As Eve Asked Adam About That Lump in His Throat

Creation. The Tree of Life stories. After Adam met Eve.

The first Tree of Life story. Somehow, the Tree of Life was associated with the challenge to know God.  At the end of the stone age. Before the nomads set forth.  From the garden.  “God looked at everything He had made, and He found it very good.”

The apple.  Adam.  Eve.  Adam was there first.  In the story.  And he DID seem to care.  About God.  And then about Eve.  And she had wanted the apple.  And so the story.  About breaking the relationship with God.  Or about your perceived to be fracturing of a relationship? 

And so there was this relationship. Cave men.  Or men from Mars. In a relationship.  Adam first with God. And then Adam with Eve.  As she entered the story, the one commandment had preceded Eve.  Just one commandment.  The first commandment.  About the apple.

In the narrative, the one commandment had never been given to Eve.  But Adam seems to have passed down, to have explained, the one rule.  Clearly he has explained the one simple commandment.  When all humans, if actually acted upon to eat the fruit from the Tree of Life, were doomed to die.

To know God.  For cave men, it is not possible to like, to love anyone, unless you first know them.  The greatest gift to be passed down was knowledge.  So, did Eve know God?  Directly?  Before she ate the apple?  I see no reference that they ever really met.  Face to face.  What happens in a relationship when only one party knows, works at knowing, God?  What was this attraction, her attraction, to God?

And so the story.  About God.  About creation.  Giving Adam and Eve everything.  And about inheritance. Not so different than what I had given my own kids.  Knowledge.  Money. T he ability to survive in the world.  Beyond the lifestyle of just stone age men.  And stone age women.

And so the story.  Creation.  The injustice of creation.  From the perspective of a writer in the Land of 10,00 Lakes.  In the location of the lake.  When Adam, or someone, might end up living closer to the lake.  Living in the age of hysteria, there was all the injustice of creation.  Or since the injustice that Adam was closer to God?  Eve and the perceived to be injustice.  When Eve, who had never gotten to spend time alone with God, like Adam had.  What was Eve’s perspective in all of this?  Apparently, Eve did not really care too much about the one simple commandment.  Clearly when it came to the one commandment, her actions bespoke her beliefs.  Did Eve know God?  About the one commandment, she more or less said, “I don’t care.”  Maybe not much different than my kids, she was born into all of this, and never inquired as to from where everything had come.  So what would be Eve’s motivation, concerning the one commandment? Born in His image.  Formed in His likeness. In the perspective of a woman.  In a world where Eve did not have a lot of choice.  It was either Adam or no one?  Or the apple?  Was Eve silently unhappy with Adam? When two people always argued about the important choices.  But born second.  The second child.  The unfairness of it all.  In this arranged marriage.  In a role of having to bear children.  Of the timing.  Of not really truly knowing –even in the garden – God.  Not really seeing God directly, before she approached the Tree of Life.  Maybe the original agnostic.  Or not too unlike how an adopted child goes in search of the birth parent, in the search for the divine.  “What’s He gonna do to me? Or what will your God possibly do to us, when I eat the apple?  And you do likewise.”

And then seeing this tree. So was the demand for authority, establishing a degree of order, proof of love? “Don’t eat the apple.” Or was this just a sin of pride, similar to the stories about the serpent? In days when Adam and Eve had not figured out the equation. Of God. Of each other. Of conditional love versus unconditional love.

Somehow, this Tree of Life was associated with the challenge to know God. Was the tree about Spiritual knowledge? Or simply the Truth? Or maybe the Tree of Life story was all about what was missing for Eve, and she wanted some knowledge of God, or desired to be like God.

Love and desire.  Establishing the proper degree of order.  What happens in a relationship over issues of sharing love?  Or was it over issues of sharing authority?  She only had wanted the apple?  Or it was more than just an apple?  Now in her desire to share in a relationship, with Adam, and with Adam’s God, there was this communal need for greater union, starting in her relationship?

In the love triangle of a man, a woman, and God, there was Eve.  The text clearly states it was Eve who picked the apple.  And she ate the apple first.  But he did know from where the apple came, since Adam was with her at the time.  He was an accomplice to picking the apple.  Yes, Adam knew from where the apple had come.  Poor Adam, having to decide between God’s authority, and Eve’s.  In a Land that was never really theirs, having to decide about actions out of love.  Or actions out of fear?  The fear of the Lord.

Eve broke the relationship with God.  With the inheritance, the dowry in the Garden of Eden, lost.  As if Paradise belonged at the time to Eve?

Trying to understand order.  Law and order.  Or God, trying to figure out Eve?  She must have been a lot more complicated than Adam.  And if Adam wanted to help populate the earth, in his relationship with Eve….well, God and His one commandment had to play second fiddle.  What could You do about it?  In the perspective of Adam?  If you loved this woman?  Adam had already figured out not so much her mystery, but he was letting Eve decide everything.  In the days before any guy ever had married.  But if he was smart, and wanted to try to be happy.  Because maybe the fear of the Lord was not proportionate to the fear of Eve.

