Queers, Whores, and the Kingdom of God (Religious Thoughts, Part Two)

As I mentioned in my previous post on my post-Christian experience, a lot of the Bible is about the way that looks can deceive. "Man looks on outward appearances, but God looks on the heart," we are told.

In my mind, this seems an improvement on pagan religion, at least for myself. The Norse adore Thor for his strength and courage. The Hindu Shiva is venerated as a destroyer and the standard of invincibility. Zeus sits and casts thunderbolts from Olympus. By contrast, the Hebrew and Christian Bible is full of heroes who glory in their weakness.

My favorite story when I was a kid was of David and Goliath. I had a picture book with a 7-inch, 33-rpm record that recounted the story. It mixed the actual words of scripture with some fanciful re-telling, but it was largely faithful. David was depicted as a young boy, sent by his father, Jesse, to take food to his brothers who were camped against the Philistines. I can still hear the sound of footsteps on gravel as David walked to meet them.

All of the Hebrews were terrified of the Philistine giant and David, full of piss and vinegar, is outraged that no one has gone up against him. He goes to King Saul and tells him that he is a shepherd, that he has fought lions and bears, and that he will kill the giant. Saul puts his armor on David and gives him his sword, but they are too heavy. David takes them off and opts instead for his trusty slingshot and five smooth stones from the brook. (Can you hear that trickling water?)

Their hero story is noteworthy, because the Jews, a Bronze Age people, tell us that leather and stone went up against the finest weaponry of the day. That shouldn't be lost in the telling.

Goliath predictably mocks the young man and tells him he will feed him to the birds of the air. David's response still sends chills up my spine:

Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand.

You know what happens next, right?

David is remembered as Israel's greatest king, and this story plays a large part in that legacy.  It's a variation on the theme I mentioned in my first post on the subject, but an important one. Tradition says that David's son later wrote: "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong . . ." In an ancient world where battles had heretofore always gone to the strong, this was news.

David's not the only one, of course. There are very few Bible heroes noteworthy for their physical strength. The notable exception is the judge, Samson, who slew a thousand men using only the jawbone of an ass. Yet even in that story, his real strength is not known until he is humbled, bound to a post with his hair shorn. Only then is he used by God. (Interestingly, God chooses to use him as a suicide killer, something we claim to abhor as a culture, though I remember hearing Samson's tale at least annually as a child.)

The interesting thing about Jesus Christ in the whole tale is not simply his humble birth, although the feeding trough and attendant barn animals add to the rustic charm of the story. But many heroes have humble origin stories and we are drawn to that. It seems to promise us that, no matter how low our beginnings, we may go on to do great things.

Those heroes are usually noted for vanquishing armies or dragons or legions of demons, perhaps rescuing damsels or returning treasure to their people. By contrast, Jesus has a fairly nondescript tale. He walks about healing the sick and preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand. It's true that some of his acts can truly be called miraculous, but they are forever in service to mercy. He makes the lame to walk, because he pities them. He feeds those who are hungry. He brings the dead back to life to be with their loved ones again. He even changes water into wine to save a friend embarrassment at his wedding.

"This is what God is like," he says. And by extension, we are much more like the gods when we are merciful.

"I and the Father are one," he tells the crowd, and they put him to death for this. The ancient world was not ready for a god of meekness and mercy. He is led to slaughter and his only words are those of forgiveness. There is no oath to seek vengeance on his enemies, no wise final pronouncement, no regretting he had but one life to give for his country.

Now, lest I be misunderstood, I want to be clear: the Bible is not all meekness and gentleness. There is bloodshed and misery and ample doses of bigotry of all sorts. But the stories that bounce around in my head and help make meaning of my own narrative are those with the unlikeliest of heroes.

It is strange that Jesus' followers in our own time glory so much in virtues he seemed to abhor. No one is as righteous in his own eyes as the modern American Christian, it would seem, and no one admires the wealthy more than they do. Jesus broke bread with poor people, adulterers, crooks, drunkards, and prostitutes. His followers won't sell pizza to a queer.

"Crooks and whores will enter the kingdom of God before the religious," Jesus preached. Is there anyone who believes that any more?

I'm not into Jesus like I once was, it is true, but I still see the truth in those stories that tell me that our strength is perfected in weakness, that the first will be last and the last will be first. You righteous people can keep your own company. I'll be pouring bloody marys for whores and drunkards.

Dear Ace

Dear Ace,

I spent a lot of time preparing for your brother's arrival just fifteen months ago. I wrote and recorded five original songs, composed a poem in honor of his birth, and began working on an extended fairy tale to explain to him his origins, which has now grown to over 50,000 words. I purchased clothes and toys, I cleaned the house and car, I bought baby seats and worked on making sure they were properly installed. I made playlists for him. I read books and listened to CDs about being a father.

