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.