"Identification, Please."

 Dear Reader,

    What is identity? Why is it important? Why is it personal and subjective, but also requiring of acknowledgement by our peers and the greater, collective society? Why is identity such an intimate apparition that we instinctively attribute it to any other we observe?

    The answers to these questions and more will be covered in this blog post so that you can each come to a final resolution in your thinking on the matter.

    Just kidding. I am no where near that confident in my understanding of this integral human condition, which has been labeled in so many varying ways. Anyone who claims to know a distinct, immutable state in which identities can be defined is not to be trusted. I simply wish to write, and write I shall.

    I think that we each identify in a broad array of contingency. Some identities that we discover for ourselves are self-evident - which, in my mind, means an observed reality that I can touch and understand without cross-reference or abstraction. I say that we "discover" our identity because I feel that the arrival at an understanding of who we feel we are is not primarily something that is defined by an outside source, so it is not only taught or instructed to us. Identity does not take its complete structure from an external supplier through any conduit, as conditioned belief (which I consider "assumption" more than true "belief" - but more on that another time) may assert. Identity is realized by questioning regardless of an answer, without or within. If that is true, then identity is never fully known, but is always a question and a modulating one at that. It's a reality that we form along with our observation of it, but a status that never fully materializes. If it does, then it can no longer be identity, and quickly becomes ignorance of the nature of correlation.

    A status may be one thing today and assume itself completely changed tomorrow. Similar to how I swear my coffee yesterday, ground from the same bean with the same coarseness, slurried through the same fixated temperature of water, unbleached paper filter, and designation of time, tastes very different today. This is not a mystery of science or something based wholly on my changing taste buds (another non-mystery). It's fairly common knowledge in our post-third-wave society that coffee beans off-gas the CO2 trapped in their cute, little, brown husks, and this directly affects the molecular structure experienced by smell and taste receptors, to the tantalization of our brains' flavor stations.

    So identity is like taste? Maybe. I would say it's similar to something so fascinating, but less available for such shareable-y expansive consumption. And less adjustable, but just as flexible - as in, it isn't as easily altered in a tangible way, but is a condition that stretches and modulates within the known confines of time and space. Identity can be "flavored", but is also less variable in a subjective sense, to each their own invariability.

    The truly perplexing thought next appearing in my consciousness is how preposterous is the obstinance toward this personal quandary with which the each of us interact. The individuality some of the human race ascribe toward their special (read: spee•shul) counterparts abruptly ends at an assertion of identity that has not been codified through years of constantly and significantly shifting language - written and spoken. Just like my use, in the first sentence of this very paragraph you now read, of an article prefixing the unit type I selected to describe all individuals, a description not fitting the accepted arrangement of attributes, worded without proper context and grammatical inference of placement and hierarchies, can be troubling to those who've become accustomed to the idea that their education has ended and foundations are settled into the deepest granite.

    •

    Oh, Centre of Worlds, yours knows not the ends as we.

    But ice and soot, such are these firmaments to your Appropriation.

    The Fall fixated inside our striving, for on floating convex are we.

    Without we are in knowledge and shivering, while what is known within is naught.

    And you will absorb the unbreakable things.

    Breakage conditions itself beyond unto not.

    •

    So, you see? While I relate identity to flavor and perspective, there is yet a deeper structure on which the concept is built, and deeper yet an unknown force that binds and consumes the depths of it at will. Knowing which unknowable thing, you or any person cannot tell me that a mere idea, a spoken interpretation of experienced inferencing, can be strictly defined based on any thing or idea, and, less so, even insignificantly by the mortal and malleable anatomical portions by which we know the very most surface realizations that only begin to point to any truth of motions, tendencies, and intentions.

    You can't tell me that a penis or a vagina determines gender. There it is without riddle, philosophy, and subtext, so that you can anchor to what I'm referring. Though, the reference does not end there, as identities vary just as broadly as that.

    Speaking about what identity is should demonstrably confirm to us why identity is. Or, at least, why it's important.

    Virtues, such as wonder, humility, patience, care, and maybe even contentment, can arise from this vernacularistic web of understanding that is identity. It is sacred. It is intimate. It is who we are. Being the essence of each ourselves, it is also a point of focus that can assist in harboring room for commonality and understanding. And the whole of an identity is tied up of a multi-tiered structure of what I might call "sub-identities."

