​ 
          I happened to be married to someone whose greatest goal was to become an astronaut. She claims the dream died after the Apollo program ended and social welfare programs demanded the money. I think her near-sightedness would have ended her quest, but I still have to hand it to her. I am claustrophobic, just a little. Elevators and closets and cheap-seat flights are just fine; it’s just things like full-body cat scans, being buried alive in a casket, and being shot up by high explosives in a tiny metal can that freak me out. 
 
            Still, in my mind I live the dream, not in a can, but in a Star Trek star ship, equipped with a holodeck and able to leap star systems in minutes or less, depending on your own fantasy of warp speed. I have had talks with fellow space lovers about the could-have-beens of space travel, the “if we had not wasted money on …, we could have…” but those talks died out decades ago. Then came the black-out, the never agains, the having-to- rent a rocket from the Russians era. Such darkness of vision controlled the Feds until recently, until Musk and Bezos entered into space with capitalist dollars and since the current president reignited the Federal space program. It is not only for the adventure of it all, as one might think; rather, the Fed involvement comes from the same impetus as the original: a military space race, this time expanded beyond Russia to include China and perhaps a few others.
 
            The idea of a Space Race was revived by an Apple TV series, “For All Mankind,” a 40-hour, 4 season romp into space based on the premise that the USSR arrived first on the moon in a tightly contested race back in 1969. With a few more tweaks of history, the series has the USSR surviving into the 1990’s (so far. We are just finishing season three). Because of these changes to history, the series conjectures that the space race would have continued with ferocity after Apollo, accelerating the establishment of moon bases and eventually a Mars base – not in some distant future, but in our past @ 1994.
 
            Oh, this show has us space heads salivating! If only! Too bad, we think, that now many, if not most of us who watched Neal Armstrong’s first step will never get to see the first step on Mars. 
 
            According to the series, how did the alternative Space Race change life on Earth? Mind you, that while the series isn’t aggressively “woke,” it is in lock-step with the spirit of the age. According to the script, feminism was essential to bring us out of the stone-age of patriarchy, and Gay Rights had to take center stage, showcased almost more than I can bear. But bear it I do, for the vicarious adventure of it, and for the writer’s views towards Space in general. While one might expect a lefty slant on the repercussions of the expense of the space program, showing millions living and dying in the streets because of cutbacks to social programs, that is not the case at all. Instead, this alternative reality has people living longer and better than ever - not because of Tang or foil space blankets, but because of vast leaps in science achieved while trying to make rocketry and space accommodations better and cheaper.
 
            One of those inventions was a type of fuel, helium 3, from which could be produced controlled fusion power (aka Star in a Jar). From that, not only were materials able to be lifted to the Moon and then to Mars at much faster rates, but humanity at large was freed from fossil and other dirty, limited fuels and given nearly free, limitless energy. Global warming was cured, as was so much filth, pollution and poverty. All for a comparatively small investment that not only held the problem of poverty at bay, but actually prevented it.
 
            What more? How about advanced cell phones 20 years ahead of their time? And computers? I did not see flying cars, but why not? With limitless energy, that should be easy. Same with floating cities and communities under the sea as envisioned in Aquaman’s dreams. Clearly, the series has us wishing, just wishing that we had continued into space with the same vigor that President Kennedy inspired with the Apollo program.
 
            Man does not live by bread alone, however, and we see the same kind of selfishness on display both individually and internationally in this alternative universe that we see today. The Apollo program did give us great advances in technology, but did not promote advances in holiness and morality any more than the rotary engine – and in fact, such tech can be loosely coupled with moral decline. A definitive connection between the two cannot be drawn here, but certainly can for technological development in general. We have certainly seen a steep decline in spirituality in the past few centuries, and possibly moral decline as well, which is logical: as we feel better able to handle this world all by ourselves, we feel that we can and will someday manage everything without the help of some “sky god.” Thus are towers to nowhere built.
 
