The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [seq. 3 – 6]

“I started reading The Spiral Cornucopia of Pale Lavender… and I didn’t really like it. But then I realized I was trying to read it like a book – I was trying to just read it. And so I went back and slowed it down and tried to imagine it more like something to ingest bit by bit. Like a poem or a fortune cookie. It’s still weird. But I like it a lot more.” – C.M.

“This is truly incredible.” -C.O.

“I have no idea what this garbage is supposed to be. Were you drunk when you wrote it?” -S.G.

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 The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction. Below is part 3. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

⁷⁴She opens the door and enters first. [SEQ. IV] ¹We go through the black door and down a small set of three steps and into a small bunker area. It is a small box. It is made of metal. There are shelves. ²On those shelves are boxes and cans filled with things. Some of it is food and some of it is generic office supplies and there is also a bag of yeast that is turning black. The ceiling drips water onto the floor. ³There is an electric plug on the wall but the shape looks like a straight line an inch in length instead of anything my collective conscious may be familiar with. ⁴The door dissolves as we approach it and we enter a hallway that is lit by light that seems to radiate out of nowhere. It is both odd and familiar to me. ⁵The smell is both sweet and delicious. Like a steak in cranberry sauce. But it isn’t strong enough to make me hungry. It’s just strong enough to make me satisfied. ⁶I see that the old woman is suddenly standing up quite straight and looking decades younger. ⁷She tells me that everyone looks different here. They look the way they want to look in their hearts, which is typically a more glamorous version of themselves. ⁸Rarely do people want to become someone else. It happens but you typically stay yourself. ⁹She looks at me and laughs. ¹⁰And when I look down I see that my skin is pale white. ¹¹We pass a mirror and I see that I am the man in the river but I don’t know why. ¹²She points at me and tells me that my hair is white. She pulls out a lock of it and shows me. ¹³We walk through the tunnels and then up some stairs and mostly I follow her because she walks as though she knows where she is going. ¹⁴At the end of the hallway there is a key. She picks up the key and uses it to open the door and I say, “Where did the key come from?” and she says that it was always here and I wonder who built this place. ¹⁵She tells me that she doesn’t know but the place is really big. She tells me that the other doors have been explored but none of them connect except two. You can go in one door and then come out the other one later on. ¹⁶A couple of guys that have been trying to map it – just some local guys in the village – figured it out. ¹⁷They think all of the doors are connected in some fashion. ¹⁸But the question is, if it’s a giant maze, what’s at the end? ¹⁹They found a room with a ceiling that appeared to not exist, a darkness that sat like a blanket. ²⁰Another place from another time. ²¹The afterbirth of a local apocalypse. ²²I ask her where we’re going and she just says we’re going to go to the quiet room until the Stomping Process is over. ²³She says we have to stay here for several days because time moves differently where we stand. ²⁴She says if you perch at the doorway (she used that word perch – like a giant bird) on this side and look out at the village, you will see everyone moving around very fast. They move like they’re all running around. ²⁵Time moves more slowly over here and I say, “How old are you?” and she tells me that she is seven hundred and twenty six years old and suddenly my heart breaks because I know that her husband that is dead is not her first and that she has experienced the loss of a lifelong husband seven times. ²⁶She carries more grief than anyone. Than everyone. ²⁷There are things she is not telling me but I cannot prod right now. ²⁸She tells me that we have to stay in here and wait for the Stomping Process to be finished. ²⁹I ask her how long three days in here is and she tells me that it is seven years out there, which they call a threshing. ³⁰When the Stomping Process begins it always lasts for seven years. ³¹They take the people and pull them into the sky. ³²I ask why and she says she does not know. But I know. ³³I know that some of them are kind and some of them are cruel and I know that they are fishing. ³⁴The woman leads me down a hallway where the walls are gray and red and when we come to the end there are two men standing outside of a double door that is locked and the men have guns but no eyes and they don’t ask what we want because their job is not to keep things out but to keep things in. ³⁵We walk through the doorway and inside I see a large group of people and they are all sick and broken in different ways. Some of them are covered in sores and some of them are thin and frail and some of them have blood dried around their mouth and nose and some of them lie on the floor coughing and some of them are dead. ³⁶The smell is unpleasant but not unbearable. ³⁷I notice a vent in the ceiling with a fan that is always running. I also see a vent and it is out of this vent that I sense a smell. ³⁸There are perfumes being pushed into the air here. Something tangy like a grapefruit but instead of masking the stench of sickness and disease it instead adds to it, combining with it, making a smell that is neither good nor bad but making something that is neither. An ambivalent scent that I don’t think I will or could ever get used to. ³⁹The people turn and look at us and some hold out their hands but most of them acknowledge us with their eyes and then turn away, aware that we are unable or unwilling to help them. ⁴⁰I see a ham sandwich sitting on a counter but the bread has turned a dark green color. There is a refrigerator but it isn’t plugged in. ⁴¹When I turn to ask the woman a question I see that she is gone and I am so stupid and now I am alone and now I am afraid and now I realize that I am one of these people and I don’t want to be. ⁴²I want to be free and outside even though I really don’t know what is out there and even though the fishermen are reaching from the sky and pulling people from the earth, or whatever this place is. A hologram, an illusion, a spell, I still would rather be out there because freedom inside of oppression is better than being a prisoner without a view. ⁴³I don’t go towards the doors because I know the men will never let me out. ⁴⁴I know that I cannot call my mother or my friends or my brother, if I had one, if I ever had one. If I ever had a mother. If I could find a phone. ⁴⁵I cannot scream for help because no one is listening and I am alone and panic begins to wash over my body and it makes me sick and I start to pace and then I lie down and I sleep and when I wake up there are loud banging noises and the walls are shaking and the lights are flickering and I run and I hide behind the refrigerator that isn’t plugged in while the rest of the people crawl towards the door. ⁴⁶They fall to their knees and they hold their hands in the air and they all begin shouting and screaming and I hear, “I am here, Lord!” and, “Take me!” and, “I am ready!” and many of them begin to laugh but most of them begin to cry and sob and I see that this is the first time they have been happy for a very long time. ⁴⁷The banging stops and a whisp of something that I would call smoke or mist creeps under the door except the mist looks like a prism and I see all the colors of the retinal spectrum blending and sparkling like a gemstone and I see other things too. But I don’t see them with my eyes. I feel them. I feel the words and the thoughts and I know that yes, this prism mist is a good thing but I fear that it is also a trap and none of the people know it and I watch as the colorful mist wraps around the group of them and envelops them and I see the mist start to boil and I hear screaming but it is not screams of pain but screams of ecstasy and it seems like they are experiencing other-worldy pleasures and it is in this fashion that they go away. ⁴⁸They are not pulled through the door but the prism fades as mist does and when it is gone, everything inside of it is gone as well. ⁴⁹Sitting on the green and white-checkered linoleum floor is a small stone, the same prismatic color of the mist. It is about the size of my fist. I pick it up and find that it is quite warm, somehow imbued with human life but no; I understand that that is wrong. ⁵⁰This is their sickness and their hatred and their sorrows and their remorse and all of the terrible and bad things of the world that have been placed and given and gifted to them over their many years wandering this strange place, this life, this existence, that they’ve gathered up and now they’ve all been allowed to leave it behind like old shoes, freed from it completely. ⁵¹I smell the rock and then I taste it, rubbing my tongue along the top. It tastes like pepper and makes me sneeze but immediately I feel the effects of it as my brain expands and I see all the pain in the world. ⁵²I see it all. ⁵³I see how it works into our bodies. I see that sometimes it enters through our ears and sometimes it enters through our eyes but mostly it is birthed from our hearts. ⁵⁴We are like mother hens sitting on our eggs, sitting on our evils, sitting on our selfishness, sitting on our jealousies and we keep them warm and we let them grow and we birth them out into the world, not as eggs, but as words or actions or in the tone of our voice. ⁵⁵I drop to my knees and I want to cry but I don’t get to. I don’t get to expel the feelings. ⁵⁶I grip them in my heart and I squeeze their complex singularity with my body and my soul cries and breaks and I stare at the ceiling, which breaks away and crumbles away and I see, outside, not sunshine, but ultimate darkness and in that darkness I sense nothing at all. No great evil staring back at me but absolute sadness and it reaches out for me and it wants me and I can feel that if I follow it I can do anything I want. ⁵⁷I can partake in all of my wants and desires but there will be no pleasure in any of it. There will be no taste to any of it. ⁵⁸I feel laughter pulled from my body and I feel joy retched out of my hands and I feel happiness, like a coin, taken from me. ⁵⁹And now I understand that I am empty and this body is truly nothing more than a little package. An envelope with a piece of paper inside and what’s written on that paper? What does my letter say? What is my message? ⁶⁰I feel the darkness reaching in for my letter but I hang on tight and it says, “No. This is mine. All is mine.” ⁶¹And I know that it isn’t true but I wonder if it is and I unfold my letter, not a real letter, but my purpose, and I reach deep down inside myself and [SEQ. V] ¹I say, “Who are you?” and the answer comes back. “Compassion. Understanding. Friendship. Don’t ever forget. You will die.” ²And then everything is pulled away from me but some kind of residue is perhaps still left and then my body is sucked through the gaping chasm in the ceiling and my eyeballs melt away and everything is dark and when I turn around, I see a hole in the fabric of whatever this is. Maybe a version of reality or a dimension or time or space. ³I drift away from it and I don’t care because nothing matters and everything is darkness and nothing serves a purpose and floating freely through space is better than being trapped against my will and I feel my consciousness expand and I understand that I’ve been here before and perhaps this is where I came from and perhaps this is the cradle of Now and I call out with myself, not my voice and not my heart because these things are all gone and now I am just a thought. ⁴My physical being has been removed and I know that I am transcendent but have somehow de-volved to a flickering memory. ⁵I feel out towards the edges but find nothing but vastness and then a vibration touches my thought and I know it is another place or another person or another thing – there is something. ⁶There is life. ⁷Something in this vastness and blackness and darkness and abyss and I call to it and I find it and it is a/ [SEQ. VI] ¹I open my eyes and I’m underwater, inside of a narrow tube and I can’t lift my arms.

