Light & Darkness

"You can wake deep in the night
And find that out of sight
. . . Right under your nose
A revolution grows"
Pete Towshend
"All Shall Be Well"

Dear diary . . .

If I had a diary, I suppose that's how it'd begin. To be sure, there's notebooks and a snowstorm of scrap paper all over my life with little scrawled words of hope and complaint read by none but me and God. And maybe that's why I'm here: to give God something to read in his spare time about life in the deep darkness far from home.

Exile.

Life. Life is exile from home, a home I don't recall.

Little words by a crazy man sent out into a night where he wishes a revolution would grow. Those things -- revolutions -- begin with little words whispered by crazy people to themselves.

What's the difference between whispering them here and whispering them to myself?

The sages teach that it all begins with little words here, logoi, that stir the heavens to move, that call out to the Divine Logos to come down and meet us halfway. We offer up a small spark in the night and The Holy responds with a rushing wind, a conflagration that consumes away the old and replaces it with something better and new.

Crazy, no?

I like to hope for something better and I like to dream of a reality more and different than the one where I've landed. I like to think that, out there, are others looking for the same things, each with their own special and discounted word -- words that never go ignored by the Above and which count for something. I look into the faces of strangers and see exiles, and I read hostile murmurings and hear the baffled language of people who have forgotten their true calling and who do not recall who they truly are.

I hear language about other and self and close my eyes. I hear talk about the divine and the mundane and am filled up with leaden sorrow. I hear of time and eternity and stand amazed.

What if all of these things are just words -- not logoi, but noises, shadows of words? Illusions of meanings?

What if there is no self and no other? When I look into the eyes of the other, what if, from the depths, I see myself? And if I look into myself, what if I am seeing none but the other? And in the blazing spark I feel smouldering inside my confusion and darkness, what if there is no one else but God?

And, so, in the presence of the stranger, what if I do nothing but face the Divine visage, a presence more Holy than an angel?

And so, in all things, what if there is nothing less than God's Own Burning Voice?

Time and eternity -- illusions formed by my own forgetfulness and weakness. Words in the sense of noises that mean nothing because time is in eternity and eternity in time. Both are sides of an unsayable Whole that my finite eyes cannot comprehend, yet my soul knows intimately.

Crazy words on a Saturday night.

What am I looking for? We send out words in hope of more returning, more meanings returning to unfold what we cannot explore alone -- a conversation.

But mostly I whisper to myself. And God, one supposes.

The wise say that each word and each intention creates an angel -- sends out an Angel of Light or an Angel of Darkness -- into the world, and God knows we wrestle with the angels daily.

To speak or not to speak, when the fate of the world is always dependent on what we say and what we hope-- or don't say and don't dare hope?

I broke a sort of oath not to speak publicly where it would probably be read by my fellow townspeople after a year-and-a-half. I wonder at the wisdom or folly of my choice -- or the wisdom in the folly. It brings frustration and sadness because shining a light always casts its shadows, and one always wonders just how strong one's light is when making pronouncements. One wonders if of is shining light or just creating an overabundance of shadow where darkness is already plentiful.

In the end, one is left alone on Saturday nights wondering in sadness because these questions don't really matter to anyone else, and probably can't. Yet . . . .

Something in me wants to speak. My soul, my destiny, what the Greeks used to call the daimon we all have, a peculiar calling and mission from God, prods me. I shut it up largely for a year-and-a-half and it made me unhappy and lonely. I speak and others are angered, but it seems to be what I was supposed to do. But like all angels, we wrestle with it -- I wrestle with it and wonder:

What am I supposed to be doing?

Hoping for a revolution. Doing what crazy men with small words do -- whisper them to God, scribble them everywhere, light and send them out on the wind and hope the flaming whirlwind returns with an answer.

What else is there to do while you're in exile than hope for a glimpse of home everywhere you look?

RVI
26 January 2008

My Letter to the Editor of The Dahlonega Nugget, printed 16 Januray 2008 (unedited version)

(After not writing in my local paper for a year and a half [see my webpage for a detailed explanation], I decided that it was time to attempt to break the silence. The editor was gracious enough to print the letter with some editing -- space is a commodity and my writing tends to consume space. I understand the need for the edit, in other words. But as I have space here, I am going to post the unedited version as it contains some background insights that a reader might find interesting.)

