Contes du Maroc

Chisos Interlude

2012-01-06T16:54:00.001-06:00

This is me on the first day of 2012

Christmas break afforded me the great pleasure of taking a break from the studying, working, and worrying that has of late monopolized my time. Getting out in nature is unquestionably my favorite way to get away. Up until late high school, getting away meant escaping into my room to play video games. Neither of my parents were big nature fans. Occasionally, we would go on a family "camping trip." This usually consisted of parking a pop-up camper in a large gravel circle somewhere near the mountains and eating hot dogs for a few days. Needless to say, the experiences were lacking. This all changed late in high school, when my Aunt Rachel and Uncle Joshua invited me to backpack with them in the Chisos Mountains. I went along, not because I loved nature, but because I loved my Aunt and Uncle and, furthermore, it was a way to assert independence.

Keep in mind that I had never until this time experienced wilderness. I was a video-gamer; I weighted 190 lbs (about 50 lbs more than I do today) and had no muscle mass to speak of, other than what was required to transport an overweight kid around high school hallways. Despite my ill-preparedness, I absolutely loved the experience. I never knew that the outdoors could be so captivating, so compelling. It was love at first hike.

Since that day, I have striven to use every available occasion to strap on my pack and have an adventure. I returned in 2008 to Big Bend National Park with a group consisting of friends, strangers, and family. All involved had a blast, despite a freak snow storm on the first night (this park is in the desert and snow is pretty rare, even in the mountains).

This trip, then, was my 3rd trip to these ghostly desert mountains. Now, I usually have pretty good luck with bringing newcomers to backpacking outings. The one exception (before this trip) can hardly count, since the disappointed party and I took advantage of our alone time together to discuss the future of our relationship (it wasn't a particularly happy conversation).

Anyway, I had pretty high expectations for this trip. The camping party consisted of two others: a really good friend from college, and a guy from college that I knew only a little (and a veteran backpacker). We'll call them Stanley and Barry, respectively.

Day 1: We meet at Stanley's house in Southern Kansas. Stanley is running behind, and we end up leaving at 7:00, much later than we had planned. I drive the group through the night to Southwestern Texas. Leaving late ended up being okay, because on:

Day 2: We ended up arriving at the Ranger Station 10 minutes before they open. Score! Here is the view we saw while driving through the park, just as the first rays of light bent around the earth to distinguish the landscape.

No, this is not a Rothko. Look carefully at the center and you'll see the mountains.

Barry and I gathered our permits. Our first site was Toll Mountain, which lay right at the foot of the trail to Emory Peak, the highest point in the park. Just what we needed. The second site lay right on the Southeastern Rim. The ranger told us it was the best site in the whole park. Nice!

The first leg of the journey was straight uphill, but it wasn't very far at all (only 3.5 miles), so we took the morning pretty easy. First, we drove to the Southern section of the park and enjoyed viewing some prehistoric petroglyphs and petrographs, hot springs, and the desert surrounding the Rio Grande. After some hiking around, we checked out Boquillas canyon, formed by the Rio Grande. All very exciting, all very fun. Early afternoon, we head back north to the basin and gear up for the trip.

The first signs of trouble came along with a park ranger. Seeing our packs, he asked about our itinerary.

"Toll Mountain?" he said, pondering our task. "You'll probably make it."
"Alright fellas, time to get a move on," was my slightly concerned exhortation.

We started up the trail, but it became apparent very early in that Stanley was not going to make it. Or rather, he might, but not any time that day. I took Barry aside and made a rather bold suggestion: "If we hike on ahead as fast as we can, we might be able to come back down to Stanley with empty packs and help him carry his load up the mountain." The boys agreed this was the only sensible line of action.

Thus commenced the most torturous section of the entire vacation. Barry and I hiked our little hearts out, up endless unrelentingly steep switchbacks, pausing only when absolutely necessary. At one point, a ranger stopped us and asked about our destination. After looking at our permit, he asked, "Where is the third guy?" We told him the story. The ranger's expression flashed to a mixture of disbelief, pity, and worry. And then, as if giving up on us, he said, "Just... be careful, guys." And he continued on his way down the mountain.

A view through "the window" as the sun lowered itself in the sky.

Barry and I made it to the campsite in commendable time, and with indomitable spirit, we promptly headed back down, with empty packs. We met Stanley, who was eating a sandwich on the side of the trail, not too much further along than when we had left him. My first thought was, there is no possible way we will make it before dark. And we didn't. Luckily, the waxing crescent moon provided near-adequate light, and our flashlights made up the difference. We had no black bear attacks, and nearly zero mountain lion ambushes. Barry and I felt pretty heroic after our successful "search and rescue" mission.

Campsite at Toll Mountain

Day 3: The three of us spent the morning climbing up to the top of Emory Peak, the highest point in the park. From the top, two countries are visible, as well as a vast expanse of desert and mountain-land. Absolutely breathtaking. Along with the view, I enjoyed the most perfect orange imaginable. We're talking Platonic Ideal perfect, folks.

Back at the bottom of Emory Peak trail, we took a short lunch break. Stanley shared with us his reservations about making it to the next campsite. "I just don't think I can make it, guys," he confessed, and as if to emphasize his point, he walked to the edge of the trail and threw up twice. The curious Mexican Jays gathered around, and the two girls who had been watching our group with curiosity from a nearby boulder got up to leave. I handed the keys over to Stanley, and we parted ways.

The rest of the day was amazing. Barry and I made our way down the mountain from Emory Peak and into the section of the park called Boot Canyon. The scenery switched from mostly-succulents and small Piñon Pines to mostly deciduous trees like oaks. Soon, we were climbing again, and by late afternoon, we found ourselves standing on the edge of the world.

View from the South Rim, New Year's Eve 2011

Bonus: our camp neighbors were super-friendly. Barry and I made camp, had some dinner, and reclined that night on the lip of the mountains. Below us, the ghostly shadows of the mountains, peppered by the occasional flickering campfire. Ahead: the beautiful starry night, dominated by Orion the Hunter. It was perfect.

Day 4: Barry and I got up really early to watch the first sunrise of 2012. Our neighbors had the same idea and perched themselves along their own section of the rim, just to the south.

Happy New Year indeed

After this spectacular show, we made some chatter with the neighbors, wished them a terrific 2012, and were on our way. Stanley was, to our relief, still alive, and furthermore, still in the car. The three of us left the park in silence, contemplating all that had taken place. By the time we had dropped off Stanley in southern Kansas, I was barely holding on to consciousness. The previous evening had included savage wind, and, together with the early rise, prevented me from getting a lot of sleep.

Honestly, I don't remember much of the drive back to Hutchinson. Much of it seemed like a dream, and at one point, I recall driving around a strange part of Hutchinson, not knowing where I was or how I got there. We made it though, still alive and with minimal injuries.

What a way to bring in the new year! And now, back to fretting constantly about the Peace Corps :D

Moroccan Cooking Practice

2011-12-13T15:20:00.004-06:00

Mmmm. Just a moment. Let me savor the memory of these dishes while I look at the pictures.

Okay. First: I have heard that Moroccans like to eat a lot, but I was not prepared for how much food these recipes actually made. The recipes I used noted that they were good to feed 6-8 as part of a meal. For the three people who were eating these dishes, I cut the recipes in half. Still, there was enough food for several meals of leftovers. Second: Moroccans take great pride in their gastronomy, and these recipes show it. The food requires lots of preparation. An example:

Here we have a very typical Moroccan dish: Couscous with 7 Vegetables. The couscous grains were first rinsed and allowed to dry while the grains swelled with moisture. Then, they were steamed over a broth. Then, they were taken out, moistened a bit more, tossed, rolled out, cooled, and dried. Then, they were steamed again. Finally, they were taken out and fluffed one more time before being served. The vegetables stewing underneath were prepared in equally-detailed ways. The spice combination was wonderful. No one flavor overpowered another. The dish had sweet, spicy, and savory elements perfectly blended. It contained carrots, raisins, turnips, tomatoes, zucchini, squash (as a substitute for pumpkin), a pepper, onions, chickpeas, and lots of herbs and spices. Delicious! I rate this one a success.

The next dish was risky. My mother wasn't sure about it when she heard the ingredients. Here is the finished product:

It's called Bisteeya, and it's a layered dish: chicken on the bottom, a creamy, egg-y, parsley-y layer in the middle, and ground almonds with cinnamon and sugar on the top. The whole thing is wrapped in delicate pastry leaves and baked like a pie. This thing took forever. It's definitely a labor of love.

The results were fantastic. Everybody loved it, and I had a friend try some leftovers. He demand more. Success!

Here they are on the table. You may not be able to tell, but the Couscous in the green dish could fill a small bathtub.

On another night, I prepared two more dishes: the harira soup and a chicken dish with olives, lemons, and eggs. Both were terrific, but I didn't get pictures; my batteries had died. Both of these were a hit as well! The chicken dish just smelled so dang good that I wanted to hang it from my rear-view mirror.

The big meal is coming up. Now I have all of the most difficult dishes out of the way. I can't wait to eat the real stuff in the real country with the real people.

By the way, all of my recipes came from Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert.

Questions and Answers (part two)

2011-12-03T11:42:00.001-06:00

What is the Peace Corps all about, anyway?

Most people tend to have a vaguely positive impression of the Peace Corps, but couldn't really tell you what it does, exactly. Some people I've talked to think it's some kind of anti-war group, and others think it's a institution for cultural imperialism. Both are inaccurate.

First, let me show you where the Peace Corps operates today, and then I'll explain its philosophy.

You better appreciate this map; it took me a long time to fill in all of these countries.

The darkly shaded countries are the ones in which the Peace Corps currently works, and the lightly shaded countries are sites of past projects. Often, volunteers are pulled out a country if the political situation is getting too hairy, but will be replaced after relative stability is reached. Notice that North America, Australia, Japan, and Western Europe are excluded. Also note that almost all other countries have at one time or another been included (noticably absent is Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and several Middle-Eastern countries).

As you might have guessed by now, the Peace Corps necessarily involves itself in developing countries. There are actually three goals of the Peace Corps:

Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

In other words, it's part cultural exchange, part trained volunteerism. As to the trained men and women, they can be almost anything: engineers, doctors, farmers, and teachers are all common Peace Corps roles.

Volunteers (PCVs) go through an initial training period in a group before being assigned their individual site placements. At that point, they typically serve alone. My impression is that, as a Youth Developer (YD), I have a higher chance of having a site-mate.

PCVs are typically issues mountain bikes at their site, as they are not supposed to be driving. We get a living allowance that will cover food and housing (about the same quality food and housing that the community enjoys - we don't want to be the rich American living in the small mansion on the corner).

Although it is possible to drop out early (quitters!), the full Peace Corps term is 27 months. In addition to the primary project which is assigned by my superiors, I am expected to complete a secondary project in this time, a project that is completely my own. This, by the way, is really exciting.

Any questions about the Peace Corps? Leave them in the comments. Or come ask me. If you want.

Practicing Moroccan Cooking: The Plan

2011-12-01T12:48:00.001-06:00

A Moroccan Tajine

Those of you who know me well know that I like to cook, and one of my short-term goals is to familiarize myself with Moroccan cooking. To this end, I have planned a Moroccan meal to prepare for the family for Christmas. Here is what I hope to make:

Bread
In this part of the world, bread is sacred. If someone finds a piece lying on the ground, the custom is to pick it up, kiss it, and set it someplace safe. Moroccan bread is chewy, soft-crusted, absorbent, and makes for a great utensil. I plan to have plenty of it.

Mixed Herb Salad & Carrot Salad
Moroccans begin their meals with a series of hot or cold salads. I'll have two kinds prepared, plenty of herbs and spices in each.

Harira Soup
This is a traditional soup. During the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims fast during the day. At sunset, they break the fast with this breakfast: Harira Soup and a bowl of fresh dates. The soup of course has many spices, as well as the addition of smen, a cooked, salted butter.

Djej Masquid Bil Beid or Chicken with Eggs, Lemon, and Olives
A classic Moroccan dish. Moroccans are known for their perfection of their meat-fruit combinations. They love including dates, raisins, lemons, and many other fruits with their lamb or chicken dishes. This dish calls for another Moroccan specialty: preserved lemons. These are made by letting fresh lemons soak in a brine with salt and sometimes various spices until preserved (about 30 days, minimum).

Tajine of Lamb with Pears
Again, a meat-fruit combination, sweet and spicy. Tajines are very common in Morocco. They are the name of a dish and a cooking implement. Tajines are earthenware dishes fitted with a conical lid. They are set over coals so that everything slow-cooks, and all of the delicious juices are trapped inside.

7-Vegetable Couscous
Moroccans take great pride in their couscous. It is reportedly like no other couscous in the world - so delicate, so savory. Meals typically include a course of couscous, and this 7-vegetable version is a big deal in Fez.

M'hanncha or "The Snake"
Time for dessert! This is a traditional Moroccan pastry filled with almond paste and coiled up like a fierce serpent.

All of this will be served with plenty of mint tea, the beverage of choice for Moroccans. They like their tea very minty and very sweet!

This is the plan, anyway. I'll post pictures and comments after the meal. Wish me luck!

Questions People Have Asked Me About Morocco (and the Peace Corps) (part one)

2011-12-01T09:11:00.001-06:00

A few common reactions I get from people when I tell them I'm going to Morocco for the Peace Corps:

A: "Oh, how great! Are you having to learn French?"

B: "Morocco, where is that?"

C: // uncomfortable silence, perhaps slow nodding //

The people in group A know enough about history and geography to engage in the conversation. The people in group B don't know as much, but are still engaged and want to learn. They are not ashamed of their questions. Group C people do not know where Morocco is, but also feel as if they can't ask any questions about it, because that would reveal that they do not in fact know everything in the world, and that would make them feel foolish.

Well fear not, unquestioning ones, for I am about to share the fruits of the labors of those who have mustered up the courage to let their curiosity show. Here is the first:

Cool, Morocco! Where is that?

Morocco is the country in the Northwest corner of Africa.

Spain protrudes from the top of the picture while the lower 3/5 is taken up mostly by Morocco. A few things to note:

1) Morocco is bordered by the Atlantic on its west and the Mediterranean on its North.
2) Morocco comes really freaking close to Spain.
3) Morocco has lots of coast, lots of fertile land, lots of desert, and a large mountain range, dividing the fertile land from the desert. These are the Atlas Mountains.

Morocco is roughly the same size as California and has a comparable population (in terms of quantity, not demeanor). It is a Constitutional Monarchy (more on that in a later post). The main spoken languages are Arabic, Berber, and French. It is 99% Muslim, and the people are a mix of the indigenous Berbers and Arabs.

I've been reading a book called Morocco, A Country Study, put out by The American University. According to the title page, research was completed in 1985. So yeah, it's outdated, but the history has been very in-depth (and readable!), and anyway, it'll have to do while I wait for my Inter-Library Loan books to show up.

I'll return to answer some more questions about my impending adventure into the Arab world.

Four More Months

2011-11-22T10:35:00.000-06:00

In four months, I will be settling in to my training routine in Rabat, the capital city of Morocco. This will begin my 27-month Moroccan adventure. It is hard to prepare for such a journey; there are just too many ways I can ready myself and not enough time to do it. For example, I want to learn the language. But which language do I learn? Currently, I am focusing on two. For Modern Standard Arabic, I am working through Mastering Arabic 1 by Wightwick & Gaafar. And for French, I am working through Ultimate French by Living Language. Even so, MSA, while widely understood in the Arabic world, is not the language spoken by Moroccans. Instead, most Moroccans speak Moroccan Arabic, also known as Darija (or Derija (or Darja)). In the cities, they may speak French (or even Spanish). In rural areas, they may speak a Berber dialect, the language of the indigenous people of Morocco. To complicate matters further, I've read that while French-speaking Moroccans can understand foreign French-speakers, the reverse is not always true, due to the Moroccans' thick accents. Ultimately, I may spend the next four months poring over these languages only to arrive in Rabat understanding nothing of the language around me.

Recently, I spoke with a Peace Corps volunteer who recommended I not think about language so much, but rather focus on the cultural aspects of the country, and the attitudes of people groups toward one another in particular. To this end, I have a short reading list to get through which will hopefully provide me with some foundation for understanding. The first is called Lords of the Atlas: Adventure, Mystery, and Intrigue in Morocco, 1893-1956 by Gavin Maxwell.

In Morocco, I will be a youth developer. The responsibility implied in the job title is a great weight on me, and I want to prepare myself for it spiritually. Thus, I have on my reading list Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. Besides teaching these kids English, I'll be allowed a secondary project of my choosing. This could entail anything from theatre to a volunteer club to organized sports. My jobs at the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center and Dillon Nature Center have interested me in perhaps starting up a naturalist society or astronomy club with the kids. There are just too many possibilities, and I'm afraid I'll just have to trust that I'll know better once I'm over there.

In addition, I'd like to become stronger before leaving, for obvious reasons. I've been rather lax these past months with my fitness regiment, but if I turn up the discipline I may be able to leave in late March with a confident physique. Also, it would be nice to learn Moroccan cooking before going over there, also for obvious reasons.

Ach! So much to do in so little time. Help keep me accountable, readers. I'll post at the end of each of these next four months to report my progress. Wish me luck!

Language Time

2011-11-09T07:10:00.000-06:00

I've been especially frustrated lately with my lack of discipline in regards to language learning. Somehow, I always manage to find a way to put it off, even while finding time to do stupid things, like hang out at coffee shops.

What I need is a concrete goal. Something like this: I will finish all 20 units in my Arabic book by Christmas. That is about two units every week. I think I can manage this. It will be a challenge, but it is not impossible. In any case, it is much better than my previous goal: I will learn as much French and Arabic as I can by the time I leave for the Peace Corps.

A Long Awaited Letter

2011-09-05T17:44:00.000-05:00

I've waited well over a year for this letter to arrive. Starting with this post, I am going to record my journey henceforth into life as a Moroccan volunteer.