Now Adam seemed honest.  Real honest.  And he said that he ate the apple, because the woman that he shared a relationship with had first eaten it.  He seemed to have wished to have shared in all of her mistakes.  In her human nature.

Cave men. In the stone age. How hard cave men had worked!  With their clubs.  Lovable stone men. And their women.  Like the one who had picked the apple?  In power struggles of knowledge.  About the Tree of Life.  When Eve is essentially saying, “I don’t care.”  About that one commandment.  About this Paradise of Theirs.  Had she failed at the Tree of Life, in the challenge to know God?  Cave woman with their power struggles with men, and with God.  Or just their insecurities, in the days before make-up?  And before matchmakers.

How hard people searched to find God after Adam and Eve.  Because Eve ate the damn apple!  When at that point, God had seemed pretty satisfied about His relationship with Adam and even Eve, even if Eve was not satisfied.

Maybe it was a lot like last night.  Speaking of clubs, in the discussion who the Appleton minor league baseball club had been affiliated with.  For the past 50 years.  In Wisconsin. Adam’s noble human nature seemed greater than mine.  I just offered the right answer.  Never was there an affiliation with the Minnesota professional baseball club.  NEVER!  While the three women in the room talked to each other. And arrived at the wrong answer.

Presenting the hard work of the past.  By cave men.  With cave women.  How hard cave men worked. For water.  For cave women.  In those Byzantine relationships.  Before marriage.  Cave men who did not even seem human… compared to me. They did not seem real lovable … compared to me.  Until forced to choose, like I was forced to choose.  In looking for union, with a woman not unlike Eve.

Such was this, the start of unconditional love.  When Adam was forced to choose… between God and Eve. And he knew enough to tell Eve she was right.  On behalf of procreation.  And the future of the world.

It was in January that I visited that 3,000 year old fort in the Aran Island.  Amidst all the rock.  And no real tillable land.  How hard in the culture it had been then for the Irish.  And then over time.  In their hard, hard lives.  How hard their lives were, compared to mine.  How hard people worked for their food.  My ancestors. The tour guide that day talked about Oliver Cromwell.  Had he been in the Aran Islands, I asked?  Noel the bus driver said he had been. Then 6 weeks later, on a public television show with Rick Steves, it was stated Cromwell never was there.  Last weekend, my friend with all the family in Ireland said, speaking about dealing with authority, Cromwell never had been there.  But Adam and Eve might have been.

Yes, how hard people worked for water.  And the hard work to find food… that present day nomads took so much for granted.  When man and woman had failed in the instruction to cultivate and care for the earth. And now doomed to die.  God who made the heavens and the sky, now had an additional purpose for His heaven?

Afterward, the punishment.  For those cave women, with their calculating stone hearts, about dealing with authority.  Women who, similarly, since Eve had to carry Adam’s children within.  Only now God would be intensifying the pangs of child-bearing.  And Eve had in every day life an affliction of desire to be with Adam, and he was to be her master.  With no mention if Adam was allowed to remind Eve of this.

So the theme of pain, along with human nature.  In the beginning.  It seems apparent that even Adam could never boss around his wife.  Like you ever could in a true relationship, boss someone around.  And when God never had much luck with Eve, either.  In this chapter.

And so the story about breaking the relationship with God.  Presenting all of the hard work of the past, but with this need for healing.  With a need for healing, for the present day nomad doomed now to die. Somehow, the Tree of Life was associated with death.  And relationships.  And how hard relationships were.  Especially for cave women, with their cave men.  And how hard people searched to find union again with God, ever since the beginning.

So what had been changed by Eve, after sharing an apple?  With the ensuing theme of pain, carrying something deep within, when it came to the kids. Eve, soon to be taking care of someone else, in those ensuing relationships, with her own kids, with their same kind of doubts over obedience and authority.

The memory of it all … with all the hard work required in relationship, did Adam ever get to ask God if relationships were harder than creation? And the  dealing with loss.  The irony that soon Eve was to be dealing with her kids who often, too, said, “I don’t care.”  So the ongoing pangs of bearing with your sons, the one who looked a lot like Adam, physically.  As the need for more commandments multiplied, until there were state legislatures.

So what else had been changed by Eve, after sharing an apple?  After eating the fruit from the Tree of Life, Eve had this longing every day to be with Adam, and he was to be her master.  And THAT was Adam’s punishment in all of this.

