. . .and Jacob have they hated

Listening to the radio provides some unexpected insight.
How many times have you heard someone call a talk show, and start their point with, "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but . . ." and then proceed to proffer evidence of a perceived conspiracy.
Prompting me to ask Devan, "Do you suppose anyone has ever called into to a talk show and said, 'I'm a conspiracy theorist, and . . .etc., etc.' "
Everyone loves the idea of a conspiracy, but no one wants to be seen as paranoid.
Generally, conspiracies are fantastic and unfounded, but there is one conspiracy I firmly believe in.
It has tentacles everywhere, and in the most unlikely places, but traced back, my suspicions are confirmed. It has one origin.
The history of this conspiracy and the staggering spread of evidence is such that I don't know where to start.
I'll start with a book I read about a man named George Lincoln Rockwell.
The man's parents possibly had high hopes for the child they dubbed with the Christian name and surname of two U.S. presidents. Indeed, he did advance to the national scene, and it was in politics and ideology, as the founder of the American Nazi Party.
Rockwell became convinced, over the course of his life, of the superiority of the white race. He broadened the appeal of white supremacy beyond Hitler's Aryan supermen. Pitching the big tent, he welcomed in whites of European descent, and all other non-Aryan whites. He claims to have had a religious experience while burning candles on an altar in front of Adolf Hitler's picture. He swore allegiance to his dead hero.
White supremacy most famously denigrates blacks, and Rockwell was no exception. He and his people released musical records with inflammatory lyrics regarding blacks. He was vitriolic in his hatred for the black race, and considered them vastly inferior.
So, reading on, I was stunned to read of the joint rallies of Rockwell's Nazis and Elijah Mohammed's Black Panthers.
The common ground on which these two proponents of racial superiority stood is an ancient, blood-soaked piece of land.
Hatred was the motivation for both of these activists, and their hatred of each other's race was strong, but they shared a hatred that was stronger yet, a hatred forged in hellfire long ago, the hatred of the Jews.
Anti-semitism has a long, layered history. Beginning with Haman's final solution, the inexplicable hatred this race triggers extends down through history to the present.
Undoubtedly, Jewish people face the greatest threat from the Muslim population, and yet, there are so many unseen threads that travel back to America and tie themselves to many people and ideologies who are in direct opposition to all things Muslim, except anti-Semitism.
Wikipedia tells me of a new form of anti-semitism, simply called new anti-semitism, that is new because of its convergence of the left, the far right, and Islam.
Immediately, the unexplored connection of Al-Queda to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, comes to mind. The connection remains largely ignored, I believe, because of the desire of the U.S. media to isolate McVeigh as simply an unhinged, former military, far right-wing, home-grown terrorist. The picture becomes disturbing and far too conspiratorial when far-right ideology becomes linked with radical Islam by anti-Semitism, which has also found a new home in the terrorist-appeasing Democratic Party.
The unlikely alliance becomes more troubling when you consider the underlying theories behind the hatred of all things Jewish. The far right is convinced that Jews control everything. The media, the banks. . .what else is there? They feel it is their duty to expose the Jewish conspiracy.
I mentioned Mohammed's Black Panthers. The Black Muslim ideology continues to share with the far right the belief that Jews are in control. Hearken unto Minster Louis Farrakhan and his rhetoric, "Jewish blood-suckers." Take notice of the word "blood-suckers." It is an outgrowth of the view of Jews as a parasitic people, preying upon their host nation. It is an old distortion, one not even laid to rest with the birth of Israel in 1948, with two billion Muslims claiming the land as their own, and descending on the minuscule, new-born nation with a vast Arab alliance to rid the previously un-used, un-wanted wasteland of their most hated enemy.
Even confined within the restrictive borders of their own homeland, they are still viewed as a parasite preying upon the host.
The Jewish conspiracy is the mother of all conspiracies.
The extreme ends of many ideologies are tied together with this idea, reminding us that ideology is a circle and when a fascist comes to the end of his radicalism, he will find himself a Communist, and vice versa.
Rockwell believed blacks were inferior and must be subjugated. Mohammed believed blacks were superior and must overcome the white "blue-eyed devils." But both saw Jewish control as the puppet master forcing their people to strive with each other.
You can feel the crawling hatred, so insidious it makes the blood slow in your veins, in the innocuous suggestion of the anti-war protester. "The Muslims hate us because we support Israel." Often left unspoken is the irritation with Israel for having brought the vengeful Muslims down on our head.
Less subtle are the allegations that Israel possessed fore-knowledge of 9-11, and even that the Mossad brought down the twin towers, to unleash the U.S. on Israel's enemies.
The proof of the anti-semitic conspiracy lies in the multiplied and diverse outbursts of anti-semitism.
The Egyptians are credited with planting the seed. The Egyptian historian Manetho wrote that the Israelites were simply expelled Egyptian lepers under the influence of Moses.
The Greeks massacred Jews in Alexandria in 38 A.D. for being "misanthropes."
The Romans had their own Jewish problem. Not content with simply having conquered the Jews, in 19 A.D., Tiberius expelled all Jews from Rome, relocating them to Sardinia. The penalty for non-compliance was slavery for life. In the second century as well, the Romans committed genocide against the Jews during bar Kokhba's revolt. Additionally, the Jews were attacked in Roman cities for issues involving Jewish fiancial and intellectual successes.
The first time the death of Christ became an excuse for hating Jews, (a favorite of the KKK), was in 167 A.D. in a sermon given by Melito of Sardis entitled On The Passover.
The moniker of Christ-killer was also snarled at Jews by officers of the SS.
The Roman Catholic Church, as well, affixed the blame for the death of Christ to the Jewish race, influencing even the renegade Martin Luther to pen some disturbing anti-semitic suggestions.
The Muslim persecution of Jews began in the ninth century, with Muslim rulers enforcing blood libels, forced conversions, massacres and expulsion of Jews.
Expulsion and forced one-child policies were also enforced against Jewish people in Prussia and Bohemia.
During the American Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued an order (hastily rescinded by President Lincoln) expelling all Jews from areas under his control. Grant later issued an order "that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the road southward."
Grant's aide, Col. John V. DuBois ordered "all cotton speculators, Jews, and vagabonds with no honest means of support" expelled from the district, and furthermore, "The Israelites especially should be kept out. . .they are such an intolerable nuisance."
The KKK, initially formed in 1866, with as much an emphasis on resisting Reconstruction as on racial superiority, was a short lived organization, with Southern elites viewing the uncontrollable nature of the Klan as just another excuse for the Federals to come down on all Southerners. In 1915, however, it was reformed in response to a wide-spreading brush fire of anti-Semitism sparked by the lynching of a Jewish businessman accused, by virtue of some sloppy circumstantial evidence, of rape and murder.
The Klan's membership peaked during the 1920's, with a whopping 4 to 5 million men.
It dropped radically following WWII, resulting partly from prominent members' support of the Nazis.
It is virtually non-existent as an organized movement today, but the strong anti-Semitic mantle has been taken up by the growing Neo-Nazi movement. The Neo-Nazis are not tremendously organized, but galvanized, particularly in Germany, by their hatred of Jews.
As I mentioned earlier, the nation of Israel is blamed for many of America's woes. Democrats accuse President Bush for "flying under two flags." i.e., the flag of the United States and the flag of Israel.
Echoing Charles Lindbergh's sneaky Nazism, every U.S. intervention in the Middle East is blamed on Israel by everyone from Sen. Ernest Hollings to Pat Buchanan.
Additionally, the long-standing furor over the U.S. imprisonment of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was reason enough to accuse former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of "extortion" for trying to attach the release of Pollard, labeled a "treasonous snake," to President Clinton's ill-fated Wye River Peace Accord.

More later. . .

On Getting Distracted

Listening to Sean Hannity, and getting mad, suddenly seemed as absurd as becoming emotionally involved in a sappy movie.
Today, my frustration with Hannity received its satisfaction of vindication. Such arrogance would reveal itself in sophomoric ridicule, I thought as I listened to Hannity mock a stuttering caller/detractor, the way a junior high bully would.
That was that. Hannity is a jerk. I felt better. Until I remembered Sean Hannity couldn't read my mind, couldn't hear my muttered undertones, and, more infuriating, wouldn't be at all crestfallen to find out that I think he is a jerk.
Sucker.
How different am I, pounding on the dash, than a Sopranos addict screaming at the television while the credits roll?
It is times like these that I feel perhaps we were better off before the information age and the new media.
Before talk radio and television, what medium could have possibly incited me to be so upset with a man I've never met? What's worse, I'm a willing participant in the advertising conquest that bankrolls said jerk.
It's a phase, don't worry. I'll get over it.
I'm become somewhat consistently jaded when it comes to having my emotions manipulated by movies.
It's only the completely innocuous scenes that put a lump in my throat. The scenes with the tears, the rain, the sunsets and the saccharine music I only analyze.
By George, nobody is gonna jerk me around.
Until I turn on the radio, under the dubious auspices of being informed.
The truth is, I listen to, well, let's see, I listen to remind myself why I am right in thinking in what I am thinking. I rehash, and reiterate, and regurgitate everything in a perpetual information or misinformation overload.
There is nothing wrong with knowing what is going on. Nor is there anything wrong with combining religion and politics, thank you, Jerry Falwell.
But in feeding my fury over immigration, I start to mirror those I disagree with.
I'm upset because I feel conservative punditry has elevated a chiefly economic issue to a moral imperative.
And I've lost focus.
Blogs notwithstanding, the immigration debate will be resolved, or not, with or without my consent or approval.
Lost souls, however, I can do something about.
Illegal immigration, Hillary Clinton's strident liberalism, Sean Hannity's hubris, border security, national security, Newt Gingrich's fresh new coat of morality, Mitt Romney's Mormonism, Rudy Gulianni's New Yorkness, all topics of concern, but all potential distractions.
No surprise, here. Spiritual concerns are featherweight, and they fly into the air when disturbed by a stiff wind.

