Birthday Blabber: Response to a friend's existential argument

There’s no avoiding talking about God every so often. Even with an atheist. Or maybe even especially with an atheist. I currently identify as agnostic, because my mom is Christian and my dad is an Atheist, and yet much of what I learned about what the Bible has to say, I learned from my dad, who loves a good story, and told them to me in riveting narrative even before I hit the first grade. (Well, I don’t think my dad is a dedicated atheist so much as just wary of religion.)

A friend of mine shared his opinion with me – one that I didn’t agree with, but it was worth taking the time to consider. I forget his exact opinion – which maybe he’ll repeat to me at some point or another – but it was either that God either does not exist, or is not inherently good or caring, for the following approximate logic: it is impossible for reconcile the state of the world as it stands, full of suffering and pain, with a God who is supposedly both omnipotent and compassionate, for such a God would have the power to end all misery and suffering and yet refuses to do so. I did not agree, and I felt I knew why, but it wasn’t exactly easy to put down into words. Simply put, I wasn’t quite prepared to answer the question at the time, and now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I better understand my own position: my own personal answer isn’t brief, even if it isn’t particularly deep. I’ve been unhappy for most of my life, largely because of the way I have been treated by a great many people, and because of my own awkwardness of personality. The two fed on each other in a horribly vicious feedback loop from approximately ages 6 to 22. Unhappy or not, and agnostic or not, if pressed I would say that I do believe in God – but because of what I’ve been through, I’ve never quite been able to put my faith in a belief as simple as He Loves Me As One of His Beloved Children and If I Have Faith Then My Life Will Surely Be Filled With Blessings and Joy. Recent events have reminded me of a lot of pain, past and present. I was born with what blessings I have – and I have needed them to make it through what I’ve been through. If He’d blessed me with any less, I think I would have cracked by now.

But before I get into it, I’ll unhesitatingly offer up this disclaimer: I am no religious or Biblical scholar. I am not a philosopher, a psychologist, a theologian, or a metaphysicist and I don’t pretend to be. I haven't read Nietschze or Hobbes or Thomas Aquinas. I never heard of Kant until about two years ago. I haven't read Atlas Shrugged or Dante's Inferno. I know jack about the debate regarding free will versus determinism. Most of my education and free time was spent studying the quantifiable, the discrete, the theoretically rigorous, and not for any uppity sense of scientific supremacy over matters spiritual or emotional – it was just what I was good at, relatively speaking. It would be intellectually dishonest of me to suggest that anything I have to say here is born of anything more than my own experiences and quasi-philosophical hearsay. On some level, my understanding amounts to nothing more than, “Well, if it were me, this is how and why I would allow things to be as they are.” Also, my frequent references to “goodness” aren’t meant to imply that I see the world in terms of black and white, good and evil. It’s happened many times that two basically good people/societies/civilizations have been willing to murder each other over a difference of opinion, so while I do believe in relative good and relative evil, I’m going to refer to abstract “good” and “evil” for the sake of simplicity, or this writing is going to very quickly get entirely out of hand. So to my friend: with all that in mind, you can buy my explanation or not. Really, it matters little to me whether or not you do.

Still here? Wow, I’m surprised. Anyhow, here’s where I stand: there are things as important or more important in life than living in the absence of pain. For some people, always being happy and comfortable is all that’s important: a life free of pain and full of joy is the ultimate good, the ultimate desire, and that’s what heaven is about, and that’s what they hope to get through devotion, prayer and faith. Well, happiness is a wonderful thing, but it is not in itself good or evil. Evil people can be happy, too; in fact, a happy evil person living a life of pleasure is generally extremely bad news. So it’s not just all about happiness and pleasure. There are other people who believe that there are other things that matter more than just giddy joy and the absence of pain: justice, honor, loyalty, the greater good, etc. Although I am one of those people, I do not posit that such a stance naturally puts one on higher moral ground. The ranks of such people also include deluded martyrs, suicide bombers, fundamentalist terrorists, and various other people who believe that inflicting pain, death, and perpetrating indiscriminate oppression or murder on the innocent – or even the not-so-innocent - are all justified in the names of the things they count as being more important than happiness and a life free of pain. There is a venomously dangerous pride in assuming you know better than everyone else. I’m sure the Klansmen thought they were doing the right thing when they were lynching blacks in the South. I’m sure Eric Rudolph and James Kopp thought they were doing the right thing when they murdered doctors because they believe abortion is always wrong. So despite frequent references to “goodness,” this whole thought exercise is not about asserting any sort of moral superiority over anyone else.

For me to understand the world I live in, and the life I’ve led, it’s convenient for me to assume that there are things more important to God than for us to live life completely free of pain and sadness. As long as we’re talking about God, let’s just accept for the sake of argument that there is an afterlife, there is a Heaven, and that God lets good souls into heaven. If it were me, I would care about the quality of the souls who get into Heaven – the truth and depth of their goodness, compassion, and sincerity. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so being a good person is about more than saying the right things and reciting the right devotions. God is omniscient; he sees hearts. You can pay all the lip service you want; I wouldn’t presume to guess at what motivates God, but well, mere words wouldn’t mean much to me. If I see a person doing good things, informed by wisdom and tempered with humility, I’ll believe he or she is a good person. If I see a person walk up to me and say, “I’m a good person. I’m such a good person. Believe me, I’m pure of heart. I’m good, I’m good, I’m soooo good. Holyholyholyholy Hosannah on the highest, amenamenamen.” I probably wouldn’t buy it. I’d find it unctuous.

