A few days ago, I came across a picture of "The Altar," a poem by English poet George Herbert.
Here it is:
Its form makes it a pattern poem, which is a 17th century version of concrete poetry.
Herbert also was a member of the school one of metaphysical poets; John Donne was the most famous of them. To these poets, religion and lust are often co-equivalent.
Then I thought of a person who once told me that sex was like a sacrament. When I heard that, I rolled my eyes are one of the most foolish things that men do:
Using God, their beliefs in it, and its power to justify your beliefs.
I'm reminded of the Roman Catholic Church, which considers all -- all -- sexual activity sinful unless it's between a husband and wife to conceive children.
I would respect organized religion in general and Christianity specifically if they were not so quick to use God as their theological support for anything they want.
Western Michigan? Tulsa?
Notre Dame football fans, I tell you this: You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. These two teams are NOT great tests on the gridiron.
You ought to face this fact: the Fighting Irish are no longer a national football powerhouse and hasn't been one for the last few years. I don't know exactly why that happened, but one reason, I believe, is that it can no longer get premier players because of its strict academic requirements.
(It's not because football players are by nature stupid. But if you had a choice of spending most of your time practicing and playing football, as the professionals do, or dividing your time between going to classes and studying or football, the ones focused on football will have the advantage.
( I'm looking at you, Southeastern Conference schools. All of you, except for Vanderbilt, are not know for your academics. You continue and perpetuate the idea that in the South, "book larnin'" is for sissies and faggots.)
Notre Dame's record so far this season is 4-5. It lost -- yes, lost -- to Tulsa 28-27 last Saturday. It lost to Navy for the second straight year after a decades-long record of beating the Middies and also to a Michigan team that is down this season.
The Irish will now rest and recuperate until their next game November 13 against...Utah. Good luck , Irish. And after I wrote that sentence, I was surprised that I wished them good luck against Utah.
But Notre Dame fans still continue and want to think the Irish are a national powerhouse, and run off/fire any coach who doesn't get them a national title, let alone a Top Ten standing.
Face it: Your team is like Army and Navy. They're in Division I, the big boy category in college football, because of tradition. They ought to be in Division I-A.
They have faded, just like Ivy League football faded when the Big Ten came to prominence, and the Big Ten faded (for a while, though) when the SEC and the Pac-8 (now Pac-10) came into prominence.
As for the whole scene around the team, I have mixed feelings. Notre Dame football is like Jesus; the two of them are good in and of and by themselves, but some of their fans are among the biggest assholes you will ever meet.
That's especially noticeable for some Irish fans in the Indianapolis area. They react to critics and criticisms of the football team as if they're anti-Catholic.
There was the South Bend radio fool who said God gave Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio a heart attack for cheating against Notre Dame. If you want more details, click here for the details.
This is the kind of ignorant foolishness that some Irish fans would've believed back in the 1950s and early 1960s. I think he was kidding, but some people might've thought he wasn't.
(Michigan State, by the way, defeated Notre Dame 34-31 in overtime on Sept. 18.)
That outlook has much to do with the provincial and inward mentality -- parochial, in other words -- of midwestern Catholics. Surrounded by Protestants/heretics/non believers, they turn inward in fear of persecution or corruption by these influences outside their church.
I remind you that 50 years ago, when John Kennedy ran against Richard Nixon for president, many people wondered if Kennedy's loyalties would to be toward the United States or the Vatican. And 90 years ago, when the Ku Klux Klan dominated state politics, the Klan was known to be anti-Catholic, besides being anti-semitic and anti-black.
Notre Dame, although you lost to Tulsa, you might -- might -- go to a bowl. It won't be one of the big bowls, though, and you probably won't be going to any big bowls in the future.
NOTE: This is a post updated from one I wrote October 26. A few additions were needed to make it more relevant.
Behold.
On the left is a picture of three neurons of a mouse's brain.
On the right is a picture of a computer simulation of the present universe.
The resemblance is either a damn coincidence or ...
I don't believe in a personal God. But I believe there is some force or forces beyond our control; and these forces form and shape the universe. I call them The Divine or The Numinous.
It isn't God, but it's like God. And to quote the Psalm 14:1 -- the fool in heart says there is no God.
ADDENUM: If you want to see the picture in more details, then please click on it.
I've been taking notes about some things that I either did or were going on around me this summer. They were too short to separate posts. Therefore, I put them here as one place.
Call them small chapters from a memoir of a limited time.
One
In late June or early July, I was driving south on German Church Road on the northeast side of Indianapolis.
I was between East 38th and East 46th streets when I saw this very unusual site: Two black men riding horses on the side of the road.
That part of Indianapolis isn't as heavily developed as the areas south of it, and it's populated mostly by whites.
Neither of them were in uniform; if they were in a police department's horse patrol unit, they were off duty.
(If you don't know the location, then please use your favorite online map to find it.)
Two
I was taking a nap during a recent Saturday afternoon. I was dreaming that someone was coming up and going to grab me as I lay in bed.
