enchantment rises
mist from an ancient lake
subtle spell worked
by crafty fingers

reaching up inside
clouding the present I
with shades of a
remembered self

I hear the sound
smell the tang, of sweat
and sour and sweet
lump in my throat

through soft fog
new shapes appear
written over old shadows
wishes and pleas

Don't remember that I was
Remember as I wish I were.

What Madness is This!

Tonight at midnight it begins.  Dreams of blood and terror, heart palpitations, sweaty palms and the pounding, pounding, pounding beat of the race to beat the monster all come together in a mind-numbing fog.  No, not Halloween, at midnight the fantasy that is Halloween will be over and reality comes home to roost.  I've done it.  This time I've REALLY done it.

I've sign up for National Novel Writing Month.  (NaNoWriMo for short.)

See, I have drawers, files, disks, and notebooks full of scribbles, scraps and fragments of sentences, chapters and ideas.  But, not one finished manuscript.  This November I'm going to finish.  (Not all of them, I'm insane but I still have to sleep.)

The hardest part has been choosing WHICH story to focus on.  I've done it.  I have my focus.  I considered the time-travel fantasy where the sociobiologist from the future is trapped in the Middle Ages and has a psychotic break over the lack of antibiotics in the midst of horrible diseases.  I considered the literary novel about teh successful lawyer who leaves her career to become a Stay at Home Mom.  I considered the Romance (Indiana Jones meets Martha Stewart).  But in the end, it's the murder mystery I've determined to finish (first).  Wish me luck, wish me ideas, wish me inspiration to get out of bed the hour earlier that I'm going to have to get up and write before my "regular" day begins.

And give me LOTS and LOTS of eprops.  Because now that I've committed myself (the NaNoWriMo people have let me know that if I fail to complete this challenge my whole circle of friends will be ashamed of me and several second cousins will never speak to me again) suddenly, I'm convinced that I couldn't write an ingredients list for bottled water.

Happily, there is no water involved in my murder story.  So tonight, I'll be up at midnight, (it's not in the rules but it seems the right thing to do) and if it goes well, I'll have dear old Jonathon happily dead by morning.

Oh, yeah -

Happy Halloween!

Dwaber asked "what would you say if you had courage?"  I don't have much courage, but I do have an answer.

To be above
With the saints I love
  Oh, that will be glory
Here below
With the saints I know
   That's a different story.

That Exmortis is tearing up my comments section leaving quips that get me started thinking about more and different tangents.  Yesterday, he worried that gawd's faithfull masses equate his will with war and intolerance.  I can tell by this statement that he's never attended a Wednesday night business meeting of the local faithful masses.  

Let's say that hypothetically, God lit up a neon sign reading, "It is My will that you kill your neighbor."

65% of the congregation would miss it because they don't show up.
10% would offer to form a committee to see how this suggestion could be worked into the five year plan.
5% would declare on the spot that there was no budget item for a neon sign this year and that God should bear the cost.
7% would notice that the word neighbor is spelled "n e i g h b o u r" in the King James version and would demand that the sign be altered to reflect the one true and Authorized Word of God which everyone knows is the one that Jesus used.
3% would protest that the pastor had put God up to it to fulfill his own hidden agenda.
3% would say this is why the pastor doesn't need a raise this year.
2% would say that they need a new building to carry out God's program.
5% would vote to adjourn to the kitchen for coffee and pie.

Can you tell that I'm not a huge fan of churches?  Oh, I understand that as a Christian I'm automatically enrolled in the Church spread out through time and space, rooted in eternity.  I rather like that.  The church I have a problem with is the one aroudn the corner, you know the one I'm talking about - the Baptist Methodist Episcopalian Presbyterian Church of God, Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit Community Fellowship of Catholic Orthodoxy.  The Great Church is largely invisible in day to day dealings with local congregations made up of bad tempered men and women who sing off key, have shoes that squeak, wobble their chins when they speak, and wear odd things. 

