Vulnerable Vases

For years I have been amazed that people watch television. I don’t know where they find the time. I must have an overabundance of interests and ambitions, because I have been unable to organize my life well enough to have time for them all, and I’m not ready to abandon my impossible dreams. I certainly can’t find time to watch, on tv, someone else live their virtual life. Thus, most of the things I have projected and begun, are seriously neglected. Julie Morgenstern’s Four D method of dealing with the overwhelming has been helpful, but I don’t want to delete, I have already delayed so much that I am continually finding the forgotten, decayed, and disintegrated. I do delegate more and still more, yet in the overall picture, I delegate only a small portion of my life. My life is mine. I don’t want to delegate it to someone else. The fourth D, I’ve made my peace with. I have lowered my expectations and diminished my visions to fit reality. Almost. With this introduction, now I get specific. A year or two ago, my yard, I was told, reminded everyone of Sanford and Son (I used to watch a little TV). I was gathering material and preparing ground for a total remake of my conventional lawn into a Native Plant Landscape. I know where I am headed with it, and am making real progress in the front yard. But to some of my neighbors, I suppose it still looks like Jed Clamped and all his kin have moved into this nice neighborhood. The backyard, however, looks more like Pa Kettle’s place. This evening as I was locking gates and shutting my little flock of banties into their coop, the thought struck me: “What if I were to drop dead before I get it all uncluttered, landscaped, and planted? Would the family attempt to restore social order, or would they throw up their hands and hire someone to come in, haul it all off, level the ground, and sod it afresh with St. Augustine grass and socially correct shrubbery?” I realized that it would be completely unfair for me to die, leaving it all in this condition for them to deal with. And, although I am in excellent health, I am at an age where human bodies fall apart unexpectedly. It is happening to more and more of my friends. I am aware I am not exempt. I will not be the exception. In 1975 I took up pottery, traditional pottery, hand-thrown on the potter’s wheel, fired in a flaming kiln. I enjoyed every aspect of it, from digging and mixing my own clay, my own glazes, forming it on the wheel, firing it long hours in the kiln, then, after admiring some and throwing out my disappointments, I sold a little and gave away 99% of the best I made. I’ve often regretted I didn’t keep more, but I am glad it is in the hands of people who can enjoy it. I’ve kept and enjoyed a vase that I made in 1976. With recent renovation in my retreat, I set it on a shelf on the back porch. Apart from breakage, pottery has an incredible life expectancy: at least thousands of years. Apart from breakage, yes, but that has always been the fate of most pottery. Pottery is brittle; it is fragile. With my eyes on the inexcusable chaos of the back yard and thoughts of the unfairness of a sudden death on my part, I opened the back door to come in for the night. As I opened the door, I bumped something that was mislocated–like almost everything else in that area–and heard things begin falling. I turned and looked down. The thirty-one-year-old vase lay in shattered disarray. That easily, that suddenly and unexpectedly, it was gone. Immediately I became even more keenly aware of the fragility of human life. It could happen to me. I try to live by Naomi Shihab Nye’s advice: Walk around feeling like a leaf Know you could tumble any second Then decide what to do with your time I made pottery for only about ten years before it was diminished in my schedule and delayed until I now keep thinking I will just delete that joyous element of my world. The pot tonight was one of the last I made with my own hands and thought. I understand that Paul of Tarsus, responding to challenges from a dysfunctional church in Corinth, was talking about something different when he said, “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” but his words also apply to the precious treasure of human life. Life is another treasure in earthen vessels. Some of us already are cracked pots, but we all will go the way my thirty-one-year-old vase did this evening. Evening is coming; for some of us it is already dusk. Know you could tumble like a leaf any second, then consider whether you have time for that addictive electronic, brain-numbing, time-stealing tube over there in front of the couch.

Correction

In the recent blog, "Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?" I named Chloe as a deacon. Should have written Phoebe. Chloe was another woman who apparently was a leader of some magnitude in the church at Corinth, but is not identified as a deacon. Check Romans 16:1, and 1 Corinthians 1:11.

