Big Book Report:Leviticus

When I recently told our pastor that I was reading the Bible cover to cover, he expressed admiration for my project, but warned that many people get stuck in Leviticus, which is only the third book. That's where I'm at now, slogging my way through. I've survived God's lengthy cookbooks, as told to Moses, of how various animal and grain sacrifices are to be done. Now I'm in the part where God is giving detailed instructions to the people about what is and is not to be eaten.

For instance, pork: ceremonially unclean. Shellfish, rabbit, any predator or carrion-eater, all forbidden. Most insects are forbidden, except for grasshoppers and such. It reminded me of a conversation I had one time with Jewell Scott, Nan's old hospice patient. We were talking about different kinds of meat. She praised groundhog, but expressed disgust over possum and those who eat it, because possums eat "cyarn." (carrion).

Of course my thoughts spin off to wonder how God-fearing people got to where they eat all the forbidden things now. And yet some of those same God-fearing people use quotes from Leviticus that take place a few chapters later to persecute gays. It seems odd to me.

Also there is a statement in the study guide talking about how there is no longer any need to perform animal sacrifices for God, because Jesus made himself a sacrifice for all times, so that no more animal sacrifices are needed. But I'm not sure where that idea originates, because I don't think it's in the Bible itself. Or maybe later in the Acts of the Apostles, the thinking of the early Christians will be clear. (Update: Apparently, the New Testament Book of Hebrews goes into all that in detail, explaining why Christian observances differ from Jewish observances. Maybe if I settle my nerves it will all make more sense later.)

I'm still fascinated by the fact that people use the Bible so much for what are essentially political battles in the present time. Those people who are literalists seem to pick and choose what they want to take literally, or maybe somebody picks and chooses for them. I have to study this in more detail. It's fascinating to me.

My Gerald Ford Story

My brush with greatness--one time I shook the hand of President Gerald Ford. He inherited the job when Nixon resigned, then was for the full time job against Jimmy Carter (and went on to lose). Ford was coming to Bay St. Louis to make a speech and then he was going on up the road. Some of my friends were more into politics than I was, but I thought it would be cool to ride my bike out to the brand new public library to see the President.

I rode up there and stood with a sizable crowd in a roped off area beside Highway 90. A podium was already set up bearing the Presidential Seal and serious men in dark suits with walkie talkies were milling around. I also saw a number of local politicians there with big grins, shaking hands, working the situation. A Greyhound bus pulls up and unloads a bunch of reporters and other people, who set up equipment. I recognize Iris Kelso, political reporter from the TV station in New Orleans. This was the real deal!

More vehicles pull up. Finally with a big fanfare three or four limos come rolling in, and out hops Gerald Ford with his posse. He works his way up the crowd, then ascends to the podium.

He speaks in a stilted, emphatic way. I don't remember what all he said, but I do recall this: "I drove through your area of remarkable natural beauty--truly a sportsman's paradise--and I want to say that AS LONG AS I AM PRESIDENT THERE. WILL. BE. NO. GUN CONTROL!!" He hammered those last words home, banging his fist into his palm with each word. I thought, well, that was kind of random. He said one or two other things, the cameras cut off, he hopped down and started working his way down the crowd.

He was shaking hands with both hands as his limo crawled up behind him and his bodyguards scanned the crowd. (Somebody had already tried to shoot him, you know. Wasn't it one of the Manson girls? I think so.) I got a quick left-handed grasp and release! I can still feel it in my hand. It's in there. It's lodged in the muscle memory.

So that was my brush with greatness. Jimmy Carter did make it to Biloxi, but never came through Bay St. Louis. (Ironically, since Katrina all the living Presidents and ex-Presidents besides Ford have been to Bay St. Louis and Waveland multiple times. Sad. I wish they could have seen us when we looked nice.)
In 1976, I wanted to favor Carter because he was from the South, but I remember being scared of the Democrats, because my dad thought they were weak-minded. But I was also leery of Ford, because my dad liked him. I always thought the Republicans were like the mean old men in the neighborhood who would yell at you for walking through their yard.

Get Back

John Lennon has taken me back. This is from the original rooftop concert, their last public performance.

The Little People

Here's a story my Mom told me, from when she was a little girl in pre-war Germany. She swears it's true.

Mom and her older brother used to gather berries in the forest and sell them in the market. Her brother would keep the money and give my Mom just enough to buy some ice cream. Mom said that she always picked way more berries than her brother, because the little people would show her where the berries were. The little people lived in burrows under the ground. They were very shy and would only reveal themselves to big people they could trust.

Towards the end of berry season, there weren't many berries left to pick and her brother told her that she hadn't brought enough berries to get any ice cream. So, Mom sat down in the woods and started to cry. Some of the little people came up and asked her what was wrong and she told them. One beckoned her to follow him and led her to a small hole in the ground, then spread his arms wide as if to say, "Here!" The hole was full of money--coins of every type. Mom filled her basket with as much as she could carry.