First steps:
* read the various packets and handbooks distributed with my invitation.
* read Inside Islam to get a feel for what the 99% Muslim majority believes
* read up on Moroccan history
* begin learning French, the language of Moroccan commerce, politics, etc.
* begin learning Arabic, the official spoken language of Morocco

I'll post updates as I set up my learning schedule and start getting through books.

Seeing All That Is Around You

2011-09-05T16:45:00.001-05:00

The stark fact of existence is one of the biggest surprises we have to discover in our lives. We exist. We are. And we exist as. What I mean by that phrase - "We exist as" - is that we (people) only have meaning in a context. We exist as primates, and this is meaningful. Inherent in our primate nature is our existence as social creatures. We communicate dominance and obedience, establish our territories to one another, display might. And while these traits are taken for granted by many people too busy to notice, they are not unused.

We are also curious.

This, I fear, is a trait that has fallen into disuse. What has happened to the bug-collector? Replaced by the movie collector. The star gazer? Replaced by the media junkie. We are curious about our own inventions, but most of us have lost interest in things outside the realm of human artifact. This is not sad. It is tragic. And perhaps ruinous.

You will never feel a surer sense of your place in this world until you foster that curiosity - that natural curiosity - of plants and planets.

Go outside, look at the way the leaves in the trees move eerily with the wind. Observe the orb-weaver building its trap. Follow the flight of a falcon with wide eyes full of wonder. Walk somewhere new, somewhere empty of human artifacts, like a pasture, meadow, or forest.

You will feel as light as air, and as in-touch as ever. You will see things exist, and you will see in just what way you exist as.

Reality as Spectating

2011-07-12T19:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, as I was meditating (read: trying to meditate), I spotted a very bad little habit that I've come into. So subtle it is, that I do not even know how long I've practiced it. I think it may be causing a great deal of unhappiness, and I am eager to rid myself of it.

This discovery took place as I was trying to rid my thoughts of the heat of the room. I was sitting on the floor with a little desk fan at my back. In order to cool off, I tried to imagine that I was sitting atop a mountain in China, a gentle breeze at my back. I pictured myself sitting there, only the top of the hill peeking over the clouds, and me in my meditative position on top of the hill. I imagined that the billowy clouds were moving gently, rapidly, all around.

And then I thought, Why is it that whenever I try to imagine myself in a situation, I experience the imagination as though outside myself?

I thought some more. Every thought of potential future situations follow this pattern. I view the scene as though from a camera lens, or from the point of view of an attentive friend who came along to keep me company. Thinking about future jobs (a topic that has been on my mind a lot recently), peace corps service, making new friends -- all of these I imagine from a perspective outside myself.

What does this mean? And is this normal?

This is perhaps a characteristic of a person who is more concerned about what a certain action, behavior, or attitude looks like and less concerned with what these things feel like.

There used to be a time when I wanted to climb mountains just for the experience of climbing mountains. I thought I have the same reasons for wanting to climb mountains today. But. Maybe I'm really just in love with the idea of climbing a mountain. That is, I love that if someone were to be viewing my life in a movie, that it would be an exciting part of the movie for them. Am I so concerned with the external aesthetic effect of my actions that I've choked and killed any semblance of pure desire?

And is this a result of watching too many movies? Reality is only experienced as a spectator. What a sad way to live. I certainly hope I'm wrong about this...

Anyway, I've decided to try to re-orient my thinking, to see things in the first person again. I hope that I can start to feel more immediately my own wants and desires, those things with which I fear I've become hopelessly out of touch.

New Thoughts About Old Thoughts

2011-05-04T21:21:00.000-05:00

So today I was going through a bunch of old notebooks I had stashed away in one of my dresser drawers. I was curious what kinds of things I had written in these things, some of which date back to my first years of high school.

A few observations:

1) I had an awesome sense of humor. Where did that go?

2) My memories of the past often do not include my emotional state of the time. I read many entries about how miserable I was at certain points of my life, and I have a hard time remembering those feelings.

3) To build on #2, my past feelings aren't the only things that are unrecognizable. Some of those things were written by an entirely different person, somebody I would hardly recognize as myself were I to have coffee with him today.

4) My handwriting varies from wildly illegible to quite good. Why the hell didn't I just always write in the latter style?

5) Some of the events I wrote about are still too painful for me to re-read, even after years of distance.

6) Nevertheless, I found that going through these was a great way to take stock of where I have come so far.

7) I need to write more often.

I'll leave you with a few entries I found detailing my first Greyhound bus experience:

Thursday

Arrived at Kansas City Greyhound station shortly before 7:00. Next bus leaves at 1:00am. Was accosted, shortly after arriving, by a man claiming to need gas money for an elderly handicapped relative, or something of the sort. Told him I've no money. Not looking forward to the 6 hour wait...

A large, unkempt man sat next to me - not much said, but seemed nice enough.

A girl sat beside me on the bench earlier. Perhaps my age, perhaps a little younger. She looked nervous. Her glances shot dramatically from her extreme left to her extreme right and back again. Wondered if this was her first time traveling. Or perhaps she was confused.

*Note to self: Falafel = gas*

Friday

Arrived at Sioux Falls about an hour late. Slept most of the way on last bus - almost didn't get a seat. This station is far smaller - no worries about getting a seat on the next bus. The farther north I travel the more normal people seem to be. That Falafel's still giving me problems.

Why the City Gets Me Down

2011-05-02T20:09:00.000-05:00

In March, I'm taking a much-needed leave of the city.

Kansas City, thank you for the music, the food, the museums, and the hot hang-out spots, but frankly, you can go to Hell.

A few weeks ago, I found myself standing at my window as the sun was setting, contemplating the streets and buildings below me. What I said came out almost automatically:

"Every man, woman, and child in this city will die by my hand."

Yep. I need a vacation.

The city is just too full of people. Every day that passes, I feel my patience for other people waning, my disgust bubbling over. In traffic, in the suburbs, in the library - it doesn't matter where I am - the people that surround me are rude, ignorant, or worse.

Sometimes, I watch the sun go down over the West Bottoms from the edge of the park across the street. I like to watch the traffic, the trains, and the people in miniature. It's like a little anthill down there. Usually, an eagle or a flock of crows will catch my attention, will fascinate me for a while.

I think that is what I miss. Humans grew up (evolutionarily) in places with other living things - a staggering variety of living things. Cities are places where almost every creature is a human. The few non-human creatures are dirty birds that feed off of our trash, or animals that we have domesticated. Even the grass and trees are there for decoration, but thank God that we at least have those.

The sense of the wild is absent here. In its place is all the worst things about people. God, give me some space, solitude, serenity. Give me a herd of something, a coyote, a fox, a wildflower, a wild something-or-other.

Jesus, Lover of my Soul

2011-02-28T23:03:00.000-06:00

An old friend and spiritual mentor of mine left a comment on my last "Religious Conversation" Post. It provoked so much thought that I wanted to share it with everybody, because I know quite a few of my religious friends are reading this, and I know quite a few of you who would make a similar statement. Here it is:

There is an element in this conversation that is being overlooked (at least, I presume). There is an aesthetic beauty and, more, an affection, which Steven appears to have for God. This is not illogical; in fact, all human beings exhibit it for something. It may be subjective, and it is not conclusive, but it is completely logical. And I can't imagine an argument that would refute it.

It is something like a man saying, "I love my wife. I appreciate her many virtues and charms; I believe her to be the woman most worthy of my affection and lifelong commitment." If I say this and someone were to say to me, "But EVERY man says that of his bride! Wouldn't you at least consider the possibility that she is unfaithful, lude, stupid and ugly, and that there may be another woman more worthy than she?", I would reply, "She has proven herself to me time and again; what reason do I have to do that? Besides, I love her!"

If that doesn't fit, perhaps another similar analogy might be for someone to state to an art lover, "Wouldn't you at least consider the possibility that Rembrandt is a lousy painter?" The man would laugh in the face of such a suggestion.

To understand this line of thought, one must realize that the Christian faith is more than set of theological propositions (although it is at least that). Therefore, to prove to someone (or to everyone) that Christianity is "untrue" or that Jesus is not the Son of God and Savior of the world, it would have to be engaged on a far greater spectrum of levels than just "Christianity is irrational." Perhaps one does think that my marriage to my wife is irrational; but one will have to get past her obvious loveliness in order to convince me of it.

Again, this is not the whole issue, but it is certainly an important part of it; anyone who loves and delights in something beautiful and good is not behaving irrationally. This is basic aesthetics (and I daresay basic human nature).

--------------------------
And my response:
--------------------------
I'm afraid your analogy isn't sound, Jeremy.

But before I tell you why, I want to address the last part of your message, because it makes a truth claim about others' capacity for understanding your analogies in the first place.

To understand this line of thought, one must realize that the Christian faith is more than set of theological propositions (although it is at least that). Therefore, to prove to someone (or to everyone) that Christianity is "untrue" or that Jesus is not the Son of God and Savior of the world, it would have to be engaged on a far greater spectrum of levels than just "Christianity is irrational."

I'm not really sure where you are coming from by saying this, Jeremy, so I hope you'll clarify it for me if I have it wrong.

On the one hand, you are completely right about needing to engage believers on more than just a "cold logic" level. Christian devotion encompasses an immense, complicated tangle of emotions - love and guilt, fear and hope, among others. To effectively engage with a devout individual, I should appeal to these feelings, as well as feelings of what some some might call "spirituality," although they can and do exist in a secular context - things like a yearning for purpose, a fascination with finding our place in the world, the desire to believe in some overarching force that guides our lives. I would love to engage Stephan on these levels as well, and I hope the conversation gets that far.

To fail in understanding these things is to fail in understanding why Christianity is so appealing to Christians. If that is what you mean to say, I completely agree with you.

On the other hand, you could be trying to say something else, something that is dangerous to clear thinking. Something along these lines:

"No amount of rational argumentation can convince me that God isn't real. The reality of God is beyond rational thought. It's bigger than rational thought."

To non-Christians, this reads as:

"Clearly, I don't have any rational reasons to continue believing in light of all that's been discussed. But I don't want to stop believing."

I have seen many a Christian abuse this line and many a conversation end frustratingly with the Christian shaking his head in pity, saying, "I don't know why God hasn't revealed his truth to you, Deric. But when he does, I think you'll understand."

This kind of argumentation, besides being extremely condescending, is simply dodging the responsibility to provide solid ground on which to adopt your religion's teachings.

And when you are making truth claims about the universe, it is completely fair for others to demand that solid ground.

In fact, for those who consider themselves "lovers of truth," this demand is not only fair, but an intellectual responsibility.

Let's say you and I were to go for a walk in a public park, and we encounter a stranger. He walks up to us and says, "Sirs, did you know that Canada is secretly amassing an army, and that they plan to invade our country soon?" I ask, "Why do you believe this?" And you would think it perfectly normal that I asked him to justify his claim.

If, at this point, the stranger becomes defensive and says, "Look pal, I just know. I can feel that it's true. My emotions are all tied up into it. I come out here every day telling these people passing through here these same things. Won't you join me?"

This man is behaving irrationally. You and I both recognize it, and we know that if we decided to just join him because it "felt right," an outside observer would conclude that we were also behaving irrationally, and that their reasons for joining the man in the park were ill-founded. And she would be right.

Therefore, I hope you aren't trying to duck your way under a standard of evidence that is demanded of our doctors, engineers, technicians, politicians, scientists, and others. Clergy don't get a free pass. I hope you are wiser than that, and that I misinterpreted your statement. So please tell me what you meant if I am wrong.

Now, about those analogies. They really are bad analogies, and I can show you why.

The analogy about a man loving his wife, for instance, would be relevant only if I were calling into question Stephan's purported attitude toward God. I do not doubt that his feelings are sincere. When Stephan says "I love God," he is making a truth claim ("I have certain feelings towards this thing that I call God") that I would agree with.

Forgive me for a clumsy attempt at turning your analogy into a more relevant one for our conversation:

It is something like a man saying, "I love my wife. I appreciate her virtues and charms. Also, she is the only wife in the world with the ability to read minds, interpret dreams, and predict the future." If I say this, and someone were to say to me, "But there are all sorts of wives out there claiming to do just these things. And as far as I know, they're all full of crap! Would you consider that your wife really isn't a clairvoyant?"

You can see where this is going. The man is behaving irrationally. He is letting the emotions he has formed for his wife to cloud his judgement when it comes to factual claims about his wife's abilities.

No clear-thinking individual should accept emotional attachment as a sign of validity of any truth claim (unless of course the claim is, "I have an emotional attachment to something"). This is obvious and should be uncontroversial.

Quickly, let me add that the second analogy is faulty for the same reasons. Here is a more apt version than yours:

Let us say you approach a man looking at a painting in a gallery. You say to the man, "Wouldn't you at least consider the possibility that this isn't a genuine Rembrandt, but rather a fake?" Please do, for it might very well be a fake. But if the art aficionado defensively cried out, "I know it is genuine! I felt its beauty inside my soul!" Then I would say that his reasons for believing are irrational, ill-founded, and not to be copied.

Do not conflate claims like, "I am devoted to God, and I love him," with claims like, "A supernatural, all-powerful being called God exists and interacts with our universe in various ways." The former is a claim about attitude and the latter is a claim about how the universe works. They are not the same.

Jeremy, I knew you as a lover of truth and a respecter of sound reasoning. The truth is so beautiful, and it requires no deception in order to stand on its own. As long as you stay intellectually honest, you will find it. And nobody, not even God, can blame you for being intellectually honest. Even if it leads you to doubt.

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 8

2011-02-25T23:18:00.000-06:00

Hi Stephan. I promise promise promise you that we will get into the historical accuracy of the Bible. I've been so excited to talk about it, actually, that I started piecing together a response. But I won't give it to you now, because that would be jumping the gun. You're only asking for clarification, after all, of the two questions from my last post. I don't want to enter into new territory before we've even surveyed our immediate surroundings, you know?

So here I go:

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, Stephan, but I beg you to recognize this: when you say things like,

faith & the existence of God was real in an almost tangible way

what I was experiencing was consistent with the God & gospel message of the Bible

I've been 'pulled back' and again more fully experienced this relationship with God, which always comes as a result of God changing my heart to cause me to again desire to seek him, and again turn away from the sin that I had let in to my life.

I'm saying in my head, "Boy do I remember those days." Quite lucidly. I thought I felt God moving inside me, I felt God's love, I desired to experience God more, I thought I saw a harmony between reality and the Bible's teachings.

I don't any longer.

But (and again, broken record) even if still had these feelings, it still wouldn't be evidence that the Bible is true. Not any more than the claims of literally millions of Muslims saying the same things indicate that the Koran is true. I feel like every time I make this point, you simply restate your original claim.

Stephan, you must certainly understand why this answer is completely and fundamentally unsatisfying. In short, this is how I've felt our conversation has been going:

You: The Bible is truth. I've experienced it in my life.

Me: Muslims say the same thing. So does every other religious person. In fact, I've experienced those things.

You: I believe it because it is true. I've experienced its truth.

Me: Okay... so what makes your claims and experiences more credible than a Muslim's claims and experiences? You have criteria for disbelieving in the Koran; what would make you disbelieve your own text?

You: Belief in the Bible is central to my faith. I've experienced its truth in my life. On a personal level.

Me: (facepalm)

Now, I realize that personal experience and feelings aren't the only reason you have given. We'll address the rest, I presume, in the next letter. But in regards to this reason, I cannot say any more than what I have already said until you bring more to the table for conversation. No reasonable person could accept subjective emotional reactions as valid evidence for a truth-claim. For obvious reasons.

Henceforth I am simply going to respond to these claims by saying, "Relativistic and Non-unique" until you can show me otherwise.

So now that that's over with, let's look at the remaining parts of your message:

You say you would accept evidence of fabrication or deception on the part of the Biblical authors, although in your answer you bizarrely and unabashedly leave yourself a way to (somehow) still believe the Bible is incapable of error even then! Of course, you do mention a few times something that I haven't yet addressed (but I will!) - the historicity of the Bible. You bring that up several times. Your bare response (when all of the extravagant dressings of theological terminology have been stripped away) goes something like this:

What would make you doubt the Bible's veracity?

The Bible has the last word. It is true. I can feel it. It is historically reliable. I would entertain the idea that it is not if there were evidence of it being deceptive. But there isn't any: the Bible is factually correct. Therefore, I don't know how to answer.

What if another religious text had an equally factual telling of history and followers who felt their lives were changed, just like yours?

Again, I don't know how to answer. Nothing but the Bible can be true, because the Bible says so. I've experienced it. Nothing can cause me to turn away from my God. Unless there were fabrications. But there weren't. The Bible is factually correct.

Do your beliefs really not allow you to even entertain the thought that your Bible isn't the absolute authority on matters of religious ideas? Stephan, when we non-believers hear these kinds of responses, it just re-enforces our belief that the only way Christians can keep a conversation going is by employing endless and maddening circular reasoning.

If, however, you are willing to entertain the possibility that the Bible contains fabrication and error, let's talk about that next - after I let you respond to the rest of my previous message, of course.

One last note: nobody in their right mind would claim that the Old Testament was written after the New Testament. This is uncontroversial.

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #1: The Suburbs by Arcade Fire

2011-02-25T20:45:00.000-06:00

Big surprise, right? Those of you who know me - you could have probably guessed I would pick Arcade Fire's spectacular album, The Suburbs.

Arcade Fire is the most moving, interesting, and important group making music today. There, I said it. That's a pretty big claim, but after experiencing their third solid gold album, I'm convinced. They can be so somber. Gut-wrenchingly gloomy. And then, so damned uplifting and hopeful. They make me want to take their music seriously. But then, if Arcade Fire wanted me to listen to the their music while giving myself a hot tar bath, I'd probably do it.

But seriously. From the opening track:

   So can you understand
   why I want a daughter while I'm still young?
   I wanna hold her hand
   and show her some beauty
   before this damage is done.

   But if it's too much to ask, if it's too much to ask,
   then send me a son.

Arcade Fire makes some grand statements in this album. Listen to it. And listen to the words. Let the music settle into your pores. Let its spirit infest you for a while.

