Two Great Lies

One great lie
shall replace
another great lie.

The angels will fall
from the heavens
overwhelm some poor
open minded human
who was looking for the answer
today's world simply
does not offer.

Those angels
will say,
the old lie was not
a lie.

The scientists will tease
facts from observations
and seduce our minds
with empiricism.

But their demonstration
is, too, a secret of which
none will speak --

doing so would drive you insane
and take away your sleep for a night
or two, twist your reality.

One great lie
will replace another
and all the liars
will fight for their truth.

Liars will die,
liars will survive,
and one great lie
will tickle Darwin
breaking the rules
of both houses.

The future will forget
and those who do not forget
will have to laugh
at how silly our ancient,
lesser evolved civilization was.

Light

Light wasn't invented
to shine on the street at night

or to make children
feel safe in the dark.

Light wasn't made
for reading books
or for television sets.

Light was made
to beam out of your eyes

when you laugh

when you're happy

when you're in love.

Light was made
to enchant.

Normal

Death, war, hunger:
normal.

You don't like it.
You feel badly about it:
normal.

No one's gonna apologize
to you for it:
normal.

You think it's really crazy
and super f*cked up?:
normal.

There are some strange mofos out there,
talking to themselves
on street corners
screaming to Zeus
and old, dead gods,
their frustrations,
searching for their minds:
normal.

Crime on the streets.
Crime in politics.
Injustice against which you
dream up a better world
you struggle to get yourself
to actualize in your day to day,

innocent people dying,
guilty people fleeing,
and no one knows who is who
anymore and no one
really cares, either:

normal.

You think you're crazy:
normal.

You're hopeless today
hopeful the next:

normal.

You say,
"There is no normal.
Normal is a myth.":

Normal.

Carry on.

I went to the praça, à noite

I went to the praça à noite:

It's spring in the southern hemisphere,
the temperature is perfect for
shorts, a tank top, and Havaianas, or
the short black shiny fur of
Georgia, the dog.

She is fascinated by everything --
a true deficit of attention
which makes her so cute
you want to watch her do her thing
forever.

So I watch her
and scoop all natural ice cream
into my mouth with a little wooden spoon-thing
and watch the kids running around
in the background where they play games
and yell all sorts of things
like the rules of their game;
where to run to and where to hide,
smashing little snap things on the ground
or tossing them at each other,
enjoying the very temporary satisfaction
of these toy explosives.

I watch the poetry,
the real life poetry
of beings in space-time
sending out waves to friends
they did not expect to see,
hugs transmit heartbeats,
conversations travel far enough
to eavesdrop,
kisses in the corner, under trees,
near the bike rack in the shade
and shadows slide faithfully
beside everyone.

Old men of terceira idade
haven't changed their wardrobe
since their twenties.

Suave slow sauntering fedora-capped
open button up short sleeves cream color
like the loose pants striding long
toward their bicycles which they ride
all the way back to their sitio
which lay along a dirt road
some 10, 20, or 30 kilometers away.
Their bikes are from the dictatorship
iron, one gear.  They carry their women
and children on them into and out of the city center.

Their sitios tucked in the sierra
alive with stars gliding slowly
like amoebas reincarnated as the most
beautiful, peaceful lifeforms,
alien evenings.  Indeed, these old men
hope their roads never get paved
but "the way things are going",
they say to each other over coffee or cachaça,
"the way things are going, who knows?"

Kids need new clothes
otherwise they'll be laughed at
and "legal" won't make sense anymore
and so won't be marketable
and then it'll all be communism
or socialism and losers eating leaves
and fruit and nuts and hormone free beef
in a glorious virgin tuft on mother Earth's
most fecund region
and they will be her immaculate conception.

I know. I speak of silly, unrealistic dreams.
Maybe I speak like a man
who sees nothing more than poetry;
who wants nothing more than peace,
but has to fight for it
heart and mind.

But hey, I write these very words
on a cell phone.
I wear Old Navy shorts and Havaianas
and Arizona tank top.
I wear a cool Antartica Guarana baseball cap
I found at my dad's sitio.
So much time did it spend in the sun,
it has faded to a handsomely aged teal
and the inside was so nasty
with sweat stains and disintergrating sponge
and mold and, no doubt, invisible critters
on cobwebs, I washed it twice before
putting it on my head.
I wear a polar heart monitor watch
and contact lenses without which
I would not enjoy the fine view of which
I now write -- my vision is that poor.

But of what we can be (not what we ought to be);
of what of us we shall take
in the arc of our children's
relation-ships with each other,
with life --

of these things, it is our duty
to speak of, often.