How would you know you’ve been a good person? Talk is cheap. I think your faith and principles are most strongly demonstrated when something that is important to you is on the line, and you're being asked to put your money where your mouth is, when it could cost you personally to do so. If you don't believe in my assumption or simply cannot accept it even as an axiom for the sake of argument, check out now. I won't try to convert you, it's not my place and it's not my desire. I think that if He cares about the quality of one's heart and soul, in terms of who is worthy of Heaven, then bad things are allowed to happen to us in life because they are opportunities for us to see for ourselves who we really are. And when you see who you really are, it’s up to you to ignore it or decide whether you want to change or improve yourself. Calling it “Testing,” I think, is too harsh a word and it implies too much interference. It's more about us rising to the occasion, to demonstrate - not just claim or state or promise - that we are good people, that we strive to exhibit compassion, courage, fortitude, faith, perseverance, self-sacrifice, altruism, humility, determination, honor, and all the other good qualities that actually take effort to maintain when the going gets tough. Anyone can act like a good person when life is easy, pleasant, and devoid of pain. But it’s when life is being bad to you that being a good person entails the hardest self-sacrifice, effort, or commitment to principles. It is easy to give to others or to do the right thing when your fortunes are abundant. It is harder to sacrifice or show compassion when your heart is full of hurt, when you feel that the world has abandoned you, or when life’s fortunes have landed tails-up for you the last eighty times in a row. It’s harder to give the last dollar out of your pocket when it’s all you have to your name, or when the thirst for vengeance shouts loudly over any motivation to be constructive.

If God never allowed anything bad to happen to us, we'd be untested, untempered. We could all blithely say we were good and innocent, but there would be no value to it. If you want to take a Creationist's view of things, the last people on Earth who could have been excused for being ignorant and innocent and held wholly unaccountable for their actions and the quality of their sincerity, were Adam and Eve - and they just frakking blew it for all of us and for all time. If the world were a sweet, nice, pretty place totally free of travail, pain, and the neglect visited on you by other people, your principles would never become informed by wisdom or tried by hardship. Your goodness would be pure, perhaps, but it would also be vapid, flaccid, and weak. The first bad thing to happen to you would be a shock, and you wouldn’t know how to face it. And if nothing bad ever happened to anyone else either, you would never be asked to take up a shield and rush to the defense of loved ones or innocents.

Is all this onerous testing necessary? I’m not sure that it is, but I would offer this: I’ve been told by many people that I’ve done a lot of good in this life, and I’m still young. I’ve taught a lot of people, stood loyally by friends and strangers in pain, and generally tried to go the distance when nobody else (or not enough other people) steps up to the task. If you think I’m being uppity or taking credit for things I shouldn’t, it’s your right to think so. I’m not saying I’m a hero or anything. If you look on me with disdain, let me tell you – you aren’t the first, you won’t be the last, and I’ve gotten pretty used to it over the years. But if my life these past fifteen years had been happier, would I have tried as hard to help other people, or sacrifice any of my time or happiness to do the right thing? I don't know that I would have. I don’t know that I'm that good a person. Maybe God means for me to be unhappy because God knows I do more good for the people around me when I'm in that emotional state. It’s mostly only through my own loneliness, my own disappointments, and my own heartbreaks that I can recognize any of what other people go through. If I have compassion, that’s where it came from. I’ve heard people arguing philosophy – arguing against Utilitarianism by positing this particularly ridiculous thought exercise: if the world could be a utopia, conditioned on the existence of one poor, miserable, wretched child locked in a closet, in loneliness, pain, and absolute suffering, would it be worth it? I’ve never liked that example because it’s a loaded question. It picks at your guilt, a lower, base emotion, in an attempt to get you to reject a philosophical proposition wholesale. Change the perspective. Would you volunteer to be that poor child, tormented, abandoned, and utterly without love, so that the rest of the world might know bliss? Would you care about everyone else, friends or strangers, that much? Or would you pass the buck and say it’s not your responsibility, because Jesus did it for you? The question is unfair either way you ask it, but one tries to tweak you by appealing to your sense of guilt, the other asks how deeply you would be willing to sacrifice of your own happiness, how strongly you would be moved by compassion.

Enter free will. Sure, God is omniscient. He knows whether we're bad or good. If He were not omniscient, I would be tempted to say that He wouldn’t be qualified to pass Judgment. He gave us free will so that we could prove ourselves, so that we could choose to change our destinies - to become bad people from good, or become good people from bad. That free will is a gift to us, but it is also His way of ensuring that people who are actually good - not just people who pay lip-service to goodness - are deemed worthy. It is shown in the choices we make, in the actions we take, of the good and the harm that we do, in the judgments we pass on each other and the sincerity or hypocrisy of the ethical, moral, and human principles each of us professes to hold dear in the face of opposition, adversity, or reason. Without both free will and the existence of challenges and injustice in our environment, those of us who unknowingly hold misguided principles would never have the opportunity to be shown wrong, to have occasion to reevaluate our principles, or to change who we are. We evolve, mature, and adapt when life challenges us, when we are hurt, when we are forced to fight for the innocent, or whether and when the sight of our fellows' suffering moves us to heal or protect. And the way we react in these situations shows the truth in our hearts more brightly, more starkly, than any set of intellectualized or moralized debates or rationalizations. It is when we are in pain or under attack that we cower or rise, fight or flee. Only when tested can we know who we are, or change who we are. If life were only good, who would feel the need to change anything at all, let alone re-examine the core of who he or she is?