    On the one hand, I can understand from this- my extremist camp of questioners and thinkers -the importance and independence assumed upon my own, and so, likely, on many others' own self-identification, the ownership and invariability from what we feel today/this year/in my lifetime concerning our identities. This worldview can be as munitions supplying the bombardment of projections we each launch at a myriad of states we're subjected to throughout a single day. My assumptions of identity, being certainly one of my most sacred visions, might be the haunting through which any other assortment of structural biases, owned or observed, are considered, even judged, an apparition of my own jurisdiction.

    But identity is not standardized by authoritative legislation and territorial responsibility. It may be weaponized, both defensively and offensively, and appropriately so in certain scenarios. We're not talking about national identities, though. These state-assigned versions of the topic are mere derivatives of an internalized validation of parts of a whole - the identity structure.

    I'm discussing the partitioning of property on a metaphysical level and realm referred to as soul and spirit. Due to the significance of this sacredness, we have constructed replicas honoring its importance in shadows and forms, referring to it as law, societal norm, holy and acceptable; sacred. Identity's importance seems indisputable when its prevalence is observed next to civil policy and warranting of legal merits.

    And here lie the hard-lined contingencies we consecrate as immutable, because law is immutable, in most cases. That invariability, the definition of appropriate practice that law escorts into thought and behavior, brings us comfort through security and assurance of outcomes, through justice and forced restraint. It is certainty in an existence where we invent gods, celestial planes, and theories of parallel universes to give us a bulwark against the existential dread of the finitude that accompanies a life.

    The Absolute defeats Death while Wondering allows it.

    Wonder is frightening.

    So then, my understanding of others in their pursuit of maintaining this absoluteness, this conquering of Death, even for those individuals with which there is no potential relationship, is made clearer. And the clearer it becomes, the more empathetic I can be toward the person who identifies with the Absolute. For they, like myself, are merely uncertain. The difference lies in our responses to that uncertainty. While a foundation is established through tradition and normalcy, laid out upon ancient, written truths that claim their own self-sufficiency, we who hold Wonder above Absolute have founded persistence of motion and striving after truths that we don't know, and can't know. I'm not sure what comes first, though; acceptance that we do not know to allow a search for truth, or an observance of truths we didn't accept at one time in the past that lead us to a comfort in knowing we do not know.

    Initially, I think it's accepting that a truth could exist that breaks our creed. It's recognizing that acceptance of the finality of death seemingly infers a belief in absolutes. It's allowing the contradiction between that denial of consciousness' end and rejection of the same to dissolve - because acceptance of the thing our instinctive selves fear most releases us from hiding behind stories that maintained the illusive wall of confirmation and continuity, and we can begin to imagine, in a true sense, which is to depress the intellect from a sacred contingency. Because it's not a belief in an end at all that we achieve upon migrating away from the notion of eternity, but an expansion of honest reflection on the memory of what we saw and its correlation to what we see, and clearer observation overall of future potentials.

    Acceptance of others' need for, or, at least, dependency on contingency only builds toward a more complete awareness of the uncertainty and utter infinity of the constantly compiling, moving, and expanding Question. Inquiring of the unknown, by the nature of what it means to ask anything of that faceless reality, creates independence from contingency by releasing presupposed ties that, upon deeper observation, may not exist. It may be true, at even further extrapolation of the data of reality, that each existence we could describe might persist purely based on sentient, or, even more exclusively, sapient observance of these ties between realities, which places even more individualistic responsibility on the definition of each their own identity, and less on the observer's insistence on that of the observed's.

    And so we arrive back at identity. We've discussed just how important it is, but that got really confusing, let's be so real right now. To break it down a little more simply for us, somebody's internal identity is their own and outside observation of their self-status does not determine its structure in any useful way beyond assigning an assumed contingency to its existence.

    So, I guess that's about it. I find it perplexing that there exists a large group of self-proclaimed teachers and arm-chair experts on the matter of gender who purport to know, with greater accuracy than the owner of said gender themself, the ascribed gender of each person.