I'm not surprised when I turn on the evening news and see destruction, degradation, and despair.  See I believe (along wth Carl Jung) that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim doctrine of Original Sin makes more sense of the observable world than all the sophisticated humanist philosophy I was tested on in school.  I get the whole God thing.  I get that humanity left to its own devices will naturally gravitate toward muck and misery.  I get that God in compassion reaches out to individuals.  I get that there is nothing I can do to attract His attention, I already have it whether I want it or not.  I get that through God's grace I have an invitation to a relationship that will do no less than transform my life.  I don't get that when God sets me down in a group of other people who've RSVPed that they too want to attend the party, they immediately start to ... fight.

See I'm really cool with God.  He and I get along fairly well most of the time, seriously.  He tells me jokes.  He has a wicked sense of timing though, put me in a room full of serious pray-ers and sure as anything He'll whisper something in my ear that gets me giggling.  I get a lot of weird looks, but I'll tell you, God is funny and He does a dead on Bill Cosby impersonation.

Church has the capacity to be cool, I can't imagine anything better than a group of people with a Friend in common getting together to celebrate that friendship.  I've been a part of small circles of the Friend's friends who are more concerned with staffing the red cross disaster kitchen than they are with whether they are on the committee to choose new carpeting.  I've been a member of communities who literally go all over the world building hospitals, schools, and homes.  I've been to celebrations of the Friendship that were so real, intense and beautiful that all I could do was cry. 

None of the things that make church cool have anything to do with religion.  They are all about relationship.  As a general rule when I write about religion, I try to make sure I use the term in a positive sense.  But, the truth is that I don't place much stock in religion, and especially not Organized Religion.  It seems to me that religion is just rules and regulations that try to outline the one acceptable relationship to Friend, and that makes no sense to me.  I don't have the same relationship with my husband that anyone else has with him, I don't have the same relationship with my son that anyone else has with him.  Can you imagine anything sillier than trying to write out a list of rules for the one and only true way that you can interact with Tim based on my interactions with him?  (I can promise you that Tim doesn't want that either.)  Why do we try to do that to God?

At least this is what I might say, if I had courage.

The Autumn Grim Opus is out.
This month's issue contains my review of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.

The meeting of sacred and profane

"I've just never understood why technology and spirituality seem mutually exclusive in so many people's minds." Exmortis

Short Version:
Many people believe that science and religion are competing ways of describing reality.  Therefore, scientific explanation is equated with rejection of religious truth.

Long Version:
CSI Miami was brutal last night.  The story of little children abducted and murdered went straight to every parent's worst nightmare.  Of course, it being a one hour tv series, they caught the guy.  I like CSI because I'm a puzzle nut and a science junkie.  The Crime Scene Investigation unit of any large police department employs both puzzle solving logic and forensic science to test the theory.  But, last night was so difficult emotionally that instead of returning to Xanga to rewrite the losten post, I went to bed and listened to the sounds of water-splashing rain-tapping, and my husband breathing.

Excite my emotions and I find it hard to think.  I believe that's exactly why it's so difficult for science and religion to play nicely together.  Emotional investment in a specific worldview, blinds adherents to broader truths.  When you read Exmortis' statement above, do you picture creationists, Amish communities and ayatollah's who reject modern knowledge and understanding while embracing outmoded systems of thought, lifestyle, and ethics based on an illogical view of reality?  Or do you think of the scientist who would write that science "enables man to live as an intellectually fulfilled atheist"? 

Students of history know that until the past couple hundred years, science and spirituality have been close companions.  As historians discuss and theorize about why scientific methodology arose in the West as opposed to the East, a good case can be made that the doctrine of theistic creation common to Jewish, Christian and Muslim thought set the stage for scientific activity.  Both Greek and Biblical thought asserted that the world is orderly and intelligible.  But, the Greeks held that order is necessary and that one can therefore deduce it's structure from first principles.  Define self-evident terms, formulate statements about the evident terms which are obviously true (axioms or postulates) then combine the axioms via the rules of logic to prove that other statements must be true. 