Spirit and Wilderness

No matter how wild or wicked the wilderness

your virgin eyes will find when your spirit

finally awakens,

know this:

It is your wilderness.  It grew whist you slept

and dreamed the dreams of a man

who thought that all he was was mortal flesh

cast here, perhaps, to defend or prove himself

among his likenesses of form.

That wild is you.  If unkempt, twas you who rendered it this

and twas you who thought, somewhere within, 

as you sensed that for which you had no proof,

as if realizing you had a blind spot in your vision,

in your perception,

that if and when your spirit should also blossom and find feet

to carry it throughout, 

it would be the wildest Life of them all,

infinity, minus fear.

shadow sculptures and other people

Shadow sculpture is especially beautiful because when you look at the physical sculpture, you do not see the order in it, you do not see the pattern, and therefore it appears to lack that standard beauty of proportion the human eyes seems to prefer. But when you cast a light from the right angle, the proportion and harmony of the sculpture becomes visible. I like this because it seems a clever metaphor for other people: sometimes we meet people who are so different, they don't seem to make any sense at all. They appear to be a mess and we therefore do not credit them as possessing a beauty of character that our own culture, our own way, our own upbringing has taught us to recognize. However, when we look from the right angle, maybe we see it. When we shine our own light upon the mess we perceive, maybe then we see that beauty, the universal intangible shadow that inspires our adoration, our affection -- Love.

today i shederized a tear

Melancholy does my heart

achey-ache observerin

mundial affairs as are.

Status, statisticus,

etcetera, ad infinitum

through death and

yummy-money stink

and good Chinese, Angolan,

Mexican – immigrants and native

to their own soils – slaves

of contemporaneity, my fellows.

Today I shederized a tear

or two, alone here in my

musicless interval of

thoughts, all of which was

full of heart and truth

like fetuses of my affair

with goddess Psyhe herself

which, for my health of mind,

were aborted before they could

a come on out screamerin

and distorterin my precious

world-view and pacificitificationdom.

I'm the only thing that matters, anymore.

Smarts is only good for getting

today cause smarts alone

with no business acumen

is that mortal recipe for

special sauce crack-cocaine;

methamphetomine; crystal-crumbed

super grass; purely man-made tasty-ass poisons;

hard, cheap corner store spirits

to numb me antennae,

falsify my delisions.

Validate yours, Gingerbread man.

Turn them into a lie

like you insisted they is.

Smarts from the books and ideas

without balls or a deep throat

so the world can f+ck the troof

into you immaculately

so that nastiness you hate

ain't nastier than you

and you is just humble

and workerin hard as the dumb

cog-man, cromagazine sex-changed

womenish miracles a science –

amazerin, distracten beautery –

drunk-drivinerin wives

gone mad at the maid

and life altogether:

Equality is killerinus.

You are killerin me.

My goodness, education tenderizes

when it should coat

cloak rape break

and gently casket

your goodness

put it on a shitty little

boatsy to Heaven

so a wave can smash it

to watery death

out beyond our innocent view

and not even your

prayers make it there,

you fool and

quit learnerin crap

start deceiverin. Deliver your freedom

to D'allah, in whom we trust,

and sweat for his green cape

to knight your worthless ass

and give you shelter

through these miserable,

sad, nasty sluts we've all becomified.

Ever feelerish as if?

Driverin from here to there

everyday and just now I seen

the billboard. It read,

“Welcome to the Animal Kingdom, Maaaaan!”

Lucky bastard was surrounderized

by ladies, beer, drugs.

Not a worry in sight

smiling from ear to ear.

Benchmark

Your benchmark days
are hidden in ordinariness.
Not everyone knows
when you learn
to ride the wave
enough lengths
to be a Man,
a Citizen, a Professional,
a Genius, or whatever.

But your own sight changes
and you marvel.

The world is what you make of it.

Hard Science

You want to run away

to the monasteries of

northern India.

Developed-world human beings

are straight bonkers.

The details of why or

how is the dissertation

you simply don't care

to write, anymore.

It'll remain the treatise

the observant lover

might spy in your movements;

the organization of your bedroom;

your reasonable protests;

your tender hypnosis,

honest and beautiful.

Let'em burn,

you've said to yourself

at your most anarchistic,

most rebellious,

most f*ck you, World.

You don't need to

be in robes in the

mountaintops of Asia

to do what monks do:

to pour water

with every ounce

of attention

pouring into

the pouring

and the water

fell beautifully enough

for the angels

to protect us

forever.

To acknowledge the life

in the plants and

the wild animals;

to bow to Life

or at least revere Life

with every act –

that is ultimately

the disconnect

rendering all of us incomplete.

You can do that here, I think.

Begin revering yourself.

Pour your sacred attention

where there is none.

This is the baptism

of lonely urban monks.

See?