Oh, and "themself" is a standard English word recognized by Chicago Manual of Style. Take that, you who may argue that "they" and "them" are mainly applied for a plural effect.

Don't be a fool.

Code Block Test

Here is an example of a code block inserted into my text body:

function codeBlock(param) {

	if (param) {
    	console.log(param);
    } else {
    	return "nope";
    }

const here = "this";

codeBlock(here);

There you have it!

Awareness is Uncertainty

 Hello.

I don't know what I'm writing about but I was suddenly inspired to read scribblings past and now have decided in the blur of the moment to write out an entire blog update.

My partner is probably wondering from the bedroom what I'm doing typing away on a Saturday morning. "He better not be working overtime!!" She tends to slide her meddling hand into my mismatched wardrobe like that - assuming I'm up to no good. Like some dog on a morning mission to find that wastebasket full of used tissues...

I'm not. And her meddling is more necessary than the extent to which I give it credit. Probably.

Still don't know what I'm writing about or why. Who reads these?

I suppose I'm trying to recapture or elicit something anew. Maybe there's a purpose to my ramblings, but they're likely just an addition to an algorithm of the complexities of our evolutionarily derived awareness.

Or is it discovered awareness? Is awareness a result of mutations, or is it the "higher power?" I suppose I'll capitalize the word from here on out to signify the importance and significance of said term.

The Awareness.

There we go. Also capitalizing the word because of my own perceived greatness, I'm sure. I'm not super great, though. I can write and I find it interesting. Maybe book readers would enjoy my skipping through grammatical aloofness as a child hoisting a gun while tumble-trotting, as children do, carelessly fingering that trigger guard. I can't foresee whether this would be observed as "oh, so cutesy and innocent" or simply "another result of bad parenting..."

Alas.

For you see, I have moved away from belief in deities and absolutes to a dependency on other assumed finalities. I think it may simply be a part of the human coding initiative. Our presupposition that there is more than this temporal existence sustains a thirst for surviving and, at risk of developing a greater insatiability, being comfortable and safe. Having a destination.

Knowing that home awaits us at the end of our day of existence.

Comfort. A condition of ease and thoughtlessness to which we aspire with all of our most determined thinking. What a paradox, that. The understanding that it is a dichotomy of a complex idea is also something astounding. How did we arrive at the place where we now entwine with the world, absorbing and expressing nuance and coveted poly-rhythms of speech and hearing?

Most of it is lost in the immediacy of the conversation. But it builds on what was known and what is assumed and is a complex sifting organism that filters our communal thought into a massive, world-covering creature of intellect. We are Aware.

In the spirit of maintaining my uncertain disposition toward all things and ideas, I'll end this post here.

Do You Remember You? (mostly, i have a daughter)

 do you remember you?

i often don't. i'm way back there in the past somewhere; a little boy with a vision of an island on the horizon.

darkness was a fiend and snowfall teleported me to a new world.

i was a poet, though i'd be the critic tearing my writing apart now.

i was an artist and a musician. i was part of a spirit and energy i don't get anymore. except for when i pull my guitar off its dusty stand once a quarter.

i was religious. i loved the sacraments and traditions. i just hate the platform religion has now become.

i was a lover. now i just kinda suck.

i was also not highly skilled at anything and didn't have money. money is nice, even if i'm still not wealthy.

i used to post great stuff like this on Facebook that made everyone cringe or just say "tl;dr..." now i still do, but i care less about the critics.

i'm also just more confident in who i am. maybe even in who we are. like, everyone.

i tend to hermit and not talk with peeps for months. and i'm half ok with that as well. i have this outlet where i can shout.

i used to be melancholic and amazed. i still am.

that must be the path back to who i am. because i think who i remember is really just the individual hoping to one day be me.

i'll never be who i became again. that diversion broke and crumbled in the divorce. but that person who wondered if he could truly pass through worlds by jumping into a pond is alive and here. parts that are important are here. parts that are important are gone.

but that's me - parts that make up a whole.

i'm diverting somewhere else now. i am fine with it. i feel no necessitation toward this initiative as i had previously experienced during my grand endeavors of my youth and early adult years. that's a very, very good thing.

i don't remember me. not fully. i remember bits and sometimes journey nearly to the moment of a gaze or a feeling before it is gone.

i'm ok with that. newness awaits. complication ensures integration. unending mysteries mock me from eons in the distance. i have a daughter.

mostly, i have a daughter.

so, godblessit! i have a life to live and a second soul to feed! a soul in the form of a kid who also may one day find her pensive entanglements to be more important than getting up to get a glass of water in the middle of writing them down on her lonely blog.

will they even have blogs in the future?