Snot

The only person, the only face, the only name I can remember from my first two years in school was a second-grader I often walked to school with, a hare-lipped boy we all knew only as “Snotnose.” Sadly, the name always fit. Of course we all at times have suffered from that condition, but with him it was a constant. One of my own snotty discoveries came after I began working: plowing, mowing or raking hay, mixing feed by the ton, unloading semi-truck loads of porously sacked blood meal, and other tasks that filled the air with dusty pollutants. Blowing and cleaning out my nose at the end of the day, It took only a few of those experiences before I came to see the function of snot. That black stuff that emerged educated me. Snot is not an obscene topic. It is merely mucus. Think of them as synonyms, which they are. Snot simply refers to the stuff in the snout. Check a dictionary; check an etymological dictionary. In polite society we find one term–snot--objectionable; if we study human physiology, we find the stuff itself–mucus--indispensable. In its pure state, this slime, in cooperation with the hairs in our nose, functions as a filtering vacuum cleaner to provide our lungs with clean inspiration. As we inhale, mucus traps and hold in the vacuum bag–the nose–much of the pollution that contaminates the air in every breath we take: dust, pollen, airborne germs, and other assorted detritus that drifts full-time through the atmosphere. When we exhale, the vacuum bag tends to empty its dirty accumulation. If the buildup begins to clog the system, we typically turn the power up a few notches for a more vigorous exhalation to blow the now contaminated snot out. Thus our lungs are protected and our health body maintains its homeostasis. What would we do without snot? This structure, the nose, stands guard over the lungs (and by implication, the body; by further implication our very self), but the guardhouse is not 100% effective. Sometimes the airborne invaders overwhelm it and infections of varied types attack the system--perhaps the most common intruder is the common cold. From the battleground on which the invaders and our immune system combat each other, many of the wounded and dead wind up overloading the limited storage space the guardhouse provides. On top of the miseries we already suffer from infection, we find ourselves with breathing problems. The intonation of our speech changes. If in public, we are embarrassed as people see us shift our breathing to a makeshift vacuum cleaner, the mouth–sans hairs, equipped rather with teeth, thus not as effective in trapping whatever foul invaders may take the occasion to advance their attack. With the nose overloaded with used up snot, we take action and blow the garbage out so the good mucus can get back on the job full-time. And, we move more closely into our comfort zone. I am writing such an essay because it is an exercise suggested by Bonni Goldberg in her book, Room to Write. This exercise was designed to facilitate a less inhibited approach to writing. I suspect that, for me, it will work. To use T. B. Maston’s applicable phrase, are there any “abidingly relevant principles” that emerge from this brief essay on bodily slime? I think there are. If time and purpose allowed, we might note the other many assorted elements with which the body protects itself, and the half-dozen or so systems with which the body rids itself of used up, useless matter, or substances that threaten our health. Moreover, we might find it adventurous to study the ubiquity and function of mucus in places beyond the nose. I am interested just now, however, in what analogies we might adapt from the foregoing essay. We live in a social atmosphere in which monstrous pollution, garbage, filth, and toxicity is unavoidable. Television is high on the list, but the list is long. We need guard towers, we need protective filters (soul mucus), or we will be–we are being–destroyed. But even with the best of protection, at times our complex of defenses is inevitably overwhelmed. Our soul becomes a battleground. Not only do we need a strong and effective immune system to rally and defeat the intruders, we similarly must develop and maintain an active and efficient elimination system or systems. Day and night, week by week, if we are alert, we become aware that our mind, heart, spirit–whatever–is stopped up or is becoming clogged up with stuff that has been used up and no longer of value, stuff that was useless to begin with, stuff that threatens our entire being with its toxicity. Part of a psychic guard station/vacuum cleaning/filtering system by learning where pollution is severe and intentionally avoiding these danger zones, to the degree that is possible. Take lessons from Thoreau’s, Walden, Scott and Helen Nearing’s, Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Listen to the Psalmist, “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.” Embed things into our character that automatically screen out pollution because they are part of who we have become. Such character traits will, like the mucus and hairs in our nose work without any need of conscious effort on our part. This only begins to suggest ways to filter out the garbage that our society systematically offers us as food. Each will have to develop systems that are appropriate to who they are, but develop them we must, or multiple infections will destroy us; our life will stumble down a degenerative hill. A second step toward spiritual, mental health is to excrete all of this stuff that jams up the plumbing of our spiritual anatomy. Sometimes, like the blowing of the nose, it requires forceful, even violent expulsion. If our spirit is healthy, much of this will be done unconsciously, much as the body secretes wastes through sweat. But we also need to maintain the sensitive awareness of the daily alien intrusions and develop habits of regular daily elimination of all the junk that obstructs or threatens our well-being. Otherwise, mental and spiritual constipation will provide a perfect setup for misery. A few methods of excretion occur to me immediately; I’m sure will come to me later. Talk with someone–trusted friend, professional counselor, God–about the trash that is clogging up your life flow. That can make a beginning, at least, of getting it out of your system. Somewhere years ago I heard the idea of “the expulsive power of a new affection.” Can something be found that is interesting enough and powerful enough to take over the space and thus expel the enemy agents that have gained a beachhead in your mind? One lesson learned from snot is that at times there are things that must be eliminated from our life or it can become mighty miserable. What has our scrutiny of snot attained? It has established that we need to learn more about the mental and spiritual defensive structures that can filter out the pollutants that fill our individual and social environment. If these structures are to do their job, regular and careful maintenance is necessary. We need to identify and become more aware of the importance of our several systems of elimination. We must understand how they work so we can regularly rid ourselves of all the crap that inescapably accumulates in our lives. Thinking about snot is not a waste of time.

