Here is redemption, and hell

Why would He, who wants for nothing and having been responsible for everything, enjoin humankind to love, honor, and obey Him? Doesn't make sense.

S/he always was and always will be and is totally sufficient unto its self. S/he created you and me and all others past, present, future. We live given this world's nature and conditions, which s/he set in motion and leaves "well enough" alone. But we in petitionary prayer and lamentations think we can move the all-powerful to intervene in any of this? Or we surrender to just what-is, end of story, no comment or questions. Doesn't make sense.

The world is as such that we act seemingly independently and together, and there is the illusion that things change and there is the promise they will get better. But we live and die without full realization or assurance of any of this, much less a deity's existence, whilst all is culturally specific. . . and therefore do in varying ways we revere. Why would we deem some entity thus deserving? or have any motives for us much less mandates? Doesn't make sense.

There is no evidence of goodness and protection when human pain and suffering we witness daily. It is impossible to love, honor, and obey such a god or ground of being. It is impossible to behave as if we can make any difference in what happens by pleading, or that we can do nothing because it is already all a fait accompli. It is impossible to discern any plan we are a part of or should follow. These things don't make sense--especially because there is no protection from or end in innocents suffering.

Hell? It is here and now. The promise of goodness and something better lie with us. What other conclusion can you deduce? without making up stories.

The only other question that remains is hearing incarnate voices, or some variation of same. Are one's personal experiences then sufficient to believe and act otherwise? If so, would it then be the start of the same stuff all over again?

Truth be told, aspect A

The best punishment for my naughty child is to be sent to my room.

In pre-school I ran down the grassy slope to inspect the chalky paint jars set on easel's ledge with large sheets of paper pinned and ready above. I touched the brush and moved it to see if it was real. I left no mark.

I registered myself for kindergarten, one child not holding his mom's hand. As I got out of the car, she said I knew where to go and what to do. I took my place in line and without fear stood independent in pride. I found I missed nothing in the act performed not as others had. I had no choice, nor did they, I suppose.

I took a test in elementary school. I had "analytical aptitude." I didn't know what that was good for, or what it was. My show-and-tell was confiscated by the teacher. After class I asked for it and got it back, her silence filled by my standing up before her in her habit.

Around eight, I wrote my first poem, something about happy alone. Be sure--not lonely.

In prep school, a visiting expert career counselor (former football great turned Jesuit) said I had better find a trade. I was not "college material," although I had been prepped. I surmised he had mixed the student folders. Who was in line before or behind me? I was the class president, wasn't I. But not been back since nor was I ever invited. They lost me or I lost them. Now they ask for money I don't have to spare. Mixed review on their teachings or what I learned.

For the life of me I could not master college survey courses as I blindly  aimed at a profession I never practiced full time and thus never  mastered. I'm now too ill and too old. Unseen connections put me with future college teachers at the time. I was stone silent and felt alone, intimidated by the loquacious ones. I told a professor of history in his office that there was no such thing as history, which I now realize is correct, the explanation too long for today's philosophy. He was too committed to listen to my mind.

 A big name in the subject of my dissertation refused to sit on my committee. I had "nothing to offer" him he said. He equated the physical with the metaphysical. Silly "prig" (his self-description for something he once did, and now my word for his arrogance and confusion). Faculty members dozed as they from lunch sated and sat to hear my master work's outline. Later one conducted my comprehensive examination by phone. He congratulated me without committee members gone missing, and without any questions. I am unsure I earned a Ph.D., but I no longer question, or much care.

I have circulated conundra like this to silent readers. I keep writing but now ignore the public(ation) of any sort. I will leave no mark. So consider this an exercise of a fearless child, happily playing in his room. He may or may not have been courageous or worthy in the face of odds and impediments. He has no money to spare, but he is a generous listener for those who need him. Matters metaphysical occupy his time as does history in the making. He works to know his self by talking to his Self, at times counter-productively in the third person.