On Educational and Corporate Elitism and Laborer Trade-Slavery

30 individual humans will “earn” over half a billion dollars between just themselves - just this year. This is only a tiny fraction of this type of extreme wealth in the world and isn’t even the most extreme example of the wealth gap with which most of us are familiar.

Meanwhile, people who weren’t lucky enough to gain massive international popularity by being chosen to play the lead in a new, wildly popular cinematic franchise will flip burgers/operate a teller’s desk/repair your HVAC system for less than 1% of one of these annual incomes over the course of decades of back-breaking work.

This is ok in our world. Can you believe that?

I can't anymore.

I don’t mean to troll any responses into correcting me, so I’ll clarify that I’m totally fine with very wealthy individuals attaining those riches through hard work and dedication to their craft. A company's CEO should be paid more than the teams that help run the company. I don’t want that job - tell me what to do and pay me less for it. I totally get this sort of hierarchy. I want the head of a company to have the incentive to lead me and a team. That's a position I'm unwilling to take on due to the stress of it.

But that isn’t what we’re dealing with.

We’re dealing with Tom Cruise being told what to do (and doing it well, according to many critics and fans) and making $100M dollars for performing well at his job. I don't want to discount the difficulty of the job of an actor. I absolutely validate the position of the thespian and performer and think they deserve fair wages as any other worker does.

But that's not what we're talking about.

We’re talking about Robert Antokol obtaining a salary of $372M in a year for running a game development company. Now, if you divide half that amount ($186,000,000.00) amongst the 3800 persons Playtika (the game dev company over which Antokol presides) employs, that’s $48,947.37 per employee per year. Nice bonus, amiright???

And the CEO still gets $186,000,000.00 dropped into their lap for the year. Not a bad deal at all! I'd take a portion of a percent of that and be living better than anything I could imagine in my current state.

It seems diminutively fair to me to give a $50,000-ish bonus to each employee while still paying such a massive sum to one individual who certainly would be no where without his devoted workers.

This doesn’t even touch on the fact that each board member of Playtika also takes home hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and how little time each of them contribute in comparison to the team members fashioning the product that's defined by the board.

No one man or woman does enough work to be valued so far above their lowest paid worker. No one.

We have a problem in this world. The ultra rich are a major contributor to it. I don’t really believe in an abject realization of evil, but this is very close to one of the few things I would define pretty close to such a concept.

If you run a company where you pay your average worker an annual salary equivalent to 0.03% of what you take home in the same amount of time, this is a shade of evil. There is no justification for it.

I fully support the movement that has been taking place since The Great Resignation began a decade before the pandemic. People deserve better. So much better.

Is this movement even effectual though?

Skill trades and hard work should be valued much more equivalently to the elite, idealistic roles than what is currently attributed to them.

The road construction worker operating under life-threatening conditions to keep our travel routes traversable and safe deserves just as much recognition and compensation as, or even more than, a project manager or accountant who, while deserving of the dividend proffered them due to their attention to education and understanding of and ability within complex business systems, statistically will not be risking their well-being at nearly the same rate, nor contributing tactically skilled, physically demanding, and spatially difficult labor to their occupational focus as the blue collar person does.

Whether physically or mentally demanding, occupations of any type should offer the worker comfort and prosperity as they give of their lives to the mechanism in which they exert themselves. Nice thoughts, eh?

I do wish that words were enough to fix this. I wish legislative referendum had the capacity to affect the injustice of it. I may even hate the state of poverty and its oppressive master, high wealth, enough to wish a military force could enact a change through occupation and injunctive coercion. Even that would not be enough though.

