Sunday, November 27, 2011

"That is Things I Wanted!" #5

I have a photo site that I set up last year. I didn't pay for the higher end spam filtering. I receive a steady stream of email notifications asking me to moderate comments on my posts, which are more than 90% spambots and scammers. My site lives in WestWorld, where my photographic work is viewed by algorithms more than eyeballs.

I only post my photos on the site, and no commentary other than a title for the image or collection of photos. Most of the robo-messaged comments are designed to be responses to written articles.

Some of the faux commenter spambots post very good bad english. I have stopped marking them as spam, as they are generally complementary and supportive of my work. Sure, their complements seem to concern some literary expression, where only photos exist, but I try to never stifle a generous impulse.

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"That is Things I Wanted!" #5 - "Pleased to end up being going"



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Saturday, November 26, 2011

"That is Things I Wanted!" #4

I have a photo site that I set up last year. I didn't pay for the higher end spam filtering. I receive a steady stream of email notifications asking me to moderate comments on my posts, which are more than 90% spambots and scammers. My site lives in WestWorld, where my photographic work is viewed by algorithms more than eyeballs.

I only post my photos on the site, and no commentary other than a title for the image or collection of photos. Most of the robo-messaged comments are designed to be responses to written articles.

Some of the faux commenter spambots post very good bad english. I have stopped marking them as spam, as they are generally complementary and supportive of my work. Sure, their complements seem to concern some literary expression, where only photos exist, but I try to never stifle a generous impulse.

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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

"That is Things I Wanted!" #3

I have a photo site that I set up last year. I didn't pay for the higher end spam filtering. I receive a steady stream of email notifications asking me to moderate comments on my posts, which are more than 90% spambots and scammers. My site lives in WestWorld, where my photographic work is viewed by algorithms more than eyeballs.

I only post my photos on the site, and no commentary other than a title for the image or collection of photos. Most of the robo-messaged comments are designed to be responses to written articles.

Some of the faux commenter spambots post very good bad english. I have stopped marking them as spam, as they are generally complementary and supportive of my work. Sure, their complements seem to concern some literary expression, where only photos exist, but I try to never stifle a generous impulse.

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"That is Things I Wanted!" #2

I have a photo site that I set up last year. I didn't pay for the higher end spam filtering. I receive a steady stream of email notifications asking me to moderate comments on my posts, which are more than 90% spambots and scammers. My site lives in WestWorld, where my photographic work is viewed by algorithms more than eyeballs.

I only post my photos on the site, and no commentary other than a title for the image or collection of photos. Most of the robo-messaged comments are designed to be responses to written articles.

Some of the faux commenter spambots post very good bad english. I have stopped marking them as spam, as they are generally complementary and supportive of my work. Sure, their complements seem to concern some literary expression, where only photos exist, but I try to never stifle a generous impulse.

The following is a collection of this weeks accolades from the spambots.
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"That is Things I Wanted!" #1

I have a photo site that I set up last year. I didn't pay for the higher end spam filtering. I receive a steady stream of email notifications asking me to moderate comments on my posts, which are more than 90% spambots and scammers. My site lives in WestWorld, where my photographic work is viewed by algorithms more than eyeballs.

I only post my photos on the site, and no commentary other than a title for the image or collection of photos. Most of the robo-messaged comments are designed to be responses to written articles.

Some of the faux commenter spambots post very good bad english. I have stopped marking them as spam, as they are generally complementary and supportive of my work. Sure, their complements seem to concern some literary expression, where only photos exist, but I try to never stifle a generous impulse.

The following is a collection of this weeks accolades from the spambots.

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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

"They Have Made Their Point, They Have To Go Now."