 

 

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Part 4 premieres next Monday the 6th. ³⁶and then he reaches up and he peels off his face like boiled skin from a tomato”

I am the Devil (and you might be too)

 

We all know this story.

 

Lucifer is hanging out in Heaven, acting as captain of the cherubic hosts. He (male pronoun used here for simplicity) is basically the worship leader in Heaven. With every movement he makes, there is music. And it is beautiful. But Lucifer becomes jealous of God, gathers up a third of the angels and tries to overthrow The Great One.

 

Lucifer and his “army” lose and God casts them to either Earth or Hell (interpretations vary) and now Lucifer is The Devil and the angels are the demons that we know today.

 

This would be considered a literal translation of Satan’s origin story.

 

But what else can we pull from this story? What else is happening that we are not acknowledging? There are pieces in this simple paragraph that the church (as a very general body) tends to ignore.

 

Based upon this telling, if I am a Literalist (to believe the Bible is word for word accurate with no symbology) I am to also believe that there is such a thing as jealousy in Heaven. Correct?

 

If you are a Heaven-Is-A-Perfect-Place-Where-No-Pain-Exists type of person (which most Literalists are, please correct me if I’m wrong), please do not shut off to this. Based upon the telling from the Bible, Heaven is a place where jealousy exists. And not only jealousy, but hierarchy. Lucifer stood above the other angels.

 

And not only jealousy and hierarchy but hatred, violence, rebellion and punishment.

 

In Heaven.

 

This is not what we have been taught.

 

But this is what is written.

 

How do we come to terms with these two contrasting worlds?

 

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There is, without question, a darkness in the world. There is evil in the world. There is selfishness and greed and hatred. You can turn your TV to any news station, fire up social media or peruse the papers at your local grocery store to see it.

 

Darkness is real.

 

But is The Devil?

 

Have we pinned our every shortcoming on this singular being? Is he our universal scapegoat? Is The Devil responsible for tempting us at every occasion? Are demons responsible for tempting us at every occasion? Are there so many creatures of darkness that each of them lingers with each of us, constantly tempting and whispering words into our ears? Is that how we think we exist? And does that sound medieval? Demons whispering in our ears.

 

Do we believe that we are inherently good people and it is only by the temptation of dark forces that we do evil?

 

Or… is that evil inside of us?

 

Is The Devil inside of me?

 

Am I The Devil?

 

Could the snake in the garden that tempted our perfect heroes be nothing more than symbolic of our own wants and desires?

 

What is the first sin we commit as humans? We disobey.

 

“Rory, clean your room.”

 

“No.”

 

Just like Adam and Eve. Or “Adam and Eve”.

 

Does darkness and light, good and bad, God and Satan, exist within me and you and everyone at every moment of every day? Are we each, as individuals, capable of doing what is right or wrong with our free will at any moment?

 

Here’s a personal confession that isn’t really a personal confession at all.

 

I love pornography.

 

Love it.

 

I could watch it all day long. Just sit down with a bowl of popcorn and let it rip. Video after video after video. Non-stop. 24/7. Weekends and holidays.

 

Now, it should be noted that I do NOT do this.

 

I do not watch pornography.

 

But I want to.

 

I choose not to. It is my choice that creates my actions. And it is my actions that define my character. Same for all of us.

 

We are each, as men, addicted to pornography.

 

Our male brains are hardwired, like magnets, to draw us to those images. We are born with that compulsion. Ladies, if your fella is telling you that he doesn’t like pornography, watch out, because you have got a liar on your hands and he is telling you things just to keep you satiated. If a man produces testosterone, he wants naked women. As many as possible. As often as possible.

 

This want is not a threat to the sanctity of your marriage or the commitment of your relationship. This is a burning in his very human nature. And it cannot be shaken.

 

And now you say, “Nah, my husband is not like that.”

 

And then I say, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he does not exist.”

 

If you don’t think that darkness is there, it’s because you are being fooled. There is darkness in each of us. But it is our choice to be swallowed by it or to shine light on it. Light in our thoughts. Light in our actions. Light in our words.

 

Now I’m going to take that popular phrase a step further and say that the greatest trap we, as humans, ever fell into was believing that we were not subject to darkness. That we were somehow above darkness.

