Your Calling is calling. Sound the (pssst) Trumpets!

At this point in your existential journey, have you been "called"?  

What summoned you? 

What vision do you have of a purpose or mission in the world?  

Are you envisioning?     

Statement of Calling

The Journey.

As child of missionaries who traveled the globe, grew up with mixed Christian and non-Christian challenges.  Saw suffering, fear, rape[TK1] , murder, hunger, and many forms of “thirst[TK2] ”.  In our village, and on a global scale.

Faith:  Never asked, as in Book of Job: “Why God permits Righteous Ones to suffer?”  Never want to increase the suffering; not able to stop it.  Never feel lost—never feel at home, except everywhere, in the Journey.   Never feel Tempted. Not even Tempted to Exist[TK3]  -- leave that up to God to work out.  Never doubt God; many doubts of Men.[TK4] 

Asked my Father and Mother many questions. They did their best, and apologized for preparing me so little for this world. And now, they are passed from it.  Midway, look back, see patterns. Shades of gray outcomes, shape a life.

Career dipped in farming, academia, music, soldiering, and law. 

Many successes and failures – colorful challenging life.  In 2011, my head, handed to me, on platter.  Experience “spirit breakdown[TK5] ”-- euphemism for becoming Eucharist.  [TK6] Had to withdraw.  

Now seeking to rejoin the World in another role. Called not to attend, but to “attend”.  Get tune in right key.  Be good counsel.  Not be voice that “darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge[TK7] ”. Going for Light, staying for company.  Can help. Rebuild Temple.

Cultivating all and the nine fruits of the Spirit.  Clinging particularly to Kindness. (In Nahuatl, no direct word for Kindness which does not connote idiocy or gullibility. Even so, raised by kind people in village). Emulating. Beyond words is words.[TK8]   This won’t be easy. 

The Calling:

In being called, I call.   So much more needed, for counseling, spiritual guidance, and strengthening Churches.  Being called to the Collar is not something one does without building muscles and armamentarium. Need tools for tasks.  Need healthier, better, sharper, gentler perspective.  Kindness.

God’s Mission Statement

After the Fall,

It’s either God’s Call,

or it’s not a Call. 

Disputation abounds.

It is manifestly certain little is certain.

Must build Church. 

All is vanity, and ends.

Not a moment to lose:

Must begin.

Reflection[TK9] :

Holy Cross is mirror: 

Look in, Son of Man looks back.

Rising vector, plunges down; arms swing open, also hold. 

Just when think  magnetism pulls, repels. 

Alone, looking inside outside, see seeing seer. 

Past and Future join black hole Now. 

Eternity spins, from dreidel[TK10]  to grave.

Hologram[TK11]  inside Holy Ghost.

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 [TK1] Rape.  In fact, this exercise/indulgence explores the patter of issues I have had with “authority”, and whether “connected”. Always a surprise to me. But then again, don’t want to frighten them.

 [TK2] “Thirst” is less abstract than “Desire”.

 [TK3] Sidereal reference to Emil Cioran’s work.

 [TK4]  Unknowable – The answer for what you don’t know is God. Great Unknown.

Life everlasting. The Story of God. Simply the story of existence -- In the beginning...

"Life is self-sustaining." --Morgan Freeman

Regardless of what they believe, people are more or less the same, and different.

 [TK5] Not “spiritual”; nothing spiritual about it. Spirit broke, spat on and stomped. But other than that, just fine.

 [TK6] Eucharist – a thanksgiving meal;  cap to convey idea of Sacrificial Body/Blood of a lamb.

 [TK7] Job 38:3, repeated 42:1, twice.

 [TK8] Beyond IS beyond.

 [TK9] Maimonides Guide to the Perplexed, studied by Leo Straus, Persecution and the Style of Writing. For reflection, we have scriptures and symbols, usually with hidden meanings. Why?

 [TK10]Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (He), ש (Shin), which together form the acronym for "נס גדול היה שם" (Nes Gadol Hayah Sham – "a great miracle happened there"). The reference is to Existence, which happened here.

 [TK11] Hologram - The intermediate photograph (or photographic record) that contains information for reproducing a three-dimensional image by holography.

What lives, hungers.

What do living things "have in common"? The Hunger. As if in order to live, existance has to curl around a need, the desire to live that moves the prepositional object.

Extinctions - blood-suckers, flesh-borers, meat wasps...

