Reflections: "9/11" Again...and again...and....

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I'm getting pretty sick and tired of all this boo-hoo-hoo over "9/11". The United States has been reducing buildings to rubble -- and killing innocent civilians in the process -- all over the world throughout this century and the last. Then one time -- ONE TIME -- we get paid back in some small measure and it becomes an event of biblical proportions. Grow up, for God's sake. What goes around comes around. Be happy that it doesn't come around more often! (I won't even mention that we've wasted more than double the number of American lives taking our "revenge" for "9/11" than we lost that day. That's fucking brilliant -- isn't it?) 

You never want to see people killed or injured by any event. But it happens every day. Put a little perspective on it, please.
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Reflections: BUSTED!

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Sitting alone in my new apartment, to which I was driven by the dissolution of my third marriage, wondering vaguely in the pain of separation why it is that I can’t seem to make it with anybody—all three of my wives left me; two of them after a considerable number of years—even though I seem to be trying, I came across the following excerpt on page 78 of a book club edition of Philip K. Dick’s novel, Valis:

 

In his study of the form that masochism takes in modern man, Theodor Reik puts forth an interesting view. Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form. The basic dynamism is as follows: a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain—any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery. So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him; he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes, automatically, anhedonic (which means being unable or unwilling to enjoy pleasure). Anhedonia sets in stealthily. Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. In learning to defer gratification he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has control. Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and controlling person. Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. Of course, he is not consciously aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence. But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others. Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essentially negative.

 

If Reik had been using my case history as his model for this theory it would not be necessary to alter a word of Dick’s description of it. This is me, to a tee. I have seen bits and pieces of these truths about myself in flashes of insight over the years -- particularly since my daughters have been college age and out of the house and I’ve been forced by default to spend more time contemplating myself – but here it is, laid out stark and bare in a novel. I recognized myself in it instantly, and without a speck of doubt, as I read it. Now it has become a fully conscious insight into my predicament, my pathology, my existential angst. Will that make any difference?

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Who You Callin' "Christian?"

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The more I read the comments made in response to posts like this one, the more I wonder how Catholics can consider themselves to be “Christians?” It becomes obvious that the most “Catholic” among them just don’t get it.

But when the Supreme Pontiff of their church is prancing around a huge castle, encrusted in gold and laden-down with jewels, I guess this is not surprising.

It is no wonder that they regard “proof-texting” with fear and loathing.

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Rodak's Writings: a Flash Fiction

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Somewhere West of Eden

Auugh! I roll over out of a dream of scratching in the hard, dry earth with a blunt, brittle stick to choke off the insistent yelping of my alarm clock, Judas. Yes, my alarm clock has a name. I have named everything here. I’ve been naming ever since I was appointed to the role of Adam on this plantation. Naming is an Adamic task -- one of many, I’m coming to learn. I give all things biblical tags, as is most fit and right. Nobody wants to be jerked out of a sound sleep by a clock named Brad. Just as no one wants to wipe his ass with tissue ripped from a roll named Kristen or Kayla. So I am currently flushing bemerded Leah into septic tank Laban. Sending old cow-eyes home to daddy. Only problem is, there ain’t no Eve. My helpmeet has decamped for New York City -- or Jezebel Junction, as I’m calling it -- leaving me here to struggle with the damned serpents all on my lonely. Sometimes I pray to the local deity, Yalkumbaknah, to spit in the dirt, stir up a hunk of mud, and sculpt me another. Sometimes I fuckin’ count my blessings. Yo, Lord! Wanna build me a woman? I gotcha bone rye cheer! It ain’t no rib, though--it’s King David, proudly erect on his pelted throne, with his chubby little sons, Absalom and Solly, rolling around at his feet. [Now enter slinky Lilith of the Five Fingers, stage left, to get a grip on the situation.] Oh, yeah. Just call me Onan and pass me a wad of Rachel. End of chapter, end of verse. Word.

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Readings: Thinking About Thinking

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Below are more excerpts from Rudolf Steiner's seminal work, The Philosophy of Freedom. While contemplating his words about our perceptions of the outside world, it is important to keep in mind that we, ourselves, are objects of the world outside. We know ourselves directly and initially only as percepts, just as we know trees, tables, sunlight, and the starry sky first as percepts. Everything that Steiner says here also pertains to you as an existing being:

In thinking we have that element given us which welds our separate individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are single beings; in so far as we think, we are the all-one being that pervades everything. This is the deeper meaning of our two-sided nature: We see coming into being in us a force complete and absolute in itself, a force which is universal but which we learn to know, not as it issues from the center of the world, but rather at a point in the periphery. Were we to know it at its source, we should understand the whole riddle of the universe the moment we became conscious. But since we stand at a point in the periphery, and find that our own existence is bounded by definite limits, we must explore the region which lies outside our own being with the help of thinking which projects into us the universal world existence.

[…]



In contrast to the content of the percept which is given to us from without, the content of thinking appears inwardly. The form in which this first makes its appearance we will call intuition. Intuition is for thinking what observation is for the percept. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge.

[…]

To explain a thing, to make it intelligible, means nothing else than to place it into the context from which it has been torn by the peculiar character of our organization… . A thing cut off from the world-whole does not exist. All isolating has only subjective validity for our organization. For us the universe divides itself up into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, thing and mental picture, matter and force, object and subject, etc. What appears to us in observation as separate parts becomes combined, bit by bit, through the coherent, unified world of our intuitions. By thinking we fit together again into one piece all that we have taken apart through perceiving.