 

You are not above darkness. You are not above selfishness. You are not above greed.

 

Nobody is.

 

Liking something. Wanting something. Being drawn to something. And actually indulging in that something are very, very different things.

 

Now, without going off on too much of a tangent, I do want to quickly acknowledge that there are various schools of thoughts on pornography – some people think it’s fine and some people find it repulsive / sinful / harmful. I tend to be of the latter group because, even though the act itself is being committed by two or more consenting individuals, the people experiencing it in the privacy of their home are, at the very least, being brainwashed to believe that sex is a certain way. And I believe this is very damaging to the individual.

 

This is my opinion. You are obviously free to disagree. (High-five for respectful diversity!)

 

That said, I am opposed to brainwashing in all of its various forms – cultural, religious, sexual, analytical, creative, etc. We should not be told what or how to think. If given certain data, the truth should be self-evident.

 

For example, does extended exposure to pornography affect the way in which a man views a woman? Does it alter our opinion of what women should be capable of / interested in? Does it alter our expectations of our wives?

 

If the answer is yes to any of these, then it’s brainwashing.

 

If you were raised in the jungle with one woman as your partner, you would still desire her sexually but your wants and actions would not be formed by things you had witnessed. We choose to be victims of our environments.

 

The devil is not tempting you.

 

You are fighting your culture and your human nature. And it is a difficult uphill battle. But we must admit that we are fighting a battle. And we must admit that we are fighting a battle with ourselves. It isn’t until we know who our enemy is that we can begin to overcome them.

 

We need to adjust our cultural perspective on darkness – what the church likes to call sin or what humanity calls immorality. Being drawn to the darkness is not immoral. We are each drawn to the darkness in our own way. We are each selfish in our own way and, ultimately, doesn’t each sin come down to a form of selfishness? To sum up sin would be to say, “Putting oneself before another.” Murder, envy, lust, greed, lying, stealing, etc. It’s all really different forms of the same thing. But these are natural human traits. Survival at all cost came with us when we arrived in the universe. Batteries included.

 

Being drawn to a thing does not make you a bad person.

 

Making a decision to be a part of that darkness is where things spiral out of control.

 

I don’t believe that’s Satan whispering in our ear. That’s us.

 

That’s our own wants and desires.

 

You’re sitting at a dinner table and you’re stuffed. You’re so full. You’re going to puke. But then dessert shows up and you take just a couple more bites because it looks so delicious.

 

That’s gluttony. Your body is begging you to stop poking food into it and you just keep on truckin’. You think a demon is sitting at The Cheesecake Factory, prodding you on, encouraging you to have one more bite? Does that thought sound silly? It should.

 

That’s you.

 

Those are your decisions.

 

The Devil is not in you.

 

The Devil is you.

 

And you create the darkness in the world. When you choose not to share. When you talk about someone behind his or her back. When you insult someone, whether in his or her presence or not. When you choose to ignore a hungry person. When you pressure your wife / girlfriend to do something they’re not comfortable with. When you steal something, even a tiny thing that nobody will probably ever notice is missing because really, they weren’t using it anyways…

 

That’s you. That’s you creating darkness in the world.

 

Don’t worry about the splinter in your brother’s eye until you’ve removed the timber from your own. That’s a biblical truth that I think anyone, regardless of faith, can apply productively to their lives.

 

Maybe stop worrying about The Devil and start worrying about yourself.

 

Start thinking about each moment. Each day. Each word. Each decision that you have to make. You bring either darkness or light with every action that you make.

 

If The Devil is real, he only exists within the temptations themselves. He does not cause the temptation but is the temptation.

 

Likewise, I don’t think that God causes the kindness. God exists within the kindness. God is the kindness.

 

And we choose to cast light or we choose to cast shadows.

 

Go forward.

 

Cast light.

 

And thanks for coming to church on a Wednesday 🙂

 

***Subscribe for updates. New blog every Wednesday – friends, family, life, death kids and adventure. And on Mondays we’re currently releasing a fiction in 10 parts called The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender. Part one linked to the left and the intro is linked here. It’s a tale of evolving consciousness through many different plains of reality. If that sounds weird enough to check out, you should.

THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 2 – 3]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is a 10-part series of fiction. Below is part 2. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

