​ 
          Somewhere during the George W presidency, his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld uttered such an impossible phrase that I have never been able to forget it. It went something like this: ‘There are the things we know, the things we know we don’t know, and the things we don’t know we don’t know.’ It does sound impossible, but each part of the phrase is true. We do know, for instance, that horses eat grass, digest portions of it, and let the rest exit out the other end. We do know that we don’t know the extent of the universe, or if that girl in chemistry class will go out with us. And we know from history that there are many things we don’t know that we don’t know so thoroughly that we cannot even ask a question about them. Quarks, for instance. Would Christopher Columbus ever have launched an expedition to find a smaller part of an atom, about which he knew nothing? Questioned the reason for black holes?
 
            There is no telling what we don’t know we don’t know, by definition, but we do know that such things or actions or principles probably exist because such things, actions, etc, have always existed. We also know this because most of us know something about something that someone else doesn’t even know exists.
 
            Take my friend Dave, for instance. He came for a visit a month before I was to travel to Mexico to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I presumed he knew at least something about her – you can’t go into an authentic Mexican restaurant without seeing her in the classic image, standing on the crescent moon with the rays of the sun behind her – but he didn’t, not a thing, not the name, nothing. Given this, he did now know enough to even ask what she was about – about the miracles she performed and about the presence of an Aztec’s (Juan Diego) cloak that exists today displaying many scientifically unexplainable phenomena (such as microscopic images in her eyes that could not have been depicted by 16th century painters, let alone seen by spectators). Without this knowledge he could not know that a source with powers far beyond human’s comprehension has left us a nearly permanent and undeniable sign of “its” existence. Without this kind of knowledge, he and many others might not believe in such force at all. Such is the power of what we don’t know we don’t know.
 
            This was brought home to me a few days ago through a discussion of the power of evil in this world by a small group of religious Christians (specifically, the members of the Steve Deace podcast). This group often uses Biblical references to discuss current political events, seeing satanic influence in much of what they call the “spirit of the age.” While many do not know the extent of such influence, they do understand that such influence exists. Many, however, have not the slightest clue. They understand that there is good and evil, but almost exclusively in an earthly way. We might say that the Russians or Nazis or ISIS are bad, and as such we are good, but that is generally understood as something clearly political; or that the child molester is evil and so we are good for not being child molesters, but that is seen as something of the law, taken from a cultural background shrouded in the mist of the ages. There are some things that are right and some that are wrong, just because, and a whole lot more that is negotiable.  
 
            What the Deace group understands it that there is a battle that is going on in all of our lives between the forces of good and evil at all times and about all things. We do have specific ideas about what is good and bad, as stated, but few see the tension between the two as a reflection of a cosmic conflict that is affecting everything. Thus it is an unknown that we don’t know we don’t know, not because it is hidden from the naked eye like bacteria to 18th century scientists, but because the nature of its reality has simply not been grasped. Paradoxically, it remains an unknown unknown because we think we know it.
 
            This I experienced as fact in an awakening that I didn’t even realize I was having. While I was told about this cosmic struggle in childhood and so realized that supernatural forces were watching me, I then only had a child’s grasp of evil. As a teen, even this tenuous connection disappeared.  What was right or wrong became something that was either dictated by my peers – what was cool and what was for jerks – or by a vague understanding of the Big No’s, those actions like murder and major theft – although some of my acquaintances dismissed even these as relics of a usurious hierarchy. Besides these biggies, life’s actions became a struggle not between good and evil, but about competing with the world to satisfy desires.
 
            Somewhere along the line, this changed. Not all of a sudden, but with a gradualness that suddenly became apparent, like the rising moon that takes us by surprise, or a bubble that arises from the depths and makes itself known only after it pops. There, suddenly, I could see what Deace and so many preachers of the fiery word see: that yes, good and evil are fighting in all areas of our lives whether we know it or not, in a classic cosmic battle that JRR Tolkien understood so clearly that he was able to depict it in mythical form in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This trilogy was not meant to be only a story to entertain but to act as a chilling wake-up call for all who are asleep to the truth that we are, for now and forever, involved in a relentless cosmic conflict.
 
            Who knew? Who even knew enough to ask? Where this awareness came from might be best explained by a quote for the Book of Sirach in the Old Testament: “He created the knowledge of spirit; With wisdom he fills their heart; good and evil he shows them” (chapter 17) As such we can say that the knowledge was always within us, but hidden so well that we did not even think to look for it: that it had become an unknown unknown, just as the master of lies, what we personify as Satan, had intended. For those in prosperous countries today, this blindness is encouraged by living in comfort and ease, much like the Hobbits. Cushioned as they were, they were made unaware of the growing chaos and madness of evil around them. Good and bad to them, as with us, were just words for behaving correctly, as Mom had taught. If not for the heroes of the Shire, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, no one would have known of this cosmic conflict until it was far too late.
 
            So it is that we can see this world, with insight given to us as if from the magic of the ring, something pulled from another world. So it is that we can see that everything can be put into a basket either of good or of evil, and that the decisions that we make for even small things resound onto bigger things – and vice versa. So, for instance, we will see it in politics. Who is forbidding the word of God to be preached and followed? Who is promoting policies that are against the laws that have been imprinted on our hearts? Who is robbing us of free will, or advancing propaganda that flies against clear and obvious natural law?
 
            We will also see it in our own decisions and behaviors regarding our relationship with others. Do we prey on the opposite sex for some form of selfish gratification? Do we advance ourselves or gain money or influence by selfish and injurious means?
 
            And so on. Some of these considerations might be familiar, even mundane, but it is in the realization that they are all tied together in one great drama, in which each of us is an integral actor, where the revelation lies. In this, nothing is small; the very perception of our natural world depends on our choice of good or evil, the former opening our eyes to the beauty of creation, the latter, to its use only for utilitarian purposes, or as an evil itself. In this world, blessed angels battle fallen angles in struggles throughout each layer or level of creation, with each intimately tied to the other. “As above, so below” extends in every possible direction and into every conceived reality, from the action of drug cartels to the disintegration of galactic systems.
 
            What separates this vision from black helicopter conspiracy theory is that once envisioned, the connective tissue appears already formed, depicted clearly in the holy books for all to see. How one’s eyes are opened depends on one’s tradition, coupled with the inscrutability of grace. It seems that trying helps, with prayer and deeds combined. However it might come, we are surprised as the unknown-unknown becomes a known-unknown, working then throughout our lives towards the known – known. Although the finality can ever be reached in this world - just as we cannot understand everything about the material world - at least we are given a general portrait of a greater reality that is startling in its breadth.
 
            In this, as things become clearer, we find that the story of The Rings is only a reflection on paper of our own flesh-and-blood-and- spirit drama. This drama is big; it is dangerous; it is a monumental challenge that makes each of us a hero or villain, and each life an epic tale of struggle, failure or redemption. 
 
