Garden

Garden is looking good. We're in a multi-year drought and with minimal water I've kept a sacred little fenced in area where I've had an abundance of goods produced. Last night I pulled potatoes, cantalope, peas, yellow squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, egg-plant and more.

I picked a quick basket several days ago and gave to Adena. She took these to the Rocky River Ranch and passed them out. Everyone enjoyed them I hear.

The below was a response I wrote to a friend after he sent me a typical mushy Christian modern parable email claiming that a super-intimate "walk" with God is the highest ideal - which may or may not be the case depending on how you want to look at it. Feedback from all welcomed on this.

Dear friend,

[this is probably putting more energy into this than deserves … but oh well, here it goes…]

Emotional metaphor upon emotional metaphor….. … another cute story with miniscule interpretation of history playing off a twist of metaphors to give the illusion of a “revelation” --- only to trick the reader into somehow still feeling defeated for what the megalomaniac author claims to have with “there is no substitute for unconditional, intimate relationship with God” and holding out still the “hope” that this is actually possible and advisable to me.

Give me a break.

Well… yes…. First of all let me reply with “Well of course, I also want this great big giant spirit friend who will play the role of my father and who also happens to be the one-and-only original maker of all the universe. He can watch out for me, do things for me, protect me from death, be there for me to cry upon his shoulder; he’ll give me meaning and purpose in life and even magical wish-powers and knowledge of the vast eternal worlds that hold the living and the dead, the future and the past.

And all he wants in return is to be loved whole-heartedly.

For sure, I want to get in on this adoption policy.

How do I sign up and how soon can I meet this giant friendly maker of the universe? And can we be best buddies?

Will I have to sort of pretend? You know, have faith that when I talk he is listening and when I’m sorry he forgives me and when I ask for something and he doesn’t give it to me that he was really watching out for my best interests anyway?

Do I have to get with other people who pretend this same talking-to-the-giant-buddy game, so we can confirm each other that “yep, you’ve had some more evidence, too? Well, so have I. This big spirit buddy really is there and he’s watching over me and you both.”


Do I have to really train my mind with lots of ancient stories and writings that when interpreted personally I can feel like this is how the giant spirit buddy is communicating with me? How can I know when he really is talking to me and it’s not just my imagination or wishful thinking or even my own internal neurotic self at work? Should I just “have faith” and that’ll sort of make it so?


I’m not suggesting that it isn’t possible to “love God with all your heart and soul” ….. if you simply change the word “the God” to “the Good” which is what the metaphor is most likely trying to capture anyway.

This could be doable and I could even understand it as the highest command.

But if I make this concept of “Good” into a giant personal spirit buddy daddy deity who lives in the sky, I find it a little harder to stay in touch with Him and to stay in touch with reality at the same time.

I’m not saying there is no God. I’m saying that your “intimate relationship with God” may actually be a personal relationship with Good.

Can Christianity Survive on Squishy Post-Modern Ground?

An interesting article on magical thinking as being the actual essence of religion... it seems the author is trying to bridge the gap some into the new post-modern era by soliciting a valid form of expression akin to poetry.

He describes a continuum between metaphorical and literal modes of understanding of religion and posits that we all move in our course of maturation from the literal to the metaphorical. In the process morality is maintained or even heightened from the more primitive strictly authoritarian faith-rule.

He describes how the Jews themselves "evolved" along this continuum throughout the Old Testament starting with Deuteronomy (meaning "second law") which was written later to "upgrade" some of the cruder more literal sacrifices and laws. Indeed it was Deuteronomy that declares the number one law is to love rather than to sacrifice.

My favorite section is as follows:

The point is that the semiotic space for such dialectical development has been built into religious language and symbolism, honed and augmented over centuries. To invent a social equivalent of religion out of thin air is akin to inventing a new language--much harder than it looks. So the rational elite may indeed be missing out on something--the "essence" of religion.

My suggestion is that while there is, and has always been, a great difference between the esoteric (metaphorical) and exoteric (literal) modes of religious understanding, there is also a continuum running between them. Many people move along this continuum in the course of their lives, beginning with the debunking of Santa Claus. As they learn the moral interpretations of mythic symbols and stories, they grow to put more emphasis on those interpretations than on the assertion that the stories really happened. Eventually they may come to feel that "God is within," animating their moral judgment and feeling for the world. But in most cases this doesn't prevent them from telling their children about Santa Claus, nor does it impel them to attack the "beliefs" of their less-advanced coreligionists.

Therefore it is wrong to classify everyone based on answers to polling questions about religious "belief." What people say they "believe" doesn't necessarily capture the functional role of the "beliefs," their symbolism and moral perspective. It doesn't tell you where they lie on the magical/moral continuum. So the picture of a tiny enlightened elite and literal-minded masses is also wrong.

All in all this reminds me very much of reading N. T. Wright and his push to be a Christian in the post-modern era by somehow giving up all the literalness of creation, miracles, virgin birth, resurrections and such as "narrative" expressions of the people themselves - not untrue, but not true either.