When she got home, her father asked her where she had gotten all that money and she said, "The little people gave it to me." He had her take him to where the hole in the ground was, and it was still there. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, okay then. You can keep it."

Lessons Learned from Painful Life Experience #1

Do not pop an Atomic Fireball in your mouth if you have strep throat.

Neocons = Liberalism for Old Guys

Another example of where you get the real news:



Also, here is a lengthy but brilliant examination of GWB by Ron Suskind that goes a long way to explain our present disaster. Published in October 2004, but more true today than ever.

While I'm on the subject, here is an insightful new article from Mark Danner, ostensibly a book review, called Iraq: A War of Imagination.

Next of Kindred Spirit

This one goes out to my homies and especially my guitar hero homies. Here's Sonny:

Another stupid holiday movie...

Rachel Becomes a Buddhist



Rachel announced to us the other day that Buddhism makes a lot of sense to her, so she is a Buddhist now. So far so good. She was quite pleasant over the weekend, although her first try at meditation (on a rock outside) was interrupted by the noise of the neighbor washing down his dumptruck.

We're supportive of her new path. I reminded her that there is no such thing as an emo Buddhist.

Our Cave

Yesterday Nathan and I finally found our cave, after five years of not being sure where it was. The old dude we bought the house from said there was supposed to be one, and last year Nan was down on the bottom and two young boys asked her if we'd been to the cave, but we weren't quite sure where it was. I finally thought I spotted it near the top of our cliff.

And what a cool little cave it is. We didn't have a flashlight yesterday, so today we went back with Nan and the kids and Abigail, who thought surely there had to be a Frisbee in there. Awesome cool. I only had a crappy flashlight, so we didn't get to explore it thoroughly. (But I have put flashlight on my Christmas list at Grandma's and I hear that I'm going to be getting about five.)

So we'll be back, next time without the little kids, especially Adrian, who navigated the cliff just fine but couldn't handle the cave itself, because of the monsters and bears. Three bats were hibernating just inside the entrance, but they just added to the awesomeness of it.

How cool. Lived here five years and just found our cave yesterday. Nathan asked if it was our cave and I told that it was on our property, but really it's God's cave, I guess. He wondered what a cave would do for our property value. I told him I wasn't sure, but it can't hurt. That would be a specialty item not on most appraiser's lists.

So we have our own cave! I can't get over it! Don't hate me because I have a cave. Get your own cave.

Teef

Adrian and Miriam counted their own teeth. Adrian has 13 teeth, while Miriam, not to be outdone, has 40.

10 Commandments

I'm at the part now where Moses is trying to hold down an unruly bunch at the foot of Mt. Sinai. God gives him the 10 Commandments, among a host of other laws and rules. Fascinating. God tells Moses among many other things, "But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise." (Exodus 21: 23-25).

Reading this causes things in my mind to circle back. I'm remembering reading Flannery O'Connor stories, like Wise Blood, in which mean, hard men quote the Bible with blood in their eyes.

It also takes me back to being in college, a bad Catholic boy who had not gone to church since I left home. I walked down to the local SVD church, Holy Ghost. The priest was a black man, big and strong like a football player. He recognized me as a stranger and caught me on my way out the door. He asked me to come visit him, which I did. I explained my story, and he asked me if I wanted to have Confession. What could I say?

I grew up with the pre-Vatican II confessionals, where the priest sat in the middle and the sinners crept through a curtain and kneeled on either side before a small screened door. When it was your turn, the priest would slide a small door open and would still be hidden behind a cloth screen like a speaker grille. He'd whisper some prayers in a rapid Irish lilt, and then you would go. I would rapidly mumble my stock collection of sins: I had lied, I had dishonored my parents, I had coveted some. Sometimes a bigger sin might be lurking in my heart but I would dare not speak it. Father might bust through the wall and kill me, or worse: give me a heavy penance.

The priest would listen and then pronounce my sentence, usually just a few Hail Mary's and an Act of Contrition*. Occasionally an unfamiliar priest or even a familiar one would get on a wild tear and throw you an absolutely horrendous punishment like 12 Our Fathers. You would do it, of course, because the priest was Jesus' stand-in, but it was hard not to feel somehow screwed over. Sometimes Father would lose his mind entirely and suggest that you do something in real life to make your sin right, which would cause a horrible feeling of sadness, because so seldom was I willing to do more than say a few prayers and then head out with a clean slate for the next 30 minutes or so.

