He was invited too serve As devil’s advocate But he prudently recognized That the job was utterly filled Declining the precipitous prize And elevated gratuitousness
At one point or another, we are each tempted to take up, the downside of an argument. The temptation to play devil’s advocate is yielded to with such regularity that more often than not such encumbrances serve only to discourage rather than uplift. Reflexive skepticism often bludgeons another’s confidence. Incessant dissection and paralysis of analysis can stall horse sense. The evil genius of devil’s advocacy is in the seemingly safe purview of inaction. Sins of omission are much easier to defend than sins of commission. Endlessly attending multifarious schools of thought offers erudite inaction at a faction of the cost Nonetheless, in a world already fucked up, practicing safer sects doesn’t go far enough. Inaction favors the status quo. In action favors change. Fortunes favor conservatism. Fortune favors the bold. The Devil needs advocates like we need a hole in ahead — don’t fall into that claptrap! We learn more from what we due than awe the rationalizing in the whirled. I’ll see you in the real world and raze you 100 devil’s advocates.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
God invented dark As a respite From high noon That searing sun Of which mortal men are made To see Sow much more Innumerable lofty stars Unseen in mere day dreams Beyond won’s highest hopes Awe at once A mist unbelievably rare life Thou dust hold together Awe that matters When noonday returns
Here is yet another poem about hope, just in case you may need to re-stock, or stock up. Life is replete with cycles. Day and night, sleep and wakefulness. Opposites teem in a paradox packed reality. Belief and skepticism are life-long dance partners. Our quest for unity requires acceptance of diversity. The immeasurable value of life is most evident in the face of death.
Taoists seem to have the keenest awareness of the importance of opposites and their complimentary nature. That the nature of something is inextricably bound to its opposite, or even comes from its opposite, is mind-boggling. The mind reaches one of its natural limits when it comes to logical contradictions. Of course, the Taoists’ purpose is not to jar the mind, but un-jar the mind — and free up the heart.
Hope is the purview of the heart. Hope may not make cents for those demanding a foolproof return on their investment. Delving into the vital depths of paradoxes and life’s necessary contradictions is not for the fainthearted. Wholehearted living demands assent and even gusto in the thralls of uncertainty and unpredictability in order to make the most of life. Hope is the life-blood of an entrepreneurial life spirit. The attachment to conventional power — those well-known levers of control — and the insistence on dominion over others, is the nemesis of hope. Hope arises from a place beyond mere control. Hope, awash in possibility, is an existential reality ever-present on the threshold of human life.
For many, the contemporary context for this poem is a looming Donald Trump presidency. Many fear that their existence may be taxed beyond bearing. This is undoubtedly true for some. Still, the contrasting values brought forth by the Don’s cartel will as surely offer high relief. Starker choices can favor moral humans as much or more than amoral or immoral humans. If you want presumed victory, take the sociopath, limiting the struggle to the well-worn levers of control. If you want more, let your heart take hope, take time to see the light amidst the darkness, and listen intently to whatever maybe herd for the duration of human game.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
I am Subject too The very inquisition Wanting too a void Axing the quest in Who would halve me Believe Know One Wrote The book In my heart Anything but stone Nothing accept Throwing multifarious dirt At clay feat As sum Call me A fool Of epic portions Too big to swallow That is, whole Left only With unspeakable meanings In awe weighs wanting A wisdom that mounts to nothing Right only In a captivating holey warship Without bail In a nature without nurture A watered down Whirled view That reigns on know won With nothing too win Oar lose In awe awash The impotent lored Unable Too even No udder abandon Wholly sown Borne of the wind Mysteriously yielding Earthy harvests Wile holy unaccounted for As only seer What ex-specter Bared without A shroud Of evidence Leaving no witnesses And subjects unknown To know a veil Having awl ready Punching holes in the heavens The sores of professorial cosmo-logical blood Shedding rare light At least Enough Too read God’s will In a towering Babel on Like stairing into the sun And skywriting in Braille Counting on Cain To objectify truth Like a bat out of hell Holy out Of our census Destined to be committed too The most minimal theories passable In firm in the phase of Ever unfolding realty Having The tome of your life As if Sum man you script Published in determination As know more than a mirror leaflet To fig you’re sufficient to cover Such immaterial shame And random glory Whole to pass on Such immanent domain That writ largesse Wading One’s hole life Fore a single letter Soul ward Incomprehensible sentences Terminally de-composing The tree of know ledge Turned too Pulp Fiction For just A taste of a lie berry A free offering For every scion ’tis Enough Too make blue bloods Turn read Anew page delivering Awe that is novel In the art of hearts
This somewhat epic poem is a playful romp and survey of epistemology, in the philosophical field of study of knowledge and justified belief. I am fascinated by the sores and limits of knowledge. I am a skeptic of skepticism, delver into intuition, and humble admirer of profound inner experience that cannot be fully shared in words (even in poetry). I find the most profound truths to reek more of playfulness than dogmatism. I find humor both a scrumptious tool and irresistible outcome in hanging out in the neighborhood of truth which is paradox. If any of your well-worn beliefs or weighs of being feel skewered by my poetry, then welcome to the heart of my unifying theory of sheesh kabob. May your hopes outpace your skepticism, and may your dreams root for truth.
