Devil Went To Church In Georgia

Continuing my theme from yesterday, I am recalling a little thing that happened at our church when I was young. It was probably one of the stranger things that took place there, but by no means the only strange thing. It unfolded in the following way.

First understand that the fundamentalist churches of my youth always had an altar in the front of the church where "sinners" would go pray their way into God's good graces. Some folks called it a mourner's bench, but it wasn't exactly that. No one sat there and prayed. The sinner kneeled and the brothers and sisters of the church would kneel around and pray with him or her. Sometimes it was a Christian who kneeled there to confess a sin (or sins) in their life. Other times - this being a Pentecostal church - it might be a Christian seeking "The Baptism of the Holy Ghost."

On this hot, muggy summer night a young person was kneeling at the altar attempting to "pray through." A man who did not attend our church had come to visit on this night. During the "altar call" as the young man was praying, this older fellow, a stranger to us, walked forward as if he was going to kneel with the younger man to pray with him. Instead he put his fingers around the sinner's throat and commenced to choke him. The stranger was, everyone stated later, possessed of the Devil. With his eyes rolled into the top of his head and thick, disgusting ropes of foamy saliva pouring out of the corners of his mouth, the possessed man continued his death grip on the sinner.

This went on for only a few seconds - although it seemed longer - when the pastor, who as I've explained before was a woman, came down from the rostrum, her Bible in her hand, and struck the possessed man on the head with the Holy Book. The man roared and fell to the floor writhing in spasms. After a few seconds of that he stood up and ran out into the night. We never saw the man again.

The sinner man did go on to "pray through" and find God, and the church service ended shortly thereafter. He later told us he didn't remember the attack and did not know the man who had visited us that night and tried to strangle him.

Weird. But certainly it had a lasting effect on us. This was the world I grew up in. While more often it was seeing people dance "in the Spirit," collapse after being "slain in the Spirit," and "speaking in tongues," I was also aware of these devilish happenings. Demon possession was assumed to be real, just as described in the Bible. And this was long before the movie The Exorcist was made.

Having experienced so much of this weirdness first hand, I have to think that for people steeped in this type of thing there is realness to it all. I believe there are better explanations than possession by either hellish or heavenly spirits, but the psychological states of the people behind some of these occurrences are genuine. God or the Devil may only exist in the human mind, but the mind is an extremely powerful entity.

Ready For Halloween

Here is Bella, my gal pal's little wiener dog, trying on the Halloween-themed shirt we got her. She really likes to wear clothes. She looks as if she waiting for the trick-or-treaters. She will be greeting the ghouls tonight as her mommy passes out candy to them, and if it the weather isn't inclement she may make a few rounds herself. Isn't she the cutest little doggy?

Childhood Halloween Memories: The Spirit Behind The Day

Halloween is almost here and I haven't posted the first thing about it. Let me remedy that now.

When my parents were still married and we as a family attended a little country Church of God in northern Georgia, Halloween was basically a Satanic holiday in our world. Oh, this was years before the Satan worshipper hysteria that later swept our nation. But in our church and our little home, Satan was one the truest of realities, aside from God Almighty. Satan was the source of all evil in this sin-scarred world of ours. Taking part in the festivities of Halloween would have been a hat tip towards the Devil and so was strictly out of bounds for my brothers and me - yet another way in which we kids seemed a bit weird to those who knew us.

In our school our teachers always decorated their classrooms with the help of us budding artists, using the Halloween themes of witches, black cats, and scary Jack O'-Lanterns. They would play records celebrating the occasion (however, never Monster Mash, that I recall). Sometimes they would treat us to scary stories like Irving's Legend Of Sleepy Hollow.

Then my brothers and I would go back home and pretend as if the day didn't exist. None of the trappings of the day could be found anywhere around our house. On Halloween nights our lights were always turned off and kept off as a signal to the ghoulish revelers that we weren't participating in the festivities. (I never had a Halloween costume nor went trick-or-treating until after our parents divorced and our family was subsequently kicked out of our church, which meant - pardon the pun - that the spell was broken; religion, while still a big factor in our lives, then took a sudden back seat to reality.)


The year before I was born, 1959, saw the release of the Louvin Brothers' album Satan Is Real. I have memories of that song playing in our home. If their album cover was a bit cheesy, the words to their songs therein were compelling and reinforcing of the belief that the world was a large stage where a battle for our very souls was being waged between God and the Prince of Darkness.

Satan had help in his quest to damn everyone in a host of fallen angels who now were known as demons, or Satan's minions. Another of his assistants were the witches, which we knew existed because the Bible told us so: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18, KJV).

How, then, could we honor a day based on witchcraft, ghosts (which could only be demons in disguise, because the Bible told us that upon death the spirits of the living were carried to either paradise or Hell), and other foul things of the Evil One? (Black Cats, however, were okay, because that was just a silly superstition, or so we were told!)

A couple of years ago I wrote a little post about the lady who pastored my childhood church. I heard her tell many times the story of the night she awoke to find a demon in bed with her, and I thought it would make a nice little Halloween tale. I have other such demon stories from my Pentecostalism days - stories which only seemed to undergird the worldview that was forced upon me as a child.

It took me a lot of years to work my through these mind-bending ideas. Of all the restless nights I experienced during my childhood, nightmares about demons, Hell, and the Devil was the number one source. Occasionally still I have dreams either about demons or a faceless "power of evil," one that hangs heavy enough in the air to be felt.

Now I believe that Satan is a handy symbol of evil of the rankest sort. The Devil is quite real to many folks I know, including my mom. They think I'm deluded, I think they are.

The hold Satan still has over the people is apparent to me here in my beloved Bible Belt as I drive around town and notice how many of our churches are having a Trunk 'r Treat Monday night in order to keep their youth from dabbling in the Devil's holiday.

The impact of Satan is too psychologically powerful for this guy to dismiss with mere sarcasm. I'll poke fun of the idea, and do, but the psychological scars I bear are real and deep. As they are for many other people I know.

Some Notes About Portrait Accuracy

I really have been having mixed feelings about my last two posts. This was a story I really wanted to tell. In order to really get to know me, you really need to know a bit about my life, my upbringing, and perhaps most telling of all, my parents.

It's never a pleasant thing to criticize people you love dearly. And I do love my parents dearly. I'm afraid my mom comes off looking worse than my dad, and in life that was the general perception most of the folks who knew them held. That was because my dad was quiet, very soft spoken, and very mild mannered. On the other hand, my mom is loud, overly dramatic, sharp-tongued, and extremely highly opinionated in the way only a fundamentalist can be. Dad certainly had opinions. He just didn't own a soap box and never felt the need to throw his opinions into everyone's faces. He also hated conflict of any kind, and tried to avoid it at all costs. That's something I'm not so much into - however, I do judiciously try to pick my spots. (I fail a lot at that.)

I guess I fit somewhere in between. I have my opinions, some stronger than others, but am always willing to concede the difference between fact and opinion. I don't keep as quiet about things as Dad did (maybe I should). I try to avoid being judgmental in the way my mom tends to be (consistent with her "Holiness" religion). I have to be careful because I, just like my mom, can easily get caught up into dramatics. Dad's approach, I've noticed, works better for most of the situations I find myself in. Therefore, I try to emulate him.

Inasmuch as I'm not writing a book about my parents, it must be pointed out that this look at my parents is narrow in scope. It's almost as if I took my camera and zoomed in on just their foreheads or the tops of their scalps and said: "here, look at a picture of my parents."

The truth is, it would take a book - a very long one - to give an accurate portrait of them. But isn't that true of all of us? I try to describe myself to my readers and realize immediately that this is an impossible task. I suppose I could have my mother, brother, girlfriend, or maybe some friends and coworkers guest blog here and provide the necessary counterpoint - but, hey, I like telling my story my way. Just like all of us. It's easier to spin that way.

[Hey, here is a good exercise - but not one for the faint of heart or for those who wear their hearts on their sleeves. Take the time to ask the people closest to you to give their honest opinions of you, the person you are, what qualities or faults they think best describe you. And then really listen. Don't argue and defend: just listen and take notes. Then be prepared to be amazed. A hard and fast rule I've always gone by is this: if three or more people say the same thing concerning a particular trait of mine or aspect of my personality, it must be true or at least approaching the truth. Then I decide whether I want to work on it or embrace it. Mostly I just accept the fact that largely speaking I'm an ass and that I and others around me either have to accept that and appreciate me for my good points, or leave me alone. But at least these exercises keep my head out of the clouds and have discouraged me from ever wanting to write a serious autobiography or open a museum in my honor.]