*The Act of Contrition never made sense to me when I first learned it, because I thought it started out, "Oh my God, I am hardly sorry for having offended Thee." You're actually supposed to be heartily sorry. That one took me a while to get straight. There's a lot going on in the Catholic thing when you're learning it and I spent a lot of time scared to ask questions.

Then Vatican II came along and there were all these reforms that slowly rolled out, among which was the Sign of Peace during Mass, an awkward spell of shaking hands with your friends and avoiding eye contact with all others. Another innovation was the Face to Face Confession, in which it was just you and Father in two chairs facing each other. Gulp. I think this was one of the things in my teen years that caused me to go into my shell and become funny (funny strange, not funny ha ha) as my Mom used to call me.

So, anyway, I'm sitting there with Fr. Linebacker knee to knee, all intimidated, doing a totally unplanned-for Confession. I go tharn. I can't speak. Fr. Ray Lewis grows visibly irritated with me and says, "Well, let's go down through the 10 Commandments. Let's start with the first one..." I broke out in a sweat. I can't remember much after that. All I know is that once I finally got turned loose, I never went back to Holy Ghost again. I've always been a chickenshit. Every time I think of the 10C, I go back to my experience of having been waterboarded.

Right now I am unable to detach myself from my own nostalgia and sense of having always been a half-assed Christian to get any perspective on the place and value of the 10 Commandments. Do I think there ought to be a marble statue of them at the local courthouse? No. Am I going to agitate to have one taken away, if there were? No. It seems to me like the extremists always get their way because they're the ones with balls enough to make things happen, while people like me sit around and ponder.

Origins

I settled for myself that the Bible is not literal, although I'm not yet on solid enough ground to fight that out with anybody. What I read so far made the most sense to me as being a story of the origins of the Hebrews and their relationship with God.

I got to reading up on it, and as usual, the whole thing is very much more complicated than I thought. Just in regard to the early books of the Old Testament alone, there are numerous theories.

One that makes sense to me is the Documentary Hypothesis which holds that there are actually five different authors of the material credited to Moses. Fascinating. Maybe my sanity can be restored. Maybe not. I don't feel so crazy now. I have decided that the very literal-minded study guide is crazy, though.

John

I hesitate to post this now, but I can't wait. My newest finished piece. This is for my Secret Santa and she won't get it until next Thursday at our office Christmas party. I don't think she'll see this blog before then. She is a very conservative, very religious person, but also a Beatles freak, and especially a John Lennon freak. Ain't life grand?

By coincidence I finished this on the day after the anniversary of his death. I will never forget the night he died. I was sitting with friends in Rusty Cunningham's room in Galloway D-3 at Millsaps, partying when we should have been studying. We were idly talking about who we thought would be the first Beatle to die. My pick was Paul, but I can't remember why. While we were having this conversation, the news came over the radio.

This is a satisfying piece, although it is not so original. I didn't take this photo, obviously, nor did I render it into this monochrome. But it translated suprisingly well to the mosaic form. It is fascinating to me how the mind, with so little information, based on angles and lines of say a nose or the shape of a jaw, can not only identify this as a person, but can beyond that identify it specifically as John Lennon, of all the billions of faces out there. Isn't that cool? That's what I like best about this piece. It's also interesting that when you look at it up close, it's just muddled tiles. You get some distance away, the pattern makes more sense.

Baby Gots Money

Yesterday Nan ran into Grandma and Dale at the Wal-Mart (the new town square of Lee County) with Baby, and Grandma deftly transferred Baby to Nan's care and hightailed it. She did leave a $10 bill for Baby to use for truck he had picked out, and when she presented the bill to Baby, he studied the portrait and shouted, "Hey Grandma, it's you!"

The Nativity

Miriam and Adrian were in the church Christmas play. Adrian was a camel. He made a grand entrance by walking into a wall, which drew a big laugh from an audience that was dying to see something cute. He was then feeling his moment, so he proceeded to clown nonstop, just out of my reach. He put up his dukes and challenged the nearby angels, "You wanna fight with a camel?"

Miriam, as the Blessed Mother, kept telling him to shut up but she was not his boss. Not tonight.


Baby missed out on the play--he couldn't reliably hold up the M for Merry Christmas--but later at the dinner, I set him up. We ask him, "What was Adrian in the play?" He shouts, "A camel!" We ask, "Who was Miriam in the play?" Baby shouts, "Miriam!" We're like, no, no, wrong. I say, "Miriam was a witch!" Baby shouts, "Miriam was a witch!" I checked him several more times to make sure he got it right. I'm going to ask him for those details when I see him down at Grandma's, in front of everybody. Can't wait.