Only Biblical thought held that God created both form and matter, meaning that the world did not have to be as it is and that details of it's order can only be determined through observation.  Furthermore, while nature is real and good in the Biblical view, it is not in and of itself divine, as many ancient cultures held, and it is therefore permissable to experiment on it.  Whereas Aristotle worked from deduction, Francis Bacon gave us what he termed a "scientific method" (observe, measure, explain, and verify), which moved us into a whole new realm of discovery. 

Early scientists believed they were "thinking God's thoughts after Him."  In addition, the Calvinist work ethic supported science.  In the Royal Society, the earliest institution for the advancement of science, Puritans made up 70% of the membership and many of these were clergy.  To Theists, science fills in the blanks of a theology which speaks truly but not exhaustively of Ultimate Reality.  I like to read books of science, both old books and newer ones are fascinating to me.  In these books I see a gradual progression in which the relationship of cooperation and mutual advantage has given way to a battle for the hearts and minds of men.  I frequently encounter contemporary science writers who display a decidedly anti-theistic bias. 

Take for example the work of sociobiologist Edward O Wilson.  He traces the genetic and evolutionary origins of social behavior in insects, animals and humans.  He asks how self-sacrificial behavior could arise and persist among social insects if their individual reproductive future is thereby sacrificed.  Wilson theorizes that such 'altruistic' behavior enhances the survival of close relatives who share many of their genes.  He futher hypothesizes that all human behavior can be reduced to and explained by biological origins and present genetic structure.  "It may not be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the humanities, are the last branches of biology" to be included in evolutionary theory.  The mind will be explained as "an epiphenomenon of the neural machinery of the brain."  He says that the power of religion will be gone forever when religion is explained by "a philosophy of scientific materialism."

Theism and materialism are opposing belief systems, each claiming to encompass all reality.  Materialism is the assertion that matter is the assertion that fundamental reality in the universe.  Materialism is a form of metaphysics (a set of claims concerning the most general charcteristics and constituents of reality).  Scientific materialism makes a second assertion: the scientific method is the only reliable path to knowledge.  This is a form of epistemology (a set of claims concerning inquiry and the acquisition of knowledge).  The two asertions are linked: if the only real entities are those with which science deals, then science is the only valid path to knowledge. 

Science starts from reproducible public data.  Theories are formulated as hypostheses that can be tested against experimental observation.  Choices among theories are influenced by additional criteria of choherence, comprehensiveness, and fruitfulness in suggesting further research and application.  Science is described as objective, open-minded, universal, cumulative, and progressive.  Religious tradition by contrast, is said to be subjective, closed-minded, parochial, uncritical, and resistant to change.  Science is said to require detached observation and logical reasoning whereas religion requires personal involvement in a particular tradition and set of practices.

Persons who hold to theistic beliefs are subject to attack on their intellect.  Cosmologist Peter Atkins writes that religion is "sentimental wishful thinking" and "intellectually dishonest emotion."  Evolutionist Richard Dawkins says, "Either admit that God is a scientific hypothesis and let him submit to the same judgment as any other scientific hypothesis, or admit that his status is no higher than that of fairies and river sprites."  E. O Wilson proposes that people have in the past relied on sacred narratives to give their lives purpose, so he proposes that "The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic.  Material reality discovered by science already possesses more content and grandeur than all religious cosmologies combined."  Physicist Steven Weinberg says "I'm against constructive dialogue between science and religion," and that one of the great acheivements of science has been to permit man to live as a non-religious person and that we should not retreat from this acomplishment.

Not only do many scientific materialists fail to distinguish between scientific and philosophical questions, they also seem unaware of how often they invoke the authority of science to speak for ideas that are not a part of science.  However, it turns out that many of the characteristics present in religious endeavor are also pesent in science and vice versa.  Studies of scientific theories indicate that they do not arise from logical analysis of data, but from acts of creative imagination in which analogies and models often play a seminal role.  In religious language too, metaphor and models are prominent.  These tools enable us to imagine that which is not directly observable.  Clearly religious beliefs are not subject to direct empirical testing, but they can be approached with the same spirit of inquiry found in science.  The scientific criteria of coherence, comprehensiveness and fruitfulness have their parallels in religious thought.

