​ 
A few essays ago I introduced the book that I have just finished reading, The Soul’s Upward Yearning, by Robert Spitzer (PhD, Jesuit priest).  It is a difficult book, and I sometimes approached it at night with a sense of weariness, but the exercise was worth it, as it is the most comprehensive that I have come across in a discussion about consciousness and the reality of the transcendent.  I could even say with true modesty that it encompasses about 70% of what I have been trying to convey over the years in this website, except more concisely (albeit, without the foolishness, mistakes, and the (I hope) fun).  That is, it is better, if you have the discipline to get through it.  And discipline is what you will need.   Imagine wrapping up Plato and Aristotle with modern theologians like Kant and Rudolph Otto, along with Einstein and a host of sub-particle (quantum) physicists to show that God is not only possible, but also exceedingly likely, as is our immortal souls. 
 
With all the above, I was impressed.  But what bowled me over was the teaser at the end – a teaser for his next volume, number two of four on the general topic.  I will propose this for the end of this essay as a teaser itself, first highlighting how Spitzer justifies the final “zinger” in this work.
 
Spitzer has largely done this for us in the last pages of his conclusion, wrapping up his findings with this summation of the core beliefs of most of the world’s religions as expressed by Friedrich Heiler:

1. There is a reality of the transcendent, the Holy, the divine, the Other
2. The transcendent reality is immanent in human awareness
3. This transcendent reality is the highest truth, highest good, and highest beauty
4. This transcendent reality is loving and compassionate and seeks to reveal its love to human beings.
5. The way to God requires prayer, ethical self-discipline, purgation of self-centeredness, asceticism, and redressing of offenses.
6. The way of God also includes service and responsibility to others.

 7) The highest way to eternal bliss in the Transcendent Reality is through love.
 
To continue on to Spitzer’s conclusion, we have to first overall agree with this summation.  It helps to keep in mind that the priorities on the list vary from religion to religion.  For instance, an American Indian might conclude that the greatest love is self-sacrifice through war, which means excluding his enemy from the field of his humanity, and the Buddhist might reduce the “Other” to an abstract nothing that nevertheless is love, but still the elements are all there.   Accepting this, we can continue along Spitzer’s path, with the understanding that we are passing over nearly 300 pages that show that the religions are correct in their overall beliefs, which include fascinating chapters on near-death experiences, psychological tests on animals and experiments in physics.  All combined, these experiments and philosophical musings bring us about as close as we can get to proof that our consciousness is special, that it exists apart from the body, and that there is an all-encompassing and compassionate power that has created and cares for that consciousness, which is what many call God.   
 
Given that the last part of the last sentence is true, Spitzer asks how God would want to make a personal revelation to us (specifically highlighting number 4 and 7 above).  Would “He want to reveal himself to us face-to-face, or would he be content to use only human intermediaries (such as prophets and holy people)?  Would he want to be with us in a state of perfect empathy and self-gift?”  We can infer from His traits that He would choose the fullest way to fully empathize with us, which would be to subject Himself to the limitations of space and time, as well as to pain and bodily death.   Given that, when He came, He would then have to appear as any of us would, in a certain time and place.  Given the perfect and all-powerful nature of God, he would have the ability to prepare the time and place so that His coming would have maximum impact.  And of course, His incarnation would know exactly how to reveal the nature of God and His relationship to man. 
 
Words would be perfectly chosen, but words for humans would not be enough – anyone can have words.  He would chose, then, to show His relationship to us in vivid, unmistakable living color.  As this ultimately boils down to intimate, infinite love, so His incarnation would show this to us perfectly by truly walking the walk.  To endure pain and death out of love so as to save us from ourselves would be this perfect act, one that makes the words of deep, intimate love come alive in truth.   
 