            On the other hand, I believe that Space is different. Recall the awe that changed personalities among the test pilots and engineers who went to the moon. Space has the ability to take us out of our little worlds and throw our minds into the infinite. It is hard to be an egotist, or at least a total one, in space. There, there is no denying one’s infinitely small presence in infinity. There, we cannot deny the overpowering silence of creation and the almost inevitable conclusion that we must make that, yes, we are not alone. Not as in the series, mind you, where I believe they will find microbial life in the underground water of Mars – which is something in itself – but rather, we are not alone anywhere and in anyway; for if God makes the vastness of space, he also makes the sparrows of the air and every hair on our head; if he is with us on a spaceship to the planets or the stars, then he is almost certainly with us right here, right now.
 
            It is here where the greatest argument comes for space travel. We might say that, if God made the universe and then self-reflective beings who long for that infinite space, he also made these beings – us - capable of exploring that space. Such is an argument for theologians. But more so: if terrestrial technology has made us less spiritual – and we are not going to stop progressing with technology – then the next step into space might just reverse that slide. How much we need that! Space, then, would not only be a booster for high tech and a chance to get rare earth minerals from asteroids and other planets; nor would it simply be something to keep our minds occupied and our hopes uplifted. Rather it could be part of a natural evolution bringing us closer to God. The intellectual gifts that were given us, then, would not have been put there to tempt us to become “like the gods,” but rather to bring us to the footstool of God in the bottomless cosmos. So it is that a little knowledge might be poison for the soul, such as we now have; but that more might be medicine for both body and soul.
 
            Fulfillment, that’s what it’s all about: fulfilling our desire and capacity to understand the created world, and fulfilling the same with our understanding of the creator. While we see things only from a low vantage point – or as St Paul said, “through a glass darkly” – God sees things from the ultimate heights. What many now understand to be contrary to spiritual enlightenment – high tech - may be exactly what Mankind needs for ultimate enlightenment. It might just be that, to reach to the bottom of our inner selves, we need to reach for the limits of our outer selves.
 
            This certainly is difficult to prove, but we must look to the results on the pioneers of our first flights into space. Most found awe, many found a new love for Earth and creation, and some even became spiritually enlightened.  Just as the sea once spoke to people of the infinite, so too does, and will, space to us and to our progeny, perhaps forever.
 
            Regardless, we are going to continue with technological development. As it has been, it will continue to dampen our interest in the eternal and infinite. Ventures into space should reverse that trend, helping us with both technological and spiritual development. What, then, in this world could be better for humanity in which to invest our limited time and money?     
 
 
 
  

  
 
   

 
          A few Olympics ago, there was a remarkable bio portrayal done on Shaun White, who at that time had lit up the world of skateboarding and snowboarding just as the two had become new events. There were home videos of him doing backflips off the roof of his one-story home when he was about ten, and then, of course of him attempting acrobatics on his skateboard, many leading to scary failures. Still, he kept on. As his mother said, he was a daredevil who would never stop pushing the edge. The grown-up Shaun explained it this way: everything felt boring unless he was risking injury to himself. There is no doubt that he was telling the truth.
 
            I have cousins on my mother’s side who are the same way. One became a drug user and dealer who was prosecuted for tying up a delinquent customer to a tree and leaving him over night. Because of his age and his first-time status, he did not go to jail, but he never stopped pushing the edge. At one time, he obtained the official record of time in the air with his hang glider in the state, jumping off of sheer 500-foot cliffs to get aloft. He said he stopped gliding because it got too boring. His brother had no fear either, and worked cleaning and painting suspension bridges while hanging from a wire over distant rivers. Good pay, he said, with not a shake or quake in him. He needed the money anyway for his coke habit, which gave him the heart attack that killed him when he was in his mid-40’s.
 
            The list goes on and on of these remarkable people. This need for risk even had a grip on me, although not to the degree of my cousins and maternal uncles. I was reminded of how this insanity had infected me in adolescence and early adulthood just a few days ago when I happened upon a favorite old album from the 60’s, “Who Do You Love” by Quicksilver Messenger Service.  The base and rhythm were surprisingly simple, even garage-bandish, but the lead had the same scintillating sound for me as it once had. It had come out of 1969 San Francisco at the height of the Haight- Ashbury LSD scene. This was about the time I started taking the stuff at the age of 15. I, too, had broken many bones and suffered many cuts and bruises as a daredevil in my childhood, and then I, too, chose to jump into the scariest thing I could find for the thrill. And boy howdy, did it deliver; so much so that after a few semesters of all-out tripping at college, I felt a need to hit the road, hitching often without a dime in my pocket for months and months at a time.
 
