On Darwin's Beard

04/26/2008 7:17 AM – 7:47 AM

And perhaps it was that Lucifer was the one who created hell as the only possible place that someone as vile as he thought himself to be could be allowed to exist. We do love our drama, us lower creatures. God is good and we feel that we must punish ourselves for not being up to the magnificence of his love. We’re weirdoes. Beloved weirdoes, but weirdoes nonetheless.

What I want of my faith is something a little less stupid and bullying. But I still want faith. Faith is one of those things that, statistically, is held by more happy people than not. It isn’t bliss that we should follow, perhaps, but happiness. Simple, ordinary, obvious ol’ happiness (which isn’t really all that simple, ordinary or obvious). And what is faith? I think it’s an action that’s end is belief. If knowledge is justified true belief (recognizing the Gettier Problem, but having no good solution to it as yet except to say, “well, yeah, it’d be really weird if that happened, definitely”), faith is acting (which I think includes thinking) as if a necessary belief is both true and justified.

Of course, with any discussion of faith, one runs into the asshole problem on the one hand and the flake problem on the other. Good faith, happiness faith sits somewhere between, I think. In science, it goes: observe, wonder, hypothesize, formalize the favored hypothesis, test, observe results, adapt theory accordingly, re-test, observe, adapt, re-test, observe, adapt – when you get to a point where you’re just removing and then replacing commas, you say, “Okay kids, check this out.” Then the rest of the kids try it themselves. Then they say, “Cool!” or “yes, but…” or “Dude, you totally missed…” Well, if scientists were not afflicted with the same types of assholes and flakes that afflict religion that’s how it would go. But how does one test faith? You can’t really. You can get as far as the formalization stage. Very bad things can happen there, though. Or maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t discount science for its assholes and flakes. Religion has its Darwin’s too (who included in his treatise on evolution a section devoted to all the problems that he’d found with his theory). God bless Charles Darwin who was as non-asshole and non-flake as his defenders and detractors are not. When I get to heaven, I will look him up and say, “thank you, sir. Damn fine job of not being an asshole or a flake. Very useful theory. Damn fine beard you’ve got there too, but do you ever find that you've been walking around for three hours with a big clump of mayonnaise sticking in it?”

On the Beat of the Thing

04/25/2008 7:19 AM – 7:42 AM

And in the end, panic attacks don’t really matter. They’re the sprained ankle of the mind. It stings and you’ve got to be a little careful on it for a few days, but the little tweaks and freezes stop after a few days and you’re back to the level you were at before. My current theory is that changing around my room triggered it, and I’ve got a few more changes of room before I’m done, so meh. Be better, oh brain.

It is better to be happy, even at the price of seeming rather silly. It is good to feel pretty. Let the world know me as happy and let this very self that is alone in his room know me as happy. I’m alive on this beautiful day and I hope for the salvation of all after death. That’ll do as a picture. That’ll do. Don’t fall in love with married women, but do fall in love as much as you can, with the same person, if possible. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t ruminate over the past. Unless it's the cool parts. This very moment is where we are and God is to be found here. Sometimes you’ve got to look a little. Be grateful for the past, remembering what is good. Look forward to the future, considering the silly fun yet to be had.

Dance, I think. Do the moderate pleasure of working towards a goal most of the day, but sprinkle little instances of useless momentary pleasure throughout. Does it add up to anything? Sure. Or rather, sure! Put down your philosophy books and pick up your comic books, preferably the funny ones. Go running. Save a little money. Spend a little money frivolously. Use drugs, but recognize that the pleasant effects are one of those little things that should be experienced in moderation. Hell is sometimes other people, but then so is heaven. Writing a public blog that is ostensibly about giving advice to yourself is really a rather narcissistic endeavor. That being said, there is nothing wrong with a little narcissism, but one should recognize that it is one of those pleasant little things that should be engaged in moderation. Learn things from flowers. Recognize that you’re going to die, but only to the extent that it makes not being dead more fun that it was. Lots of gods have died; the wonderful thing about Jesus is he rose again. For me. Rise again, oh Lover of my soul. Rise again and set my feet to dancing to silly 90’s pop music where the words don’t matter. Just the beat of the thing.

For He Abides Indeed

04/24/2008 7:57 AM – 8:54 AM

Okay. Here I am. Up. The thing I suppose that I should mention right off the bat is that I had a panic attack last night, and that's what this post is about. It was a small one and this time it was not hell that was it’s fixation but the absolute nothingness of an atheistic death.

The thing is, it’s not the panic attack that’s bothering me this morning, it’s that the two hours I spent calming myself down and, actually, well, “worshipping” is the word that comes to mind most readily, but that’s not quite right, anyway the two hours I spent doing whatever it was that I did made me have to sleep in and now I’ve missed my running schedule. On the second day of it. Well crap. But it’ll be fine. And it’ll be fine. And, behold, all things will be fine. I want to remember the steps or parts that I used to fight the panic attack so here goes: first I fought it with simple aversion meditation, that is, not thinking of white elephants. This was mildly effective. Rather mild, but still, it helped get on to the next stage, which was a weak “it’ll be fine; it’s just a panic attack.” Then I got out of bed and knew that I wasn’t just going to fall back asleep, I had to fight back, so I pulled out that old rusty gun “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” This was actually quite effective. It focused my emotion on anger to the exclusion of fear.

