Exhaustion

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So, here I am again, woken at 3 AM in the morning by the narcissists that run the company that employs me. They’ve tied my compensation to acquiescence to their industrial ambitions, and won’t take “no” for an answer.

When my boss told me two months ago that he wanted me out of the company, I memorialized the conversation, and ended up in a scrum that included the owner and the HR manager. Offered control of the agenda, I chose compensation as the topic. At one point, I asked the owner whether he could characterize the value that I brought to the company. He stammered, and then admitted, “Well, perhaps I know more about other parts of the company that I know about your area.”

He has no idea what my contribution is worth, and interprets his ability over nine years to avoid that understanding not as a testament to my value and virtue, but as a reason to ignore them. In fact, my boss is his fair-haired child, a man that the owner sees as driven and strong enough to ensure success in the competitive world of commerce.

To clarify the emotional context that drove my concerns, I shared that my father had passed two years ago, and that I had been living in proximity to my mother in Westlake Village until rent increases had forced me to move away. The owner interrupted me, stating that others had come to him with family issues to demand higher pay, and he had the same response for me: my family issues were my problem. He had a “family” of more than a hundred employees to consider.

To demonstrate his sacrifice, he tendered a letter of offer for his business. He said that he didn’t really need it any more, and I was tempted to tear the envelope in two. My family is eight billion people. The mind that I occupy took three billion years to create, and will survive long after the sun has annihilated the earth and with it all material evidence of human accomplishment.

Our mind is worth more than his company. It is worth more than all the businesses in the world. There is no price sufficient to purchase a billet of entry. The qualifications for entry are the compassion, tenderness, and awe that guide those responsible enough to walk in the temple of the Most High without corrupting his Creation.

Those aren’t typical in those unable to recognize and honor virtue when they see it. I shouldn’t have to think twice about being close enough to support my mother. I shouldn’t have to think twice about flying out to Texas to support the survivors of our most recent mass shooting. If they recognized that, the executive team at my company would be bending over backwards to garner the benefits of awareness among those that receive my love that “I work at Advanced Motion Controls in Camarillo, California.”

Rock of Egos

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NASA’s New Horizons probe is flying through the Kuiper Belt (home of the Solar System’s comets) and about to survey a large rock. The rock is named “(486958) 2014 MU69“, which would sound nice when tweeted from R2D2, but is a terror for newscasters.

So NASA is running a contest to select a name to attach to the rock for their PR campaign. Recommendations include “Mjolnir” (Thor’s hammer) and certain mythical cities in the heavens.

My suggestion is “Ziggy Froid.”

The rationale? In honor of David Bowie, of “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” Because “Ziggy” is a diminutive of “Siegfried” and “Sigmund” which ties in to the Norse mythology of the Arctic Circle through Wagner’s series of Ring operas. And because “Froid” – French for “cold” – is a near-homonym of “Freud,” evoking my sense that it’s crazy to attach names of power to the first rock that we happen to encounter in the Kuiper Belt.

Though there’s no purpose served, you can visit the contest site and vote for my entry.

How Long?

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This nation has cultivated a spirit of violence. Lacking an external enemy, it turns now inward.

First Las Vegas, and now Texas. Both sites of the most fervent gun worship. The saner parts of the country reject your mania, and so the intensity of the hatred builds where it finds succor.

We shall overcome:

Exit the Dragon

The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe and Its Lessons for Today: An Interview with Daniel K. Williams

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In the form of an interview with Daniel Williams, Millennial offers the most sympathetic articulation of the pro-life stance that I have encountered. The experience of the original activists – proponents of the liberal theory of universal human rights – is typical of the experience of the Pharisees confronted by Jesus: any attempt to use law for moral ends allows hypocrites (such as the fiscal libertarians of the GOP) to suborn those impulses.

The proper approach is that of Jesus on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That generation did confront their error, seeing many of their brethren convert to Christianity – including Saul on the way to Damascus.

So should we look at the problem of abortion – as a teachable moment that might not change the heart of a desperate woman, but that should change her behavior, hopefully bringing her closer to God as a result.

Williams’ final paean to life also rings hollow in my ears: babies are not priceless because their genetic code is unique. They are priceless because they represent an opportunity for self-clarification of a soul. We do have responsibilities as parents to optimize the conditions of that opportunity. That is best informed by abandoning the categories “pro-life” and “pro-choice” and choosing to be “pro-creation.” Pregnancy should be a conscious and considered joy, not an accident.

