Tagged: Christianity
On Baptist Preachers Continuing the Invitation
Not because I can’t or wouldn’t or won’t share the gospel—including asking the question, “Have you decided to follow Jesus?” with my kids, but I really want my family to join me in attending a small-ish Baptist church which still sees the preacher invite the congregation to salvation before concluding the service. “Why?” you ask. “Why, Pete? Why go backwards? Everyone knows that denominations are dying/dead, and never to return. They are a failed experiment. It’s non-denominational, one-church-multiple-campuses-small-groups-for-those-interested-and-no-invitation-messages from here on out.”
I’ll tell you why. And this is close to the heart, so please go easy on me. I want my family to join me at the Baptist church because the invitation is my answer to the infamous “how do you know you’re saved?” zinger of a question.
Many, many Sundays of my childhood and youth, and nearly every time I heard the invitation ever since, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday (if I was in a Baptist church), I knew it was directed specifically to me. I knew I was the sinner. I knew I needed salvation. I knew Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life. Moreover, I knew I couldn’t hide behind anyone, nor did I want to hide. I wanted salvation. Who wouldn’t?
For most of my life, I have not treated this response as anything noteworthy or indicative of eternal spiritual matters. I had accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior at a young age and was baptized later on and the rest of these times I chalked up the feeling to “powerful preaching.”
As I have gotten older, as fewer people come forward, I have to say that it seems like most people don’t take the invitation as a literal invitation.
But as a father, I take my young daughter (A- this time, H- in times past) and the two of us sit there, and I imagine what H- and my step-son, both 14 and not present—would think during the invitation. Would they think, “My parents are good (believers), so I am too.” Or, “He’s not talking to me. This is just the end of the service.” Or maybe, “My phone, my phone, my phone, my phone…”?
I honestly cannot imagine them saying, “Uh, I am a sinner. I need Jesus. Dad, what do I do?” in any capacity. Mostly, that just seems in line with the more rare emotions, like achieving a lifelong goal, that I can’t imagine what it might look like. But we all talk such nonsense, so much of the time, that it feels fair for a kid to say, “Oh. You were serious about that? I thought that was just part of the ritual.”
Anyhow, we’ll see what the family decides to do. As for me, I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb, no turning back. So I’ll see you at the Baptist church.
Passing Tests: A Primer On Purpose
Certain unpleasant circumstances (whose ultimate superficiality are yet to be determined) have led to me taking back full control of my step-son’s education. Long story short, I had it once, lost it in hopes of marital bliss, and have now taken it back. The long game is back in view—marriage be damned.
He’s newly 14. And he does not think. “But I repeat myself,” by Twain applies here.
Pilots take many, many tests. Merely to become a pilot requires passing many tests. It stands to reason, then, that as a group, we pilots know a thing or two about passing tests. Relatedly, we know a thing or two about the skill of memorizing information. One example, before returning to the step-son bit, of these test-taking skills conveniently aligned to memory skills is when taking a multiple choice test, there is a general rule, “too long to be wrong.” Get it? If three of the four answers are tremendously shorter than the other, it is more than likely (but don’t blindly skip reading the long one—always read in full the answer you select) that the test creator did not suddenly choose to waste their time by typing out an unnecessarily long wrong answer. Take away from this tip that we pilots (among other test taking masters) put to use other factors than content when viewing a test. Think of it like the self-defense advice to not forget about all available ways to use your surroundings during attacks etc.
One task that I have my step-son accomplishing each day, then, is reading from the classics (currently on The Apology of Socrates) one paragraph at a time and writing as brief as possible an abstract of the paragraph. This is not easy—and that’s the point.
We skipped chatting about Tuesday’s and so yesterday we had to cover two paragraph’s worth. Both attempts were unsatisfactory (he seemed to have skipped reading in favor of using some commentary I had previously provided to accomplish the summaries—which I take as evidence that his culture’s ignorant and unfortunate reliance on oral tradition still outweighs his reading level). This was disappointing, but that’s okay—the process is half the point.
But then there was one of those moments which make ya lose all hope. As I tried to grease the wheels a bit for the next day (I had read ahead), I said something like, “So as you do tomorrow’s paragraph, keep in mind that yesterday’s had Socrates dealing with politicians, then today’s had him dealing with poets-” I was suddenly interrupted by a boastful, “-Yeah, tomorrow’s is a short paragraph.”
Hmm.
At least he knows what a paragraph is?
