Church of the Churchless

Benefits of blogging and bitching

Yesterday I got an email from a Church of the Churchless visitor who offered me some advice:

It seems to me like you spend more time writing on this blogging thing than is healthy for anybody to do….We all get disillusioned with something, but we can move on or we can waste our time bitching about our disillusionment in cyberspace all day.

Well, I beg to differ. I'm not in cyberspace all day.

Though when our well pump stopped working this afternoon, and I had to find a way to get it fixed at the start of the Memorial Day weekend, I sure wanted to escape into a more pleasant realm of reality.

Which for me, is writing – the essence of my blogging. It's therapeutic for me to sit down for an hour or two every day, write about whatever strikes my fancy, then publish it on one of my two blogs.

Science agrees that it's good for me. And other people too, naturally.

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits.

Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

I suspect that my correspondent felt better after writing me to say that I shouldn't spend so much time writing. He needed to bitch about how I bitch about my experiences with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, though in his message he also said:

A lot of the things you say about the path are valid, and many are similar to the reasons why I didn't follow in my parents spiritual footsteps.

If you want to read about someone really into sharing the details of their inner self online, check out Emily Gould's tale of blogging semi-addiction in the New York Times magazine.

Of course, some people have always been more naturally inclined toward oversharing than others. Technology just enables us to overshare on a different scale. Long before I had a blog, I found ways to broadcast my thoughts — to gossip about myself, tell my own secrets, tell myself and others the ongoing story of my life.

I was sort of similar. In my pre-teen years I founded a neighborhood "newspaper" via my mother's typewriter and carbon paper. It lasted a couple of single page issues, surely disappointing my handful of subscribers.

Like Emily, I've always had an urge to write down thoughts and, however I could, get them into other people's brains. Like she said, with the Internet it's just a lot easier now to do the mind-melding.

So I don't agree that sharing ideas already in my head deserves to be called "bitching." In my admittedly self-absorbed world view, it's "openness."

My notion of bitching is irritation feeding upon itself, the act of complaining serving as fertilizer that grows a larger crop of bitchum.

By contrast, almost always I feel calmer and more content after I write a blog post. Getting out what's inside lowers the level of my psyche's Lake Irritation (though I realize that often it raises other people's).

Here's another thing: today I mailed off the questionnaire Consumer Reports sends me every year. I dutifully reported on our experience with cars, restaurant chains, cameras, lawn mowers, and various home appliances.

I love Consumer Reports. I always have ten year's worth of issues stacked in a cabinet. Whenever we're considering buying something, I check to see what Consumer Reports says.

I also Google potential choices. I like to learn how other people feel about this or that. Likewise, Amazon reader reviews frequently sway my decision about whether to buy a book.

Why, if all this is so helpful, is it wrong for people to similarly share their experiences with buying into a religion, philosophy, meditation practice, or spiritual path? Sure, there's less objectivity here compared to, say, the performance of a vacuum cleaner.

But there's still a lot to like about someone sharing as honestly as possible how they feel about a "product" that supposedly brings one closer to God or Self.

Results may vary. Sure, that has to be remembered. Nonetheless, I'm interested in knowing what the results were. And in sharing my own, bitchily or otherwise.

Life is a mystery. Afterlife, ditto.

I like how Zen talks about the need for a "great ball of doubt." It seems like I should have enjoyed a satori by now, my doubt is so balled up.

Some days more than others. This was a good doubting day.

I just had an interview with my Zen master, who, conveniently, is myself (makes it easy to get appointments). He reviewed the enigmatic koans that life presented me on this Sunday, along with my responses.

I think he was pleased. But I can't say for sure. That doubt thing, you know.

Sundays usually follow a fairly predictable routine for me – breakfast at home, coffee at Starbucks with friends, exercising at athletic club, napping and chores. Today was way different.

Which got me to thinking: if it's so tough to figure out what's going to happen moment to moment here in this material world, how the heck can anyone believe they've got the afterlife figured out?

When I walked into Starbucks and didn't see anyone familiar there, "Mother's Day" popped into my mind. My mother being dead and gone who knows where, I'd forgotten that spending the day with Mom is what this May 11 means for a lot of people.

Including, apparently, my usual coffee klatch group.

Well, no problem. Starbucks still was pleased to sell a skinny venti vanilla latte to me, along with a New York Times. A third of my way into the latte an older woman walks over to my chair. Sort of eccentric looking. With purple fingernails.

One bit of small talk from her: "Nice shirt." "Thank you." Then: "Do you have a phone?" "Yes." "Can I borrow it for a local call?" "Sure."

Never happened to me in Starbucks before. But then, lots of things happen that never have happened to me before. Well, everything, in fact. Same for everybody. We just get lulled into the illusory quasi-predictability of life.

The woman went back to her table. She fiddled with my phone for quite a while. At one point she asked, "Do you have a watch?" "Yes." "What time is it?" "12:15"

I never heard her actually talk to anybody. I pictured her putting my phone into her purse and walking off with it. I wondered how I'd get it back. The way it happened was, she walked over and handed it to me. So predictable, it surprised me.

Turned out I needed the phone again, a few minutes later. A barista steps out from behind the counter and yells, "Anyone named 'Brian' here?" "Yes."

She walked over. "Your wife just called. Some sort of water emergency. She wants you to phone home."

Laurel and I never turn on our cell phones except when we need to make a call. So she found me via Starbucks. Another first.

After talking with Laurel I knew that the day was going to be even less predictable than I'd already found it to be. Gigantic bursts of air, and not much water, was coming out of our pipes.

Living in the country, with a well connected to a complex mass of water treatment equipment – softener, iron filter, ph adjuster, ozonator – we're used to dealing with water problems. This one, though, was beyond Laurel's ability to handle herself.

The man of the house was needed. I fired up the Prius and headed home.

Where I spent the next four hours dealing with mystery after mystery, aided in my quest by a couple of phone consultations with the guys who installed our water treatment system.

My usual fix for air in the pipes (disconnect ozonator solenoid; dislodge debris with paper clip) didn't work. More drastic measures had to be taken, stretching my minimalist plumbing skills.

Another trip into town to the hardware store to buy an O-ring became obviously necessary when water sprayed into my face after turning the system on, expecting that I'd solved the problem, only to find that the original problem had morphing into a fresh form.

Throughout, I was surprised at how serene I remained.

My churchless soul didn't see this, as it once would have, as: karma to be gone through, an opportunity to practice detachment from worldly concerns, or a test of my ability to perform selfless husbandly service.

It just was life. Stuff happens. Unpredictable stuff. Stuff with no meaning other than the need to deal with it.

A few weeks ago the Religion columnist in our local newspaper, Hank Arends, quoted Salem's Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Rick Davis. Davis likes to break out of conversational ruts. Recently, when he checked into the church office by phone he'd ask the office administrator, "What is the meaning of life?"