  
 
 
 
                
             

 
 “Hear me all of you and try to understand. Nothing that enters
  a man from outside can make him impure;

 that which comes out of him, and only that, constitutes impurity.

 Let everyone heed what he hears!” Jesus of Nazareth, from     Mark  7:14-16
 
            What people have done with scripture to excuse themselves - and I am not immune.
           
            Back in the 1990’s, homosexuals were justifying themselves through a musical (I forget the name) where they quote food prohibitions from Leviticus, focusing on shrimp. I believe they used shrimp because non-orthodox Jews still avoid pork, but not shrimp. They used this to say (sing, really), that, yes, homosexuality is prohibited, but so is shrimp. Yet the holier-than-thou still eat shrimp. Hypocrites! If they can avoid this law and see themselves as pure, they crooned, then why can’t we participate in homosexual behavior and be just as pure?
 
            I am no expert on the Old Testament, but the New Testament clearly states what the Old Testament was probably setting up with its food prohibitions: a change in heart, from the inside out. Starting with Abraham, rules had to be made and followed before the meaning and depths of the rules could be explained, as one does with children. As we can see in the quote from Mark above, Jesus enables us to plunge deeper into the meaning of the old dietary rules. It is not the stuff of the non-human world that defiles a man, we are told, but man himself, with his thoughts and deeds. Christ is telling his Jewish brethren that, now that they have gotten the hang of following God’s rules, it is time to know the meaning behind them and advance to the next stage.
 
            Lust and desire, for instance -although perhaps sparked by things in the outside world - originate from the inside. The new and greater understanding is that one must follow the rules that direct us to control our inner desires, and sex is (of course) a great part of our urges. From this more mature perspective, eating shrimp is fine, but control of the primal urges is paramount. Before this deeper understanding, the homosexual argument disappears like the morning dew after an all-night kegger.
 
            But homosexual behavior is not the only sin, and I have used the same sort of argument against the “silly” rules of Leviticus to justify the many ways I have broken the rules under which I was raised. These include the usual wash of pleasure-seeking inanities that often lead to disaster: drugs and sex, and a little too much rock ‘n roll.  I have repented, but often repeat. Still, the question remains: just what is this “inside” from which our sinful thoughts and behavior are hatched?
 
            There are many ways to approach this. Nowadays, we would probably go to one school of psychology or another to look for the Id and Ego or to behavioral training and the like, but our interior is deeper and more mysterious than that. I look to two episodes from my own life, along with spiritual traditions, to guide my understanding of the great darkness within.
 
            `The first occurred when I was in 1st grade. I had a brutal teacher who still used corporeal punishment and we all feared her, and yet one day I boldly defied her as well as another authority figure without even understanding why. It was in gym class, outside on a beautiful day. We were told by our pretty and nice gym teacher to hold each other’s hands to form a circle, but then NOT to pull at the circle to break it. Of course I did. I did not feel pleasure in it or anything at all, and why I did it puzzled me even at the time.
           
            The second occurred decades later, about 25 years ago, not long after we had moved to Wisconsin. I had not liked the move and had found myself without employment and was pretty unhappy about it. With this, I was often drinking too much at night. On one such evening when I had had my fill and was about to go to bed, my very troubled alcoholic cousin called. She did this now and then when she was plastered, and I often didn’t answer, but with a great sigh, this time I did. As she slurred on, I decided, well, maybe I’ll have just one more. But as we then still had cord phones, I could not go downstairs to the beer fridge. With no other alternative for alcohol, I stretched the chord to the max and made it to the cupboard where the liquor was kept and poured a single shot of bourbon over ice.
 
            What happened next was astonishing. After just a few sips, something powerful seemed to rush into me like a hot wind. I was suddenly altered and began criticizing my cousin for her slurred inanities. She had no understanding of what was happening and after repeating herself several times, the conversation ended. Still, that odd sensation stayed. It stayed as if it were another entity – a demon – existing within myself. I came to understand that it had jumped from my troubled cousin into me, and it made me miserable. It turned everything in life into something dark and mean and made me feel like a captive prisoner in my own head. Such was my misery that I quit drinking for nearly a year in an attempt to keep the beast at bay. Just as oddly, even after the beast lost its power, my heavy drinking came to an end.
 
            Rejection of it, of this entity, also opened the door to Christianity, much to my great relief. On the other end, my cousin continued with her problems and died of alcoholism some fifteen years later while still in her fifties.
 
            The long story of her tragedy would take more than a single essay to relate, but what of the urges that make us or try to make us do things we know we should not do? As a child, the urge that made me break the circle was simply a “beast” that was teaching me to say “no.” The rule was without consequences except for the fact that I had broken the rule. This is akin to a Jew from ancient times eating shrimp. The prohibition itself was inconsequential, but the following of authority – in the case of shrimp, the authority of God – was crucial.
 
            In the second example, I was fully mature and I knew that excessive drinking was unhealthy. I did it anyway because I had learned well the lesson of “no” from my childhood. The consequences were well beyond what I had expected, as is often the case with our actions. Alcohol had opened me up to demonic influences which could have ruined me, as they did my cousin. Instead, I was given the grace to remain apart from the demonic power even as this made for a long, miserable internal struggle. The result was the realization that I could not live a good life on my own; that I needed a superior and good – even holy – power to restore the internal balance of what I came to understand as my soul. 
 
            So where do the demons come from? Are they ego-driven voices of “no” formed in our childhood that have matured to affect our adult life? Yes, but why? As social animals, what good is it to have an egotistic will of such strength that it can separate us from the herd, and from life itself?
 
            The book of Genesis explains this ‘will’ in the ability of Eve to be persuaded to eat from the tree of good and evil. The snake tells her that the fruit will not make her die, as God said, but will instead make her equal to God. God, says the snake, lied to her because he jealously wished to monopolize his power. In this, the snake understood human will. Of course Eve, and then Adam (the dolt) fell for it – for free will does make temporary gods of us.
 
            Free will, however, is the only god-like power that we do have. All else, from our math to our technology, is limited by the rules of physics that the creator, not us, has made. He has also made the non-physical rules, from the prohibition of shrimp to adultery, knowing as he does the outcomes of our behavior. So it is that we cannot flap our arms and fly, although we can make machines that give us the effect of flying; and so it is that we cannot rule our lives with our every desire without eventually calling in the demons.
 
            The demons that prey upon us feed from our free will. We can keep them at bay by following the laws planted in our hearts, laws that tell us to say “no” to the childish ego within. While this demands great humility, in the end it all comes out the same: we can either choose to humble ourselves, or be humbled by the consequences of our own ego-driven choices.  