            Life on the road was one big pot-fest back then, with an occasional peyote or mushroom trip thrown in – along with an occasional encounter with some very dangerous hombres (much of this is in my book, Dream Weaver).  In retrospect, it seems obvious what was driving me to danger: the need for the ultimate, aka, God. The hitchhiking voyages had been leaps of faith as outlandish as jumping off of cliffs with a hang glider, and I understood even then that the goal was eternal paradise. Of course I did not find it. One cannot jump into paradise; one has to be gifted with it internally.  But the reason for the drive to insanity that had run through my family had been exposed.
 
            This was made evident when the hang glider and drug pusher cousin laid all that aside shortly after his involvement with the law to become a Jesus freak. It was not a temporary turn for him in an attempt to save his life. Rather, it became his sole and soul passion, his career and hobbies reduced to side issues. It is still his primary concern today.
 
            How many of the saints were bad boys and risk takers throughout the centuries? All the Apostles had to have been, but many had become so AFTER the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Of those before? Certainly Saul, who later became Paul, was one; and Joan of Arc and St Francis (a former soldier who came into court naked to defy his father) and probably Mother Teresa and maybe even Pope John Paul 11. Most would become “insane” risk takers after the work of the Spirit, but the story of spiritual people who burned with undefined passion before and those with holy passion after is the same: God wants people, as Jesus said, who will “set the world on fire” (Luke 12:49). Of others, of those of lukewarm faith or passions, these Jesus would “spit [you] out of my mouth” (Rev 3:16) While this does not mean that all the saints were manic maniacs – many were quiet people whose fire burned silently within – it does show what this craziness is for. 
 
            Think of that then: a world where the passions that are now spent on self-gain and self-destruction are instead directed towards the passion of the Spirit.  Echoing Jesus, St Catherine of Sienna was certain that those - meaning everyone – who follow the path set for them by God would, again, “light the world on fire.” For those of a quieter persuasion, that would mean bursting out of the “life of quiet desperation” into the world as one who, in some fashion, has become a person of passion. For those of a more wild and untamed nature, this energy would be redirected, as it was for my cousin, who was several notches crazier than I.
 
            His energy was not taken away and replaced by something lukewarm. That is what wild people think, which makes them rebel against the “Man” who they believe is trying to restrict them. As we see by the lives of the saints and those who are caught up in spirit, this is simply not true. Instead, courage is bolstered even further and the limit, once contained within the things of this world, now becomes limitless.  Jumping off a cliff? Easy compared with jumping into an unfathomable universe. Tripping out on ‘shrooms? Small potatoes compared with communing with the infinite intelligence.
 
            Hey, I know. That is why, since about 2015, I write. That’s when the miracle of Spirit began to pour it on. Not all at once, mind you, but instead with small and calm tidbits of miracles that began to make a trail that led deeper and deeper into the mystery until the realization came that, Holy Shit, this is for real! This new wilderness that was revealed is so much farther, so much beyond the playgrounds of the world that all the standard crazy stuff is like a lunch break with the naughty kids smoking in the boys’ room.
 
            Not that I’m not impressed with those who climb El Capitan without ropes, but truly, if I had the faith I should, that would also be possible for me, at least in courage. The point being, that this crazy courage is merely a doorway to the most courageous act of all - to put one’s life in the hands of The Way, the persistent, mysterious wind of the Holy Spirit.  Once there, time will not be boredom interspersed with terror, but meaning and purpose interspersed with meaningful terror. For when we stand before the ultimate power, we are on a cliff of impossible height. It is then that we should tremble in terror – and in this we should delight. Life does not suck, and then we die; rather, life takes us through doors and passages that reveal greater and greater traces of purpose, until at last we come before the ultimate purpose, our reason and the reason for being. Bolstered by the impossible courage of Spirit, it is then that, with the greatest rush of terror and joy, we cast ourselves into its bottomless depths. Geronimo!
  
