Today, the last chapter of Hurricane River, "Henry,"under the site of the same name.

A quick "note:" Last night as I was about to go back to reading a new book - excellent in its own way - my wife mentioned that a movie I had rented for the Memorial Day holiday still lay unseen, and was due Friday.  So we watched it, wary, after the shorts before it: all were of teen-flicks, from action to Vampires.  And yes, The Giver was a teen flick, but with meaning and well-done, although for an adult eye, the lapses in certain sequences were all too obvious.  

It was about a "dystopia," the buzz word for the year, where there was no war or bigotry or pain, thanks to a climate-controlled little world kept atop a mesa, and certain drugs that made everyone color-blind and devoid of intense emotion.  They also were kept dumb to history, except for one special person, in who resided all the memories kept of human beings.  His post was maintained to supply the Elders with information when something special came up.  In the movie, this Keeper of Memories had become old, and it was time to give his secrets to another, a young person of special qualities called the Receiver.  Thus the old man was The Giver.

There is no need to go into the plot, for we "elders" have seen it all before.  However, there was one detail that struck me, as I have been thinking about it lately - music.  Music in this world had been forbidden, because it caused emotions and memories - and memories caused attachments, all of which could be dangerous. But the Keepers had to know of it - and the Receiver was awed by it.  

This was the greatest aspect of the movie - that it made me rethink how deep and special our lives are.  And in that special-ness is the language of music.  How does it do it?  How does it speak to us?  Yes, we are culturally conditioned to music - without an ear for it, for instance, Japanese or Chinese traditional music is particularly boring to us of the West.  And when I was in Native country in Venezuela, the Indians hated tapes I had brought of rock 'n' roll.  But all music shares a common stem - it is a language that speaks to us in tones of emotions, affecting us far more deeply, overall, than any other mass form of communication (at least as far as I can think of).  But how can this be?  If it were the tones themselves, we would all feel the same about all music - but we don't (although it is much, much easier to learn to appreciate Japanese music than to speak the language).  Usually we must learn the emotions behind the tones, although the learning is more often than not informal, just as learning one's native language is.  But there is no blanket explanation behind the tones.  They become what they were intended to become for us, almost out of nothing.  Does a song for a Hungarian wedding feast bring a festive mood to all, or is this only because it is parred with the wedding, creating an association?  

It is more likely a combination of factors, but regardless, sound without explicit meaning never-the-less gives us deep meaning.  It reminds me of one form of music that is nearly universal in its affects - that of liturgy. Such music is generally clearly recognized for what it is, and brings with it a sense of awe. To a born-again Christian, pagan music might sound like the music of Satan, but it is still recognized for what it is - a spiritual address.  People without a classical background understand the ecstasy in the Hallelujah Chorus, and the chanting and gongs and drums of the sacred music of other cultures are clearly articulating another reality to everyone.  

In the beginning was The Word.  Are we essentially a resonance? Who keeps singing our song, the song that keeps this resonance going?  And what, if we knew the language better, is it really trying to say? We cannot know by discursive logic - and somehow we all have the key to music kept somewhere in the chords of who we are.  FK         

In a personal Memorial Day tradition of several decades, last night I watched a war film, this one, "Unbroken," new enough to have to be rented. I had read the book and wasn't sure I wanted to see the graphics of torture in the Japanese prison camps, but I did want to see the later development of redemption, not because it is anything new to film, but because the book on which the movie was based was a genuine, researched biography that included commentary by the subject, Louis Zapparini (excuse my  spelling), himself.  In the book, the real-life man lived a mythological life, so perfect in its workings that it is hard to believe.  But it was true.  

My son was upset by the torture of the prisoners of war, as I expected.  Louis had gone down with his fellows in a B-24 bomber in the south Pacific, had endured 45 days in an open raft with next to no water or food, and then had been captured by the Japanese and subjected to their cruelties for the remaining two years of the war.  When the film showed the fire bombing of Tokyo next to one of his prison camps, I shouted to my son, "There's Grampa!" for my father had been a gunner on the B-29's that destroyed Tokyo.  He was, I have to say for his sake, appalled at the deaths that he helped bring, even though it was warranted by the standards of war.  After one mission, he told me that General Curtis LeMay, who would one day run for president, had stood in front of him and the other men and bragged-congratulated them for having "killed over 100,000 people last night!"  Most of the men, including my father, had turned green will nausea and guilt. 

