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Greatness: A Story Idea

A long time ago, I had a dream in which I was reading a short story by Zelazny, and when I woke up I remembered the story that I had been reading. It was a good one (and very Zelazny-esque), and I made some short notes to myself, in the hopes that one day I would write it up.

Then, of course, promptly forgot all about it.

Bruce wrote me the other day, and mentioned in passing the AA phrase, “fake it til you make it,” which reminded me of my own comment recently on the issue of lying, concerning pretending to be something better than you are, in order to become that (and the difficulties associated with that).

Also, for some completely inexplicable reason, Toby has been inundating my poor GMail with countless (read: “two”) articles concerning mind-controlling parasites.

And thinking on these things reminded me, across time and space, of the story idea I’d had long ago.

It goes like:

Somewhere in space, on some out-of-the-way planet, there is a parasitic creature that is capable of mind control, that enhances its victim’s aggressive instinct.

Another advanced race discovers the parasite and cultivates it, using it as a form of rehabilitation on truly horrible criminals, enemies of the state, and conquered enemy soldiers, turning them into state-sponsored assassins and soldiers. Eventually that race’s entire standing army is peopled with zombies controlled by these parasites.

Generally the life-expectancy of one of these zombies is pretty short, given its reckless charge into danger, but one particular criminal is so incredibly lucky and talented, that she lives for years longer than any other. She is quickly promoted from soldier to assassin, and becomes feared through the galaxy (style of thing).

Finally she shows up at some out-of-the-way bar and sits down across the table from some wanted fugitive, who recognizes her and knows that he’s dead. He strikes up a conversation, trying to buy time, and most of the actual story takes place within their little dialogue. And over the course of the story, you discover that the mind-control parasites themselves only live a couple of years, and that this one woman’s controllers died more than a decade ago, but she had become so much what the parasites made her, that even after their influence was gone, she just kept it up.

Then I suppose she kills him, because why not?

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God and Greatness: A Maxim

When it comes to religion, your average scientist is a person who can ask “Why?” a thousand times, but call someone a superstitious fool for asking it a thousand and one.

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Greatness: Biography (Part I)

There’s a very ancient custom (tradition, superstition, whatever you wish to call it), that orphans and foundlings must be treated with a special dignity. The story goes (or went, if you will) that the gods, whatever their names, have a surprising predilection for going disguised as men, and they certainly tend to get about a bit, and so you never quite know whether the adopted baby’s biological father is, in fact, biological. If you get my drift….

(Yes, I’ve been reading some Pratchett recently, for those who’ve read enough of his stuff to recognize the influence there….)

Ack. There’s something I want to write, something I need to say, and I’m quite sure that I’m not up to the task of saying it. I felt this way, several years ago, when I had to give a toast at his wedding…..

Listen, I have a lot to say about Human Greatness, and this glorious world crafted by God for the sake of humanity, and how even the bad comes out to good, in the end….

But it hurts when it’s someone you know, y’know? It’s painful and it’s scary and it’s really, really, really, bitterly unfair. And you want to scream and you want to cry at the same time. That’s what it’s like when Life happens. A baby is born crying, and for good reason.

(That last sentence is just about the most cynical line I’ve ever written….)

Look, Life is like this: it’s Man-made. It seems like a good idea, it mostly works, all the pieces fit together, and those who know how it works can really get it to do some amazing things. And other people have an astonishing tendency to just push the buttons, without really reading the manual, and it just works for them. They’ve got a knack. But with anything Man-made, you’re going to have some people who, no matter how they try, just can’t quite understand what’s going on at all….

I imagine that’s what the world looks like to angels. It’s fascinating. It’s beautiful. It’s just this overwhelming experience, full of boundless possibilities. But when you get down to the joints, down to the bendy parts, it’s gritty, and it breaks down just when you really need it to go….

I heard this morning that one of my oldest friends (or, in fact, one of my youngest friends, depending how you’re counting) has cancer. That’s the impetus for a thousand blog posts, I suppose. I don’t care. Let me join in the caterwauling. I need to talk about him.

I’ve known Josh for as long as I’ve been me, for any but the most general definition of “me.” I met him when I was six, in Claremore, among that great cloud of my-age friends that I stumbled upon when my family moved there. By the time I was seven, at the latest, he was my best friend.

His special genius was singing….

No, that’s not true. His special genius was smiling. He had so much fun, whatever we were doing. We used to laugh together at anything. Y’know how little kids play together? How they dream up an idea and together they go off into some other universe and just…play? Josh and I used to play for hours. I don’t remember really playing before I met him (but, then, I don’t remember much before I was six), and I don’t really remember playing after then, except with him (or on my own).