She ducked the question for several days, then answered: "To reflect the Divine Light into Earth's dark places." Here's what Davis said in the newsletter.

This answer provides a good 'purpose' for life but dodges the question about the 'meaning' of life. Seems to me that question is an imposition of a human concept upon a universe that doesn't operate according to our limited frameworks of understanding.

That's for sure.

We strive to find meaning in events because their unpredictability threatens our humancentric position at the center of existence. There's got to be some purpose, some master plan, some reason behind a malfunctioning water treatment system that consumes my entire afternoon, right?

No. Life can just be what it is. Arends continued:

By getting so involved in studying for the meaning of life, one could consume years of time and thereby miss life itself. Davis pointed to those who questioned Buddha with abstract metaphysical questions.

In response, Buddha said in essence: "Knock it off. You can endlessly speculate about such matters but that will not add to the quality of your present condition. Be aware. Pay attention. Wake up."

That's all we can do, really. Moment to moment, life is a mystery. The afterlife, infinitely more so, since we don't have any history, any regularities, any experience to base a prediction on.

Driving home after picking up the O-ring I tuned to the Oregon State baseball game with UCLA. OSU won the national championship the past two years, but the team has been slumping recently.

They were behind 7-4 in the top of the eighth. Bummer. Oregon State needed a win to take the weekend series and bolster their chances for post-season play. I figured I'd open up the paper tomorrow and read about another disappointing loss.

I turned on the radio on my third trip into town today, finally getting to get to my Sunday athletic club workout after mastering the mystery of the ozonator problem. First words I heard were…

"One of the greatest baseball games I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. Unbelievable – a grand slam home run in the bottom of the eighth with one out. Then a double play in the ninth to seal the win."

Life. Who can figure it? When religious true believers say they can, don't believe them.

Unless they can reliably predict the outcomes of baseball games with one out in the eighth. And whether, when I'm sitting in Starbucks peacefully drinking a latte, I'll soon find myself playing with plumbing.

Big waves, small waves: no difference?

It's easy not to think too much on Maui. But my blogging addiction presses me toward a Church of the Churchless posting.

Where is my inspiration? In today, in the waves.

They were good sized today in Napili Bay, praise the wave gods. Whenever we come to Maui I religiously bring my boogie board on the airplane. Then I devotedly cart it down to the beach, every time we go, no matter how calm the ocean is.

You never know. You really don't. I've been fooled before. Nice waves can spring out of nowhere. Like satori.

This morning I was reading more of "Consciousness is All." An excerpt hit close to home. Our temporary home.

Imagine a drive-in movie theatre with a picture showing on its large white screen.

In the movie picture, a woman and man are standing on a tropical beach, gazing out over the ocean. There's a beautiful sunset and a boat is sailing by in the distance. As a large orange sun appears to drop below the horizon, the woman and man are talking about what a wonderful day they've had, expressing their emotions of happiness.

Now, Peter Dziuban's point is that all this wonderfulness is just images on a screen. The images aren't real. Only the screen is – the screen of consciousness.

For this example, all that is important is the screen, wholly apart from any picture projected, any movie projector, theatre, observers, or anything else.

Hmmmm. I like Consciousness is All as a philosophy. Oneness is so deliciously simple. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everything was the same thing, and nothing was different? Or…would it?

I can't deny my present reality, where some things sure seem to be a heck of a lot better than other things – regardless of whether they're ultimately real or not.

Since we got here my boogie board has been sitting on the sand. This morning the ocean changed. High pressure moved from the south to the north of the islands, doing something or other to the prevailing winds.

Whatever it was, the result was boogie boardable waves. Not great, but good.

And I felt so much better. More alive, because I love catching a wave and feeling the rush of being carried along by a force much more powerful than myself, yet under my control (sort of) if I can flow with it.

Big waves, small waves. A considerable difference, to me. Yet many mystic types would say, "All is one. Physical and mental sensations are passing phenomena, not part of unchangeable unity."

OK. I still prefer big waves to small waves (my wife feels exactly opposite, being a snorkeling fanatic, so we pray to different wave gods).

The Zen folks deal with this stuff somewhat similarly, or so my shallow understanding of Zen tells me. One school puts a big emphasis on keeping the mirror of the mind clear of dust. Another school says, what mirror, what dust?

There are two primary schools of Zen Buddhism. The Gradual School of Enlightenment is firmly rooted in the scripture of Indian Buddhism and the inheritor of that school of meditation. A verse from this tradition:

"This body is the Bodhi-tree
The soul is like a bright mirror.
Keep it clean at all times,
And let no dust gather upon it."

The School of Sudden Enlightenment created an entirely new phenomenon as expressed in an answering verse:

"The Bodhi is not a tree
The bright mirror is nowhere shining
As there is nothing,
Just where can the dust settle?"

and absorbed the Taoist approach to life. "The world is always held without effort. The moment there is effort, the world is beyond holding."

I guess I'm more of a Taoist than a mirror cleanser, or a movie screen devotee. I like reflections. I like images. Particularly when they're of stuff that I enjoy, such as large waves coming into Napili Bay.

Religions generally preach the merits of an other-worldly attitude. But all I know is this world, right here, right now. To deny my experiencing of it, my love of it, my enjoyment of it – senseless.

That said, I also can see how nice it would be if everything that I experienced was, well, nice. Because I didn't take it seriously and could enjoy it while it lasted – which, given the nature of the world, won't be for long.

Hawaiians are big on "hang loose." A good philosophy of life. There's got to be a way of melding an attraction for the screen, and enjoyment of what appears on it. Some movies are better than others, for sure.

But in the end there's "The End." Waves come, waves go. The ocean remains, though. I just want my boogie board to be out in big waves tomorrow.

Short cut to losing the ego

Been meditating for lots of years? Made pilgrimages to India? Devoted yourself to serving a church or other faith? And you still have a big ego?

Don't worry. I've discovered another path to egolessness. No Zen master required. All you need is an inexpensive Flip Video and a free You Tube account.

Then make some videos of yourself doing something that you think you can do, upload them, and experience the marvelous humility of seeing yourself from the outside rather than the inside.

That's what I did yesterday on my other blog, with "Me doing Tai Chi." I mention this post here for a couple of reasons.

One, the more people who watch me doing the forms (decidedly imperfectly), the greater will be the karmic impetus toward ego dissolution. At least, that's how I figure it. And I'm so smart, I'm hardly ever wrong.

Oops. There I go again. Bad ego!

Which brings me to Two: It's only by presenting our self that we really see our self. Now, before the advaitists and nondualists jump on that comment, I'm talking about the external side of us, not the subjective side.