In the book, Louis returned emotionally crippled from the war, spending the next several years with PTSD, with terrifying real-feeling flashbacks of his imprisonment.  He became an alcoholic and nearly lost his wife to divorce - before his crucial turning point.  In the movie, however, a scene that was described in the book is underscored in epic proportions.  It relates to his time in the raft, when he promised God that he would do anything He wanted if He would only save him.  And so, in the movie, the active commander of the camp, a sergeant who was such a zealous sadist that even his commanding officers backed off and let him rule, confronted Louis, who he had a particular desire to crush.  He made Louis pick up  a large rafter and hold it over his head, threatening to have him shot if he dropped it.  And so he held it for hours, the other prisoners watching and praying, until finally the sadist sergeant himself was broken, loosing face before the prisoners and his own men for not being able to subdue Louis, who, not by accident, looked very much like a persecuted Christ at Calvary.  This was his big moment, his breakthrough for God and Man.  In the movie, that is.

In the book, his redemption happened after years of depression and alcoholism after the war.  His wife, then about to file for divorce, gave Louis a chance to stop the proceedings by going to see a new charismatic preacher who had come to L.A, - a guy by the name of Billy Graham.  Louis had stalked out of the first meeting and the second, but the third time was the charm - he then remembered his vow to God in the raft, and really, really saw the light.  He quit drinking that day, saved his  marriage, and went on to talk of this experience to others for the rest of his life.  He raised money for charities, and started his own, taking disadvantaged kids into the California wilderness for rock climbing and camping and so on.  In a phrase, he gave over his life to helping others in the spirit of God, and said so.  Everyone else who knew him agreed.  He died while the book was being finished, at the age of 97.    

The movie mentioned a bit of this in a few paragraphs at the end, leaving the viewer unaware of the true nature of his change.  It had not been achieved in a crowning moment of courage, but had come at a considerably larger price, as hard as that is to imagine, from a form of torture that acted on the soul instead of the body.  The change, too, happened at that depth, and continued for a lifetime.  In fact, he realized that he had never really been happy until that change, even before his ordeals.  He had gone to Hell to get to heaven. The analogy to the trials of Christ, although misdirected, was true over all.  

It is breathtaking to read, but also made me think - oh God, no, not me  -  don't choose me!  For most religious mythologies, one has to suffer greatly to achieve true wisdom.  But no one wants to pay the price, not even Jesus, who asked his Father to take the cup from his lips before his own trials began (and then followed by stating that if it were the Father's will, then so be it).  No, we don't want it, but sometimes we get it.  Louis was so chosen and lived a long and meaningful life.  But I for one would still beg to have that bitter drink taken from my lips. FK     
  

Today, a new essay, Tequila Sunrise, under Essays in the website. FK 

A month or so ago we were listening to a Sunday morning music program, "Musica Antigua" which plays music from the Baroque era and earlier, most of it from the late- Medieval period. Although they did have local "fun" music then, the high music of the earlier period was almost exclusively religious, and it is that which has primarily made it to the present day.  At one point while I was washing a frying pan, some celestial choral music came on, as simple as folk music, but other-wordly and mind-transporting.  Waiting to hear who the composer might be (some from that period - the 12th century - are anonymous), I was surprised to find that it was from Hildegard of Bingen.  I had read of her before - an abbess, a writer and a composer who was also counsel to kings and popes, and considered a powerful prophet of her day.  Because of this, I looked for books on her, and was able to get an odd but satisfying one, Hildegard of Bingen, by Heinrich Schipperges, translated from the German.  

One of the first things that becomes clear is that she was exceptional for her influence, particularly at a time when women where clearly considered incapable of great thought.  Said one man of her from her time after much praise, "Imagine this from a woman!"  I am only 25 pages into the short book, but have already found other gems.  She was indeed exceptional, as she challenged the powers of her time to rise above corruption, at one time telling Emperor Frederick, after he had set up his own counter-pope, that she would be coming after him with a sword (one expects she meant the sword of righteousness, but one never knows - it was the 12th century).  