            I think this reasoning, and the overall ark of the book, is beautiful, if difficult at times.  After reading through the pages, most of us would have to agree with Spitzer that the universe – the “united word” – is not here by chance, and most would agree that ultimately, whatever or whoever is behind this universe has knitted it together with infinite, unfathomable care.   And many would agree in the end that sending such a son as Jesus would certainly prove his love.  It might not be the only way, but it might be a worthwhile exercise to try to think of a better way to show this love authentically to souls trapped in a material reality. 
 
            After this, Spitzer leaves us with one last zinger, one that should be obvious to all but obviously is not: “If it can be shown that this [the incarnation of God in Jesus and the story the life tells] ultimate [author’s italics] revelation is truly connected to God – and is not simply the ultimate revelation of a loving man, then it should be taken with utmost seriousness…”  To which I reply, “Ya think?”  He then tells us that in the next volume, Volume III, he will reveal to us the abundance of clues that show that Jesus is divine, from the Resurrection, to the many miracles to his ultimate sacrifice. 
 
            Yes, I will bite and buy the next volume, but for now I feel it is important to reiterate that phrase, “then it should be taken seriously.”  We do not even have to take it as far as Jesus if we are coming from a very skeptical position, but rather, just through the near-proofs in the book that show that God is real.  If we throw off our cloak of modernistic invulnerability, this should be abundantly clear.  What is almost as clearly true are His attributes, those seven given above.  If they are so, then, we would be the most foolish and self-destructive beings on the planet to not take the existence of God seriously.    Rather, God should be put at the center of our lives, not because we must do so out of fear, but because by so doing so we would be doing the best thing we could possibly do for ourselves, for our family, and for the world.  After all, if He is real, and if He is loving and caring, He would know what we need most.  He would also be eager to give it to us, if only we would embrace Him as He embraces us.  To learn to do this, we must go and search for Him beyond this book, but the reasoning and examples that Spitzer gives us should be all that we need to start – or rather, to ignite – our exploration.     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

​ 
Sometime ago, I wrote an essay in which I pondered my career orientation by looking back at my early childhood.   The first thing I recall ever wanting to be was a garbage man, because he rode on the back of a really great truck.   A little later, at about age four, I hit on something more enduring.  I used to go to the bus stop near the top of the hill to watch my older brother and sister drive off.  From there, I could see the Sleeping Giant, a low tree-covered mountain that was also a state park, which sat serenely in the distance, often surrounded by the light of early morning.  Although it was only about ten miles away, it seemed like the distant horizon of heaven to me.  It was this vision of the hill- as- heaven that made me decide I wanted to be a hobo; that is, I wanted to travel unencumbered to an earthly heaven.  In my future, there would be no jobs or family or anything else to tie my wanderlust down, at least not until I reached this unreachable goal.    
 
Not exactly a go-getter personality, and I have almost lived up to that vision – that is, of being a dreamer with no serious occupation.  A family finally did tie me down, however, for which both me and my dental health – hobos don’t have money to go to dentists – are grateful.  It was important that I learned earthly love, I think, before I could find eternal love in heaven.  But still, the verdict is in: the child that was me would not grow into someone who would be written about in the history books or anywhere else. 
 
Millions of others, however, know from early on exactly what useful world-changing or at least world-helping occupations they will have.  I have known several artists and doctors and preachers (just one there) and athletes and rich people who have all followed their early dreams with at least some success in this world.  Of those, though, I have never met any like those profiled in the Ken Burns series I am now watching about the Presidential Roosevelt's.
 
Theodore – meaning “loved by God,” although the series rarely delves into his spiritual life - did not know that he would be president, but he had a vision of being great in the eyes of society.  Born to a stout and moral father, he wished to be everything that he believed his father was, even though Ted was hampered by asthma, poor eyesight, and an overall weak physique and timid personality.  His will, however, was unbelievably strong.  He read books about daring explorers and forced himself to be like them until he had genuinely lost all, or nearly all fear.  He exercised with a maniacal passion until he became as strong as he could be, and far better, tough and ready for adventure.  Adventure he did, and somewhere along the way he determined that politics was one of the greatest of adventures.  With his boundless energy coupled to his family connections, he quickly rose to vice Secretary of the Navy, which allowed him to glorify himself on San Juan Hill in the Spanish – American War.  As a hero, he became the choice of McKinley in the 1898 presidential election, which he won.   Fate would have McKinley die from an assassin’s bullet, leaving Teddy as the earliest president in US history, at 42.  From there, he filled much more than his share of the history books. 
 
