Rack and O-pinion Steering Me Wrong

Core beliefs lived out and publicly expressed?

What is this nonsense?

Don't these people know that opinions are for keeping to oneself and living quite contrary to without reflection?

This underscores the problem I have with modern humans. In the old days, I'd clamber through the woods, sniffing for Christian blood. When I caught wind of the little juicy buggers, they'd pray and fight (thus, the God and axe scars running down my face) as they went down.

Simple.

Today, however they get into a debate with me over my existence, telling me flat to my face that I don't exist, as if they don't believe in me! They feel my hot rancid breath* in their face, bear bruises from my battering, and insist that I'm not there.

The whole thing degenerates into a debate...a debate(!)...over things that neither my victim nor I believe for a minute. It is exhausting. I fall for it so frequently that I come home, more often than not, hungry, though I had easy spoils in my grasp not an hour before.

These humans, they entertain opinions. They do not hold them.

We beasts are forced, by our very nature, to live the beliefs we express (which is why we do not express them.) How did these humans figure out how to goof the system and invent duplicitousness?

Hrmph. The kicker is that they seem to miss fewer meals than I do.

*Yes, I've been reduced to Italian submarine sandwiches with onions, the people have been so elusive lately.

From Malachi to Matthew

I can't recreate the sensation of living through the entire history of the world through the Old Testament and the subsequent "familiar shock" that arrives in the God-man Jesus portrayed in the book of St. Matthew.

I can only recommend that you attempt it. God is real and alien; strange and family; omnipotent and weak; omniscient and humble. There are only two thing stranger than the idea that God was born a man in order to save some humans: the first is that he told us, in great detail, for millenia, that he was going to do it (and we still didn't get it) and the second is that there are so, so many humans who don't believe it now even though it has already happened.

Poor, stupid humans. I've seen tar that reflects more light.

Spilled Paint Buckets

This weekend, I stained the wood frame of a new window we had to install after the old one rotted away. I liked to think of the old one as a magic window, slowly revealing the world outside as it really was, until I realized what the window really was: a deluxe home-value depreciator.

Anyway, as I stained, I came to a very profound realization:

I would never try to paint a room with the help of my pre-school children.

We might survive the first thirty seconds after careful instruction, but pretty soon...

sploosh.

In a vain effort to unsploosh, I'd probably kneel down, fondue-ing my pantleg in Inland Green. Kid 2 would be in stagger-back mode, tottering toward the freshly painted wall.

splat.

Now, tears. More motion, more stains, travelling stains, stains that will ruin my whole house if I don't implement some drastic and immediate lockdowns of now screaming children who had only moments before joyfully joined me in a home improvement project.

I'm smarter than that. I'd never, ever do that.

Even if I did, I sure wouldn't invite all the pre-schoolers in the neighborhood over for a clean-up party.

I realized another thing: my Father will never take parenting tips from me.

When Abraham was called out and told he would be blessed with descendants, God invited him, and all Abraham's descendants, to a painting party.

"Abraham - look! All this land is going to be the possession of your children. What say we get to work on it? I'll start by giving you a son in your old age and blessing him."

"Okay, Lord. I'm happy to help you! Let me just find my spare servant wife. My regular one is, according to her, past her prime."

Sploosh.


Ishmael is born. Because God promised to bless Abraham through his son, nations would arise that would eventually present great conflict for the descendants of Isaac. The paint bucket of God was freely placed in the unsteady, childish hands of Sarah's doubt, of Abraham's panic. That paint would run down through generations, and at least according to a great deal of modern tradition, would even stain today's political landscape.

The examples are numerous: Jacob swiping Esau's birthright (and Esau begging for a blessing anyway), Moses begging God not to wipe out the worshippers of Baal (until, of course, when he descended from the mountain and witnessed the sin with his own eyes. Then he went bloodcrazy,) Jonah dodging Ninevah, all the negotiations of the Hebrews wandering in the desert, and so on.

Sploosh. Sploosh. Sploosh-a-ty sploosh.

Tears. Motion. Stains. Travelling stains.

Yet God looks on the havoc His children wreak and loves them enough to devise a way for them to be washed clean, to be presentable before Him.

His method involves stains, too: bloodstains.

As if I needed reminder, I am not like God in this way. Perhaps it is because, despite my protests, I still prefer my rooms like my tombs: whitewashed.