"They Have Made Their Point, They Have To Go Now." or, How to Speak Fundamentalist

The Global Occupy Movement has spread to over one thousand cities. The numbers of people on the street steadily increases, as days move into months. Momentum seems to be building, not waining. The Occupation has arrived in Tulsa. Oklahoma. I think that what we are witnessing with this Movement, and the Corporate Media reaction to it, is the cultural retirement party for an old social map printed in black and white, lacking the interactive apps of the new maps. Whereas the Occupiers serve as a welcoming committee for the arrival of options, of other ways to be in this world. It would serve us well, we human types, to address this cognitive gap. I believe that it is not only possible to communicate with the cognitively impaired, but, as we have allowed them to run amok through the halls of power, it is now imperative that we do.

I googled; "They made their point," and "They should go," and "Occupy." This is some of what came up;


"They made their point—only I’m not sure if they knew what that point was—no one else did. Apparently, it wasn’t all that important at the time of the start of the movement ." -Steve Rose , Blogger/Cop

"They made their point. Probably about time to go home." -Otto Maddox, self described Dork

"Maybe it’s time for the children to go home. They made their point, and they can continue their protests and activism, but the time for the campout is over." - Rob Port, angry person

"They made their point, people acknowledged it, now why don't they go do something useful?" -Some forum commenter person, being useless

“That’s the great thing about this country, you can stand up and say what you want, but I think they made their point,” -Asian businessman that joked to a cop-“bring out the tear gas and call it a day.”

"They made their point now get out and get back to living. Lets stop this NOW." - Rosie

"They made their point. They were allowed to protest. For WEEKS." - Someone using an old cognitive map.

"They made their point..Which is they have none…Why the press covers this story is beyond me…Just kill ‘em….Time to move on…" - LiberalsRDopes, angry person

“They made their point,” - Sgt. Limbert of the Mission Police Station

"They made their point but are now becoming irrelevant, .ok....got your message, now go back to work, school or your bong, but stop costing taxpayers money that has to be diverted from other programs to police these love-ins." - rjag, Angry Canadian


I'll venture to say that "their point" has not been made, nor will it be for some time, because of the difference in cognitive maps.
One group comes from a place of realizing the wisdom of sustainable growth. Another group, rather than admitting an inability to grasp the meaning or implications of something emerging in the environment, invoke a cultural banishment spell, such as "They made their point" to put it out of their minds. It's a recusal from the dialogue under the premise of some higher cultural authority, or sense of "normalcy." I think that is my favorite response to the Occupations, and I hear it often. It's that Irony thing that I like so much. It reveals a lot about the person that utters it, and the cognitive maps in play. The purpose of this sentiment is to reduce and marginalize anything seen as a threat to the status quo, or their personal identity which often in these cases are fused together. "You've made your point" used in the examples above, translates roughly into "I'm tired of hearing your nonsense, and/or I'm ill equipped to respond intelligently." It can be seen as a self defense mechanism employed by a threatened creature. If seen this way, compassion for the opposition comes more easily.

The rhetoric of 99% vs. 1% has a use. Of course, a Movement of 100% would be really nifty for a bit, but not possible, nor desirable. For those "We're-All-One" purists that have a problem with the divisive function of the 99% slogan, may I remind you of the Red Vs. Blue wedgie that has had us on our toes for the past decade. I'd say surgically cutting out a 1% cancerous tumor is a big improvement over chainsawing the country down the middle. There's magic in taking out and isolating just one percentage point. For a moment, the 99% have an opportunity to imagine that their individual causes can be joined with a greater cause. I see the 99% icon as symbolic of dethroning a monarchy, or aristocracy. We are in the meantime now. This is the moment when power shifts.

This is not a protest, and the people are not protesters. This is an Occupation.The Occupiers are not there to do anything as much as they are there because of what has been done. This is the effect of unchecked greedy causes. The people that just want this to go away are afraid. Of course, there is the fear of the "1%", the CorportateBankerLobbyistMedia cabal and the authorities that serve them. That fear says Mission Accomplished. But there is another fear, on the other end of the spectrum, a fear and anxiety around daring to hope that real, meaningful change in the consciousness of the human endeavor is possible. Maybe not everyone would describe it that way. Another way: who doesn't want to live a more authentic existence? If given a choice between surviving and thriving, what would you pick? We can have this discussion now, and those choices are available. Endeavoring to understand how we live in the world together is the new sexy. "Oh my God, did you see how huge her economic comprehension was? That was hot."