⁹I enter another room that is more like a great hall and see that it is more vast than my simple field. So large that I cannot see the roof. ¹⁰Where am I? Am I not on a craft? The sky seems endless. Am I on a planet? Where have they taken me? ¹¹The inside of the cavern glows with perfect light that radiates from nowhere. The essence of life gives light to itself. It is a light that exists at the origin of everything. ¹²Two doctors converse and stop speaking when I approach. ¹³I feel as though my presence makes them uncomfortable. ¹⁴No words are spoken. Instead, we stare at one another and have a conversation of thought. ¹⁵Because I am a creature comprised of emotional experiences and every experience shapes me differently, like a fist hitting plaster, every other individual’s experiences make them uniquely who they are and, even if our experiences are identical, we will process them differently based strictly upon our natural birth bend – the organic recipe of our brain bubbles. ¹⁶I will try to transmit my pure, raw thought which I apply emotionality to, and I will churn it out into raw and savage words for you to then process through your ear and get filtered through all the bullshit that makes you uniquely you. And so often what I say is not what you hear. ¹⁷So much is lost in our primitive grunts. ¹⁸The greys speak through emotions. It is not the hearing of an audible voice in your head. It is the feeling of justice. It is the feeling of wrongness. It is the feeling of love. They are able to transmit the very essence of the thought to one another. The very pureness of the emotion. The core. ¹⁹Nothing is lost in translation. ²⁰And because of this they cannot lie and in fact do not understand what a lie is. A lie is beyond the fence of their mind. ²¹I also sense that they don’t know that they don’t know. ²²The knowledge of the unknowable does not exist to them. I don’t sense a hole wherein something is missing from. I sense that there is nothing there at all. ²³A loud but warm and not altogether unpleasant alarm begins going off. It seems to radiate in the very air itself. The siren is not audible. There are no speakers but rather a general consistency in the air quality that shifts. The local energy wavers and quivers. ²⁴The greys all knew what the “sound” meant by the sensation it gave them. There was no need to make the feelings abrasive. The good feeling gave them the knowledge for what was needed to be accomplished. ²⁵This made me wonder why fire alarms on Earth are always screeching headaches. Especially when you want everyone to remain calm. Would the same effect be created if the powers that be simply played loud but pleasing music that encouraged people to run? I always have a more difficult time completing a task if there is a person screaming in my ear as loud as they can. It’s difficult to concentrate. ²⁶When I realize that I’ve been lost in some stupid rambling thought I suddenly acknowledge that [SEQ. III] ¹I am standing in the field again and there is a rainbow that arches across the little stream. The grass is tall, the sky is blue and the clouds are white. ²I can see the day moon sitting in the ocean above me and it is so beautiful and I know that I am in a computer-generated image. I know that I am still on the ship or on another planet or in a machine in a small room or I’m on Earth and everything is being projected onto us but this is not real. ³I know it like I knew the feeling of their lies. I know because I can still feel some kind of emotional residue. ⁴None of this is real. ⁵Why am I here? ⁶What are they doing with me? ⁷A moose walks to the rivers edge in the distance and takes a sip. It’s weird because he drinks it with his lips and not with his tongue. ⁸A couple of blue birds fly past me and I feel like a child again. ⁹On the other side of the stream I see a scarecrow and I wonder who put him up. I do not feel concerned that I haven’t seen any people or that I don’t know where I am. ¹⁰The world feels real but I don’t know what I’m doing here or how I got here but it all feels okay. ¹¹This is where I was before they took me but this is not when I was before they took me. ¹²I hear a large boom and then another and I become fearful. Very fearful. ¹³My stomach rolls and my knees begin to shake and quiver and I find that I’m having a very difficult time walking or thinking appropriately. ¹⁴It is awful. ¹⁵I fall to my hands and knees, my stomach washing waves of panic over me. My brain feels like it’s crying. ¹⁶With one hand I pull myself to a large rock that is nearby and hide behind it. ¹⁷BOOM. What is that noise? Is it a giant? Is it a bird? My mind begins thrusting images of giant birds at me, making me stare at them. Look at this bird with its enormous beak, pulling you apart and splattering your blood against the soil! Watch your neck break and your body become consumed. This giant blue bird with its feathers chasing you through an empty field and squawking. ¹⁸Where are these thoughts and feelings coming from? ¹⁹I look around the rock and I don’t see anything. I don’t hear the noise anymore. ²⁰I turn and crawl up a small hill where I find a fence that is made from posts of wood and barbed wire. I crawl between the top and middle wire and approach the scarecrow. ²¹Its face is brown sac cloth and its eyes are made from plastic buttons. One is red and one is blue. Its nose is made from a tightly wrapped fresh condom and its mouth is made from rotten banana peels. It’s wearing a tracksuit that is gray with white tennis shoes. The brand is expensive. Someone has put something in its pants to make it look like he has a comically huge boner. Someone else has smeared mud all over its ass to make it look like it shit its pants. ²²At the base of the scarecrow are two small chairs – lawn chairs. There are also some cups, a fire pit made out of rocks with ashes in the middle, a tea kettle that looks like it’s lived a busy life but has never actually been used here, at this spot. It is gray and covered in rust. It is tall and narrow and looks like something you’d find on a camping trip and not in a kitchen. There are old metal forks. A red compass. A stack of pornographic magazines and a pack of cigarettes. I notice that there is no lighter nearby but then I see a box of strike-anywhere matches. ²³I see a trail that cuts through the corn where it has been trampled down a number of times by repeated use. ²⁴Then I notice a second path. One leading somewhere and one leading somewhere else and which one will I choose? ²⁵I look up and I see the day-moon and the sun both in the sky, both right next to one another and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before. ²⁶I feel a strong vibration in my body but I don’t know what it means. ²⁷I push towards the path on the left and it winds through corn that is taller than I am, a mouse in a maze, an Earthling in a labyrinth. ²⁸We are all observed and studied. ²⁹How will I react? ³⁰I feel like a child. ³¹I am lost and I am not afraid and not fearful but I feel like something terrible is going to grab me. I don’t want it to grab me. It will touch me. The black sleeves and the green hands with cuts and warts. And what are those hands attached to? What is on the other side of those hands? Is it a witch? No. It is faceless. ³²A hungry, lusting darkness that lingers at the fringe of the peripheral. ³³And where are you? What are you? Why do you make me feel like this and do you like it? Is my fear necessary to the world? Does my fear feed a creature that needs it the way my breath feeds the trees? Is my fear powerful? ³⁴When the path ends I see that there is a small white farmhouse but I also see that it exists in a tiny little community. There is a small community playground with a swing set and a merry-go-round and a tractor to sit on and dig with. There is also a water fountain inside the head of a giant inanimate lion. There is an old barrel that is very tall and lying on its side – kids get in and run. It’s a human gerbil wheel. I see children running in it now. Four of them. Five of them. A girl in overalls tries to stand on her hands as the barrel spins, taking her in a full rotation, spinning her a day into the future around their imaginary sun. ³⁵An old woman sits on a swing by herself. I notice that the other swing is empty and I know that she used to be married and that she used to have a husband and that she is very sad that he is gone and she misses him terribly because they were together their entire lives. Their whole life. ³⁶They were together when she was fifteen and he was sixteen and they’ve now been together for sixty years. ³⁷They don’t remember life before one another. ³⁸The memory of their individual lives before their counterpart existed has long ago been washed away off the placards of remembrance. ³⁹They were together for so long that she considers him a true extension of herself. ⁴⁰He had the authority to act on both of their behalves because they had achieved such simpatico that they had become the same person in two bodies with two separate interests. ⁴¹They understood and achieved true love and compassion for the other person until they understood what the other person wanted perfectly. ⁴²Her husband has been dead for three years and she doesn’t have any friends. She has people in her life but she would not consider them friends. They are okay to eat lunch with but she couldn’t share these thoughts and emotions with them. ⁴³They don’t understand and none of them has ever lost a husband and she wishes she could speak to someone about it. ⁴⁴And because I know I am supposed to, I approach her and ask how she is and she looks at me because the question is very straightforward. Her face crunches up and then becomes very kind and she says she is alright and I tell her that the day is beautiful and she agrees and I see the foot marks in the ground where her wooden shoes have been dragging back and forth in the dirt. ⁴⁵Her skirt looks homemade. It is white and comprised of chicken feathers. She wears a pilgrim style bonnet that is white and her chest is covered in purple sheen although it is completely transparent. It projects a perfect twenty year old chest onto her body and it deceives the eyes in order to look as real as possible and this is what these people do here. ⁴⁶It is okay and acceptable because it isn’t a question. ⁴⁷She tells me that she is fine and I ask her if she knows which one of these buildings is a schoolhouse and then I hear a loud BANG or BOOM and it’s the same sound as before and she tells me to run with her. ⁴⁸She gets off the swing and starts to strain towards a home. She is old and moves very, very slowly but I stood by her and I helped her as she hung onto my elbow. I notice that her back is quite hunched over. ⁴⁹She takes me to a small plot of land that is filled with doors – just regular house doors – but they all appear the same. ⁵⁰Identical black doors. ⁵¹There are no numbers on any of them. Just handles. ⁵²She approaches one in the front row and opens it. Inside I see stairs spiraling downwards. ⁵³I don’t ask if we are going underground because I know that we are not. ⁵⁴The doors are vices that hold the fine fibrous Fabric of Feich open like surgical clamps hold open a wound. ⁵⁵These doors lead to Someplace Else. ⁵⁶It isn’t on this Earth but it also is not off this Earth. It is a kind of side-step to a higher perception of reality that exists on top of us, an overlay that we cannot perceive. ⁵⁷We have not yet discovered where this other place is in relation to our world or planet or solar system or existence. ⁵⁸Scientists have gone through and acquired samples and have found strange molecular patterns, sacred geometry and interesting fruits and flowers but still no people and the doors are too small to take any major tool through – like an astro-scope or bio-splitter. ⁵⁹But I also know that scientist is a very loose term because the people in this village are the only people on this planet. ⁶⁰There is no one else. ⁶¹The moment I heard the bang I knew. It was like the vibration alerted me. There are no others but these. ⁶²I know this to be true. ⁶³But what is out there? What is beyond their city? ⁶⁴I need to know. Do I need to know? Do I want to know? Why does it matter? Why does it matter what is beyond their city? Why do I care? ⁶⁴Is this my human nature? ⁶⁵Is curiosity just an advanced form of the house cat and the laser pointer from the future of my old world past? Is my entire life someone’s stupid video? Am I the punch line to an advanced joke? ⁶⁶Are alien children watching us and cooing, “Oh! He’s becoming curious! Watch him play with his curiosity! Hehe! He is going to see what that scratching noise is! He’s going to go investigate the odd auditory stimulation! Tee hee!” ⁶⁷I have my life happening right here and I have problems at hand so why does it matter if there is a desert or a mountain or something else entirely out there? ⁶⁸Right now I have to deal with this problem and that’s how I need to live my life. I need to appreciate the now and right now I need to get to safety and this old woman is walking very slowly but finally we do get close to the doors but before we do I see in the distance a great metal rod stamp out of the clouds and slam into the earth. ⁶⁹BOOM            !! And then another. And another. And another. BOOM   !! BOOM          !!BOOM           !! The sound hits my ears seconds after the vision does. ⁷⁰I ask her what they are doing and she says that they are collecting and I say, “For what?” because I already know who. ⁷¹She says that they are fixing them – hey, Chuck! – but I don’t know what she means and I also know that there are other people out there. ⁷²Why was I so certain there was nobody else out there? How could I have known that? ⁷³How could I have been so certain that it was true but now here I am being proven completely wrong? What else am I wrong about? What else is sneaking up on me? What else am I living with that I need to re-examine and release? ⁷⁴She opens the door and enters first.