Today, the essay "No Survivors" under "Essays" in the website. FK

 
          I don’t know if I am more sensitive to movies than others – I certainly am not that sensitive in many other ways – but I recently saw a documentary series that has haunted me for days. I guess I should have known, given the person who had recommended it.
 
            It was not from a personal conversation, but from a podcast of a radio show that Steve Deace gives on BlazeTV every weekday at 11:00 (Central). Deace is the script writer of the movie “Nefarious.” If you have not seen it but like horror movies without all the blood and guts, this is for you. It takes place primarily at a maximum security prison where a serial killer is about to be given the electric chair. A psychiatrist is called in to ascertain the man’s sanity as a last safety-check before the body of the man is purposefully fried. We quickly see that the man believes that he has been possessed by the devil. The psychiatrist is a typical materialist scientist and at first cannot believe him. In time, he becomes convinced.
 
            It is a show that immerses one in the kind of evil from which one cannot – or almost cannot – escape. The evil exposed is much worse on the emotions than are the typical teen blood and guts movies. One sees this and believes. It is intended to send people out to seek their salvation, and by golly it does a good job at it. To see that we all are potential victims of an evil force that is way beyond our abilities to control should send us all in search of a savior with sufficient empathy and power.
 
            And so it is with this documentary, although it by no means was made with the intention of compelling us to seek deliverance. Rather, it simply tells the facts about a man named Arthur Leigh Allen, primarily through the eyes of the children of a family in which this man served as a kind of reserve uncle.
 
            Allen is dead now, but he remains the prime suspect in the notorious Zodiac Killer murders that took place from the early 1960’s to about the mid ‘80’s in California. If you are like me, this documentary will make your skin crawl. It is not fiction and it exposes us to semi-miraculous artifacts that one can look at to this day as proof of this special kind of evil.
 
            First, like the possessed man in the fictional movie, the Zodiac Killer through his actions and letters showed that he was a man of astounding intellect and malicious humor. He once, for an instance of the humor, announced that he was going to kill all the “kiddies” as they “bounced out” of a school bus. He did not, but again and again he killed people, many times couples, leaving clues behind, but never quite enough to convict. Even after the police zoned in on Arthur, who was almost certainly the killer, he was able to evade prosecution. Even, we might add, after he was put away for several years for child molestation.
 
            For an instance of his genuinely supernatural intelligence, he left behind his infamous Zodiac messages, with codes so intricate that at least one has not been deciphered to this day, even with the help of sophisticated supercomputers.
 
            Some, however, have been decoded, and in them the killer tells us of his relish for the suffering and death of others. More, he announces that he is not afraid for his own death, as he bragged to the world that the people he killed would become his soul-slaves after his death. Even if he did not believe in what he wrote, such a statement was meant to make the survivors of his mostly youthful victims cry out in spiritual alarm. Is this man the devil? Can he enslave my (son or daughter) in the kingdom of Hell? What kind of monster would say such things besides a demon?
 
            There is more. Although we see him in the beginning as a somewhat pudgy schoolteacher in his late 30’s, we are then shown a brief clip from a home camera of his performance on a diving board. Here, the soft, aging man suddenly launches himself in the air, does a flip or two, lands back on the board to do another flip, and then dives into the water. Only a skilled acrobat or gymnast could pull off such a feat. Obviously, he had physical powers that he should not have had.
 
            He died a very sick man in the 1990’s while in his late 50’s, of a sudden blood clot. Somehow he knew he would die right then at his desk at home, as he was found clutching a final letter to the world in his cold hand. A death-bed confession? No: instead he denied he had anything to do with any of the killings and wished the world well except for the police who he claimed had unjustly hounded him, perhaps causing his sickness and death. He would not give to the world and the relatives of his victims’ closure. We might conclude from the evidence that he did it all, but without conviction or confession, he has ringed the popular verdict with nagging doubt.
 
            Such instances of pure supernatural evil are rare, but those few give us clear evidence that there really is demonic influence in the world. I find this so disturbing that if such evil were not important to understand, I would not write about it at all. Facing death as we all do is bad enough; but facing death with the possibility of being snatched into Hell for an eternity is almost unbearable. We who are Christians have been told our whole lives that this is a possibility, but we cannot -will not - really believe that this could be so. Christianity is not alone in posing a bleak afterlife for the unperfected, and it is apparent that those of other faiths prefer to ignore these warnings as well. How can we not, when each of us knows that we are not perfect? That we, the ‘normals,’ might be headed for a bad afterlife as well as the truly evil few?
 
            Fortunately, it seems that we are usually protected from outright demonic influence. This gives us clear evidence that God does care for us, which should give us hope. But now and then, the satanic is allowed to fully bloom. This we should take as a gift for wisdom. Being warned of the possibility that we could fall into the horrors of supernatural evil because of our imperfections should compel us to change for the better. Without such warnings, would we even try to change?
 
            We live in a bubble both individual and shared. We do not really believe in our death and we do not really believe in supernatural evil. We do not because both are too horrifying, especially when put together, to tolerate as we are. Such it is that our bubble both protects us from the truth and also makes us incapable of living with the truth. Instances of outright evil break the bubble and remind us of the great protection we usually are granted from a loving God. It is this side, the side of love and mercy, which is our ‘out.’ When the reality of the dark side becomes unavoidable, we are compelled to leave our bubble to find the other, the good, where our salvation lies.
 
            Imagine the fury of the demons when they find that their very evil makes us more holy? That we may write this as our parting message to the world.
 
    
 
                       
 
           
 

 
          I am not a touchy-feely guy. In fact, I am glad that I am not a touchy-feely guy. If it weren’t for the hippies in San Francisco back in the day doing so much acid that they started the trend of guys hugging guys, I would never have hugged a guy in my life and been glad for that, too. You should only hug your mom when she gets old, your kids when they are young, and your wife on special days and that’s it. Otherwise you get what we have now, guys nervously going through the routine of mandatory hugs as they eye the exits wistfully, wishing that someone would pull the fire alarm so that they can make their escape. I know. I’m one of those guys.
 
            Our cultural prejudices, however, even as they might tell the truth of our social being, often do not tell the deeper truth. About love, for instance. As youth, we all heard the French expression (it must be French): “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” That sounds pretty, but if you have ever been through a major break-up, you might want to argue that point. A bad break-up can ruin your life for months, and maybe years. People leave jobs over this, leave the country, start a goat farm in Idaho, take up residence with a bottle in a paper bag, or whatever. It can become an obsession, and just like drug or alcohol addiction, this obsession can lead to the loss of friends and family and everything else because no one else can understand your pain and everyone is tired of hearing about it. ‘She’s just another (girl); not even that pretty; find someone new and better; one by every minute,’ and so on, and they are right. But they are not right for that time, not when you have just lost. Love is then a misery and a curse, and why the hell did we get away from parents selecting our mates anyway?
 
