If there’s one thing worse than an atheist, it’s an atheist who makes everyone feel bad by refusing to lie about it

I ran into someone today who left my atheist group because, as he said, he doesn’t like labels. What is a label but a noun, and what is a noun but a label, and every complete sentence contains at least one noun, which means that labels would be unavoidable even if they didn't serve the very useful function of telling us and everyone else who we are. When someone claims to avoid labels, I assume that (a) he hasn't thought the matter through, or (b) he’s being dishonest to stay out of trouble, as seems likely with a label like atheist. For example, I was put on the list for jury duty recently, but was pleased when I didn’t have to go because jury duty can be awkward if not humiliating for any atheist who dares to admit to being an atheist. There was the time in Mississippi when another juror rapped me on the head because I didn’t stand when the district attorney led the jury in a Christian prayer. Then there was the time in Minneapolis when I refused to swear “…so help me God,” after which both attorneys singled me out for questioning about my religious views (believers were not so questioned), and the district attorney had me sent home.

When people tell me that religion is a private matter and that it seems very strange for me as an atheist to write about it, these are two of the incidents from my own life that come to mind. There are also the thousands that I’ve heard of or read about. The downside of being a closet atheist is that it causes religious people to consider us more of a minority than we are, and this makes it easier to mistreat us.

Introverts, Extroverts, Atheists, Americans, and a few Canadians

I left my atheist group primarily because I’m an introvert. When only a few people came to the meetings, I delighted in having something to give. I planned, announced, and hosted events, and did what I could to increase the group’s effectiveness by increasing its numbers despite the fact that I personally dreaded growth. When the attending membership hit eighteen with more people joining every week, I came to hate our meetings. I would work hard to prepare for them, only to spend most of my time quietly hoping they would end sooner rather than later. I soon stopped hosting events, and I attended very few at the new location.

Extroverts aren’t always boorish individuals who are in love with the sound of their own voices, but they often are. Likewise, those who talk the most don’t always have the least to say, but they typically do. A few months before attending my last atheist meeting, I complained (to the steering committee that I organized to run the group) that 20% of our attendees were doing 80% of the talking. A modest effort was made to turn that around. On one occasion, a ball was passed to whomever raised his or her hand to speak, and no one else was allowed to talk until that person surrendered the ball. By meeting's end, it mattered little who had the ball, and it never reappeared.

At the next meeting, the instigator of the ball passing took it upon herself to ask for my opinion from time to time, at which point everyone would look at me in puzzlement as they wondered--or so I imagined--why I needed to be prompted to speak. Her well-intentioned behavior put me at the level of someone with a disability, which, I think, is how I had come to be viewed. I stopped going at all when I became convinced that (a) I had nothing to offer that I wanted to offer; (b) I wouldn’t miss, or be missed by, more than a few, and they could see me outside the group; and (c) the group as a whole had no commitment to inclusivity, a problem that was exacerbated by its large and rapidly growing membership. When a fourth of the people at any given meeting are new, the expressed unhappiness of one individual doesn’t amount to much. 

The group’s membership is now approaching its second hundred, and I can scarcely imagine what it must be like if 30-40 of them actually show up. The thought of hearing all those extroverts looking for any and every opportunity to steal the floor from one another is nauseating. If you theists are right, and I go to hell, it will probably consist of an everlasting replay of just such a meeting.

When I was active in re-evaluation co-counseling, I attended a large co-counseling event in Canada that went on for several days. During this event, the Canadians complained that the Americans were prone to interrupting others, talking over them, and doing everything else they could to monopolize the conversation. Until then, I hadn’t realized that such behavior might be an American characteristic rather than a human one. However, it is true that America values boldness (if not brashness) over prudence, and that we treat other nations accordingly. To this end, we proclaim ourselves “the leader of the free world.” We bomb first and ask questions later. We use Hellfire Missiles to kill foreign citizens on foreign soil. We exploit the world’s poor so we can buy things cheap. We hog the world’s resources. Our secretary of state lectures the leaders of other countries on what America thinks they're doing wrong and what we expect them to do differently. We demand that other nations be peaceful and environmentally responsible, although we make little effort to do so ourselves.

We are a nation without humility, and when you lack humility, you walk over others whether you’re a government or an individual. No doubt the extroverts in my atheist group consider it their right to speak as much as they please. As for those who are quiet, or shy, or need time to think before they open their mouths, well, truth be known, such people only matter in that they constitute an audience for the performance; they can always be replaced.

The picture is of me trying to reflect the feeling of being in a typical meeting. I had just come in from ripping boards on a tablesaw, which is my idea of a good time.

How to cut down on the committee work in a marriage

This picture shows the door sidelight that I mentioned as being one of my recent projects. The opening originally contained a single thickness of fluted glass that I broke ten years ago (don't worry, it was an accident), after which I filled the opening with plywood that was covered over with lattice on the inside and painted to match the door on the outside. I never liked this arrangement because one end of the living room stayed dark. I couldn't find a full piece of glass that didn't strike me as a burglar hazard, and Peggy wouldn't agree to bars for added security so, after the passage of several years, we recently compromised on this arrangement. What you're looking at are two pieces of 5/8 plywood with a thick piece of laminated, frosted glass sandwiched in-between. The assembly is held in place with stout molding and long nails on the outside, and stout molding and long screws on the inside. Peggy argued for thinner plywood, and Peggy gets her way more often than not because I find it easier to give in than to spend eleventeen hours in committee. But when it comes to security, I'm often adamant, so Peggy will usually capitulate at the outset unless what I'm proposing is a complete deal-killer for her, as were the window bars I mentioned.