Dear Editor,

I will begin with apologies. This is bad form, but necessary.

I apologize for asking to speak in a forum which no longer wished to print my words as of a year and a half ago. I must beg enough of the community’s – and the editor’s – forgiveness as to tolerate a few more words.

And I apologize to myself for breaking an oath to never ask to speak here again. But there are things more important than pride.

After a year and a half of semi-forced retirement from the life of my birth-community, I have read something here that compels a response. It needs an uncommon response, and my conscience won’t let me rest without doing this.

Mr. James Brady, in a letter of 8 January 2008 entitled, “Tired of people running down our country,” presented ideas worthy of careful consideration.

He begins by asking, “What is wrong with our country?” and this is where I part company with him. The deeper and better question is, “What is wrong with our world?”

Mr. Brady continues: “We too often just let people bad-mouth our country when we should straighten them out. When they start running down our country we should tell them how great America is. If that don’t take care of it, we should make them understand the hard way.” By “the hard way,” he seems to suggest violence. If he wasn’t suggesting violence, more care with the language might be desired in the future.

My own response is to ask a religious question, as many readers here are said to be religious: “When I stand before God Almighty, will He ask me whether I was a good American, or will He wonder if I lived up to the gift of being a human?”

From an ultimate point of view, does my being American increase my worth as a human one iota, and does the fact many people are not Americans decrease their worth one whit?

Being an American, aside from the privileges involved, is also nothing more than an accident of fortune.

Hear me out.

One of the things deeply wrong with this world is that we humans construct barriers – like tribes and nations – that allow us to ignore the truth that, in the depths of our beings, we humans are all children of one and the same Mysterious and Eternal Deity.

We are all daughters and sons, princesses and princes of a Holy and Royal House that was before all others and will be after all others are gone. Our lives are all equally precious, and none of us should ever be made to feel alienated or inferior, treated as less than we truly are.

Ignoring all the artifices fashioned to keep me separate from my brothers and sisters, if I look within myself, I find, behind the darkness of doubt and selfishness and hate, a blazing star: a bright, burning spark of the Divine that belongs to God Himself. It is a perfect and beautiful fire that is God’s and remains close to Him always.

Nothing I or anyone can do will ever mar, diminish, or destroy it. It is pure and inviolable. It is fearless, immune to doubt and depression, envy, hatred, intolerance, death. It burns with love for its fellow creatures and for its Creator and for itself. It would never treat another in a manner it would not be willing to tolerate. I can choose to live by orienting myself to it, or I can wander in darkness and pain.

This part is my humanity, my fate, that which I am asked to live up to. It makes me a person and not a thing. It allows me to creatively bestow value upon all things in the world except other people who are all filled with the same light of this fiery, divine spark. Other people are, as the philosopher Kant said, inherently valuable, due my respect. More than that, others are due even my love.

Not just me and my kin, my community, my state and nation, but all people, even my enemies. Even people who have worked very hard to forget the light, people who have listened to doubt, hate, anger, and the temptation to violence. People who have constructed boundaries and meaningless distinctions between themselves and other people that allow them to pretend their brothers and sisters are inferior, inhuman. People who have been deceived into believing they can beat others into submission with words, fists, and gossip, isolate them, discount them, imprison them, wage war on them eternally.

If saying these things makes me a friend “of America ’s enemies,” I will have to plead that I am only attempting to follow my Savior, Jesus.

If the Christians are right, Jesus was both God and man at the same time. He came here voluntarily to live with us and give us the example of the right way to live, to follow the light in spite of the darkness. He lived here as a stranger, few welcomed Him, many found Him a bother. He said things like, “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head” and “A prophet is not honored in his own land.”

In the end, He was crucified and suffered an excruciating death. Many believe it was His blood being shed that saves the world in some way.

Let me propose this: On the cross, the Christ completed His work, which was to show the right way to live. He did not resist those who hated Him and misunderstood, He did not curse them. He forgave them: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” He showed infinite patience. Being a good Jew, He prayed the Psalms of David as best as He could for comfort, just as He had renewed the teachings of the great Rabbis during His life, exemplifying the spirit of the Law, not merely the letter.