Millennial's avatarMillennial

What was the pro-life movement like before Roe v. Wade? In Defenders of the Unborn, Daniel K. Williams, history professor at the University of West Georgia, provides an essential overview of the pro-life movement in this period. Millennial editor Robert Christian interviewed Williams on his groundbreaking book and its implications:

The pro-life movement is often associated with conservatism, but could you talk a little bit about the roots of the movement?

The modern American pro-life movement, which originated in the mid-twentieth century, was the creation of Catholic Democrats, most of whom subscribed to the social ethic and liberal political philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.  They believed that the government had a responsibility to protect the rights of minorities and provide a social safety net for the poor.  They viewed the unborn as a minority deserving of legal protection, but many of them…

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Healing Touch

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After Dance Tribe on Sunday, I stopped in to sit with a sick friend.

Reclining against the arm of his sofa, he motioned for me to take the armchair. I took the last pillow on the couch and put a hand on his shoulder. He got up to take a pain pill and we watched football, interrupted by two calls from ladies that love him.

Again I put my hand on his shoulder, then worked my way around to his neck on the side where the cancer was eating at his jaw. He sat up, giving me another twenty seconds to feel his spirit, then arose abruptly to set up a massage table. As he placed a sheet and pillow, I rolled a stool out from under the counter. He climbed onto the table, draping a blanket over his legs, and laced his fingers across his breastbone, waiting.

I had told him that I had come to get his head out of the way of the parts that were working toward healing: his heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. As I felt around, touching him gently, my right hand eventually came to rest along the right side of his head, fingers behind the ear.

I saw then the scene he had described before: the noose choking him as he grieved for his people and land.

The evil eating still at him.

I had advised him that many sacred beings stood in attendance to aid him in his struggle, and I did nothing for those twenty minutes other than facilitate the introductions. They gathered under my palms and fingertips, secure as I felt around in the corruption until safe harbor was found.

He relaxed completely, patient with my intuitive explorations. It was only at the end that I hooked my fingertips under the choking circle and widened it, lifting it over his head twice. Remnants remained – the connection to those others that had suffered with him, a connection that he needed to strengthen to transmit the pattern of healing.

I admitted: “I think that I need to allow you to process what you’ve received. Is it OK if I leave now?”

Dear friend, what an honor it is to support your struggle to bring light into the world.

Relax into Peace

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Tired of the politics of commercial software development, I’ve started looking for simpler options. The first thought was counseling or therapy, but I see five years of study before I can do that professionally, which leaves me only five years to pay off student loans.

So I went out to the Peace Corps site and found that they’re looking for physics instructors in Guinea. That’s seems really simple: nothing exchanged except knowledge and sustenance; no substantial compensation that seems to give people the idea that they should be allowed to tromp around in the garden of my mind.

The only catch is that the community is francophone. I took a year of French in college, thirty-five years ago, which is almost a loss. Happily, when my sons took French in high-school, I purchased a license to TellMeMore and began working through the lessons. I’ve picked it up with renewed enthusiasm now.

It will be a haul: ten courses of forty hours each. In the first week, I made it through half of the first course, which is material that I remember fairly well.

The effort is in the dictation. TellMeMore has voice recognition. Even English diction is a hazard for me: spending all day doing abstract reasoning has made my brain unbalanced, and that shows in my facial musculature. The left side is lazy.

I remember working hard in French during college, and I do mean physically. Jaws, lips and cheeks became tired from the contortions required to approximate the nasal vowels and the consonants. Again in that mode, TellMeMore kept complaining that it was having trouble with my audio equipment. On a scale of seven, I had trouble making even three, the minimum passing score.

The dictation sessions were the slowest part of the lessons.

I finally realized that French is all about vowels. This was gathered by comparing my sound profiles with the reference recordings. This improved my scores somewhat, but I still had trouble with the transitions between vowels and consonants. In particular, the consonants caused me to close my throat, which made it hard to get the vowels going again. Certain passages made me gag.

So: keep the throat open, which means dropping my tongue at the back of my palette, relaxing the jaw and letting the front half of my tongue form the consonants. And then this shift happened, with a frission that normally indicates that I’m working with other people: let the back of the throat roll from vowel to vowel, the consonants only interjecting rather than interrupting.

And I begin to sound like I’m speaking French.

It will be charming if this also improves my English diction. I’ll find out at work tomorrow.

Anti-Matter Antidote

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On my New Physics tab, I have a set of links that document some important facts that are unexplained by modern particle theory. These aren’t obscure points of experience. Rather, they include facts such as “the proton weighs 50 times as much as it should” and “quazars precede galaxy formation.” They are “first order” facts that should cause every particle theorist to blush in shame.