In that respect, most of the evil that exists in the world is caused by the free will of other human beings, many simply by being who they are and indulging their baser or more selfish desires at the cost of others. God allows them to be who they are, because they must be allowed to choose whether they wish to be in Heaven or not, whether they care about it or not. From those who either aren't worthy yet or don't care to become worthy, the consequences of their free will spill out onto other people, incidentally providing the harsh circumstances and provoking the reactions and precipitating the painful experiences that cause others to reflect upon who they truly are inside. In other words, the free will of bad people provides adversity by circumstance. They provide the struggles that move other people to demonstrate and discover who they are in the face of hostility and adversity. God doesn't have to go to any trouble to provide more testing. And as for those people who choose evil or amorality over goodness, their continued free will is necessary to allow any of them a chance at self-redemption.

But isn’t this an unnecessarily hard way to do things? As much as I’m loath to think it, I’d have to say no. If God just used his omnipotence to make all of that unnecessary and just force people to be good from the very beginning, then none of us would ever have the chance to prove ourselves, to improve ourselves, to temper ourselves into becoming wiser, more virtuous, more understanding beings. It's good to have a good heart - but what use is a nice coward? A sweet pushover? A moral nobody? A principled lethargic? How much use are any of these? These are good people. But useless people, who may be driven before a storm like so many hapless refugees scarcely capable of saving themselves, let alone each other. These are not navigators who will brave life's maelstroms on missions of compassion or expeditions for truth. These are not laborers who will build levees to hold back the tide. These are not healers who will seek out the wounded, the weary, nor teachers who will lead by example. I believe people usually become these things after seeing wrongs in the world and choosing to change them. If there were no wrongs, there would be no need for such people, which on the one hand would be pleasant, but it would offer fewer opportunities for individual growth. (Some people seem to like the sheep and shepherd metaphors a lot. If someone totally buys the supposition that God really wants us to be happy sheep, then I doubt my line of thinking would be very convincing to him or her.) If God is like a stern but loving parent, as many have suggested to me, He may be most pleased in the knowledge that his creations have potential - have the ability to make more of themselves and improve themselves. Why not? A parent may love his or her child unconditionally, but a parent’s pride comes from the child’s growth, doesn’t it? Maybe I wouldn’t know, I’m not a parent (and the way things are going, perhaps never will be). God could have created us fully formed as beings of goodness and strength - he could have made us all angels from the start. An act of perfect, static, and unchanging creation. But could it be that the greater feat of creation is to create something small, weak, and humble that is nonetheless, in itself, capable of creation? If God helps those who help themselves, then I would think that there is more dignity, grace, and honor in a soul that chooses to do the right thing, despite temptation, hardship, fatigue, or thanklessness than in one that does good only because it knows nothing else.

So to recapitulate in brief: I think the world is imperfect and that suffering exists because God gave us free will, and that was given to us because His concern is as much with the strength and goodness we choose to grow in our hearts as with our simple happiness in life. It is through the consequences of free will – our own and that of others – that we see our own true colors and have the opportunity to change them for better or worse. God can be omnipotent and compassionate at the same time if His desires go beyond merely providing us with a happy and painless life. It is only if one assumes that God’s compassion outweighs His valuation of other virtues that an omnipotent, compassionate God seems internally contradictory.


Well, whatever. I’m sure someone has said it all before, somewhere else. I just haven’t read it.


Also: this is for a limited time only. I generally prefer to write about secular things. Nothing seems to bring out the judgmental side in people as talking about spiritual matters, and the longer I leave this up here, the more likely it is that someone is going to want to tell me I’m wrong about something or other. Can I deal with it? Sure, but I wrote this as a birthday present to myself, mostly, and if it wasn’t clear yet, I’ve been through plenty of personal attacks already in life and there are probably more on the way. If someone wants to pick a fight with me, that’s fine… but I’d rather not do it over my birthday present to myself.

Consumer Goodwill

Wow. The teahouse near work has added salads to its menu, and I ordered a personal favorite: Insalata Caprese (fresh buffalo mozzarella with basil and roma tomatoes). At about $7 for an entree salad, it's a fair price especially considering that this is in Palo Alto. And they gave me the whole cheese - imported from Italy, basil as strong as I've ever had it, and about 3 Roma tomatoes, flavorful and fresh. Again, wow. Very generous - and practically at cost! I couldn't prepare it at home myself for less (especially after gas).

Mmmmmmmmm good.

Triviality

Filled up to a half tank this morning. One side effect of higher gas prices is that managing a "perfect pump" is considerably harder than it used to be. Back when local prices were around $2.35 a gallon on average, I managed a perfect pump perhaps once out of every two fill-ups. The amount of manual-temporal precision required now that local prices average $3.60 a gallon, however, seems to be beyond my ability. No perfect pumps in the last year. It's not a big deal or anything, but it's just one of the many ways it has managed to make life less fun than it was before.