Ad Nauseum

I have a confession to make.
I'm prejudiced.
I happen to like Hispanics.
That being said as a gesture of honesty, I think a lot of people dislike Hispanics.
And, I believe this prejudice is kicking up a lot of the dust we see swirling over this immigration fracas.
I'm well aware that accusing conservatives of prejudice in regards to immigration has been addressed and deemed race-baiting.
I observe, however.
I live in Kentucky. The two largest minorities are African-American and Hispanic.
Studying the behavior of my fellow white brothers and sisters in reaction to both minorities has revealed two things to me.
The Jim Crow days are over. Black people are accepted, assimilated, and integrated. From where I stand, we now look at blacks and see simply another human, perhaps one who can sing better, laugh harder, and cook better, but just another human nonetheless. I see blacks and whites working together in complete harmony. I believe MLK can rest in peace. His dream came true.
On the other hand, when I observe whites and Hispanics, I see sullenness, rolling eyes, irritation. Particularly, (sorry for any controversy this may arouse) among white women.
I see a lot of white people who seem to resent being in the same room as a Hispanic.
Why is this?
You can rattle off your list.
Refusal to assimilate, refusal to learn English, etc.
I am convinced, however, that the reason we have not learned to accept Hispanics as they are, broken English, cha-cha music and all, is because we have not yet been told to accept them.
How many movies have you seen which address the issue of racism in regard to Hispanics?
How many highly publicized hate crimes verdicts have been handed down for white-on-Hispanic, or black-on-Hispanic crime?
Has the Catholic church apologized for enslaving Hispanics, as the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for enslaving African- Americans?
Which month is Hispanic-American history month, and if there is one, how come I haven't heard about it?
How many Jesse Jacksons, or Al Sharptons do the Latinos have?
Just today, a Hispanic male driver clipped a little girl in an Austin neighborhood. She was later taken to the hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries. At the scene of the accident, however, nine black males descended on the driver of the car, and when another Hispanic male attempted to intervene, they beat him to death.
Let's see if the fuss made over this even begins to compare the explosion we heard over the shooting death of a black male at a strip club the night before his wedding.
I am not suggesting that illegal immigrants be given a pass because they're discriminated against, such as our jury system gave to O.J. Simpson, I am suggesting that the whole reason this discussion raises such rancor is, one, because, it's an economic issue, and two, because people don't like Mexicans. I simply don't believe the American public is capable of rendering a thoughtful judgement on anything.
Illegal immigration is seen as being a drain on the economy, and worse, an irritation and an inconvenience.
It's the economy stupid, and I ain't gonna sit there and try to talk to no Mexican who ain't got the courtesy to learn to speak no English.
Honestly, I'm sick of this.
I listened to the great Sean Hannity treat Tony Snow like Sean doesn't treat Bob Beckle or Melissa Etheridge or Howard Stern, for crying out loud.
He was argumentative, petulant and came off sounding like a cross between Pat Buchanaan and Alec Baldwin.
Hannity repeatedly accuses the president and his supporters of being out of touch with the American people. If I wasn't so exasperated, I'd be amused. Since when do conservatives seek for justification in popular opinion?
I wouldn't go so far as to say that if a majority of the American public support something, I'm automatically against it, but you better believe I'm going to look at it with narrow-eyed suspicion.
Again, I say it's like living in a town full of drunks. If there's a riot, there's been a shortage of booze.
If one-tenth the energy devoted to this issue by talk radio were devoted to, say, the abortion issue, South Dakota wouldn't be the only state to suggest banning it.
Illegal immigration is a problem and needs to be dealt with, but I, for one, am disgusted when I see this issue and the Duke lacrosse scandal as having become our identity.
The only way I would have been happy with the outcome of the Duke mess, by the way, is if they'd put Mike Nifong, the stripper, and the three young Duke thugs all in the same cell together for about six months.
More later.

So What Was Frances Schaeffer Trying To Prove?

How does a good fundamentalist balance Christian activism with pre-millenialist theology?
How do you put your heart in your warning against abortion, homosexual activism, and radical Islam when you believe these things are signs of the times?
Put another way, how hypocritical do you feel when you affect grimness over a tumultuous Middle East and the apocalyptic rantings of Iran's president, against a rising bubble of excitement in your gut?
I often feel pitied admiration for the likes of James Dobson, cheering him on, muttering under my breath, "Man, you're beating your head against a brick wall."
I harbor no optimism for the salvation of my country, much less the world.
It's not simply a matter of eschatology. I know that James Dobson knows that the world will not continue to get better and better until it's good enough for God to live in. He's fighting the good fight, don't misunderstand me, but what end does he see?
It could be that I'm simply not compassionate enough to muster the energy to place behind the hope that drives a dedicated Christian activist.
It could be the cynicism of youth, (I'm a Generation X-er, after all. "Hope, where is hope? Don't be a dope, hope is gone.")
There is a passage in a novel that has influenced me, perhaps more than it should.
It is a burst of exasperation from a weary, burned out pastor responding to the blazing, fresh-faced optimism of a young pastor, determined to take the town for Christ.
"Have you even asked this town if it wants to be taken for Christ? . . .I guarantee you, Kyle, I know some people around here who do not wish to be taken for Christ. . .No one . . .has ever. . .taken a city for Christ. Not Paul, not Peter, nobody. Not even Christ took a town for Christ."
Taking a town for Christ, or fervent prayers for a revival to be poured out on this city are owing in part to a certain score-keeping mentality that is inseparable from humanity.
There is something of a war cry in the prayer, "God, take this town for Christ!"
I think most of us would be more suited for battling against principalities and powers if it were a physical matter.
I remember reading the Darkness books by Peretti at a fairly young age and then bolting outside with a broom handle to mow down demons like weeds.
They were, in fact, weeds, and they did fall before my broom handle like Destroyer's hordes fell under Tal's sword.
I'm not equating my immaturity with the zeal of evangelism, but I can't help but be reminded of it when I listen to the words of a worship song, "You know I feel there's somethin bout to break now. You know I feel there's a city here to take now. . .We've got this leather backed book and a freedom cry and we're an army of God who are ready to die."
What army?
Maybe I'm blind but I see a few scattered, exhausted soldiers just standing up under the weight of their armour and a whole bunch more who have shed everything but their sword and are running around hacking on trees for the glory of God.

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society." -D. James Kennedy

Head in the clouds or head in the sand, what's the difference?
I recently looked at a website called Theocracy Watch.
They are the brave souls warning America about the drumbeat of doom. These people are literally terrified of the rise of the Christian right and their impending "theocracy."
I want to laugh so hard that I reach that stage when it's hard to tell laughing from crying.
Yeah, sure. Lock up the kids. Bar the windows. We're coming to get you.
We're gonna haul you in to a church and force communion down your throat, and make you recite the Ten Commandments, the Four Spiritual Laws, and Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses.
Beyond the absurdity of worrying about a Christian conspiracy is the sad fact that if we wished to conspire, we'd be hard put to gather ten of us around a bonfire to come up with a secret password.

More later.

I fully intend to reconcile my view with optimism.

Really.

Theory of Relativity (and Einstein rolled over and groaned)

Where does relativism end?
How much of it do we ingest every day and how much do we breathe out?
Relative, i.e. not absolute or independent.
I'm sure there would be a consensus among most of us, that-
Noam Chomsky is a zealot.
Not only that, he's zealous about absolutely nothing, and quite literally.
Nietzsche, was, in my mind, not the father of, (the claim to that title goes to the one who spoke the words, ". . .and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.") but the Bill Gates of functional moral relativism. He made it user-friendly and progressively, since his death, more necessary until now, we're confounded without it. He was also Adolf Hitler's false prophet.
It doesn't impress me that Nietzsche held anti-Semitism in low regard. He had no right to hold anything in low regard. He certainly couldn't have said that killing Jews for being Jews was wrong, now, could he?
But Nietzsche was the hairy, scary, real deal.
He emblazoned the pages of his books with courageous pronouncements. He minced no words, he made no concessions, and, to his credit, was quite possibly the least contradictory relativist I've ever read after.
But his stuff was a little too strong for us to stomach.
Especially after the development of his ideas arguably contributed to the Holocaust. So, we watered it down a little.
Not unlike evangelical Christianity does with predestination.
Poor John Calvin must have been in a theological slump when he walked up to the plate with that predestination idea.
But the doctrine of eternal security, he knocked that one out of the park!
Which is not unlike saying he used a matchstick to hit one out.
Just a curious aside, if the doctrine of eternal security was based on predestination and it was, how come everyone goes around assuming they are one of the ones God chose to go to Heaven and not hell?
So, are you a relativist?
Before you lower your eyebrows, when was the last time, when discussing a difference in a certain point of doctrine, or standard of living, you said, "Well, I have confidence in that person, I just don't agree with them on this or that."?
Without getting into specifics, (I haven't the nerve) what exactly is it that makes you so sure that the person is dead wrong, and all right at the same time?
Just how far back up through the ranks and levels of rules and regulations can we take this "personal conviction" stuff?
All the way to the very first ten?
Where do you put the kibosh on not judging?
When they start getting on your nerves?
The deeper I sink into this quagmire, the more I realize that "judge not that ye be not judged" is a command only understood and followed properly by the most devout, an order I long to join.
Did it mean, "Decide not for yourself whether this person is right or wrong?"
Upon quick perusal, I say, "No, it doesn't, it just means, keep your decision to yourself."
Quick perusal is generally a bad idea.
Looking closer, I see a command, a directive given to the heart, an attitude the Lord instructed us to cultivate.
It means, desperately wish and hope for and believe the best about your brother's spirituality, and when you are proved wrong, don't "aha!" Rather mourn and intercede for that soul as if it were your own.
Furthermore, "their Christianity is their business," is pure flippancy when viewed through this Christ lens.
We are to become heavily invested in our brother's success as a follower of Jesus.
Don't just not care.
Don't just make it a matter not for your concern.
Until now, there is a story about the Wesley brothers I have always regarded with some degree of cynicism.
It is said that John stated that Charles reserved judgement, and wished to be convinced of someones spirituality, but that he, John, took them at their word. I, John said, have been more often right than Charles.
I'm as cynical as the next cynic, but now, I wonder, without deciding for sure, can the confidence you place in someone become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

