BACK INTO THE FRAY AGAIN

It's been awhile since I last put any posts out, mostly due to some health problems. Being in pain and having little energy makes for a very dull imagination. I spent a lot of time watching TV that for me is HULU and NETFLIX via Amazon Fire. I'm basically a Hallmark Special kind of viewer but with the extra time, I've gone astray. I am now somewhat an expert on torture techniques, subversive countermeasures, undercover disguises and assassination techniques. This was quite a bit more than what my regular soap opera ever portrayed. The overload of dark and dangerous shows and movies left me to fear almost everyone I met, or at least to make a potential threat assessment. 

I'm doing a little better now. However, I'm still trying to figure out how the hero with only a pistol can take out fire guys with assault rifles. I know a little about weaponry from being in Vietnam but apparently, the usual laws of physics don't apply anymore. Yet such critical observances didn't matter as much as the need for pure distraction in a realm that I would have normally not wanted anything to do with. 

On my better days, I thought about what I was doing with blogging, if anything at all. I never expected them be popular as I can be an equal opportunity offender. But maybe something a little more nuanced would get more page views. With the extra time, I was able to see that many have similar critical considerations. It can't be helped unless you limit yourself to writing about puppies and kittens. For a while, several new directions and approaches were entertained. In the end it wasn't so much as needing change as it was needing inclusion, the inclusion of all things - all people, all suffering, all happiness, all evil, all hope, all need, all laughter, all illness, all success, all hunger, all joy and all displacement. 

Many more realities can and ought to be named. But a look at the world as it is, or was, or might yet be at every given moment "IS" rather massive. It seems then that any understanding could at best be only a mere reflection of its cohesiveness. But some don't consider things that can be known with only a little effort because they already have everything figured out.

The more we know about what life on the Earth is for all who have found themselves as it's inhabitants, the less we are to apply dogma. Sadly, many lives have left only a trace and certainly no record. At best we can paste together what life may have been for them. Even with recorded histories, some have been lost or destroyed or grossly incomplete. Too many histories have been written from limited or self-serving points of view even as our current history is often formed in the same molds. But what would a complete and concise history of everything actually look like? ...I'm definitely waiting for the movie. 

Let me be quick to say that I know of no approach that fully takes in all that there is. Some of that is based on how little we really know. The rest is based on how much we don't want to know. Perhaps faith is best seen as our hope in knowing enough. But that may likely depend on what we attach to it. It seems that some faiths are so burdened with add-ons that the original truth is distorted. I think the more narrowly defined, the more likely that even God has to consult it. 

Even the closest explanation of and for all things (which usually is the one that we currently hold) is not without problems. Many conflicts of course come from those who have a different explanation. But what is of more concern is when you can clearly see that some things don't fit and can honestly admit that you don't know what to do about it. Here I recommend a hefty dose of denial, or allow for some anomalies to exist or make unfounded accommodations. But if you can't just broad-brush all the incongruities away and the desire for reasonable understanding persists, welcome to living life without the safety net of knowing why.

The world is full of those who claim to have the truth about life; some even do it when they have people at gunpoint. And apparently, it can get even worse. Truth-telling can be a very risky business. But I can honestly say that I've never been so confident about the meaning of life that I would kill someone. I just don't see where that is necessary; leaving them traumatically wounded is good enough.

In writing posts for a blog, I sometimes feel like the "American Sniper." But it is said that the keyboard is mightier than the armed drone. Figurative killing and maiming seems to be a rather popular literary sport. Some of it is providing push back or at least a prick to the illusion of rightness. It is to point out that their solutions are just plain impossible, that they don't get to determine who is the best American or a real Christian, that they can't say that equal rights are only for their friends, that they don't get to be the only ones who speak for God, and that they can't just watch Fox News or MSNBC with mindless admiration.

Okay then, I think I know what I'm doing with this now. So it's back into the fray again. But maybe this time with a little more learned treachery disguised as objective analysis, and of course, at least some puppies and kittens. 

There is only doing, no guarantees or assurances. You have to deal with life one way or the other. Not so much the ideal as it is the practical that is needed. Perhaps it is as the best blogger I know put it in another time.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.

Special thanks must go to Sydney Bristow, Elizabeth Kane, and Peggy Carter.

CREDITS: William Shakespeare Henry V, Scene One