Christians are told that, if He had desired, He could have come down from the cross at any moment. He was, after all, God; thousands of legions of angels were surrounding Him, awaiting the Word He did not utter.

But Christians seem to forget: With that same Word, He could have ended all of this. He could have exacted revenge on those who caused Him harm, those who did not understand, those whose eyes were darkened and deceived by hatred and fear – He could have ended this world and all of us with it, as we are all both light and darkness mixed together, all sometimes filled with anger and hatred and fear. He could have seen only the darkness in us and extinguished the lights – started over again with a new universe.

But He did not. He forgave, He tolerated, He withheld vengeance. He understood something: There are more important things than surviving at any cost. We cannot do anything we wish to others, even our enemies and those we do not like – we must not pretend the ends of our survival and pride excuse any means we see fit to exercise. We must live up to that inner purity that is so easy to forget – it is what gives us value and meaning. It guides and limits our actions. We cannot pretend to be less than we are, and we cannot pretend others are less valuable than they really are.

Even if they have forgotten.

Richard Van Ingram
10 January 2008

(A story by my friend, Orestes Wilkinson, hermit; hand-delivered this morning from his mountain fortress.)

Confessional; or, Even the Dog Has a Creed
by Orestes Wilkinson

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

“How long has it been since your last confession?”

“To a priest?”

“Yes, of course . . .”

“I think it was 1995. Just before my ex-wife divorced me because I became sick and she realized I’d never have any status or money. And then told my priest I was a bad person or something. I’m not sure.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“I was in the hospital.”

“But later.”

“Well, I was sick. I waited to be visited by someone from the Church – I used to do this for others when I was a Eucharistic Minister.”

“No one came?”

“No one came. No one called. I figured no one cared.”

“Did you ask – ?”

“ – well, no. No, I felt horrible, abandoned. I lost everything – didn’t even feel like getting out of the bed anymore. It was like waking up the day after the Earth ended for a long time, wondering, ‘Now what?’ I’d survived, but why? What was the point? The only purpose I could lay hold of at the beginning was being a father to my son. He was about a year and a half at that time . . .”

“So what did you do?”

“Decided I had to make it up as I went. Figure it out on my own. I waited around for directions from God for awhile, but what I received was a sense of shipwreck. So, being shipwrecked on alien shores, it looked as if I had to stay alive till the rescue came – if it ever came. Which it didn’t . . . or, maybe, that was the rescue, the inspiration to keep moving and create a meaning where I found none. The refusal to just sit down and die.”

“Why didn’t you return to Mother Church?”

“Father, I had a strong sense that I never left Mother Church: Mother Church left me, abandoned me – or Her representatives on Earth did. And then, since my ex-wife divorced me, I was banned from receiving Holy Communion, the thing I valued most in my religion, the place where I met God concretely and from which received some small measure of peace and a sort of orientation. It was a magic beyond magic for me, a mystical union literally beyond words and saying.

“In losing it, I was shut outside with the dogs, as good as dead. Where once I was privileged to serve the altar as a lay minister and had some reason to take my life very seriously, Mother Church forbade me from approaching the altar rail from the other side at all and decided my life was worthless to Her after all. So, like all good, homeless dogs, I set to wandering as I had before my conversion.”

“Where did you go?”

“Where I always wind up – searching for a place where I am welcomed and valued – or just tolerated; searching for truth; searching for a way to live, and looking for who it is, exactly, that God intends for me to be here in this world. In the end, I went to the Episcopal Church because it had room for the wounded and the imperfect, the seeker and questioner, the doubter, the abandoned. I was and am of a different, lower class than my fellow Episcopalians, plagued with poverty at times, illness, given the burden of caring for the sick, teaching the inquisitive, and facing people who genuinely hate me because … well, I don’t always understand it.

“Sometimes it is because I am very different than most people where I am from, a strange person, a person who asks too many questions, thinks too deeply and comes up with answers that don’t square with the majority opinion. And, then, I am stupid enough to share my ideas openly – for this flaw in my character (one of many), my community tells me it is not my community.