We used to talk about starting a singing group. Josh and me, and the rest of that cloud of my-age friends there at the Church of Christ on Blue Starr Drive. Yeah, me. Yeah, singing. Josh was that convincing….

The last time I saw Josh, he was smiling. Every time I can remember, he’s been smiling. And not because things were going great, when I happened to see him. He’s always been able to end up smiling, though, no matter what was going on…. To see something in the world around him, the world that is just beating and bruising and bewildering him — to see something in all that to laugh about, at least when he’s around friends.

I imagine that’s what the world looks like to angels. Life has not been nice to Josh. I missed all the pain, too. I haven’t been anywhere near him for any of it. It’s easy to feel guilty about that. He was my best friend when we were kids, without a care in the world, running through grassy pastures, pestering our siblings….

I moved to Kansas just months before everything went wrong with his parents.

Six years later, senior year in high school, I met up with him again. He came to live with us for a little while, and I got to know him again. Still smiling, still laughing, still this incredible boy. I was there when he met Julie. I made a very clumsy and (in its way) fairly rude rendition of his role in my life, by way of a toast at his wedding. I’m very concerned, writing this now, that I didn’t learn a thing from that experience….

Because life hasn’t worked right, for Josh. He’s so enthusiastic, so determined, so alive — so much more so than everyone I know — and for every bit of force Josh has poured into Life, Life has pushed back with equal and opposite, as it were.

He’s had an amazing life, already….

He made it on his own, when he needed to taste independence. He had a hard time of it, because he was young and, after all, making it on your own is a hard business. But he’s managed it more than once.

He had a beautiful and brilliant wife. I know how proud he is of that. Even if only for a while, that was an accomplishment. He’s got two beautiful sons.

He could sing like an angel. I tried a dozen times to come up with another way to phrase that, but it’s the best I can do. He could sing like a drunk, at times. He could sing like a troubadour at times. He could sing like anyone in AVB or Acapella, and I’ll fight anyone who’d say otherwise. He sang with passion, because he loved to sing. That he understood. Even when nothing else in the world made sense, when the Devil cheated and even God seemed to be up to something, music was straight and true. I remember how he poured all of himself into singing a single song….

He always wanted to sing for AVB or Acapella. That’s why I mentioned them up there. Elementary through high school, I remember how cool he always thought that would be. I imagine it would rank as one of his life goals, no doubt.

I found out this morning that Josh has cancer on his vocal chords. I guess they’re checking to see if it’s elsewhere, and to see what else can be done (or needs to be done), but, really, the whole story of Josh’s life is right there. He’s got cancer on his vocal chords.

It’s not fair.

Too often, when I think about Josh, I want to cry. I think of him as this big goofy smile, I think about all the happiness he has brought into my life, and when I think about how much pain has been in his, I want to cry, because life isn’t fair.

But this is too much. It’s like it’s aimed at him. Everything else is just Life, in the big, faceless, heartless manner of it, but this….

This is what I’m talking about. This is how Life is tailor-made to us. This is how God writes us into precisely the one story where we won’t be a bit part. No other promises but that one, it seems.

I hate to write this all, now, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. I am writing this whole post on three short lines of information, a quick note from Mom. So I can’t say whether he’ll be well again. I can’t say what will come of this. I don’t know enough to make predictions, or guesses. I know just enough to absolutely hate it.

I was there at camp, when Josh sang for the talent show every year. I was there the year he found out Tony Brown had been hired by AVB, and Tony promised to mention Josh to them, keep Josh posted. I remember how excited he was, how much fun he had teaching me the bass line to “Keep Looking Up,” by Free Indeed.

I can’t believe how far away he is, now. I wish I could somehow be there for him. This is the third time I’ve felt that way, deep down in my heart, and each time it has been worse.

Say a prayer for him, if you can find it in you. Because he’s got to be scared now. Because he’s got to be angry now. Because it’s just not fair.

“Dear Lord, my Father and my King. Be close to Josh today.”

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Greatness: Self-Determinism and the Nature of Reality

One of the most fascinating aspects of human history has been the remarkable success of the human species. Man, pitted against all Nature, has been able to thrive in nearly every climate. Man’s dominance over his environment can be seen in every aspect of his life. Man acts as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, building environments to suit his needs, maintaining them according to his expectations, and destroying them when and where they no longer suit him.