"Sweet Mother of God, STOP!!"
- M. Mellow, paying for gas and watching the pump meter on the road trip back from San Luis Obispo

Feast and Famine

Having been at my job for almost two years now, I've made it past a few of the professional growing pains. One aspect of becoming acclimated to the work is getting use to - or at least, learning to expect - the feast and famine nature of work as a litigator. The work schedule is driven by the discovery, pretrial, and trial schedules. When it rains, it pours. Nearly any litigator will tell you that the intensity of work has its ups and downs. Harder to convey, however, is just how violent those ups and downs are, and no words quite do it justice. Still, there are some things to be thankful for.

Any year in which the billables stack high during the first half of the year is good. It's better to hit your minimum billables early enough in the year so that Thanksgiving and the winter holidays aren't sullied with the background worry about having enough work. It's the winter season that's more fun - skiing and snowboarding, baked foods, warm tea, family get-togethers - all these are more pleasant without the nagging undercurrent of work stress picking at the seams of a quilt of cozy feelings.

A number of discussions with other associates outside my firm have also confirmed one of Townsend's points of pride - a good, emotionally healthy workplace. Most of my stress comes from the volume of work. Still, I'd have to admit that generally speaking, the heavy hours come with the territory. What I haven't had to suffer through is any real quantity of office drama or politics. Sure, it's there - but on the whole it's not too bad. It's certainly nothing that would drive me to leave the office to seek work at another firm.

I also have this weekend off. No work - I'd forgotten how nice it feels to do absolutely zero hours of work in a 48-hour period. I've caught up on some sleep and had a good day at wushu. I haven't had a weekend like this since the year started, and this has been really nice. I haven't felt human in a while, and it's a relief.

Personal truth for an Enneagram 1:

Why value honesty? Honor? Sincerity? Fairness? Humility? Why value the things that hold you back from taking what you want out of life? Why even indulge in the doomed attempt to live up to an impossible paradigm, a standard which sneers at the inevitable failings of your mortal efforts and so parsimoniously dismisses all appeals to cosmic justice by saying, "virtue must be its own reward"?

Because some things hold value even in the absence of happiness or contentment.

Because if you spend a lot of time alone, you must absolutely be able to live with yourself.

These young'uns, deys funny

Just over a week ago, I was hanging out with some of the current generation Cal Wushu folks. I mostly just sat around and watched their antics, feeling more than a little too old to fully join them in their scarcely post-adolescent youth. They're a funny bunch.

Present: two girls, at least seven guys. Four of the guys are intermittently wrestling each other and acting rather generally gay (I don't use that as a perjorative, I mean that as a descriptive). Including - reaching down each other's pants, assuming suggestive positions, etc.

So much so that one of the girls took it upon herself to interpose herself physically between two guys to keep them apart from one another (on a large leopard-spotted... er, bean bag, for lack of a better understanding of the large and garish piece of... furniture), and the two guys basically rolled right over her to get back to their play wrestling.

So much so that the one openly gay male in the room, who was watching the antics but not participating, shook his head and pronounced, with mock gravity tinged with a shade of deadpan, "I feel straight around you guys."

On the way back, one of the guys asked me, "Are you ok? I hope you weren't freaked out." To which I could only say, "No, it was just... unexpected. I had a consumingly academic undergrad, and basically missed out on a normal college experience, so I'm just wondering whether this is the sort of stuff that I missed out on, way back then. I have no point of reference."

On another note

Big Oil sucks unwashed barbarian butt.

I make good money, yeah. But after mortgage payments and gas, I'm half-tempted to mug the derelicts on University Avenue for the change in their paper cups.

Okay, I would never do that, please excuse the hyperbole. It's just that I'm sure most people's apprehension of what life as an attorney is like doesn't include subsisting on instant oatmeal and saltines three days out of four. It's nice to be a homeowner, I guess... but where would be the justice in working seventy hours a week and not being able to afford one? It's nice to have a bed and a roof to go along with the five hours of sleep I get per night.

We invent things. Karma. Destiny. Fate. Luck. Divine provenance. All to explain the things we can't control, as though the existence of some explanation, any explanation, makes it all easier to bear somehow. It's easier when it's not your fault. It's easier when you don't have to bear the responsibility.

Does it fix things? No. But not everything can be fixed. Sometimes, it seems easier not to care, but when you stop caring, part of you dies, and it's something everyone notices - you, your friends, your family, your enemies, and perhaps worst of all, even the new people you meet. Sometimes, it seems like people unconsciously smell emotional trauma in others. I've forced myself not to care about a lot of people anymore, and I tell myself that it's out of necessity, just pure survival. Part of me dies every time, and I can feel it. Should I be happy, then, that there's still plenty of me left to lose?

When I was twenty, I had hoped the next ten years would be better. In many ways, they have been. Not because any of it got better on its own - because I went out and made it that way. I managed to change everything, except the one thing that pained me the most.

I hope the next ten years will be better still. More than that, I hope I find the wisdom I need to shore up the worst of these wounds, but time has not healed them in the least. Some experiences do not age like fine wine. They sour like the most acid of vinegars, until their sharpness threatens to split the skin from within and pour you out onto the earth, to sink into the ground, lost forever, no more than a poor stain, mixed thick with dust.

What have I done with my life? It's a success by so many measures, isn't it? I have a fine job, with excellent pay. I have my health. I have an education. Maybe two or three educations. I have a few small talents. I have a home. I have friends who think well of me - not just of my accomplishments or my abilities - they think well of my soul. I carry the well-wishes of others with me. Any generosity I have shown in my life has been returned to me twofold. So why the discontent? Would I trade everything I have, for the one thing that I don't?

