ReachOut

My parents read things to me that one would read to grownups, or certainly not a 6-7 year-old child. _Call of the Wild_ is hard core for the soft hearted. _Moby Dick_, have you ever tried reading some of that on a day when you need to RELAX? For my seventh birthday, added in the stack was a leather bound Bible with my name engraved in gold leaf. The edges were gold leaf too, and there were masterpiece paintings reproduced at delightful intervals. Of course, I was in what Piaget termed the "concrete stage of cognitive development" so when I read the inscription by my parents about a treasure to be found in the pages, I turned the thing up and shook it, looking for the money. Concrete is concrete.

As my introduction, mother read me the "Book of Job." She'd prepared me well. I could handle it after recovering from the terrorization of dogs and whales and assimilating those natural conditions into my schema of "how the world operates." Job made sense. It was the right place to start. She didn't know it was the oldest book written of them all. When you read it and the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ they do that: they mesh. There were giants and creatures and old worlde realities in days gone by that we can only read about now and imagine.

I was primed for a life of literature. I read the whole book on my own. It took awhile and several flashlight batteries because I had a full day and an imposed bedtime. Dad sneaked me the batteries. I went from that to Homer, Edith Hamilton's _Greek Mythology_, _Swiss Family Robinson_ and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, all the Twain and Dickens books, then the Brontes, Jane Austin. By ten I knew fact from fiction pretty solidly.

I didn't have any problem seeing the Bible as fact. I went on to get my Master's degree in English Literature and added the credits for an MA in Writing while I was at it. The ancient Greek stuff had history, theology, philosophy all mixed in. I loved it all. My teachers were frustrated because school was B O R I N G and my California Achievement Tests had me maxing out anything they had within their reach to teach me on grade level. I preferred to play jacks, work in the library, scheme ways to make money and look for book buddies.

I'm still looking for book buddies. I "know stuff." When you know you want to share.

Reaching out. Yeah. Doing that.--Keevah

Time to Talk

I have multiple bookshelves full of books I've read and I have to wonder to what purpose? How do I bring about some conjunction of knowledge and understanding and do more than hoard it quietly to myself? There is so much I have learned and continue to learn, so much I've been shown and so very much that I enjoy added to so much that concerns me, it's impossible to consider just being "silent."

There was a biography of John Lennon on a PBS station tonight. His enlightenment ended with himself. A song he wrote and recorded states that he doesn't believe in a succession of things, Jesus and the Beatles included. They fell away as myths to him and what he was left with was himself alone. If that is so, then death is final. That's not good enough. There's more. I felt sorry that he was his own god because at the business end of a bullet, his god had no power to save him. In order to be plucked free of evil, there has to be something over and above it to wrench us from harm's influence.

It takes a big shrug to conclude there's nothing ultimately loving or sustaining with the power to overriding the tragedies that strike us all. The worst onslaught is death itself. Death is an enemy. It's universally a "bad thing," along with pain and suffering.

There has to be a universally good thing to counter it.

Balance ... justice ... joy ... where do they originate? Only in the imagination?

No. And there IS no such thing as justice if death is all there is to end our time here. Death is the wrong team winning after all. That's not how it is.

My books on philosophy, history, theology and biography all bring me closer to truths I'd prefer to share in a life informed by even something more, something that communicates inside out. I'm most frustrated by institutions and individuals, "enemies within the camp," that counterfeit the truth in order to obtain some shadow form of power or profit. I think if you deal in lies, profit is a temporal and elusive term. One might seem to prosper when the "gifts" are rolling in, but the life taken in context won't really succeed over time. A person pays for the character they choose to assume. Mr. Televangelist with a Rolex and a 10 minute Infommercial begging for money with each broadcast isn't doing the work of a Universal Diety; he's pitching for himself period.

So I'll start with the Didache which instructed early apostles to have a trade and support themselves. The ministry wasn't something one did as a career. How revolutionary a notion is THAT in today's Theoconomy? We shouldn't be selling the message or the service. We give, as we are given to. WE being those who stand alongside Christ, following his teachings and trusting his Word.

Check out the text: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html

VERY interesting. --K