Hearing God While Reading the Bible

Today during Ed’s funeral, we learned that the greatest single word of assurance for him came from John 14:1-3, specifically: “I go to prepare a place for you. . . .” When God spoke directly, personally to Ed as long ago he read those words, he heard God saying: "I go to prepare a place for you.” Ed had felt alone in the world prior to that life-changing moment; there was no place where he felt that he fit. But when the risen Jesus spoke clearly to him of “ a place for you,” he knew that there was a place already prepared for him, just him, a place waiting that no one else could occupy. After that word from God, any time he felt a question about his standing with God, he went back to that personal word from God. But we know the setting in which these words were spoken by the historical Jesus. Knowing that he was facing death, knowing that his close disciples felt as if they were about to be abandoned, Jesus assured them that they should not be disturbed, because although he was about to die, he was going to prepare a place for them, so that at the appropriate time they could join him in a prepared place. These words were addressed directly to the few special disciples. They were not addressed to the multitudes. These words weren’t given as a generic message of comfort and hope. How can we appropriate these words, believing that God speaks them personally to an individual in the 21st Century? Can biblical hermeneutics answer out question? Hermeneutics is all about interpretation: methods, principles, practice. It intends to help us understand the true meaning of a written passage. At the heart of hermeneutics is the concept of exegesis, which is the effort to extract from the text only what is in the text. Exegesis is to be contrasted with eisegesis, which is the practice of reading our own ideas into the text. Careful use of the principles of exegesis give us an objective, we might even say scientific, understanding of what a text is saying in truth. Eisegesis is a subjective reading that can read almost anything into a text; it has no objective constraints. Standard practice in schools of theological training stresses exegesis as the only dependable pathway to biblical truth. Eisegesis is frowned on. For long years I lived under the control of these ideas. However, I’ve come to realize that exegesis alone is not sufficient, perhaps not even necessary to hear God speak through the written holy script. Exegesis, in all its dimensions, de-finites meaning only in the literal sense of definition, that is, it sets the boundaries of meaning, and that is all it can do. It indicates where the fences are. A fence, a wall, a border, knows not the content, intent, or portent of what it confines. Sometimes exegesis cannot completely fence in meaning. Sometimes meaning jumps fences, breaks them down, slips through the border guards. Sometimes the borders are permeable or semipermeable. At other times the fences have gates, built-in gates through which meaning finds or achieves greater freedom. “The letter kills; the spirit frees.” Nor do any principles of interpretation dictate or clearly delineate meaning. Certainly hermeneutical principles cannot provide objective, indisputable, comprehensive understanding, much less insight or direct communication. Hermeneutics exists only as a faithful servant to be called only occasionally, as needed. None of this is to denigrate exegetical, hermeneutical principles and methods. However, occasionally the need arises to remind servants of their station, to put them back in their place. Servants are not masters. Consciously or not, deliberately or not, one theme of history is that servants tend to forget who they are, or reject their status and usurp the authority of their mistress or master (Mark 12:1-12). Principles of interpretation, the work of exegesis, the learning of the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic languages and perhaps other Semitic languages are all of value. To repeat, the vocabulary, etymology, grammar, and syntax of a language guard against subjectivism, but the guard–like the servant–is not the Lord. I cannot overemphasize the respect I have for all these objective tools, but they must be kept firmly in their place. I remember the manager of a nationally prominent Angus Cattle Farm in Tulsa, Oklahoma back in the 1950s. He had brought his prize cattle to show–and win–in the International Livestock Show in Chicago. After getting the cattle and hired help (read, “servants”) settled in, he checked into a nice downtown hotel. The manager, Earl, was inconsiderate, wrong, and extremely rude to the bellhop who carried his luggage for him to his room. The bellhop, expecting a tip, extended his hand, palm up. Earl dismissed him abruptly with a curt: “I don’t shake hands with the help,” then turned to the task of unpacking and settling into his room. In recounting this occasion, I have not intended that we should adopt and project Earl’s attitude toward the “help.” I reviewed this scene as one way to emphasize that the “help,” the “servant,” always holds a place subordinate to a superior, and must maintain always the subservient place. Formal hermeneutics is subservient to the living Spirit who first inspired these words and would now speak to our own living spirit. I have great respect and appreciation for formal hermeneutics. It has been a needed guard and servant for me, a close companion for most of the past fifty years. Because of my training in a “modern” and conservative theological seminary. I too often allowed it to be the director–even the dictator–of my reading of the Bible. (Clearly, it would rule that Ed did not hear God speak to him in the words of John 14; those words were directed to Jesus’ apostles.) I refer to my “modern” theological training, for although pre-modern–patristic and scholastic–interpreters were not at all hermeneutically unsophisticated, their way of reading the text was quite different from the modern. In the late 20th Century, a postmodern generation also refuses to be fenced in by “formal” rules and boundaries. Postmodern searchers for a scriptural word from God search intently within and without the gate. They are realizing the limits of the exegetical limits on meaning and truth. This diatribe came about as in the wee hours of the morning I drank coffee, ate toast and eggs (from my little silver-laced bantam pullet). As I ate and wrote a letter to one of our daughters, I had The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, open to the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah. At about three o'clock I took a sip of coffee, looked over at the text of the message, and read: “‘There’s hope for your children.’ God’s decree.” I know the occasion of these words, to whom they were addressed, and know that God’s word is not in any one line, or one verse, but lies, rather, in the whole story of the Hebrew Exile. However. . . . When I read, “There’s hope for your children,” this troubled father of sometimes troubled daughters, grandchildren, and great-grand children heard the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, God’s powerful presence, speaking words of comfort to my own aching heart. To me, for me, in that moment, the Holy One of God’s covenant community spoke, saying: “There’s hope for your children,” and I gratefully acknowledged and praised God. A few years ago, the Benedictine oblate, Kathleen Norris acquainted me with the ancient idea of lectio divina, which is defined as: An ancient form of meditation on scripture where one reads "very slowly through a text until a word or phrase 'lights' up and attracts the reader. The text is then laid aside and the phrase is repeated in the heart...without analysis." It is: Reading or more exactly, listening to the book we believe to be divinely inspired. In this way we hear the word of God in the scriptures. It is the most ancient method of developing friendship with Christ by using scripture texts as topics of conversation with him. God spoke to his people in Exile, Jesus to his fearful disciples; Jesus to my friend, Ed; and the other morning, to me. Not, the Bible said, or the Bible means, or “we may understand this as God’s word to us.” No, God’s word, that is, God speaking directly, through the written word, Spirit to spirit, divine love to human cry. Lectio divina: words on a page suddenly light up and it is not just a book, not just an inspired text, rather, in that moment we are inspired–in-spirited by the Comforter Jesus promised.

The Need to Change

No matter how good their evidence, the doctors don’t always know. Doctors from three major hospitals told us that Bea had only three to six months to live, so we borrowed a credit card and with three hundred dollars friends had given us, we set out for California for a last visit with Carol’s sister. That was forty-some years ago. Bea died last year (not of cancer). The doctors don’t always know. On the other hand, the doctors usually prove to be right. I had been their pastor only a week or so when I was told that I should visit a very sick young mother who lived on a farm seven miles north of town. I was new and I was young and it seemed to me that Mae more endured than appreciated the pastoral visit. A few weeks later she was in the hospital forty miles away. When I arrived, the lady at the desk directed me to Room 312. A doctor was leaving 312 as I walked down the hall. I asked Mae how she was doing and received the bitter response, “How would you feel? What would you do if the doctor had just told you that you had cancer and only six months left to live, and you had a son who is only six-years-old?” These unexpected words hit me like a slap in the face, but I realized that the doctor’s words had been a far greater blow to her. It was early afternoon when the doctor came to her room and told her. She was alone. Friends and family were home and about their business, and the doctor had not been expecting that I would be arriving. He merely had told her the devastating facts and left her alone, without any available support expected. I was glad I had showed up. We were virtual strangers, but at least I was another human presence, someone she could absorb some of the shock. I had a six-year-old at home myself, and found myself replying to her “What would you do?” question with: “I don’t know, but I think I would spend that six months putting into that son all of myself that I could.” Within a few weeks I conducted her funeral. Whether my word were of any value or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that now, more than forty years later, I still think that would be my most honest answer as to what I would attempt to do. With Bea, the doctors were wrong and our visit of 1963 was not our predicted last time together. We had many good visits in the years that followed. With Mae, the story was different. Her time was up. I was not allowed to become anything other than a stranger. Someone else raised her son: his father, and then later on, a stepmother. Yet another story, more recent, speaks of a different kind of opportunity. Recognizing that she has come to a fork in life’s road, which will she take before death takes her? Will she choose, or merely drift? Again, a young child is involved. For long years the mother has been careless about her own health, to the point that she now realizes her life is at risk. Her fear of death seems to be like that of Mae’s: “What if I were to die and leave this precious child behind?” More to the point, “How selfish and inconsiderate of me if I were to die because I refused to change my way of living, and thus deprived my child of her mother?” In this situation, I responded, as I often do, with the words of an old Russian proverb: “No matter how long you have been traveling the wrong path, turn around.” Bad eating habits, lack of exercise, failure to follow doctor’s instructions, or even to see the doctor as often as needed–no matter how long these have done their damage they all can be turned around. As Carlyle Marney often said, “You don’t have to go on living like you have.” I remember reading somewhere: “Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it.” Most of us have the essential life skills. Many of us, if we stop to think, know what should be done next. Most of our failure most of the time lies in our not doing what we know we should, and what we know how. There is still time for this mother to turn around and move toward a more promising future for mother and child. Most of us realize the need to turn major elements of our life in a new direction. But will we do it?

