Consequences

September 11, 2026 5:45pm

Twenty-five years since the towers fell. We’ve been to the site but not in the museum. Think about the consequences of that day. Wars, more lives lost, emotional turmoil, existential angst, anomie, nihilism.

See the humans with serene countenance, their masks concealing the seething maelstrom within. How do they cope and contain this chaos? Their secret lives lead them on through the tumult of time and tragedy to a destiny devoid of hope.

Adult fairy tales, we are told all our lives, but the reality is harsh and final and will not be denied. How improbable that I am here and ask these questions.

Coming Home

September 13, 2026 8:36pm

Homecoming Day at the little country church where my parents were married in 1954 and where I first attended services in August or September 1955 as a newborn. Within a month, we three moved back to Richmond where dad was enrolled at EKU on the GI bill.

Today I heard stories of hardships and trials that reinforce my conclusion that this living is just barely survivable. I heard at least two people talk about the promise of a new body when the current one is failing – perhaps the metamorphosis is only a few days away. The rest of the unbearableness then comes to stare blankly before taking its place on the pile that has been weighing me down my entire life and I think, “how can you blame anyone for clinging to whatever little comfort they can find in the middle of a shit show like this?”

So, I nod along with the hopes for a new body, and I too wish it for them.

A Winter’s Night

September 25, 2026 7:10pm

While reading Balzac’s “The Wild Ass’s Skin” outside in fading light, I was, for some inexplicable reason, reminded of an encounter with an elderly farmer in the rural community where we lived 40 years ago. I don’t know why I had gone to see him, but he had invited me in to discuss our business on a dark winter evening. He was a widower and lived by himself, so I imagine he was very lonely. Anyway, after our business was concluded, he asked me to sit a while…so we sat in a dark room with the TV broadcasting “Wheel of Fortune’ and not a word was spoken but I had this feeling that he just wanted another human presence to help counter the awful loneliness of a widower’s long winter night. I don’t remember his name or how I left or anything else. All I remember is sitting in the dark, watching Vanna White with this man long since dead.

Apophenic Theology

September 28, 2026 8:36am

Iain McGilchrist, British psychiatrist, philosopher, and neuroscientist wrote ” The Matter with Things” in which he refutes scientific materialism. He believes that our use of our consciousness determines what we “see” (in an apophenic sense) and ultimately our interpretation of reality.

I sympathize with his desire to find meaning in a mechanistic universe but, in the end, it seems Quixotic and futile – no matter how brave. The same mind that contemplates truth, justice, and beauty gave us the Sabbateans, Frankism, Jim Jones, and thousands of cults all seeking ….. God. The Sabbateans and Frankists are a special case – Jewish cults that proclaimed that only through the most depraved sin could they achieve salvation. This is the path to righteousness when one follows a self-proclaimed Messiah and a reincarnation of that same Messiah.

Humans- so fragile, so weak. We all see exactly what we wish to see, and this is our reality.