If my mother were to read the last two posts - and after telling me just how much like my daddy I am - she would say I have totally failed to understand her after all these years with her. Perhaps so, but I think not. Dad wouldn't have cared very much. He lived in his own internal world and didn't care so much for the opinions of others - and that really always seemed to get my mom's goat, too. (Really religious folks are the world's worst about keeping up appearances while downing everyone else.)

The point I feel I should make is that even though my parents seemed to be the major players in the past two posts, this really is about my perceptions of them and the influence their troubled life together had on me. The fair thing to admit is that I am not so much describing them as they are (were), but describing them as I saw them. I think I've been fair to the facts of the case, and certainly tried to be, but realize that what I wrote is largely opinion.

Well, that's about the best damage control I am able to do without becoming sentimentally silly and lying through my teeth.

I'm old enough to embrace the frailty of humans. Of course, I criticize the behavior of others, am shocked and sometimes outraged by really bad behavior, encourage people to try to improve their behavior when possible or desirable, enjoy the company of people who share a lot of my basic views, avoid people whose life choices I personally find repugnant, and as I suggested yesterday, strive to strike a balance between the sometimes extreme inclinations I inherited from my folks.

Only others can judge how well I have done that.

And The Head Bone Is Connected To The Neck Bone, Part Last

My mom was the Bible scholar in my childhood home. It was she who studied the Bible constantly and tried to make sense of it, and then teach it to us at the "family altar." She interprets it just about as literally as is possible. Having never made it to high school, she has never had a problem reconciling the Bible with science. There just isn't a tension there - and if there were, science would bow to the Bible. She definitely doesn't believe that humans evolved from lower life forms. I once heard her express doubt that the universe is "all the billions of years old" as science suggests is true. And I heard her admit that she didn't know how or where to place the now extinct dinosaurs in the overall scheme of things. But having never studied or read much hard science, it is enough for her to just dismiss some of these things as wild theories.

My dad, on the other hand, was not a scholar. He had natural smarts. He could be shrewd and highly skeptical. But as far as reading goes, I rarely saw him read any thing other than the newspaper, which he read ... I have to say it ... religiously. Until, that is, my parents divorced and he moved out and into an apartment of his own. Then he would often look forward to getting my old comic books as I finished them. Archie being a particular favorite of his.

I think it was my mom more than my dad that got us into Pentecostalism. Originally my parents "got saved" and begin attending a Southern Baptist church a few years before I was born. One of Mom's friends at work got her to visit her church and the ramped up emotionalism meshed quite well with Mom's high-strungness.

My dad in almost every way was my mom's opposite. As high-strung as she was, he was as laid back. He almost always was unflappable, and rarely panicked or showed much emotion. That being the case, naturally the antics that go on in these Holy Ghost churches had to be something of an annoyance to him, especially as Mom became so wrapped up in them. I heard him make fun of the tongue speakers, of who everyone, he had noticed, seemed to have a distinct and individual vocabulary of weird, nonsensical words they use. Or as Dad always put it: "Skiddy-eye-skiddy-eye-skiddy eye." (If you've been to one of these churches you know what I'm talking about; if not, that probably won't make sense.) Dad never spoke in tongues, and I'm sure never could have and kept a straight face. However, he stayed with what he knew - or as I suspect was really the case, with people he knew - for a long time. Neither of my parents left Pentecostalism completely.

Dad firmly believed in God, and did until the day he died. As a natural born southerner, his being religious meant being Christian. He knew practically nothing about other religions. He believed in the power of prayer. He believed in a Heaven and a Hell - although he wasn't much concerned about theological correctness. How could he be when he didn't know theology? He didn't care to know it. (But he did know Archie Andrews and all the characters that made up his circle of friends and family!)

He was a good and honorable man and a genuine fun guy to be around. He was known to everyone as the "king of the moron jokes." And he had one for every occasion. This embarrassed my mom a bit. And religious though he was, he had a naughty sense of humor. He loved off color jokes and told them with a flair. Not filthy jokes. Dad wasn't too much of a "cusser." But definitely he had an earthy side to him!

My parents were a very odd couple, destined, I suppose, to fall apart in the end. Not to drift apart, but fall apart. When their marriage did finally fall apart (and it was more like an explosion), they were promptly booted out of their church, our church, the only church I had ever attended regularly as a child. Holiness couples don't get divorced. Or at least they didn't back then. Not and stay members in good standing.

As far as I was concerned, the divorce was when I really began to suspect my parent's religion wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It was as if I had lived eleven years with my parents (especially my mom) teaching me (and my brothers) one thing, only to find out that they were now in effect saying: "never mind, it's not that important." Despite their continued efforts to keep one foot in church (and my mom is still there today) and the other in the "real" world, I couldn't buy into it. I couldn't reconcile it with what I came to recognize as the hard, cold facts of reality. My brothers and I all left organized religion and pretty much said "good riddance" to it when we did. It's also organized hypocrisy.

Most of the church people saw Dad as the victim. Honesty compels me to confess that of the two, he genuinely was the more likable of the two. My mom could have fit in very well with the Puritans of Colonial America. Nowadays she blushes and has a mini crisis of conscience whenever I make her laugh by using off color humor or salty language. Too much of that and she will usually give me a stern look and remind me that: "Nathan ... I didn't raise you that way!" To which I will respond with more dirt and salt, and we have yet another good laugh. Yeah, she's lightened up a little. Or maybe she just drops her guard a little more often now. Unfortunately, way too late to benefit my Dad.

Mom remarried a few more times, usually outliving her husbands. She is a widow again and seems - at least for now - to be happy and adjusted to life on her own, with her two surviving children nearby.

Dad played the field after the divorce. He loved women. All kinds of women. Mostly he just loved having a good time. I don't think he jumped from bed to bed or anything like that. (I also don't he think he went out of his way to resist a good opportunity, however.) He just knew how to roll with the punches and make the best of whatever situation he found himself in. Even when his health broke and his mind was damaged by strokes and dementia, he kept his sense of humor, his positive outlook, and continued to flirt with the nurses and female attendants right up until the end. They seemed to get a kick out of it and he was quite popular with them. Never a dirty old man, he just never lost his ability to come across as a naughty, mischievous little boy. What a guy!

Only one more time did he try the marriage thing. And that, again, to a much younger woman. He lived to regret that a bit. When he had the major stroke that left him with severe epilepsy and much mental impairment, she took that opportunity to place him in a nursing home, cash in his life insurance, get a quicky divorce from him and swindle him out of the home he had bought for them. She took his every possession excepting only, quite literally, the shirt (or rather, pajama top) on his back. That was where I found him years later. He wasn't bitter, really, just enlightened. But as I said above, he kept a positive outlook and had fun with the ladies around him. That was his life: entertaining himself and everyone around him. I thought he was less shy in his later years. On second thought, I came to think he just felt liberated from the straightjacket of an oppressive form of religion and a hopeless concept of marriage. Although he never stopped loving God or Mom, he just found more time and opportunity to be himself and love life.

Before he married the young lady I mentioned above, and so before his health broke, he had the opportunity to get back together with my mom when they were between relationships. He declined. Years later, when I had gotten him out of the nursing home and tried to care for him at home, I asked him why he didn't get back together with her. He matter of factly (but without animosity) told me he just didn't want to play that game again. They had married young, divorced for a couple of years, way before I was born, remarried, divorced again when I was eleven, and then spent the next decade getting on with their lives while trying to get each other back with a sad and sick game of "look what I'm up to now." That's probably a little bit of unfair editorial comment there, but it's largely how it appeared to me then and now. But whatever, he just didn't want to go back and he didn't.

As a postscript to that, they did finally reconcile during his final year. She would go visit him in the nursing home. They would exchange sweet little nothings and innocent little kisses. Now he was finally willing and eager to explore the possibility of them getting back together one last time. But Mom then became the holdout and wisely explained that her failing health and his need for constant medical care and supervision just made such a thing impossible.

I was working the nightshift when I got the phone call from the nursing home letting me know that my dad had passed away from a sudden heart attack. He had terminal lung cancer, so really this was a gift. They told me it was quite unexpected and that he had a really good day, laughing, joking, cutting up with the ladies, just being Bill. It was a Friday night and I had planned to visit him on Sunday. Damn, that hurt!