 

 

Return next Monday, May 30th for part 3 of 10 as we visit a prison at the center of time, witness the mystical collection of energy and fall into complete oblivion.

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Code 5 Quinn-pocalypse

I’m walking out of my house – I need to run to the grocery store to pick up some waters. It’s a quick in and out job. Super basic. I’ll be gone ten minutes. Max.

I hit the door and drop down the porch steps and I’m almost to my car when I hear Quinn behind me. She does this whine – it’s full of panic and concern. This tone that is like eeeeeeehhhhh! It’s a noise that sounds like she’s on the edge of a full nervous breakdown. Her voice wobbles and quivers. “Daddy! Wait! Wait! I didn’t give you a hug and kiss!”

I can hear her shouting this from the living room. “Yeah! I’ll be back in just a minute! One minute! I will be right back, I promise!”

“NO! HUG AND KISS! EEEHHHHH! PLEASE!”

I keep walking. She’s on the porch now. Squealing. Now she’s running down the steps. Running towards me. I keep walking. “I will be right back, Quinn! You will see me in two minutes. I’m just buying a water.” And then my internal monologue kicks in, which goes something like this: What is wrong with this kid? What have we done to this child to give her such separation anxieties? This noise that she makes is killing me. It is driving me up the flipping wall. I wish she would just relax. Her panic is so dumb. And so senseless. I’m going to be right back. Why isn’t she listening to me? If she would just stop making these stupid whining noises and listen to me, she would know that I’m going to be right back. Why is she wasting my time?

This is the routine whenever either Jade or I leave the house. Every time. Every single time there is a fantastic meltdown over hugs and kisses. If you do not properly connect your lips with Quinn’s lips and give her a very proper hug that has a fairly specific form to it, then you are dealing with a Code 5 Quinn-pocalypse.

This is not, like, a thing. This is A Thing.

I’ve driven away before. I’ve been like F it. This is ridiculous. I’m leaving. This must stop. I get in my car and drive away. In my rearview mirror I see her standing at the very edge of our yard, waving her arms and jumping up and down and screaming, “HUG AND KISS! HUG AND KISS! DADDY! PLEASE! HUG AND KISS!” and I have no idea how long she stands there and does it for.

To remove all sugar coating and to be as primitive about it as possible – it is annoying and it gets under my skin and it drives me crazy because it doesn’t make any sense to me and, if I’m being completely honest, the vast majority of the time that I give her a hug and kiss, I do it as quickly as I can and just roll through the motions so that I can get to wherever it is that I’m going.

I brush her off.

And I’m not just brushing her off like she’s blathering on about how she wants mac and cheese for lunch but we just ate breakfast so please give me a second to finish doing the dishes but I’m actually brushing off her affection.

And so I’m standing on my front sidewalk and I say, “Quinn, yes. Hurry. Please. Hi. Hug and kiss. Okay. We’re done. Thank you. Go back inside. I’ll see you in a hundred and twenty seconds. Goodbye. Finally.”

And she says, “Okay! See you in a minute! I love you!” and then she runs back into the house.

And then I’m standing on my sidewalk and this feeling of… it was a light bulb turning on over my head. It was a feeling of illumination. I had a moment wherein I saw the darkness and I saw that I was swimming in it.

I was engulfed by it.

And I didn’t know it.

What has happened to me? What am I doing? What is wrong with me?

My child. She has come to me to see me off. To show me affection and admiration. She has come to me, small and powerless, to say I love you and I will miss you while you are away. You will only be gone for two minutes. But in those two minutes, I will think of you and I will wish that you were here. And I want you to know that.

And this is, apparently, just too fucking insignificant for me to waste my time with.

Sometimes I catch sight of myself and, for all the good I like to think that I do, I realize that I am still just a selfish piece of shit that knows nothing about humility.

 

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [seq. 1 – 2]

