at the moment of conflict between ethics and religious faith. Suppose it is my sense of doing God's will that makes my life meaningful. How does philosophy conceive this meaning?
Kierkegaard, in his book Fear and Trembling, argues that for philosophy life becomes meaningful when one attempts to "raise myself to the universal" by bringing immediate (natural) desires and inclinations under the moral law, which represents "telos" or "what I ought to be". In doing so there is a loss of individuality (since the law holds for all) but one's actions become meaningful in the sense of understandable, governed by a norm. Now a person whose sense of doing God's will is what gives their life meaning will be intelligible just to the extent that their action conforms to the universal dictates of ethics.
Existence as a philosophical problem appears at this point: if there is a dimension to being that is both meaningful and yet not governed by the rational standard of morality, by what standard is it governed? For unless there is some standard, it is impossible to speak of "meaning."
To solve this problem there must be a norm inherent in singularity itself, and, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard tries to express such a norm in his claim that "subjectivity is the truth," an idea that prefigures the existential concept of authenticity. His justification is what he called the "passion of faith". To perform the movement of faith "subjectively" is to embrace the paradox, rather than to seek an escape from it by means of objective textual exegesis, historical criticism, or some other strategy for translating the singularity of my situation into the universal. Because reason cannot help here, the normative appropriation is a function of my "inwardness" or passion. In this way I "truly" become what I nominally already am.
To say that subjectivity is the truth is to highlight a way of being, then, and not a mode of knowing; truth measures the attitude ("passion") with which one makes their own, an "objective uncertainty" (the voice of God) in a "process of highest inwardness."
Ethics are considered transcendent, and are based on God's character. Thus, right and wrong are determined by God. However, due to the subjective nature of transcendent truth, as depicted in theistic existentialism, it could also be said to be determined by the individual themselves.
This makes me think of Mari again. So I dig even deeper.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me

A CAL-ORE FAMILY CHRISTMAS

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love gave to me

Twelve trackable items
Eleven dogs a'barking

Ten ducks a'laying

Nine baby punches

Eight poopin' weenies
Seven talks of worms
Six overstuffed suitcases

Five smoking grownups

Four snowballs flyin'!
Three security checks
Two precious children
And one Santa under a fallen tree

Twelve Trackable Items

Those I have been talking to about my trip to the California-Oregon line for Christmas know that I was most excited about the opportunity to do some geocaching in three new states. I brought with me twelve trackable items (travel bugs and geocoins), some I found and some I own, to drop along the way. I wasn't sure I would find enough caches to leave them at, but as it turns out I dropped all of them and found twice as many caches on our trip: 24 of the 81 I was researching. The snow effectivelly curtailed many geocaching adventures, particularly once we got to New Pine Creek, up near the mountains where the roads were slick with ice and snow. My favorite geocache finds of the trip were:

Belly Up! a cache hidden inside an old crematorium on an antique wagon up near a general store in a frontier logging town up in the mountains of Northern California. I was the FTF on this cache, which is odd since it had been out for four months. That would never happen in Houston (especially the northside)!

Modoc History a rose colored ammo can hidden next to the Alturas History Musuem (think cowboys and indians)

Spanish Springs Resort an ammo can hidden inside the buckboard of an old wagon at the entrance to a fancy rustic resort

By the second to last day we were there, I finally convinced my brother in law to take us up one of the mountain roads to attempt some of the more remote caches. The first one we tried took us on old logging roads that had steep dropoffs to the right and cliffs to the left, and too many dangerous turns and dropoffs in the snow for my courage. I convinced him to turn around so he took us up another road to find a different one. We were driving on a foot of snow, across creeks and up mountains. The inclines and vertical shots were making me anxious, until he pointed out the tracks in the snow ahead of us and I had something new to worry about: first the cougar, then the bear, then the bobcat. By the time we got to GZ, I was a bundle of nerves and the guys kept messing with me. Between my fear and the foot of snow, there was no way I was going to find the rock that covered the hidden container. That day pretty much took the geocaching urge out of me.