But she was also a mystic who spoke of the tremendous insights that God gave her on the meaning of the Gospels and of her times.  This author, unlike one previously featured here concerning the Little Saint, quickly presented current psychological and medical explanations for her abilities, and just as quickly dismissed them.  I, of course, applauded.  But then I had to think - it is true that many gifted people have mental, emotional and physical problems.  Wouldn't it be just as true that these problems could cause aberrations that people from a more superstitious era would call "gifts"?  

The great movie, "A Beautiful Mind", with Russel Crowe (if I recall correctly) chronicles the life of a real-life mathematical genius who, we find out, is also profoundly schizophrenic.  We learn that his paranoid fantasies are just that - and they soon come to take over his life.  Still, it was this mind that produced his works of genius, works which might never have been without the mental disease.  Here we understand that the mind can operate at separate levels - that the diseased or imperfect portion might reflect the brilliance of another portion.  How this works is still controversial, but clear enough, and nearly universal - most of our geniuses were people with feet of clay.  Martin Luther King's dalliances with prostitutes did not affect his courage and moral strength in fighting racism; and, from another angle, Thomas Jefferson's ownership of slaves did not affect his own courage and genius in helping to craft a government of and for the people in an era of despots and kings. The list goes on and on.  Why, then, should certain physical and mental problems (and moral problems) affect the reality of the visions perceived by spiritual geniuses?  

Of course, they can - The "genius" down the hall who has coated his apartment with aluminum foil to keep out extraterrestrial thoughts might simply be nuts.  But those such as Hildegard have been "vetted" by the best, and her psychological health should not obscure her works.  Not that she showed any sign whatsoever of mental illness for people of her time, but still - the clarity of her visions and the beauty of her compositions are enough.  She was truly gifted.  More pages await.

Speaking of the prophets of old, as well as of herself, I leave this quote from her which reminds me of the quest for 'quality in writing' discussed in the previous blog: "They also had a certain hardness like the solidity of marble, because having been filled with the Holy Spirit, they did not cringe before anyone but always stood firm with the integrity of truth.  They did not cut their words, since they accepted what they said from no one other than the one who is complete integrity, namely, God.  They were as inflexible as stones and did not give ground to anyone else.  They acted in the whiteness of simplicity, in the simplicity of an infant that does not speak other than what it sees and knows."  FK  

A few years ago when I had started this blog, an acquaintance was critical of the books I chose to review.  "Why don't you ever go to fiction?," he said.  Said I, "There's too much bad stuff. Unless you stick to the old classics, chances are you're going to be wasting your time.  At least with non-fiction, you get some information and a genuine point of view." 

Welp, I've just wasted several days of my time and will waste another night to finish a fiction mediocrity, The Eye of God by James Rollins.  I should have read all the "praises" for it on the dust cover, for one compares it to the "grand tradition" of adventure books that includes Clive Cussler, another (in my humble opinion) waste of time.  

I know these authors because they write of strange things - I mean, why wouldn't someone interested in spiritual issues be drawn to a title such as "The Eye..." ?  The bigger question, one I'm sure asked by English graduate students every year, is: how can one judge quality?  

Certainly, there is familiarity and ease of fluency with the language, but Rollins is technically a good writer, and his editor is almost flawless in his corrections.  There is rhythm as well, something that I discovered myself from writing; good prose writing has a rhythm much like poetry or music.  It is impossible for me to define it exactly, for it is not like 4/4 time or iambic pentameter, but it is real.  I first discovered it as I wrote Dream Weaver and found myself tapping my foot to its beat.  It's something, I suppose, like a free - jazz musician feels; it's in the bones.  But, while Rollins's work does not have a classic rhythm, there is most certainly an adequate rhythm.  

What, then, defines quality?  Yes, it must come from the soul - but talk about the undefinable.  And even that is not enough. There are a million personal essays written from the soul, but most are often overwrought, self focused, and/or trite.  Tear jerkers, they are called, and many are truly from the heart.  But corny. 

I have had issues with this, too, and found that I cannot be too emotionally involved in such writing.  To create a good work, it must be objective, even if dealing with an emotional subject.  It must be dry-eyed, to leave the reader to his own feelings.  If it is focused on self, it brings that trite, boring quality.  It must be as if witnessed by an impartial judge.  It must be as if witnessed by nature, the nature that has no mother (or father) in it; the nature that both gives life and takes it away, without partiality.  Human emotions can be injected into it, but not as the driving force behind the entire piece.  