By thinking, we also, then, fit ourselves together again as integral parts of the cosmos which is the context from which we have torn ourselves through the self-creation of that suffering personality which we know as "ego."
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Quote du Jour: from The Philosophy of Freedom

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The following is from the Preface to the first edition of Rudolf Steiner's seminal work The Philosophy of Freedom, first published in 1894 and revised in 1918:

[W]e do not want any knowledge of the kind that has become frozen once and for all into rigid academic rules, preserved in encyclopedias valid for all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge, but each in his own way.

Yes. And this is precisely the mind-set that is capable of producing the artist and/or the saint.
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Reflections: On Faith and Friendship

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I have again been neglecting this blog due to a combination over-involvement in Facebook and emotional set-backs in my “real life.” One of the few things that I’ve managed to do during this period is slowly read an interesting little book loaned to me by the University Archivist. The book has the non-mellifluous title: Go Back, You Didn’t Say “May I”: the Diary of a Young Priest. The author is Thomas Jackson.

Through his words, I have come to truly love Thomas Jackson, a young Episcopal priest, who comes to this town, Athens, Ohio, to serve at the United Campus Ministry (UCM). He comes in the late summer of 1969 when the campus of Ohio University is experiencing the unrest of the civil rights and anti-war movements—the summer after I graduated from the University of Michigan and got married for the first time. My parents had moved to Athens two years prior to this, so I had several times visited the Athens to which Thomas Jackson has arrived at the beginning of his diary, and was well aware of the milieu about which he writes.

Jackson, as he presents himself in this memoir, is the kind of man I admire and would like to have as a friend. When he errs in his ministry, he errs on the side of being too Christ-like for the local Christian bourgeoisie to tolerate. He has previously been fired by a congregation for this kind of “fault,” and feels a similar fate coming on in Athens after he’s been here for some months.

In his work with the student body, he has gone through what they refer to locally as “the Troubles” – the student uprising following the national guard killings of the students at Kent State, and the closing of the University. There has also been a constant string of crises on a smaller scale, such as pregnant coeds seeking abortions; troubled faculty marriages; jailed students.

As time goes by, Jackson begins to feel less and less effective in his efforts; more pressured by the University administration; and less appreciated by the local citizenry, including the Christian community. His best friend, and most effective colleague, Tom Niccolls, has recently left Athens to pursue other career interests. Finally Jackson comes to the decision that he, too, should move on to new pursuits. He has, therefore, written an article for the campus newspaper, the Post, expressing his decision to leave UCM, and Athens.

What I have chosen to excerpt here is Jackson’s entire diary entry for February 3, 1971. I chose it because it expresses an idea which I have felt very strongly, and very consciously, in my own life, but which I have never seen so openly expressed by anyone else:

February 3

            A deeply personal, loving letter today from Tom Niccolls, regarding the article in the Post last Friday about the future departure of the Jacksons, ended with this quote:

               “Somebody placed the shuttle in your hand:

somebody who had already arranged the threads.”

                                                          Hammarskjöld

Weave well.

                                                                    peace,

                                                                         Tom

            I wonder, Tom Niccolls, if I would be planning to leave Athens if you were still here. I wonder if I will ever again work with someone who understands my thoughts almost before I think them, or with whom my personality and hopes and quirks mesh so well. You and your crazy Calvinism!

            If this is truly the Age of Anxiety as Auden describes it, then I begin to think that the anxiety comes from our constant departures one from another. We occasionally find that human being with whom we can share so much of life, and before the celebration of it can get very far, we move on to another place, and our relationships are then carried by postage stamps and weary mailmen.

            Why in hell do we leave? Are we driven by some sort of “success” motive which demands that we scamper up the ladder of fame and profit, regardless of what and whom we leave behind? Do we move on simply because we are out of control, pushed on by the very mobility of our society, moving because everyone else is moving? Or is this one of those Big Lessons in Life that I am supposed to learn: to grow is to move, to move is to grow.

            I wonder if the article in the paper last week was really, finally a fraud. I don’t know why I want to move. I simply know that I don’t want to be left alone in this job, facing all of these people without support and hope and rest. That is cowardice, I suppose.

            Maybe I’m leaving, or at least trying to leave, only because of cowardice.

Indeed. Why isn’t good friendship enough to anchor us in a community? Why can’t we ever be content with what we have, even when it is good? Why do people always pursue that clichéd green grass beyond the proverbial fence? Of what are we so afraid that we run, not really knowing if there is actually something chasing us? We say that we value friendship above nearly all things, yet we cast it aside for a new job that we soon grow weary of, only to start looking to move on again. I don’t understand it, and I never will, because I’ve never felt it.

I end this already long discourse with a poem I wrote some months ago, touching on this theme:

Contentment

A thing the world hates

                         
                         and fears -- contentment:

that a man could be happy

plowing the same field

year after year, hoping

not for more, but

simply for enough.

Sufficiency is not

a thing that is suffered

by the world gladly,

for it is seen as virtuous

only to strive for abundance.

To drift easily on the current

when others are compelled

by greed, by pride, by fear

to struggle against it,

compelled always

to get there first,

to have first grab

at whatever is there,

no matter where ‘there’ is;

                       To win the humbling regard

that is the child of brother love,

rather than a grudging respect

engendered by fear and envy;

To eat in response to hunger,

rather than to dine or feast

in obedience to appetite;

To take what one needs

in preference to that which

one imagines oneself to want;

To choose solitude

over popularity;

To seek knowledge

rather than entertainment;

To pay attention

rather than employing the senses

to troll for distractions;

To love oneself enough to feel

secure in one’s own company;

To seek to discover the joy

inherent to each moment of existence,

even while being battered

by the shit-storm of scorn

with which an offended world

requites one’s loathsome contentment:

Let this be your prayer and your mission.

Thank you, Thomas Jackson, wherever you are…
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