An Ineffective Coalition

The impetus behind my frustration with the current furor over immigration is the disingenuous "conservative" motivation behind it.
I know plenty of hard-core, blue-collar, pro-union, yellow-dog Democrats who are just as vehement around their wad of tobacco about the flood of illegals as is the bespectacled Newt Gingrich.
The only distinction lies in the presentation of the case. The case of the blue-collar Democrat may be summed up in an anecdotal comparison; Renowned for his reserve, Calvin Coolidge reportedly attended church one Sunday without his wife. Upon returning to the White House, his wife asked after the service and the topic of the sermon. "Adultery" was the extent of Coolidge's report. "Well. . ." the First Lady insisted, "What did the minister have to say on the subject?"
"He's against it." Coolidge replied.
Gingrich's presentation for the case against II, if we can abbreviate, is intellectual and eloquent.
The commonality?
The motivation.
I.E., the good of the country, which, after unauthorized translation means, the good of me.
In the Dem's case, more money, and less difficulty conversing with mono-lingual Hispanics.
In Newt's case, a prospective presidential campaign.
I realize there are other, better examples of high-profile II opponents, and their motivation may be less suspect than that of either the union Democrat or the politician.
However, the trumpeting of an impending conservative victory in regard to the languishing immigration bill disgusts me.
Opposition to II is no more begotten of conservative ideology than opposition to human rights abuse is the spawn of liberalism.
Unless, of course, you agree to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that your conservatism in this matter is pure fiscal conservatism.
Again, keep in mind, I discuss the issue of Hispanic influx (which is the wind that drives the storm) and not the issue, linked though it is, of national security.
My frustration lies in the company that I, as a conservative ideologue by virtue of my Christianity, must keep.
The instability of the Peggy Noonan-dubbed conservative coalition was made evident to me when Sean Hannity invited Howard Stern as a guest on his show, following the FCC censure of Stern.
The realization dawned not as a result of Hannity hosting Stern. After all, he features (and opposes) many others I differ with.
It was not even the result of Hannity's essentially gutless, completely ineffective handling of Stern's barely restrained stream of filth.
It was the many calls afterwards from loyal Hannity listeners who also laid claim to being loyal Stern listeners.
Are these the people with whom I share the foxhole?
Disciples of Howard Stern?
Everything I stand for as a social conservative, every reason I call myself a conservative is diametrically opposed to everything that motivates Howard Stern.
If there is evil, there must be good, if there is a Satan, there must be a God, and if there is a Howard Stern, it must mean there was an original concept of purity in which he found his identity by spending his life mocking.
To call yourself a conservative, but gleefully indulge the sickness of a Stern, an Imus, an Opie and Anthony, a Bob and Tom under the guise of First Amendment rights is to expose yourself as nothing but a libertarian, which is another word for the most self-centered creature on God's green earth.
Probably more later.

The Death of a Bill

Just as I was prepared to fire the silver bullet at the afore-mentioned conservative pundits, asking, so, what's your plan?, Sean Hannity let fly with a concrete suggestion.
Before we do anything, stop the flow.
Easier said than done, but the point is taken.
Illegal immigration is a monumental multi-faceted problem, but turning the water off before you start to mop up the puddle is common sense.
Beefing up border patrol, included in the now dying bill, is perhaps more of the same, but again, I trust border agents to turn back the tide more than I trust a fence.
A comprehensive electronic database allowing the government to closely monitor employers is an even better idea included in the dying bill.
Much of the focus has been on the illegals instead of the avenues taken by them.
They aren't swimming the river individually.
Preemptive intelligence focused on smuggling networks would seem to be only more common sense.
The proposed path to citizenship has suffered another accusation by yet another conservative pundit, Mike McConnell. To make a way, straight and narrow though it may be, to citizenship for those who chose to enter the country illegally is not fair to those who wish to enter the country but have chosen not to come in under the radar.
I find that an odd argument, especially coming from the no-nonsense McConnell.
This is not about them, this is about us, correct?
The primary objective is how to fix the problem for America, not all the foreigners who want in.
And if we are to begin trying to be all things to all people, let us either apologize to the Hutus slaughtered in Rwanda or forsake Darfur altogether.
America is a steward trusted with great responsibility, but our own interests come into play.
Altruism applied in our personal lives is commanded, but applied geo-politically unfortunately doesn't preserve a nation very well.
The security issues raised by Mark trump the economic issues.
If we have nukes going off in our cities, priorities will hurriedly realign.
More later.
And by the way, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will be popping champagne corks if this bill is killed.
Unlike Bush, they do everything for political expediency, and don't think they aren't going to play up this Republican division for every dime it's worth

Trouble on the Border

I don't know how many people read this blog.
Last estimates were somewhere in upwards of single digits.
Sometime in the next quarter some analysts predict breaking into double digits.
But I really would like some feedback on this one.
I'm in a political funk.
I'm disgusted with liberals, predictably.
I'm disgusted with conservatives.
And I'm uncomfortable siding with John McCain against John Cornyn.
There's an issue that has come down out of nowhere, like a handichopper on an unsuspecting potato.
Illegal immigration has been a problem for decades.
It has been one of those things we live with and joke about, like Congress.
I suppose it had gotten to the point where I assumed it was one of those things that would never be addressed, and if it were, it would be in some droning congressional session in the middle of August, with the pages and the C-Span camera men knocking back cappuccinos and punching each other to stay awake.
What becomes a hot push-button issue for a public whose list of concerns is topped by American Idol and NASCAR, and becomes outraged only when their direct deposit paycheck doesn't clear the bank until noon on Friday?
Who'da thunk it?
This is the first thing that bothers me.
As disenfranchised as I am with my countrymen, I'm bound to cast a jaundiced eye on any issue that roils such widespread concern. Such as it would be for one sober to live in a community of drunks. If there's a riot, chances are there's been a shortage or prohibition. Society in general is too stupefied to be upset over anything legitimate.
So what am I left with?
Across the board, there is one issue that unites us all in one common purpose: money.
If there's an uprising, as they say, follow the money.
Illegals are seen as being a drain on the old pocketbook.
So we've decided to build a what?
The first time I heard somebody raise the idea of a fence, I thought it was good.
As a joke, not an idea.
Fences work good for cattle and chickens.
People, however, bent on the American dream, will tend to be repelled by it only if it is forty feet high with high voltage running on top and underneath and manned by guards every 100 yards armed with assault rifles.
Such as the Berlin Wall.
And if you wish to run away screaming with hysterical conjecture at the comparison, don't let me stop you.
Let me say that I think the border should be beefed up, and the government should come down hard on employers who hire illegals.
I do believe illegal immigration is a problem.
I just find the idea of a fence ridiculous.
So we have a bill in the Senate with the express purpose of fixing the problem of illegal immigration.
Early on, President Bush advocated a guest-worker program; the best idea yet.
Conservative pundits howled amnesty, and it went the way of the president's approval numbers.
So now, we have another Bush-backed idea.
We have a proposed path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegals.
If you want legal status, which is an excellent deterrent to deportation, you own up.
You pay a 6,500 dollar fine, prove yourself proficient in English, pass a criminal background check, pay all back taxes, prove full-time employment, and go back to the Mother land to await a visa, for a minimum of thirteen years.
And conservative pundits howled amnesty again.
I'm seeing two Latinos, Miguel and Gorge, looking at each other with raised eyebrows and low whistles, "With friends like this, amigo, who needs amnesty?"
I hesitate to begin a list of the president's detractors on this because I should get to bed sometime tonight, but . . .
Sean Hannity takes the concept of beating a dead horse to new proportions, (Think of whacking a dried up jaw bone down the road with a stick) and then references all the flak he's taking over all the flak he's giving the president.
Laura Ingraham whines that all this time conservatives have begged the president to take the gloves off, and now he's taken them off and punched conservatives in the nose.
Peggy Noonan accuses the President of sundering the conservative coalition, serving notice on me that there was such a thing.
Michael Savage ravages the bill because the name Bush is attached to it and because if Michael Savage wasn't savage, he'd just be another nutritional expert with a political talk show.
Rush Limbaugh has opposed the president on this, but has studiously avoided joining the Bush bash.
President Bush doesn't do things for political expediency.
I do have a charming gift for understatement, don't I?
More later.