The city and its dress

and gadget ornaments

drying up our moments

of contact

deserted human hearts

drinking greedily

from the mirage.

ARMA.ZEN

4 June 2015

WORDNERD

The word play here is that the word "armazenar" means, "to store", in Portuguese.  The word "armazens" is the plural of "armazém", which is "warehouse".  Also, the word, "arma" is "weapon" and "zen" is the same as it is in English, "zen".

a lot in life

Somewhere in the

Kingdom of God

there is a

post for you.

Live and learn;

follow and lead;

come and go;

open and close

the doors to Moments

Life invites you

to enter,

and be grateful

(In fact, if there ever

were a skill to develop –

a sense to fashion

keener than the rest –

it would be

that of gratitude.).

Close the door

if you plan

to stay in a moment,

to make it a forever

or a season

or a vacation

from Normal;

close the door

when you leave.

Let your spirit

not linger there,

in Moments passed.

You will always

get somewhere, just

keep on going.

That post for which

the Lord interviewed you

may not be your destination.

There are the called,

as they say,

and there are the chosen.

Even the eternal

wanderer who seems

to have no post

whatever

carves, from the

tremendous pace of sunlight,

a space with the blade

of his very being.

His and a cathedral's

shadow result from

the same phenomenon:

equal labor and industry;

equal symbolism, sacredness,

vastness;

equal beauty;

the same hands sculpted

both the beggar and the throne

of the very king he might have

been in a past life,

the same society lifted him

into palaces

as now forces him

to repose in an Eden

behind the veil of poverty:

should he find it,

he will profit the boon

of the rarest mortals.

The kingdom

may pass through

the gates of his bones,

but in this life

it is but a cruel metaphor:

a cold wind both trembles

and troubles him,

ironically fortifying

the stalk of his spirit.

He may have beheaded

Emperors with a single breath

lifetimes ago,

as with a single breath

the final iota of

Will will flee

the labrynth of forces

binding flesh to soil

or Adam to Eve

or atom to atom

until all of humanity

is riddled with wormholes

decomposing on a special rock

somewhere in the universe.

And the Universe

will eventually tire,

as each of us already has.

And she will have to sleep

for another eternity

if we are ever to be

dreamt up again.

I'm Right

You're right, you're right
you're soooo right
all the time!

But, is that your only trick,
being right?

If you are provoked
to humor
do you get violent?

Why Dogs Cry

A dog irritates his master by wanting so much love and attention.

I wonder if God thinks the same of humans.

If so, I should apologize to Him.

I am also an obnoxious creator.

I fail to perfectly live in His image.

I must apologize to you, all of you, for that.

All that good advice from the greats --

the thinkers, the cultural builders,

the saints, the artists, the parents,

the motivational speakers,

the voices of consciousness

and Life herself --

I do my best to listen

and take those encouraging words

all the Way. To give them back, too.

Walk the walk, they said,

don't just talk the talk.

Buddha was a man

and what would Jesus do

and so was Carnegie and Rockefeller

Gandhi, Newton, all of 'em.

The world seems to love them so;

but this is only seeming,

not the whole story.

I am sure of it.

In fact, they were difficult to love;

at least at some point

in their lives the were difficult to match

and people hate that

and they, feeling hated

while trying to love so deeply,

can only turn to God.

And, like adorable, yet

obnoxiously helpless dogs,

beg for His touch.

Hafiz-inspired

My spirit cartwheels in the 
virgin fields of hope illuminated 
by the auras of children begot
of Love and Reason.
And, If I am a human
I will surely know to follow
for humble eyes
spy masters, plain-clothes
or otherwise,
and to follow begs
of the heart the courage
to live forever
with our without
the body:
but impossible
to take one breath of
Eternity
without faith.

Café de manhã

Reading clouds out the café window
in a hoodie and fleece pants
and house slippers,

southern hemisphere
purple black nights
and pink clouds
told us, days ago,

you'd better bundle up.

And the books
have ideas that authors wrote
years ago and thought
even longer ago
and sat and labored
to spell it all out for sleepy
audiences like me.

Wake up and smell the coffee,
be amazed by nature
and life and human fucking beings,
say the authors.

And the clouds?
you should also ask.
Who made those,
and what cryptic message might
they form in your mind
in your heart?

I don't have the answer to that,
says the poem:
for that, you must go
and see for yourself.

Praying Over Food

You, pancakes with egg and bacon in between; you, double espresso from Carmo de Minas; you, delicious bolo de fubá with crunchy, sugary crust on top; you, shot of sparkling water: my belly is your Heaven, for I see you for the energy you are. Let me bow my head over you and pray, and my prayer will be a contract to use the energy you give me to do Good. Your destiny is a gesture of kindness; a timely moment of self-restraint; a smile; that hidden extra effort that I put into Loving Life and my Fellow Human Beings will come from the energy that each of you provide me with now, at breakfast.