Man exerts his control over his environment in many ways, from metaphorical response to concrete pragmatism. From his earliest days, Man has used storytelling to create meaning and understand the world around him. By interpreting natural events in mythical ways, early Man was able to conceptualize the complexities of his environment in his own terms, and then respond to the story, rather than the base environment, in a way that allowed cultures to unite and prosper in pursuit of common goals. By sharing stories, individuals were able to share their interpretations of the world in which they lived. While the creative story defines the meaningful world in which Man lives, his interaction with that world tends to take a concrete form, in the use of tools and technology. From the crudest axe to the particle accelerators and nuclear reactors we see today, Man has long sought to use the elements of his environment to shape it into one more suited to his desires. Whether building structures for safety or damming rivers for power, whether moving mountains for easier travel or developing medicines to double his lifespan, Man uses technology to shape the reality he encounters into the reality he desires. Even within his own communities, Man creates reality, building up social structures to define the roles of community members, and manipulating expectations so that the creative energy of a multitude might work together to strengthen their shared environment. This last process can be most clearly seen in any established institution, from the covenant of marriage to the culture of Western Science, societies work together to construct shared systems of control on their environment.

Of course, these institutions are as much devoted to sustaining as they are to creating, and this can be seen clearly in the tendency of such systems to incorporate a great degree of tradition and respect for history. The base concept of “culture” — that is, the collection of human creations that most clearly illustrates a society’s constructed environment, most commonly in art and stories — is a maintenance force. That is, the cultural works of a society are valuable precisely because they are able to illustrate aspects of the society’s constructed reality, and encourage an audience to continue to construct for themselves a similar reality. By “constructed reality,” I mean those aspects of a society’s environment that are not inherent, not absolutely natural. This extends to every manufactured good, every built structure, but also to ephemerals that factor — in a very real way — into the lives of the society’s members; ephemerals such as morality, covenant relationships of any sort, and higher-level constructs such as worldview that, though based on the natural environment, will not naturally occur in precisely the same way from individual to individual, or society to society. Whenever a society agrees to share a constructed reality — again, from a similar architectural style to a generally compatible worldview — the society tends to devote itself to the maintenance of this constructed reality. On the most practical level, this is seen in Man’s animal instinct to survive, as the individual seeks to maintain a reality that includes him, rather than accepting nature’s proposed reality that…doesn’t. This same practical survival instinct echoes through all levels of a society’s constructed reality, as people strive to maintain what they have built, encouraging others to accept their own creations, and defending them against outside threats. Just as Man’s creative aspect can be found in the tools he uses to create, so too his sustaining aspect can be seen clearly in the tools he uses to measure and to record. Man’s clear desire to ever-more-perfectly measure and describe the world around him arises out of a desire to defend that world, to replicate his reality as faithfully as possible, whenever it is threatened.

Any force capable of creating and sustaining, must necessarily be able to destroy, as well. Consider the example of Man’s animal desire to survive, used earlier. This very basic sort of sustaining can only be achieved through the act of destruction, whether of plants and animals used as nourishment or of enemy creatures competing for resources. In the same way, Man’s power over nature includes a powerful destructive aspect on every level. Just as story and myth are used to create a meaningful worldview, there are methods of philosophical and rhetorical speech that can be used to destroy constructed meaning, from Nihilism to parody and satire. Furthermore, some methods of constructing meaning, such as Rationalism and Western Science, simultaneously construct meaning while destroying any other constructed systems that might rely on the same source material. Of course, Man’s destructive nature is not limited to his own constructions, but can also be bent against his base environment, destroying aspects of it that stand in his way (such as a mountain demolished to clear a path for a highway). Naturally, such destruction must also extend to those competing with Man to define his environment — namely, other societies of Man. Thus we have seen, throughout history, the violence and brutality of war, the viciousness of execution and murder, as Men ultimately destroy those who would challenge them to define the environment in which they move.

It is easy to focus on this last aspect of Man’s power and despair. It is equally easy to look on great works of art from time gone by, and regret what has been lost, or to consider Man’s wondrous accomplishments and marvel at the greatness of Man’s spirit. It is most important, though, to consider the whole aspect of Man’s power, to see clearly the ways in which Man builds environment (and maintains it, and destroys anything that would challenge it). It is important to understand the whole picture, to consider the parts together, so that we can more wisely interact with our fellow Man, and more powerfully, more perfectly shape an environment that will benefit us all.

(Click on Comments for links to previous posts on this topic.)

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Greatness: Irreconcilable Differences

There’s this proposition that…err…proposes… that all Men are created equal. I am dedicated to this proposition. Now, when, in the course of human events….