Eleven dogs a'barking

My friends also know that I love dogs. I do. My in-laws have eleven dogs at their house. Three live outside mainly: the mastiff Bella, and the border collies Bandit and Fritz. I always had a love for Fritz and tried to keep him once and make him my agility dog, but he and Rascal kept getting in the trash, chewing up items, and chasing cars on the road. Rascal never did those things on his own (well, except chasing cars, nasty habit) so we had to take Fritz home. Bella was very sweet to the baby, and mostly Bandit and Fritz played chase and stare games with each other.

Ten Ducks A-Laying

I think there were ten. They kept sqawking when the baby and I came close, and moved from one frozen patch of yard to another. I noticed my mother-in-law got three fresh duck eggs while I was there. She also keeps some chickens and turkeys. We didn't go in the hen house but we checked it out from the fence. The chickens were hiding but Kaleb did get to check out a turkey close up.

Nine Baby Punches

My youngest learned to hit just before this trip. He was practicing on us during the night when we were trying to get him to sleep with us in the RV. You would just be falling asleep when suddenly you would get slugged in the face. You had to learn to protect your face and be aware of his actions at all times. He started wanting to smack AJ in the face and would sneak right past the barrier I was making with my arms. It was funny but we don't want to reward it by laughing. I hope this is a quick temporary stage.

Eight Poopin' Weenies

Lately my in-laws have developed an infestation of miniature daschunds (a momma dog had a rcent litter). Four belong to Sherry and Richard, and four belong to Alex, Ted's brother, and his girlfriend who live at the house. Most of the dogs at some point ended up pooping on the floor in various places of the house. I guess the weenies don't like to go outside to do their business, or much care where they go. It was freaking me out though because I just got done with a continuing education course about the zoonotic danger of Toxocara canis and Ancylostoma caninum, or more commonly, roundworms and hookworms. The current message from the CDC is that puppies need to be dewormed every two weeks beginning at four weeks for a total of four times. Or course I had to ask the question about deworming protocol and we got

Seven Talks of Worms

So what if I made the children wear feet coverings in the house and made sure they stayed clean, particularly hand to mouth? I was concerned about the risk to myself and the children, and just tried to quietly freak out about it but Ted was running interference between his mom and Alex and Mary about me and got them all worked up about the worms. We kept having to talk about it.

Six Overstuffed Suitcases

Which turned into seven on the way home, because we just had to stuff these giant pillows Sherry got the kids into suitcases that were already brimming with clothes and various gifts. Those were such a pain to haul around, especially at the airport. It worked out okay, though. We managed to come home with everything we brought, and it even seemed less stressful than last time we went up there for the holidays, when I was freaking out about our million little things.

Five Smoking Grownups

The smoking room in the house is the front room, where the Christmas tree blinks and the TV runs, but which also happens to be the room for the children. Curiously, my children had a bit of a cough by the time they left.

Four Snowballs Flyin'

There was much winterland adventure planned for while we were visiting, but as it turns out, it was a lot of talk. The last day we were there, AJ asked why we had not done any of the things we had planned on (riding on the inner tubes behind the truck, etc) and it was decided that there was just enough time left in the day to do one of them: have a snowball fight in the yard. AJ threw two snowballs at his dad and had Alex hiding, where he threw two at Ted as well. Ted threw four at AJ. The guys said it was fun but it wasn't much of a snowball fight.

Three Security Checks

One in Houston, one in Reno, and then one more in Reno because I failed to pack my carry-on in accordance with TSA policy. I had to go down and check it, which was fine because it gave me a chance to get out for a smoke before the harrowing journey home. It would be nine hours before I could have another one, which would be difficult since you know, I have fallen in step with the in-laws habits.

Two Precious Children

Who got their white Christmas and presents under the tree. I worried the whole time over their safety during the journey and at our various destinations. Angels with attitude.

And One Santa Under a Fallen Tree

My in-laws have a very large live fir tree for Christmas, heavily laden with garland, lights, and ornaments. All on one side. And when "Santa" was arranging presents under the tree, there was a mishap. An avalanche. The tree landed on top of Santa. Richard had to tie it up with baling wire. How's that for excitement?

It was a good trip. I forgot what it was like there in some ways. No computer access for days was driving me insane. I tried to use a neighbor's computer but it was a slooow dialup connection, so it was so not worth the time. The roads scared me. The turbulence on the airplane on the way home scared me. We had good gifts, good food, and good fellowship, though, so it was a good Christmas for all.