So worry not, oh food of Foods, oh energy of Energy, oh cooperative vibrations of the celestial orchestra grouped in your respective forms like the drums, strings, and trumpets at the gates of the Kingdom! See that my teeth are the Pearly Gates and my body is the karma burning furnace in which your tastiness, your Love, will know both an End and a Beginning, and that you shall be dispatched, post-haste, through Acts directed at the King of Kings, the God of Gods, as flowers of celebration at the wedding of opposing houses from which the Prince of Peace will be born.

Amen.

Vibrations & Silence

At the horizon where a

Now larger than

you might

imagine

meets a tomorrow

beyond Belief,

Saint Truth awaits you.

He will appear at

the doorway,

heart-shaped,

and you'll say,

no way, I don't believe it,

how obvious, how

can it be?

You will be the silence

digesting your own questions

into quarks and quasars

beaming back upon yourself

and when you are the silence

your body is not of skin

and forms exposed by light

but vibrations:

You are either music,

noise, or static within

your hitherto silent eternity;

but it depends on so many things

and it is a formidable task

that the sharpest logic

should shake hands with Truth

and not need to see its blood

to know it lives.

What I've Learned from Dogs

I was a cross country runner at Cornell University from 2001 to 2003. The city of Ithaca New York, where you will find Cornell, is beautiful because of its rather balanced relationship with the natural environment. In Ithaca, you will find waterfalls, gorges, hills, woods, and Cayuga lake, among other wonders of nature. And as a runner I had the special opportunity to know these places in the intimate way that only running, hiking, or biking can offer.

Our team would leave from Bartel's Hall and follow one of many paths that covered anywhere between 5 and 30 kilometers. There was one path that was mostly pavement – relatively quiet streets shaded by trees lining the road, along which there were modest, middle and upper middle class homes with yards and dogs and so forth. On this running loop (I forget the name of it now), there was this one house in particular that had two dogs and they would always, without fail, dart out of where ever they were and race toward the street where were were running. And they would be barking madly.

A dog's bark betrays the emotions and/or intentions of the dog. Whereas the dog may simply want to show that it is excited or happy, the bark, at least to the human ears, sounds the same as the bark of an angry attack or a threat.

I remember the first runs, responding with fear, thinking that the dogs would come chase after me and bite me, which is not unheard of. It took me a few times to not be afraid or to respond with my own “bark” to show that they weren't going to psychologically dominate me, and they would either retreat or stop barking and run more calmly behind me until they determined they were far enough away from their home or running with me simply wasn't as fun without the barking.

My self-awareness evolved considerably, I'd say, because of these dogs. After conquering my reaction and indeed rendering it a conscious response to their barking, I still had a sensation of annoyance. “Why do these dogs always come barking every time we run by?” I thought to myself each time. And this irritated me. I thought that the dogs were irritating me and felt that irritation evolve on its own, conquering my opinions of dogs in general, even, creating limits within my heart and mind, reinforcing the feeling of irritation with the labor of constructing arguments to the end of validating my reaction.

The truth is, the dog is a dog. Dogs bark. That is a part of what they do. I don't underestimate the dog's sensitivities and capacities. Indeed, I am sure that the dog has an awareness equal to mine, even though I could not tell you how it is equal and in what ways a dog, specifically, is aware and spiritual and so forth. But I believe it.

I am a human being. At least in terms of rational thinking, the dog and I are not equals. From the human stand point, it is less the dogs responsibility to stop barking and “behave” then it is my responsibility to not permit the dog to have the power of irritating me. In the end, it is my emotional response. Correction: it was my emotional reaction that the dog elicited.

Much later, years later, it occurred to me that the special feature of my being is that I can train myself to respond in a manner that protects my peace, my happiness, or whatever it is I wish to preserve. This is the difference between reacting and responding. The dog was reacting to our passing by. The dog had no reason to change his reaction, no reason to fashion a response. I did. My reaction was my problem and, as a human being, I had to do the intellectual labor of reshaping that reactive energy so that it did not perturb me.  If my emotions bother me, it is my responsibility to examine why and see what I can I can do to alter my response before I blame whom or whatever elicited said reaction.

"This, I think, is the definition of 'response-ability'", barked the dog day after day to me -- I just didn't understand, at the time.

The Meaning of Life III: Competition and Institutional Goals

In which competitive sport does the competitor wake up and complete everyday?  Outside of abstractions of what "training" is, the answer is, "no sport has a competition everyday".  In the same way, why would our entire economic system, which has significant influence over our politics and thus inter-national communications, be based on competition?