Beh. Whatever. Here’s the point: every person has within him the ability to become anything any other person can become. Yes, that includes Wolverine, but if you really think about it, really, would you actually want to be Wolverine? Or Wolverine’s wife, ladies? Sheesh. No, no you wouldn’t.

But that’s beside the point. Every person has within him the ability to become anything any other person can become. And, as we have seen in history and legend, a person can become some pretty damn impressive things.

More importantly, people become pretty impressive, over the course of time. Here’s a thing: two people can do more than one person can. Again, more importantly, two people working together can do more than two persons working individually can. That’s an important distinction. The very foundation of all Society, all Community, all Civilization, is that a group of people banding together becomes more than just the sum of its parts.

There’s a reason for this. While every person has within him the ability to become anything any other person can become, most don’t. That is, we all take our beginning, our infinite possibility, and through environment, education, training, and choices, we all tend to become somethings unique. When we pool our resources, then, those who have trained for physical strength can offer their physical strength to the community. Those who have trained for mental prowess can offer their mental prowess to the community. And lazy bastards with a knack for spelling can get a surprisingly high GPA pursuing an English Major. Har har.

But I’m working my way toward a point, here. Gar, and it’s going to sacharrine, so there’s your fair warning. It’s the differences between people that make communities stronger than collections. It’s the diversity of a community’s membership that provides the community’s strength.

I think this is one of the reasons families work so well. Bruce and I have discussed the…unfairness of the way families work. That is, without choice, without apparent reason, by an accident of genetics you are irrevocably tied to a particular group of people. Nothing you can do in your life can change who your family is. However, families remain an incredibly successful and powerful social structure. I think the “accident of genetics” is a very important reason for this.

Friendship communities, and even professional communities, will tend to bind together because of shared traits. Naturally, there is a significant degree of deviation from person to person even within a similarity-based community, but within a family you’re going to get a significantly greater degree of divergence of interests and specializations. The family bond itself binds these divergent elements together, and allows them to become the sort of successful, greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts community I’m talking about.

So. That explains families, but we really do have little control over the shape and membership of our family, so through life we create other communities around us — we bind ourselves to other folks, adding our resources to theirs (and theirs to ours) and all of us growing together.

And here’s how relationships work (from a pragmatic standpoint): Similarities create the bond that keeps a community together. Differences create the strengths that make a community effective.

Remember what I said earlier, that two people working together are stronger than the same two people working individually? This is only true inasmuch as there are differences between them. Two people, perfectly identical in ability and disposition, would work as well apart as together. There are some flaws with that claim, but on close consideration I think it really holds. The significance of a relationship comes from its diversity.

What, then, is a marriage, but a constructed family bond? That is, the whole point of a marriage, as far as I can see, is to create a community of two bound together for the sake of becoming greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts. There’s the strong force and the weak force, though. The very thing that lends significance to the relationship (difference) creates a constant pressure forcing the people apart. It takes something stronger than that to bind them together, so that the individuals can act as a community. In blood-relationships, it’s the genetic bond that overcomes the repulsive force. In made friendships, it’s similarities (and often these similarities have to be so overwhelming as to practically smother the differences, limiting the ultimate effectiveness of the relationship).

I can’t quite seem to get to my punchline here. It sounds something like this: “irreconcilable differences are what make a marriage worth having.” I’m not trying to be trite. Sincerely, if a couple could reconcile its differences, it would cease to matter as a couple. It is the difference between who you are, and who I am, that makes us, as a couple better than just a couple of people.

That goes beyond marriage, obviously, but marriage is the most powerful illustration of this basic core of all human relationship. Marriage is the idea that a custom, a ritual, and a vow can create a strong enough tie to overwhelm that repulsive force. There are, naturally, other elements at play, but in the end, it is staying together that makes a marriage work. Every relationship is constantly under pressure to fly apart. Always. All the time. Staying together is the ultimate, constant challenge of any relationship, and it’s the only thing that makes the relationship matter at all.

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God and Greatness: Honesty and/or Truth

This is a bit of a puzzler….

Y’see, I’m a fantasy writer. I write fiction. Not, y’know, professionally, because apparently it’s not good enough. Pah. But deep down, that’s who I am. A storyteller. That’s quite apparent to all of you, of course.

And in the course of becoming that, you have to confront the possibility that making up stories is the same thing as lying. In fact, that’s a popular way of describing little children who tell lies — “he’s telling stories again.”

But at the heart of all good art is a lie. Every piece says, “The world is this way.” And the world is not that way. The world is more complex, or uglier or, in some cases, much prettier. Art is not reality — it’s an expression of reality.