I went home to notify all the family and make arrangements. I called my mom and told her about my dad's passing. I honestly think she took it harder than I did. Why do you have to wait for someone to die to really appreciate them?

This is a sad story. There is no overriding moral to it that I can see. Lots and lots of little lessons can be gleaned from it, but overall, as a template for what a normal relationship should be, my parents really failed me and my brothers. However, to err is human.

I have the blood of both these interesting but failed humans coursing through my veins. I'm a mix, without a doubt mostly like my dad, but with more than a mere sprinkling of my mom. I understand them now so well, because I've felt some of the ways they must have felt. I've found myself experiencing thoughts I had heard them express over the years.

My life has been one long struggle,a balancing act, to keep in touch with my emotions without letting them rule me the way my mom has done, and to make peace with the inevitable without surrendering fully and without struggle to some unfathomable but irresistible Fate, the way my father apparently did.

Sometimes I wonder how it is that I am sane. Other times I wonder if I really am.

And The Head Bone Is Connected To The Neck Bone

Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

So God allegedly inspired the Apostle Paul to write to the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 11:3, NIV), and such we accepted at our church when I was growing up.

In other words, the divine "pecking order." God first, God over Jesus (so much the worse for those who are trinitarians), Jesus is over all us wonderful men, and the women folk ... well, at least they are above dog excrement. Woman, after all, was an apparent afterthought to God. Man was lonely, and even though the Almighty paraded his other creations before Adam, none was found adequate. What man needed was a helpmate. Now, I know what the good old King James actually said was: "And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him (Gen. 2:18, KJB)."

Most southern preachers I heard growing up (and some even now) refer to woman as a "helpmate" for man. That always struck me a little as if he were a describing an accessory for his workshop. Here, for example, is a picture of Black and Decker's popular Workmate. How Handy.

Any many would consider himself lucky to have a Workmate in his home. Think of what all could be accomplished. And most men I know consider themselves lucky to have a woman "helpmate" in his home to cook, clean, do laundry, and - of course, most importantly of all - "service" him in the bedroom. Plus, it has become increasingly popular to have the little wifey get a job and "help out" bringing in a living.

Let's get another Scripture passage on this subject up here:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything (Eph. 5:22-24,NIV).

How's that again, Lord? Obey her husband to what degree?

In everything.

Everything?

Everything!

My ever resourceful mother had a unique twist for this teaching. She would say: "Yeah, but the wife is the neck, and the head can't move without the neck."

The "everything" was, in her view, limited to religious matters. In other words, the man should be the spiritual head of the family, taking his orders directly from above.

My mom, like her mom, was big on a man not ever "grinding a woman under his thumb." And in fact, my mom "wore the pants" in our family, was the disciplinarian and overall boss.

In other words, had my mom lived back in biblical times and had been a part of that culture, she probably would have been discreetly - or maybe not so discreetly - removed from society.

Dad was a quiet man. A kind man. A man who always strove to avoid conflict and tumult. He wasn't violent, but having said that, it is fair to add that when he reached the limit of his patience, he could act decisively. But never, ever did I see my dad lay a finger on my mom (although I saw him catch a few shoes and dishes).

Now my dad wasn't a saint. But he was a product of his times and environment, and deep down (like most men) didn't at all care for bossy women. Which isn't to say he had a problem with women in positions of authority. He was a momma's boy who had a cold father. And my parents attended a church where the pastor was a woman (I never heard her preach on any of the woman's subjection to man texts). He just didn't like to be constantly nagged and criticized by the woman he loved. And I never had a doubt that my mom was the love of his live. To his dying day, despite the divorce and remarriages, he confessed to me that my mom was the only woman he ever really loved. I believed him.

I should probably add that I don't mean to make my mom sound like an ogre, either. Let's just say that claiming your own rights means also granting others every right you lay claim to. Sometimes she tends to forget that. Most of the emotional stress she has experienced with her fellow humans is because she can't understand that the rest of us just don't necessarily see things her way. It's almost as if there is only her way and the wrong way. (Thankfully, she doesn't have a computer and so can't read my blog - but honestly, these aren't things I haven't discussed with her ... just not "publicly.")

Now despite the criticism, I am to this day extremely close to Mom. I was that way with my Dad. Always was. I never took sides in their divorce. That is why it pained me so. I loved them both and thought they both could have done more to make their marriage work. Moreover, I think life would have been kinder to both of them had they pulled together and toughed it out. (They thought so also - but as my mom always says: once you have scrambled eggs, you can't "unscramble" them.)

So in all this I have to say that my mom and her wacky views were the biggest influences in my rearing. Dad taught by example, and a great example it was. However, I didn't really "get it" until many years later, when the school of experience had pounded many lessons into my granite skull.

The ideas Mom instilled in me concerning women (which again, mostly only applied to her) set up a lifetime of failed relationships, bruised ego and heartbreaks for me. I could take a month and write a series of posts about my misadventures with would be helpmates. But I won't!

I don't understand women. Not really. I hang with women more than men. My best friends are women, not men. What that says about me I'm not exactly sure. Even my lady friend and I share a deep friendship with only subtle sexual overtones. Nothing at all like a typical couple relationship. But what the hell, little I do is typical!

I just wish I had spent more of my formative years with my dad. He was a ladies man of sorts. I saw him after the divorce date girls half his age. One - a sister of one my classmates - was a model. He had a way of being charming that because of Mom-instilled bluntness, I lack. He didn't discriminate against plain looking women, or women that were overweight. He wasn't what we now would call a player. He was kind to the women he was involved with. He knew how to separate his sexuality from heart strings. Something my mom beat into me shouldn't be done. He could adjust to the deepness or shallowness the women he was with desired.

Okay, I'm running out of time and have to leave for work. I didn't get to where I was wanted to go, so I will have to finish this tomorrow.

There But For The Luck Of The Draw Go I?

Give Christian preacher and martyr John Bradford credit for the over used phrase: "There but for the grace of God go I." That goes back several hundreds of years, and what he probably said was: "There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford"

I began to question God's overall graciousness in my youth. Before long I was questioning his very existence. My mother used to encourage us when we growing up that we needn't worry because God is still on the throne. No matter how bad things got, God is still on his throne! We were one of those families who had a "God is my co-pilot" license plate.

The question naturally enough occurred to me wonder just what the difference between God being in control and no one being at the controls would be.

No real debate can be made on this subject because we all look at things through biased eyes.

And face it. "There but for the luck of the draw go I" just isn't as catchy.

Theoretically at least, God could have a definite plan that we just can't understand. Maybe He/She does play favorites, and maybe He/She has a sadistic streak and just likes to mix things up a bit with heaping amounts of evil and pain.

I have to say that I don't believe in luck as a specific concept. I think it's just a name we humans attach to a series of events that seem to form a trend - a run of "luck" that can be either good or bad. I'm sure the "lower animals" have no such concept. Nor of religion.

A lot of the people I know look over their lives and say they detect a definite pattern. I'm not sure what I see when I look over mine. In some ways I've come full circle so many times I'm getting dizzy. In many ways I'm not the same guy I used to be when I was young. But when I think more deeply I think maybe I am - just with fuller understandings of older concepts.

Does God play dice with the universe? I incline towards Einstein here and believe not. My personal concept of fate is intermingled with my concept of determinism, that great chain of causes and effects. The luck in the "luck of the draw" for me is commensurate with my general ignorance of the grand details of life.

And maybe that is why sometimes at least, ignorance is bliss.

I'm slowly learning from my animal friends to take life as it comes and accept it for what it is. Details, after all, can be tedious.

Barney's Pants

After writing my post yesterday, I went to work and in the back of my mind mulled over the factors that helped form me into the man I am today. A lot of it, of course, is genetics. The older I get the more I recognize my mom and dad in my personal traits. Environment undoubtedly plays a role, but I've never been able to figure out how much of one. That's probably because everyone's unique genes determine how much he or she is influenced by their environment and to what degree.

For myself, I have to say I had loving parents and a loving home life - until my parents divorced when I was eleven years old. I still had plenty of parental love after that, of course, but the sense of security, wholeness and overall well-being with the world was shattered for me (and I'm sure for my two brothers) at that point, and in a sense we never recovered, but have spent the majority of our lives (my older brother is now deceased) searching for it.