Our first thought was for the cutouts to be cats or maybe a crescent moon and stars, but we decided we would be less likely to tire of something less cutesy, so Peggy drew this pattern. I think it goes well with our 1955 house. As for the rest of the picture, we bought the lion's head door knocker in the '70s, and have put it on a few houses by now. I built the mail-slot because I couldn't find a ready made one that I liked. The pineapple was a Peggy purchase that she says represents hospitality--in Hawaii, I think. When a poor country boy marries a globe-trotting girl Air Force brat, he learns things like that.

Manly-Man's Battle Bars

Some of you asked for this recipe a couple of posts back. You can name it anything you want to. I just call it "regular crackers" to distinguish it from the other crackers I bake. Maybe I should call it Manly-Man's Battle Bars.

9 cups flour (I combine whole grain wheat, spelt, barley, and rye, with 1/2 cup of ground flaxseed.)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup warm honey (or however much you want)
2+ cups warm water (water and honey mix into the dough better when warm). Add slowly, and vary the amount as needed to get a dough that is moist but not sticky.

Appx 3/4-cup oil (I use canola.)

This is a big recipe (I would guess 200-250 crackers that are 2/3 the size of a saltine) so feel free to halve it. Alternate adding the oil and water because the dough will be less sticky than if you put the oil in ahead of the water, but not slippery and dripping the way it would be if you put it in after the water. This recipe takes about 2 1/2 hours from start to finish unless you have a oven that will hold more than two cookies sheets.

My Kitchen Aide Mixer isn't big enough for so much dough, so I mix two separate recipes, one at a time, and then join them together with my hands before I ever start rolling them out. Flour the dough no more than necessary as you roll it, and aim for a thickness that is maybe a little thicker than a saltine. I would suggest that you cut the rolled dough into squares so you won't have to re-roll the large amount of leftover dough that results from rounds. You can roll flax, caraway, or sesame seeds into the top of the dough. If you do this a little before your final rolling, they will stick better than if you forget and add them at the last minute as I often do.

Hold a fork in each hand and poke the rolled dough a few times to prevent air pockets from forming in the oven. Now, you are ready to cut the rolled dough into cracker size pieces. I would suggest that you use a large cutting board for this along with a large sharp knife because a large knife will cut faster and straighter than a small one. Bake at 290° to 325°, depending on how fast you want to roll out crackers to replace the ones that are coming out of the oven. I prefer cookie sheets that have an air pocket in the middle because crackers are prone to burn on bottom, and the air pocket helps.

Flip the crackers once or twice during baking. Move the top cookie sheet to the bottom and the bottom cookie sheet to the top (turning each around) after you flip them. This will help prevent burning. I check on them every three to five minutes, and more often than that as they get closer to being done because the time between being done and being burned isn't much. You will also find that the crackers toward the edges get done ahead of the crackers toward the middle. Just don’t leave any of them in until they're more than slightly brown because it will give them a different taste that is somewhere between done and burned. This isn't necessarily bad, but you probably wouldn't want them all that way. If you don't know whether to take one out or not, err on the side of caution until you develop of feel for what to do. Spread them on a countertop to cool and harden. I freeze them in quart bags but we used to take them traveling, and they would still be good after two months without refrigeration.

These crackers aren't anything like the ones you can buy in a store, even a health food store. They're more on the order of American Civil War hardtack but not as thick. If you want to go decadent right out of the gate, you can substitute Parmesan or some other cheese for about half the flour, and throw in however much cayenne you think you would like (if you're a woos, about a half tsp). This makes for a slightly more difficult dough but a damn tasty cracker. Substituting corn meal for about a fourth of the flour is another option, and it makes for a delightful dough, but the cracker itself is a little hard to bite into even when it's thin. Yet another option is to make a flour out of walnuts or pecans, and substitute some of that for some of the real flour. Crackers invite such experimentation.

Making crackers relaxes me, and I especially enjoy it at night in the dead of winter when rain is falling and Peggy is away. I will put on a Western movie, smoke some pot, and bake until I'm baked out. Sometimes, I bake biscuits and cornbread on the same night that I bake crackers. Between the movie and the marijuana, you might think I must burn a lot of dough, but I guess I've baked for so many years that it's not enough of a challenge that I need to be at the top of my game. I just have to remember that I have crackers in the oven; after that, the rest follows. Try using a timer if you want to, but you will have to reset it a lot. 

