Mmm. Bacon.

(This was borrowed from Bay of Fundie who borrowed it from somewhere else...)

White Buffalo Woman Kicks Ass

"The formless Absolute is my Father, and God with form is my Mother." God reveals Himself in the form which His devotee loves most. His love for the devotee knows no bounds.

~Ramakrishna
From "Teachings of the Hindu Mystics," © 2001 by Andrew Harvey.


"Time is the root and the seed, it gives and it takes away. I bow to God, who lives in this world within us; whoever calls Him by any name, by that name does He come.

"Therefore, take care with the names of God," said Vaisampayana, "and I have finished my story."

~Mahabharata
Retold by William Buck


One of my most favorite books is William Buck's retelling of the Mahabharata. The language is exquisite. I am fascinated by this idea of God appearing to us in a form we can understand, or perhaps in the only form we can handle. There is a comforting symbiosis in this, a kind of interactive godhood. Whether "god" is the word we use for that which lies outside our current understanding, or as a metaphor for the mysteries in our own souls, or a real Person, we may never know. And that's okay.

The following is the best ever rant on the subject. I would really like to memorize this for those times when someone asks me what I believe. I may not truly believe all of it, but it makes a good story. ;-)



"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen--I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate our cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

~from Neil Gaiman's American Gods

Apocalypse Now

Main Entry: apoc·a·lypse
Pronunciation: &-'pä-k&-"lips
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, revelation, Revelation, from Anglo-French apocalipse, from Late Latin apocalypsis, from Greek apokalypsis, from apokalyptein to uncover, from apo- + kalyptein to cover -- more at HELL
1 a : one of the Jewish and Christian writings of 200 B.C. to A.D. 150 marked by pseudonymity, symbolic imagery, and the expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom b capitalized : REVELATION 3
2 a : something viewed as a prophetic revelation b : ARMAGEDDON
3 : a great disaster


I had the oddest notion while driving in to work today: Having spent a good portion of my (earlier) life in anticipation of the Biblical Apocalypse, I found myself thinking that while we may not ever see a literal apocalypse, we are responsible each day for a number of little apocalypses. How often do we find ourselves destroying one thing to begin another? Whether it be a career change, or a relationship, or changing an old for a new habit. Maybe that is why change is so difficult; we resist change, because we resist destruction. But we cannot stop change: destruction and creation are both bound up in it. Anytime we embrace something new, something old is lost. The four horsemen are always riding through, but in here and not out there.

Owe it to the wind

I attended a wedding today at St. Lucy's Church in Campbell: My boss--one of my bosses, really--the president of the Steinway Society, Janie Horton, and her selected sweetie, Humberto Ramirez. Their story is unusual--this is Janie's third marriage (divorced hubby #1; hubby #2 died), and third wedding to Humberto (they had a civil service last year, followed by a family wedding in Chile). Apparently, they both didn't realize the amount of paperwork and processes they needed to complete for Janie to join the Catholic Church and annul her first marriage in order to exchange sacramental wedding vows, which was the ceremony they held today. So there were a lot of good natured jokes about her being "so very married" to Humberto that they are stuck with one another for good. They didn't look like they seemed to mind. [grin]

I've been inside a Catholic Church before, but I don't think I've ever attended a service. I was--only slightly--disconcerted by the moments when other people seemed to Know What Was Going On and I didn't. They've obviously been here before. [grin] Stuff like, when the priest says, "May the blessings of the Lord be with you," the audience replies, "And also with you." Not having been raised Catholic, this was new to me. There were other things, too. Like when the audience was supposed to take a minute or two to "express the love of Christ" and everyone went around shaking hands, even hugging and kissing, saying "Peace be with you." Again, not strange in a bad way, just unexpected and different.

Another thing I noticed was when they offered the Eucharist--the symbols of the wine and bread for the blood and body of Christ--they used a white wine. [???] I didn't get the chance to ask the priest about it, but I thought this was odd. I was always under the impression that the wine needed to be a red wine to fit the whole blood analogy. Curious.

So anyway, I'm sitting there while all this is going on, and it's a really beautiful church. Very modern with a wide arching ceiling and two huge stained glass windows on the left and the right. On the left is the depiction of the nativity and on the right is the crucifiction. And I began to wonder if they did this on purpose. I mean, I know the religious significance of these scenes, but taken down to their core meanings, we have Birth on one side and Death on the other, and here we sit, all of Life in between. I just found myself tapping into something far older and more universal than the merely Christian aspect they no doubt intended. It's times like this when I recognize that the Bible as Myth resonates far more deeply and more truly with our humanity when it can be linked to other traditions. But there, that must prove I'm a heretic. The angry mob with the torches and pitchforks should be arriving any moment.

Afterwards, I went outside for a closer look at the statue of St. Lucy. I asked my "other" boss Henry (VP) if he knew her story and he said he couldn't remember. See, if I was Catholic, I would get into all that stuff. Every saint has a story. But I'm not Catholic, so I guess I'll go back to reading critical theory and poetry and whatever else catches my fancy.

So Henry starts telling me about this song he's trying to remember, and he hums a few bars--and isn't it funny how a song stuck in someone else's head can get stuck in your head by only hearing a few notes?--so then it was stuck in my head, too. So there we stood, the three of us, me and Henry and Henry's wife Shirley, humming this song and trying to remember what it was. Thank god for the internet. I was able to come home and enter a few snatches of verse I could remember and I came up with this:


We're All Alone
~Rita Coolidge

Outside the rain begins and it may never end
So cry no more on the shore
A dream
Will take us out to sea
Forever more forever more
Close your eyes and dream
And you can be with me
'Neath the waves through the caves of hours
Long forgotten now
We're all alone we're all alone

Close the window calm the light
And it will be alright
No need to bother now
Let it out let it all begin
Learn how to pretend

Once a story's told
It can't help but grow old
Roses do lovers too
So cast your seasons to the wind
And hold me dear oh hold me dear

Close the window calm the light
And it will be alright
No need to bother now
Let it out let it all begin
All's forgotten now
We're all alone oh oh we're all alone
Close the window calm the light
And it will be alright
No need to bother now
Let it out let it all begin
All's forgotten now
We're all alone we're all alone
Let it out let it all begin
Owe it to the wind my love


Praise be to the internet gods. Now I can get some sleep...