And unless you’re growing up in an extremely fundamentalist household (which I wasn’t), it’s pretty easy to realize that our culture recognizes the value of a story as literature. So that little moral qualm quickly passes.

(Note that this hasn’t always been so. You may be aware that theater still has a lingering reputation of being a little skanky, for some reason. There was a time when the Church — and, for reference, this was a time when the phrase “the Church” could only refer to one institution — made it very clear that telling fictional tales was the equivalent of bearing false witness, and pretending to be someone you weren’t was nearly as bad. Morality plays got by, because they were a method of teaching Bible stories to the illiterate masses, but drama was strictly forbidden.)

Anyway, the point I’m getting at is this: from a very early age, I’ve been wrestling with the difference between truth and honesty. And I’ve generally been losing that match, too. When I was in middle school, I told some laughably ludicrous lies about my own past, about who I was. It made sense to me — I had just moved to a new state, and a new school, and none of these people knew my story, so when they started asking about it, why tell them a boring tale? Y’know? So I made up something with some flash and dazzle.

My whole life I’ve lied, to be perfectly honest.

(Yeah, that line made me smile.)

And this post comes from several discussions I’ve had with all of you, and those with Daniel and Toby particularly. There are clearly times when telling not-truth is okay. There are times, at least according to social convention, when it’s actually good. But, clearly, there are times when telling not-truth is quite destructive.

What’s the line? When is honesty right, and when is it just anti-social? Daniel and Toby have both, at some point, come to the conclusion that our society is far too comfortable with untruth — that what we need in our lives is a great deal more honesty. Instinctively and intellectually, I disagree.

There’s a thing I know. I’m not quite sure where or when I learned it, except that it would’ve been sometime before high school. See, the Ten Commandments include that one rule, “Do not murder.” Well, in Aramaic (that’s right, isn’t it?), there are several different verbs for “to kill.” There is a generic word that means to end another person’s life. There is a word that refers to killing in battle, and another that refers to a judicial execution. And, finally, there is the word that we would translate “murder.” It doesn’t necessarily imply specific circumstances, but it states that this killing is socially and legally forbidden, and therefor a criminal act.

The commandment against murdering is precisely that. I know people who are against the death penalty on the grounds that the Ten Commandments forbid killing. That’s what I’m getting at. The commandment specifically doesn’t forbid execution, it forbids the act that the person is getting executed for. (And, since I’m here, I should pretty much state that I don’t think the Ten Commandments should be considered the primary deciding factor in decisions concerning present-day American judicial policy. Just that I know people who do.)

But, back on topic, I wish that I knew the relevant Aramaic to let myself off the hook for the lying thing. That is, I kinda wish I could appeal to some higher source, and get those boundaries of what’s wrong, what’s okay, and what’s right.

I guess since we’re at the Ten Commandments, I’ll glance at them real fast. The phrase there is, “bear false witness,” and I get that the phrase is not just referring to witnesses in criminal proceedings. However, it does imply a certain degree of specificity that I’m comfortable with. Telling a story for entertainment purposes is not the same as claiming, “and because Superman did that, you have to vote Republican.” That is, claiming that the implications of a fictional story impact the hearer’s (or reader’s) life in a compelling way.

Hmm…I think I’m back to Christian Leadership here, in a way. I guess I feel that the difference between a story and a lie is that a lie is forced upon the hearer (or, presented in such a way that it will be taken as forced), whereas a story is presented as an opportunity for the hearer, to take or not at his discretion.

That’s a fairly vague line, though, and it doesn’t cover nearly enough of the ground I need to cover. What about self-image? People have this amazing tendency to become what they believe they are. Tell a child that he’s a genius, and you’ll be surprised how smart he turns out. Tell a child he’s an athlete, and he’ll be incredibly apt. Tell a kid he’s an idiot and a bum, and he will be. There are limits, naturally, but a person’s self-image clearly and consistently guides his future development.

Given that, there is value in telling un-truth for the sake of growth. It’s what our myths are all about. We say, “a man can be like Hercules,” not because anyone ever particularly was like Hercules, but because focusing on that potential encourages us to grow toward it. That’s the beautiful value of ideals. Ideals are not real (and therefore not true). They are better than true. They are honest.

Then again, a dishonest person could use that very line of reasoning to destructively conceal his own failings — to justify a lie, in fact. Sure, I’m an alcoholic (not me — this is just an example), but I don’t want to be an alcoholic, I know I shouldn’t be an alcoholic, and so I will claim not to be in the hopes of growing into that potential. I will sneak and hide what I am, telling a lie for the greater good.