Neat Street versus Junkyard Boulevard

I’m cleaning house today because two and a half weeks have passed since the last time (I’ve been working outdoors), and I couldn’t stand it any longer. Life would be easier if I were adaptable to dirt and disorder. Before I could move my ailing father to Oregon in 1992, I had to dispose of his stuff, and this meant staying in his house, which was so cluttered with old newspapers, magazines, junk mail, things he had brought home from the dump, and, seemingly, everything he had ever purchased, that I had to sidestep through rooms. The house and everything in it smelled of mildew, and the toilet looked like it had been stolen from a rundown gas station. His cleaning efforts were limited to the dishes, and they were slippery with grease. The only good thing I can say about his housekeeping is that he didn't have any pets to add their own stench of neglect. Otherwise, I would have slept in the yard for the three weeks that it took me to dispose of his stuff at a rate of one truckload a day to the dump, one to the junkyard, and one to get rid of at an estate sale.

His level of filth peaked after my mother died, but both they and my sister always leaned in that direction, and I always leaned in the opposite. Keeping things clean and orderly doesn’t make me happy, but if I were forced to live otherwise, I would have to create my own little oasis in the midst of it, however small that oasis might be. I have done this my whole life long to some extent. In this house, my oasis is my bedroom because it is the only room over which I have complete control. My need for household simplicity is such that when Peggy went away last week, I immediately tidied up the bathroom by putting her shampoo, conditioner, and razor in a cabinet so I wouldn't have to look at more clutter than necessary.

I only know one person who is almost my equal in cleanliness and order, and it’s not Peggy, although, if she had to do her own housework, she would do better than most. Like a lot of people, Peggy likes things to look good on the surface, but takes no interest in cleaning out her drawers, file cabinets, and closets. I take this to suggest hypocrisy, although she finds that conjecture too boring to consider (Peggy has zero interest in discussing or even thinking about morality, ethics, religion, atheism, government, politics, or philosophy.)

I am unlike Peggy to the extent that there is no part of my property that escapes my scrutiny, including the attic, the crawlspace, and even Peggy’s drawers and closets once they approach the point of popping like boils and inundating the house with putrescence. I used to think that THIS time when I cleaned and organized her things, she would finally see how much better life would be if she too lived like this, but I finally realized that I would die before that day arrived. I’m no longer sure if any of us ever change in a fundamental way, but if we do, I would suspect that it’s in response to some new condition in our lives that, if removed, would eliminate the change.

Weltschmerz

Peggy has been away for a week and, my pain level having dropped precipitously over the past several months, I’ve been working almost every waking hour at jobs that I couldn’t have imagined doing six months ago. Replacing soffits for example. Try that with bad shoulders. Unfortunately, I still have bad shoulders, and the pain still wakes me during the night, but it’s not so severe that I can’t work. Here are some of the items I’ve checked off my list so far this summer.

  

Install sidelight by front door.

Install security lights at front and back corners of house.

Replace drain from kitchen and laundry room to where it enters the house drain.

Replace drain from bathtub to house drain.

Replace drain from lavatory to house drain.

Cut old galvanized pipes into lengths suitable for use as levers and rollers.

Disassemble garden box and put the dirt in compost bins.

Cut Ponderosa stump to grade.

Power-wash house, front fence, and patio.

Paint front fence.

Replace soffit on west side of house.

Plant shrubbery in back yard (My “shrubbery” includes five giant grasses, two clumps of bamboo, a Gulf Stream Nandina, a Japanese Fatsia, and the Silver Queen Euonymous in the photo).

It’s been years since I could really work, and I can’t get it out of my head that I need to catch up with everything today because I sure the hell don’t know what kind of shape I’ll be in tomorrow. None of us do, but it’s easy to get into the habit of imagining that we’ll wake up to the same world we went to bed in. When you’re forced to face your vulnerability, it tends to make you sadder and more fearful. At least, it did me, and living with these feelings has been the hardest adjustment I’ve ever had to make. For one thing, it has turned me into a loner. Pain has put such a gulf between me and everyone else that I see them all as inhabiting their own little planets, and I have no idea how to reach them. I think they imagine that they can reach one another, but I picture them as already being in their graves without even knowing it. All the years of our species is but the impossibly short flicker of a meaningless dream. It is only the possibility of kindness that makes life worthwhile, yet I must confess that the more I recede into myself, the less even that seems to matter, although I still practice it.

About halfway through the week, I realized that I was working too hard, and this made me feel old, hopeless, and thoroughly depressed, although not enough to slow down. I decided to get wasted. "I deserve this," I told myself. "I'm in pain and I've been working really hard, and I have earned the right to chill out." I took 40 mgs of oxycodone (4-8 regular doses), a big chunk of a marijuana cookie, and a slug of 190 proof. Even then, I couldn’t stop working, although I was rather proud of the fact that I even could work. If it hadn’t been nearly midnight, I would have been outside running power saws, but as it was, I went to bed at 1:00 and slept ten hours.

Now, Peggy is home, and I will allow myself to rest. This is resting. 

More meanderings

I now understand why people pamper cats. It’s because cats are so enamored of luxury that it’s rewarding to give it to them. Dogs enjoy luxury too, but a dog would go through hell to be with his master, whereas cats are not so constituted. Therefore, what better thing can a person do than to pamper his cat?

