Edward Hays ~ Author, Artist & Storyteller
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Ubiquitous Lust

7/31/2013

 

Ubiquitous Lust

Dear old and new friends,

    A friend gave me the book Staring at the Sun by Dr. Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who wrote about our lustful craving to revere a great man or woman or to become the disciple of some master or mentor. He relates the extraordinary reverence paid to the Dalai Lama when he spoke in 2005 at Stanford University. Yalom wrote of watching as eminent professors, deans, even Nobel-level scientists, all rushed forward like schoolchildren to bow before the Tibetan Lama and call him “Your Holiness.” He then quotes Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom who wrote about “the lust for submission,” which is the stuff, says Yalom, from which religion emerges.

    Erich Fromm’s words inspired me to recall when I first tasted the lust for submission which was in college with my deference to those who possessed a superior intellect, be they classmates or brilliant professors. My lust to be deferential was heightened in the presence of bishops and archbishops of the Church’s hierarchy. While I never personally met a pope, I fanaticized kneeling to kiss his ring and addressing him “Your Holiness”—and being able to boast this rarest of events to others. The adoration of a fan’s (short for fanatic) fascination of stars from television, movies and sports, and even in politics, is another form of that lust.

    Irvin Yalom’s accusation that the yearning to be subservient was “the stuff of religion,” drove me to explore honestly my own religion. The personal rituals in my Catholic religion of hushed silence in church and genuflecting and kneeling for prayer and worship, I had considered signs of reverence, not subjugation. But scrutiny of prayers like “O Lord, I am not worthy” and “Lord have mercy on me for I have sinned against you” I came to see as verbal confirmations of submissiveness of those rituals.

    Fear is the evil root of any acquiescence, fit for slaves but not lovers of a compassionate and beloved God. The Galilean Teacher radically somersaulted society’s values both then and today by calling his followers to be lovingly submissive to other’s needs. By his words and the servile washing of his companion’s feet he taught his community was not to lust for any kind of hierarchical structure. When it came to disciples, the unspoken desire of Jesus was expressed well by Gandhi: “I don’t want disciples or followers, just fellow seekers of the truth.”

    An ancient Hindu proverb says, “A person consists of his faith. Whatever is one’s faith, even so is he or she.” Be a seeker of the truth! Examine honestly your religion, church or faith to see if it has infected you with a lust to be submissive to the powerful. If so, then cleanse every bit of it out of yourself. As for any urge to cleanse it from your religion—don’t! That’s God’s business, not yours!

The Vacant Cure

7/24/2013

 

The Vacant Cure

Dear old and new friends,
  
    Where did Adam and Eve go on vacation? Since they lived in Paradise, they didn’t need to go anywhere—but they should have!

    Summer is vacation time, but when I was a child only the rich and upper middle-class had such luxury! The typical pre-unionized laborer worked up to ten hours a day six days a week! Sundays were their restful vacations…no wonder our favorite prayer for the dead was “May they rest in peace”!

    In the1900’s, New Yorkers sweltering in the heat of the city began declaring their intention to “vacate” their homes to travel north to summer camps in the forest and lakes of the Adirondacks Mountains. A new Americanism was born—“Vacation”—and it quickly replaced the previously used British term, “Holiday.”

    A summer vacation trip for most people and families is now a common annual event. The poor though still are unable to vacate their homes or jobs for a vacation. If your budget is stretched to the last penny and a summer vacation likely isn’t possible—take a one anyway! Why? Gradually, as dust slowly settles on furniture, the old twins Habit & Routine eclipse our eyes to the marvelous wonders of our daily surroundings. A cure for habit blindness is to “vacate” your home for a Thoreau exercise. I believe it was Henry David Thoreau who suggested departing your home and closing the door as if you would never return again…and then go for a long walk that would end where it began—at your front door!

    Now enter your home with Alzheimer’s eyes, as if seeing it for the very first time! With such original vision, hopefully you will experience what Thoreau wrote in Walden, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads!” G.K. Chesterton proposed the same when he paradoxically proclaimed, “The purpose of traveling is to come home.”