I woke quickly and, in fear, threw a pillow.
No one was there.
Three
I was standing in the courtyard of my apartment complex during two separate Wednesdays evenings when I saw a bus from a local Nazarene church pick up some of the children of my fellow residents of the apartment complex.
No adults boarded the buses, however. And some of those adults need church more than their children do.
Four
I thought a lot about the real estate novelist who's mentioned in the Billy Joel song Piano Man. I can't figure out what the hell a real estate novelist is and how he would differ from, say, a novelist who wrote psychological thrillers.
It's damn rare -- at least for me -- to fine an atheist who outgrew his belief in God/The Great Spirit/The Nouminos like he did with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy.
Those atheists are as militant in their beliefs as any hot-blooded jumped-up evangelical Protestant.
(That's the loud ones, at least: The ones you know are atheists and are damn sure of it.)
The emotional attachment is still there.
It reminds me of a quote from the book Love and Will, by Rollo May:
Hate is not the opposite of love; indifference is.
I had a friend who in the middle of his life left a sales job and became a minister.
He tried to get me to go to church as a way to, as he said, "reform" me. I declined because I didn't believe I needed "reforming" like that.
However, he had some interesting words to say as he tried to recruit me. He quoted the old saying that we only use 10 percent of our brains, and added the line from the movie The Wedding Crashers that we only use 10 percent of our hearts.
To that, he added that a lot of people only use 10 percent of their souls, and that church attendance would help raise those figures.
the catholic church ought to have separate lines for confession booths, like grocery stores have different checkout lines. one line would be for folks with, say 15 venial sins or less; the other would be for more and greater sins, like the mortal ones.
i can see it in action.
a teenaged girl goes into the shortline confession and says, "forgive me father, for i have sinned. it's been four hours since my last confession. since then i called my little brother a doodyhead and had impure thoughts about justin timberlake's private parts."
these are small potatos, the priest thinks. "my child, say one hail mary, give five dollars to the church's building fund, and go and sin no more," he tells the girl.
in the line for more and bigger sins is a man who -- well, he's done some very sinful and immoral and illegal things -- hell, he's a mobster. he just found out that he has terminal cancer, so he wants to get right with god.
he goes into the confessional booth and says, "forgive me, father, for i have sinned. it's been -- uh -- about 35 years -- maybe 40, i don't know -- since my last confession ..."
then he tells the priest about all the things he's done: the burglaries, the robberies, the extortions and violence that often came with them, the arsons, the adulteries, the illegal drugs, the murders ... and so on ... and so forth.
while he is confessing all this, the priest is thinking: lord, i wish the pope would let us take notes in here. i could use all this stuff to write a heck of a book about organized crime.
after the mobster is finished with his confession, the priest says, "my son, that's quite a list of sins. why did you go so long between confessions?"
the mobster says, "uh, couldn't you tell, father? i've been busy."
i'm going to write pope benedict xvi and the powers that be at the vatican to see if they'll consider my suggestion. it'll be an ecumental suggestion, because i'm a methodist.
today is sunday. thursday will be thanksgiving day.
since they are usually days of religious reflection, also know as prayer, i have a special one for my readers and everyone else on the internet.
it's aimed at for the more cynical among you -- maybe even the more nihilistic.
*
lord, i have so much to be thankful for ...
i thank you for:
pain -- without it, i would've gone numb years ago.
hate -- it drove me this far, despite how many people said it would never happen.
love -- so we can have our hearts broken and our spirits shattered.
birth -- without it, we could never learn the good graces of death.
childhood -- so we could learn repression to help us with the rest of our lives.
television, movies and magazines -- so they can live our lives for us.
elementary school and high school -- it put us in our place and stripped away our identities.
college -- it 's the only way degenerates, lowlifes and idiots can buy respect and authority over the more talented and less fortunate social classes.
church -- so people too illerate to read the bible for themselves can be told what it says. also, they can be told there they will never ever be good enough.
perverts -- so we could have priests, teachers, roomates, various managers and endless failed relationships.
friends -- to help us lie to ourselves.
enemies -- to tell us who we really are.
youth -- to tell us how much we will need to learn.
adultdhood -- to remind us how little we truly know.
old age -- to forget all that we once knew.
family -- to making you fee like a failure every single day of every month and every year.
*
this is not mine. i found it in too much coffee man magazine. i tore out the page but didn't write the date of the publication on it. information about it can be found here.
this is a copy of the current indiana license plate. the motto in god we trust is optional.
i chose not to get it. it's not because i'm an atheist, but a deist. i believe in that there is something out there larger and greater than ourselves, but don't think it's male, or that he had a son who came to earth to redeem humanity.
i just don't trust the people who have that motto on their license plates. it could be used -- and probably is -- as a code to signal who, among hoosier motorists, are the righteous ones.
the self-righteous ones, i call them. i'm tired of these church-going asses.
and i bet those church-going asses have some operatives in the bureau of motor vehicles apparatus who note the people who have -- and especially don't have -- that motto on their plates.