[SEQ. I]¹Inside, but also outside, of the grand sweltering nothingness I do not exist. Nor am I an I. No singularities drift. ²In empty space that is not cold, a warmth suddenly envelops me and I recognize and accept that I am a thing. ³Liquid washes over my being although I do not know the word liquid because I have never known anything. The currents of motion and time push me where they wish. ⁴I am the first of my kind. ⁵Something tingles at my core and I feel a tugging and a separation of my being before becoming aware that there is another. A second presence is nearby and it is the same as me because it came from me. ⁶I am a singular cell. A collection of atoms. A bond of life. I am both mortal and divine. I am spiritual and temporal. I am life. The very first. ⁷And now there is a second, made from me. My partner was pulled from my essence and made from my content. ⁸We are not identical but we are not the same. ⁹Another spasm and then we have some company. There are four of us. Eight of us. Sixteen of us. A village of faceless, emotionless, drifting amoebas in the liquid love juice of existence. ¹⁰We are the spermatozoa in the semen of creation. ¹¹A tail. Gills. Limbs sprout from my core. Intentional movement drags me to a mate where we replicate and create our own life. Our community calls our replication evil. Says we are dabbling in the unknown. Playing God. ¹²The breath of life rushes over me again and I can move faster, hide better. ¹³Survive in the darkness. ¹⁴Stay away from That Thing that has engulfed so many of my kind. ¹⁴Above me is a sharp blanket. It hurts my eyes to look for too long. I push towards it. Ah, yes. Light. ¹⁵The pressure of the environment pushes back against me. ¹⁶Our tribe says not to go towards it. They say that is where God lives and we were meant to stay back. If He wanted us to approach Him, then He would not have placed the pressure barrier between us. ¹⁶My body has changed and the pressure doesn’t bother me any more. ¹⁷I am curious. ¹⁸I crawl along in the shallow dirt, the light just above me calling not my name, as I have no name, but calling me. My code. ¹⁹If it is God, I want to see. I want to press upon It with my eyes. ²⁰I press on to the light and then, like a gentle slap, my face births from the water and I understand that I am in water and that there is such a thing as out of water. ²¹I have been reborn. ²²One step at a time I emerge from the ocean, the cradle of existence, the warm goo that is The Earth’s Womb. As I have birthed a child, so too has the Earth. ²³The air is cold and a fibrous material begins to coat my body, covering me, changing my form. ²⁴Fruit hangs from trees and I crawl up them to eat their sweetness and I look around and I see The Land stretch out in front of me in such a great distance that I become dizzy observing The Eternal. ²⁵I hop out of the tree and my face has altered. ²⁶In the distance I hear a noise and when I follow it with my recent eyes, I see a four footed creature behind a tree. It too is covered in brown fur but it is not like me. My stomach rumbles and I know what I must do but I know not how. ²⁷I straighten up, accepting the task at hand. ²⁸I pick up a stick that has fallen to the ground. I rub it against a rock until the end is sharp and I hunt. I follow the creature until I fall upon it and I stab it. ²⁹Red life gushes out of it in currents and I drop to my knees and press my hands into the warm blood. I did this to you. You gave your life for me. I am grateful for you. ³⁰I watch as its eyes blink, staring into the trees. I follow its gaze and see another one like it but a smaller version. A baby. ³¹I am ambivalent to it. ³²Without waiting for my beast to die, I reach my fingers into its chest and I pull, ripping open the skin. Greasy and stinking organs ooze out of its hole and coalesce at my feet. ³³What are you? What is it that controls you? ³⁴I dig in deeper and find a hard white material. I crack it open and expose a soft beating rock. I lift it up. Here you are. ³⁵And I smell it and I engulf it and I am filled up and the creature that is a part of this place becomes a part of me and I become stronger. ³⁶A breeze scratches me and I find that I am cold and so I peel off the hide of this creature and I wrap myself in it, dripping blood down my naked and goose pimpled body. ³⁷I stand above this beast and I stare at its empty shell. I stare into its hollow eyes and I send my value and worth towards it. I am grateful that it has given its life for me. It has given me food and warmth at the very cost of its breath. ³⁸I recognize something called color and that each object in my surroundings contains variances of its own. ³⁹In an empty field that is green and yellow, a forest suddenly bursts from the ground, not saplings but large oaks that are mature and the Earth continues to change as I do. ⁴⁰It happens fast because I don’t pay attention. ⁴¹There are natural holes in the trees trunks, inverted knots, where small animals roost and nest. Creatures scurry in the branches. I see a red squirrel with a white belly and a fuzzy tail. It has big cheeks, full of food. The squirrel runs down and curls up in the hole of the tree but then the tree eats it, consumes it, nurtures itself. ⁴¹It contracts and the hole squeezes shut and I hear a crunch and a squeal and the tail of the squirrel, which is trapped outside of the nest, gives a few weak kicks and then the tree sucks it in like a dog eating spaghetti. ⁴²I walk towards the river and I find a small raft made out of thick cut branches tied together with old yellow fabric. ⁴³Who built this? ⁴⁴Underneath the raft I find a dead and bloated body that resembles my own save for the color of the skin. Where mine is dark, his is light. It reminds me of the color I saw in the ocean, hovering above me. ⁴⁵Could this be the source of the light? Could this be God? ⁴⁶Has our understanding of God been wrong? ⁴⁷This is a man with a potbelly. He has white hair in a male patterned type of baldness. His skin has turned into cottage cheese. His eyes used to be green but now they look like someone has poured glue over them. His fingernails are yellow and brown and caked with dirt. ⁴⁸I wonder what this man’s penis looks like, mangled and gross, bloated and crawling with bugs. ⁴⁹He is wearing a white shirt with blue trim. The subtle intricacies of the design are unparalleled. How he was able to fabricate such a creation sits beyond the fence of my understanding and must be a kind of divine wonder. ⁵⁰I wonder what is in his pockets. I wonder who this man was. ⁵¹I hear another crunch and my senses tingle. I turn my head and see another beast walking towards me but this one is far different. It is what I will look like someday. It is what I will become. What I will change into if I am left to change. But I will not be left to change. This thing is about to take me away and show me things. ⁵²I have been chosen. I have been chosen. ⁵³If the others thought the bloated man was God, it was because they did not lay eyes upon the creature approaching me in grace. ⁵⁴It is short and thin – its body structure narrow and delicate. It has big black eyes and gray skin. It approaches me and I see that it has a very tiny mouth. ⁵⁵I wonder if it has teeth. ⁵⁶It stands before me and we observe one another in silence. ⁵⁷The Great Being looks at me and I get lost in those monolithic eyes. Getting lost in their darkness. Am lost. ⁵⁸I want to sing their praises and write their poetry. A sense of awe pours over me and I realize how tiny I am. The Earth that I saw from the top of the tree is nothing. ⁵⁹I am a speck of shit on the toilet paper of existence. And now I’m going to have my nose rubbed in it for thinking I was better than I was. Such a foolish and limited creature I am. My stupidity and primal state are embarrassing. ⁶⁰I take a step closer. I could touch it if I chose. Or I could try to. ⁶¹A gentle humming that is not verbal radiates from the body and sends shivers up my spine. My penis tingles and a tear runs down my cheek. I smile and my hands clench to fists. I drop to my knees and stare up at this thing. “I love you. Please. Save me. Show me. Anything.” ⁶²If it wanted to, it could end me. It could simply cap off my life and tear me open and wear my skin to cover its nakedness but I sense that it won’t because it has not an interest, but no need to do it. ⁶³The holy black eye surrounds me and [SEQ. II] ¹then I am standing on a craft that crawls through the blackness of space. ²I know this to be true. ³The fence that circles my mind doubles outward and I see the lay of more land. My understanding rises up out of the Earthly sludge and comprehension of things previously unknown dawn on me like the beginning of time. ⁴I now understand that there is a fence and that my mind can only approach the fence and that I cannot wander past it. Present, future and past tense are moot. All happen simultaneously. Language tense is invalid and lacking true dimensionality. ⁵All around me are greys, none of them staring, all of them observing. I am the center of naked attention. ⁶There are machines everywhere. And hallways that seem endless. ⁷I walk down one and off to the side I see a woman with the top of her head split open and her brain exposed but she is still alive. She says, “Hey, Chuck!” and wiggles her eyebrows at me in a friendly gesture. Her hair is brown and curly. The grey operating on her brain reminds me more of a mechanic than a doctor. ⁸He is just fixing a small problem in one of the machines. ⁹I enter another room that is more like a great hall and see that it is more vast than my simple field. So large that I cannot see the roof. ¹⁰Where am I? Am I not on a craft? The sky seems endless. Am I on a planet? Where have they taken me? ¹¹The inside of the cavern glows with perfect light that radiates from nowhere. The essence of life gives light to itself. It is a light that exists at the origin of everything.