IF YOU WANT A GOOD CRY

Just watch this. Reminded me of the Baby Grace story.

Again, where is the "momma bear" in these women? I am trying to understand how things like this can happen in this world, and why women do not protect their babies at all costs.

HINDU: REVERE THE COW

Farmer: Feed the Cows

Animal Rightist: Free the cows

Animal Welfarist: Love the Cows

Environmentalists: Reprogram the cows

Recently, scientists in Austrialia have been investigating ways to reduce methane emission of livestock. I find this very interesting. When it was originally presented to me, it sounded more radical than it really is, but in learning about it, I wonder why we never tried that earlier.

I wonder, though, if that is a little too close to "playing God".

And then I get angry, because it makes me think about the stem cell research controversy. I think about how Bush and I are on other sides of the fence on this one. He has vetoed every attempt to get stem stell research federally funded. I think that stem cell research has the potential to help find the cure for Parkinsons, which my father has, and whose symptoms are getting worse. I feel his time is growing short and that research could not come fast enough, and why doesn't the government throw us a bone on this one?

I think about the children who have cancer, and the desperation of their parents for research that will find a way to save their child, ease the pain, provide comfort and cure, as I throw a marshmellow at my "research model." I think about how we should do our best to serve the animals that serve us, and I think about how understanding their behavior will help us build a better research model.

And it takes me back to the cows, because I remembered a day where I believed that understanding their behavior would help us build a better farm animal: an animal that was comfortable and therefore produced more meat, more milk. Now I am trying to build a better research model, one that is comfortable and therefore enjoys better health and more hair.

But it's all the same.

I'm just here to love them.

QUE SERA SERA AT THE SKATING RINK

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, "What will I be?
Will I be pretty, will I be rich"
Here's what she said to me.
Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera

This evening, I took my oldest son to the skating rink. Not just any old skating rink, but Champions Roller Rink, the skating rink I went to when I was a young girl. Even though I have been there since my adolescence, tonight really brought back the memories of who I was as a person when I used to go there.

This flood of memories was jogged by a familiar song, a song they used to play when I was a child skating here: Micheal Jackson's "Thriller". Talk about a blast from the past. I was listening to the song and thinking about the video to it, and how we all thought it was so cool back in the day: the pants, the style, the dance, all that was great about 80's Micheal Jackson.

While I was digging the song and trying to remember my skating moves from back in the day, I was watching the people all around me. There were certain people that stood out in the crowd.

One of them was a young girl on the cusp of becoming a woman. She had the curves, and she had a "rocking body", but she also bore braces and bad skin. She stood out out in the crowd mostly because her outfit, a white crop top tank and black low riding short shorts, was displaying a lot of skin, and because she was fast and graceful. She was the fastest skater in the fast skate round, and during the regular songs, she danced on skates while singing along with the song that was playing, performing for her friends. She could turn around on a dime and started moving backwards, her feet keeping rhythm with the beet of the song, swinging her hands around.

There was another woman there who was older, and slower. She looked to be in her fifties, with long greying hair and lines on her face. She was listening to a headset and watching a pedometer. She was wearing loose jeans and a button down shirt worn loosely. She mostly kept in the back corner near the wall.

And I skated next to my son (although not too close, because he has a wide stance on his inline skates and sometimes moves his feet erratically) and ran through an entourage of memories of my youth spent here.

When I was going to the rink often, it was in a time in my life where the future was still a very magical possibility. I stopped going around the time I started junior high, a couple of years younger than Ms Hot Stuff in her short shorts. I would gauge MHS to be around fifteen years old. I feel like she is at the age where she thinks about sex, but hasn't experienced it yet. With that rocking body and enthusiastic attitude, I am sure it is not long before some boy tries. That's just the way life is. She is about to experience her future.

I stopped going skating when my future was still a dream, and held many possibilities, back when the wonder was always present on our lips. What will my life be like? This was still during the age of Barbie, and all that she represented.