Meaning, the side that other people see and relate to. That includes the religious, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs that we hold and communicate through words, actions, emotions, and other means.

Just as it includes less lofty things, like Tai Chi forms that I practice.

Until yesterday I'd never watched myself playing any forms ("play" is Tai Chi parlance for "perform"). I'd seen myself in the mirrors that line a wall of the room where I take classes. But a passing reflection isn't a good substitute for what a video camera captures.

It was a surprise to see how I looked through a Flip Video recording. I was pleased with some things I saw; not so pleased with others. Regardless, I learned a lot.

I learned that how I feel doing Tai Chi from the inside is different from how I look outside. I learned that I need to better meld the inside and the outside, because I don't always make my body move as how my mind believes it is moving.

That's one of the benefits of communicating religious, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs – or the lack thereof. Our words, and the reactions of other people, serve as an observable manifestation of what otherwise is kept inside.

Often I hear believers say, on this blog or elsewhere, that sharing their personal experience runs the risk of enlarging their ego. In my opinion, the risk lies in the other direction.

When we see ourselves from the outside, as others do, that's a healthy (and usually humbling) complement to the often inaccurate vision we hold of ourselves.

Feedback is good. Criticism is good. It can't be offered unless there's something to comment on.

I’m an ignorant fool (happily)

For most of my life I'd get pissed off if someone told me, You're an ignorant fool! But now I've begun to say that to myself. And it makes me feel good.

Today the words came to me before I began my habitual morning meditation.

I'd drunk my strong cup of coffee. I'd read from my eclectic mix of books, a bit of science, a bit of philosophy. I'd settled onto my cushion, preparing to open myself to insights into the Meaning of It All.

And the voice that speaks inside my head blurted out, You're an ignorant fool!

My reaction? "Yes, yes, yes. Say it like it is. I couldn't agree more. Talk truth to me."

I felt a delicious sense of weightlessness, of the pressure of being right lifting from my psyche.

I like to be correct. I like to win arguments. I like to sound like I know what I'm talking about. But when it comes to the big questions of life, I'm clueless.

I don't know whether God exists. I don't know if there's life after death. I don't know what's right or wrong. I don't know where the universe came from. I don't know if life has a meaning other than what we ascribe to it.

For the rest of my meditation time I sat immersed in a welcoming embrace of ignorant foolness. I didn't have any other revelations.

Can't say that I had any, really. Because understanding that I'm ignorant about the questions religion claims to have answers to is so blatantly obvious, it shouldn't count as a "revelation."

Yet maybe it does, since I often ignore the obvious. Such as the fact that I'm an ignorant fool. I get reminders, but they don't stick with me as much as they should.

For many years I've engaged in Sunday morning coffee house conversations about subjects both sacred and profane (the latter being a lot more interesting). Not infrequently debates would get hot and heated.

We'd be arguing this way and that, pretending that we knew what we were talking about. I remember times when a friend, who would go nameless if I didn't call him Steve, was asked what he thought about the contentious subject.

"I don't know," he'd say. "I've got no idea."

That was the most honest thing any of us had heard all morning. It'd bring the conversation to a momentary stop as everyone pondered this unusual take on whatever the hell it was we were dissecting and analyzing with such enthusiasm.

Then we'd ignore Steve and get back to it. Not-knowing often is the truest thing that can't be said, but it puts brakes on the illusory confidence that fuels passionate coffee house conversations. Or religious organizations.

On the positive side, the Fool occupies a high place in certain circles. Such as Tarot cards, where the Fool is the first major arcana card.

"He represents new beginnings as he starts his heroic quest for self knowledge. In his naive innocence, the FOOL is very creative for he does not yet know rules or limitations. He is the court jester, village idiot, clown, time traveler, speaker of truth, and prodigal son. Mythologist Joseph Campbell interpreted the FOOL as the hero with 1,000 faces. His number is 0, the empty vessel waiting to be filled. He is ruled by the planet Uranus, the planet of revolution and liberation."

OK. I know zilch about Tarot. But I'm up with fools, being one.

For those wanting to dive more into foolishness, John R. Boettiger's blog has a nice post: "The Holy Fool."

The holy fool, or the fool as wise soul, is a figure in many wisdom traditions, including notably those of the Sufis of Islam, Zen Buddhism, Christianity and the inheritors of the Hasidic movement of Judaism, as well as folklore that is not specifically religious, like some of the tales collected by the brothers Grimm.

… there is another sense of the holy fool, less a matter of conscious and intentional disguise, more a matter of guilelessness, transparency, embrace of wonder and mystery.

"The path of soul, writes Thomas Moore, "is also the path of the fool, the one without pretense of self-knowledge or individuation or certainly perfection. If on this path we have achieved anything, it is the absolute unknowing Cusanus and other mystics write about, or it is the 'negative capability' of John Keats--'being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'" (Care of the Soul, p. 261-262)

Talking about One is fun, but decidedly Two

It's a good day when I combine a tall nonfat vanilla latte with some stimulating philosophical conversation. This afternoon I enjoyed both in the company of Patricia Herron, a religious studies professor.

We get together periodically at the south Salem Beanery to solve the mysteries of the universe. Never quite get there, no matter how large the latte, but the journey is the thing.

Today we started out musing about nonduality and duality. It's fun to talk about the One, my favorite non-religious euphemism for "God."

But as countless mystics and philosophers have pointed out, as soon as you say anything about One, you've got Two. Ditto with a thought, emotion, intuition, or anything else about One.

So, basically, you've contradicted yourself right off the bat. Guess that's why Buddha did his holding-up-the-flower thing, though that's dualistic also.

Heck, everything is. Because as soon as there's a thing, there's at minimum two: the thing and someone aware of it.

Which led our musing down the trail of consciousness.

I said that when you try to get closer and closer to One, throwing out as many Twosies as possible – perceptions, thoughts, emotions, sensations, imaginations – reducing the contents of consciousness to bare bones, you're irreducibly left with…

Consciousness. Awareness. Knowing.

Because if consciousness was absent also, there'd be no awareness of One. There would just be One. And it's difficult to argue that One can be aware of itself, since then it'd be Two. Itself and its awareness of itself.

So knowing One, being aware of One, requires a consciousness that's separate from One.

I realize that all this sounds sort of abstract and intellectual (maybe a lot more than "sort of"). However, what we talked about is at the core of a whole lot of spiritual-religious-mystical seeking. And people go off in different directions depending on how they make sense of the One vs. Two business.

Countless times I've heard devout devotees say, "God is everything." Or, "The guru is everything; I am nothing."

I'd think, "Well, if you're nothing, how could you just tell me what you did?" More: do you really want to be nothing? Or is this just a way of speaking, and you really haven't considered the implications of what you're saying?

