I am therefore

To believe and have faith is to give life to the unexisting the unimaginable, to have miracles and gods.  I believe in my existence and I believe in yours and I believe that my beliefs don’t mean a damn thing. Only my beliefs shape my world, open my eyes and heart to things so I can see/feel them. What I believe in probably existed or was or had form and purpose before my faith was invested, but to me they were nothing.

“if i believe
in death be sure
of this
it is” -e.e. cummings 

A day Richer, a Dollar poorer

One more duty day over and done, complete, over-done.  I was the hero of the drunks last-night: I fixed the duty van. Van. Ugh. So yeah, I got to get greazy and dirty, covered in coolant and shocked half to death. I loved every minuet of it. Fixed the hole in radiator, fixed the problem with the spark plugs, got the Van running and then…    stood watch. Fun Fun Fun ’till they take my wrench away. Not much else doing yesterday, I really just enjoyed myself for once. I am at peace most when I have a problem to fix, when I can fix the problem. I love problems. I love troubled relationships, I like arguing. I like to wrestle. I like resistance, the Idea of overcoming, conquering. Steel is sharpened by stone, so then I am made stronger by resistance. Never seek the easy path, it leads to complacency, to an early death and the hands of a meat shop butcher. Baa Baa Black Sheep…. “Get rid of them black sheep, they stick out like a sore thumb, they need to be silenced, to be hidden and forgotten!” Stay Noticeable! Don’t dye your wool, don’t be what your not. Accept the resistance, learn to love it, to thrive on it. When I am in the middle of a wrestling/boxing-kicking-biting match I laugh… I laugh when anyone tells me To silence myself, to blend myself, to lessen myself. Their resistance makes me laugh. Now I’m not saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ that is a stupid, stupid saying. I am saying that resistance and opposition strengthens you. It can change you, don’t be afraid to change, just be wary of it. Change is good, we should not sit in the same pool unless it is a bubbling pure stream. Truth doesn’t change, Ideas of truth do. What you believe to be Truth may not in fact be so. Examine all things, be critical. Seek Truth, Seek what is right and true. Do not seek justice for perfect justice is perfectly blind and we must all then be judged. Justice is Gods domain, man should not presume to know what justice is. But What is right, Truth can be known, it can. At rock bottom in the heart of man is truth. Listen to your neighbor, truth comes in the wind of emptiness, mouths speak without ever knowing what come out of them, it is up to us to listen and interpret. Do not speak emptily. Truth is born in the hearts of man it is in us at birth, be aware and do not let the sounds of everyday drive away what is right and true. baa baa black sheep have you any wool, yes sir, yes sir.

The Quiet in the Storm

Ah, Midwatch again, it was wet… <Sailors HATE the midwatch, really though, they hate anything that keeps them from the rack. Amen: so be it.> WARNING comments that are christian in nature and intent lie ahead! I have to smile and laugh though because earlier in the day/night I had prayed because of a foreboding that I had and in part of the prayer I said “My God answers me with a furious shout and a voice like thunder”. HA! Jokes on me. So I was awoken an hour before my watch to go and help fix the lines going from the sub to the barge, also the brow from the sub to the pier was off the damn boat so that had to be fixed as well. The voice that awoke me was a shipmate of mine shouting furiously about having to get up, la-de-da, I had to get up too. Though I did not do so peacefully… So after the situation/emergency was taken care of I had to relieve the watch. As soon as I stepped up to relieve the watchstander of his weapon the skies opened up and turned into a monsoon. In less than thirty seconds my boots were full of water, I felt like I had just jumped into a pool. Someone upstairs had just dropped a bucket on me(and everyone else, but I wasn’t thinking about them at the moment). So, After conducting the worlds fastest gun turn over, I assumed the watch. I stood topside in Horizontal rain watching a brow I couldn’t even see for four hours. At some point in this watch, while I was standing there the wind died down and the rain stopped and I remembered my prayer and I heard a voice… Laughing. God had indeed answered my prayer, and He did it just like I said He would, The bastard. The funniest thing was that in the whole rainstorm there was a lot of lightning but only on report of thunder. Thank you God for your faithfulness to answer my prayers, next time I’ll ask for candy bars and chocolates. 