“Sometimes it is because my ex-wife hates me deeply, is angered that she ever had anything to do with me, that we have a child together – feels I must be punished and must be made to pay to the last ounce of my ability to do so; that I must be made to feel guilty for each and every transgression, no matter how minute, no matter how distant, no matter how ephemeral, no matter how illusory, that she perceives or recalls or imagines. Largely, I do not grasp why I am supposed to suffer because of my ex-wife’s anger and unhappiness, especially as we are now nearly 13 years out from the divorce and I have done all for my son I have been allowed to do . . . but, truthfully, I understand very little in this world, being but a dog and a fool.

“Anyway – The Episcopal Church decided it would have me, so I went there and made as much of a home as I could, being a perpetual outsider. The people were all good to me, even when it took effort; I think they tended to forgive my being shy and uncomfortable, as I hadn’t spoken to many strangers for years at the time I crossed the threshold the first time, and as my last experience with a church as an adult was what it had been as a child: I was dismissed and devalued. So, there I went, found a good priest and a good community that was as supporting of me as I’d allow it to be, and was confirmed into the Anglican Communion. And, again, was allowed to approach the altar, allowed to approach my Christ Who, in spite of my many faults and hurts and stupidities, welcomed me again into His presence and supped with me.”

“But the Episcopal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church – their rites and beliefs are irregular, the line of succession from the apostles is broken . . .”

“They are a tolerant and good people.”

“But . . .”

“When you threw the dog from your house and would no longer let him eat even the crumbs from beneath the table, you starved him; and when he was sick and you did not care for him, when he was poor and you did not help him, when he was lost and you did not leave the 100 to look for the lost one – he looked for another home. For no good reason he was welcomed at another house, he was cared for, his wounds were bound, he was fed from the Master’s own table freely and gladly, and not the scraps, he was loved and helped as much as his wounded soul could stand it. Any house that does that for someone is the House of God, no matter what name it goes by, no matter the imperfections – especially as it makes no claims to perfection, Father.

“You say the line of succession was broken in that church? I say that what men beak in their bickering and misunderstanding can be made whole with love, and that the Episcopal Church has been made whole by its love for the outcast and the poor, and by its service to truth, its struggle with truth. It is as much part of Mother Church as the one seated at Rome.

“Should every church be wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow, every Bible burned to a cinder, every Prayer Book made ashes and dust – the next day, when someone helped another person, cared for another for the right reason, when someone struggled with their burdens and their wounds and inclinations to do the easy and wrong thing, when someone struggled to forgive others, not to be better than them, but to help heal them up, whenever someone loved the truth for its own sake and hoped for something better than what we are given – there the Christ would be, where He has been all along. Even if the people doing these things did not call themselves “Christians” or even anything at all.

“Father, I am no longer afraid of names. I am no longer a worshipper of appearances. I am a dog, but I am God’s dog; I am a fool, but I am God’s fool. I think – I hope – God has a place for such as me, that He has mercy for such an outcast and misfit as I am, and I hope He understands there is no way I could repay such a debt. I have nothing to equal it. All I can do is live by the only word I have discovered has any worth at all in this shipwreck life: Try.

“That’s my confession, Father. I apologize for taking up your time.”

And with that, he walked out, back into the world. Back to the hope that makes no sense, the faith that is a form of idiocy, the love that is difficult, because it is real and because it is the hardest path: the path of peace, the path of forgiveness.

The End

Poore Richard’s Aphorisms for the Week of Our Lord, 10 December Two Thousand and Seven, which He must claim even though we are regaled yet again by another President of the United States saying, "What missing tapes? I don't know nuthin' 'bout no tapes. And, if I did, it wouldn't be any of your business!" (With apologies to Ben Franklin himself.)

