Reflections on a Higher Power

In this essay, I write on my thoughts on God (cue Blue Cars) from my perspective from a few decades of sobriety, as an ethnic Jew (paternally, wrong side), a Catholic (again paternal side) and a consumer of cable TV archaeology documentaries. I don't claim scholarship. There will be no references to check. If you don't like that, stop reading now.

In Europe, my people were forced to become Lutherans, and after the 30 Years War, Catholic. My grandmother's family has been Catholic since, but there are a lot of Jewish last names on my grandmother's side (Fuchs, Lieb, Dasenberg). Bindner derives from the name Bittner (in English, Cooper), which is both Saxon and Yiddish. The name Bindner is the Luxembourgish version, with that second n making it closer to Bodner (Yiddish) than Binder (German) in my estimation. The Pittner family name is the Argentine variant or Tonelero or Varela in Spanish. 

The idea for this essay came from considering whether I wanted to binge watch the next season of Lucifer tonight on Netflix (the new season is out). The concept of Lucifer evolved from being the angel whom God uses to test the metal of people with adversity (hence the fires of Gehenna) into the Zoroastrian world of angels and devils. 

This led my thoughts to the the damnation narrative of the Book of Revelation. Revelation was a criticism of the Gentile church of Paul and his successors, who had departed from the purity of the original Church in Jerusalem which was led by the brother of Jesus from a different mother. Jerusalem had been sacked by Rome and John of Patmos was pining for its restoration. Enter Hell. Just as the image of Lucifer evolved, so did the image of God.

The first appearance of an eternal, ineffable, God was in the burning bush. God says He was Who is. That is a fancy way of saying that He (and/or She) is Being itself. In other words, God is everywhere and in everything. This is underlined by the Commandment that there be no graven image of God (indeed, the devout are not even allowed to write the word, instead G_d is used. Of course, if everyone knows that it means God, you may as well put in the "o".  

This idea that God is everywhere, is not limited, was and is the unifying principle of Judaism and similar faiths. Digging around the Holy Land has found that Sinai has found no evidence of a large national settlement, although one show has found that at Mt. Horeb, something like 12 large rocks (representing the 12 tribes) was found and that Horeb is a much more impressive mountain, visually - but still, no Cecil B. DeMille ruins. This is another way of saying that the idea, not the events, are what is vital - what gives life.

Ruins in Israel prior to the Exile (to Babylon) show that people kept house gods (indeed, there was even Ashura, who was the bride of YHWH, who also had statues). After the Exile, there were no such statues. They  also show that at some point, the god-kings of Canaan were displaced by a society where there was no king. The Bible calls this the period of the Judges. 

Whether this was due to invasion or revolution cannot be proven. The myth is the former, the reality is likely the latter. Regardless, the Book of Joshua states that the Tribes eventually stopped going around Canaan sacking cities and began living in peace with the locals. This adds credibility (to me) to the revolution theory rather than invasion. 

During the Exile, the Pentateuch was consolidated. When Ezra and Nehemiah rebuilt (or built) the Temple of Solomon, the people gathered (as they supposedly did at Horeb) and accepted the Law. The myth is that Moses gave us the Torah. The reality, according to biblical scholarship, is something different.

This is something that should be stressed in how we treat the Palestinians in modern Israel - especially because we Ashkenazim are ethnically more European than Middle Eastern. It is likely that the same people, generally, who were Canaanites were then Israelites, with some taken to Iraq, returned with all accepting the national idea, with the Samaritans excepting Christianity in the first century CE, and most when Constantine made it that state religion. Then the Muslims came and people accepted that. Is I stated at the outset, how you pray is often a function of who conquers you or tries to murder you (which is the same thing).

Next, the action shifts to Jesus. Part of why he was rejected was because he claimed to put a face on the ineffable God. How can the omnipresent be a person? Those who believe in his resurrection do so because they believe that the people who saw him raised were not lying and that this group became the Church (before the second Century, apostles were everyone who saw the risen Jesus, instead of just the shepherds (which can be rendered as Overseer which can be pastor or bishop - when cities had more than one congregation, Clement of Antioch made it mean the latter and Christianity has not recovered since).

