Two Letters for 1993
by
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Let me commence by giving you a preliminary insight into where I’m going with what is soon to follow. To fashion that preliminary insight, let me describe for you the picture which I...as early as perhaps the age of 4...associated with the notion of God. Up front, let me be honest and confess much of it probably comes from Walt Disney...most probably from Snow White. Since the image was formed during a period of my life of which I have little or no memory, it’s not possible for me to be sure of either what events contributed to its formation or how much was contributed by what events. Picture a little clearing deep in a dense forest. In the middle of that clearing is a small white cottage with a thatch roof. It has a doorway and window bays but no door or window panes to block those openings. That’s because The Friendly Old Man living there wants any and every living thing to have unrestricted access to Him. No matter what the time of day or night, whatever wishes to do so can come and go without so much as having to open a door or slide a sash. That, though, is not even the half of what’s unusual about The Friendly Old Man. The far more remarkable thing is this: He never hurts and can’t be hurt. You can try to hurt Him. You can kick Him, for example. But, nothing will feel pain or suffer damage except your own foot. If you spit at Him, your saliva will go no further than you. Try yelling at Him. Curse Him, if you wish. It’s meaningless to Him. He’s as friendly as ever. There is a drawback, of course: The Friendly Old Man never does what He hopes will hurt you...whether as a way of getting even or as a way of causing you to avoid a worse disaster. On the other hand, He does do things which He very well knows can’t fail to hurt certain types of visitors regardless of whether or not He Himself...whether as a final or an intermediate goal...intends the hurt. For example, He very well knows you will get hurt if you kick Him; and yet, He will let you kick Him, if you insist on it. He’ll let you kick Him as many times as you want, even if it means your foot will be reduced to a bloody pulp. In a certain sense, then, The Friendly Old Man is indeed harsh...exceedingly harsh. Invoking a bit of "poetic license", we can say He’s harsh in the same sense that New York City’s sidewalks are harsh because they refuse to transform themselves into air mattresses whenever struck by suicides leaping from a skyscraper. It’s easy to perceive it: The harshness of a first party to a second one can result in two radically different ways: ONE: Having decided to change the way he behaves toward the second party, the first party may then attack rather than befriend that second party. TWO: Having decided never to change, he will, if successful, automatically become maximally threatening...threatening, though, to only one kind of second party. I refer, of course, to all those with a compulsive commitment to the most irrational and suicidal ambition of them all...namely: to be the "irresistible force" which caused the "immovable object" to change. The harshness of the changeable can’t be compared that of the changeless. By definition, the changeable can switch from intend to befriend to intend to attack; the changeless never switches at all. The former may be either aggressive or non-aggressive at any given moment; the latter is forever one or the other. If the changeable causes death, loss of body parts, beatings, imprisonment, loss of property, or ostracism, it may sometimes be something he solicited...solicited by changing to behavior he hoped was so designed it would insure such a result; at other times, it may be no more than an inadvertent but unavoidable side effect...a wholly unsolicited spin-off of no use to him. It happens only because he either shouldn’t or couldn’t prevent it as he went about soliciting a very different result. If Changeless Love causes death, etc., it is, in every case (and necessarily so) no more than an inadvertent but unavoidable side-effect...a wholly unsolicited spin-off of no use to Him. It happens only because He either shouldn’t or couldn’t prevent it as He went about soliciting a very different result. For that reason, to equate the "harshness" of the changeable with that of the changeless is simply an excellent example of an idiot’s suicidal assault upon the immovable. For some, one of the most grating results of The Friendly Old Man’s determi-nation to remain FOREVER THE SAME TOWARD ALL is this: He lets any living thing come inside. Naturally, if you’ve got a thing about spiders or snakes or mosquitoes, His openness to them may be very painful to you. To be sure, nothing bites in His house. Still, if you’re up tight about such creatures, it doesn’t make any difference whether or not they bite. Just the way they look and sound tells you they have got to go. But, He won’t help you get rid of them. If you try to chase them out on your own, you find it just doesn’t work at all for some reason. So what?! The main thing is this: No matter what you do, He will not Himself hit you or twist your arm or make you stand in the corner for a while or throw you out of His house or even tell somebody else to do such things to you. No! No matter what you do, He will in no way intentionally assault you but, rather, will forever leave you free to come and go as you please. Any time you want for as long as you want, you can say anything you want to Him, and He will always reply and never deprive you of as much communion with Him as you want. He may not always say what you’d like to hear; but, only you can terminate the dialogue, and the only way you can do that is to run away and never come back. Of course, one can always insist: "He was so obnoxious He drove me away." He, though, would reply: "Yes! That is true. But, that is the difference between children and adults. Being a child, the child is weak and cowardly and has