Moderation is Toleration

Love makes no compromises, it takes a direct path through the most austere environments - the undaunted trace of a shooting star through a field of obstacles. Perhaps the one we truly love steps into our light without hesitation - but only providing love illuminates parts, without receiving it to make it whole. When we love those who tolerate us, we love only as much as they can take...not as much as we can give and it seems love does not prefer to be dolled out in doses of glimmer.

I Gotta Lot Undoing to Do

Godsend

     When I was down, I got high  

     When life got in the way, I still got by

     There was nothing going ‘round that I didn’t go through

     But what you left undone between us, isn’t something that I want to do.

Seems we spend most our lives gettin' out of the way

Of a sun that's meant to shine on our darkest of days

Chased by our own shadows straight into the night

Lookin' back at what won’t work, when the future still might... (whatever)

Friends say I’ve mastered falling down to an art,

Building pretty little piles from what’s been torn apart.

But the pieces that you left are as much as you took,

And no one gets the whole story from reading half of the book.

     So when you were up, you put me down

     When I got in your way, you ran around

     I reaped hope from the furrows, where nothing ever grew

     but fixin' what you’re doin-is more than any man would want to do.

When I think back now what I wish I’d know then,

The same people fool me again and again.

They say hindsight’s 20/20, but to tell you the truth

While I can see through your lies, I'm still blind to the proof.

Yeh, your ghost seems to leap from one girl to the next

And while they keep gettin' better, I know what’s better ain’t best

If my senses come to find me, they’ll know where I am

I’m just one idea behind, where the thought of you ends.

     And when I get down, I still get high.

     When life gets in the way, well, I'll get by.

     In fact, there’s nothing [that] comes to mind, that I wouldn’t do

     So stop redoing what you undid, so it’s done, and I’ll be over you....

     Till then I’m chasing you down, 'cause when I’m down, at least I’m close to you.

The Creative Adult is the Child Who Survived (Yep-Sun Gazing)

Think about it; the most creative moments of your adult life were the moments you allowed the child in you to play. rsb.

Sad how growing older oft becomes the smothering of the innocent innovator - we are compelled to protect what's within by never letting it out.  And one day, we can't remember what we dreamt the night before.

Through the course of adulthood the surface of childhood is wounded and scarred, like tree bark around the sapling; well intended...but ill begotten in the end.

Creativity is the uncloaking of passion, that is otherwise imprisoned by the broad black lines in our coloring books, with the grown up instruction, "shush now, and color within the lines."  I'm reminded of a picture from Kent State during the war protest - a college girl is placing the stem of a flower in the barrel of a national guardsman's rifle.  Images like this are misconstrued as an almost ineffectual act of creativity, passion, and love.

The world can only be saved by the minds of adults and the hearts of children.  Of all the animal kingdom, the only species to not evolve is the child within a human.  And for this I'm grateful.

Tomorrow I will imagine the conference table as a sandbox, our coffee cups as pails, and my colleagues are children and playmates (not the adult kind of playmates, they'd be fully dressed.)

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to get my coffee and help my son build his Lego Ninjago toy.  I explained to the girl at the counter, that 41 years ago I used to play with Lego's - a whole barrel for 5 bucks...the half shoe box size set of Ninjago Legos were 84 bucks.  No one said, remaining a child was going to be cheap!

Jimmy Buffett sang, "I'm growing older but not up, my metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck, let the winds of time blow over my head, I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead..." (he also has a song, "Life is Just a Tire Swing.")

ON CLERGYMEN BUGGERING LITTLE BOYS

Benedict Groeschel, Reverend of the Franciscan Friars of Renewal, recently claimed in an interview with a Catholic news source it was often the case that priests were seduced by teenagers...I knew this guy...he was a real RILF, if ya know what I mean. Hm....I remember going through catechism and the priest's mocking disapproval, followed by a cheshire grin, when I said, "...and lead us not into TEMPTATION..." during the Lords Prayer. Priests are often teased like that. There was just something about much older, creepy, droopy men in cassocks that drove young boys wild - come on, the priest were practically asking for it! I tried seducing nuns, but the priest would say, "it's okay to try with nun, but just don't get into the HABIT...get it, HABIT?" (...whenever you're at a rave and a man with a funny colar, and a cross around his neck puts a wafer on your tongue saying, "...the body of Christ..." it's probably really ecstasy...)

EVANGELICAL RAVINGS

ON THE POPES "Encyclical Letter HUMANAE VITAE" (Pope Paul VI, 25 July 1968). Which establishes the "long-held and unwavering" position of the Church against the use of BIRTH CONTROL:

How does one go about obtaining such apparent empirical knowledge in order to write as compelling a letter as this? I have personally tr
aveled into the realm of evil via coitus interruptus and found enlightenment - I could not have written this with more clear instruction.

...and "the use of contraceptives cause men to forget their reverence for women!?" Seriously? So I've cheapened women (er, I mean "baby vessels") by not getting them pregnant. Well, now we know why the Taliban hate christians so much... contraception is clearly the impetus for islamic fundamentalistic values toward women. Why intervene with the stoning of women (which I read about in the old testament), just cut off the Taliban supply of contraceptives - or convert them to christianity...problem solved.

I guess, we will have to put warning labels on condoms, "The Catholic Church warns that the use of this product may promote pornographic fantasies about about women in socio-cultural bondage." And here I was thinking, it would prevent pregnancy, hackneyed abortions, and abandoned children that are spawned by sinners and single "reverent" mothers...that is if the moms survive the pregnancy (or sexually transmitted virus) to be reminded of the "more respectful" rapist who didn't wear a condom... (long winded I know).

How many women break from their ascetic ways and claim, "if you respect me, you'll get me pregnant and marry me in the morning..." I more often get the clear message that her "physical and emotional equilibrium" depends on passionate acts of love and caress...not shaking her hand and kissing her at church during the benediction. Lest she obtain her own "instrument of satisfaction," batteries included.

If there ever was a case for polygamy... you can only get the same woman pregnant once every 9.5 months (thereabouts - I had to change the gestation period because Arizona governor Jan Brewer, says that pregnancy begins two weeks before conception...still scratching my sinful head over that one)

When asked "why do you have so many children?", the man answered,

"because I like sex."

"...then why so many different women?" continued the flustered friar.

"simple - because they don't."

LATEST RAGES

ON MORMON FOUNDATIONS OF POLYGAMY:   When your religion is working for you anymore, don't retrace your historical context, just change your moral code! Which is why I brought up Jan Brewer - here is an example of where legislation wasn't achieving it's moral objective for medical rulings on "when a life begins" (which I already knows is after the age of 50) and so they decided to change biology.  (Brewer upholds that it begins two weeks before conception - huh?)

The best way to accommodate everyone in what is most certainly an ever changing future is to NOT learn anything too much - it will only be changed for us to learn again.