Science as science does not conflict with religious thought.  Scientific materialism cannot avoid the clash with religious thinking, because it goes beyond scientific fact to draw conclusions about ultimate reality.  As long as scientists misuse their authority to push a metaphysics which rejects the existence of God, sacred and secular meetings will continue to be power struggles benefitting no one.

Lost Entry

I spent some considerable time this morning writing a thoughtful answer to Exmortis' question of last Friday ... "I've just never understood why technology and spirituality seem mutually exclusive in so many people's minds."  Then when I hit the submit button, it turned out that I had been bumped offline and the post was lost.

I've been trying to find time to write a second version, but it's been a busy day.   I usually only get one shot at writing early in the morning, then it's time to do school and household stuff and the next thing I know, it's 4:00 in the afternoon. 

If I could save time in a bottle,
the first thing that I'd like to do,
is crawl down inside
for the length of the ride,
and then stick my tongue out at you.  ...

Okay, I'm cracking up now, I just got the mental image of the lamp in Aladdin with the geni's tongue sticking out the wick hole. 

So what would I be doing in my bottle, I'd have a modem hookup next to my bathtub so I could surf the net while soaking in bubbles.  I'd have a dreamy workroom with all my quilting and sewing equipment permanently set up so I don't have to use the kitchen table.  And of course, I'd have my library.  I'd come out occassionally to kiss my husband and hug my kids, then I'd go right back to being selfishly self-absorbed.  ... Wait a sec! ... If all the time in the world was in there with me, I wouldn't be missed out here in Real Life, because no time would pass in my absence - well there goes the last smidgen of guilt I was entertaining for that fantasy. 

We really had a good weekend.  Quiet, family activities.  The kids played a LOT of games of GO FISH.  Tim was in a baking mood, so he made rye bread, beer bread, cookies and cajun cornbread.  Yum.  I made apple butter, but I didn' put in enough sugar and it turned out like syrup.  I did find a website with fixes for jam problems, so I'll try again tonight and see if I can save it.  I'm usualy a good cook, but sometimes I just can't believe that the directions in the book could possibly be right.  I mean this apple butter recipe called for 3/4 again as much sugar as I had apple pulp.  That would have been a whole five pound bag!  It just didn't seem reasonable. 

I watched Double Jeopardy last night.  It was kind of fun being the only one awake, that doesn't happen to me often since I'm the original early to bed Mom.  I like Tommy Lee Jones in almost anything, and I'm coming to appreciate Ashley Judd more and more.  I was glad that in the end she didn't torture and kill her weasle husband (although he deserved it).  She didn't deserve to have to carry that guilt, and it was pretty clear at that point that she wasn't the kind of person who could nonchalantly walk away from an act of violent revenge.  Did anyone else watch it?  I wondered if it had been edited for television or if they showed it complete.

Well, maybe I'll catch a few minutes tonight after CSI Miami and I can reconstruct my brilliant essay of this morning - or at least make a reasonable stab at the topic. 

At the Car Wash

Tucker: Momi, I don't see the van.
Momi: It's right over here.
Tucker: (less than ten feet from vehicle in question) where?
Momi: It's right here, baby.
Tucker: I think I could remember it better if it didn't change color.
Momi: I suppose it is a bit dusty.
Tucker: Let's go wash it.

Tucker schemed, triumphed and giggled all the way to the carwash.  HE was going to wash the van just like a big boy, this was a major coup on Michael who opted out of hte trip to the grocery so he could watch a dumb video.  I put the quarters in the machine, he squeezed the power washer ... it's a good thing I was standing there to catch him when he was blasted backward from the pressure. 

We have tried a lot of things over the years.  One of the things we tried was raising rabbits.  It didn't work out so well.  As you can see from the fact that this little fellow was allowed to play in the house, we didn't treat them like livestock.  As a result most of our bunnies wound up as pets.