I Don't Know

For thirty-some years they came into the university ethics class that I taught, most of them twenty to twenty-two-years-old, honors students mostly. On classroom day one, I always announced as a major objective of mine that they leave the course knowing less than they did at the start. They knew right from wrong. I effectively undermined that knowledge, or as I stated it in class, as another objective, I intentionally muddied what they thought were clear waters. This is one of our larger major problems as citizens of the “developed” world: we know too much. Worse yet, we know that we know it all. We don’t live plagued by uncertainties and doubts. That is very scary. There just is not that much in this world that we can know with certainty. There is not. W. T. Conner was perhaps the greatest Baptist theologian of the 20th Century, at least west of the Mississippi. One of his students related that one day in class, a student asked him for his answer to a particularly difficult and controversial point of theology. Dr. Conner responded, “I don’t know.” Whereupon, the young student began to give a full and clear answer to the class and Dr. Conner. The professor interrupted him with, “Mr. ___, I didn’t say, ‘You don’t know the answer,’ I don’t know the answer.” In her 1994 acceptance speech on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wislawa Szymborska spoke of why she valued that little phrase ‘I don’t know’ so highly. It’s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us and the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself, ‘I don’t know’ the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones, and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself, ‘I don’t know,’ she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some . . . highschool. . . . I’ve been in church all my life, am an ordained minister, hold three advanced degrees in theology, and have taught theology for thirty-some years, yet I don’t know–about, for instance, “demons,” “evil spirits,” or whatever. I’ve read and heard just about everything others think or know or think they know, and I understand their reasoning. But I don’t know what they are all about. I do know that whatever they are, in the gospel stories, they were the cause of suffering unspeakable. Those possessed by demons did not live a life of comfort and ease. In a core sense of the word, they were dis-eased. What I do know about them is that Jesus had power over them, and had the power and compassion to heal those under the bondage to these dis-eases of the spirit. That only touches the surface of what I don’t know biblically or theologically–my Christian agnosticism.

Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

I don’t know how we get things so mixed up (so confused, is just another way of saying the same thing). “Fuse” simply means “to blend together into one,” and the prefix, “con,” (a variant of “com”) has as one of its major meanings: “together.” Thus, confuse has come to mean: “ to blend together into one, things that don’t properly fit together.” Why and how is it that we so commonly mix together things that don’t belong together? Again, I don’t know the answer. All I know is that we do it. Just now, I’m talking about the ways we confuse things in the Bible, which, when we do, inevitably makes an unholy mess of our religion: both our thoughts about it and our practice of it. More particularly, just now, I’m considering our confusion of women and the Christian ministry, and later, the confusion of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. First, some terms can stand clarification. What is a preacher, what an apostle, and what a deacon? One of the two primary words from Greek New Testament that we use to translate as preacher literally means, “One who carries a message of good news, one who announces good news.” “Apostle” literally means, “one commissioned and sent to carry an official message.” The Greek word we translate–actually transliterate–as deacon means, ”servant.” Now, to the specific confusions. According to the Bible, Mary of Magdala was the first to see, as well as the first to speak to Jesus after his death, burial and subsequent live appearance. Jesus told her (commissioned) to go (sent) and tell The Eleven (no longer the Twelve, Judas having been lost) that he had been raised and would meet with them. By clear word meaning, this makes Mary Magdalene one of Jesus’ apostles, even though the word itself is not used in the text. She also is, by clear word meaning, a preacher, in fact, the first preacher of the good news of the resurrection of Jesus. She is, as some early Christian writers acknowledged, “the apostle to the apostles,” and, under the direct order (ordination?) of Jesus, she is a Christian preacher. Perhaps Christian women should be holding meetings to consider whether men should be ordained to Christian ministry. After all, the men had run away, defeated, discouraged, and ready to revert to their old life. When Mary related to them the gospel of the resurrection, they were unbelievers; they paid her no mind. Except for subsequent cultural developments, there is no reason that women should not be included in, and ordained to the Christian ministry. Now to deacons. The woman, Phoebe, is identified by Paul as a “deacon.” The Greek words used to identify Phoebe is, in the New Testament, always translated, “deacon.” Except when they refer to her! Although the original text of the Bible calls her deacon, the translators almost universally use “servant” in the Phoebe passage, with no word of explanation for the word change. Clearly, the word does mean servant, but when it refers to men, the translators uniformly transliterate rather than translate the Greek, diakonos, as deacon. Again, cultural developments after the 1st Century seem to have caused Phoebe to be re-designated. Several more reasons could be adduced for routinely including women in Christian ministry, and perhaps on another occasion I will relate those. My more direct interest in this blog is to clear up the long-standing con-fusion of Mary the Magdalene and “prostitute.” Again, for cultural reasons and from an early date, Mary was identified as a converted prostitute. I suggest the best way for you to clear this mix-up is to read each of the New Testament passages that refer to Mary Magdalene by name. Other, unnamed, women often have been identified, by mere assumption, as “Mag” (I play loosely with her name only because I have an aunt named Magdalene, and the family usually calls her, “Mag”). There is no evidence at all that any of these unnamed women actually were Mary.

Me Again Once More

I’ve been retired for eleven months. Major life transition. I had no idea how much “catch-up” there was to be done after decades of more or less benign neglect. I retired May 12, 2006 and was certain I would have everything caught up and organized by July 15. Then I could devote serious time to writing. After July 15, I realized it might take as much as six months. When December came, I was on the verge of despair, but pulled back from that destructive mood. I now realized that I could not define the time required to bring a new order into my life, so I relaxed, decided to “go with the flow.” “Don’t worry, be happy.” However, the eight-ten weeks lapse in blogging nagged at my happiness. Now, neither completely caught up, nor solidly restructured, I do believe I have cleared a path wide enough and smooth enough that I can renew serious blogging. By my retirement anniversary, May 12, I have good reason to believe that I will have successfully made the transition from university professor to professor emeritorious. The continuity between these two parts of the book of my life is that I continue to be “He who provokes thought, who challenges the status quo.” That is about all that I am good for, except maintaining a faithful and richly satisfying relationship with Carol, a love that has been running now ever since the summer of 1950. If you want a challenge, an adventure, try to match that. It is more than worth all the effort.