plot thickens

How much farther he could go on bald tires in this blizzard, Moses didn't know, but the slow and easy approach seemed to be working so far, so he kept the '93 Corolla in the center of the lane and glided along; no sudden moves, no quick acceleration, no hard brakes,
He was furious with himself. He couldn't have foreseen this storm. The weather forecasters sure didn't. They predicted a light dusting. But this kind of weather was the one thing he didn't, and should have, taken into account. It didn't do this in El Paso. It didn't even do this in Las Cruces. Even as close as Alamogordo, the snow had only iced the desert, frosting the mesquite and ocotillo and stretching over the sandy ground with a meager two inches. The farther up the mountain he came, the more nervous he got. The snow flew thicker and heavier. The roads went from wet to slushy to snow-packed, and since he'd left the highway, he'd not seen one set of tracks. That was another thing that bothered him. Leaving the deep fresh tracks behind him, he felt as if he were throwing out meat for some predator to follow. It was bad enough coming up here in the daytime. He hadn't been on this road in the daylight in months. It was more than a little confusing. He was used to following the dim outline of the pale gravel road in the moonlight, no headlights. In broad daylight, with all this blasted snow, he wasn't completely confident of his bearings. He wasn't sure how he'd made it this far, but he knew if he stopped, it was over. He could maneuver the rust-ravaged beater over the worst kind of desert terrain, but this snow. . .
His hands were starting to meld to the wheel, and his eyes ached, planting a headache solidly on top of his tensed neck and clenched teeth. He'd even turned the radio off, something he could never remember doing. If he could've stopped long enough to admit it to himself, he was scared spitless. But Moses wasn't the type to admit anything to anyone, least of all himself.
He couldn't afford to. One admission would knock over the first domino, and he'd been setting them up, one right after the other, for years. They curved and twisted and even looped back on themselves for all he knew. If one fell, they'd collapse so far back he could see his childhood, something he didn't care to see. Keep moving, don't stay in one spot too long. That was the reason he was mad. He knew as soon as he'd put those grave markers up, they should've split. For that matter, he shouldn't have even put the stupid things there. He just did it for Carson.
He couldn't have cared less where those two worthless people were rotting, but Carson missed his mother, and begged for a place where he could go and talk to her.
He shouldn't have buried them around here, shouldn't have put the markers up, shouldn't have left Carson up here so long, shouldn't have waited until this mother of all blizzards to come up here and get Carson, and shouldn't have taken that last turn, he had a bad feeling.
But he was afraid to slow down, much less stop, in more ways than one.
He had convinced himself, a long forgotten time ago, that he knew what he was doing. He was an impressive sight, with all that devil-may-care confidence. He cut an impressive figure anyway. He was tall for a Hispanic, something he could thank his German mother's side of the family for, if nothing else. His eyes were a clear blue, and his lashes were thick. His hair had the lustrous black sheen of his father's, but with more curl. His skin was the smooth, flawless color of dusk. And a dedicated work-out schedule had added smooth pads of muscle to his chest and back, filling him out like a hard-edged soccer player. His demeanor was quick and sure. The slight swagger, to anyone who cared to look hard enough, had just enough of a self-conscious check to it to reveal a bottomless insecurity. But it was pretty near perfect, and it didn't matter, anyway. Whatever was unnatural he'd done for so long it blended in. Even his voice, with the ragged edge to it, had an affected quality to it. His English, especially, had a flowing, almost musical cadence. He used profanity like rhythm, punctuating his carefully chosen phrases with a syncopated beat. He sprinkled a little Spanish cursing in his English as well, and gave it a nice overall American Salsa flavor.
He'd created himself. And he'd done it so well, that no one, least of all him, would ever know who he was to start with. It was somewhere back on that first domino.

It's Not That Easy

Recently, (a relative term) I mentioned a form of occult worship which combines certain elements of charismatic Christianity with Haitian vodou. It is representative of a religious culture awash in bizarre concoctions of doctrine.
Where I erred was in judging this to be a modern, or post-modern curiosity. The Isrealites persisted in combining all forms of idol worship with Judaism.
Much earlier, Cain insisted on sacrificing vegetables to God, and was only his mother's son. From Eve's initial protest and then acceptance of the serpent's dubious theology, I seem to gather that she chose to believe that the eating of the forbidden fruit dovetailed quite nicely with the rest of her theology. Outright rebellion it was not. Heresy rarely is.
I rehash to bring up another subject that I again considered a novelty; the practice of self-inflicted penance in the stead of God's convicting changing power. Upon reflection I am stunned by the prevalence of the prostitution of guilt.
Guilt has overtaken NASCAR as the national pastime. We are guilt-ridden, and, at the same time, extremely careless. And it is our guilt that enables us to be so care-free. It's easy. You compartmentalize. Guilt needn't interfere with our pursuit of happiness.
I grew curious over lyrics from a certain Christian group, recently, and availed myself of their website to see what made them tick. It wasn't jeweled movement.
I read of their reticence to be classed with "cheesy, holier-than-thou evangelicals." Their prioritizing of social concerns was in curious order for a group of professed Christians. They long to record anti-war songs, but feel their audience may not be ready for it. Asked about a rumor that they were stumping for Hillary Clinton for president, they placidly denied it, "at this time", although, they then went on to note that they did like her husband, but were currently "intrigued" by Barack Obama. They acknowledged abortion as a societal tragedy, but seemed more concerned with pushing the issue on environmental issues. They conjured up taboos set in place by the Christian establishment, and then bemoaned the imaginary restraints placed on them.
As I read on, I became disgusted with what seemed to be one of the most whining, pretentious, self-righteous, judgemental rants I'd ever heard from one group who calls themselves Christian on another group who calls itself Christian. (Oddly enough, there's really not that many self-righteous evangelicals around. They're all too busy sputtering, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven."; a worthy mantra, if applied correctly.)
This same group, who funds a large charity dedicated to the care of AIDS sufferers in Africa, expends most of their precious musical and lyrical talent on critical introspection.
Thoughtful, I would have called it. Spiritual navel-gazing now seems to be a more applicable term.
Evangelicals misuse guilt as well. By and large, the late twentieth century mutant strain of Calvinism now pervades every major evangelical denomination. Guilt is common here, also. An old friend, in fact. The worse you can feel about crucifying Jesus afresh every day in thought, word and deed, the more spiritual you are. It is a glorified form of self-deprecation. How awful it is that we cannot keep from pounding new nails in His hands every day! The studied conscientiousness of how our continual sin extracts continual sacrifice from Christ burdens many a radio preacher, oh, if only we could quit!
I myself am not above abusing guilt.
If I offend anyone, this troubles me deeply. I apologize, profusely, unsatisfied until the offended party forgives. A self-serving attitude manifests itself in my desperation for an apology. I don't wish to trouble myself any longer over the wrong I've done another. I question whether I ever troubled myself over the harm I caused another or whether I was sorry simply because I found myself inconvenienced by having to suffer through repentance. Acceptance of the apology and forgiveness is, consequently, nothing more than a placebo. All this was a subconscious process until recently, and frankly, I'm irritated that it ever reared its ugly head above water.
Furthermore, in referencing the relative ease with which I live out my Christianity, I wished to know whether we have truly taken on His yoke, or if we have, have we lightened the load?
I enjoy my Christianity. I've grown used to the sacrifice.
In case the glaring contradiction lurking in the last statement didn't jump out and bite you on the nose, I'll point it out.
If one grows used to sacrifice, it ceases to be sacrifice.
If your servitude becomes a comfortable fit, it needs alteration. It should chafe a little.
Does one go hunting for trouble? Perhaps not, but if you are advancing as you should be, you are behind enemy lines and trouble will find you.
Every Easter season we are treated to the spectacle of crucifixion in the Philippines.
By submitting to fifteen or twenty minutes of the most excruciating physical pain imaginable, you make a one-time, life-time sacrifice of our will.
If only it were that easy.
We are required to sacrifice our will daily.
Entire sanctification is appropriately categorized as surrender. Whereupon, however, we are not deposited in a stockade and instructed not to attempt escape.
Instead, we are taken to the arsenal, armed, and sent back out to do battle with our old comrade-in-arms, Self.

the little boy

He would never know whether it was a sixth sense or the sight of a branch springing upward, shedding it's burden of snow, out of the corner of his eye.
Whatever the reason, he had begun to rise out of his crouched position and turn, so that the blow had not the force it might have.
As it was, it was stunning, and vibrated his skull down to the base of his neck.
Dallas Cowboys blue swam in front of him.
Another blow, more solid, more square.
A child's face, looking afraid. . .
Another blow.

He resisted consciousness, because he vaguely suspected that he probably would prefer to remain unconscious.
He became aware of his surroundings in waking glimpses, before squeezing his eyes tightly shut and willing himself back into darkness.
A dirt floor, exposed rafters with nails jutting through plywood, a pile of sticks in a corner, a card table stacked with cans, an ax handle that looked fleetingly familiar.
He knew the boy was there, and he knew he couldn't move. He lay on his side, with both arms behind him. His left arm was completely numb, but he could feel the rope chafing his right wrist.
He lay as still as possible, feeling that if he could avoid attention, life might go on indefinitely. Not ideal, but discomfort was better than any new developments.
He was in the back of the room, farthest from the door. Somehow that didn't disturb him as much as it might have, because no instinct stirred within him to escape. Not yet. It was easier to lay still.
The cold, seeping up from the earth, further immobilized him. The semi-fetal position sustained the little warmth remaining in his body, yet another reason for remaining completely stationary. He began to discern a cycle to life. The door would open at roughly regular intervals, and for a time he could sense no movement. During these times, the door would remain open, permitting an intrusive draft that dulled any relief he might've gleaned from his respites of solitude.
Following usually what seemed about ten minutes, the door would scrape closed, and the other cabin-dweller would take up residence in the cabin's one chair, and watch him, or so Joshua assumed, with his eyes shut.
Time passed, doors opened and closed. He shuddered and slept.
His captor's chair creaked and cans clattered.
Consciousness stalked his resistant brain.