The last of the bunnies made it's escape from the hutches just about a year ago.  I was out of town, a storm blew up, and the hutches tipped over.  By the time that Tim got home from work, there was no catching them.  They were free as the wind blows.  The bunny above just wasn't able to completely let go of life with Verrettes.  He was last seen this morning, nibbling the leaves off my hibiscus bushes.

Seeing through the rain

It's still rainy and cold today.  Neither the dogs nor I like rainy cold days.  I can't walk them simultaneously, so I double hate rainy cold.  I had thought I would post something funny today.  I mentioned Darwin Awards to my sister, so she's been reading them and sending me the ones she finds the funniest.

But, it's rainy and cold.

I'll admit right now that I'm no poet.  I don't get how poetry is constructed.  Where do those words and forms and metres and feet all come from anyway?  I admire good poetry the way I admire a bridge, I appreciate the way it carries me from here to there, but I don't presume I could build one.  I never know whether the words say what I think they say until someone else reads it and says hey!  I know that thought/feeling.  (Then I listen to them tell their thought and I gauge whether the poem conveyed what I meant.)

do you ever
see
things ...
things that you know
that you can't
know
a flash of color
or a glow
hot
cold
halo
just enough to
say
notice ...
notice ...
notice ...

i do
i see it
and then I never say it

orange hurts
you think
hidden 
deep well
the yellow
throbbing
poison

blue/green joy
written in skin
and blood
and tissue
(joy never goes
to the bone
like
pain)

lavender thoughts
your head
fog enshrouded
clean white
feet walk
above
ground

red passion
burning warming
sometimes
consuming
behind your
wire framed
spectacles
(i keep my
gaze carefully
away/above/over
so you won't
know that i)

know because
i can't know
these things
i see

What Stone Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Did I mention that it's rainy and cold today?

***************

If you want to make a smiley : - ) (don't forget the nose)
If you want to make a devil : - P  (you have to capitalize the P)
If you want to make a jester : - D 
If you want Smiley-guy to wear shades ; - ) 
If you want to see Smiley comfort his sad friend : - (  

Psychotic or Simple

I was listening to NPR yesterday.  One of the brief asides in a story about activism was that people who are very young, or who are very old tend to be the most politically active.  People with young children and mortgages cannot afford to rock the boat.  This makes perfect sense to me.  Henry David Thoreau, off at Walden pond, had the time to critique the government and the security that he took no economic risk by doing so.

Southern Indidana is peopled by a group committed to simple living.  When I go into town, I see them.  Black clad families riding in horse drawn buggies to the feed store, the grocery, and sometimes through the drivethrough at McDonald's.  (It's only my knowledge that they prefer not to be photographed that keeps me from following them with my camera.  They seem such quaint and surreal figures on the contemporary landscape, even here in Salem, Indiana.)

What makes Amish living simple?  It isn't that they don't work.  On the contrary they have to work very hard.  They farm, build, and tend livestock.  They school their children at home.  They marry young (usually by age 16) and have large families.  The key element that I notice has to do with the Amish attitude toward debt and possessions.  They don't do debt, everything is worked out on a cash-only basis.  Material possessions are cared for, have a simple beauty, and don't dominate the lives of the possessors.

By contrast the rest of the community strikes me as not only materialistic, but psychotically so.  We make decisions not on the basis of sound reason, but fear.  If I don't stay late and show the boss how committed I am, the promotion will go to the other guy.  If I speak out about unethical practices I observe, I might lose my job.  If I make my family a priority, I'll find myself siderailed form the fasttrack onto the "Mommy Track."  I have a perfectly servicable ______ but I feel I MUST have a new one.  Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over.  We crave things we neither need nor enjoy in order to impress people we do not like.  We are bombarded with ads whose message is that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality.  We learn that we should feel ashamed if we wear our clothes or drive our cars until they are worn out. 

