One of the great things about working in the ever-exciting world of bookkeeping is that, occasionally, it becomes a hunt.
Just as an expert tracker sees the tracks and can tell the "story" of an animal's movements and purpose, so can the tracker of transactions.
Tonight, the hoofprints at the watering hole told a tale of panic as a rogue cash refund emerged, unexpectedly, from the murky depths and sent the poor beast at the water's edge into a blind frenzy of transaction-code posting, finally crashing, helplessly, into the completely inadequate cover of a direct bill adjustment.
Ah, good times.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Further
I don't mean to say that there is no value in prayer, or that God is remote to a mechanistic universe. Indeed, I believe He acts through us, and prayer has its value as action.
What we call theology, though, is this world of mental nonsense, presuming to dissect and disclose a mind that none can comprehend, then distill and standardize answers to "Why?" That, to put it bluntly, is mental masturbation of the sort which has made a profession out of an avocation - rather like the legal profession, it has set its own ground rules which profess its indespensibility to belief and practice, all because of a self-invented and self-perpetuating insinuation into society.
The one really clear answer that God gave as to Divine Being is "I am." More accurately translated, "I shall be howsoever I shall be." It's a name of verbs that combine being and time. The claim that Jesus showed us who God really is is short-sighted, as one sees that God really is what part of Jesus one focuses on - Jesus loved/Jesus condemned; Jesus taught/Jesus obscured; Jesus embraced/Jesus rejected; Jesus affirmed/Jesus denied. Why? Because the central reality of God that Jesus embodied is that He Is as He Is. That's it. We are as we are - so do what you can do, take responsibility for that, act as the situation calls for, and stop playing around in your head. God is. Man is and God Is through man. There's no different angle, no bureaucrat's stamp, no trickety-trick that's going to reveal the Divine Totality to you. You can't pigeonhole reality, and God IS through reality.
When will the Kingdom come? When we do it. When will the world end and the Eternal Blackness of the Pit fall? When we do it.
What we call theology, though, is this world of mental nonsense, presuming to dissect and disclose a mind that none can comprehend, then distill and standardize answers to "Why?" That, to put it bluntly, is mental masturbation of the sort which has made a profession out of an avocation - rather like the legal profession, it has set its own ground rules which profess its indespensibility to belief and practice, all because of a self-invented and self-perpetuating insinuation into society.
The one really clear answer that God gave as to Divine Being is "I am." More accurately translated, "I shall be howsoever I shall be." It's a name of verbs that combine being and time. The claim that Jesus showed us who God really is is short-sighted, as one sees that God really is what part of Jesus one focuses on - Jesus loved/Jesus condemned; Jesus taught/Jesus obscured; Jesus embraced/Jesus rejected; Jesus affirmed/Jesus denied. Why? Because the central reality of God that Jesus embodied is that He Is as He Is. That's it. We are as we are - so do what you can do, take responsibility for that, act as the situation calls for, and stop playing around in your head. God is. Man is and God Is through man. There's no different angle, no bureaucrat's stamp, no trickety-trick that's going to reveal the Divine Totality to you. You can't pigeonhole reality, and God IS through reality.
When will the Kingdom come? When we do it. When will the world end and the Eternal Blackness of the Pit fall? When we do it.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Sparrows Still Fall, Don't They?
I simply don't buy the idea of this God Who is so deeply concerned with our concerns.
It isn't that I believe God is impersonal or uncaring, but that God is Transcendant. Why should it be unthinkable that the human race will fail and disappear? Because of "promises?" Those promises were made in a general sense and by a Being able to comprehend the totality of all creation, time, space and dimension at once. I don't find it at all unlikely that we were built on the ashes of a previous creation, and that there may be one after us. That and our utter extinction would not, under any circumstances, constitute a failure of God to follow through.
In (grossly simplified) Kabbalistic thought, there are the Klippoth, shattered remains of previous creations in which the Divine energy became unbalanced and destroyed themselves. Present creation is built on the remains of previous civilizations, so to speak. Present creation stands on the foundations of seven "infernal palaces." Who's to say there won't be a creation built on eight? The shells shattered, the forms destroyed or left to twist into "demons" are not their ultimate reality, so nothing was lost. This is all mythic symbolism, of course, but so is Scripture. It is incredible Pride and foolishness to believe that God will focus the whole of His Will on preserving our little forms and fancies.
Jesus tells us our hairs are counted, that every sparrow that falls is in God's mind. But . . . He didn't say that that will keep our hairs from graying or sparrows from dying. It is, in a materialistic mind, only a very cold comfort; you - as material you - are not guaranteed anything but that God, Who is as inscrutable as God's plan is ineffable, cares for what you really are.
It isn't that I believe God is impersonal or uncaring, but that God is Transcendant. Why should it be unthinkable that the human race will fail and disappear? Because of "promises?" Those promises were made in a general sense and by a Being able to comprehend the totality of all creation, time, space and dimension at once. I don't find it at all unlikely that we were built on the ashes of a previous creation, and that there may be one after us. That and our utter extinction would not, under any circumstances, constitute a failure of God to follow through.
In (grossly simplified) Kabbalistic thought, there are the Klippoth, shattered remains of previous creations in which the Divine energy became unbalanced and destroyed themselves. Present creation is built on the remains of previous civilizations, so to speak. Present creation stands on the foundations of seven "infernal palaces." Who's to say there won't be a creation built on eight? The shells shattered, the forms destroyed or left to twist into "demons" are not their ultimate reality, so nothing was lost. This is all mythic symbolism, of course, but so is Scripture. It is incredible Pride and foolishness to believe that God will focus the whole of His Will on preserving our little forms and fancies.
Jesus tells us our hairs are counted, that every sparrow that falls is in God's mind. But . . . He didn't say that that will keep our hairs from graying or sparrows from dying. It is, in a materialistic mind, only a very cold comfort; you - as material you - are not guaranteed anything but that God, Who is as inscrutable as God's plan is ineffable, cares for what you really are.
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