Our political system should be based entirely on cooperation.  In the same way that a teacher must acknowledge and address the level of a student and his or her learning preferences, so too must a international community evaluation its constituents in terms of the "hidden curriculum" which is to Love.  I know it may sound absurd to say that a Nation's curriculum is to Love, but it is True, regardless of its silly, non-political sounding humanity.  It is true because all Peoples seek to survive, and in order to survive one must be well-verse in Love, especially when those People seek to survive in a diverse global community such as ours today.

Now, this means that any Nations with seemingly everlasting historical conflict need to invest, politically and economically, in the resolution of that conflict.  Institutions should conscientiously, openly, and by design have this as their end.  And this is not the responsibility of just the nation with the conflict, but of all nations.

So, if one nation does not have the means to resolve its conflicts due to the fact that it feels it must, first are foremost, compete in the global market, then that nation should be pardoned from competition in the global market and all other nations should contribute to the operations of that nation, so long as that nation focuses, for whatever duration of time necessary, on the resolution of its crippling conflicts.

The Meaning of Life

The purpose of Life is to Love Well. Thus, in ourselves and our surrounding, will we witness Meaning bloom like a fruit come to sustain we who husband the Land of Love, sacrificing its pulp to perpetuate our good cause.

To Love Well means that we acknowledge the gift that is our capacity to love and explore its magnitude, with both a scientific and religious spirit. Scientific insofar as we test it, we dare to hypothesize (e.g. that it is infinite) and then endeavor to prove that it, in fact, is as we hypothesized or is not. Religious insofar as we resurrect love -- even when it seems dead and gone, even when it seems like it never was -- with the breath of our belief and the tenderness of our humanity.

When I say that the purpose of Life is to Love well, it is to accept this gift of Love, first; to know it, second; and through knowing it, allow ourselves to be changed by it so as to not kill the enemy, not trespass on other students of Love, but to destroy our very own mal-constructed knowledges of what Love is.

This day we may not see as easily with the imagination of the mind, but indeed, with the heart we are obliged to hold fast to this vision.

The purpose of Life is to Love well. In order to to this we must study Love and in order to do this we must endeavor to first and foremost love ourselves, for in ourselves, we will find every law of Nature and of Man, every theorem of mathematics, every philosophy of every philosopher, and so forth. In ourselves we will find the light and The Light, the flesh and the bone and the Spirit and the Soul and in there, somewhere, we will find what all men, since the dawn of consciousness, have intuited to be greater than which any single man can imagine: that wondrous capacity to Love, that capacity that knoweth no limits save for our own failure to act, our own unwillingness to believe (which is to say, act with the love of a mature heart, even when the mature mind counsels otherwise).

Be not shepherded by Temptation, but by Love, and only Love.  And if thy art shepherded by Temptation, it is to learn the difference between Temptation and Love.  Once the difference is distinguished, that phase of your growth is over and you should endeavor to release temptation and this is also done with Love, for Temptation has taught you.

Loving well is not easy and in our efforts we are sure to fail. In this cycle of believing, trying, failing, we are left with the final gesture of loving ourselves again, despite failure; which is to say, believing in Love and its eternity, despite any quantity of empirical results suggesting otherwise.

To Love holistically is to recruit all orders of thinking, including that Highest Order Thinking which we tend to believe is preserved for difficult problems of a mathematical, philosophical, economical, theoretical, academic, even moral sort sometimes … when, in simple fact, this high order thinking is nothing more than that faculty to Love and the intensity and rigor often required to do so, well.

"Endeavor to Love well", is the proposition here, friends.  And if you do so already, endeavor to do so to a degree you cannot presently imagine; the whole World of Man, and the whole Universe of Energy will conspire in your favor.  For in this Life, Love is the Alpha and the Omega.

Jimmy and the Angry Birds

Jimmy went walking at the nearby University a little while ago. He soon found himself being attacked by birds. He thought to himself, “what's up with this? Why are you attacking me, bird?” Of course, he said this only in his head and, of course, the bird did not respond.

Or, at least, the bird did not respond in the same language that Jimmy used to ask the question.

Unable to deduce why the bird was attacking him, Jimmy continued walking in the direction he wanted to go, for he thought, “I need to go this way to get to where I want to go.” But the bird's attack only grew more fierce and soon, Jimmy was running as fast as he could away from the bird.

It occurred to Jimmy as he was running fast away that there was a nest there on the ground and the path he took to get to where he wanted to go took him pretty close to the nest, which belonged to the bird. The path did not belong to Jimmy, but he supposed it was well within his rights to walk where he walked, the way he walked. Plus, the bird did not have any signs up, nor did the bird speak the language of Jimmy's preference, which was the lingua franca of Human Beings; very particular to Human Beings, indeed.