 
  
 
            

 
          This, and the next blog written for the beginning of next month, will be shortened due to the publishing of my next book, Basket of Reeds. On that work, let me expound just a bit;
 
            It was the first novel written after my first book, the autobiography Dream Weaver. I determined the subject by the old rule, “Write what you know!” and did so, banking on my studies in anthropology and my months’ long stay in a peasant village, along with the nearby Huichol Indians, in the backwoods of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. This was done with my then-girlfriend on a shoe-string budget back in the summer of 1982 around the time of my 28th birthday.
 
            The scenery in the mountains was astounding and the people exotic beyond anything I had yet experienced. It was a rugged, often difficult, but exciting two months’ stay.
 
            Years later, I realized that I had witnessed the beginning of the rise of a powerful d​rug cartel, which was just starting to take over the Huichol areas for the growing of opium poppies and marijuana. I had worried then that the conflict over land with the Indians would escalate, and when I started writing the novel in about 2011, I found that the struggle was already mostly over, and that the cartels had won. From what I read, I found that much of the lifestyle of the Huichols had been reduced or destroyed because they could no longer practice their former way of life without the land. Much of the action of the book revolves around the initial struggles, with an imagined battle between the two forces pivotal to the story.
 
            As for the druggies, we know what became of them: they now run large areas, even whole states, in Mexico. There will be no justice for the Indians because everyone in power is afraid and/or paid off. It is the way of our current world: corruption and money are more destructive than ever to traditional ways of life, particular to the sacred aspects. This includes Christian beliefs and practices as well.  
 
            As the book was being written years ago, the state of the world became more and more apparent with each chapter. Other discoveries also occurred, but it was not until recently that the greatest of all gradually surfaced: that I had been led all along in the writing by the Holy Spirit and had not known it.
 
            That this happened is ironic in that I had started the novel with a cynical idea: that I would include something biblical within it to make it appear “deep.” At that time, I was a practicing Catholic, but only in the modern sense. I had kept my own secular opinions about the Church and Christianity in general, even believing at times that Christ was perhaps just another prophet or guru – high up and wise, yes, but not the risen Son of God. As I wrote the novel, cynicism often was transformed into discovery, but still, I had no idea that the writing was actually using me.
 
            I didn’t know this, in fact, until I began editing and rewriting it late last summer. Over many months it then became clear: the book actually was spiritually deep, but not because of me. I had not even seen what was happening. In fact, I found so many twists and turns into the ‘deep’ when editing that I knew with a certainty that I did not have the intelligence to ever have written this stuff without great help from a higher source.
 
            And so, Spirit has had the last laugh, and I am glad. Perhaps I would never even have noticed its profound influence on this work had I not grown in faith over the years. And, as usual, the “last laugh” of Spirit was not mean, but simply overriding, helpful, hopeful, and even cheerful. It has brought the sense of fun I had when writing it up to another level, while still keeping the fun. Holy Spirit, you are amazing!
 
            And so I leave for now to start the process of turning electronic pages into permanent print. My sister, a natural artist, will be doing the cover art which will be an experience for me as well as the reader. I pray that all will go smoothly and, more importantly, that the joy that is Easter will be shared by you all.
 
           

 
          I don’t always know how we are tracked by companies on the computer. On the one hand, if I’m looking for a bed online, I expect to see bed and bedroom furniture adds for the next few months. But there are other times when they hit the mark that are downright eerie. Sometimes we are left saying, “How could ‘they’ know this? I had only mentioned it in conversation the day before?”
 
            For instance: I have never gone onto Spotify or other musical sites looking for old Spanish guitar music, although I love it and play it myself as well as I can. So how did ‘they’ think to send me an album with this type of music, “Spain on Fire,” out of the blue? Have they listened somehow to what I play on my guitar? Could be, for I also have played such boomer favorites as “Down by the River” and “Love Hurts” and have gotten a ton of classic rock sets as well, but that might be explained only by my age.
            We have to face it: privacy does not exist either on the computer or anywhere near a connected device, this being the one good reason to actually fund the US Postal Service. As far as I know, the ghouls of Silicon Valley have not yet penetrated the written mail service – as far as I know.
 