There are a large number of Americans that want what we all want, they just don't want it to be complex. This condition of narrowness, which manifests as various forms of fundamentalism, has little to no capacity for irony, metaphor, or a spectrum of possibilities. Yes or no, good or bad, black or white. Think binary. The Neo-con revolution was only made possible by the crass manipulation of the fundamentalist mindset. The spectrum of possibilities that color the Occupy Movement gets lost in the monolithic shadow of Good and Bad.

It might be helpful to imagine a kind of cultural deafness that monotheists, fundamentalists, and the like, suffer from, and like many that suffer a diminishing of one capability, another capability is enhanced. Those that seem the most resistant and/or uninformed about our socioeconomic situation, will be the ones that muscle the corrections through, once it becomes clear that that is what MUST be done. In the mean time they will defend what they know, right or wrong. They want no part in maybe or perhaps.

Some people can change their mind easily. Some can try on a philosophy and take it for a test drive, and then just as easily step out of it. For people like this, it may be hard to imagine how a fundamentalist operating system works. John Wayne is a good icon to keep in mind when exploring this. Fundamentalists identify themselves with their beliefs and ideas, which are defended as a part of the self. Asking a fundamentalist to see something from someone else's perspective is akin to asking them to just exchange eyeballs for a moment. But what they lack in adaptive facility, they more than make up for in manual effectiveness. They get'er done. Finding an appreciation for the form and function of the fundamentalist portion of the 99% serves everyone.

If the intellectual elite and and the progressive right are the brains and heart of the country, then the fundamentalists and their kind are the muscle and bones. The muscle and bones want to respond to correct impulses that lead to their strengthening and growth. They are not concerned with why or how. The neo-cons led them along by dangling a bible on a stick for thirty years. I think the muscle and bones need to be treated better than that (and that doesn't mean taunting them by dangling Dawkins instead). Like we have provided handicapped spaces for the infirm, and braille on the elevators and ATM's to accommodate the blind, let us endeavor to translate the complexity and beauty of this Occupation into a simple binary message for the cognitively impaired.

For those planning to become more directly involved in the overhaul of American representative government, as well as any other cultural overhaul that might be timely, might I suggest learning to speak Fundamentalist, as translators are desperately needed at this time. Many Americans suffer the same cultural ills but cannot coordinate to correct them due to cognitive incompatibilities. I don't think we can expect our frightened dichotomous brothers and sisters to be the ones to initiate a broader understanding of our condition. Do you?

Destruction Porn



“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” - Ernst Fischer

Decay seems so Un-American.

Blow it up. Set it on fire. Roll it down a hill then jump out and just to watch what happens. We like a firm period or an exclamation point, or both, but no dot dot dot's, please. The Big Finish. The Climax. Armageddon as an ongoing narrative, a kind of cultural cum shot that we are told is necessary to ensure viability in the market place.

Having an ongoing tantric co-awareness won't generate web traffic, see. Trancendental for the participants, perhaps, but not a spectator event, really.


Resolution of a drama, I think, underlies the apocalyptic fetish. Like a rudementary impulse that springs forth from feelings of inequality, be they rooted in race, economics, class, intelligence, or other. A desire for a leveling. A prayer that life will favor the humble, or rescue the victimized, destroy the opressors.

After indulging the initial thought impulse of the lash, imagination can take hold and offer up more creative solutions than the destruct-o-rama. I think that the choice between awaiting some indefinite destruction, and forging ahead in a shared creative endeavor, is a simple one, at least for me.