Gerry Spence, the leather clad lawyer from Jackson Hole, Wyoming wrote a book entitled "Give Me Liberty."  He tends to be a bit flamboyant in his presentation, but his basic argument is worth noting.  Life in America is not free.  We are subjects of an economic and psychological slavery the likes of which are unprecedented in history.  Our lust for security has led to an insane attachment to things.  Our desire to live a "good life" leads us to give up everything that's good about it, the desire for affluence in contemporary society is simply ... crazy.

Opposite the notion of simplicity is complexity.  A complex life is made up of and influenced by many parts.  The Preacher of Ecclesiastes said, "God made man simple, man's complex problems are of his own devising." (Ecc. 7:30 Jerusalem Bible).  If complexity is the problem, what is the solution.  Archimedes said, "Give me a place to stand and I will move the world."  Modern life affords us no place to stand.  How can we become centered, if we are constantly being pulled, pushed, tossed up and blown down in the storm?

Jesus said, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you."  By placing our first priority on the things of life, we are doomed to disorder and disarray.  Reorienting ourselves to life that flows out of a spiritual center, we find that things will reprioritze themselves.  Soren Kierkegaard commenting on this Gospel passage concluded, " ... in a certain sense it is nothing I shall do.  Yes, in a certain sense it is nothing, become nothing before God, learn to keep silent; in this silence is the beginning, which is first to seek God's Kingdom."

Inward simplicity ineveitably leads toward outward action.  I have wrestled with the idea of offering some guidelines for simplicity.  I tried once before and it was suggested that I was calling for people to live like peasants.    Let me assure you, I believe that forcing you into the life of a peasant, is a far from simple thing.  But, I don't believe that inward simplicity is possible without accompanying external signs.  So I'm going to give a list from Richard Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline, which I have found useful.

1. Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status.
2. Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you (unless you are addicted to reading my Xanga blogs - I hereby grant you special dispensation for that particular ailment.)
3. Develop a habit of giving things away.
4. Refuse to be propagandized by purveyors of gadgetry.  (Gadgets never save you time, and never pay for themselves in six months.)
5. Learn to enjoy things without owning them.
6. Develop a deeper appreciation for nature (which is generally free!)
7. Eye with healthy skepticism all "buy now, pay later" schemes.  (An exception to this rule is that in today's market it is possible to obtain credit cards with a 0% interest introductory period.  If you have revolving debt, I strongly suggest that you consider cutting up the card, transferring the balance to a 0% card and paying off as much as you can afford per month.  Then at the end of the introductory period, do it again - switch to another 0% card.)
8. Employ simple speech.  Let your 'yes' be yes and your 'no' be no. 
9. Reject anything that breeds the oppression of others.
10. Shun anything that distracts you from your spiritual center, the Kingdom of God.

Amish communities may not have it all figured out.  Many of their rules, designed to encourage simple living bring complex problems in a changing world.  No list of rules can be turned into a one-size-fits-all blueprint for simple life. 

I will this day try to
   live a simple, sincere
      and serene life.

I will repel promptly every thought
   of discontent, anxiety, discouragement
      impurity, and self-seeking.

I will cultivate
   cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity
      and the habit of holy silence.

I will exercise
   economy in expenditure,
   carefulness in conversation,
   diligence in appointed service,
   fidelity to every trust.

                    John H. Vincent

************************

For those my SISTERS who like leaving me 0 props because they are enamoured of the little devil, I have now switched.  You can leave a little devil in your comments if you type the characters for a smiley sticking out his tongue. 

For Peppermint Patty

PP aka Amy, works with my Tim.  She has the most adorable dog, Newman.  If you haven't checked out the photos of Newman they are worth the peek.  She asked for pictures of my Simone.  I don't have new photos of my baby because my digital camera bit the dust.  But I do have a few oldies that are particularly appropriate this time of year for the sheer horror of the most awful haircut in the history of dog-grooming.

Isn't She a DOLL!  This is Simone before, a little fuzzy but still a cutie pie.

Even she knows it's bad.  Look at that expression!

It looked like some kind of bondage outfit!  Poor Baby.