Obi Wan Kenobi

When Nathan was little he loved action figures. When the new and improved Star Wars came back around, everyone was getting him the 12" Star Wars figures for Christmas. He was going to get all of them for Christmas--Nan has a large family, and at that time Nathan was That Baby, and he always got his share, big time. But Obi Wan Kenobi was scarce--one of those suspicious shortages of one certain item of a popular set of stuff. My Mom asked what Nathan wanted, and I said, "Hey, see if you can find him an Obi Wan Kenobi figure down there (on the Coast)." I talked to her again a few weeks later and she says, "I have looked everywhere for that Mister Nick Nock and nobody has it. I've looked everywhere."

Family Glossary: I'm not tattlin', but I just thought you needed to know...

This one comes from our niece Chelsie, the youngest of the three rowdy cousins, and the snitch of the bunch. After being fussed at for tattling, she would come in and say, "Okay, I'm not tattlin', but I just thought you needed to know that Kayla called Tori a bitch."

So we use that one from time to time. "I'm not tattlin', but I just thought you needed to know..."

Who Dat

Reggie gets in on the fun, taking a screen pass 60 yards through the entire Dallas D for one of six, shall I say easy, touchdowns. Cool deal when Brees took a knee four straight times inside the Dallas 9-yard line, then gave the ball back to Dallas, and Parcells took them off life support by having Romo do the same to end the bloodbath.

Big Book Report: Moses

I'm in Exodus, where the narrative moves swiftly and contains many more of the key big events of the early days. Moses is a Hebrew who was raised by the Egyptians, and who returned to the Hebrews when he was on the run from a murder. Moses sees the burning bush, God gives him the task to go back to Egypt and set his people free. Moses whines and begs, but finally agrees.

No sooner does Moses head back for Egypt, when we get this fascinating detail, from Exodus 4:24: "At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses, and was about to kill him." (The Lord was going to kill Moses because he had not circumcised his children, and Moses' wife had to hurry up and do it to save his life. God didn't play in those times.) Circumcision was a ritual that separated the Hebrews from the not-Hebrews. What does it suggest that in the narrative, God was so serious about circumcision that he was about to kill Moses over it immediately after he commissioned him to go free his people? Moses' wife had to intervene quickly to get the circumcision problem dealt with. Clearly, it's a story telling device to suggest that Moses had to get his personal ducks in a row.

With this passage, I had the sense that God was trying to tell me something. And what I think God was trying to tell me is that indeed the Bible is not meant to be literal storytelling, and that I should just settle that issue once and for all for myself. Growing up in Catholic School, we never took the Bible literally. Only today have the religious right made it seem unchristian to use your God-given mind to read the thing.

Here's another example of the same thing. Let's go back to the story of Jacob. Jacob was the second son to Isaac, and Esau was the rightful heir. However, Jacob was his mother Rebekah's pick, so she decided to hoodwink Isaac, who by then had failing vision, into thinking that he was giving his blessing to Esau when he was in fact giving it to Jacob. One thing momma Rebekah did was to cover Jacob's forearms with sheepskin, to simulate Esau's hairy arms, in case Isaac checked. Of course, the fascinating narrative detail is that indeed, Isaac did check and was convinced by the hairy arms that he was dealing with Esau. (Gen. 27: 11-39). As I read this, I could see that there are obvious narrative storytelling elements. It was similar to Red Riding Hood, in which Riding Hood says, "Grandmother, what big teeth you have."

So I'm freed up. I don't feel like I have to worry about the literal truth of the words themselves. I think the issue is settled in my heart. So instead I can start getting a sense of the real truth. One real truth is that the Bible is a record of man's relationship with God and God's relationship with man. Beyond that, it is a story of how man's understanding of God becomes more sophisticated as time goes on, and really only fully matures with Jesus' parables. And also, and this is where I take the most comfort, God's chosen heroes were not even especially virtuous, much less holy. They just more or less did what had to be done, and evolved through the process of wrestling with God.

That's where I'm at today.

One of the Lost Pieces

I started out taking photographs of every mosaic I made, good or bad, so I could keep a record of my "children." But there came a point where it felt like vanity to do that, so I quit for a while. Now and then I see those pieces and regret not having photographed them. Here is one.

I made this Welcome sign (#31) and about five other pieces to sell in a small, but overstuffed, albeit successful whatnot shop in Pennington. They sat on the shelf for several months until friend and former coworker Sharon Deel bought most of them for gifts for coworkers, so several made it back where I could visit my kids.

From time to time, the owners of Whigs will send word asking why I don't sell more pieces in their shop. Well, had it not been for Sharon Deel, those others would still be on the shelf, I think. I have an idea for some small pieces that I might make to sell there--small coasters, for which I would use unglazed porcelain. I could make them in a more timely fashion than the larger pieces and still sell them for like $15. But I have to get caught up first, which will take another few months, anyway.

Now I get frantic to have a good photo of every piece before it goes out. I don't know if I've gotten more vain. I think I just want to journal it all.