He did not know he would become president, but he was driven to be great in the eyes of Man.  He knew with an absolute certainty that greatness would – must – trail behind him in waves of glory.  And he was right.  What angels – and devils – he had. 
 
Franklin, on the other hand, knew from the start that he would probably be president, in part because of the example of Cousin Ted.  He was a life-long mama’s boy whose mother, and family fortune and name, confirmed in him the sense of his own greatness.  His fellow students did not like his airs, either at Groton boarding school or at Harvard, or in the state house in Albany after his first successful foray into politics, but no matter.  HE knew he was great.  His wife Eleanor’s organizational skills helped, as did his mistresses’ adoring attention (sorry, Franklin, I had to say it).  But like his cousin, his destiny was tied to overcoming adversity, although his was much worse than Teddy’s.  After riding his luck and name and talent to undersecretary of the Navy, just as his cousin had, he came down with polio, a horrible and permanently disabling disease almost always born by young children.  His long and intense suffering, say the historians, taught this son of privilege compassion and endurance, without which he could not have been the president that he was. 
 
Both Roosevelt's knew that they would be great, each in his own way, and each had to suffer and struggle for it in his own way as well.   Who plants this seed of greatness?  I suspect that many such seeds are planted, but only a few are able or willing to go through the process that is necessary to actually become great – just as many shy away from the rigors of medical school or missionary work or, for that matter, the monotony of accountant training.  I suspect that we are called to employ the will that we were given, one way or another, for the task, and that in this our free will is employed.  We accept our destiny and the suffering that goes with it or we don’t.  This is easy to see in the ones who become great.  What must that feel like, that sense of greatness, to a four-year-old? 
 
 I will never know.  But what about the rest of us schlubs?  How about those of us who were given lesser destinies?  I believe that each of us knows somewhere, at least by our older age, whether or not he has lived up to his destiny. 
 
I stopped writing at that last sentence on Saturday because of an appointment for a haircut.  The last woman we went to retired, so we now go to a young woman in her late 20’s who was recommended to us, and she really is good.  She called to have me come in early, and so I found her at the desk ready for me.  She is very attractive, although her short sleeves showed far too many tattoos for my taste.  She had a “woops,” as she calls it, in high school and is now the mother of twins (!).  She lives with her boyfriend – not the father of the twins – who is pushing for marriage and another (his own) child, but she’s not so sure.  As she sat me down in the chair above the hair-covered floor, I wondered: is this the life she dreamed of?  She was certainly good at it.  So I asked her.
 
“Did you dream of being something when you were really young, like in grammar school?”  She hemmed and hawed, so I gave her my example of being a garbage man, and then a hobo.  She laughed and then spilled the beans.
 
“I wanted to be a dentist since first grade.  But I don’t know, I’m not made for reading all the books I would have to.”
 
“So” I said, “is it that you couldn’t do the work or that you just didn’t want to?”
 
“Oh no” she said defensively, “I could do the work.  I just didn’t want to.” 
 
“That’s what I thought.  It’s like we know what we should do but it’s a matter of willpower.” I paused, realizing the implications.  “Jeez, kinda makes you feel bad, doesn’t it?”
 
“Yeah.”
“Oh well.  I couldn’t even succeed at being a hobo.” 
 
Which is true.  But being a hobo searching for heaven isn’t a career.  In the past it was for a very few, with itinerant monks like Friar Tuck of Robin Hood fame, or eccentrics like Johnny Appleseed, and for a while, naturalist John Muir before he became respectable, but it is not exactly a career category.  Make no mistake, I do not think I lived up to my calling, but that calling was never explicit, like being a dentist.  And I wonder – what about the rest of us?  How many not only have a failure of will, but a failure of insight? It might just be that most of us were meant to do farm work, or industrial work or computer work, depending on the era, while only a few are actually called for something specific.  Or it may be that we are all called for something above the ordinary lot, but we either refuse to listen or to take the challenge. 
 