For my brothers and me two factors mostly dominated our upbringing. One was our kooky, repressive, unrealistic and fantastical Pentecostal religion. A world where miracles supposedly take place on a regular basis, where people speak in "other tongues" in a godly language, see visions, have God speak to them audibly, and every life is formed according to some master plan of the Almighty. About this I've written here many times. Although I haven't even scratched the surface.

Less explored here but equally important was the poverty we endured, being the children of uneducated parents (neither having reached high school before being compelled to drop out to help out at home) who took their place among the struggling workers in the south's famous yarn mills, where work was very seasonal. Summers were hot in these unairconditioned factories and the hours were long in the southern heat and humidity. By winter's approach the work had slowed - sometimes being only three or four days per week. Every winter was thus a struggle to keep our old, mostly uninsulated, rental homes heated.

Food was often scarce for us during my childhood years. Beans, potatoes, corn, and cornbread made up our usual fare. Meat was mostly limited to potted meat and bologna sandwiches and very rarely hamburger. Occasionally, during the good times of the year, we would have a chicken for Sunday dinner and cheap bacon ends and pieces (not slices!) for our weekend breakfasts. The factories where my parents worked would usually give their employees a turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas as a bonus. I never tasted steak until well into my teen years.

Thinking of my nonconformity, well do I remember how much an outsider I felt during school lunch. Longingly would I look at my classmates' lunches of stacked and various luncheon meats (not the lone slice of baloney on my sandwich) on quality bread, or tuna, or thick chunks of home-cooked roast beef. I usually had sandwiches of peanut butter and sometimes of mayonnaise alone. My cheeks really blushed when Mom had nothing to make a sandwich out of except leftover pinto beans from the night before, mashed and salted and peppered. The looks on my classmates' faces when they saw that! Of course, we never had the fruit they had for dessert. Usually they had fruit and a snack cake. My brothers and I were thankful for our peasant sandwiches.

My and my brothers' general appearance was a bit strange as well. We mostly wore old clothes that were given to us by church people who had kids who had outgrown their stuff. Mom shopped regularly at the Goodwill. We got one pair of shoes at the beginning of the school year, which we would have outgrown except for the fact that by year's end they were fish-mouthed from wear, giving us ample toe-room. Our hair often had the shaggy, unkempt appearance that comes from too long a span of time between visits to the barber. Mom finally found a way around that when she bought one of those home haircutting kits. Then we were all lined up on Saturday afternoons and given burr haircuts. Again we stuck out.

I'm only scratching the surface here. I have mixed feelings about it all. Actually, it stiffened me against the peer pressure. When my childhood friends would laugh at me and make fun of us, it made me more determined to do my own thing and live my life my way. I eventually learned to not give a damn what people thought about me. And sometimes I would turn the tables and laugh at them and their cookie-cutter conformity. I learned to despise pity. I learned to look around the world and notice that many people are different for many different reasons, and that they are no less human for that. I began to go out of my way to befriend the outcasts, of whom I was certainly one.

You may be wondering what any of this had to do with Barney Fife's pants, so now I will tell you. It was something my older brother, Earl, and I had a lot of fun with years later, as adults, when we looked back on our hard upbringing.

You have to understand that Earl was six years older than I, and was born in 1953. He was always tall and long-legged, and I was short and short-legged. My grandparents had bought him a nice suit of clothes when he was five years old. It looked forevermore like the one suit of clothes Barney Fife always wore on the Andy Griffith show when he was dressed up and out of his uniform. Sometimes he only wore those pants, with a shirt and tie.

I don't know what ever happened to the jacket that went to that suit, but I do know those pants - those very fiftyish pants - ended up on a hanger in the back of my closet. I was eight years old by the time I had "grown into them." Whenever my regular school clothes had been exhausted, usually because my mom had been ill and unable to make it to the laundromat (we didn't have a washer and dryer at home, and sometimes mom would do our laundry on a rub-board in a metal wash tub), Mom would reach into the back of my closet and pull out those Barney Fife pants for me to wear to school. God, how I hated when that happened!

Mom never got why I dreaded it so, why I sometimes cried at being forced to wear those pants. "Why, Earl was always proud of those pants," she always told me. I wasn't able for some reason to express how I felt. How Earl wore those pants when they were in style, back in '58, and here I was in the 1968/69 school year, as styles were rapidly changing, wearing Barney Fife's pants, all baggy and hanging off my butt like a huge cape.

I was too young then to have learned how to shrug off the ridicule.

But I was a very religious child. Somehow I just knew the truth of what they always told me at church: If God be for us, who can be against us? That and the love in my childhood home were the only things that carried me through, that made my dismal life even a little bearable.

But I lost my home and church in 1971, and within a decade of that I lost my God - slowly at first, but completely finally.

All that was left was me. Damaged, imperfect, different in so many ways Doug. Oh, my brothers understood well enough. My older brother was my best friend and true confidant. And then I lost him, too. My younger brother and I somehow have evolved to be both close and distant at the same time, if you can imagine it. My mom doesn't understand me and never will. To her I'm still the religious nut of my youth, the one she felt the need to name Nathan, after the Old Testament prophet, because, she tells me, she knew God would have his hand on me and my life. She just thinks I'm confused and that one day I will return to God and the fold.

Everyone has a tale to tell and that, briefly, is mine. Religion and poverty are the main factors that combined with my family's weird genes to create the person I am. Not a bad guy. Not a good guy. Just someone who looks to self and only fully trusts self. Doug in a nutshell. No apologies, and absolutely no desire that anyone attempt to help me search for and find my true self. I know who I am, what I am, where I've been and where I'm going. And if you can accept me as I am, quirks, scars, faults and all, I make a great traveling companion - so long as you don't try to get too close.

Groper Poll: Do You Consider Yourself Normal?

I'm an oddball of sorts. I hold many nontraditional ideas about things. I have at least my share of emotional demons and baggage that I have to deal with. I haven't the least inclination to keep up with the latest styles and feel little impulse to just "fit in." Truth be told, I was probably primed for all that by my childhood upbringing in a very strict and repressive religion while at the same time being raised in poverty.

While a definitive concept of "normal" probably doesn't exist, most of us have a general idea of what being the typical human animal is. My Groper Poll question today, then, is:

Do You Consider Yourself Normal?

If you do, then, congratulations! If you don't, please feel free to briefly state in what way(s) you feel you don't fit the norm.

Of course there is probably a large cadre of nonconformists who work hard at keeping up the appearance of conformity. That is a troubling thought for me.

And That's The Way Things Are*

[*With apologies to the late newsman Walter Cronkite.]

Lest you think my post yesterday was just an angry or anguished rant, more or less just hanging in the air, I thought I'd add a few more thoughts.

For those of who have been regular readers of my blog it should be remembered that I'm a determinist who believes things unfold in the only way they can unfold. Although I'm not immune from doing it myself, intellectually I accept that looking back on the past with regrets and wishes that I had zigged instead of zagged at this or that point in my life is pointless. Whenever I take the time to attempt to go back in my thoughts to the mental state I was in at any debatable decision point in my life, I still feel I either did what I thought was the best thing at the time or - when clearly going against my better judgment (which I recall doing many times) - the thing I most wanted to do.

In my relations with others I have found a kindred spirit of sorts with Abraham Lincoln and his doctrine of necessitarianism. Mr. Lincoln, according to his biographer Herndon, held a belief that "all of us are the children of conditions of circumstances, of environment, of education, of acquired habits and of heredity molding men as they are and will forever be."

As I understand things, nature and the unfolding of all things within it - which is to say everything we know that exists - abides by natural laws, forces that are greater than ours to withstand. So a post like yesterday's is both an acknowledgment that I can only play the hand I've been dealt, but at the same time I can do it begrudgingly because I wish things weren't that way.

Maybe and most likely probably someday things will not be this way. The higher a nation rises, the harder and farther it falls. Will our country one day reinvent itself after rising from crumbling ruins, or will it one day be absorbed by outside governmental powers? Who knows?

Our nation (and the rest of the world around us, for that matter) has evolved into what it is today, guided by the circumstances being forced upon it by the forces of nature. While it's fun as a mental exercise to play "What If" and wonder how things would be today had Albert Gore rightfully taken his place as our forty-third president instead of George W. Bush. Or imagine if President Carter had been able to stave off the Reaganites. Perhaps the these past three decades of greed and undermining of the basic safeguards of our uniquely American form of capitalism would not have taken place - at least not to the degree we see it today, where the few of its people control most of the wealth and the majority are trapped into a mad scramble for the meager leftovers

Alas, things are the way are and could be no other way.