On further thought, good writing must be one in the same with spiritual insight.  This does not demand belief in a god - Buddhists do not have a god as we understand it, and there have been atheist authors of classical pieces.  Yet the former DO recognize the spiritual presence, and the latter a depth to life that often brings forth books based on the author's frustration with his lack of understanding (Kurt Vonnegut is the most familiar to me of this sort of author.  There are several more in the "existentialist" ranks).  Again, they are all dry-eyed, even as they might make you weep.  And they tap a vein that runs through everything, just like the spiritual force.  Whether these authors like it or not, this vein that is essential to quality IS the spiritual force.  

But I run too deep here - there are good thrillers that do not share this spiritual quality (I like Tom Clancy, I must admit).  They are simply good stories.  But they usually run only culture-deep. They usually will not be seen as classics a generation later, and certainly not one hundred or two hundred years later.  Moby Dick is a fiction classic because of its spiritual connection; The Hunt for Red October is simply a good story for males raised in the era of the Cold War.  

There is quality in writing, in music, as well as quality in life.  Of the latter, all lives eventually wind up being classics, because the individuals who live them are inseparable from the deep vein of spirituality.  But for most of us, this quality eludes us except at exceptional times.  To live a quality life overall would be to feel the spiritual undercurrent in all things at all times; to view impartiality events that are up-close and personal; and to feel compassion for those both close and far, but without personal distraction.  It would be like living the way an author of classics writes, which happens to mirror the essential quality of the wisest of gurus, shamans and priests.  FK        

Today, a new chapter, "Amanda," under "Hurricane River" in the website.  It is not the last chapter as I had thought, but the second to last.  FK

(Spoiler alert - if you want to  read the book Whipping Boy by Allen Kurzweil, I will talk about the ending here.  You are warned!)

"...the lies we tell others always begin with the lies we tell ourselves."  Allen Kurzweil, from the last sentence of the Acknowledgments.  

Kurzweil's book, Whipping Boy, did end on the only satisfactory note that the author could give us - the admittance that his obsession was his alone, that the events of the past and the bully that had dominated his thoughts were really about his own discomforts and fears.  And that is true - as stated Monday, his "tortures" were not especially egregious.  They were not the actions of a truly dangerous boy- to- become- man, as the boy Cal Roeker spoke of in his comment.  In the book, the conversations the author had with his nemesis led to a third meeting where the author confesses his interest in Caesar and his need for - what? - revenge?  In this, Caesar replied with great clarity; that he did not remember the incidents, but did recall his own adolescent difficulties.  And in speaking fully of his part in the scam that landed him in prison,he insisted that he believed everything was on the up-and-up, in spite of conflicts with the facts.  But we come to believe him; as the above quote states, he had lied to himself so convincingly that he believed the lies himself.  And, to make matters more uncomfortable for the author, Caesar later wrote him an apology for any pain he might have caused him - with great sincerity.  Where was the villain, after all those decades?  

Of course, it was the author's own obsession, something he only revealed in the last two paragraphs of the last page of the regular text, and in the last sentence of the Acknowledgments.  The suffering of decades was the author's own story to himself, as much a lie, in its way, as was Caesar's.  He does not say so in a detailed fashion, but we understand. 

We also understand that this is not the conclusion the author had wanted.  He had wanted a truly evil guy on whom he could blame all his youthful misery.  This is revealed best by the extreme brevity with which he treated the final epiphany - something this author (me) would have spent an entire chapter on (maybe that is the difference between a successful writer and the rest of us). And while at  first glance everything wraps up nicely, if too quickly, something more disturbing rumbled into my mind some time later. No, it was not what I had thought I would ruminate on - about the emptiness of revenge carried on way too long - but rather about the nature of our selves.  Who am I, really? Thinking this, I made a review of myself - and discovered that I didn't have a clue as to my objective nature; that I, too, lived a life of lies told to myself, although which and how many of my personal stories were tweaked I have no idea.  If I did, I would know myself, and that is the problem.  I don't.  Most of us don't.  