In the early days, the Mandala, which was an image of Jesus' face, was displayed on Holy Days in the East. When it disappeared, the Shroud appeared. It is believed to be the same thing. Paintings of Jesus have a commonality that can be traced to the Mandala. Such paintings, with paintings of saints, became Icons. The iconoclasts did not like that. The Jews and Muslims were still honoring the command not to show images of God, which includes Jesus. The next generation said that the image is a link to the divine, so that it may be venerated as such, but not worshiped. 

Then the practice of Eucharistic Adoration evolved and host as transmission of Jesus to the people, making them the body of Christ, became God. There is no way of knowing. Jesus is experienced in Communion by those of us who believe in the real presence, but the test is consumption. What happens before cannot be known, only believed in common agreement. I have never found any comfort in Adoration, but experience my higher power in consumption. 

I believe that the Rabbi of Caphernaum would be aghast at becoming a graven image. He believed he was one with the father, but in Communion we were one with him. He also believed in the spirit of the law, not the words. The iconoclasts, both in Constantinople and Istanbul, were adhering to the words, not the spirit, which is that God is in being and word and love - not in an object. The people who wrote the words were trying to convey that as an ideal, not as a prohibition. 

We like our idols, our representations of God - including his words written down in the Gospels, the Torah and the Koran - or the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The debates between using the Big Book and 12 Concepts & Twelve Traditions is an extension of that. This essay sprang to mind while reflecting on the fact that, in modern times, even those who would paint only geometric designs on their mosques now freely carry pictures of religious leaders and watch images on television. 

Images are both a reflection of the divine and an expression of tribe. The ideal of a universal God is to go beyond tribe and find the Truth, especially the Truth of Being in Love (capitalization reflects my Trinitarian beliefs. Even Athieists and Agnostics value Love as the ultimate value to live by. The belief in a Trinity is not so different from the 1000 names for Allah or the many terms for Ashem or Shekinah (the divine feminine) or Sophia (divine Wisdom - which in ancient Suomic is Alita or TaLetta - my Norse grandmother and second great grandmother's name). 

Ultimately, the name or names we have for God are expressions of how we relate to God relating to us. We cannot know the truth in this life, so we should quit fighting about it. Twelve Steppers believe in allowing each to have the God of their own understanding. It is why some cringe when people say Jesus in meetings and why some do not use the Lord's Prayer (which Catholics call the Our Father), because it implies Jesus as higher power. 

The problem is not the words, it's the sectarian title. Even the use of the original title implies sect. Calling it the Carpenter's Prayer would be more inclusive. I like thinking of it as the Rabbi of Caphernaum's prayer, which is what he was doing when he gave the Sermon on the Mount.The root translation for the word in the Greek is more akin to day laborer - the kind that congregate at 7-Eleven than the skilled middle class tradesman. We like gods we can relate to. Jesus wanted us to find him in the poor. 

With time in sobriety, I have my own beliefs (which are of a humanistic Jesus) and a communal one, which is being an Agnostic Pantheist - meaning I am not out to convert anyone. Lately, I am partial to using the Hebrew feminine form Shekinah, which can be identified with the Spirit as well. 

"Recovered Catholics" have a problem with the rules, Mass attendance and prayer requirements of their childhoods. These are sourced by the teachings of St. Anselm, who believed in a transactional salvation (obey and you go to Heaven) rather than what Jesus actually taught (the Spirit of the Law giveth life). My reading of the Gospels comes up with crucifixion as vision quest, not offering. Instead of God killing Jesus out of spite, Jesus experienced the pain we feel in this existence, so we could relate back to God.

The Church teaches that God cannot look upon evil, so we must be purified. I believe that God does not see evil. My HP accepts me as I am and am not (She has no stake in how I behave other than Love) - with humility accepting that this is true and that I must understand others in the same way. To do either requires the assistance of God, as these are impossible ideals, not a license to avoid working on defects of character, which are things that I cannot change. God can change me. 