But I knew that this was not the end of the thing. Anger sinks back too easily into other negative emotions, namely fear, plus, even as I was saying it, I knew that part of me didn’t accept this. I had to fight both the fear and doubt. I used that scene from “Joe vs. the Volcano” where Joe wakes up to a moon that takes up like an eighth of the sky and says, “Oh God, whose name I do not know, thank you for my life.” I started to realize then that what I was using to fight the fear was a metaphor that we use to describe something that we don’t really know the name of. For me, this something is Christ or Christ is this something. I can’t prove it, and sometime it’s not literal, just metaphorical, but it’s there. It’s always there. This brought me to the next part which was the phrase, “Christ is risen.” And I knew what I meant by it. I meant, “Hell and death have been destroyed” or “judgment and punishment have been done away with.” There is nothing more to fear. There is nothing more to fear. The fact of evil has been done away with, we just have these flashes of the hollow place in our souls where evil used to reside and we have not yet allowed to heal over.

I realized that even an atheist has this sense of things. When an atheist says, “there is no God.” He is saying, “There is no more judgment.” There are other parts of atheism that I disagree with (namely that there is no eternal hope in it – psssht – with all the possible things to hope for, why hope that death leads to nothing?), but when the part of atheism that is there says, “there is no more judgment,” I agree. Christ has paid the debt. Evil is no more. Christ is risen. And then I realized another phrase that stated that thing that I was saying, “the Dude abides.” Christ is risen – the Dude abides. That which is merely silly and fun becomes that which is eternal and sublime. What better metaphor for what I mean by God’s redemption of mankind?

But there was more. It was a very busy two hours. Following my favorite metaphysical theorist, George MacDonald, I knew that my hope was that all would be redeemed even to the evilest of evil men, the vilest of demons and that betrayer of us all, Lucifer himself. I had, at this point a sort of metaphysical epiphany, which is that if Christ Risen, the Dude Abiding, redeems all things, than even my panic attacks were redeemed. The panic attack has, already in the distant realms, been turned to path of the redeemed. At the very heart of its being this panic attack was a fumbling attempt of my mind to comfort me. What felt like a vivisection of my soul was an attempt at a caress. So I thanked it. I called it a motherfucking cocksucker, but I thanked it. It’s like the Eucharist in a way, it’s still tasteless cracker and cheap wine down there in the belly, but the eternal fact of it is, I have just ingested the body and blood of my Christ, risen for me. And that doesn’t make sense to me, except in the way that it makes perfect sense. I am my Beloved’s and He is mine. And that doesn’t make sense to me, except in the way that it makes perfect sense.

I’m already running behind, so I think that’s the end of the story for now. I went back and forth between all these things and there were a few more things that I left out, and when I got back in bed, I had a minor slippage back into panic, but I thanked it for it’s attempt, told it to go fuck itself until it learned better manners in the sack and thanked God for the Resurrection of his only begotten Son and told the cosmos and all they that dwell therein – the Dude Abides. So. The Dude Abides. Go now and abide ye also. You’ve nothing to fear. The Love of God is inescapable. Even to cocksucking panic attacks. I'll go running tomorrow. Someday, I'll kiss the girl.

On 31-32, Gratefully

04/09/2008 6:26 AM – 7:01 AM

And so it is my birthday: happy birthday! To me! 2 to the 5^th power! For some reason, a discussion of birthdays came up yesterday at the store (I did not mention that mine was today) and Nora (my store boss) said that she didn’t really celebrate them anymore, which I was more than half-inclined to agree with but then Sarah the Volunteer laughed and said, “Oh no! At my age, I’m grateful for every year more I get!” She’s 82.

I like Sarah’s response more. The cynic in me is satisfied by the fact that such a response is so thoroughly humble as well as being so happy. And so at 32, I am grateful for my 31^st year. I just did my taxes and it was the most money I’ve ever made in one year. I’m grateful that I finally learned how to work. I’m grateful that I have bosses that encourage me in working. I’m grateful for the cool and funny kids I work with. I’m grateful for those few really wonderful patrons that make being nice feel really good. I’m grateful that I learned the happiness and suckiness of running and that I’ve started it up again even earlier this year.

I’m grateful that I survived my panic attacks and did, in fact, learn from them. A lot actually. I’m grateful that the new novel is going well. I’m grateful that the student loan people finally caught up with me and it didn’t suck nearly as much as I thought it would. I’m grateful for my family, far away though it is. I’m grateful for my friends, scattering further though they might be. I’m grateful for email and blogs. I’m grateful for Wikipedia and Google. I’m grateful for bourbon and hoppy beer and pot. I’m grateful for fat, sugar and salt. I’m grateful for boobs. I’m grateful for unexpected and unrestrainable laughter. I’m grateful for learning humility once again in how little we can know and how wonderful it is to love, even if it doesn’t come right back. Perhaps that was what Koheleth was talking about when he talked about casting your bread upon the waters. I’m grateful for the dark days that make the bright ones euphoric. I’m grateful for empirical studies of happiness even if I don’t know how useful they’ll turn out to be. I’m grateful for those few scattered writers who can write and make the world into a funny serious wonderful mysterious hard meaningful loving place to live. I’m grateful for God, even if he won’t show up in my room and tell me that everything is going to turn out really, really well. I’m grateful that I learned what it means to hope for something that you can’t quite convince yourself is true. I’m grateful that I’m still alive and happy at this little moment. I’m grateful for the blue sky and the yawning morning. I’m grateful for my cup of coffee and my pouch of tobacco (even if the smoking of said tobacco makes me cough up really disgusting things – I really must quit soon). I’m 32 and I’m grateful for that. A whole ‘nother year to wonder and act and see and hope and love. Yeah - faith, hope and love – these are what I am most grateful for this year, I think. Well, those and boobs of course.