no staying power. His feelings hurt by one too powerful for his tiny limbs to crush with a kick in the shins (or for his tiny mind to crush with words), his lack of bravery leaves him no alternative but to soothe his feelings with flight, and that’s why he can be driven out the door. Who’s truly an adult, though, is courageous and, no matter how unbeatable the foe, will stand and fight to the death rather than flee, and that’s why he can not be driven from My house. And who stands to debate with Me to the very end will never regret it. For, Mine is a mind well worth the knowing, if only you can stand to see all your own most precious thoughts annihilated." Yes! Stay is the only condition in The Friendly Old Man’s house. Whatever else you do, unlimited access to His mind and conversation remain His gift to you. Furthermore, if you find you are a child and, therefore, the weight of His words so heavy you cannot yourself alone prevent your cowardly legs
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About the Book
If you always follow the voice of your conscience, are you on safe ground? Do some people at least sometimes have motives of the highest and noblest kind, which ever perhaps existed? Do some people at least sometimes try to be the best person they could and ought to know how to be? On the other side of the grave, is it possible most people will find hell is their preferred destination? If so, why?! How could a truly loving God allow either that a hell should exist or that some people should prefer its eternal torment to the eternal bliss of heaven? Do all of us, as children, "picture" God as the kind of father who comes after you when you do something bad? What is the nature of individuality? Which should one concentrate on the most: not giving offense or not taking offense? What about motives so hidden we ourselves who have them are not aware of either their nature or their presence in us?! Why do some people find it impossible to believe in a God but easy to believe that they themselves are gods from the standpoint of their behavior’s merits? Does agnosticism rest on an intellectually sound basis? How does Christianity affect our failure to be the best people we could and ought to be? Is love ever totally unconditional? Which is more important: to avoid hurting other people’s feelings or to enlighten them? Those are the kinds of questions considered in the pages of this book. But, why should one be interested in what this book has to say on such issues? I’m quite sure I myself cannot give anyone a truly compelling reason to do so. At best, I can only say this: The answers given herein have done wonders for me. Though, at 64 years of age, I am as alone, lonely, and rejected as anyone I have ever met. (As a child, my parents repeatedly assured me I was nothing to them but the hell they had to endure on Earth in order to escape the hell hereafter. Despite 50 years of heroic effort to keep The Ten Commandments, I’m still so immersed in mortal sin, it strongly suggests that even God totally rejects me; and, though I’ve written dozens of books and pamphlets, not a one of them has ever drawn anything from book publishers and agents save a myriad of rejections lips...thus forcing me to publish on my own.). The answers in this book leave me at all times as high-spirited, enthusiastic, euphoric, and confident of the future as is anyone else I have ever met. It is no small achievement, to say the very least. May God grant these thoughts do half as much for you.
About the Author
Born April 13, 1936, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the author graduated from Jesuit high school, in New Orleans, in 1953. A single fruitless semester studying music at Loyola University of the South in New Orleans was followed by almost two years of floundering in a sea of confusion, and the author then joined the U. S. Air Force on Dec. 7, 1955. Honorably discharged in April of 1960, the author underwent another two and a half years of floundering so severe, he came extremely close to a mental breakdown. In desperation, he gave away everything he owned and, for thirteen years, took to the life of a wandering hermit. In search of as much time and energy as possible for inner reflection upon self, God, and the nature and purpose of reality, he criss-crossed the United States on foot four times. At first, he lived off of whatever food and clothing he could beg; but, after learning how to live on a dollar a day or less, he turned to working at various monasteries in the winter time in exchange for the two to three hundred dollars required to feed and to clothe himself during the next spring, summer, and fall of walking. The monasteries also provided access to libraries in which he could read, and extract notes from, the great writings of the Catholic Church. In the course of that thirteen-year odyssey, there was a four year period during which he refused to speak to anyone (except on very rare occasions) and communicated only by means of written notes. In August of 1975, the author’s father lost his mind, and the author’s siblings insisted he was the only one in the family with the time and ability to tend to their father in his hour of need. Thus, after thirteen years, the author’s preferred lifestyle came to an end. Dire poverty then gave way to economic independence, and total seclusion gave way to what little privacy can be enjoyed by bachelors who prefer to avoid partying and to stay home and--as much as possible--to bury themselves in as much reading and writing as the world around them will allow. After his father’s death in 1981, the author took care of his mother until her death in 1996. In this book, the self-educated author of dozens of mostly unpublished books and pamphlets seeks to share with others the avenues of thought down which his mind was lead by thirteen years of heroically intense inner concentration followed by twenty-two years of moderately intense inner concentration.