Or it could be that a career isn’t the calling we are given.  It could be that we are to be good fathers or mothers, or run food pantries, or write poetry that only a few read, but read well.  In the end, I really don’t know.
 
What is clear, however, is that some are mysteriously called before they even know the meaning of their calling, and they fulfill it with single-minded vigor.  Some of them become presidents, some doctors, and some heroes of wars either domestic or international.  These lead important lives and sometimes, as with the Roosevelt's, trail streams of glory in their wake.  But each calling demands a sacrifice, some nearly impossible to endure.   I for one prefer comfort, or at least a life with little anxiety.  And it is this, our attitude -the personality of our wills - that finally determines both the challenges we are willing to accept and our rewards.  The greatness may have been offered, but it is often left as a half-forgotten dream that comes back to haunt us now and then in moments of quiet clarity that renders the truth of our weakness.     
 
 
 
 

​ 
It was Saturday night and our son for once had no place to go.  Instead he practiced his mixology and made margaritas with real strawberries, and of course real tequila, to which we oldsters said, what the heck and salud!   After a while the guitar came out and he played one of his favorites, a Kurt Cobain -influenced dirge that, with all its minor chords, was still almost beautiful, even though it was dedicated to the dead of Tienanmen Square.  It is played with the low string, usually on E, dropped to D, so that if played with the D chord makes a drone, or low reverberating sound.  I got on my high horse then and explained how this ‘drone’ had been used by monks in the medieval ages to elicit a feeling of God, just as the Buddhists make a similar drone in their chanting.   I did a few numbers in Drop D on my own and, ever mindful of myself, told him how I often disappeared into this music when I played it.  I call such music an active prayer, in that it gives you what the best of prayers should give you – a taste, or hint, of the ecstatic union with God.
 
This is the beginning, the hint of what we want although we usually don’t know it.  This is often made very clear to us from other’s lives.     
 
We have been watching a Ken Burn’s documentary, “The Roosevelts,” about our two presidential Roosevelts.  Since Teddy was the elder of the two, we were first treated to his life – to his intense need for action and to distinguish himself among men – particularly among men - by showing indomitable courage.  He was driven, as all future presidents must be, but he was also a creature of his time, a man of extreme generational wealth who was deeply immersed in 19th century romanticism.  This included, most famously (or infamously now), his romantizisation of war, but also his romantic notion of connubial love, which he found in overwhelming abundance in his wife Alice.  He had written in his diary before marriage that she was so perfect, so imbued with feminine grace, that it almost seemed a sacrilege to touch her. 
 
But of course he did touch her after marriage, and in due time she became pregnant.  He was only in his mid- 20’s then and was already making a name for himself in politics.  He was, I recall, at the state house in Albany when his wife went into labor in NYC, to which he anxiously rushed.  Once there, he found that both his mother and his wife were desperately ill, the latter from problems in childbirth.  He spent the night running back and forth from one bedroom to the other until, first, his mother died, and then, that next morning, his wife.   The baby lived, but he would have nothing to do with her (also named Alice) until a year or more later.  Rather, he would write one phrase, “The light has gone out of my life,” in his diary, before he fell into a deep depression.  It was only the time spent in the wilderness of @1884 North Dakota that allowed him to pull back from the brink, although the historian in the documentary related that he was never quite the same after the deaths. 
 
We can bet that he would have given up his future reputation as a Rough Rider, and his future as President, if those losses would have given him his wife and mother back.  But of course, as the world is, he would never have realized this had the tragedy not happened.
 