 

 

Return next Monday, May 23rd for part 2 of 10 as our adventure continues through the realms of deep space. We’ll also ground down to a small village and meet a woman who carries the weight of many lifetimes of misery. She will guide us to a community park filled with doors that lead us to the land of Somewhere Else. Fear, hope, anxiety, betrayal and escape. This is the beginning.

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WHAT IS The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender?

Dear Audience,

Today is Friday, May 13th.

On Monday, May 16th, the first part of my novella The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender will premiere here, at JohnnyBeBald.com.

The book is broken into 18 Sequences (or chapters) which will premiere here over the next 10 weeks, roughly 2 Sequences at a time. Mondays will see the release of Pale Lavender. Wednesdays will continue to be regular scheduled programming of the more traditional content.

The majority of work that I write here is non-fiction and based upon my life, whether that be my experiences as a father, husband, son, friend, stranger, road tripper, camper, adventurist, spiritual explorer or inhabitant of this planet / universe. I like to think that I write about the human condition in all its glory, both good and bad, from a multitude of perspectives, and I like to hope that we all, as a group, grow together through it.

It is my goal that you see some of yourself in some of my stories and that we can all re-examine our lives through group illumination.

That said, Pale Lavender is something completely different and please consider this post the back-of-the-book or inside-flap read to prepare you for what is to come, in case you’ve decided to take this journey with us.

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender opens on pre-time, pre-existence, pre-life of any form, and follows a single entity from before the dawn of time, through its journey across various plateaus of reality, consciousness and spirituality in a variety of bodies and identities, in its quest for Ultimate Truth.

It is told in one continuous paragraph and, due to this, the Sequence breaks will appear at random. This is the nature of the piece.

At the end, on the 11th week, I will post the book in its entirety from top to bottom in a single post. Beyond that, I would love to release it as an e-book.

This is the first time that I’ve released something of substance that is fiction – and especially fiction that is so far removed from my traditional wheelhouse – and so am experiencing a certain sense of nakedness, exposure and vulnerability. But to grow as people, I believe that we must leave our comfort zones.

I’m very excited to present this to you and it is my hope that, in some way, by reading it, it also makes you feel naked, exposed and vulnerable.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you all on Monday.

Johnny

 

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The Genesis of Observation

 

1 In our beginning, existence was formless and empty, darkness and abyss were over the surface of the cosmos. ² The Observer witnessed the creation of space and time.

³ And The Observer witnessed a great star ignite in the abyss, burning hydrogen and creating heat. ⁴ The Observer noted that with light came darkness. ⁵ Millions of years passed.

⁶ And The Observer witnessed gases collect around mass and create atmosphere and The Observer noted: This will contain the elements necessary for life and will protect the inhabitants from elsewhere. ⁷ Slowly, the atmosphere formed. ⁸Millions of years passed.

⁹ And The Observer witnessed pressures underground shift the plates of the planets and the low spots began to gather water and the high spots began to gather snow if the elements allowed. ¹⁰ The Observer witnessed the formation of dry ground and the formation of seas. And after millions of years, The Observer noted that it was good.

¹¹Then The Observer witnessed vegetation evolve from the soil. The land produced many seed-bearing plants and many trees that bore fruit with seed within them. ¹² And after millions of years, The Observer noted that it was good. ¹³ Time passed.

¹⁴ And The Observer witnessed more hydrogen atoms begin to ignite in the cosmos across vast distances. And The Observer noted that constellations could serve as signs to mark time passing from other shores, ¹⁵ and the stars gave light to the Earth and everywhere.” ¹⁶ The Observer witnessed Alpha Centauri ignite, which would warm Earth and The Observer witnessed gravity draw the moon into the orbit of the Earth. ¹⁷ The Observer noted that the moon reflected light from the sun back onto Earth at night, ¹⁸ and new evolutions began. And after millions of years, The Observer noted that it was good.¹⁹ Time passed.

²⁰ And The Observer witnessed the individual cells of life continue to multiply and witnessed them evolve. The Observer witnessed them divide in the water and crawl towards the land. The Observer witnessed them evolve wings to fly in the air across the sky. ²¹ The Observer witnessed the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it evolve, according to their kinds, and every winged bird evolve, according to its kind. And after millions of years, The Observer noted that it was good. ²² The Observer also noted that the creatures continued to divide. ²³ Time passed.

²⁴ And The Observer witnessed creatures evolve from the sea and walk upon the land: the livestock, the creatures that moved along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. ²⁵ The Observer witnessed the wild animals, the livestock, and all the creatures that moved along the ground, evolve and change. And after millions of years, The Observer noted that it was good.

²⁶ Then The Observer witnessed their brains evolve conscience and self awareness and witnessed them becoming more intelligent than their ancestors had been so that they could care for them; the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, and the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and all the creatures that moved along the ground.

²⁷ So The Observer witnessed the creatures evolve,
with self awareness and consciousness, both sexes evolved;
male and female both evolved together.

²⁸ The Observer noted, I hope they are kind to one another; it is a great thing to care for the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and every living creature that moves on the ground.

²⁹ Then The Observer noted: Their bodies have evolved to fit this planet perfectly. They can sustain themselves on the vegetation of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.³⁰ And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.

³¹ After billions of years, The Observer noted: the machine works. Time continued to pass.

 

 

 

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Where Do Babies Come From?

While visiting our in-laws in Montana and patiently awaiting the arrival of our newest tribesmen, Jade and I decided to dip out and take a walk with the kids. Turning the corner on an overcast day, Quinn asked me, no doubt with thoughts of pregnant women on the brain, “How do babies get inside the mommy’s tummy?”

This train of logic makes sense. We show up to Montana, telling the children that Aunt Katie is going to have a baby. We tell the kids that there is a baby in her tummy. Green light, green light, green light. Who the heck put that thing there?

Gotta be honest. I was a little caught off guard with that one. I had certainly thought about what it would be like having that talk with my daughter and I’ve thought about what I’d say but I’d never actually come to any kind of conclusion. I’d never thought I will say THIS. I mean, even if you’re going to shoot totally straight about it, there’s no clean way to say, “A man gets an erection – uh, that’s when his penis gets really hard, and then he sticks it into a woman and rubs it until he ejaculates inside of her – oh, ejaculate is like this creamy puddy stuff. Yeah, it’s pretty gross. So anyway, the man shoots this creamy pudding stuff into the woman’s vagina and then badda-bing, bodda-boom, the baby is there.”

It’s gross, right? You’re cringing. No way am I saying that to my five year old. No way am I playing this one straight.

Not yet, anyway.

I just imagine that I damage them so irreparably that every sexual experience they have for the rest of their lives both begins and ends with spells of shivering and vomiting.

Anyway, I’m like, “You know our garden and how we pick vegetables?” “Yeah,” “And you know how we plant a seed and then a plant grows?” “Yeah,” “A daddy plants a seed in the mommy. And the seed grows into a baby and when the baby is ready, we pick it.”

I say, “Does that make sense?” and she says, “Yes,” and then peddles away on her big wheel. What is happening? I’m having sex talks with my children. I was in high school yesterday. How did I get here?

Well, as it turns out, who the heck put that thing there turned into who the heck put me here which turned into who the heck put us all here?