As evidenced in “too long to be wrong” and throwing office chairs at gunmen, he’s not wrong in hoping to draw a connection between paragraph length and difficulty of meaning. But he clearly stopped listening at “tomorrow’s paragraph”.
In the end, this whole experience of family and children seems to be an experiment on “purpose”. My revised hypothesis today is, “If there is no purpose, then there can be no test.” This updates what I now see as the laudable—but I’m suspecting will prove to be merely laughable—claim to “teach kids to think”.
Where does purpose originate? Easy: the living god. But who knows his ways?
Onward!
The Interesting News I Want to Read About Trump 2024
No news articles, op/eds, or even letters to the editors about Trump 2024 satisfy.
The cycle has been on repeat since before 2016. Nobody has anything new to say. In sum, …just kidding. I wouldn’t be so cruel as to repeat it once again.
Instead, I would like to offer and record my fantasy. Unbelievable as it is, despite all the coverage of Trump since before I was born, I want more. Isn’t that crazy? Crazy, but true.
This fantasy of mine isn’t knowing the outcome of the election ahead of time. It isn’t knowing some more details about Jan 6 that keep exonerating him of any wrongdoing or learning about more indictments which he uniformly evades unscathed or hearing more locker room talk that is fairly tame compared to any group of sporting men I have ever been among.
My fantasy is that some professional writer or journalist will research and write a long-form article about why and how Trump has consistently caused the news itself to resort to lying. Why do they lie?
Whether democracy can recover is boring. Whether Trump becomes worse than Hitler is boring. Whether Trump commits adultery is boring. But, for me, how one man caused every single journalist to lie is endlessly fascinating. Isn’t it?
From his political opponents who maliciously lie, to the mainstream journalists who lie to protect us, to his fan base who inflate every assertion into coming-of-Christ evangelism, the entire industry is unable to report the truth. Why?
I don’t know for sure. But I’m interested to learn.
I Need Security: Harmless Stupid vs. Insecure Stupid
Everyone knows there is a distinction between “stupid” and “ignorant”. The main difference being “stupid people who mean well” are different than “stupid people”. And we call “stupid people who mean well” “ignorant”.
In my experience, I have come to see one other division of the general category of “stupid”. I see “harmless stupid” as most humor and silly assumptions that do not negatively affect life, even if they do hinder success. One example of this that comes to mind is misattributing cause and effect—not ignorantly—but harmlessly. Like when the regularly scheduled sprinkler system goes off during the outdoor church service and people attribute it to the devil doing devil things. They aren’t ignorant of the situation, they just are stupid.
Different from this kind of stupid is the kind which causes insecurity in life. One easy example of this would be alcoholic parents. They may be great parents most of the time, but the weekly or monthly instances of uncontrollable outbursts or whatever particular scenes unfold (kids trying to wake up passed-out parents etc.) leads to insecurity in life.
With me? Make sense?
Routine, even if for harmlessly stupid reasons, is still secure. “Every Monday after dinner my parents drove exactly the number of miles as the calendar date. I never understood why. Still don’t. But we got ice cream afterwords and it was fun overall.” That’s a bizarre and stupid routine, but it is not problematic.
Put another way, and to get to the point of this post, I value security over intelligence.
Moreover, I do not believe that stupidity is necessarily insecure.
What I am not certain about is if I am actually right. All I know today is that I need security.
My wife hails from one of the most uneducated regions, continents, and countries on the Earth. While dating, I noted many harmlessly stupid comments and observations. (This was/is not too different than any other day, or any other interaction with folks.)
Little anecdotes about “everyone there believes all Americans are rich” were cute to hear and even carried an air of “why would they believe otherwise if the only source was Hollywood films?” intentionally-sympathetic soundness. Couple this with the fact that no educated American wants to admit the reality that, “What you just said is completely without thought at a level that is beyond ignorance and evidences some mixture of mental laziness and legitimate inability to think”—especially if the conversant is BIPOC.
To be clear—I have witnessed first-hand many, many American friends hear my wife tell the same anecdotes and they all respond the same way, ie, no one calls out what each of us plainly hears. And why not?
I cannot answer for anyone but myself, and my no-call was because I believed there was harmless stupidity.
But the other kind, the stupidity which leads to insecurity, that is now something I am dealing with every day. And I don’t know how to right the ship. I don’t know how to course correct.
Readers might offer advice about the big things, like kindness, compassion, empathy. And I wanted to believe those exist, but have slowly been convinced that those are culturally-based postures and so the problem in this culture-clash-called-my-family is not resolved.