No. Perhaps not. If I did, I would no longer really be me. And then, in my mind, I would no longer deserve what I want. Then, I could no longer live with myself, which, truth be known, is something I can do. In the end, I would rather be able to live with myself, even if only with unease. I can at least look at myself in the mirror, flaws, scars, and all, and not flinch. I don't think I could have done that ten years ago. It must mean there is hope.

Driving with tongue in cheek

The Friday morning commute placed me behind two fun specimens: a bright red Hummer H1 with Greenpeace and "Save the Whales" bumper stickers, and a baby blue Prius with I <3 OPEC vanity plates.

Fromage

Excerpts from conversation (approximate):

"American cheese barely qualifies as cheese. Some American cheeses barely qualify as a diary product. It's mostly vegetable oil with some food coloring and a little skim milk. I'm not even sure it's cultured."

"Not to mention the lack of culture. It's bland, unmemorable, decidedly plasticky in texture..."

"It's essentially a condiment. Unlike real cheeses, like brie, cheddar, cambozola, manchego... there's really not much point in eating American cheese on its own. The closest I can come up with for a bona fide American cheese dish is macaroni and cheese."

"But cuisine is still the richer for the existence of American cheese. American cheese melts well, and while it isn't an ingredient in what you might call high-culture food, think about the everyday pleasures, the comfort foods - cheeseburgers, the aforementioned mac & cheese, on top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed."

"Life wouldn't be complete without the humble, the simple, the unpretentious. A childhood without mac & cheese might be a little healthier, but for what? One less denizen of the comfort food roster, one less inhabitant of the domain of soul foods. A rich-tasting, inexpensive slice of popular culture, as ubiquitous and relatable as any other treat in the shared memory of the collective consciousness, nestled snugly within fond and common memories of legos and otter pops, trading cards and pillow fights. As we grow older, some of us enter the ranks of the cultured, or leave behind the simple pleasures of the past for the trappings of the elite. But highborn or lowborn, rich or poor, no one is denied the universally accessible pleasure of movie theater nachos, tender bits of elbow macaroni bathed in the glistening yellow of school buses and infant playthings, or a slice of the unassuming, mass-produced processed cheese food draped over a well-done burger, a finishing touch so perfect that it always commands its own modest premium."

"Oft maligned, but even more loved. Life wouldn't be the same without it."

Cynic's-Eye View on

Teenage angst:

"What's the rush? Give it a few years, you'll have real reasons to be cynical soon enough."

Brayne-faht

Hope is like oxygen. Without it, you're as good as dead. Too much of it makes you stupid, then sends you into conniptions. If you're lucky, your friends will take enough of it away for you to regain your senses and your health. And because you're out of your mind, you won't appreciate it until after you've stopped being giddy, defensive, and hostile. (Don't forget to thank them afterwards. Loyal friends aren't to be taken for granted.)

If you're alone, you better damn well learn to regulate your own hopes. Keep your expectations realistic, even cynical, but don't lose it all, especially if you've ever experienced suicidal thoughts. Stay away from those extremes. It's harder than it sounds, because you can never really be sure that the internal diagnostics are properly calibrated.

Really, sometimes I don't know how the hell any of us can keep it all together on our own.

More Wisdom from the Storied Mr./Ms. Anonymous

"This life is mine to lead. However sad, tragic, or lonely it might turn out to be, it's too good a story not to tell."

- Anonymous

Moonbow

It hadn't been the longest day at work, but it had been long enough. I'm driving home from work at 10pm, the open sunroof shearing a wisp of spring breeze from the rushing air to blow lightly through the cabin, which ruffles my hair amidst the soft glow of dash lights and picture-perfect moonlight. We crest the top of the hill and I take my foot off the gas, coasting the last half-mile home. It's late, and I'm tired, but it's a beautiful spring night.

I turn left into the driveway and get out to open the gate, and as I swing the iron frames clear of the driveway I cast a glance skywards and the sight stops me cold in my tracks.

It is a beautiful night. Unusually so, and this one's worth sharing before I go to bed. I pull into the garage, pull the key, and step into the house. "Hey, everyone - it's a nice moon tonight. Come out and have a look!"

Shining stars and motes of mist gather in audience. A formal audience in the celestial court is an unexpected event full of anticipation and trepidation. Through the eons, the greater denizens of the heavens have been known for their constancy of manner, tracing solemn, dignified paths through the sky. The Queen in her full radiance would dominate the sky, but as is her habit, she changes the strength of her presence night by night. Queen she may be, but the sky is for stars, and as often as not, she leaves the serene night to the sound of their voices. But a formal audience requires a fullness of bearing, and tonight, she shines brightly indeed.

My brother and parents wander past the yawning garage door and tilt their heads toward the sky, bathed in the brightness of a full moon. It's a misty evening, but there's so much light that we can see all the trees and foliage in the yard surrounding the driveway, make out the edges of individual maple leaves and the profile of individual needles of home-grown rosemary. The darkness of night holds few mysteries tonight, as the light makes even the sides of the hills surrounding our house distinct and discernible.