And now here we are, on the eve of your birth. What, you may ask, have I done to prepare for you?

Hmmm.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but basically nothing.

Now I know what you're thinking: "Daddy loves Griffin more than me." That's not true. I promise you it isn't. It's just that things are different now.

How?

Well, for starters, before your brother was born, I was a recently-divorced bachelor living by myself. And let me tell you something, little man, my place was happening. I had musicians and girls crashing there, crazy parties, and the place all to myself any time I wanted. I also had a lot of free time, partly because I spent about three months unemployed during Griff's gestation. Your mom didn't live with me and I came and went as I pleased.

Now I come home to the Crackerbox Palace, and spend my nights with your mom, your two brothers, and your sister. I bought this old house right after your brother was born, and I love it here. I don't know if you'll ever have the chance to go from being a bachelor to a father of three in the space of a couple of weeks, but it's a trip. I got home from work tonight at about 5:45, then we ate dinner, I played with Jackson and Griffin while your mom took your sister out, then I cleaned the kitchen, emptied the litter box and diaper pail, took out the garbage, and helped your mom carry in groceries.

I don't mean to sound like I have a square life. I really don't. Several times a month I put on funny clothes and make-up and play songs about werewolves and zombies for people. I gig somewhat regularly with three bands. I've got a groovy little music studio set up in the basement and your mom doesn't mind if I spend a couple of hours down here every night. I'm even having a couple of short stories published in an anthology soon.

My life is pretty hip.

But it is a full life. There is never a moment that it stops. It's an interesting life, too.

Take this evening for instance. Your oldest brother began telling us about how he and a bunch of girls formed a Pickle Club at school. They learn facts about pickles every day. Yesterday, they learned about pickle juice. We dressed Griffin up in a Spider Man costume and had him dancing to the Spider Man theme from the 60s show. Your sister was going around singing, "I see butts! I see butts!"

I'm not making this shit up. It's like this every damn night. I really dig it.

Things are different in other ways, too.

Well, the past year has been kind of a roller coaster ride. Both your grandfather and your grandmother died this past year. Heavy, right? Your grandfather's death had been long coming in many ways and while it saddened us all, it came as no shock. Your grandmother's, just two months ago, hit us like a ton of bricks. The pain from it is still very real and I would be lying if I told you that I'm not glad my life is crazy busy so that I don't have time to stop and think about how much I miss her. Miss them both, really.

I really had hoped that your grandmother would make it to see you. She knew you were coming and my goodness would she have loved you. If anything could have made her live another two months it would have been seeing you, but life isn't fair and things don't work out like they do in the good stories.

Your grandfather would have loved you, too. He would have looked at you toddling around his house and said in his fake gruff voice, "Hey, Ace!" And he would've called you that, too, because he called all the boys "Ace," which is why we're calling you that.

Your other grandfather, your mom's dad, has been gone for a few years now. I never met him, but he sounds like a mighty fine fellow in my book — a musician and writer who loved New Orleans. (Yeah, I know. Your mom has lots to talk about with her therapist.)

You mom's mother is very much with us, however, and for this I am very thankful. Susie is as cool of a granny as anyone could hope for. She's an art teacher who once saw Muddy Waters in concert and made me a vampire hunting kit for Halloween. She makes costumes for all of us and has everyone over for visits where they play with chickens.

Maybe another reason that I haven't spent as much time planning for you is that we weren't expecting you so soon. I mean, you weren't an "accident" in the sense that we didn't want you. We just thought we might be seeing you six months from now instead. The Fates had other plans, however, and your mom is a buxom and healthy woman, so our evolutionary programming kicked in and I sought to further my line of DNA.

So what am I giving you, since I didn't have much time to plan?

Well, I'm giving you a name for starters. That may not seem like much. Everyone has a name, after all. But you have my name, which makes me proud. I told you about "Ace" already. As for your Christian names, those take a little explaining. "Harrison" is the name of one of your maternal ancestors. It's also the name of my current favorite Beatle and the guy who plays Han Solo (and there is a new Star Wars movie coming out this year with him in it and how unbelievably cool is that?). "Parker" is the name of one of my favorite saxophonists of all time: Bird. (Daddy has a tattoo tribute to him on his left arm.) He was as hip as they come and you could do a lot worse than to sit and listen to "Relaxin' at Camarillo" ten times in a row. You will also have the initials "H.P." to use if you should so choose, which are the same as Mr. Lovecraft, one of your dear pa's favorite horror writers.