If God or the guru is everything, and you're nothing, there's just One. And you're on the outside of unity, looking in. How much sense does this make, though?

On the outside of unity? Where's that? How do you separate yourself from One, if it is truly One?

Beats me. And Patricia too. I've heard so much talk about the drop merging into the Ocean, the ray merging into the Sun, the soul merging into God.

But all that talk comes from people who obviously haven't done what they say is possible: merging completely with ultimate reality, a.k.a. "God."

Their talk is conceptual, theoretical, hypothetical. It isn't something they've experienced , because they're clearly still here in the world, as two'ish as you and I are.

The One isn't going to let you enter and leave again. All that coming and going would create dualities. So, yes, it's fun to speak about the One. However, that's just idle talk unless you can walk a One-way walk.

After which, there'd be no more talking. Or, walking.

Help expand recognition of my divinity

Thanks to my friend Randy, who emailed me these images today, for a while I felt really good. Finally! I was beginning to get a well-deserved recognition of my holiness – as befits someone, namely Me, who has preached so many sermons here at the Church of the Churchless.

Unfortunately, I let reality enter into my fantasy. Not a good idea, if you're entertaining delusions of spiritual grandeur (one of my favorite activities).

I made the mistake of Googling "church of briantology card." And damn it!, up popped a result that led me to a blogger who just had to write about his birthday, and how he got a great card that says on the front "The Church of Briantology," blah, blah, blah.

Well, that explains why the guy on the card doesn't look at all like me. Where's the beard? Where's the distinguished, graying, intelligent, charismatic, literary, sublime expression? Where's the posture of profound humility mixed with undeniable worshipability?

So it looks like I need to toot my own horn, since so far I don't even have a greeting card purely in my honor. It's time for some Church of the Churchless devotee to perform an act of service that, frankly, some visitor to this blog should have thought of on his or her own a long ago.

But it looks like the divine plan is for me to proclaim the obvious from my blogosphere mountaintop: There should be a "Brian Hines" Wikipedia entry.

I would have already written it myself, being eminently qualified to discuss my marvelous accomplishments and qualities, but Wikipedia has a hangup about autobiographical articles.

They are often biased, usually positively. People will write overly positively about themselves, and often present opinions as facts. Wikipedia aims to avoid presenting opinions as facts.

Hey, me too. If someone wants to draft a Wikipedia article about me, I'll be happy to review it and make sure that any unsupported opinions in it are converted to facts.

For example, if the draft said "Some feel that Hines has an inflated opinion of his philosophical and spiritual knowledge," I'd correct the sentence to read "Hines' writings are recognized as exceptional examples of modern scientific spirituality."

One point in my Wikipedia favor, among many, is that lots of information about me and my life is available online. Some of it even hasn't been written by me. Wikipedia says:

One thing which you can do to assist other Wikipedia editors is, if you already maintain a personal website, please ensure that any information that you want in your Wikipedia article is already on your own website. As long as it's not involving grandiose claims like, "I was the first to create this widget," or "My book was the biggest seller that year," a personal website can be used as a reference for general biographical information.

I've scanned the notability criteria (though not too closely, because I've already decided that I'm notable and don't need any inconvenient facts messing up that conclusion). Name recognition is important, and Google testifies to my preeminence among the world's Brian Hines'.

Which reminds me: Eric, another friend, recently passed on a link to The Church of Google. I already spend a lot of time worshipping there, so I'm glad to learn that one of my favorite divinities (other than Me) has been proven to be God, as I've always suspected.

Would-be "Brian Hines" article writers should feel free to email me to discuss how we can best collaborate on relieving the distress of a well-deserving man who is suffering from Wikipedia deprivation.

Fawning sycophants will receive priority attention. But since admirers in this category seem to number in the zeros, I'll consider anyone moderately capable in the English language to be well qualified (openness to editing suggestions is a must).

Thanks for the chlorine gas, Mom (cough, cough)

There I am, eleven or twelve years old, some age thereabouts, hunched over a test tube on my back porch, carefully following the instructions in my science kit that said, "Conduct this experiment in a well-ventilated area."

Good advice. Because this, thankfully, was before the days when anal-retentive product safety types could stand between a boy and his homemade chlorine gas.

As instructed, I put the chemicals into a test tube. I added water. I put my nose close to the test tube and waved my hand over the end of it to waft some of the gas into my nostrils.

Then I hacked and coughed for at least five minutes. It was a moment of science that is still clear in my mind at the age of 58.

Thank you, Mom.

A woman who'd divorced a jerk, my father, who never paid a dime of child support payments, she didn't have much money back then. Yet she paid for monthly Things of Science kits, if I remember the name correctly, that her son enjoyed immensely.

I got to thinking about this inner child stuff in the course of wondering why I react so strongly when someone trashes science, whether they be a commenter on this blog like William or the inaptly named Discovery Institute, a primary purveyor of creationist intelligent design B.S.

Must be that I got imprinted onto science at an early enough age so now I see it threatened and rush to protect it, like one of those orphaned baby monkeys that learned to look upon a rag doll as if it was its mother. Try to take it away and the monkey would scream like crazy.

I'm not quite that attached to science. But I spent many happy boy-hours at a card table inside my bedroom closet, where a chair and me could just barely fit with the sliding door closed.

I set up my chemistry set and other science experiments on the table, a bare light bulb hanging from an extension cord serving for illumination. That was me as a youth, a kid, an immature pre-teen.

And now? Every morning I make a strong cup of coffee in our kitchen. I then take it in hand and walk to an unused tiled shower in another part of the house. There I open up the sliding door and step over an extension cord that snakes from the shower to a bathroom electrical outlet.

I sit down on cushions rather than a chair. Plus, instead of just a light I've also got an electric clock and space heater. So, yes, I've changed, grown up, matured. Sort of.

My meditation area, my laboratory, usually still has a strong scientific presence, books that tell me what's happening with modern cosmology, evolutionary theory, quantum physics. They're pleased to share shower space with more explicitly spiritual literature, Taoist, Buddhist, whatever-ist.

That whiff of chlorine gas, it was real. When I read about chlorine attacks in Iraq, I had a much better understanding of what the victims experienced because of my back porch experiment more than forty-five years ago.

Such is the power and glory of science. It puts us in touch with reality. Not religious dogma, superstition, imaginings, conjectures, theology.

My mother didn't force me to endure any more Catholicism after I resisted nuns cramming my cranium with whatever the hell I needed to know to be confirmed. (Included something about venial and mortal sins, I do remember that.)

Her "religion," which has become mine, was learning. Learning how the world works. Learning how the mind works. Learning how the world and mind work together to produce such things as fingers typing on a laptop, communicating signals sent from a blogger's brain onto the World Wide Web where others can read words written in Oregon from any place on Earth.