When my father was about 50, he had what might now be called a mid-life crises, and he began (and finished) a masters degree in psychology at night after work.  One class was particularly harsh: after some weeks, each student was given a personal evaluation by the other students, who were encouraged to be as blunt and honest as possible.  One might imagine that this would have been tough at first, but that it would have gotten easier with time, for as one was disrobed, he would later wish to disrobe the other.  In my father's case, he was dubbed the "over-the-hill swinger," not for his sexual activities (I am certain he never cheated, not out of honor for him, but because I knew him. His old-school propriety on that matter was unassailable, even ridiculously so), but by the way he interacted at large - as if he still had the attractiveness and energy of youth.  It was a tough blow to him, although he got over it.  With a little thought, he knew that the others were probably right.  What he did about it I do not know, although it was a fairly small and harmless flaw.

In my own case, I have no idea about the perceptions I have left others.  Perhaps at some time in childhood, one kid thought I was a bully.  That would really be news to me, but so it was to Caesar as well.  Or perhaps I would be viewed by-in-large as a quirky guy with a closet full of neurosis, of unfounded fears. Such it was for Kurzweil, however briefly acknowledged. 

Bigger still, though, is that we ARE our personal stories, facts be damned. While most of us think of this as a psychological thing, it is also a spiritual thing, for we are not who we we think we are, or who anyone else thinks we are (for "they are "us").  Each culture tells itself its own lies, which we collectively validate in our own personal assessments.  As humans of all cultures, we also share the lie that makes us the physical species that we think we are. Were we to believe, all of us, that we were shining spirit entities, we would be collectively more like the Elves of the Lord of the Rings fame than humans.  Human advancement - or degeneracy - is really all about changing the story about who we are.  

All stories are, to some extent, make believe.  Some are more accurate than others.  We are, in our obvious blindness to our greater reality, living more a lie now than a truth.  We learn this in small ways from stories like Whipping Boy, and in bigger ways,   when our stories, through death or tragedy or odd coincidences, crumble before our mind's eye.  FK          

It's a busy time of year on our property, with brush clearing and rototilling and planting and mowing and on and on, so much so that in recent days, I have not been able to get to reading until past 10.  One night, I stayed up until 2, which is something for this old doter who never makes it to midnight on New Year's Eve, but it is more because of the book than anything else.  It's one of those that you have to keep reading, stretching for the ending that you hope, you know will be satisfying.

No, it is not a mystery or thriller, but a non-fiction book, The Whipping Boy, by Allen Kurzweil, about the author tracking down, 30 years and more later, the boy who made his life miserable at a boarding school in Switzerland when the author was 10-11 years old.  It is a fascinating psychological peek into obsession and loss.  It is also a thriller of its own as all roads, at first, lead nowhere, the former bully and classmate having seemingly disappeared, even as he came from an upper-middle class family in Manila.  But then the trail gets hot: he finds that the bully, Caesar Augustus (real name - all names are real, for the author concluded that no one would believe the story if he invented or changed anything) was working as a shill (front man) for an international "banking firm" that was finally revealed to be an elaborate hoax formed to separate people, mostly legitimate, from their money as they attempted to get backing for their dream enterprises.

It could have been a movie.  The head of the "trust" claimed to be a prince and the 74th Grand Master of the Malta; his wife, a descendant of another European royal family (apparently, that was true).  He was aided by a Colonel and a Baron, both shown to have extremely prosaic roots in the working class, and so on. They dressed elaborately, met at the finest hotels around the world, and were able to con some very prestigious institutions into providing legitimacy by their hire.  And at the bottom of the pyramid was Caesar, who would get three years in jail in the State of California for it all.  

But the author was not satisfied; he had to meet the man, to find if, as Caesar had said at his trial, he was conned himself, and that he, through his troublesome childhood, had himslef long been a victim.  "Cry me a river" one can hear the author say, but he must find out.  Through subterfuge, he manages to meet his nemesis as only a former classmate, to discuss the good 'ol days. He meets with him again a year later.  In both, so far, Caesar is found to be a somewhat pathetic character who believes that he has had to struggle in a world that has handed him such adversity.  