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
In the deep Of the knight Watch man Finding one self prone Where singular stars obscure As perpetual high noon Where time stops Straight up Where the sun don’t shine Like a broken time peace With patients in undated Wear dreams forgotten In their wisdom nocturnal Giving weigh Too dark truths For like a sentry Only look out For what is best For all won no’s Awe that it seams A mist their act In side There elementary Recesses Of their mine Uniformly capped With unforeseen foil As dread to them all ready With tin pan reflections Too mirror dusky shadows Pre-pared Too skill or be skilled With shattered arts Leaving won stiff A post to the last man A testing to peerless mail bravado In A remote job So only after ours In defense ably doing one’s doody Incriminating nature’s coarse All the wile Without looking up Just as speculative figure Bad Whether who starred it Hoodwinked by grope think Having Out groan Constellation prizes Fumbling about On which even you Depends® Pooh-poohing it As a conjury of their peers And mutual convictions Of that right before you A void seeing Sow proudly dedicated And right fully committed To full hardy belief Going where no won has gone before And highly ill logic All Klingon too Their frayed comforters And sheer sheet Amor gauzy shield As bull work Oh posing Things that go Bump in the night Or worse yet The not so light of daze That everlusting grind A cannonized weigh of life No’ing the least of all Surrender Taking up arms Accept as a lust resort As dissembling mime A forged silence In farcing What might Be pro-pounding As juster Buy a majority A con-script for the wrest Safeguarding their camp Helter-skelter Sounding all arm Pitting laughable fauxs As our enema’s enema In fashioning new fiends Intimating familiarity With won’s dark side In is culpable evil Only knot see The twinkle in the I’s Of every won a mother Slumbering a bout So far aweigh To be Raptured In that stare way to heaven Untold stories a way Of what might raze The dead of knight And shrouded rays Pre-veil over such pricks In mortal pitch And feather light That mother flicker Projecting the torch erratum Flying that beacon In witch Our enemies Cannot consume What hell’s at stake Ill luminated by fires bellow However super intending Divine assent read The wholly smother Jilted by pin holes of darkness And heads as dead wringers What’s under the desert More gripping Than hearts bared And glistening from above Calling out Too arms And a pare of feat Swearing evolution As erect brothers Punctuate posterity In memorial Just ahead stone As others lie In truth As plane to sea What would work To out fit Such titanic under-takings Of what still Remains To be Seeing Putting on the crowning touché To a juggernaut of nods Assure as the cock crows Mourning will come Graveyard shifts end At the brake of daze To the relief of fodders and mothers And in the wake of the moment We will score the skinny That rarefied crack In lightening this orchestral ball Dawning upon him A most well come vocation Know more job As the reel work begins As fissures of men Bring us to reguard Catching ourselves As part of each wholly lessen A mist every calumny nation As in deep The knight made a parent Calls it A day
This epic poem, in both length and theme, plays within the abyss of skepticism and bids a certain openness prerequisite to fully experiencing mystery often hidden in the shadowy places of the heart. Spiritual discernment can peer as but a pin prick in a dark and distant heaven, or it can peer as a guiding star, even blazing sun. In your life as a spiritual being, may you find guiding stars in the deepest, darkest nights, and blazing suns purifying you with fire during your high noons.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Life peers to me As a gentle breeze With fragrant harmonies In the tenderest victories Know longer bought a bout by yielding hope Prospecting in rock Dead set, vane certainties Or coarse inclinations While a sole breath moves through me Not ever posing As superior From above Securely skeptical Of won scoffing up A flunked up humanity As a praising sneer life experiences From the cryptic As a well found cynicism In the phase of unmerited bounty On a head of the game As dead or alive know matter As inspiring expires Weather we apprehend or knot And how ever we reckon our peeps It is realizable Still possible Life sucks Or with equal viability Life blows Seemingly a parent either weigh A cruel duplicity Winds of change Running lapse around you Leaving won too Giving no quarter And only making spare cents As scorn points Awe the wile know one wants Too be still As the heart beats Have the time Know longer wanting Just deserts A trial of tears And fated watering whole Pooring out As in is capable Only too fine life in such delugings In this tempest of life Wear wind and water Meet on earth In a saucy plan it Of surf and turf Wandering whether Life is fare A mist such room and bored With awe of its chinooks and grannies Ever present ciao time Reigning in time And timeless A mid week prostration And fateful eras Wrest a spell As a right full heir Fore life is a breeze Only to be Bared at see
This poem is about the ethereal nature of human life and the breezy character of the human spirit, where success has more to do with experiencing fragrant harmonies than vane certainties. My skepticism about skepticism partners with my playful heart as hope and willingness trump willful crass pragmatism or cynical “realism.” Apprehending such tender truths is better realized as believing is seeing more so than seeing is believing. Hope, gratitude, and unmerited generosity open our hearts to seeing better than through stacks of the thickest and most erudite reams of scientific reports. A fruitful life of the spirit is a prerequisite for a meaningful and abundant life. In a paraphrase of the Bob Dylan lyric, “You don’t need a whether vane to know which way the wind blows.” May you follow the winds of the spirit without overly kneading to no from whence it comes or where it goes…
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
If the message of this poster doesn’t make immediate sense, then welcome to my whirled of multiple meanings, well suited to presidential campaign politics. My first intent is as an anti-Hillary Clinton meme. Though, skepticism about relying on anyone else to fight our fights is a good starting place for active, direct participation in democracy and politics. Most every politician claims to be fighting for us, but we have been burned before. May the people take back their country through direct action.