The night after the Drop D guitar solos, I had another one of my “failure” dreams, this time with many of my adventures tied in, from my trip to England in 1972 to the life with Indians in Venezuela in the late 80’s and early 90’s, to my pilgrimages to Europe and the Near East in the last five or so years.  Incidentally, in all of these episodes I was looking for a place to pee, so we understand why I woke to remember this dream, but the feeling throughout was, “not enough, never enough;” that is, that whatever these adventures were about, they did not fulfill the need that had sent me towards them.  In the dream I was always lacking, alienated even from the others in the adventure, always on the outside.  I awoke with this painful sense of lack and need, which is the very definition of failure.  I told my wife that is was my subconscious crying out for the fulfillment it thought I (we) should have had after all the academic preparation and travel.  I said that, although I know consciously that academic life usually means the death of any spiritual feelings, which would have been a disaster for me, this still did not alleviate the inner feeling of failure.  It did not alleviate it because reasoning is usually only discursive and can only reach so far into the emotional world; but also, I realized later, it was because this explanation wasn’t enough – that there was another dimension that I had missed.
 
That morning we had gotten up late, and as it was a Sunday, I tuned into the radio station carrying “Musica Antigua,” ancient music, that always plays during breakfast time on that day.   Immediately I was struck by the beautiful singing of a woman, with the “drone” sound humming without pause on a stringed instrument in the background.  It brought me close to heaven, even though I briefly mused that it might have been only a troubadour song about lost love (as it was in a foreign language).  Finally the heavenly music stopped and the DJ told us just what it was: Music written in the 12th century by St. Hildegard of Bingen, an abbess and one the greatest composers of sacred music, as well as perhaps the only woman composer, of that time.   The collection of the songs on the album was called “A Feather on the Breath of God.”
 
Teddy Roosevelt would have wished for his wife and mother above his ambitions, although he probably would never have known how important they were in his life had they not died.  But something in me still wishes for the drama of adventures and travel and success, even though the drone of heavenly music is playing louder and louder.  Slowly it is becoming clearer, however, that it was towards this, this vision of heaven, that all the adventures have been about.  It is why none have ever fully appeased my need, and why any success in any field would have felt dry in the mouth after the initial feeling of pleasure and power.  I am beginning to understand that this is true.  However, it appears that it will not be from anyone else’s death but my own when I will finally and irrevocably come to understand this - that this heavenly union was always the goal, and that all efforts towards it in this world never were and never will be enough.  Just as the ghost of Teddy’s wife Alice must have brought him awake and broken even in the White House, so I am brought awake and broken in a humbler home, fumbling with insecurities that only point, in the end, to the message hidden in the one letter and one note of Drop D.    
 
 
 

​ 
A few weeks ago found me waiting at the local mechanic’s for an oil change.  In the familiar office, with the smell of grease and the noise of pneumatic tools, I pushed through the large selection of magazines on the heavily-stained coffee table.  I quickly found my favorite – Mad Magazine – and was disappointed at what I saw.  For one, the artwork had changed completely, computer-print images on glossy pages replacing the ink drawings on pulp of past decades.  More disturbing, the stupid and pointless jokes – the reason I have read Mad since 4th grade – had become stupid, pointed jokes – at Trump and the 2nd amendment and border security, and probably other conservative boilerplate issues if I had continued to read.   This, a magazine meant for kids and pre-teens, was gushing forth New York political views without a wit of reasoning.  The latter is to be expected from Mad, but not the former, exactly for the lack of thought.  It was a magazine meant for fun.  It has become an object now of propaganda for juvenile audiences.    
 
It was, as Mad would once have put it, as funny as a fart in an oxygen tank, a joke I had laughed at in 4th grade without considering just how a fart might find its way into an oxygen tank.  Which is how it should be: things meant for kids and for fun in general should remain light and illogical.  Heavy points of discussion, on the other hand, should be backed by heavy ideas.  To mix heavy points with light comedy is perhaps the best way to propagandize kids and, on a larger scale, to dumb down a population.  Nothing stings as hard as ridicule, even when it is based on a wisp of nothing or even really bad ideas. 
 