Of course, I don't write and speak out and complain about things as if I were a mere fatalist. To acknowledge that things are the way they are because of necessity is not the same thing as knowing how things are and are to be and then simply urging that we do nothing about it. It is this great unknown that causes so many of us to worship freewill and think that the future is truly open. It's not, but it's still unknown what role our individual actions will play in the grand scheme of things.

Those who voted for Barack Obama in hopes of changing the course of our nation found out first hand what happens when a moveable object meets an irresistible force. Our president finds himself, as did every other president, a victim of forces beyond his control. (Every one of us in our puny lives are in the same situation, even if the plethora of self-help books and motivational speakers deny it.)

Sometimes the force is with us and sometimes it is not. But always it is indifferent to individual wishes and desires.

For that reason, bitching and moaning seems like the natural, if irrational, thing to do. Therefore, I blog

The Times, In Case You Haven't Noticed, Are Changing

I guess that's always the case when you study history. The older we get the more fondly we remember and even yearn for the good ol' days. And you either change along with the times or you get left behind.

The United States I find myself leaving in today is not the same country I was born into and spent my youth living in.

When I was a child part-time work was mostly something teenagers wanting spending cash or students to part in. In today's America you have corporations using a massive part-time work force as a cost-savings program. People are trying to support and raise families on part time employment! Think about it. It sure does cut on the usual perks that full-time employees typically receive - like health insurance, for example.

Speaking of health insurance: when I was a child both of my parents had insurance through their places of employment, my dad's being the primary and my mom's the secondary. When any of us became ill we went to the doctor - just like (snap!) that - and my parents paid off the remaining balance of doctor's and lab fees over time. No bankruptcies, no doing without medical care. Any prescriptions were mostly covered by insurance.

Today my mother struggles and does without medicine because of the joke Medicare has become, and I, with my high deductible and no prescription drug plan insurance, mostly forego healthcare. If I get sick I go to the clinic and just pay for it myself. Checkups are bypassed because when you start getting older the doctor always finds something they want to investigate further with costly testing. Doctors are big on referrals to specialists, so any medical problem has the potential to be an expensive fiasco.

Quality is another casualty to changing times. In our gluttonous age of inexpensive instant fulfillment, the emphasis is always on cheap and fast. Many families and individuals mostly live off of fat - er, I mean - fast food. Cooking seems to be mainly for special occasions. I've noticed that even holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are being met with precooked meals from the grocery store's deli department or a host of restaurants that are open and "doing the cooking" for you. Hardly like the old "home for the holidays" concept.

We live in a disposable age. So many of our goods are of such cheap and low quality workmanship that repairs are often more costly than replacing the item. I had my last cell phone for three years and recently tossed it when it quit on me for another one that I paid around thirty bucks for. Televisions, microwave ovens, computers and such things are now so inexpensive, you just toss them out and buy more when they expire.

I miss the days of quality. Sure, you paid more for things. But things lasted and served you well for many years.

Being in the manufacturing industry myself, I can tell you this. With all the emphasis on cuts, cuts, cuts, and cost savings, it is hard to make quality products. People will buy whatever is cheapest. This makes it hard for people to take pride in their work.

Monopolies are everywhere. Mom and pop stores and neighborhood shops are more and more a thing of the past, while "superstores" with aisle after aisle of cheap, imported junk are everywhere. And they are always rolling back even further the already low cost prices of the junk they sell.

I guess most of us get caught up in it by necessity. But I do miss the old days, even knowing full well they are not retuning.

I do my share of bitching and moaning here on my blog, but I know we have come too far to go back now.

Some of us are too close to the boneyard to wait for a return to sanity. We must learn to adapt to the shitty way things are. Speaking about some American Dream is about like speaking of Shangri La. It just doesn't exist, except in the mind. People don't think anymore because they don't have time to. It's easier to turn on the television or radio and get a prepackaged, predigested opinion from one of the talking heads.

Now I'm not saying everything is all gloom and doom. In many ways things are better. We tout the advances in medicine and medical technology, for example. It's just that most of us can't afford to take advantage of it.

Young people especially, who don't remember the way it used to be, are prone to get caught up in this instant gratification, narcissistic, valueless society of ours; and the truth is, the time is now theirs. Dinosaurs like myself will soon enough finally become extinct and leave them with it.

I hope they find enjoyment in it. It doesn't seem to me they will, what with drug addiction, rising suicide rates, bullying, voyeurism, winner-take-all business practices being all the rage. In a way I'm glad my time is limited. Because, frankly, I think this whole modern culture thing sucks, bigtime.

What An Ass!

I was just reading HuffPo's little thing on Walter Isaacson's soon to be released biography of the late god Steve Jobs. According to Isaacson, Jobs has told him in his final interview for the book:

I wanted my kids to know me. I wasn't always there for them and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.

Okay.

Some folks feel that it is bad form to speak ill of the dead, but this appears to be a case of a man who though dead is yet speaking to us. I wasn't listening when he was alive, and don't really care to now that he is dead. I wasn't impressed him with when he was alive and it seems my opinion of him would drop even further if I actually sat down and read this biography.

If Isaacson's accounts of Jobs' interaction with President Obama are accurate, it seems he would have qualified to be a commentator on Fox News (not that they could have afforded him). I sure would love to hear the president's side of this.

Also interesting was Isaacson's account of Jobs' much talked about decision to pass on surgery for his pancreas cancer for nine months: "I didn't want my body to be opened ... I didn't want to be violated in that way."

I'm not knocking his decision. I might do the same thing in a similar situation. With cancer, from my experiences with friends and loved ones who have suffered from the dead disease, sometimes the cure is indeed worse than the disease!

But the way Isaacson explains it, Jobs sounds as if he was talking about a sacred shrine rather than a simple biological unit.

All in all this article paints the picture of a man totally in love with himself and in awe of his own wisdom. Exactly the type of person I love to hate.

Interestingly, I scrolled down through some of the comments on this piece and came across this one:

What's wrong with having a big ego if you've actually done something extraordinarily helpful to society?

Because, I would answer, you have almost certainly overestimated your worth.

Risk Takers, My Arse!

I was looking over the letters to the editor section of one of my local papers this morning and found the following gem which wails about leftists like economist and columnist Paul Klugman. You can tell by the use of certain conservative mantras that this is a gentlemen who has just swallowed the silly conservative salami whole, without any soda to wash it down his gullet:

So what do you think? Is Krugman correct that we should ask the most successful in our land to bear more than 50 percent of the entire tax burden they already pay plus denigrate them for their successes? Is that the smart way to encourage America's entrepreneurs, investors, risk takers and job creators? Hardly!

Whoa. Let's think about this thing for a couple of moments.

First, have you guys ever noticed how success is usually measured by these "God and country" conservatives in dollars amassed?

I haven't the first stone to case at anyone who has become financially successful through their businesses acumen.

On the other hand, I have nothing but stones (figuratively speaking, of course) to throw at my fellow humans who believe making or holding on to a dollar is more important than helping to care for their needy neighbors. Those folks, in my opinion, are poorer than the lowliest beggar.

I guess that is one of the major differences between the way I and conservatives look at things.

And these risk "takers and job creators" ... hey, where are they? All I see are more and more layoffs, more and more outsourcing of jobs, in order to protect the profit margin and obscenely inflated CEO and executive salaries and perks.

Here is what I would like to see. I would like to see stories about CEOs and business executives taking substantial pay cuts in order to preserve jobs and avoid cutbacks and layoffs.

These super patriotic "job creators" and "risk takers" prove quite timid when it comes to real risk. The informed consensus is that our economic woes are being prolonged because of a simple lack of demand for goods and services. And it is simple common sense that people who are unemployed are not big into consumerism. So why don't these business gurus show some real initiative and preserve jobs and take some real risks in these troubled times and expand their businesses against the certain hope that more jobs will equal more demand?

Give the people jobs and a living wage and, as certainly as daylight follows the darkness of night, prosperity will come again to our country.

The conservatives are going around spouting off that these "risk takers" aren't taking risks because they are uncertain about taxes and government regulations that supposedly strangle reinvestment.