            Ahem. Hopefully I have strayed enough from the topic to boor the systems-watchers into a stupor. Probably not. AI does not need sleep, only vast quantities of energy squeezed from hydro-electric dams in the Northwest and coal-fired plants chugging away in the prairies of Wyoming. But they would not be interested in this anyway, unless one is an improved version of the near-mythical “comfort” android that many men try not to dream about, because what I am about to talk about concerns unrequited love.
 
            This was brought up not by a high school reunion picture, but by one of the Spanish guitar pieces on “Spain on Fire” that were sent to me from the electronic ether. It is called “Loco Amor,” and its refrain (with great guitar tapping and flare) is “Ay, amor loco, ay, amor loco/ Yo soy para vos y vos para otro.” : “Ay, crazy love, ay, crazy love/ I’m for you and you’re for another.” Many of us have been here in our youth. I have written an essay on it, “My Guitar,” in my book Beneath the Turning Stars, which my wife did not mind – gratefully, because it is a heart-rending and common story of lost love – because I think she knows it is not really about one woman, or maybe not about women at all. No, not a man either, but about something else that is not quite contained by human interaction. Longing love, as it turns out, can originally come from somewhere far from its specific location in time and space.
 
            The singing itself does break the heart. The pain is not a joke, even though it is given a lively and passionate presentation. This passion is for youth alone, for we elders have learned that no one, no one man or woman, can forever sustain in another the intensity of sexual fixation. Sometimes this kind of love can even turn into contempt and hatred. But there is something more in it, and it is found in the emotions put into the singing of the tune. This something, given the retrospect of age, is not about longing for a person but for an ideal. It is, then, really about achieving perfect union forever with, with...
 
            …with every longing that we have ever had, only understood after its passing. We might find that the longing for that college beauty is sustained not for the woman – 20 years later, she is simply another mother pushing a shopping cart – but for the promise of youth at that time. Sometimes we remember the brilliant autumn leaves more than her face that time we took a walk with her; sometimes, we remember the friends that we had then more than her caress; and always, we recall what the ideal of youth has become for us more than the sound of her voice.
 
            That ideal is about the hopes and dreams that we once had that are now vanishing, their possibilities made impossible by cold reality or by current circumstances which will not improve. This longing is about what we wished we had done and how we wished we had lived when we had the chance. It is about hindsight and foolishness and wasted youth. The heartbreak of our unrequited love has, with age, transformed itself into the heartbreak we now have about life, with the super-imposed face of the lost one placed on top to make it more understandable. And more - to make it more tolerable, for we most certainly have found or can find other loves in our lives, but we can never re-live youth to make it perfect and happy as it should have been. Ah, to have the wisdom of old age and the vigor of youth! How many millions have thought that?
 
            Still, that wisdom is not true wisdom. We have not lived up to the possibilities of youth not because we erred, but because we cannot, not then and not now, even if we were transformed into our most perfect youthful selves. We cannot because nothing of the corporeal self or the physical world can ever be raised to lasting perfection. Even cathedrals turn to rubble, and nature rots and tumbles. Our imagination has turned our youth into a dreamy world of endless possibilities that we were so close to achieving and lost only because of ignorance. But that is not true. It is never true. There is no one that I know who has reached and maintained that perfection – no one. Not even in the world of the rich famous are there those who have reached this permanent state. They always continue to strive for more, and if they don’t, they become withdrawn like Howard Hughes or simply disappear altogether, perhaps into contemplation, trying to understand why the fulfillment of their dreams has not led to fulfillment.   
 
            Where has this longing come from? Those who have read these essays before know what I am going to say, which is the truth: the longing comes from an inner knowledge of God and what we are missing by our separation from him. But youthful sexual fixation, aka, infatuation, is very important in that it makes perfectly clear to us the pain that is in this separation. Such an experience removes the separation from God from the classroom or pulpit to the heart. I recall that a few breakups were unbearable, so much so that I don’t want to remember them. The pain dissipated with time, usually within a few months, and the girls involved simply became normal girls again, but the memory, the longing remained. It is painful still, even though I now know where this pain and longing come from - especially now, because I now know where this pain and longing come from.
 