This is no cop out. My focus is must not be on me, but on how I treat others - which must be as God sees them. My defects show how I am not so good at that, but my focus must not be on others, not my discomfort with myself (or Mice Elf). The Seventh Step prayer says nothing about my working to fixing myself. Takes divine help.  Step 12 means I am not to fix my cab driver, my barista, my daughter or my ex-wife. It takes a long time to see that i sobriety. We learn by doing, not by thinking. 

How I treat others reflects or is reflected by how I see my higher power - and that is always a work in progress. I am still not fine with the state of the world I am wired by genetics to like and be good at politics and public service. God has not removed that from me. Whether She does or does not, or when, is none of my business. Thank you for letting me share. If I keep coming back, I will remember this growth. If I don't, I will try to get drunk and kill myself before I get to how Gin made me feel when I was 11 (note capitalization). Gin drunks are the worst. If you like gin for the taste, there is something seriously wrong with you. If you like the taste of Gin, find me after a meeting. I will give you my phone number.

PS, funny story. I had read in Susan Powter's book that she thought 12 step programs were a Protestant cult. In my first day of aftercare, the counselor asked if I had been to any meetings. I said no, just another fellowship and he said there was one after the session across the street - which was my parish church. I figured that Monsignor Awalt would not let a protestant cult in his basement - so the joke was on me.

I have a nice way of closing. Baruch atah Adoni Elihenu, grant me serenity......

Why the World Hates King Donald

 Let’s put aside the obvious; that he is an odious buffoon, a bully and ignorant of a great many things. He is not actually as stupid as he looks. For example, the problem of low flow toilets and non-incandescent light bulbs really is a thing. Sometimes you need to think like Trump to understand that he is not entirely daft. He is also correct, in a way, about NATO and its dependence of American force projection. He gets the solution wrong, however. It is not withdrawal. It is expansion of the political system.

This story goes back to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran (who is actually a descendant of the Khans) and the foundation of the Islamic Republic. This event has colored Middle Eastern political and religious life for 40 years and shows no sign of stopping. Indeed, the more we interfere, the more likely the status quo will be maintained.

Why this is important to American foreign policy involves delving into the mind of Dick Cheney. Anyone who served in the DoD knows that the PPBS process goes from Defense Guidance to planning, programming, budgeting and into contracting and execution of mission.  When Dick was our boss as the Secretary of Defense, the first Gulf War took place and the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union fell. 

According to General Wesley Clark, who saw the D.G., in order to keep the economic engine which is the military industrial complex well fed, a new threat was needed. The Secretary found that threat in the Middle East. His grand plan was a series of wars and American footholds, with Iran as the last stage. 

Whether Cheney’s motivation was economic, jingoistic or an unacknowledged love of President Carter, whose presidency was ruined, in part, by the hostage crisis, what he planned as Secretary was actualized as Vice President. In response to September 11, another war in Iraq was his response. He wanted to finish the job of ousting Saddam. Bush 43 was having none of it, nor did General Powell.

How does this relate to Trump and to NATO? When the second Iraq War was looming, the world did not want any part of it. The coalition of the willing included the U.K., but not much else from NATO. People took to the streets. It is important to understand why.

The United States, and its President, is the leader of the alliance. The American Giant had awoken in World War II. Europe and the Pacific were a ruin. The U.S. was not. We also had a nuclear monopoly, at least for a while and we were not sharing the weapons, nor the launch codes. Every mutual defense treaty we have spells out that the Supreme Commander must be an American flag officer, reporting to the President.

In 2003, Europe did not like the full implication of that agreed upon reality. President Obama, who pulled Europe’s feet out of the fire in Libya, was seen as a much more capable King of the Alliance, for by treaty, the President is essentially a king (Europe invoked NATO because a slaughter of rebels at the lands of Qaddafi would have made it hard to keep buying their light sweet crude). Then Trump was elected.

Trump did not, and probably does not, understand even the basics of American defense, like the nuclear triad (land based ICBMs, nuclear subs and B-2 bombers). The subtleties of American hegemony do not occur to him. All he knows is that he got caught wanting to put a giant tower in downtown Moscow, which would have looked phallic from behind the onion domes of St. Basil’s. I am sure he fully expects that this tower may eventually have his name on it. He may finally be having doubts. It was never going to happen.