How can it be both ways? Isn't that what risk taking is, dealing with uncertainties? Good businesses run with sound business principles will make a profit. These folks are neither risk takers nor job creators, but quite the opposite in these troubled times.

Conservatives say they believe in America, yet they praise those who are unwilling to invest in her future. They say they love America, but they oppose any efforts to reinvest in our aging and slowly collapsing infrastructure.

It all comes down to those privileged few sitting at the top of the heap tight-fistedly trying to gather all the marbles while leaving the majority to rake and scrape for whatever is left.

Why would anyone with even half a brain support that? How could anyone with even half a brain think such a system could work for long without bringing about its own collapse?

Is Herman Cain The Antichrist?

One of my more religious coworkers actually expresses a real fear of Cain, because if you invert his 9-9-9 you get 6-6-6, the number of the Antichrist.

Inasmuch as Jesus was a strong defender of the poor and oppressed, I actually saw an entire platform full of Antichrist's during last night's Republican debate. After all, do Republicans ever come up with economic plans that don't exploit and crush the poor? Of course they don't. It's against what they believe at heart.

Now that Herman Cain is getting more attention he says he is under attack, according to this Reuters account of last night's Republican debate. "Their only strategy is to attack me," says the would-be president.

Seriously now, that nine percent national sales tax would have many impoverished Americans paying close to twenty cents on the dollar for their purchases once state and local taxes are factored in. Even food would not be exempted according to Cain. The corporations would no doubt take their nine percent taxation as a gift. And the nine percent individual tax (minus charitable deductions) would again target the poorest Americans.

Herman Cain's complete tax plan can be read about on his website here.

It is worth noting that his much ballyhooed 9-9-9 plan is only the first phase of his grand tax scheme. According to the above linked site, under the head Phase 2 - The Fair Tax:

Amidst a backdrop of the economic renewal created by the 9-9-9 Plan, I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.

Ultimately replaces individual and corporate income taxes

Ends the IRS as we know it and repeals the 16th Amendment

I wonder what he means by ending the IRS as we know it? Personal and corporate income taxes would eventually be phased out by a constantly increasing national sales tax?

Is the man insane?

No, he's just another businessman wanting to run the United States like a corporation, with all the ruthlessness involved in turning a profit no matter the human cost.

On Toenails

Oddball things sometimes fascinate me. Nail growth is one of these. And my nails grow like crazy, just like my hair does. People tell me it is a sign of good health. (So is the fact that I rarely get sick, I would think.)

This is no problem for my fingernails. I clip them every few days because I like them a certain length - below the fingertips with no white showing (and I never bite them, so they are never into the quick). I carry pocket nail clippers always just in case I get a hangnail or break the end of one of my nails. I hate that feeling!

But those toe nails, now, are another matter.

Over the past few years I have noticed a difficulty with keeping these nails fashioned as I like. There is a growth that has come up in recent years (actually an embarrassing and excessive middle-age spread) that makes clipping my toenails a bit difficult. On top of that, my back usually hurts. I abused it in my younger days with vigorous outdoor work such as roofing, installing rain gutters, and window washing, that put a strain on my lower back. Some mornings I have trouble just putting on my socks and shoes.

But I persevere with my efforts to keep my toenails under control.

First, every since I can remember the feeling of my toenails snagging a blanket or a sheet put my teeth on edge. My skin literally crawls if I try to put on a sock and feel a thread snag a toenail corner and start to unravel. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

This happens way too often because, for some odd reason, my toenails seem to grow at different rates. Or more probably, perhaps, because of the difficulties described above, I don't get them trimmed even. (Remember: fingernails should be rounded, toenails straight across to prevent ingrows!)

Whatever, it seems to be the case that I have to trim an average of one toenail a day now.

Here is another unpleasantry it has been my misfortune to encounter more than once. I'm cuddling with a lady, nuzzling faces with her, and suddenly I become aware of being poked or scratched by one of her toenails. (Hope I've never returned the favor!)

People with ugly nails send me running. Dirty fingernails, guys with dirt caked underneath their nails or with long, broken, and turning-under fingernails. Yuck! Anyone with long, gnarled toenails creeps me out.

On the other hand, women who care for their nails to the point of painting them with polish always get my attention.

Another thing. Sometimes people will buy shoes too small for their feet in order to avoid the feeling of having clown feet. I don't do that. I make sure I have ample room for my toes. I have big feet for a small guy, wearing a 10 1/2. If that makes me look like Bozo's son, so be it. Deal with it. Too tight shoes cause foot and nail problems.

A part of getting older, I am assured, is that toenail problems in the form of thickening and increased susceptibility to nail fungus become common. That seems to be confirmed by older folks I know. Lots of things go haywire with our bodies as we get old. In the meantime, I'm watching my toenails for the first signs of trouble (at which point I will probably stop my habit of wearing open-toe house shoes).

And if you are thinking this post has been an odd few minutes of your life to burn, just be thankful I decided against posting my thoughts on nose hair.

Peanuts And Me

No, not good old Charlie Brown and his gang, but the humble goober.

In case you haven't heard, the price of peanut butter is soon going up because we have a peanut shortage. Blame it on the drought and the heat.

I heard that news late last week and thought that when I did my did my Friday groceries I'd pick up several jars to lay by.

But when Friday came and I stood in front of the peanut butter section of the grocery isle, I was greeted by the fact that the price of the peanuts already in the jars had gone up! Oh, maybe not the thirty or forty percent they are forecasting, but the price was significantly more than it was the last jar I bought - even with the lower-priced store brand that I usually buy.

Everyone is a speculator these days!

I settled on picking up a couple of jars of a name brand peanut butter, 2 for $4, which was a good buy for that particular brand. I guess I will deal with the price hike once it really arrives by relying on the store brand. In the meantime, I'll take those two jars of name-brand and hope I don't grow up either.

I can't do without peanut butter. Since I was a young guy starting out on my own, I realized that as long as I had a jar of peanut butter and a box of soda crackers in my pantry, I wouldn't starve.

Besides that, it is a staple with me. A basic and very versatile sandwich base. It is great by itself on bread. Superb on toast. Makes a nice sandwich when paired with jelly or with bananas. When I was a child my mom would often makes us peanut butter sandwiches with a little butter (actually margin because we couldn't usually afford real butter) to thin the PB. Try some sliced bacon on a peanut butter sandwich. Wanna get fancy? Thinly slice some apple and place that on top of the bacon. Delicious! We used to eat peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches. Haven't done that in years, but I remember it fondly. Of course there are my beloved peanut butter and green olive sandwiches that everybody kids me about. I like to toast some bread and make s'mores sandwiches, with peanut butter, marshmallow cream, and chunks of broken up chocolate bars. I think the possibilities are endless.

I'm also a lover of a hot, steaming bowl of oatmeal on a chilly morning (or sometimes for a light supper). Add a dollop of peanut butter and it tastes very like a peanut butter cookie. Sometimes I'll do that and add a squirt or two of chocolate syrup to boot. And always serve it with a tall glass of cold milk.

Of course I love peanuts as snacks. I make my own trail mix sometimes. I watch for when the mixed nuts (less than 50% peanuts) go on sale. With the peanut shortage, peanuts will no longer be considered a cheap filler for this.

I will survive this shortage. Hopefully the next peanut harvest will bring relief. In the meantime I guess Vienna sausages are still cheap enough to keep on hand as a survivalist meal with my saltines. Not as versatile, certainly not as healthy, but cheap is the name of the game when you are just trying to keep from going to bed hungry.

This is going to be rough on all us poor brown baggers.

Babies

The other day one my coworkers found a baby mouse, still alive, among some of equipment at my place of employment. Cute, I thought, in a baby sort of way. My mom always said that a baby anything is cute. I find that mostly true. Who among us haven't watched baby bears or tiger cubs on television playing and appearing nothing short of adorable, yet knowing all the while in the back of our minds that one day these darling little babies will grow up to be fierce and menacing creatures? It's their nature.

My female coworkers pronounced that baby mouse to be a rat, and made all sorts of disparaging comments about it. And for one reason only: one day that "rat" would grown up to be a destructive pest and a disease spreading vermin. Cute though the baby mouse was, I couldn't deny their basic logic. (In case you are wondering, my coworker who found the mouse turned it loose outside, where, considering its age, it no doubt quickly became food for the various creatures that live in the wooded area behind our plant.)

