An encounter that might have gone badly

Peggy and I have been taking advantage of breaks in the weather to go biking in the woods with the dogs. Yesterday, we saw a pygmy owl sitting on a low limb. Our presence did not disturb it in the least. I wondered that an owl’s light sensitive eyes could bear the afternoon sun, but later read that pygmy owls are diurnal.

Last week, we encountered two large, strong dogs that came from a house that stood between one gated Weyerhaeuser road and another. They stayed with us for a disturbingly long distance, although I thought they seemed more curious than aggressive. Peggy—who was at the rear of our little procession—later said that one of them had growled at her, and forced her off her bike by pushing against it. When we passed them on our return, I encouraged Bonnie and Baxter to run so we could get past them quickly. This did not work, because the other dogs were upon us too fast. I nonetheless persisted with my approach until Peggy yelled from behind that they were becoming aggressive. “They’re okay,” I yelled back. “I don’t think so,” she said.

I did a U-turn, and found them on the verge of attacking Bonnie who was snapping furiously but unconvincingly at her powerful foes. I parked a few feet away, strode between her and them, and warned them sternly that they had damned well better back off. Their eyes met mine unflinchingly as they searched for some sign of weakness. Finding none, and without any apparent communication with one another, they turned in unison and walked away.
I marveled at their intelligence and perceptiveness, for the encounter would have ended badly for them had they been brainless brutes. I had in my pocket a can of Fox pepper spray, and I sorely wanted to see what it could do after being choked for several minutes last week when I sprayed barely a whiff of it on the patio floor.

With the marauders gone, I expected to find myself alone, Peggy and the dogs having had plenty of time to make their escape. Instead, there stood Bonnie right by my leg. I didn’t know whether she stayed to protect me or for me to protect her, although she invariably comes to me when she’s afraid. Baxter shows no preference, being as apt to run to a shrub as to a person.

I kidded Peggy about running out on me, but she knew that I handle dogs well—and that I had the spray. More than that, she wanted to get Baxter to safety, because he’s dumb enough to attack a passive wolf yet cowardly enough to be panicked by an aggressive Chihuahua.

Two non-vets reminisce

I visited a friend in the hospital during the recent PBS series about World War II. He was of military age during the war, but flunked his physical. He talked what that meant to him, and I talked about my maneuverings to avoid Vietnam and what that meant to me. We were hardly on the level of veterans comparing Iwo Jima with the Battle of the Bulge, but we shared such stories as we had, and congratulated one another on having never been shot at.

After 9/11, I would have seriously considered enlisting had I been younger, but now I am exceedingly glad that I was unable to fight in yet another pointless conflict based upon a lie; and I honestly don’t know if I would voluntarily risk my life for my country in any war. I’m not even sure my country is worth dying for, or what it would mean, exactly, to die for it.

I worked as a stock clerk at Woolworth’s when I was in college, and I took note, for the first time really, that my nation’s every sacred occasion was another excuse for a sale. Our nation was created by brave idealists—let’s have a sale. Millions fought for our freedom—let’s have a sale. Christ was born of a virgin—let’s have a sale. And, when we can get away with it, let’s move the sacred day to Monday so we can have a “three day sale.”

I sometimes wondered why almost no one seemed to object to this. I mean, come on, George Washington was born on February 22, but we’ll just honor him on whatever Monday comes closest—later renaming the day to honor all presidents (no matter how inept or evil)—and assume that Washington would be okay with that. True, every Christmas a few people write editorials about the real meaning of Christmas, but even they don’t usually object to commercialism per se, they just think we need to tone it down a bit, as in enough’s enough already.

So, I don’t know. To die for my country would mean…. To die so half of us can exercise our freedom to stay home from the polls? To die so the least among us can speak his piece, although most won’t bother because only the rich and famous are heard anyway? To die so …?

We lead the world in consumerism, waste, and obesity. In what else do we lead? Oh, yes, the cost of medical care, although our life expectancy continues to drop. If it is fair to say that our soldiers died for that which we do best, they died so that we can shop until we drop, and waste until we have wasted it all.

Most of my countrymen (adolescents mostly) who fought in wars probably thought about their sacrifice a lot less than I if only because I have been at it longer than they were able to remain alive. From what I can gather, they were entirely too trusting of their elders and too generous with their lives and fortunes. It’s not enough to be good, you also have to be smart lest your goodness serve an evil end.

This I call God

We decided to work in one last camping trip for the year. Our destination was the end of a logging road on Bunchgrass Mountain. When we arrived, the sky was clear, the weather warm. Within minutes, chilly clouds had descended to just above our heads, hiding Fuji, Diamond, Verdun, Wolf, Judd, and David Douglas. Then the sky cleared, and we were warm again. Then clouds rolled up from below and surrounded us completely. Then we went to bed. Baxter and I aren’t half the men Peggy and Bonnie are, so we slept in our coats while they passed the night au naturel.