   We watched the end of the century
   compressed on a tiny screen.
   A dead star collapsing, and we could see
   something was ending.
   Are you through pretending?
   We saw the signs in the suburbs.

You will see what I mean.

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 7

2011-02-21T21:49:00.000-06:00

OK, well I'll first respond to your first 2 questions, which I think will require some clarification from you before I move on...since I found myself unable to really answer what you asked...

What evidence would it take for me to doubt the veracity of the Bible?

This question is difficult, because it is at the core of my faith – sola scriptura: I know that I can be clouded by emotion & prone to drifting, and this is why my “anchor” is in the Bible, because it is the unchanging word of God I can always depend on & go back to. When I made the decision to follow Christ personally, and make it not just something my parents did, it was because faith & the existence of God was real in an almost tangible way, similar (in some ways) to how I can know that gravity exists: by experiencing it. I found that what I was experiencing was consistent with the God & gospel message of the Bible. Further, I found the historical confirmation & reliability of what was recorded in the Bible to be compelling.

All that being said, I suppose that if there was solid evidence of fabrication &/or deception by the authors, I would find it necessary to give it serious thought, for that would indicate an apparent contradiction between my faith & scripture. But I can't imagine what that would even look like...I'm quite sure that the “facts” of especially the New Testament are considered historical fact...Jesus Christ was born, claimed to be the Son of God & only way for salvation, was crucified, and was reported to have been seen by hundreds. The events that followed validated those reports: there is no other explanation for the transformation of his followers from scattered & dejected to unified & emboldened, willing to be killed (and many were) in order to spread the message of salvation through Christ. So I'm not really sure how else to answer this question.

If there were another text that could claim all of these things, would I believe it to be the inspired word of God?

Again, I'm not really sure how to answer this, as there is no room for contradictory absolute truths – the Bible makes it very clear that there is only one way to God: having the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, which was purchased/created at the Cross, and applied to us by faith when we become born again & believe. I will admit that there have been times when I've entertained doubts regarding the existence of God in general, at times when God seemed distant & life seemed to be going nowhere – but every time I've been “pulled back” and again more fully experienced this relationship with God, which always comes as a result of God changing my heart to cause me to again desire to seek him, and again turn away from the sin that I had let in to my life.

The truth is: I simply love God, and it doesn't seem there is anything that could cause me to turn away from him... I'd have to be convinced that I was delusional, and that there was fabrication &/or deception from the very beginning of the church, and see evidence that the Old Testament really was written after Christ or evidence that Christ didn't actually fulfill these prophecies (but I'm pretty sure that it's historical fact that the OT & its prophecies were written long before, and I think many of the fulfillment are verifiable )

So I really didn't answer this question at all, but rather it seems I just elaborated more on the first question. Can you clarify more, especially what you are referring to by “all of these things” that some other text could claim?

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #2: The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night

2011-02-21T21:40:00.000-06:00

I didn't realize how much I loved this album until I really listened to it. I remember the night well. Laying in bed, I stuck my in my earbuds and started up Are the Roaring Night. By the middle of the first song, I had goosebumps all over my body, and I found myself grinning uncontrollably. This song is really awesome, I thought. The next track had the same effect. And the next.

This is an album that sweeps you up and carries you along in its beautiful, dark melodies. And those are really the best two words to describe this album's sound: beautiful and dark. If you love the theatricality and emotion of, say, The Hazards of Love, you should definitely check out The Besnard Lakes. And don't neglect their previous album, The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse.

So, if you are looking for a transcendent experience, put on some headphones, turn up the volume, close your eyes, and experience The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night.

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 6

2011-02-19T10:18:00.000-06:00

Hi all. I'm posting this one earlier than usual because my sister is coming later today to visit for the rest of the weekend! She's been back from China since early January, but I still haven't seen her. Goodness gracious...

More people are following this conversation than are commenting. I know this because I am receiving private comments on Facebook, through text messages, phone conversations, and personal remarks.

Please do not be afraid to comment on the blog. As far as I'm concerned, here is where the conversation is primarily taking place. I won't deride you for asking a stupid question or attack your personality for questioning my reasoning, and I know Stephan won't either.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, Stephan. I was waiting to say anything in regards to your "mini-response" since there were some things in my last post that covered some of the questions you were asking, and I wanted you to digest what I'd said a little bit more before repeating anything.

Your question about self-authenticating truth is something that I already spoke to in my last post. I'll summarize it here:

I cannot replicate your experiences for myself. I have never known and can never know what experiences Stephan Duval has had. I don't know how exactly you feel when you say you feel the Holy Spirit or hear God speaking to your life. Nobody can know this. I have no idea how you experience time or tangerines. Nobody can know these things about you.
Likewise, you do not know what my experiences are like. Not exactly.
To extend that, let's just say we can never really share anybody else's experiences.

Here is what I do know:

The language you use to describe your spiritual experiences is almost exactly the language I would use to describe myself when I was a Christian.
This language is used by millions of other Christians and ex-Christians.
The spiritual ideas couched in this language are expressed in a very similar (yet culturally specific) language by Muslims, Jews, Shamans, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and in the past by Greeks, Romans, Chinese mystics, you name it.
Many or even most of these astonishingly diverse and mutually-exclusive religious groups claim that only true adherents of their faith (or careful readers of their faith's texts) can share in these special experiences.

Confronted with these facts, I have a few different ways to look at what's going on here:

One system, out of the literally thousands of beliefs, actually does have the truth. The others' claims of spiritual authenticity are fraudulent, empty, copy-cats of the "real thing" at best or evil delusions at worst. (this, as far as I can tell, is the position you take)

OR

None of these people are receiving magical signals, thoughts, feelings, ideas, or inclinations from an invisible, all-knowing deity. They are practicing something we call being human, and part of this process includes trying to coat everything that happens to us in this varnish of meaning. Whether we call that varnish God, Allah, Fate, The Great Spirit, WakaTiki, or Jumanji is less important than that it is something that literally billions of people have experienced. The ones who want to attribute these special moments of ultra-meaningfulness or meta-meaning to a deity are doing so because that is what they want to believe (or have been taught to believe). This is the position I take.

And it is not surprising in the least that people sometimes think the universe, Fate, or God is trying to guide them in some way. It's called confirmation bias. It's the same reason that, when I tell you to listen to Led Zeppelin backwards and listen for these lyrics -

Oh here's to my sweet Satan.

The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.

He will give those with him 666.

There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.

- you hear those lyrics. Does that mean Led Zeppelin put them there? No! Of course not!

If I tell you to look at the tile in my bathroom and find a face, I don't even have to show you where to look - you'll no doubt find a face somewhere in the tile pattern. Does that mean the bathroom tiler was feeling especially artistic on the day he put my tiles in? No - it means that the human brain is extremely adept at finding patterns in things where they weren't intended.

So am I surprised when I hear a story about a Jewish rabbi who attributes a series of remarkable coincidences to Yahweh? Or a Christian to the Holy Spirit? Or am I surprised when I hear the Muslim say that, just as he was reading the Koran, he felt an immense peace befall him? Or the Christian who just felt God speaking to her in an hour of need? Absolutely not. It would be surprising if I didn't hear hundreds or thousands of stories just like these.

What is surprising is that, knowing as much as we know about other cultures, other beliefs, other religions, people still maintain that they are receiving a direct line from the true deity, that they know this because they can *sense* it, and that any mutually exclusive claim to this sense or feeling is just plain wrong. That is what is surprising.

Of course, maybe I've got this all wrong. Am I missing something here? Is there another piece to this puzzle? Is my understanding of what you mean by self-actualizing truth just completely off-base?

Please enlighten me. And next, we can talk about the historicity/reliability of the gospels.

Cheers!

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 5

2011-02-17T21:34:00.000-06:00

Upon reading the first part of this message, I recognize that I won't be able to put forth the thought & self-examination necessary to continue & thoroughly consider your challenge until at least this weekend - hope you can understand (I just don't want to do so in haste)!

One thing in response to the first part: do you believe that truth can ever be self-authenticating? I believe this is what happened to me:

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3-6).

For sure there is much more, but coupled with the historical reliability of the claims of Christ's life/death/resurrection, this is where it starts for me.

I am forcing myself to not say more until I've considered what you wrote - if you want more detail regarding why I believe Christianity is true, I agree with: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/taste-see-articles/eight-reasons-why-i-believe-that-jesus-rose-from-the-dead (I hate sending a link to make arguments for me, but I thought I'd at least disclose one resource I have been helped by. I don't worship John Piper, at least not anymore, but I have been greatly aided by his scholarly & pastoral pursuits.)

For saying "I'm not going to reply back right away", I sure had alot to say... :-/ I fail.

-Stephan

God-manotaur

2011-02-17T21:30:00.001-06:00

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #3: Broken Bells

2011-02-17T21:09:00.000-06:00

The first time my very enthusiastic friend had me listen to this album, I thought, meh, it's pretty good, I guess. He played it all the time, and pretty soon I was anticipating my favorite tracks on the album. Soon after, every track was my favorite track on the album and I didn't listen to any other album but Broken Bells.

I have faith that other listeners will feel the same way. First, I love James Mercer and his beautiful, dark lyrics. Sooooo good.

This album takes all of Mercer's greatness and all of Danger Mouse's greatness and meshes the two together, but not in a way that you can listen to a song and say, "Oh, these things exhibit Mercer; those other things exhibit Danger Mouse" or "This track is so Mercer, but that track is definitely Danger Mouse." Think of it like Jesus Christ. He was both fully God and fully man, not a mixture or a pieced together god-manotaur, but fully both. This album, see, is fully Mercer and fully Danger Mouse.

Listen to it, in the name of almighty Mercer.

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #4: Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus

2011-02-13T20:29:00.000-06:00

This album is a trip. Don't expect to be humming along to most of these tracks. Do expect plenty of jazz-influenced, experimental, out of control good times.

I don't have too much to say about this one. Look out for guest vocalist Thom Yorke. "Do the Astral Plane" is a favorite, featuring some wicked scatting.

AIDS in Africa

2011-02-11T21:26:00.000-06:00

28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen: A

Everybody should, at some point in their lives, pick up a book about AIDS and learn about the virus that is devastating an entire continent.

And if you've never read a book about AIDS, 28 is a great place to start. You might not think that this would be a very comprehensive look at the situation, but Nolen did a great job of picking stories that highlight unique, important facets of the AIDS pandemic.

The introduction provides a nice, concise exposition - how AIDS got started, how the world first reacted to its discovery, why she picked 28, and more.

Then, Nolen picks out 28 individuals who share their heartbreaking stories. Not all of them are infected with HIV, but all of them, in same way "have" AIDS, and by that, I mean that AIDS has dramatically and irreversibly affected their lives.

Nolen's writing style is simple, emotional, and always with appropriate tone. She's compassionate without being preachy, and she is always focused on trying to understand what is happening in Africa and why it is happening.

The book ends, appropriately enough, with suggestions on how we can contribute to AIDS relief programs, research, advocacy groups, etc.

This is a very accessible, informative, emotional book. Find a copy at your local library.

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 4

2011-02-10T20:08:00.000-06:00

This is a really long one. Please bear with me. Also, for any Christian friends reading this, please take my challenges to Stephan and apply them to yourself. Specifically, I ask a number of questions in this post that I challenge Stephan to answer before coming up with a retort. I would be interested to see how others would answer these questions as well.

And now, a funny graph:

------------------------------------------------------------------
Forgive the delay in our transactions, Stephan. Thanksgiving season, you know?

Let's get right to business.

You start by saying

I believe the Bible because it is true.

I hear this phrase often by Christians, although it was never a tactic I employed against the godless when I was among the elect. I especially heard it used in this context: "The Bible isn't true because I believe it; I believe it because it is true." This has always seemed redundant. One will always believe "X is true" as long as one is willing to say "I believe X," unless of course the latter sentiment is intentionally misleading.

Karl Marx isn't right because I believe him; I believe him because he is right.

Santa doesn't exist because I believe in him; I believe in him because he exists.

The earth isn't the center of the universe because I believe it to be so; I believe it because it is true.

etc etc ad infinitum

Nobody will ever say, "I believe in the theory of relativity, even though that theory is not true." That would be absurd.

Maybe you can help me out, here. Why do Christians use this tactic? In my experience, all it does is shock the other person for a while while he tries to figure out what, if anything, was intended by the remark.

It seems next you lay out some criteria for truth, although the order and categorization of some of your claims are hard to sort out. If this isn't an accurate breakdown, let me know:

God has changed your life through the Bible
You have a mind that sees the Bible as truth
Historical Evidence

Jesus' life, including contemporary writers' comments
Post-Jesus church growth

Christianity has been historically influential
OT prophecies are fulfilled
The Bible has been reprinted with very few textual errors
Christianity emphasizes a personal God rather than human self-justification

Before I go through these points, Stephan, ask yourself these two questions. Really ask them. Answer them before you move on. In fact, before reading past them, type out your answer to both questions in your response. I'm really interested in what your answers will be.

-----

What evidence would it take for me to doubt the veracity of the Bible?

If there were another text that could claim all of these things, would I believe it to be the inspired word of God?

------

Are they answered? Good. Now hear me out.

I was once a very devout, faithful, sincere, soul-searching Christian. I believed with all my heart. I believed the Bible to be the word of the creator of the universe. I knew he loved me and died for me. I was absolutely positive and oh-so-grateful that his sacrifice enabled me to spend eternity in union with him and his elect. When Christians talk about seeing the Bible through new eyes, when they talk about having a renewed, radically-changed life, when they talk about discerning spiritual truths that non-believers see as folly, I know exactly what they are talking about. I have myself experienced each and every one of those sentiments when I was a Christian. I am intimately familiar with them.

So please don't claim that you can somehow see some truth that others cannot. Every ideological tyrant will claim this. Communists will say that non-Communists do not understand the tenants of Communism, but if they did, everyone would join in.

Atheists could say the same thing. It won't have quite the pedagogical flair, because I have no text from which to quote to emphasize my point, but I'll give it a shot:

Stephan, you religious people are delusional. Your psyche is twisted due to your recycled mantras, your repeated authoritarian truth-claims, your ego-petting beliefs about the nature of the universe and mankind, a propensity for seeing intentionality where there is none (some call this 'over-active agency detection' - it is a fairly well-understood concept), etc etc. As long as you continue to put yourself in this religious environment and surround yourself with bias-strengthening peers, books, music, or what-have you, you are only coddling your delusion. Atheists can see the folly in your beliefs because they are outside of it, but as long as you surround yourself with folly, you will think like a fool.

Read over that statement a few times to get the real gist of it (by the way, I used the language of folly and fool only to imitate the passage in Corinthians, not because I think you are foolish!).

Of course, any religion can (and does) claim to have insight that all outsiders lack. You will find no shortage of Muslims claiming that their lives were changed as a result of the work that Allah achieved through his inerrant word, the Koran, and that poor infidel Christians lack the spiritual goggles to read it and understand it. Ditto for Jews. Ditto for gnostic mysticism. Ditto ditto ditto for your religion of choice.

So for claim 1) and 2), there are two general ways (among others in between) to respond:

Either one of these religions really does have a truth that genuinely changes people's lives and whose truths can only be correctly interpreted by adherents (I'll even generously ignore - for the sake of simplicity - the intra-religious dissension as to the correct interpretation; apparently not all spiritual goggles are made equal) - all of the other religions are false, man-made, perversions of truth.

All religious claims to changed lives due to special divine insight are bogus.

The first statement is very unlikely (but not impossible). The second is very likely (though not certain).

Allow me to skip 3 and 5 for now, as I want to devote an entire post to just those claims.

Claim 4 is true, to be sure, but completely useless as an argument, since (a) the historic influence of an ideology has no correlation to its truth or falsity, and (b) it is completely non-unique to Christianity. Other religions and strands of religious thought have, over time and throughout the world, had more historical influence than Christianity, especially when we leave the domain of the West.

Claim 6 is also true, but fails as an argument for the same reasons claim 4 failed.

Claim 7 is odd. This is another argument that I read from apologists quite a bit but never really adopted, because I couldn't see the use for it. Nowadays, it's almost comical.

Why? Because it seems to me that by trying to show how Christianity is unlike any other religion, how it is so unique, so odd, so different, apologists are trying to draw people's attention away from one blindingly obvious fact:

The story of Jesus, when boiled down to it's big parts, is almost identical to many, many, many older religions. Sometimes to a shocking degree. Elements like:

The Virgin Birth
Prophesied Birth
Carpenter for a father
Birth attended by wise men and/or angels
Star signifying birth
Born in poor conditions
Said to crush a serpent's head
Taught in a temple at age 12
Had 12 disciples
Was baptized in water
Spoke in parables
Performed miracles during life
Body and Blood consumed as a ritual
Walked on water
Died on a cross (between two thieves (for all of humanity))
Buried for 3 days
Resurrected after 3 days

etc
etc
etc

Who besides Jesus could fit this description?

Precursors like Krishna, Horus, Dionysus, Mithra, Buddha, Osiris, and many more share many or most of the above traits.

This was a problem back in the early church too. Some of the church's early giants recognized it. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Justin Martyr all claimed that the similarities were a Satanic deception.

A satanic deception. Really?

Other Christians claim that it was divinely-inspired foreknowledge that pre-Christ cultures incorporated into their mythology. In other words, those myths were just foreshadowing Jesus.

Again, I have to ask myself what is more likely.... and I think you know the rest.

Even though the big picture is obviously borrowed, there are fine points that are unique to Christianity or the Bible. However, there are fine points in other religions too, for that matter. Maybe a Muslim would say that, because of the way Islam unifies government and religion into one entity (Sharia law) proves that it is superior to other religions, because it puts the focus not on the individual, but on the way an entire community interacts with God's precepts. Between that claim and your claim #7, I have no reason to pick one over the other, or to use either as a way to prop up the alleged truthfulness of either's sacred texts.

Furthermore, I could easily one-up your #7 by discussing the things secular humanism focuses on, but I would never use that as proof that secular humanism is true - only that it has a better ethical framework than your religious alternative.