But extend this thinking to the human animal. And I do. While not a child hater in the tradition of W. C. Field's film persona - hey, do I think human babies are cute, just as I do baby mice, bears, tigers, alligators, why, just about any of nature's little critters - I never see a baby that in my mind I don't wonder what kind of grief it will one day bring into the world.

It is a popular thing among the "pro-life" people to ask us to pause and wonder if that next aborted fetus might not be a future president, a future doctor who might find a cure for AIDS or cancer, or the next Einstein. A little more thought ought to suggest that it might also be a future serial killer or political tyrant, etc.

Another thought occurs to me. The blind self-centeredness, the cry until they get what they want stubborn, inflexible will of a baby seem to be things that most never fully outgrow.

The human animal learns to talk and give voice to the deceits of their youth, get better with their physical skills and abilities, not just in walking, but also in causing the kind of pain and human suffering babies are unable to perform.

I never look into the face of a hardened criminal on TV but that I don't stop to think that once, quite awhile back, that criminal was a cute, cherubic-faced baby, cooing and drooling with an ear to ear grin.

Humanist though I am - and curiously enough I arrived at that philosophical position as a member of the human family! - I have to agree with the way my female coworkers viewed that baby "rat." I just extend it to the human animal as well. Human nature and all ... you know?

Don't Take The Universe So Personally

Which is easier: changing the universe or changing to the way we think about it?

It's easy enough to claim victimhood if we harbor the notion that life is supposed to be fair. Worse still - at least to my thinking - is the idea that we humans are the primary objects of concern for the universe. This is the basic thesis of many religions, especially the Abrahamic religions.

We humans are storytelling animals and we love (I was tempted to type "are addicted to") happy endings.

But happiness is a fleeting thing. It cannot even be honestly said that life is equal parts happiness and unhappiness.

The argument between optimists and pessimists about whether the glass is half full or half empty or whether or not this is the best of possible worlds will continue ad infinitum, I suppose.

But not for me.

For me, my emotional salvation or solace comes from accepting that the universe doesn't have my personal best interests at its heart. Therefore, if constant happiness isn't an option - and reality suggests to me it is not - perhaps I should settle for contentment. I should just make the best of the way things are, accept it, and live accordingly until entropy puts an end to all my assessments.

Oh, to confront night, storms, hunger,
ridicule, accidents, rebuffs as the trees
and animals do - Walt Whitman

When The Cupboard Is Bare

This sad story has been all over my local news. This is not something just taking place here in my neck of the woods. This once great nation of ours is facing the prospect of massive hunger, homelessness, and deaths from medical neglect.

I know, we've always had these problems; but now I fear it is on the verge of becoming an epidemic.

One local Salvation Army is down to two cans of vegetables on their food pantry shelves. They have been reduced to turning hungry people away.

There once was a wonderful program of low-cost food distribution known as Angel Food Ministries. I knew some people who benefited from this ministry. Sadly, last month they shut down after posting the following message on their now defunct website:

At this time we regret to inform you that we have not found a solution that will allow Angel Food Ministries to continue to distribute food on a monthly basis and have decided to cease operations.

I am aware that there have been some allegations of impropriety in their finances. Like any of these religious-oriented nonprofit organizations, there is the temptation for leaders to enrich themselves at the expense of kindhearted folks. But I also know that most states (including mine) had churches that took part in this program and that thousands and thousands of poor people ate better because of it.

Take a moment and do a little Google searching to see just how desperate this situation is becoming. Donations to charitable agencies are way down because, for most Americans, belts are being tightened well beyond the point of comfort.

At the same time we have some real ass-clowns running for president, saying absolutely ridiculous things. For example, Herman Cain's recent outburst:

Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!

And rather than such idiocy causing him to sink in the polls like a bottomless fishing boat, his political stock is actually reportedly on the rise!

Rather than concentrating on the engulfing poverty, it seems Republicans care only about reclaiming the White House and increasing their own political power in Washington DC If that means Americans go hungry, homeless, or die an early death from lack of basic medical treatments, Que Sera, Sera. And if they are jobless, that's their fault, too!

Hunger is no joke. Not being able to assuage the painful gnawing of an empty stomach is a horrible way to spend a long night.

Worst of all is the utter hopelessness that crushes the joy of living out of the downtrodden soul.

But it is "class warfare" to suggest that those who have abused our system here to rake in ever more riches should give back just a little of their abundance in order to keep their fellow citizens from being hungry.

With the word God dripping from their hypocritical lips they share a vision for America that is more frightening to me than any of the propaganda I heard about "godless Communism" as I was growing up.

My disgust with the mess our country is in is beyond my ability to put into words.

Bring Back Drawing And Quartering!

Capital punishment is a certain emotion flaring topic of conversation. People feel strongly about this, especially people who lean toward the conservative political pole. They cheer loudly about high state execution rates - and evidently, the question of possible miscarriages of justice in the form of executing the innocent is given a dismissive shoulder shrug.

I see where one Florida law maker, troubled about execution by lethal injection and the accused criminals "getting off that easy," has this week filed a bill that should be heard by Florida's legislature early next year calling for a return to the electric chair or maybe the firing squad.

The Miami Herald reports that

[Rep. Brad] Drake said lethal injection just allows a person to die in their sleep while a firing squad or electrocution would force Death Row inmates to think about their punishment "every morning."

"I think if you ask a hundred people, not even talking to criminals, how would you like to die, if you were drowned, if you were shot, and if you say you were put to sleep, 90 percent of some of the people would say I want to be put to sleep," Drake said. "Let's put our pants back on the right way."

The ardent death penalty proponents I talk to all have some form of "really making them pay" as the backbone of their arguments.

And if that is how it should be done, I make the modest proposal that drawing and quartering be brought back. This is an idea that dates back to thirteenth and fourteenth century merry old England.

The Wikipedia entry on the subject gives us a nice description of this form of punishment:

Convicts were fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where they were hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered (chopped into four pieces). Their remains were often displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burnt at the stake.

As for that last detail, it seems modern modesty is not as stuffy as in days of yore, so I see no problem in applying this punishment equally to both sexes.

Or maybe we could do this. Why not bind the hands and feet of the convict and allow the closet relative(s) of the victim a choice of brass knuckles, clubs, whips, and thick heeled boots in order to slowly and painfully beat the life out of the convict? The criminals will think about that, right?

I've no doubt that many would happily take part in such a spectacle. Yet I've hope that many more of us, if brought face to face with the stark reality of man's inhumanity to man, would walk away and preserve our efforts to attain a higher nature.

Our prison system lacks a whole lot to be desired, but that is a topic for another post. Right now it is the best place to house the criminally dangerous. But If we as a people are going to insist on capital punishment, I would prefer it focus on the concept of the taker of lives forfeiting theirs, rather than an attempt to out-brutalize the brutal.

Jesus Said

This is sort of funny. Yesterday at work, one of my coworkers was complaining about another coworker. I thought the matter was a bit petty, an example of simply being human. I suggested that perhaps the complaining coworker should remember what Jesus said: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

"Hey," I was told, "don't quote that thing if you say you don't believe it!"

"That thing," of course, being the Bible.

Well, I tried to carefully explain my position. It makes no sense to me that even though I don't believe the Bible is God's Word, that Jesus is "God in human flesh" or in some unique sense the son of God, that I should not quote good things I find therein.

Jesus said lots of things that I like and find handy. But he is also credited with saying some things I find just plain wrong and a bit kooky. So I do what I do with any well known teacher. I accept the good and reject the bad.

I don't know how many of you have noticed, but if you click the link to go to my profile you will find that I list the Bible among my favorite books. I was literally raised on that book.

So much of the Bible and so many biblical phrases have been incorporated into popular speech that the majority of folks don't even know they are referencing the Bible when they speak. Think, for example, how often you hear the phrase "the powers that be," which is how the Apostle Paul referred to the Roman government under which he lived. I could give many other examples.

No, I find lots of wisdom in Jesus and the rest of the Bible. I just don't believe it is the absolute truth. Parts of it are backwards and outright bad. But some passages are lofty and "on the money."

Many of the Psalms are very vile and anti-humanity. Others are quite consistent with a pantheistic concept of God, a concept I embrace. If the book of Ecclesiastes were the only book in the Bible, then I might approach being something like a Bible-thumper (please don't take me overliterally there). The book of Proverbs has good tidbits of wisdom. Some of the Old Testament prophets spoke good things alongside their inanities.