Experimenters at CERN have now magnified the problem.

The reigning theory of the universe holds that it formed from a super-hot gas – so hot that the very fabric of space contained more energy than the existing particles. As the universe cooled, that energy was converted to particles.

One problem with this theory is that energy is converted to matter through a process called “pair production.” You can’t make only one particle – you have to make two.

Specifically, the particle comes with an “anti-particle” with equal mass and opposite charge. The conundrum is that those particles attract, and when they meet, they annihilate each other. The matter and anti-matter convert back to pure energy.

This leads the physicists to wonder: how did we end up with a universe composed only of matter? In principle, there should be equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, and every solid object should be annihilated.

The answer proposed by the theorists was that matter and anti-matter are slightly different – and most importantly in their stability. Anti-matter must disappear through some unknown process that preserves matter.

The experiment reported today attempted to measure differences between the most important building-block of matter – the proton – and its antiparticle. None was detected.

In consequence, everything created by the Big Bang (or the Expansive Cool – take your pick) should have disappeared a long time ago. There should be no gas clouds, no galaxies, no planets, and no life.

If that’s not a reason to be looking for new theories of fundamental physics, then what would be?

The Narrow Gate

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When telling a friend on Sunday afternoon that I was going out to Vegas, I admitted that I considered it a sign that I have failed. Through all of my writing, begun anonymously out at Zaadz ten years ago and now openly here at WordPress, my hope has been that others would learn to do the things that I do.

He was irked, stating that other people pray as well.

But that’s not what I do.

I can’t document my experience. It started four days before my departure, and still continues. Time went into a blender. My body went forward on a linear track, moving through space into encounters that bridged to events earlier and later. Threads become tangled ever more densely, cresting with unforeseeable intensity.

It’s that tangling of threads that I am compelled to relate.

I knew what the outcome was: Paddock sitting with the gun in his mouth, gazing intently inwards beyond the metaphor of flesh to discern the personality that had broken his will. The flash of gunpowder blew a hole in its spirit, freeing the captives it had gained through violence.

But how to reach that moment?

The victims’ memorial was one pathway, but it also focused a wall of hatred against him. I did beneficial work there: in the first dark hours of Monday morning, rubbing the spasm-wracked back of a man mourning the stranger that he had tried to pull to safety, answering his repeated “It just sucks” with the tender mantra, “but you don’t.” Finally he opened his grief to me, and I gasped. When breath returned, I reassured him “Wow. Very good. That was good.”

As I fell asleep back at the hotel, I found again that moment of liberation, gathering the traumatized souls into my heart.

Waking at six, I pulled up the press reports to locate the Route 91 concert field. It was just kitty-corner from the hotel at the intersection of Las Vegas and Mandalay boulevards. In the days prior, I had visualized entering the field and kneeling before the stage. That seemed the most direct route into the trauma.

But faith communities were another possibility. I queried for Catholic churches, and learned that the diagonal through the field running away from the hotel ended at the Church of the Sacred Redeemer.

Expecting an early mass, I dressed and hustled down to the street. The concert field was inaccessible, cordoned by crime scene tape and guarded by officers in vehicles with flashing lights. I took the long way around to the Church, down Reno Blvd, hesitating at the cross walks to figure out how I could get through the cordon. The church yard was festooned with crime scene tape, but the schedule promised a mass at 12:10.

Backtracking, I felt the first deep surge of trauma as I walked up Reno. Catching my breath, I stretched both hands up to the sky. “Here. Here. This is where it hurts.” Washing the responsive grace slowly downwards, I found gratitude among the people and stretched back up to the heavens again.

Carrying grace and gratitude with me, I followed the hotel staff as they entered the Mandalay, stopping under the corner where the matte finish of the cladding betrayed the location from which the shots were fired. Stretching my hands up, I touched him again in a moment of calm in the days before the tragedy.

I took a shower and ate breakfast before heading back to the victims’ memorial. Chance encounters threatened to distract me: a young lady in a bright red dress standing in front of the elevator leading to the 32nd floor; two women at the table next to mine talking about blogs and event speakers; a blackjack dealer catching my eye as I tried to find my way back out to the parking structure.

I was anchored to the moment when the shooting stopped.

Heading back out to the victims’ memorial, I took more time in the sunlight to look at the faces, re-arranging the beads, signs and flowers to ensure that each was visible to the passers-by. A platoon of police officers endured stoically while tourists took selfies. Having finished my devotions to the fallen, I stepped forward to ask whether any of them had responded to the event.