And so the theme for everybody of pain, with fertility, which, for the most part, had felt so good.  At least in the beginning.  And the irony of all of this apple business, which had started over the relationship. But finally, for the present day nomad doomed now to die, there was at least God, and the memory of it all. When it seems apparent that, in Adam’s view anyway, if Eve had never came around, no one believed how great it had been here.  Between Adam and God.  But with no real reason to write it all down.  Not until there was such conflict, such pain.  And women, with their viewpoints about the various degree of pain. Theirs was the worst!  And to write it all down, otherwise no on would believe it, until they found out all the hard work required in relationship.  Based, in different proportion, on love and authority.  And the irony in all of this.  That Adam never had an apple juice again.  In his life.

And so the unimaginable, inconceivable, unthinkable story of creation and procreation ever since, before the editors and proof-readers were hired and got a hold of it, when, in the words of Picasso, every act of creation involves a form of destruction.

Copyright © 2015.

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Stock

“Michael. Row the boat ashore.”

My youngest niece is 4 years old. Within the past few days she came across 2 blue robin’s eggs in the backyard. Left unattended. On the ground. On territory belonging to her living ancestors, four generations older.

My 4-year old niece wanted to know, with her own developing sense of belonging, to whom those 2 blue eggs in the backyard belonged.

Her father expressed concern on the previous Sunday about the east coast of the United States, and the damage done by that off-shore oil rig, the Deepwater Horizon. In the area that his family lives, and where he grew up. A state that he left attended to by his mother and 3 sisters. And their families. On the east coast.

Coastlines. The suspicions of the inhabitants, with their sense of belonging. Of nomads, always in search of place. Crossing borders. With reckless abandon. Addressing those relationships. Of belonging. With new beginnings. Or at life’s end.

“Michael. Row the boat ashore.” The mystery of off-shore drilling, nearly one mile deep. Or of robin’s eggs.

Life was not fair. On shore. Just when they had the least income, old people had to go to the doctor the most. In Ireland, Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney was trying to sell to sell its state-owned health insurance company, VHI. But first she had to deal with issues of capital reserves. To attract new investors.

According to new data published today by the Central Statistics Office, women in Ireland had an average of 2.05 children in 2007, one-third of which were births outside of marriage in 2007. (The percentage of births outside of marriage was higher in my own country in 2007.) The estimated April 2007 population was 4,339,000, with 2,171,100 males and 2,167,900 females. This was the highest fertility rate in the European Union in 2007. The fertility rate in France was 1.98, while 1.92 in Britain.

Life was not fair. Over the draft and a government’s ability to send young men to their death. In war. As government attempted to increase its own power, on the back of the vulnerable young men. And about those robin’s eggs. Life was not fair. On the birth issues. As government attempted to increase its own power, on the back of the vulnerable young women, so the issue of fertility. An Irish woman born in the 1980s, Ann Enright wrote: “The wars we fought about contraception, abortion, divorce were not about virtue–or only incidentally so–it was about breeding. It was about maintaining stock. The nation faced a demographic shift towards the young. We could not believe that the nation had to overproduce just to keep still. ”

Maintaining stock. The Irish government is planning to sell its state-owned health insurance company, VHI. While the European Commission had initially set a date of September 1, 2009 to implement an adequate regulatory regime to oversee the state-owned health insurance company, Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney has set a new date to accrue the required capital reserves by of January 1, 2012. As previous deadlines have been missed, this is at least the fourth deadline set by the government. The Irish government faces court action by the European Commission for failing to implement an adequate regulatory commission to oversee the VHI that could require an investment of up to € 200 million. It was as if the SEC quit overseeing Wall Street.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen said: “The scheme will be significant in scale and scope, reflecting the real additional cost of health care for older or sicker customers. While we prepare the legislation and engage in appropriate consultations, we will ensure that there is significant support of costs of claims for older people though the tax system.” According to the Irish Times, having expanded beyond the health insurance market, the state-owned health insurance company has benefited from having to meet solvency levels, with exemption to set aside reserves for a minimum guarantee fund, as established by two directives of the EU non-life insurance, from the general insurance supervisory commission.

Maintaining stock. The Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, stated: “We are protecting older and sicker people from being loaded with premium increases or more expensive policies solely because of their age and medical history. There are very complex challenges involved in our health insurance market. It is important to deal with all the complexity on the basis of a clear objective and a determination to achieve it.”

Those robin’s eggs. And unconditional fertility. Or infertility. Affecting movement in the story. Affecting coastlines. In the lives of a woman, young and old. And in the lives of nomads. With all the human desire for stability. So were your relationships stable? Maintaining stock when you, with your hunger and desire to connect to someone, had the inner desire to belong. And to maintain. When life was not fair. And death was not fair.

What would happen to the boat when the proportion of elderly to the young, in the way of rowers, was out of balance –when the elderly were not required to row, and the boat quit moving? When a nation had to overproduce, to maintain.