So far, my solution has been to try “let’s start with truth” and go from there. “Could we agree to say true things?” But the language barrier is such that even this seemingly simple request relies tremendously on ignoring reality and relying on hopeful intentions.
He said: “What did you buy?”
She said: “Groceries.”
So far so good.
He said: “What is this item?”
She said: “Oh, underwear.”
Setback.
He said: “In your culture is ‘underwear’ in the same category as ‘food and soap’ and other things that we use up?”
She said: “It’s wrong to buy underwear now?!!”
So even something as supposedly universal as “truth” seems out of reach.
Of course, the easy solution is to resign. To simply not care. To “let go and let God”. To choose a “non-fighting” version of “peace” as the higher ground in every moment of every day. But the problem with that is I tell the truth. I don’t tell it in a “I’m just keeping it one hundred” provocateur kinda way (mostly not at least). I just need my words to mean things, and I need my kids to mean the same things when they say the same words.
In other words, I need security.
A Woman in 1899, Another in 1920, and One from 2024
Self-satisfaction begins with reading a variety of books. This morning, already, I have read from F Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise and Jack London’s short story “The White Silence.”
The necessary vital stats of these two giants for this post include London’s work preceding Fitzgerald’s by about 30 years; oh, and London wrote about life in the wild, whereas Fitzgerald wrote about life in, what later would be called, the concrete jungle—the city, specifically high society.
In writing about “life”, they also wrote about women. Women are everywhere, it seems. And not to be avoided.
In order of my reading today, here is a blurb from F Scott on women.
“I’ve got an adjective that just fits you.” This was one of his favorite starts—he seldom had a word in mind, but it was a curiosity provoker, and he could always produce something complimentary if he got in a tight corner.
“Oh—what?” Isabelle’s face was a study in enraptured curiosity.
And, now for the real test, from 30 years earlier and a world away, Jack London’s entry on women.
“Yes, Ruth,” continued her husband, having recourse to the macaronic jargon in which it was alone possible for them to understand each other; “wait until we clean up and pull for the Outside. We’ll take the White Man’s canoe and go to the Salt Water. Yes, bad water, rough water—great mountains dance up and down all the time. And so big, so far, so far away—you travel ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep”—he graphically enumerated the days on his fingers—“all the time water, bad water. Then you come to great village, plenty people, just the same mosquitoes next summer. Wigwams oh, so high—ten, twenty pines. Hi-yu skookum!”
He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance at Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed twenty pines, end on end, by sign language. Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism; but Ruth’s eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her poor woman’s heart.
“And then you step into a—a box, and pouf! up you go.” He tossed his empty cup in the air by way of illustration and. As he deftly caught it, cried: “And biff! down you come. Oh, great medicine men! You go Fort Yukon, I go Arctic City—twenty five sleep—big string, all the time—I catch him string—I say, ‘Hello, Ruth! How are ye?’—and you say, ‘Is that my good husband?’—and I say, ‘Yes’—and you say, ‘No can bake good bread, no more soda’—then I say, ‘Look in cache, under flour; good-by.’ You look and catch plenty soda. All the time you Fort Yukon, me Arctic City. Hi-yu medicine man!”
Ruth smiled so ingenuously at the fairy story that both men burst into laughter. A row among the dogs cut short the wonders of the Outside, and by the time the snarling combatants were separated, she had lashed the sleds and all was ready for the trail.
I know, I know. Way more from London. But it’s to serve a point, my point.
The earlier-dated passage from London required more words as the task before him included also announcing the different cultures.
But they both offer the same comment—and oh, how detestable the situation!
They both convey a man telling a fairy tale to their woman, and they both convey that women are beholden to men.
We are now one hundred years from F Scott and this question is, by my thinking, the pre-eminent question of our time. My generation has no other issue of more importance on the docket.
And for my part, I have determined resolution of the question. This will not shock regular readers.
I can put the matter in one of two ways, a kind of “glass is half-full” version and a kind of “glass is half-empty” version.
Half-empty: Women are no longer beholden to men. And without men, women are actively disintegrating civilization.
Half-full: Wise women would do well to choose to live as if beholden to men, regardless the true nature of their plight.
****
For the record, Ruth is infinitely more attractive to me. According to the text, she displays taking “pleasure” and “ smiles ingenuously.” (Look it up, if you don’t know. I had to.) She also lashed the sleds.
What did Isabelle do? Nothing that an animal in heat couldn’t.
What Exactly Do You Want Me To Do?
“Join me in lifting up these heroes and their families in prayer.”
That’s what Nikki Haley tweeted.