This dumbing-down through ridicule is nothing new.  I am now reading an excellent book on Christian apologetics, The Soul’s Upward Yearning by Robert Spitzer (PhD and Jesuit priest), who has written this entire book refuting atheism through logic, example, and objective oddities like Out of Body Experiences.  It is good stuff, even the logic part, which I thought I didn’t need but found that I did.  The sad part of this is that the book is necessary.  Until the late 18th century – the century that produced the Deists who helped draw up the US Constitution, as well as the atheists who chopped off heads in Paris – the belief in God was nearly universal among both the educated elite and the peasantry.  This was true not only in Europe but in the whole world, and true not only for then but for all time as far as we know, right back to the era of Eurasian Neanderthals.  Why the change came about just then in Europe is a notion involving complex scholarship, but the simpler point I wish to make here is that the creation of atheistic culture in general often was accomplished not through great thought but by simplistic natural observation and ridicule.   The naturalistic thought was, “well, I don’t see God, so there mustn’t be one,” forgetting about the enormity of the cosmos and the impossible reality of creation all about us.  The ridicule part was formed around religious attempts at helping people understand God better through art and myth.  Virgin birth - are you kidding?   Jesus rising from the dead – now you’ve got to be kidding.  None of this ridicule is ever backed by toe-to-toe argumentation, or any thoughtful argumentation at all. 
 
Who started this and why is again a complex issue, but I think we can line up the partisans roughly into two camps: one, those objective observers who have forgotten that everything they observe is through the lens of a created body and a created brain formed OUTSIDE of so-called objective observation; and two, those who see God as an impediment to their desires.  This latter group uses both the proofs of the first camp to buttress their claims, and also ridicule to compel the rest of society to “be logical” -  that is, to accept their lifestyles or desires.  This is not only a European phenomenon now, but also used extensively in current Chinese –style totalitarian governments. 
 
  Which gets to the greater point of the essay: this type of superficial thinking leads to really bad government and, ultimately, a really, really messed up society.  China shines forth as the greatest example of this, but our popular culture has taken on many of the same elements, as Mad Magazine shows.  Ridicule without contemplation is being used to get the society that some think they want and some think that you should want too. 
 
Just what the writers at Mad really want is what many in our information class want, which is God -only -knows -what.  But this movement is making, regardless of the desires behind it, a real mess.  Suicide rates rise higher and higher, loneliness is a growing problem, marriage and reproduction are fading and nihilism gaining – all side effects of the “great leap forward” of progressive thinking.  And all, frustratingly enough, so predictable. 
 
Which is what our book, The Soul’s Upward Yearning, points out so succinctly.  The progressive movement is liberal or leftist at the present, but we can forget about that here; instead, the point that Spitzer makes so clearly is that we yearn because we do not have or understand perfection, yet desire it with an aching need.  We desire it, he claims, because we are internally aware of it, aware of a horizon of perfection that we cannot achieve ourselves but is built into us.  Because there is no perfection in this world that we can observe, this “built in” part must come from something that is perfect, something beyond us, as does our yearning for this perfection.  This ‘something’ is often called God. 
 
So goes the logical part of his book in a nutshell, but it also points to why our current attempt to create the perfect society without God is and will continue to be such a failure.  As Miley Cyrus said after Trump won, (paraphrase) “Life would be paradise if we all had Hollywood morals.  Instead (sob) we got Trump!” We almost choke with laughter ourselves at this comment, but she has made a sincere point: that she believes that her morals, created entirely from objective human sources, can create a paradise.  Yet, if we wish to remain objective, we know that we cannot create a paradise ourselves.  We cannot observe perfection directly, and thus cannot even get a blueprint of what that perfection might be.  Rather, that comes from a source most call God, but we can call ‘cosmic intuition’ for those who cringe at the “G” word.  Although we cannot obtain perfection with that source in this world either, we can get our direction from it; that is, we can get, as we get from religion, an idea of what perfection is, and how best we can approach it.  It should be needless to say, as it once was, that mere human thought and even more self-interested actions can never get us there – not even close. 
 