How is that different from telling your child that he’s a genius, in the expectation of him becoming one? To bring it into closer parallel, let’s talk about playing along with someone who’s pretending not to be an alcoholic. Believing that he can become sober, you pretend, with him, that he already is. How is that different from encouraging your child toward a potential he has not yet indicated? How is it, fundamentally, different from saying, “No, honey, that outfit does not make your butt look big”?

Honestly, I don’t know. I recognize that it’s a real problem, because a broken person’s best hope of getting fixed, is in his recognizing the break. However, I also believe that a person’s best chance of becoming something incredible, is in convincing himself that it is perfectly credible.

Hmm…I’ve come to no conclusion here — just raised some issues. Please feel free to carry on the argument. I look forward to the discussion.

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Greatness: Man’s Divine Nature

Okay, for several of you, about three paragraphs into this post, you’re going to think, “He’s talking about me!” And that “me,” in case you didn’t catch it, is shrill and outraged. Honestly, though, this is something everyone needs to hear, often. It’s not directed at or wholly inspired by any one of you. (No, not even you.) But, if it happens to speak to your own life, now, take it to heart and be glad at the coincidence that placed words into your life right where they belonged.

I’m just sayin’, is all.

But here’s the thing: everyone you encounter in your life is a person.

I need some snappier way of saying that, a clever phrase that will stick in your head and pop into your thoughts right when it’s needed. Maybe before this post is through I’ll come up with one. For now, though, we’ve gotta settle with the boring, apparently obvious “everyone you encounter in your life is a person.”

That’s a big deal, though. We live our lives inside the first-person point-of-view that so many authors have discarded as being too limited in scope. Each of us sees his life as his own story, and all the people he encounters along the way are just characters, just plot developments that push his story this way or that. Some of them we love for the impact they have on our lives. Some of them we hate, for the same reason. And the named characters keep coming back, keep affecting our lives in different ways, so maybe our feelings about that person change, shift, over the course of the story.

Even so, making another human being into a dynamic character in your story isn’t enough.

Because, behind his eyes, he’s living his own story. He’s got a whole world, a whole life of his own to live. He’s conscious and aware and trying to live his life well. Where it intersects with yours, there is conflict. In writing, we refer to all of these intersections as conflict. It could be a fistfight or an embrace, but it’s still conflict. It’s two stories trying to come to terms enough for each of them to move on, in their own directions.

This post isn’t about the story metaphor, though. In fact, my main point is that the story metaphor completely defines most of our lives, and it’s totally wrong. Or, rather, dangerously limited in scope.

Everyone you encounter — whether it’s a friend, a loved one, or a perfect stranger — everyone you encounter is living a whole life, is a person encountering you at the same time. And every one of us (I’m convinced of this) is trying to live a good life. What exactly that means changes from day to day, but every one of us is trying to live a good life.

I know you are. Right now, you are.

And yet, even so, you make mistakes. You say something offhand to someone you really care about, and it’s just devastating to them. You’ve done that, without ever meaning to offend, and you’ve seen the impact it had on their lives.

You act, trying to do something good (or at least something pleasant), and years later you see how your own actions are impacting the lives of people you’ve met, people you care about. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways, and you never really know which will be which.

Sometimes you just act like a jerk. I’m not accusing you, I’m just reminding you of something you know is true. Sometimes you’re in a bad mood, and something touches you off, and you just act like a total jerk. It’s a short-lived thing (because you’re not a jerk), and next moment you’re back to trying to live a good life.

And that’s okay. Life is a learning experience. You try to get better as you go along, which is the same as saying that, all the time, you’re trying to live a good life.

Now…change perspectives. Think of someone you encountered yesterday. It can be a stranger, or it can be your spouse. But think of someone specific. Think of someone you encountered yesterday, and realize that that person was trying to live a good life. That person was an awareness behind his eyes, looking out on the world and making decisions about it. Maybe he said something that hurt your feelings. Maybe he acted, in a way that will impact your life down the line (for good or bad). Maybe he was just a complete jerk.

But he wasn’t doing any of those things to you, y’see? He’s living his life, just like you’re living yours. He was making decisions, and maybe floundering and maybe just shining like the sun. We do that, sometimes, too. You do that, more often than you realize. You’re just going along, trying to live a good life, and out of nowhere, BAM!, you actually do. You flare up like a nova, and shed beautiful light on the lives of everyone around you.

I’ve seen you do it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have invited you to read my blog.