Sow ponderous are wee The nature of God And God of nature Never two be the same As one Awe weighs Whichever becoming Created in won mine Weather mirror mortals Or I am parish-able being A quest in during Too haves And halve knots Regarding the spirit of what matters Neither helled fast Nor celestially slowed buy death And aft-er life each claiming Stern up trouble Figuring the other’s sale is rigged Know cents in fallowing What is billed of star board Oar all is port As solid grounds a mast Exceeded only by wind Assumptions and renunciations From the back spew and affront row A mist The sow called Whys Only wandering How does it awe end
I am prone to venture into the dangerous arena of speculation on the nature of God in efface of skepticism and the idle juggernaut of cynicism. This poem is about awe, that and much more. I view awe as a primary experience of what I would term spiritual or mystical. I find awe uplifting. Dissecting life rarely leaves life still living. In do coarse, most arguments about God or any sublime reality devolve into reductive thinking and defensive emotional stances, regardless of one’s belief in common ground or sacred spaces. I am skeptical of any view of humans as solely common ground. I am also skeptical of the races of men to lay claim to the sublime spaciousness that is sacred. Awe is elusive. The spirit is like the wind, as we know not where it comes from or where it goes. I suppose that it would not be an unwarranted characterization to say the awe is my religion. Of course, awe and wonder are the enemy and antidote to dogmas, in this dogma eat dogma world wee in habit. Sow, this poem is a bout finding a place where awe does not end, where awe is not exiled from our ideology of the moment. May you ask wise as you wander, and as you find awe that you are seeking, make more of it.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Hers was a blinding faith Sow bright That it often left her without peer Few could fathom such countenance As she left them smiles behind A grate number are partial To glean faint moonlight Mirror dim reflections Of their dreary world Rather than stare into one such bright star Of such undifferentiated light In discriminate hope From celestial furnaces Most believe Better to be leery Anywhere near foreboding Inclement whether Shoes dropping On roads paved with good intentions Or easy devotion to cynical amasses Having it made In the shade Or even to a void in certitude More at home groping in the dark Than by a blinding faith
This poem is an ode to faith. Faith is metaphysical optimism, the blood that beats through wholehearted living. Faith is only manifest in the mettle of life fully lived, put to the test. Such a way of life is akin to the scientific method, but its subject is subjectivity, metaphysics, a life lived to discover or confirm how metaphysical optimism can transform living. Bold testing is the natural course of faith. Where and how far can faith take us? Empirical skepticism, the fuel that powers the engine of science, is analogous to this bold testing. Yet, scientists, who are subjects themselves, often project their own hubris onto subjective matters, leveling “spirituality” for putting forth bold — unfortunately, sometimes bald — faith assumptions for good living. All the while, there is a nagging tendency to conveniently overlook that there is no such thing as an assumptionless philosophy, even by those subjects operating in scientific endeavors. Yep, as quantum physicists know awe to well, the experimenter changes the experimental results. In “real world” terms this is simply recognizing that what questions we ask determine the answers. We, subjects awe, deeply participate in whatever answers will come our way. I, for one, am much more fascinated by the questions of how we transform our lives through the science of living matters, than simply nailing down the science of dead matter, fixated on predictability and control. Of course, nailing down stuff plagues the human condition in both scientific and metaphysical endeavors. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” The question still remains: in which half of the creeds does faith live? This can only be tested and confirmed by personal discovery, in our living. While there is a lot of truth in the truism that misery loves company, I would venture to say that passionate optimism is far more attractive than life-sucking cynicism. This poem is intended to capture the reactions of living in the wake of bold metaphysical optimism, often through an irresistible pull to live fuller lives, and sometimes by shrinking into the seeming security of smaller certitudes. May you find yourself putting your deepest faith to the test, and in this mettle may you discover many bright and beautiful alloys along the way.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
In his rock Solid doubt Thomas Had herd rumors Of unflailing love Abuzz of hope so high If only To find himself Quite In the dark Wear time stops To the ever sow gentle Beating To a singular conundrum As sound as it gets In the artlessness of won’s Perpetual searching Where awe is aloud And know license kneaded Yet so long Due Over Come Warming to the extremity In a hospitality of patients Still Not sure What he thaw He’s frozen code Hesitatingly lust Pulling out Aplomb The surest proof Of assurance Yet knot enough too Drink the Kool-Aid™ Turning to whine Taken in Bred of skepticism Only willing To live on Crumbs That will Surly re-seed In annoys Of the daze The quest in For gotten How ever dumb dumb dumb dumb
This is another poem on a familiar theme of skepticism of skepticism. In this poem, skepticism is juxtaposed with a simple and profound reality at the center of each human life: your heartbeat. In fast-paced, postmodern society, we live in a precarious and constricted mental and spiritual territory. We are, well, maladapted to ask “What have you done for me lately” a-long-side routine strings of epic fails to live in the moment. In a triumph of evolution, we walk a mathematically constructed line that every mathematician knows doesn’t exist except as a mental construct. And then we complain about God’s ethereal nature — with a periodicity much less regular than a heartbeat, in between ignoring God’s good creation. I can’t help but note that the bulk head of such complaining seems more fitting on bar stools than in poem or song. Of course, I don’t recommend sobriety when it comes to being drunk on poetry. In the book, The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, the main character tells two stories: one hauntingly mesmerizing and another as a police report. When asking another character which story they prefer, not surprisingly, they choose the captivating story; to which the main character replies, “and so it is with God.” I, for one, would much rather be captivated by a good story than limit my reading — and living — to police reports (though many good stories include police reports). I strongly suspect that God wants us to make epic stories of our lives, for our hearts to beat captivating rhythms, to grow bigger and fuller today than we were yesterday. For this to happen, at some point, we have to make stuff up as we go along. This process can be analogous to scientific discovery, proposing stuff that we are not quite sure are true and then testing them out with out lives. Not surprisingly, scientific-minded folks are greatly disturbed when religion hypothesizes great truths and then fails to adequately test them in the here and now. Not all shit is worth making up. Fortunately, most any shit can be used as fertilizer. Even cautionary tales are indispensable. Nonetheless, as Native Americans traditionally began their storytelling, “This may not have happened, but it is true.” Or, as I might put it: God is the coolest being I ever metaphor.
But back to the even more palpable. Your heartbeat serves as a metaphor, gentle reminder, and literal lifeline to, well, life. The heartbeat is both a shared human reality and intensely intimate and personal tether to life. In astounding irony, the common ground of a heartbeat at the center of each human life seems to be easily taken for granite, that is, common ground. There may be a fine lying between common ground and complicated dirt, but I suspect that the road less travailed makes awe the difference. Akin to breathing, our heartbeat is a great center for meditation, that is, simply centering our life (see my poems, Breathing and The World’s Shortest Meditation). I find the persistence, reliability, unobtrusiveness, and effectiveness of both breathing and our heartbeat as a wellspring of metaphors and insights into the deepest nature of life. Still, may your life take definition by those moments which take your breath away and that which makes your heart to skip a beat.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Hear I am My life Unmeasured By awe but Smiles And ours alone A forum of love Only known by agape Sometimes taken as dope And every sow often Be held as a parent Breathlessness Be gotten heir Inspiring life itself
Where does life come from? Some claim, in a type of miraculous skepticism, that life emerges out of nothingness. Others figure there is something more seamless in the creation of life, like coming from like. Regardless of where one’s perspective begins concerning the ultimate origins of life, most can agree that, in the here and now, life produces more life. Life in its fullness is contagious. Also, the highest human experiences seam to be inescapably linked to awe. Awe strikes me as being sublimely taken in by the sheer breathtaking and breath-giving nature of life. Awe seems close kin to gratitude, particularly of receiving something that transcends our own doing or merit. For me, such experiences inspire me to live in a way that will breath life into stale social contracts, however well contrived, and knock the wind out of social relationships where another’s humanity is bargained away for supposed profit. A life well-lived should be more full of celebration than calculation, carousing than conniving. We will gain much more from dancing than delineating which dances are viewed most positively by each market segment, so we can maximally profit off others’ dancing. Life, in its fullness, will dance around such cramped connivings. Of coarse, such lessens will be self-taut, whereas life involves a boundless teeming beyond grasping.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
I under stood God’s might And might not And in awe probability New That I Will only Fooly see Phase to phase Until awe of creation Come prized my parish
This poem is about dying to see the face of God. This takes two forms: dying when unable to see the face of God and dying if a mere mortal human were to see the face of God. The first form is the traditional form preached about and at others to point out their deficiencies and need for God. I find this form fraught with peril as pedantic and fixated on the lack of God’s presence, the very thing it seeks to dispel! As if God could successfully hide; fortunately, on this account, God is a total loser. God bursts forth from creation, if not well reflected in humans, then from nature. Still, God is a total loser because God cannot reveal God’s full face to humans without literally blowing out our mind and being as humans. There is a protective veil necessary to preserve and maintain human existence. I am far more intrigued with this second form of dying to see the face of God, the Oneness of awe, worthy of my worship. My deep faith is roughly matched with deep skepticism for authority. I want peace and reconciliation in this matter — perhaps even to the point of my matter exploding.