Beware of Smiling Americans.
Poore Richard

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for people to decide evil tastes like chocolate ice cream with rainbow sprinkles on top.
Poore Richard

No matter what you think you know, there's always more to know than what you think.
Poore Richard

Nothing succeeds like coercion.
Poore Richard

You ever had the feeling you are the skeleton in the family closet?
Poore Richard

To err is human; to forgive, in a small town, unheard of.
Poore Richard

Virtue is its own reward. A good lie, by contrast, will fetch you a fortune on the open market.
Poore Richard

The only thing worse than punctuality is someone who values it.
Poore Richard

Too much of a good thing is usually female.
Poore Richard

If you speak truthfully, you can damn sure bet there's someone on hand who'll make you wish you'd kept your big mouth shut.
Poore Richard

Who needs principles when there's Visa/Master Card?
Poore Richard

Laziness is responsible for more evil than malevolence.
Poore Richard

To one who tells the truth
We prefer a liar;
To liars go mansions,
a sinecure, we gather them a choir.
Poore Richard

Have you ever wondered how your mother knew enough about people like me to warn you about us?
Poore Richard

Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth will make you Poor.
Poore Richard

If people speak ill of you, be sure to give them a good reason.
Poore Richard

It's easier to point the finger -- once their back is turned.
Poore Richard

The greatest reward you can expect for doing good in this world is mistreatment by those who are dead certain you've done something wrong.
Poore Richard

Wishful thinking is better than not thinking at all.
Poore Richard

When you're angry, take a breath and count to ten. Then pull the trigger.
Poore Richard

From the Silence * 31 October 2007 *

Overlap and collision – things in time and out of time; people in their right mind, people out of their minds: Halloween. The old people used to say that this is night the borderlines between the worlds melt like wax tears, the night when the past becomes present and comes back to haunt us, the time when that which we pretend is far away reveals itself as ever-present and due respect, if not placation.

It’s a night we usually smile off and ignore in these days of "more important matters." Oh, what need have we of our ancestral idiocy?

But the ancestor’s idiocy is yet with us in many ways: the costumes, the candy, the parties, the vague memory of a memory when the night was actually dark and life was a delicate matter, long before we thought we’d cheat old Kronos and Thanatos at dice for our lives. Years before we dreamed we’d send Koltho, Lakhesis, and Atropos a false address when they mailed us our winding sheet – before science made life a dream and rendered our fears neuroses and psychoses for which there are pretty pills and solemn professional rites.

And yet . . . the night has not been banished completely: there are spots between the streetlights, alleyways immune to headlights and neon. There are dreams, there are nightmares, and no amount of electricity or science or psychopharmacology erases any of this. Somewhere down in us, no matter how deep we sink the half-thought, we are eaten with the knowledge that, for us all, the borderline between ourselves and The Other will melt and does melt, and it overwhelms us with terror and awe.

We know that, one day, we, too, will be translated to another state, the state of a memory becoming fast forgotten. And it causes us to recall the memory of those who are now memories, forgotten, lost, suppressed.

Worlds within worlds, worlds beside worlds, worlds overlapping – the borders dissolve: Halloween, the evening of the holy dead, of daimons, angels, demons; the evening of our forgotten Fate.

Prepare a glass of wine and light the candles in the windows to guide the souls home. Set a table for Death and welcome him; make terms with him. Because, one night, he is coming to supper whether you like it or not: He will come in the long black car and take you to a feast from which you will not return – save for days like today when we light our candles and wear the images of the denizens of other worlds. Save for the days when old memories are welcome and we honor our fears, if not placate them.

If there is a holiday in honor of depression, our Saturnine mood, it is this one, the one when we welcome all that is dark and melancholy, we rejoice in it, we do not pretend it is an illness to be fled from – it is the one time we hold our darkness close and go through it to the worlds beyond; and, if we live, we live to be richer, more imaginative in our lives. And, if we don’t survive – well, we become the stuff of imagination for another day, another’s life, another’s dreams and nightmare visions.

Sermon Thousand Ninety-Nine; or There's More Than One Way To Be a Christian, Mr. Falwell

(A sermon from a Fool on the occasion of the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell.)

But I must remember
I'm a hustler
I'm a full moon
I'm a tiger sleeping in your. . .

Would you call him
And tell him how I feel
I can make the payment
I can make the deal
Would you call him
And tell him how I feel
I can make the payment
I can make the deal

The Boxer
The Chemical Brothers with Tim Burgess


Get ready for a fight.