You know, that Barbie was a real 'ho. She was always going out with Ken, and sometimes they did very naughty things in the backseat of the pink Corvette. And we wondered, will I be pretty?, as we brushed Barbie's hair and put on her stilleto heels. We met boys at the skating rink at the end of my days there, maybe got phone numbers! but we never called. We wondered if we would ever ride in cars with boys to dances and parties, if we would ever fall in love, get married, have children and families. Would anybody ever love us? Would anybody find us beautiful?

Only I find it odd that we should make that connection between attractiveness and love. It is not only attractive people that are loved and allowed to breed. In our society, we have an equal opportunity procreation pattern. There are many people we meet in the world that are not attractive (to us) but have marriages, families, children, people who love them and perhaps think of them as beautiful even if the world does not. You are not barred from the world of love for not being beautiful.

I think MHS is beautiful, and will be loved in part because of that. It reminded me suddenly of pictures I had looked at over at my friend J.'s house the night before, and how I had been fixating on them. J. was like "get over yourself already" and I was trying to explain "but it's subjective, and personal", that I was thinking I just looked a whole lot better in these pictures than I have recently. That girl in the pictures was so far removed from me, she seemed like someone else. I didn't even recognize her bones. But dang, she was a hottie.

I thought about the answer to that question hanging in the air when I was a child: well, was I pretty? For a while, I was, and I still sometimes do all right. I went to the skating rink before I had a boyfriend, and I ended up having many of them. Before I had left junior high, I'd gone through about thirty little "boyfriends"; you know, during that stage where you're "going together", as in "will you go with me?" scrawled in ink pen on a college ruled notebook and passed over to you in class, or in a note at your locker, or face to face on a dancefloor. Most of my boyfriends lasted about two weeks, before my fickle heart ran some other way. My junior high notebook has many a young boy's name scribbled, pledges of undying love. Hilarious.

In high school it was the cars, although it was never quite like Ken picking Barbie up in the black Ferrari. For me, it was more like "dad's landshark" or "the old Ford", something like that. At any rate, there were dates, dates with boys with cars to dances and parties. There was first love, first heartbreak, first fights and first fooling arounds. There was all that and more. Then there was college. Yikes.

I thought about the plans we were making for our lives back then, what did we imagine we'd do. Will I be rich? Will I have all the things I wanted to have? I could never have imagined my having the various jobs I've had when I was a child. I don't know that my imagination stretched that far. I'd had a vague idea I wanted to work with animals, but how?

Geez, during those days, I have to admit, I was much more about Brenda Breyer than Barbie. I played Barbie with my friends, but when I was alone, I had Brenda. I wanted to be Brenda Breyer when I grew up. I wanted to have a stable full of horses, and different riding gear, and make my living the way she did: running a boarding/training stable, teaching horseback riding lessons, "breaking" colts, raising foals. Funny, I did have some of that, though, looking back. Lots of horses in my professional life, at a few times ran a barn for a short time, taught lessons, acted as a breeding assistant and mare widwife. I made more per hour teaching private riding lessons than I have ever made, but the problem was I didn't have enough horse to do that full time. I taught lessons off my horse, and sometimes I "borrowed" a horse (with permission) from the stable owner, and they can only be worked so long. I remember in those days thinking that if I jst had eight more horses, I could make a good living doing that. And sometimes that was my job, but with someone else's horses; three different summers as a camp horsemanship instructor, the one who fed the horses twice a day, who picked their hooves and saddled them for the children, then led lessons with twenty horses and twenty children every hour for six, eight hours a day.

I got a little of what I wanted, but it didn't come to total fruition. I didn't become rich caring for animals, in the financial sense, but emotionally I did, I did realize my goal. I became rich of heart instead. What would you rather have?

As we were leaving, I saw the older lady coming to take off her skates. She sat down next to her husband and he made some smartass remark, and she bit into him with a bitterness. You could feel the tension, her anger, their drama, and that is was a worn and familiar refrain to them. It made me sad and hope to never be like them, and how sad her life must be. Marriage.

Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?

Will I ever fall in love, get married, have a family?

And I had some of that, all that, and I am glad. I fell in love five times, and that's more than most people get. I have a family, a husband that has his moments and two sparkling, darling little boys. I thouht of my old BFF from back in the skating days, and how she is married with three boys, about the ins and outs and ways and means of married life, about the couple I was witnessing, and their failure to redeem their marriage.

