Ch.1 A Hard Lesson in Turning the Other Cheek + + It took me quite a while to get back into the flow of the Chronicles after that monumental visit to Ashland.  Whether it was a welcome change or not, it certainly was huge and I was scattered to the wind in a lot of ways.  I think you'll see that in the first several chapters of Part Two; they are far more centered on my own happenings and mental/emotional states.  You'll also see a lot of 1 and 2 Cross ratings as well.  This chapter is brief and illustrates an example of how I sought to put my new understanding of Biblical concept s to use in a whole new context, also how it is possible to go to them for guidance without believing them to be "God's Word."

Ch.2 Fun with Mormons/ page 1 / page 2 + + Describes my visit to a Latter-day Saints church service on the 4th of July.  Yeah, I poke a little fun, and it isn't terribly relevant to Metatheology, but I also try to explore the roots of why this group is so demonized by the Western Orthodox Church, and give my eyewitness testimony that there is nothing scary or extremely deviant going on in Mormon circles.  I do consider them genuine Christians after experiencing a service, just not the kind I'd chose to associate with on a congregational level. Wikipedia links: Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith

Ch.3 The Big Dispatcher in the Sky + Very small chapter, nothing of much interest to any reader, really just moved the narrative along across what must have been a downer stretch after the Mormon adventure.

Ch.4 Driving Saint Michael + + + + This one is almost a creative nonfiction short story in itself (in fact I've thought a few times about adapting it into one) about a hitchhiker I picked up and drove from Iowa to eastern Illinois. Although this chapter also didn't advance the discussion of Christotheism too much, I gave it 4 Crosses because it is one of my favorite pieces of writing in the Chronicles.  The prevailing theme is the absolute holiness of an ordinary individual, even (or especially) one struggling through life.  It also leads to a revelation about my faith, and why there is no need to search anymore.

Ch.5 Sacre Blues + + Another chapter that shows how preoccupied I was with the new marital situation, documenting a sort of ho-hum Sunday spent leisurely in Quebec.  Here I start to explore one of the major distractions I dealt with during the Part Two phase: how to handle my newfound freedom from a monogamous relationship (and one that involved a fair amount...no, a great deal...of sexual repression to be maintained).

Ch. 6 My Homage to Attention Deficit Disorder + Still struggling to get back into the rhythm of the Chronicles.  I tried to complete the theme I started in Ch. 5 about lust and possessiveness, but I wrote sporadically and mostly just covered the geographical movement of several days here.

Ch. 7 Something Else/It's Not Easy Being Greene/Whatever God Wants.... + + + + + NOW it's starting to come back to me.  After a quick (and ominous) update about my wife, I spent a lot of time playing with what I found to be an extremely angry fundamentalist Biblian tract I found at a truckstop in Massachusetts.  What started out as a little mockery at the author's expense became more poignant for me as I started to sympathize with him and realized this was only the less-PC version of what is taught at my own church.  As a contrast, I offer up a long passage from The Last Temptation of Christ, which I had just started reading, depicting all the tenderness and heart-rending mercy and compassion I feel in the person of Jesus when I consider the example He gives to my spiritual journey.  Definitely a must-read for those following the Christotheism thread.

Ch. 8 My Torrid Affair with Kim Smith + + + My carnal nature came back with a vengeance and took over the next several days, prompting the need for a full-blown exploration in the next chapter.  Basically I chronicle the back-and-forth dilemma over whether to buy one of those PG-13-level softcore porn magazines with the not-nude-but-provocatively-posed women.  I had found myself very attracted to one particular model in this one issue, and with the loneliness aspect of truck driving hitting me full force, well, I'll leave you to make your own conclusions.  If the author had seemed to you to be skirting real-life issues to this point, I definitely don't here.  This chapter caused quite a stir when I emailed it, but it is not at all about shock value, just brutal honesty (and there is also a section that I highlighted in light blue which introduces a very important theme of Christotheism: how "the God that can be named" serves a vital role in pointing out and directing us toward the metaphysical experience of the eternal, thus giving a redeeming value to the theological concept of an anthropomorphic God).

Ch. 9 A Sort of Homecoming/The Sweetheart Lady + This chapter was interrupted by a frantic dash to get home to New Hampshire in time for my sister's graduation party (and horrible driving conditions from heavy rain), but I got down a little nostalgic homily for an old Italian bakery near my former residence in  Easton, Penna. where I frequently began my morning with canolis and coffee.