Grace themselves

Not for me, not for you, not for the eye
that spied them first, our fancies thusly prompt.
There they hurry and stop for us to sigh.
Not cam'ra nor the -man for him they romped.

Three graces grace and give the static lie--
in a moment frozen. But more we'd see.
We would they'd greet us now approaching nigh,
to have 'nd hold they'd share with us their glee.

The trap for audience response now set.
Charm and mirth the scene--it is fertile green.
A font for creative words we must let,
gathered here then cut, crafted so, too lean.

This lyric is the most that we can get.
The graces were as they still there appear:
The only joy-create their own they met,
in freedom mindless of what man they sear.

Hell with Socrates

Humbly I till the garden of letters,
seeds and seeming fruit and flowers
ripe for picking or peering at.
For my own recreation and amusement,
they are my treasured memorials,
my rage against the dying of the light.

And if speech dialectic is not my call,
or house to house my words and private
wisdom and print for unnamed others?
I care only that I do not forget.

Thus I behold tender inclusion into ordered rows
their slow growth and interweaving and interleaving.
This is a past time where my days are spent.
If by chance my son or daughter stops by
to see and savor my works, know that my labors
were in truth not just mine and not just me.

They are treasures against forgetting who I am,
and who I was.

Harold Hoarder

Dearest Harold (the Hoarder),

Thank you for your message. I read it with compassion, but a pain in my heart. Compassion we need not dwell upon, mere sentimental and useless BS. But of pain must I speak, being a person of the cloth, your humble servant, bringing you ideas and words you, sadly, cast into the wasteland from which your materialism grows. My faith in your salvation continues, and so . . .

I recall you once threw a dildoe away. Blessings, my son, for therein is an evil material thing. Why, with dildoes, what woman has use of a man and his member? Is it not better to cast the thing from you and use your own, Gypsy-given tool to satisfy yourself and your woman? Besides, dildoes need batteries to work and they wear out and you have to buy more. With a dildoe you now have more things to worry about. You performed a good deed by casting that "thilthy"* thing aside.

I recall you once hoarded an empty box. Is it not so? Cast it also away. It is the occasion for sin, for you might put something in it and then where will you be? A man with a box now filled--you have two material things whereas before you had one. See how this error in your ways multiplies? And what if you put more than one thing in the box? You will forget all of what you have in there before nature takes your memory away from you naturally. What a tragedy! We need no stinking boxes.**

Does not the scripture say that to enter the kingdom of heaven you must pass through the eye of a needle? It indeed does. In the Holy Book of Gypsy it says that the damned will swim in their belongings on the lowest level of hell, for there is where all human waste and material objects sink and mire those who would not forsake and let go  their grubby little hands that which they could not part.

Ah, pain in my heart. Save thy self before it is too late. You don't wish after you part to be thrown into that infinite storage unit below with all that crap and all the crap that other hoarders and materialists have accumulated. Think of it. All that plastic and refuse and tools you can't use in the afterlife. You will be unable to grasp any of it with your immaterial hands. You will still, however, get a monthly bill for storage. Material hell is not a fair nor pleasant place.

Ponder and continue to pay until you are forced to yell, "Uncle!" or, "Pastor, help me. Help me. I'm drowning. I'm drowning."***

So ends this message from Word-of-the-Day Salvation and Redemption services, a non-profit church for the overly burdened souls of color on this earth. You being a whitie of some pinkish color, not politically of course.

I.M. Free

PS Where did you throw that dildoe? Is there any way of recovering that and having a quick sniff?****

___
* _Filthy_ pronounced thus for shock/amusement's sake.
** An allusion to a line from a movie, which was never, trivia buffs beware, phrased in this way in the original.
*** A reference to Harold' youth when he and a buddy rowed out a ways in the lake and called to the shore, thus bringing the Coast Guard and the county sheriff to the rescue.
**** Property of Diane Messchaert about whom another post will tell all sordid details.