            Still, it is the truth: it is better to have loved and lost, and I have recently experienced that truth in spite of my near-complete allergic reaction to public displays of affection.
 
            This love has nothing to do with hormonal chemistry and young woman with delicious-smelling perfume. If I had to name a cause, it would have to be my increasing identification with Christ and Christianity, but it is not exclusive. Rather, it is based on the revelation, shocking and coming at unexpected moments, that others are just as completely human as I, and that others, at least at times, suffer from a loss of love. This love usually has nothing to do with Romeo or Juliet, but with a sense of isolation, an isolation that is more profoundly devastating in its way than the loss of romantic love.
 
            This is nothing new. I can in fact remember an episode of the original Star Trek where Captain Kirk (hardly a great philosopher) is taken over by an alien entity who says just that, that our species is “so (desperately) alone” within itself. The newness is with the fullness of the realization. In this fullness, we suffer right along with the other who is suffering. The result of this suffering, though, is not akin to the loss of a romantic love (which is really about the self) with all its misery, but rather returns to us a feeling of completeness that comes in spite of the shared suffering. In other words, through empathy and all its pain, we come to feel fulfilled; by suffering the pain of loneliness of others, we lose our own sense of loneliness and emptiness.
 
            This is the kind of love that it is better to have, even as it guarantees us suffering. It is, in a practical sense, obvious that by sharing others loneliness we decrease our own, even as this sharing is unspoken. But this has a far more profound side that is explicit in the suffering of Christ, something so profound that I struggle to put it into words or even to understand it internally. It is the startling realization that creation itself has willfully chosen to suffer along with us in our isolation, so that this most elemental of human problems can be solved - a problem which in one way or another is at the bottom of all man-made misery. And there is no reason for creation to do this other than for love.
 
            This means that love truly is at the bottom of everything. It also means that in suffering we are liberated, which is something the saints have always understood and that I really cannot. And yet, even so, even as suffering occurs, its liberating aspects become clear.
 
            We might say that this is true in sharing other’s loneliness, but what about physical suffering?
 
            God, I hate it, even as I get older and experience it more and more. We could get really metaphysical here by attaching physical pain to revelation, but we do not have to start there. Rather, we can begin by putting into words what many have experienced, even as it makes little apparent sense: that through physical suffering, we also learn about love and begin to solve the fundamental problem of loneliness.  It is simply true, and any reasoning must begin with the truth, no matter how unexpected.
 
            Perhaps it can be boiled down to this: when we are healthy and fit, we feel as if we are beyond the bounds of nature, a world unto ourselves that does not have to pass through the cycle of life and death. When we are not, when we are ill and weak or in pain, we are brought back into the true cycle in which all of nature is involved. We then are forced to realize our shared vulnerability with all living things, and in this, like prisoners of war, we share a bond that is deeper than common friendship and cordiality. We come to share something more like the bond of comrades in arms, a bond that can allow us – can even demand us – to be willing to sacrifice ourselves for others.
 
            This shared suffering is our reality, and the depth of our community is based on how open we are to this reality. If we were perfectly aware of our situation, we would naturally form a bond of love with humanity. Many already have this bond, although imperfect, with their family, and others with their tribe or nation, but to be truly aware is to have that bond with all of creation. It is what Christ has, and what all truly inspired spiritual leaders must have.
 
            Still, we don’t have to be gurus to experience this depth. It can be given to anyone through grace, which is often delivered to us through suffering. My personal experiences probably have something to do with the diminished capacities and infirmities of age, but it doesn’t matter. The central mystery of the universe still resolves around the same premise: that it is all apiece and desiring that everything understands this in its own way. So it is that the eternal heavens must understand the weakness and suffering of the finite, just as we must understand, through our bond of weakness, our attachment to the eternal. It all seems so complicated, but it is not; rather, it is sublime, like the precise spiral of a sea shell.
 
            This curve of the truth brings us around to the mystery of the sacrificial Christian God. In his eternal presence, he must fulfill the unity of his creation by experiencing finitude and pain. In this, he unites his eternal life and joy through his suffering with our suffering. And in his guise as a mortal, he insists that we unite with all humankind in sympathetic love so that we may realize eternal completeness, and in this, God’s eternal bliss. 
 
            It is so simple yet so difficult, as sleek and slippery as an eel. If we could put it onto a bumper sticker, we might just say that “It is better to have lost before we might love.”
 
           
 
   
 
             

For this Christmas season, the essay "The Night My Father Shot Santa" from my book Beneath the Turning Stars, under Essays in the website. Merry Christmas! FK

 
          Pop rock has been so far from my mind for so many years that I still speak of Kurt Cobain as hot contemporary. Necessity, however, is often the mother of retro, and nothing speaks of necessity louder than being in an isolated area without normal gadget connections. Of course I speak of the region in which our little cabin is embedded up nort,’ where I found myself a few weeks ago driving, quiet and alone on the curvy road along the Lake Superior coast. My modern mind confused by the inactivity, I reached for the dusty dials on the car radio and clicked on the FM button, and then the search buttons. Country, country, county auction, NPR, obscure preacher, and then, finally, pop rock. Not Classic, but rock favorites that extended well beyond Sweet Home, Alabama, landing me in unknown, post-Grunge territory. I listened; the beat was good, the guitar scintillating, the production way beyond anything from days of old. I listened more and ferreted out the lyrics: “Give me a word/give me a sign…Whoa, heaven let your light shine down!” A search for heaven, my kind of stuff!
           
            And on it went, good, good stuff, so good that later, back in civilization, I put forth enough information to raise the song on Spotify. It is called “Shine” by Collective Soul, and it was even better on the ear buds, so good that I might have given myself a heart attack at the gym as I pedaled on the stationary with the song blasting so loudly I couldn’t even tell how exhausted I might be. In those few minutes I felt the thrill of youthful invulnerability which was so wrong back then and even more wrong now, but so satisfying that I could believe that life went on forever with one adventure after another. Ah, stupid, arrogant, fun youth!
 
            It was then that I found out about another modern convenience from the Spotify entertainment center: that they would take a song from you, categorize it, and add a long, long list of other songs that somehow paralleled the original piece. Suddenly, I was inundated with all sorts of post-early 90’s pop music and groups. I listened. I skipped over about half that I simply did not like, but listened to a dozen or so that I did. What I found from this delve into recent pop was anything but comforting.
 
            “Shine” had a glow of optimism to it, as if paradise were just around the corner waiting to be discovered. Most of the rest, however, including those by Collective Soul, were not so hopeful. In fact they were dismal. One, “Loser” by Beck, was fun and bouncy with an incredibly seductive beat, but spoke basically of its title. The singer (the object of the lyrics) and his girlfriend and whoever else was entangled with him were all useless losers, getting by on drugs and food stamps and possible grifts in Vegas. Says the refrain, “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?” Yikes. There was no redemption in the lyrics.
 
