Today, a new essay, "Countdown," under Essays in the website. FK

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          Time melts away as we force it into routine.  This is a bad thing when we look back on our last decade and say, “How did the time go by so quickly?” But it is a good thing when we want that time to fly, which we might while waiting in line at the DMV or while traveling long distances on well-known routes.  
 
          So it has become with my near-monthly trips to the off-line cabin in the UP.  While the route is not bad – nothing like that through NYC or northern Jersey – it does get stale after many outings, even when passing through Green Bay and the towering mass of Lambeau Field, and it is then that my routine has helped enormously.  With a bag of pretzels at my side and a book-on-CD in the player, it is almost as if time does not exist, except for my two stops for gas, the restroom, and a 16 oz. cup of coffee. 
 
           Sure, time flies by with this routine and I am there before I know it, but it’s the coffee part that gets me.  Coffee to me is like an illegal drug that has been smuggled across the Mexican border.  It focuses my attention so sharply that nothing else matters but what is right at hand, which is good for letting time fly but horrible for multi-tasking.  When I arrived at the shockingly quiet cabin in the back of beyond, it is that quality of singularity that started my problem.
 
          Normally, the first thing I do when arriving at the cabin is to open the hatchback and start pulling gear and etc. out to pile onto the porch.  Because of a recent birthday present to me of an expensive fat tire bike, however, my wife insisted that I lock the bike rack to the car and the bike to the rack, just in case some clever heroin addict might cruise the rural gas stations to steal from travelers.  So it was that I had to take out a cluster of keys from the seat console to unlock the mess, along, of course, with the key to the cabin. 
 
            That might not seem like a job requiring multiple degrees in applied science, but with my coffee mind concentrated lazar-like on unlocking the bike and rack, something happened that caused the cabin key to be misplaced, aka, lost.  I discovered this, of course, as I shifted my mono-focus from the bike rack to the gear, and to getting it off the porch and into the cabin.  The discovery that the key was nowhere in my pockets or in the car or on the porch then sent me into a panic.  Overreacting, I turned to bitter self-recrimination and then to a scrutiny of cosmic forces as my addled mind tried to decipher the meaning of it all.  Why me?  What have I done to deserve this?  What hidden agenda might the spirit world have in displacing the key?     
 
             The consequences weren’t even that dire.  I had a spare hidden under the porch, which I hadn’t seen in a few years, but which I found, slightly tarnished, exactly where I had put it.  I was in.  But still it bugged me.  There were practical reasons for this annoyance, one being that I needed to leave a spare for other people coming up later, but that was only the smaller part; the larger part still remained in the cosmic question: why, in the grand scheme of things, had this happened?
 
          I can hear a reader say, “Oh, come on!  You let a key fall out of your pocket.  Big deal!,” but this reader does not know the coffee mindset.  At that time, there simply had to be a bigger reason, and one was found almost immediately.  This came about as I was putting the cabin key back in the console.  It was then that I noticed another key that I had never used which looked suspiciously like the cabin key.  It was silver, not brass, but the cut of the key looked exactly the same.  This was confirmed when I placed the two of them together, and then easily inserted the new-found key into the keyhole of the door to the cabin.  Eureka!  I now had the extra key I needed, one that I had had all along but had not known.  That in itself gave rise to spiritual speculations of Biblical proportions concerning loaves and fishes and the power of belief and more.  But the coffee mind was not satisfied.  There was something more to this lost key than even those things.    
 
          My searching soul was not long in wanting.  Just the day before, I had been exploring Mathew, chapter 5, where one of the greatest teachings of Jesus is presented, the Beatitudes, or Sermon on the Mount.  Along with the lowly and the poor of spirit, number 8 on the list blesses those who are “pure of spirit” or “single hearted.”  Looking into the footnotes, I found that this joins other admonishments in the Bible calling for personal integrity, meaning ‘wholeness of being’ or ‘being of one mind.’ That made me think: in concentrating on the bike, I had somehow misplaced the key to the cabin.  This had come from a type of single-mindedness, yes, but a pathological one.  The reality was that I had two important things to keep in mind, the keys for the bike and the key for the cabin.  That I had forgotten where I had put the later showed that I had not had integrity of thought concerning my intentions.  I had let one thing slide for another, while both should have been placed as if on a list, each set of keys or key given its time and place.  What I had done was like putting a new pair of diapers on a baby before taking off the soiled pair. 
 
          And so it came to me: purity of heart, integrity of the spirit – this is something that I lack so profoundly that it has become a standard condition, not only for me, but for most, at least in our society.  Freud even gave us a layered diagram of the mind, where we think and act from three (major) platforms, the id, the ego, and the superego.  In this, one barley knows what the other mind is doing, if it knows at all.  We might be telling ourselves that we love our fiancée with all our (singular) heart, while another part of us only wants to see her naked, and another is with her because her family connections or money will bring us prestige or wealth.  Which, we have to ask, is ourselves?  This we have to ask if we want purity, or integrity, of spirit.  Where in the mess of our minds might we find our true selves?  For if we can’t do this, how can we bring ourselves to a singular purity? 
 