I’m not stupid and I’m not tone deaf. I know that this is the appropriate statement for public consumption after tragedy strikes.
But I am serious and earnestly want to know. It is tragic that Americans are being killed overseas because they’re Americans and I would like to do anything I can to support those who agree that it is a tragedy. So again, what, Mrs. Haley (et al), exactly do you want me to do? Turn agreeable? Blithely nod?
You want me to close my eyes? You want me to close my eyes and bow my head? You want me to talk with my eyes closed and head bowed?
You want me to close my eyes, bow my head, and think thoughts?
You want me to keep my eyes open and look towards outer-space and think thoughts?
You want me to talk to some named, but never seen, invisible being that folks write about, but never see?
You want me to, while thinking about the three dead and dozens injured, speak words in the hearing of others (or no one) that request something of some deceased-but-still-powerful ancestor?
How could I possibly join you if I do not know what you mean?
****
Wouldn’t it be nice if people actually said something that meant something?
Something like, “If, like me, you believe that there is only one god powerful enough to comfort mourners, meter justice, and grant forgiveness, one living god that was, is, and is to come, the King of kings and Lord of lords, that his name is Jesus Christ, then join me tonight, at 8pm EST in reciting the prayer he taught us to prayer.”
Yeah, that’d be something worth posting.
I Have Two and a Half Other Children
It’s true. I have two and a half other children besides H-. I barely write about them on here. I think I have written about my step-son (he makes up the “half”), A-, the most, and I can recall writing one post about my other daughter, A-. I do not believe I have mentioned my son, J-. If I had to guess, I believe I don’t mention him because he, unsurprisingly, carries all my hopes and dreams. I think I’m trying to say, with my son, that it’s the same as how we don’t tell the birthday wish after we blow out the candles. You won’t get a chance to know him on here. Only time will tell if you have the opportunity in real life.
But I have written a whole series of posts, generally categorized, ‘The Daughter Project’, about H-. And my last post was not just written about her, but to her. (Though in it I did write some facts about her ((that she has been kidnapped by her mother)) as I pleaded with her to “wake up”. Upon consideration of that post’s purpose and this blog’s content as a whole, I found myself almost motivated to rename the blog once again, this time to something like, “Revelatory Blog Posts from One of the Many Divorced American Dad’s Who Desire to Father Their Children on the Topic of ‘How Vicious Women Can Be as Measured by How Absolutely Impotent Her Ex is from Stopping Her Heinous Moral Crimes Against Their Child’, Among Other Interesting Musings.” But given how few blogs are actually written by humans (not AI), and how few of those are written by men, and how few of those are updated with any regularity by men doing anything other than expressing bitterness, I realized, “Pete’s Blog” pretty much does the same job–and it’s much easier to remember.
I want to tell you something I have never written about on here.
I want to tell you what I believe is the real beef between her and I.
Aaron Sorkin, the Hollywood writer/director, offers writer’s the tip, “Each line of dialogue should be an attack. And every argument is always about something beneath whatever the stated topic is.” (I’m paraphrasing.) I really like that. I like it because it is clear and easy to follow for writers, and I like it because I believe it is true. Sure, some folks may not always attack, and some folks may legitimately be superficial, but these folks clearly are missing out on the good parts of life.
I can only imagine what my ex tells her family and friends as she describes her crimes. Everyone loves playing defense these days, so it wouldn’t surprise me if all she said was, “I have loved him from the moment I heard there was a ‘big white guy’ in the studio. I really do want him to play a role in H-‘s life,” and subsequently the whole room always rushed to her aide.
For my part, when I talk about my ex-wife’s crimes against me and our daughter, the general response I get is, “I hate when people use the kids against each other,” and, “That sucks that she is using your daughter to hurt you.” As the respondent begins, I always take careful note to learn if anyone is willing to enter the fray and claim that either of the adults (me or her) need a defense or to be attacked to my face. Nope. They do not. Instead they stick to the fairly obvious and fairly neutral, “DON’T HURT CHILDREN!!” claim in all its agreeableness and wisdom. In other words, people–even friends, especially friends–do not attack her, or defend me. Truth be told, as I candidly mentioned last post, if my family and friends do any attacking, it is against me for writing and posting these stupid posts. Aside from that, the only human being who certainly is attacking anyone (outside of me and my nightly imprecatory prayers to the Most High God, Yahweh Elohim–ineffective as they are) is my ex. And she is only attacking H-.