Sorry, that was really wordy, and I didn't even get to #3 or #5 in this post (but I will). For now, I'd like you to be sure and answer these questions:

Why do you say, "I believe the Bible because it is true?"
Is my breakdown of your criteria accurate? Does it need any revision?
What evidence would it take for you to doubt the veracity of the Bible?
If there were another text that could claim all of your criteria, would you believe it to be the inspired word of God?
What do you make of my claim that I too once believed I was reading the Bible with an enlightened heart and mind, through the grace and power of the holy spirit? Was I lying? Was it, too, a satanic deception?
What would you say to somebody who claimed your religious delusions prevented you from seeing the world as it really is?
What do you make of the astounding similarities between the story of Jesus and the story of other gods or god-men?

Please, take your time in answering these. I sincerely believe that if you go about this search with an open heart, you will find the truth. Always be honest with yourself. Preserve your integrity!

And for goodness' sake, forgive me for the length of this post!

Deric

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #5: The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe

2011-02-10T18:59:00.000-06:00

This album is astonishing.

First, let me tell you that it's a concept album. The storyline revolves around a time-traveling android from the future fighting for the freedom of citizens under the heal of a secret society bent on destroying love.

Not only that, the album encompasses almost every kind of musical genre. There are two concert overtures in the album, which are followed by a myriad of pop, funk, hip-hop, dance-rock, R&B.

Not every track is perfect, but the album as a whole is definitely a work of art. Give it a spin. you won't regret it. Also, check out the music video for one of the more popular tracks off the album, "Tightrope."

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 3

2011-02-09T23:30:00.000-06:00

I would like to use this introductory text tonight to mention something that I feel is important.

You might get the impression from the way these letters are written that our letters are, at best, urgent-sounding, and at worst, rudely cold. You see, these aren't the entire messages. I've been leaving out personal bits that come at the beginning or end of the messages. Stephan and I are actually very friendly to each other at the beginning of all of these messages, and then we get down to business. Anyway, I wanted to say that so you don't read any unfriendly tones either of our letters. And now, the comic:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I completely agree - most Christians go about defending their text the wrong way (though I believe it is good to clarify discrepancies, especially this particular list leaves much to be desired - including many "discrepancies" that are simply bogus - though some are legitimate issues).

First of all (bear with me...), I believe the Bible because it is true (I'm obviously biased, I recognize) - God has changed my life through it, and has given me a renewed mind that can see it as truth. I know it seems like a cop-out, but "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (I Cor 2) - I proceed to defend the validity of the Bible, even though I know that I can not wholly convince you - God must do a work in you before you can believe.

That aside, I believe the Bible has more things "going for it" that no other Holy book has. First, it is historically verifiable - it jives with recorded human history, which clearly documents the life of Jesus. It is a known fact that he lived, claimed to be God, and died. And there is much evidence of the "explosion" of the church after hundreds claimed to see him resurrected, and no single person or movement has had anywhere close to the impact on the course of human events than Jesus & his church (sadly, the church's impact hasn't always been positive...). Contemporaries of Jesus have much to say about him & his movement in secular writings. Also, the sheer number of fulfilled prophecies is staggering - and the authenticity of the current text vs the original manuscripts is like no other ancient text. The OT prophecies were clearly written many years before Christ was born - few doubt that.

Anyway, I believe the Bible is in a class of it's own among other ancient texts & holy books - though I realize that no amount of "proof" can definitively prove Christianity is true. But I believe the historical record heavily leans in that direction. I have seen no other person or idea or anything, which changes lives & entire peoples like Christ does - no other faith that takes the emphasis off from human self-justification, and puts it on a loving (yet wrathful) God who desires to know & love us personally.

I recognize I am biased, but very much desire to understand conflicting view points... Thoughts? I know that I kind of just spewed out random thoughts with little cohesion or explanation - though if I put more time & thought into it I could argue more specifically, when appropriate.

Have a great Wednesday!

-Stephan

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 2

2011-02-07T00:26:00.000-06:00

Keeping with the tradition of posting a religion-related comic before the serious conversation:

Okay, so here we go with letter* #2:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Stephan! Good to hear from you, man!

I'm glad you responded to that post, actually. I post those in hopes that my Christian friends will respond. You're one of my Christian friends that can talk about these things without being unreasonable and/or put off.

First you say,

Such a list saddens me, because many of those items can be easily explained through actually studying the context (textually & culturally), as well as distinguishing "paradox" from "contradiction".

I know exactly what you mean. I'm familiar with many of these explanations. For me, the important thing isn't that there are alleged contradictions in the Bible per se or that there are alleged workarounds; the important point for me is this: many Christians tend to shrug off other Holy books because they have historical, theological, or self-referential contradictions, just like the Christian or Jewish Holy texts. Muslims, for example, have ways to explain their alleged contradictions; these are strikingly similar to the Christian explanations. Either it is an unknowable paradox of theology or a misunderstood cultural convention.

Every major religion has critics that point out errors in some holy text or another. Each also claims to have infallible texts. For me, the choices are as follows:

1) One of these religions really does have an infallible text. The others have errors.

2) All of these religions have infallible texts. They are all true. The contradictions between religions, like the contradictions within their texts, are a paradox that colors God's mysterious character.

3) All of these texts have errors. None of them are infallible. The followers of these religions have concocted sometimes elaborate explanations.

To me, explanation #3 is the most likely.

I don't necessarily have a problem with theological mysterious, such as free will/sovereignty. I love those kinds of mysteries. It's the banal stuff that gets to me. What would I expect if a bunch of people from the same cultural tribe over a long period of time recorded the myths and superstitions of their day? I would expect something like the Torah, the New Testament, or the Koran.

What do you think?

And how have you been, Stephan? What have you been up to lately?

- Deric

*These are facebook messages, not letters. I just thought "letter" would make it sound classier. Or maybe I just thought that labeling it as "a facebook message" cheapened it. Probably the latter.

Religious Conversation With An Old Friend - Part 1

2011-02-05T22:24:00.000-06:00

I'm a nice guy, and I'm nice to all of my friends, even when we're talking about things with which I disagree.

Like religion:

from XKCD

I have several friends who are good sports about it, and I have other friends, who are either (A) uncomfortable with the idea of talking about it (for whatever reason) or (B) too ill-humored to talk about it without getting pissy or mistaking my disagreement for personal attacks.

My friend Stephan* is not one of these friends. I met him during my time in Yellowstone National Park. We enjoyed many talks about Christianity, some while hiking through America's most beautiful wilderness. When we met, I was just beginning to think of myself as an atheist. Stephan belonged to a Campus Crusade for Christ group that was working at the park for the summer.

A few months ago, I posted a link to a visual representation of contradictions in the Bible. This did not go unnoticed by my old friend, who initiated a discussion around it. I have been very glad to be talking to him, as I miss our old conversations.

I want to share this with other people for a number of reasons:

This is a great example of how to conduct a civilized, impassioned discussion about religion.
Stephan's questions and challenges are well-shaped and clearly stated.
This is a conversation between two people who respect the idea of addressing each completely and systematically, and who try to avoid logical fallacies.

I will post the discussion in chunks, so as not to overwhelm the reader. As you read one entry, try to imagine what the response will look like. How would you have responded?

And without further ado, here is the first message:

*Not his real name
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know I haven't talked to you in a while, and this isn't really the best way to say "Hi, how've you been?", but I saw the link you posted, and wanted to comment, but didn't want it to become an endless Facebook comment debate, which rarely accomplishes anything. But I'm curious what your thoughts are...regardless of where this ends up, I'll let you have the last word. And by the way, how've you been? :-)

Such a list saddens me, because many of those items can be easily explained through actually studying the context (textually & culturally), as well as distinguishing "paradox" from "contradiction".

All that being said: yes, there are some tough texts in scripture, and I do wrestle with them; but ultimately: who am I, a finite man, to conclude that simply because I don't understand how two things can be true together, then they must be a contradiction...

Imagine a highly educated & successful scientist explaining his work to a student (imagine a freshman in Biology 101), and then that student tore him apart, finding many "contradictions", when in reality, it was the student's inability to understand the complexity of the subject that caused him to initially reject them as contradictory. There are mysteries - the classic free will vs. God's sovereignty is one of them: no matter how one explains it, there will still always be an element of mystery (though I believe one can & should still seek sound doctrine, because scripture is clear on many of these issues). We can't scientifically explain God - that's what it means for him to be God: Holy - set apart - not created - not man.

But most of the items on that list aren't even deep mysterious questions - many of them just highlight a general lack of effort to resolve them. If one analyzed any other literary document that way, they'd be laughed out of academia!

Anyway, just thought I'd ask if you had any further thoughts on any of this - for I realize that you likely were not the author of the document: linking to something doesn't imply complete endorsement.

I hope all is well,

-Stephan

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #6: The Way Out by The Books

2011-01-31T21:04:00.001-06:00

Hello, greetings and welcome. Welcome to a new beginning, for this tape will serve you as a new beginning. That's right, a new beginning, as we're about ready to begin. On this recording, music specifically created for its pleasurable effects upon your mind, body and emotions is mixed with a warm, orange-colored liquid.

So begins this bizarre, baffling, beautiful album by The Books. Just listen to it. Set aside a quiet 50 minutes some day and just listen to the entire thing, from beginning to end.

This album will float around in your head for weeks afterward. Songs like, "A Cold, Freezing Night" will disturb you while you walk down the street. In a moment of meditation, words from one of the "Group Autogenics" will take you by surprise.

The catchy, flinging, "I Didn't Know That" will inevitably work it's way into your everyday thinking.

But this album exists not only in your mind. There are genuinely human moments on this album, like the ethereal "Beautiful People" and the sometimes-humorous, sometimes-heart-wrenching "Thirty Incoming."

This album is chock-full of awesome samples of thrift shop tapes, traditional folk music instrumentation, and a melange of masterfully manipulated music.

If you like the music, I suggest checking out the band's website as well. If you want to get into their head (and read a little more about the strange process of making this music), check out their blog. Absolutely brilliant.

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #7: Small Craft on a Milk Sea by Brian Eno

2011-01-31T20:24:00.001-06:00

What's that? You haven't yet discovered the music of Brian Eno? I hate to break it to you, pal, but you're about 40 years late. Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (actual name) has been making great music since the 70s, and his latest album is just beautiful.

Small Craft on a Milk Sea is an album you feel. "What does it make you feel, Deric?" I hear your question, but I've not any good response. The opening track, "Emerald and Lime," for example, makes me feel a strange mix of nostalgia and adventure, as if I'm catching the faintest trace of a scent from my childhood.

"Complex Heaven," makes me feel both sad and stealthy.

Realize that this album is open to myriad emotional interpretations. For me, a strange intense excitement underlies almost every track. Every listener might agree that, whatever this album makes you feel, it's sure to be complex.

Don't let the brevity of the first four tracks fool you. They play out as a series of distinct, interesting ideas. Close your eyes and let this music really affect you.

All in all, this album has direction. Listen to it and feel yourself being taken on a journey. Where is this journey taking you? Is it a place you want to be going? Are you prepared? What would you do if you found yourself aboard a small craft on a milk sea?

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #8: Condors by Nedry

2011-01-25T21:25:00.000-06:00

Continuing the avian theme, Condors comes in at number 8 in my list. To be honest, this album contains some of my favorite musical ideas of any album in the top 10. If every track were as freaking awesome as "Squid Cat Battle" or as freaky-tribe-tastic as "Condors," the album could have easily landed at number 4. Condors, as it is, is a stunning debut for these three musicians. Ayu Okakita, the vocalist, has a wonderful voice - smeary, dream-inducing, soaring, chilling.

Condors mixes electronica and dubstep with some pretty straightforward rock ideas and drills right through the center with Okakita's haunting, beautiful voice. The end result is an album that is completely unexpected, and yet its sound is never forced, its form never seems out-of-place.

If you want a taste of the album, try one of the two previously-mentioned tracks. But if you listen to "Squid Cat Battle," I strongly encourage you to listen to it after its predecessor, "Four Layers of Pink." The two tracks merge together and "Four Layers" makes the opening to "Battle" all the more freakin' sweet.

I will, without a doubt, be watching this band's progression. They are already working on a follow-up album, and in my opinion, it cannot come soon enough.

For your listening pleasure, here is track 2: "Apples and Pears."

A Major Commitment to Fitness

2011-01-24T23:19:00.001-06:00

Friends, I have decided to make a major lifestyle change beginning tomorrow morning. As many of you may know already, I have been trying to introduce new positive habits into my lifestyle a little at a time. Due to the success I have been having in several small things (daily flossing, push-ups, more focused reading sessions, learning geography), I have decided to add a pretty major routine to the beginning of my days: It is know by its creator, J.P. Muller, as "My System." Muller's system was once very popular throughout Euroupe.

Anybody want to do this with me?
Oh, for those of you who are interested, here is a nice article in Slate that introduces it (and from which I pulled the media).

I completely forgot - you can view the entirety of "My System" for free on the interwebs.

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #9: Going Places by Yellow Swans

2011-01-24T23:00:00.000-06:00

This album is not for everyone. There, I felt that would be an important preface to my acclaim for this album. Going Places isn't so much an album of music as it is an album of sonic ideas. It is ambient noise that wants attention. It washes over you in undulations of sound.

This is noise music. There is a lot of atonality, a lot of fuzz, a lot of dissonance, and lots and lots of subtle shifts in the noise-scape. It's this subtlety that immediately turned me on to the album.

I knew I was truly in love with it one night as I was listening to it while going to bed. I had let myself become fully immersed in the music and I felt as if I were being carried away by something.

Each track is a unique experience; listened to properly, I'd say that is what Going Places really is - a collection of little experiences. Noise music is something to be experienced, after all.

Noise music has, until Going Places, carried a negative association in my mind. I couldn't feel a great deal of appreciation for it. I suppose I thought that the idea of noise music's aesthetic was far more relevant than the aesthetic itself. This album changed my perception. If you're interested in the psychological sway music can have on an individual, have a go at Going Places.

10 favorite albums of 2010 - #10: Mines by Menomena

2011-01-20T20:47:00.000-06:00

An old college acquaintance recently sent me a link to his blog over facebook, and his most recent post was his Top 5 Albums of 2010. This inspired me to create my own list, but while thinking it through, I could not bear to limit it to 5 albums. Beginning with #10, here are my top picks for 2010:

I cannot emphasize enough how difficult it was to settle on #10. In fact, I started writing this post for a different album, but I didn't feel right about it. Menomena just managed to make it into my top 10, inching past LCD Soundsystem.

From their track, "Tithe:"

Beneath the door frame,
waiting for earthquakes,
after the rapture comes and goes,
the saints went marching,
the trumpets salving,
the chosen ones are phoning home.

And nothing sounds appealing.

Kansas City has been pretty icy these last few days. Sometimes when I'm driving, I can feel my truck loose traction. I'm still heading the same direction (usually and for the most part), but I know that I'm no longer master of my ship (the good ship TurtleTop); in those moments, the only thing separating me from disaster is the whimsy of a combination of many many factors beyond my control.

This is what it feels like to listen to Menomena. The music is threatening all the time to skid off the road and erupt into a fireball of drums, saxophones, and keyboard.

Dig the sax riff on "Five Little Rooms," which begins with the line, "This is a play that takes place in a freezer." The song is indeed chilling:

Hung on a pole right next to a McDonald's,
in a suburban shopping mall,
at half mast again,
between shootings.

All this could be yours, someday...

Scattered Thoughts

2011-01-10T20:52:00.000-06:00

I feel as though since Christmas break, I have been turning over a new leaf in my life. I once again take great pleasure in walking through town. Why, just tonight I watched a group of youth having a snowball fight down in the parking lot a hundred feet below. What delight it brought me, seeing this innocence at play!

This is a small and trivial example, so let me explain in a little greater detail.

From my previous posts, you might have been able to tell that I had been going through some depressive stages. I carried these brooding thoughts with me back to Kansas, but, through a tightly-budgeted schedule, kept myself too busy to have many negative thoughts.

I especially enjoyed seeing my old professor, Tash. Around him, I feel as though someone really takes an interest in the things I take interest in. I feel like he "gets" me.

I also visited my second mother, Marci, and several of her offspring. What a delightful visit! I even just laughed when they began making their silly jokes about liberals. I didn't mind. I was just glad to be with people that had a history with me.

At my Uncle's Christmas Eve party, I saw some classmates for the first time since high school. One of them asked me, "So what are you doing these days? You're in seminary, right?" The thought! This guy's last impression of me was so vastly different from who I am now that - well, I didn't even bother explaining to him that I had been an atheist for the last three years. I just laughed and said, "No no no. No. I'm working with a nonprofit agency right now in Kansas City. I'm about to go into the peace corps in August."

I got to visit many old friends from high school and college both. It was a nice refresher for me - a reminder of where I had come from, what I had been working through all my life up to this point. Perhaps one day I'll visit with my fellow team leaders and reflect on the person I am today.

The most momentous part of Christmas break was traveling up to South Dakota with my grampuh, Uncle Zachary, and my cousin, China. We went to the Black Hills, a place I am well acquainted with, to visit my Aunt and Uncle and their family. Away from my computer and with barely a bar of reception for my phone, I was pretty well cut off from the goings-on of the rest of the world.

I suppose visiting all of these people made me aware of my existence in a different way. I had almost forgotten that I am somebody to other people. My existence has a lot of meaning, especially in relation to others' existence. I needed this reminder. Also, I had a great discussion with my Uncle Zachary that inspired me to take my last 7 months in Kansas City more seriously.

When I came back, I immediately made some changes. I've been waking up earlier; I've stopped checking personal email at work; I've cracked down on my eating (except for a few times - damn you pizza parties!). Coffee seems to be a new, regular part of my life. I don't quite know how I feel about that yet, but it's seemed so far to work a positive change in my mood.

With all of this, I've finally mailed in all of my peace corps paperwork, sans my extraction paperwork. But over the break, I asked a family member with dentist connections in Kansas City for a favor, and she's been working on something for me. Everything is coming up Deric lately.