            Another by Collective Soul, “December,” was a harder, grittier plunge into existential worthlessness. Speaking, it seems, to his girlfriend, the refrain grinds out, “Turn your head and spit me out!,” which I interpret as an allusion to an unartistic and non-reproductive act of sex, with the implication that she is spitting ALL of him out. More, he asks her, “Why follow me to higher ground/lost as you think I am?” The two are close, they are co-dependent, but disdainful of each other, sterile in both collective soul and body.
 
            But oh, the clincher is a simple and genuinely beautiful ballad that draws from a dark underground of unabashed neo-paganism. Titled “Lightning Crashes,” by Live, it contains versus like these: “Lightning crashes/a new mother cries. Her placenta falls to the floor. The angel opens her eyes/the confusion sets in.” Then, “Lightning crashes/an old mother dies. Her intentions fall to the floor. The angel closes her eyes/the confusion now belongs to the baby down the hall.”
 
            With the music, the dark intensity of this begins to tug the heart from the chest, only to  reach a greater height with, “Like rolling thunder chasing the wind, forces pulling from/the center of the earth…I can feel it, I can feel it!” Wow. It is the force of nature, its greatness, its mystery and darkness, its depth, and its seeming pointlessness (‘confusion sets in’). Powerful and unsettling, to say the least.
 
            To say that these songs represent the youthful mind would be an unproven excess. I know, however, that these represent a large element of people at least a generation younger than I. Maybe I can compare them with the rock hits of my era, the late 60’s and 70’s, which spoke primarily of drugs and sex and earthly paradise. We all didn’t believe it and we all didn’t act largely on this shallow philosophy, but we were all effected. Whether through cause or effect, it was then that premarital sex became the norm, which was then followed (necessarily) by legal abortion, and then, quickly, by the watering-down and emptying of the churches. What we could see back then in the music and the lyrics could quickly be matched with the remake of Western culture.
 
            Applying a similar rule to the new pop, what came AFTER the counter culture and sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s could be said to be almost catastrophic. What is described in the lyrics is not romantic sex or even Hair Band-style reckless and wild sex. Rather, it is sex that is cynical and shallow and meaningless, something that leads to nothing more than broken relationships and resentment. This is something that one might expect from two or more generations suffering from high divorce rates, or no married or even cohabiting parents at all. Turn your head and spit me out. And if you do it the old-fashioned way, the resultant child might not even know the father. As if that should matter.
 
            Even more importantly, we can see the frightening depth of meaning and searching in the last and heaviest song mentioned, “Lightning Crashes.” Here, life is not a cheap voyage of drugs and welfare checks, but is recognized for what it is: an experience extending from the depth of the earth upward to the wings of the angels. The songwriter fully recognizes the reality beyond the quotidian and superficial, but he cannot find coordinating meaning. That is, he cannot make sense of this depth. Rather, “confusion sets in,” from birth to death. The depth is unknown. In the language of the ancient cartographers when referring to unknown lands, “Here Dragons Be.” Mystery and darkness, pain and death, and ultimately fear; real fear, not like losing your house but losing your very being.
 
            All this is commendable for its honesty, but also expository of the other part of the cultural revolution of the 60’s. This is when the churches were changed - and then emptied out. Before then, mystery had long been identified, along with evil and birth and death, but the coordinating part had been figured out. This unabridged explanation of existence is really why, more than conquest and domination, that the Christian religion spread so quickly and widely.
 
            The ancient pagans were no dummies, nor were they squeamish about the truth of the natural world. We are born in pain and fear, live in episodes of more pain and fear, and then die in pain and fear. Back then, some sacrificed human life as propitiation to a creator or creators who obviously were heavy-duty, demanding dudes and dames. All the old pagans did something intense and startling to reflect the startling and intense reality of their lives.
 
            It was Christianity that figured it out and put together all the pieces, from death and evil and boundless mystery to the spectacular and eternal life in another sphere. It is all there: fear of eternal damnation (the heavy), but also hope of eternal salvation. More than that, there is a plan. The intensity of life and death does not bring about life-long confusion. Rather it all – sex, family, life, death, suffering – has a place and a purpose.
 
            Without this plan, we see a pit before us that ends in the horror of bottomless darkness.
 
            As a contrast to the aura of these tunes, I later listened to what I consider (in my relative ignorance) to be the greatest song of grace ever made: “Spem in Alium” by Thomas Tallis (from the Elizabethan Era). Through its many parts (the version with conductor David Wilcox is the best. Peter Phillips is also good), it answers all the questions posed by the current pop-rock musicians. With its vast array of musical parts, it speaks to the infinite variety of life; and with its mood shifts, from near-frightening to the cheek-strokes of angel wings from on high, it encompasses both the frightening and the jubilant, both the birthing mother and the dying mother.
 
            At its end, there is no room for confusion. That is the key. Here we find perfect order made from chaos and imperfection, and a perfect destiny for all who are born into ignorance and who fight against meaninglessness. The Elizabethan Era was cruel and dirty and often brutish and vulgar, but for all who questioned and sought, there was an answer. And all, or nearly all, accepted that answer, whether they wanted to conform to its teachings or not. In the time when there were many dragons, there was ultimately nothing to fear. We had purpose and a destination. Whether or not we took the right road was up to us, but we could all see the sign post and knew which way we should go.
 
            There is no going back, except to what was left us in artifacts. We are different now and can never be as we once were – and that is probably a good thing. But it has been figured out for us. We don’t have to sing of bitterness and fear. Rather, it is time to put up the old sign post in a new language. It is time for a new Thomas Tallis. We don’t have to go the way of modern pop-rock, although I’ll take the beat. We have to admit, in spite of everything, that some things have gotten better – which might have been the reason for our confusion all along.  
 
              

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          The wind howled at 45 mph sustained, the rain came and went like fits of tantrums, and my son and I were in a cabin with no computer or TV. There was the handy IPhone, however, which has a download function so that programs can be saved while in range and played later while out of range. Since the cabin is out of range for anything but a Sat. phone, we had our downloads and nothing but the downloads. And they were good.
 
            Podcasts. Were it not for my wife, I would still be using an Olivetti mechanical typewriter, and were it not for my son, I would still be listening to nothing but commercial radio. But saved podcasts we had, one being a several-hour-long stilted conversation between Joe Rogan and Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman. 
 
            Or Fetterwoman as he once called himself. It was this quirkiness that led Rogan to invite him on, this and the fact that Fetterman had suffered a stroke during his senatorial campaign – which he won - that had made him incoherent. Two years later, he is vastly improved, but still hobbled, having to listen to other’s conversation through a computer that turns spoken language into written language. He must do this because he cannot understand spoken language.
 