I thought about MHS and her shining, precious future, and wished her the best.

Whatever will be, will be

SHOO FLY AND BABY GRACE

This morning, as I was doing my usual fecal sample analysis at work, there was a fly hovering over the waste bin. Every time I threw another sample in the trash, the fly buzzed around and came back to rest on the lid to the biological hazard bag. I was trying not to think about the fly sitting on the trash can because it was making me sick.


My thoughts, though, kept buzzing around and coming back to rest on another image that made me feel even more ill.

This is the face of Riley Ann Sawyers, thought to be "Baby Grace", whose body was found in a plastic box in Galveston Bay.

In a statement to Galveston authorities, her mother, Kimberley Dawn Trenor, said that the child was beaten with leather belts, had her head forced under water, and then was thrown across the room and landed on a tile floor. I read somewhere that there were three skull fractures found in the autospy report.

In a way, I wished I had never read this article this morning, because it upset me so very much. All I could think about this morning is how terrified that little girl must have been. I thought about the details that have come out so far, about how the mom moved in with this guy she met online in June, how the "stepfather" wanted her to use corporal discipline to teach the child manners. In July, the little girl died because she didn't know to say "please" and "yessir" and "nossir" to her new "stepfather".

On the Roula and Ryan show in the morning, they were talking about this story, and Ryan Chase, who admitted that he is "as liberal as they come" and generally opposed to the death penalty, thinks it is warranted in this case. He said "there's a special place in hell for people like that."

I am ambivalent about the death penalty, and I am not sure which is worse: serving a life sentence for being a "baby killer" or being put to death. I do think that Royce Clyde Zeigler II is a monster for doing this to a sweet baby girl, to any human. I don't think he should be allowed to breed and I am really upset about the news that supposedly Kimberley is pregnant with his child.

It makes me think about Andrea Yates, and about this show I saw on WE about "Women on Death Row" in which they featured a woman on death row for very similiar circumstances to the one that Kimberely Dawn Trenor is facing. In both situations, there was a child being beaten over a prolonged period of time by a man who was not blood related and who was punishing the child through brute force for something that was not age-appropriate for them to be able to understand. Both of those children died from head trauma from being slammed up against something.

In the end, both the woman who was on death row and Trenor failed to protect the child. I don't understand these women. There are options! Like taking the child and getting out of there, like calling someone to come save them, like going "momma bear" on his ass. Our primary job as mothers is to protect the children. Even if they are not yours, like in the case of the woman on tv, your duty is to protect.

It makes me so scared to think of my children coming to harm. Like the fly on the proverbial crap, that fear keeps coming back. Sometimes when my husband is disciplining them, I worry it might break their little spirits and hover over them waiting to offer comfort. His punishment is not corporal, but he does set boundaries, and sometimes I worry it is too harsh; for instance, thinking the ten minute time out should really just be five. If I felt he was really crossing the line, I would intervene and stand between him and my child. I would rather feel pain than have them experience it.

Not that there is danger of that with the man I live with. I worry about the mental damage, never the physical, and I would never allow it. I would keep my cub between my legs and show my teeth. Where was that instinct with these women?

More on this to come.....?

Check Your Premises

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
Ayn Rand

At our bible study lesson, we are watching a video to our Song of Solomon. The minister who is doing the video series makes a comment denouncing existentialism, stating it caused the sexual immorality that we see in our culture. His claim is that existentialism would have us believe that truth is subjective, and without absolutes, we lose self control.

I wonder if this is true. The problem is, to determine if it is true, you have to take it apart. You have to define the parameters.

Let's start by defining existenialism. The problem with that is that there is no clear definition. There have many interpretations and representations of this school of thought, and even among the more famous representatives, there is wide deviation in explanations. Here is what the dictionary has to say about it:



Existentialism: A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Another source1 states, "Existentialism cannot be precisely defined. In fact, an exact definition is usually avoided by existential philosophers, since to define it would be to lose it in the bondage of too restricted confinement...Existentialism, as the name suggests, relates the destiny of the individual thinker to the ideas that engage and can be understood by his own mind."

