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Relevancy

Of late, I have realized a few things about myself.

One of them is that I fail to be relevant.  Fail miserably, in fact.  The main reason is perhaps that I try too hard, without a strong focus of what I’m trying to achieve.  I lack the motivation to be relevant, to wear a facade, to try to write relevantly to an imaginary audience.  I tried to avoid the personality cult, but with my complete lack of skills in any other form of networking, it seems that I must abandon either self-consciousness or honesty.

All I can do is pursue my life with sincerity, and work and practice to purify that thing which is me.  This is not facades or manipulations but transformation.  It is not easy; it requires everything.  It requires me to stare in the face the things that I fear, and surrender anyway.

It requires me to face the fact that I don’t like most books or movies (and I write fantasy novels… what?).  It requires me to face the fact of what I truly desire and truly care about.  The more I find myself tapping into a culture of peacefulness, steady-mindedness, simplicity, and remembrance of the Kingdom of God instead of anything–anything–of this world, the less I find myself to be relevant.

To either world, because of my impurity.  It’s an uncomfortable limbo.

Faith, though, that inscrutable thing.  It has been made possible for us to be purified if we have faith and do not despair.

Perhaps one day I will have been sufficiently transformed to be relevant.  In the meantime what service can I offer?  Nothing grand, bits and pieces, here and there.  As I struggle to discern the difference between spirit and matter, I am forced to recognize how hidden from mortal eyes is the Spirit–how far from religious externals.  “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” – John 3:8  The necessity of being “born again” or “twice-born” is emphasized in East and West both, the recognition that to be born of flesh and to live according to it traps you, but to be born of Spirit frees you to be who you truly are.

A denizen of the Kingdom of God, of that strange realm that is beyond time, death, and change, yet is always blissful and active.

This is the goal.  I am not there yet.  Certainly not.  Bewilderments and fascinations still litter my life and my consciousness, attractions, repulsions, sufferings and enjoyments.  I am still running across the field, tripping over roots and holes I can’t see, thinking I’m getting somewhere.

It is an intense battle we are fighting.  It is not one we can win on our own.  Not with only that first birth under our belts.  But that is why, in His mercy, we have not been left alone.

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Personalism, and How to Create Monsters

When I was a kid, I really liked Godzilla and his kaiju pantheon.  Godzilla, originally, was a monster spawned, and a story told, out of the terror and devastation of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan.  The horror of the devastating technology we had created was unrestricted by any higher meaning, or system of value and honor.  The Allies, faced with fighting against the honor system of Japan, which was more real to them than to anything and was considered more important than death, bowed themselves to the god of death and created a monster in its service.

Film artists in Japan found a way to depict–powerfully and immediately–the monster we had created.

The monsters we create, of and within ourselves, through our consciousness and subsequent actions, are often things that look very much like vampires, zombies, and impersonal, merciless, destructive forces.  Maybe that is what is so freaky about zombies–they are impersonal.  They “personify”–or not–the destructive impersonalism that wracks our world to its roots, shaking down into despair, terror, crime, violence, suicide. How we deal with the monsters that have been created in the world may help us to rediscover what being human means.  To be human is to be a person, which essentially is to be personal.  What does it mean to be personal?

It is the personal aspect that gives what we do meaning and opens the door for transformation.  Results achieved in mind, body, and spirit are always personal in every situation, and the more we recognize this and allow personal connection to handle problems and uphold values, the greater success we will have.  Great discoveries, transformations, and changes are wrought–in persons–through means that while including a mechanical process, can never be observed to be dependent on it.  This is the quality of spirit acting through matter.

You can study gross matter, of course–as empirical science does–and be able to get some impersonal result of mechanical process, but even this level of impersonalism has ramifications.

Because it is not dead matter or any mechanical process that gives meaning to human life.  It is personal connection–the thing of Spirit–the relationships and values we show and address in the stories we tell, against the backdrop of monsters, impersonal forces, the problems of a world, and various mechanical successes or failures.  These values and relationships are made real and potent by the personal impact they have on human beings.  More than that, this personal potency is contagious.  That is why stories impact our lives and transform us.

And nothing can show us quite as quickly the importance of those things beyond the mechanical or material–than when we try to destroy it with the introduction of an impersonal monster, in whatever form.  A nuclear bomb, a zombie apocalypse.  Wrongly handled, horrors such as this have the power to degrade us, powerfully.

But if allowed to shine through, with faith and conviction, the human spirit has more power than any horror to adhere to real values, and can rise up within us in contrast to the destructive forces around us.

