. . . . . Emergency post: Had a minor dental emergency the other day and the receptionist was from my little town here. "A good place to live" was mentioned in the conversation, as was "small town." As I was leaving I mentioned that I wished I had asked her (she was gone already) if she'd heard the song getting some radio play of late called "I Feel Safe in New York City". It struck me maybe before I got in my car that it could have been taken the wrong way, that I was even laughing at the misfortune of the dupes living up there thinkin' they had it good.
. . . . . With me being so (in)famous and all, it struck me that I need to clear up this possible misconception before ordinary mind rises up and forms a lynch mob or something. Here's what I thought I would like to say during my follow-up next week:
. . . . . What I meant by what I said was that most people in most small towns relate to and like most of the other people in the town. Like is a bit above midway on the love-hate continuum (continuums, part of our reality, are touched upon [by Stephen Gaskins] here). Most people in most small towns dislike somebody else in the town. That's closer to hate than love for sure. (We just aren't very good at loving our neighbors are we?) Most people would just as soon avoid somebody who doesn't like them. In New York City the odds are much better that you won't encounter somebody who doesn't like you because it's so much easier to go to places where people who don't like you don't go.
. . . . . The odds are probably about the same as far as felony assaults go. Maybe not. But when you factor in something like being a non-conformist, of the rock-n-roll band type say, the equation alters drastically. We do tend to like people who are, well, like us. We mostly don't even relate to people from other cultures because they're nothing like us; we don't understand them. They're aliens and it's just not natural to love aliens. (I guess we'll all agree, by the way, that not relating to other people is not caring about them, which we might at best place on the midpoint of the love-hate continuum [and call it, well . . . lukewarm?(see Revelation 3:16)].)
. . . . . At any rate, if you're a bit different say, and you live in a small town, just because of the way we are, you know, not being good at loving (remember what Krishnamurti said here?) even most people who live around us and are a lot like us, well, now the overt non-conformist can expect that even many, possibly most, of his encounters will be with people who make no bones about the fact that they dislike him/her/them. And here we start flirting with the mob mentality ya know. Kind of dangerous.
. . . . . Life on the edge does admittedly hold a certain attraction for some people I know. And that type of person admittedly might not be as concerned about being the victim of a violent crime as, say, your average citizen. (And there are times in New York, I know from experience, when there are places it's not like real safe to be, unlike small towns when the times are merely occasional, random say.) Anyway, now it should be easy to empathize with (or at least imagine) someone who can, with conviction, sing "I feel safe in New York City!" Yeah, probably this "emergency" is all in my head, but I had a couple of errands I forced myself to run today and think a gross misconception has occurred regarding what I said. One of the minority who I thought at least feels sorry for me gave me the jerk treatment. Hence the emergency post of a(nother would-be) journal entry I'm nowhere near ready to put on the 'Net.
. . . . . Below is part of a little something I posted to a newsgroup on the Internet recently in my ongoing efforts to win friends (well, anyway to try) and influence people:
"And the second commandment is like unto the first and great commandment ("Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."), Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." -- Matthew 22:39 KJV
"Gotta serve somebody." -- Bob Dylan (the song goes "It might be the devil, or it might be the Lord, but ya gotta serve somebody.")
"Gotta serve God and everybody, or the devil and your own little world." -- me. . . . . Well, the Bible verse is kind of edited; still, why can't I keep my mouth shut? Seems every time I open it I provide grist for the freakin' gossip mill which I dearly hate to feed. At any rate I'm not gonna erase what I had already laboriously stitched together below:
. . . . . Just came upon Haggai 1:7-9, which says "Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD. Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the LORD of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house." (emphasis mine) My note on verse 7, by the way, says "never noticed a three-word combo before: suwm-leb-al is translated "consider". Consider our ways?"
. . . . . Well, I just had like an(other) epiphany. Picked Alan Watts' The Way of Zen up off the floor where it's been for maybe months and (check this out:) Zen opened it to Chapter One ("Empty and Marvelous") of PART TWO: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE (see here for example of roots), where Watts continues:
. . . . . The logic of ("if you want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong") is so simple that one is tempted to think it over-simple. The temptation is all the stronger because it upsets the fondest illusion of the human mind, which is that in the course of time everything may be made better and better. . . . The only alternative to a life of constant progress is felt to be a mere existence, static and dead, so joyless and inane that one might as well commit suicide.
. . . . . Of course the entire thrust of my theory has evolved to point out that the illusions of the human mind which Watts refers to are the clear and present danger to humanity. I'm saying, like Gaskins (where*), and Jesus throughout the Gospels, that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. J.D. Salinger's long-awaited novel of 1999(?) might have been delayed because I read one line out loud in BooksAMillion to a woman who I don't doubt expected me to read the line to her. (It was "sit quietly . . . and Christ will come?") The point I'm trying to make is there are at least millions of people who don't want to hear it. If they're told the entire world is gonna meditate at 6 pm zulu time on however many different days there are going on at the same time they're gonna stay off the streets if the penalty is a huge dose of barbituates (see, I don't know even if everybody needs to be awake) but I guess that doesn't take a subclass of druggies into account, to say nothing of angels.