The Queen speaks softly in a voice full of power. Her words fly to the ends of heaven and earth, commanding attention with gentle authority. Whereas the light of the daytime King, glorious but domineering, claims the entire firmament for himself, the queen's voice is not so opaque. Hers allows all to be seen, whilst still allowing all to be heard. When the King holds court, the stars have no voice. The Queen, being a better listener, finds that a clearer, calmer brilliance suits her needs better. The court gathers around her, settling with dignity and decorum. In a quiet ceremony blessed with order and dignity, the shining mists and the lordly stars gather in attendance at a deferential distance about the Queen, forming a perfect circle of twinkling light, unmoving, yet breathing deeply with life.

A thin fog hangs in the air high above our heads, drifting across the sky at a pace vigorous enough to see with night-adapted eyes. Too thin to form true clouds, it flows like a slow current of steam across the sky at a pace somewhere between lazy and daydreamy. Most striking, however, is the perfect circle of glowing light hovering about moon like an enormous halo stretching halfway across the sky. At first it just seems to hang suspended in the heavens just beneath the moon, still and unmoving. As our eyes continue to adapt to the night sky, we start to see that the glowing haze, appearing motionless at first, actually seems to cast off slow curls of vapor, almost like wafting across dry ice. Though the rest of the sky glows faintly with starlight and drifting, moon-brushed fog, the sky within the halo is a deep expanse of perfect, crystalline darkness, interrupted only by the blazing moon in perfect relief at its exact center. Even the stars within shine less brightly than those outside the halo. Mom coos with delight while my brother purses his lips in amused puzzlement. My dad glances back at me with a knowing smile, probably wondering if my hazy recollection of physics has figured out where the enormous, dazzling halo is coming from.

The exciteable, miniscule sprites drift and coast about with great relative speed in a great crowd huddled around the Queen's forum. Caught up in the regal spectacle of the event, they roil about with nervous energy, straining to catch every word, see every motion. Most of the stars, the lesser lords of the sky, hover in their usual places, fully capable and content to participate from their own serene perches. A few stars move within the forum, whispering to the Queen and amongst themselves, keeping order, and briefing the Queen and one another on tonight's agenda. They also maintain the peace; for all her love and understanding, the Queen's forum remains a sacred space and the stars ensure that it remains orderly and clear.

"It's a rainbow." Dad smiles and nods. "Uh-huh. A rainbow can appear as a perfect circle of refracted light; we usually only see part of it but if all the suspended moisture that's creating it is in view, you can see that the diffracted light come in from all angles. That's why you can see a full circle in the spray of a garden hose or from the window of an airplane. It looks like tonight, the moon is bright enough and fog in the air just right to catch and diffract the moonlight into, well, a moonbow." "And the sky inside the moonbow is darker than the sky outside, just like a rainbow. The white light that gets diffracted into a rainbow has had its path diverted from elsewhere in the sky; the thick band of light has to come from somewhere, so the part of the sky inside a rainbow seems darker because some of the light from within the rainbow is being bent away and concentrated into the rainbow."

"And that's why, if you look closely enough, you can see that the halo isn't perfectly white. One edge is just a tiny bit pink, and the other is just a tiny bit blue."

As the scene settles into focus, millions of small voices gather in chorus, singing and chanting their cares to the Queen. Kept civil and orderly by stars many times their brightness, they observe the decorum but begin to separate into bands of differing viewpoints, different concerns. White, worshipful throngs of vapors sing the skies’ praises as they rejoice in the grandeur of the audience itself. Millions more of skybound sprites cast billowing ripples of reddish light as they air grievances, urgent requests, or counterpoised defenses. They restrain their agitation in the presence of the Queen and the ever-watchful elder stars but cannot fully contain their anxiety and intensity, pushing their way to the edges of the forum’s halo in an effort to be heard. While each voice is too small to see, collectively their efforts ruffle the outer edge of the halo with the energy of a billion murmuring debates. The Queen stands in the center, observing them all as the throngs outside drift past in quiet observation. And we, standing on terra firma, gaze upward as the forum opens a great portal allowing us to peer far past the dome of the sky. It is as though heaven itself drew back a curtain of nebulae and light to reveal an expanse of dark, beautiful infinity, a vast and inverted chasm of crystal clear blackness. The sight beckons your perspective up and out of your body, soaring skyward to revel in unfettered freedom.

Entitlement


http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/03/christian.movie.rating.ap/index.html

"House Majority Whip Roy Blunt and other lawmakers are demanding explanations after hearing complaints that the movie "Facing the Giants" was rated PG instead of G due to religious content.

"This incident raises the disquieting possibility that the MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and violence," Blunt said in a letter to MPAA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman."


Christian themes? Or Christian dogma? Now, I don't know much about the movie itself. It really might be wholesome and innocuous and deserve a G rating. What bothers me is the sense of entitlement these congressional advocates seem to be bringing to the topic. Religion is powerful. Ideologically weighty. Religion is no less powerful a force in this world than nuclear weaponry. Can faith move mountains? Maybe. We know they can level them, that's for sure, and it disturbs me that people entrusted with such great responsibility seem to think that it's proper and desirable to wield the force of religion recklessly.

It seems to me that religion or lack thereof is an issue of deep significance in psychological and attitudinal development. It has to be a choice, if not by the adopter then by someone, somewhere, usually the one doing the childrearing. If it were truly the natural state of things then we'd be born religious and indoctrination (as opposed to education) of any kind would be redundant. And the manner in which a Christian is introduced to Christianity seems to have a lot of influence on how that person treats the rest of humanity. So yes, I'd say that religious themes *are* PG subject matter. No, more than that - there are religious themes that are undoubtedly R subject matter.