Yet we are being told, now apparently even in grade school, that there is some sort of moral perfection to be had if we just listen to the mavens of culture, those very people who mock those who are deeply affected by ‘cosmic intuition.’  Incredible as it should seem, writers like those at Mad Magazine actually believe that they have the right to steer youth in the right direction - a direction they get from where?- through vapid ideas and infantile humor.  Wherever that direction might be, if it is not from and towards the Source, then it is towards a direction that will not lead us to a better society, let alone perfection.  Given this, its direction must bring disappointment first, and then chaos, as with the French Revolution, and then, if persisted, doom. 
 
This is logical, but perfection and visions of paradise also logically point beyond us, and beyond logic.  It is this, this “beyond logic” dimension of potential human experience that atheists of both stripes dismiss or ridicule.  They would not if they would follow it, as the wise have done for millennia, but their arrogance and ignorance keep them blind.  It is what the biblical phrase, “the blind leading the blind” is telling us to avoid.  But we are more and more trapped in the objective, and mocked for attempting to strive beyond it into the realms of intuition and metaphysical perfection – into the realms where true genius and holiness lie.  Da Vinci understood this, as did our own modern-era Einstein.  The writers at Mad Magazine apparently do not.  I don’t know for sure about everyone else, but I think it would be more prudent to follow the examples of Da Vinci and Einstein.  To follow Mad might be as funny as a fart in an oxygen tank, but when the storms rage and the oxygen tank becomes a matter of life or death, I don’t think I’d be laughing. 
 
 
 
 
 

​ 
Somewhere in my cotton-stuffed head I know it; somewhere I know where I came up with the phrase, “The Orb of Being,” but I can’t remember it, even though it tickles like a feather.  It is the domain name for The Quiet Voice, but it began as the title to my last novel, which is never likely to see publication.  It was meant as a capstone for a diverse set of writings that started with Basket of Reeds, my first novel and one that might be published, moving through Remission (which I also intend to publish), through Miracle, which is a ‘possible,’ and ending with The Orb of Being, which I cannot clearly remember, but I think of as something of a mess.   In the final act, the grand finale to all the rest of the novels, the hero, who we have traced since the first novel, ascends more or less like Elijah into heaven, but without a chariot.  Maybe I’ll take a look at the novel again, but in any case, I still don’t know how the Orb name came up.  
 
It could be the coolness of it – the Orb is an archaic term for a solid globe, and “Being,” well, who cannot nod wisely at this hint of some sort of ontological proof, whether we really understand it or not?  I think, however, that it came from some reading I was doing at the time, but what that might be I don’t know.  Because I am now a man of the modern world, I (of course) looked it up on the internet to find the answer.  There I got no hint or clue at all, but I did find something else that is way cooler than a phrase: a painting.  A painting from the Italian Renaissance, no less, and a painting from the Italian Renaissance from no less than Leonardo Da Vinci - yeah, that’s right, the guy who painted The Last Supper with Jesus and the apostles, and thrilled the world with his genius. 
 
The painting is called Salvator Mundi, “Savior of the World,” which depicts Christ in Renaissance dress making the sign of peace with his right hand while holding a crystal orb with his left.  It is so cool that I bought a replica on cotton for $42 on Amazon, and it arrived last Saturday, just in the nick of time, as I will soon relate.  It hangs now before my desk, and every time I want to curse or think bad thoughts, I can feel Him looking down on me with those too-alive Da Vinci eyes, the same that made Mona Lisa so famous.  I might be sorry I hung him there, but then again, how could I?  How could I when I see the Orb in his hand?  The Orb I believe he shared with me for this website, which itself has taken me on such a journey - a journey towards exactly what the Orb represents.
 