The unattended robin’s eggs. The off-shore drilling. The damage done. With her own sense of belonging to a tribe…on territory belonging to someone, with a desire to connect and sharing the inner desire to belong, my 4-years old niece wanted to know, with this developing sense of belonging, to whom those 2 blue eggs in the backyard belonged.

The mystery about fertility. And stability in relationships. Until you were related to the entire world. And all of its problems.

Maintaining stock. The challenge of maintaining stock, with the past to pass on. The relationship of a woman with her body. Or a robin to the fertility issue. Affecting the collective world. Just another relationship affecting a woman. At the age of four. Addressing those relationships. With new beginnings. Or at life’s end.

Rummaging for God. But having to deal with issues of capital reserves. To attract new investors. In the birth and death issues.

I spent last weekend with about 20 high school classmates. On Saturday I had breakfast with three classmates, two of whom were patients dealing with leukemia. The news about the leukemia of one friend I had forgotten. The other was a doctor who, after dealing with life and death issue each day in his practice, had come face to face with own mortality two years ago. More than 4 out of 5 patients with his diagnosis were dead in 24 months. Instead he was having to deal with issues of capital reserves and medical bills over the past 24 months in excess of $2 million. He has been intimately involved each day with the birth and death issues of women on the east coast. Perhaps overcome as much with other people’s suffering after twenty-five years, this one-time close friendship –that distance more than time had eroded the relationship — seemed at first to have changed. I wondered if he had lost his sense of humor. I never saw him laugh that first day during the weekend, until telling stories about his kids. And it was too often true that nothing was ever funny in the world, except for our kids.

Rummaging for God. On issues of birth and death. And fertility. But having to deal with issues of capital reserves. To attract new investors. In the death as well as the birth issues. Yeah, a nation mostly had to overproduce.

The Irish government was expected to announce a new risk equalization scheme to operate in the health insurance market. In advance of the sale the Irish government announced “substantial” capital will be injected into the company’s reserves to meet the requirements of the European Union to continue operations.

“Michael. Row the boat ashore.” New risk equalization schemes. Ministers for Health and Children. Coastlines. “Michael. Row the boat ashore.” With all the concern over coastlines. And maintaining stock. Amidst risk equalization schemes.

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Programmed Trades

There has been rising number of senseless robots within institutions. In business. In government. Over the last 20 years. Actual robots, insensitive to the historically marginalized population within the traditions. And all the auto-transports, where no one had to move, or to think. And everyone just wanted a cellphone. With a camera to record it all.

In a world with oh so little physical exertion. Moneyball. Scouting through statistics. Senseless robots. Doing unbelievable damage. All the auto-transports, where no one had to move, or to think. With so much thoughtless damage.

In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink talked about the context of work that makes so many people passive and inert. And he discussed awakening a validated sense of autonomy and purpose at certain companies of its workers. Changing the context of the real sense of workers. The five senses, and their desire to do things because they are fun and interesting. What William Blake described as the inlets of the soul. The five senses which lead us to something.

Daniel Pink said, “ In many ways, it is our context that makes us passive and inert.”

“But if the context is changed, I think all of us can awaken that real sense, that scientifically validated sense, of autonomy and purpose and the desire to do things because they are fun and interesting.”

Programmed traders on Wall Street. TARP money, to prevent injury? In a world with oh so many injuries but so little physical exertion. Senseless robots, doing unbelievable damage. To human freedom. To economic systems. With the missing human element on Wall Street. With bankers. All the programmed trading. And the missing self-belief of trades. Confidence and self-confidence. Or not. As belief was lost. In this age of diversity. With so much conformity.

As the collective voice of institutions went faint. In a world with oh so little physical exertion, the purpose of education was to study to understand the dominant voices and prevailing ideas within the world’s religions, to change the institutions. The now emerging voices about the experiences of the historically marginalized population within the traditions. In an era of expectations about exciting movement for theological and institutional change, so labor movements died.

And so that Passover instruction, year after year. About eating the lamb. “In proportion to the number of persons who partake of it.”

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The Nomads

He was never there for me.

Relationships. Those crazy biblical relationships. Of these pastoral Nomads. Semitic-people, with their related languages derived, presumably, from a common tongue. The descendants of Noah’s eldest son. Migrating in large numbers. The ancient Semitic populations, descendants of Shem, including Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Those relationships? God, with these nomads. For these always moving nomads. The original illegal aliens. Sleeping with whomever. Seen from a distance. The movement in the story. But with something elusive, seen in the distant.

Those nomads in search of something. Abraham had married his father’s—but not his mother’s —daughter. Sarah. Oh, those crazy biblical relationships.

God and Abraham. In a relationship. With a distance to be moved in life. For the Semites. The changing setting of time and distance, for each generation. And some attachment to belief. About life and death and birthrights. And new nations.