The Judaeo-Christian tradition of dying if one were to see the face of God originates in Exodus 12-23, when Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the ten commandments from “I am,” the name God chose to reveal to Moses. This is how the conversation is retold (NIV translation):
Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”
The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”
And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”
Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”
And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”
In a conversation with one of my former pastors related to seeing the backside of God, I noted that this made perfect sense, that is, a carpenter son would have a plumber for a father. His irrepressible grin and laugh reflected the joy that is the infallible presence of God.
For as much as God does, God may seem to do little to nail down God’s intentions at the crossroads of our lives — humans seem much more intent on that! In surpassing logic, God proffers a taught a logical lessen: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Grate! So God expects me to lead my life based on mercy and compassion coming out literally from God knows where?! Of course, there is also that whole ten commandments thing, written in stone no less! In the coarse of life, the Jews expanded this to 613 laws, establishing a firm foundation for eternal arguments. My whole point is this: it is never enough. As my one-line poem matriculates: I often find myself stuck in that awkward time between birth and death. This built in yearning to understand God and God’s creation drives both spiritual enterprises and scientific endeavors. Learning to live into this fundamental yearning, whether experienced as the mystical union with God or a unified scientific understanding, comprises much of wisdom: Until awe of creation / Come prized my parish.
Awe of this wrests in the shadow of an unwholly dissatisfaction. I am deeply intrigued by the profound dissatisfaction with spiritual enterprises, most commonly cited as religion, that live in this shadow. Ironically, in such a critique of religion, this perfectionism and idealism to which religion falls woefully short is precisely that which under-girds religion: the quest for a coherent whole which can bring with it the peace of heart and mind. This common quest is shattered by fundamentalism, weather buy religious legalists or militant atheists. I view such fundamentalism as the grate divide in life, not simply the speak easy surrounding theism.
I am fascinated by the contention often put forward by atheists, that God is a projection of human minds. There is much truth in this. Psychologically speaking, projection is superimposing the ego’s shadow, or incomplete understanding, onto that outside the ego, thereby purporting or inferring a distorted truth. More simply put: “We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.” Of course, this is neither proof nor reproof in the master debate over theism. This is true whether God’s perish or God’s parish. Nonetheless, projection is a powerful force and critical diagnosis each of us should make to move toward a more robust and healthy relationship with reality. The diagnosis of projection is a necessary but not sufficient condition, the hallmark of never-ending scientific discovery.
The deeper quest in is how do we best move through inevitable projection and, even more boldly, firmly center our self (ego) in a ground of being that will most reliably guide us to an expanding humanity and more accurate under standing of the deepest realities. I contend that the spiritual master Jesus best articulated this in the spiritual practice and commandment (a should) by instructing us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I am unaware of any more powerful and reliable guide to an expanding humanity and more accurate under standing of the deepest realities, whether from a religious or an atheistic perspective. I cite my own experience and the experience of millions of others in testing out this hypothesis with scientific rigor and skin in the game much greater than most of the most articulate purveyors of scientific discovery. Most simply put, if you want to put the God hypothesis to the test and dare experience a glimpse of the awe mighty, this may very well be the closest we can get: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” This existential treat ease rests on authority emanating from scientific rigor applied to our whole life and God deeply roots for us to experience this phase to phase in hour life. In the face of a whirled of hurt, may your life reflect the mercy and compassion that comes from God knows wear.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Exhale Meditate on Mother Nature Asking only What have you done for me lately?
Meditation is difficult. Meditation is exponentially more difficult for each additional minute attempted. The chattering monkeys of the mind interrupt accessing the sacred silence offered by deep meditation practice. Many meditation techniques are based on accepting these interruptions for what they are and moving gently past them.
The meditation offered in this poem is surely not an all-purpose formula for effective meditation practice. Still, centering on breath as both a process and content of meditation offers quick access to the gratitude inherent in our very existence. The phrase “waiting to exhale” is reversed here, replaced with “waiting to inhale.” “Waiting to exhale,” in popular usage, can be a long and winding road to either letting go or relaxing into a situation. “Waiting to inhale,” is grounded in one of the most powerful and immediate life forces present in our life, the need to breathe. This force will easily overpower us if we somehow feel a desire to resist. This overwhelming invitation to appreciate such a life force is built into our very human existence. Breathing has been a perennial focus in meditation practice because of the somewhat odd reality that such a basic life function, necessary to sustain our life over the horizon of seconds, is directly subject to our willful control. This interface between conscious and unconscious forces is ripe for fruitful meditation practice, offering a bridge between conscious and unconscious realities. Why we have direct willful control over breathing escapes me. When is our conscious direction of our breathing superior to the unconscious regulation our bodies provide? I suppose if you have an infantile desire to seek a terroristic ransom from a parent by threatening to turn blue from lack of oxygen, it may come in handy. Nevertheless, even in this case, unconscious forces of a more benevolent and enlightened nature will come to the rescue by robbing the most willful of their consciousness and return them to a greater bodily harmony.