On to it, on to the raison d’etre of this post. I told you that besides informing ya’ll about my family demographics that may not always come across and I like to believe may have a softening effect on the man behind the blog, I wanted to take a moment and describe, for H-‘s sake, what I imagine is the “real” fight/argument between her mom and I. I want to take a moment, crazy as it may be, to reveal my best guess as to what her mom really has had beef with for at least this past 11 years of being divorced. Ready, H-? Ready, dear reader?
H-‘s mom, unlike me, really loved me. As in, she really wanted to not be divorced from me.
Three clues that lead me to this conclusion.
Firstly, when we were in front of the judge for the first and only time we both appeared together in a court room, even he, the judge, commented how well we seemed to get along. I was, naturally, unconcerned with truth and just doing whatever my instincts instructed would be the winning action/speech to get the hell out of there alive. In the moment, I assumed K- was doing the same. Like a traffic stop on steroids. Survive. That’s the goal. But then one of the weirdest moments of all my life occurred in the elevator down, which we, for some reason, got into at the same time. K- said to me, “Well, who knows? Maybe we’ll get remarried.” I knew then, by the speed of the transition of the look on her face from hope to hate, that without a doubt I wear my feelings on my sleeve.
Secondly, I can’t take sole credit for developing this imaginary scenario of mine. One of the only people to truly listen and try to figure out how someone could still care enough to keep pursuing the crime after seven years was the first to state it. This co-worker said something like, “She must have really been hurt.”
My immediate reaction was like, “What do you mean? Hurt by what? Hurt by who? Me?” It’s actually a bit daunting to consider what I saw as the conclusion of this co-worker’s assertion. I started thinking, that my ex-wife–miserable, vindictive wench that she is–actually loved me and wanted to remain married to me or get remarried to me despite all the unpleasantness of our 6+ year marriage. All the more daunting because I just never did. I had even said, “If it doesn’t work, we can just get divorced,” casually on or near the day I proposed.
I have never been one to hide my faults. I have never been one to deny my sins. And I suspect this is where I am different from most people. I have no problem baldly saying, “I never really loved you. I never really cared about you. There were many outside variables–most of which stemmed from my view of sexual union–that led to my proposal.” I just don’t shy away from confessing shameful things like that. “Let’s get the truth in the air and then figure out the path forward” has always been my modus operandi.
Keep in mind, I also believe that “let’s get the truth in the air” is what is happening all day long by our actions. The distinction I draw or ask for help in drawing is that I believe we should intentionally match our words to our actions. K- was no happy wife/mother. She still isn’t. Her actions said so and say so.
Thirdly, the final piece of the puzzle that assures me that my imaginary world of her “love” for me and wish to remarry is the fact that she got remarried, only after I did. The difference, of course, is that I barely dated–and never lived with a girlfriend for the 6+ years between divorce and wedding. Slow down and read that again. I had 6 years of living alone–and after trying some dating for the first 3 years of renewed bachelorhood–was single for the next 3 until I met my current wife. And we did not live together until we were married. My ex, on the other hand, continued where she left off back when I became her bankbook of the hour. Since our separation, a year before the divorce was final, she had live-in boyfriend after live-in boyfriend. As much as I can cherry pick all the disastrous women I have heard of and conclude that I disdain the female sex in its entirety, believe me when I say that I am well aware that the male is equally as terrible. What kind of man moves in with a single mother–a single mother collecting child support and kidnapping the child as if the father, me, is on the penal farm? Horrible men, that’s who. Tried and true “mother effers”. It’s in the name, folks. But she found them and invited them in. Yet, she wouldn’t marry them, or they didn’t ask, or she didn’t pressure them to ask with the “get the milk from the cow for free” BS that made me feel guilty all these many years ago.
But she loves me still. And I don’t love her at all, never did.
That is the underlying disagreement that all the surface dialogue attacks about child support and parenting time is truly about.
****
What do you think, H-? In your almost 14 year old wisdom, does every marriage have to be based on love? And does every divorce have to be based on equitable lack of love? And do empirical facts have any role to play in determining what love is?
Finally, H-, I’d love to hear how you justify your treatment (or lack thereof) of A-, A-, and J-, otherwise known as your ‘brothers and sister’. Do you know that I barely say your name around them anymore, to protect them? Is that what you want? Or are you gonna reengage sometime soon and I can remind them of their big sister? For what it’s worth, J- is so young and promising that he probably won’t display any care, taking the wisest of stances if/when he decides to speak about it. Something like, “I always figured things would change when the right situation presented itself.” So while you two need each other, the age and gender gap is just too big anyhow. I will tell you, though, that taken together with how much your mom is hurting you, you’re doubly losing by not having A- in your life. I can already see that. She has so much love and energy to give. The four of us can’t receive it all. So please start using your grey matter and come back to us.