The "Good Life," located out of place

Both the Stoics and the Epicureans came to believe there was no way they could figure everything out, understand how it all works, or what it means. Both agreed that wisdom lay in backing off from the heavy issues and making the best you can of your brief years. The Stoic said, "You can’t understand Reality, and you can’t change it, so get real, accept and adjust to the way things are. Stop getting excited, and stop being gloomy. Quell your emotions and live by calm Reason." Epicurus took an approach similar to the biblical Ecclesiastes. Since we can’t figure it all out, enjoy it while you can. Live for personal pleasure. Christians understand the Bible to be revealed by God, not thought out by some human mind. Divine revelation and philosophy are opposites: one comes from God’s will, the other from the human mind. Ecclesiastes is the only book of philosophy in the Bible"I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven." (1:13) "I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after the wind." He sets out to figure things out for himself and realizes he can’t. At that point he became a philosopher. "I concluded that man cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover; and though the wise man should say, ‘I know,’ he cannot discover." (8:17) "So I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat, and to drink and be merry." (8:15; See also 2:24, 3:12f., 5:18f., 9:7f.) The Epicurean idea of pleasure can be understood more clearly by contrasting it with the thought of Aristippus of Cyrene. He also taught the pursuit of pleasure, all you could get. Several decades ago, a beer commercial on television said, "Grab all the gusto you can get; you only go around once." If you enjoy liquor, really tie one on. Do you enjoy mountain climbing? Then go to the Himalayas or the Alps; climb Mt. Everest or the Matterhorn. Go for the greatest thrills. Aristippus’ name didn’t stick to his philosophy. Rather, this way of thought and life took on the name of the place of its origin, Cyrene. Those who hold to this view are called, "Cyrenaics." Ernest Hemingway was a representative Cyrenaic. He climbed the mountains, got roaring drunk, got into the bull ring in Spain and fought the bulls. Once, while taking a carload of friends to his country home at Ketchum, Idaho, a grizzly bear ambled out of the woods onto the dirt road. The bear stopped in front of the car, so the car had to stop. The bear reared up on its hind legs and growled ferociously. Hemingway got out of the car, walked up and got in the bear’s face, then proceeded to cuss him out for scaring all those people in the car. After a minute of such profanity, the bear dropped back on all-fours and retreated into the woods. These are all high-risk thrills, but to the Cyrenaic, they are worth it. Epicurus thought the Cyrenaics (who are still very much with us) stupid. Yes, those are high experiences, but don’t forget their downside. Many who challenge the great mountains fall to their death, or freeze. Yes, Epicurus said, the drunken party may be great fun, but the hangover next morning cancels the night’s pleasure. Get the exhilaration of the bull ring, but remember that sometimes the matador is carried from the ring on a stretcher. Not all grizzlies will turn and slink away. Epicurus believed the wiser hedonistic life was more moderate. It didn’t have the great highs, but it didn’t have the painful or fatal lows. His idea of the life of pleasure–the good life–was to sit at table in a quiet, lovely garden with a few friends, some cheese and a bottle of wine, and engage in weighty conversation. Both the Epicurean and the Stoic are egoistic hedonists. Later we will meet a couple of universal hedonists, but these early fellows advised that we just look out for number one. If you are a Christian, consider the possibility of a Christian hedonism. God created the world for his own good pleasure. It was God’s pleasure to bring salvation by way of Mt. Calvary. Whatever else heaven is, it is understood to be a place of pure pleasure with no admixture of pain, regret, or distress. The height of the Christian life is peace and joy. Love, as characterized in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, is the way to ultimate enjoyment. Love leads to peace and joy. Cyrenaic, Epicurean, and Christian hedonisms? Quantity of pleasure, quality of pleasure, and highest quality of pleasure. Think about it.

What Is the SBC?

I guess I should add Baptist to my "Bs." If Paul was "a Hebrew of the Hebrews," (and he demonstrated to the Philippian church that he was), then I was a Southern Baptist of Southern Baptists. Before I was born, Grandma Roark was a member of the Fair Baptist Church in western Stephens county, Oklahoma. Ever since I became an adult, I’ve known that Grandma was "churched." They voted her out. My dad was about seventeen at the time, and when he heard about it, he went in the house, got someone’s pistol, and started down the road to the church. Walking. Uncle Charley saw his younger brother walking down the red clay road with a pistol in his hand. He caught up, and asked, "Harry, what are you going to do with that pistol?" Daddy’s instantaneous response was, "I’m going over to the church and shoot that preacher that kicked Mom out of the church." (At the time, this young man was a self-declared atheist, little knowing that within three years he would be at Oklahoma Baptist University, and pastor of a quarter-time church, the beginning of a ministry of more than fifty years.) Uncle Charley talked him out of killing the preacher. I was over sixty-years-old when I learned "the rest of the story." The pastor was carrying on a sexual affair, inappropriate to a minister, and Grandma was one of the first to learn of it. The pastor learned that Grandma was going to raise the issue at church business meeting, so he beat her to the punch and talked the church into voting her out. I never learned the nature of his case against Grandma, but he apparently was a persuasive speaker. A short time later, he was "called" to another church. I’ve told this story to indicate that my Baptist roots go back a ways. Daddy wound up, as I noted earlier, being a Baptist pastor from the mid-thirties until up into the eighties of the last century. He became a trustee of Oklahoma Baptist University. My younger brother has been in the Baptist ministry for more than fifty years. He and I both received our doctorates at what used to be the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Daddy earned a doctorate from the Central Baptist Theological Seminary. I was born on a farm, but was raised in a Baptist parsonage. I grew up in Baptist churches, and not only knew most of the hymns in the Broadman Hymnal, but knew the page number of those most often sung by Baptists. I got a major part of my education in the B.Y.P.U., later to become B.T.U., and then, simply, T.U. In those days it was alive and well, in very good health. Those programs are gone with the wind. I taught in two Baptist universities for a total of almost thirty-five years. The reason I spoke of "what used to be S.W.B.T.S., is that across the past three decades, a group who call themselves the leaders of a conservative resurgence among Baptists in the South, have taken over the SBC. In this post I’ll not go into the nature of this "takeover group," as they have been called. I just want to add my voice to the many who strongly affirm that these people are not actually Baptists, if you know Baptist history polity, and doctrine. I have written to announce the designation that I have given to the Southern Baptist Convention–the SBC. I’ve heard this from no one else but myself. Please understand that the language I am about to use is not intended the way it is used in foul speech, the way it is ordinarily used. Rather, I am using it in the primary dictionary definition. SBC no longer designated the Southern Baptist Convention. In recent decades, SBC has changed meaning. Now it denominates, as an accurate description, the Southern Bastard Convention. The new SBC is the child of illegitimate parentage: Southern Baptists and the whole sweep of right-wing Evangelicals. Some elements of Roman Catholicism have gotten in, making one wonder is there was another illicit affair involved. They have bulldozed the old SBC and replaced it with a misbegotten institution as a substitute. I repeat, I am not speaking pejoratively, rather, I speak descriptively when say: They are not Baptists; they are Bastards, pseudo-Baptists. They will go their way, and I, mine, but they are not part of my family, I am not part a part of theirs. I’m not kin to the SBC (except, perhaps, as second-cousins, thrice removed). Perhaps later, I will revisit, briefly, the reasons for this shift from the SBC to the SBC.