You were thrown headlong into it the day before you were born, and until you go down the final and everlasting time, you are in. You are in for all you are worth, whether you like it or not .

Was it fair you arrived in this world? Fair has nothing to do with it. For you to be you, this is the world you had to come into, for all its beauty and horror, for all its kisses and lacerations, for all its smiles and pitilessness. For you to be you, you had to come into this world, the world of death; because the world of death is also the world of life.

Is this “the best of all possible worlds?” This is the only world possible for me; whether it will be the best possible world depends a great deal on whether I will choose to be the best me I could have been. Theodicy? I will not lay the responsibility for this world at the feet of Almighty God. He needs no excuses from me or from you. This is the world we were given and along with it, as part of it, came the responsibility to make the world right if it is not to our liking and if it marred, filled with pain, death, lies, hatred, and betrayals with no purpose or point.

Was it fair you arrived in this world? Rather ask, was it fair to the world that you came here and were the person you have been, are, and will choose to be?

Oh, I will be honest with you: There are days I hate this world and most everything in it. I was raised to despise the world and think of it as a hateful thing passing away. I was raised to think that, any minute, Jesus would return to rescue me from this hateful mess into which I had been thrown. I was raised with many such notions, years before the rest of the country came under the influence of the Evangelicals and the Pentecostals.

I was raised to believe I was worthless, that I was born eaten with sin and went downhill from there. I had nothing to offer the world, much less myself or my loved ones or my neighbors. These beliefs left deep scars and I am the scar tissue that remains – these are my things to fight against, wrestle with. They are my angel, my sweet daimon. They are what made me who I am.

A long journey – from worthlessness to the realization that being imperfect only means I am human, not worthless. If I am worthless, if I have nothing to offer, I cannot be responsible for my part of the world, nor will I care what happens to it or those who inhabit it, neither today nor tomorrow after I am gone. Let them fend for themselves, right? And the memory of the dead, my responsibility to hold those who have gone before in some esteem, listen for their voices – why should I care? They are dust and were no more important than I ever have been, and I am worthless, right?

It does not surprise me we molest the graves of the dead and let their words, their books rot and go to nothing since we, as a people, are now as convinced of our collective worthlessness as much as I was of my own personal worthlessness as a child. It doesn’t surprise me we shrug at sending people off to senseless wars and stare straight-faced while we torment and murder people in the name of “security.”

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that so many of us look at our brothers and sisters and do not see brothers and sisters – we see “homosexuals,” we see “foreigners,” we see “freaks,” we see “the crazy,” “the poor,” “drug addicts” -- whatever. We have so little self-worth we refuse to recognize the inherent and glorious dignity in others.

Oh, the world is passing and so are we all; that is the essence of things, to change, to become other than they are. But as long as we are here, we are responsible for what happens in this world, all of us. We are responsible for everything, as Dostoyevsky once said, and we are all responsible for each other, the dead, the living, those yet to come. We cannot do anything we wish. We cannot hate the world, and the world is nothing more than the people who inhabit it, all of us. We cannot abandon it and pretend it is “God’s will” we hate His own creation and refuse to do our part in its ongoing manifestation.

Yes, the world is a thing passing away, but maybe those who taught me that missed the real point – it is passing away because God expects us to make Jesus present within it, to convert it, not to a religion, but from something horrid and marred to something transfigured and of great worth. We are to take its scars, its crosses, its hate, its blood drenched graveyards and the mire of all battlefields and convert them into something human and humane.

We are to forgive and change ourselves and the world, and this, for Christians, is the very work and fruit of the Holy Spirit. Wherever I find that work, whoever I find doing that work, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Shintoist, Taoist, Wiccan, Pagan, Christian, atheist – I do not care what name they go by: there I find God at work, and Goodness, and Christ, and Jesus becoming present in the world. He calls whosoever He wills, however He will, and accomplishes His work in His own way, in His own time – but through us, through us all, as many as will simply take up the burden and become who we are.

Welcome to the fight. We will all fall and fail, but as the Sufi mystic, Rumi said, get up and come, as many times as you have broken your vow. You will not be rejected. Your work is here to be done as long as you desire to do it and beyond.