I was a descendant of Irish nomads. With great restlessness. Which developed from, was caused by, famine.  Maybe not much different than in these stories of Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph. About life and death and birthrights. And new nations. The Barren.  I spent a January day in The Burren, in Ireland.  A stark and barren place, with all of the silence of a great famine on a karst landscape of bedrock.  Looking out toward the Aran Islands, on this opposite side of the Atlantic where my forefathers started.  Irish nomads, with great restlessness.

God and Abraham. In a relationship which was the basis of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.  God and Abraham and Isaac, in this “western religion.”  In a relationship.  When after 5 generations, there had to have been quite a divide.  In the relationship.  So since the days when God’s one command given to Abraham —“Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking you; for it is through Isaac that descendants will bear your name” —had Isaac always been a burden?  For his father to be with?

Abraham and Isaac.  And the women in the lives of Abraham and Isaac.  Wives who waited so long for a son.  The barren women of nomads. In a relationship, with this deep longing within.  And then the nomadic men, also dealing with their infertility.  Nomads in search of the Promise Land.  Looking to be excited by something.  By someone.  In a world with all the false substitutes.  Soul mates looking to be excited.  And she had selected him.  So he prayed for his barren wife.  In a world where no one can be sure.  About endings, after the beginning.  In the relationship, where in the half-relationship, Abraham wanted to satisfy Sarah.

Abraham did have other progeny.  But what did it mean sacrificing Sarah’s only child?  Had Abraham really liked Isaac?  Sarah’s son.  Yeah, Abraham, married to Sarah, his father’s daughter.  But not his mother’s daughter.  Sarah’s only son.  Sarah’s son who after dealing with the years of infertility together, never really has much to say.  Or maybe he was not real quotable.  Or said the inane things that young athletes say. Like the guys of his generation.  The ones who had it all.  Leisure time.  For the physically able.  The ones who did not deserve the future – when the present time had once been the future, for Abraham and Sarah. After all the past suffering.  Yeah, that generational thing.  But it was Isaac whose descendants would bear his name.  So, what was this special power of Isaac?

Those relationships?  Speaking of the inadequacies.  The covenant that had been all about Isaac.  The inner turmoil.  The inadequacies.  When it is not natural to be the son of Abram.  After his new name and new identity as Abraham.  Or the son of Sarai, with her new name.  When someone like a parent brought you to God.  As you learned to pray.  And never really talk about the struggles with faith.  Or over identity. And never really asked about the struggle involved to reach this point.  About what you observed to be true – or at least what had been told.

So at this point in the story, had Sarah, whom Abraham had tried to satisfy, been terribly disappointed? Like an ex-wife, by all the inadequacies.  By this time, Hagar had gone where?  Speaking of covenants and relationships. Soul mates, who had been through the test.  Nomads with barren wives who were never there.  Life in stark and barren places.  Bloodlines and DNA.  And dealing with fertility.  When your relationships, with God, with your kin, with nomads, were based only on blood.  And love.  When no young person can even be sure.  About those relationships?  Or about their identity.  When for Sarah, this set of beliefs had always been passed done by the fathers.  At least in this clan.

The covenant that had been all about those relationships?  About the things in life which moved you.  When the focus was on greatness, not on the shortcomings.  In relationships.  Oh, but the shortcomings. At least the focus of some wives.  Or some sons.  Oh, the focus on the distance, with all the shortcomings. “He was never there for me.”  The mirage, with the distance in a relationship.  With a wife.  With a son.  Of a nomad.  Like those who are in flight, with God.  About the beliefs of each generation.  Even after what all God had given.

Nomads in search of the Promise Land.  Note the different points of view of each generation . . . about the distance.  What seemed a natural distance in any relationship, to a nomad?  When over time, in a generation, you discovered the meaning.  Of a phrase.  Of a distance.  So that was why in this monotheism with one God, who was so different over the distance of time, the reference to the God of Isaac, distinct from the God of Abraham?  In the world of interior design, with a different for each generation, there was the evolution of the God of Abraham which had been written about for centuries, before Charles Darwin’s Theory.

Those relationships?  The little movement in his relationship.  Or in Isaac’s relationships?  For these nomads.  Until it finally hurt to move anywhere in old age?  Any distance.  And God commanded that he take Isaac to Mount Moriah?  Another trip?  Forced in old age!  For this 130-year old nomad? Another demand, a spiritual demand, only when it now really hurt to physically move.  When it has always seemed to hurt a guy to move.  In a relationship.  Once he had one.  Just ask your wife.

In the book of Genesis, the Akedah is the account of the binding of Isaac, when Abraham, at the command of God, takes his son to be offered as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah.  With the travel factor.  Concerning distance.  Perhaps it was Isaac who felt that his father’s God seemed three days away from the real world in which he lived.  Yeah, the Isaac that through him Abraham’s descendants would “bear your name.”