           In my fieldwork with a more primal-level people, I found that they did indeed have more singular, almost innocent, states of mind.  This is why Western observers from another era thought of primitives as child-like, even as they killed and birthed and enslaved and did all those things that their civilized counterparts have long done.   And it is true - their lives are less complicated.  It would be hard for me to imagine one of them running around in a coffee frenzy as I had done.  They certainly would not lose one key while dealing with another.  But they, too, are not fully integrated.  They have a subconscious that manifests not only in dreams, but in spectral illuminations similar to Lady Macbeth’s as she wandered about the castle yelling, “Out, out, damn spot!” They also might have mercurial, uncontrolled turns of emotions. The problem of achieving purity of heart, then, would be helped but not solved by a having a less complicated life. 
 
           As of yesterday, I struggled to figure a way out of this dilemma.  Last night, the answer slowly dawned on me when my wife found a small, engraved wooden box in the household clutter.  It had been given to me from an excess of funeral gifts that had been handed out to the attendees.  It contained a small-print Catholic edition of the Bible within.  The important thing for me, though, was the engraving on the box: a dove embossed over a cross.  We know what the cross is for – God’s sacrifice for our benefit – but not all might know the meaning of the dove.  It means “peace,” but not just ordinary peace.   It is the peace that the “paraclete” - literally, the “advocate” – has been sent to bring us.  It is not the kind of peace a South American Indian living in a small village might have; rather, it is a divine peace created from the divine sacrifice meant to save humankind from it frenzied fits of mind, from coffee stupors to uncontrolled tremors of hate and visceral need and envious greed.  It is the peace, as St Paul put it, which surpasses all peace.  It is the peace of the Holy Spirit that brings true integrity of mind, and it can only come through this Spirit.  It is a type of magic that cannot be performed from a worldly view that, by its very nature, embodies differences that all but guarantee conflict.  It is only through this integrity of mind with mind where mind can meet soul and conjure unity from diversity, rivalry and competition.
 
         So the two keys brought me to this big question and to a bigger answer.  But another thing happened.  A day later after the key fiasco, a great rain came, and as it was ending, I made my way through the cloud of mosquitos to the outhouse, and then back again past the car.  As I approached the vehicle, it occurred to me with absolute certainty that if I looked behind the car I would find the key.  Of course, there it was, the rain having washed away much of the sand that had covered it.  So, from two keys had come three.  I might say that it is similar to the appearance of Jesus, where from the Father and Son had come a third, the Holy Spirit, although that might be taking it too far.  But certainly, through adversity and effort had come something greater.  I had gained both a key to a simple door in this world and a key to another far greater, the one united incongruously but seamlessly to the other.  How even the simplest of things can lead to amazement.          
 
         
 
 
 
                
 
         
         
 
          

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          I could pretend to be a classical music snob, but I would be caught short by anyone who knew anything in a minuet – er, minute.  But my mother listened to the masters during my youth, and because of this I was granted at least the possibility of enjoying all those horns and tympanies and oboes and other instruments that would never make it into my normal listening fare of blue grass and folk.  So it was that this possibility, along with an Olympic game and a commercial for beef (“What’s for Supper”), would send me to Aaron Copland, the composer of Fanfare for the Common Man and Rodeo.  Because of their commercial exposure, everyone knows at least a part of both.  Of Rodeo, anyone born before 1965 has heard most of the movements in the John Ford western movies, especially those featuring John Wayne.  They are quintessentially American tunes, expressing the best of the myth of our country by eliciting a panorama of wide open spaces and the rugged individualism epitomized by the roving cowpoke or the striving industrialist of the expansionist era.  These melodies define us as we –at least the older generations – wish to be: tough, optimistic, and ready to move on a dime to another corner of the half-continent that we call our own. 
 
          But there’s an oddity here to be found in the composer himself.  In the button-down era of the first half of the 20th century, Copland’s homosexuality would have been appalling to the average Joe who he wished to epitomize.  Fortunately for him, he was born into an upper class New York City family where such things were seen as quirks of intellectual superiority, and into an era where people simply didn’t talk about such things.  While his sexuality would not be a big deal for the average Joe now, we still have in the man and his best-known works a juxtaposition that is hard to fathom.  How could this financial and cultural elitist speak with the voice of the common man in America? 
 