I'm giving you a home, too. A year ago, I couldn't say that to your brother. He spent a few days in my bachelor apartment and then off with your mom and I didn't see him for days on end. Then after we bought the Crackerbox Palace, there was a period of adjustment while we all got used to how the other ones smelled and all that. I won't say we're completely through that period yet, but I will say that it feels like a family. It's not a "traditional" family, as they say, but I think we're okay with that.

(I should mention here that you are a bastard. So is your brother. I bring it up now because some square ass-hat will probably try to make a big deal out of this some time in your life, but it's not. I love your mom and we're making our life together and we love you and your siblings and that's all that matters. Besides that, bastards are really sexy. We have a whole television program called Game of Thrones that is dedicated to this premise.)

We're giving you faery godparents. Your faery godmother is a burlesque dancer who is recently divorced from her wife. Your faery godfather is an Englishman who is an illegal alien and my former bartender, a relationship that is sacred among our people. They are both smart-asses and make-believe misanthropes, but they will give you love and you should talk to them a lot when you are older. They both like books and music and dance and all the things that make this old world bearable.

I also will give the advantage of being an older father. I'm happy that I'm having you in my middle age rather than my youth. It's not that I'm less rock-and-roll or anything like that, it's just that I think I know a little more about how things work. I know enough to know that the old gods are not as powerful as I once thought they were, but still wise enough to know that fairy tales are true — if you know how to read them.

I can also tell you what it's like to be the youngest in the family and the third boy. That's the spot your old man had in his family. It's kinda charmed, to be honest. I got all the advantages of my parents' experience with none of their overbearing concern. Everyone thought I set the moon and loved on me all the time. I hope that's your experience, too.

I can give you a love for music and the arts, for books, for learning, and for this world — because it is the only world we have, in spite of what the old stories say. We may dream of Paradise or Valhalla, but we better get busy sweeping our front step. A bunch of Englishmen in feathered hats used to go around saying, "Carpe diem!" I am told, and you could do worse than to follow their advice. Gather ye rosebuds, Ace.

I hope I can give you a sense of wonder about it all.

Here's something I know now that I didn't used to: you are made from the very same stuff that was present when the cosmos began in a giant explosion. Not only that, but all the atoms in you — the carbon and oxygen and whatever — were forged in stars in far-away galaxies. The atoms in your left hand may have been forged in Andromeda while those in your right may have formed in the Cartwheel Galaxy.

Our distant ancestors were single-celled organisms and fish and rodent-like creatures. There is no living thing on this planet that is not related to you.

In the span of a single lifetime, our species went from our first flight to landing on the moon.

We now carry around in our pockets more information than all of the libraries of ancient Babylon and Greece and Persia and Egypt combined.

We have billions — maybe trillions — of micro-organisms living in and on our bodies, living creatures too small to see with the naked eye.

There are untold billions of galaxies in our cosmos, filled with untold trillions of stars, surrounded by innumerable planets that may host life that we cannot begin to imagine.

My imagination is staggered when I think about these things and when I think about the role you (and your siblings) play in all of it, our star children. Life is the most incredible drama, and we each have our hour on stage. Make the most of yours.

I hope you will understand my negligence in preparation for your arrival. Speaking of which, I need to go now. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.

Welcome to your world, Ace. We love you and hope you have a good time.

Demand More Science

I've been on a bit of a mini-crusade recently.

It centers on the manufactured controversy around childhood vaccination and vaccines in general.

I say "centers on" because it encompasses a lot more: climate change, evolution, GMOs, the teaching of science in schools, fracking, mining, etc.

The crusade is for science literacy.

I'm not the poster boy for this topic. Let me tell you a true story.

When I was in 10th grade, I had a great biology teacher named Karen Emery. She was a very hands-on teacher and I had a great time. The thing was, I wasn't a "science kid." I was a "music kid," which, you know, is supposed to be the opposite. Anyway, I was dicking around in class one day and got called out to answer a question regarding eurkaryotes and prokaryotes. I hadn't really been paying attention, but instead of just admitting that, I did what any 15-year-old dickhead does to save face in class. I said, "Why do I need to learn this? I will never use this information for the rest of my life."

But I took it a step further.

That night, I found two poems — Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer" and Poe's "Ode to Science" — and typed them out. Both are Romantic reactions to reason and the Enlightenment, decrying the lack of poetry in science and the loss of wonder. Then the next morning, I placed the poems on Ms. Emery's desk. She came and found them. I watched with glee while she read them. Then I saw her eyes getting wet.

She regained her composure then and tacked the poems on her bulletin board. She carried on with class and said nothing more about them.

Yeah. I know. I was a major asshole.

Fast forward about ten years.

I'm teaching music at a middle school and this student asks me if she can go to the library. She has a report she must complete for science class. I allow her to go and am shocked when she returns in five minutes.

"You're finished?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Let me see."

I looked to see that her "report" is simply copied and pasted web pages.

"There's no way you know what any of this means! You haven't even read it! Like this word here — what does that mean?"

She read. "Eukaryotic." Then, "I dunno. What's it mean?"

Boom.

I wrote a letter of apology to Ms. Emery that night.

But I grew up thinking that science wasn't important. At least, not to me. I was artsy, you know, not concerned about all those facts and rational thinking. That stuff was for other people.

Besides, I was an evangelical Christian in an evangelical Christian community in an evangelical Christian state. We knew that scientists were liars.

I remember the "Chick tracts" we got at church. There was one about evolution that I loved. It was like a little mini-comic featuring a college student who calls out his godless college professor on evolution and convinces everyone that the Bible is right — the heavens and the earth were created in seven days.

I memorized those talking points and had them ready any time evolution was discussed.

The thing was, it wasn't really discussed all that much. I had science teachers in junior high and high school that went to my church or other churches like it, and they didn't believe in evolution either. They certainly didn't think the universe was billions of years old. Well, maybe Ms. Emery did, but she was probably bullied into going light on the topic.

The only time I ever heard these things — the age of the universe, human evolution, all of these wondrous discoveries — was from my friend Rebecca. And she was a Unitarian, so I wasn't about to trust her.

And this is the way I grew up.

As I got older, I mostly just ignored science. It wasn't my field, so I wasn't interested. And I was still an evangelical Christian, so I knew that science was wrong on many, many things. I had the Bible and the Bible was God's word — inspired, infallible, and profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.

And then I lost my faith.

That's a subject for another time, but I lost it hard. All of it. It was gone, leaving a big God-shaped hole in me.

I'm not sure when, but I decided to re-visit the whole "Science Isn't Important to Me" thing. Because, you know, I had a lot of free time on Sunday mornings.

I "discovered" Neil Degrasse Tyson. And Bill Nye. And Stephen Hawking. And Lawrence Krauss. And Brian Greene. And Richard Dawkins.

You know what else I discovered? I discovered that Whitman and Poe were wrong: science is full of wonder.

Consider this: all matter that exists in our universe was once contained within a dense ball about the size of a softball.

Or this: scientists may be on the verge of discovering why anything exists at all. It takes math. Lots of it.

Or this: all the elements in your body — the oxygen, the carbon, the nitrogen — were forged in stars. AND the elements in your right hand were probably forged in a different star than the ones in your left, perhaps separated by billions of light years. We are made of star dust.

How's that for inspiring wonder?

Beyond that though, I live in a world made possible by science.

We wouldn't have DVDs and CDs if it weren't for quantum mechanics. We would have no understanding of DNA — which has led to breakthroughs in medicine, criminal science, and history — without understanding human evolution. And my children and I enjoy a life relatively free from diseases that two generations ago crippled and killed thousands of people a year in this country.

Science matters. So does science literacy.

Here in this state and others like it, we are battling against regulation of the fossil fuel industry. This is because those interests own our state government. Luckily for them, they have a ready audience of climate-change deniers in people who are like I once was: scientifically illiterate or otherwise indifferent.

Our state and federal government actively fight against student learning standards that require critical thinking, partly, I am convinced, because students who are able to evaluate claims and evidence will begin to make better-informed decisions about global warming and other hot topics. Those decisions may result in a shift of power in this country.

The current of anti-intellectualism in this country is profound and disturbing. The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said that global warming has to be a hoax, because the Bible promises seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, as long as the earth continues. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has said repeatedly that no one knows what causes the tides. Georgia Republican Paul Broun, a member of the House Science Committee, said, "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell." California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher opined that dinosaur flatulence is what most likely contributed to past changes in global temperatures.

That's right: dinosaur farts.

The thing is, we need science desperately if we are to survive as a species. This world was not created for us and in fact, 99% of the species who have ever lived on this planet have gone extinct. We have an advantage, though. We have an advanced brain, one that has given us survival skills and tool-making abilities and the ability to reason. One that has given us science.

Those who have known me for a while know that my mantra for many years was "Demand More Art." I've not abandoned that cause, to be sure. I regularly advocate for the importance of the arts in the lives of people young and old, and I make my living in the arts. But we need to demand more science, too, and more scientific thinking among every day people.

If we do not, we may be beating the drum for a return to the dark forests of an age long past, back to the gloom of superstition and a time when we lived in ignorance and fear, praying and offering sacrifice to mute gods against the perils of the elements and disease. This is a future I do not wish for your children or mine.

Throw Out the Baby Jesus; Keep the Bath Water (Part One)

I am not a Christian.

I used to be. God-the-father-almighty-maker-of-heaven-and-earth and all the rest.

I wasn't casual about it either. I don't mean to imply that I was particularly moral or good. I wasn't. But I thought a lot about the things I believed. I read the Bible — several times. I went to church two or three times a week. I studied Christian writings, everything from the church fathers to the Puritans to contemporary authors.

I think I have a pretty decent grasp of Christian theology, too, especially the branch I most recently belonged to. (Reformed Baptist, if you are curious.) I can recite a bunch of scripture or the catechism to you, or distinguish for you the major differences between the 1644 London Baptist Confession of Faith, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the 1689 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith. I can even tell you why it's called the 1689 Confession when it was written in 1677.  I can talk to you about the distinguishing characteristics of the first and second "great awakenings" and why the second is not highly regarded among some.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. It's not much use to me now.

If people ask me "what I believe" now, my answer usually depends on who I am talking to. Sometimes I say, "I'm not a religious person." If I want to be cheeky, I tell them I believe in John Coltrane. I like the word "agnostic," I suppose, although that has to do with what you know rather than what you believe. The word atheist might fit, but it has so much baggage, I don't know if it's worth it.

Besides, it doesn't capture the way I process my life or the narrative I impose on it. 

I am a rationalist and a skeptic when it comes to the natural world. I believe that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and that we evolved from lower life forms. I believe in the scientific method, in secular government, and in a "wall of separation" between church and state.

Yet I have these words and stories bouncing around in my brain. And I don't mind them. Staves turning to snakes. Widows mites. Buried talents.

At some point I was introduced to Joseph Campbell. If you haven't been, I cannot recommend highly enough his Hero with a Thousand Faces. I don't agree with him categorically, but I do find that he understood our need for myth, much similar to (and related to) our need for art. Campbell sent me to Jung, and while I haven't figured anything out just yet, I'm more comfortable than I used to be with all that stuff I used to take literally.

It's a common thing among evangelicals of a certain stripe to say that "Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship." I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm in need of a religion, but no thanks on the relationship. I need psalm and prayer and communion and celebration and the word (lower case "w" will do just fine). I need a pause at the end-beginning of my week to say, "Life is not merely matter, energy, and time." I need sacred moments and sacred spaces, made sacred not by the presence of the spirit of God, but the presence of my own spirit — me, fearfully and wonderfully made, the product of untold eons and made from the dust of stars. I need the mythology of the Bible without the disproven cosmology and barbaric ethics. 

I don't exactly think that there is anything special about Christian mythology, it's just that it happens to be the one I grew up with. As Campbell wrote, it is one of many examples of the monomyth found throughout mythology and art. But there are some things in the Christian story that seem unique, or at least emphasized more strongly that seem special to me.

These are the things I think about, the things that still color the way I see the world. I am deeply grateful (in whatever sense you can understand that in a non-theistic way) for that.

So, I thought I'd do a series of posts about this topic, namely, what about my religion is still meaningful and relevant to me in a post-supernaturalist context.

# # #

All of that was by way of preface, but I thought I'd go ahead and talk about the thing that still means the most to me in the Christian religion. And in a weird way, it's the thing that's central to what I do and don't believe any more.

I'll start with a story. It's one of my favorites and I've mentioned it in a prior post. Perhaps you already know it.

The king of Aram was at war with Israel. And God had given the prophet Elisha knowledge about the king's comings and going so that whenever he would encamp, Elisha would send message to the king of Israel and say, "Don't go to such-and-such a place. The king of Aram waits to attack you there."

So the king of Aram asked his courtiers, "How is it that the king of Israel always knows where I am about to attack?"

And they answered him, "The prophet Elisha knows and tells him."

So the king of Aram sent his army to Dothan, where the prophet Elisha had pitched his tent. And Elisha stayed there with only his servant.

So the servant rose up early in the morning and left the tent, and he saw hundreds and thousands of horses and chariots and soldiers of Aram. So he went to the prophet and said, "Alas! What shall we do, master?"

Elisha answered, "Do not be afraid, for we are greater than they are." Then he knelt and prayed, "Lord, open the eyes of my servant."

Then the servant looked again and saw the army of Aram, and encircled around them were the hosts of heaven riding horses and mounted on chariots of fire.

The story goes on from there. God makes the army blind and Elisha leads them to Samaria, where their sight is restored and they realize they are in an enemy city. Then the Israelites give them bread and send them back to Syria.

I love, love, love, love, love this story.

It comes to me when I am at my lowest. It renews my spirit. There is real power in this story.

If someone asked me what I take from the story, I would say it is this: things are not as they seem.

There is more than meets the eye. Like Harry Potter in a world full of muggles, we are surrounded by wonder and what passes as magic.

In many ways, it is one of the central themes of Judeo-Christian scripture. As I've written before, the Bible is filled with these unexpected twists. Boys slay giants with slingshots. A man kills a crowd with the jawbone of a donkey. And right there at the climax of the whole story, we see the most divine, powerful thing in the universe made weak. But the secret is this: we are made strong in weakness. The first will be last and the last will be first. And that man who is now naked and despised and bleeding on a cross before a pitiless crowd is winning the battle over death.

How can this possibly appeal to the rational mind?

Because it's true, in a sense.

We've learned that the smallest things in the universe — particles so small that we cannot see them — have unimaginable power, power to level cities and nations.

We look at a diamond and at plant life and imagine they are different, but they are not. Time does its thing and one transforms into the other.

All matter that ever was or will be in this universe began as a small ball — about the size of a softball, if Neil Degrasse-Tyson is to be believed — and has grown to an expanse past human calculation.

Each of us — kings and queens as well as washerwomen and chimney sweeps — are made of the same matter that makes up the furthest star.

We look up at the night sky and see ghosts — stars that have passed out of our universe ages ago, whose light is just now reaching us.

Each of us is covered by billions of micro-organisms who depend on us for survival and who, if scaled to our size, would seem like the stuff of nightmares.

And we can look at a single-cell organism and see something like our most distant ancestor.

Things are not as they seem.

It could pass for magic. But it is real.

How marvelous. What a wondrous world we live in.

A number of very virulent atheists like to refer to the Bible as a book of fairy tales. I would agree with that assessment, but I celebrate it. It is a book that has prepared me to look at the world in wonder and expect the unexpected.

Laughing at Death

My family has a dark sense of humor.

I think that is typical in families that have had a high level of dysfunction. It's kind of a coping mechanism.

My father was the model for us in this, even though he was also the source of much of the dysfunction.

The last time I went to see him in hospital, he wore an oxygen mask and I had trouble understanding him. So he had my brother Mark relay a joke he'd heard:

A nurse walks into a patient's room at the hospital. He's wearing an oxygen mask and she's having trouble understanding him but finally makes out, "Nurse, are my testicles black?"

 She tries to ignore him, but he persists his questioning through his oxygen mask, "Nurse, are my testicles black?" 

"Mr. Smith," she says, "that is really not a polite question." The man looks puzzled.

"Nurse, are my testicles black?" he asks again, gasping for air through the oxygen mask.

Finally she walks over to him, lifts the cover and answers, "Mr. Smith, your testicles are fine."

He looks at the nurse very strangely and then takes off the mask. "Nurse, are my test results back?" he enunciates clearly.

My dad couldn't stop laughing at that joke, in the face of the pain he was in, or perhaps because of the pain he was in.

Or maybe it was the fear.

I've had some experience with fear in the last few years. I can say, without a moment's hesitation, that fear is the worst emotion there is. It is crippling. When you are in the grips of fear, there is virtually nothing else you can do.

Except laugh, strangely.

When you are standing toe-to-toe with the unknown, the Big Bad that's finally come knocking at the door, laughter is the only life-affirming response. All of the "focus on the positives" and "all things work together for good" and all the rest don't amount to a hill of beans from a practical standpoint, not for me at least. They give no comfort against the evidences you've witnessed of the indifference of the universe toward your own pain.

Therein must be the origin of gallows humor. It probably also explains why horror-comedy is such a popular genre.

My mother was the ultimate straight man. It wasn't that she didn't have a sense of humor. She did, she just also said some ridiculously funny things without realizing it, often at what others might judge to be very inappropriate times.

I went with my mother and brother to the funeral home after my dad died last January. When it came time to discuss the obituary, she said that she wanted donations made to Hospice of Southern West Virginia, because they'd been so good to my father. Then she says, "Of course, Don's brother Eldon didn't care for them. He wasn't expected to live long but finally sent them home after eight months because he said they kept getting in the way. Of course, I guess that's what happens when you don't die on time." She delivered that last line as straight-faced as Bob Newhart.

When she died, just ten days ago, it was harder to find laughter. We didn't make pancreatic cancer jokes. We were too much in the grip of absolute fear. Instead we became centers of activity, taking care of things, making arrangements, making lists, moving things around, doing something — anything — to keep ourselves from imagining our lives without her.

It was the trip to the funeral home that finally changed that for me. If you've never had the chance to sit in the mourner's chair at a funeral home and gotten the sales pitch, you don't know how ridiculous human beings are. They sell thumbprint jewelry. Like, they take a thumbprint from the corpse and then you can buy cuff links or whatever. And pendants made from your loved one's ashes. I am not making this up.

I started to lose it over a mix-up with the disposition of her body.

We were brought a form that bore a notice across the top: "CREMATION IS IRREVERSIBLE AND FINAL."

I got the giggles. We questioned this clause with the funeral director, who sought to explain it in hushed, soothing tones. Apparently there is no process for the reversal of cremation. Who knew? I couldn't stop giggling.

My mom had specified in her will that she was to be cremated, but according to the good folks at Blue Ridge Funeral Home, West Virginia code does not allow an individual to select cremation: it is done only upon agreement of all next of kin. This simultaneously sounds like something they just made up and something dumb enough for the West Virginia Legislature to have enacted, so I'm not sure where I am with that.

My initial thought was, "Just leave her then. You guys can decide what to do." It's hard to explain why this made me laugh, but it did. I was just imagining the mortuary stuck with this body and no way to get rid of it, just moving it from room to room to accommodate new arrivals, it becoming a fixture there in a sort of Weekend at Bernie's way. Maybe they'd dress her up for the office Christmas party or the funeral director would find himself talking to her about problems at home.

I just heard you cringe.

Yeah, I know: it's my mother. How can I, blah, blah, blah . . .

But fuck you if you think that means I don't love my mother enough or don't love her the right way. For all of the mistakes they might have made, my parents didn't raise me to cower in reverential fear when Death entered the room. We never whispered the word "cancer," or used florid euphemisms to avoid speaking Death's name.

There at the funeral home, I had to call up my siblings and ask all of them to come sign the release form. They arrived about twenty minutes later.

It was just the five of us us there and it was probably then that I realized that this might be the last time we would all be in a room together.

We were making jokes and laughing. Some of us took photos. Sarah had noticed a Keurig and began dispensing coffee like a barrista trying to set a record.

I did not witness my mother's passing. Sarah did, and told me about it. I will admit: it sounds frightening to me, standing there at the abyss, looking into the blackness and wondering what, if anything, is beyond.

How can we possibly face moments like that?

I promised my mom I wouldn't tell a dick joke at her memorial service. I suppose I will keep that promise, but I will laugh. It's the only thing I can think to do.

Let It Bleed

My mother, Dora Leigh Deskins, died last night, December 7, 2014, after discovering last month that she had pancreatic cancer.

There was a book that came out several years back called On Death and Dying. The author offered that there were five distinct stages of grief. There hasn't been much research since that time to support that assertion. My own experience seems to indicate that grief can vary widely.

My father died on January 27 of this year. I grieved for him, but I can tell you already that the quality of that grief was very different. He had lived a very hard life — drinking, smoking, generally being a rough character. He'd had three heart attacks and quadruple by-pass surgery. I had been anticipating his death for many years.

I had never even considered the fact that my mother would die.

Her death was very sudden. She was 75, but she never seemed elderly. She never drank a drop and smoked only briefly in young adulthood.

I'm feeling and thinking so many things at once that it is hard to even notice each one.

I'm struck by how casual death is. She sat in hospitals, talking to doctors about dying and now she is dead. It seems like it should be more elaborate, accompanied by more pomp and circumstance.

Death is dehumanizing, in the most literal sense. When someone is sick, you watch them gradually lose those things that attach them to their humanity. It robs us of our dignity.

I'm confused. It seems like this is all a terrible mistake, as if someone else was supposed to die. She was supposed to retire. Her paperwork got mixed up with someone else's. She paid her fees, she talked to the guy. We need this corrected, as soon as possible. This cannot be right.

If I think about her voice, it is almost more than I can bear. I cannot believe that I won't ever talk to her again. It's only been a day and I miss it more than I can stand.

I spent today at her house with my siblings and some of our families. We walked around this house where we all once lived, but now the owners are gone. It's not our house. It felt weirdly like we were trespassing. When I think of all the times I walked through that door and heard Mother or Daddy call me from another room, happy to see me, glad I was there . . . that is gone. The house is nothing now. There is no more warmth or love to be had in it, and it will be sold and others will live there or maybe even tear it down.

What do I do now? What do I do now that I don't have parents? Who do I go to when I fuck up?

Death Without God

I write this at my mother's bedside. She is at the Bowers' Hospice House in Beckley, West Virginia. She came here after being diagnosed just last month with pancreatic cancer and spending the last few weeks in and out of hospitals. Her last words to me were yesterday afternoon, whispered "I love yous" to me and to my infant son. She has been mostly unresponsive since then. Her family is now relegated mostly to watching her die.

My mother is a deeply religious person, with a belief in a personal God, the reality of the devil, and an afterlife spent in the eternal peace of Heaven or the eternal torment of Hell. I shared those beliefs until about seven years ago. Mine has been a gradual process of losing faith, part of what could be called a midlife crisis, I suppose.

I haven't discussed this very much with my mother. I think it would cause her too much distress. That is, after all, one of the things that makes religion so very successful. It is near torture to imagine yourself and your loved ones facing eternity separated from all comfort, your bodies being burned with a "fire that is not quenched," and subjected to unspeakable torments for eons. The alternative, by contrast, is a promise of life eternal, a life without pain or even emotional distress, where God Himself "wipes every tear" from your eye. The only price to be paid? Believe. It is that simple, we are told. The price of Heaven has been paid for us by another if we only believe.

That sounds like a good deal, doesn't it?

Only it isn't. Not really. Because belief in this instance means subjugating one's mind to the teachings of others, abandoning critical thought, waiving one's right to question. It means accepting as truth that which goes against reason and to do so without evidence at all, because "faith is the evidence of things not seen." It is to completely surrender one's life, the only one we are certain exists, for the promise of another that no one has seen.

It took me some time to reach this point in my own thinking and I'm well aware that most of you reading this will disagree quite sharply. As I was relaying to someone today, the question turned for me on a spiritual level, not on matters of science, as is the case with so many. It's a topic for another post, but suffice it to say that it did not happen overnight.

To have won the right again to question all received wisdom, to reject anything that comes without evidence, to organize your morality on human reasoning rather than 3000-year-old tribal ethics, to marvel at science and human understanding, and to again be humbled at how little we truly know − well, that is liberty. As was said, "The truth will set you free."

Yet I have expressed to many my reticence to abandon all that I once knew. For all they lack if understood literally, Christian scriptures are rich with metaphor for shaping life's meaning. Eating forbidden fruit does bring knowledge of good and evil, a loss of innocence but growth in wisdom. We have witnessed our own Davids slay mocking Goliaths. We know the power of grace in our lives and that forgiveness exceeds vengeance in every way.

I still think in those terms and truly long for the experience of the "holy," not something supernatural but the setting apart of times and spaces as sacred to the human spirit. I relish Christian mythology without being beholden to its cosmology or ethics.

It is at times like right now that I long for it the most. I'm at my dying mother's bedside, the scene of dozens of bluegrass songs, where those old-time mothers say, "I've just seen the Rock of Ages − Jacob's ladder coming down!" I want something of that experience, without needing to abandon reason. I long for this to be a sacred time, a time to reflect on a life well-spent, a time to ponder life's hardest questions and construct meaning for the dying and those that remain.

A few short years ago, it would have been impossible for me to imagine meaning apart from God. "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever," I would have told you. To reject Yaweh, whose very name suggests that He is the ground of all being, is to have no meaning at all.

It's not like that for me any more.

I suppose I'm "apostate," to use the old-fashioned term. Even as I type that, I realize it is likely to land me on more than one church prayer list. That's okay.

The meaning I make at this passing is one that acknowledges what we know of this cosmos and re-imagines those tropes that served to comfort me in the past.

I look at my mother and I hear the Apostle's words, that hers is a body "sown in corruption, but raised in incorruption; sown in mortality, but raised in immortality." Then I think about what might become of her body after her death. It will be returned to the earth, sown in one sense, and provide life again to plants and animals and again to generations after us. And her DNA we now know was sown in the five children she bore and again in her grandchildren, and will continue on as long as her progeny continue to reproduce. The words she spoke, at home and in the classroom where she taught, were sown in the minds of her children and students, and will bear fruit long after she has perished. This, then, is true immortality. This is immortality rooted in the cosmos as we know it.

I look at my mother and I hear the words of the Preacher: "As one dies, so dies the other . . . All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return." Then my mind turns to what astrophysicists tell us of our origins some 13.8 billion years ago, and the fate that awaits us many eons from now. Because every atom that is in us − every bit of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon − was there at the big bang. "We are made of star dust." And when the cosmos cools, all that is shall return to star dust, including those atoms in her body now.

It is a triumph of the human spirit that we even know this, that great women and men asked questions and questioned assumptions and made these discoveries.

So as I sit with her here, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, these things are a great comfort to me. They are the meaning I make in the face of death.

I meditate on them in the knowledge that my mother does not share my beliefs. That is okay, too, because there is no Hell for the unbeliever in a world of reason. There is only love for her and a great sadness, knowing how much I will miss her.