Fourteen hours later it was light enough—and, we hoped, warm enough—to get out of bed. Then it snowed, and the wind came up. Peggy set out to climb Fuji (7,144’) while I biked some nearby roads. My hands and feet were cold even with chemical warmers, so I soon went back to bed and read, alternating the hand that was holding the book while I warmed the other against my legs. Peggy returned triumphant with photos of clouds two feet from her face and hoar frost on shrubbery. “Fuji fed my soul,” she exclaimed, and I remembered that the one in Japan is also said to do that.

Later, we biked together in the little warmth that splotches of afternoon sun provided. Skeleton trees from a forest long since destroyed by fire stood ghostly white against writhing gray clouds. Vine maples consoled glacier-scarred andesite with leaves of red, yellow, orange, and purple. A coyote crossed the road in search of a chipmunk. A red-tailed hawk hung motionless on an updraft. Pinnacles too steep to hold snow pierced high clouds. Sunbeams illuminated patches of trees in a u-shaped valley that rose thousands of feet above the rapids of Black Creek. Purple asters, yellow St. John’s wort, and white pearly everlastings gladdened the roadside. Thickets of snowbrush made the air heavenly with honey-flavored balm.

I grieved that twinflower, prince’s pine, and vanilla leaf, are about to go underground for more months than I can well endure. The star-burst sprays of mountain hemlock made my heart leap for joy, and the haughty limbs of young noble firs reminded me of Bonnie when she was a cocky pup and thought it would be great sport to attack a city bus. I ate a choke cherry from one of numerous fragrant groves, choked, and ate another so as to hold tight to that which God has spared from pruning snips and selective-breeding.

God. Three weeks ago, we camped near Windy Pass. I had been there twice but only knew it as a warm and sunny place where five logging roads converge. It is not high (3,800’), not barren, not surrounded by precipices, and not the least bit windy. Mediocre Pass, Nothing-Much-Happening Pass, You’ll Not Remember Being Here Pass; such names as these seemed more fitting.

The wind came up that night. It did not touch the van, but I could hear it overhead, waxing and waning as it flung itself out of Winberry Canyon and vaulted far into the sky. I imagined it as a great beast that was inhaling and exhaling, and gaining strength with every breath. It continued for hours under the clear sky, maybe all night. I don’t know because I drifted in and out. I just know that when I awakened, Windy Pass was warm, and sunny, and still, and not at all imposing.

During the night an interesting thing happened. The wind stopped waning. It reached a very high speed—there above the van—and it never slowed. Bonnie became so frightened that she did something she would never presume to do in ordinary times, she got into bed with us. I have camped above timberline when winds rocked the van as if it were a boat on a lake, but this wind was greater than that. To be so close to something that vast, powerful, and unwavering, and yet to be untouched by it! I felt as though I could have spread a map on the ground without it being disturbed, yet there, just a little way above me, the sound was such that God might have been passing by.

I think that to die in such a place would not be death at all. I would hope to lie in a snowbrush thicket and become a feast for the hungry. No crematory flames would waste my substance or formaldehyde poison my tissues. I would feed the earth that has so generously fed me, and I would count it as a worthy end to the narrow life that I have known thus far, for it is without excuse that I have lived nearly three score years, yet required a mighty wind to awaken me to the majesty of a mountain pass.

“The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper…. And it said, ‘Why are you here?’”
1 Kings 19:11-13

Why indeed, except it be to praise that which created me and sustains me, yet which has no awareness of me and no desire for anything I might offer. This I call God.

The religious requirements of Masonry

I’ve been busting my butt memorizing Masonic ritual, which isn’t easy at best since only the first letter of every word is printed. To see the actual words, I would have to drive to Portland and ask the Grand Master to unlock his safe. By the time I got back to Eugene, I probably would have found another word I didn’t know, and would have to do the drive over. Instead, I call local Masons on the phone, and tell them I’m stuck on Page 52, Line 18, etc.
It’s a “Masonic offence” to make even a tiny pencil mark in a ritual, much less write the ritual out. A “Masonic offense” is even worse in Masonry than a mortal sin is in the Catholic Church, because Catholics aren’t ordinarily excommunicated for mortal sins, whereas Masons really are kicked-out for Masonic offenses.

