Today I will go from the center of the base of the palm to right about where that groove is where the ring finger and pinky knuckles meet, then do another cross-section of Ohio, drop- ping this trailer at the USX terminal outside of Dayton (technically it is a “service station,” not a terminal –USX probably realized that a place whose name is synonymous with “deadly” is not where one wants to go to have maintenance done on one’s rig and whatnot). Then I shall go to pick up another trailer near the northwest corner of the state, a load bound for Alabama.
Aubray will be doing something I find much more interesting: she will be flying from Medford to Seattle, and then to Anchorage, Alaska, where he older sister Kierstin and 2 ½ year old niece Sierrah will pick her up and bring her to their home in Kenai. That is where Aubray and I were trying to get almost a year ago, by car, driving across Canada from Massachusetts. We got as far as Edmonton, Alberta before, for various reasons, we turned our trajectory southward, a journey that eventually landed us in Ashland.
Now she’s going without me. I’m jealous of course, but I could not be happier for her. In a way, this is a celebration of her own miraculous healing event: her right eye cleared up to a point where it is better than at anytime since it started losing vision [Ed. Note: Aubray had been losing vision in both eyes due to diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration for over three years at the time of this Chronicle. A few days after I left to start driving, she elected to have her third laser eye surgery –second on the right eye— and it turned out to be the most successful procedure she had by far.] Aubray told me she watched a foreign film at a theatre with a friend recently, and she could read the subtitles, where before she could barely make out what was happening on the screen.
I know one reason why she was so hot-and-cold on the Canada trip was her frustration over not being able to see much of the great countryside that I reveled in and saw so clearly. When we turned away from Alaska, one of the rationales was that we should wait until she can see better before going there –we both had faith that this day would come. Now it is here!!! And I’m in Ohio…(those are flattened exclamation points) But hey, I’ve been bopping freely all over the country while Bray’s been stuck in Ashland (one of the nicest places in the world to be “stuck,” but stuck nonetheless), and with her you never know how long a blessing like this will be given. And there is a certain “live for today” philosophy that understandably goes with her advanced diabetic condition. She decided to go now, and I fully supported it; I even found her the airfare online. As of this moment she should be in the air over Oregon. Fare thee well, my dearest one; may the sky rise up to meet you. –HC Medway, Ohio
12 Aug I-69….Do-U? :-P
Bad, bad joke. I’m sorry everybody.
Maybe I just wanted to prove that no matter what happens, I will never be holier-than-thou. God made me a rascal, and so I shall stay –again, at least until I have no need for personal qualities altogether, and then who knows what this person will be like.
(At least they had the good sense not to run this highway past Big Bone Lick State Park and Beaverlick, Kentucky)
For now, I just feel like celebrating humanness a little bit. It is a much-maligned quality in most spiritual traditions, Eastern and Western. In a lot of ways I think it gets a bum rap. I have seen enough decency and kindness in the human heart recently, along with all the other stuff, that it makes me wonder: are we really all that far off from being what God intended for us? [and by this what I mean is: maybe all it would take is a small change of the mind and the heart for us to see each other and treat each other the way God intended us, and maybe what we need is already inside of us] To say otherwise seems a little bit like a slap in God’s face, and who are we to do that? We are so extremely hard on ourselves as a species, and sometimes it strikes me that if it is possible for God to be insulted by anything that we do, it might be this: our belief that God’s creation is out of control and given over to evil, that wickedness runs amok and there is nothing that a “redeemed” or “justified” person can do but make plans to leave.
Aside from putting down other people’s faiths, there is nothing I find more tiresome about Biblian Christianity in practice than the “we don’t belong here” philosophy. Really? Were you abducted by aliens? What exactly happened outside of God's power that situated you here in this world in the here-and-now?
This world is not our ultimate home, you say in response? We are “in this world but not of it?” I absolutely agree with you on both statements. To say this acknowledges that our source is beyond the created world and that our presence is in it, and it hints at a sense of purpose for that presence. (I would just caution against drawing hard and fast lines between the created and uncreated; they are not mutually exclusive and are categories that will not hold up to non-dual reality) I agree that we are all heading back/forward toward our source.
But to say “we don’t belong here” hints at something else. Something that says, “This world is fallen and awful, but not to worry because I expect to be leaving any minute now.” Like you are riding on a freeway in a chauffeured sedan, and the driver takes the wrong exit, dropping you right into the heart of the ghetto. You feel that instant sense of insecurity, like you had before you were “saved” from this neighborhood as a child when your family moved uptown. But the trusted driver says, “Sorry, my mistake. I know how to get back on the freeway. We’ll be home soon,” and you say, “Good, because I don’t belong here.”
Maybe that is not actually what people are saying; maybe I’m taking the words too literally. But this is the impression I get when I hear Christians talking about how they don’t belong here, especially when they start expressing what a dim view they hold of the world.
So I just intrinsically disagree with the whole not-belonging theme. I say we all belong here, and that is why we are here, having the human experience.I know I belong here anyway, and I’ve been given a job to do, and I’m going to go about doing that job with as much joy and vigor and compassion as God wants me to have. If you are among those who insist that you belong somewhere else, well, fine, go there. Prepare to be raptured if that’s your thing. Just leave the rest of us alone and stop spreading gloom and doom all over the place. I would also ask that you kindly refrain from trashing our planet and our God while you wait for your exit plan to be implemented, thank you very much.
Before you go, there is just one thing I don’t understand: y’all are in such a hurry for Jesus to come back and take you home with Him, and kick start all the events described in Revelations, but you also profess that this will be the kiss of death for roughly two-thirds of the world’s population (many of whom I’m sure would be your friends if you had the chance to get to know them), not to mention everybody’s pets, lots of innocent cuddly wildlife, the birds of the sky and the fishes of the sea, and all the creeping things that crawl on the earth –you are looking forward to all of these dying a gruesome, torturous death, while you and your in-group frolic carelessly at a private, invitation-only affair with God?
Is there no Christian equivalent to the Mahayana Buddhist bodhisattva, who takes a vow to return to teach and comfort after attaining enlightenment, as many times as necessary until all living beings become enlightened?
Sorry if this is too narrow-minded, but I cannot consider “end times” Christian belief to be a viable spiritual path; I say it is a case study in widespread sociopathology. I only hope there is room for treatment.
I think God wants me to save Oliver B. Greene. He has sort of become a human emblem for this kind of Christianity (remember his depiction of the gruesome, torturous death that awaits the vast majority of God’s living creation, by means such as boiling oceans and giant demon locusts, when His personal savior comes to town?), and I’d really like to help him. It can be my first Christotheist mission. Right into the darkest heart of Christian belief in the “fallen world:” Greenville, South Carolina. I pray that we will see the day when Oliver B. Greene will embrace the spiritual heritage of his Savior, whose mercy and compassion were without limits, and welcome all of his brothers and sisters into the sheepfold of the children of God. Jesus promised the Father that He will not miss saving a single one of his children, and I promise that I will not let Oliver B. Greene leave this world without knowing what that means. Amen.
Until then, friends, let us drink a toast to this life! To the experiences we are given to have in it! And to the brothers and sisters we are given to share it with! Let us embrace this world while it is here, for the sake of the world and not for ourselves, and let us be ready to let go when we are in fact called to leave. I do not pretend to know what happens next, but I share with Hafiz a strong sense that, no matter what one believes now, it is going to be “major-league wonderful” for each and every one of us! HC Franklin, Ky.