This is a process of several days, understand. She’d ask a question and it would seem to percolate with her for 24 – 48 hours before she’d come back with the raised ante.

So we’re driving home from Montana and Quinn asks me from the backseat, “Daddy? Where do we come from? I mean, all of us? Did God put us here?”

And this is a role defining moment for me. I was raised in a very traditional Catholic household before leaving the Catholic church and rolling “straight Christian.” My faith has gone through a number of peaks and valleys – or rather, my faith has always been what it is but it is my actions that have seemed to falter. The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak, you know?

And it wasn’t until recently, and probably I could write an entire piece on this, that I’ve begun to seriously question many of the tent pole beliefs of my faith. Was Jesus actually the son of God or was he simply one of the most amazing teachers history has ever seen? Did Jesus resurrect after death? Is God real?

I won’t get into the minutia of it here – perhaps another time – but I’ve found this really divine peace that I’ve never experienced before. I feel free.

My faith was chaining me to the ground. My blind faith only made me blind.

And so I don’t want to tell Quinn that God is real and that she should believe XYZ simply because I’m telling her that it’s true.

And so I let her wonder. So that when she does look for God, it is her own journey and it’s not crafted by me and it’s raw and rich and experiential. Instead of telling her what happens in the movie and how awesome it is, I’m just going to let her go see the movie herself.

I believe that there probably is a God. I believe that it probably isn’t the one that modern Christian culture is having us believe in. I think our perspective of God is disgustingly warped and perverted and I think the Christian faith, overall, is absolutely grotesque masked hatred. While most of the followers walk around preaching peace, they’re sitting on their hands at home, blasting pornography and talking about how important it is to keep men from loving men and how to best keep families that are in desperate need out of our country. Basically standing in direct opposition to Christ’s teachings.

By opposing gay marriage, they are saying, in short, that love should not happen. And by keeping out the Syrian refugees they are saying, in short, that empathy should not happen. They will tell you all day long that they don’t think this but words are wind.

“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” That’s James. From the Bible. Calling this brand of religion worthless. 

“And you will know them by their fruits.” That’s Jesus.

Christian church, we all know you by your fruits. And your fruit is rotten and disgusting and it turns the stomach of the world. Your faith is off-putting. It is not attractive. You are not the victim. You are the predator.

Christianity as a whole is very wonderful. The teachings of Jesus can change your life and can change the world. I don’t want what I’m saying to be confused with modern day Christianity, which is – for the most part – just a stiff-necked mannequin. An imposter. A copy of the real thing.

It is a giant, rubber dildo. A phony.

Most (not all) modern day Christians are so consumed with the laws of their faith that they’ve lost the lessons. Modern day Christianity has come full circle and the practitioners are the very Pharisees that crucified Christ.

When the Bible says that you’ll call to God and he’ll say he never knew you, it’s talking about those people. When the Bible says that many are called and few are chosen, it’s talking about those people.

If you believe in the devil, you can rest assured that he’s just kicking back and watching Christians do all his work for him.

And I can’t get behind that way of thinking. And I don’t want to associate myself with any group of people who lead their lives with such fear. I believe in a God that kicks ass in peace. A God that lives inside all of us and in everything. A thing of beauty and love and a thing that we can each connect with in that beauty and love.

And I found this raw experience because I was willing to let go of everything I knew and I would have missed it if I had refused to let go of things that people taught me instead of the things I had experienced for myself. Who God was to me was always who God was to my parents. Does that make sense? My perception of God was crafted by other people.

And I don’t want to craft Quinn’s perspective of who God is. When the Bible says seek and you shall find, I believe this is what it’s talking about. You come look for me. And I’ll be here. I truly believe that. And if you believe that, then cutting your children out into the world shouldn’t be a problem. If you believe that God is great and God is the Ultimate Truth, then if your children seek the Ultimate Truth, they will find your God.

But we’re all afraid they won’t find God. We’re all afraid they’ll find something else. Because when it comes down to it, we have no faith in our faith. And so we nurture our beliefs into them. Better to keep these things in our own hands. Spoon feed them religion.

When I told a number of my Christian friends and family that I was speaking with the door-to-door Mormons and was reading The Book of Mormon, I was told that I should quickly run the other way. When I told a number of my Christian friends and family that I was reading Dianetics, I was told that I should drop it and run the other way.

Never trust an organization, institution or group of individuals, whether that be political, religious or otherwise, that demands you to not seek knowledge elsewhere. When someone suggests that you not look for true knowledge outside of the presented box, they do not have your best interest at heart.
Fear of knowledge is a fear of reality. And a fear of reality leads to a very limited understanding of the world. And a limited understanding of the world leads to a limited understanding of people. And a limited understanding of people leads to fear. Oh, my. That’s certainly cyclical. Look at your people group. Look at your friends. Is it the same people that would tell you to hang tight to your beliefs that would tell you to keep the Syrian refugees out? Is it the same people that would tell you to hang tight to your beliefs that would tell you that gay marriage is an abomination but not be able to tell you why?

Are the people that tend to fear the world the same people that tend to fear knowledge?

When Quinn experiences God, I want her to experience the closest thing she can. And when she looks for God, I want her to look on her own. I want to instill in her a sense of raw wonder of the universe. I love that she’s asking all these questions at five. I love that she’s already seeing the world and going, what is this? What is this? What is that thing? How does this work? She asked me about the sun and planets and outer space the other day and now she’s memorized what most of them look like – she knows that Saturn has rings and Neptune has rings (that go the other way) and Pluto is tiny and Jupiter (which she spells Gupiter) has a big red spot on it and that our planet is blue and she understands that the planets work on a “big loop around the sun.”

I’m like, excuse the French but, what the fuck?

Is this child freaking Carl Sagan reborn?

“Well, Quinn. We came from amoebas.”

“Amoebas?” really, truly shocked. “What’s that?”

“It’s like a small thing that’s even smaller than you could ever see. You’d have to have a microscope to see it. It probably traveled here on an asteroid that contained ice when the world was forming.”

“Is it like this small?” and she holds up her fingers pinched almost together.

“Smaller. Way smaller. Like nothing at all.”

And then I try to explain evolution to her but quickly realize that there is just no easy way to explain this to a five year old. You try to talk about things changing and it doesn’t make sense to them and you try to talk about natural selection and it’s just too big an idea because they don’t really understand breeding and passing of traits. Is there not a children’s version of Darwin’s Origin of Species?

So I’m left to try and simply draw connections between monkeys, apes, Neanderthals and modern man. “What animal do humans look like the most, Quinn?”

“Uh… monkeys?”

“That’s right! I’m very impressed that a five year old noticed that.”

 

Crickets.

 

“Over millions and millions of years, monkeys slowly became man.”

“God did not put us here?”

“Well, some people believe that God put us here and some people believe that God put the amoebas here and some people believe…

Are you sure you want to say this? Once it’s out of your mouth, you cannot take it back. Is this a seed you really want to plant? You are about to make a major life decision and this may affect her faith in sweeping ways – in large ripple effects.

“Some people don’t believe in God at all.”

“WHAT?!”

She doesn’t ask me if I believe in God.

Sometimes I wonder what I would say if she had…

 

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