This rather leaves one on squishy ground, but if indeed we are at a major cultural crossroads in the magnitude of the Middle-ages to Enlightenment crossroads, then there just may be another acceptable mode of expression which can include worship of a creator in the genre of poetry, and story-telling that could be valid but not literal.

N. T. Wright, among other intellectual Christians, tend to suggest this is our future hope for the sustainability of Christianity. I'm inclined to agree.

Come and Take It

I love this snapshot I took at an Austin protest a while back. I just came across the history of this slogan and even T-shirt from a bunch of East Texas hog hunters. You gotta love Texas attitudes and history. :)

"Come and take it" was a slogan used in the Texas Revolution in 1835. At the minor skirmish known as the Battle of Gonzales, a small group of Texans successfully resisted the Mexican forces who had orders to seize their cannon. As a symbol of defiance, the Texans had fashioned a flag containing the phrase along with a black star and an image of the cannon which they had received six years earlier from the hands of a Mexican officials.

Steve Earle - intro to Devil's Right Hand

Steve Earle comes out on encore in his "Townes Van Zandt" tour playing in New Braunfels, Tx. June 20, 2009 and talks about gun-control and raising an "out-of-control" fourteen year-old son.

This was about as entertaining as it got.

The venue sucked and I almost got into a fight with a staff member who threatened to call a sheriff to throw me out. I swore I'd bad-mouth the Whitewater Amphitheater to no end.

First they charged an additional $10 when you get there just to park, there site directions there and on the web is confusing, at least one member of staff was a threatening jerk, one drunk (supposedly works for the owner) stood up front near stage making scene and being a distraction till several audience members complained. The organizing was lame and for the price of a $28 ticket (plus $10 surprise parking) there wasn't even a full band.

On the good side you can buy a shot of Hornitos Tequila for $6. Plus I got to hear and visit with a friend of ours - grammy song-writer Susan Gibson.

If it hadn't been Steve Earle and Susan I'd of passed on this one. Adena finally did get him to sign my Texas Troubadours book, but he was harder to get to than freaking Bob Dylan - (we had to hand the book to a gaurd, who then waitied and handed it to Steve Earle - it was all meant to discourage fun)

Pretty Empty Glasses

Some photos of the brethren..... are them glasses empty?

Fun Things To Do While Camping Out

I’m trying to think about some things we could do next year to make our Blanco Brethren Intelligentsia Christian Beer Bash (BBIC beer bash) a little more memorable. I'm looking for ideas and wanted to brainstorm a few of them here.

Pitch in and give me some ideas. The only requirement is it has to be actually doable and believable.

• For starters, we'll need a keg of beer next time. We should spend a lot of time anguishing that the keg will not be enough and calculate many times how many ounces per day everybody gets before we tap it.



• We can drink and buy other beer till the last member shows up and then we'll open up bottles of whiskey and vodka and drink that instead.



• We'll need some general not too intelligent discussions on nearly non-resolvable topics like GOD, POLITICS, and HOW TO RAISE CHILDREN.



• I think lots of blood-curdling free-style singing easily heard for miles up and down the valley would be enjoyed by all.



• We should have at least one or two brawls at the height of drunkenness. We should include some life threatening shouting and at least one tent getting busted up and maybe even a nice guitar getting smashed beyond repair. That'd be cool.



• We should go on at least one long hike (10 miles) over rough river rock with a mixture of swimming and climbing and thrashing through wilderness. We should take the dogs for fun. This should prepare us for by-passing the keg of beer and going straight to the whiskey and vodka.



• Let's plan on somebody getting lost - preferably at night while completely drunk. We’ll call him 'dumb-ass'. He can wonder up and down the river bed not sure of direction or which side of river camp is on. The rest of the folks should be bedded down totally not caring.



• First thing in the morning we can ask each other, "Hey, where's 'dumb-ass' ? Is he alive? What a dumb-ass."



• On one night someone needs to sleep out on a big rock in the river bed. This could be the same 'dumb-ass' or not. In the morning we can call him "Man-Who-Sleeps-on-Rock."



• We should generally lose lots of equipment and supplies. Things like cigarettes, bandanas, eye-glasses (these should be repeatedly stepped on, lost and found and stepped on again) and other trivial things. We should somehow misplace and never find a watermelon.



• With all the lost items, we'll need someone throwing out some paranoiac expressions and accusations like "hey who took my cigarettes?" and "hey, why are you guys ganging up on me?" and "hey, has anybody seen that watermelon I brought?"



• Last but not least, we'll need someone on the last night to really guzzle the whiskey and all through the night they should wail and moan and cry out in the night to God in fits of rage, anguish, and pain. Ideally, this will wake the sober people enough that they will worry and not sleep. This should sound like demon-possession akin to wailing and gnashing of teeth as hell is described.

These things along with a few injuries like described in last post - especially someone falling into the cacti - should set us up for some real fun.


What do you think?