In order to disprove the preacher's point, I set out to answer the following questions:

Does believe in existentialism negate belief in God?
Does it take away the absolute of moral authority?

Does existentialism represent a threat to Christianity?

In doing some research on existentialism to prove my hypothesis, my clarity begins to bend and finally disappears altogether in face of the different metaphysical viewpoints presented by various "existenialists". I try re-reading Nietzsche's "Beyond God and Evil", including commentary by philosophical researchers, for clues about how existenialism juxtaposed with Christianity, but I end up just getting a headache. Learning more about Nietzche, I come to see that he believed that, "even though Christian morality is nihilistic, without God humanity is left with no epistemological or moral base from which we can derive absolute beliefs."1

In that sense, then, perhaps the preacher and Nietchze would have been of the same mind.

What is bothering me is the idea that because one believes in existentialism, one has no absolute believe in a moral framework, AND that having no moral framework leads one to sexual immorality.It just seems like flawed logic to me.

So I did a little deeper....

TO BE CONTINUED

http://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/documents/existentialism.htm

The Beautiful Mystery


"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher.
"Everything is meaningless!"
Ecclesiastes 12:8

This is both the opening sentence and the closing sentence of the book of Ecclesiastes. In it, the narrator, "The Teacher", also believed to be King Solomon, expands on the wisdom he has gained through experience in his life.

King Solomon was an ancient king who ruled a united Israel, perhaps the last one to do so. He is credited with writing a few books of the Bible, or perhaps inspiring them. One of the books credited to him is the Song of Songs, which is a story of erotic love. There is much debate over the meaning of this song, over whether it is an allergory of God's love, or a literal story of married love. Some teach that the ideas presented in the Song of Songs represents what God wants from us in terms of courtship and intimate love, his guidelines for us. There is also an interpretation that it was a story to be acted out, with three main characters; the woman, who is perhaps the Shulammite woman, The Sheperd, and King Solomon. However you attribute it to, the book is a story of love.

As I sat in Bible Study to begin the lesson on what the Songs of Solomon can teach us about how to find and keep lasting love, I was reading my preface to the chapter in my Life Application Study Bible. I was struck by a sentence describing King Solomon.

"King Solomon probably wrote this 'song'in his youth, before being overtaken by his own obsession with women, sex, and pleasure."

I wonder, then, how we can use this book to explain the way God wants us to love, when obviously this is a story of a love that comes to an end. How can one love so intensely another, as the pages describe, and drop it for such selfish pursuits? What does that say about lasting love?


These are the question I ask myself, as I look on my best friend. How can something seem so perfect and turn out not to be? And I wonder if it makes me question the foundation of faith in love. We've known the relationships that were built to last come crumbling down. Does it make us stop believing? How does it affect our faith?


In the book Misquoting Jesus, the Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart Ehrman, the author explains the history of the New Testament and how it was changed over the ages. This is from the perspective of a biblical scholar who has devoted his life to the study of this issue. At one point in the book, the author details information about various scholars who have spoken up about the variations of the Bible over the years. During the sixteenth and seventeeth century, there were those who would like to discourage this kind of textual criticism, because of the fear that this might cause people to lose their faith in the Bible.


As I was reading this book, I questioned if it changed by own faith, much as I questioned my faith in love in light of the dissolution I see around me. I find my heart filled with questions, and I turn to scripture to examine what else has been "divinely inspired" along these lines.

I want to know what happened to King Solomon and his lady. In Song of Songs, 2:15, he speaks so sweetly to her, "How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves." How is it that this same Solomon was the one who also was reported to have 700 wives and 300 concubines? If he could love this true, why was it not a faithful one?

When I search for the traces of Solomon's affair, I find countless explanations for the different theories on what is happening in this book, and what it means, but never any vestages of a failed relationship with the jewish maiden he loved. Where did his love go, how does love like this just end?It seems like everyone has an interpretation, and which one of those is the true meaning?

What I do find, though, is the hint of experience, the hint of wisdom, the hint of repentance. It came from one of the other chapters accredited to Solomon, the book of Ecclesiastes. It is said that Solomon wrote Ecclesiates at the end of his reign, when he was sixty years old. The legend has it that Solomon was allowed to ask God for whatever he wanted, and what he asked for was wisdom, although he was already considered to be very wise.