Wednesday, October 12, 2011

"The Beginning is Near"

I think I have End Times fatigue. Global thermo-nuclear annihilation, rogue meteors, swine flu, AIDS, alien invasion, pole shift, climate change, Y2K, 9/11, planet Nibiru, The Austrailan Jesus that looked like Mark Twain in a jean jacket, Economic Meltdown, ETC.: I've followed them all closely. It's a family tradition that wasn't supposed to be.

I don't know what stressed my parents out more, The End being so close, or The End not showing up . The more elusive the American Dream became for my parents, the more attractive The End became. When I was much younger, say 4, God (speaking through my Dad) and my Dad both told me that we were in the tribulation, and the shit could be expected to hit the fan at any moment. In the interim, i was expected to not touch my penis, pursue a business degree and keep my hair short. The notion of the apocalypse is a large part of what made it possible for me to live in a fundamentalist household. For those of you that have had empathetic relations with fundamentalists, you know: The idea that their suffering through life could be shortened through divine destruction has an understandable appeal. It's no fun being right all the time.


I'm over 40, I'm not a fundamentalist, and I'm not miserable enough to want the entire world to end just so I can stop pretending to be a good person and have my debt wiped. But still, I cannot get enough of the apocalyptic notions, especially when served up with conspiratorial zeal. Tasty. I feel compelled to engage in them. I'm addicted to the high that the specter of doom provides. Just a little suspension of disbelief, and BOOM- Aliens could be living among us, but as trans-dimensional algorithmic forces engaged in the hijacking of the human narrative in order to steer us into a side gig of creating an artificial life form for them to mate with and spawn the next big thing in Life. Or somesuch.

The conspiracy threads on the web, true or not, often entertain me far more than the bland, rehashed, blockbuster narratives of the broader culture. If we agree that truth is stranger than fiction, and say the most extreme conspiracy/doomsday stories are fiction, then that just makes life even more interesting, as far as I'm concerned. I see it as our modern mythology. Metadata. A conspiracy/doomsday story, true or invented, will only live and grow if it appeals to the kind of anxiety that we are addicted to as a culture.

It's natural for people who feel powerless in their lives to be prone to the doom-adrenal fix . Sudden, immanent annihilation of the status quo can be seen as a beacon of hope to people with lots of credit card debt and hateful spouses. "I feel powerless to change the circumstances of my life, so, please, can we just get this over with? Jesus..." The prospect of extinction can become favorable to the onus of reclaiming personal sovereignty, or even just continuing on. I can see lust flash in the eyes of the true believers as they enthuse about the Apocalypse. I think the apocalyptic fetish of our culture comes largely from a national sense of powerlessness and hopelessness.

We were raised on a stress inducing diet of dueling doomsdays, economic boom and bust, energy scarcity, Them against Us : forever! (…er, until the apocalypse). The specter of Doom spikes fight or flight adrenaline, and our eyes widen and we get high on worse case scenarios. A thrill here and there is nice, but It's become a chronic condition in vast numbers of the modern world. And that's not healthy.

It's been shown that prolonged stress can be very hard on a human. It clogs arteries. It's been shown to actually gnaw at the nubs of ones chromosomes and fray the ends like an old shoestring. Stressed humans are not as effective. Stressed people are more prone to violence and illness. Meanwhile, we have become addicted to our media prescribed stress. We're hooked on fear- the MSG in our media diet. We wouldn't eat the nightly news without it, not with the low content infotainment they serve up.

We need 100% real journalism, at some point, for a healthy society to live and grow. A focus on collective human issues instead of the partisan cock fighting. The cocks like to fight, and they like us to watch and cheer them on. We like to watch, cheer and support as a passion pacifier . Eventually, soon eventually, some one has to rise above the cockfight and point out to the spectators that the arena is on fire.