conscience kills the cat

He ate slowly, a laptop open on the kitchen table behind the bowl of soup and a mug of Chai tea.
He quickly forgot the intrusion, or thought he had, until he finished eating, when, as he arose to place bowl and spoon in the dishwasher and glanced outside at the mounting drifts, he was struck, reluctantly, by the improbability of it.
His nearest neighbor was twelve miles away.
Where did the boy come from?
He stood frozen, capitulating to the hateful notion that someone was intruding in his personal space.
David Copperfield sat upright by the leg of the table, regarding him with a kittenish cocked head. Joshua made his decision in a decisive, sudden movement toward the sink, causing Copperfield to attack his leg and Ebenezer to sit up quickly, ears pricking forward.
It was no good not knowing.
He'd constructed and sanctified this universe of his too long and too jealously to ignore the intrusion.
Neighbors, with kids, this close, was as the introduction of sin into the garden of Eden.
He shrugged into his coat and began lacing his boots, leveling a stern gaze at the eager Ebenezer. The dog was definitely staying. He'd have the intruders sought out and befriended before Joshua made it out of the yard.
He slipped out onto the porch and shut the door firmly behind him.
The tracks of his visitor were softening in the continuing snowfall, visible now as slight depressions in the deepening banks.
He followed quickly, but watchfully, not wanting to be seen before he saw.
The tracks continued down the road for a good mile, ricocheting off both sides of the road, sometimes detouring off into the woods a few steps, where gleamed the fresh wood of a broken branch or once, a partially assembled miniature snowman, lacking a head and sporting one arm.
The trail continued so, until at an upward left-hand curve in the road, the tracks followed instead a logging trail that forged straight ahead off the main road.
Here, the tracks began to straighten and the stride seemed to lengthen.
A destination seemed imminent.
The trail dropped off suddenly down a steep grade, leaving Joshua to wonder how a logging truck would possibly manage.
The snow was steadily consuming the forest, piling on the slenderest branches three and four inches deep, clinging to the rough pine bark like cumulus moss, creeping up the tree trunks, slowly obscuring any color or depth-perception.
The world closed in around him. The drooping clouds were impenetrable. Visibility was limited by the deepening drifts and the clustering puffs of snow that grew inexorably on every horizontal, diagonal, and vertical surface. Every color save white was being blotted out. He was going snow-blind.
A stiff breeze accompanied the storm, whirling the flakes into a maddening flurry, brushing his cheeks, resting on his eyelashes, blurring his vision.
He wasn't fond of hats but was wishing for once he'd neglected his wardrobe preferences and thought of comfort.
He frequently reached his hand up to brush the snow from his bare head before it had a chance to melt and then freeze again in his hair.
He almost walked right past it.
A little ways off the trail, a horizontal angle flickered at the corner of his blurred vision.
In the chaotic honesty of nature, the curves and crooks and spider-webbed branches, the tiny glimpse of man-made uniformity jumped out at him.
He stood very still, squinting into the wind, straining to see the now barely visible tracks and where they led. Tracking the boy was quickly becoming guesswork in the deepening snow.
He couldn't be sure.
Afraid of being spotted, although he had no proof as yet this was where the trail ended, he stood in his tracks for a long while before finally deciding to backtrack a little and get off the trail into the trees where the snowfall would be limited by the obstructing branches.
He found a spot under two crowding pines and hunched down, and studied the structure before him.
He'd seen it before, knew it was here, and if it hadn't appeared (possibly) that the tracks led to it, he wouldn't have considered looking here.
It was a very small, extremely rustic A-frame cabin, probably an old hunting headquarters, framed with odds and ends of lumber and particle board and supplemented heavily by young pines with the bark still remaining. The door was a sheet of plywood. A strip of rubber, formerly functioning as a hinge, hung cracked and dry on the four-by-four doorjamb and swung freely in the wind. The door was, however, apparently fastened or braced from within, as it fit snug against the doorjamb revealing only a half-inch crack at the top.
A drift obscured his line of vision to the bottom of the door, the sight of which would no doubt tell him if this were the unlikely end of the trail. If snow had drifted up on the door, he could move on, if it were swept back, the trail ended here and he would have no choice but to investigate. Neighborly he wasn't, but neither was he cruel. If the boy were here, he obviously couldn't stay, and if he wasn't, well . . .he'd cross that bridge later.
The whiteout was beginning to make his eyes ache. He opened them wider, straining. Multi-colored spots blotted his vision.
He shut them for a moment, tightly. The spots multiplied, bursting fireworks fading into blackness.
He kept them closed, wondering how long he could wonder around out here before the storm became a real blizzard and he became more lost than the boy he was looking for.
The wind gusted, nudging at the plywood door.

a little personal history

Lee and Matt wriggled free of the crowd as the chapel steadily disgorged it’s congregation into the fountain square.
“So, where are you going tonight and with who?” Lee asked.
“Have no idea.” Matt scanned the crowd.
“Oh, I see, you haven’t decided yet, you’re just looking the roster over for options.”
“More or less.” Matt responded slowly.
“It’s nice not to have to worry about that.” Lee spoke to the night air, since he knew Matt wasn’t really listening.
He was, though.
“What about Karen Smith?”
There it was again. He fervently wished Mr. and Mrs. Smith had never met. The result was causing him problems.The sooner this scuttlebutt died, the happier he would be. It couldn’t be long now. He’d avoided her like the plague for the last two weeks, trying to starve the rumor. In that way, and some other ways, rumors were like jackrabbits. Born easy, die hard. Not to mention the way the way they hopped around and popped up out of nowhere when you least expected them.
“What about her?”
“I heard you were- well, Angie was telling me-”
“You’ve been talking to Angie.” Lee cut him off crisply, glancing up at the moon.
“Yeah.”
“What else has Angie told you that you took for truth and gospel?”
Matt chuckled.
“Point taken. So. . .find somebody else.”
“I knew you weren’t listening when I said it was nice not to have to worry about that.”
“I was listening.”
“Then what’s your point?”
Matt shrugged, zipping his coat up before belaboring the point “Isn’t it a little depressing,” he smiled in his own inscrutable way, “-not to even think about women? I mean, less trouble, yeah, but what fun is it?”
“For you. Females for you have pros and cons. For me, it’s all cons. Why should I regret not having something I don’t want?”
Matt saw a blonde head in the distance and conceded the argument quickly. “I suppose you should suit yourself.”
“I am suiting myself, thank you very much.” he muttered to Matt’s departing back.
Having said that, he suddenly found himself in the near vicinity of an entourage of Karen Smith admirers; three of them, orbiting like Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter around the same sun.
He looked purposefully elsewhere, his eyes rolling involuntarily. He stopped short when his gaze settled back into place and locked onto a pair of large green eyes.
The minute their eyes met, she spoke, charmingly sarcastic.
“Oh, look. There’s Karen and all her men.”
He bristled in spite of his resolve to let the whole matter die of starvation. This insidious, casual rumor had gone far enough, and nobody was going to stop it but him. Time to put it to the sword.
He stepped closer, turning his back on the Smith solar system, and looked down into a face that was even prettier up close, and the eyes bigger.
“Do me a favor,” he requested in a tersely intimate tone, “and do not refer to me as one of Karen Smith’s ‘men.’”
Behind him, Venus laughed at something the Sun had said.
She looked up at him with just a touch of sobered remorse, but still saucy, and said, “I’ll be your girl for tonight, if you want me to.” Just like that.
His initial feeling was mild panic. The sudden dryness in his mouth was not what he wished to experience when being flirted with, given his self-confirmed and somewhat prideful independence of . . . And furthermore, it was unsettling, coming from her. Everything he had ever seen in her pointed to sincerity, not given to friendly flirting. In fact the first time he’d ever spoken to her, it was to say, “If you get your nose any higher in the air, and it rains, you’ll drown.” Such was her reserved, indifferent air to males; an attitude not easily reconciled with the coy insolence that saturated her enticing remark.
He weakly resisted until it came to him that it would take a better man than he to laugh and move on.
“We’re going out, somewhere.”
Sellout, he told himself
“Why don’t you come along, both of you.” he gestured towards her friend Dory who was regarding Natalie with what he would recall later as a shocked look.
Natalie now looked slightly bewildered. “Where?” she finally asked, supremely unsure of herself now.
“Not sure. Gotta find everybody. I’m supposed to meet em over by the post office. Hang on, I’ll go see if they’re there.”
He moved off through the crowd, while she turned away with a dismayed look in her eyes.
Ten minutes later, he returned to the same spot.
She wasn’t there. Neither was Dory.
He meandered through the idling crowd, until he saw his cousin.
“Hey, you seen Natalie?”
“’I think I saw her headed toward the dean of women’s office.”
What’s she doing in there?
“Would you go get her, we’re supposed to go to Covington and her and Dory were gonna come.”
“I’ll try.”
She returned shortly with the two of them in tow; Natalie, reluctantly, it appeared, accompanied by Jack Alder.
“He coming?”
“Yeah,” his cousin volunteered, “They’re gonna ride with him.”
Whatever for?
Since it appeared that Natalie was not going to look directly at him, he shrugged and dug his keys out of his pocket.
“Hey, can I ride with you?” Shelby asked. “Manuel said he’d be by later. so he can bring me back.”
“Sure.”
He and Shelby arrived last, since he never could find anything, not a gas station, much less a specific restaurant to which he’d never been, without at least three wrong turns and an occasional jaunt the wrong way down a one way street, pedal pressed to the floor, desperately racing to dart down a side street scant feet before the shocked, indignant glares of drivers coming the opposite direction, clearly offended at having to take their foot off the accelerator. And since his parents never could find it regardless of how many wrong turns and how much frenzied speeding down one-way streets, they never made it at all.
He and Jack sat opposite Natalie and Dory. He opposite Natalie, Jack opposite a nervous Dory. It appeared there were something afoot there, also. Chad and his brother and his brother’s perpetual fiancee sat to Lee’s right.
Chad, leaning into Lee’s peripheral vision from the opposite end and side of the table, flashed a downright smug smile at Lee, shifting his look significantly towards Natalie, then back at Lee.
What?
Chad then went back to conversing with his brother in hushed tones, with Lee and Natalie obviously the topic, judging from the sideways jerks of the head, and the glances down their direction that never quite reached them.
Sometime between the main course and dessert, Lee found himself intrigued. Not impressed, for he’d already been impressed. There was an abundance of impressive traits; beautifully shaped eyes, perfect mouth that needed no lipstick, auburn hair, endearing little mannerisms.
But what was intriguing was her complete lack of pretense. Sincerity, that was the word. She didn’t ooze goodwill, or exude enthusiasm or coquetry. She was just sitting there talking, not embarrassed, shy, or overconfident, yet apparently interested in him. He was definitely off balance. Every girl he’d ever known up to this point had served to reinforce his conviction that females were all well and good, just not for him. He was a little disgusted. Not very disgusted, just disgusted enough to be amused at his disgust. What sort of way was this for a woman to act? Just when he’d been completely content to categorize all women essentially the same, and just as content to leave them be as they were and go on his merry way without them, no hard feelings, thank you, this enigma casually stepped into his path and looked him full in the face. No pretense, no designs, just plain, undisguised interest. He’d never seen anything like it. And so, as one does with a novelty, he stopped to look.
When they had done with supper, and curfew loomed large, he got up to pay for his meal. When he returned to the table, he was disappointed to find them already gone. Manuel had since arrived and left, taking Shelby with him, so Lee got in his truck alone and blundered his way back to the college, five minutes past curfew, and meandered up the stairs to his room. He pulled his tie and dress shirt off and sat down at the desk in his khakis and t-shirt to spellcheck the essay due the next day. Halfway through, Matt eased the door open and ambled in.
“Where you been, boy?” Lee drawled.
“Went out with James Tackett and Levi and some girls.”
Lee chuckled. “I think I’ve finally got you figured out. You never go out with the same bunch twice in the same month. I don’t even know anybody named Tackett.”
“Linda’s cousin.”
“Linda?”
“Yeah, you know, blond hair. . .”
Lee put his pen down and twisted in his chair. “Blonde, really?”
A sheepish little smile flitted across Matt’s face. He dove onto his bunk. “So, what’d you do all night? Plot the violent overthrow of the marriage institution?”
“I went to Uno’s pizzeria.” Lee replied cryptically, turning back to his essay.
“By yourself, or with another bachelor?”
Lee doodled in the margin and said nothing.
“Oh, I see. By yourself.” Matt gripped the edge of his blanket and rolled toward the wall, thus relieving Lee of the burden of explanation.
The next morning, Lee’s eyes opened at seven o’clock. Just as he started to close them again, a thought nudged him awake.
He dressed quickly with the light off, leaving Matt and Jim still asleep and hurried downstairs and across campus to the cafeteria.
He came in the side entrance and searched the cluster of students down at the far end.
Sure enough, there she was.
He sauntered down the other side of the room, picking up a glass of juice and a muffin and headed for her table.
The closest seat available appeared to be three seats down from her, so he sat down, grateful when Shane Crosby across the table and four seats down hollered, “Well, look who’s up at this unearthly hour.”
He watched out of the corner of his eye and saw Natalie lean forward and look his way.
Fifteen minutes and some general commiseration about finals passed by and Natalie stood, leaving.
Lee gulped the last of his juice and shoved his chair back directly in front of her, unsure of what he was doing, just not ready to give up so easily.
“And where are you going?”
She never missed a beat, pulling a chair out from the opposite table and sat down, scant inches away from him.
She leveled that saucy sincerity at him and smiled. “Did you want to talk to me?”
Well . . . at least she cut through all that preliminary nonsense.
He smiled too, if a little shakily, and came right back, deciding that honesty, in the end, was bound to be the best policy.
“That’s what I came down here for.”
When the thirty minute conversation was over, he couldn’t remember exactly what it was they talked about, only that as they both departed the cafeteria for eight o-clock class, she asked, “When do you eat lunch?”
“Around one o’clock.”
“Okay.” she replied without inflection in her voice, leaving Lee with the pleasant impression that she simply took it for granted that they would see eachother at lunch.
Which they did.
And as they were leaving again, she asked about his finals, and why didn’t he bring his books down to the lounge and study there?
Finals more or less took a back seat as it will when two people who want to get to know eachother attempt to “study”together.
“So, when are you going home?” Lee asked, closing his philosophy book, finally conceding to himself the folly of trying to study while drinking in this new pleasure that was Natalie.
“My mom is supposed to pick me on Thursday, but . . .the old blue van hasn’t been running so well, so . . .”
Lee felt he had been around long enough to spot a hint like that one. But . . .no sense tackling conclusions.
“How are you gonna make it home if your Mom can’t make it?” he asked bluntly.
He nailed her. Her eyes went down and her pencil rolled in drunken circles in the margin of her notebook. Lee smiled inside. She had that same look last night after she had offered her company for the evening.
He quickly relented. “I could take you.”
He always gave up too easy. So did she.
He liked the way she gave up the charade; with a little smile in her eyes when she said, “Oh, but that’s way out of your way.”
“Oh, I think I could spare the time.”
The smile appeared on her lips. “I’d like that.”
I’ll just bet you would.