In the spirit of turning over a new leaf, I've also completely rearranged my apartment. I know, with only one large room, it's hard to be too creative, but I managed to sort of split it up into two areas. More importantly, I've split it up so that it encourages reading and exercise and discourages dawdling at my computer.

I'm flossing daily.

I'm reading more.

I've been going outside more often, and other places - the museum, the bookstore, the symphony.

I won't say that I have no more sad moments - I do. But I definitely feel different. I feel better, and I think the feeling is here to stay. With more confidence in my emotions, I will improve more and more, and I will love myself more and more as that happens.

Oh, one last note - I feel like, for the first time, really, I'm moving past my last breakup. Maybe that is the single most important factor in this whole shift.

On a side note, I know I've promised a video for quite some time. The truth is, I haven't been able to motivate myself to edit the pieces of footage I've taken together into something coherent. I'll get around to it, I promise.

Defusing the Bomb, or A Clumsy Dance with Optimism

2010-12-15T12:05:00.001-06:00

A sinister feeling has been slowly creeping up on me over the past few years, commensurate with my increasing level of awareness of (first) all of the evil shit that's going down in the world, and (second) all of the greedy, compassion-less bastards that are exacerbating the problems and/or stymieing the significantly smaller chunk of humanity that genuinely gives a damn.

My warm-blooded, liberal heart has for so long hoped that the goodness inside each of us will ultimately prevail, that we'll eventually stop persecuting people based on their religion (or lack thereof), skin color, sexual identity, or nationality, that we'll some day stop trying to kill each other, stop exploiting everything and everyone that we come across.

Imagine, if you will, that all of the hate in the world is a bomb (fitting, considering the implications of certain hate-filled groups in the world with easy access to nuclear and biological weapons). The bomb is about to explode, causing a massive amount of damage to everyone involved. Hate, avarice, and stupidity push this bomb closer to the detonation point. Meanwhile, folks can either (one) try to defuse the bomb, putting themselves in dangerous proximity or (two) get the hell out of the way - as far away as possible, in fact. Just forget the bomb and enjoy your life. Accept that the world is extremely unfair, while celebrating your relative luck. And what luck! Westerners are on the winning side. We're the exploiters, the rich, the powerful. Morally questionable? Certainly, but what the hell. They believe the bomb is going to go off eventually anyway. If something cataclysmic doesn't happen, the world will just slowly transform into a starving, war-torn, polluted dump.

As I was driving to work today, I noticed the trash truck in front of me was losing trash along the interstate, one significant chunk every thousand feet or so. What could I do? For all I knew, there were hundreds of trash trucks in Kansas City at that same moment littering the streets with resident garbage.

And this is really where I've come to. I observe the world falling apart. I take note of how tragic it is. Maybe I even appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a world falling apart. Is that sick or what?

This is odd coming from somebody involved in nonprofit work, I'm sure. Understand that, despite my best efforts at optimism, I've been surrounded by people who say, as if jeering at me from a safe distance, "There will never be an end to war/racism/sexism/intolerance/whathaveyou. That's because each person is born with original sin. Only in heaven will things be really good. On earth, we're doomed to live in a dying planet." I guess they were right, at least partway.

But if you're one of those people, I want to make one thing clear: you aren't right because it's impossible to fix the world's problems. You're right because there are enough jackasses like you who are too cynical or cowardly or apathetic to approach the bomb. There are too many bystanders and not enough defusers. And unless we find a cure for stupidity and ignorance, there will always be more people pushing the bomb closer to detonation than there are trying to defuse it.

When Happiness Loses Its Appeal

2010-12-15T11:51:00.001-06:00

I cried this morning. Scratch that - I wept.

Before it happened, I called in sick. I've been fighting a cold for several days, see. After that was taken care of, I sat down on my couch and broke down into sobs.

The scariest part is that I didn't even know why I was crying. I don't usually cry, see. Not even at funerals or weddings or anything. In fact, I can remember each time I have cried over the past couple of years.

Just a few days ago, I called a very dear family member who is dealing with some seriously heavy things. Near the close of the conversation, she started crying and said, "You're very special to me." I dittoed both sentiments.

This last summer, well before moving to Kansas City, I found myself crying a lot. My grandmother died - cancer - in her house with the rest of my family taking care of her. Her youngest son, my Uncle Joshua had died tragically just months previous.

Before that happened, I parted ways with my girlfriend, Jennie. Easily the most I have ever cried before in my life. But this is no place to get into that. Oh, also, I had cried to her on a number of occasions when I decided to spill out my emotions about personal things.

Okay, so compared with the rest of my life, this last year has included a lot of crying. But before December 2009, I cried very rarely, with the exception of a patch of tearful spots during my high school Junior year.

What is happening to me?

I have certainly been very moody lately (i.e. over the last year), but I remember being happy, very happy, even. That seems to be changing. With the loss of college life, I have lost a lot of things that colored my life in brights:

a sense of direction and goal completion
a series of intellectually and emotionally engaging tasks
a close-knit group of friends that made my problems seem manageable
a friend I could share intimacy with
several professors who were friends sharing wisdom with me and supporting me
a community in which I felt I could make some changes

Several days ago, I spontaneously jotted down several things about myself that disgusted me of late. I was shocked at both the size of the list and what it said about my character. At the top of the page I wrote "Lately" and underneath:

directionless

overwhelmed by options

not committing

taking the lazy route

not being impressive

eating too much

not exercising

not writing

not playing any instruments

not learning another language, trick, or developing a talent

not reading about things for which I am passionate

not being passionate in general

not being great or exceeding expectations

not calling an eye doctor (I've been putting this off for some time now)

making excuses for things

too much time sleeping

too much time on the computer

too much time watching tv

Kind of a depressing list, right? And these are just the things at the front of my mind. Who knows how long the list could've grown had I actually (God forbid) put some real thought into it.

I've tried taking steps back toward a fulfilled life. I buy mostly healthful food. I have started watching online math classes from MIT. I'm teaching myself to juggle.

Most recently, I have been looking at grad schools. Maybe setting up a concrete goal will motivate me to be happy. That's what I was doing when I broke down early this morning - looking at grad schools, trying not to think about my ex girlfriend.

What's more, I have no idea what grad program to choose. At times, I've wanted to be (in roughly this order):

A computer programmer (high school)(I was advanced in math)

A lawyer (high school)(state debate team)

A pilot (just thought it would be cool)

A missionary (college - Missions major at TMC)

A lawyer (again, this time serving overseas with the International Justice Mission)

A theologian (college - Theology major at TMC, then undeclared at SC)

A tour guide (summers at Yellowstone National Park and Wind Cave National Park)

A pianist (here and there throughout college, thanks to Dr. Nix)

A writer/journalist (college - Humanities major)

A filmmaker (college - Humanities major)

I finished college intending to eventually go into a writing business. And now - now that I'm looking at grad schools, what programs am I looking into?

Physics

Mathematics

Earth Science

What. The. Hell.

This is my big problem. I want to do everything. I try to do many things. As a result, I am 22 with a job that I don't really like in a field that I have never thought about going into with a bachelor's degree in Humanities. English, art, philosophy, music, or theatre majors are already notorious for their worthlessness in finding a job, but I picked a major that mixed them all together.

So here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to pretend I just graduated high school and start all over again. And maybe this time I won't fuck everything up. I'll stick to one subject religiously. I'll become competent at something for once in my life. And if all goes well, I'll be successful in it.

Or maybe I'll learn to be content with unhappiness. Apparently that's a pretty popular option these days.

Pet Peeve: Faith and Faith

2010-11-05T16:17:00.002-05:00

"Everyone has faith in something. Even if you don't believe in God, you might have faith in humanity."

In a handful of conversations now, a coworker at YVC has said this, or something like this. I understand her intent, but I must object to her sentiment. I believe she's committing the fallacy of equivocation.

The word faith - like the words spirituality, religion, and even God - has come to encompass a pretty large swath of definitions, and not all definitions are equal. Consider:

A) I have faith that my doctor will take good care of me during surgery.

B) I have faith that the scientific method is a good way of discovering truths about the world.

C) I have faith that human goodness can overcome evil actions.

C) I have faith that an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God watches over the earth and all its creatures.

D) I reached that point in my life where I had to make a decision. I decided to take a leap of faith.

There are obviously some profound differences in the way the word faith is used in these examples. In A, faith is used as a straight-up synonym for confidence. It can be assumed that the speaker's confidence comes from the fact that she knows her surgeon has had to go through many years of intense training and schooling, or that the surgeon has carried out the procedure many times on other patients.

Statement B is similar. The scientific method has made what our ancestors considered unsolvable mysteries into understandable, predictable phenomena. We have jet planes, microwaves, and iPads. These things work because they are based on sound science.

The next one is a bit trickier. Is there any objective way to say that human goodness can overcome hate or bigotry? Possibly. Maybe the speaker has witnessed that very thing in the life of a friend, a historical figure, or in herself. Perhaps they have experienced the power of rehabilitation, change of heart, radical transformation.

If someone were to say they had faith that their car mechanic would be able to transplant their heart, based off of nothing more than freewheeling optimism, we might call that blind faith - a faith of a considerably different nature. Imagine too, if someone said they had supreme faith in astrology or alchemy, or that they have faith that Al-Qaeda has the best of intentions for humanity. This is strolling along the top of a cliff-side in the pitch-dark night, changing lanes without checking the rear-view mirrors.

Is this kind of faith virtuous? Not in any of the examples above, obviously, but a large percentage of Americans believe it is a virtue as long as the faith is directed toward a god.

In the many extended conversations I've had with Christian friends at Sterling College or from my old church, the faithful might say at first that his faith in God is based on evidence in the form of, say, answered prayer, a serene peace or love, or a changed life. But these aren't necessarily attributable to Jehova.

Incidents of answered prayers, after all, aren't statistically different from the machinations of random chance. People attribute more weight to the positives than they do to the negatives. Psychologists understand this phenomenon very well. It's called confirmation bias. No surprise, then, that every religion has adherents claiming that a supplication was answered in some miraculous way. A similar trick is used by those who claim they can read your mind, interpret your dreams, or speak with your dead relatives, but I'm not putting my faith into John Edward any time soon.

Serene peace can be felt by many things. I can feel it when I'm thinking about God not existing as much as I did when I used to believe in God. I can also do it by meditating, reading poetry, or taking a walk by myself through the woods.

And life changes happen for all sorts of reasons. I made several changes, for the better, in my own way of life when I deconverted from Christianity, but for some reason my Christian friends don't want to take this as evidence that God does not exist, even though they often use the reverse situation as proof.

The conversation inevitably leads to this, then: "I cannot prove that God exists. He wouldn't want that anyway. He wants his people to have faith in Him. Faith is belief in the unseen, the invisible."

Which brings me to the essence of faith as illustrated in statements C and D. This blind, leaping sort of faith is the very core of religious literalism. Anyone who believes that God as described in sacred texts really exists is relying on a blind faith. Most will admit this.

Is this a good thing?

I will let that question linger until another post, but for now all I wanted was to make a clarification between usages of the word, because equivocating the various definitions trips people up and leads to more fallacies, like claiming that atheism, agnosticism, and secular humanism are religions in the same sense that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are religions.

No. I'm sorry. They are not the same. In almost every way that matters, they are not the same.

So next time you hear somebody say something along the lines of, "Everybody has faith in something," remind them that not all faiths are equal.

I make friends

2010-11-05T14:06:00.000-05:00

Don't knock it til you try it. That's what they always say. And in the case of online friend-finding services, they're right. I am not ashamed to say that I have made most of my acquaintances so far through meetup.com.

Let me elaborate a little. Meetup is not so much about finding friends as it is about finding group events. Before I even moved to KC, I joined meetup and started searching the KC area for groups.

For example, I searched for "books" and found some book clubs. I joined one. So far, I haven't been interested in reading any of their books, so I haven't attended any of their meetups. Meetup can be the virtual equivalent of hanging around a new group of kids at school just close enough to pick up their basic behavioral patterns, but not so close that you're committed to engage them in meaningful social interactions. You move like this, keeping an appropriate distance, from group to group until you find a good match, and then you plunge in.

I found several atheist/humanist/freethinker/skeptic groups based in Kansas City and joined a few of them. I found a meetup event that looked interesting - just an informal chit-chat at a place in Westport. I RSVP'd, showed up on the appropriate night, asked for the "Freethinkers group" (as per the instructions on their meetup site), and by the end of the night, I had made several new friends. Those meetup attendees had connections with other groups. Now, I too belong to these other groups.

Just check out some of the good times I've had with them.

conquering the trails near Weston before the

infamous Weston Irish Festival

judiciously studying my Irish car bomb

partaking

let it set in a bit...

dancing an Irish jig

game night.

trying new styles

drinking with some friends and a goliath

dog at game night

picnic and chillaxing at the Nelson

thinking about another Irish car bomb

a scene from Evil Dead, the Musical

being awkward at the Halloween party

and again

and again

I'm much less awkward when

I am by myself.

Between the people I've met through meetup and the people I've met through YVC, I've made a decent amount of acquaintances. Only time will tell, however, whether I'll meet another Scott or Stuart or Mike.

Some more posters and tattoos for work

2010-10-20T11:04:00.000-05:00

This is what they get when they ask me to design a tattoo for recruiting youth

2010-10-20T10:14:00.000-05:00

Introducing the Youth Volunteer Corps

2010-10-07T23:43:00.000-05:00

The organization I work for was started in Kansas City in the 1980's by a man named David Battey. It now has over 50 member sites all over the United States and Canada. Those of us in the Kansas City branch have the advantage of working in an office shared by the national staff. David even comes in periodically. You can learn more at the YVCA website if you're interested.

The Kansas City Branch consists of 5 team leaders (I am one of them), the program director (my boss), and the program cultivation artist. You can meet the team here. Warning: my bio is pretty cheesy.

Anyway, my job has three main parts (for now).

The first is an after-school project. Every Thursday, I bring a group of youth volunteers (11-18 years old) to a place called Operation Breakthrough.

Operation Breakthrough is both a day care and an alternative school for children living in poverty. 98% of the children are living below the poverty line. 25% of them are in foster care. Another 25% are homeless. My group gives these kiddos attention. We play games with the kids, we read to them, color pictures, do homework - whatever they need.

I made this recruitment poster for Operation Breakthrough.

On Wednesday mornings, I work with Associated Youth Services, an alternative high school for long-term suspended students.

On these days, the students are the volunteers. Thus, sometimes I give a lesson, and other times we all go somewhere for a service-learning project around Kansas City, KS.

The other team leaders have their own in-school and after-school programs. The activities, ice-breakers, and lessons are all planned and executed by the team leader in charge. However, another really important part of my job is the weekly Saturday project. All of the team leaders sort of collaborate for these projects. We try to have at least two projects available every Saturday for volunteers.

How do we set up these projects? I'm glad you asked. That's an important part of my job - finding nonprofit organizations that need help. Once I've found one, I set up a Saturday with them, bang out the details of the project - number of volunteers needed, orientation, supplies - and discuss it with the other team leaders. Once a project has been confirmed, I recruit volunteers. Some of this is done for me by judges. Lots of kids (or their parents) call our office because a judge ordered them to gain X many volunteer hours before such-and-such a date, and YVC is one of the best ways they can get those hours. Other volunteers are students who need it to graduate or to be in NHS, 4-H, their Homeschool group, or what-have-you. Still others are just kids with bad home situation that just want to get away and make some new friends.

Then, we work on the learning part of the service-learning project. Generally, this takes the form of a short lesson, an educational activity, or a talk from a representative of whatever nonprofit we happen to be working with. Finally, we designate a team leader (or two, if it's a bigger project) to lead the project, and when Saturday rolls around, that leader meets the youth and bam - the work gets done. So far I've worked at a couple of urban community gardens, a homeless shelter, an arboretum, and a nature sanctuary.

So there are three components - in-school, after-school, and Saturday projects.

That's it for now. I'll talk about more of my duties in later posts.

Kansas City Livin'

2010-09-30T22:43:00.002-05:00

July 30, 2010 - Arrive in Kansas City, confused, alone, and terrified of the city people. I carry only identification, my lucky pen, and a pair of rubber gloves to ensure I'm not infected with the disease that makes all city people assholes. As it turns out, I didn't need those gloves. I had arrived at an orientation session for my new job: Youth Volunteer Corps Team Leader, a gig with AmeriCorps, the same corps that hooked me up with the Student Conservation Association last summer. And the city people I met there were all really nice folks.

August 11, 2010 - Arrive for good, with a few other essentials, like a toothbrush, a lease agreement, and a tenor saxophone. Move into my new apartment, located in the bloody, pumping heart of downtown - Quality Hill Towers. Quality indeed. Even though the refrigerator is barely larger than the one I had in my college dorm, the view is remarkable and the location is extraordinary. I am positioned right between the River Market district (home to a plethora of Asian markets and a damn fine farmer's market) and the Crossroads Arts District (center of First Fridays, the hippest, most happenin' party in KC). I splatter paint my walls. I set up my furniture. I bask in my very own view of the city's skyline.

My sister in front of the freshly-splattered walls.

My aunt taking a break from all of the moving.

Our feet paid a heavy price for these walls.

This is what I get at night.

And this.

mmmm, and this too.

I'll post a little about my job soon. Maybe with digital video! Well, that's more than a maybe. I have a video camera now, so I'll be posting some video updates on Deric's Play Place in the future. Be prepared...

Egg

2010-04-27T01:35:00.001-05:00

Into the poorly lit kitchen I go. Right into the trash heap, that's right. Senseless, trying to keep these counters clean from grape jelly and mayonnaise. And of course, the skillet is dirty. It's always dirty. Sometimes I think my roommates crouch in the darkness of the pantry, sauces at the ready; and as soon as I clean the skillet and go on my way, they spring into action: dumping, frying, and caking as much nastiness onto the pan as is humanly possible. I think they just want to make me feel hopelessly and utterly defeated. And I do. I feel defeated by entropy.

So I clean the pan, feeling a great existential weight resting on my shoulders. The work will always be there. For me. For those who come after me. We're all Sisyphus, after all - the collection of us, that is. Humanity.