I write about heavy subjects because that’s how I think. I’m forever absorbed by reflections pertaining to one idea or another, so I will write about it over a period of days, doing both revisions and whole new approaches to the subject. I love to play with words and ideas this way. In fact, it’s the main thing that keeps me going. I also need physical labor, but too much of it seems like dissipation. Trips to the mountains are also good.

Things you don’t know about me:

I bake my own whole-grain crackers. I got my first recipe from an Episcopal priest’s wife, and afterwards baked crackers for the Eucharist each week until a lady who attended regularly got throat cancer and the church went back to the melt-in-your-mouth “fish wafers.” I've continued to bake crackers for myself during the intervening 35 years, but I’ve branched out from the original recipe because cracker dough is very open to experimentation. I name my various crackers after their defining flavor, such as rye, corn, wheat, walnut, cheddar, and Parmesan. Before each of my three shoulder surgeries, I had to bake a big supply of crackers because it would be four months before I could roll out dough again.

I have memorized at least thirty poems including more than one apiece by Robert Frost, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Wordsworth's "Daffodils," Keat's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," and Heine's "A Maiden Lies in Her Chamber" are three of my favorites by other poets.

I recently planted two clumps of bamboo and five of a variegated grass that grows nine feet tall. I’ve adored variegated grass for years but this is the first I've grown. I wake up each morning and look out the window at my variegated grass, and I smile. I take such joy in plants that I have no words for it. 

I try to get to the Cascades each year before the bears eat all the salmonberries. These resemble blackberries but are orange. They are also three times bigger and three times juicier. They practically fall into your hand when they're right for eating. Once in your hand, they flatten out, because they're hollow in the middle. The bears and I also compete for salal berries, but they grow best in the Coast Range. Once while biking down a logging road looking for berries, Peggy and I surprised a mother bear and her cub (and vice versa). Black bears tend to abandon their cubs rather than fight for them, and this one was already on her way, so I stopped the bike and said, "Oh, Peggy look," but she didn't answer. When I turned toward where I thought she would be, I caught a glimpse of her way down the road, pedaling as fast as she could in the other direction.

 I love wasps. The ones in yesterday’s photo (taken during soffit work) are typical of most Oregon wasps in that they’re so gentle that you can all but touch their tiny nests without fear of harm. I literally forget that they are there even when I'm working next to them. This is a night-and-day difference from the big and aggressive Mississippi wasps that live in nests of hundreds, yet I loved them too. I built the nesting box in the bottom photo for solitary wasps, and I have a bald-face hornets' nest hanging in my den. When people ask if it still has hornets in it, I tell them that, yes, it does, but if they keep their voices down, they'll be okay.

I eat two, 22 pound watermelons a week, all summer and into the fall. I prefer watermelon to chocolate, and that's saying a lot. I also have a weakness for mayonnaise, which I often mix with Parmesan and nutritional yeast and spread on whole-grain crackers.

Stoned ponderings on recurring themes: one after another after another

I

I would say that I have a good marriage, yet Peggy is a serious disappointment to me in some ways. For example, she’s a procrastinator who often expects me to help her with one project or another at the last minute when she’s under pressure, and I have something else I want to do. I don’t do pressure, and I become testy when someone rushes me, so it’s a bad situation that I blame entirely on her because she’s the one who’s doing the imposing. However, I finally had to give up trying to change her. Not that I don’t bitch and moan from time to time, but I would be an idiot if I expected anything but broken promises to come of it. The sad truth is that EVERYONE is like Peggy. Instead of expecting another person to be all but perfect and to love you forever, put your emphasis on deciding whether you even find them tolerable.

II 

When I was in my teens and twenties, I would ponder all these heavy religious and philosophical questions, but my half-sister, Anne (my elder by eleven years), was the only person I ever knew who wanted to discuss them. I assumed from this that everyone else must already know the answers but for some reason wouldn’t share them with me. I made this assumption because I couldn’t imagine that questions which were so compelling to me could have escaped their notice altogether. When I finally—after many years—concluded that they had, I started to think less of other people and more of myself. I pictured everyone else as being like dogs or cats, nice enough in their way but sadly lacking nonetheless.

III

I was embarrassed to be a Mississippian long before I moved to liberal Eugene, where Mississippi and every white person in it is considered a joke. I would get mad when I heard people trashing Mississippi, not necessarily because I disagreed, but because they couldn’t have named the major towns, or pointed to The Delta on a map, or identified kudzu and fireants. They were simply relaying to me, a lifelong Mississippian, all the bad stuff they had heard. For awhile, I joined them; for awhile, I kept my mouth shut; now, I demand to know their sources because theirs is usually a case of prejudice based upon hearsay. It doesn’t even matter to me that a person is right; if his reasons for his beliefs are unfounded, he’s still a bigot.

 IV

Foolishness that is at least understandable in the young becomes inexcusable with age. I'm very aware that I'm a "senior" now and, except for the physical pain and limitations, I rather like it because at no time in my life have I experienced more of wisdom or contentment.