With my allowance and chore money I was able to buy a Hallicrafter's short wave radio back in those good old vacuum tube days. I learned how long of an antenna was needed to pick up what I wanted to hear. It got strung out of my bedroom window, along the roof, and thence across our back yard, precariously supported by some lumber scraps.

I could sit at my desk and listen directly to what most adults had to glean from newspapers and magazines. I heard Radio Free Europe preaching to those commies in Russia. I heard Castro's propaganda emanating from Cuba.

Glorious. A gift of science. The ability to tune into distant places, unfamiliar and foreign, while sitting at my roll-top desk in Three Rivers, California.

And now? I close my science or spirituality book. I put on my noise deadening ear protectors and light obstructing eye shades. I take a last sip of coffee. I settle myself into my meditation cushions as comfortably as I can.

Then I listen. Trying to tune in to whatever is being broadcast on whatever frequency my consciousness can pick up. Still up to the same boyish tricks. I'm older, but I'd never say I'm wiser.

What I am is still a lover of science. Sitting in my own little laboratory. Doing some experiments. Wanting to learn a bit more about how the world and me work.

Some days, it's like sniffing chlorine gas. Not pleasant at all. Other days, it's like hearing an unexpected voice from halfway around the world, telling me something I've never heard before.

So if you read this blog and catch me blasting someone for being anti-science, hopefully now you'll understand better why this fifty-eight year old, going on eleven, feels the way he does.

To me, science isn't different from life. At least, life as it should be lived. Especially when we're trying to figure something out. Like, the meaning of life. Or why we want to figure out the meaning of life.

I'll end with a quote from Natalie Angier's "The Canon." What it points to is: we're all scientists.

You don't need to work at a laboratory bench to follow a scientific game plan. People behave scientifically all the time, although they may not realize it.

If someone is trying to fix a DVD player, they do experiments, they do controls," said Paul Sternberg, a developmental biologist at Caltech. "Step one is observation: What does the picture look like? What are the possible things that could be wrong here? Is it really the player, or could it be the television set? You come up with a hypothesis, then you start testing it. You borrow your neighbor's DVD player, you hook it up, you see your TV set is fine. So you check your DVD's input, output, a couple of wires. You may be able to track down the problem without really understanding how a DVD player works.

"Or maybe you're trying to troubleshoot your pet," Sternberg said. "Why does the fish look funny? Why is my dog upset? I'll feed the hamster less or I'll feed it more, or maybe it doesn't like the noise, so I'll move it away from the stereo system. Should I take Job A or Job B? Well, let's see how long the drive would be from the office to my daughter's school during rush hour; that could be the killer factor in making a decision.

These are all examples of forming hypotheses, doing experiments, coming up with controls. Some people learn these things at an early age. I had to get a Ph.D. to figure them out."

Balanced between belief and doubt

I enjoyed my 45 minute or so BlogTalkRadio conversation with medium Marcel Cairo yesterday. We were supposed to talk about Science, Spirituality, and Spinoza, which we sort of did.

The archived AfterLifeFM show is here. To hear me in my (somewhat muffled) glory, scroll down and click on one of the symbols to the right of "Dismantling Dogma." The arrow thingie fires up Windows Media Player.

Alternatively, I'll share my memory of some conversational highlights.

This is the third time Marcel and I have talked over the Internet. We've got a thing going. As a medium, Marcel obviously believes in the afterlife. Me, I'd like it a lot if I will live on after my physical death. Who wouldn't, so long as it isn't in a hellish state?

But I don't know if I will. So I float in the unknowing zone between belief and doubt, wanting to be open to the possibility of existence beyond the physical, yet having no proof that this is a reality rather than wishful thinking. To me, this is the most honest and practical way of living my life:

Accepting that until I know something, I don't know it.

So I told Marcel that every morning I spend some time meditating. My habitual pitch to the "universe" (my way of referring to the totality of what's real) goes something like this.

Hi, it's me, Brian. If there's anyone or anything hearing me, other than myself, I'd be pleased to get to know you. I have no idea who or what you may be. Jesus, Buddha-nature, Allah, Jehovah, angel, extra-terrestrial intelligence, God, Zeus, guru…I'm clueless. And ready to be surprised. Like Jodie Foster said as she was waiting to be transported somewhere, anywhere, by a mysterious force in Contact, "It's a go!"

I don't know which direction to go myself. Yesterday I said that the best I could do is surmise that ultimate reality is much more likely to be found within rather than without. Spinoza makes scientific sense when he says that there is only One Thing happening in the cosmos.

He called it God, or Nature, or Being. Three words for the same thing that can't be encapsulated by words. It's everywhere and everything. We're all a part of it. Or perhaps more accurately, we are it. Thus to look for this truth outside ourselves is to miss where it could be found.

I mentioned that it's strange (or maybe not so strange) that if there's a reality beyond the physical, it's so damn difficult to discern. You'd think that the foundation of the cosmos would be just a touch more evident. However, scientists can't put their finger on a Theory of Everything either, despite a tremendous amount of trying.

This leads me to the conclusion that a soft touch is better than a crude reaching out. My meditation now is essentially an effort to stay on a pivot point that allows me to turn in any direction. Belief. Disbelief. Faith. Doubt. Higher. Lower. East. West. Death. Life.

Last night Laurel and I had our second Night Club Two-Step class. Like Tango, the man is supposed to be the leader 100% of the time. At one point Lora, our instructor, went over to the sound system and brandished a remote control.

"See this, guys?" she said. "This is yours in dance. You get to decide the moves. Use it!" That's a challenge. An equal challenge, for the women, is to not anticipate what the lead is going to be.

Laurel and I would get into practicing a series of moves, a pattern. After a while I could feel her edging ahead of me, taking a step before I'd led it because she thought she knew what I was going to do.

Bad girl! Laurel was admonished for this when Lora took on the man's role while demonstrating a move with my wife. Lora stopped Laurel in her tracks and said, "What are you doing? I didn't lead that step."

Applying this lesson to dancing with the entire universe rather than an individual person, Spinoza taught that everything that happens is necessary. It's determined. There's nothing outside of Nature, or God, that could exercise an influence on the universe.

Thus you could say (and Spinoza does) that God/Nature always does the leading, and we the following. Einstein agreed, holding that free will is an illusion. He echoed Spinoza's view that we are aware of what we desire to do, but unaware of the causes that lead us to have that desire.

So it makes sense to strive to be a good follower, sensitively attuned to the forces acting upon us both from within and without (understanding that if the universe is indeed a unity, actually there's no without).

We become lighter on our feet, trusting that we're in the arms of a partner – God/Nature/Being, to use Spinoza's terms – that will lead us truly. Our faith is that we'll be led to do, think, feel, and perceive the right thing, even though it isn't possible for us to know ahead of time what that will be.