I'm just saying, the Bible is worth reading and understanding. So, yes, I like the Bible and quote from it. I just don't "live by it" because, taken as a whole, I don't find it a sufficient life-guide. Many parts of it are embarrassing to a cultured mind.

On the other hand, there is the bigger problem of those who do claim to believe the Bible is divine and God's revelation to man, yet who seemingly reject or ignore large swaths of Jesus' teachings and biblical commandments.

I've explained myself. I'll leave it to those folks to explain their thinking on the matter.

Blog, Baby, Blog!

Who blogs anymore? With Tweeter and Facebook, is blogging becoming a dying art form?

My gal pal has a Facebook page and she keeps up with several friends and family members this way as most of them have them as well. The things she shares with me from these pages seem to me most often to be trite and silly (examples she has shared with me of pages she follows: "poke me with a fork and see if I'm done" and "Dear Drama, please go away...) . Lots of my coworkers keep up with each other this way, even though they spend a third of their lives together already. And Tweets seem to me nothing but teasers.

But blogs, when properly done, can convey real information, pose serious questions, impart heavy wisdom. Or, if we choose, they can be opportunities to explain who we are and what makes us tick to anyone who might be interested.

I've met some very nice people through my blog and have formed some important cyber friendships. My blog has become a very important part of my life. I make time for it - which isn't always easy. I put a lot of thought into most of my posts. I make sure I respond to anyone who asks me to clarify what I'm writing. I value every person who takes the time to read and especially those who go to the additional trouble of commenting on things I post.

Now honestly I do have fainting fits sometimes. I wonder if my time might be better spent on something else. Sometimes I get the feeling I'm redundant. It's hard to write regular posts and come up with winners day after day. But even when I don't come up with something that is overly thought-provoking, I try to at least let my friends here have a glimpse into the warped mind behind this weblog. Sometimes I just share things that I have found written or said by others that have resonated with me and I hope you guys will enjoy. And not that my opinions about things are more important than anyone else's, but current news stories are always grist.

I said all that to say this: The day may indeed come when I will hang up my keyboard and stop blogging. However, I suspect before that happens, I will just cut back my postings, or maybe just take a few days off. My cyber friendships are that important to me. I wouldn't want to lose touch with you dear people.

Of course I'm not an expert on blogs and blogging. My design is simple, basic, no frills. That is both a reflection of my own personal minimalism, but also a courtesy. I hate waiting for a blog with lots of bells and whistles to load and suspect others might feel the same way. There are two schools of thought about design: one suggests that periodic overhauls keep interest alive (I would hope my posts are interesting enough); the other is that it is annoying to regulars to find an ever-changing design. I lean towards the latter theory. When you guys come here, I want you to feel that sense of comfortable familiarity, like you would experience if you regularly visited me in my home. I want you to feel a warm welcome as you enter the friendly confines of that old elephant groper.

I miss some of friends with blogs who are not posting regularly anymore. I wish you guys would go back. Some of you are still reading mine and taking part in my forum, and I appreciate that. But I still miss your blogs. Some of you don't have blogs that I'm aware of (let me know if you do). I like to encourage people to blog. It can be therapeutic. Everyone has something to say. So say it! Don't think no one will be interested in what you have to say. The human experience is real, so please share it. What better way to inexpensively reach a lot of people all over the world than by creating and maintaining a blog?

Come on, you can do it. Blog, baby, blog!

The Politics Of Orthodoxy

Geeze, what a crazy thing to debate in a political campaign: Is Mormonism a false cult? You know, that is the whole problem with mixing religion and politics, and I hate it.

If, instead of the Constitution we do have, we governed our land strictly according to the Bible, perhaps that question might have some relevancy. But we don't. And if we did, say, go by Orthodox Christianity in some form of theocratic church state, our politicians would forever be holding heresy trials.

That is why it is a bit humorous for me to watch these other Republican president-hopefuls trying to distance themselves from this controversy, when they opened the door in the first place by inviting Jesus into the debate.

Now I have to admit here that I don't understand how any Bible-believing Christian can be a politician and be thought of as following Jesus' command to seek first the Kingdom of God - unless in someway the United States is instrumental in bringing in that kingdom, something neither the Bible nor Jesus indicate.

Rest assured that if I accepted the New Testament as the Word of God, I would not have time to worry about politics. I would be too busy urging people to get ready for the coming kingdom, JUST AS JESUS DID AND COMMANDED HIS FOLLOWERS TO DO. Remember the Apostle Paul wrote that the Christian's citizenship is in heaven (Phillipians 3:20,21).

The sad truth of the matter is, religion has become just another political tool, another bullet point on the candidates resume, another source of rhetoric. And in this case, just another political weapon with which to wound an opponent. All this is repugnant.

I can only hope this controversy will serve as a catalyst for getting religion out of politics, or at least shoving it into the background - where it ought to be.

Abraham Lincoln's Suicide Soliloquy?

That our 16th president suffered constantly from depression is not news to anyone who has studied his life. Had he not been a man inclined to melancholy, certainly the events that enveloped him upon taking the reigns of the United States as its long, festering division over slavery came to a head would have been enough to bring him or anyone, for that matter, to the brink of despair.

Long before Abraham Lincoln was elected president, when he was the ripe young age of 29, an anonymous poem appeared in a local Whig newspaper, a dark, brooding poem that has been attributed to the prairie politician by some historians.

Lincoln had spoken of death often in his life, and many times of death by suicide. Being deeply moved by the mood and tone of this "soliloquy," I feel it seems more like Poe than Lincoln, but I just don't know if this really was the work of the future president. No one can deny, however, that Lincoln had a way with words, a knack for expressing his thoughts and emotions in stirring prose.

Here, dear readers, is perhaps Lincoln's but certainly somebody's brooding death poem. Read it and weep.

The Suicide's Soliloquy

Here, where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o’er my carcase growl,
Or buzzards pick my bones.

No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens’ cry.

Yes! I’ve resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I’ll rush a dagger through,
Though I in hell should rue it!

Hell! What is hell to one like me
Who pleasures never knew;
By friends consigned to misery,
By hope deserted too?

To ease me of this power to think,
That through my bosom raves,
I’ll headlong leap from hell’s high brink,
And wallow in its waves.

Though devils yell, and burning chains
May waken long regret;
Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,
Will help me to forget.

Yes! I’m prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn’d on earth!

Sweet steel! come forth from your sheath,
And glist’ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!

I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!

Astronauts And God

Here is factoid for you guys, perhaps most of you are already aware of it. Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (now deceased) was the first human to reach outer space.

As a child of the sixties, my mind was occupied with thoughts of space travel, as was the case with most of us earth dwellers.

Gagarin's adventure took place when I was quite young, so I only read about it. The Apollo space program was the first one I personally followed, and I well remember sitting spell bound in front of the family television, watching coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It, occurring as it did in July of 1969, I was out of school and so had the time to sit in front of the TV for long periods of time, and my bedtime was extended much beyond the school year norm.

It seems to be only a myth - albeit, one that has been widely disseminated - that Cosmonaut Gagarin made the statement upon reaching the realms of outer space: "I don't see any God up here." It appears to be the case, however, that Krushchev made that statement about Gagarin, who was reported to be a religious man and member of the Orthodox Church, so not likely to have said such a thing.

Then there is another astronaut who captured my attention, Edgar Mitchell. Mitchell traveled to the moon, and even after leaving NASA in 1972 continued his interest in consciousness and the cosmos. After having had a religious experience of sorts in space (he was raised as a Southern Baptist) he went on to found the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

In an online interview I stumbled upon recently and that can be read here, Dr. Mitchell gave the following description of his current understanding of God, and it is one that really resonates with me:

Well, my concept of God is probably quite different than the normal. The universe that we are in is an intelligent, self-organizing, learning, participatory, interactive, non-locally interconnected evolutionary system. It’s all of those words. So to me – the universe is the body of God, and God is still learning. The evolutionary mind, the consciousness that exists in the universe, is the mind of God. I do not embody God in a being, but in the collective of all that is.

Pantheist that I am, I can embrace that description and pass it along to my readers as at least thoughtworthy.

It is something I am just now embarking on (and I don't have as much time as I would like to devote to it), learning about what "God thoughts" the people who actually reached into the heavens might actually have. As I do more research I might pass along some more of their thoughts in future posts.