            My son could not understand this. Is he deaf? Rogan, too, was mystified, and so asked him just that: did the stroke make you (Fetterman) deaf? No, he replied: rather ‘I cannot understand spoken language. I can still reason and still read but cannot understand the spoken word.’ (paraphrase). The reason, Fetterman was finally able to describe, was that the part of his brain that took the sound of language and turned it into meaningful words was severally damaged. He could still read language and think in language but could not translate the vocalization of language. Very, very odd and very telling.
 
            It is telling like the magic goblet that we have seen since grammar school. We all remember: what do you see when you look at this picture? For most, the first thing they see is the oddly-shaped goblet. When we are told that there is something else there, sooner or later two faces appear, staring at each other across the space that holds the goblet. Huh. We can see one thing, and then something totally different by a simple change of perspective.
 
            Let’s look once again at the Old Testament and compare it to the New. In the Old, there was no heaven for anyone but the very special – like Elijah beaming his way into heaven on a golden chariot.  Hell was for all, but held only the ragged remnants of our earthly selves that would slowly dissipate into nothingness. God’s threats and rewards were made for the living, either as individuals or as family or tribe or nation. Thus the messiah was thought to be a remake of the earthly King David; this belief apparently was the reason Judas betrayed Christ, so that this great prophet would finally get his butt in gear and drive out the Romans. It was not only Judas, however, who had no idea about who The Christ really was. The other apostles remained completely baffled by the thought that God would die for humanity through his son and then rise from the dead. God dying? What the…?
 
            “…not the smallest letter of the law…shall be done away with…” Jesus said (Mathew , 5:18). However, according to Paul, “He is a real Jew who is one inwardly, and true circumcision is of the heart.;” In other words, the Law was to be fulfilled through its interior, deeper meaning, which is ultimately to love God with all one’s being and to love one’s fellow Man as one loves himself. In this we see that from the time of Abraham to the preaching of the Gospel after the death of Jesus – a span of nearly 2,000 years - a huge change of consciousness had taken place, with the Law moving from appearance into the conscience. With this, the Jews (and later the Christians) began to think twice about bashing in the brains of the babies of their enemies and selling off their women; they had now begun to see others as themselves and to court the love of God in their hearts.
 
            Almost all are aware of this change, yet we still fall short of living what we know to be true. On the one hand, we are like Fetterman after his stroke, able to understand the meaning of the Word in our minds but unable to “speak” it in our daily lives. The ability to do so is there, but only marginally. We need to practice what we preach again and again so that it might grow. We are still seeing the goblet rather than the faces even though we know that the faces are there.
            Translated into our vision of the cosmos, people of our age now know without a doubt that the universe is vastly beyond our grasp, a nearly infinite mystery of dark stars and black holes and stuff we cannot even imagine. But still we fritter. We still are hurt by the slights of others, hold resentments, have affairs for the thrill of it, and endlessly chase after money, prestige, and human power, even though, through our knowledge of the cosmos, we know that all these things are infinitely petty.
 
            On the other hand, linguistics and pictures are only the start. There might be – almost certainly are – realities around us about which we know nothing at all. To see these, we would need a teacher to tell us where and how to look anew. And then be given a new faculty by grace to see.
 
            I had this experience while visiting the museum of the scrolls in Jerusalem. There, at the end of the exhibit halls, was a partially unrolled Dead Sea scroll of the prophet Isaiah (who of all the prophets speaks most about the coming of Christ). I was standing before it and looking at its foreign writing without understanding when an elderly woman next to me asked, “Do you see the human faces in the words?” I answered that I did not until I took a second look. Suddenly – with the suddenness of seeing the faces in the goblet - I saw the heads of hundreds of different people in the Hebraic writing. They were as varied as a general population would be, most with longish hair and beards, all in black and white like the writing itself. In retrospect, the faces appeared much larger than the writing, although they were fully contained by them. This could not be. This was physically impossible. And yet it was.
 
            This is where I believe we are today. We have been given the scroll and the words have even been interpreted for us, but we are missing something to understand them better. Within this scroll is a living reality that is beyond our current ability to see. We are like the Jews at the time of Christ, aware of the prophecies but unable to perceive what was truly meant by them. God will die and rise again? But these were not the Jews of the Old Testament. Time had altered them, allowing some to begin to perceive. The Way had to be pointed out to them, but they were ready to receive the grace necessary to understand the rest, to work upon the human potential that had been so long hidden that would allow them to understand.
 
            This new understanding is still being fulfilled in our time, but it seems that this phase is coming to an end. It is not just the Christian faith that is dying in the very land that it came from, but the truths of other faiths as well. In a manner of speaking, we have all been given a spiritual Testament and have understood and practiced this as far as we could. Now there is a timely need for the pointing of another finger, and for the gift of grace to allow us to understand this new thing that is being pointed out. 
 
            This seems to be happening at warp speed, just as a new era of materialism is rocketing upwards. Where is the force to counter the belief that AI is about to become a superior form of humanity? Where is the power to counter the belief that humans can create this new Frankenstein with technology, eliminating the need or even the thought of God? In another manner, such crucial questions as these were being asked by the Jews 2000 years ago: where is the force that can counter the pagan Romans? Where is the new David that was spoken of in the Old Testament?
 
            He came then, but not as expected, just as it is a near-certainty that our new David will not come or be as we expect. Christ’s kingdom was not of this world, and he allowed himself, King of kings, to be tortured and killed like a common criminal. No one of that time could have seen that coming, even though it was clear for all to see in hindsight that Isaiah had described him perfectly. So what are we missing now? What faces in the goblet have we not seen? And who will point this out to us? Because of a dire need for a counter force, I believe we will find out soon. We wait in fear and hope.
 
 
 
              
 
 
 
             

 
            The German word “volkgeist” has some pretty heavy baggage but carries a worthy idea, meaning in English “the spirit of the people.” The word became common knowledge after the Nuremburg rallies in Nazi Germany, where one was infamously filmed in all its astounding and frightening glory in the 1934 epic “Triumph of the Will.” Hundreds of thousands of Germans attended the festivals that ran annually until 1938, along with tens of thousands of helmeted troops, often lit up during the night with blazing torches illuminating giant swastika flags. Hitler’s speeches were nearly hysterical, and the people clung to them like drunken fans at a rock concert. The crowds and the leader were one. They shared a terrifying volksgeist in a frenzy of national unity.
 
