Anyone who has ever hauled children cross country has heard that one, or some variation of it, it’s just the nature of the operation. C’mon, tell us we’re almost there. We’ve been incarcerated in the back seat for eight whole hours now and looking out the window is getting boring. C’mon, how much longer to Grandma’s house and all the yummie things she bakes for us? Are we there yet?
I haven’t posted anything for a few days now, been a trifle busy with a couple of things, a few from things from the second (public) reality, the remainder from the first (inner) reality of the self.
The first and most critical thing was restoring the functionality of my desk. Blow a bugle sad and low, smooth and slow, fire off a salute into the setting sun: the old desktop system my son built for me over a decade ago finally surrendered to the years. I got up to see the obituary pop up before the cursor: WIN32/CONFIG SYS missing or corrupt... my digital companion of the last dozen years passed in his sleep. Twelve years of computer time is ancient indeed, the event was not unexpected, just unscheduled. The hardware held, just the system finally gave up to the ten bazillion and one to many modifications and mutations from to many updates. The hard drive accepted being set slave in another machine of like kind so the future allows for the possibility of a resurrection into the family reserves, nothing was lost other than a tear or two for the nobility of me old friend.
Soooo… I’ve been a bit distracted getting the backups reassembled on a new(er) machine I bought this past December from a fellow who got carried away at the pawn shop and needed some cash back to buy Christmas, it was basically a low dollar raski that has come home to me fairly quickly. He needed cash, I needed something for the son to do to earn the burger runs when he gets roped into pulling a double shift, it all worked out. My son had it waiting for me in the closet with a fresh system installed on a reformatted drive, cleaned and overhauled sporting new fans ready to step into the job. The king is dead, long live the king.
Yea, right. That’s been the major player of the past week or so, the one visible in the second reality. But perhaps as a consequence of the other player in me life, the class bought from the local academics giving a tour of the thoughts set down by those now considered classic philosophers I’ve also been busy at matters pertaining to the first reality, the inner reality of me.
I was sitting in the classroom the other day with the other folks waiting for the instructor to arrive when one of the lads, frustrated at the confusion of dealing at depth with thoughts several centuries older than any he’d ever encountered before piped up at a goodly volume with the question “what’s this stuff good for, anyway?” producing one of those totally pregnant pauses in half a dozen conversations concerning video games and the engineered to idiot child type campus activities. Being the eldest of the group by a factor of at least two I felt compelled to answer him, saying “Dude, if you want to run with the big dogs you gotta tune your head like you tune your Honda, this stuff is just a dynamometer of the mind lets you test and tune under working load.” He understood my meaning, so did several others, for more than a moment the room was a good bit more sober than it had been. Sorry kids, just the truth of the matter.
True for them, and true for me as well. I’ve got rangers in the field, the scouts and elite recon units, but the main body of my invasion has yet to be committed into battle, those functions are still in the final stages of training. The thoughts of the SoulMarine and the secretly faithful ChildofGod, the thoughts of the Skeptic and the NewAgeMan are serving as drill masters for me as well, and considered at the depth they deserve they’re not easy masters to please. By the contrast made possible by the light of their thoughts I’ve seen several things in me that I wouldn’t trust to run to the grocery store, much less run an armored column up the enemies ass, those things are in the process of going away. I’ve walked Escherville a time or three, nodded to the monsters on the street corners who now just sit and look sad knowing better than to raise a tentacle in my direction, I’ve revisited several particular places in that town to evict what hid from me in my first passages of that place, those things that hid hoping to restore the monsters to power should they ever succeed in luring me into an environment fit to nurture more of their kind. Sorry, but no.
"...the secretly faithful ChildofGod..." I always thought so. It may be simply my having believed in God all my life, but I have always thought that most people, including you, really believe in God in their innermost selves. If they say they don't, a few quick questions usually reveals that for some reason they in fact are angry at God, and express this anger as verbal disbelief. Or they have been taught a false concept of God, and in rejecting this false concept reject any belief in the true God. But S/He is very good at cutting through the crap with which we insulate ourselves from painful realities...
ReplyDeleteJust remember, Cyranos, when you go in there are others going in through different routes. You are only one cell in a Divinely-inspired cabal, and we know very little of what other cabals may be deployed and ready to march at a moment's notice...
Been my experience most who say they don't believe in God (in one form or another, by one visage or another be it Jehovah or Gaia or just the best possible of all best possibles) usually are more disgruntled with the idea of Church (quasi-political organizations of Man) than they are with the Almighty... take the collection plate and the sample ballot off of 'em and most will acknowledge the difference. *sad chuckle* The founding fathers built a nation on keeping church and state two seperate critters, crying shame no one has been able to do the same concerning church and God...
DeleteYep, that's about the size of it. Too bad that believing humans aren't more adept at living and letting live.
DeleteI'd say Gods, like churches, are constructs of man, and therefore, not to be taken on faith alone. all beliefs must be held as only potentially true, subject to change as new knowledge is acquired. an open mind requires this. i have a term for the process. it is called 'as-if-ing'. hold a belief 'as if'' it were true, to override if necessary. to me, a God is too far fetched in various way for me to 'as if' it as an entity. however, that there may be a spiritual essence to the universe, a basic quantum-atomic awareness that occasionally nurtures, where necessary, the forward course of evolution... who knows. i can almost 'as if' that.
ReplyDelete;) pip