Postmodern society suffers from chronic disconnection from nature and experiences of God. This is wrapped up in our physical and technological infrastructure which isolates us from regular immersion in unspoiled nature, and from an ideological infrastructure of a distant or nonexistent God, isolating ourselves from the moment by moment and close-to-one’s-heart miracles of life present in such experiences as breathing. Of course, ever-wanting belief and skepticism routinely intervene to relegate nature, the creation of a distant or nonexistent God, to a mundane status quo, of which taking for granite, our stoney heads and hearts fail to consciously access ever-present life forces which quietly and persistently answer the question: what have you done for me lately?
May you be overwhelmed by wonder and gratitude in the presents offered by the mystery of mysteries of life.
At certain moments I am left In a world Beyond That which is My own Speechless In what seams faultless Only to be Hereafter Unleashed After awe Unforked tongue Speaking freely To anyone who can Here Experiencing such presence Unfrayed of whoever’s might Raze doubts Without distinction Of those naked to the world And wholly close off To any conception Of consummate being Unfucked And irreproducible Sow what They attest Ribbing such hipness I deal With it As holy inconceivable Awe that is receivable Soully redeemable Oar simply unspeakable
This poem is an ode to the wondrous nature of life and the blessed certainty of certain experiences that expose us to truths that cannot be accessed by the mere triangulation of facts. Also, this poem is a tribute to the conundrum faced by poets and prophets everywhere where the most deeply experienced truths leave us speechless and yet call us out to speak freely about that beyond that which can be bought. The gossamer armor of poets and prophets is easily pierced by those prone to cynical pokings. Cynics and sadists get perverse pleasure in crying out, “I don’t buy it.” To which poets and prophets can only respond “exactly.” Skepticism is so much more easily packaged and neatly priced — for those who proffer such things — than the freely given intimacy of a singular truth.
I find myself drawn to the phrase, “I was struck,” as a way to describe this immediate and direct experience of truth, free of the “means” inherent in the commerce of daily life. Being struck implies something palpable, perhaps even enough to get the attention of someone who usually requires getting hit on a bit to get them to pay attention. Still, the shared truth is more wooing than getting hit upon. The unspeakable force of this truth is manifest simply by paying attention. The palpability is more akin to breathing or a heart beating, the present necessity of life finding its way into the world but neglected, taken for granite in a more concrete whirled. The familiarity of this world of steal leaves us petrified and orphaned in a world parently without much forbearance. The ostensibly passive voice of “being struck” intimates another actor, another subject, tendering an offer so tender that its import counters boarders difficult to cross. The nourishment is present to those who can fiord to see. Nonetheless, in loo of moral fiber, many constipating skeptics promptly pooh-pooh any such experience; and to their wonderment are unimpressed by what remains. Mean wile, scorn points at the quiet telling, at what is dumb founded. The inescapable forest of logic is stumped. The prize paid is too ironically fined that missing peace in their puzzlement. Re-covering truth is a threadbare undertaking. Aww, to be borne again! Awe natural is the only propriety birth day suits. Veracity is no wear to be found. Perhaps the best we can do is to strike a pose and hope that there is more to come than leaving them in stitches. There is sow much more than making an offer, that one scant refuse.
The stockpiles of human knowledge grow exponentially And wisdom, like needling a haystack Says, “What the hay?!” Finding better questions is where it’s at Not how fast you can shovel it Nor how big your pitchfork is Rather what thread follows And sew what
This short poem is a tribute to questioning with a purpose. Unfettered skepticism produces cynicism. Wisdom recognizes that some questions are better than others. In fact, what questions you ask determines what answers you get. This poem cuts through the exponential amassing of knowledge by honing our attention to that which mends our reality together into a meaningful whole. Without meaning full questions to guide our inquiries, greater access to knowledge simply leads to greater confusion. The attraction and distraction of a tsunami of available answers to questions, i.e., knowledge, can actually hamper wisdom. Now, this isn’t some anti-intellectual argument. This simply recognizes that intellect lacking wisdom is much less fruitful, even dangerous. The quests for scientific knowledge and wisdom are consonant. Both seek to integrate knowledge into an ever greater whole. Knowledge that serves the whole, as opposed to just some part of reality, is a better quality of knowledge. Knowledge isn’t just about bits and pieces, mere facts; true knowledge is about a deeper understanding of the relationship of these parts to each other, and most importantly, the whole. Wisdom has a deep respect for the whole, and an even deeper reverence for the fact that the ever greater whole can only be tentatively and incompletely described. Thus, wisdom is characterized by both humility and curiosity. Wisdom opposes militant ideologies and apathy. In fact, militant ideologies are simply ideologies that have lost humility and curiosity and stopped seeking out the ever-elusive, ever-greater whole, which is at least partially represented by those outside a militant ideology. This fact escapes many trapped in militant ideologies because they mistake totality for unity. Wisdom is an inoculation against militancy, fascism, and fundamentalism. This is because the humility and curiosity of wisdom breeds a generous attitude in seeking a harmonious relationship with the whole. The openness of wisdom is not merely a corollary of the tentativeness of empirical skepticism and scientific reductionism; it is is rooted in the positive appreciation for the value of the “other” which comprise the yet-undiscovered aspects of reality and ineluctable mystery. This may be your enemy. This may be God. It may be both. A generosity transcending mere openness is made possible by a trust or faith in the whole being more valuable than the parts, even the sum of the parts. This faith is as essential to healthy scientific investigation as it is to loving human relationships. This simply assumes, or prefers, science that serves the whole rather than some special interest. This simply assumes, or prefers, human relationships that don’t reduce humans to things to be manipulated, but beings to be appreciated. The generosity of wisdom is the mother to its only true child: kindness. In humility, stripped of arrogance and egocentricity, and equipped with an overpowering curiosity and a transcendent appreciation of the “other,” only kindness remains. And all good will follow.