Why is the polity so tolerant of pestilence, and at the same time so willing to see wonderful forms of life disappear right before our eyes?

MOSQUITOES. As fascinating as this tribe is, they are not an essential part of a food chain (could be replaced by other creatures), and their hemotaphagous dirty needles spread immense suffering: The Culiseta family is the most dangerous disease vector known. WHO estimates about 250 million people are infected by malaria, and mosquitoes also spread West Nile virus, four forms of encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue fever, rift valley fever, meningitis, and other diseases. Not to mention they also cause sleepless nights and ruin fishing trips and the crepuscular magic of the tropics. Who could possibly miss them? Ironically, I still find people KILLING the "mosquito hawk", Toxorhynchites, in paroxysms of bug-ophobia. This giant of the mosquitoes actually cannibalizes its nasty little brethren. It should always be protected and released.

MEAT BEES ("yellowjackets"). I value creatures whose lifestyle includes eating the other undesireables in my neighborhood. It is my understanding that most of the Vespidae Family, and the Vespula Genus in particular, eat an assortment of insect pests. Our local picnic area and watering hole is often made tricky to use by invasions of aggressive flies which mimic wasps, and a few wasps. Although the sting, usually repeated, of a wasp is painful, and an altercation with a large hive can be fatal, I recommend letting them "be", so to speak. When the occasional paper wasp nest or hornet hole is found too close to my work in the garden, of course, I remove it.

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How Pitiable, and Glorious are the Natural Urges

I am deeply offended by people who pretend that they are in any ANY ANY way "above" Nature. For example, people are entitled to wear WHATEVER they want to wear. And if they choose to join a group that wears UNIFORMS, good for them. However, there really is NO excuse or rationale for requiring a Dress Code that is UN-NATURAL.

Specifically, the wearing of disguises in public is not only offensive, it can only be taken as a deliberate affront. To REQUIRE a woman to wear a SACK covering her entire body -- including her ears, head, nose, and eyes -- her BREATHING organs! -- is simply one of the most evil means of subordination ever devised. It is ONLY justified as an effective means of oppressing a subordinated population.

I realize that "Religious" authorities have invoked various texts to justify such oppressive Dress Codes. While "modesty" is a legitimate criteria, there is in fact nothing modest about oppressive Dress Codes or enforcement of oppressive and un-natural coverings. There is NO WORD in the Torah, the Bible, or the Qoran which comes even remotely close to UN-Natural apparel requirements.

Males will look for women, no matter what women are wearing, and no matter whether the women are imprisoned, or locked up. To claim that women are covered and locked away for their own protection, is to add invidious irony to the perversion. Covering the women in sacks does not diminish, it keens, the natural impulse of the male. Whether males and females are CREATED by Allah, or are the result of evolution from tardigrades and apes, ALL clothes should meet Natural requirements. If an article of clothing is UN-attractive, one should think twice, many times, before donning it.

Attractiveness is the Point. It is Natural for us to gaze upon each other. We have an extraordinary number of "expressions" in our faces, built by an elaborate number of delicate muscles. We are SUPPOSED to look at each other. And the reason the practitioners of Religion spend an inordinate amount of time talking about Dress Codes is that the desire to see a naked person is a universal. The awe one feels in seeing the movement, the astonishing talent or grace of an arm, an eyelid, or to hear a voice, is what we do and should hope for.

Males will jump through hoops to smell, or just imagine, or to be overcome with awe over the peculiar GRACE, the way each woman MOVES. And some mullah is not "permitting" these Natural hopes? How frustrating it must be to a man who is constantly scheming to get a few million sperms next to just one egg. And the man is a priest, a pope, an ayatollah, a man of authority and grace, we must respect, and yet he has no respect for his own Natural instincts?

The more a Religion devotes itself to clothes, the more pitiable the sight. Pathetic is the effort to put a finger into the tide of Nature, and pretend to prevent its rise. A veil is like being buried alive. There is nothing modest about wearing a grave. I have seen women gathering roots in the marshes wearing nothing but string skirts, and they were at once more modest, and more comely, than the queens of piety, showing their pretentions for all to see.

No man is uglier, and less worthy, than the one who takes things and people to himself as his possessions. As if he has "special needs". No mouth can form another credible word, after it has promised "virgins" as a reward in an After-life, for a man condemned to live in This Life without the kindness of sex. The Wine, the Women, the Song -- bring it on!