"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee!"

Uh. Rated G? The line was made famous to the country, not by a priest or scholar, but by an on-screen, fictional contract killer in the process of committing murder (who proceeded thereafter to wax contemplative about religious themes and his own life, not to mention Caine and Kung Fu *wince*). If the manner of introduction helps determine whether one uses religion to motivate performing acts of philanthropy or to rationalize the shooting of a medical practitioner with a high powered rifle through the window of his own house, then no shit - religious issues should not have carte blanche for a G rating! Religion is not harmless! It's *full* of power. Exposure to gratuitous sex and violence can shape an impressionable kid into a callous philanderer or wifebeater. Exposure to outrageous dogma can turn an impressionable kid into a cold-blooded terrorist, too. People wield guns and declare wars in the name of religion. Should "Left Behind" be rated G? Of course not. Oh, wait - it's because of the death and violence, right? Right. Like there wasn't any sex or violence - or murder, or betrayal, or idolatry, or incest, pillaging, plundering, invasion, slavery, conquering, warfare, or genocide - perpetrated by the protagonists and inheritors of the sacred books of the Old Testament.

Please, people. Religious themes include many mature subjects, and religions are as obsessed about the imposition of death, preservation of life, sex, and procreation as any other topic out there. Probably moreso. Every religion I can think of had plenty to say - nay, demand - about who could mate with whom, how, when, and where, and under what circumstances. So act like grownups, people, and be responsible enough to wear the label. Not that I necessarily think *this* movie demands a PG rating, but automatic entitlement to a G rating seems misplaced. The quoted Congressmen seem upset that the rating might prevent people from being exposed to Christian values. Oh, what, is there a First Amendment violation in assigning a movie a PG rating? It would be the first time I've heard anything about it. I've never known a PG rating to prevent anyone from seeing a movie. This is PG we're talking about! Not even PG-13! If anything, a PG rating respects the gravity of the issue, and how it should not be taught carelessly. To put it crudely, this is life-changing, life-shaping shit we're talking about. At least one family friend joined the Jehovah's Witnesses in college a few years after being introduced to Christianity by a well-meaning elder. She and the elder have had discussions since about how following the Jehovah's Witnesses is "not what she meant" by being a good Christian, and how "they don't teach God's word the way it's meant to be taught." The discussions, as far as I can tell, have been to no effect. The kid's still a Jehovah's Witness, and devotes all her time to that sect, and seems to think that all secular entertainment and any outward expression of joy - or even association with non-Christians - is a sin against God.


When it comes to learning about God, it's not all the same. It would be incorrect and unfair to paint all Christians with a single broad brush. I know my aunt and Pat Robertson are not on the same page. She tries to convert everyone she meets, sure, but my aunt would pray for the protection of all of God's children, devout or not, saved or not. She certainly doesn't invite God to destroy entire cities or states for the laws that they pass or strike down. Robertson wishes more death, suffering, and harm on the living, breathing, hard-working - even devout - citizens of the United States than Al Qaeda has ever managed to inflict on us to date, and that's already thousands upon thousands of murders. The same ideological underpinnings can give rise to an extraordinary range of beliefs - and subsequent actions and consequences - ranging from saintly benevolence to repugnant spite.

So if a movie purported to tell your child what he or she should understand about religious faith and values, shouldn't you be concerned? Newsflash for Congressman Blunt: PG stands for Parental Guidance, not "don't let the kids see it." Did you forget that? Wouldn't you like some input? Wouldn't you like the option to hope that the ratings system and theater administrators, even with all their faults and vacuous logic, might give you the chance to advise your kid what you think a relationship with God is all about? If Robertson, Osama bin Laden, Jesse Jackson, George Bush, Cotton Mather, King Henry VIII, David Duke, Pope Benedict, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Baker, King Saul, Ann Coulter, Mother Teresa, David Koresh, or Ayatollah Khomeni, brimming with charisma, authority, power, or fame, walked up to your child with a fistful of promises and lure of eternal life in the Kingdom of God, wouldn't you like the chance to tell your child what you thought of that person, good or bad, before he or she started talking?

"Johnny Walker Lindh, come here this instant! This is not how I raised you!"

Too late.



PostScript: Yes, I know there's an argument for the other side. We don't enforce G vs. PG ratings on books, even though I'm sure there are people out there who say we should. But nobody's going to stop a 7-year old from walking into a bookstore and buying a copy of the Bible, The Prince, Mein Kampf, or Neitschze's Finest Quotations. Making that observation, of course, opens up a whole new can of worms. But making the argument that a movie should never be rated PG for the mere fact that it discusses religious subjects seems as misguided as saying that a television show that depicts fantasy violence is more harmful than a religious text that explains why it's ok - or historically acceptable - to perpetrate actual violence on real people who aren't members of your religion. Which, of course, includes the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran. I'll also say that I've never personally known a PG rating to ever prevent anyone from buying a ticket and watching a movie. Maybe parents have more control in other states.

Ping

There has been a lot to talk about but no time to write about it. A lot's happened with wushu and with work, which is also to say that not much else has happened elsewhere life for lack of time. But there are two blips on the radar that merit mention, if only briefly, because they insisted on resonating somehow, even with the mind weary and preoccupied with work.