In stories, this is why such monsters transform our consciousness so powerfully when we see characters standing up to them–standing up for the very values that the monster’s very existence seeks to ridicule and destroy–instead of giving in.

I remember, as a child, asking, “why was it necessary to drop those bombs on Japan and kill so many people?” and being given the answer: “Because the Japanese would never surrender to us, because of honor, and if we had not dropped the bombs, many many more people on both sides would have died.”

As a child, I accepted this answer without understanding it.

But now I understand it a little better, and cannot accept it.  Because it is, in its way, making an idol of death, or perhaps an idol of life.  The idea that avoiding death and suffering (even suffering such as the loss of resources, security, or a nation) is more important than the values of honor–duty–and maintaining proper relationship and integrity, is an insane idea at best.  Why?  Because we will HAVE death and suffering in this world–all of us will.

Could not the Japanese unbending (even in the face of death and suffering) allegiance to honor perhaps give us some glimmer, some possibility, that there is something more important than avoiding death and pain?  “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

Instead, in ignorance of the thing beyond that the Japanese adhered to, however terrifying or wrong their adherence and actions seemed, the West did a thing unspeakable.

It created a monster.

 

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Review: Rot & Ruin

I have never particularly liked zombies, and have never read any zombie stories.  Now, I love of monsters of all sorts, but I’ve always had an odd reaction to zombies.  They make me laugh, even though they’re horrible if you think about what they are and what they do.  I don’t know if they seem unbelievable to me or simply uninteresting.  As if they were the clumsy invention of a young child that then went horribly, ironically bad.  Like Frankenstein.

However, I happened to read a brief review of this book by someone who also did not like zombie books, and was intrigued by the claim that this book was not about zombies, but rather, was about what it means to be human.

That is always an interesting and important topic, no matter the backdrop.

So I picked up “Rot & Ruin” at the library.

I wasn’t disappointed!  The world the author creates is a believable and compelling backdrop; cozy, bucolic, and rustic in an odd sort of post-apocalypse way.  I enjoyed the mileau, and the curiosity one always has about strange creatures and how they work was well and logically answered (although I confess the zombies made me start laughing at several points–you can’t get around the intriguing absurdity of zombies).  No matter that the living dead is a strange enough concept; this book makes it work and uses it to play off the human drama.

Because that is indeed what this book is about.  This book is about human beings, their need for relationships, security, and meaning in their world.  What it looks like when people go bad or get scared to really be human anymore.  The well-drawn interactions in this book create compelling characters, social classes, and frames of consciousness for different groups that fit well with the world.

The heroes are not always who the main character, Benny Imura, expects them to be.  And in his increasing experience of the world he lives in, he faces ignorance and denial, treachery and power games unleashed by greed and lust in a world of anarchy, and the quiet, unassuming, unruffled peace that is the bolt that aims true.  Perhaps barely in time Benny figures out what is truly worthwhile and what is not–in time to take crucial steps to save what is.

One must ponder the question, though… why are monster stories such an excellent backdrop for showing the meaning of human value, action, and consciousness?

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Why to Write

I realized… I really hate blogging! Anonymous jewel-lit flights of fancy sprinkled across the page, all right. Deep, introspective ponderings on various life situations and philosophical possibilities, okay. Brilliant, sun-soaked illuminations of profound mystic truth, sounds good to me.

But I can’t put a face on. I can’t write for an audience. For the bare, simple reason that I am unsure who I’m writing for, and the people I imagine I’m writing for make me feel quite self-conscious (apparently) so that I tend not to let out the ecstatic drivel that is my truest self and highest passions.

Platforming and marketing runs tired and dry for me right now. This is largely because the sting and frayed edges of my own impurity and lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, frames the clear-as-a-bell sounding call for me to drop all material accomplishment, all ties to worldly life, and plunge myself headfirst into the sweet burning flame of renounced life.

Yes.

Once I come through the other side of that fire, I will know, perhaps, who I am, and why I am writing. At least I should hope to know why I am writing, who I am writing for, and what noble service I am doing, what I hope to accomplish with it. Now, it is too vague. The intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched. Dispersed. Fizzled out. Laser-like precision, single focused will, this is the only thing that will save me or anyone from the terror and bitter taste of wasted time, wasted life. Wasted consciousness.

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid, my long-time flame of inspiration and also my confirmation saint. Her singleness of purpose in service, to the renunciation of every worldly good or self-thought, is dressed in a thousand miracles and the bestowance of the mercy of the Lord in her honor.

So in her footsteps I shall set my face to the things of God for a time, and leave off all of these material worries. All the rest of these things are only for that–to always remember God, and never forget Him.