A post without known controversy

I’ve spent three hours a day for three of the last four days digging in the yard. My shoulders have been holding up better than expected, so I debated hard about going out today because I knew I would be pushing my luck, but I felt lazy for not going and also distressed about taking a week to do a job that I could have once done in a day. I finally decided to work, but just as I got to the door, the seasonal rains returned after almost a week’s absence, and I can’t say but what it wasn’t for the best, the digging not being urgent enough to work in the rain to do.

For several years, I wouldn’t have dared to take on a digging project that would have lasted ten minutes, if that, so I greatly rejoice that I can do this work again because I love it enough to make it into a hobby. The bulk, beauty, and simplicity of the tools; the diversity of the movements; the feel of weight pulling my muscles; all this plus the odor, temperature, and tactility of the soil; the joy of finding artifacts (nails, glass, fence staples, a few toys, two tools, one bra, one clay marble, and thousands of Styrofoam pellets); and the delight—mixed with remorse—that comes from unearthing worms and other critters.

I grew up in Mississippi calling the tool in the photo a grubbing hoe, but people here in Oregon call it a mattock (not that I hear them call it anything very much). I would like to know what you call it, assuming that you call it anything. This one belonged to my father and maybe to his father. For years before Dad got a tiller, he would come home after working ten hours as a carpenter and break up a fairly large garden with this very tool. It’s a wonder it has any blade left, but there’s easily enough there to outlast me. I’ve painted it a few times by now as I paint all my outdoor tools. Any tool that lives in my house has it pretty good.

There is a tool that I would love to have, but I can’t find it. It’s a hand-powered posthole auger, and I don’t mean a bucket auger but a spiraling screw auger. I’ve looked online, but I can only find them in Britain, and then at places that don’t ship to America. I’ve also looked on Ebay for antique augers, but I’ve had no luck there either. If you know where I can buy one, please let me know.

Have you performed the impossible today?

“…if you have faith the size of a mustard seed...nothing will be impossible to you.” Jesus

Even love is a delusion unless it’s built upon truth, and so it follows that the same applies to faith. The truth is that my wife (pictured) has shown herself to be a person of loyalty and integrity for the 42 years I’ve known her. Hence comes my faith in my wife. It couldn’t have worked the other way. I couldn’t have had faith in her from the time my best friend introduced us in the summer of 1971, although I could have had credulity. 

Many people lose faith in Christ because he doesn’t keep his promises, and I haven’t observed that those who remain faithful seem to expect much. Otherwise, they would ask for things that couldn’t happen anyway, things like raising the dead, reversing tsunami damage, replacing amputated limbs, giving sight to the eyeless, and making quadriplegics walk. Jesus said, “…the person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these.” Greater deeds than walking on water, killing a tree with words, turning demons loose in a herd of swine, restoring life to a stinking corpse, and rising from the dead? I don’t think so.

I have occasionally been asked why I criticize religion so much. Aside from the fact that it interests me, my belief that it’s destructive combined with the fact that I know more about it than most people, make me obligated. There are seven countries in the world in which I could be put to death for writing this blog,* many more in which I could be imprisoned, eight states in America in which I couldn’t run for public office,** and at least one state (Arkansas) in which I couldn’t testify in court. I have been reviled, struck on the head, and dismissed from jury duty because of my unbelief, but these things were nothing compared to the assaults, vandalism, death threats, house-burnings, pet killings, child beatings,  job losses, rape threats, and other abuses that American atheists suffer for speaking out against the intrusion of religious practices, symbols, and dogma, into schools, government, and the military. There’s not a day that the sun comes up but what it doesn’t set on the corpses, broken homes, and prison cells of those who were abused in the name of one god or another. Not all religious people are vicious, but the truth is that millions of them behave that way while millions more remain silent in the face of the oppression.

This link (http://uuastoria.org/ffrf.pdf) is to the March issue of Freethought Today, a 24-page monthly newspaper that is filled with articles about the abuse that critics of religion suffer. I’m not sure that religion does much good, but even if I’m wrong, no amount of good can make up for so much meanness by so many people in the name of their God.

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/10/the-seven-countries-where-the-state-can-execute-you-for-being-atheist/

** http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2009/12/15/which-states-ban-atheists-from-holding-public-office/

She all but slammed me into the wall!

Every time I go the dentist, whichever hygienist I get gives me hell about the coffee stains on my teeth. Some of them get so worked up, that I expect them to burst forth in sermon, something along the lines of, “Your teeth are a personal affront to God Almighty, and I’m going to make you give up your 14-hour a day coffee habit or know the reason why—praise the Lord.” 

It’s a source of wonder to me that these women care so much—a lot more than I do. All I care about is leaving that place without spending a thousand or more dollars in expiation for the sins of my childhood and my decades of life. As for looks, stained teeth are my last problem in that area, but I guess it makes sense that teeth would be what a dental hygienist would complain about, and, come to think of it, it would hurt my feelings if they criticized my thinning hair and old age spots the way they criticize my teeth.

Lonely in the present

Sometimes, I’m lonely with a loneliness that people can’t fill, and so it is that the lonelier I am, the more I desire solitude. Solitude allows me to reflect on things that don’t seem that interesting to most people, a fact which increases my desire for solitude...

In Buddhism and Taoism, there’s an emphasis on being in the present. I’ve never understood this because it seems to me that if I’m doing something boring that it’s an excellent time to not be in the present, but to think of things more profound than, let’s say, doing dishes. I’m not saying that doing dishes can’t be profound, but why would I make it my goal to become completely absorbed by the chore of doing dishes every time I wash dishes? Yet, I’ve seen this recommended in many books (Be Here Now, Chop Wood Carry Water, the writings of Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Thích Nhất Hạn, and others). As to why, they only say that the present is where we are, so if our minds are someplace else, then we’re not completely alive. We’re half dead then? I don’t see myself as ever being incompletely alive; it’s simply that some things energize me, and other things enervate me, and a focus upon the present isn’t always the most energizing option.

The painting is Three Friends in Winter by Ma Yuan (1160-1225).