            We are all aware of our own segments of volksgeist. A rock concert was mentioned above, but we also feel it at sports games and revival rallies and, yes, political rallies. This feeling of the “folk will” can be small or overpowering, long-lasting or evanescent, dark and scary or light-filled and hopeful. We had our own frenzy of national unity after 9/11, which led to major, even drastic changes in domestic and foreign policy, including the implementation of a few “forever wars.” We are now having these frenzies in a divided nation beneath the shadows of the coming presidential election. Harris benefitted through the Democratic Convention, and now Trump has it, the frenzied spirit, in lieu of a few assassination attempts and what- have -you. It may not last, just as the initial Harris “vibe” did not last.
 
            This thing, this spirit of the people, is hard to maintain through intentional force, although people and groups of people try. Hitler did it very well, aided by a set of disastrous events in the past followed by a startling succession of successful conquests. In such cases, failure is the quickest way to neuter the buzz. In this country today, the opposition to Trump is trying to stomp out the momentum with buckets of everything thrown against the wall in hopes that something might stick. Something might. A buzz is usually not based on tangibles (although Hitler’s initial success was very tangible), and so can rise and fall as easily as notes on an amped-up electric guitar, even on a national scale.
 
            My first realization of a serious national volksgeist came during the most profound era of change in recent American history: the 1960’s. The younger audience might laugh or yawn, but the repercussions were tangible and profound. From sexual mores to government programs to race relations, everything changed, for better and for worse. I wrote about it in the beginning of my hitchhiking autobiography Dream Weaver. For the young, the vibe was magical, a siren call to utopia that was so overwhelming that the impossible seemed inevitable. It fizzled away in the 70’s, but left us with the world tremendously changed.
 
            Fizzled away; to those who were political actors in the 60’s, the volksgeist was purposefully infiltrated and worked out exceedingly well, but for the rest of us young dreamers, the vibe erupted, burped, then slipped into a pair of flared white double-nit hip-huggers to dance the Disco. Yet there was an expectation that this 60’s vibe was the beginning of a new era, the Aquarian Age, described by another German word, the “zeitgeist,” or spirit of the age. This supposedly is to have much deeper roots than the volksgeist and should carry us through the next 2,000 years, just as Jesus carried the age of Pisces, the fish, for the last 2,000. What, though, can we say of the meaning of numbers? While past civilizations thought numbers were magical, we do not; they number things and that is it. 1,000 or 10,000, they are simply human constructs, nothing more than digits that can run through a super computer like pizza through a frat house.
 
            But there are things that are happening that are creating a world-wide vibe at “zeitgeist” levels. We have spoken here before of the supposed words and prophecies of Our Lady (the Virgin Mother of Christ) at Medjugorje in the otherwise bedraggled nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Within the lifetime of at least some of the 6 children who were and still are being given visions, an era-changing event is supposed to happen (the children are now mid 50’s to 60). Supposedly, a sign of Christ will appear in the sky, and everyone will be subject to a life-review, something that is usually given to each of us at our death. Some will die from fright, but others will see themselves as God sees them, and because of that they will fundamentally change their lives. We can only imagine the magnitude of this change. It would truly bring a new era, a new zeitgeist, a new age, just as we felt was certain back in  the 60’s, and just as the astrologers have predicted for two thousand or more years.
 
            Predictions are easy, however, and we have seen so many pass by unfulfilled. In the first millennium, whole towns in Europe stopped work and hunkered down for the new age. It did not happen, and it is probable that many starved to death following that cold New Year’s Day. Another end of an era was expected after the bubonic plagues of the 14th century. In retrospect, a new age – the modern era of individualism, secularism, and capitalism - did come to Europe, heralded by the Renaissance, but such changes occurred over centuries as a “process” rather than as a singular miraculous event. There certainly were sudden shifts in places like Milan and Florence, but they did not impress the whole continent as a new age.
 
            Regardless, a millennial-style shift seems to be embedded in our DNA, and such things have occurred. The appearance of the Spanish galleons off the cost of Mexico in 1519 comes to mind. The Aztecs had expected it from their own prophets, just as all of Christendom has been taught to expect a second coming and an apocalypse as well. Such was first predicted by Christ for the Jews, and it did occur with the diaspora and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans some 40 years after his death. But for the rest of the Middle East and Europe, the complete rise of the Christendom – and the new era – was not really fulfilled until the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day of 800. It took a long time to get there, and I don’t believe it was taken by the masses as a shining new age. Should we expect anything different?
 
            There is more news from Medjugorje. A large group of Catholics went there just weeks ago, many of them friends of ours. One spoke to a priest established there who is known for his great eloquence. Decades before, he had received his M.D. from Oxford and was on his way to a comfortable living when he was mysteriously called to Medjugorje. There, he had various visions and locutions from Mary, along with (if I remember correctly) hauntings from demons, all leading to his becoming a priest and great evangelizer. With such credentials he is well respected and not to be taken lightly. So when he said the following (purportedly) to my friend, she took notice: the great change, he said, the new era, the time of the illumination, all of that spoken of by Mary at Fatima and Medjugorje and Akita (Japan) and Kibeho (Rwanda) and other places will occur within the next 2 years.
 
            Of what we know, the change will not be subtle nor take centuries to manifest. The world has been exposed to the conscience-changing spirit of Christ, and now the time to complete the first phase of this history, this “age of Pisces,” is upon us, which will lead suddenly to a new age. Coincidentally, this would be right on target according to numerologists - almost exactly 2,000 years after the resurrection of Christ and the exposure to the world of the Holy Spirit.  
 
            What should we make of this? This prediction is recorded here, and if nothing happens in the next two or three years, we might dismiss our priest’s prophecy. If nothing happens in at most 40 years towards this end, we might be able to discard the whole lot of the Marian prophecies.
 
            So: on the cusp of this great event or great fiasco, I have to ask everyone: do you feel it? Many boomers felt the ‘60’s vibe, many reading this felt the Obama vibe, and we have recently experienced the blip in vibes of our two presidential candidates. But this event is so much bigger. Perhaps we should sense it as wild animals sense the coming of earthquakes. The priest in Bosnia felt it, and I, not gifted in this way, do as well. Many Christians are biased towards this belief, but whose world view isn’t in one way or another? And could not a bias held by so many severally affect reality?
 
            But we are not talking about a movement of social phenomena here. A miracle has been promised, and there can be no taking it back with hedging and excuses. The visionaries of the last century and then some were and are either off their rocker or were and are speaking the word of God through Mary. So I ask again, do you sense the coming of the new zeitgeist? If so, we have been told how to prepare. If not, if it is all hogwash, we will all die someday and should still prepare. That last prediction you can take to the bank.   
 
