Sol's Inner Vault

The athiests or doubters would explain it with little challenge. How natural and expected, they'd say, that God's personality was described by the early Torah authors with so many attributes most familiar to human experience. Beginning in Genesis, Yahweh is the sole Creator of the universe who also at times expresses great wrath, jealousy, vengeance, remarkably mortal qualities that, to many who strive to understand, are most puzzling as divinely shaped descriptors of an All-powerful and All-knowing God. Scripture clearly confirms that we're made in God's image, yet we've also been vexxed with painful, immature, and negative characteristics. Folks of faith might say our God's image is now a distortion because of sinful behavior. Disobeying Yahweh is the beginning of sin, Scripture pointedly describes. God had no mercy for Adam and Eve's mistake, no tolerant understanding. Cast out into suffering, they knew nothing of God's purported universal loving or f

I learn about something, a fact, an idea, or a concept, then I'm scratching my head, struggling to understand how it's true. Like, considering the impossible. For example, quantum physics. It curls my brain into question mark pretzels, so that I almost have to "feel" what I'm learning. Contemplating other dimensions is like trying to leave the room without moving, or, like leaving and staying in place at the same time. My consciousness and the cosmos are in fact always inseparable, but there's a constant and convincing illusion that some division exists, and this trick is accomplished thru an endless myriad of momentary distractions called "life". Mathematical magicians assure us that the computational certainty of these other dimensions is beyond question, all of which doesn't help conundrums of unanswered enigmas, and how I go about steering this mortal wheel's roll. It's believed that I, as observer, must at the same exact time affect

Although appearing later in the Bible's New Testament, this particularly defining Scripture is really the start. Believers must begin here, where faith makes its primary claim, and where all doubt ceases by conscious selection. Verse 3:16 says "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,". Many verses preceding and following review in detail the dangers of association with non-believers, and the inviolable Word of God being eternally beyond question. This is the seminal point of departure, the nucleus. Did God say it, or are these merely the words of humans?  Formally marking a certain finality of knowledge, one must choose to believe that every "jot and tittle" of Scripture is God authored. This is the biggest challenge to overcome, or rather accept as being true. Various secular world views, based largely on reason and science, react with quickly determined rejection, refusing to believe without

Is there any merit in quibbling over unknowns? Early this morning, 3am, roaming the house on her walker, my mom says it again. It's been awhile now, a repeating thought. "I just want to know what happens afterwards. Where do I go?", she asks in earnest. How easily I could answer that no one really knows. Yet, many, many believe that heaven is real. Lucky place at the throne of the Creator of the universe.  So, I always answer her the same: "You'll be with father again, mom, that's where you'll go. Where he is." What do I know? Just another sinner here, typically imperfect to answer the most important mysteries with clarity. On whatever conscious or instinctual plain, believing is a decision that helps bring the mind over to heart matters, like devotion and unconditional love.  There is no merit in quibbling over unknowns. In the end, it matters little what we actually can prove, because within the limitless realms of faith, all is possible. Calming c

Dementia When mom bolts straight up from the couch, from quarelous sleep or menacing dream, and shrieks out "Help me! I'm dying, I'm dying!"- there is a moment when you think Death itself would be scared off, frightened, in shock. The ritual of daily heartbreak is continuous, witnessing her struggles and confusion now, so active before.  Everything about dementia is a startled, dreadfuly unwelcome reset. Random, sometimes ominous blanks from memory banks clogged in evil fog, mired down with star maps gone, destinations lost.  How do you even hate a disease? Chemical imbalance. Plaque. Brain processes run wild. The most insidiously impersonal of crimes, it has no face to despise like Hitler, like Satan. Maybe each face of dementia's victims is held mercifully in God's great Hands, but names and personalities are still uprooted. Minds of loved ones are still ransacked, disheveled like tossed hotel rooms, numbers gone from the doors.  Anyway, hating it never help

A night so crowded with pale haze and lavender mystery, even the darkness is grateful how the moon wasn't having it, beaming thru the whispers, low clouds and intrigue intermingling.  The small town continued its deep slumber, uninterrupted by queries or controversy, the last few lights gone out several hours ago, a quiet calm settling down upon the village as if all the questions were answered, all the dreams counted one by one, all the longings fulfilled as promised. A night when the sky has other plans, the wind near dawn knows its place, the oldest secrets are all explained in unknown languages filtered thru fog and an alphabet of encrypted symbols, hieroglyphs of random spirits spread across galaxies from the original past. Constellations of conscious mythology, the moon understands their meaning, a night when souls only want to hide.

This quizzical life is also constantly heroic, as evidenced all around us. Everywhere we are, small acts of courage occuring with hardly a notice, lost in the traffic of days passing, hours dissolving into weeks and months of quiet miracles by the hundreds of millions, uncounted in the reverie of the moment. Despite all the faceless, unconscious fears of this veiled mortal experience, humans are yet prone to help each other, it's not purely a selfless instinct. We all somehow intrinsically know thru our DNA that each survives better when more survive together; it's in our bones, this original kindred knowledge. Commonly great heroes are ususally disguised by the immediacy of the challenge, the crisis or problem in play. You can see them better when you look sideways, past our entitlements and prejudices, we all have them, they make us all blind to the most obvious. It's the mom, or dad, or grandparent, trudging along in the routines needed, thanklessly toiling day to day, d