(Suspense! tonight proves that British magic is more powerful than German magic. Germans and Japanese will be depicted in a less than positive light in these WWII era programs. This is "Lord of the Witch Doctors," Oct. 27, 1942.)

What sorta religion you preachin’ there, preacher?

Oh – a sort the Lord and me worked out twixt ourselves.

 

Several years ago a friend of mine discovered Emmet Fox and subsequently reordered her entire world view to fit into his – ah – whatever it is. I was reading and commenting right along. We had many discussions. Now – it seems like an eternity since – The Lady would like me to view the movie version of The Secret, a book in a similar metaphysical vein. She and her fellow enjoyed it, apparently.

 

And, of course I am to go down there when he is away. This came up in conversation between the White Tornado and me while we were en route between jobs.

 

The WT: You’d better wear protection, young man!

 

Myself: For a movie? All we’re doing is watching a movie.

 

The WT: Yeah right – while her man’s away?

 

As you can imagine, I was indignant. Honi soit qui mal y pense. It took me until yesterday to figure it out. She’s jealous. Don’t go crazy now. I had a friend in High School, a male friend. I wanted him all to myself. It bothered me terribly that he would go off and do things with other people. It was my first taste of jealousy, not the last. Yet he was a man and I’m as straight as any crooked line in Nature, so it’s not necessarily sexual – or at least, not overtly so. You might say I was in love with my old friend. I wanted to be like him. No, I wanted to be him.

 

This is part of the way God loves us. God loves us passionately, violently, obsessively. God is a stalker. It was passion, and it was The Passion, that was missing from the thinking of Emmet Fox. And, it is missing from the ideas of Dr. Wayne Dyer. And it is missing from many churches. It is missing from Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. Ok, so what is not missing is fascinating and in many particulars true. We have no problem with it working. But when it doesn’t work we are confronted with all the trouble in the world, for without The Passion, without a personal revelation of God, without His jealousy, we have absolutely positively no way to explain suffering except to condemn ourselves.

 

I understand that requires some elucidation. God does not make us suffer because He is jealous, no. The Passion is the suffering of God, an idea which must be rejected out of hand if one is to follow New Thought down its rabbit hole. Jesus Christ becomes no more the Son of God than any of us are His children, but He is rather viewed as an ubermensch, a teacher/profit like the Buddha who has been reincarnated many times until He had reached that uber state. The crucifixion, the Resurrection – these must be myths, for such a divine person would never suffer, for if He did He wouldn’t be divine.

 

God created us in His image and likeness, and just as soon as you can say ‘poop on a stick’ we turn around and recreate Him in our own. At last I have found a context suitable for the following pronouncement: LOL.

 

What they have to say about Gratitude is true. Many things they say are true. I don’t wish to start an argument about the relative merits of any ‘health and wealth’ interpretation of Scripture. Let it suffice us to say there is missing from it an understanding that our values, our desires, our wills for ourselves, are not necessarily imposed upon God simply because we would consummately wish it to be so.

 

My mother suffered terribly in her final years, though you would hardly know it as she was not a complainer. And why was that necessary? Why is it necessary to imitate Christ? Well, even my dear friend The Lady, after viewing The Secret, tells me “It must be because she sinned.”

 

So I asked her, “Did Jesus sin?”

 

From this particular point-of-view, this particularly attractive heresy, every martyr, every Saint, every stigmatist – Pio, Francis of Assisi – every holy person, like Jullian of Norwich, who prayed fervently for the gift of suffering, must be the very devil! There’s something they’re doing terribly wrong. But if the goal or purpose of life is self-fulfillment I say it is a hollow one. In fact, the goal or purpose is God-fulfillment, and how you define that makes all the difference in the world.

 

 

But, here’s an interesting tidbit: I had written, though quite summarily, about Zoroastrianism back at Christmastime in posts about The Magi (who are still standing in attendance at my little Nativity scene which I haven’t yet packed away). I have since discovered that one of my newer customers is a former professor whose specialty was ‘comparative religions,’ (the implications of which I will leave for another time), and he told me a little more about the Zoroastrian idea of the Afterlife which I think is very interesting.

 

You may recall that Zoroaster, a.k.a. Zarathustra, - his writings – proposed the existence of two gods, the one good, the other evil, in order to account for human suffering. This is called dualism. (duh.) As religious thinking goes, the teachings of Zoroaster make great sense, which some might say is reason enough to distrust them, but people who make a study of this sort of thing have declared it quite reasonable. Zoroaster’s description of God, apart from the glaringly dissimilar dualistic idea, is remarkably similar – once you get into it – to the Abrahamic one.