Yeah, it is a little self-absorbed.
Its my blog.

Why do I serve God?
Fear was my initial motivation. Forgiveness. . .
That was a long time ago.
What holds me, now?
I've certainly no desire or temptation of desire to forsake my Christianity.
Why is that? It may seem an odd question, but it is begotten from my distrust of human nature in general, and my own nature in particular.
I believe that I am a child of God. I also recognize my insufferable humanity.
I observe that I am impressed by Christianity.
I read books by C.S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias, and G.K. Chesterton and am gratified by the philosophical and intellectual royalty that raises Christianity to its throne as king of religions.
I was born of Christian parents, neither of whom have ever given me the slightest reason to disrepect the heritage they have given me.
I am the grandchild of exemplary Christians, people known for their testimony.
I married a Christian woman who delights in the law of the Lord.
My sister and brother-in-law serve God.
My in-laws, uncles, aunts, cousins serve God.
What troubles me in unguarded moments is this: I have no reason to be anything other than a Christian.
Have you ever wondered how much of your experience is positive peer pressure?
Surely you have noticed how much easier it is to hunger and thirst after righteousness when righteousness is the food and drink of choice of your companions.
Surely you have noticed how much you desire humility when you observe it in others and wish I would that others could see that in me.
Surely you have noticed that prayer acquires much more fervor and reality in the presence of a saint, and how difficult it is in the presence of a sinner.
Surely you have noticed how incredulity tempers your boldness.
Falderal, whippersnapper, you may say. What of it? Count your blessings.
I don't wish to strain at gnats, but in quickly dismissing this question I sometimes feel as if I'm making a molehill out of a mountain.
Thank God for your Christian heritage, you say. Thank God for your upbringing. I truly am.
Be thankful for your Christian companion. I am too grateful for words.
Deepen your knowledge of apologetics, then, and fortify your faith with the words and writings of wiser men. Populate your world with saints and follow their example.
I intend to.
But whence cometh my motivation to serve God? From all these?
I have made my Christianity something to be enjoyed. An easy yoke it is, and yet I sometimes feel as if I've unkowingly shrugged off the yoke and trot on down the road, empty harness flapping behind me.
How positive is positive peer pressure if it props up your salvation?
What would I do if there no Lewis, no Zacharias, no Focus on the Family, no Steven Curtis Chapman, no Frank Peretti, no parents, no grandparents, no Devan?
Stripped of all the decorations I have draped over my Christianity, would it look like our artificial Christmas tree on New Years Day; miserable, naked, drab, ready to be dismembered and packed away for another year?
How deep do the roots go?
How solid is the foundation?
What would a good stiff wind leave behind?
I cannot know this. I can only prepare.
Study to show thyself approved

The Genius of Satan

As fascinated as I am by the sheer number of interpretations of religion, philosophy, and Jesus Christ, I can't help looking for the root of it all.
Searching for motives behind the formation of people's worldviews will, I'm convinced, show a common thread, more, a common foundation; "anything but God", I'll call it.
I think it is entirely fair to say most people have put no thought into their worldview. It is formed by the combination of one's likes and dislikes, needs (wants) and passing fancies and is come upon quite accidentally.
If you were to ask the first person you met in Wal-Mart, "What is the meaning of life?", you would most likely be either stunned, confused or extremely amused depending on your appreciation for cynicism.
(I daresay America is no doubt the most diverse in this area, continually melting as we are, into one sticky, insoluble mass, recognizable only as goolash, in our large culture pot.)
We are an amalgam of every book, magazine, movie, album and person we have ever known. Having begun with no blueprint, the collection of values and philosophies that have rained down on us throughout our existence lay strewn about, useless, rusting, settling into disrepair; a junkyard. But it's our junkyard, and we know where everything is, so don't come through trying to organize things. First thing you know, you'll be trying to put things in the closet or spraying disinfectant everywhere and that stuff makes it hard to breathe.
All this observation boils down to one point, I realize, and a less curious person would be content to state the bottom line, it is all breathed into existence by the Father of Lies. [simplistic and very true. After all, it may sound unseemly to say that Buddhism,for example, is Satanic, but none the less true, Buddhism being yet another manifestation of the "anything but God" thread, which is, at its root, self-based and self-centered or didn't you know that Buddha left his wife and children in search of truth and thereby embarked on one of the longest wild goose chases in history.]
But the devil is still in the details and I think it is profitable to examine the junkyard. A pattern will emerge, one of chaos, organized.
In the modern religious manual, orthodoxy is condemned. Orthodoxy is rigid, unyielding, stubborn and arrogant.
Creativity is praised. We are philosophical bohemians, running around like abstract artists flinging paint and mud and dung and ideas at a canvas, waiting for some three dimensional masterpiece to emerge so we can collect our funding.
And when I say orthodoxy, I don't just refer to orthodox Christianity, I refer to orthodox anything. Single-mindedness of purpose is admired nowhere, not in Athens, not in New York, not in San Francisco. You may be a gay transgender transvestite earth-worshipping artistic vegan living with your partner you married in Vermont and your adopted kid and that's great, just don't be dogmatic about it.
And that is the hellish genius of it. That is, if we don't approve of forcefulness or proselytizing from anyone, we can continue to feel infinitely open-minded, and continue to ignore the one snide little question, is your mind open to being closed?
And in large part, we as Christians have hamstrung ourselves.
I think an excellent example of this is the way Christians and sympathetic social conservatives used the other edge of the civil liberties sword to strike back, quite effectively, at the celebration of Christmas sans Christ. It was pointed out that it was hypocritical of civil liberties activists to restrict the religious expression of Christians celebrating Christmas. As a trend, they are coming around, Merry Christmas is acceptable once again, and Christ is allowed back in the pantheon.
And we've done ourselves no favor. The best thing we could've done is give the libertarian zeal free reign and let it rush down the slope to choke in the sea.
More later.
Much later.