God gets a bad wrap As do men Gloom Over Rite and wrong Babies borne of bathwater Throne buy themselves Like clay Giving rise To the pitter potter of little feats And inconceivable images Speaking out laud In a class by themselves Bastards won and all In celestial relationships With awe thumbs up Too given the slip Sow fatefully fired Knot from above Hardened arts of ode And stone code making cooler heads Commandments all deca-ed out Can you digit For what remains Won in the mettle No’ing only gods enflesh And bones picking Wons fecund knows As dead pan humors And how to think themselves Outside the box And portending wake Only breaking That awkward silence And bound curiosity Ex-splaying stuff A coffin in drag Employed in the coroner office As doody-full janitors So disposed In a sweeping universe Taken out Behind the would should Wile hearts still Beating Out standing in there feeled Straw men ghostly flailing Which came first The bunny or the egg? An ironic inquisition Unable to eat crow So far a field Full of crop Making hay Of men Which can’t be bailed As so determined Only Abel to must-er Barren stock aid A vestigial humanity Remains incalculable Even as calculating Blinded by the blight Reckoning slight unseen Nothing sound to be hold No peeps to be herd In this objective a praise Un-re-lie-able reports Of being touched During wholly observances Untraceable soles Save those who follow A fare hearing too steep Know inviting savor to a t Angles abandoning No read scent to be found Not to be Incensed by fragrant violations of logic Having bin burned before And thinking it novel Sticking to non-friction Yet a tribute to nothing a tract Easily excepting gravity And perhaps animal magnetism In a random house A glorious reproduction Fit to survive In terminable halls of tomes Covering smiles from end to end Atlas, holding the whirled And shrugging As passé Ages of old Quipped with a thesaurus In countering the unspeakable Super seeding doubt Calling out Awe hail Too the faithful As libel to slander Of rites unridden And xenophobic farces Poorly versed Caricatures With drawing From think wells Drying too hard Distasteful to unknown palettes A vapid likeness Running lapse Around good taste For bitter or worse Never winning The grace Unfounded Even though profits speaking Assure us From the freely given We make the most sense Only from blessed assumption Are we Infer the right of our life Or in ability To take our hunch back And so stoop id Egos on and on Un-till We are Super With unassuming cape-ability There is all ways won more Last sup pose Surrounded by friends Or enemies So tight God sheds tears In a wrap so taut A hide sew made Pelted by the dead The cruelest of stoles Witnessed ever Only Escaping such a cloak From beyond assent As leapers never heeled By any crowning bluff Transcending any convictions Illiciting something knew Surpassing the bounds of a head A risqué gambol When all that you are Goes for bust Never able to hold its own In the public square Spilling the truth On all who will here Should their eyes beam And motes be crossed To take a hike to knew places Where nothing will be left Wanting more Even when full Groan
This poem is a long elaboration of a familiar theme of mine: the transcendent bigness of God and the cramped quarters built by man’s hubris. The poles of this theme are occupied by scientifically unverifiable but glorious experience of life and the denial of God, often on the grounds that any mental packaging of God is necessarily inadequate, a too messy foundation for some. The mystical reality that no description of God can do God justice is fodder for both believers and skeptics. Those anywhere on the spectrum from belief/openness to skepticism/denial are doomed to at least some measure of failure trying to give God any wrap in human terms. Believing in an open-ended God that cannot be put in a box strikes me as a rather predictable characteristic of the creator of life — life being a dynamic and messy endeavor. To continue maturation beyond a certain point as a human, belief is necessary — necessarily messy. Those who are agnostic strike me as trying to avoid confronting this juncture between the transcendent and the mundane. I think this can leave one developmentally disabled or delayed. Deniers strike me as having more hubris than tenuous believers because they must assert certainty to disqualify the question as a legitimate question. Of course, the is a seductive simplicity to addressing the nature of transcendence by simply saying it doesn’t exist. But, like Einstein said, “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Disagreements about God probably have little meaning as an abstract intellectual argument. God is definitely too big to fit in your head! Our conceptions related to the God question are ultimately questions of power. There seems to be a universal tendency in humans to not be lorded over by others. This part of our nature can serve both skepticism and belief. Questioning authority is a natural process when ultimate authority is open-ended and messy. Belief in such a higher power, one that doesn’t want submission but rather co-creative participation, frees us rather than enslaves us. Reality is bigger than our self. In at least one inescapable sense, we’ve gotta serve somebody or something (for those more comfortable with the impersonal). Bob Dylan captured this sense well in his song, Gotta Serve Somebody:
You may be an ambassador to England or France You may like to gamble, you might like to dance You may be the heavyweight champion of the world You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk You may be the head of some big TV network You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame You may be living in another country under another name
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a construction worker working on a home You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome You might own guns and you might even own tanks You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray You may call me anything but no matter what you say
You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
In life, as in tennis, even before the first serve, there is never zero, only love. It is only our need to score points that obscures this primal reality.
She had a profoundly rousing spirit Unfortunately, he did not believe in spirits And lack of belief Will only Carry you so far
I like this short poem because it plays with the notions of spirit and disbelief. There are very few people who would welcome reducing their most intimate friends or significant others to a machine, even a fabulously complex, particularly useful, and/or entertaining machine. At the same time, postmodern society is crippled in its thinking about spirit. Even those who are religious or intentionally spiritual often have a low level of literacy when it comes to the metaphysical. When push comes to shove, there are many, if not most, who feel uncomfortable in an apologetics of spiritual matters. Skepticism as a predominant mode of being makes trust more difficult than it has to be. Not surprisingly, materialists may experience a great deal of awkwardness in relating to ghosts in machines, formerly known as humans.
I view postmodern society as addicted to certainty or “security.” Most children of postmodern society experience tremors when they can’t get their fix of certainty. The materialism of postmodern society, at first glance, seems to offer more reliable solutions to issues of uncertainty. Predictability is at a premium. Unfortunately, since humans aren’t machines, human problems will remain stubbornly unsolved if limited to materialist solutions. Materialists cannot escape viewing messy freedom as a problem, not the solution. Most simply put, materialism is a negation of the better portion of being human. Stuff like faith, hope, courage, and love — let alone freedom — simply don’t make much sense from a materialist perspective. Reductionist approaches rip the heart out of higher ordered realities.