At this point, I am at the middle of the second meeting, and I do not know how it will turn out.  Is Caesar only continuing his con, or does he really believe that he is a victim rather than a crook and a bully?  Nearing the end, I will find out tonight.  But a bigger question is raised about the author himself - why?  Why this obsession?  Some of it has to do with the purposeful loss of his watch by the bully, the watch an important reminder to the young boy of his father who died when Allen was only 4.  But the other episodes of bullying, which the author describes as torture - heck, I thought, I got worse than that from the older neighborhood boys and relatives than he did, all of whom I am now on good to very good terms with. This bullying, as the author calls it, was something younger boys of my time expected from older boys - and the reason we steered clear of them.  I believe I pulled a few mean tricks on my younger brother as well, by which he responded with appropriate revenge. All gone.  The memories are still there, but the animosities are long gone, for the obvious reason that we have grown up.  We are different now, as most people are with maturation.  

In that, there is something dark about the author himself. Perhaps the last pages will resolve everything, but nothing will explain away this now-40 year obsession.  Claims the author: 'there was never a week that went by where something did not remind me of Caesar.' (my approximation).  For over 30 years!

Last night, the Simpsons had an episode, oddly, on bullying.  The town of Springfield passes an ill-thought ordinance against bullying, and soon half the town is in jail, or forced therapy. During this time, Homer continues to abuse his neighbor, Ned Flanders, who is a fundamentalist Christian that must always forgive, as Jesus commanded.  Yet his two boys see how he is bullied by Homer, and have a collective dream about Jesus. Here, bullies have stolen Jesus's halo, and are passing it back and forth over Jesus's head, until it lands on a rooftop.  Jesus meekly asks his "Father" to forgive the bullies, and the Father grumbles, "why did I have such a wimp for a son?"   

But we know Jesus was no wimp - in fact, he was scary-harsh, calling the Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and vipers to their faces.  He upended the tables in the Temple and even admonished his mother for having him turn water into wine at the wedding in Canna.   What would Jesus do?  We can never really know, although many think they know, but what is certain is that Jesus demanded that grievances were to be resolved quickly and let go, one way or another.  In this book's case, the grievance could never be resolved as it could in a village of that era.  True, but has this painful memory of humiliation and need for revenge done well by the author?  Of course, the book might be a big hit, but that was never behind the grudge.  Rather, it was a grinding pain rooted in the loss of his father and of his own sense of humiliation.  He feels he can only be made whole by confronting the bully whose image has tortured him for most of his life.  

What a burden. Maybe, in the end, the author will realize this, but I don't think so.  I think he will be relieved to find that his nemesis was an evil person, after all, and his incarceration and failure in life the measure of the author's revenge.  Except that it took nearly half a century to get there.  

Many of the directives of the spiritually wise seem to be ridiculous or wimpy, but in practice, they do more than meets the eye.  Mark Twain, in Huckleberry Finn, wrote of the feud along the Mississippi and how young boys shot each other for the mere fact that the other belonged to the wrong clan.  The "incident" that started the whole mess was long lost to the constant need to avenge the latest deed of revenge.  Forever, it would seem, just as it is now in Palestine.  What a waste.  FK                        

Every year in late spring, the local highway department cuts along the edges of our road to kill any trees or bushes that might be trespassing on blacktop space.  The former owners of our house planted lilacs along the edge of the property, and lilacs are creepers - every year, they send out shoot towards the road, and every year, they are cut back.  

The former owners also planted juniper bushes along the edges of a retaining wall separating the house proper from the lower garage.  Some sort of rust got to them, killing many, and a very cold winter last year killed off the rest of them, so I got out the shovel and dug up the lilac shoots and planted them in the place of the dead bushes.  They took admirably, and this year are ready to grow like crazy, as long as we don't get a prolonged drought.  Overhead grows a broad white birch, and early this spring, I cut back the lower limbs to give the coming lilacs more light and space to grow. Everything is set.  I know it.  The tree and other shrubbery don't.  

This reminded me of how nature may have intelligent design - that is, a prefigured growth pattern, not absolute but probable, built into the entire system.  To put it simply, God is the gardener, the plans that we cannot see are made, and given our's and nature's probable actions, the future is already proceeding from the present as part of the great gardener's design.