Baby tests on the High Banks of Bristol

He was trying to be patient, but he was about the rattle the cage of the minivan in front of us that looked like it didn't want to lead. Perhaps a lovetap. Just good hard racin'. I could feel Dad, Grandpa and Dale somewhere grinning.

It was a clean race, however before the night was over a few tears were shed. Baby was upset that Lightning McQueen was not on hand. While Adrian was crushed to find out once we finally got on the track that actual green flag racing was not going on.

I guess partly to blame were the lies told to these younguns by somebody along the way.

Omi's Thoughts on War

My Mom is German. She was 9 years old when Hitler invaded Poland, and was 15 when the war ended. She was in the Hitler Youth, as were many of the young people of her generation. She hated the Americans, and when the Army marched into their town, her younger sister, Gabi, then six, was handed a chocolate bar by an American soldier. My mother snatched it from her hand and ground it under her heel. Mom said that my grandfather used to sneak and listen to the Voice of America radio broadcasts, and she would be furious with him, because she was supposed to turn him in, and while she couldn't do that, she resented him putting her in such a moral dilemma.

Mom really only woke up to how she was still a Nazi deep down when she was asked to speak to a high school class about living in Germany in World War II and she heard herself defending Hitler.

My Mom said that one time she was walking down a lane to the village to get some bread during the later days of the war. An American fighter plane roared into view, strafing the ground with machine guns, up the lane towards her, flying low. Mom said that she was frozen with terror, and could do nothing but stare at the plane. She said the plane stopped shooting and pulled up, and she could see the faces of the American pilots looking at her. She said that she recovered her nerve, went on towards the village to get the bread. Up the lane she saw an oxcart that had been driven by old man--the old man, ox, and cart were shredded by bullets. This was the war.

Towards the end of the war, a bomb flattened their house, and they had to be dug out of the basement by neighbors. They all survived, but barely. Later on, when I marveled at how Mom could have survived Katrina's storm surge for five hours in a pine tree, she said, "Well you know, I've been through a war."

I asked Mom what she thought about Iraq, and she has nothing but contempt for our President and the people who thought this was a good idea. She said that Germany was able to get back on its feet so quickly because the Germans and the Americans, while different people, share the same basic culture and values. She said the biggest problem in Iraq is that we don't understand them and they don't understand us. And no matter how guilty we might feel for having ruined their country, they would really rather us now just go home.

Weird Stories

One of the things I do now and then when I get out in the weeds in therapy, partly for my own amusement, is to ask the client if they know any weird stories. If they can't think of one, I will tell one or two of mine, to shake things loose. Then they'll go, "Oh, yeah, well, one time..." I like weird stories, because they either tell you how mixed up your client really is, or they tend to confirm a world "out there" that you can use to give them a sense of hope and spiritual guidance, if they are so inclined. It is a very specialized weapon in the therapeutic arsenal and is only proper every now and then. (The most dangerous therapy weapons are those that are fun for the therapist to use.) It's also a fun thing to do around the lunch table. I don't tell on clients, so I'll keep the client stories to myself. However I will say that one of the great joys of doing therapy for a living is getting to live life vicariously through so many people. Every life is fascinating when you go into the details.

I think I also dwell on these tales at times when I begin to doubt that there is anything "out there." In the Bible I'm now at the story of Moses and the burning bush. This is where my palms get sweaty, because I have to figure out whether I believe these things to be true or not. I also have to figure out whether to take the path where I believe them to be true in some spiritual way that is not necessarily the same as actual, physical, objective reality. I don't know where that path will lead me, but I think that's where I'm headed.

Here are a few weird stories and those of a friend or two, all true from my own experience or sworn to be true by good, smart people:

The Dream of Keith Getting Hurt

One time when I was in college, I had a dream in which my little brother, who was about 9 years old, had climbed up on the kitchen counter, had reached into the cabinet, and somehow lost his balance and fell backwards in slow motion, pulling the stack of plates out with him. He kicked a large butcher knife off the counter which rotated slowly in the air and was poised to stab him in the stomach. The scene froze there, and I then had an image of my dad's desk at the house, where the old black rotary phone sat. I awoke with the urge to call home and warn my mother.

It was time to get up anyway, so I argued with myself over whether it was silly to call home over a dream. I took a shower, but couldn't shake the feeling, so I called my Mom, who by then was at work. She worked as a school secretary, and the same school where my brother Keith was in like the 4th grade. I called the school, the principal, Sr. Celeste, answered the phone, which was unusual. She told me that my mother wasn't there, that she had taken my brother to the emergency room. He had been on the playground before school and fell and punctured his abdomen on a piece of exposed pipe. (It wasn't really that bad. He healed up quickly.)

So, what caused this urgent warning to call my mother?