 V

I just finished Hell in the Pacific by Jim McEnery. It wasn't the best war book I've ever read (that would be With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge), but I'm glad I read it. The following passage will stay with me more than most: “I’ve never lost sleep over the enemy solders I shot or bayoneted or blew to bits with grenades—not even the wounded ones I put out of their misery…. I did it the same way you’d chop off the head of a poisonous snake that was about to bite someone.” I would call that a pretty good example of the dehumanization of war. Of course, the Japanese military went out of its way to earn such hatred (just as we did with our “Shock and Awe” bombing of Baghdad), but still… About three years ago, I heard an old man say with tears in his eyes that he had recently hugged a Japanese woman, her being the first Japanese he had touched but didn’t kill.

VI

Someone wrote that I put unnecessary limits on my openness to experience by labeling myself an atheist. This ignores the fact that I used to be a believer, and that I don’t consider any of the experiences of God that I had back then to have been worthwhile. I went from being scared shitless of God when I was young, to hating him when I was a teenager, to not believing in him when I was in my twenties. That said, I should think that a person who is committed to believing in a particular version of god might be at greater risk than an atheist of limiting his experience of the divine. For example, what if God should come along but not look or act the way a person expects him to look or act; might not such a person fail to recognize God? Because an atheist wouldn’t be so committed, he might be better able to experience God than a lot of theists. After all, few atheists categorically say that God's existence is impossible; they simply say that they can't find a reason to believe in him.

VII

Old times seem to look better with age when the sharp edges have eroded somewhat, and everything has been interpreted and reinterpreted so many times that reality is forgotten.

Photo by Manfred Brückels

A sensitive boy

I was what my mother called “a sensitive boy,” meaning that I got my feelings hurt way too easily. What I can tell you about being “sensitive” is that it doesn’t work worth a damn to go through life feeling slighted. This is why I gave it up. I no longer take much of anything personally. Even if it’s meant personally, I don’t judge an attack or a rejection as being a statement about me but simply as another person’s choice at a particular time in his or her life. If I can see how I unnecessarily contributed to any bad feelings, I will apologize without hesitation because honor requires it, and I do love honor because if a person has honor, most other virtues will follow. However, I don’t beat my breast in agony, and I don’t berate anyone. I also don’t give up on important friendships, and will, unless forbidden, continue to reach out from time to time for years after an important person has left my life. Not feeling hurt and needy has taken the stinger out of rejection, making this easy. It’s the former friends who never speak to one another again who are the walking wounded.

I have also found wisdom in allowing relationships to ebb and flow rather than being elated during the flow periods and interpreting the ebb periods as rejection. I would say to you that you don't know what's really going on with other people, so when they seem to be pulling away from you, let them go. They will either come back or they won't, and you can no more control the seasons of their lives than you can control the seasons of the year, although you can make a fool of yourself if you try. In all situations, remember your dignity because that alone is of far more value to you than any friend you will ever have. Even if you could persuade a thousand people to love you, you would be no less alone inside your head, so make yourself into someone whose company you cherish.

I stopped being “a sensitive boy” once I completely gave up the notion that other people have things to offer me that I need desperately but lack within myself. When I understood at the 100% level that my hurt feelings always had and evermore would be much ado about nothing and that no possible benefit ever did or ever could accrue from them, I found giving them up to be a profound pleasure. I won’t pretend to know how I might feel if Peggy should leave me after 42 years, but I’m quite sure that no one else can throw me off balance, and I really don’t think she can. It’s a marvelous way to live. It’s the difference between being sad at times versus being angry and despondent your whole life long over one relationship or another. 

I have just summarized in three paragraphs wisdom that took me several decades and considerable agony to learn, yet I don’t know if anyone else is capable of learning it in any way other than I did. If you're "sensitive," like I was, you've got a lot of hurt to look forward to, and you might as well at least try to cut it short by doing what now seems impossible, that is finding the ability to feel complete within yourself. This comes through remembering that you are ultimately alone, and that no one can save you. All the strength for living that you have at your disposal is already within you, and the only way for you to be saved is to develop it by thinking rationally about who you are and about who other people are in relation to you. Don't mistake them for being more than they are, and don't mistake yourself for being less than you are. Once you cast off your expectations of others, the feeling you will get is like going from black and white to color. Everything that was murky becomes obvious. You will wonder how it was even possible that you failed for all those years to see just how rich you are within yourself. At your deepest level, you deserve your fullest respect, and when you're at that level, being reviled or rejected is scarcely deserving of notice.

How to convert an atheist

First the bad news. No one can convert an atheist unless that atheist is poorly schooled in atheism. Otherwise, converting him—to Christianity, for example—would require not just changing his mind about one belief (God=Christ, Jehovah, and the Holy Ghost) but about the scores of assumptions that underlie that one belief. Believers are generally unaware of these assumptions. I know a Christian blogger who claimed to have converted three atheists, yet she confessed that she had never known an atheist who wasn’t thoroughly arrogant and overwhelmingly obnoxious—me more than most. If you think all atheists are alike, please allow me to disabuse you of that notion.

I’ll tell you frankly that atheists tend to be smart, educated, liberal, and mistrustful of authority. After that, they are very different from one another. I don’t even like most of them, but then I don’t like most people. Some atheists don’t view atheism as important in their lives. These tend to be the ones who grew up in households that were either atheistic or nonreligious. For those like myself who took religion seriously or suffered from the oppression that comes with living among religious people, atheism tends to be extremely important. I think about it everyday, and it influences my thoughts in more ways than you can imagine. I would even say that atheism is as important to me as religion is to a devout Christian.