The perspective about distance, for the son or a father.  For a veteran nomad.  Those who were in flight. Was there a reluctance present?  It had taken Abraham three days to get to Moriah.  Was the issue about impending death and relationships at life’s end.  Between a father and a son?  Or with God?  A future?  Was there something missing in a relationship with God?  In what seemed a natural distance in a relationship of a young nomad?  Was there an undercurrent of paternal anger?  Was that why God suggested sacrificing Isaac?  With God’s approval?  Was there a power struggle here?  A physical or spiritual one?  Those Ten Commandments had not yet been put on stone.  Killing was not yet outlawed. And always the theme in the stories about Isaac—about birthrights.  And the shortcomings.  And on the eve of his own death, and where it was where they were really going?  Abraham, when he had to have seen his own contemporaries die off.  One by one.  Was the issue at least for Abraham now about the his own movement.  Beyond life?  For a nomad, always in search of place.

Those crazy biblical relationships.  About birthrights of nomads.  The descendants of Noah, migrating in large numbers. These pastoral semitic-people with their related languages derived, presumably, from a common tongue.  Those who were in flight.  Wrestling in those days, with identity, after Noah’s world had already been destroyed rather than passed along.  Just like when God once had elected to start over, in themes about starting over, what would God do concerning the next generation of Chosen People?  In starting a relationship with the next generation?  Who seemed to have so much less need for sacrifice.

Abraham and Isaac.  With their related language.  When a son had his father’s dialect.  Or his mother’s. With Abraham carrying the fire and the knife.  And Isaac somehow, in an unstated way, carrying the future. When dysfunction was related to the depth of communication, in a relationship with a related language?  So was this about trying to pass on the manner to pray – the idiosyncratic way that Abraham prayed. For enforcement, with a knife, of his beliefs?  With a son maybe 25, perhaps 30-years old, or maybe 35.  The shortcomings of a long ongoing dysfunctional relationship?  With little communication of the purpose of, the true reason for, the trip.  The distance, the movement in relationship?  Abraham with the knife.  And a dysfunctional relationship?

With the knife, and carrying the fire.  Reportedly, at the command of God.  Withe the same knife which had circumcised his son, at birth?  Symbolic of unconditional love, in his pact with God.  And maybe with what was left of the very same fire about unconditional love, at the age of 130.  In the world of interior design, with Abraham carrying the fire; when in a birth by fire, in his own version in his own day of a penecostal moment.

Stories about devotion to God. In a largely pagan world, with migrating large numbers of nomads, into cities, in search of something.  In the polytheistic world.  In a tradition that was all about a covenant of the past with the present day, was Abraham no better than any other pagan making a sacrifice?  To move the next generation of nomads, in their search for the Truth.  The movement in relationship, when you prayers seemed so alive.  How to keep something alive about your life and about the past?  How to keep something alive in such a world about the past, so that God would never be forgotten by the next generation.

Stories about devotion to God, written on manuscripts, bound and passed down.  Note the importance of the binding in the Akedah story, about devotion to God, when you were bound by belief.  How to keep something alive about your life and about the past, as over time, in a generation, you discovered the meaning…of a phrase, or of your beliefs from your past tradition clashed with the present day world.?  With the younger generation.  When you are bound to the blood of your children.  And how quickly the knife appeared, after Abraham had tied up Isaac.  As the knife approached the binding.  In an act that was to express belief.  Or disbelief.  For the ages.

Those crazy relationships.  And you wanted others to have the same experience?  Yes, how quickly the knife appeared, after Abraham tied up Isaac.  Was the Akedah story about the need for change in Abraham’s relationships?  As a nomad in search of something.  And you wanted others to then have the same experience.  With God wanting more.  And so God’s intervention in the relationship, with the command. “Do not lay our hand on the boy….do not do the least thing to him!”  And the movement in his relationship.  God’s direct intervention, for nomads in search for the Truth.  The distant Truth, when Abraham’s God was the True God.

When your prayers were so alive.  In search of the Promise Land.  When your relationship was so alive. And somewhere along the line, you witnessed the Truth.  And the movement in His relationship.  And then writing it all down.

Flesh and blood nomads in search of something.  “Mostly they are the same lives.  The same stories, over and over,” wrote David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker.  When we endow our lives with stories.  The importance of the binding in the relationships, in stories about unconditional love.  When your relationships are so alive.  When you prayers are so alive. And you wanted others to then have the same experience.  With God’s intervention in the relationship.  Mostly the same stories, generation after generation.  With a great restlessness.  Carrying the fire.  With your own tradition.  In search of the Promise Land.