Two different women in whom I'd been interested, years and years past (and years apart, mind you - wasn't interested in them at the same point in time) are both getting engaged. Does this mean anything to me? I'm not sure. Not sure what does, anymore.

I'm looking at my desk, strewn wildly with papers, pens and highlighters, post-it-notes, half-full teacups and fallen, now crisp and dry, flower petals. The pursuit of law and order itself creates entropy.

Tomorrow now begins.

I passed the Bar Exam. Results came back today, in all their starkly dispassionate minimality.

My relief is inchoate; I think it'll finally hit me tomorrow.

Great Friends, & One Varmint

I drove to the teahouse yesterday, to catch up with my beloved law school support group. An evening of pure joy, spent catching up with lots of younger friends who kept me going through my years at Boalt. Many smiles, much laughter, & warm hugs. You know it's a comfortable group when even the guy-guy hugs aren't awkward.

I felt a little silly calling ahead before driving up, but it would have been really sad to take the trip and, by happenstance, not manage to run into anyone. Even so, it was a slightly self-conscious endeavor - rather like being the class drama queen with delusions of grandeur. "M. Mellow's visiting! Everyone drop what you're doing and come visit moi!"

And so I got to chill with the regulars, and had a few chance meetings with other friends and personages over the course of the 7-hour visit. No laptop, no books, no cramming for me... I did bring my backpack, which made WiseYouth suspicious. "I demand to see what you have in there. There better not be any books."

Out comes the pineapple. WiseYouth manages not to let on surprise, if indeed he is surprised at all. But we agree at least that it was random and unanticipated. The pineapple was an extra left over from ZLS's going-away party. These hawaiian gold pineapples are really yummy, though, so I brought it to share at the teahouse.

The one downer of the evening? Well, to even write about it grants it unwarranted dignity. DeltaFarce picked a fight with me! No, really, what an exhibitionist nincompoop. The guy has an internet fan club on the one hand, detractors on the other, and serious mental issues. He makes a spectacle of himself on a daily basis (the source of his rep, bad or good) and then decides that he doesn't like the bad rep that he has with the regulars. And then he apparently decides it's all my fault and that he can rehabilitate his rep by beating me into submission in front of the whole crew of regulars. I'll admit I don't like him, his mannerisms, and his affected arrogance, but he's not what I'd call an evil person. He's at once very self-absorbed and insecure... it's just sad more than anything else. Especially sad that he means to cure a bad rep by beating up the oldest man in the bunch, as though I were the source of it all. Have I voiced negative opinions of him? Sure. I don't claim I haven't. There's a lot about the guy that's just wrong.

No, we didn't fight. I wasn't interested, and DeltaFarce's eagerness to throw down struck me as absurd. Bandannaboy and Languidgenius stepped in, waved me off, and eventually talked DeltaFarce into leaving. And after that, we headed out for our midnight snack.

On the one hand, that put a downer into the evening. Pure and preposterous crap that nobody should have had to deal with. On the other hand, with DeltaFarce inches from my face and itching for a fight, threatening to "fuck with me" in a transparently indirect tough-guy way, I felt something I haven't felt for most of my life. Perhaps I never deserved it before. But emanating unseen, past the field of my peripheral vision was a unfamiliar but comforting sense:

We've got your back

It was past closing time, so only the regulars and the crew were still there. Eight in all. I felt completely safe. Even had I been physically helpless, I would have been in no danger at all. Of course I feel that my good friends have my back, this was just a context it hasn't had to face before. Languidgenius spent five minutes explaining to a thick head that threatening customers with physical violence is a good way to get permanently banned from a restaurant. Bandannaboy, who has a friendlier relationship with DeltaFarce, walked the big lug outside and eventually, amazingly, got him to leave voluntarily.

I don't think DeltaFarce quite appreciated just what he had done to himself. Maybe he wanted to make a big show of publicly picking a fight with me in order to scare the other regulars. That's his usual modus operandi in everything, anyway. Maybe as far as he was concerned, this was just between him and me, and didn't believe that anyone would want to intercede between me and his ridiculous muscles. But if he had a bad rep before, it's really in the hole now.

I think I've said before that often you don't quite know how deep a friendship runs until it's been tested, and the sad reality is that often, such tests involve bad circumstances. But a midnight snack and two hours after the fact, the day ended on a fine note. Just me, my friends, and a fond farewell to Hawaii.

Frivolity

I gotta say, I love BoA. Yes, she could easily be singled out as a singular exemplar of manufactured, formulaic Kpop. Yes, she's been called the Britney Spears of Asian pop. (I disagree; she's much more tasteful. She wears clothes. I can't say the same for Britney.) Yes, her stuff is really peppy and sugary and too cute for some people to stand.

But it fills a niche. I need peppy, sugary, excessively cute music sometimes. I spend enough time in the mists of melancholy, and sometimes I need out. It's as simple as that. Granted, mixing Vienna and BoA in the same playlist doesn't quite work, so what I play depends on what mood I'm in and what I'm doing. Same as everything else.

And she's quadrilingual. That's awesome. I can only speak one language, myself.

Foul Spirits

Okay, now that I've had a chance to vent my wounded pride, I suppose I should admit that I don't necessarily come across as a very nice guy. I'm bitter, melancholy, I hold grudges, and am prone to voicing florid but empty threats about my taste for retributive cruelty. I don't pretend not to be driven by fits of negative energy, but even if negative energy is all you have, you can still put it to constructive ends. It's worth a try, anyway.