Buzzards (not as in, The Old Buzzard)

Buzzards? In a blog that covers a listing of "B"s, from bamboo through Bible, biodiversity, books, Broadman Hymnal, Bruce, and business, how did Buteo buteo earn a line on this list? Beauty or biodiversity, they could get in by either of these doors. Close up, they are the ugliest, most repulsive, abhorrent, obscene, and detestable of birds. In flight they are living beauty, grace in motion, a wonder to watch as they ride the air currents, the highs and the lows, majesty gently floating without apparent support as they survey their vast domain. The essence of graceful motion, they are despicably offensive when seen closeup, sharing stinking their feast with the entire family. They are on the list because they frequently bring majestic, awesome, and almost reverent serenity to my soul. Biodiversity and the Bible are part of the rest of this vulture story. Buteo has a peculiar and essential niche in the biosphere. Somewhat surprisingly, in the Bible, God is found to speak of the buzzard. However, the rest of this story must be told on a later occasion. Buzzards? In a blog that covers a listing of "B"s, from bamboo through Bible, biodiversity, books, Broadman Hymnal, Bruce, and business, how did Buteo buteo earn a line on this list? Beauty or biodiversity, they could get in by either of these doors. Close up, they are the ugliest, most repulsive, abhorrent, obscene, and detestable of birds. In flight they are living beauty, grace in motion, a wonder to watch as they ride the air currents, the highs and the lows, majesty gently floating without apparent support as they survey their vast domain. The essence of graceful motion, they are despicably offensive when seen closeup, sharing stinking their feast with the entire family. They are on the list because they frequently bring majestic, awesome, and almost reverent serenity to my soul. Biodiversity and the Bible are part of the rest of this vulture story. Buteo has a peculiar and essential niche in the biosphere. Somewhat surprisingly, in the Bible, God is found to speak of the buzzard. However, the rest of this story waits to be told on a later occasion.

2 Corinthians 5:17, a Challenging Biblical Dilemma

"Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come." NASB 2 Corinthians 5:17 is one of the most widely quoted verses in the New Testament. On a first reading, it no problem to understand. If anyone has given their life to Christ (is a Christian, a believer in Christ), God fashions them into a completely new person (born anew, re-generated). The person they were no longer exists. See (examine with your own eyes, observe, it is obvious), a new person has appeared. But this poses a logical dilemma: Either this is absolute literal truth or it is relative truth If absolute literal truth, then for anyone who is a Christian, their old ways of life are no longer a part of them; the life they are now living is a new way of life, different from the old. If relative truth, then for anyone who is a Christian, their old ways are relatively gone; the life they now live is relatively new. Therefore, either they are complete converted, or they are not completely converted. This verse is in the form of a conditional (if, then) statement. Logically, when the if part of the statement is true, the then part of the statement must be true. To state it a different way, when the then part of the statement not true, the if part of the statement cannot be true. If an individual is completely converted, their old life is completely gone The old life is not completely gone; elements of the old life remain Therefore, they are not completely converted. To restate: If an individual is "in Christ," then it is a certainty that their old attitudes, values, and way of life have disappeared. If we find that the life of a person who claims to be "in Christ" retains any of the same old attitudes, values, and ways of life, then we must conclude they are not truly "in Christ." Long-term observation indicates that some old attitudes, values, and ways of life continue in the lives of all professing Christians. If this is true (and I think it can be demonstrated), then no professing Christian is "in Christ." In fact, there are none "in Christ." Can one be a Christian, but not "in Christ?" If so, then what does "in Christ" mean? On the other hand, if we understand this verse to be relatively true, then it is possible that an individual might have a definitely positive relation to Christ--relatively in Christ--but not completely. They could be a relatively new creation with their old life relatively gone. The new is in the formative process, and the old in the process of being eradicated. Of course, this raises a question about the nature of the entire Bible. If the Bible is absolutely true, then 2 Corinthians 5:17 must be absolutely true 2 Corinthians is not absolutely true (so it seems from the preceding) So, the Bible cannot be absolutely true If 2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true, then the Bible is relatively true 2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true (so it seems from the preceding) Thus, the Bible must be relatively true. This necessitates a complete re-viewing of the Bible, a re-vision of our understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Now, it must be looked at from a new perspective, a perspective that differs from the consensus of Christian tradition. [See my blog, God Is Relative]

Why the Rests?

I grew up in a non-musical home. We were, however, a church-going family, and there was always music in church. I must not have been more than six-years-old when I told my parents I wanted to be a song leader when I was grown. They probably responded with, "good," spoken with no note of interest, excitement, or encouragement in their voice. That was my earliest ambition, and it faded within the year. My wife, Carol, grew up in a home that sang all the time. With no musical training they found it easy, almost natural, to harmonize together. My love of music intensified over the years. I loved to sing, and did all the time. However, after marriage, I learned that I could not remember the correct notes to sing, couldn’t get the tune right, nor did I did I have the slightest sense of rhythm at all. Our daughters were born with the same abilities that Carol had. I was not encouraged to sing.