Jimmy later realized that he was too close to the bird's nest and that the bird was right to defend the area around the nest. Jimmy apologized within himself, as if the message would, somehow, eventually make it to Bird. He said, “Sorry Bird. I didn't know you were protecting your babies. My bad.”

Having heard Jimmy recount the tale of the Angry Bird, I was compelled to analyze it. Firstly, the bird was able to communicate to Jimmy in a way that got Jimmy to do what the bird wanted; namely, to keep Jimmy away from the nest. Jimmy,without knowing it, succeeded in communicating to the bird that he understood neither the bird's language nor message, and it was in response to this ignorance that the bird got more fierce on Jimmy.

The second observation is this: the Bird is not always so aggressive. Indeed, the Bird can be seen flying around peacefully, eating things, caring for her fledglings, standing on branches or electrical wires singing for no apparent-to-humans reason. The Bird does, however, possess a violent side, and this side is installed in the Nature Software Bird as the application Angry Bird. Any part of Nature using the Software Bird will possess the app Angry Bird otherwise the part of Nature operating as Bird will have a low survival rate (it seems that Nature is interested in Survival – this may have something to do with the song of the bird on the branch or electrical wire).

In the same way, any organism born of Nature will possess an Angry X software designed for the very same purpose: to survive. Not that it is the only Nature App contributing to the survival of the Natural Being, but it is one that has proven successful for the period of time Living Beings have been around.

Now, I daresay that an organism is not just a Single Form organism, like an amoeba (single cell) or a bird (single body) but a society of human beings, too, is in the category of Natural Living Organisms (NLO). As such, it too has all the codes and special apps found in Nature. So, while not all of its parts may express the same range of emotions, behaviors, interests, etc., indeed, the collection as a whole, once it is full and alive, will have, among all other codes and apps, a member or group of members who are the Angry Birds, so to speak. They will have the Angry code, they will be the defense mechanism of the NLO and, like the bird, when they are engaged, they will not yield unless their terms are met, one way or another. Their presence is natural, their function is natural and fueled by a most primitive Purpose, and there are only a few ways to stop them:

1. take another path to where you want to go, do not consider that path your own, forfeit your “right” to take whatever path you want, or;
2. simply run because, in the end, your goal was not to awaken the angry bird, nor to injure the angry bird or her children, but simply to achieve another end, or;
3. engage in the bird's aggressive physical dialogue decisively and silence the bird once and for all; and don't feel badly about it when it is over, for you are a part of Nature.

An Interpretation of Biblical Miracles

You won't understand anything in the Bible until you know what the book seeks to tell you about. It is a Creation story, but not of the physical world, of Life. And the Creation story presented in the Bible is not and does not seek to be scientific. Indeed, its purpose is precisely to call your attention to an aspect of Life that cannot be explained sufficiently with the language of science.

You will not understand anything that Jesus says until you accept certain premises about who He is and where He comes from. The idea is that Jesus is God incarnate. Before you go and affirm that this is impossible, know that this affirmation is born of your mind, and that your mind has been molded, trained in a way. This molding and this training is not necessarily complete and you might want to practice some mental flexibility by considering hypotheses which, at first, seem quite unlikely and seeing what these hypotheses produce within you if you follow them to their conclusions. You will find that text like the Bible work in this way: they render you the proof of the Nature of the Truth they profess. You either accept or do not. You either put in the effort to understand or do not. You either believe or do not.

To accept a premise and to believe that it is true are two very different things. To accept a premise and see where it goes is simply responsible intellectualism. It is also respectful to he/she/they who created the story and/or argument. To some humans of this modern era, accepting the requisite premises of Sacred Texts is an exercise in intellectual humility for many are exorbitantly proud of human achievements until now. And, almost all of these achievements lay outside the domain of Faith. They seem to provide a view of Life such that Faith and her stories seem lies better suited for gullible children.

Recalling that Jesus Christ is God incarnate will help you to contextualize any and everything that comes out of his mouth. Remember that He speaks of the Kingdom of God and that his purpose is, in effect, to remind men of spiritual values in a serious way. He does not address men and woman as the common man does (an imperfect creature of mortal flesh to another imperfect creature of mortal flesh), but as a perfect, eternal living spirit addressing other perfect, eternal living spirits ( the Aramaic "aba" was used in the sense; see Dr. Errico Rocco). Jesus does not think of Life as the common man thinks of Life. He does not think of Death in the common way, either. He is here to talk about the Eternal. He is here to talk about God and the truth of God and everything that he does revolves around this singular purpose. He is not just talking about this stuff, either. He is living it.