I wasn’t surprised that none had, and normally would have disengaged, but the pressure that drove me brought me to ask of the man bearing insignia of rank “If it makes sense to you, would you represent them to me?” They looked askance, and I backed away. “That’s all right. I’ll walk by the concert field later.”

So I went back to the hotel. Feeling fatigued, I bought a cup of coffee and meditated to Snatam Kaur’s Jap Man Sat Nam and Ong Namo.

Then it was time to go to church.

The police SUV almost sent me away. I approached the officer to ask whether they had “shut them down.” Laughing, he replied “Far be it from me to shut down the Lord. Mass will be at 12:10.”

I entered and walked the perimeter of the interior, taking in the sculpture. I settled first in the back corner, furthest from the field, amid the icons of Christ. But a voice told me that I needed to be as close as possible to the external cross. So I moved all the way to the front, next to the statue of the Holy Mother bearing the infant Savior.

The service began with an apology from the priest. They had indeed been shut for the last week, giving up their offices and parking lot to the police and FBI while they did the crime scene analysis. The Paschal candle was lit in memorium of the victims, and the gospel would pay homage to the Good Samaritans that had done so much to prevent greater tragedy on October 1st.

And thus the gate opened to tears.

I can only bring back snippets. Sending the message into the panicked crowd that they should “run toward the cross.” Feeling Paddock, abandoned and demoralized, in the hours before the shooting started. Rallying those fleeing to “see each other” so that God might know how to marshal energy to guide the bullets away.

The great wash of energy rising from the cross, flooding across the field to enter through the open window to freeze Paddock with the proof that Christ had not abandoned him. The melody of “Amazing Grace” harmonized tenderly by the pianist, and the shocked hope of his realization that it was never too late.

And so it was finished.

As I left, I took the priest’s hands and stopped to pray:

Dear Father in Heaven: bless these hands, that those they touch may receive comfort and healing. Bless the mind of this man, so that his words may relieve confusion and bring faith. May all he encounters be inspired to open their hearts to the love that emanates from the Most High, and so receive grace and salvation.

To which, backing away, with a voice almost breaking in grief, he responded “Please keep praying for us.”

What Happened in Vegas

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I drove out to Vegas last night, getting in around midnight. After taking a room in the Mandalay Bay hotel, I walked down to the victim’s memorial on Las Vegas Blvd, finally turning in around 2 AM. I woke at 6 AM, unable to rest, and began the work that I was sent to do.

Touching the 58 crosses this morning, I was astonished by the number of young women. From some came peace and acceptance – from others the mourning of the family and communities from which they had been ripped.

That number was repeated at the Church of the Sacred Redeemer at noon. The celebrant mentioned the 58 several times.

But there weren’t only 58 dead. It’s just that one is dismissed as unworthy of concern.

Reading of Paddock’s writhing and moaning in bed, I understood his struggle. We used to talk about the “bad seed” or say the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Paddock’s father transmitted a spirit of violence to him. Today, many that suffer that initiation choose not to have children for fear that they will infect them as well. Paddock may have not had children for that very reason.

At Love Returns, I write of the Earth as a honey pot that trapped selfish personalities, enabled Micha-el and his cohorts to cast them out of heaven. Rejected, they rage against humanity here on earth, driving us into self-destructive behaviors.

What I realized, as I drove without rest for five hours on Sunday night, is that they are now trapped in our minds in the same way. If we focus our will carefully, we can blow them up.

In controlling their victims, one of the memes used by demons is that God has abandoned them. I went out to Las Vegas to love our enemy – to redeem the only soul that was in doubt. For those that can’t put the pieces together, that may be for the best.

But I will testify as to this: the grace and forgiveness of the Father is unlimited. Every spirit that falls and is redeemed blazes a trail through human nature. When we peer into their darkness, they see a light shining down on them. It’s important not to leave them there alone.

Words, not Bullets

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Response to Leah Libresco’s opinion piece out at WaPo: I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

The answer to what?

The gun control issue is about more than gun-related deaths. It is about the relationship between police and the public. It is about the psychology of our public spaces. It is about respect for democratic process and the methods used to create social change.

For far too long we have allowed the NRA, which contributes $54 million a year to sympathetic political organizations, to create a carte blanche remit for the gun industry to poison our political dialog with advertising that promotes hostility, suspicion and fear – all with the goal of building a deeply-rooted need to possess ever-more-powerful tools of violence.

This is the real problem. An assault weapons ban is merely the low-hanging fruit that all politicians should be willing to embrace as a means of defining what is acceptable in political dialog. No one should feel a need to own a military-style weapon. That so many of them are sold is a testament to the control that the gun industry has over our culture.