So, how do we make a break from the chronic stress we feel on a national and global level? What would ease our collective survival anxieties? Perhaps working on a pressure point to release some blocked energy? ( Hello Wall Street)

Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist from Stanford, studies the deadly effects of chronic stress in humans and other primates. Here he describes a moment in the day of a typical baboon colony hierarchy;

"You've got some big male that loses a fight , he chases a sub-adult, who bites an adult female, who slaps a juvenile, who knocks an infant out of a tree; all in 15 seconds. A huge component of stress is a lack of control, lack of predictability. You're just sitting there watching a zebra, and somebody who is having a bad day comes along and it's your rear end that's gonna get slashed. It's tremendously stressful for the folks further down on the hierarchy."

A Baboon colony that he had been studying in the wild for a number of years suffered a tragedy that yielded a provocative finding. The colony came across an abandoned camp and rummaged through the rubbish. When meat was discovered, the most aggressive alphas, the source of the stress that trickles down through the colony, took it all for themselves. It happened that the alphas contacted a fatal ilness from the meat and all died. The colony continued, sans abusive alpha class. Health improved, violence went down, prospects of longevity went up. As outsider males entered into this liberated colony, they were adjusted or rejected.

The events of one day dramatically altered the stress level, and well being, of a colony for generations after. They Occupied DoucheBaboon Street in the midsts of a self created Alpha Male Meltdown. Having suddenly lost the stress of unpredictable hierarchical abuse, and feeling life without it, the colony of baboons was inspired to perpetuate it through regulation and enforcement.

In my experience, being proactive in civic and social solidarity can serve to cure apocalyptic anxiety. We have an opportunity to have national dialogue beyond the arena of partisan politics. I think most will agree that there must be an intervention in the corporation/lobbyist/politics game. It's an easy thing to rally around. . There are solutions available. That hasn't been the issue. The issue has been lack of participation in the governance of our nation by the best and brightest members of our society. The Fat Cats have thoroughly dominated our political sandbox with their buried offerings, so that any one who jumps in to earnestly shape solutions runs into shit. What decent person wants to jump into a sandbox full of shit? It's too big for one personality to handle cleaning out. We all have to get our hands a little dirty on this.

We need our system of representation gutted and retro fitted before it will have the integrity to move effectively in asserting the will of the people now clamoring for attention. Mike Gravel's proposal of a National Referendum should be dusted off. Everyone votes directly, bypassing the house and senate. Initiate the new and improved tamperproof ballot process nation wide, put a muzzle on Wall Street with a public examination and auditing until sanity has a say in the matter.

The etymological roots of the word apocalypse are "revelation, disclosure, uncover". The modern interpretation, "a cataclysmic event", I think, applies to those that are invested in a concealment. As the scale of the corruption and collusion becomes more apparent, more and more of the population will have to face their personal responsibility in allowing the scam to have happened, or even their collusion in it. Our economic system has been brutally ravaged. I think a certain level of shame is responsible for our not talking about it; shame for having suffered the brutality, or shame for having profited from it. The people flowing into our streets are an apocalyptic force, in that they are uncovering and revealing the truth of our condition. This is where the helpless are very helpful, coming down and showing up to sustain and support as the reality of the occasion percolates. They may not know why they are there, but they feel why. It would be a shame to remain shameful when the opportunity to reveal and heal comes on this scale.

I think that the reality of our condition, as a country, a species, a planet, has been badly photoshopped and edited far out of context. I don't believe that the solutions for our collective well-being are as difficult and abstract as we are led to believe. The impotent alphas that need big stacks to compensate for the lack in their souls have the bullhorn and are writing the narrative. In that narrative we are all doomed without them. Without their guiding hand we will start having sex with donkeys and burning the elderly for winter heat (I suspect that that would not come to pass, though I concede that isolated instances could be inspired by the suggestion). We are due for a new narrative. We can pull out the hook and clear the stage of the hacks. The finiteness of the world has never been more apparent, and at the same time, blithely dismissed as an issue of any real importance.

The age of sustainability is dawning, casting long shadows of the dark age predators exiting the stage.

