Happy Uncle

Okey dokey. i finally hustled me a mug shot and an A.K.A. Feller's name is Brody Harrison Lewis. (Pretty much everyone i've mentioned that to so far agrees that there'll be no possibility of mistaking his ethnicity: "So, like, do you, like, surf, or like, what?") He came into the ring at 6 lbs. 2 oz., 19.25 inches tall. This is a shot of him morphing into his "I. Hulk" form; but i think he's pretty darn dashing for all that.

Ladies and gentlemen, my newest nephew: Brody

Meg, a superb job of moulding, shaping, and cooking all around. Glenn, kudos on the genetic donation. God, thank You for a healthy nephew. He's beautiful.

My new nephew

A very big congratulations to Glenn & Megan on a shiny new baby boy! To all both of you who both read my blog (i think) and could care one widget less who they are, they had a... boy! He has a name-- i am confident-- but i have no idea what it might be. Moreover, i understand he came out weighing more than your average citrus fruit. Also, i'm told he caused no "tearing" or undue pushing, which, i think, could only be good. When i am apprised of more than just his very probable X-to-Y chromosome ratio, i will post that as well. Until then, you'll have to live in suspense with me.

And that's why we call it "the void."

A smaller bit more still of a little thought

i'm just off of work for the morning, but i had a wee thought occur to me and think i'll write it down. Maybe you'll just squint blankly in my direction and flare open one nostril, maybe expose a few of the top teeth on that side of your face in that special sort of hemi-snarl that somehow expresses abject disbelief or confusion; only, i think it's my spiritual gift to convey the brutally obvious. In my defense, i do make efforts to convey it artistically enough that whoever has the patience and long-suffering (i gather those two items are not the same thing) to follow me through yet another tautology comes out with the feeling, not that they've just cut a neat circle, but that they've for no discernible reason been induced to trace a much more idiotic polygram to come out exactly where they started. At any rate, you be the judge. Here's the thought:

i was listening to a country music station on the radio, and a song came on in which was the following line. (i think the song's called "When i get where I'm going".)


When i get where I'm going
And i see my Maker's face
I'll stand forever in the light of
His amazing grace

Now, this evoked the kind of image of Heaven that i've had for a long time; namely, that-- whatever other "sights" or "feelings" there are-- it'll be some variant of being in the Me-burning Radiance of God. Only the rest of the song is about flying, riding raindrops, stroking a lion's mane, etc.: earth as usual, but with People, Unlimited. The strange thing is that it's sequential. I.e., sometimes you're standing before God, but sometimes you're doing other things. Sometimes you're modifying your perspective into unusual shapes. Sometimes you're expanding; sometimes you're just expansive. Sometimes you're having a spontaneous picnic with your billion closest friends. But then sometimes you come again to stand (or, as the case may be, come to be aware of standing) before God and you worship. That's not to say that we couldn't be perfectly worshipful whilst doing other things; only there's a kind of Break involved, and i wonder if it makes any sense.

This is where i get stuck in a trap. i want to know what Heaven is like-- at least enough so that i can properly hope in it-- and yet i do know (inasmuch as i know anything at all) that, whatever Heaven might be, it'll be different enough from this place that i couldn't really wrap my little cogitator around it anyway-- even if it were given its very own 2,000 page thin-leafed fully-canonized and Widely-Accepted Book, indexed and concorded for easier reference. And i do know that, if only in virtue of the fact that i've never died and then been raised to life again; i've never awakened to find everything, everything changed for the better, but with the mind-crushing understanding that i had nothing whatever to do with it. It's just terribly odd to me that said Break is so (how do i say it?) acceptable. It's as though we're happy with the thought that we don't have to be among the 144,000, "'Cuz, Man!, would that get old after a few bazillion years!" Or maybe it's that we really, really, really would like the chance to get to do this life over again, only maybe a bit better equipped. (That, i can most assuredly understand.) That is what, as i gather it, Hindus and Buddhists hope for. Or maybe the common idea is of a sort of retrogression to the garden of Eden where we'll be we sans the the genetic wrenching bequeathed us by the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. [Could probably fit a few more "of"s in that sentence, but i'm afraid it'd start to lose its meaning.] It seems like they were fairly happy there, and yet God walked among them sometimes.

But maybe (here's where i come back 'round to the opening foreshadowing) we could somehow be a bit like we are now, only perfected and with the constant awareness of the presence of God-- that Adam and Eve obviously lacked. Maybe that's what Christendom hopes for. It's only taken me 30 years to give 'em credit for it, but it sounds good to me. And my confidence in the sanity of the Worldwide Union of Believers has increased sharply.

A little more of a little thought

[i'm going to go ahead and publish this, although i heavily recommend scrolling down and having a stare at m' boy. He's mighty cute. Cheers. --ed.]

There's a funny phenomenon about very long, ongoing Dialogues (or at least it's funny to me; but i'll admit i'm pretty easily amused) that the component streams of them have the habit of coalescing into very broad, homogeneous Generalizations. For example, when discussing the thoroughly eternal, wholly holy Land of Heaven, there seems to be a sort of commonish image i have in mind with whom i'm normally having such a conversation. There're golden bits and bejeweled bits and green-pastured bits through which a quiet water flows to, presumably, a crystalline sea. (Or at least there is a crystal sea. i guess it's less than clear what sort of river it's at the end of.) But we don't typically bring all of those component parts up in any single context-- for the very good reason that (to drag in a possibly inappropriate image) it'd take longer to set up the game board than it would to play the game. That's just to say that when i get together with my more respectable friends or, more normally, when i get together with myself to consider Heaven, we don't normally revisit all the possibilities/ variants/ models/ shinyhappy pictures we have or could come up with; that'd make having such a conversation (or any conversation at all, for that matter) untenably laborious and, well, infinitely long.*