    Vacations are a cure for many things in our lives. When you are engaged in any project, especially a difficult one, vacate it for a mini-vacation. Upon returning to it with new eyes your task will be energized with creativity. If not, vacate it again for a longer time!

    What was the Original Sin? Was it disobeying God by eating of the forbidden fruit or the sin that preceded eating the apple? Adam and Eve weren’t happy and content having what they had with paradise under the feet and over their heads. They wanted more…they wanted to be Godlike! Ah, if only they had chosen to vacate Paradise even for a short walk they might not have fallen from grace.

    A religious belief states we’ve all inherited Original Sin. So universal is being dissatisfied and always wanting more, Original Sin should be renamed Daily Sin!

The Prehistoric Question

7/17/2013

 

The Prehistoric Question


                           *Footnote to the Previous Haystack Reflection of July 10

After my blog reflection on the Baptist Diet of bugs in which I spoke of Americans great disdain for eating bugs, I accidentally came upon the following: “The average American eats one to two pounds of dead insects and insect parts a year that are contained in such foods as pasta, spinach, broccoli, cereal, rice and beer. The Food and Drug Administration has allowable levels of insects for various foods; beer, for example, can contain up to 2,500 aphids per 10 grams of hops.” This quote is from ScientificAmerican.com that I found in the June 21, 2013 issue of the magazine The Week.

Picture"Sinking" by Melissa Rubin
Dear old and new friends,

    Melissa Rubin’s painting Sinking visually captures our helplessness world under attack from both sky and ocean. Symbolic of the human-made world is her lone house being inundated by the dark evil of storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and other disasters. Humanity’s perpetual question is who is to blame for such evils?

    Those who believe in God usually see God as sole ruler of the world. Do the lightning bolts striking the house in the painting and the belief God is the sole ruler of the world mean that both good and evil must be from God? That verdict was affirmed when God took ownership (Gen. 6:3-7) of the catastrophic global flood of Noah’s time as a divine punishment for the sinfulness of the world. Likewise, it is God who rains down an apocalyptic firestorm (Gen.19) totally incinerating the sin-soaked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

    Bible-clutching preachers used these scriptures (considered infallible by some) when claiming hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on New Orleans for the sinfulness of its Gay population! Yet, when the recent terribly destructive tornado leveled so much of Moore, Oklahoma, those same Bible belt preachers didn’t point their finger up to the sky! Lawyers affirmed preachers with their “Act of God” legal clause that made God culpable for a variety of evils as it denied victim’s legal compensation for a variety of destructive disasters since the Almighty had caused them.   

    Despite biblical or legalistic culpability, do you personally think God is liable for our increasing natural disasters? And if not God, then what malicious superpower is to blame? Consider that God, not wanting to be a divine puppeteer, gave humans the gift of Free Will so without outside manipulation we could freely choose how to act. Consider also that the Creator gave the natural world the same freedom to act according to its own unique laws and by so going made all natural disasters neutral—neither good nor evil!

    Human history and today’s world is saturated with Evil. We can’t blame it on some supernatural diabolic power since we know we humans alone are the source of deliberate, malicious evil! That knowledge is the source of the old anonymous truth, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing!”

The Baptist Diet

7/10/2013

 

The Baptist Diet

Picture
Dear old and new friends,

    Americans are always hungry for a new diet guaranteed to radically reduce weight and is also healthy. I have just the right one—the Baptist Diet! It’s named not after the Southern Baptists, but rather John the Baptist.

    Summertime is bug time. We can swat, spray them to death or sauté them to be eaten. This Baptist Diet, reported in the Gospel attributed to Mark, tells us that John the Baptizer wore a garment of camel hair and fed on locusts and wild honey! Among God’s dietary laws the Book of Leviticus lists: “You may eat the various kinds of locusts, grasshoppers, various kinds of katydids and crickets.” The success of this Baptist diet clearly is visible in icons and pictures depicting John as a thin, gaunt desert acetic.