What will you do?
Wake Up, H-. You’re Being Lied to by Your Mother.
It really bothers me that my choice of wife has resulted in the kidnap of my daughter. These days, I think it probably best to say “kidnap/runaway.” I think the addition of runaway better reveals the indifference and poor parenting involved. We’re not talking about a fairy tale here. We’re talking about years long moral crimes by mothers and all who support them.
Coming a close second to the fact of physical separation and the resultant lack of influence by yours truly is the absolute nonsense behind the idea that I, me, have any responsibility for the situation. Let me be clear: I don’t cause these crimes.
Not only have I done nothing (ever) that any reasonable person would think indicates that I don’t want to raise or can’t raise or shouldn’t raise my daughter, I have only ever acted with the intent to raise my daughter. Do you know how easy it would be to quit these days?
My intent is evident all the way from the fact that I have a job down to the fact that I have never—not ever—suggested that her mom not get time to raise her. She’s your kid too, dummy! Of course you get the chance to screw her up like your parents screwed you up!
Physiological effects surface by just typing this description of the perverse nature of the situation: a mother kidnapping her daughter from the father while stealing his money to foot the mealticket and nearly every single witness, the judge, and the jury look away. Does God?
It bothers me.
Did I ever mention on here that despite thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars being stolen by H-’s mom that when I finally saw H- again, she was wearing socks with more than one hole in them? That they were thin as tissue?
Do you see the three-fold problem with that, dear reader? First, no one over there has thought to teach her self-respect. Second, “Buy the kid some friggin’ socks!” And third, “Pay attention to your kid’s socks!”
Why is my daughter clothed like a pauper when the money you steal should have her keeping up with the Kardashians? Or do you work for me and not have money left over for H-? I wonder what your husband thinks of his benfactor? Sounds fun. Maybe someday his balls will drop.
The great flaw of Christianity, if it can be called that, is exemplified by the following question that constantly circles my situation. The folks who put this question to me usually preface it with, “Now don’t get upset, but…”
The question is, “Is there anything you are doing to cause this situation?”
I want to answer them, “Uh, yeah. Tons of things. Like, breathing. And eating. And putting one foot in front of the other. The other day I turned on the water; I think that had something to do with it,” but instead an anger of the hottest kind boils over into, “I AM NOT CAUSING THIS!! IT IS NOT A SITUATION WHICH IS AN EFFECT OF A CAUSE!!” (That use of capital letters is meant to convey yelling in the most passionate rage.)
Some people, it seems, live on a planet where there is a balance book, a zero sum world. In their world, if you help an old lady across the street a couple times as a kid, then your future ex-wife is morally grounded, narrowly avoiding the ever-present call all women face to embody a virulent waif. On the other hand, if you discard every instinct and signal your body sends, in favor of optimism, and accordingly marry someone (whose action of leaning over in her car, as the two of you drive separately from her job to the restaurant of your first date, is, you later find out, for the purpose of taking a hit of weed), divorce her later before the madness spirals totally out of control, and write—with uncommon voice, vocabulary, and velocity—both how you feel about the State you served’s defense of a mother’s right to kidnap and neglect a child, rob the father, and that she never once, not once, ever, never ever supports herself (or her daughter) financially, then it’s open season on you.
Sorry, Bible-believers, but if you really thought that “choice of spouse” was that important, then that should’ve been the end of the matter and we can forget about the whole Gospel thing.
But you and I both know that life is about much more than marriage and family relationships, don’t we? That’s right. We do.
The thing, in short, is this.
Every bone in my body tells me I am right, tells me my way of seeing—not everything—but this situation is reality.
I would be betraying myself, I have betrayed myself, by giving time and action to the notion that I somehow, in some way, play a role in the situation. That is simply not true. It is an untenable option.
I want my daughter, I have always wanted my daughter, and I have done nothing to push her away from me. Never. Even the divorce was my way of trying to save her from experiencing her mother for at least some of her childhood—exactly half, if I had my way.
Instead, all my efforts have dropped me off on soil where I am the one who never sees H-.
This bothers me. It depresses me. It makes me want to quit. Quit with a capital Q. I feel like ending all effort and just vegging out on the couch in front of the tv. No more work, no more parenting my other kids. No more reading. No more piano. No more nuthin’. Just leave me alone.
But I persist. I persevere.