Rats have chewed their way into the pantry, which isn't surprising. Not bothering to patch the holes has compounded the misfortune. At this point they almost have us convinced that it is their pantry, and that they are busy working on fixing it up. We get the updates from the cockroaches that scurry under the blocked door. We neglected to notice that the cats we hired to patrol the scene were becoming fat, not with rats, but rat kickbacks from our stash. They stopped bringing us heads and gall bladders some time ago, and we were happy not to have to deal with the little messes.

As this recent movement swells, I believe that the already overstated rhetoric of apocalypse will grow as well. I'll start: This is an apocalyptic event. The Occupiers are the revealing, what gets revealed behind the corporatist veil of WallStreet/Washington with be The End of something. We can be minion victims of the mighty corporate menace, or the producers of the show, willing pull the plug of a vulgar and abusive segment.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Bride of Jesus



Met the neighbors daughter yesterday. She called to ask me to help her put a small antique tractor motor into the trunk of her Cadillac. Small or not, it necessitated a tactical operation.

As I was rummaging around their property looking for planks and blocks to make a ramp for walking this beast into position, she asked me if I was planning on living here for the rest of my life. I replied that that kind of time frame was beyond my usual calendar of events. She said it wasn't going to be as long as I thought. I wondered if she was perhaps a brazen medical intuitive and had detected a brain tumor, but she clarified her statement by adding: "you know, with all that's going on."

"What is going on?"
"All the things happening in the world, the economy, the riots…"

She seemed exited about what she saw happening. She relayed all that she saw going wrong in the world with the innocent, greedy enthusiasm of a child on Christmas Eve.

She asked me if I had a garden. I told her that I had a small one last year, but was prepping for a larger one this year.

"That's important now, and guns... do you have any guns?"
"I have a slingshot."
"Well that's not going to stop an intruder from coming into your house. You should really stock up. Everyone I know is getting ready. I have a .22, which is small, but I've had to fire it in my house already when someone tried to break in. I'm getting something bigger and you should too."

I remained neutral and told her I just hadn't felt the need yet.

I continued my search for something to help move the dead weight into the trunk as she followed me around talking about more terrible things to come. As I was moving a 2x12 into position, she asked me how I liked it here in town. I told her that it was a great place for me as a writer while working on my book. She asked me what kind of book I was working on. I told her that it concerned the communication problems between the fundamentalist mindset and, well, others.

"Well, you probably hate me then" she said with a smile.
"I don't hate you, and that's really the point of my project: if we were to make a comprehensive list of all that we have in common, all of us human types, then I'm certain that we would find that we have more in common with each other, than not, only the -not- part seems to be getting all the press. So, having lived in a fundamentalist reality as well as other ones, I'm making a pitch for the possibility of diplomacy and clearer communications between us to facilitate that awareness."

Still beaming at me she replied, "But there are differences, and they are real. Do you know Him yet?"
"Who's that?" I had a pretty good idea who He was, but there are more and more He's around these days. I always try to leave a little room for the unexpected to enter, but that was challenged by the familiar zeal she was emanating. I said a quick prayer that He might be J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, or a Nibiruian ambassador. My prayers were not answered.

"The Lord God Jesus."
"Oh yes, I am familiar with the story. Um, this thing is going to leak oil in your trunk, do you have a tarp or some plastic bags to lay down first?"
"Oh, don't worry about that, this car is old anyway."

It was a nice looking Caddi, no dents, good paint.

"We can just roll it in there, I don't care if it hurts the car." I told her there was no use breaking her trunk if we could avoid it, and asked her to find some smaller blocks of wood to protect the trunk latch and rubber seal. As she poked through the piles of old lumber and dead power tools, she mentioned that she and her daughter were going to build a house behind her mothers house here, to prepare for what was ordained by God, and that lots of guns were important to protect us from "them" when they start to come over the hills to steal our food.

Awesome. The Bride of Jesus was moving in. Nothing like the sounds of construction and target practice to cajole a muse into creative action.

She held the blocks in place as I gently walked the engine in to position.

