Fear the Crab

A friend recently confessed her worry that she will not see any of her family and friends in Heaven.  This concerned her to the point of tears, that her father, her sister, her daughter, or her best friends will never meet up with her in the afterlife.  The reason for this dire fear was that according to what she is being taught, the only way to get into Heaven is to accept Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior.

So how does one respond?  It is a very delicate area to be mucking about.  How do you comfort a person so distraught, yet not compromise your own personal beliefs, much less avoid shattering hers?

It is hubris to think that I have all the answers.  I do not have the perfect solution to this dilemma, nor do I have the wisdom and authority to aver that what I think is the right thing.  I only have what is in my heart, based on my limited experience with human behavior and interpersonal relations.

I told her that out of everything I have read or been told about this Jesus chap and his father is that they are filled with boundless love.  Jesus cured the Canaanite woman’s daughter, even though there was a bit of a conflict between the teachings of God and the Canaanite religious practices.  Jesus cast out Legion from the suffering man, even though the farmer who tended the pigs undoubtedly lost his source of income and livelihood.

The writings of the Bible indicate that God’s love is not reserved solely for those who follow its teachings, that no one is so far from God as to be beyond God’s heart.  Therefore it seems reasonable to believe that God would accept any and all creatures among the faithful in Heaven, regardless of their race, political affiliation, or religious practices.  Granted, it seems horrifying to think that monsters who murder children or exploit the safety of others purely for their own personal enjoyment or benefit get the grace of God’s love… but perhaps that is reflective of just how powerful God is.

God is described as perfect, and I do not doubt that.  Yet his word is given to us through the hand of Man, and man is fallible.  Man is not perfect, and it’s pretty obvious that the different interpretations of God’s word has given rise to the many divisions of Christianity.

So for a person to tell another that they can’t get into Heaven because they do not accept Jesus as the Lord and Savior, to me is not representative of God’s love.  In fact it seems that it the opposite of love; I’d go so far as to claim it is a bit of hate.  It is a hate that places a burden on someone’s shoulders, someone who is already suffering under a heavy load.  How can God’s love create fear, anxiety, and overwhelming sadness?  How can one find comfort in a God that heaps pain instead of peace?

I find it hard to agree with anyone who attempts to hold themselves in a moral superiority.  Practicing an all-exclusive path of love is nothing more than a smug assertion that you’re not going to Hell.  Telling people that their loved ones aren’t going to be in Heaven is only proclaiming your own self-righteousness.

I am not a Christian.  However, I do feel there are a lot of nice things about Christianity.  I agree with the mantras of good behavior, how to treat others well, how to have compassion.  I think a great many people in many different religions and walks of life practice the same levels of decent human behavior with their fellows.  I think there are many different paths of good behavior that is reflective of God’s love, and I think God is probably rather receptive of that.

I know that for someone who is learning about Christianity, it is difficult to remove yourself from your pastor’s teachings.  It may take months or years, or even a significant life event, to gain the ability to step back and re-interpret God’s word as something different than what the church says.

Yet perhaps with the acknowledgment that there may be many paths towards the same goal, comfort can still be attained without the sacrifice of faith in God and in humanity.  Perhaps through the reading of the Bible, listening to sermons, and talking with her friends and family, my friend can find solace by forming her own personal belief of God’s word, even if it is different than what she is being taught.  Perhaps she will find a way of loving those around her irrespective of their religious leanings or behavior.

And to me, that kind of acceptance and love is far more closer to God than the tallest spire.

I rode a motorcycle, a phat beast of a hog with enough roar to shatter windows.  Except this motorcycle also had pedals, which I seemed to use whenever I took a turn.  The crank on these pedals was not very good; in fact it was almost as small and frail as what you’d find on a kiddie tricycle.  The pedals themselves were thick and flat, and I think they were made of wood.

But that didn’t matter, because I used “phat” to describe it, and all the cool kiddie tryke riders know that “ph” in “phront” of anything makes it cool. Besides, acceleration on my dreamcycle was taken care of in the normal handlebar means.

Tooled around an unfamiliar suburban neighborhood, and stopped at a motel of sorts to find room.  I was approached by the manager and a female acquaintance of his, and was asked to escort the woman on some errand she had to perform.  The woman was required to use a motorcycle to deliver some package, and she said she would feel better if there were another rider with her, because she was not very experienced with the machine.

Perhaps it was the clandestine nature of the request, but I refused.  I had some kind of rebel-loner streak going and I didn’t want to get involved in any shenanigans, particularly those that seemed strange or out of place.  I also didn’t want to babysit someone and train them in handling a motorcycle during the journey.

The dream devolved into some attempt at blackmail, linking me to a motorcycle gang and the threat of revealing said history to the outside world.  Apparently I was an ex-member of a notoriously wicked group of riders, and I tried to cover up my past association by literally covering the patch on the back of my jacket with a blank sheet of leather.  The manager took a knife and cut away the leather, peeled it back and revealed my colors.

The patch was a white-feathered stork, neck bent in an S-shape, head tilted down in an alert pose, wings partially open as if it were ready to take flight.  The feathers were ruffled, standing straight up, and the tips melted into a rainbow of Van Gogh streaks, red and yellow and white against a blue background.

I still refused to do this task, and left the manager with my tattered jacket.  The woman followed, and proclaimed with wonder, “You were a member of the <insert name here>?” [I don’t remember the name she said]  After which, she pulled out a large book from her bag, flipped it open to a page and said she had been following the life of the group since she was young.  The picture on the page looked nothing like me, and the dude was playing a guitar during a concert on stage.

I didn’t answer her, and just kept walking away in my cool phat loner rebel style.

* * *

I don’t know how to ride a motorcycle, and I don’t know how to manually shift the engine.  That didn’t seem to matter in my ride, though, which I can only assume to mean that my bike was automatic.

Or maybe I shifted gears using pedal power.  That’s cool.

Population: You.

I don’t know why I’ve been having trouble sleeping.  If it’s not the inability to properly fall asleep once I’m in bed, it’s the consistent interruptions during the night.  I wake up only a few hours after I last remember closing my eyes with all the regularity of a well-fibered meal, and after that it’s a good chance I’ll do it again two or three more times.

I posited to Maile that one reason for waking up in the middle of the night could be that my unconscious mind is actively listening for my alarm clock.  Since I wake up earlier than Maile, I keep the alarm low to minimize the disturbances.  However, I think it’s so low that I’ve set my ears on sensitive, and now any noise of alarm-clock level will jar me awake.  It could be the dog, it could be the house settling, or it could be the weird chirp-whistles outside the window.

I say this because on the weekends, when I typically do not set my alarm, I can rest peacefully without complications and take in well over 8 hours.  Of course, I probably also “know” that it’s the weekend and I don’t have to be anywhere by any particular time.

Last night I could not even close my eyes.  My brain was going off on a tangent of randomality, and no amount of Ovis numerations would slow it down.  I tried tiring my mind with some crosswords on my new Nintendo DS, which usually does the trick, but this time it didn’t work.  I went into the living room where I fired up some MLB Power Pros 2008 and played some electronic baseball, but that also failed to make me sleepy.

In hindsight, playing a sports video game is probably not the best way to make yourself tired, especially if you’re a fan of the actual sport.