Sol's Inner Vault

For this thought stream, God's reality will remain unquestioned. But, what must God be feeling in the midst of global fractured faith among Christians and Catholics? Is God sad with all the ongoing quarrels of opposing doctrines? The internal battles never cease to boil.  Even as Christians are harshly persecuted around the world, painful philosophical differences endure over a millennium. Today, Pope Francis is attending the great Synod meeting, where Church philosophy and practice are reviewed. Many seeking policy reform have been hopeful their views would have a turn. For instance, the very contentious issue of women receiving holy ordinance, then becoming priests, as Lutheran and other denominations may permit. But, this Pope, as his predecessors, will not consider at all such radical change. His Holiness explains it cannot be done without also changing the structure of Catholic beliefs in Revelations, and that no one has authority or cause to alter God's design: only men c...

(Excerpt from the 1855 preface to Whitman's Leaves of Grass.) "...hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown..." Thinker and poet Walt Whitman wrote about our many human contradictions, the personal traits that make no sense, that seem so opposite and impossible. Being a resigned agnostic who prays, for example. Or, being a questioning explorer of the boundaries of science and faith, how they both share a long, confusing border of reason, beliefs, facts, and emotions. A dad for two decades now, I'm still asking myself what is the best way to help my young son understand his own contradictions, or impulses that may shape his choices and even outcomes.  After Hebrew school, Bar Mitzva, and me talking about the Commandments, he's a young adult now. We always have frank conversations, so he knows my agnostic traits, and that my praying is contrary to my doubting, still a part of...

Mind wandering after work, thinking about writing and other forms of self-expression, what's similar what's different, and the parallels are many. I'm blessed with friends who are pros in the visual arts, drawing and painting, sculpture, crafting of all kinds. Having so little skill in these amazing talents, writing somehow seems maybe easier. For instance, thinking of words and colors, the basic core tools of creating, there is such a numerical difference! Due to light physics and our eye structures, there are three primary colors from which an endless range of hues emerge. If words were colors, with thousands and thousands of hues in each language, what is their ancestry? If words were colors, what then are the primary three, from which all emerge? "Me, You, We"? "God, Love, Eternity"? What are your three?  

A week of sporadic grappling with the urgently irrelevant. Going home now. Coming back again next month for another week. How is it possible, there's so much around me to contradict this feeling, yet it's daily. So alone in this universe? No, not all day, the sensation comes then leaves, the disconnected sense can last for hours, an alien malaise with no other symptom beyond heartache. Feeling alone in a crowd as they say, strolling the day invisibly, or straying about with no purpose, but in pain, inverted screams implode between normal thoughts, but it's not important now who goes nuts or who survives, when you're down to the tens and fives of your rationality, the constellations say it all, wheeling above you in plain encrypted sight, too far off to dispute. How is it possible, if I have a soul is it vacant, does someone return in time? Hoping so, as alone in this universe seems vainly focused anyway. You'll say, but what about family, dearest friends, neighbors ...

Don't be alarmed or distressed, the nonsensical is all around us, all of the time, no matter compass or your GPS. It's a functional part of our commerse, common speech, interacting in kind. Reason has its place. But, fantasy gives us the possibilities to surge beyond our limitations; fantasy lets us see the broad frequencies of colors, and channel them all thru unbound imagination. Magic is okay when kindness is in play. Someone will say to another, "May you be blessed a thousand eternities." Fine salutation, the sentiment counts. But, odd words. Is there even a plural for eternity? What would we do with two?  

Uniquely palpable sense of self, those fingerprints of a lifetime's history, the feeling that you are you, I am me, banks of random memory, all of this dementia steals away day by day, stranger hours get tangled over nothing important, nothing recalled. Little by little sense of self never was beyond some dream that seemed real for decades but now it fades like fog or the last cloud passing thru an epilogue.

Sometimes, when you go somewhere, you take a certain route, because it is the best way. Coming back home, you may take a different route, again because it is the best way. There is no contradiction, especially if you are walking and there are hills or inclines. Consistency in life may be undefined by routes taken, but then refound by steady purpose, lasting values, and some enduring hope for no particular reason.  

Horror of war begins with the false premise that lives have different value. There are no obscure lifetimes, only lack of storytellers. Most of our stories go untold, except for awhile, maybe for generations, by those we know. Old photos, anecdotes handed down, second-hand reflections repeated again. What can we do? The universe isn't big on permanency, ever expanding as it is, so humans cannot expect much, except by faith or belief.  Fully composed, the chronicles of humankind would stack to the next galaxy and beyond, a swirling trail of volumes and titles most unimaginable, countless pages, every day's details described, every person's story told.  There are no hard and fast rules. Whatever seems like the most simple lifetime, if studied up close and personal, it would reveal all the similar triumphs, hardships, gains and losses found in all biographies. Every human who has ever lived or will ever live is a compelling diary of intense interest and value. Every unique lif...

Let's see where this goes. Thinking that is magical in nature. Thought processes involving an ongoing series of ideas, images, concepts, beliefs and feelings passing in processional order in our minds. But, these thoughts have no actual basis in reality- they're magical. Magical in this context refers to thought process not grounded in reason, logic, and accepted facts in global evidence. As in, the Earth is round, a fact. Thinking it's flat is magical process.  Magical thinking includes magical mathematics, magical physics- the hapless and doomed Wiley Coyote, hanging out over the cliff's edge, suspended in air for funny moments before vanishing beneath the screen.  What does all this mean, reason or magical, facts or belief, illusion or reality? How does it affect me right now, in this one moment of my life which has continued for seventy years, and hopefully counting? What is the choice at hand? Magical thinking may include nearly every religion, any belief system be...