I want Ecclesiastes to tell me the meaning, to answer the questions that have been raised in my heart from the fragility of the human bond; the incogruency that lies somewhere between the love story of a king and a maiden, and his subsequent descent into indulgence, between the perfectly matched personalities and the eternal seperation, between the sheets of desire and the fabric of the human soul.

So what can be concluded by of all this wisdom? In Ecclesiastes, that is what Solomon is thought to be relating; however, the overriding theme seems to be a lack of a defined conclusion.

All this I tested by wisdom and I said,

"I was determined to be wise -

but this was beyond me.

Whatever wisdom may be,

it is far off and most profound-

Who can discover it?

So I turned my mind to understand,

to investigate and to search out wisom and the scheme of things

and to understand the stupidity of wickedness

and the madness of folly"

Ecc 7:23-25

This only I have found:

God made man upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes."

Ecc 7:29

The work emphatically proclaims all the actions of man to be inherently "vain", "futile", "empty", or "meaningless," depending on translation, as the lives of both wise and foolish men end in death. While "the teacher"clearly promotes wisdom as a means for a well-lived earthly life, he is unable to ascribe eternal meaning to it. In light of this perceived senselessness, the preacher suggests that one should enjoy the simple pleasures of daily life, such as eating, drinking, and taking enjoyment in one's wife and work, which are gifts from the hand of God.

According to some religious traditions, the point of Ecclesiates is to state that all is futile under the sun. One should therefore ignore physical pleasures and put all one's efforts towards that which is above the Sun, i.e. "God".

I think about John Mill, and his edition of the Greek New Testament with its notation of thirty thousand variants, and how now scholars believe there may be upwards of three hundred thousand variants. I think about how the latest research points to the fact that the book of Ecclesiastes was thought to be written between the second and third century BCE and not in fact the seven hundred years or so prior when King Solomon was still alive. It is commonly believed, in fact, among religious scholars that this book was not written by Solomon at all, but acredited to him to give it more credibility, and it was really written during a time when the Greek Epicurean viewpoint was prevalent.

So what kind of truth can we really obtain from this, really? When truth is only relative to experience and perspective, how do you define it? If the answers cannot be found or the source can not be trusted, how can we determine the answers, and have any faith in them?

My friend Lorraine sits next to me at a baby shower. I remember her husband is a Lutheran minister, and I ask her her interpretation of Song of Songs, of Ecclesiastes, of what the Bible is telling us of love when all we can see are things that were not the answers. This is what she tells me,

"You're looking for a perfect thing in an imperfect world."

I wonder how many of us that could apply to. She goes on to explain that there was only one perfect person, and he was not even really a person, but a divine one. Humans are flawed, every one of us, she tells me. We are all, at best, only human. Searching for perfection in dating relationships, in marriage partners, in even the best of spouses is a futile enterprise, and in the end we are only disillusioned if we expect to see that perfection there.

She also reminds me of the school of thought that the Bible, although "divinely inspired," is not considered to be the "unerring Word of God", which I agree with as well. That is my answer for why reading Ehrman's book does not shake my faith in God. My belief in God has nothing to do with my belief in the teachings of scripture. I accept that the Bible is not a perfect or accurate representation of the knowledge God wants to impart to the world.


My belief in lasting love, likewise, should not be solely based on the experience of the disillusionment I see around me, in the foolishness of one who refuses to see what love really is. Like the New Testament, it is based on interpretation. With all these various interpretations, the only truth becomes the one inside of you.

I am still not satisfied with that answer, though, because how can that be absolute?


I go to worship to seek the answers, only to be disappointed that the scripture reading was about something totally different. I put it out of my mind, then, these questions, and concentrated on the lessons of the day. After Communion, I sat in my pew, concentrating on the cross in front of me until it becomes the only thing I see, a reminder of the Christ who gave up his body to us so that we, sinners, with all our many schemes, can be absolved of sin. The more I open my heart, the more I feel it filled by the Holy Spirit, and that is when it comes to me.