"Can't ya just push it in?"

She was taking the engine to someone who wanted to use it, and I assumed that they wanted the Model T style radiator on the front in one piece. I continued to take my time and finessed the thing into place as she told me how awesome it will be once Jesus entered my life. Then she thanked Jesus for helping us move the engine safely as I tried to avoid a hernia.



The culture of the rural demands a healthy degree of diplomacy. Status updates aren't on Facebook so much as they are on the actual faces. It's important to communicate with your neighbors, and more important: to know how to do that diplomatically. Better you talk to them than to have them talk about you.

Townsfolk talk to each other. If you don't talk to the townsfolk, then by default you will be defined by them as a disconnected city person, snob, elitist, or much much worse. The projected stereotypes, assumptions, and judgements will become palpable, fueling a sense of growing otherness. It makes a noticeable difference in one's quality of life while living rurally.

The Bride of Jesus was confronting my soul. She wanted to know if I was with her, or against her. Though I was neither, I sensed that that realty would not be translated in tact to the literal mind before me. Picture neutrality as a round ball dropped between the two vortexes of good and evil. My neutrality was going to be rolling down one of those judgements. I endeavor to effect a favorable spin before I drop the ball, especially when fear and guns are the opening topics of the dialogue.

I was squatting on the ground, wiping the old oil off my hands in the hard packed dirt, when she began to witness in earnest. She stood over me dressed in all black showing only hands, head, and cleavage. With broad gestures and wide eyes she began to speak her conversion experience. I know this moment well. The witnessing is a primal attempt at social bonding through revealing what one believes to be the most important thing in the world. It could be a love for playing guitar, or an enthusiasm for marijuana, or ones personal connection to the great mystery, the qualitative feel is similar. I sat and witnessed her witnessing.

"I used to sit and watch the girls going to church and made fun of them. They looked so boring. I wasn't into the church, or God at all. I was into men that were strong and good looking and dressed nice and had great hair and drove nice cars, two or three of my husbands were like that, but one day I was really depressed and didn't know what to do and suddenly there was a voice, not in the room, but in my head that said 'everything is ok. why are you worried? there is nothing to fear' and I felt so silly for ever doubting Him. He came through the corner of my room and he was more beautiful than those men, I mean, I couldn't see His face because He was glowing, but I could feel how beautiful He was."

I secured the chinstrap on my diplomacy helmet, stood up and centered my stance. I told the Bride of Jesus that I sensed and appreciated her motivation to tell me how I will be so much better off when I realize that I will be eternally doomed until I submit to the living-dead God Jesus (I'm sure I used more diplomatic terms). I explained that I'm no stranger to the liminal experience and quoted part of J.C.'s Sermon on the Mount concerning the lily's of the field to show that I understood the gravity of her revelation. I maintained firm eye contact with a soft expression as I told her that I was perfectly willing to dialogue about our experiences, so that we could share the joy and wonder of such, but being told that her interpretation of such a mysterious event was the only one and true way was going to make this difficult. She interrupted to qualify, but I stopped her to finish by stating that her superior manner was off putting and carried the implication that she was not interested in my point of view, which made me sad (I'm not sure if I used anything more diplomatic here). She back pedaled a bit and assured me that she was not condescending, but just wanted to share the Love of Jesus. I expressed that we were probably closer to agreement that it seemed, and that additional discussion risked jeopardizing that, and I didn't want to take that risk. She then took my hand and smiled and prayed that the Lord Jesus would come into my life and fill me with the Holy Spirit. I smiled and said, "Back at ya."

I offered my help if she needed it again, and said it would be nice to have a neighbor to share the fruits of the garden with, then begged off to feed the dog.



Something was communicated between us today. I'm sure many layers of meaning transpired beyond anything I could grasp. I understood her zeal to transmit her love of God to another person, and I didn't want that to come between us. I'll share the love of God with anyone, anytime, but I couldn't just sit there and take it.