Far from being simply a negation of other people’s beliefs, it is the backbone of my worldview because it makes it necessary for me to create meaning in my life. By contrast, believers have meaning handed to them on a platter, although how most of them behave is so much at odds with what they claim to believe are the two great greatest commandments (Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor—including your enemy—as yourself) that their bad behavior would be facetious if it didn’t cause so much pain. For example, all of America’s recent presidents have been Christians but with the exception of Jimmy Carter, this has never stopped them from slaughtering people by the thousands.

I hold atheism to be a very personal and precious aspect of my life, and I embrace it without regard for anything or anyone other than my desire to know and speak the truth. If I am wrong, then I am wrong, and any God worth is his salt will give me credit for having done the best I could. On the other hand, if many of you are right in holding that everlasting hell awaits me at the hands of a vengeful deity ("…the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you…”), then I would ask you if you can in good conscience really and truly worship a being that would send an honest man to hell. If you say yes, then I would respond that any God who performs acts that are considered despicable when done by a human being* is better suited to play the demon in The Exorcist than to be worshipped as the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, and I am glad not to have made his acquaintance.

I am sometimes asked why I write about atheism and religion so much. It’s because they’re important to me, and because decades of study and reflection have made me qualified to express an opinion. Atheism lies beneath many of my thoughts in many areas, and religion represents to me a very great evil—possibly the greatest—and I want to warn you about it even if you hate me for it. My question to you would be, given that you think so highly of your God, why don’t you write about religion more? Could it be that, although you think God should be important in your life, he really isn’t?

Now for the good news about converting atheists.... Sad to say, but I lied and led you on just as you might have expected a dirty little atheist** to do. You see, there is no good news about converting atheists. All of your arguments are as old as Methuselah and have already been considered and rejected. The only thing you can do for an atheist is to help him fight the oppression of those who claim to worship the same God you do. Do this one thing for me if for no other reason than that, if religious fanatics come for me today, they will come for you tomorrow if they decide that you too are an enemy of their private deity. Atheists are simply at the head of the line of people who—for the good of society—must be re-educated, locked-up, or eliminated.

*http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/DarkBibleContents.htm

**Teddy Roosevelt, an American president, referred to Thomas Paine (who is pictured at the top of this post), a guiding philosopher of the American Revolution, as "that dirty little atheist." Roosevelt's view was that all of the good a nonbeliever does is meaningless. A recent president, George H. Bush denied that atheists are citizens, or that atheists who distinguish themselves for valor in combat are patriots. Consistent with such hatred, some American states have laws preventing atheists from holding office or even testifying in court. Believers often claim that religion is a private matter, but this is not the case if you're an atheist in America because you are hated and discriminated against everyday of your life.

How to Keep a Lid on Your Pussy in Twelve Easy Steps

When I got Brewsky 18 months ago, I resolved to rid him of those failings that are so regrettably common to both cats and women, things like vanity, aloofness, selfishness, disloyalty, obsessive grooming, and a perverse refusal to obey simple commands. In short, I resolved to do with him what I have failed to do with Peggy after 42 years of unrelenting effort—I resolved to make him into a good dog in the hope that he would serve as an inspiration to her.

He is only influenced by immediate punishment, and even then the effects only last two or three minutes, after which he returns to doing the same thing for which he was punished. This is where technology is useful. For example, I installed an alarm system to keep him off the kitchen countertop. When I leave the room, I flick a switch and if he jumps up on the counter while I’m away, three diesel-strength airhorns emit 185 decibels of sound simultaneously. Except for urine on the countertop, cabinet doors, and sometimes the ceiling, this works amazingly well because he knows he can’t wear down technology the way he wears down flesh and blood people who have more to do in life than control a recidivistic cat.

Breaking him from burying his shit has proven to be a greater challenge. As I observed him in his toilet one morning, I reflected upon how pointless it was for him to bury that which I would have to dig up anyway, so I resolved to cure him of the habit. To accomplish this, I began carrying his litter box to whatever part of the house I was in, and when he would start to bury his poop, I would run at him screaming while using my Deluge-a-Kitty Water Cannon™  to knock him right out of the box and into whatever wall, chair, or table was within his line of travel. Now, he only shits in his litter box when I’m asleep or away from home. The rest of the time, he shits on my pillow. On the one hand, I have been largely successful in preventing him from burying his poop, but on the other, things haven’t worked out quite like I planned.  

I have also had excellent results in getting him to sleep during the night instead of keeping me awake by miaowing loudly while running full-tilt throughout the house (after which which he would sleep all day while I stumbled drowsily into walls). My method consists basically of locking him in a room with a vacuum cleaner everyday (he’s terrified of vacuums), and connecting the vacuum to a timer so that it will turn on for a few moments every fifteen minutes. Now, he’s the one who stumbles drowsily into walls, only he does so at night while I'm sleeping peacefully.