Faith is not something you know or decide from reading a book; faith is something you feel. My questions surrounding my faith dissolve as I feel the warmth of the love of Jesus in my heart. My faith in love need not change based on the foolishness of a man. Truth is individual, based on perception, experience, emotion. The answers of which we seek lie within ourselves, if we simply open our hearts. If we search our hearts, will we find that our faith is amiss because of the imperfection of men, or intact because there are those who have shown us what it is to truly love another, to truly believe?
So I am not sure, in the end, if I have some great meaning to give to you, my friend, that is based out of my faith and can answer all the questions you have. All I have is the line from John 14:27 that settled my own heart in church today.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you."

I hope you are able to find the same peace that I was, and be able to look past the imperfections, the incongruencies, the inconsistencies, and find only faith and love left in your heart.

Sources:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes


http://jeru.huji.ac.il/eb32s.htm

Fool’s Gold

In the dream, the man and woman are walking along a verdant green path that leads into a bright, wet wonderland, presumably somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, probably Seattle by the way the look of the natural flora. She is looking at him and smiling, and he is carrying their young daughter over his arms. She is probably around three of four but she is the most beautiful little thing, and he is laughing and smiling at her.
And it is you, and it is I, that woman and man, but I am above it, and there is an emotional component to the dream that somehow supersedes the scenery below.
A great sensation of happiness.
And I woke up resolved to obtain it, which was probably related to a conversation last night with Pegs about “the power of positive thinking”, which she was calling “The Secret”, which I thought was also vaguely appropriate.
But I want to hang on to that image, hold it like the breaker against that tide that threatens to pull me over the edge. It ties me to the mortal ground like an anchor.
In that respect, it reminds me of another time when a dream of the future anchored me, a time when my youngest baby was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, struggling to breathe, with a future dependent on how valiantly he fought. I was scared, and alone, that night in the hospital room when the doctor came to tell me about his prognosis. I cried for hours but in the morning, I reached some solace when I was given a dream.
In the dream, a sweet blonde haired boy was running through a field, laughing, at my side. He was probably three or four, and his eyes were bright with humor and we were having so much fun. We were out in the physical plane, existing on a level of true bliss. I knew he would be all right, I knew we would be together in this lifetime.
I believed on one level that God gave me that dream as a source of strength. It gave me solace and allowed me to focus on my newborn instead of my troubled emotions. Sometimes I am not sure if it will come true, exactly. I wonder if I am just supposed to take it literally, or simply find the moments in my life that resemble it. Am supposed to experience the moment in that dream in small pieces that share some of the same properties? I question my ability to accept it as is, in fragments that look like the real thing, without having it in its entirety, and in the end I think I am okay with that.
I thought of that today, while out with that young son, who is now about eighteen months old, as we walked along a pebbled path next to a lake. He was very interested in the pebbles, and wanted to pick up his favorites and place them in my hand. As each one hit my hand, I saw the speckles of gold in the coral stones light up briefly in the sunlight, and thought about how that would seem so precious to children, like fool’s gold. It is just as shiny and bright as the real thing, but doesn’t cost nearly as much, because, as you know, it is not the real thing. Although fool’s gold shares some of the same properties as real gold, those who know the real value knows it is not exactly the same. But sometimes it has nothing to do with the material value we assign such things, but simply has to do with the aesthetic appeal. We want it because it is shiny, and that brightness makes us feel happy inside. Particularly when we are children, or at least maintain some of the same qualities as children.
As we raced up the grassy knoll to the shade of an oak tree, laughing, I thought, as I have, more than once, “is this it?” I feel this moment is one of those specks of gold in the pathway pebbles, and I think of my dream of him, and then it reminds me of my dream last night, and how I was carrying that dream underneath my breast, soothing myself from the winds of wildness that threaten to take me away.
And I realize it may be fool’s gold. I know it might simply be a fantasy and not a premonition of the future. And I find it curious the idea that if it was fantasy, it was a fantasy about having an emotion, which seems so funny to me I want to laugh out loud.
But the thought that maybe someday I would get the pieces of that one unfold, like the moment I was having with my child, the speck in the pebble, is still strangely comforting. Even if it is just that, I am okay with it, because at least I know we would be all right, we would be together in this lifetime, and in between I could carry that dream along as a source of solace and strength.
Like a piece of fool’s gold in my pocket.