Fear & Faith

Do not be afraid. - Angels in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt is faith's quality control. Doubt keeps faith from getting smeared with superstitious smegma, cluttered with kooky claptrap or wasted with wildly-weird woo-woo.                  

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; but if there is an opposite, a good case could be made for fear. Not that fear is always necessarily bad. Healthy fear can keep your sweet butt out of the E.R., out of jail and out of the crematorium. Healthy fear can keep you from keep you from walking across the interstate at rush hour, standing on your head on your Harley at 50 miles an hour or doing anything after drinking and shouting, "Hey, ya'll, watch this!"                

On the other hand, a life guided by fear can keep you from faith better than bad breath and body odor can keep you from getting a date. When you live in fear and allow fear to call the shots, there's no room for trust. No room for hope. No room for confidence. Fear pops the faith balloon and kills the party. Allowing each decision and turn in life to be directed by fear, inevitably leads you to a tiny walled-in cell. A prison where a healthy faith-fed soul can starve.                  

If the holidays are anything, they are a carnival of faith. A festival of joyful expectation. A salute to infinite possibility. The holidays are a celebration that we never, ever need to live our lives boxed in by fear.

The holidays can be a headache in many ways.  But, this week, Howard is headache-free and flying high because his ladies are coming home.  Daughters Windsor and Kelsey are flying in from Boston and Miami, respectively; and Howard's LadyLove, Joyell, will be flying in from her 2 1/2 month journey through SE Asia.  Lots of hugs, kisses, chatter and toasts are in the offing.   

Broken Promises

God is delighted and amused you once tried to be a saint.

- Hafiz

Marriage is all about love and loyalty. Love and loyalty are what nearly every married couple commits to. The idea is that when love fades, loyalty will hang on till it returns; and vice-versa - when loyalty slips a gear, love holds on till the transmission can realign. That's the idea. Just not the reality. At least, for a lot of folks.                

When love loses its vibrancy and begins to look and taste like unflavored gelatin, loyalty often gags and takes a back seat. Which means promises get pummeled. Vows get voided. Oaths get overlooked. And all of a sudden, someone is sleeping with someone else and someone else gets hurt. Loss of loyalty can trash love; and loss of love can get loyalty to look the other way.                  

A broken promise - in whatever context - can trigger anger, resentment, bitterness and grief. It can cause even the most trusting soul to distrust. Even the most believing believer to disbelieve. And sometimes, all the love in the world can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And we look at our shattered promises scattered about, littering life's landscape and ask, "Is that all there is?"                 

The bad news is: We have all had to deal with broken promises. The good news is: We have all had to deal with broken promises. Whether we were the breaker or breakee, we've all been there. Like Sir Dumpty, we've all got cracks and scars. Which makes a good case for compassion. And forgiveness. And love.  No matter what.  Which is finally what it's all about.

Beyond Time and Space

Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me." 

Look what happens with a love like that.  It lights up the whole sky.

-Hafiz

"Life is like a roll of toilet paper," goes the bathroom wisdom, "the closer you get to the end, the faster it seems to go." True. When you are 10 years old, 1 year is 1/10 of your life. When you are 50 years old, 1 year is 1/50 of your life. So, when you're fifty, the year seems to go by 5 times faster than when you were ten.                 

We all know that, sometimes, when you lie out under the stars or get "lost" in a book, a concert, a meal or a session of love-making, time can scoot by at the speed of light. Likewise, when you're waiting for the end of boring class or the end of a dull workday or the end of a tedious conversation, time gets real lazy and can stretch out until a moment feels like a month.                

Some call it, "time distortion." Some call it evidence that time is consciously malleable. Some say, "No more brownies."  Whatever you call it, the holidays kick it in high gear. The stories of Mary & Joseph, the stories of the Jews, the Maccabees and the oil lamp, the tales of dark spirits on the longest night are told and retold as if they had never been told before.

To anyone who is intent on celebrating the holidays, the ancient tales become far more than old yarns and legends. When we re-enact the nativity scene or light the menorah or bring evergreens into the house, it's as if these old stories are happening again right here in our presence. Which is part of the magic of the holiday season. 2000 years of time get squished into a mystical momentary morsel. Of course, when the family descends on you like locusts, the holidays can feel like they last at least 2000 years.               

All in all, these holiday celebrations seem to point to one unavoidable and inescapable principle: There's far more going on than time and space. Or, as one frog said to another, "Time's fun when you're having flies."

Thanksgiving

They beheld God and they ate and drank.

- The Book called Exodus 

The best potlucks are the ones with the most variety. You can have a table full of braised artichoke pate, grilled Caribbean pineapple/shrimp and wild shitakes stuffed with lobster; but if you don't balance that with a bag of chips, a bowl of salsa and a bucket of chicken, it ain't no honest potluck. Likewise, a board spread with nothing but chips, pretzels, Velveeta and beenie-weenies might serve as hippie marijuana munchies. But call it a potluck? No way.

The beauty of potlucks is found in the diversity of the food. And the reason for the diversity of the food is the diversity of the people who bring the food. Some folks enjoy spending hours preparing a beautiful platter of gourmet cuisine. Others run by a Quik-Stop on their way to the potluck and grab whatever they can get for the $7.87 they have in their wallet. But both are essential for a kick-ass potluck. Both are necessary if the purpose of a potluck is to be served.

And what is the purpose of a potluck? It's sharing. All about sharing. Sharing whatever shows up. Sharing your food, sharing others' food, sharing time around the table oohing and ahhing over the grilled eggplant and lamb-on-pita bread while spooning chili con queso over your plate of Doritos. At an honest potluck, whatever you put on the table is just right.

Sooner or later, we may begin to realize that, finally, the only way we humans will survive in this world, is if we realize that it's all a potluck. Every day. Every moment. And our gig is to share what we have while we enjoy what others bring to the table. Whatever shows up.  Which is what Thanksgiving is all about.

Uh-Oh. Are the fried pork rinds already gone?

Seeing Stars

...suddenly the heavens were opened to him...

- description of Jesus' baptism 

Have you ever been bonked on the head and seen stars? Blame it on a phosphene. Ever rubbed your tired eyes or sneezed and seen little points of light? More phosphene. Have low blood pressure and frequently see little flashes of light? Phosphene. Or have you ever done a shroom or two and seen all kinds of colors and lights? Phosphene again.                

A phosphene is a normal phenomenon of your optic system. No one really knows how it works, but with a particular kind of stimulation to the area surrounding your eyes, you see what, at least, appears to be light with no outside illumination coming through your eyeballs.                  

Lying out under the stars on a clear night can be similar to a phosphene. That is, nobody really knows how it all works. Nobody. But you can experience it, nonetheless. You can describe what you see when you look between the stars into infinity; but you can never comprehend it. Then again, you can describe what you see when you blow an infinitely epic snot-rocket; but nobody really cares.

Infinity and the way your brain and body work are equally mind-boggling. And perhaps one of the best ways to wake up your soul is to be mind-boggled as often as possible. Trying to get your brain around the mystery of infinity and the mystery of yourself, of course, is like trying to understand love. They're all are equally baffling. Who knows? They just might be related