Vodoo Christianity

A black hole cannot be directly observed. The size and gravitational pull is proven by what disappears into the event horizon.
A black hole is American spiritual culture.
I read (scanned) with horrified fascination a book on American vodoo, not to be confused with its darker, simpler, purer sibling Haitian vodoo.
American vodoo has become inextricably fused with charismatic Christianity, fueling my belief that the only reason Satanic Christianity has not yet made its debut is because no one has thought of it. Maybe I shouldn't bring it up.
Worship involves waiting on the Lord, waiting for a word to be shared with all the brethren. There's healing, reliant on the availability of sacrificial chickens.
We've Americanized Africa.
Pluralism does not begin to describe the convoluted maelstrom of religion that has become our state religion.
Jesus Christ isn't quite villified, just tolerated, as long as He recognizes his place in our spiritual paradigm.
The Lion of Judah is our circus animal, jumping through hoops, tamed, by us.
Don't get out of your corner.
Christianity has become festooned with dried garlic cloves and smells of incense.
It is a world populated with wandering spirit guides and departed loved ones, beckoning us upward to higher planes.
We are very spiritual, much to our detriment.
Good old fashioned materialistic atheism was baked desert soil, webbed with deep cracks that drank in hard rain. We've traded it for life underneath a flat rock, crawling like worms and centipedes through the mud and flattened, albino grass.
Plenty of moisture and no bright lights.
I don't know that we've become more sinful than previous generations, just more creative, and paradoxical.
. . . white lies, insanity pleas, no-fault divorces, mercy killings, lesser evils . . .
Guilt is something in which we indulge, rather than suffer.
I was listening to a song by Jars of Clay about the bumbling efforts of Western Christianity to try to help our Third World brothers and sisters and couldn't decide if I agreed with the message or was violently opposed to it. (This is why listening to alternative music is so entertaing. You can put a different meaning to it each time you listen to it. It is the musical equivalent of abstract art, or those 3-D paintings that everyone claims to be able to decipher.)
It did occur to me, however, that, try as we might, we'll never truly assimilate with other cultures and ethnicities. We've evolved too highly and rapidly in the area of guilt for anybody else to catch up with us.
Guilt, having become a science, is no longer a grief, because the guilt has become penance in and of itself. It is now the end, not the means. We don't have to crawl up the steps of a cathedral, but the principal remains the same.
No self-inflicted pain can ignite our soul like God's burning purity.
So we lacerate our bodies with feathers, and fast on junk food.
If you are sorry, you get a pass.
If you resolve never to sin again, you are to be pitied.
The guilt trip is a short one, if often traveled. You get good at it, and it's easy to feel really sorry for your sin without getting carried away by delusions of grandeur and imagining what life would be without it.
But humility, well, that's something of which we can all be proud.
There has never been a generation so humble as ours.
We trample each other flat getting to the back of the line.
Is there a virtue left which has not been compromised?
Man's eyes were indeed opened that he should see good and evil, only he chooses to keep them closed most of the time.

western hospitality

The boy paused, still blowing into his gloved hands.
"Are you lost?"
The gloves dropped, and the boy looked up, his blue eyes heated with a sudden strange intensity. He gazed, searching, for a long moment.
Discomfort grew on the back of Joshua's neck like hot, prickly moss.
He ventured further hospitality.
"Do you need something?"
Joshua read the answer that leaped into the boy's eyes but never made it to his cracked lips.
Desperation.
He felt Ebenezer pushing against his leg again and heard the faint whisper of conscience begging him to open the door, bring the boy in, seat him by the fire.
He stiffened his legs and broke the gaze, pretending to hear something within the house.
"Hold on." He turned and pushed the door almost closed and bustled back to the pot on the stove which was, as chance would have it, almost boiling over.
He belabored the task of moving the pot to a hotpad on the counter and turning the stove off.
He walked reluctantly back to the door, ignoring Ebenezer who stood staring at the door.
The boy was halfway down to the road when he swung the door open again.
He quelled the burst of satisfaction that spread hot guilt all over him.
"Do you-" he began, but bit it off, unsure of what to say, or what he wanted to say.
The boy, not hearing or disregarding, bounded down the slope and hit the road in a dead run, disappearing quickly.
Joshua leaned against the doorjamb, watching the last place the Dallas Cowboys parka had flashed through the trees.
The longer he stood there with the door open, letting the warmth of the house rush out like vapor into the snow, watching for, hoping against, another glimpse of royal blue, the more satisfied he became that he'd done what he could.
At last, a chill shuddering over his shoulders, he stepped back and closed the door.
It was snowing again.

He picked up Copperfield, stroking the black head between the ears until a rumbling purr pulsed against the feline's ribcage.
Dumping him lightly at his water bowl, he retrieved a bowl and spoon from the cabinet, ignoring the irriation he felt with Ebenezer who lay in front of the fireplace, head resting on his paws, ears pricked and eyes trained on the door.

With an ear tuned to the simmering pot on the stovetop, he surfed aimlessly, merging onto the billion lane cyber super freeway and cruising in the fast lane, blazing through carefully prepared sites at a dizzying speed, caught up in the attention deficit culture.
He slewed into a site with the informative url impressions.edu and spun out, carefully picking through selected information archives on Monet.
Monet was precisely his ideal of the perfect artist. Not crass enough to depict matter in it's bold reality, not presumptuous enough to think he could exactly duplicate the beauty of his subject, and yet not so temperemental as to disregard any and all semblance of reality and cast order to the wind.
Sparse were the collections of artwork in Joshua's cabin, but each one was chosen carefully for its taste and placed deliberately, fulfilling its aesthetic potential.
No computer-generated glassed-in prints of winding rivers, cheery lighted cabins, or budding roses adorned his wall.
The sound of a dog dish skittering across tile, an explosive, inquisitive bark
and the scrambling of claws across hardwood was the only preamble to a thunderous knock on the front door.
It sounded thunderous because it had never happened before. Ever.
The heavy oak door hung on brushed brass hinges by Joshua's own hands had never fallen under the summons of a human hand.
Telling it was, that the option of not answering the door never occurred to him even though perfectly social people did it all the time. It certainly would have been an acceptable quirk for a hermit.
It was what he'd been waiting for, after all. What was solitude without discovery?
Solitude was meant to be discovered. Without discovery, it grew stagnant.
This thought never occurred to Joshua overtly, still, the blood pulsed in his head as he proceeded to the door. Joshua held no hate for the human race. He wasn’t even jaded. He was simply temperamental, and in danger of becoming extremely eccentric.
Ebenezer and Trotwood hung back, disconcerted.
He unconciously cast a glance about the room, searching for imperfections, reaching for the doorknob.
He swung the door open.
He wouldn't have been so eager.
A boy, nine or ten, blue toboggan, Dallas Cowboys parka, gloves, too big, shuffling his dingy tennis shoes over the packed snow.
Ebenezer thrust his big head in between Joshua and the door, but removed it quickly when Joshua surreptitiously squeezed his head in between his leg and the door.
"Hi."
He said hi with that bright ring of expectancy that said, I think your cabin is really cool. Aren't you going to invite me in? I'll play with your dog.
With all his reclusive soul, he wished to simply step back and shut the door.
Of course he couldn't. Mostly because he couldn't simply ignore the fact that an undesirable breach of his sanctuary had occurred. A child meant others, others who had no better sense than to let children wander and disturb. What if there were more children? A vulgar vision of his yard littered with deflated, sun-bleached basketballs, a forgotten blue and yellow plastic three-wheeler, an overturned slide,
and a blue plastic swimming pool filled with stagnant water and dead leaves filled his mind.
Joshua measured his tone. "Hello."
A silent pause ensued in which the intruder inexplicably cupped his gloved hands and breathed into them.
A reluctant hint of civility crept into Joshua's voice, "What can I do for you?"
"Um. . ."
You want to come in. Because it makes perfect sense that since you exist and you are a child that you have the right and even the invitation to impose yourself on anyone and everyone.