            From flesh and blood to the heart to the spirit is a short journey in our person but a long one in our mind. We do not cry or mope or pound our fists over the loss of God as we might have over that girl because we are, as St Paul says, “of the flesh.” But our spirit is only hidden, less than skin deep, only unknown to us like sound to a deaf man. The pain of lost sexual love awakens us to the sound of spirit and its longing. It is the sign that our hearts are still alive and can sense the needs of the spirit. So much so that, if we pass that old high school crush in the supermarket parking lot, we should thank her and open the car door for her and help her put in the walker, for the pain was never her fault. She only helped you understand that you needed a greater love, love that went beyond home and parents and family; that you needed, in fact, a perfect and lasting union, one that you had so hoped she would give you.
 
            She was only a girl who is now an old lady with a walker, but the pain and longing remain. Thank her again, and then look behind the pain and longing. The face you see will not be hers, but the dawning of all you expected from youth and could never achieve. You had placed your hope on sexual attraction, which was the beginning, and now you can drive from the parking lot towards home knowing that it was Spirit calling you from behind all along.          
           
 
           
 
           

 
            “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” (Jesus, in Mathew 26:38)
 
            For those of us who are Christian, it is the Lenten season, which gets at the very heart of what God is for us. It is the time leading up to the Passion, which recounts the sufferings that Jesus endured from the beginning of his beseeching prayer on the Mount of Olives to the crucifixion.  And passion it is. The brief quote above embraces the entire journey, from the sorrow for the sufferings that Jesus foresaw, to the treachery of Judas, to the cowardice of the apostles, to the hatred of his own people at the trial, to the whole bloody journey, right on through to his death on the cross. It is followed by Easter, which encompasses the miraculous resurrection and the promise of paradise for all who die believing in the saving divinity of the Christ.
 
            Most of us are at familiar with at least a bit of this, regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof. Such has been the guiding myth (I use that word as a general definition for a culture-wide guiding spiritual story) of Western civilization from the time of the late Roman Empire to today, however dated it may now seem for many. So I leave it to others to relate the greater story or to relive it themselves. Rather, I want here to concentrate on the particular words themselves, “sorrowful, even to death” to get a notion of just what this means about the creator of the universe, and of what this says about our place and our destiny within this unfathomable creation.
 
            I write this not as some dry dissertation, even as it may have started as such, but rather as a reflection of an experience I had recently that made me very sorrowful, if not unto death, than at least unto discomfort and emotional pain. 
 
            It had to do with someone who I have known all my life, someone with whom I shared strong roots, but with whom I later veered well away on my own path. That veering away itself has become a continual thorn in the side of our relationship, particularly concerning politics and the cultural shifts that much of these politics have endorsed. Even with this, the relationship had already been strained by our differing emotional groundings that have led to different lifestyle choices. For him, they have led to great personal sorrows and even tragedy. Combined with the personality that led to these sorrows and the political views, my sympathies for him have long been constrained. In other words, I have seen him as a pain in the ass for whom an eye-role and a “you gotta be kidding me” are (with the exception of the great tragedy) appropriate responses. Until, that is, an instant a few days ago.
 
            It must’ve been due to the season of the passion, for it simply came out of nowhere. It was this: suddenly, I felt his pain and suffering, and in that, felt my own heart-breaking response that might have been hiding there all along. Suddenly, my care for him became manifest in a compassion that I did not think I had for anyone, not just him. It was profound and devastating and unwanted. As uncomfortable as it was, however, it somehow hinted at a growing sense of fulfillment.  It brought alive Christ’s words at the beginning of his passion, of ‘sorrowful, even to death,’ and with that, the heart of the relationship that we have with the creator.
 
            It is breathtaking. As stated in the beginning, the sorrow encompasses the whole journey to the crucifixion. There is human fear, as all humans would have before such a premonition, but there is also in his pain the pure, direct voice of God expressed perfectly. In this sorrow is not the thunderous and punishing god that so many have rejected in our century of material ease, but rather the broken-hearted God of love that we have heard about but find impossible to understand. What is this love? It is certainly not erotic, and it seems to be something that is far beyond whatever “love” we may have in friendship.  But that, the latter, is what it is.
 