But it seems there are other, special reasons we don't put Heaven together in one place, so to speak, that are beyond that more pedantic, obvious reason we don't re-lay all the groundwork for each ongoing Dialogue we carry. For one, many of the images of Heaven in scripture are awfully weird, or just vague, and they are at least tricky to weld together into anything like a coherent, presentable concept. For example, the less-than-reverently harvested collection of descriptives above do, irreverence notwithstanding, make an odd diorama. The very small glimpses we get of the Other Side from the Psalms and the prophets, from Jesus in the gospels, from Paul, and from the Revelation don't necessarily gel very well. And to do damage control before it becomes demanded, they certainly don't necessarily have to; there aren't many claims among them that a definite imagery or landscape or mode of being is being revealed by the writer. That is to say, most of those images have a raison d'etre having nothing whatever to do with revealing the contents of Heaven. So with that in mind, to gush on about the skyline of the New Jerusalem or the chemical makeup of our New Bodies is to speculate (even toward the goal of upbuilding and encouragement) without much bedrock beneath. Not that there isn't a place for some encouraging gushing**-- only speculation (along with, perhaps, personal testimony) can be an undulating sand dune on which to build one's eternal hope.

There is, i think, another reason we don't more often lift each other up with visions of Heaven, which reason i'd like to use as a springboard for further reflection (and maybe even, in the end, a little encouragement). Some of the images are, according to the person treating them, just flat-out uncomfortable. i'll admit it: i used to sit in various Sanctuaries staring wistfully at the vaulted Gothic buttresses thinking how much less a waste of wood they'd be if there were some climbing routes set on 'em. Then i'd drift off considering how boring Heaven would be if there were no boulders there. Surely it was a less than mature phase of my life (although arguably not a less mature phase, sadly); the point is that the whole "slouching about in luxurious green fields by a lovely li'l creek" scene sounds desperately less than a happening way to roll for an endless eternity. Likewise, the Jehova's Witnesses' archetypal painting of the frightfully happy Non-Hundred-Fourty-Four-Thousanders lugging baskets of easily-acquired oranges and-- what? avacadoes?-- around Subheaven sounds like it'd be fantastic 'till somewhere around lunchtime. It's not that i'm against peace per se; it's that i'm not equipped to imagine infinity without some sort of purpose, some goal. For that reason, i tend to eschew the whole Shepherd's Paradise scenario (although i'd give some serious thought to shepherding on Mallorca or Malta. Phooey with the sheep, but there're some skies i could stare at for a really long time.) On the other hand, i can much more easily empathize with the Elders' and the Four Living Creatures' situation: falling down perpetually on my face before the throne in awe of GOD. But then i wonder if it isn't a kind of arrogance or wrongheadedness on my part to put myself in such a place. i just don't know.

There are, though, some things said about the next life that are apparently very definite. With this abusively verbose introduction i'd like to dive off into some of those.

* Perhaps that's the sort of conversation for Eternity where (i strenuously hope) it will be unnecessary.

** To be sure, i wonder how some of the more straight-laced of our ilk maintain their posture for a lifetime. It seems that many spend their lives vigorously pursuing the failure to drink, gamble, have sex, associate with (or be) wild women, or cuss; and they build their fellow cloistermates up with stimulating imagery of an eternal Not-Hell. If that doesn't whip you into a frenzy to hop on the Morning Train, let me recommend a Lagavulin primer.

A benchmark of collective moments at breakneck speed

A very happy birthday to my Aeon David! Just this minute he's completed his 365th revolution about the earth's axis (with respect to some imaginary fixed point in space, of course) and, moreover, has pushed out a couple more teeth. For swinging 'round the sun at just over 65,000 mph, you look awfully calm. May your next 525,600 minutes be as rich and packed with life as the last and may you keep your beautiful quiet spirit. i love you little brother.

Kibitzing Thereunto II

The initial Tricky Bit to Love is that there really isn't a Limit to the Emotional Attachment/ Sacrifice in the Demand. Obviously Jesus took the Whole Thing pretty far. (And it wasn't just Dying For the Cause, or even Living For Other People-- that's all seemingly doable; it was the Living and the Dying with an awful, beautiful sort of Understated Uncertainty under the constant aspect of demonic Ignominy: That's mind-wrenching, silencing, stilling. But that's for a different installment.) At first, that would seem to drastically simplify things (and, indeed, in the End it almost certainly does). If Absolutely Everthing Possible is demanded of you in order to Love someone in a given Moment, then a lot of Equivocation and Worry, Thumb-Twiddling and Pathetic Mewling, Second-Guessing and Hesitation in general is cut out from the Get-go.

The Tricky Bit rears its Silver-Tongued Maw when Love seems to demand (let's say) two counterpoised, yet mutually opposing Positions from the would-be Lover-- without Limit. Obviously, there is a Problem in endeavoring to accomplish any two mutually exclusive Undertakings simultaneously; but to accomplish each with Infinite Vim and Attention (or Emotional Attachment and Sacrifice, as the Case may be)-- crazy!

i may very well want to give my life up for this Friend or this Enemy, or embrace this Cause, but my Family or my Circumstance demands otherwise-- and in the Name of Love. So, finally, i squat alone at the edge of the Habitat with my back to one Demand or the Other glancing nervously about me for any low-flying Responsibility; and i throw Peanuts and Pearls through the incontrovertible Bars of the Cage in Hopes that it'll accidentally demonstrate a little Love to the Alone on the other side. And i know that soon i'll have to quit my Attention and Sacrifice to This, and move on to the Next; and Nothing i'll have done will have been Limitless after all.

i'm afraid there are too many Obligations and People to Love to actually get to Love any of 'em very Infinitely.