Ashes, ashes, all fall down

This is the second time I've tried to write this entry. The first one was humming along nicely and vanished. Naturally, I didn't save as I went, so it's my own fault.

I have some interest in the culture of the so-called Native Americans. (I am genetically descended a miniscule amount from those people. However, I was born here, my family has been here for time ranging from centuries in some lines to decades in others. I am a Native American.) Most of what I know is about those groups which were present in recent history in this area, primarily the Shawnee. (There were also various earlier groups collectively known as the "Mound Builders," about whom relatively little is known. By the way, ancient peoples built mounds, both for burial and other unknown purposes, all about the globe.) One of the cultural devices of the Shawnee was known as the "gantlet." Essentially, the strong men of the village formed a sort of alley. The condemned was covered totally in a mixture of animal fat and ashes. The goal of "running the gantlet" was to run the length of the gantlet and be alive and not permanently disabled at the other end. Few folks did that successfully, and the only one who immediately comes to mind is Simon Kenton. (There is a Holiday Inn at the confluence of the Elk River and Kanawha River, where Kenton spent a winter around 1770 alone, which is sad to me -- I stay elsewhere when I go to Charleston.) Well, the notion of the gantlet symbolizes my odd spiritual journey of past months, because it denotes pain and path-altering forces coming from unexpected directions. (See prior posts for the then-current feelings.)

The next step in this gantlet tonight was the observance of Ash Wednesday. The church had a service for the "imposition of ashes." For those unfamiliar with that practice, it consists of the pastor making a small cross on one's forehead out of ashes with some sort of oily binder. In years past, we had county Magistrates (the lowest rung of the judicial ladder) who would get the ashes in some early morning service and leave them on all day. The consensus at the time was that this was conspicuous religious consumption, and rather cocky of them. (There is an article in a very obscure publication from the turn of the 20th century about judges who modeled themselves and their decisions after Christ. The article concludes that these people are unstable idiots, and that they aren't doing their job, which is the application of the LAW as it exists.)

A prayer authored by Pastor Josh identified three reasons for the Ash Wednesday observance, self-examination, confession, and penitence.

I'm totally on board with the notion of self-examination. Only a moron believes that he or she cannot be doing better, and critical self-examination is a marvelous tool. Without self-examination, progress of an individual or a society is completely stalled.

I'm generally OK with penitence, too. When it prompts a state of mind that produces positive results, penitence works well. Too many people go overboard, though. They sink right through wallowing into depression and into useless stasis. Some of them emerge into the strange world of those who actually enjoy taking upon their own pain, a la Las Penitentes. That's rather self-destructive, and therefore stupid. Mind you, there are lots and lots and lots of other ways that we are self-destructive - booze, food, tobacco, drugs, violence, hate, and on and on. But it's rather warped to be sorry to the point of self-destructive.

Confession is the one that I have some trouble with. Oh, I understand that "confession is good for the soul," but is it good for those around you? Sometimes it is, for it engages other minds in solving problems and improving life. And it is necessary and a part of self-examination that you "confess" to yourself what your life is really like. Any other way and you would be suffering from a divergence of your mind from our friend, Mr. Reality. Confession, however, can hurt the ones around us. We might feel our souls cleansed and our minds at ease, and do so only after selfishly pointing out that we have ignored or rejected or betrayed those around us. Sometimes the kindest thing to do, the honorable thing to do, is to shut up and suffer in silence.

Darn - LaElu is watching something on TV in the other room involving people answering stupid questions upon which they have been polygraphed. There are dramatic pauses while an ethereal voice declares whether the contestant's responses are true. What unadulterated bullshit. Is there NO debasement that we are willing to inflict upon others or ourselves in order to find a bit of bread-and-circuses amusement?

At any rate, Pastor Josh went about the job of the "Imposition of ashes." As he did so, he repeated a mantra (is it proper to use a Zen term in this context?) on the ashes-to-ashes theme. I reminded him sotto voce that this was quite similar to a stanza in a song in a Simon & Garfunkel early album, probably Wednesday Morning 3 AM. The stanza goes:

Who will love a little sparrow?
Will no one write her eulogy?
"I will," said the Earth.
"For all I've created returns unto me.
"From dust were ye made and dust ye shall be."