Ch. 10 Private Enemies, Essay No. 1 + + + + + The visit with my family was monumentally wonderful for me, and this is reflected in the HUGE change of mood beginning here in Chapter 10.  I think this was the first point in Part Two where I began to feel the Chronicles as a mission again, and I wrote ferociously for many days on end.  This chapter is about letting God transform us through opening up all of ourselves to the eternal presence of I AM, and about finding the absolute peace and stillness of the heart that comes through our forgiveness toward what we thought were our "enemies" Wikipedia links: J.D. Salinger

Ch. 11 The Perfect Job/Hafiz + + + + One of the things I did while in New England was drive up to Vermont with my father and sort through the belongings that my wife and I left at her father's house when we moved to the West Coast a year before.  I found a book that I recognized from the communal shelves in our many homes, titled The Gift, a collection of poems by a Sufi master named Hafiz.  All those years that it was in my home, and I never felt compelled to open it up...but having come to better understand the relationship Sufism has to orthodox Islam, I was intrigued.  Well, that one decision changed both me and the Chronicles for evermore, as you'll begin to see here.

Ch. 12 Fun with White Supremacists/God Fought the Law and God Won + + + + + --> Ah, finally, the first 5-plus chapter of Part Two. Picking up where Chapter 10 left off, this is a long, colorful, much boldfaced essay on the idea that if Jesus came to fulfill the law, as the Bible quotes him as saying He did, than He did so by turning us away from where the law is written in books to where it is written in our hearts. Contrasting the spontaneity of His love with the carrot-and-stick nature of the observance of external law, this chapter bursts with enthusiasm that says the Kingdom of Heaven is here now, and we can find it by following His example and seeking to eliminate the dualistic thought that makes us feel separate from God: "no person or doctrine or law has the authority to separate you from the infinite love and forgiveness and presence of God."

Ch.13 Black and White Churches/You Never Close Your Eyes.../Is God Passionate? + + + Starts off with a little frivolous church talk about trying to find an African-American church in Georgia, then an odd segue into a little self-satire updating us on my "relationship" with Kim Smith, specifically our breakup.  This would be a 1-Cross chapter for sure if not for some good thoughts at the end about God and passion. "Could the natural state of I AM be a passionate embrace of all there is?" And if so, is it possible for us to cultivate a detached, non-egocentric passion through union with the Divine?

Ch. 14 Bray in Alaska/We Belong Here + + + Originally two skimpy chapters, I combined them into one when first compiling the Chronicles on disk.  The first part is a brief note about my wife's impromptu trip to Alaska to visit her sister; the second is a feisty diatribe against the Biblian notion that Christians do not "belong here," meaning essentially that they are spiritual beings while the rest of the rabble are merely human.  I would still write this essay today, but I'd write it differently --less confrontational I suppose. Something was sticking in my craw those days.

Ch. 15 Oliver B. Greene, R.I.P./The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man + + + + + Starts by reporting the sad news of Dr. Greene's passing, 28 years prior, and a positive note hoping that he and Christians like him will be made whole by Christ before they pass on.  Then I return to another passage from The Last Temptation, in which the author's Jesus and the disciple John demonstrate the infinite reach of the love and forgiveness of God and how we can play an instrumental part in showing that mercy to each other --whether or not the Christian Bible reaches the same conclusion.  Personally I found Kazantzakis' take on the Lazarus parable to be one the most uplifting pieces of fiction I've ever come across, an I hope you'll lend an eye to it here.

Ch. 16 One Man's Heaven is Another Man's Hurricane/The Teetering Edifice + + + + + During the infamous 2004 hurricane season there were a few different times that I was down in the Southeast, on the verge of being in the path of one of the storms, but far enough away so that there was no danger to me or Camerado.  The first of these was during Charley's devastating march across central Florida; this chapter starts with a brief reflection on being safe while others suffered greatly, including the timeless, mystical thoughts of the English poet John Donne on the subject.  The bulk of the chapter is a direct attack on the Western Orthodox Church's claim of the absolute authority of the Christian Bible in spiritual matters, and specifically over our understanding of what/who Christ is.  It is probably the most oppositional Chronicle thus far in terms of presenting a structured understanding of how the Church's stance on the Bible limits its capacity to know and love the fullness of Christ and of God. Wikipedia links: Hurricane Charley, John Donne, Mahabharata, Qur'an, Talmud