It is all that simple – and all that difficult. God forgive us for our hatreds and judgmental habits. The next time a disaster comes, please remind us, if we wish to point a finger, to first go look in the mirror for the only guilty party we ever need be concerned with. The Devil has only one face: mine when contorted in anger and flushed with the acid of intolerance.

God forbid we lay our burdens on others, and God forbid we see “the other” as a stranger to be despised. Help us make the table and welcome in the stranger that he may become our brother, that we may serve him and not curse him because he is of a different race or belief, that he loves in a different way than we do, that he has been injured and tormented in ways we haven’t.

This is jihad, the Holy War against . . . ourselves – against our own weaknesses and prejudices, against despair, against devaluation of God’s world and God’s people, and all people are God’s whether they know it or not. Whether we know it or not.

It is a fight and you are in, whether you like it or not, whether you pass through the world without ever figuring it out or not, without ever caring or not.

“Pray for the dead, and work for the living,” said Mother Jones, saint that she is.

Amen, and amen. Amen forever.

Richard Van Ingram
15 May 2007

Sarcastic Venom in a Fruit Jar, Straight From the Mountain

"No man quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man."
H.L. Mencken
"The Skeptic"

. . . And then I sat silent for a couple of weeks, listening.

It’s awfully easy to become demoralized if you are not a brainwashed True Believer and starry-eyed servant of the Bush family.

Where to begin?

Over the past several days I have sat, head in hand, with the realization that, come 2008, once again a Republican nut case will be sitting the White House. Why? Because the Democratic Party is led by selfish idiots.

Here we are, at one of the most dangerous moments in human history: countries are coming apart at the seams; resources such as oil are now dangerously scarce while demand is on the rise – with all of the attendant environmental difficulties this brings; religious fanatics are delivering their sermons on the heads of guided missiles, punctuating them with IUDs; human beings are treating human beings as so much meat to be ground up and disposed of at will, and they are all acting as if the planet is just tinder for one fantastic marshmallow roast to be had at the Gotterdammerung.

Our Supreme Court is now stuffed with Right-Wing zombies who believe in sending the country back to happier times before the Voting Rights Act was passed and the grounding for various individual rights was recognized within the Constitution, and before people began to consider strange ideas such as that women and men might be equal and that straight and non-straight people deserve equal protection before the law.

We’re faced with hordes of Neo-Cons who think the New Deal was a Commie Plot and say so out loud; they are no longer concerned people will call them on it because they have succeeded in mis-educating and propagandizing the public for a solid quarter century now. They have convinced the American people we have no responsibilities except to ourselves and to protecting the "rights" of big business. Anything else is "socialism" and socialism, as we all know, is the greased stripper pole straight into Hell and equality.

Okay. Let’s say that’s the short version of the world’s and America’s woes. Let’s say 2008 is election year after two terms of George W.’s rule, two terms of ridiculous, wicked, pure-out insanity and greed which the Democrats could not end even with the President’s approval ratings in the toilet in 2004 – 2008 rolls around and it is paramount that we get these Neo-Con proto-fascists out of office and work on dismantling their "initiatives," "laws," and "policies," such as the Patriot Act, before they become permanent. So what do the Democrats do? Run a field of candidates that cannot win.

Worse, they run a field of candidates that will make it possible for the Republicans to take the White House even if they decide to run a lobotomized slobbering Baboon plagued with the habit of masturbating vigorously in public.

Of course, he’d have to carry a Bible, but I digress.

What do we have from the Democrats? Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards.
What’s wrong with them? Nothing. Nothing at all. But that isn’t the issue; the issue is that there is something wrong with our country, a slight issue we call "prejudice," both racial and gender oriented.

In short, the front runner, Senator Clinton, is unelectable because she is a woman and Senator Obama is unelectable because he is black. The simple and unfortunate fact is that we cannot hope to reform a country in the middle of a Presidential race – we cannot change people’s minds about such matters in a campaign they are not prepared to change them about ahead of time. The Democrats as a party must get into office first, then work on changing people’s minds, not the other way ‘round.