A UFO Story

I was swapping weird stories with a coworker back at GCMHC, and he told this story:

He was a student at Gulf Coast Community College back in the early 70's at which time there was a rash of UFO sightings up and down the coast. As he was driving home from class one night, he heard on the radio that a UFO had just been sighted over by the Biloxi airport. As Steve was driving down DeBuys Rd. towards the beach, he looked out the window, and there was a UFO. He said it was about the size of a small camper, it was egg-shaped, covered with flashing lights. He said it was just above the tree tops, moving slowly south towards the beach. He said he crossed Highway 90 and parked by the beach and got out of his car, while the UFO hovered over him on the beach. He said that other cars were stopping up and down the highway, also watching this thing. He said he studied it for a while, and he said that it gave him the strangest feeling like somehow it belonged there, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He watched it for a while and eventually got the idea that if he chucked a rock at it, he could hit it. So he bent down and picked up a rock out of the sand. He chucked it at the UFO, which then zipped straight up into the sky without a sound and was gone in a split second.

A story like this, if true, is rich with mystery and raises a ton of questions about many things.

George

My mother-in-law lives in an old house, and most of the family has at some time or other had an encounter with "George." Grandma has had the most, seeing things like a little boy peeking out of an upstairs window. George hasn't been around in a while lately.

One time I was upstairs playing a video game, and I heard Nan's brother Dale coming up the stairs with his heavy gait, go into his room next door to where I was, and I could hear the sound of his bedsprings as he sat down. No big deal. Then a while later I went downstairs to use the bathroom, and there is Dale sitting on the couch. Dale said he hadn't been upstairs, confirmed by the others in the living room. Nobody but me was upstairs. That was my little George experience. It wasn't in the least bit scary or threatening, just interesting and kind of creepy.

What is really going on in a haunted house? Something else that has become apparent to me as I get older is that it seems like every old house is haunted in this way. Sometimes things are only perceived by certain individuals, but sometimes by everyone who's around enough. What is up with all that?

That's enough for now. Some other time we'll talk Near Death Experience stories, which are the most compelling of all, I think. I have an unshakeable faith that there is more than meets the eye in this world. I think the determined rationalists have the God-given right to take the scientific approach to everything. But parsimony dictates that sometimes the most credible explanation is that these things are real.

So, now I need to decide whether there really was a burning bush. My palms are sweating again.

Random Notes

Clearing out some mental cobwebs...

• I think one of the reasons I don't like polyester is because it smells weird when I iron it.
• How does it happen that sometimes I will make a retarded, wrong move when I'm chewing and then bite the crap out of my tongue, and then once done, keep biting it in the sore place? Similarly, what is going on when I'm swallowing water or a soda and for some unbeknownst reason, I swallow too big a gulp, and can do nothing but brace myself while this huge lump of pain goes all the way down my esophagus?
• Sometimes I get stuck behind a slow car--a really slow car. I manage my frustration as best I can, and I imagine the Mamaw or Papaw behind the wheel, doing their best to navigate using their feeble vision and fragile, deteriorating motor skills. When I finally get the chance to pass them, I will glance over to check their appearance against my mental image, and usually I say to myself, "Aw, bless Mamaw's heart. She's just as God made her." But every now and then I'll glance over, and it will be some young dude! Then I am left to ponder just what is wrong with that guy.
• I hate it when I'm kind of sick, like right now (I have a sinus infection--I'm on amoxycillin and getting better, thanks) and somebody comes up to me and says, "How're ya doin'?" and for a split second I have to debate within myself whether it is worthwhile to tell them I'm kind of sick, knowing that they really don't want to know all that, but for me, it's my entire life at the moment. So usually, after just too long a pause, I'll stammer, "Uh, I'm okay, I'm fine." Which will then cause the other person to stop what they're doing and question me further: "You don't sound so sure about that! Are you alright?" Then for a second time I have to debate within myself whether to go into the health thing: "Well, I've got a sinus infection and I feel like crap." At that point I'm always vaguely pissed off that I've been interrogated into talking. Like I'm a weak terrorist or something. Two questions and I spill my guts.

Work-related Theories and Hypotheses and Rules...

