Happy Easter!

EASTER, LAMB OF GOD, LOVE, WORSHIP

Beautiful boy with a bright, smiling face, having dinner with his brother and parents at Café Soleil in Wareham. I love a beautiful boy. I always have. There’s a game I’ve played all my life: When I enter a space full of people, I pick out the most beautiful boys in the room, and try to narrow it down to the most beautiful one of them all. I look and I look and I look until it’s time for him or I to go. One of life’s greatest pleasures has been for me to look at and admire beautiful boys. I may go down and die in ignominy and shame, but I will have had the pleasure of loving boys.

I wrote once to Steve Price, my erstwhile friend and handsome, blonde boy, about dying with grace and good humor. Life doesn’t always give one the chance to die a classic, romantic death. Death is often crude and inconvenient. "The senses represent birth as untimely and death as irresistible" (Eddy, 1906, p. 265). Life can be messy, and some of us simply live messy lives. Our poor lives are simply messy all the time. We never do recover from disaster sufficiently to live an orderly life. We struggle on and limp along until it’s over. It isn’t pretty. One of the best things a man can do in his lifetime is to love others more than himself. That’s grace. It blesses the other and oneself, enveloping all in uplifting, life-giving Spirit. I don’t lead a model life. I try to do well, but I don’t excel. I lead the life I’m inclined to lead.

I can’t save you. If I knew how to, I would, but I don’t. I simply do what I can to affirm, support, and encourage you. I do what I can. It isn’t everything, but I know that it makes a difference. I know that it makes a positive difference in another’s life to love him. If I were self-centered, I might have a neat, polished life. But, I have chosen to share the joys and sorrows of others as the form of my own enjoyment. I like to think that my life has been God and man centered. I have lived an imperfect life of worship and service, worshiping God and loving man.

Eddy, Mary Baker. Science and health with key to the scriptures. (1906). Boston, MA: The Christian Science Board of Directors.

Photo: The Lamb of God. Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Torccello (Venezia, Italy). late 11th century. Retrieved March 20, 2016, from https://03varvara.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/unknown-artist-the-lamb-of-god-cattedrale-di-santa-maria-assunta-torccello-venezia-italy-late-11th-century1.jpg

Election 2016

PUSSIES, PERVERTS, AMERICAN WAY

(whack jobs + pussies) x popular culture = Trump²






Trump Photo: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com

Kick Ass Self Defense

REALITY, NORMALITY, DISAGREEMENT, DEFENSE

Part of popular culture is the idea that there is no normal. There are a lot of different normals living in the same objective reality. Popular culture suggests that one cannot know what normal is, and that it is politically and socially incorrect to think that one can. We are supposed to think that all realities are valid, and it is expected that we will tolerate, defer to, and nurture them, even at the expense of our own health, happiness, and prosperity. The other’s reality is of equal or greater value to mine, and the nice thing to do is to defer to the other. It is mean and stupid for me to insist on the superiority of my reality, and defend it against your encroachment on it. When, where, and how did you earn the right to promote yourself at my expense? What makes you think that I will cooperate with you? What makes you think that I will not turn on you, and rend you limb from limb in defense of myself? Reality isn’t what you say it is. Reality is what I am willing to do to you in defense of myself. It doesn’t matter what you say. It only matters what I do.

Muhammad Ali photo. ©2014 Judo Minnesota. Retrieved March 1, 2016, from http://judomn.org/boxing.html.