POEM: Devil’s Advocate

June 9th, 2017 Filed under: Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Argument, Awe, Change, Evil, Genius, Job, Play, Poems, Poetry, Short Poems, Skepticism, Status, Status Quo, Temptation

HOPE POEM: Why God Invented Dark

November 28th, 2016 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Acceptance, Awareness, Awe, Choices, Control, Death, Diversity, Donald Trump, Dreams, Existential, Fear, God, Heart, Hope, Life, Mind, Moral, Nature, Opposites, Paradoxes, Poems, Poetry, Possibility, Power, Present, Reality, Skepticism, Sleep, Time, Unity, Values

POEM: Anew Page Delivering

September 6th, 2016 Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Feel free to browse positive attitude and optimism designs.

Tags: Art, Attitude, Awe, Dreams, Epistemology, Experience, God, Heart, Hell, Holy, Humor, Life, Nature, Optimism, Philosophical, Philosophy, Playfulness, Poetry, Skepticism, Soul, Truth, Wisdom

EPIC POEM: As Night Watch Man

June 9th, 2016 Filed under: Peace, Poems Add Comment

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.

Tags: Abyss, Awe, Defense, Dreams, Enemies, Evil, Evolution, Heart, Heaven, Hell, Job, Life, Logic, Mourning, Mystery, Nature, Poems, Poetry, Silence, Skepticism, Spiritual, Time, Titanic, Truth, Vocation, Wisdom, Work

POEM: Life As A Breeze

March 29th, 2016 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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…

Tags: Awe, Change, Character, Cynical, Cynicism, Generosity, Gratitude, Heart, Hope, Humanity, Life, Nature, Poems, Poetry, Present, Skepticism, Success, Time, Willingness

FREE POSTER: Only You Can Prevent “For Us” Fighters — Hillary Clinton Feeling The Bern

March 14th, 2016 Filed under: Free Stuff, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Yep, I couldn’t resist — just for the pun of it!

Feel free to share, download or print out this Hillary Clinton Feeling The Bern Poster.

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.

Tags: Democracy, free poster, Hillary Clinton, Politics, President, Skepticism

POEM: How Does It Awe End?

October 18th, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Argument, Awe, Character, Cynicism, Death, Dogma, Experience, God, Ideology, Life, Mystic, Mystical, Nature, Poems, Poetry, Reality, Religion, Sacred, Skepticism, Spiritual

POEM: A Blinding Faith

October 8th, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Awe, Beautiful, Change, Control, Cynical, Cynicism, Faith, Hate, Heart, Hope, Hubris, Life, Love, Metaphysics, Ode, Optimism, Passion, Philosophy, Physics, Poems, Poetry, Questions, Religious, Rumi, Science, Security, Skepticism, Spiritual, Spirituality, Subjectivity, Truth

POEM: How Ever Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb

September 2nd, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Art, Awe, Cautionary Tale, Character, Conundrum, Creation, Evolution, God, Heart, Hope, Hospitality, Irony, Life, Love, Meditation, Metaphors, Mind, Modern, Nature, Pi, Poems, Poet, Poetry, Police, Reality, Religion, Skepticism, Society, Spiritual, Time, Truth

POEM: Inspiring Life Itself

August 30th, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized Add Comment

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.

Tags: Awe, Creation, Dancing, Experience, Gratitude, Humanity, Life, Love, Market, Nature, Perspective, Poems, Poetry, Relationships, Skepticism

POEM: God’s Perish

August 17th, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings, Uncategorized Add Comment

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.

Tags: Argument, Atheist, Authority, Awe, Christian, Compassion, Creation, Death, Enemies, Existential, Experience, Faith, Fundamentalism, God, Heart, Humanity, Idealism, Ironic, Jesus, Joy, Law, Learning, Life, Logic, Love, Mercy, Militant, Mind, Mystic, Mystical, Nature, Passion, Pastor, Perspective, Poems, Poetry, Power, Probability, Projection, Reality, Reconciliation, Religion, Religious, Skepticism, skin in the game, Spiritual, Success, Time, Truth, Wisdom, Worship

POEM: The World’s Shortest Meditation

August 2nd, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Consciousness, Control, Creation, Experience, God, Gratitude, Harmony, Heart, Life, Meditation, Mind, mother nature, Mystery, Nature, Poems, Poetry, Present, Reality, Sacred, Short Poems, Silence, Skepticism, Society, Status, Status Quo

POEM: In What Seams Faultless

November 6th, 2014 Filed under: Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Awe, Blessed, Conundrum, Cynical, Experience, Facts, Heart, Holy, Hope, Intimacy, Ironic, Life, Logic, Moral, Nature, Ode, Poet, Present, Prophet, Propriety, Skepticism, Soul, Truth

POEM: Needling a Haystack

May 20th, 2014 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Apathy, Argument, Arrogance, Attitude, Character, Curiosity, Cynicism, Facts, Faith, Fascism, Fundamentalism, Generosity, God, Humility, Ideology, Intellect, Kindness, Meaning, Militant, Mystery, Poems, Poetry, Power, Questioning, Questions, Reality, Relationships, Respect, Reverence, Science, Scientific Reductionism, Short Poems, Skepticism, Transcendent, Trust, Unity, Wisdom

POEM: God Gets a Bad Wrap

May 11th, 2014 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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