The pan is clean, so I grab the egg carton from the refrigerator. I just despise that word: refrigerator. Nothing graceful or pleasing about that word. I wish we could call it something else. Even fridge sounds ugly. Oh great, I'm missing a few. I guess I'm their maid and their grocer. Now that's a pretty cool word: grocer.

I like the sound the egg makes when it hits the hot pan. Somehow destructive and constructive at the same time. I could just watch the egg sizzle all day, except of course it would eventually burn to a crisp. That would be no fun. I'm always afraid that the spatula is going to scrape some of the pan and that I'll ingest some kind of metal or metal coating with my meal.

I go into the living room, sit down on the couch, and stare into my creation: a big, steaming slab of egg. That's what it is: a slab. A slippery, white, slab of not quite an embryo. Eck. Maybe it will seem appetizing if I put some Tabasco on it. It won't smell so much like an embryo, anyway. Maybe a little black pepper, too.

Ah hell, what's the use? It's unappetizing. All food is unappetizing nowadays. I'm an angry person. Angry at my roommates, at my house. Angry at eggs.

Damn you, Sisyphus. Damn you.

I guess he already is. I guess we all are.

For Stuart

2010-04-26T22:53:00.001-05:00

He strokes his chin gently
and stares intently
at Webster's Big Book of Grilling.
The suspense is killing
me.
Oh no, he's moving
those steaks are behooving.
The pan gently tipping
the sauces, all dripping
down the sides of his cutlets.

We just had a time
shooting bottles, sublime
and stress-melting entertainment.
And now, a well-deserved break,
some salmon, some steak,
and a smoke to boot.
"Hey, why don't we shoot
a movie for Scott?"
"I quite like that idea. I like it a lot."
It's a great idea
from my friend
Stuart.

Afterlife

2010-04-26T22:01:00.002-05:00

The bullet took the man rather by surprise. Why, just a moment before, he was sitting in the park, working feverishly on a crossword puzzle. The last thing that went through his mind, besides the speeding death-bean, of course, was the answer to 11 across: "having escaped or left without permission."

Nine letters, long, begins with an a... Ends in ed, obviously; past tense and all. Aha! It must be 'abscon--

Dead. The bullet killed him instantly. Shot from a gun held by a man believing himself to be Harold Bloom reincarnate. (It mattered little to the man that Harold Bloom was still alive).

But this story is not about the delusional Bloom aspirant. This story is about the dead man with the bloody crossword puzzle in his lap; his name was Harold. This, however, was pure coincidence. As a matter of fact, the delusional man wasn't even aiming for Harold; he was aiming for a pigeon.

Harold felt himself falling gently yet swiftly, as if being lowered by stage wires for dramatic effect.

I smell sesame, thought Harold. Indeed, he was smelling tahini, one of the main ingredients in Hummus, which, as it turned out, was precisely what he was being lowered into.

He sunk into the Hummus until it was about chest deep, his arms hovering horizontally above the creamy snack. Well, well, he thought. Harold had often wondered what might happen to him after he died, but hummus was a wholly unheralded hereafter.

Harold had lived a decent life. Though no saint, Harold committed no major crimes. His friends all thought of him as a perfectly tolerable and even good-natured fellow. By the time that bullet had prematurely put an end to his crossword puzzle solving endeavors, Harold was sufficiently happy with where he had come in life. He was, in other words, not too sorry to expire into a Mediterranean dish at that juncture in his life.

Harold just stayed there for a time, suspended in hummus as he was, to see if something would happen. The paprika started to make Harold's eyes water. The tears distorted his vision, but a sea of hummus looks the same, whether clear or obscured. Anyway, the temperature was nice, and the texture was pleasant enough. Another soul was not to be seen, and the silence was beginning to bother him. He called out towards the hazy, hummus-lined horizon: "Anybody have a pita chip?"

But there was not a pita in sight.

A Scene From My Zombie Movie

2010-04-26T20:12:00.003-05:00

front exterior of house. suburbs. night.
side exterior. murmuring voices. thin wisp of smoke from around corner.
back exterior. four college-age boys standing in circle. it is a still, dark night. they talk openly and pass around a pipe. they laugh. something funny has just been said.

Boy 1 (after laughing subsides): Yeah... It's coming. One of these days.
Boy 2: Dude, when the zombie apocalypse happens, I'm going right for Josh's house. Have you ever seen his stash of guns?
Boy 1: No.
Boy 2: He has an arsenal, man. An arsenal.
Boy 3 (pantomiming): When it happens, I want a shotgun. Headshot. *boom!* Headshot. *boom!*
Boy 4: Baseball bat. Don't have to worry about ammunition or reloading. That's when they get you. When you run out of ammunition, or when you're reloading. You're totally exposed.
Boy 2: I want that gun from Zombieland that freakin', uh, uh, uh, Woody Harrelson uses, dude. That thing is so bad-ass.
short pause. everyone ponders.
Boy 2: What about you? What's your weapon o' choice for Z-day?
Boy 1 (looks at Boy 2 for a while, then looks into the night): A lasso.

zoom to close-up on Boy 1's face. zoom out to reveal Boy 1 standing in the middle of a ravaged city street, burning cars, torn-up buildings. camera zooms out and up, looking down on him from above. hoards of zombies slowly closing in all around him - hundreds of them. he raises his arms and begins to spin his lasso. camera lingers on this scene, lasso swinging above his head, zombies approaching from all sides, inexorably. cut back to group of boys. Boy 1 still looking with great intensity into the night, fantasizing. others stare at him, dumbfounded.

A Litter of Communist Kittens

2010-04-26T18:00:00.001-05:00

One Winter I walked through the park
An hour or two before dark,
And as I put on both my mittens - behold! -
A litter of Communist kittens.

In Springtime I traveled to London.
I saw bridges and buildings, all golden.
But even amidst all those Britons - again! -
Those Pinkos! Those Communist kittens!

The kittens you usually tickle
are stamped with a hammer and sickle.
Do not let yourself become smitten
by a litter of Communist Kittens.

A Toast

2010-04-26T16:31:00.002-05:00

Are you feeling too hydrated?

Wondering how to get that special

scratchy feeling back into your life?

Maybe you're just tired of the same

old boring street vendor food.

What you need is

Mr. Toasty!

Mr. Toasty has been servicing the fine folks

at Sterling for the past 3 years.

NOW THAT'S SERVICE YOU CAN TRUST!

Spring Special!

Unlimited Toppings

ONLY 10 CENTS!

We do parties, too!

Just look for the giant toast

and kitchenette set!

Mr. Toasty and all subaffiliates are not responsible for any butter or lipid-related accidents.

Dostoevsky, and Sex

2010-04-26T16:05:00.003-05:00

It's 5:30 in the morning; I'm awake:
I'm awake because my bed's begun to shake.
There exists, though, no seismic activity,
just two people's passionate proclivity.

While the waking world washes around me,
my dull brain starts sensing some sound, see?
So I put down my ZZZzzzZZZ's and perk my ears up
and hear an erotic heave-ho thup thup thup.

Damn him, my roommate, so callous to those
he affects with his actions, those slumbering souls.
Their sleep is suspended; their rest ends in vex.
And for what? So XY can join with XX?

Oh hey, but gee, bro! Lucky for me, though:
Dostoevsky distracts me from him and his she-beau.
The Brothers: I love it - delicious, complex.
No morning quite like it: Dostoevsky, and sex.

The Depressing Tale of Ed Boxingtonmann

2010-04-15T15:58:00.001-05:00

Edward Boxingtonmann was an ordinary man, perhaps just like you or me. He didn't want much out of life: a modest, steady income, some friends to spend time with, a pretty woman to kiss on the mouth. Nothing unreasonable. But fate had dealt Ed a pretty heavy blow.

You see, in his early teens, Ed had noticed that his tongue was longer and more bulbous on its end than those of his classmates. By the time he graduated high school, his classmates had also noticed, and began talking about it behind his back. By the time Edward was celebrating his 21st birthday, his tongue had grown out of control. Whenever he opened his mouth wide, it shot out at amazing speeds.

Just a little red boxing glove, punching it's way out of Ed's oral cavity, and he had no control of it. This trait caught the attention of local law enforcement when, in college chorale, Ed knocked out Caesar, the Italian baritone who stood in front of him. Caesar spent six weeks in the hospital recovering from his head injuries. He was never able to sing again.

An enthusiastic Lieutenant Spitz reported in the local paper that Edward's "unique talent" was "nothing short of a superpower." And so it happened that the police force added Ed as an honorary member. Ed and his boxing glove tongue. Under intense police training, he worked out his mouth and neck so as to be able to sustain the stress of heavier and heavier tongue punches. Soon, his tongue was packing over 300 lbs of pressure per square inch. He could knock down a door just by facing it and opening his mouth wide:

*Gaw* POOSH!

Or take out a drug dealer:

*Gaw* SHPOP! ... thud

Ed was happy to help out the police force. The criminals, however, weren't so pleased. And so just like in comic books, Ed became a hero, and sad, sadistic criminals flocked to his home town of Cleveland, Ohio.

Soon, Ed Boxingtonmann was being kidnapped by these villainous wretches and tied up in dank basements, surrounded by masked men. Usually, he would find his mouth covered with duct tape and his arms and legs tied to a chair. No matter:

*Gaw* FWOOP! SHPACK! TAWANG! ...thud thud thud.

Ed would look around sadly at all the bodies and amble on back home. I think I'll fix some Lean Cuisine tonight, he would think.

Yes, Ed just wanted to live a quiet life. But society wouldn't let him have it. Not the bad guys. Not the good guys. Not the citizens of Cleveland. Everybody needs a hero, and Ed fit the bill. His depression grew like a great black wave.
And the villains kept coming. And justice continued to call for his help.

He had to stop it.

Ed sat at his house one night after consuming a rather unsatisfying TV dinner. He was crying. Nothing will stop them, he thought, from bothering me. All of my desires for life were just pipe dreams. Edward Boxingtonmann looked down at the floor, at his feet. He followed the crease in his pants up his legs and onto his crotch. He slouched back in his chair and looked at his stomach, and his eyes finally rested on his chest, his chin tucked down as far as it could go. He stared at where his heart was buried, listening to its pathetic beating. Keeping the beat to my life's cadence, he thought.

And that's when Ed enjoyed one of the only things he could call his own: his regret. I wish I didn't have this boxing glove tongue. I wish I didn't join the choir. I wish I would have learned to play the piano.

*Gaw*

A Strange Encounter

2010-04-15T12:50:00.003-05:00

The man did not know how he came to be in a cornfield. But there he was. It was nighttime, and the man couldn't see very well. The glowing pallor of the distant city's faint, humming lights washing hazy over the southern horizon helped him navigate around the soldier-like rows of corn. The city scared the man. He didn't know why exactly, but he felt it best to walk north, toward the peace and melancholy of that black sea. The cornfield wasn't too cold. It wasn't uncomfortable, either. It would do well enough, he thought, to just walk around in it for a while.

But the serene stroll was cut short. Just as the man's mind meandered to pleasanter places, a bad feeling caught him across the jaw. I'm being followed, he thought. The Russians are after me. The man started to run in diagonals, cutting through rows every so often to correct his direction. The man ran into a clearing. The Russians were waiting for him there with a space ship.

The man knew there was no escaping from the Russians, especially if they had a space ship - and they did - so he climbed on board with them. Better to cooperate at this point, he thought. He was being held in a part of the ship that was a bit like the back of an enlarged ambulance, but without the gurney or sharp tools. The man sat on a bench next to two or three Russians, and across from him sat a handful more. The man thought that the Russians weren't as bad as he thought they would be. Even though they hadn't spoken a word, their quiet was not a cold quiet. They were just bored, perhaps, or hungry.

The man could feel that they were slowing down. They had been traveling for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. It was hard to say how far they had gone. The man had no windows to see the outside whirling by. Probably for the better, he mused, because I get motion sickness in space ships. From the front of the craft, the man heard some murmuring and what sounded like an electronic voice.

One of the Russians sitting across from the man leaned forward and said, with a heavy accent, What you want to order? The man had been pretty hungry, lost in a corn field and all. I'll take two double cheeseburgers and a small fry, he said. You want a drink, no? said the friendly Russian. No thanks, said the man. He hardly ever ordered drinks from fast food restaurants. He believed it was wrong to pay so much for something that cost the owners so little.

So the man waited in the space ship with several Russians in that McDonald's parking lot, and he didn't miss the corn field a bit.

A Great Day

2010-04-15T09:07:00.007-05:00

One of life's biggest annoyances for me is trying to find something in a pile of junk in the car. I get the feeling that the entire pile is conspiring against me to hide whatever it is that I'm looking for. And so it was on this Spring morning in California, I was feeling bullied by this mountain of road trip knick-knacks in the passenger seat, working it's hardest to tumble down around my arms whenever I attempted to push it aside. For God's sake, I just want to find this book. Stuart and Scott are probably in Scott's house drinking or watching a good movie, or eating breakfast.

"Sir, do you need assistance?"

A policewoman! Where did she come from? She sounded suspicious.

"No, thank you."
"Sir, what is it you are looking for?"
"Just my book, thank you." I wanted her to leave me alone. I did have some herb in a brown, engraved, and otherwise conspicuous box on the floor of the back seat. I wasn't thrilled about this lady hovering over me like this.
"You mean to tell me you're not hiding a 'package' in there?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Surely she didn't know about the herb. I wasn't too worried, though - she had no right to search the car. No probable cause.
"You aren't hiding anything from me?"
I reached into the back seat and slid the box underneath the front passenger seat. Immediately I thought this would look suspicious to the policewoman, but she said nothing about it.
"Look, ma'am, I'm just here with my friend from Kansas. We're visiting an old college buddy. I can't stand out here and answer your questions all day."

Rather than take offense, I think she was impressed with my forwardness. I was a little impressed myself. She glanced backwards. Another cop was walking towards the car. Well, hell, I thought.

"We're going to have to ask you to sit quietly in the back seat while we take you to the precinct," said the newcomer.

And for some reason, I did what they asked. Maybe because they were matching my forwardness with intimidating language, maybe because it was too early for me to resist anymore, or maybe because I was curious by now. In any case, I was in the back seat, watching unfamiliar California shops fly by me.

We hadn't been gone long when I regained my courage.
"Where exactly are we going?"
No answer. The newcomer was driving and the policewoman that grilled me about 'the package' was sitting right in front of me on the passenger side. She smiles a little. It's not the kind of devilish smile a bad guy might grin in a movie, but the simple smile that says, "I love California. I love the sun in my face."

About this time it occurred to me that these people might not be real cops.
"Let me see your badge," I said.
Nothing but a smile.
"Dammit," I said. I cracked the door open, hoping they'd slow down and let me out. But they kept driving. Soon, we came up to an intersection. We got into the right turning lane, which had a yield sign, and the car slowed just enough for me to jump out. I could see a family in a minivan on the adjacent street gawking at me. What is a person supposed to do in this situation? I didn't exactly feel panicked or in danger, but I felt obligated to wave my hands around and cry for help at traffic. My car continued down the road with the two non-police women inside, and I crossed traffic, waving my hands and yelling. I attracted considerable attention but no help at all.

"Shoot. I guess I can probably find my way back home." I started jogging, lest I take too long and forget some of the turns. I crossed some railroad tracks and took a right, jogged a little more. I crossed the street to my left and jogged a little ways down that road too. It didn't take too long to get back to the house.

I ran right through the front door and into the kitchen, where I startle Stuart in his undershirt, cooking breakfast. After an instant or two of adjustment, he relaxes and smirks.

"Dude! I just got my car stolen by some lady!"
Stuart smiled. "Yeah, I figured that's what was going on out there. I saw her talking to you earlier."
"You saw it happen and you didn't do anything?! What the hell is wrong with you?!"
Stuart just let out a little chuckle and waved off the question. He sat me down and put some bacon and eggs with salsa on my plate. I forked a little bit of the scrambled eggs into the salsa and with my left hand, crumbled a little bacon into it. I let it sit there on my fork for a while, appreciating the aesthetic quality of the whole thing. I decided that I better clear the brassy, sweaty taste off of my palate with a swig of sweet rice milk. When that was done, I stuck the loaded fork into my mouth and savored the hell out of that thing.

"Oh yeah, dude, I found your book. You'd left it on the couch yesterday." Stuart flopped the book on the table in front of me.
I looked at the cover, thought about my life, and rested my bones for a while. Life was good. "Sweet. Thanks, man."

Spies Don't Wear Flip Flops

2010-04-06T08:13:00.005-05:00

Spies don't wear flip flops.
They make too much noise.
And when lurking 'round ledges,
they throw off their poise.

Spies don't wear rain boots.
They squish squosh squosh squish.
So when weather's wetly,
They're bare as a fish.

Spies don't don clogs much,
except in their free time.
or wear climbing shoes much

'cept in need of a high climb.

Spies try to walk quietly -
it's espionage.

But barefoot be the foolish spy
whose foot fits moulage.

The Spider Poem

2010-04-04T20:20:00.003-05:00

I do not like spiders.
They give me the creeps.
They have hairy legs.
They make sudden leaps.

But a spider, I hear,
abides in a shell
perched right on your bike,
a plastic motel.

You say you don't know
just how it survives,
with no source of food
and no kitchen knives.

Perhaps you're enough
for your eight-legged friend:
your close company
its needs do attend.

So Jennie, although
that pest is disgusting,
our relationship needs
no readjusting.

Just as the bug is
content, by my troth,
If I can be with you,
I'll take you both.

Things Move Away

2010-03-30T19:47:00.005-05:00

Away is such a nebulous word,
a direction,
movement towards the
"not here."

I went out for a bike ride
yesterday afternoon
on the washboard roads
a little ways away from my house
just as the sun was racing away.

As I approached a graveyard, I noticed
a small dog in the road snooping about,
maybe a puppy.
It heard my un-oiled wheels and scrambled
away from me, into the tree line.
With difficulty it bent its little body
twisting itself underneath the branches,
going through all sorts of pains
to escape my reach.