Finally, the Bible is a powerful argument not only for the existence of God, the Kingdom of God, and the relationship between common man and the divine, but for the simple Value of Belief and the need for the awesome Power of Belief to be aligned with something that is Eternally, Fundamentally and perfectly divine, in the human flesh, ergo Jesus Christ.

The Body and Blood of Christ

The Eucharist/The Lord's Supper/Holy Communion

Bread is a chemical substance. Those chemicals, when examined under a microscope, are molecules and the molecules have atoms. When we look at the bread this closely, we see that is is mostly what appears to be “empty space”. The nuclei of the atoms are so small and far apart, like the space between the sun and a planet. If we were to see it with our naked eyes that way, we would not think that it was bread, nor would we see the color of it (it would not reflect light) nor would we perceive, with any other physical sensation, that it was the bread we know bread to be.

Scientists today say that bread is energy. I mean, the say that everything is energy. They say that even the nucleus of the atom, which was the smallest physical thing for a long time, is also actually just another form of energy. No actually solid stuff. Yet it is so easy to grab a piece of bread, eat it, taste it, and then say, after we ate it, “I just ate bread”. Despite Science's fanciful description of physical and chemical stuff, there is no argument about the reality of the experience of eating bread. The experience had effects like touch, taste, and so forth. Certain effects can be measured the the human organism itself. But can we feel how many miles 4 slices of bread will permit us to walk? No, this would take a more holistic analysis of what bread, according to chemistry and physics is. We would have to interpret bread as a type of energy and not simply as the bread the human organism so unhesitatingly accepts as Real.

Understanding that Bread is Energy To Do Stuff is the the same Variety of Reasoning employed in talking about God and Jesus. Bread is energy, and bread, from some perspectives, from certain microscopes and eyes, is a miracle. When you stop shoving it in your face along with other stuff (the substances of which are also unknown to you) and you actually sit and contemplate that bread – that plain old boring bread – you find that you are wrong: the bread is neither plain nor old nor boring. You find that it is molecules you can't see, energy that you can taste and burn and use to move your physical body. The bread gives your physical body Life. Seeing the truth about bread might help you see the truth about what Christ.

The same logic is used to understand the blood. The body and blood constitute our physical presence here. What we do, what we consume, and how we use that energy we consume and seed our environments with that energy after it has passed through our human organism.

Water into Wine

Who wants water when you can have wine? I met a guy in the Italian Alps, in a small town called Chamois in the state of Val d'Aosta. He was 73 and the only guy who was born and raised up there in that village which, when I was there, had all of about 13 people. He said he never drank water. Only milk and wine. Because he was a man.

Now, Jesus turned water into wine. How did he do it? Jesus said, “look at the water.” Then he said, “what is it?” You thought about where it came from. A fountain somewhere. And then continued thinking about the origin of the water in the fountain, maybe even the fountain, itself. The water came from a mountain on which it rains occasionally. The rain came from a cloud and the cloud from the ocean and the water from the ocean got lifted up to the sky and turned into a cloud because of the heat of the sun and some wind and air pressure and a few other of Nature's phenomena. The water as two constituent molecules. It is soft and seems to have pretty much no flavor. Who made the water? Why do I know to drink it? Why is it so good for me? I think when you understand the water, and then you drink it and feel how real it is, you also feel how real Realness is (in a Platonic or even Heidegerian sense) and it isn't what you thought it was. You original idea of Real was a fraction of what is known today and what is known today is yet a fraction of the Whole. The Whole Real Truth is way, way, realer than what we are used to, that it is so hard to describe ... understandably, then, it is hard to believe.

This truth is ten thousand times more intoxicating than wine. This is the truth of Jesus Christ.

The Fish and the Bread

Soldiers are sitting around, starving. Dude named Jesus comes around and tells his friends, “get two fish and five pieces of bread 'cause we're gonna feed these guys.” They're like, “no way, bro.” Jesus is like, “Yeah way.”

Imagine yourself there. Hungry as hell. Living in a time in which there is a guy who some people actually believe is the Son of God. Like, God in the Flesh. You might not believe it, sure. But there are dudes around, rational, sane human beings, who believe it. You try to fight it off, but you can't help but be at least a little bit influenced by your environment. You have to keep on telling yourself, “this is Jesus guy can't be for real. I don't believe it.”

But then you see the first guy handling the fish. He is delicate with it. He takes such a small piece. Thissoldier is emaciated, shivering with hunger, looking like if he doesn't get half that fish, old dude is gonna die. But he takes just like a lick of the fish. And then when the bread comes, he pretty much just touches the bread and then licks his fingers. Licks his fingers like the taste on them was gonna save his life. All the guys do this and eventually, but the time the bread and the fish get to you, there is still like the entire fish and the entire pieces of bread and all the dudes in front of you are smiling and talking now. They aren't as grumpy as before. Not even as weak and famished as before. They are lit up. Maybe the moon is out, shining on them. You don't know. You have your eyes on the barely fed faces of five thousand soldiers. Your disbelief is dissolving in the truth of the light of their mood, their smiles, their camaraderie.