Such is the balance that a dancer who's a good follower has.

She returns to her center after a move is led, not anticipating what will happen next, ready for anything, sensitive to the lead that may be felt either subtly or overtly.

She floats in an zone between faith and doubt – confident that she will be led appropriately, but not knowing where or how.

Know the strength of man,
But keep a woman's care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.

…Know honor,
Yet keep humility.
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.

--Tao Te Ching, chapter 28

(Here's another version of those verses, with some nice commentary.)

Me talk Spinoza on BlogTalkRadio today

Who knew there was such a thing as BlogTalkRadio? Not me, until medium Marcel Cairo invited me to be on his AfterLifeFM show today, 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern, some other time in between the coasts.

Tune in. Or better yet, call in. You listen via the Internet by pressing the "Click here" thingie when the time comes. You can call in via any sort of phone: 646-478-5711.

Our subject is Dismantling Dogma: Science, Spirituality, and Spinoza. I'm no expert on Spinoza, but I've filled up a large-post it note with pithy reminders of his philosophy, which should be good enough for a BlogTalkRadio show. (I'm guessing, and hoping, that no Spinoza experts will be listening).

Marcel bills his show as featuring "smart talk from both sides of the grave." Hopefully my side of the conversation will be from the alive side. If not, this should be a really interesting afternoon for me.

Finding our energetic groove

The past few days haven't been real cheerful for me, save-the-world (or 137 acres, at least) wise. My wife and I have been leading a fight against a proposed subdivision on groundwater limited farmland adjacent to our neighborhood.

Wednesday we got screwed by a purely political decision by our county Board of Commissioners. They ignored an independent hydrogeologic assessment and their own Planning Commission. That night I had trouble getting to sleep, as travesty of justice visions kept running through my brain.

Thursday I got to vent to a television news reporter. That made me feel a bit better, even though just a few seconds of my sage observations got on the air.

So what do you do when you're confused, discouraged, and out of sorts? I was bummed out by a material world disappointment. But I've had the same feelings when my spiritual aspirations were dashed by cold, hard, unfeeling reality.

For about a day and a half I struggled to regain some sort of balance. I alternated between Screw social activism because it all comes down to bullshit politics and Those ignoramus county commissioners have to be stopped before they kill (the environment) again.

It was interesting to observe how I reacted to my own thoughts and intentions. Whenever I envisioned continuing to fight the subdivision to the bitter end, no matter what it took, I'd feel a burst of positive energy. Giving up, or engaging in a half-hearted attempt to stop the development, left me listless.

There's a few things I like about "The Secret." Just a few. One is that your emotions are signposts pointing to the Way for you. When you're doing what you should, it feels good. Not necessarily pleasant (climbing a steep mountain, for example), but right.

Hard to put into words – "right" isn't quite right as a descriptor – but you know it when you feel it.

Which I did sometime Friday afternoon. I stopped conducting mental cost-benefit analyses, the odds of winning an appeal vs. how much we and our neighbors would have to raise to pay the attorney fees. I realized that what mattered to me wasn't what might happen in the end; it was what I felt driven to do now.

And that was to battle on. If the rolling hills I drive by every day eventually are covered by homes, it'll bother me a lot less if I feel like I left everything on the field rather than throwing in the towel (sports metaphors come easily after watching the College World Series a little while ago. Go Beavers!).

I'm reading a book about Spinoza, an appealingly heretical seventeenth-century philosopher. Here's what I came across this morning:

Happiness is freedom, says Spinoza. It follows when we act in accordance with our own deepest nature – when we "realize ourselves," as it were. Unfortunately, we humans rarely have the privilege of acting according to our deepest nature, for in our ignorance of ourselves and of the world we submit ourselves to the guidance of forces beyond our control.

…Most people most of the time, concludes Spinoza, are passive. But the point of life is to be active.

…The conatus is a drive or desire – in essence, the desire to persist in one's own being. Every person – and indeed every rock, tree, and thing in the world – has a conatus to act, live, preserve itself, and realize itself by pursuing its own interest (or "advantage").

"Pleasure" is the state that results from anything that contributes to the project of this conatus, that is, anything that increases a thing's power or level of "perfection": and "pain" is the state that results from anything that does the opposite, that diminishes the power of a thing.

Well, I didn't need a philosopher to tell me this. It was nice to read an explanation of what I'd been going through the past few days, though. I could tell when I was in, or close to, my conatus' energetic groove. Also, when I was out of it.

Relating this to being churched or churchless, faithful or faithless, devoted or doubtful, something in each of us yells Oh, yeah, this is SO right! to ourselves when we're really grooving to the beat of our inner drummer.

Our dance might not be visible to other people (or, it might). But (shifting metaphors) we know when our conatus is firing on all twelve-cylinders and smoke is pouring from our racing slicks as we shoot down our Way fueled by high-octane confidence.

Confidence that we're doing what we should, even if we're the only ones on that road, because there's nothing else we can do. The engine's warmed up, the gas tank's full, the windshield is clean, and we've got some traveling to do.

Life is good, even when it isn't, so long as we keep moving. Staying still isn't an option unless we're dead. As I remember Davy Crockett saying in a Disney movie from my childhood, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead."

Spinoza would agree.

“Nobody is going to come.” So I killed him.

In my dream, I hasten to add. No need to call 911. All the killing last night took place in my own mind for reasons unknown, like so much else that transpires in my psyche.

Usually I'm not big on trying to interpret dreams. Mostly they seem to be my mind's attempt to connect fragments of the previous day's disconnected experiences.

Maybe this explains my dream. Maybe not. Regardless, the peak emotional moment is still vivid.

"Nobody is going to come!" After repeatedly calling out for help to people I could see around me, I finally realized that if the man who was trying to kill me was going to be stopped, I was going to have to do it.

With that realization, my panic abated. And my ferocity fired up.

My attacker had been relentless. He wasn't armed. I had a gun, but it wouldn't fire. The trigger mechanism was devilishly hard to pull. It kept freezing up just before a shot should have been fired.

Deeply frustrating. Revolver interruptus. The fight turned to close-in combat.

Which is when I was able to pound the guy into his death throes. Conveniently, a pile of stones was within reach. I was on top of him as we struggled on the ground. I picked up a good-sized rock.

And smashed it into his throat. Repeatedly. It felt great. Blood started spurting. I got covered in it.

After he was dead I walked past the people who had ignored me. Probably because they weren't even aware of me. They didn't seem to notice a blood-soaked man with a rock in his hand slowly strolling by, out of breath.

"Nobody is going to come." The feeling stuck with me into this morning's meditation. It didn't make me feel lonely. More like resigned to reality.

Nobody has come after close to forty years of daily meditation. Nobody other than me, and sometimes even he didn't show up. So what are the chances that an outside rescuer is going to appear before the end of my life? Pretty darn slim.

I've done a lot of dialing and talking on my spiritual telephone over the years. Hello. Hello. Is anybody there? Can you hear me? Love to chat if you have a minute. Or, eternity.

When you don't get a response, how long are you going to keep holding the receiver up to your ear? At what point does it make more sense to pick up a rock and smash that plastic "Hello Kitty" toy into smithereens?

Because the fucking thing isn't connected to an outside line! Nor, anything. Other than my own mouth and ear, so far as I can tell.

Todd was one of my best high school friends. We kept in touch for a while after college. He moved to Oregon at one point. Took a few classes at Oregon State. Lived in an old house outside of Corvallis.

I remember going to visit him. Todd told a story about how he'd been trying to fix the oil heater in his basement. A line broke. Oil started spurting out.

Todd said that he remembered what his father used to tell him. Todd's family had a ranch in Three Rivers, California, where we grew up. They also raised hay down in the San Joaquin valley. Lots of stuff goes wrong on ranches and farms.

"Look around," was the advice. "Don't panic. You'll find that you have what you need to deal with the situation within reach. Just look."

Todd did that. He saw a rag. He wrapped it around the leaking pipe. Cinched it tight. Got breathing room for a real repair.

I thought of that story when I woke up this morning. Those rocks were right there next to me. All I had to do was pick one up. And smash away. Problem solved. The man deserved to die. It wasn't hard to accomplish.

All I needed to do was get past the turning point: "Nobody is going to come."

Evidence of my steadily declining divinity

When we had to drag everything out of the crawl space above our garage, I found a 1970 photo that hadn't seen the light of day for quite a while.

I was struck by how I appeared so wise at 21, and, let's admit it, Christ like (leaving aside the minor detail that no one knows how Jesus looked).

Now, at 58, I don't know nothing about God and all that. I'm on a downward trajectory that has culminated in my Wu Project. But I'm confident there's further to fall.

This unposed photo was taken in my home town of Three Rivers, California. I'd returned there for a summer festival of something-or-other in an artistic neighbor's pasture. David Green, sculptor, artist, and spiritual seeker, snapped me in front of a tie-dyed banner that he'd made.

I'm holding some posters in the original. I cropped them out to place more focus on my serene yogic visage.

Back then I knew it all. Or at least a lot. That was before I became a spiritual doofus. I'd been studying hatha yoga and meditation pretty intensively for more than a year. I could chant mysterious mantras and stand on my head like you wouldn't believe.

I could give inspiring talks on Indian philosophy. I could say "Tat tvam asi" (That thou art) and actually believe that we all are God.

Now, I'm clueless. Yet this lack of clues about what It's All About doesn't dismay me. I've gotten comfortable with being spiritually lost.

Back in 1970 I thought I'd found That. Yet, looking back, what I'd found were ideas, concepts, imaginings, philosophies. I was good at talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

Not much may have changed in that regard. But at least now I'm more realistic about where I stand, even if I'm not moving in any discernible direction.

And heck, for all I know (which isn't much) where I am, and was, might be exactly where I'm meant to be. It just takes a lot of stepping to learn the value of staying still.

The metaphysics of a really shitty job

I spent six hours this weekend pulling disintegrated insulation out of the crawl space above our garage. There are difficult jobs. There are nasty jobs. And then there are really shitty jobs. Like what I just did.

Serendipity is perusing the comments on your blog and finding just what you need to give a boost of profundity to the post you were planning to write. Thank you, Edward, for the Richard Feynman quote:

"A poet once said "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass closely enough we see the entire universe."

Hopefully also if we look closely enough at a crawl space full of disintegrated insulation that needs to be disposed of. And at other sorts of jobs that lead the brain to scream, What the holy fuck am I doing here!?

That cry of despair was particularly strong yesterday, when I clambered up the drop-down folding stairs in our thirty-five year old garage to begin the Job from Hell.

Our detached garage/carport is getting an earthquake renovation. Supporting lumber needs to be “sistered” to the joists in the crawl space. The contractor told me, “The insulation has to come out. We’ll be back Monday.” “No problem,” I said, with what was, in retrospect, ridiculous overconfidence.

My first problem yesterday was simply seeing. A squirrel had electrocuted itself on top of our power pole. Nonetheless, I needed to get going on the insulation disposal job.

Rainsuit with tight cuffs. Fifty garbage bags. Dust mask. Rake for difficult to reach spots. Gloves. Flashlight. Battery powered lantern. “Glasses” with LED beams. I was ready to go.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t ready for a stygian nightmare. Gloomy shadows. Stale air. Clouds of thirty-five year old dust, decomposed insulation, mouse poop, and god knows what else rising into the unventilated crawl space every time I touched the unholy mess that covered the spaces between the joists.

Dreams of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome danced through my head.

I’d like to say “the worst part was…” But there were so many worst parts, it’s hard to choose.

Pulling on a piece of insulation and having it disintegrate into many fragments, each of which had to be picked up and stuffed into a garbage bag. Crawling my six foot, 185 pound body under the low sloping roof edge, perched on a piece of wood to avoid going through the sheetrock, reaching out half-blindly with the rake, only to find the insulation caught on one of the 2x4 crosspieces that for some inexplicable reason had been nailed between the joists every two feet (undoubtedly with the intention of driving me insane several decades later). Hitting my head on a rafter and/or roofing nail. Pushing around the large pieces of plywood that our crap had been stored on before we’d laboriously hauled it down the stairway to hell earlier in the week.

There was a moment on Saturday of near-panic. Scrunched under the lowest part of the roof, immersed in a dark dust cloud that wasn’t being totally filtered through my mask, already tired and frustrated with the shitty job less than 10% completed, I thought, “I can’t do this. I just can’t. It’s too awful.”

And yet… (Isn’t it wonderful how life always offers up an “and yet”?) I didn’t know how to find an illegal alien for hire on the weekend. The guys from Paragon Construction were expecting the insulation to be out by Monday. I was still capable of moving. I hate to ask for help when I don’t really need it just as much as I hate to ask for directions when I do.

So I tossed the few bags I’d filled down the folding stairs. Took a shower. Went to our tango class. Got lattes with my wife afterward. Went to Lowes. Bought a better N95 particulate mask. And longer gloves.

Went to sleep envisioning a new and improved plan of attack on that goddamn insulation (which, strangely, was installed in an unheated garage; again, surely as part of some cosmic plan to drive me insane thirty-five years after the construction was complete).

New day. New attitude. Laurel kept saying, “Why don’t we just call someone on Monday, have them do the work, and tell Paragon they’ll have to put off finishing the work?” Hah! No way.

In our tango class I’d just been told by the female instructor, “Guys, have more of an attitude! Take control. Lead! Make your partner do what you want her to.” I wasn’t about to let Laurel talk me out of climbing back up into the crawl space and bending that fucking insulation to my macho whim.

With a Taoist edge. Today I started off mellow. Gazing through my new eye protection (clear swim goggles), perched on my new insulation collection platform (decided to push around the plywood for a firmer base of attack), breathing better through a respirator with a valve, I sent out love to the insulation.

Gently, gently, ever so gently, I’d pick up a piece and put it in a garbage bag. Keeping down the dust. Breathing regularly. Taking my time. Slowly, grasshopper.

Worked for a while. I realized that this job, shitty though it was, could be managed. I had a choice: to make the best of it, or the worst of it. I had the choice. No one else. I was on my own in that crawlspace. No illegal alien was going to materialize miraculously to rescue me. Nor was my wife going to be of any help, allergy prone as she is.

It was me and the insulation. Well, since the insulation was unconscious, it really was just me up there. How the rest of the shitty job day went was going to be up to me.

I had my ups and downs. After a few hours, I hit the dark night of insulation removal. I still wasn’t halfway done. Getting into the low spots was ticking me off even more than before. I’d hit my head on the roof beams so many times, I stopped saying “Ouch!” There wasn’t anybody else around to hear me. I got tired of speaking the obvious to myself.

Then I hit the sweet spot: a mini (or micro) satori. I was in the zone. I stopped thinking, “This is shitty.” Or, “This is fine.” It was both. And neither. I was just doing what I had to do.

It didn’t matter that my legs hurt, I was thirsty, my water bottle had rolled under a piece of plywood that I didn’t feel like moving, there were still three rows of insulation-filled joists to deal with. As strange as it may sound, I was quasi-blissful.

I’d hit the bottom of a really shitty job. It didn’t feel so much like I’d bounced, but rather that the bottom wasn’t there anymore. Or the top—where I’d tried to stay during my brief Taoist “got to flow with it” phase. It was just what it was, as New Agey clichéd as that sounds.

By 3:30 pm I was done. Right at Super Bowl kickoff time. I had enough energy left to do my usual athletic club workout. Saw the end of the first half at the club. Have managed to not learn the score up until now. Time to fast forward through my DVR recording, focusing on the commercials (usually the best part of the game).

I promised the metaphysics of really shitty jobs in the title to this post. I’m not sure if I delivered. Which is, I hope, an indication that I have.

You can try to find meaning in a really shitty job. Or, a lack of meaning. Same applies to God, religion, salvation, the hereafter, and all that. But in the end, there’s just what is. Dust. Garbage bags. Decomposed insulation. And…an unwatched Super Bowl game.

That’s enough. More than enough.

Silent snow has a lot to say

This is a Church of the Churchless day when some Oregon snow is going to do most of the talking. I learned quite a bit from it on my walk this morning.

When you feel the spirit, jump up and dance with snowballs.

Bare bright branches are beautiful. No leaves necessary.

Even blah barren brush turns into wow! with a coating of white.

Put on the right coat and you'll say "It's not cold."

Dead trees are still alive. Oh, yes, very much so.

It’s possible to walk in your own footsteps (our dog can, at least, which is how she makes four paws look like two).

At the end, dive in. Unless you don't want to.

Suddenly--a flash of color.

On the edge…an interesting place to be

It’s true: bending low, bamboo doesn’t break.

Keep flowing. Always.
Around rocks. Wherever.

It’s nice to have a friend along when exploring shadowy woods. (But alone is fine too.)

Thank you, Church of the Churchless visitors

It’s sort of clichéd for a blogger to devote his last post of the year to thanking his readers. But who’s afraid of a big bad cliché? Not me. I’m doing it anyway.

Thank you.

TypePad, my blog host, tells me that on average a few hundred people enter the cyberspacey Church of the Churchless door every day. I’m grateful.

I talk to myself a lot of the time. That gets old. It’s nice to reach out and touch someone else, even if they’re repulsed by the gesture. Today I caught up on some unreplied emails and came across one from a woman who said:

I do read your blogs once in a while – initially I used to get angry, upset, baffled, and confused by reading them but now I enjoy them…

Apparently not because they’re any less of an irritant. She’s just come to accept that my skeptical/heretical attitude toward religion in general, and Radha Soami Satsang Beas in particular, is simply part of the burden that God’s truth-bearers have to put up with.

You know, the “Take up thy cross and follow me” sort of thing.

Well, I’m happy to hear from everyone who comments on my posts, emails me, or gives me an earful in person about something I’ve written. Really.

I’m the child of my mother, Carolyn Hines. She was a ferocious conversationalist, in the nicest sense. She loved nothing more than a spirited debate. My mother could be a hugely irritating know-it-all, yet she truly did know a lot.

She’d inspire others to bring forth what they knew, or thought they knew, because if you didn’t bring your best game when you debated her, you were going to get blown out of the give-and-take ballpark.

From my mother I got my intellectualism. From my grandmother, Eva H. Lewis, I was inspired to seek the truth that lies beyond thought. Mystery.

As I wrote about in “Tracking the trajectory of my Wu Project,” she affirmed a 13 year-old’s poem about the void of unknowing. And who knows? Echoing Robert Frost, being encouraged at just the right time to take the road less traveled by may have made all the difference for me.

Religion is a well-traveled road. So is science. Another way—I don’t have a good name for it—is what I’m drawn to. As are, it’s pretty evident, many if not most of you. That way is difficult to pin down because it defies description.

It’s the road that I’m sure exists, and will get me where I want to go to, but which is so damn difficult to find it often makes me want to scream. Or, blog about. Or, shed tears for, as I related in “An old koan rises from my past.”

“There will be light when there is no darkness and through darkness we cannot find the light.” Like I said, fuck! What kind of bullshit is this? Well, the kind my mind has been wallowing around in since that 13-year old stared at the California night sky and thought, “What’s in the darkness past the stars?”

I’ve never regretted setting out to answer that question. The search can be lonely, though. Necessarily, it’s taken me into myself, where so far I’ve encountered mostly me. Well, for all I know, entirely me.

Via this blog it’s nice to share what is sharable about the ramblings I take around my state of consciousness. I enjoy feeling a connection with fellow travelers. I’m not sure what direction we’re heading, individually or collectively.

I simply appreciate knowing that there are others on a roughly similar ride. Gracias for being willing to jump on board my train of thought now and then. And special thanks to those who take my musings in a different direction through your comments and emails.

Fresh vistas. New scenery. You guys are great travel companions. May we all get closer to our final destinations in 2007.

Happy New Year.