Pretty good, I thought, and then remembered Sir James Frazier and his famous, but seldom- read 19th century classic, The Golden Bough.  The greatest motif, or plot, in this armchair account of primitive civilizations throughout the world, is captured in the phrase often used by pre-industrial people regarding their leaders: "The King is dead, long live the King!" Meaning that with the death of the king, another king would arise. Frazier attributes this attitude to the change of hunting-gathering societies to agriculture societies, whose yearly rounds govern the lives of agricultural people.  Yes, the crops die, but the following year, they grow again.  To this, in a subtle way, Frazier gives us the underlying myth-metaphor of Western Civilization's most enduring religion, Christianity.  Christ was born and will rise again.  It is embedded in agriculture, and the culmination of the lifestyle that it imparts.  Christ is the outgrowth of our former way of life, not a Truth of all reality but a truth of an agricultural people.  Thus, for example, Isaac's eldest son, Esau the hunter, was tricked by his brother Jacob, the agriculturalist, to give up his birthright for a meal.  The hunter lives for the day, while the agriculturalist prepares for renewal.  The agriculturalist won the day, and won the myth of Western civilization.

On one level, this is a reductionist explanation that leaves out the claim of immortal truth.  On another, though, it does nothing of the sort.  Agriculture, apart from it being brought about by conquest, quickly became a part of nearly all the people of the world's lives after the last glacier receded about 10 thousand years ago.  It secured food for larger populations, and so was simply bound to succeed.  As far as we know, agriculture did not exist before the last ice age, even though fully modern humans have been around for at least 40,000 years.  Could it be that agriculture fulfilled the template of intelligent design?  Could it be that the world as it is, not in story but in actuality, is better understood as another form of myth for a greater, more comprehensive reality?  Are we then really more like the plants, cultivated and planned by a greater power to fulfill a destiny, or at least a probability, one that we are, like the plants, simply unable to understand? 

More and more this is my view, as the world as I thought it to be is becoming, in my mind, more a cosmic play on a mythical stage.  There is meaning in nature, and meaning in everything we do.  But what, beyond the logic of a Frazier, is the meaning behind the meaning?  That is, why  are the laws of nature, and the trajectory of humans, the way they are, for they both show a pattern.  And if we can now discern this pattern, can we not begin to understand it in a greater context?  

Not in it its fullness, for that would be as impossible as the plants understanding our own design for them, but at least in the perception that a garden - our world -  has been arranged by some intelligent source for a particular reason.  I cannot prove it, but it does go further than our current forms of empirical thought allow.  And, if we think about it at all, what our current thought allows simply does not and cannot give us the answers to the biggest questions of all.  

Myth - circles and circles of meaning that expand our understanding.  Now, the myth tells us that the King shall rise again.  What greater realizations has our gardener planned for us?  What is our next and more encompassing myth?  FK                 

I hope I have that quote above right - it is from the "X-Files," a poster on Agent Mulder's office wall related to his obsession with extraterrestrials.  If you were a fan of the show, it almost makes no sense - the evidence was so 'there' that you would have to try hard to NOT believe.  But so it always hung pasted to the wall, a reminder to the viewers that they should not take this stuff too seriously.  Mulder was on a quest for meaning, and the ET X-Factor gave that to him.  He would try to believe, for his own sake, regardless.  

So the book, "Therese of Lisieux" by Monica Furlong, has worked its way into my unconscious.  Prodding here and there with psychological asides, we are (so far - we have not gotten to the visions yet) taken through a rather dreary life of a little girl who was raised a Catholic zealot, who lost her mother when she was 4, and then lost her beloved older sister to the Carmelite convent some 5 years later.  She sees, we are led to believe, that the Calling is the only way left to complete her life.  Adding to this, we are to understand that she has no other avenue to develop her great intelligence, anyway.  Therese, we find, told her sisters at an early age that she was meant for "something big."  For the Catholic hierarchy, this was understood as the calling to sainthood.  For the author, Therese's draw to the religious life was driven by her desire for recognition channeled in the only direction a female of her time could take for a semblance of fame. Psychology and repression - so far, it has made a melancholy read.  And, as said, it has burrowed into my own inner need to believe.