The reference to the Earth creates an interesting line of thought, that of the Gaia belief/hypothesis. Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Earth (one of MANY novels of the Foundation series, which continued after Asimov's death) expounds widely on Gaia, the spirit of the Earth to whom we all owe some sort of love and allegiance. The idea of planet-as-deity is intriguing. It raies an interesting question: What is God's jurisdiction? Is some sort of fresh pursuit of sinners into other jurisdictions allowed? Are the laws and lawgivers there similar to our own God? Do spooks and sprites of sin get extradited from Andromeda? Well, this light-heartedness covers a pretty powerful problem. I have elsewhere talked about an intensive sky survey done recently by earthly astronomers which opined that there are approximately 70 sextillion stars in the Universe. Does this ONE GOD run the whole show? Many stars have planets, which makes the proliferation of spatial bodies even more profound. Is God bigger than we imagine? I'm not sure. I THINK I'm sure that God is bigger than we possibly CAN imagine. We talk blithely about getting the truth about the Plan from God, but I rather doubt that we can handle very much of it at all. We humans are optimistically cocky, and that'll bite you on the ass 9 times out of 10.

After the service, an "elder" who has been a lawyer-friend since we were very young told me that he had suggested that a particular individual who had called him and who he was conflicted from helping call me. He told me that individual's name, and I truthfully told him that if that guy came into my office and tossed gold bars onto my desk until it collapsed from the weight, I still would not represent him.

As of last night, I'm down 175, and still pushing hard. My activity level is up because (1) it's physically possible for it to be and (2) because my life gets nothing but more complicated as the months roll on. Today, I ordered a couple of pairs of dress shoes. I know that doesn't sound very earth-shattering or even vaguely interesting. It's monumental in my life, because I'm ABLE to wear conventional footwear. How to write about all this, that is still a question mark in my mind.

LaElu has been on my ass a bit about rings, and why don't I wear a wedding ring. Well, when I worked with power equipment, I wore no rings, watches, chains, dog tags, ties, loose gloves or anything else that would be dangerous, and I kept up that habit for years after I got away from those activities. Then I acquired Fred's steel Masonic ring, which I wear faithfully, and that shot in the ass my argument that I just don't wear rings. So, I found (on the net, naturally) a silver band inlaid with turquoise that I'm wearing.

I'm looking forward to a fun weekend of tax accounting. To my great fortune, my dear friend JC is a brilliant tax practitioner. All in all, I'd rather have pins stuck in my eyes. But I'll have some reading with me, do some writing, go to a bookstore I've never been to before, have yuppie coffee and generally have some moments of peace.

A local police officer called me today, wanting me to come down to the station to give them a statement about a domestic violence incident, part of which I witnessed when I took my mother to the hospital a couple of weeks ago. I told the officer that I'm as good a citizen as the next guy, but I was crushed today, and he was OK with me dictating a statement since, perhaps, I have some clue about what information is supposed to be in one. It turns out that it's a felony case because it's a third or subsequent offense, so that makes my participation in Court as a witness sometime more likely. In one sense, that's good -- it is an experience to see life in what is my home from another perspective.

I wonder if I'm perceived as being very open here. In point of fact, a great deal of what I am doing professionally at the moment is totally black, and there are many things about which I can make not the most oblique reference. Sometimes, just the fact that I am helping someone is a fact that, if spread, would cause irreversible damage. That is rather constraining, but it is the life I have chosen.

In a larger sense, I wonder how open anyone is on the net. The hostility which has been present on abookshelf2.org lately, in addition to being pointless and silly, probably is the face of lies, for I doubt that people's minds are so petty or that their hearts are so twisted. On the other hand, I'm the eternal optimist, and even though I see constant examples of honest evil, I want to think that it'll always get better. "Vanity of vanities," saith the Preacher. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

Pippa passes.

R