• Here is a new theory that just bubbled to the surface of my mind yesterday. I am so sure it is true that I have skipped from hypothesis straight through theory, to law. No research needed. Just for now I'm going to call it the Ralph Ott Law of Case Management. And it is this: The quality of services a client receives is directly proportionate to the position of their last name in the alphabet. For instance, Abner Anderson gets good case managment. Xavier Ulysses, well, he's screwed. Xavier's chart might even get lost before it's over. Anybody with a caseload knows exactly why this is true. The rest of you will have to either guess at why or not care at all why. Take your pick.
• There was another mental health rule when I worked at Gulf Coast Mental Health that we called the Nancy Kramer Rule, because it was formulated by the legendary Nancy Kramer, and it is thus: The likelihood that a client will show for their appointment is inversely proportionate to the extent that you put yourself out to accomodate them. In other words, if you cancel an appointment to make room for a crisis, the crisis won't show.
• Here is a more recently formulated rule of, let's say, time management, or more specifically, sign-in sheet management, and it is named after its inventor, LCBHS site director Wendy Burgin, and can be called the Wendy Burgin Rule. Basically the rule is that time is somewhat malleable and is molded to fit whatever makes one look better. For example, let's say you arrive for work at 7:55 AM. On the sign-in sheet, you write "7:55." But if you arrive at work at 8:10 AM, on the sign-in sheet you would put "8:00." Likewise at the end of the day: if you leave at 4:55 pm, you put "5:00 pm." But if you're caught up late and can't get out til 5:40 pm, you put "5:40 pm."
• One of the greater works of genius, I think, is the Jeff Bennett discovery of Some Dude Syndrome (SDS). I have preached the gospel of SDS for many years, and recently I was gratified to hear a fellow staff member talking about SDS spontaneously. So the word is getting out. Credit goes back to The Man himself, the legendary Jeff Bennett of Gulf Coast Mental Health Center. SDS is especially common among the substance abuse clientele. SDS is essentially this: The sufferer starts out doing nothing more than minding his own business, when out of nowhere here comes some dude who goes upside his head, usually with a bottle or a brick. The sufferer invariably has no information whatsoever about the identity or motives of the assailant involved. Most commonly, the SDS sufferer has never been right since.

Naive

How sad is it that we must turn to The Daily Show to keep from feeling like we've lost our minds?

On Reading the Bible

I am often surprised to find myself being highly influenced by single comments or things said to me in passing, sometimes many years ago, that have stuck in the back of my mind. For instance, an old clinical supervisor, Roger Fox, told me a long time ago, quoting somebody else, that "Therapy is about the essential or it is about nothing." I spent a lot of my time under Roger's supervision feeling like he didn't adequately respect my then three years of experience. But to this day I often use Roger's quote as an anchor to ask myself whether I'm dealing at the heart of the matter with a client, and if not, why not.

I read something quite a few years back that stuck in my head, and it finally bore fruit in my desire to pick up the Bible and start reading. It is an excerpt from a personal account of a near death experience, by the Rev. Howard Storm. I love reading about near death experiences. I got interested in them about 15 years ago when I had a succession of clients who told me NDE stories. (I find that in therapy, things tend to come to you in batches, which is cool. Because by the fifth, say, depressed client in a season, you know more how to work with them.) Since that time, Nan has worked in hospice for over 10 years, and has brought home countless NDE stories. NDE's are quite common, even in those who are not religious. NDE's have the ring of truth and congruence to me. (Contrast NDE stories with the reality that too many things that people say, from the president on down to our religious leaders, seem to insult our intelligence and common sense.)

So here is the quote from Howard Storm's NDE story that has rattled around in my mind for five or six years:

I asked, for example, "What about the Bible?"

They responded, "What about it?"

I asked if it was true, and they said it was. Asking them why it was that when I tried to read it, all I saw were contradictions, they took me back to my life's review again – something that I had overlooked. They showed me, for the few times I had opened the Bible, that I had read it with the idea of finding contradictions and problems. I was trying to prove to myself that it wasn't worth reading.

I observed to them that the Bible wasn't clear to me. It didn't make sense. They told me that it contained spiritual truth, and that I had to read it spiritually in order to understand it. It should be read prayerfully. My friends informed me that it was not like other books. They also told me, and I later found out this was true, that when you read it prayerfully, it talks to you. It reveals itself to you. And you don't have to work at it anymore.

So now my meditation is to read the Bible with less and less of an agenda, to absorb from it what it will teach me. I'll keep you posted.

You know, I just realized that part of my resistance to the Bible is my fear that it will teach me bad things--that it will teach me that gay men and women are an abomination, and somehow I'll fall for the logic that served nomadic people in harsh conditions who lived 4,000 years ago. Maybe I need to have a little more trust in myself that I can handle it and that my brain will keep working properly throughout. My good friend Ken said something wise: we do a good job loving God with our hearts, but we do a bad job loving God with our minds.

It can't be wrong for me to apply good commond sense to what I read. That's God-given, too, I believe. So, God smites Er and then Onan for wickedness, no further explanation given. My common sense tells me that, this being in the Book of Genesis, this is an after-the-fact explanation of origins. Genesis was written at a time when all these families and tribes were at war (kind of like now). So it is the creation myth, fleshed out into a fuller complexity. Not myth in the sense of common misunderstanding, but Myth in the sense of a story that gets at truths that are ultimately mysterious. What could be cooler than that? I am all into this.