 

But anyhoo, when a man dies – (and it occurs to me I must ask my customer if something similar happens to women) – he sits at the head of his body for three days. After that time a bridge to Paradise appears before him, and lo, a beautiful woman is crossing it to escort his soul to the other side. The bridge is spanning quite the chasm, by the way. But, depending on how a man has lived his life, by good manners or by bad manners, the beautiful woman may turn into an ugly hag who – far from escorting him into Paradise – wrestles him over the side of the bridge to plummet into Hell.

 

Taken by itself the imagery is imaginative but not too unlike Pagan ideas, the bridge serving as boat, the chasm as river, but here’s where it becomes impressive: At the end of Time it is pre-destined that the good god will defeat the evil god – or that truth will prevail over lies – and at that time all the souls who had been in Hell will be released into Paradise. That’s nice. Condemnation is not eternal because Good’s triumph over Evil is inevitable and certain. Moreover, there is a mysterious ‘splitting’ of the One True God into two persons, but this One True God is nevertheless purely spiritual, (exists outside of time and space), and is also the Creator of the world. This qualifies the belief system as non-Pagan.

 

It is bloody interesting, by golly. There’s a whole lot in this world that’s interesting.

 

But I’m not Harry Powell from Night of the Hunter, the beautiful 1955 film noir masterpiece directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum as a murderous itinerant preacher. I don’t have a religion I worked out in a secret deal twixt God and myself.

 

But I do have one. I know that it gives me protection enough to view whatever the film may be without risking dire consequences.      

Cloudy days and clear nights are the killer combo. It is not a barefoot day. Here a mighty river passes under trees. This really is a mighty river, not a creek, but we are quite close to its source, and it begins rather small. On Memorial Day hundreds of canoes will pass through here – racing the 70 miles down river to another town. Yes, it becomes wider by then. This segment is in a delta-like flood plain. What we are seeing is one of many small “fingers” of the river that seem to come together to grasp the swampy wetland between them, and then join together to pass under a bridge – I suppose, at the wrist. (ahem.)

 

Yes, I know William F. Buckley died the other day. I happen to be in the middle of one of his Cold War era novels. His autobiographical Nearer My God is a book I’ve returned to several times, as it is written in sections with each one addressing a certain theme as well as a particular period in his life. I subscribe to National Review On-Line, as well as Human Events and the American Conservative Union. So that’s how he gets his current events information, I hear some of you saying. I know that I have told you I receive all my world and national news from a gnome who lives under the carriage house, but that was a – ah – fib. Yes, that’s the word.

 

 

I enjoy reading columns because they are usually short enough to hold my attention from beginning to end. An essay should be short enough to be presented orally before an audience, and that audience should not fall asleep or start looking to relieve the warts on their fannies. Otherwise, as I have said, I enjoy novels. I could read a good novel for hours at a time, losing track of time. Unfortunately, I cannot say that about this novel written by Mr. Buckley. I have consumed four Sci-Fi paperbacks in between his chapters, each one polished off in one sitting, or two. They are my TV, I suppose, except that they invoke interest.

 

But he is not best known for his fiction. Perhaps he is best known for calling Gore Vidal a queer and threatening to kick his ass after Vidal called him a Nazi. When I was young I wanted to learn how to talk English like Buckley. (And also like Dylan Thomas.) And now that I am grown, I do talk like him. (Them? I talk weird.) Well well… Imagine what life would be like today if I had wanted to learn how to talk like Soupy Sales? Silly – for he is also articulate. I’ve followed the musical careers of his sons, Hunt and Tony, for many years. Albums that they have worked on have that Hunt and Tony sound. Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life and The Idiot are the obvious examples. Tin Machine. Throw me a lifeline, sailor, I’m drifting away from the ship!

 

Buckley was influential in my thinking all along, which may not be obvious when you consider how divergent that has been. But I speak truly when I say that seeds planted by him would bear fruit once life experience had at last prepared my soil to be fertile, not barren. You’ll not hear me rail against anything I didn’t at one time believe. That’s not unique, but it is unusual. I think most converts make the conversion from lack of conviction to conviction, from apathy to activism. It was not so with me. I was never apathetic; rather, I experienced a complete change from one equal but opposite view to the other, although the use of the word equal in this sentence isn’t as precise as could be.

 

It was obvious that Buckley knew where his sentences were going before he began speaking them. For myself, I am still working on that.

 

I learned from him, and others, to not place my Catholic faith in a box to be opened only on occasion, but to allow it to fill me as though I were a sponge. I know that there are times when the level of it seems rather low, and its mightiness is reduced to trickles I can scarcely discern under an overgrowth of unimportant things, but there it is.

 

Anyhoo.

  

Snow is general across the entire world today – or, at least across the parts of it my travels took me. They closed the schools early. Sheesh. This is the Great North East. And this is the end of February. That’s like closing school on account of rain in Seattle. I know, weather’s boring, change the subject.

 

This scene is the before and after - or after and before - of the creek that gives Chateau Creekside its name. Below is a road, just plowed, unfortunately.

 

I was running after the plow truck saying, “Not yet! Not yet! I want to get a picture!” I guess he couldn’t hear me over the sound of his swearing. Very colorful language.

 

Whether it’s cold

Whether it’s hot

We must have weather,

Whether or not…

 

Not very colorful pictures, though. I mean, it’s snow, after all. Snow is white until you write your yellow name in it.

 

I may do nothing but take pictures from now on. It’s too much fun.

 

Everybody’s stuck at the McGee’s house tonight, quarantined from Measles.

 

Something other than the balalaika to pin our ears on. That’s a good thing. I was starting to shake a tambourine every time I came to the computer.

 

Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, play some old time radio for me.

 

 

 

Yesterday – that is, the night before last, I was awakened by a telephone call from a friend. It took me several minutes to remember myself and reconnect all the dots, and meanwhile her voice was covering me with its wide-awakeness. I thought her words were birds fluttering as if to perch on me, or very friendly dogs as like to bowl you over with affection. I had missed picking up by the fourth ring, and so the answering machine came on recording – and broadcasting rather loudly throughout the house – the first part of our conversation, one-sided as it was.

 

John something told me I had to call you – something because of your soul and we are connected – I feel you are in some kind of trouble – like you’ve been reaching out to me – like, I don’t know if we’re mentally connected but it’s more a spiritual connection and I don’t know – it’s just so – Is there something going on in your life? Something you need to talk about?

 

Through this loving assault of verbiage I made several failed attempts at speech, still in the process of quickening, which came out (on the machine) sounding like the grunts of a lovemaking session, or of stomach pain – who can tell which – and, it was a whole minute, or even two, before I awakened enough to be able to communicate my need to put the phone down for a minute, go into my kitchen, pick up the cordless, and turn off that infernal answering machine that was broadcasting our voices at an extreme volume throughout the house and into the neighborhood.

 

It was The Lady. Although it took a while for me to admit it, she was right, I have been deeply oppressed as though by a heavy weight. And, admitting it, at once I began to speak to her as if she was my mother, as if a door which had been closed tightly was suddenly opened.

 

Yesterday the oil nearly ran out at Chateau Creekside. I thought to get some kerosene to see the furnace through till Monday – today. I didn’t fancy bleeding the line, which I’d have to do if it were allowed to run out completely. I had given Elizabeth my old gas can – a red plastic thing of a type I’m sure you know – but I thought I might for this single use borrow it back for an hour or two. I called her, and yes, she said, anytime, and several hours later, after mass, I headed up to Hubbell Hollow in the beautiful bright sunshine. The can was obviously right there on the porch, but I thought I would knock on the door anyway because it seems extremely rude to me to trespass on porches without blessing the house. It was her husband, flanked by their many hounds, who answered. Chit chat about confirming the obvious fact I was there to retrieve the gas can was peppered with a few bizarre other words that I still haven’t managed to comprehend.

 

Well, I’ll bring it back, says I, knowing that they would want to make a kerosene run themselves later in the day.

 

It’s your can, he said with sleepy – or sheepish – dark and threateningly handsome beam of black eyes.

 

No, I gave it you. It’s yours. I’m just borrowing it.

 

I don’t hate you, he said, to which I could not possibly have been prepared to make a reply.

 

Other than, I know you don’t.

 

And then there was a curious wordless exchange involving the removal of an icicle which had hung down from the porch roof between us. I broke it off because I could see that it seemed to be perturbing him that it should be there. So then he broke off another and handed it to me. What could I do but take it? And then I discarded it, too.

 

Are you a gypsy? He asked suddenly.

 

No, says I. And I thought, how sad that I am not because I so want to be liked by this broodingly handsome prince of darkness, and how silly I must seem with my effusive, blundering, meaningless words when his words – which really were meaningless – seemed to contain such profundity.

 

 

Well, I did the decent with the gas can, to make a long story – ah – no longer than it needs to be, and I was grateful to find that the oil had not run out at Creekside, so grateful that I offered a prayer of Thanksgiving. There was suddenly a giddy lightness on my heart, a feeling which I thought was dead, that had been absent these several months, that everything was exactly as it ought to be, and everything was right and good.

 

So – and I was tempted to keep the can and not return at all to Hubbell Hollow, knowing that if Elizabeth came into town for kerosene she must come right by my house to do so – I stopped at the service station once more and filled it yet again, and swallowing whatever trepidation I might have had, returned it full to the exact same spot on their porch where I had found it. The impression of it was still in the snow like the mark of a sleeping body on an old mattress. This time I did not knock at the door.

 

I’m not a very nice man. I’m curmudgeonly and disagreeable. I’m individualistic to a fault. I have little of that quality known as compassion. When I say this people tell me No, no, no, but they don’t yet know me. My trouble is I have never been good at telling what the right thing to do may be. So I do what I want, and to hell with you.

 

 

I have a friend who enjoys reading non-fiction. She cannot seem to get her mind around fiction. I am opposite that. Non-fiction I read laboriously – usually in the form of short essays, by G.K. Chesterton, for instance. Many complete philosophical and apologetic works are divided into chapters, each having its own thesis. I can take those in bits, a chapter at a time, until I have begun to understand it.

 

Now – I have said that I have a friend who enjoys reading non-fiction. But, do I? Perhaps I don’t really have such a friend. Perhaps I’m just saying that I do as a way to introduce the topic. Does that matter? No – not in the least. That’s silly.

 

I don’t write fiction all that well, I’ve discovered. I don’t write non-fiction either. What I write is non-non-fiction.

 

The non-fiction approach to telling the story of my life begins thus: “I was born in 1961…” which information is completely irrelevent. I mean, who gives a rat’s ass what year it was? That I was left by circus people on the doorstep of a Catholic hospital in the Bronx is much more true. As I grew up I did so in the context of twenty years past because of how my parents lived their lives, and how they raised me. When I look back, twenty years past is as immediate as yesterday, and so it was with them. Such a fact needs to be taken into account when one is recounting facts, and if a fact must be fictional in order to advance the truth of the story, so be it.

 

What I do is write non-non-fiction. It’s not my eyes that do the seeing; nor is it my ears that do the hearing, my skin that does the feeling. My imagination is the organ that sees and hears, and feels. The other things are merely hardware – like a webcam.

 

The fact is, I probably do have a friend who enjoys reading non-fiction. I cannot at the moment call one to mind, but I’m sure I must have one. So what?

 

Woke up thinking that.

 

Also, This Is The Sea, The Waterboys, Mike Scott, was playing in my consciousness. I found the lyrics, but I had to restore all of the apostrophes. Well, rang-a-lang-a-ding-dong. The thoughts expressed by the song are most appropriate to my morning meditations, mechanizations, maniacal machinations, and so forth. So, here they are:  

 

These things you keep
You’d better throw them all away
You wanna turn your back
On your soulless days
Once you were tethered
And now you are free
Once you were tethered
Well now you are free
That was the river
This is the sea!

Now if you’re feeling weary
If you’ve been alone too long
Maybe youve been suffering from
A few too many
Plans that have gone wrong
And you’re trying to remember
How fine your life used to be
Running around banging your drum
Like its 1973
Well that was the river
This is the sea!
 
Now you say you’ve got trouble
You say you’ve got pain
You say you’ve got nothing left to believe in
Nothing to hold on to
Nothing to trust
Nothing but chains
You’re scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
Scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
But that was the river
This is the sea yeah!

Now I can see you wavering
As you try to decide
You’ve got a war in your head
And its tearing you up inside
You’re trying to make sense
Of something that you just can’t see
Trying to make sense now
And you know you once held the key
But that was the river
And this is the sea!
 
Now I hear there's a train
It’s coming on down the line
It’s yours if you hurry
You’ve got still enough time
And you don’t need no ticket
And you don’t pay no fee
No you don’t need no ticket
You don’t pay no fee
Because that was the river
And this is the sea!

Behold the sea!