This short poem succinctly portrays what is lost by disbelief. A full appreciation of a rousing spirit becomes impossible because a materialist perspective inevitably “understands” such unique manifestations as mere statistical anomalies, at best arising out of “randomness.” Lack of belief will only carry you so far. I have to shake my head in disbelief every time a scientist includes randomness in their equation, hypothesis/theory, or worldview. These seems like a modern equivalent of “insert miracle here.” Though such a miracle is of the lowest possible order! I find it much harder to believe in randomness than that the free choice of the metaphysical world responds within a framework of reality that often, even predictably, elicits higher ordered functioning, a tip of the hat if you will to an experienced higher order. Randomness and determinism are strange bedfellows. What type of worldview relies on randomness to explain order?! Wouldn’t it be much more coherent to posit a form of order from which order arises? The logical conclusion of those addicted to this bizarre, false idol of certainty is actually that there is no order, that it only seems like there is order. When determinism is hybridized with randomness, should we be surprised that it produces an absurd bastard child? In any case, what follows from such a worldview is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Choice, human freedom, IS a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, if you don’t believe in choice, then…well, that’s your choice…
Jaden’s skepticism
Was like a cannibalism
That learned to crave
The taste
Of it’s own flesh and blood
And could settle for nothing
Less
Then a connoisseur
Of embalming
Empty vein hopes
Of immortality
In some unremitting pâté
With every golden goose cooked
In a dish best served cold
A first course
Able to stave off
Most kind of appetites
With well-bread relish
Where one helping
Is too much
For the rank and file
Of such a prison
Making ciao of anyone’s best guest
Too have your cake
And not eat it
For what may be
Inside
And passably left
I am very skeptical of skepticism. Skepticism is most warranted when exploring empirical truths, those facts of the physical world, the realm of reductionistic science. Skepticism has diminishing returns, and can even become cannibalistic, when applied overzealously to metaphysical or subjective truths. While skepticism has its place, it can blind ourselves to subtler, higher truths, those of our subjective realm. Many of such truths in life can only be taken in with a measure of grace. Those refusing to risk being taken in are at risk for missing out of some of the best things in life. Hope, love, and faith will wither in the face of unrelenting skepticism. If your quest is for passable reasons to bypass hope, love, and faith you will almost certainly be rewarded with their loss. Reducing them to mundane forms of psychological or sociological constructs will strip them of their transcending power.
Unrelenting skepticism is perhaps most dangerous at home, in one’s inner life. Our own experience is the direct access we have to the world of subjectivity, a world mold-able to our free will. This direct personal evidence cannot be shared in a verifiable or provable manner with others, as the methods of reductionistic science follow. This does not mean that such realities experienced do not exist, or that subjectivity does not exist. It simply means that they fall outside the methods of reductionistic science to examine. Nonetheless, our experience, or consciousness, is at the center of our lives, not just some afterthought. Plus, it can offer insights into others, as experiencers of their own human subjectivity. Knowing thyself is the foundation for knowing others, the most important aspect of navigating the human world. Metaphysics deserves our attention.
Some committed cynics consider free will an epiphenomenon, a mere shadow, illusion, or ghost, in a deterministic world. Such determination is unwarranted, and cripples our abilities to perceive the world. Of course, most people, and most philosophers, recognize that metaphysical realities exist. To move from perceiving physical realities to perceiving metaphysical realities, one needs to move increasingly from skepticism (doubt) to openness (faith). Such a move is not blind; it is based on experience. Still, it requires a growing acceptance of uncertainty. This veil of uncertainty is somewhat analogous to the veil of uncertainty in reductionistic science. As our observations and experience grow, the veil moves. The key difference is that science moves to include knowledge that we can know with scientific certainty, whereas metaphysical knowledge always includes a much greater degree of uncertainty, and the metaphysical veil can never be fully lifted, since it represents an intrinsic limit to human knowledge. The metaphysical veil has a mysterious nature that becomes self-fulfilling in our approach to it. If we approach the veil with too much skepticism, our knowledge of higher truths will be stunted and the resulting ignorance will appear as justification for a too constricted veil. If we venture down the rabbit hole of such things as hope, love, and faith, we learn much more of such higher truths, and the territory once bounded by the veil will recede, even revealing vast expanses previously unimagined.
Fortunately, the payoffs of metaphysical knowledge are well worth the uncertainty and risk. As Saint Thomas Aquinas famously pointed out: “The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.” Exploring our own hearts, and risking relationships with others’ hearts requires courage, one of the highest things. Clinging only to dead stuff, inanimate matter, because it is the most certain is the height of human foolishness. Here the truth lies, in this grave of lifelessness. Wisdom resides elsewhere. Find it and you will find yourself, and a whole world as well.
