I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

– Bob Dylan

A. G. Rizzoli: Temple of Life

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(I don’t really know where this is going, something I thought up on the train home. Sorry if I never finish it, but here: the start of a sci-fi short story.)

By the name Tom Weller he was scarcely known, the man with the heavy AKA: a.k.a. luxØr, he was the the one responsible for that famous HLPIMTRPD virus which, yes, even in this day and age (or is it especially in this day and age?) convinced some unwitting users to believe that there was a man trapped in their computer. Focus: upon an ordinary screen, probably running an internet browser or word processing program, which is surreptitiously seized at an exact, predetermined time, and whereupon begins to be scrawled “Helq me! I am trappeb inside this machine!” (Yes, a couple of the letters were even reversed, to mimic if someone were actually, imperfectly scribbling the message from the inside.) Hook the keyboard input to an Eliza*-like interface writing back in a semi-random script, and whammo — 9 out of 10 (actually, more like 2 out of 10) users can’t taste the difference from a decaffeinated virus. You will note that the intent was never to do harm, but just to laugh his head off the next day, which he did. It didn’t destroy any files, and its propagation phase was already quite complete by that magic hour — no annoying emails to everyone you know. And whaddayaknow, it made CNN.com, so the objective was well achieved: LOL, and L, and L, and L… until later that next day, when something very similar to what he had perpetrated happened to him.

*Eliza was a program that acted like a psychotherapist, to which some people were so taken as to tell their real problems to.

Looking into my heart, which is perhaps the best way of looking into other men’s, I know that the Savior I want is one of whom I can say with Thomas of old, “My Lord and my God.” It would not suffice for my need that He should be only an heroic brother, man divinely inspired. I owe Him my soul, He fills my whole spiritual horizon, I seek to lose myself in Him that I may find myself eternally in life and love divine.

How could this man who now I am have ever been a child?
No, I was born fully grown, fully dressed, walking to the office.
Childhood was just a dream, and it gets shorter each time I look.

We forget for most of the day that today is all we have.

Back in my wilder days, one of my favorite videos to watch was Woodstock (3 days of peace, music and love), the documentary about the festival of the same name. You know the one, 400,000 people zonked out of their minds listening to rock ‘n’ roll. The one that was declared a disaster area. Yes, that one — there is, of course, none other that you could really confuse this with, the anniversary concerts being such crass commercialism that one must just shake one’s head when one thinks of them using the same name. But the original one, in that huge gig, I think about this line that still stays with me, an announcement when they realized just how many people showed up, most without tickets: (I paraphrase) “There’s only one way this is going to work. See that man next to you? He’s your brother.” And I think that really, that so applies anywhere, everywhere you may go. See this world? There’s only one way all of this, this whole deal is going to work: see all these people around you? They’re your family. Yeah, man. That’s cool.

The Lord would have us follow His example, not toward victory by strength of arms, but to win it all by way of love. For He is unique among all the gods of the world, that He did not come as a conquering hero, but instead, as the lamb slain for the transgressions of the many, transgressions He never Himself committed. It is no fairy tale. And He would have of us that we should be like the above, from where He came, for He gave us that charge: to love one another as He loved us. That to lay down one’s life for one’s friends — there is no greater love than this, and we can indeed be called His friends when we follow the calling with which He called us. It need not be so extreme, I think, but can be something we do daily: when given the choice between force or understanding, between our own wills being done or to turn the other cheek, that we choose to be strong not in arm, but in the heart. For it was true strength that died on the cross, the symbol of which we today look upon to give us courage: remember that that is a crucified man we worship!

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.

A. G. Rizzoli: The Cadevtr

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The preacher and the writer may seem to have an… easy task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men’s hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words, shaped cunningly to pass men’s defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice, turning a face of flint toward the easy cliche, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology — dear, no doubt, to the faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospel.

Go as far as you understand, then take another step or two, so that you might learn.

(And now for something completely different — an experimental poem I did years ago. Enjoy (I think).)

Defendants

Truth perils depth
(where death is the closest
money) to shy
the rushing patterns of
distance light brittles to aim —
blank wisdom was bought.

Enter life the deafening
boredom: she tailors
a sage, heathen fire
to hermetic savor.
Then she screams planets.

What action craves to sting,
ancient dread predestines a
taut plunge, and stills the air
leaven eras to ruse.

While reason bleeds
lies, mutations of blue
fold in unceasing logic.

Once every somewhile, an inkling of how things might have been. A glance at a fragmentary mirror, glimpsing into the possibility: I have always imagined that destiny’s hold was not so tight on us. It could have happened in another way, even the things that are meant to be. Perhaps, in my thinking, a different shuffling of the deck would not have turned the world upside down — some dreams that are not could have come true, and some dreams that became real might have stayed mere figments. The balance of the world is more a feel than an infinitesimally precise metric. Somewhere, God winks at us. Sometimes, why is merely a passing fancy.

On the one hand, there is the helplessness of man to override the gears of destiny. On the other had, there is the primacy of choice. Perhaps it is the nature of we the upright animals to be of such paradox, made out of nothing in the image of the infinite. For it is written that our lives are predestined to the last bit of detail, yet in the same breath, we are made poignantly aware that the smallest thing that we decide echoes in eternity. One can, given this information, utterly despair that anything we decide makes the littlest difference in what happens to us, in how we affect the world; too, one can be paralyzed by the sheer weight that each choice ultimately will portend. But in each, we ignore the consequence of the other viewpoint of how things work; and it may be that in the paradox one can consequently breathe free.

Look at our Lord, Jesus Christ: for Him, the paradox was the utmost in its expression. He could see all things that He was going to do, and thus, the destiny He was committed to was completely laid out, plain before his eyes. If, then, He had no freedom in choosing what was to happen, what would He be but an automaton, less than human, a robot going through the motions that had already been planned for Him — what would He have been but simply the Algorithm of God? Yet, this is not how we know Him. He was, instead, the highest that consciousness can aspire to, and so, must have had the greatest of all freedom. Thus, we must believe that since in any situation, He would only choose the best way to go, that in any situation, there were an infinite number of best courses available. Not equal, not even equivalent, but with what He could make of any decision, in any of these ways, the best that possible could be.

Does the fact that He knew exactly what He would do lessen His choice? On the contrary, it means instead that His powers of planning were absolute. There is more meaning, then, to His decision, not less — because it all went precisely as He intended. What this lays out for us is that we are no less free to do anything though each iota of our expression is known. We should not despair that our decisions mean anything less than freedom gives us in consequence. And we should not collapse at the weight of such responsibility of choice, for the workings of destiny are larger than any of our choices precipitate. We are caught in the middle of never and forever: but it is a good place. We are responsible for our actions, but in the last estimation, believe that Someone who knows better understands how fraught with uncertainty any of our choices are, how much courage it takes for us to make them.

Distance is the one mystery no one considers.

A. G. Rizzoli: The Mother Tower of Jewels

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Even if all the things that people prayed for happened — which they do not — this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable “success” in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something more like magic — a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.