Salvator Mundi; for centuries it was known to exist, but so many copies were made of it that no one knew which, if any, was the original.  It wasn’t until the year 2,000 something when, in the process of being restored, the expert doing the work brought it to an official art committee with solid evidence that this was the original “Last Da Vinci” as it had long been called.  The committee agreed, and with that, the price shot up through the “orb” of the sky.  It sold just a year or so ago to some Saudi Prince – obviously not a Christian –for 450 million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a painting at a public auction.  Why one would pay such a price when Christ would no doubt have blanched at this ostentatious waste is almost beyond me, except that, in the rare art world, it is known that the price of the work of a master will probably increase.  And so it was more of a monetary investment that also, I suppose, lavished some snobbish credentials on the prince. 
 
 
Except that maybe it won’t give the prince any of the above.  It is accepted by the experts in general that elements of the painting – perhaps large elements - were done by Leonardo’s students under his tutelage in his workshop, which was common.  Unfortunately for the prince, it might be that they and others who came after accomplished the entire piece.  Without at least some work of the master on the painting, it could never be accepted as a true Leonardo.   
 
They, those experts who were not on the committee, have reasons to believe that this is so.  For one, the painting has been so retouched over the years that its provenance is difficult to prove with such things that only art experts know.  There are also discrepancies in style: the thumb of the right hand, for instance, seems to some not quite up to Leonardo’s standards.  And then there is the Orb.  If the reader is interested, look it up yourself and take a look at the Orb.  Were it technically correct, a glass orb would bend the sight of the palm that is holding it, as well as the cloth that is behind it.  It does not.  Leonardo would never let such details go, even if done by a student.  Except, says another expert, Leonardo was an ardent student himself of rock crystals, such as quartz, which he studied with the very woman who might have been the model for “Mona Lisa.”  Rock crystal does not bend that which is behind it, but rather double-refracts it (that is, shows two straight refractions) – which is exactly what this orb does to the palm that is holding it.  So it might be that the Orb is key to the authenticity and price of the painting.  But what does the Orb mean?
 
In the Ptolemaic universe, which I vaguely recall is geocentric, the “heavens” are represented by a crystal orb that encircles the Earth.  And so this is, with Christ holding our heaven in his hand, ready to give it to all who share his peace.  The Orb of Being, then, is our perfected self, aligned with the heaven(s).   I do not think I thought of that when I named my messy last novel, although it is now clear that it was exceedingly appropriate, given that the story’s hero was elevated to heaven in the end.  So it is that the Orb – the will of heaven, or God, or his Holy Spirit - always gives in surprising ways, ways that we might not become aware of for months or even decades later.
 
Or sometimes, far, far less time.  “Salvator Mundi” arrived last Saturday afternoon, a package as desired as any Christmas present.  It found a place for itself on the wall in front of my desk, where I saw it in the light of my desk lamp and gasped.  Even the reproduction is that good, although as a novice in art, I cannot say exactly why.  I could not sit and relish it for long, however, as the rain from earlier in the day was starting up again.  With no outdoor work possible, I seemed the right time to head out for mass which was soon to start.  I would be leaving the ‘Salvator’ on his own.  Or so I thought. 
 
But no.  Instead, he followed me right into church.  After the usual preamble and the Gospel, the priest – who I have found has an odd telepathic connection with me and some others – gave his homily.  I was almost but not quite shocked when he began by mentioning Leonardo Da Vinci and his noble work, and how his students helped him create his masterpieces by following his example.  This, said the Father, is how Jesus worked with his disciples – he was the master who taught the lessons that they later carried to the world.  We too, he said, are called to spread his lessons as were the original disciples.  He did not have to add that in this way, we would achieve what was in the ‘Salvator’s” left hand – the Orb of crystal that is heaven.  And this Orb was just as valuable whether achieved through the master or the student, or by someone who had become a student himself.   The blessing of the master was all that was necessary for the work to lift one to heights even beyond the price of ‘The Last Leonardo.’
 
Don’t laugh.  There is a world greater than you might think outside our little patch of goecentricity, where anything can and just might happen.  A concept might even follow you, maybe for years, from a mediocre work to a masterpiece to the real thing that does not reflect but really was, is, and forever will be.