NATO does not like that its King was playing for the other team. He has no appreciation that his role as President gave him that power or that Europe was an is aghast that he, in theory, possesses it. If I were a European, I would want Trump out of NATO more urgently than Trump wants to leave. It is a triumph of long-term thinking that the United States has not been expelled from the alliance. An extremely unlikely second term may have that result. 

Those in the know are hoping that Cy Vance will indict Trump sooner than later and that Don McGahn will quickly be before House Judiciary, forcing the GOP to do to Trump what it did to Nixon. A dark GOP convention, a dormant Trump ad campaign and signals from the Senate Leader that social distancing from Trump is OK can be seen as hints the way that Kremlin watchers would analyze who was in favor by who sat where during parades in Red Square. (I doubt Trump is aware that this was even a thing).

Getting rid of Trump is a short-term Band-Aid to a bigger problem. Indeed, the last three years have again drawn attention to the American monopoly in mutual defense. Trump has it ass backwards. The problem is not that we support Europe, but that Europe has no say in the selection of the Supreme Allied Commander or the election of his Commander in Chief.

This state of affairs cannot be maintained. At some point (which Trump is right about), there must be fundamental change of America’s role in the Alliance. What Trump cannot process is that it must involve either removing automatic command from the American President or including the entire alliance in his or her selection.

Democracy does not do empire well. We use our economic power to make it look good, but it is against our basic credo; although since the Spanish American War, we have been relishing how imperialism and capitalism work so well together. 

Frequent readers know that getting rid of capitalism is also on my list.

To expand the Allied polity, we need to contract the scope of American governance. Many matters should be governed and funded at a regional, rather than a national level. The White House staff, even with the best of Presidents, is not the proper venue for what is called the Administrative Presidency, which is control of the domestic agenda over and above fiscal policy (and sometimes including it). 

Regional vice presidents and legislative caucuses will remove unaccountable power closer to the people. Civil and workers rights, the national debt,  printing money and military and strategic deployments, of course, would remain national, as would NASA and certain regulatory agencies. 

At some point, allies become regions and regions become allies, with some combination of regional executives and allied legislators selecting the Commander in Chief of the Alliance. That person should not always be an American. Many would say, we have had our turn. Trump taking his (and wanting to keep it) may be the last straw.

The Soul of the Abortion Debate

 We all know the two main contours of the debate on abortion: economic and sexual. 

The economic solution takes the incentive out of using birth control or resorting to abortion when it does not work. Over 7 of 10 abortions are performed for people  who are either poor or cannot afford to have another child. The solution to this problem is to increase the child tax credit from a $2000 non-refundable bonus to $1000 a month distributed with pay.

Another factor is fatal fetal defect or maternal life or health.  If a child will be stillborn, it is better to take it earlier than later as the child has no claim on its mother if it won’t survive anyway. Non-fatal defects, predominantly Downs or being female in a patriarchal society, are solvable by economics so that the child is not a burden. 

The other main reason is sexual autonomy, as in the person does not want a child and will use abortion as another form of birth control. Conservatives believe that this is the case with all abortions, but they also reject the economic solution as socialism because they don’t want to subsidize the sexuality of poor people, especially those of color or who are unmarried. In other words, it really is about controlling female sexuality from their POV, not protecting the life of a child in utero.

These are complicated issues, or not if you are willing to spend the money or mind your own business. The fire in the pro-life belly, however, is that the debate gets to the notion of what it means to be a person, particularly in relation to whether there is such a thing as an immortal soul - with all that implies as to whether God exists at all.

Pro-lifers believe that every soul, rather than every sperm, is sacred. This is because they want to think of themselves as sacred. For them, to kill a fetus is an attack on the existence of God. It is why the Catholic Church has such a vested interest in the debate. The asexuality of the Catholic hierarchy is less a driver as the belief in an afterlife. They see those who abort as non-believers in their Imaginary Friend. I am not saying that in a bad way. God is a conception, not a reality in the physical universe. It is certainly easier to get an abortion if you think this is all there is 

The reality is that many believers do get abortions as well, mostly for compassionate reason because they do not want to bring a child into the world who would be poor or spend life suffering. I am talking perceptions from the right, not lived experience of families. My wife had two miscarriages. The first was hardest on us. The second, not so much. Part of coping is carrying a bit less, although I do still mourn the loss.