These are just a few examples of the kind of work I have done with him and the outstanding success I have achieved. If you would like further ideas, feel free to buy my $30 book How to Keep a Lid on Your Pussy in Twelve Easy Steps. You will find it anywhere good books are sold, which basically means that if you'll send me a check (certified only, please), I’ll send you a link to a Word document.

In closing, I feel it only fair to inform you that Brewsky appears to be losing his mind, as you might have guessed from his haunted expression. He cries piteously for hours, drools, refuses to eat or groom himself, and spends his every waking moment staring in transfixed horror at the same empty spot on Peggy’s bed. I suspect that the problem is hereditary, but since he was a shelter cat (I wanted a dog, but Brewksy was half-price so I got him instead), I have no idea who his parents were, so this is mostly conjecture based upon the absence of environmental stressors.

The point is to get woke-up, not fucked-up

I’ve written several times about the effects of marijuana, but for each piece that I posted, there were five that I didn’t because I know that many of you have little patience for the subject. This means that when I do write, I need to make it good, yet there’s nothing harder to convey than an experience that is completely alien to others, especially when they might judge it harshly, as is often the case with my posts about drugs and atheism. 

As you go through an ordinary day, how many new thoughts or insights do you have? I have few to none when I’m straight, but I’m awash in them when I’m high. I become so adrift within myself that I never know what new shore I’m going to land upon. I find myself visiting several per hour, and the rapid-fire intensity of my visions leaves me exhausted.

One person speculated—probably whimsically—that pot might lead me to God. I actually do have experiences that are akin to mysticism, and I enjoy them, but because I don’t believe in spirits, I don't interpret them spiritually. I’m open to seeing God, but so far I’ve only seen a succession of demons. That was 30 years ago, and I didn't believe they were real even as I was looking at them, although they still scared the hell out of me (ha). More recently, I all but see music, and I do sometimes see my surroundings pulse and shimmer. Often the drug starts by enveloping me within a heavy cloak of fear and anguish, which usually gives way to such an absorption in my thoughts that I completely lose contact with the external world. To better convey the profundity of the drug, I'm going to share what a friend wrote about her experience as she was nearing the end of a bad marriage.

“I was really losing it because I didn’t know what came next; I only knew I was, by necessity, going to be losing everything and walking away from it all. My son offered me some weed…. I smoked my first bowl in 30 years…and suddenly my life looked completely different. Suddenly, I could see inside. I understood. I am not talking about the delusions we consider that seem profound at the time, but that in reality are just that—delusions. These were very real revelations about myself, and along with those revelations came the emotions, the insights, the tears, the rants, the guilt, the anxiety, and finally and essentially…the very real ME I had been keeping hidden away for years….”

Unfortunately, marijuana increases right-brain depth and self-honesty at the expense of left-brain learning, memory, and problem solving, so I mostly use it when my left brain isn't too busy. I also need to be able to stop whatever else I'm doing to write because writing becomes my obsession when I'm high. Unfortunately, very little of what I put down is ever read by anyone, including myself, and this leaves me feeling more lonely and discouraged than I might otherwise feel, but it can't be helped. As Schopenhauer wrote:

“There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.”

In my fantasy, all of you are here with me, and we're high. Only what do we do next--go to our separate computers and blog? Well, why the hell not? I would argue that in most cases, writing is superior to speaking, if only because it gives a person time to reflect and, hopefully, to go deeper.

About the photo. The film canister contains unground flower buds (the most desirable part of the plant); the jar contains ground flower buds that are ready to smoke; and the silver thingy is a grinder. The open-top container holds matches. The pipe was made decades ago by a friend and is about as basic as it gets, but I don't smoke a lot. I mostly simmer marijuana in butter (the odor is so strong that it spills into the yard even with the windows closed) and then use the butter to make small sugar cookies that I cut into quarters, one quarter of a cookie being as much as I would ever want. Two quarters are pictured.

About blogging

I have 262 followers. Some are dead; some have deleted their blogs; some haven’t posted in years; many if not most never left a comment on my blog. Here’s the thing about blogging. You could post nothing but underexposed and out of focus pictures of driftwood, yet you could still have 800 followers and sixty laudatory comments per post if you did nothing all day but leave flattering comments on other people’s blogs. I used to receive 25-40 comments per post, but I became overwhelmed by guilt because I felt obligated to visit everyone who left a comment, and I couldn’t do it, at least not without spending my days on the Internet, so I all but stopped, and, no surprise, most people stopped visiting me.

The most recent person I know who gave up blogging was Jane Gaston. She hadn’t posted in nearly a year when she returned for two months. Last week, out of the blue, she deleted her blog. Back when awards were popular, Jane gave me several, and she often told me what a great writer I am. Now, she’s gone, and I have no way to contact her and no reason to think she wants to be contacted. I took our friendship personally, but it ended impersonally with a post that basically said: It’s been fun, but I’m outta here; bye. That was her right, of course, but it sure hurts when someone up and disappears. Just so you’ll know, I plan to be here, as the saying goes: " 'Til death does us part."