              
 
 
            
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          “April is the cruelest month…” T.S Eliot, “The Wasteland”
 
            I grumble and joke about this one famous phrase every April when I start bicycling again. I usually begin on the first warm-ish day in the first week, but shortly find that one cloud, one change of wind, one passing day or even a few passing minutes can change everything from “nice” to horrible. Back when our son was only about 7 or 8, he and I started out on a tandem bike on a fine sunny day, only to find ourselves deluged with cold, wet snow and an icy wind some 5 miles from home. As we were instantly wet and had no place for shelter, I made the decision to peddle on like crazy until we got home. It was miserable and exhausting. When we finally arrived, I stepped off the bike with trembling legs, only to find my son covered in icy mud spun up from my back tire. My wife saw him too, and I did not receive any kudos for rescuing our child, to say the least.
 
            The poem goes deeper than that, however. From the very beginning, it lets us know that any hope we might have in spring is really only a cruel joke. All that new life that is stirring will die, just as you and I will. The joy of the wedding and of the healthy birth are more than matched by the sorrow, even horror, of sickness and death, both of which are inevitable. Hope, then, is an illusion. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow, we shall die.
 
            `Such we find in any study of nature, no less so than in a new and very popular non-fiction book, Owls of the Eastern Ice, by Jonathan Slaght. This is the autobiography of an ornithology doctoral student doing a five-year study in Primordia, Russia, a coastal wilderness near the Sea of Japan just south and east of Siberia, on the rare ‘fish owl’ species. Talk about the cruelties of nature. Dogs chase deer that cannot move in the deep snow and tear them apart, thawing rivers drag down game and flood the forests, ticks burrow into hosts to suck blood while they spread disease, and Amur tigers are driven to eating humans by infestations of parasites in the brain.
 
            Humans are a huge part of the cruelty as well: in National Geographic style doom and gloom, we hear of habitat loss through poaching, over- fishing, over- hunting, man-made fires, and personal anger towards entire species driving, some to kill them on the spot. The people are also often brutal to one another, both in broad resource wars where roads are seeded with spikes to ruin tires and cabins are burnt down, and in vicious personal fights, often within families (nothing new there).  In such instances, humans mirror the harshness of nature.
 
            And yet the author loves the land, referring to it towards the end as a near paradise. Humans are disturbing that paradise, but Slaght is no preservationist, believing that humans can live and work within the land at a sustainable level. Balance and beauty and bounty can reign. Paradise, while not within our grasp, can remain at least within our distant view. Done right, the Earth can truly be our benevolent, although strict, mother.
 
            This view brings to mind an eternal question: if God is all light and love, and God made Earth, should Earth not be paradise? Slaght studies the workings of nature within and between species and finds the relationships to be as beautiful and varied as infinite structures of snowflakes. They all fit together so well, not so much as a law but as a ballet, with some species moving this way and another that, going to and fro and back and forth within the loose confines of a limited stage ruled over by the oscillations of weather and climate. He is right. If you can begin to grasp the intertwined patterns of nature, nature becomes a marvel of art and architecture far beyond the abilities of man, a display of cosmic might that is beyond measure. For some, this marvelous union of complexities might be defined as paradise.
 
            However, if one means by “paradise” ease and gentle beauty, one would be horrified by the savagery of actual nature. We could all compose an enormous list of the discomforts and downright tortures we that we are subject to, knowing that some of them are unavoidably coming our way sooner or later.  Here is the eternal conundrum and why many sincere people simply cannot believe in a wise, just and loving god. As Jesus himself said, what father would give his child an asp when he asked for fruit? And yet, there we have it: not only are children born with hideous diseases, but nature itself doles out pain and death on a regular and unstoppable basis. What father indeed.
 
            The conundrum, however, is not a problem at all when looked at from an eternal perspective. It is this that I wrestled with in my novel, Hurricane River. Horrible things happen, but to what end? In the novel, I discovered (I write to learn far more than to teach) that for those who are still alive, life continues after tragedy, and often good things follow from the bad. Those who have died are promised a greater and eternal existence, but we don’t have to focus on that. Instead, we can plainly see that new order eventually arises out of chaos, just as it does in nature. Equilibrium is reached again, even after such horrors as the Nazi holocaust.
 
            So we read it again and again. In another note from the New Testament, Paul tells us that all things work out well for those who have faith in God. The key is the phrase “work out,” given God’s infinite timeline.  While paradise was supposedly on Earth in the epic of Eden, imperfection was then brought into the world – a world made perfect (as it only could be) by God. The horror we see was brought on by a change in our perception, one that included an historical timeline. Still, perfection exists, as our ornithologist Jonathan Slaght tells us, as seen through the marvelous and intricate balance in nature. As a species we screw up this balance, just as we did with the mythical paradise, but perfection is still inevitable through timeless reality. In the end – as we perceive things – balance will be achieved, both within us and without us. As is nature, so are we, both entities existing in an eternal and undeniable truth that may be seen to reflect the power, glory, and yes, the love of God.
 
            We do not have to believe in the Christian definition of God to see the beauty and balance. One can be a Jeremiah Johnson (of the movie, as played by Robert Redford) and come to understand that tragedy in human life is part of the natural flow of things in nature, which is overall a marvel and a glory. But hundreds of millions have experienced the being of God, just as millions will experience Him this very day. To those with this experience, God is self-evident, most declaring that His presence is more real than our natural reality. For those without the experience, this tells them little except that this Presence is no passing dream or illusion or hallucination. Just as the piecemeal understanding of nature and its cruelties can be broadened into a perspective of awe and wonder, so God can emerge from an abstract cloud as an undeniably real being. And this being, say the experienced, is love. Just as a real appreciation of the beauty of nature goes far beyond a colorful sunset, so the experience of the love of God goes far beyond the love of a puppy or a child or spouse. In this love lies the timeless balance that we see in nature, and that we can see in the human sphere. Perfection is found in love, along with everything else that is timeless.
 
            Love is the beauty, the forever, the joyful embrace of a universe. It is the spawning of salmon as well as the movement of stars. The laws of nature are from love, but they are not love. The laws of Man are often from love, and if they are not, they will fail, but even those that are good are not love. Love is the total and can only be the total. When ‘being’ is seen in pieces through time or space, it cannot be love. It is imperfect, and in that, bad things happen. Even then, though, perception in time reflects the wholeness of love when taken as a greater whole. We can experience that when studying nature and its marvelous balance. We can grasp that when studying the gives- and- takes in human history. In this, the skeptical might begin to understand that the spiritual is something real. From such observations can faith be strengthened; from such studies might we understand that what is broken will be made whole, and that perfection exists in the timeless.
 
            So we can say that T.S. Eliot was wrong. April leads not only to winter, but to April once again. There is perfection and beauty and love in the whole. Sun and warmth will turn to snow and mud and back again, but there is something gained in the entirety. No moment is a fraud or a trick. The waterfalls and tides and forests and birds, all of it, are never isolated and contained. They all work within the boundless wonder of divine law. And so do we.