Why? Because if I was H-, and this daydream may be my fatal flaw, if I was H-, then I would want to know that I had experienced violence at the hands of the only person I trusted. In other words, if I was H-, I would want to know I had been kidnapped.
I would want to know.
****
Half the reason I am motivated to “keep on, keepin’ on” in life is the quest to find reality. What is real? Put differently, am I alone?
Reality for me, I guess, means peace. It means evidence of order—irrespective of feelings. Reality is not the chaos caused by passions. Most importantly, reality is worth fighting for.
Am I really a deadbeat dad, deemed by society as unworthy of raising my own child? Is that the reality? Am I really some maladjusted, bitter, and just plain mean terrorist of a man, being justly punished for an unending reign of terror—but a man who is always one moment away from changing his ways to the reward of being reunited with his daughter? Is that reality?
Or, or, or, are those and other grandiose fantasies being perpetuated from every angle with all intensity upon an unsuspecting teenage girl who finds herself bound by a seemingly unbreakable spell made up of an unrelenting dark web of lies and half-truths cast by her own mother?
Reality, for me, is the latter. But H- is the one who must decide. So I persist. Because she is my daughter and worth fighting for.
Her Idle Hands
In an EMS job (I just learned this during some yearly recurrent CBT), you have to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice. It can make things like “eating” difficult. For example, yesterday I was grazing successfully for the first six hours of the shift, and then boom!, got a call at 3pm, and upon completion of that one, almost having returned to base, got a follow-on call that kept me out until 1059pm. That’s eight hours, folks. Luckily, I carry two Clif Bars, (one regular, one protein) on my person and a Gatorade in the aircraft. Simply put, I survived. (Didn’t even have to crack open the protein one.)
Another aspect of the job is that you leave the office in disarray, not having time to properly cleanup when the call drops. That’s the stimulus for this post.
I was in the middle of some Psalm reading when the call came, the second and third Psalms.
I didn’t really think about leaving the open Bible for my counterpart pilot to see when he came on shift while I was out, but when I got back to the office, after my truly heroic effort to impose security and peace of mind on the public, I saw it again and couldn’t help but wonder if he snuck a peek. He probably didn’t.
But I like to daydream and the following is my daydream.
****
“I saw you were reading the Psalms, Pete. Did you leave that for me to see? You trying to convert me?”
“Ha. No. I don’t think it happens like that. And I can’t say I knew whether or not you were redeemed until just this moment.”
“Touché.”
Pause.
Then he began again, “Why do you read that book? I don’t see the point.”
“Well, it’s like this. First, it’s true. Jesus really is Yahweh, the God of the Bible, in the flesh. And the Son of God. And ‘Ya’ll need Jesus’ as the meme goes. All that is true. But the reason for reading it is best put like this.
“You know my ex wife kidnapped my daughter, right? I’ve mentioned as much, yes?”
“Yup.”
“Can you help me get her back?”
“Uh. Seriously? Or hypothetically? I mean, you know that I am ready to rock’n’roll Taken-style, just say the word.”
“Nice. But without using force. Can you help me?”
“I don’t see how I could. So no.”
“I agree. You can’t help. Don’t feel bad. I’m making a bigger point. Here are the facts. My parents can’t help either. My wife can’t help. My children can’t help. I have no friends who can help. Mediation can’t help. Lawyers, even if they persuade the judge, aren’t ‘enforcement’, and so they can only help on paper. And the Judge also isn’t enforcement, and so he/she can only wish to help. Finally, no law enforcement actually has time or concern to help. It isn’t exactly prime optics to yank kids out of one of their parent’s arms—not to mention domestic disturbance calls are known escalate so quick that no one is interested in being around for the fireworks, regardless of the principles and titles involved.”
“When you put it that way, I do not envy you.”
“Thanks. In any case, I hope you see why I might read the Psalms. Forget Jesus for a minute. Forget history. Forget all the nonsense we chatted about a few weeks ago regarding the misconceptions of the Bible being translations of translations etc. Just listen to this,
He who sits in the heaven laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.
“And,
I lay down and slept; I awoke, for Yahweh sustains me.
“When I see the world, when I see my little situation and extrapolate it out to others’ situations and even the biggest situations, like wars and such, I cannot find any hope. I mean that I despair. Truly. You don’t want to know. But these words—the idea they hold—the idea that the powers I see are not the highest powers, well, these words become my hope and my prayer.
“‘LORD: for whatever reason, there is no hope down here. In a tone familiar to you, ‘None can help me, no not one’. Can you? Will you? Prove yourself.’
“That’s why I read the Bible.”