And think about your own life. Sometimes you’re awesome. Sometimes you’re horrible. Through it all, though, remember that you’re a Child of God. You are this amazing thing, this beautiful, boundless potential, and you’re living a life learning how to live up to that potential. Remember that you are everything that you could one day be. You are the brilliant, shining moments, and the cost of becoming that, the very process of becoming that, necessarily includes the sleazy, cruel, selfish moments, along with all the rest.

And that stranger who just cut you off in traffic? He’s the same thing. That’s one of his bad moments, but he’s a Child of God, and you had better believe that there’s times he glows in radiant beauty. The same is true of everyone you meet. Every person, every single person, is a little bit of divine spark trying to learn how to shine. And all of them are seeing the world through their own faulty eyes, trying to guess what it all really means (just like you do), and making decisions, and making bad choices, and stumbling through today because, please, maybe tomorrow will be better.

That includes people close to you. That includes your Mom or your Dad. It includes boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses and siblings and children who just won’t treat you like you deserve. They’re looking at a world they can’t quite get, they’re fending off frustrations and trying to find their purpose and wrestling with the injustice of it all, and when you cross their path, when you enter their life, they make a decision that will impact you.

And it may be good, and it may be bad. Switch perspectives again. You encounter someone in your life, someone important to you, someone you care about, and you make a decision that will impact that person’s life. It may be good, it may be bad. You want it to be good, but you know from long, long experience, that there’s equal chances something will go wrong.

All of us, every one of us, is trying to live a good life. It’s fair to be hurt when someone hurts you. It’s fair to be annoyed at someone acting like a jerk. But remember, always remember, every single one of those people is a little bit of divine spark, trying to learn how to shine.

I challenge you, personally, to try to see that in people. Try to see people as people, wherever you encounter them, not just as characters in the story of your life. Try to remember who they are.

And, in a very specific application of this, here’s your homework. Think of someone you care about, and who you know cares about you. Someone who has hurt you so bad that you almost discarded them from the list when I said, “and who you know cares about you.” Think about that person, and the thing he or she did to hurt you.

And think about a time when you made a choice about someone important to you, and you hurt them. Whether you meant to hurt them or not, you made a choice that hurt their lives.

Dwell upon these two things, and find the space behind this person’s eyes. Find the space inside his or her own mind, where the offense happened. And try to recognize it for what it was, rather than what it became within your life.

Please? For me?

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God, Government, and Greatness: Adoption

I have my doubts that I will get across everything that needs gotten, but there is a base concept of Adoption which I really need to establish.

I may have mentioned this to some extent in my earlier posts on Goverment (Monarchy specifically), but I couldn’t find it if so, which means I didn’t go into enough detail.

First, I’d like you to read a passage from Romans 7. It’s verses 13-19, 22-23. The two verses I omitted do not significantly change the meaning of the text, so I’ve cut them for clarity. By all means, feel free to read the entire passage in context — I’m just not quoting it all here.

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For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed….

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
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This is not, of course, the only place we see reference to God-the-Father or, by extension, the members of the church as his sons and daughters. In the book of Romans, though, Paul is able to draw upon that concept more fully and powerfully because of the Roman cultural practice of Adoption.

Our culture has established its own ideas concerning adoption, specifically the conception of a second-class status for adopted children. It’s silly, it’s an easily-dispelled idea, but it’s one that persists in our culture and, honestly, that’s how we feel in relation to God. When Paul says that we’re the adopted sons and daughters of God, that makes perfect sense to the American mind. We’re not his REAL kids, but he was generous enough to adopt us.

That’s not how Adoption worked in the Roman empire.

(I referenced Goverment in my tagline, and that’s about to come into play, too.)

Y’see, when we think of old-timey inheritance, we generally think of a system called “primogeniture” whereby the first-born son inherits the entire wealth (including titles) of the father. This is one of the huge stumbling blocks of monarchy as we imagine it — that terrible corruption of passing the throne from Louis I down the line to Louis XVI.

The Romans had a system in place to prevent that, to some extent. Adoption. It was the responsibility of a Roman man to choose his own heir. It could be his first-born son, but a first-born son was not actually born with any inheritance rights. In order to pass his estate on to his first-born son, the Roman gentleman would have to adopt his son as his heir. He could just as easily adopt a nephew or a brother-in-law or, more likely, an apprentice or assistant. It was his responsibility to choose an heir who could effectively maintain the estate he would inherit.

