Sweet and Spice & Everything Nice

My six-year old got a neat “rainbow machine” for Christmas. When you press the button, this device makes a rainbow appear across the ceiling of the room from side to side, and since the holiday it has served as sort of a bedtime reading light for us. We keep it on while we read bedtime stories or talk about the day we just had.

Last night, my daughter (at age six mind you) asked me why God made things like tornados. "Well, crap! So it begins." I thought to myself. I gave the question my best shot.

When I finished babbling for what felt like two hours, she made her way over to power down the rainbow machine. As she did, the light of the rainbow flashed across her face. It moved from displaying all the colors on her cheeks, to a moment where it started powering down one color at a time. It ended on red and faded to black. In that moment, I saw an old divine promise shudder through her beauty and innocence. It covered over all my personal ineptitudes and theological misgivings. In that single instant, while the reds, yellows, and greens faded into the canvas of a tiny six-year old, I knew that there was nothing more to be said on the matter.

We both slept very well and awoke refreshed.

Brit Hume to Tiger Woods: "Drop Buddhism, Take Christianity"

So this little bit got a few people up in arms this morning. And while I undoubtedly think that what Hume says here is exactly correct, it probably isn't something that should be said on a national news broadcast. It's a little odd to blog on this because people that know me would probably expect me to come down on both sides of this issue at the same time. I'm not going to. I am squarely in Hume's camp on this one.

Let me explain. Redemption isn't a concept in Buddhism that a person can explore. There's no moral room for it because in most Buddhist philosophies, one need not be redeemed. There is a particular strain of Buddhism, and forgive me for forgetting which one it is, in which adherents are capable of offering Redemption to others through right living, or following a moral code. Even if Tiger were of this Buddhist variety, he's already blown it.

What does Tiger, or anyone like him do? In Buddhism, there is no concept of sin for the most part, so Tiger can just move on as though nothing happened, trying to bridge his relationships were he can. For the Buddhist, forgiveness is primarily just a way to keep negative thoughts from consuming a person. In other words, you should forgive others so that you don't get bitter. Good advice, but where does this help Tiger? Tiger is the one who needs to be forgiven -- although I suppose he needs no forgiveness if he's Buddhist because he's committed so sin.

And lets be really honest about Buddhism for just a moment. In the case of Tiger Woods, an act of pardon or Grace is nonsense for the adherent. Instead, the emphasis in most Buddhist texts is not about Forgiveness -- it is about the foolishness of having taken offense in the first place. And that friends, is the great strength and the great weakness of Buddhism.

And personally, in Tiger's situation, it is why I solely agree with Brit Hume. Buddhism's approach is theoretically and practically inferior to Christianity in matters of forgiveness and redemption -- and pretending that in the course of our human experiences, we need no forgiveness or Redemption... well, that's an illogical insanity. And one of two reasons that I am not Buddhist.

The other is suffering, by the way.

Cheers.

John Mellencamp's MATRIX

So I finished 6.5 hours of the Matrix once again. It's really too bad that most people shelve the story because the questions it asks of us are too demanding. Coincidentally, I was jamming to Mellencamp's Human Wheels tonight....

I'll leave it to you to make the connections, should you be so inclined. But by all means, don't let me tax you uneccesarily. After all, I am only the Alpha-Nerd. ;)


Human Wheels

This land today, shall draw its last breath
And take into its ancient depths
This frail reminder of its giant, dreaming self.

While I, with human-hindered eyes
Unequal to the sweeping curve of life,
Stand on this single thread of time.

Human wheels spin round and round
While the clock keeps the pace.
Human wheels spin round and round
Help the light to my face.

That time today, no triumph gains
At this short success of age.
This pale reflection of its brave and
Blundering deed.

For I, descend from this vault,
Now dreams beyond my earthly fault
Knowledge sure from the seed.

Human wheels spin round and round
While the clock keeps the pace.
Human wheels spin round and round
Help the light to my face.

This land, today, my tears shall taste
And take into its dark embrace.
This love, who in my beating heart endures,
Assured, by every sun that burns,
The dust to which this flesh shall return.
It is the ancient, dreaming dust of God.

Repeat Chorus.


I'm kind of tired tonight... literally and figuratively. I've had a virus and that's left my body ravished. I'm also a bit tired of living in the space I occupy, at least to a certain degree.

The Matrix was completed over seven years ago, I still don't believe I've ever held an intelligent conversation about it with a single living soul. I guess maybe at this point, I won't ever. 'Human Wheels' was released ten years before the Matrix, and I guess if I've going to be real honest, I've never had an intelligent conversation about this song either. I think if I'm to be real honest, I never will.

Is this the place that most people occupy? Do we all carry minds full of connections, lives full of meanings and hints of things unarticulated? And are we forever doomed to live unspoken lives and hidden truths in a failure of human community? I dunno, but since I am feeling (and I am feeling tonight)... since I'm feeling generous: Most scientific studies regarding the control of pain are not explained by the relief of pain. And in fact, the best science can offer us at the moment is that pain may very well be tightly woven into the purpose of all life and it may in fact serve as a means to an ends of what 'humanity' really is.

Now by all means, please enjoy the Matrix trilogy. And fire up some Mellencamp when you're through. I'm waiting with either a hot cup of coffee or a think glass of liquor on the other side. Maybe both.

And I suppose if you're really feeling daring and want some graduate level work on these themes, check out T.S. Eliot. Here's some of my favorite lines from The Four Quartets. This particular section is found in the "Little Gidding:"



If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfillment.


If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.


You know the scariest thing about that last connection with T.S. Eliot? It just sort of flew in my brain... and I've never had an intelligent conversation about the poem "Little Gidding" either.

Good night, all.

It's particularly dark tonight.

And cold.