“Hmm. I can’t say I will get there from here, but I hope it works. Let me know, will ya?”
“I doubt I could stop updating you even I wanted to. Ha.”
****
On the topic, do you want to hear what the mediator (would’ve thought he was supposed to maintain neutrality…) actually had the balls to say to me? He said, “I did want to tell you that I applaud you for trying so hard to stay in your daughter’s life.”
What does one do with that betrayal?
Umm…thanks? I mean, the only thing I ever did to “leave” my daughter was determine that kids cost money, and then apply for a job, accept the position, and go to work as scheduled. I will never understand how that has resulted in “losing” my daughter. Seriously, her mom has literally never worked full time in the last 18 years. Think about that. And the result is the kidnapping of a child, robbing me, and unilaterally influencing our daughter? Idle hands are the devil’s playground, after all, it seems.
LORD: for whatever reason, there is no hope down here. None can help me, no not one. Can you? Will you? Prove yourself.
Marriage and Family: Arty D vs. Louie Lah vs. C Frazier, A Corner-Joint Review of “Through the Magic Door”, “Passin’ Through”, and “Cold Mountain”, by the Aforementioned Three Greats
Sir Doyle’s book is a must-read for book lovers with a personal library (or bookshelf), but definitely can be skipped by all others. The best moments of it are of the nature of the best moments of all of life, which is to say, the best moments are those in which we unwittingly reveal our core beliefs. For this knight, it comes out in his statements about the barbarians or uncivilized (or the like) that still exist today, but of course we stopped labeling them as such pretty much when the likes of Doyle died.
Mr. L’Amour’s book was exactly what you would expect for an author whose works have sold over 300 million copies worldwide.
And then we come to Mr. Frazier’s masterpiece. Oddly, I first heard of Cold Mountain when in the USAF’s OTS in Alabama after college (you need a degree to be a US military officer, and need to be an officer to be a pilot), and had arranged the third of three terribly awkward and resoundingly terminal “let’s meet up since we spent so much time playing SOCOM together online” rendez-vous’. This online pal was a professor’s assistant or something and so I figured it couldn’t be too weird. And it wasn’t. But the only movie worth seeing after grabbing a bite was Cold Mountain. I figured it looked kinda like Braveheart, so I was a bit surprised how it felt so “Notebook-ee” when viewing with a veritable stranger. Not that I regret the meetup. Live and learn, I say.
I watched the movie later in life for whatever reason and fell in love with it. I bought the piano music even. I even, while in Denver, tracked down a “Sacred Harp” group and used to traipse all the way to it when I could, carrying H- in tow. I probably posted about that actually. H- was adorable at those types of things back then. If you haven’t been, the dozen or so participants sit facing each other in a square. And one person stands in the middle and leads the acapella singing, using a particular and simple arm movement to keep everyone on time. When it was H-’s turn, without blinking or thinking, she just stood up and went to the middle, arm at the ready. So funny and instructional. Form the kids, I say. They can do it.
That was close to a decade ago, and a dozen views of the film. As I looked for something to read with my wife (we started with “The Age of Innocence”), I picked up the book. I figured it had to be good if they made a movie. But I didn’t count on how tricky the English is. Most literate native speakers can handle it, if book sales and ticket sales mean anything, but I found that nearly every sentence contained so much meaning—and maybe just to me and my imagination—that I couldn’t read it to my wife and believe that she was following any of it. In retrospect, it was probably more the simple setting of the Civil War American South than anything else that I saw as the barrier. Try explaining the richness of that history to an alien. As I’m sure they (aliens) have—actually we all know they hold grudges longer than we of the West, how else can you explain Africa?—there is just too much passion and indignation and family, not to mention—or dare I mention—principle involved in that great war for the future of America to be captured by words. And folks who don’t interact with the land of America, just the fruits of America—in other words, “the rest of the world”—just can’t “get it”. They can’t. It’s parroting at best, and falsehood at worst.
How do the three relate? Whether Doyle had any idea he was doing so or not, the way his book ended lumped him into the category of the other two, by virtue of climaxing on the concept of marriage and family. I think Louise writes love stories because he knows women read more than men. Frazier wrote his because it was kinda family legend/history. And then Doyle somehow arrived at marriage and family because he randomly began his trek along his bookshelves at such a point that the end of his collection included Stevenson’s works, thus the platform to display awareness that Robert just chose to bypass marriage/family altogether when writing his classics. It lead to Doyle’s best line, “How many [men] go through the world without ever loving at all?”
Captain’s Log 