You, too, lick the fish and graze your fingers on the bread, then lick your fingers like there were endless noodles coming out the tips of them. Jesus noddles. "Fake". "Fictitious", according to your old way of seeing things, according to empiricism (or what you thought it was) but empirically, you are passing the fish, passing the bread, smiling, talking. The fish and the bread are the occasion that invite loving, even when there is almost nothing.  This is the light and when two or more emit, give or basque in it, there you will find the love of Christ, the presence of God.

Summer In Itajubá Survival Tips

In summer Itajubá, you should take off your clothes when you get home. It is hot and you will sweat watching TV or surfing the net or whatever you do. You will then have to change clothes before you leave again because your first outfit is sweaty and Brazilians are an impressively clean, nice-smelling people. If you come to my house and I attend you at the door in my boxers and flip-flops, just look into my eyes and it won't be so awkward.

You should not be surprised by the sight of bare-chested construction workers, homeless, teenage boys or any other variety of male half-naked in public. Also, you should not get too excited by the ubiquitous short short shorts, the flowing colorful dresses, the shine of vitamin D on everyones skin. That will distract you from getting anything done. You may even acquire neck injuries, like whiplash, or fall back into the habit of drooling, which is considered rude in Brazil.

If you get irritated with anything at all, look at the sky, look at the mountains, buy a homemade ice cream or açai or an all-natural juice. Sit down and sweat in peace, knowing that you are in Itajubá and probably if you arrive "late" to where ever you think you need to be, you will most likely arrive right on time.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Take time to reflect today, Dr. MLK Jr. Day. 

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

From "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

Here are two quotes I like, the latter of which reminds me of John 1:5 for those of you interested in religion, quality literature, or hermeneutics. I put these two, also, because it has taken me around a decade of reading the Bible as an adult to finally feel like I understand the text. Many times I put it down and said, "this is ridiculous. This doesn't make any sense...it isn't realistic." I hypothesized that the failure to understand was my own. The effort to understand is a part of the experience of reading the text. The authors' were not obscure, I was dim and arrogantly considered my little candlelight of intellect sufficient to behold the cosmos of the soul.

There mere act of trying to understand the texts as completely as possible has strengthened, stretched, and rendered more nimble my mind in such a way that these "upgraded" faculties have enhanced my perspective on Life, People, Art, Work, etc. So, religious or agnostic or atheist, I argue that anyone who accepts the challenge of humbling his own "knowledge", his own conception of what is "True" to the narratives of (probably) any Sacred Text will find his mind more capable, his physical senses more sensitive to the depth of Truth, and his heart more at peace, pumping not just blood through his own body, but Love through a metaphysical organ of which all Beings are, arguable, constituents.

Excellent Men

Once, I found myself in the company of excellent men; or rather, men of habits lending toward what some might call excellent results. Well, I knew well enough to lay my third-eye gaze inward. Indeed my contents were in every way equal to theirs and yet my output, my expression, my transmission, my transubstantiation, my alchemy, of said substance (rather a "super-stance" or an "omni-stance" than a "sub-stance", I propose) was simply not par. It was a difference of method, approach, motivation. Indeed, either a lot of work was needed on my part, or a miracle, to come to match. I'd scribbled on a piece of paper, as I was in the habit of doing -- and still am -- whilst I sort of fretted in my agitated, inferior-feeling Will-force and irritated Ego: "I, too, must therefore seek excellence; if not, new company." 

And then, just at that moment, the lads of whom I speak, who were at the table discussing other things not-at-all related, all cried out, "amen to that brother!" smashing their glasses together above the middle of the table, and it was a Divine Timing behind that coinciding of my interior moment and that shared experience where by body, at least, was present. It was metapoetics, it was what the Single Soul in which we reside looks like when it dares to leap from the alphabet soup of the Collective Mind and fizzle in the caustic breath of Life, gazing upon itself through my confounded ears. Gone it went.

And of the capital “T” Truth, the meaning, there is no measurement, no empirical nothing in regard to it. Just me – I – and my response. I was to be the result, the proof, you so desperately need in order to confidently “know”.

But even now – and perhaps no matter what I might do or claim – you prefer your fine and reasonable doubt as if it were the shadow of a lone tree in a desert of confusion when, as I see it, it is much more like a mirage holding you from progressing onward, from returning.

Examining our two situations, I wonder: If you are right insofar as I am fueled by a fiction and I am right insofar as you are rendered stagnant by your Truth, which of us, in this Life, has got it right?