           He was there on the religious front as well, speaking for an extreme latter form of Puritanism found in the Shakers @ 1900.  These people created great furniture, but never any heirs to their great agricultural holdings in rural America, as they forbade sexual contact.  Just a few decades ago, as the last of the Shakers were dying off, several younger people rushed to join to inherit their vast, and now priceless, real estate holdings.  I don’t know what happened in those cases, but in another very popular work, Appalachian Spring, Copeland works his opus around the Shaker song that I know as The Turning.  You have heard it, too.  It speaks of religious fervor and purity and the rejection of material comforts.  Again, this would not include Copeland in just about any way.  And yet, there his work stands as a deep calling to the myth of American religious purity.
 
          What are we to think of this clash of personality, lifestyle, and creative renderings? 
 
          I came upon this dilemma through a comment by a friend of mine.  I had made a silly joke with adolescent sexual innuendo – the dumber the funnier as far as I am concerned – when he retorted with something like, “And this from a guy who writes about the mysteries of the Holy Spirit.”  Yup, and this has puzzled me about myself as well as guys like Copeland and all sorts of culture creators who often belie in their works the cruder aspects of their own nature. 
 
          There is a man, David ….. , who writes some of the best Catholic popular tunes out there –  note that “good” and “popular” don’t often go together in Catholic music – with some absolutely filled with the sense of the Holy Other.  Meanwhile, as of this writing, he is involved in a bitter court case involving several young adult males and sexual abuse.  We who present music to the church have been advised to avoid his works, at least until the man is cleared in court (which seems increasingly unlikely).  Again, what the heck?  Such things seem to present us with an unsolvable dilemma. 
 
          Except that they don’t.  We all not only know someone who is both a jerk and a good guy all in one, but know that often enough, that guy is us.  This is not only a reflection of our own failings, but a reflection of our attempts to BE good guys.  It is well-known among Catholic priests, for instance, that the more one tries to engage the Holy, the more one will be tempted, even besieged, by the opposite, or even the demonic.  Nearly every saint I have read of has had confrontations with the demonic, some of these lasting a life time.  The only difference between the saint and the man sincerely looking for the good is that the saint never budges an inch for the bad.  We should all understand by personal experience why saints are in extremely short supply.   Veering from the sacred, it is also known in linguistics that comprehension of something is in part known through its opposite. Without black, we would not fully understand white.  And so it seems, too, with the sacred, or the good, or the viral or the chaste.
 
          But our spasms of emotions and desires go beyond a simple internal dialogue defining things both physical and moral.  In “It’ a Wonderful Life,” the good man yells at his wife, takes a swing at another man, and questions why he ever engendered “all these kids.”  Such inner conflicts and contradictions in the real world are not only normal, but nearly universal.  Still, the initial criticism of the friend points to a deeper reality – that inner conflict (often expressed in outer conflict) is normal in the world we have built, but is not normal in the universe at large.  Natural laws rarely contradict themselves, except in Star Trek.  The truth seems to be that we simply do not understand our true natures.  We are contradictions to ourselves because we are befuddled, both about ourselves and the nature of the world in general. 
 
           By Christian definition, the world’s only perfect man was Jesus Christ.   Yes, he expressed anger and even despair, but does anyone believe that he lost control in these situations by releasing repressed emotions?  We are rather to believe that certain situations called for such emotions.  Anger at another’s brutality or harmful stupidity, for instance, might be compared to the spank or rebuke you give to your little child who keeps running into the road.  “Wake up!” says the shout.   And so it could be that our inner contradictions are wake-up calls to alert us to our true natures and to the dangers of the false narratives we have incorporated into ourselves.  Could anything be more telling about the overall health of our civilization than the gender dysphoria now sweeping through the young like a plague?  Or the peaceful protestors everywhere burning down our cities?  Or the proponents of both national and personal disarmament obsessing over the right to abort children? 
 
            Yes, we are a bundle of contradictions.  The music of the elitist can truly elicit the spirit of the common man, just as the music of a sexual predator can set in us the peace of the Holy Spirit – and just as a common buffoon writing from his home computer can touch on that same Spirit.  But in a perfect world – in the world that Christ calls us to in the Sermon on the Mount – these contradictions would not exist, or so the voice of the saints tell us.  Much of humor rises from a recognition of contradictions, to make fun of ourselves for our daily hypocrisies.  How could this be wrong?  But when we live by these contradictions and are controlled by them, we mess up the world, at least a little.  The worst aspect of this is that by living in them, we pass them on to the next guy and to the next generation.  It is from contradictions of values and morals that the wheel of humanity’s tragic history turns.
 
           To seek purity of heart and soul, then, requires a complete overhaul of the self that is built upon the shifting sands of personal and social contradictions.  So it is that the saint is an outcast and the prophet – along with the honest comedian - is despised.  To reject our collective contradictions of thought and behavior is to reject ourselves, and, worse, is to tell us what we already know and do not want to hear.  It might even be that a naughty joke can expose our contradictions about sex and love – and, just as likely, expose the clay feet of the clown who tells it, the same clown who might also be looking for an exit ramp from the endless circus.