Circles

I don't learn things very often about my brain. I've been a close observer all my life, and the pickings get slim, further alone the road. But I had an insight about what I think loyalty is. It's not gifts and back-pats, kind words and smiles. These are gestures, incidents, that can be as much a function of mood as of devotion. Loyalty, I'm thinking, shows itself most dearly through consistency. You are patient with your kids even after a hard day at work. You return a phone call in a timely manner. You forgive the shortfalls of someone who repents an error. Not as a whim but out of the presiding spirit of your relationship with that person.

I have a lot of pride. I'm touchy. It's not a consistent thing -- there are slights I just don't care about .. but these would be from people I don't care about. As with I expect almost everyone, I cannot abide being disrespected, slandered, ignored. A shortcoming, I know. I should be strong and independent. Like I was told with words to be, when I was a child, via parental preaching.

I was in my mother's house earlier today ... she'd lost her phone ... it was lying in the grass in the front lawn ... and I somehow noticed that my father had published his memoirs. I knew he'd written it, but it's out there in the great wide world now. I won't be reading it. I know the story all too well. It's got a good title, except he subtitles it with a self-description of "certified schizophrenic", and as I've noted before, that's his self-serving self-diagnosis. He is in fact paranoid, narcissistic and borderline. I flipped through it. Desperately needs editing, of course. Otherwise, same old. All about how evil the women in his life have been.

Well, I'm rambling. Circling the drain again.

I did the XF Opens workout on Saturday, 7 minutes of burpees, score of 95. Little disappointing, but I have no right to expect more. My training is consistent but not serious. On the other hand, the top posted scorer for my age group got 122, and he's 5 foot 5 and 155 lbs, which means in terms of actual workload and power (work over time), I beat him. That's not how they reckon scores, though. Anyway I'm simply not strong enough, in terms of real competition, and I don't run enough, cuz you know there will be runs in upcoming trials. Had a bit of concern about getting my score posted in time ... other people needed to be involved in the registration, in a managerial capacity, and lines of communication were for one reason or another occluded.

But I'm paranoid too. I have long imaginary monologic diatribes about my imaginary father. "You should be please that I agree with you about your being crazy, and you should listen to me, because I have a lifetime of observation and contemplation on the matter. " But I don't actually say such things to him, because there is no hope of real communication, and I'd just go higher on his enemies list, and I in fact am crazy too -- the burden of too-great truths having shattered my equipoise.

What the point. What's the fucking point.

Given what the world is, I am surprised both that there is such a thing as a humanity, and that there continues to be such a thing. I look at what life is, and it is clear and self-evident that there is no God as the Bible presents him, no benignant presiding Intelligence who guides things to an ultimate good end. It is clear, because there is no evidence for faith in such an outcome. The end is never ultimately good. The end, per the actual evidence, of real observation, is death. Everything ends in death, which is almost always fearful, painful and full of sorrow. Counterbalancing this is a hope that what appears to be the end is in fact not that thing -- hope, based on faith, based on trust. Trust in what? A God who created a universe in which everything that can be observed ends in death.

Yet I have never questioned the character of God. Without God life is impossible ... the magical thinking that would suppose an alchemical transmogrification of inanimate matter into the higher order of life ... well, if you haven't discerned it yet, I do not believe in magic. So of course there is a God. Why did he create? So that he might be observed. Thus, revelation, and therefore authority, and ultimately logic and submission or rebellion to the requirement of faith. As with gravity, one cannot disobey, only avoid and delay, God and his inevitabilities.

God is not schizophrenic, for all that he is three persons. He is not paranoid ... he has real enemies, that are truly evil. He is not a narcissist, because he is worthy of the admiration he requires. He is not borderline, because the universe reflects his mercy as well as his judgment. But for all that God is justified, I don't like him, and I don't love him. The only excuse he has is Jesus. Without Jesus, God would be just a more confusing Satan, whose purposes are obvious. God would be Allah. This is as much as to say nothing at all, of course, since there could not be a God without a Jesus. They are one. Lucky for us they have different names then, or we would find it simply impossible to understand any of it.

Not that I do, understand. Oh, I talk a good game. But sometimes all I want is to be left alone. Sometimes I know that if I unbarred the door of my soul, the screaming loneliness would crash out and tear the flesh from my bones. I wouldn't be so proud, if I could trust. But who is trustworthy?


J