It started with a conversation about God and Jesus yesterday on a long walk.  I mentioned my own belief that NOT believing in God (the mature God, not that of our early childhood indoctrination) was absurd - that It's presence was so profoundly obvious, from the existence of meaning to existence itself - that other's disbelief could only be equated to that of a fish in water - it is so immersed in water that it could not tell you (if it could) what water is.  It just is.  But Jesus? That he walked and lived and died as a man raises questions about belief.  Yes, there were miracles, but religious myths of all cultures are filled with miracles.  Yes, many of his time had seen or heard of the miracles and the Resurrection, and it is hard to doubt their sincerity.  But we are a long way from the historical event, and we are a different people.  Even the tough Romans believed in gods and spirits and miracles then.  Now, the Romans among us, our tough scientists and cultural elite, find such ideas the epitome of ignorance.  

I do not.  This is an unfathomable universe.  But that does not mean that all the things that we think of or believe are  true.  For me, I would like to believe in the divine Christ - but like Mulder's partner, Scully, I need more evidence.  Just a little bit more.  And Furlong's book makes that evidence (so far) that much harder to find.  

Such it was that the book started the conversation on that walk, which either drove or was driven by the unconscious mind that developed a spooky dream last night.  In it, I found myself climbing on the side of a rocky cliff, along with several others.  With a sudden spasm of faith, I leaned back against the cliff in the posture of one crucified, and there, without nails or pain, became stuck to the rock.  I then told the others, "See? This is how you are saved.  Try it yourself."  And so they did, but with that, I became unglued and returned to my 'normal' self, now seeking company.  Looking up, I saw the others glued to the cliff, their eyes closed and bodies still, as if dead, and I called to them, "you can come down now.  No need to be dead anymore," but they remained, encased in an aura of both restful peace and frightening death.  Feeling the chill, I slid down the mountain into a tangle of forest and swamp, just as the sun set.  It was then that I found myself surrounded by humans who were also demons, zombie-like phantoms who grabbed at me from the dark.  "Voodoo!" I cried, identifying a religion I find to be filled with terror, and with that, others came forth from the dark, tearing at me with arms and religious beliefs (so it seemed) that I also found terrifying.  I tried then to scale back up the mountain, back to the peaceful land of the crucified, but could not.  The arms coming from the darkness were too strong.  And so I woke.

Does fear drive belief?  Certainly, and for someone raised Christian, a lack of belief in Christ means the ruination of the soul.  "He" is the only way, and one must believe, unlike Thomas, without needing proof.  One has to think with the heart, and to know Christ in the heart is to know that one is right.  But that means that to NOT know Christ in one's heart means that one is wrong - not a good thing in a faith that postulates an unpleasant afterlife for the non-believer.  

And so, Furlong would have us believe, we find fear and a psychological need to alleviate that fear - along with a need for fulfillment -  at the base of the Little Saint's faith.  More so than I, she would have needed and desired the company of even the dreariest of saints rather than be devoured by the demons from the dark swamp. 

Fear is a strong whip, but there is something missing here.  While God is obvious to everyone who has not determined to not believe, Its connection to us is not so obvious.  We frequently feel apart from this presence, as if our very minds exclude us from the Kingdom that is present not only beyond death, but also here, within the natural world.  What we seek, beyond even fear, is a connection to this obvious God - and what we have gotten, among many other religions, is Jesus.  While we are told that it is essential for the Christian to believe in the historical Christ, one might also see it in another way - that Christ is the personification of our desire for a human connection.  While it does not seem as satisfactory, it might be that the very notion of this connection is enough to justify faith - for it puts God into our own perspective, which otherwise could not grasped by our intellect.  

This might not be enough for the believer, but it is enough for me to let the question go, at least when at my wisest, for the personification - that human connection to God - is OUR connection.  It is what makes God relevant in our daily lives.  And it may, however it is honestly fashioned, actually be what saves us from detachment and non-belief in general - from becoming the sad purveyor of  reductionist psychology or ideology.  Further, this connection is ultimately good.  As dreary as the cross may be, the outstretched arms of sacrifice are not the flailing arms of Zombie demons.  We are promised resurrection, as disconnected as we might feel ourselves to be.  It might be an obvious fact to some, but for most of us, we are fish in water and need something- and somebody - to tell us that we live in water, and will always be in the living waters of being.  FK