And the sad reality is that the only way a black person or a woman will see the Oval Office in ’08 will be if the Neo-Cons decide to run Condoleeza Rice against Hillary Clinton; in that case, even Trent Lott and his Mississippi Klansmen will turn out to stuff ballot boxes in favor of an African American simply to retain power. They would resurrect the dead back to the Civil War to get enough names, strange times as these are.

Senator John Edwards? He is pro-union, pro-worker, and no one knows who the Hell he is as he has no money, comparatively.

What are the Democrats thinking? They aren’t, as usual. What they ought to be thinking is: If we can take the White House and hold onto Congress, we can pass legislation; we can override dangerous Supreme Court decisions; we can have coherent foreign and domestic policies.
What the "frontrunners" each ought to be thinking is this: Hillary needs to throw in the towel and say, in return for my money and support and a cabinet position, I’ll support whoever we come up with that can be our figurehead and get elected; Barack should say I’ll do the same and I expect to see the Democratic Party to make a concerted effort to pay attention to me and my issues for the next four years; John needs to follow suit.

The Democrats then, as a united party, need to put it to the American people that the Far Right Conservatives have gotten us into an unbelievably dangerous mess based on principles not geared toward the good of most people, and that we need to come together in the middle to start working on some compromises we can all live with, move away from this far Right-Wing and far Left-Wing extremism, face our future more or less together, and get on with living.
Otherwise, there will be no way Hillary or Barack or John – or their supporters – will be effective at all. That is, unless the majority of Americans suddenly snap to their senses and realize the Republican Party is corrupt from toe to top and is more frightening than that 10-headed Beast of the Apocalypse Jack T. Chick liked to write about in his little Bible Tracts. One more term in office and they’ll have cameras in your houses and microphones in your bedrooms and National I.D. cards in your pockets – geeze, people, they already have your phone and e-mail and financial records and were willing to snag them illegally. They already have dungeons and torturers and murderers on the payroll and have such nebulous definitions for "terrorists" and those who "aid terrorism" that it wouldn’t take much for anyone who asks too many questions to find herself in Camp X-Ray wearing an orange jumpsuit, chained to the floor listening to Megadeath so loud it makes her nose bleed.

It can’t happen here? It would take the American people realizing that such evil can happen anywhere there are humans and governments.

It would take the American people realizing that every other word out of George W’s mouth is a lie and that every word in between is either an excuse for having been caught lying or an attack on those who caught him; and it would take us collectively realizing we’d be better off with Senator Clinton, or Senator Obama, or Senator Edwards in the White House for any of them to get elected.

But I don’t think we’re there yet.

No, we’re still listening to Dick Cheney continue to claim against all facts that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and that we’re "winning" the War in Iraq which is an
extension of The War on Terror. No, really.

And none of it was about oil or Halliburton. No, really.

We’re still listening to the President throw his support behind corrupt functionaries like Alberto Gonzalez and Paul Wolfowitz. The President is still claiming his new Federal Attorneys, replacements for the fired ones, were not chosen for political reasons, because that would be illegal, not to mention just bad policy. "Good job, Brownie!"

The American people are still buying the Star Spangled showbiz bullshit from the White House and from Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter, and as long as they do so they won’t be able to bypass their prejudices towards women and black people (or candidates without a lot of cash) and elect one of the three main Democrats to the presidency. The American people, as little as they like Bush, as much as they tend to grasp by now that he and his bunch are vile and corrupt, aren’t as concerned as they ought to be about the regime that has generally ruled this country starting with Reagan that inevitably led to George W. They know they don’t much care for Bush – but they don’t truly know why they ought not like him and his party yet.

I don’t think most folks will figure it out before November ’08 short of yet another mishandled and botched disaster, God forbid, that the Republicans try to convert into even more opportunities to "make lots of money," as the Pet Shop Boys sang.

The American people won’t figure it out and the leading Democrats won’t admit it’s their responsibility to sacrifice personal ambition in order to avert further destruction and corruption. Just like a bunch of damned politicians all around.

I’m beginning to feel like a Roman. I’m smelling smoke on the wind and I think I hear the Emperor’s fiddle in the distance. It’s far off – but not too far now. Not at all, not at all.

Richard Van Ingram
7 May 2007