Obviously this system was open to abuse of its own. I’m pretty sure most of you are already thinking of Nero and Caligula, and after all, who is going to try to hold an Emperor accountable for living up to his social responsibility? The Emperors did hold their followers responsible, though, and there were dozens (hundreds?) of kings within the Roman empire who were compelled to choose fitting heirs, and bound to that decision by the process of Adoption.

Adoption, then, was not an act of mercy or compassion, but one of investiture. When a Roman adopted a son, he proclaimed to the world, “I approve of this one. He deserves to one day own all the wealth and power that I possess.”

And that is what God has done with us. That’s the entire point of this passage in Romans. God has Adopted us into his sovereignty — not just into the comfort of his home, but into the position of wielding his great might. We have been proclaimed worthy of becoming like God himself.

Here’s the important bit “we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

We have been made Sons of God. We have been given all the power Christ bore when he walked the earth, but more than that. We have been promised the full power of God. This is the confidence he has shown in us. This is his expectation of us. Because adoption is a responsibility as well. We must live like Princes, in training to someday assume the throne. That’s the “sharing in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” bit. And that’s an amazing position to be caught in.

And — this is what irks me — it’s a role that we are not taught! My dad taught me about Roman adoption, and what it means to be a son of God. Other than that, I heard not a word. Have any of you heard of this before, from anyone other than me? We’re taught that every one of us is a foot soldier in God’s army. We’re taught that we’re prey the lion is stalking. We’re taught to think like the Israelites, for whom God provides manna. We’re taught that we’re like the lillies, and God will clothe us in beauty, or that we’re like the birds of the air, and God will fill our needs.

But that’s not even the point of that passage. Jesus cries out, “how much more, then, will he do for you?” We are not just soldiers, we are not just cute little animals and pretty flowers. We’re not even like the trackless Israelites, but like Moses who led them, all radiant from the Glory of God. We’re Princes. We’re Kings and Queens, arrayed before our Emperor. Stand up! Be proud, ye heavenly powers. The armies of angels are our armies.

Remember the parable of the prodigal son? Remember how he went away and sinned, and because he had squandered his wealth, he lived among the pigs, and lived like a pig. That’s what we’re doing, and the whole point of the story was that it was never necessary. Stand up! Go back to the wealth and the power that is your due — not on your own merits, but because you have been adopted by the most powerful benefactor reality has ever known.

Live like it. That’s your responsibility.

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Greatness: Change

It’s easier to initiate change on objects in motion than on those that are sitting still. Once change happens (for good or ill), you have a special opportunity to initiate a little change of your own.

It’s complicated, though. Sometimes you want to make a change in a particular directions, other times it’s toward a particular destination. Chaos is GREAT for initiating a change in direction. It’s too random to target a precise destination, though.

Every now and then, for precisely this reason, it’s good to spread a little chaos of your own. Mix things up (harmlessly, of course, if you can manage it), and then bend the world in the direction you want to go.

But the other aspect is the real point of this post. Sometimes the world changes violently, against your will. Lemons and lemonade, my friend. You can mope once things have settled down (you won’t REALLY know how bad the change was until it’s over ANYway). Meanwhile, spend your energy making what good you can.

That’s my advice, anyway. Also, live well.

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Greatness: From Me to You

This is what I would have you know:
Life is big. Really big. It’s amazing. It’s…dynamic. We stop it from being so, every day, for our own comfort.

That’s okay. It’s nice to be comfortable most of the time. There’s a certain thrill to going camping, sleeping under the stars, eating fresh-caught fish pan-cooked over a little campfire. But…well, we don’t have to live like that. Camping is just a fun little bit of excitement we can sprinkle into otherwise comfortable lives.

What I want you to know, what I really want to get across to you, is that the comfort is something we’ve made, for our own sake. We haven’t changed anything underneath — it’s all still there. We CAN still go camping. You can go camping within an hour’s drive of Denver and it feels like the most remote wilderness in the world. Even with all the civilization that is Denver.

This is important. This is a big deal. You can step outside of your comfort, into excitement, into magic, into legend. It’s all there. Jason and the Argonauts, David creeping into Saul’s camp, fire from Heaven and so much for Baal. Not just that, though. Garden State. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. American Beauty (*sad sigh*).

Think of your favorite movie. Your life could be like that. It’s not, because it’s more comfortable to not live life like that. But you could wake up tomorrow and make your life like…whatever movie you’re thinking of. Life is that big, it’s that powerful.

I’m not asking you to. I’m certainly not suggesting. Hell, how often do I actually go camping? It’s nice to know it’s an option, though. Remember that, when you’re feeling trapped or bored or insignificant.