There were no houses around.
I took it to be a runaway
So I called out to it
to no effect. I gave up,
rode away.

An hour later, upon my return to
this tract of road, I saw the puppy again,
in the road,
mangled and broken.
An old farm truck had struck it
little noticing its fatal effect
and drove away towards the last rays
of the day's light.

The dog was not quite dead,
but close. I stood there for a while on this quiet road
straddling my bike
as the poor thing squirmed uneasily
still looking distrustful of me, even near death.

Away is anywhere far from here.
Far from the pain so plainly present.
That's the point.

A desperate man's last thoughts

2010-03-26T08:51:00.005-05:00

the door the door stay out of its way flat against the wall back to the wall quiet. breathe. mask on gun loaded bag ready. no identifying marks? good. breathe.

...

ready. try the handle GENTLE now, damn it. dark and quiet this is eerie as hell is this hell? too harsh - everybody has to eat

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hungry men sometimes must steal in order to survive. Sure, they can beg. The rude ones beg. The lazy ones beg. Or, they can go house-to-house, stealing food from this person and that. But multiple thefts increase the likelihood of getting caught, and besides, why inconvenience so many people? That's just as rude as the bum on the street. Much more polite to find a rich person (they deserve it anyway, more often than not) and make one big steal. A frugal guy can eat for quite a while off of one good steal. Maybe his entire life.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

stairs are really quiet - carpeted - good. ears, quiet! ironic, a man's eardrums waking the homeowner focus! jewelry, bedroom most likely. against wall again listen.

...

anybody in there? no one to be seen damned dark! go forth SLOWLY slowly creep through !!! rustling? hold breath adjust, damned eyes! what am I doing I'm going to be caught killed this wasn't worth-- MOVEMENT!! ... oh jesus, it's just the dog. just the dog, jesus a dog. fucking dog. bark? bark? bark? no, licking my leg hahahaha quiet now

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Upon suspecting a great threat, the body boosts its secretion of the hormone epinephrine. It's most immediate effect is to stimulate the fight or flight response in the individual. Epinephrine also dilates the air passages and increases the heart rate. With a high enough dosage of epinephrine, the weakest, atrophied slouch will feel god-like. Even after the fear is neutralized, the effects of epinephrine linger. Momentarily, in such a state of perceived invincibility, coupled with extreme relief, the sneakiest thief can let his guard down and do something stupid, like laugh out loud in an occupied house.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

oh no. no no no no no. they heard me it's over over can I hide no! they heard me already, didn't they? heard "someone there?" I know I heard-- footsteps in hall -- shit! gun ready--

"Hello? Somebody in there?"

....

"Hello? ..."

...

"Jackson, boy, was that you?"
"Honey? What's wrong?"
"I thought I heard laughter from this room."
mumbled, hushed
"Jackson ---- ----- acting ----- ----- the room. As if.. as ----- ------- ------ the police."
"------ ---- downstairs, I'll check -----

I can't kill a man he has a wife maybe kids? prison's not so bad at least I get fed FUCKING society! should have been a socialist should ha-- shit I'm no good death death? death. not bad make it clean for these folks sweaty palms gun hot trigger cold oooh barrel cold on my temple figure in door going for light switch god forgive me

----------------------------------------------------------------------

With a large enough dosage of epinephrine a man might even believe in the survival of his own suicide. Maybe the thief believed his bullet would be a kind of Juliet's poison. Maybe he was too cowardly to look the husband in the eye. Or embarrassed. Or maybe he was just desperate, so very utterly desperate for an out.

A suicide candidate can easily botch a shot to the head. Aimed below the eyes, the bullet will probably only damage the bone structure of the face. Too forward, and the bullet may only damage the frontal lobe, a relatively recent evolutionary add-on, not necessary for survival. Even if the bullet is aimed into the center of the brain, the bullet could still take a path that misses any vital parts, merely taking away speech, memory, emotion, or any other part of the brain that makes humans something more than featherless ducks.

But when done right, and with a little bit of luck, a properly-aimed bullet can shut down the part of the brain that gives a person self-awareness. Although the body may continue to be alive, medically, the person is, in effect, instantly eliminated, along with any feelings of hunger, epinephrine, or desperation.

Stealing the Elephant

2010-03-10T23:19:00.001-06:00

One time, my friends and I went to Alden to steal something. Nothing big, important, nothing that, once stolen, would devastate the ex-owner. We drove around until we found the most luxurious house in town (which isn't saying much for a town like Alden) and spying out their front porch decorations. Aha! An elephant trumpeting its trunk. How majestic! How noble! How theft-able! Scott spotted it first, actually. He said, "There it is. We're stealing that elephant." So we circled the block once, talked over our plan, and got into position. The house was well-lit, so we parked the car half a block away, out of the light. Mind you, we parked in the middle of the road, so we weren't exactly inconspicuous. Still, the owners of our target couldn't see us. Michael got out of the car, ran up to the porch, and wrapped his arms around this large and (as we were able to deduce from his body language) very heavy elephant. Michael struggled with it so much, in fact, that he couldn't make it to the car. Several of us understood the idiocy of our plan and exclaimed to no one in particular, "Oh shit! He's not going to make it!" So we drove the car into the exposing light of the rich man's house and opened the trunk for Michael, who promptly threw in the elephant and hopped into the back seat. We sped away, victorious, awaiting the police. After all, we were literally the only moving car in all of Alden, and no doubt several of the neighbors observed with considerably suspicion this strange car parked in the middle of the road.

We tried to make our escape a number of times, but couldn't remember how to get back to Sterling. So we ended up driving up and down Main Street three or four times. I was thinking, "Jesus, we're just asking to get caught."

But we didn't. We made it back to Sterling without anybody following us, without anybody coming out of the house. Hell, for all we know, nobody even noticed we were there.

Do I feel bad about what we did that night? Not really. We targeted the richest-looking property in town. I like to think of it as wealth equalization. The equalizers have never been looked upon favorably by the wealthy. But they're heroes. Our actions weren't exactly heroic. After all, we didn't meet anybody else's needs by stealing this elephant. We did, however, stick it to a rich man. A man content with parading his wealth by displaying costly animal molds on his front porch. What a dick. No, I don't feel bad in the slightest. Besides, it made a cool mascot for Campbell basement for a while, and it's served as a great conversation starter.

I think the elephant is happier too. Who likes being a trophy? Nobody. Almost nobody. Nobody of noble standing, anyway. The elephant is much happier, I'm sure, chilling out with college students than freezing his giant gray ass off in front of some rich guy's house.

On Seeing in Grays

2010-03-08T12:57:00.005-06:00

Human beings are pattern-seeking creatures. Look at some shag carpet or a textured wall. Chances are, you'll find a face or even an animal. Kids recognize this. Ever seen a small child lying in the back yard staring at the clouds? Children intuitively know that they can easily find patterns in things. It's not surprising, therefore, to (for example) hear "hidden messages" in reversed Led Zeppelin music or the face of the Madonna burnt onto a grilled cheese sandwich. It would be really surprising, actually, if we didn't find such patterns in random events.

People can find patterns where patterns aren't intended, and in the same vein, we can draw delineations where none are intended. Scientists differentiate one species from another by asking, "Can they breed and produce fertile offspring?" If the answer is yes, the two animals are in the same species. If no, they belong to different species.

Great, so we have natural, clearly-defined boundary lines that allow us to slice up and categorize living things, or so it seems. As it turns out, nature isn't so clear-cut. Along a geographic stretch, like the east coast of North America, for example, animals from extreme ends cannot interbreed with each other, even though each animal can breed with its neighbors. In other words, A equals B equals C equals D, but A does not equal D.

Humans are always trying to classify, group, delineate, and label, and that can be really good. After all, the idea of species, even if it doesn't really exist in nature, is and has been very helpful to scientists. It is important to remember that just because something is helpful doesn't make it true.

Nowhere is this more true than in the area of ethics. We live in a world of grays. Some shades of gray are almost black or white. Nazi Germany committed unforgivably vile acts. Racism is ugly. Sexism is ugly. On the other hand, feeding the poor is noble. Helping disadvantaged people is kind. Loving someone is almost always good. But these obvious moral situations are scarce. More often than not, we are left in sticky situations. Issues such as abortion, immigration, and gun control have many facets, and one thing is clear: it's not a simple, black-and-white problem. We have to take what we know into consideration, and make the best decision possible.

And just what is the best decision? There may not be a right or wrong answer in all situations. That's the beauty of living without moral dogmatic declarations. We can do our best to increase happiness and decrease suffering for others without fearing the retribution of a malevolent heavenly dictator. We can do good for goodness' sake.

The Theotritionist

2010-03-07T23:45:00.009-06:00

*** for the privacy of my clients, I have altered the names of some of the deities mentioned in this article ***

My name is Daniel Beeber, and I am a Theotrionist.
Theonutritionist (n.)
One who is an expert in the nourishment and dietary intake of deities. Also, theotritionist.

On a practical level, this means I always have work. Deities are notorious for their digestive complications. But who doesn't have digestive problems nowadays, right? Our governments subsidize shitty food and big business makes it impossible for good food to become popular. Anyways, people think deities are different, but they really aren't. Input always affects output. Oftentimes, deities have trouble in the shitter because of lousy nourishment.

Early in my career as a theotritionist, I worked with a god named Joe Hova. Although Lord Hova had a robust and zealous following, his diet consisted primarily of grazing mammals, like goats, sheep, and bulls. Occasionally, Hova would consume some bird or another. By itself, this diet is not detrimental, though unusually high in protein and saturated fat. The problem for Joe Hova was that he feasted on this meaty diet with an unhealthy amount of sin, resulting in lots of gas and a nasty case of loose stool. Dieting deities describe this phenomenon as Atkins-Sin Syndrome (ASS).

"I've got quite a case of ASS, I'm afraid," Joe Hova said to me when he first came into my office. Hova and I worked together to come up with a slightly more liberal diet, which included animals with cloven feet, animals that chew on the cud, leavened bread, and pork. On an unrelated note, this is about the time his PR man, Mike Barklowski, completely renovated his public appearance. These major changes, though unpopular at first with his stockholders, eventually proved effective.

Yes, my name is Daniel Beeber, and I am a theotritionist. I used to enjoy my work, but lately, I've grown tired of all of these deities. They seem so dated, like I'm mending the wings of the last few Dodos. And the more unpopular the deities become, the crankier they get. It's all jihad this and spiritual warfare that. I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the Waco siege.

I think I'll quit my job and get a job with the park service. I like the mountains. Maybe I'll just live in the mountains for a while, clean up trash along the trails. Anything to get away from these damned sickly deities.

Appalachia

2010-03-07T20:46:00.003-06:00

So why was Appalachia the way it was? That is, why did the conifers sing those haunting tunes every Autumn? Why did the mountains spill down and roll away from heaven, God's linens tumbling out of the dryer? Why did the air excite the skin? The dirt the feet? The moss the eyes?

Why, standing in a snowy forest in the late afternoon, did it seem like every living thing was holding its breath?

There is a fragile magic in natural things. A mystical momentum in that marmot's movements. A mountain of meaning in that muddy muskrat mound. Magic.

But why was Appalachia this, and not some other, way?

It reminded us of of what we are.

we are not abandoned. we are not yet abandoned

2010-03-07T19:55:00.004-06:00

In the 1950s, the United States military installed a series of missile silos throughout the Midwest. It was a key component of the West's defense against the perceived Soviet nuclear threat.

These silos were fully equipped with computer stations, living quarters, and military command terminals, as well as an anti-nuclear missile capable of taking down enemy nukes.

In the following years, a peace treaty mandated that all said missile bases be deemed useless by filling them with water and dirt.

However, outside one decommissioned Atlas missile base near Lyons, Kansas, the soft dirt testifies to the continued activity beneath the surface and around the large silo blast doors floating above the hidden military compound.

A small family of raccoons live here. The father collected pieces for their den from an old fallen tree near the blast doors. They made the den in an old, expanded prairie dog burrow, just across from the emergency escape ladder. And the mother collects acorns from the tree just off the main road. Living in uneasy proximity is a very active jackrabbit. It prefers munching on the grass by the Western security fence, because the food is tall and in the cool, early morning shade. The hemp plants prefer growing in the iron-rich soil around the old rusted exhaust vent poking up out of the earth. Lizards like the cold dank stairway leading down, down.

All of this in the rotting remains of a missile silo.

Disappearing Act

2010-03-07T18:49:00.003-06:00

Often, as a child, I would
slip into silly daydreams -
not of being a pop star,
an astronaut,
or superhero -
I would dream of
fighting my father.
My father, whose
temper was as short
as his moral stature.

Few boys have the
chance to live out their
daydreams.
But I did.
From upstairs one night,
I heard my father
yelling,
angry as Hell.
This had been brewing
for some time, I thought.
I grabbed a knife from my bookshelf
and headed towards the commotion.
Thwack, "You whore!"
Thwack.
"Deric!"
"What is it, dad? Just calm
down."
"Call Pastor and Mickey"
And so I placed the call,
and placed my weapon on the pool table,
and tried to calm both of them,
hysterical
spouting nonsense
crying
frantic
"Calm. Both of you, easy now."

Randy arrives, wife trailing
behind.
Dad lunges, yells, knocks
Randy to the ground
straddles him, right next
to the pool table.

Here it is:
I love my mom
I love Pastor Randy
I loathe my father.
But when I grabbed my
knife, I didn't unsheathe it.
After all,
who wants to hurt a
man already in so much
pain?

So I hit him with
the harmless end.
I hit him
again
again
nothing
he's still beating the crap
out of my pastor.

So I run.
To the phone.
911.
And I run.
Outside.
To the car.
Drive away.

Whatever happened
to the hero?

After Summer Sosltice

2010-03-07T18:38:00.004-06:00

my very first priority for the day
was to sleep in as late as
possible.
when my foul roommate woke me up
I had to shift to
priority number two:
be as comfortable as
possible -
normal routine be damned.

Upon shuffling my way
into the kitchen,
I discovered a moth,
wet-plastered to a dirty pan.
"I feel your pain, buddy."

Sitting on the couch
next to a glass of water,
I wish I could
devise a way
to get the water in me
without having to
move my arms
or head.
My vacant glazed gaze gathers
itself toward a brochure on the
coffee table:Tips 4 Teens - Alcohol Abuse
I laugh
(only mentally)
and for a moment,
the shaking stops.

Jesus, it's good to
be alive.

Storm, in Black and White

2010-03-07T18:16:00.004-06:00

The following poem is based on the photograph taken by James Karales, Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965.

It looked like quite a storm
was brewing
that March day
when Karales snapped his photo.

The ominous clouds seemed to
dip down
Heaven itself
trying to intimidate the oppressed.

But the line of protesters
remains unaffected
by this heavenly threat -
extends into the horizon
fronted by what looks
like a row of chorus
dancers.

Will their audience be impressed
by their bold footwork?
Will the gods in heaven
relent?
Will those protesters still be dancing
in 100 years' time?

or will the rain cloud burst?

Lies From Heaven

2010-03-07T18:10:00.003-06:00

 In the beginning, the LORD God made the heavens and the earth. With the appearance of age He made them, and when He made them, the LORD God saw that it was cleverly deceptive, and the LORD God smiled upon his work.

Next, the LORD God surrounded the earth with a multitude of stars, so that man might be tricked into believing that he is not special in the eyes of the LORD.

The LORD then created the animals. Male and female he created them, and with great number and variety, that man might believe foolish thoughts, even that the higher animals were evolved from the lower ones. And the LORD saw that this also was deceptive, and pronounced it good.

Finally, the LORD God created man out of the dust of the earth. With vestigial organs he created him, that man might believe foul and devilish voices, even the voice of Charles Darwin would he believe.

And so, removing all evidence of His creative acts, God stepped back and waited.

And the LORD God said, "Verily, unto those that heed the words written in my book be eternal damnation, for they heed not what nature shows plainly. But to those who are observant and thoughtful, and who believe not in me, they shall have rewards everlasting."

And in this way, the LORD God ensured the salvation of the wise and the destruction of the blind.

I'll Be Barfing Creativity...

2010-03-07T17:50:00.004-06:00

I'll be posting quite a bit this semester. My creative writing class requires that I, at the end of the semester, submit my best 50 journal entries of writing. I had been writing a lot of them down, but I wasn't crazy about the idea of typing out 50 entries at the end of the semester or finding some way to mark all of the good entries and hand my entire notebook into the hands of my teacher. Some things in there are better left seen only by me.

Warning: Some of these prompts come from a creative writing book, Writing Wide. It's awful. Thus, some of these posts will be awful. But I hope most of them are pretty good. More than that, I hope some will be great. I really need to practice, after all, if I want to do this professionally some day.

I don't know if anybody is still following this blog, but if so, great. You can keep me accountable and critique my writing. Please excuse any tackiness. I'm new at this.

Bubbles

2010-03-02T17:58:00.004-06:00

Jesus, man: just blow!
These retards have no capacity for the fine, incidental skills the rest of us have: rolling a joint, folding an origami swan, blowing a goddamned bubble of chewing gum.

A cynical bastard like me has no business volunteering at the local nuthouse. If I say even half the things that are in my head, I would crush the very shriveled, splintered core of every loon in this place.

Yet here I was, sitting with Kevin from Portland, a middle-aged man who can't string a full coherent sentence together; Kevin, who has been drooling over my shiny black shoes for the past 25 minutes. I mean that quite literally - he's a drooler. A retarded, shoe-obsessed, non-bubble-blowing drooler.

Christ, what am I doing here? I can feel the backs of my ears getting hot from frustration. My patience left me long ago. Who the Hell decided this would be a good bonding activity, anyway?

Kevin is having about as much fun as I am, by the looks of things. His eyes are glazed, fixed on my shoes. His spine is slouched in his chair. His mouth is wide open, from boredom or retard-dom or something... Maybe his drool is self-aware and just wants to escape his that lifeless, bubble-less mouth of his.