a litle background

Fourteen e-mails promptly went the way of the recycle bin, one from his thankfully far removed editor in New York busting his chops over a deadline received a thorough reading, a snort, and the delete button, and three more, one from a brother in Colorado Springs, another from a sister in Denver, and the obligatory daily from his mother in Butte were left unopened for later consumption.
If Joshua has been misrepresented to the reader heretofor as a man without acquaintance, even a man without family as a frame for his identity, an orphan having exploded into this vast expanse of wilderness like a human Big Bang, it is the fault of the writer and must be set right.
Friends he had, of mostly past or long distance acquaintance, and family as well; family of even a markedly normal and functioning quality, family that faithfully attempted contact with him, though more and more they resorted to one-sided e-mails, to which he responded, eventually.
This family consisted of his parents, a retired sytems analyst for a small freight company, and a semi-retired nurse who still worked one day a week for insurance purposes; one brother, married, with three children and an interesting to say the least career niche chiseled out of online marketing; two sisters, one a housewife, one child, and a burgeoning E-Bay customer base, the other sister, the youngest, recently married, bearing a master's degree and no children, and a promising if not lucrative future in cataloguing southwestern cultural history and native American contributions to eventual modern society.
The family had always been close, existing with a high level of functionality, and forgiving compatibility that many families only dream of.
The in-laws got on very well, as did the cousins, minus the usual competitiveness and awkwardness that will plague several young relatives who see eachother only two or three times a year and always in the confines of a backyard, a cleared out garage or family room.
The adults fared a little better, the conversation buffered in the courtesy supplied by adulthood. The women were perfectly content to shoulder the massive food burden necessary to family gatherings, as long as the men and the children made no great nuisance of themselves, getting on very well, thank you, the interaction graced with the social kindness of the sex, and later complaining only mildly in the privacy of their allotted bedrooms of the others' rambunctious children or the inevitable dispute over the use of glass or plastic, china or paper plates.
The men oscillated between the garage, the shop, the den, and the respective vehicles in the front drive, providing there was a new one or one with a particular confounding ailment. The interaction here was easy and relaxed, lacking the stress of competition that festered among the male gender of so many extended family circles. The camaraderie had only recently been jarred by the discordant addition of the youngest sister's husband, an energetic, ambitious, supremely confident young Cingular Wireless salesman who sported a year-round tan, a regrettable lack of subtelty, a strident conversational voice, and a hearty fake laugh.
However, even this dissonance was soothed by time and the new guy's realization that his male in-laws were not quick to be impressed or possibly didn't need to be. The gusto was quieted, and the laughs were reserved for things found genuinely humorous, instead of anything and everything related to his promising career, including but not limited to anecdotal on-the-job training. When the restraint became too much, and the energy ebbed too low in the masculine discussions, this brimming chalice of sanguine-choleric personality would bolt, like a caged tiger, for the kitchen in search of wide-eyed feminine appreciation.
Perhaps no family is completely normal.
But if general compatibility can be supposed to contribute to the sum of "normal" this family functioned at ninety percent.
This nearly normal family discussed often among themselves the frequent absence of their brother, for whom they all exhibited a fondness of such a degree that was to him almost inexplicable and at times, an irritant.
Joshua hadn't always been so reclusive. At an earlier time at any family gathering, he might've been generously titled the life of the party. His poor mother, clearly the most distraught over her eldest son's "self-imposed exile", as she called it, was forever trying to place a particular point in time or circumstance to his remarkable change in demeanor and habits.
His father, less disturbed, but still puzzled, reasoned perhaps it was due to his being single, a writer, and a psychology major in college.
"Any one of the three is enough to weird a man out, Janet." he pointed out to his wife. "At any rate," he inevitably concluded, "it's a phase, just like all the others. Remember the genius phase?"
Todd, his father, was here referring to an extended phase of Joshua's thirteenth and fourteenth years, when after reading a biography of Albert Einstein, he had decided to be a genius, and had affected all the trappings. He labored intensely over each subject in school, especially math and science. But chemistry, which wasn't available until the eleventh grade, became his passion. The school library became devoid of a large segment of the non-fiction section from 323.575 to 323.975 for weeks on end. He lusted after petri dishes and test tubes but scorned the Nickolodeon chemistry set his mother purchased at Wal-greens, utilizing only the blue microscope, with smiling ameobas on either side, and only after he had scraped the ameobas off. He spent hours with an open chemistry book and various bathroom and kitchen chemicals.
At least he never blew anything up, besides maybe his hair, his father, ever the irreverent one, was fond of saying, referring to the tousled hair-do that Joshua refused to admit, but everyone speculated, was emulative of his new idol.
His expectation for every test and review quiz was nothing less than a 100% A+, and he was disconsolate when he received a B+ in science and an A- in math, and became indignant when his sister pointed out that "Einstein was an idiot in school, too."
That phase weakened gradually and eventually died, but this phase, as his father insisted it was, was now years in dying off.


Just a note. This "serial" is written sheerly for my pleasure, and with no particular drift or plot in mind. You have just as much inkling about the next turn of events as I do. Throw me a nice plot twist idea, if you like. I don't promise to take it. There is just a touch of my protagonist in me.

Hope is there, just buried deep.

James Dobson sets himself up for disappointment.
As do we all.
It's called hope.
In a recent broadcast of Focus on the Family, he interrupted regularly scheduled programming to bring some pressing social concerns to the listening audience, first and foremost, a South Dakota ballot initiative to essentially overturn the recent from-out-of-the-blue state ban on abortion. The supporters of the initiative are all very democratic and American, I'm sure. After all, they just want the people to decide. Regardless of the motivation, the abortion ban, if polls are to be believed, may well share the fate of the very lives it seeks to protect. Seems the people think the governor and state legislaiture may have overstepped their bounds.
Dr. Dobson stressed the importance of this upcoming vote, urging us to fight on, because we're winning.
He gave the results of a recent study that shows abortion opponents winning the ideological battle over abortion. Some seventy percent of the American public, if polls are to be believed, think abortion is morally wrong.
We're winning this battle, he exulted, crediting advanced ultrasound technology for the ground gained.
Immediately, hope rang hollow.
The benefits of such technology notwithstanding, the victory, so called, is moral, which is another way of saying it is useless.
The reason being, there is no depth to this change of heart.
Americans are exceedingly opiniated on many, many issues, but opinions dwell on the surface, a safe distance above the deep, powerful undertow of conviction and they can be turned by no more than a gentle breeze.
If Americans are stirred to righteous indignation against abortion only by ever-advancing ultrasound technology, if it takes the clearing footage of a kicking, squirming, living fetus nestled inside the womb to sway their minds, then they can be swayed just as easily by the first agenda-driven movie director who takes it in his or her head to do a two-hour documentary featuring a rape victim in South Dakota who hadn't the funds to drive to Fargo to get an abortion.
We live by a moral code that we believe to be cohesive and structurally sound and are affronted when someone points out the contradictions and the weaknesses.
We are an amalgam of every possible belief system that exists. We have traded hateful prejudice for the guilty pleasure of complete acceptance of literally everything. There is a nice benefit to this new acceptance and tolerance. In exchange for accepting the moral shortcomings of others, we can play the intolerance card whenever someone questions our moral faults. With a tradeoff like this, tolerance feels pretty good.
You can be right, as long as the truths you hold are not in opposition to another's truth. This truth held in exclusion of all contradicting ideas becomes arrogance, and loses its place in line. It must then go to the bottom and work its way back up through the levels of truth, recognizing its obligation to be relative and not absolute, apologizing for its presumption all the while.
Truth, in and of itself, holds no direct appeal, unless it is cloaked in something exciting.
There is no demand for truth, unless it is gutsy, gritty, shocking, sizzling, rebellious, revolutionary, charming, disarming . . .
For truth to sell, it better have market appeal.
Unadorned, it will go unnoticed by the modern connoisseur of truths.
C.S. Lewis pried into the post-modern mindset in 1942 with the Screwtape Letters.
His fictional senior demon writes to his hapless nephew, "It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries ealier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous-that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about."
'Nuff said.
The only comfort I find here, and it is a comfort, is that the truth, unadorned and unaffected, will shine all the brighter in this moral fog.

continuing some more

He disliked the idea of heading home without the dog.
He stood at the crest of the mountain for a long while, facing south.
The lonely distant drone of an aircraft reached him and he looked up, just in time to see a black silhouette float through a hole in the increasing cloud cover; a charcoal triangle moving slowly across the sky, a Stealth fighter.
The image was surreal, as always,the sense of the quiet savagery of the wild, undeveloped mountains so indifferently conquered by cold technology. He had lived here for years, and still felt the chill of isolation, the science fiction sense of being stranded on an island of wilderness in the midst of a bustling world. To the north, the brooding beauty of the mountains virtually disappeared under a colorfully clashing world of tourist attractions. To the far east, the mountains weakened and broke into long, sloping plains of tall, yellow grass. To the south, a barren expanse of Army appropriated land met the concrete desert of a combined metropolitan population of 3 million souls. And to the west lay the home of the black falcon now floating through the high desert sky; an Air Force nerve center of legendary importance and secrecy.
Yet here he dwelt, in the comfort of his self-imposed exile in a land where you could walk for miles and miles through the forest and never find any more definite signs of civilization than an occasional boulder-strewn logging trail, invariably made impassable to anything other than pedestrian travel by a heaped-up burm of soil and rocks.
When he'd first moved here, the solitude, so long sought, had quickened his spirits in a hundred different ways. Now it had become a way of life, a routine that suited, not excited.
Yet some peculiar propensity for loneliness carried him quickly through the years in a pleasant fog of contentment, and the affection he harbored for his way of life and the contempt he held for the general population grew each time he was forced to leave his nest and rub shoulders with reality.
At length, and still not bearing in mind any particular course of action, he stirred and took a look around.
And took in a sharp breath.
Ten feet away, underneath a wretched, drooping pine, stood Ebenezer, watching him, head held high, gaze inscrutable.
A knifing wind froze on the trees, and Joshua felt a prickling numbness in his cheeks
A pause, and Joshua shuffled one foot forward.
The husky's shoulders hunched and his head lowered, still watching.
Joshua stood completely still, fascinated.
Until a sense of humor touched him. This was ridiculous. The pitiful excuse for a graveyard, probably some long gone backpacker's attempt at cryptic immortality had flung a smothering mantle of melodrama over that was now wearing hot and prickly.
He squatted and scooped up a handful of snow, molded it and hurled it at Ebenezer, who sprang aside deftly and landed in a playful crouch, the spell broken.

They got back to the cabin an hour later, after an uninterrupted beeline from the top of the mountain to the front steps of the cabin.
David Copperfield stirred lazily from his post on the back of the chair in front of the fireplace, shook his head, and sprang lightly in front of Ebenezer.
They greeted casually with a quick whiff, the animal equivalent of a brief nod, and Ebenezer proceeded to his water bowl, leaving an idly curious David Copperfield to watch Joshua shed his boots and coat.
This accomplished, Joshua scooped up the cat and slumped in the same chair.
Copperfield appeared to be done with sitting for a time, however, escaped and bounded toward the utility room, where he shared his eating quarters with the husky.
Joshua closed his eyes for a minute.
He opened them to behold a decidedly late evening hue of sunshine streaming through his bedroom window, spilling out into the hall, bathing the living room floor in an orange glow, and splashing over the stone fireplace in front of him.
The unscheduled length of the nap disoriented him for a few moments, as he leaned forward and rubbed his face in his hands. He looked toward the kitchen, trying to remember what he'd planned to eat.
A pot of stew, made yesterday.
Joshua dined largely on stew, soup and chili. His array of spices, measured and applied in precise amounts, were of an eclectic variety, gleaned from various cooking sources and magazines. He'd even taken to online foraging for recipes, variations on vegetable soup, and odd herbally-influenced concoctions of cider and tea. He took a great amount of care in food preparation, with special attention to appearance. If the coloration or consistency displeased, he scarcely bothered with discriminating taste, he threw it out. In this manner, he'd avoided belonging to that tired stereotypical subculture of bachelors to whom fine dining was Buffalo Wild Wings and good home cooking was Hungry Jack's.
He removed the pot of stew from the refrigerator, placed it on the stove on low and went to check his e-mail.