            It is this genuine love of ‘brother’ that is God’s love. It is what I had felt and learned from. It is different from what we usually feel because we have become hardened from hurt and are fearful of expressing the compassion that is the true reflection – the image – of God. God is not afraid of anything. He does not dissimulate or hide behind anything or try to impress or save face or any of the other techniques that we have perfected for self-protection. ‘Be like these little ones,” the children, admonished Jesus, not because they are ignorant, but because they have not yet formed their shields; because they still retain shreds of what our relationship to God should be - and to what God’s relationship to us still is, and always will be.
 
            This relationship is about complete openness, absolute honesty, and the all-seeing of our hidden hearts; and more: with this comes pure, unfiltered compassion. In Christ’s lament in the Garden where he sweats blood, he is broken-hearted by the betrayal of mankind. There is no room, none, for hatred, just as there never has been from divinity. At the core of the entire passion is a caring for us that total. He sees into the pain of our hearts, the wounds that have been passed on from generation to generation, and the hate and resentment they have formed. He knows how we are made and how we should be; he knows of the absolute open relationship that we as a species once had for him, and is sorrowful to death that this has been broken. This sorrow is for him as well as for us, as mutual as it was for the human and god figure in Christ that he sent, both human and divine. The sorrow is devastating because it is unshielded. However, this sorrow, too, is mutual, for we cannot obliterate who we truly are. Even with all the negative passions and resentments and wounds, we hurt just as God does Were we to have the courage to be absolutely honest and open, we, too, would feel the sorrow unto death that is there, hidden and turning within.  
 
            This sorrow is behind all our atrocities both big and small. The passion of Christ was intended to open our minds to the depth of our heart, where our true compassion and courage lie – courage even unto death. For that was our true nature at creation. When the link to God was ruptured, so, too, was our consciousness of our true nature. Christ came to heal the rupture. As part of this healing, where he literally sweats blood, he accepted the burden of the greatest love that can be given: that of giving one’s life.   
 
            What is being conveyed here has been said so many times before. The difference for me has been the grounding experience I had through this certain person. It exposed in deep personal terms my own rocky heart, and the compassion that I should have. It also exposed what the true nature of God’s love is, and what we are called to be.  It is not a call to simply be a nice guy. Rather, it is a call to reflect the relationship that God has with us, as expressed through the agony in the garden, as far from “niceness” as the ocean is from a bathtub. In realizing the depths of this love, we see that we have been cut off from our very life. Without the open and continual relationship with God, we are like zombies, like the ‘dead who bury the dead’ as Jesus once noted. Without it, we are without our central purpose, and deep within we know it. In this secret knowledge of our loss is outrage and self-hate. In this lies the seed of all the evil of the world.
 
            We cannot open our hearts entirely by ourselves, just as - as the Buddhists say - the tongue can’t taste the tongue. So this bridge, the god-human, was made. And that is why all of history is drawn around the Agony, where Christ’s soul is “very sorrowful, even to death.” For there is our link, were we only to see it. There in the Passion is our link and the revelation of God’s essential nature, which radiates such pure compassion that it renders the heart. Here is where the beginning lies, where our rendered heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh. Such is the depths of the Passion, such is its sorrow, and such is its hope: to bring us back to the relationship in which we share in the glory of the divinity and of all creation. 
 
            The sweating of blood is no exaggeration. There on the Mount of Olives, all of our evils and sufferings and despair were brought forth, all there because we have cut off our roots to the divine. And from there, all of those evils were suffered by the Christ so that we might become aware that we are broken; so that from there, we might allow ourselves to be repaired.
 
            It is no small thing, this sharing of the suffering of another that was handed to me. In fact, it has been handed to all of us 2,000 years ago, in every detail, from beginning to end. How broken must I have been to not understand? And how broken must I be that I will no longer understand tomorrow?   
 
 
           
 
 
 
           

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

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

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

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

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

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

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