That there is a materialistic soul is obvious. Indeed, settling on what that is ends the debate on birth control being a murderous act. In the material world, the soul is the electro-chemical process by which the brain and body organize to prevent entropy.  Once the soul is gone, decay sets in. This is a sign that maybe, if the body is going into organ failure while in a coma, Elvis has left the building. At gastrulation, the tissues that grow into the brain and nervous system coordinate development. Aristotle would call that lower powers obeying the higher.

Apologists for abortion draw the line at when the child could be born (as the law), or when the child is capable of cognitive function. Given what we now know about the ghost in the machine theory being false (meaning that consciousness is a result of brain activity, not its cause), cognitive ability has no meaning. 

People dislike cruelty, whether it is a 20 week fetus responding to the negative stimuli of a later term abortion, a newborn boy who is facing circumcision or an infant who gets surgery but is not given pain relief (which could also be hazardous).  A child that suffers, even if it cannot appreciate the suffering consciously, disturbs us. If it continues suffering, that can also set up bad neural pathways in a way that will warp its personality.

Children are not conscious until they have language. Blind and deaf Helen Keller described her life as animalistic until her teacher spelled water in her hands. Language is what makes us free. The more you command language, the more options are available to you. Creating language is creating the world. 

That realization is dangerous indeed. We know that children and the demented respond to stimuli, even if they do not understand it. So do great apes, who have limited (but existing) vocabulary (especially regarding cookies). My daughter responded to stimulus as an infant. She would even say “ticwa” rather than mama or dada. She said this until I realized that she was trying to say tickle. Once she learned tickle, there was no more ticwa. She only knows that because we told her.

Being in the womb, a child or demented is actual life, but without language or reflection. It is the same lack of reflection experienced in twilight sedation during a visit by aliens (colonoscopy), an alcoholic blackout or the experience of taking Ketamine to reduce consciousness to nothing. 

Hypnosis, including self-hypnosis, or meditation, has the goal of stopping the mind’s commentary to either respond to suggestion or experience reality without noise. On occasion, I have found that trance-like state, where you are not sleeping and cannot dream. I was one with my body, the bus, the road for two hours - from Cleveland to the Elyria rest stop. They call this mindfulness meditation. I am not so sure. I spent almost three years becoming conscious. I am not sure that mindless being is not a way to simply lose time.

Back to abortion, what if the experience of soul is all about language. If so, what kind of soul does an aborted fetus have; or a child. On the other side, has someone who died with dementia lost their soul with their ability to express themselves. Are near death experiences simply a neurological phenomenon rather than something out of the body? It would seem so. Memories are in the mind, not the soul. If the mind is shut off, it cannot remember what it was not present to.

It takes real faith to grapple with this question. This is because proof is impossible. An afterlife is entirely a matter of faith (including, for Christians, believing that the stories told by the original 500 witnesses to the Resurrection are true and not a first century fiction). That Christians, and others, have a shared belief in an afterlife which they share evidence of explains why they resist abortion - but that is mainly because they want more proof and less faith. It is a natural human response. 

There is also the question of retribution. Real faith would regard some abortions, as well as most suicides and euthanasia as compassionate, rather than treading on matters to be left to the authority of God. Such a God is simply an Ogre in a white garment. A God that does not depend on the obedience of Her creatures is not to be feared.

Does this excuse abortion? I never said that. I am not a fan, but am compassionate for those who see no alternative. My job as a believer is to find alternatives and not shrink from those cases where there is no value in preserving a life which could never survive being born. As for the rest, it is not my place to judge (so as not to be judged - which is also an article of faith).

Compassion works both ways. Regardless of the natural desire to see pro-birth Catholics and their Evangelical enablers as sexist fiends, we must try to give them the benefit of the doubt in facing whether one of their core beliefs is challenged by an act which is none of their business. It takes great faith indeed to believe in a God who does not have an agenda.