I was in my mid-fifties when Dr. Nancy Jo Humfeld joined the faculty where I taught. Among other things, she taught voice. Her first semester, Carol heard her singing at a performance of "Amahl and the Night Visitors." She was so impressed that, without my knowledge, they conspired to teach me to sing. Now, I have taken six or eight college music courses, and live in a brand-new world. Not only am I a much better singer, I now understand music very well. Almost everything that interests comes under philosophical consideration. My mind turns naturally and easily to philosophical analysis, as well as attempting to set things in a larger context in order to get them in perspective. My singing can now be endured (thought not invited for public performance). On the piano, however, folks would quickly tire of my inept performance. So with the violin, the saxophone, the trombone, th guitar, the recorder, harmonica, or pennywhistle. I have become, according to some definitions, a musician, but of what kind? Neither performer, composer, conductor, nor teacher. I was, and am, convinced that I am a musician, but it took me a while to find my niche in the musical habitat. But when I began investigating the idea of philosophy of music, I learned that I am a musicologian (I’ve never heard the word used; musicologist is the academically accepted term). The field is called "musicology." Musicology has many sub-divisions. It is commonly the term used for historians of music. But in the broadest sense, I am an amateur musicologist. Now, after narrating my entire musical history, I come to the point of this post: Why does musical notation have "rests?" There are quarter-rests, half, whole, an entire measure, and rests of many other kinds. What function do they fulfil? When I first began the study of music, mostly voice, I knew little about it, but early on, I got to wondering about the rests. So in my ignorance I stopped a music professor walking across campus, and asked him about rests. I suggest my own naive answer. Do they mainly serve to give singers and other musicians a moment to catch their breath before proceeding? "Well, there is a little more to it than that," I was informed. Once more, my wonderment sought a new direction might lead to satisfy my insatiable curiosity. I asked most musicians that I knew, and most answers were variations on, "I’ve never really given that much thought." Well, I have. Finally, I thought it through and came up with the answer, or at lest the core of the answer. Rests provide opportunity for assimilation and anticipation, for reflection and readiness for more. I will grant that musical rests seem much too brief to fulfil either of these functions. No, there is not enough time for the rational intellect to assimilate and/or anticipate, but the emotional intellect, the aesthetic intellect can handle. They operate much more rapidly than the pondering movements of logical analysis. Certainly you are free to disagree. If so, I would like to know your suggestions or critiques. However, I was much encouraged when, at a Baylor University "Faith and Art" conference, the keynote speaker was a world-class British composer and musicologist. The next day he gave me several minutes of his time while I asked my "rest" question, and offered my answer. He immediately agreed, and led me into the depths of these two functions. The mainest thing he did was to was to confirm my own musicological thinking. Upon further reflection, I have provisionally concluded that "rest" has the same core meaning outside the world of music. When we are tired, we rest, if possible. Our body now assimilates the labor that we have just been engaged in. At rest, the internal workings of the body work very actively, repairing, strengthening, and calming nerve centers. After adequate rest, we, mind and body alike, begin to anticipate what is to come next.

The Things I Carry

These days, I am reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, one of the most highly acclaimed books about Vietnam. He talks about the things they carried with them in Vietnam. They carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated Bibles--and they carried each other. The more I read, the more my mind drifted back to the title (the book goes far beyond the title). Then one day my thoughts took off on a tangent from the title. I got to thinking about the things I carry, not that anyone should care. I found that I carry much more than I had realized. I am wonderer, a thinker, a writer. Ideas, insights, just plain old sights, quotations, all kinds of things occur to us every day, but most of them quickly evaporate from our mind and cannot be recovered. So, I always carry pen and paper of some sort. I don’t trust my unaided memory. Along the way, I find all other sorts of uses for carrying a writing instrument of some kind, and a notebook or note cards. Ever since I received one as a birthday present when I was eight, I have carried a pocket knife. And I keep it sharp. I spend a lot of time outdoors, where I find the knife to be invaluable. Most men, it seems, and many women, carry this small tool in their pocket or purse. I don’t carry a knife on airplanes. A pocket comb. My hair is very fine and the wind, even a mild breeze, tosses it around until I look like mad man. In old age I am worrying much less about my hair; I no longer need each one to be always in place. My wallet, for obvious reasons. Almost everywhere I go, I carry a book. If, for any reason, I have to wait for any length of time, I have something to do: read. I can always entertain or educate myself. In the car, and in the pickup, I always carry a book of light reading and a book of serious nonfiction. Also, a Bible, a dictionary, and a hymnal. These, along with a notebook, pens and pencils are in each vehicle at all times. Time spent waiting is never wasted, never boring. In each vehicle I try always to have a stash of almonds or dried fruit. When I begin to fade, these help recover alertness and vitality The vehicles stay stocked with boots, shovel, gloves, plastic bags, a trowel, an old towel, and an old jacket. Frequently I take time out to dig a plant or gather wildflower seeds. In recent months I’ve added a couple of small, modern technological machins: a cell phone and a digital camera. There is so much I see that I don’t want to forget. Out with the camera. I am amazed that it does not run out of film, and that if I take bad pictures, I don’t learn it too late, after they’ve been developed. Although they are appropriate, indeed almost essential for some people and situations, I’ve never wanted a cell phone. Almost, I’ve said that I would never have one. I like my privacy, don’t want to be available, on call. But life circumstances change. Often I go on walks with no definite route. Sometimes I find opportunity to roam and explore the semi-wild. At times I have taken some bad falls in remote places where, if I were to break a leg, no one would know where I was and it would be unlikely that someone would come that way, perhaps for weeks. I am seventy-two-years-old. I hear that bones get brittle with old age. My wife has diabetes. A daughter alerted me to the need to carry a cell phone, everywhere I go,just for emergencies. So, I carry a cell phone. I pay for the minimum minutes. It is only for emergency use. Only family members know the number, so others can’t invade my privacy. I hope it, like insurance, never gets used. Finally, only three or four times a year might I be found outdoors without carrying, on top of my head, a hat or a cap. Until I was about thirty-years-old, until Jack Kennedy became an American president who did not wear a hat, the vast majority of men in this country wore hats. They would be just as likely to go without underclothes as to go outdoors bareheaded. I wear a hat as part of my heritage. I wear a hat because it keeps the wind from making a straw stack out of my hair. I wear a hat because it takes only about five minutes of unshaded sun before I have a major sick headache. I wear a hat in cool or cold weather because it keeps me warmer. I keep hearing that most of our body heat escapes through the top of our head. Whether true or not, I know the hat insulates my scalp from the cold. After a funeral, at the grave side in winter, I respectfully remove my hat during the committal service. It makes me uncomfortably aware of the difference the hat makes. In truly cold weather, I am amazed to see men bundled up in coats and scarves, but bareheaded. Especially those who do not even have hair covering the top of their head. What do you carry? I suspect it reveals a good deal about who you are.

Humans or Vidiots?