The devil (in) Man

I had a dream, day dream, that I was drunk and raving at a group of people. Shouting that they were nothing but failing bags of water and should spend less time pandering to the desires of their bodies and more time worrying about their souls. Which in a large part is true, people spend far too much energy and waste too much time on pleasing their skin bags then thinking about other things; However I will also say that we have to live in these skin bags and to care for them and to please them is not evil. I then started to shout at God and tell Him that this was all His fault, that He made Mankind, that He made the Devil and that the Devil was Man. I shouted that He would be better off just starting over. “Scratch that one Jesus, sorry about the Golgotha thing.” I ranted that we could no longer save ourselves, that we had gone too far and there was no turning back, we were doomed. In a way I suppose that is true. We, as a species, have gone to a far point with our technological developments, a point of no return. No longer will children grow up in America with the Idea of owning their own business; no more will families worry about moving their kids too much, after all we can keep in touch with people half-way ’round the globe; families period will be different, multiple parents will be the norm; Churches will change soon as well, we have already seen that with the advent of predominately homosexual congregations; our grandchildren’s freedoms will be less then we have now, its an alarming trend but more and more government controls are being seen; pollution will force an economic and technological change in the next 20 years; very few households are without a computer; everyone has access to the internet, secrets are increasingly hard to keep; news and television becomes more and more Interest controlled; most of America and her citezens are saved in bits and bytes on some computer… Point of no return. Still its not Doom as I said in my dream (day dream), its life and progress. However we need to be aware of what is going on around us, Ignorance is unforgivable (a sin), be aware of what we can do to make things better for ourselves, not for Future Generations, because nobody is motivated by such high ideals; “what is good for me is good for now” is our motto. We need to look at the beyond now though, because we will be living in the future at some point and that future needs to be as rosy as this present or better, preferably better. Then again it depends on your definition of good, of better. Most humanity is only interested in whats good for them, so ”if it doesn’t bother me now it wont bother me latter and I can safely keep my head in the sand were it is warm and comfortable.” ’warm and comfortable’… So many of us become just that, we are satisfied with life the way it is and care nothing for changing it, we have our needs met, our desires. Well at least as far as our house and food and job and kids are concerned. So then do we care more about our flesh and all its soft desires, or about our souls which will live on after the flesh? Socrates believed that we should abandon all else and pursue the enlightenment of the soul. Siddhārtha denied his body even food in the pursuit of enlightenment. So do we need to do this? Do we need to drop everything else and give over to meditation and contemplation? No. That is silly. We all have lives to live and things we wish to accomplish in this life, sitting under a tree for years is not one of them I’m sure. So the answer lies not in total devotion but in being aware, of at least knowing that there is more to life then the skin and bones you inhabit. You inhabit… We should all realize that our bodies are not us, just looking in a Mirror long enough will convince you (at least me). So if the flesh house is not us then what is us? A question that is a question in a question in a question, in short a quest, a “question quest.” That answer is not easy, nor easily come by. So in conclusion Man is the Devil and the Devil is in man, but the same is true for God.

Flat line.

“A person can be dead and still have a heart beat.” Words spoken to me by a good friend. She was right. What then is to have life? Obviously it’s not just breathing and walking and talking, not merely existing. Not merely existing. What then is to be? How do you define yourself? “I think therefore I am.” Not really. Ok, so if your here, your cognizant, you can talk and interact, your alive. No. The context of the Conversation was having to do with people who are blinded by there own self importance, people who think nothing of crushing another individual if it will get him what he wants; this applies to politicians, world leaders, c.e.o.s, and faith leaders. (I will not discuss that today.)
I take it further. To be is not to live. Merely existing is not enough to say you are truly alive. So what is life? It is all the experience you take with you into the future, all the lessons of everyday life, the time spent with someone, the time spent with yourself, all that you see and do, all that is done to you, for you, with you, the changes that you go through, the tragedies, the joys… This is life no? Then be alive to it, be alive to the moment, the thought, the brief period of wakefulness that you have. Be alive to the opportunity, to the chance, of calamity of triumph. Do not shut your eyes on anything. Live through what you go through, don’t just float down the river, unaware of the waves, and the rapids, unseeing of the trees and fish, of the sun reflecting off the glass that you travel through. Live, be alive.

Amen.

When I am Drunk….

“…all the things I keep inside my self, they vanish in the air.” Casting pearls before no-one. Speak and be heard by the stones and the trees and the sea. What I have inside is what was given me at birth, a message, a voice, a choice, a gift, an idea, a thought… I say what is right, and what is wrong. The answers are there in the face of your friend, your lover, your neighbor, your spouse, your sibling, your mirror. Life is a collection of brief encounters and forever connections, it is a time when you can speak and be heard, when you can think and not be interrupted. To die…. Once said to be great adventure. The past is death! We have birth, re-birth, time to see, time to be, to leave a mark and be grateful for life, for the chance to be, to see, to be, to sing, to be, to laugh, to be… I am. I am that I am, be here now, stand still and listen, Be, I think therefore I am, stand tall and do not flinch for when the wind comes you will bend and be strong & you will not break you will stand & last and become a stout tree & not break & not bend and you will be looked upon as a survivor & as a shade provider & as a protection and as a place of peace and wisdom.