There is no sudden fix or resolution to this fabricated yet tangible slavery that entraps most of humanity. The curse of the power of money is ineffable and unrelenting. It is without predator aside from an unexpected act of natural motions - which may include self-immolation, introspectivisms and self-realization, and/or self-transcendency. I am optimistic toward the continuance of a certain valuing of community and cooperative evolution as we have seen only recently emerging through the evolutionary course of life on earth. I am also cautious in this positivity because, well, we could enact nuclear warfare and then be done with this attempt at expanding the spark of awareness.

Thank you for joining me on this ferocious unwrapping of mind-speak as I confront the state of the human race as it has always been. No answers are given here. Merely perspectives and convolutions. And that is all I've ever had.

Please remember to do "good" with the vastness appointed you by chance. Remember to lift your companions in this life to equality and commiseration. We can become the species to attain true peace, interdependency, and equilibrium with this strange force pushing against gravity defined as life. I really believe this.

The only question that bothers me in the dark corners of my home is, will we?

On Necessity in General

I do agree that I am necessary to the extent that the collection of particles and immeasurable pieces, which have yet to be found, collapsed together to form my spatial tangence in the way that achieves what they (the particles) intend. The specific collection of mass and motion that is “me” is here right now -being- | so, yes. “I” am not replaceable. However, I am placed here. And I can be moved from here. 

I’m in a system that runs on my position and through positioning me, that is connected to quadrillions upon quadrillions of other positioned placements. My awareness of and subsequent interactivity with this is a phenomenon, as many organisms can’t, at least from our perspective, understand the vastness and acuteness of everything. They just are. I have to reason then that awareness, consciousness, or spirit has a purpose. Is it an elevated response to the inward motion of all things? Is it a separate entity sent from beyond tangibility to inhabit these cardboard shipment containers we deem bodies? Is it randomness? Chaos? Just a chance reaction of chemical interactions that have made a very small part of a massive universe able to observe and actuate itself? The expression of a God who created an evolving version of himself that will come to completion in self-awareness at some inconceivable point in the future?

All fascinating speculations to me, but what really gets me thinking is how my necessity right now in space and time depends little to nothing on my contribution actuated through this state of awareness. Yes, we made societies and cities and art and science. We have religions and ideals and philosophies and social media. We have balance and greed. We have fairness and murder. We have awareness. And my existence -is- because of the current ordering of particles commanding particles we call “humanity.” So awareness begot awareness. But awareness didn’t become aware from nothing. And nothing didn’t form something. It’s a continuous trade off of intentions with tendencies; on a cosmic scale! Galaxies forming constantly from motion throughout the expanse. Entire solar systems and galaxies contracting from space into blackholes where matter is compacted into ultimate density.

The world builds itself without us touching it. If our species died, the world would use the tools of itself to turn us back into it, which is all we’ve been all along — some combination of elements that have assembled into this complex organism allowing us to manipulate the world as we see fit in a much shorter span of time and with more expanded intention than what the universe does to us through tendency... and some small hint of intention.

I can’t get past it. That idea that everything is intentional. There are, however, cosmic forces that move at much more rapid speeds of particle destabilization than what we can enact. Our skills in disassembly, organization and reassembly of elements and particles into new forms measures as nothing compared to the potential force that a small chunk of space debris contains were it to enter our planet’s atmosphere and make impact with the surface. And then there are super novas and the like. And then there is the microwave spectrum. Forces we can’t even see and predict that could end us in a nanosecond. Fascinating.

Yet, here we are. Inside the big bubble of earth’s protective atmosphere, shielding us every moment from unending assaults by the cosmos. Protecting us out of an evolutionary and survival of the fittest interest, perhaps? Or, mayhaps, let us reason that a God set this up in such a way. Definitely plausible. All things point toward a being of infinite power making a system that would work in the way I’ve laid out here. I won’t get into that right now though. This one isn’t about God. Well, unless you’re of the persuasion that everything is through and from and for and about God. Then this whole argument works in your favor. I’m not attempting to talk about God though because it doesn’t matter. Unless you believe it does. Then it matters a ton. Except that it doesn’t.

Agh!! Look what you’ve made me do! I won’t go into that right now. I must resist. This blog post has gone on long enough.

Let me end by saying that I believe there is a struggle between intention and tendency and that struggle is an intersection on which awareness persists unto necessity. There. That should wrap it up nicely.

I Don't Believe?