It succeeds, along with that nasty, chewed up piece of gum. I saw it fall out as if in slow motion, but the monotony of giving bubble-blowing instructions to a retard totally screwed my reaction time. It smacked against my Floorsheims with a moist thud.

Ah, this must have lit up something in that sour mash brain of his, because his eyes snapped to mine, searching (fearing? hoping?) for a reaction.

Normally, I'd yell. Normally, I'd stomp out. Lose my shit. But this was just so ridiculous that I couldn't behave within the normal boundaries. I was in a nut-house, after all. So... I stood up and began to tap-dance. I tap-danced just as a retarded person might tap-dance. I mimicked every facial expression, every shoulder twitch, and every awkward foot-tap. I tried to hurt Kevin's feelings as much as possible. It was a pretty good impersonation, I thought. All the while, the gum hugged tightly my shoe.

Something wholly unexpected happened then. Kevin, rather than crying or moaning (as I expected he would), worked up a grin. I could hear a chuckle work its way into his throat. Eyes fixated on my shoes, in complete amusement, Kevin laughed. And as he laughed, he formed with his drool and his lips and his breath the most perfect, beautifully-shaped spit-bubble ever to be made by man.

And when I saw it, I crumpled. My legs gave out. I fell back into my chair. This time, my mouth, was agape, I was astonished; I must have looked like the retarded one. What was left to do but join this man, Kevin, in his innocent laughter?

And so I did.

Ruminations During History of Philosophy

2009-10-06T13:45:00.003-05:00

I thought this semester was going to be fairly uneventful. Now, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get through it without some kind of therapy. For now, my therapy has been reading rational thinkers like Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins.

I started with Letter to a Christian Nation, which I actually read as a Christian when it first came out in 2006. I've also read Harris' The End of Faith. Before leaving for South Dakota, I read Atheist Universe, another good rational book. This semester, after going back over Letter to a Christian Nation, I read Breaking the Spell and am now almost finished with God is Not Great. In addition, I have read some of A People's History of the United States, which sure points a nice lens on Christianity's past atrocities.

My Faith and Life class has about driven me to tears. I can hardly believe that college educated people could spout off so much nonsense in so short a class period. The class is filled with religious and sexist bigots, using their pathetic understanding of the Bible to back up their beliefs.

Today, for instance, a girl in my class said, with a straight face, "I really like the Old Testament in the fact that it was more fair to women (than the NT)." This statement is so patently ridiculous, I need not even say why.

In addition to this nuthouse, I'm also having to sit through a "History of Philosophy" class. I put it in quotes because, while it started out as a philosophy class, it has devolved into a theology class. For the past several weeks, we have been talking about issues such as infallibility of the bible, the incarnation, and original sin (which is what we're talking about today). More often than not, I cannot even answer the question in an intelligible way, since the question assumes the answerer is in fact a Christian.

I have absolutely no desire to continue attending these classes. Were they not required for my graduation, I would drop them in a heartbeat.

Somebody please show me that there are sane people left in the world. This campus is like the Twilight Zone.

Looking Back on Rangerhood

2009-07-29T19:48:00.009-05:00

Since I've only two more weeks to "do that ranger thang," I feel I am in a good position to reflect over how this summer has impacted me. First, some pictures:

Three cave pictures. Some popcorn, frostwork, and some flowstone in the third picture.

The magical elevator building, built by the CCC in the 1930's, along with the shaft.

Readouts from the anemometer stationed inside the Natural Entrance.

In the ready room, we have everything we need to do the tours, including the iconic ranger uniforms...

...and an army of flashlights. These are the stingers, the brightest of the three we carry.

Next to the only natural entrance into Wind Cave, one of the longest, oldest, and most complex caves in the world.

I'll begin my reflection with some frankness - I don't want to be a ranger "when I grow up." It has been fun for a summer gig. I've got to see parts of the cave that few people ever get to see. I've learned how to explore the backcountry of the cave. I've interacted with visitors cut from all sorts of cloth. And my public speaking skills have no doubt grown tremendously (on some days, I can take 120 visitors through the cave).

But -

I say more or less the same things every day. And what I'm allowed to say is determined by the national park service, and more directly, by the head of interpretation here at WICA (Wind Cave). I want to speak freely. Why should it be such a big deal on cave tours?

Because cave tours inevitably involve geology. There are fossils of ancient brachiopods down in the cave. And I'm living in a country where 39% of the population believes in evolution.* Many of the people that do not believe in evolution also scoff when confronted with the age of the earth. Many of them come to the cave to challenge the ranger.

In training I was upset to learn that we are not allowed to engage in such "controversial conversations." In other words, this is what is expected of me:

Visitor: How old is the cave?

Me: The limestone was formed 250 million years ago. The cave largely began to form 65 million years ago, when the Rockies were uplifted.

Visitor: That can't be true! God made the world 6,000 years ago!

Me: Well, we all have our own beliefs on the matter. In any case, know that the cave is really old.

I'm not allowed to challenge anybody's beliefs, even with scientific evidence. That's "disrespectful" of the visitors' "divergent backgrounds."

Sure, whatever.

In any case, I've been very pleased to spend the summer out here in the Black Hills, among the pronghorn, bison, prairie dogs, and yellow warblers.

I've had a chance to finish The Kite Runner, which immediately became a favorite. We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families was excellent journalism, but required a lot of commitment to get through it. John Krakauer fascinated me again with Under the Banner of Heaven. It has solidified my contempt for religious thinking: belief in an afterlife, so-called divine utterances (whether in the form of books like the Christian Bible or "oral revelations"), devotion towards religious leaders or prophets, etc.

I'm ready to come home. Two more weeks.

* According to a Gallup Poll taken in February 2009.

Losing People in the World's 4th-longest Cave

2009-06-12T21:47:00.002-05:00

The other day, I lost 5 people down in the cave, including a mother and father with their 2-year-old daughter, and part of a Polish family. If you want to know more about it, call me and ask.

Fundamentalists in a Cave

2009-06-12T21:32:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, I was leading a cave tour in Wind Cave for a full group (40 people), when I stopped to show everybody some Brachiopod fossils in the limestone of the cave. A large family consisting of a mom, dad, and several teens passed by to see the ancient shells, and as they did, they exclaimed, "Oh look! Evidence of Noah's flood!"

Of course this is ridiculous. But I said nothing.

In the next room, everybody sat on some benches, and I proceeded to talk about some of the speleothems found in the cave. At some point, a gentleman in the group asked me, "How old is this cave?"

I braced myself for some glares from the fundamentalists and confidently declared, "Geologists tell us that the rock in which this cave is formed dates back to about 150 million years ago."

To my surprise, the fundamentalists didn't glare. In fact, they did something even more ridiculous - they laughed. Out loud. Heartily. I was shocked for a moment and paused, but quickly regained my composure and proceeded. "But the cave itself didn't start forming until the the uplift of the Rockies, about 65 million years ago."

Initially, I felt conflicted. By showing them the Brachiopods, I fueled the idiotic fire burning through their brains. However, I though about this incident for a while and came to this conclusion:

* My response was appropriate. Challenging the fundamentalists would have been a waste of time for everybody.

* The fundamentalists probably wanted me to start an argument.

* No matter what I said, they would still cling to their unscientific delusions.

* By ignoring them, I simply made them look foolish in front of all others involved, which is the best thing I probably could have done at that point.

Igloo, SD

2009-06-12T21:27:00.002-05:00

All I want to say is this: I went with some friends to what is by far the creepiest place I've ever experienced last Sunday night. If you want to find out more about this Hellish place, search for "Igloo, SD," "The Black Hills Ordnance Depot," or "Black Hills Army Depot."

Oh my god.

Atheist Universe

2009-06-12T21:12:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I finished this book before I left for South Dakota. Well, I didn't feel like reflecting on it until now, so deal with it.

Atheist Universe is like The End of Faith in that it will offend religious people, and that the author's frustration with Christianity clearly comes through the writing. It's different because it focuses particularly on the Intelligent Design movement of Christianity. Rather than having more of a narrative flow like Harris, Mills fashions his books as if it were a Christian apologetic book, like Strobel'sThe Case for a Creator. I'm not positive, but I don't think I like this. Perhaps it will reach some Christians, but it seems more of a reference book for atheists than anything. The problem is that Mill's voice seems a little immature at times, unlike Harris, who can sound angry and dignified at the same time.

This is not to say that Mills' book is full of immature ideas. He gives a good amount of science in the book, just enough to feel substantial without being overbearing. I'll probably pick up a copy to own as a reference, but would hesitate in recommending it to a Christian.

A New Home at Wind Cave National Park

2009-06-12T20:41:00.004-05:00

I know, I know... This is long overdue.

I left for my great South Dakotan adventure way back in May and arrived at the park (hereafter abbreviated as WICA) on the 17th. I'm living in what here is referred to as "lower housing," meaning I'm living in the cool section of the employee housing. I have four roommates, none of which are SCA. One is an intern directly through the park service and the other three are paid employees. In terms of job responsibilities, training, pay, time off, and uniforms, the only difference between interns (like me) and paid employees (like a slew of others) is... well, I don't get paid, and I my uniform has "Volunteer" stamped all over it, just so the visitors don't get the wrong idea and think I'm qualified for the job.

Living in WICA is really fun. There is a fire pit in lower housing which hosts a beer-drinking and story-telling circle of workers just about every night. Is fun.

In the center of the image, you see some trees separating a long string of apartments on the right from a house and garage on the left. That is my house. In the center-right, you can see the fire pit.

A word on employee politics here:

* The interpretation division (interp) is by far the largest division in the park, with something over 20 employees. Everybody resents the interp for being treated like royalty and having a cooler job than everybody else; also, most of us don't know how to drive a fence post into the ground, wire the cave lights, fix the elevators, manage the park computer network, or do anything else practical around here.

* The Law Enforcement (LE) are resented by everyone. Their favorite past-time is hiding in the bushes by lower housing and nailing underage drinkers sitting around the campfire. Because everyone knows where that leads: senseless killing and grand arson. Actually, it leads to a bunch of stressed out employees fraternizing around the campfire and having a good time, but that seems to escape the LE. The LE are dicks (most of them).

* The maintenance and fence crew simply are. Nobody has strong feelings about them. There may be some collective guilt shared by non-maintenance, because they have to do actual work around here and don't get paid any more than the rest of us.

My weekend is Thursday-Friday. I'm not sure if this will end up being a good thing or a bad thing.

I'll be giving at least four different cave tours (five if I so choose), one prairie hike, a discovery program (DISCO), and perhaps an evening campfire program (if I so choose). In other words, my plate is full.

My housemates and some other friends on a day hike.

The job is lots of fun, and my fellow employees are interesting. It's going to be a great summer.

One More To Go

2009-05-02T23:59:00.002-05:00

Well, another school year has ended. Next year, I'll have my own apartment. And I'll be 21. And I'll be part time. And I'll have a job. It's going to be nothing short of amazing. Although I must say that I don't think anything can touch how great this semester has been, particularly because of two very great friends: Stuart and Scott. Sadly, neither of them will be around me next year, so I'll have to find new friends with which to get into trouble.

Also sad (but on a whole lower level) is that I couldn't finish The Making of the Atomic Bomb before it was due at the library, and since I'm leaving for the summer, I'll have to finish it next semester. It's been a good book so far, though. In the meantime, I'm getting I'm reading the decidedly shorter (and easier) Atheist Universe. So far it's good. I'll give you my full reaction when I'm finished.

Choir Tour

2009-03-20T21:07:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow morning I leave for Colorado, where the SC choir will be touring over the period of one week. I expect to be skiing, shopping, singing a lot, and generally having lots and lots of fun. I'll also be going over my lines for the one act I'm in this semester: Hard Candy. I don't think I've mentioned my involvement in the last play either, but a senior here at SC directed Arsenic and Old Lace, to much acclaim. I played Lt. Rooney, the deus ex machina. It's nice to be the role of the guy who assumes absolute control at the end.

A Long Way Gone

2009-03-20T21:03:00.002-05:00

I finished Ishmael Beah's memoir earlier tonight. It's a very accessible book - very straightforward and written with much care and emotion. If you have even the least bit of humanitarian in you, I strongly encourage you to read this book. It certainly puts the condition of the African citizen in perspective.

A Long Way Gone: A

On the Biblical Mandate to Respect Authority

2009-03-13T16:35:00.002-05:00

The SC choir chaplain brought up a passage in 1 Peter at the beginning of this week regarding submission to authority. It led to interesting conversation, and I'd like to reiterate part of that conversation here.

1) It is important to remember that the early churches who passed around these letters had a very practical use for them. The early church could have easily been stomped out had the early Christians been too anti-government. True, the church was persecuted. True, the church did get into trouble with the government. However, remember that the persecution happened for short bursts of time (historically speaking) and only in isolated areas. It was by no means universal persecution. Additionally, when you look at other early Christian documents, you see more injunctions to work with the rulers.

And why not? The early church needed all the support it could get, while not compromising, of course. If they were all outspoken government radicals, they would not have lasted long.

2) With that in mind, I'd like to state that I unequivocally support every man, woman, and child's right to not only speak out against the government, but to practice what Thoreau called Civil Disobedience.

Someone in class mentioned that it's okay to disagree with the government, as long as you don't disrespect the government. Not only is this modifying the passage to your own liking, it's near meaningless. What does it mean to "disagree with respect"? Is calling the president foolish disrespectful? Is calling the president a liar disrespectful? Is calling the president a crook, or a murderer, or immoral disrespectful? Because I know many world leaders who deserve to be called these things. In some cases, I firmly believe that the leader must be taken out of his or her leadership position, violently if necessary (e.g. Hussein).

The definition of respect is shaky, and Christians exploit this shakiness by using the 1 Peter passage to condemn certain protesters while at the same time justifying their own protests. Many Christians would have no problem calling Obama a baby-killer (I've heard it done here at SC) because of his abortion policies. On the same token, I've heard the same people bitch and moan whenever someone calls G.W. Bush a moron because all of a sudden that's violating the 1 Peter passage.

Now, let's put 1 and 2 together. Let's all agree that in our country, we can disagree with our leadership - make fun of, call names, label, whatever - just so we're all on the same playing field. Let's also agree that when a leader is exploiting the people, starving and killing and robbing, etc., that country's people has a right to overthrow the government.

Lastly, set's put some restrictions on our actions. Here are some things that I think we can all agree are unethical:

Slander: As defined by the free dictionary as "A false and malicious statement or report about someone." Keyword: False. No making up things about our presidents. No premature judging. Get your facts straight before exercising your freedom of speech, for crying out loud. It will do the whole country good.

Needless Violence: Violence may have its place, but very rarely. I'm talking Hussein-level baddies. Blatant exploitation and violence against the people on the part of the leader.

If you can think of any other exceptions, please tell me in the comments.

Some Things I Like

2009-03-13T14:50:00.003-05:00

For those of you who are tech-savvy, I heartily recommend the following services, websites, and applications.

Want to learn a new language? Busuu is an excellent social-based language learning site that connects you with native speakers (only if you want).

I've started a regular work-out program at the Sterling Wellness Center. I've also been tinkering with my dietary habits, fitting in more whole grains, fibers, and protein. The web service Gyminee has helped out a lot. It tracks nutritional goals, workout patterns, and like Busuu, there is an optional social aspect to it, great if you need accountability.

If you're into reading, you should check out BookMooch, a book trading website. Basically, you earn points by giving away your books (you pay shipping costs) and use those points to request books from other users.

With Make Me Sustainable, you can track your personal carbon emissions and find out how to bring them down to zero.

Finally, if you're into science, art, literature, technology, or culture, check out the awesome collection of "TED talks" over at TED.

Science Class Frustrations

2009-03-13T14:21:00.003-05:00

We watched An Inconvenient Truth in our Environmental Science lab this week, and took class today to discuss the documentary. This was the second time I had seen it, and I was expecting some people to scoff at the ideas presented. Still, I was disturbed in during the discussion, because some people simply did not want to believe him. Some said that they didn't believe the science because it traced earth's climate back to 600,000 years ago, and these students didn't believe the earth was that old. One student, as if thinking of the idea for the first time, said, "Well, we've had ice ages, so it only makes sense that we have warming periods as well. I wanted to shake him and say, "Did you even watch the fucking movie?!"

And here's what I've been thinking since that class today: Groups with agendas (political, religious, etc.) tend to approach scientific findings with a buffet mindset. If a finding disagrees with their stomach, they simply pass it by. When something seems tasty, they snatch it up. That's not how science works, folks.

Perhaps what most upsets me is when people hear of a scientific study - a cursory description - and immediately dismiss it. "Well, there's no way they can tell that." Somebody said something similar in class regarding the measurement of temperatures from the past by analyzing air bubbles trapped in ice core samples. I've seen this reaction to many scientific studies. It's as if they're thinking, "I'm a pretty smart Joe, but I don't understand this. Therefore, they must be making it up." Or, "Silly scientists. They overlook the most obvious things."

Listen people. These scientists have usually had more education than your entire family put together. Who the hell do you think you are picking apart their studies when you don't have even possess a fraction of their knowledge in their field?

"But Deric, who will criticize his arguments if not us?"

Oh, you're right... If only there were some kind of forum where other scientists could critique their peers... like if they could publish it in some kind of journal... golly gee, it's too bad no such thing exists...

But no. People are too lazy to read comments by actual scientists. They'd rather read popular science or Christianity Today to get their science updates. More often, they just rely of their own gut reactions to gauge the veracity of any scientific pronouncement.

Mind you, this isn't only directed at "global warming doesn't exist and if it does, we aren't responsible" crowd, but also toward the Greenpeace crowd. Both censor scientific findings that they don't like.

There, I've vented. Can we all grow up now and take science seriously?

L'etranger

2009-01-20T21:06:00.002-06:00

Tonight I finished The Stranger by French author and philosopher Albert Camus. It instantly became one of my favorite books. The story is short. The premise is simple. Ward's translation is beautiful and I think accurately conveys the tone of Mersault into English. Camus effectively put me in the skin of Mersault, and by the end of the book, I saw the world as he did: dispassionate and absurd.