Be that as it may, I learned my degree work from two wonderful men, and at least one of them had at least some of the ritual written down. I know this because when he couldn’t remember a word, he would turn his back to me and refer to a book that he kept in a drawer. I suspect the practice is common, and I interpret it this way. If you take a stretch of highway on which motorists can safely go fifty, and you post a twenty mile per hour speed limit, most people will ignore the law. They might not go fifty, but they will go over twenty simply because the law makes no sense. In the case of the Masonic ritual, you can find it on the Internet in a few seconds, and hardly anyone would want to read it anyway, because it would be—to use another Catholic comparison—like reading a mass. It’s an interactive affair—you have to be there to appreciate it.

Yet its attempt at secrecy does make Masonry more appealing. It’s not that Masons are hiding things because they are shameful or sinister, but because they are intimate and sacred. If just anyone could drift into a Masonic lodge, I would not be a Mason. There are no social connections, there are only private connections within a social context, and the secrecy of Masonry (along with its accompanying vows) facilitates that.

Masonry claims not to care what your religion is just so long as you have one, yet it requires its members to believe in one God, personal immortality, and the holiness of John the Apostle and John the Baptist. Well, so much for Hindus and Buddhists. Aside from this blatant hypocrisy on the part of Masonry’s Christian majority, I had to think hard about what these requirements mean to me. Could I in good faith affirm them so I wouldn’t be like my friend who got around Alcoholics Anonymous requirement that she believe in a Supreme Being by promoting her teddy bear.

I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I have no qualms about defining God as that which causes my heart to open—Peggy’s loyalty; Pachebel’s Canon in D; Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince; alpenglow on Diamond Peak; the kindness of strangers. These things I worship (and what a person worships is properly said to be his God). They’re as good as it gets, and they’re as real as it gets. When I pray, it is to the goodness within my own heart—a goodness that such things elicit. God is love and beauty. Love and beauty are God. Such is my religion.

Personal immortality posed a greater challenge. As with God, Masonry requires you to believe in it, but they don’t tell you what it is. Here is my problem. I am no longer the person I was when I was two, or ten, or even fifty. I even like to think that I am not the person I was yesterday, because yesterday was a lousy day. I ate nothing, drank too much coffee, and was pretty near psychotic by late afternoon. But being a tad psychotic from time to time is not always bad. Like LSD, it can show you the world through new eyes. Therefore the me who awakened this morning was, in a way, a different me than the one who awakened yesterday morning.

If Masonry meant by personal immortality that, if I died today, I would awaken in another realm as a white man with all his relationships intact, I would think them rather silly, but since they leave it to me to define personal immortality, I have to say that the personal (who I am at my deepest level) is unlimited in time or space. There is my ultimate reality, and there is my present incarnation, and the two are one. I am not a being but a passageway, within an indivisible whole.

Most Masons would shake their heads if they were to read this. Many might say that they can’t tell what the hell I’m talking about, and they doubt that I do. “But do you know what you’re talking about?” I might counter. “Do you know what you are talking about when you refer to personal immortality as if the next life were a perpetual family reunion with God carving the turkey? Do you truly believe that your existence is like concrete? Why even concrete is not like concrete; it contains atoms that are forever moving like an extremely slow river and, as Heraclitus said, ‘You can’t jump in the same river twice.’”

Personal immortality can only mean that we possess an inner core that is unchanging, and in this I believe. I just don’t believe that this core is synonymous with how I perceive of myself now/today/this minute or even this lifetime. “I” am bigger and older than that. So big that I see no end to me, and I am indebted to the Masons—and the Odd Fellows—for making me think about such things.

Seneca versus Wall Street

I’ve been doing some complementary reading. On one side, Wall Street Shoeshine Boy, which is about greed, depravity, competition, materialism, and drug abuse. On the other, the writings of Seneca and Epictetus. Wall Street looks even worse when compared so closely to the Stoic belief that virtue is the only good.

When Seneca was ordered to commit suicide by Nero, he first cut arteries in his arms and legs, but he had a clotting disorder, so that didn’t kill him. Then he drank poison, but that didn’t do the trick either, so he finally had himself carried to a steam room where he died of a heatstroke. All the while, he was exhorting his followers to remember the things he had taught them. Admiral James Stockdale spent eight years in the “Hanoi Hilton” after breaking his leg when he parachuted from a plane. He was nearly starved, often tortured, and kept in solitary confinement for four years. The writings of Epictetus enabled him to survive.

At 58, with all the mistakes of the past, how might I live better? How might I take life more seriously, not in a morose way but an intelligent way. First, I could be more polite. Am I rude then? No, I’m not rude, but I could go to greater pains to be nice. I could open more doors for more people. I could stand aside and let others go first. I could talk less about me, and ask people more about themselves. I could judge less harshly. I could try harder to see the other person’s viewpoint. I could show respect even when I’m not being treated respectfully.