Reminds me of how I've said before that the universe keeps changing. And how Stephen Gaskins said it before me somewhere on this site. And what I've meant by that is that the fate of the universe keeps changing. Ain't that wild? And yeah, Stephen already said that too. But yeah, very edgy, that's how I feel.
. . . . . Andrew Wommack was talking (on tv) about teachers in his Bible college making mistakes about the Bible and some "zealous students" coming to him and saying this or that teacher is "of the devil" because they distorted the Word or such. Andrew said he responded that, yes, the teacher made a mistake, but the heart of the message was from God. "God doesn't give you word for word" what to say, he said. Talking about mistakes he makes, he said "in the process of delivery I might say something wrong" but "the heart of it (is) from God." Kinda made me think about the prophets and Paul and even the disciples. . .
. . . . . Encountered a nemesis (?) the other day, who more or less wanted to claim that capital accumulation is okay if you're married, surely the prevalent attitude among capitalists and also (would-be) Christians who have, shall we say, encountered the truth and don't like it a bit. And hey, it's easy to justify it if you believe in the traditions of men, who certainly include Paul. I think people who like encounter God can basically be ruled out of the angel category. Blinded by the light.
. . . . . Anyway, I mention on these pages somewhere* about my struggle in the early '80s with Paul's admonition that he would have us unmarried, because then we could care for the things of the Lord (1 Co 7:32-33: "But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.") and not the things of the world and how I now wonder about the two decades that have passed since those days.
. . . . . But that is all me trying to make a point: Paul evolved his doctrine over the course of years, and I don't doubt he started off not merely encouraging people to not marry and instead attend to the business of perfection, but rather telling people not to get married because he was doubtless instructed more and more in first understanding Jesus' doctrine by hearing more and more of it (following the disciples' telling him "only" that he "remember the poor") and then grappling with the realities of ordinary mind, the inertia of the status quo.
. . . . . I've ranted before about how contemporary (would-be) Christian doctrine holds that the commandments and instructions Jesus put forth on the Sermon on the Mount are "held in abeyance" (I guess the only until end times qualification can make it quite acceptable as doctrine now I think about it) until the end times and how ridiculous that strikes me (but again I'm struck by the the realization that giving it all away makes for more people in need).
. . . . . Well, keep trying to shut this (would-be) journal down, and it keeps poppin' back up. Made a note, sitting in the bank the other day. "Stand dichotomy." That was the note. Found it today. Not much to it, maybe I put the basic thing in the last chapter, where Dylan speaks of his recent epiphany ("I am determined to stand, whether God will deliver me or not") and how this is a recurring theme in Old and New Testaments ("who shall stand in that day of the Lord's fierce anger" say [e.g., Malachi 3:2]) and what I didn't mention is that it's not just a matter of like making up your mind that your faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord is sufficient that you can and will be counted among the believers by standing in that day, but there's also the matter of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 saying that "every knee shall bow" and every tongue confess Jesus as Lord. There's a clear dichotomy, a very real dilemma for those professing to be believers.
. . . . . I posted earlier here I know something about "expect to see me on bended knee" because it's something I had wrestled with earlier. Well, wondered about anyway. And it struck me ultimately as kind of a no-brainer. But events of recent years have had me re-examining my non-stance on the kneeling issue actually, and now I hear a mentor has had this really startling thought strike him (is how he put it). Yeah, my pondering was re-started after my encounter with the gang in the kitchen say; you know the reference if you've read this journal 'cause I don't think anybody who read it would forget it. Really wild stuff, in my mind anyway. And now Dylan says that. So yeah, I've played out lots of scenarios and I'll tell you the truth, I've been a stand-up guy in most all of them.
. . . . . Also meant to mention that I'm calling off the food watch this month. I think I adequately covered thanksgeeving in the last one. To say nothing of the fact that it's like the middle of the month and I don't have many clues at all about how much money I spent where. Receipts? Forget 'em. I know how much cash I've spent, and checks I've written and such, but basically I can't deal with it now. Got an invitation to Thanksgeeving actually, the first in years. In my mind, things are changing.
. . . . . And here's a good example: Headline News reported that the Spokane WA area, not one normally subject to earthquakes, has had 75 in the past six months.
. . . . . Anyway, the reason I came back to this . . . obsession with this (would-be) journal is because I was listening to a Grateful Dead soundboard from 1977 and opened my Companion Bible (rather Zen fashion, listening to "Fire On the Mountain") to the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:9 says "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." Bullinger's note says: "peacemakers. Cp. Ps. 133.1. Gr. eirenopoios. Occ. only here." Psalms 133:1, of course, is "Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" The margin note there says in part: 'unity=one. The reference is to the "one man" of 2 Sam. 19.14 (David), and the "one heart" of 2 Chron. 30.12 (Hezekiah).' See, it's all so simple! We are to have the mind of Christ (or pick a prophet huh?), His "single eye" say, of Matthew 6:22 e.g., with which we merely love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind and love everybody else like we love ourselves. Just nothing to it huh?
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