About the picture. Yep, that's where I write, and, nope, I didn't straighten things up before I took the picture (which is why the mouse is off-center on its pad, and the file cabinet isn't closed all the way). I bought the little rabbit for a friend, but liked it so much that I kept it. The paint-by-number painting was in my family when I was born; no one remembered who did it or when it was done. As a boy, I often lay in bed pretending that I lived in that painting. The small photo is of Peggy, and the gold-rimmed plague above it reads:


I love Snow 100 million, billion, trillion, times over. I love him sooooooooooooooooo much. He is the best man, and I love him. 


                                                                         Peggy


    Love 
                     Love 
                                       Love 
                                                         Love
                                                                          Love


Given that she hates to write, I think you'll agree that Peggy does pretty well when she has the urge.

Peggy: sixty years worth, ten years at a time

1952. That's Peggy's sister on the right. Dianne was (and is) timid, whereas Peggy was (and is) tomboyish. You might have guessed this from their body language.
















1962. As I was looking at this photo trying to think of what to say about it, I had the thought: "I could just eat this little girl," but I realized it might be interpreted sexually when what I meant was that that I want to use my body to build a fort that would protect her from all the sad things that have since happened in her life, many of them caused by me. Even that doesn't capture what I feel when I look at this picture, but it's the best I can do. The sweetness, alertness, kindness, shyness, playfulness, innocence, tomboyishness, and femininity in her face is, well, when we talk about the sacred, I feel like saying, "But I feel the sacred all the time. Looking at this picture is one of those times."





1972. By now, we had been married six months, but hadn't known one another a year. This photo was taken on a canoe trip on the Pearl River near Jackson, Mississippi. I'm sure I put Peggy up to the pose because she was too shy to do such things naturally, and our relationship was still new, after all, despite the fact that we were married.











1982. We were building a shed at our home in Mississippi, and Peggy appears to be having an amiable interlude with a nail--either that or she's asking it not to bend when she drives it into the oak lathing. She insisted on the un-carpenter-like apparel and wouldn't wear anything on her feet but sandals. One day, we were splitting wood, and she dropped a large piece of post oak on her foot and broke it--the foot, of course. Silly me, I thought this meant a speedy trip to the hospital, but Peggy said, "I'm not going with my hair dirty," so I held her erect while she showered.


1992. Peggy was on figure skating teams in Oregon and in Minnesota. She then got into downhill skiing, and it and mountain climbing became her passions. I tried skating. skiing, and mountain climbing, but didn't care for them.












2002. Even I have summited the mountain in the photo, but it's a little one that you can scramble up. You've got to be willing to work hard and risk death to get up the ones that are technically challenging and prone to bad weather. Peggy couldn't get enough of them, so I became her support person, going on training hikes with her and keeping camp at trailheads. Mostly, though, she and a half dozen men (few women climb) would go off and leave me home, and that was fine with me. The red thing in her hands is an ice axe. It's good for probing for crevasses, climbing steep snow or ice, and self-arresting when you fall (you will fall).

2002. Those are cross country skis. Peggy and I did this together a fair amount, and we also snowshoed a little, but she found them boring compared to the excitement of downhill skiing, so she was forever going off with another carload of men to Hoodoo Ski Area or Willamette Pass. I don't like snow, so I don't miss cross country skiing much, but I would still like to go occasionally. Mostly, when we were going, we would simply drive to where the road was closed by snow and take a day trip from there. We have snow camped, and we have also skied to fire towers and spent the night in them. This photo was taken on a day trip, You can tell because the pad is too short for lying down (it's for sitting on), and the pack is too small for carrying everything we would need to camp. Bonnie was five in the photo. She's now 14 1/2 and blind. She still likes to play fetch.

2002. If the slope below her was as steep as she's making out, I doubt that Peggy would be holding her cap in her hand, yet she did go on rope climbs that people have been dying on for decades. Like many of Oregon's Cascades, this particular mountain has a bad reputation for "rotten rock," meaning rock that either comes off when you pull or push on it, or else falls on your head for no reason other than that your luck was bad. People have climbed Everest only to die in Oregon because mountain climbers aren't interested in safe mountains. I didn't like for Peggy to climb dangerous mountains, but it was in her blood, and I've never imagined that I had the right to tell her what she could or couldn't do (I subscribed to Ms Magazine for her when it appeared in the early '70s, but I was the only one who read it). I would be at a loss how to handle a subservient woman. On the one hand, it sounds sexy, but I don't know if I could respect her. I want influence, not control.

2012. Sad to say, but Peggy no longer engages in any strenuous activity, probably because of arthritis more than anything. She just took up drinking coffee, so in the photo she is having her daily brew of 3 parts vanilla soy milk to one part strong coffee. We try to find campsites with a good view and that (except for the road we drove in on) are so closed in by terrain or vegetation that we can let Bonnie roam freely. The thought of losing a 14 year old blind dog in the wilderness is simply too horrible to contemplate. You can see that we camped directly on the road, confident in the improbability of anyone coming.

Despite the fact that Peggy is the breadwinner in our family and has enjoyed a lot of traditionally male activities; she is all woman. And despite the fact that my bedroom is pink, I cry more easily than she, and my father was a transexual; I am all man. We have always given one another the freedom, and even the encouragement, to transcend traditional gender roles. Perhaps, this was made easier by the fact that we have always known who we are.