    Arab desert nomads are fond of eating locusts after pulling off their heads, wings and legs. The worldwide consumption of grasshoppers, ants and bugs (as well as 1,900 other insect species) makes sense since they are highly nutritious and a healthy food source of fat, protein, vitamins, fiber and mineral content. Regardless how nutritious they are we westerners can’t stomach the thought of eating bugs…even honeybees that are said to be especially delicious.

    This summer America’s east coast will experience its 17-year cycle of cicadas when billions of them will appear, amounting to an estimated ratio of 600 cicadas per person. If you have a Baptist appetite, these cicadas roasted or sautéed should be exceptionally tasty since they have fed on underground tree sap while hidden those seventeen years!

    Bugs perform an inestimable service in nature and a valuable spiritual service as challengers of prejudice and bias. When next you come upon a big grasshopper or fat cockroach, stop and vigorously strive to overcome your discrimination against bugs. After overcoming your bug bias, consider moving on to other more subtle, less evident ones disguised by the subterfuge of your “dislikes.”  

    To be prejudiced is to be narrow-minded. Instead be broad, Godly-minded by letting every bug “bug” you…and pester your conscience to own and uproot any other culturally “acceptable” prejudices.

The Haystack

7/3/2013

 

The Haystack

Picture
Dear old and new friends,

    Before the 19th and into the 20th century hay was cut by hand and usually stored in a haystack, the name of my blog. Great stories have been spun of travelers lost in the blinding blizzards on the plains who found refuge by crawling inside a haystack. Cyrus McCormick developed a mechanical hay cutting and bundling machine in 1872 but the first reliable mechanical baling machine didn’t appear until 1939, and after World War II became common on farms. Few, if any of us, have ever actually seen a real haystack yet the name continues as a figure of speech in common phrases such as: “Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” an aged metaphor from the early 1500’s for an almost impossible task.

    I entitled my first book “The Haystack,” a play on my family name and the late medieval metaphor about the lost needle. In my early twenties I had purchased a bound book on whose blank pages I intended to write the book by hand. The Haystack never evolved beyond the first page! That lone page was my drawing of a round stone wheel with a smaller stone on top entitled, “The second greatest human invention was the brake.” I still have it as a blank reminder that mistakes can be great teachers!

    My early mistake of thinking all I needed to be a writer was pen and paper taught me an important life lesson. While IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is helpful, more important is EQ (Experience Quotient). Experiences of beauty, adventure, painful defeat, heartaches and successes slowly grow into a useful guidebook for life and writing. I now add to EQ hefty doses of invaluable CQ (Curiosity Quotient) about which poet satirist Dorothy Parker said, “Curiosity is the cure for loneliness. There is no cure for curiosity.”

    Becoming an octogenarian who isn’t a crossword puzzle fan, I required something to vigorously exercise my aging brain cells. A year and a half ago that need was resolved when I decided to write a weekly blog reflection, and for a name I resurrected The Haystack from its tomb. My hope is that old or new friends reading it might find needles of inspiration within. I also hope those reading today’s Haystack find in it the precious silver needle of encouragement to resurrect some abortive activity or pursuit from yesteryear’s tomb.

    Before concluding, I desire to mention “haywire,” that Americanism for being confused, out of control or temporarily crazy. It originated from cutting tightly wrapped bailing wire around an oblong hay bale. Sometimes when the wire was cut it would unexpectedly whiplash around wildly. On occasions may The Haystack reflections contain a wild haywire of paradox or fanatical thought.

    July is hay baling season. Since the 1970’s it is common to see those large round bales of hay in fields. In the failing yellow sunset light, to quixotic romantics these appear as phantom covered wagons rolling across the prairies.


    Edward Hays


    Picture
    Haysian haphazard thoughts on the
    invisible and visible mysteries of life.

    Picture

    The Haystack


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