I don’t watch TV. Do You? Really? Why? What do you get out of it? Don’t you have anything else to do with your time. No matter what you are doing at this moment, what you are really doing is doing your life. Your one and only, over before you know it life. Are you going to use up your precious limited time watching and listening to a bunch of actors "playing" out the lives others have scripted for them, in order to amuse (origin of term: OF amuser ‘entertain, deceive’, from muser, ‘stare stupidly’), entertain (From French entretenir, from Latin tenere 'to hold'), divert (our attention from things we should be attending to), sell (is this what tv is really about; I read that the average American, by the time they are sixty-five, has seen 2,000,000 commercials). I have to accept the truth: Americans are addicted to it. Someone said that we are a nation of "vidiots." But why? Can we not read? Are we afraid of contact with reality, so we watch virtual reality, hyper-reality, sort of like when movies changed from black and white to color? The color was called "technicolor." Technicolor was more intense, more brilliant, more vibrant than life in the quotidian. It was an escape from reality into fantasy. Meanwhile, our life is slipping away. We all are facing a "dead"-line. "No matter how long you’ve been traveling down the wrong path, turn around." Don’t allow the tube to steal your life as you mindlessly watch and allow the robbery go on. Get acquainted again with real people, people you have said you love. Love is not a once-for-all thing; it must be maintained. What is it I hear people saying these days, "Get a life?" Well, God has already given us one. The question is: Are we going to live it, or . . ..?

Former Students & Present Readers

The old saying is "Them that can, do; them that can't, teach; them that can't teach, teach teachers; and them that can't teach teachers go around the country giving lectures." I first heard this from a traveling lecturer. It has some element of truth in it. I am a teacher for three reasons: Divine calling, because I enjoy it more than almost anything, and because of the nature of my personality, I am a thinker and teacher, not a doer. I do have a quarrel and an argument that thinking and teaching are, in fact, doing, but that is another issue. That third reason means that in the realm of human society there are many things that I believe need to be done. Urgently and desperately need to be done. Most of that doing means changing from the conventional wisdom, the status quo, the politically, socially, and ecclestically correct. I don't know how to be a public change agent. I am a teacher because many of you are "can do" people. I know a lot of you and look up to you. I teach so that, perhaps some of you will catch a vision and effectively, persistently pursue it. That is what my teaching is about. That covers all three of my reasons for teaching.

Link to My Blog on Another Site

http://aintsobad.typepad.com/ikant/

Good Morning

It is after 6:00 a.m. and the banty roosters have been crowing for a couple of hours. I need to go let them out of the coop. I am attempting four separate blogs, and considering a couple more, but have been told it is hard to keep up with more than one. We'll see. The fellow who told me that has a more than full-time job. I am no longer on any payroll, don't have to report in, am accountable only to God and my wife, and thus just may be able to do considerable blogging. Having left my teaching position at HPU, (where I now have a new title--as someone called it--Professor Emeritorious), I am now teaching in a new classroom, The Blog Room. The potential class size is much larger, there are no tests to grade, no committees, none of all the rest of that stuff that is necessary to keep a university operational. Now all I have to do is love my family, care for the quotidian, and write. Now it is 6:30, so I'd better get dressed, eat breakfast, and be at Starbucks by 7:30 for a one-on-one session, much like I did in the office or hallway in the past. Don't get caught without something to write with and something to write on. And, keep a dictionary handy at every location where you read. Library discards and garage sales make it easy to own several.

My "B"s=Me

These Bs make up a good bit of who I am. From time to time I will use one of them as a starting point.

• Bamboo--Exceedingly flexible, exceedingly strong. Ruth Chang told me, one day somewhere in Southeast Asia, "You are bamboo." But I had it going five years before I spent that time in the Pacific Rim countries.
• Banties--Now that's another story and series of short, short stories. At the present time I have 4 Light Brahmas (Brahma Pootras, Chittagongs, Shanghais), 3 Cochins (Pekins?), and 1 each of: d'Uccle, Silver-Penciled Seabright, Americauna, and Ginger Red Old English Game. Restorative, re-creational, relaxing, and almost a necessity. [Check in on my blog: "The Weekly Banty."]
• Barnabas--"Bar-nabas"--"Son of Encouragement"--what I try to be, although too often folks have had reason to say that I sure have a strange way of showing it.
• Barnboy (Horse & Hog)--There is a whole lot of rural in me. It shows up unexpectedly, and sometimes may account for some lines that surprise you.
• Barr, Nevada--Got me started reading mystery novels, hers first, then others, then all sorts of well-written, thought provoking fiction.
• Battlefields--Comments on war.
• Beauty--Yearnings, memories, aesthetics always a high priority.
• Bflat--Music: non-performer, poor reader, I only "play" music, except when doing musicological commentary.
• Bible--opens the way to the entire religious dimension. [Some of this can be found in my blog: "God Is Relative." See also my regular contributions on Rick Davis', blog, "IKANT." ]
• Biodiversity--Yard makeover: memories (nostalgia), economics, point-of-light, non-conformist challenger of the status quo, beauty, mini-ecosystem, mostly natives, problems, joys.
• Blanchard--Former students that keep in touch; earlier, I called you students, now I call you friends.
• Blah, blah, blah--this blog will serve as a catch-all, miscellaneous place to post.
• Blog--the latest on the list.
• Blue--Emotions, The Great Depression, Mental Health, the old "Country Blues," before BB and Muddy, (but hymns are higher).
• Books--I'm often reading twelve at a time, on subjects almost all the way across the spectrum I'm also writing two book manuscripts.
• Botoh--Dialectic; challenger of status quo (which is nothing to quo about), which is Latin for "the mess we're in." [This will develop on a separate blog: Considerate Thinking.]
• Broadman Hymnal--The many churches I've experienced; Southern Baptist Convention [SBC has become the "Southern Bastard Convention. No, I've not taken to profane language, it's just that after an SBC uncivil war, what is now called the SBC was born illegitimately. {By the way, there are no illegitimate children, rather, there are illegitimate parents.}]
• Bruce--My brother, but so is Mack, but Bruce is just a family member representing the entire family--Carol above all.
• Body--Health, in order to minimize the time of decrepitude, and maximize the time available to do what my life is about.
• Business--I've just retired, and must keep on top of this because I am my own investment counselor, decision maker, and manager. Only in 2000 A.D., did I begin to take "business" (as in Personal Business) seriously.
• Buttermilk--Comfort foods and their cousins.
• Buzzard--Scavenger: the great American Bald Eagle, coyotes, crows, hyenas, opossums, raccoons--and me. Reasons are several.

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