Dear People In General,

This really has been a conquest up 'til now, hasn't it? I mean, life and the endless strivings. I guess I'm referencing all of them. Like, all of the fights for survival for all of time. Since a beginning or a conceptualization of conscious awareness and feeling within humanity. It's been a struggle to figure it all out and to know ourselves and to grasp the reason for it all, hasn't it?

I'm a very melancholy and sentimental type of person. I always have been. I feel intense waves of emotional singularity with seasons and spaces that may echo meaningful experiences from my past. The depth at which I connect with movements and movers had always inspired the need in my mind to appropriate effort to meaning and meaning back again to effort. In my perspective this was the circle; this was the balancing act.

This was the "moderation in all things" I strove to emulate, if only inside my own brain.

However, one course in my endeavors took precedence above all the others. Every course had some sort of value to present as beneficial to my state, to my existence. Every task my hand discovered needing, my heart discovered it chrono-dependent.

To explain, I knew the value of money. I knew, having reasoned from a very undeveloped age, that the love of money was what attributed evil to the middleman of our decadent value system. The value maintained itself separately, though, and a mechanism of time and motion would ascertain for me in it's own specularity the exact moments of chance and significance of allowance. Simply put, money would do its part as I did my part (which I really, really sucked at for a very long portion of my life and, from such suckery, am still feeling shockwaves).

So it had value - realized or unrealized. I hated it. I hated the needlessness of it all. The lack of conductive thinking that made this mere conduit something relied on by society for every menial implementation of thought in action. This routine of necessity also awaked inside me a hope in it's gears. It had value despite it's worthlessness. It could be useful in the time and space that it becomes so, and if not, oh well! Conjuring currency is not the fight of immortal significance. It's simply a course that benefits me in senses of temporality. Nothing good or bad will be the ultimate outcome of it's acuity or obscurity. There was a meaningful value beyond all the little worthless blights that added to the stain of us. The canvas had a shadow of the environment within which labor was applied to it's surface. There was and is a Beyond. These empty routines aren't ends that make an end. These are ends usher the over.

Sex was a motivation. I was internally and covertly vexed that it held only a momentary and insatiably redundant purpose: to make to make. Yet it motivated me. There was a woman out there in the feral wild who would find me as I found her and our love would be impenetrable and intertwined in sweet, eternal, mortal satisfactions and a gradual unification of sacrificial living. It would happen to me as it's purposes of pleasure and reproduction were realized in a time and space that aligned beside my reality.

And then we'd have incredibly intimate and mentally stimulating sex. Mainly that: we'd make babies like few had before us. Because I could think and understand and feel and I knew she was mine like she knew I was hers. It was the ultimate goal. Perhaps it remains of top importance, only in a very different light. As I was saying though, sex was a motivator, not a truly meaningful institution. It had purpose, value, but was meaningless. I hated that it was meaningless. I hated that it couldn't fulfill me. What was it worth if it wasn't absolutely visionary?

So I fought time and space for it.

I took it. I found shortcuts and I claimed little satisfactions. These triumphs mixed with the response of social undertones tore me to pieces. I knew there was a more perfect satisfaction. I pushed for it. I fought the wild. I found the beauty and took from her. Out of balance with what I had preemptively obtained, I felt the pressure to abandon and reset myself. I searched again and found multiple desirables who were nonreciprocal.

I went from one crush to the next. I was the classic, jaded dude, thinking this might finally be the one who notices what magic we could be. Rejection hit me hard again and again and I decided I didn't care.

I had one thing I knew.

The one underlying reality and single course that I viewed without the filter of moderation was Christ and nothing more or less. What was the value of everything else that comes in, around and after or before? That was my one overarching theme that sounded distinctly in this internal war by which all things were made meaningless with a certainty of value. The contradictions inside me found resolution in knowing an absolute end to the ends. An over to the game. A finality to the narrative.

The resolution comes at the end of the world, so whatever will be will be.

Whatever wealth is enough.

I make love to make love and love makes to make.

These are the redundancies. These are meaningless, but purposeful. These are the circles and they go on and on. They round up to mere shadows of the originator, as imprints of the steps that were taken, as images on a canvas in a much larger room in an endless expanse. They were placed into existence for perfection's sake by the Creator and are now meaningless because of our inadequacy. We trudge onward through these cycles to find ourselves face to face with either a glorious new home or a flaming vortex of soul destroying torment forever.