Ch. 17 Backhaulin' Trash/Fruit and Chaff + + + + + Brief mention about the load of "waste, synthetic fibre" that sprung me out of Texas toward the Northwest, then continues the attack on idolatry of the Bible, bringing Nikos Kazantzakis back into the argument as an example of how to use spiritual discernment over a literal reading of the text.  Compares the creative approach of Kaz to the method of Thomas Jefferson, who according to legend used to cut out the parts of the Bible that didn't jive with him. "The parable as recorded in the gospel of Luke actually teaches the worldly way, Kazantzakis says indirectly, and the living Christ has taught me this other way –let me share it with you."   Wikipedia links: Thomas Jefferson

Ch. 18 The Continuing Story of Ananias and Sapphira / page 1 / page 2 / page 3 + + + + + --> This is not so much a chapter of the Chronicles as it is a rather long short story (if you'll pardon the oxymoron) influenced by the Chronicles that led up to it.  I spent nearly a month writing it, or roughly one-fourth of the total time spent on the Chronicles.  In many ways it is the literary culmination of all the previous ideas that were developed in essay form --most specifically, the "historical fiction" and spiritual discernment elements of Kazantzakis' retelling of sections of the Gospels.  Like The Peasant and the King it is written with the intent of being read as pure allegory, with no possible threat of being mistaken for a literal or historical truth --this is the formula I believe must be used to fulfill Joseph Campbell's call for a new cultural mythology, a new form for the ancient Truth of God in our world. (In the interest of those who would prefer to print this story and read it on paper, I have left the pages free of graphics and with a white background for easy printing.)

Ch. 19 Big Sky Kicks/I've Been Everywhere + This chapter is pure road journal, and a recollective one at that.  I spent almost the entire tour of duty from late August to mid-September writing "Ananias and Sapphira," so in this chapter I merely recount some of the travels that I did during the writing.  Leads up to my next hometime that I spent with my old friend Dave in Seattle.

Ch. 20 Six Days Off The Road/I AM Is Here Now + + A long and rambling chapter that I considered cutting altogether, until I realized that there is a nice, neatly wrapped message about the power of identifying with the eternally present presence of I AM, and how this liberates us from the need to wallow in the past with the ego.  It feels like the way this chapter ended helped build momentum for the dramatic crescendo of Chrisotheistic ideas in the following chapter, so it is possibly worth checking out for that reason alone, to catch on to the wave and ride it into Ch. 21.

Ch. 21 I AM Is Still Here Now + + + + + --> This is it.  If Chapter 18 became the epitome of The Camerado Chronicles in the format of fiction, this was the quintessence of Camerado as an essay.  No preceding chapter managed to penetrate the heart of my belief in Christ and present it intellectually as a summary of Christotheism the way this one did. "In portraying Jesus as 100% human and 100% God, and in removing the dualistic barrier between God and God’s creation (specifically humankind in this case), Christian theology has thus allegorically delivered us to the non-dual perspective in which we can see the presence of God in all of humanity.  Suddenly the 'Virgin Birth' of Christ is no longer a theological Sasquatch whose historical accuracy is to be debated without end –it is the ultimate metaphorical depiction of how God 'enters' our world continuously through the eternal act of Creation.  To assign this relationship to Jesus the man, and to him only, is to miss His point entirely.  This is the foundation upon which all future writings upon Christotheism have been built.  An absolutely can't- miss chapter for those following the metatheological strain.

Ch. 22 Riding Into the Sunset + + I thought I was merely wrapping up Part Two, but of course this turned out to be the last chapter of The Chronicles.  No metatheological developments --it was all spent in the "grand finale" of Ch. 21-- but a great personal sense of closure for me as an author, finishing the idea started in the previous chapter of why it was important not to utilize The Chronicles to explore my ego's past: "it would make it egocentric, in a way that would strip it of its value as an allegorical tale.  Just as the Bible serves us best by offering what I have been calling a metaphorical imperative rather than an historical one, I believe the Chronicles can best serve the reader as an allegory of one ordinary person’s search for meaning in a world where all the alternatives seem absurd." Closes with the hope that "readers who were not doing so already were inspired to start Chronicles of their own in some manner, to wrestle with God on their own terms."