For those who are in flight, just trying to survive, a religion starting from blood relationships.  Looking for union, but with God’s intervention in the relationship.  In bloodlines.  And learning about the proper way to worship.  And sons somehow learning their own identity along the way.  So, what was this special power of Isaac, who seems to speak in Genesis less often than God.  Was it a story about the power of the future, in these stories about some form of deepness within like in Isaac’s descendants who would bear his father’s name – and all the conflict of the past creation not so much with the present but with the future human creation to come?  And the fertility in a world to come.

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The Disenfranchised

Giving birth to something. A nation. The labor pains. A poetic outlook. The agony. The joy. Of ideas. Dealing with relationships. Searching for individual wrong-doing versus institutional wrong-dealing. In my house. In my state. In my church. In my nation. At Enron. At Arthur Anderson. At Goldman Sachs.

Amidst the unstable governments. In London, in Washington. In Athens. Why is there mention of inconclusive elections in England? After one party was deposed? With little real searching for individual wrong-doing versus institutional wrong dealing.

In the morning. Were your relationships stable? When you with your hunger, and desire to connect to someone…and the inner desire to belong. With the human desire for stability.

Stability. Too much like on a escalator ride, in a world with so little physical exertion. All the auto-transports, where no one had to move, or to think. In this world of reaction to stimulus. THE stimulus. When the superficial is shed. When bubbles are burst. There were safety concerns—with people looking for safety. Those feelings of abandonment. When no one was watching out for my interests.

When people lost a sense of belonging –or when leaders lost something–a form of anger developed. Amidst the unstable governments. In London, in Washington. In Athens. Feelings of abandonment. When no one seems to be watching out for my interests. As the value of gold rose each day, a form of anger developed when people lost a sense of belonging to their leaders.

When you are most vulnerable. When you are most in need. Born again? Or simply redirected to this sense of belonging. When facing biological clocks. Or those survival challenges of the species. In war or in peace. Where were you most vulnerable? Or in a search for some safety. Or a place where you might belong?

When people lost a sense of belonging, a form of anger developed.

Stability. Like on a escalator ride, in a world with so little physical exertion. All the auto-transports, where no one had to move, or to think. In this world of reaction to stimulus.

Stability. In relationship. Or seasick? Stimulus. In the days before giving birth to someone. Induction. God moving through you….like that escalator ride. About the lack of progression. The attention given to the inner stimulus. Pitocin.

The belonging, which comes from a relationships. The belonging that introduces the identity questions. The point of view of identities. The various identities. The stress in life. When facing death. Or biological clocks. Or war. Those survival challenges. Of the species.

The immersion themes, with identity. With belonging. Reborn. After finding some kind of spiritual Pitocin. As opposed to born again, when people had a sense lost of belonging, The labor pains.

The spiritually lazy. To shout at the world of elevators and escalators, with so little real physical movement upwards. Reborn. This time with a better consciousness. With a poetic outlook. About the lack of progression.
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Pampers

The focus here is for the most part on the interior department. Mine. Mostly about the drilling for what was within. And the relation to the news. In the real world. And God’s view of all of this. In the beginning. Like somehow with music. Or in writing. Or a lot like with creation. When the invisible becomes visible.

God’s view of all of this now. Was there disbelief? Over the deepwater horizon.

Starting at 2.40 pm (Central Standard Time), almost 1.3 billion shares traded on US markets in a ten-minute span as Mexican-Americans prepared to leave work to celebrate Cinquo de Mayo, as about $16 billion worth of stock changed hands after someone placed an order for one billion shares of Proctor & Gamble — suggesting that genuine trading activity was behind the fall and rally—instead of what was thought to be a one million share order of Proctor & Gamble. And the guy that made the mistake also can have made an incredible profit in the short time the entire market bounced nine percent or more within 24 hours.

I went to bed last night finally appreciating why people are buying gold. With a potential seismic destruction of the trading value of any currency in few days’ time in the future—underscored by this news—I think, with this financial system, the day will come within my life time when paper currency has no value anywhere, when banks holidays are declared, when Arabs quit delivering oil, when vehicles are as valuable for transport as the gas in the tank, and without heating resources, Minnesota homes without fireplaces will be as valuable and sustainable as an ice cube in the dessert. Things sure had changed.

Maybe it was not just the hierarchy within religious denominations that was inert about taking action over the last decade. In a warning to offshore rig operators more than a decade ago, repeated in 2004 and in 2009, through Democratic and Republican administrations, federal regulators warned of the need to install backup systems to control in an emergency blowout preventers, those giant undersea valves used to cut off the flow of oil from oil wells. And those oil rigs were left to regulate themselves.

Power? Unregulated power? Conspiracy theories, anyone? Perhaps a quick way for financing the next election? A system of power without scruples or authentic moral sentiment created to hide true crimes and private lives with those lavish incomes which no human was worthy of. Had the trade come from Citibank? Bailed out Citibank? Or was this just organized disorganization? From East to West. Supported by lobbyists all over state capitals?