The gift of life Is quite inexplicably wonderful But fear not Teams of scientists Are working Around the clock To redress this problem
Skepticism has its limits. In practice, I am a skeptic of much skepticism. Life is wonderful. The foundation for life being wonderful is that it is a gift, something we received without any effort or merit of our own. This foundation of life as a gift is the most natural springboard for gratitude. Gratitude is the antidote for cynicism. Try it. Try being cynical and grateful at the same time. Nearly impossible. Of course, this poem mocks a particular form of skepticism, that of scientific skepticism. Scientific skepticism is a religion to some, even a disease. Not without deep irony, many of these same folks view religion as a disease. I find very few militant scientific skeptics as happy and carefree. While I appreciate the work ethic aroused by deep commitments, empirical skepticism, scientific reductionism, is simply unable to answer the most important questions in life. Over-committed skeptics regularly rule out contemplating meaning as a legitimate enterprise. If they do find some subtle tricks to allow for meaning, these heavenly concepts are confined to cramped quarters with narrow doors and frequently with no windows to larger realities. There may just be no explaining my wonderful, carefree frolicking about. Well, deal with it — and preferably not as a problem…
From his firm bed rock Of unassailable logic However earnest He couldn’t quite grasp love At home in more gossamer venues Wafting Teasingly just Out of reach Not able to pick up Love’s plucky de-meaner From afar Only willing To confer Its first fruits freely In an uncertain intimacy Beyond accost Of logic’s gripping tail As if Tolled To shake down some dog Only to get It all backwards As his skepticism had made him Hard for so long Until he could know longer Get it Up sow Hi Bye and bye As the apple of his eye Disembarks his safety zone Leaving him in his Free Fall Out of his tree Her bounty Mere droppings Too his unyielding countenance For baring Whatever Specter To be Sow full of crop Aura leased Scent-a-mentality Beckoning his wallow His Adam’s apple Like an overzealous bobby Robbing him As swill be the case Of reel nourishment While fishing on dry land Where pomes unsurprising Are all rotting And naught For giving Worming one’s heart Arboring thoughts So shady When looking up As some things are Between you and the stars Sheerly facing Unremitting awning And sow what Gives
This is yet another poem addressing my common themes of the head versus the heart, logic sequestering itself from love. Unassailable logic, at the expense of love, seems to fit aptly with this poem’s prime metaphor, from the Bible: picking the apple from the tree of knowledge, setting off perpetual tension and confusion regarding different “fields” of knowledge. The many fruits from the garden of Eden may still be available, but we have become to smart or clever for our own good. A fixation on logic and its inevitable legalisms locks us out from accessing these higher fruits. We end up refusing to trade up the seeming certainty and safety of our water-tight legalistic systems for the supra-rational fruits of the spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23) Gracefully, legalisms bind themselves up an self-destruct, not being rooted in the life-giving forces of the spirit. Unfortunately, the crumbling of legalistic systems can still be very dangerous as they fall. This is often made worse by last-ditch efforts to keep patching such systems with ever-more sophisticated legalisms. Nonetheless, as they fall, and we can’t take it anymore, we may just hear the perennial call from the spirit world: Sow what gives…
Somewhat sheepishly She whispered Beware of wolves in elephants’ clothing Lurking about Only looking Like they want To kick some ass Though you can skulk in style If you have A grand Old party Securing your plush seat At the table Loaded With elephant guise Rather incestual sycophants At their I’m potentate parties And if you are well, off They will take you To a tee Spouting about King George I and King George II And unjust taxes More dear than all the tea in England And buy George, they’re not satisfied with a billion Let alone a third Perhaps some fresh prince all over A newly-minted crime scene Unseemly blind to any lackey of evolution Yet there is no ruler To measure their monkey business Their trinity Cheering with pomposity Throwing monologues on the fire And stalling Having perfected the nationwide holdup A three wring circus And we are left With what’s in the stall The elephant dropping All that is fertile For phony fossils Making evolution impossible A lessen they never forget With a mellifluousness Abel To capture the common man A cleanliness next to godlessness Their hoods white For shadowing their golden daze In an urbane jungle Leaving behind poor gramma Spelling her downfall GOP opposed to GOD Having fallen Down And can’t get up Leaving students With nothing but a prayer Leaving workers With a free market they can’t afford Leaving US With life after death And perhaps before birth Still All the wile between Sent to our gloom To be Or not to be Borne again That is the quest in Whether it is know buller For in the mine to suffer The blings And ere rows Of outrageous fortunes Oar to take alms Against a see of troubles And by opposing thumb end Overcoming any Hitch Hiking what’s left As necessary Sew much more than Evolution One of the scarce things They can’t seem to buy Their con science Of what They know longer nose Inescapably figuring Somehow elect by birth Perpetual SNOBS Where the N is usually silent In their civil war Inevitably impaled by their mortal compass Spinning north and south Feigning uprightness Disavowing any revolution present Captivated by fanciful futures And realities passed And still What goes around Comes around A choice truth Either buy Ballads or bullets We all have the write to choose To ward off electioneer death
This poem is a thinly veiled anti-Republican party exposition. Profoundly ironic, Republicans are as sure proof as you are going to find that evolution doesn’t exist, and, as Gandhi never said, “Be the lack of change you want to see in the world.” The Republican party appears quite comfortable with greed as the primary human motivation. Perhaps worse yet, and even more disingenuous, is the ease at which Republicans embrace anti-science views, of which anti-evolution and climate change skepticism are its hallmarks. For the so-called religious expertise that Republicans claim, they certainly manage to brand religion as anti-science, which it need not be. Even within the hallowed halls of religious territory, Republicans manage to bring hypocrisy to ever-new heights. With their specialty Christianity, Republicans paint a picture of Jesus as if he were a white, suburban-living, English-speaking American, preaching some prosperity gospel. For God’s sake, Jesus wasn’t even a Christian, he was a Jew, and a Palestinian Jew at that! If such a poor, dark-skinned, Middle-eastern, non-English-speaking, peace-loving, giver of free health care showed up in America, the Republicans would have reserved seating at his crucifixion. Of course, they would contract out the actual killing, though a carpenter driving in those nails would not likely be a member of the carpenters’ union. Plus, the Republicans definitely wouldn’t bother paying a “living” wage for such low skilled tasks, however unpleasant.
The larger theme in this poem is about the tension between electoral and non-electoral politics. The two-party duopoly of Republocrats offers only a narrow range of possibilities deemed politically feasible. This leaves the electorate, barely even a majority of eligible voters in many elections, to ratify the predetermined candidates from a relatively narrow ideological pool. In my view, this electoral desert leaves little room for the kind of robust responses that the current world begs. Our slow and limited responses to climate change and energy use demonstrate this best. Even a well-managed end of civilization as we know it is a poor substitute for saving humanity. Of course, the “ballads or bullets” dichotomy is somewhat hyperbolic for effect. Nonetheless, without nonviolent revolution, or much-speeded evolution, our current body politic will experience a much more violent demise. I am rooting and working for a nonviolent revolution. The driving force of this revolution will almost certainly originate outside formal electoral politics. As history teaches us, such robust change does not come without personal sacrifice, and it demands courage. The Republicans would be well-advised to learn from Jesus, who showed us a different way. And who better than Jesus would know that just because you are a carpenter doesn’t mean that you have to see everything as a nail!
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Reflexive skepticism often bludgeons another’s confidence. Incessant dissection and paralysis of analysis can stall horse sense. The evil genius of devil’s advocacy is in the seemingly safe purview of inaction. Sins of omission are much easier to defend than sins of commission. Endlessly attending multifarious schools of thought offers erudite inaction at a faction of the cost Nonetheless, in a world already fucked up, practicing safer sects doesn’t go far enough. Inaction favors the status quo. In action favors change. Fortunes favor conservatism. Fortune favors the bold. The Devil needs advocates like we need a hole in ahead — don’t fall into that claptrap! We learn more from what we due than awe the rationalizing in the whirled. I’ll see you in the real world and raze you 100 devil’s advocates.