Holy hot damnation. What did I just type?

Well, here now unfolds my confession; I have dreamed to doubt my entire life. Yes, I fantasize about the very act of doubting. The notion of throwing my claim to faith into the winds of self-interest and indifference has tempted the stern of this vessel since I first learned that hell was for people to be burnt in forever and ever. When I learned that heaven is golden and glass, pure and brilliant, and our constant activity will be singing "Holy, Holy, Holy," forever and ever, I was, frankly, disappointed.

But I couldn't tell anyone.

And it's not anyone's fault that I couldn't. It's my fault. I knew what it would mean to some in my circle of Christianity if I had admitted out loud that all those shouts of "holy" sounded painfully boring and repetitive. That all my present shouts of "holy" were laced with a plea to the one I shouted for to prove Himself.

Let me elaborate on that.

Here's the actual thought process that I remember so clearly while coming to terms with this newly discovered future reality for my second life. Since my two choices were: A. hot, white flames licking my everlasting, melting skin while small, writhing worm-like monstrosities devoured the epidermis of my eternal body as I screamed in the blackest, coldest, hottest darkness forever and ever, or: B. God's presence wrapping me in light and warmth and love, and living in a place of joy and peace without sadness or regrets, walking on golden streets and swimming in a sea that looks like glass, singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy," I chose the latter.

I figured it'd be something I would come to enjoy. Eventually I'll just get in there and do it with the team! It's an acquired taste and will be my favorite thing to participate in someday, right? There were several other ideas with which I attempted to convince myself. I tried to apply imaginative narratives to the whole afterlife thing, since it was all very underdeveloped in scripture. Then again, I didn't need to know what it would be like. I just needed to trust and live out my life. God clothes the flowers.

When it came down to it, the greatest freedom of Christianity was that I didn't even need to believe! I didn't need to strive to prove my allegiance. I only needed to accept the gift that was available. And I did.

I sang about it. I sang for Truth. I sang for glory to God. I gave myself over to a belief, a faith, because it was true.

God is Truth. Truth comes from God and is God, so the very act of believing isn't something I have to even try to do because it sustains itself in Truth, rather than a truth being sustained by my belief.

So, it's self-evident then. By the very nature of this Truth, it has to convince any would be believer, because it is not my Belief that is true, but a Truth that compels my belief. Anyone who doesn't believe is in such a state because Truth hasn't been revealed. If it was revealed, I would either gladly believe or scornfully reject it.

Since I didn't lean either direction, I gradually became aware that I didn't actually believe.

This realization brought me to a point; some call it a crossroads. The decision to turn onto the selected route didn't occur in an instant. Just as it requires checking back and forth before proceeding through a 4-way stop intersection, I checked. I looked for the real God. I observed all of these proofs that emanate from themselves. They created truth. The Creator made our awareness. So it must be there. Waiting to be revealed. So... where?

Can I reveal it?

No.

It reveals itself at the right time. To claim belief before being convinced of it, by it, is to stand in my own attempt to myself pull back the curtain that was not mine to touch. I'd rather count myself a fool who says there is no God than to attempt deceit of the same. The fool is the more acceptable reprobate than the one who lies of such convictions of faith.

Add on whatever other philosophical one-liners you can think up and you got a nice little finale here! Because that's about it. That's where I'm at. I haven't finalized anything. As I said in the previous post this past summer, there are no answers. And that's good enough.

Indefinitely?

Yes.

Absolutely?

No.

Nothing is absolute.

Let's just leave it at that: I don't believe in God.

It's not like I don't want to.

Yeah. I'm shrugging the blame. It's not my fault. I am at fault for many errors I have made, but redemption, it seems, is fully dependent on revelation.

So, come on. It doesn't really matter if I don't believe. If I'm predestined for that path, I'll come around to it wholly due to its own nature. I'm more intrinsically bound to the search for truth than ever before. I don't know if I'll find it. I've made peace with that.

Now, to the refinement (...still shamelessly optimistic toward it all...)!

Andrew R. M. Hanson