Creation. Which also has involved destroying life in one form. Always and everywhere. And replacing life. Confronting the unsettling ways in which God, as we encounter Him in the history text, keeps entering the story. Yesterday over the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigation of Pampers Dry Max Diapers, made by Proctor & Gamble.

Organizing a response to all of this crumbling. To all of the evil. Against those who conspire against the public good for personal gain. In these years as humans.

Drilling for what was within. Organizing with others, in the name of God. To keep the process honest. A process now capable to blow the world up oh so very unexpectedly. Until we all became immigrants again, with various forms of documentation.

Witnessing it all. This process of unexpected destruction. It was more than just a rash of bad news. And now, what replacement for all the unexpected destruction? As the invisible becomes visible. Drilling for what was within. The Department of the Interior. By those interior design major.

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NEW BEGINNINGS

Words. Cut the last paragraph…insert that paragraph in the next chapter. And leave something hanging.

In the beginning. Like somehow in music. Or a lot like in humor. Or in creation. When the invisible becomes visible.

The patterns, like weather patterns. The patterns which represent deep currents developing from ocean temperatures, in global meteorology which work against any effort for stable temperatures everywhere. Wind patterns which reflect something. Like an image. And image to transcend divisions.

What moves people? Anger? Love? The weather patterns, the isobars of love? How did love move people? How did the political forces of the world move people? What moved God?

Words. Describing the relationship which should exist. The self-hatred when re-creating without love. Sensing it in the girl. Then seeing it within me.

The disorganization. Movement. Break-ups. The patterns. To see water fall from the sky, when the ocean was 1,000 miles away. The amazement.

The patterns. In the clouds. In lives. With all of the disorganization. All these words here, making only thunder. Asking what moves people?

What moves people? On the land masses? In the divided land masses. When something ethereal transcended the divisions.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” All this attention on a young person’s education. For twelve grades, or more. All this focus on words. But when life was not just a memorization process.

Words. Cut the last paragraph…insert it in next chapter. Leave something hanging. Actions. What I have done. The disorganization. In the words. In the plan. And the purpose of the story was? As the world got more complicated, all this disorganization. Thus the conflict.

Would there ever would be organization? In the words? In the isobars?

Wanting to have some power in your life. Some creative power. Some organized power.

Good and evil. Words. All this focus upon words. So that one day a person might act on the disorganization. When something invisible had become all too visible. In a teen-age bedroom. Or in a society.

Words of anger. Words of love? The weather pattern of love? How did love move people? How did the political forces of the world move people? And what moved God?

What was the purpose of the story? Chosen men. On a land mass. Characters with the need. To establish order. On the land mass. The need in the community for a homogeneous view. About good and evil.

One. The need in the community to establish order. With a human head. In a relationship.

The meaning of creation. Despite the conflict, wanting to have union. And wanting to have some power in the significant other’s life. When she desired an authentic relationship. The kind of relationship which should exist. Or the self-hatred when re-creating without love. First sensing it in the girl. Then seeing it within me.

The creation process. Good and evil. Men in a relationship. If they were lucky to have one. Fortunate men. Lazy men. Chosen men. With a woman. And with God.

Coming to grips with creation. Helping with it. In a world with 6.7 billion. Who will you affect, in your relationship? Who will you touch?

There was a new point of view. Out of union.

Because somehow my life was, with the weather patterns, to be a geological force that shapes the earth. In the creation process. In union.

About your greatness. Prove it. In a relationship. And then in the world.

Life in those relationships. Organizing a point of view. Union.

When life, new life, was the language of creation absorbed each day. Slowly evolving. When, or if, God was the inspiration to your focus. The God of Abraham. The God of Isaac. The God of Jacob. An always evolving God. For chosen men. By women. And then Chosen People. In the changing language of humanity, in the new point of view in this story, what was the purpose of the story?

Creation. Which also has involved destroying life in one form. Always and everywhere. And replacing life. Confronting the unsettling ways in which God, as we encounter Him in the actual text in the years when humans entered the story, became engaged to holy men and women in the Torah. A lot like those prophets who have gone before us, who gave us the foundation built, but who seem decidedly ungod-like. Those prophets living in a polytheistic world. And there then were also the unsettling ways in which God appeared to be decidedly unlike God. Especially if you had been an Egyptian, and beset with plagues. Who could believe in the God of the Hebrews then? God waging war on the side of the Israelites. This God, who made everyone, beset with the same conflict of inheritance? Passing on or hoping to pass on, something to the next generation. Or to someone. When people had human rights and liberty. But maybe not lawyers yet.

Words. The symbols clanging. All these symbols clanging and all these words here, making only thunder. The disorganization. In the words. In the plan. In what I forgot to do.

Noises. Words. Looking for attention. Action. What I have done?

C Cut the last paragraph…insert it in next chapter. Leave something hanging.

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