John Gaspar, SVD

Reading the Bible is taking me back, connecting threads in my life from today back into my childhood. When I was a kid in Bay St. Louis, my mother, who is German, made friends with two German priests at St. Augustine's Seminary--Fr. Frank Vogel and Fr. John Gaspar. Over the years, she became especially close with Fr. Gaspar, who in many ways became a father to her.

When I was little my mother told me that if you were really good, at Christmas time you could see angels. I checked this out with Fr. Gaspar, who was the holiest person I knew and he confirmed that indeed, if you were good enough, you could see angels and they wore red robes. I never saw any angels.

(My mother had also told me when I was even younger that if were bad, I'd grow devil horns. Sometimes I would check my forehead to see if there were any bumps indicative of budding horns, and would be dismayed to find what I was sure were horn buds.)

Fr. Gaspar used to visit every few weeks, and he'd bring us cartoon Bible story books. They were awesome books--I remember the story of Zacheas, the stubby tax collector who clumb a tree to see Jesus. I remember the story of the house built on rock versus the house built on sand. I remember the story of Noah's Ark.

I remember the story of Joseph, with the problematic Coat of Many Colors. Reading this story today takes me back to sitting at our dining room table on Commagere Blvd. on weird swiveling chairs made out of barrels, all thrilled to read one of Fr. Gaspar's Bible story books.

I used to visit Fr. Gaspar at the Seminary when I'd come in from college, and it's sad to admit that there was some little part of me that hoped he'd give me some kind of gift, and he often would. He gave me some binoculars one time. He gave me a rosary. I have an intricate crucifix carved from a single piece of wood that he gave my Mom and she passed on to me, thankfully pre-K, or it might well be gone like so many other things. I have a silver paten that he said he picked up in Rome at the Vatican, and some workmen were using it as an ashtray. It is very old.

In those days we had another frequent visitor from the Seminary, Brother James, who would gather up a truckload of old, unsold Times Picayunes and States-Items from my dad's route and take them to the city for recycling. Brother James would always bring us a box of Fiddle Faddle or Cracker Jack when he came around. Word got out in the neighborhood that Bro. James came bearing gifts, and he would be swarmed with kids. I never felt like the other kids did much to deserve candy from Bro. James, but you know how such things go.

Once a year it was a tradition that during the NFL playoffs my actual brother James and I would stay after church and spend the day at the Seminary with Bro. James. We'd eat in the cafeteria and drink Bug Juice, a horrible drink that I now recognize to have been grapefruit juice. We'd watch a playoff game, we'd eat Baby Ruths and Fiddle Faddle until we'd founder. Then we'd explore the grotto, then go to the pig sty and feed the pigs, we'd go look at the Clay Pond, then we'd ride the tractor around the Seminary. Nailed to the wall of the pig sty was a hand-lettered sign on a piece of wood warning that a cottonmouth moccasin the size of that sign had been caught and killed there.

Br. James passed quite a few years ago. Fr. Gasper died on my birthday in 1991, at the age of 88. At his funeral, a black man spoke who had been a child at a church Fr. Gaspar had pastored many years ago in Greeneville, MS, up in the Delta. Fr. Gaspar had treated the black folk with kindness and had stood up for them, in the days when such things weren't done. This man had come all the way to speak at Fr. Gaspar's funeral and he told us not to fret, for we had a powerful friend in heaven. I take comfort from the man's words to this day.

Katrina Recovery Update

Here is some big news, and it's not good. A major commercial insurer in New Orleans has decided to pull up stakes, citing concerns about the rebuilding of the levees. As much as I love Da City, I always worried that it was living on borrowed time. I worry that the U.S. Corps of Engineers is just not capable of doing what the Dutch engineers have done in The Netherlands. That seems to be what Travelers Insurance is thinking. This will probably spark a jailbreak of insurers out of the city.

Italy might support a Venice, the Netherlands might have dikes and large areas of below sea level living, but that's really not how we tend to roll in the U.S.A. GWB promised to do whatever it takes to save the great mother city of the South. I hope he's right. I worry about what Mother Nature has in store, not just for Da City, but also for the vulnerable coasts all around the nation. How long til a bigass Category 5 storm rolls across Galveston or south Florida? Imagine the financial crisis that will ensue. It's a matter of time.

We've spent, what, going on a half trillion dollars in Iraq. Total insanity. I hope and pray that this recent election will start the process of a national coming to of the senses.

Big Book Report: Jacob's Ladder

I'm having to rethink my approach. I'm getting too bogged down in details. Too much focus on trying to find interesting details. So, I'm just gonna hit the highlights and keep it simple.

I'm at Genesis, Chapter 30 or so. We're reading about Jacob. I'll let Bruce sum it up: