T - Raids on the Inexplicable

Raids on the Inexplicable

Artifacts of an Experience

Reflections, Observations, and Realizations on the Vocation of Humans

By Don Gerz



(This work was composed between 1984 and 1995 and revised in February and March of 2008.)

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Contents

 Dedication…………………………..………………………………….…………………………… 3

 The Context of Raids….………………..…...…………….…………………….…….…… 4

 Preface….…….…………….…..…………………………………..……..………….…….…… 5

 Ignition - Peculiar Grace: The Sting of the Jellyfish……………………..…… 7

 Raids on the Inexplicable………………………...……………………………….……….. 8

 Expanding Spheres………………….……...………….……………….………………….. 12

 Expanding Spheres Considered….….……………………………………..…………… 13

 Articulations ……………………………...…………………………………….……..…….. 14

 Nothing New Under the Sun………………..….……………………………..………… 31

 Postscripts and a Prayer………….…………..………………………………………….. 32

 The Great Conversation / Bibliography……………………………………………… 33

 Acknowledgments…………….………………………...……………………….………….. 44



Afterword………………………………………….……..……………………….…………….. 45

 About the Author….………………………….……………………………………………….. 46

Reflections, Observations, and Realizations on the Vocation of Humans



Dedicated to My Children,

Paul and Andrea

…and to All Who Read This Work

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Paul Gerz and Andrea Gerz Glasofer

Andrea and Paul, I have composed this small work as an instrument of my tangible presence to you long after my passing. In all situations and on any special occasion, should you wonder what I would think, say, or do if I were still alive, I would be quite pleased if you would consult this highly compressed piece and consider its crucial and insistent values and meanings for you and your lives—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I created Raids on the Inexplicable to serve you and others,

but it must be read and considered carefully and prayerfully if it is to be of any actual use

.

Love,

Dad




The Context of Raids

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“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— twenty years largely wasted trying to use words.

And every attempt is a wholly new start and a different kind of failure because one has only learnt to get the better of words for the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which one is no longer disposed to say it. So each venture is a new beginning, a

raid

on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mass of imprecision of feeling—undisciplined squads of emotion.

And what there is to conquer by strength and submission has already been discovered once or twice, or several times by those whom one cannot hope to emulate.

But there is no competition. There is only the fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again and again, now under conditions that seem unpropitious— but perhaps neither gain or loss.

For us, there is only the trying.”

…from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “ East Coker”




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Preface

“Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar,

and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.”

--- Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Early in the year of George Orwell’s long-awaited 1984, while attending my company’s annual sales and marketing meeting in Ft. Lauderdale, I pondered how it might be possible to rise above the uninspiring circumstances in which I then felt trapped. My condition was difficult to explain, even to myself. It was an ambiguous state, a paradoxical sensation of starving at a banquet. Compared to the economic misery of much of our planet’s population, my lack of fulfillment seemed trivial.

However, I rejected this appraisal on two levels:

One, my plight was not unlike that of many other individuals in western industrial societies. I realized that most people, in their own ways, desire to reach far beyond the “nuts-and-bolts” and “ceiling-wax-and-string” of straightforward materiality. Whether we seek power, justice, beauty, influence, knowledge, wealth, prestige, wisdom, fame, honor, respect, love, or any of a thousand other intangibles and countless combinations of them, most of us eventually focus on searching for ways to make our lives count before we pass from this earthly scene like last year’s dead leaves. We want to contribute rather than merely consume. In a sense, we continue to live by contributing.

Two, I was convinced that our unexamined perspectives tend to repudiate the significance of essential human nutrients…sustentative “food groups,” such as mystery, beauty, synthesis, coherence, comprehensiveness, inclusion, and many other

“foods” that are left to rot on the vines of the human intellect, spirit, and psyche.

Therefore, I wrote Raids on the Inexplicable. Please understand it is not something I wanted to write. Instead, I felt that I might contribute rather than consume by doing so.

Because any work such as Raids may pose inherent difficulties for some readers, I must make a few comments. Anticipating potential misunderstandings and questions before they occur will help...perhaps. I will group these clarifications in two groups—those concerning the issue of authorship and those regarding the literary form of the text:

 Unlikely Author - Fortunately for me, a white whale did not write Moby Dick!

Herman Melville, a man with many flaws wrote that insightful novel. Some who personally know me (or think they know me) may be surprised by this work because I (of all people!) wrote it. To say I am not worthy to have written this work is to state the obvious. I know it, God knows it, you know it,

everyone knows it! However, I did not write Raids because I am good, or because I think I am good. (I’m not, and I don’t!) I wrote it in spite of my

many shortcomings. (In fact, perhaps my faults, failings, and outright sins




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helped me to develop a taste for what I and others yearn.) As is everyone, I

too am a sinner. I wrote Raids on the Inexplicable because I was equipped for it by my experiences, background, teachers, friends, temperament, family, and various other factors. (My experiences, teachers, education, background, and the like are not better than anyone else’s are, but they have been different

than most have been.) So, what were my real motives in composing Raids?

First, it is a work of love to Humanity…a work I hope will convey a view of what

I (and many others) think it means to be an authentic human being…a work I believe to be both beautiful and true. Consequently, I am eager to share the inherent hope in this work with the reader. Second, I simply could not turn away from writing it. It became a twenty-four year passion.

 Unfamiliar Form - How a text is read is no less important than how it is written.

The literary structure best suited to communicate the content of what the author attempts to convey is irrevocably attached to the method of its conveyance. As Marshall McLuhan once said, “The medium is the massage.”

(The form of a message rubs and massages.) Raids on the Inexplicable differs from many texts. Yes, it is written in English, but its formal components differ from other formats in much the same manner as do menus from sermons, phone books from volumes of poetry, and medical texts from tomes of philosophy. All of them may be written in English, but each must be approached by the intelligent reader through a given work’s specific linguistic form if that text is to be properly and accurately understood. This work is no different. As well, please keep in mind that I have designed this small work as a bridge between our familiar experiences to human encounters that may feel new to us. Please note, however, that everything we now take for granted was at one time exceedingly strange and unfamiliar. We did not always like caviar, scotch, or calamari. (If you do not like caviar, scotch, or calamari, please make your own list of things

you did not initially like, but now enjoy!)

As noted in the meditation on page 31, the ideas and experiences in this small work are not uncommon. In fact, many have been around for thousands of years.

However, readers may find the presentation of those ideas and experiences to be somewhat novel. (I hope so!) In any event, on pages 33-43 I have provided a bibliography of works that have helped to shape this work.

I hope you find the careful reading and contemplation of Raids on the

Inexplicable to be profitable.

Peace,

Don Gerz, 2008




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Ignition

Peculiar Grace: The Sting of the Jellyfish

Once upon a time, there was a man in his middle years with a restless spirit who embarked on a journey to personally rediscover, recover, and reclaim through direct experience that which cannot be put into words. He determinedly pondered a sizable number of books on and of philosophy, theology, literature, comparative religion, history, psychology, the Scriptures, and anything else that might have helped in his quest. He also strove to better perceive the many traces of the divine that abide in the most essential and inherent elements of ordinary life.

The man quickly discovered that his mind was capable of only so much understanding. He became depressed over the limits of his intellect, but continued reading, looking, and listening because nothing else pleased him more than searching, pondering, and wondering. Soon it became apparent that he enjoyed the quest itself more than the actual object of his passion. This realization disturbed him greatly because it meant he was more comfortable and satisfied with what little he could understand than with the magnificent reality that lived far beyond the limits of his paltry reason.

The man prayed, but soon realized he experienced mere images of his own mental construction and projection instead of the genuine goal of his search. He became vexed and was even somewhat indignant. Exasperated, he consulted a monk who taught him how to pray to the God we cannot see, hear, imagine, or understand. The monk assured him that he would be fulfilled in due time. The man centered himself in this manner of the heart for a few moments each morning and evening.

Two weeks later, the man was swimming in the ocean when a jellyfish stung him across his chest. He swam back to the shore, sat on a towel, and touched his skin where the creature had left its mark. Thinking of nothing in particular, he observed the many men, women, and children on the beach. He noted how beautiful and noble they appeared to be. The man also saw many flaws on the faces and bodies of the people—and he was certainly still aware of numerous defects and deficiencies in himself. However, the overall perception he vividly experienced that day was undeniably one of absolute beauty, grace, and perfection. He marveled at what had happened to him.

The next day, while he was attending his company's annual meeting, the man hurriedly wrote twenty-one aphorisms that became the core of Raids on

the Inexplicable. Eleven years later, he was moved to add another fourteen sayings. The man thought perhaps his work was finally completed, but he eventually understood it was just beginning.




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Raids on the Inexplicable

(Thirty-five Reflections on the Vocation of Humans)

We do not live by food alone, but by the creative silence of the original I.

and true self.

II.

Since the false self is a clever counterfeit we unquestioningly take for reality, we must discover and recover the original self. We may do so simply by gently dismissing all images of self and inviting the genuine article to walk along as we seek the best path in life. Our paths are not in any particular direction, but rather in all/no directions. It takes little time to travel upon such paths, but most spend a lifetime in ultimately experiencing that which is unnecessary to seek because it always “was, is, and will be.” The true self always is.

III.

We can fully know only in experiencing—and we can experience solely in the action of true being, rather than in the lethargy of mere knowing.

Authentic experience is a gift we are reluctant to give ourselves, due to legions of excuses and a myriad of pretensions.

IV.

We cannot control truth. Even if we could do so, it would not profit us nearly as much as our acceptance of pure being. Being is all or nothing.

V.

The will is perfected in the gift of the desire of what we need to be authentically human. The awareness of what we need is accomplished when we are brought into reality. Being brought into reality is a cooperative process that has both its gentle and severe times. The process is all-important—the goal is assured.

VI.

The only thing we can possess is our true self. Even the true self is a subject who is, rather than an inanimate object to be merely possessed.

We can own nothing—we can only be. To be is everything. To have is not even possible in the calculus of the human soul.

VII.

A man for others once said, “Seek and you shall find.” Another has said,

“Give some of what you find to others, for in this way you will possess it forever. But if you keep most of what you find, surely it will possess you instead.”

VIII.

To be sincerely tranquil and genuinely serene at the outright futility of possession is to have it all.

(Continued)




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IX.

We begin to be when we directly experience what dwells within the authentic self—when we are silently present to what is casting the shadows on the opaque walls of our dim caves.

X.

Being is what happens when we dare to love and be loved. We cannot love and receive love if we do not assume that we are loved. We are loved. Of this, there must be no uncertainty.

XI.

That we are loved is the underlying article of all faiths, and the basic assumption of every truly human philosophy. All other principles of every faith, and of all credible epistemologies, are actually so many corollaries of “We are loved.”

XII.

We are permitted and even encouraged to doubt almost anything and everything, but we can never afford to doubt that we are loved.

XIII.

Everything true departs with the belief that we are not loved. All truth returns with the conviction that we are loved.

XIV.

The ground of our being is the stuff of what happens when we dare to be loved.

XV.

We are made by love to love and be loved. A fish is made of water to breathe that of which it is made. We are made from love to breathe that of which we are made.

XVI.

A fish seeks only to swim in that of which it is made. We must seek only to swim in that of which we are made.

XVII.

We are fish out of water.

XVIII.

It is said that it is more blessed to give than to receive. But one cannot give what he has not yet received. It is impossible to love without first being loved; yet, it is likewise impossible to feel that same love unless one first accepts it.

XIX.

It is a gift of humility to receive what one does not yet possess. It is also impossible for one to give unless another accepts and receives what is given. Therefore, it is actually a little more blessed to receive than it is to give.

(Continued)




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XX.

Love is the foremost necessity of humanity. When such a prime need becomes impossible to recover, we must reclaim it with our sweat and bare hands. The work of love is the vocation of humanity. The regeneration of love is the purpose and function of all knowledge, wealth, education, intelligence, freedom, courage, and grace.

XXI.

Fallen nature desires possession and control, but grace seeks nothing except to inspire acts of love and being loved. Love is the firstborn child of wisdom. She is an order of wisdom one can never understand because her instruction is in the doing. Doing love is understanding love.

XXII.

Life only seems to be contradicted by death. Even in its most fearful stage, “death is the final stage of growth.”

XXIII.

That which grows is life. That which has the courage to grow toward eternity is life perfected. To have the courage to grow is to have the will to live forever. To live and grow is to have eternal life—even in the throes of death.

XXIV.

Daily we die through the necessary sacrifices of faithfully loving, living, and learning. It is through living that we die, and it is through dying that we will truly live.

XXV.

A prophet once said, “If you would be first, seek to be last.” Another wise man has said, “While you are at it, seek to last.”

XXVI.

Do not believe in everything everyone says. See it for yourself. First, however, see yourself. To see yourself, find and clean your mirror.

Finding your mirror is most difficult amid all the noise, amid all the dust and clutter in the attics of our lives, our minds, our souls.

XXVII.

To err is human, to forgive is divine, and to forget is impossible. We must not be too proud to ask for the impossible, yet we must be grateful for what is given. We are given much. As a modern statesman has said, “For all that has happened, Thank you. For all that will be, Yes!”

XXVIII.

Most say dreams are a waste of time, that dreams do not make much sense anyway. But are not dreams real? Do we dream or not? Certainly, they must have purpose. Creation itself, every invention, and all discoveries were conceived within the infinite womb of dreams. Dreams are far more substantial than automobiles, money, or even food. They last forever.

(Continued)




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XXIX.

Dreams very often do not make sense because they generate future realities—realities that will inevitably make marvelous sense later on.

Actually, humanity does not have the luxury of ever retiring from the toil of its divine dreams.

XXX.

If it were not for divine dreams, we would not even be. Our general purpose is to continue dreaming the divine into our future. What will be our future if not for the boldness of our dreams?

XXXI.

We need each other because we are parts of an infinite organism comprised of flesh, mind, bone, psyche, earth, spirit, blood, the expanding universe, and the eternal void whispering in our ears, “We love you.” Certainly, we are not who we seem to be, and for that we should be eternally grateful. Who are we? We are each other.

XXXII.

A man for others once said, “You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” Another has said, “We are children of salt from the sea.”

XXXIII.

We spend our evenings walking along the ocean shore, our mortgaged voices drifting in the foam. Incessant waves urge us to enter and be one.

We hesitate and delay. We lack the desire to dissolve, to find what and whom we must offer again and again. Meanwhile, every wave, every movement of our translucent deep, whispers words beyond words within our glassy brine.

XXXIV.

At midnight, we nakedly see and hear the vastness of the great void as we walk on the sand. Again, we hear “the mermaids singing, each to each.”

This time they sing to you and me.

XXXV.

Our chorus is the voice of sea foam from the eternal void's infinite depth.

It is not my voice, your voice, or their voices. It is one voice—a reprise, a song we have always heard within and without, but have never realized until now.




Expanding Spheres

(A picture is worth a thousand words.)

(See below this diagram for its key. Note: all spheres are permeable and therefore “percolate” into each other. “A” is not a sphere.

Rather, it is an infinite atmosphere of sorts.)

(Note: Spheres E, F, G, and H should intersect each other instead of overlapping, but the software refused to cooperate!)

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A - Ultimate Reality


B

C

C - Absolute Realities

E

E - Body

G - Intellect

D - Relative Realities

The Person

F

D

H - Spirit

D - Relative Realities

C - Absolute Realities

B - Nature



A. Ultimate Reality / B. Nature (the Earth ) / C. Absolute Realities / D. Relative, Sociopolitical, Cultural

Realities, E. Physical, Material, Sensory Realities / F. Psychological Realities / G. Intellectual, Logical,

Mathematical Realities / H. Spiritual, Noumenal, Transrational, Alogical Realities



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Expanding Spheres Considered

(Thoughts on the Drawing)

What comes first: the "bird" of reality, or the "egg" of knowledge? When birds are contemplated, eggs always seem to precede them; but when eggs are considered, invariably it is birds that are laying them. From the perspective of reality—that realm of the bird and the oak tree, of the external and the concrete, of existence and the object, of the mechanics and the substance of sense, perception, and cognition, of the body and the brain of all beginnings and ends—knowledge obviously must exist before reality can be perceived, processed, articulated, and transmitted. However, from the vista of knowledge—that province of the egg and the acorn, of the internal and the abstract, of becoming and the subject, of the idea and the reason of sense, perception, and cognition, of the mind, soul, and consciousness of all ends and beginnings—reality necessarily must exist before there is any object to be known.

Reality and knowledge seem to be mutually dependent and positively correlated to each other.

Reality is what provokes, motivates, and stimulates the human endeavor to know and experience nature and itself. Human acts of virtue through the millennia of prehistory, history, and in the present generate incalculable procreations of the original objects of reality. Knowledge is the sum of human growth and awareness of the realities surrounding and infusing all with still more reality and, therefore, with yet more to know. It is through knowledge that we become aware (though "through a

glass darkly") of our vocation as humans in the "suchness" of the realities that constantly envelop and suffuse us.

Between the two titans of reality and knowledge is still a third mammoth: experience. Experience is the effect of reality and knowledge at play within the spheres of the body, psyche, intellect, and spirit of the intact person (spheres E, F, G, and H of the diagram); within the cultural/sociopolitical sphere (D)—that place and time where and when individuals and groups fashion and develop their public voices for the improvement and growth of their societies; within the sphere of the absolutes

(sphere C), which houses preexistent values that seem stillborn until we rediscover, recover, and reclaim them in that sphere and throughout the other spheres of reality; and within the natural world of which we are made (sphere B). Experience, therefore, is the method and technique by which reality and knowledge are united in the individual and in society. Because reality is life, and because it is the nature of life to grow, reality's impetus is necessarily one of constant development and expansion.

Experience provides reality with the fuel to move and the pattern on which to grow and develop.

Note that the four spheres of the intact person expand and extend into the sphere of the cultural/sociopolitical realities, which in turn expands and extends into the sphere of the absolutes and the sphere of the natural world. All spheres expand into ultimate reality (A). We absorb this reality into our beings and commune with its substance, not only through scientific knowledge and Kant’s pure reason, but also through contemplating the mystery of what it essentially means to be human—that is, through the experience of human life and death. The experience we gain from this lifelong prayer of becoming comprehensively intact persons—of becoming more real— is more than enough to become one with who we already are.




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Articulations

(Poetry and Notes Reinforcing and Expanding upon the Reflections and the Drawing)

A poem is a tightly woven and highly compressed pattern of images, emotions, perceptions, and experiences. Its intent will be transformed markedly from person to person because no two souls share the same linguistic sensibilities. The notes and comments after each poem are provided so that the reader may have a general awareness of the underlying idiom of each piece.

Shells

Shells sing of nothing, know not where they go, settle in no particular places.

But their songs are heard, their journeys seen, their ends known.

Even the objects of oblivion live forever in the mind of pure being.

(Even the discarded dwellings of dead animals, whose only claim is simple existence, are not lost in God, the heart of pure being and ultimate reality. If objects of seemingly little concern and worth are important enough to be forever intact in an absolute sense and place, how much more so are we?)

Between Sleep and Consciousness

Through sleep's door left ajar

You peel surface from surface,

Revealing to strangers in a strange land

Depths upon infinite depths

This world can never see.

Perception sharpens until it shatters ---

Pierces knowledge's bubble

Where we see and are seen.

Inside my thou,

The fertile moisture of your one

Contains without holding wills hostage

To your means or ends.




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Time is servant to your beauty,

To your desire.

Arresting planets, stars, galaxies, universes,

You draw life to itself by sifting it finely

Through your yearning.

As my senses clear

To better see and hear,

The air is heavy,

My vision pinched.

I catch your apparition

Slipping home behind my eyes,

Beyond hearing,

Disappearing as water

Into my ground.

(Divinity is revealed when the layers of delusion, deceit, and dread are peeled away from the core of the true self. This true self can be compared generally and approximately to Hinduism's

“Atman,” Judaism's “Other,” Confucianism's “Chun-tzu,” Taoism's “Tao,” Buddhism's´ “Void,”

Christianity's “Christ-self,” Zen-Buddhism's “Original Face,” Islam's “Fana,” Emerson's´ “Over-soul,”

Martin Buber's´ “I-Thou,” and perhaps even to the “Unified Field” of quantum physics.)

A Cost of Living Index

Strive to become finally silent.

Speak a jazz full of transparence.

Expect no more thoughts ---

Only agreement with rhythms,

Soundless quiescence.

Why pour more into what is filled?

How can anything be added to all?

Less results from straining,

Trying to form words first spoken

Before either of us took shape.

There has yet to be a time when

We have never been thought of.

Why flex who we think we are when

We can know only by being known?

How to be known if we always speak,

Moving egos to the confines of poems,

Music, the damnable two cents worth?

Two cents buys merely two cents worth.

Even bubble gum costs more than that.

(We would do well to listen more and speak less. Until we guilelessly permit ourselves to be recognized by transcendence, we cannot genuinely comprehend or authentically experience anything or anyone, not even ourselves.)




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Skydiving

The excitement of being shakes me in bass tones as though I am parachuting into humanity.

The autumn wind rifles the wheat below.

Golden.

(Being is reason enough to discover the unlimited potential in each person.

Often, however, we must detach ourselves from the particulars of individuals to visualize the full panorama of what humanity can be.)

The News

If a Sacrament is a sign of the

Presence of who we are, the

Nightly news is the image of our

Failure to choose that presence.

Quite a contradiction of terms: a

Ghost of someone lacking himself.

Sand clear of this reflection.

No mirror can find it; yet surely it

Seeks to destroy in others what it

No longer finds in itself.

(Sacraments are signs of truth—corporeal vessels of God's faithful and staunch presence within our past, present, and future history. As it is usually presented, the news is an unending and unholy daily and nightly litany of how we are tempted unconsciously to see ourselves. Such a debased vision is a malignant distortion of the human spirit and of human nature itself. In effect, the news has

become an anti-sacrament to comprehensive reality.)




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Lost Moments

If it were not so important to wait for the purpose of our moment,

It would be a relief to disappear into the crowed room amid the talk of Larry and Pam, of Mary and Dan.

But is it not a sickness to lament the loss of the moment ---

Even the loss of that moment when our purpose is meant to unfold?

Infinite moments are in you and me ---

Enough time to pose our questions, define our positions, choose our weapons, and decide our fate.

Our future rests not on the random moment, but on a choice immune to time, removed from the dirt of the grave and the endless words of Mary and Dan, of Larry and Pam.

(Lost time and opportunities are forfeited only when we become obsessed with success and failure, with gain and loss. The general vocation of humanity is the growth and development of our capacity to extend and create greater and more significant vistas of truth, life, and love. Failures and losses are just as indispensable to our individual and collective evolution as are successes and gains.)

The World is Too Much with Us

Wordsworth once said,

“The world is too much with us.”

Compulsions, delusions, distractions

Drag our devotion down streets

Where we plead for honor restored.

Words of expedience, intent, and conjecture,

Spurred by feeble brains in faint spheres

Struggle, stumble into pale conviction,

Repeat, compete with themselves.




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But we must mold intact images and

Ideas into plastic symbols—dreams,

Elastic meanings within this rigid world

Where the imagination is hardened

To hawk beer and cigarettes.

The TV tempts us to mimic thought, fools

Us to be jesters with vacuous smiles and

Unnatural appetites until we clamor for

Easy agreement with the unexamined life.

“The world is too much with us.”

Will our children find us lockered,

Hanging as dripping laughter

From the sides of mouths agape,

Cold meat, ridicule, hooks and all?

(We are concerned with the superficial to the detriment of the essential. Mediocrity has become the norm, while the magnificent no longer holds sway. The momentary is treated as the eternal, the truly eternal as nonexistent. Conviction about almost anything has become difficult to maintain in this vacuous age. Our imagination as a people has been rendered vapid, our vision truncated. What will our children think of us after we have died?)

Dust in the Air

There was a time when I perceived you

Within the dust in the air.

We communed in wordless sounds

When I murmured to myself as a child.

Your logos was written inside a mirror

Smashed with your image amid particles

Stirred through the air by my hand ---

I found your face.

What was the conception within my mind

As I gazed into your center?

For no true concept of perfect being

Can safely abide in the human intellect,

Or prosper in this sterile reason

Unsullied with desire and need.

But in the warmth I felt you

As an animal touches the wisdom

Of its ancestral accretion ---




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I became blissfully mute.

Only the lucid experience of you

Could have so completely pierced

The feeble understanding

Of my antecedent logic.

Paltry language was flooded

With innocent truth ---

Truth awash with you.

Amused with a delight you can never lose,

But with which I have since misplaced,

You relished my impertinence.

Impertinence was among the first

Of your creations, was it not?

If I had realized your smiles were me,

You would never have laughed at your aspect

Reflected in the glass of my gaze.

Knowing nothing, in your eyes I could see everyone

Who has lived and will live.

In your voice, I heard the song of the moment

And the melodies of what could be.

In the dust, I heard the fragmented chords of death.

(Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...)

I was not afraid.

The residue of consecrated time

Formed the outline of your person,

Dusted the voice (Both mine and yours),

And reflected your face—the gift of a primal right

To children disinclined to doubt the voice

And vision of their creator.

My face was not then as others came to know it,

Or as the mirror now reveals me.

I had no use for mirrors that could not bear

Your reflection when I was a child

Gazing at the dust in the air.

(In the beginning of a human life, God appears to be everywhere and anywhere. The wordless, conceptionless murmuring of a child playing with nothing is as God talking to himself. In a sense, God talking to himself through the child's true self, a self so genuine that it resonates almost perfectly with bequeathed divinity. Knowing nothing, in effect the child celebrates and consecrates everything, but will require the rest of his life to rediscover, recover, and reclaim what he originally enjoyed without question, reservation, or analysis at the dawn of his own consciousness.)




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Dogs and Stars

Stars in the sky,

Seeds in the ground.

Still, I do not grow

Beyond dim star.

Dogs barking.

What can be barking

To a star?

Writing of heat

So far away,

The coolness

Of this night.

Only fools write

Of stars who

May be dead behind

Their slow light.

But light never dies,

Nor foolish love ---

Brightest starlight of all.

Still, the dogs bark.

What can barking be

To a star?

(The seeds of understanding are in the ground of the soul like stars in the soil of the heavens, yet at times there seems to be no growth of spirit. Instead of absorbing the muted heat of externally and internally remote realities, we become distracted and downcast by the common dross of dense circumstances that routinely surround us. Faith feels absurd at such times. However, although ephemeral and distant possibilities such as consciousness, faith, hope, and love seem to be ridiculed by this brutish existence, transcendence is never far from one's inextinguishable desire for it.)

Haikuesques 1-10

1

Sand dollar eats sand.

What is consumed

To make your buck?

2

Trees shattering in dreams.

Birds, strangers collide ---

Glancing over wings.




21

3

Writing this --- sunrays

Spank stained glass ---

Bruised fingers.

4

Children see ideas through

Their eyes. Seeing that,

Too smart to think.

5

Color of her eyes ---

Too deep to end anywhere

But infinity.

6

What moves in hearts

Gives sparrow push

Against her wing.

7

Get the feel of the idea.

No texture? No thought.

No music? No idea.

8

Let the pen go where it will ---

The word writes itself. One

Mind cannot engender reality.

9

Writing of frogs who swim

Easily where words can

Only drown --- life.

10

Where are you? Wherever

Can you be? Inside, but

You refuse to enter these days

( 1: Since we are what we eat, what is the net effect of what we are feeding to our minds and souls? What kind of life and future are we generating for ourselves and for our children? 2: Fear engenders unplanned and reckless spiritual withdrawals where needless casualties inevitably occur. 3: Writing and all other forms of creating are bruising vocations. 4: The child's world is simple, yet profound in its wholeness. Its oneness cannot be experienced through analysis. 5: The depth of sensory vision is a precursor to the soul's infinitely greater capacity for sheer insight. 6: The dynamic of love is the engine that moves the universe. 7: If an idea has no "feel," it is not really an idea. If a perception does not engender a certain order of music, it is not an authentic perception. 8: Truth is preexistent. It does not depend upon a single human mind, or even upon six billion human minds to exist. Truth is discovered, not invented. 9: Words are expressions of life, not life itself. Symbols are no more pure reality than road signs are actual cities. 10: Even though we may live under the same roof, we cannot discover one another if we do not penetrate each other's soul.)




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Observation Status

Even the children of death seek the seeds of their own rebirth.

When the seed cannot rise to the egg, the egg must descend to the seed.

Whining in a blank room, even if I could be understood, no one listening, no one for me.

Blown down a leaf-wet alley, wind-driven into dark corners, it's me, it's you, it's Everyman.

Mind tired, uncreative.

Eyes drinking common beauty, uncommon nobility.

Soul refreshed ... grateful.

So much despair, so much greatness merely being human.

(Survival is the final recourse of existence. Life must adapt itself to the requirements of its given environment. Each person develops a unique language suited to the demands of his surroundings. Many of these existential dialects seem untranslatable because we frequently fail to listen to what we are hearing in the context of what is occurring. At times, we are at the mercy of forces that obstruct communion. No one is immune. When we have been completely defeated, when there seems nothing more to lose, we can still see beauty, even human nobility behind humiliation and abandonment. Such a perception is all that is required for renewal, for gratitude. To objectively perceive and willingly experience the simultaneous despair and magnificence within our humanity is to have uncommon insight.)

Infant Mortalities

Conceived and expelled onto squalid, vacant lots

with lawns of sharded glass in any metropolis

of every nation,

We dimly Xerox the star-presaged Nativity

of the stable.

Our hearth is a sinkhole of the soul ---

His barn featured fresh hay and the preconscious,

knowing more than philosopher-kings

with their perfume and stones.

Our probabilities suggest a flinching existence ---

His purpose lances the meanings of our wounds.




23

Our distress is a rheostat of the sun ---

His peace expands the envelope of our mortality.

Our madonnas fell on what they mistook for

God's blunt sword ---

His mother died with a cellophaned soul to bestow

a transparent heart.

Presidents shirk their vows, Herod slew his future,

and Pilot wiped his hands on the body politic.

The Word is prostituted on expedient charades

of lip service to debased constitutions

and bills of rights.

Meanwhile, in every city we work out our despair.

And every city is a new Bethlehem waiting

for a few wise men.

(Many souls are needlessly sentenced to enter a milieu completely lacking in the human essentials for their predestined development. The contrast between such a stark existence and the simple nurturing of the Nativity comes to mind. The purpose of the Incarnation was and is to provide humanity with the purest model of history's sole purpose. All cities of every nation await citizens and leaders with courage and wills to realize and accomplish the human meaning of the divine birth in

Bethlehem.)

Words on the Floor

Beware your sweeping statements

Found scattered on the floor

Senseless, tripping words, mere

Metaphors meaning this

Meaning that

Slipping under the door

Some are wet

These seem dry

Those are there, others here

What do you say?

What should I think?

What do we dare?

I don’t know, I can’t care

When you swear such cryptic jabber

With words from bards and such

Of larks and much

From postcards we bought

But forgot to mail




24

Found in a drawer

By a comb, between hair

Locks and a hard place

Made so by me

(You helped)

Saying this, meaning that

Is not too bad as long as you mean

What you say, saying

What you mean

Metaphors lying on the floor

Do get dirty, do get spoiled

My pockets are full of them

Full of words for me, for you…

Full of metaphors for saying to each other

What cannot be said or thought

Not here, not now, perhaps not ever.

(Words are not reality itself, but they have the power to generate and shape what eventually evolves into our unconscious conceptions of the actual. Ignoring the potency of language, we nonchalantly fling phrases and hurl sentences at one another as if they had no significance. We obscure our real intentions behind the smoke and mirrors of contradictory statements, equivocal innuendoes, and outright deceptions. We profess our actual selves, yet our acts betray twodimensional personas instead of who we really are. We can, however, think the great thoughts that cannot be thought, say the great things that cannot be said, and do the great things that cannot be done. All we need to do is to retrieve and examine the noble words we have been strewing like discarded flowers upon the floors of our lives --- and live them.)

Flying

Startled in my dream, I flew to your soul

Through the fullness of space and time,

Through the thick voids of empty matter,

To everyone and all, to where you might be.

Progress was easy at first, my speed unfettered by partially

congealed particles strewn and adrift upon perpetual seas and

undulating in measureless waves.

Undeterred by parties we danced at and kissed into long ago

nights, I removed the mask we artfully crafted to reflect

clever faces and camouflaged wiles, the thickened smiles

painted with purposes ordained by numberless dilemmas and

enigmas we actually solved (yet we left each other torn and

unresolved).




Detached from our hopes and sometimes forbidden desires and

acts, I saw stale time dragging its hours through the furrows

of our prior passions and rotting upon desolate altars and

neurotic shrines somewhere west of satisfaction.

And I made fluid headway without the crutched and dripping

clocks we hung on our faces, faces set to times we never could

tell and never could keep, to times and seasons out of joint

with us and who we used to be when we were just we.

25

Shifting in my dream, I flew to your soul

Through the fullness of time and space,


To everyone and all, to where you could be.

Plunging into the sifting emptiness of the sand like nothingness

that is matter, I chipped away the edges of my substance,

those harsh musings, thoughts idle and merely speculative, the

cells of imagination, fire, no doubt blood itself, of our

futures coalescing and pasts once commingled, but presently

separate, of bruising materiality now slamming against

immortal fruition with fitful slowings, with many jolts and

surges within deathless bodies and souls.

Then finally through buildings, bridges, oceans, walls, skies,

and earth my body streamed and pierced through every

obstruction and impediment to you.

I surged through rivers and stars, darkness and black holes,

voids and droves, through anything, everything, everywhere,

anywhere and everyone all.

Shattered and dispersed within my dream,

Annihilated, I flew to your soul

Through the fullness of space and time,


To everyone and all, to where you would be.

My body began to lose its form, maintained its substance in a

truer way.

Atom for atom was exchanged, was sown and laced within all I

flew through, within all height and width and depth of

everything known and unknown,

Through electrical plants and steel, through concrete, trees,

and stray dogs, through byways and expressways, insects and

dread, cause and effects, and lead, through sacred liturgies

and vacant lots and parks to name but only a few, through




26

swords and whispers, through the mating songs of every May

throng, through London and Bombay, through various national

and world affairs, through each city, population, race, and

time, through ancient wisdom, modern texts, and future

designs---through these and through many more, I once again

saw you.

Serene in that dream, I planted my soul

Within the fullness of time and space,

Within the thick voids of empty matter,

In everyone and all, forever with you.

(Our dreams are able to reveal the world as it could be, not as our conditioned perceptions and minds typically predetermine it to be. When dreaming, we are sometimes more awake than when lucidly fixing our attentions on the day's business. We have not the courage or vision to perceive difficult things; yet even physicists now tell us that matter is as Swiss cheese, that all voids are not even remotely empty, and that something they can't measure has always created everything from nothing. Love goes awry when we reason and act on unexamined assumptions of scarce metaphysical resources and upon unconscious expectations of becoming less than we can be. Who are we? We are made of love, by love, through love. When we genuinely love, nothing is able to obstruct our communion with those who have lived, are living, and will live. Time, space, voids, and matter dissolve into a boundless dimension of an infinite presence and the eternally present. When we awaken from our dreams to walk back into the world as it is generally experienced, we are empowered to transform all that seems to be into all that is meant to be.)

Warrior

Splitting boards, crushing tiles,

Gouging rocks, piercing skin ...

A man's bare hands go deep as spirit:

Substance without substance,

Eternal in depth.

Pure mind, empty mind:

Perfect freedom, no attachment ...

Energy of creation, emptiness in form.

Composed mind, empty mind:

Anxiety and fear withered at their source.

Contracting to expand,

Weakening to strengthen,

Taking by giving.

Bending, remaining straight,

Worn, remaining new,

Vacant, remaining full:

This is that, that is this.

The axis is both and one,

Always the same, complete,

All-embracing, whole...




27

Endless change.

Learning the Way,

Transcending the mundane ...

Washing dishes, taking out trash:

Enlightenment through first things,

Throne in paradise.

Passing through and beyond concepts,

Reaching pure suchness ...

Every city Benares, every grove Deer Park,

Every tree Bodhi tree: Noting the suffering,

Prying fingers from what never was,

Demonstrating what is.

Pure mind, empty mind:

Perfect freedom, no attachment ...

Energy of creation, emptiness in form.

Composed mind, empty mind:

Anxiety and fear withered at their source.

Splitting boards, crushing tiles,

Gouging rocks, piercing skin ...

A man's bare hands go deep as spirit:

Substance without substance,

Eternal in depth.

(Spirit empowers the true warrior, and courage conquers every impediment to incarnated virtue. It is also spirit that must enlighten the rigorous and disciplined mind. The disciplined mind is the free mind emptied of all expedience and manipulation. This liberated mind, this fighter's mind, is full of the eternal, is brimming with elemental forms that cast shadows upon the walls of our human consciousness. The endeavors of the warrior must reflect the middle ground between history's polarities, yet must also be reliable and substantial enough to be built upon in any age. His social, political, and economic ideas should mirror the entire philosophical spectrum of opposites instead of becoming fixed and mired in ethically and metaphysically murky occupations and pursuits, or stifled by the disingenuous agendas of institutional power struggles, and by the egocentric bottom lines of societal herds and bureaucracies. The warrior's mission is the liberation of humanity from the totalitarian bonds of ignorance, laziness, arrogance, selfishness, mediocrity, self-gratification, and much more. The warrior's vocation is the stimulation, motivation, and inspiration of individuals from all populations to the awareness that we are wholly responsible for our future, for our children's future, and for the future of humanity in general. Each of us, therefore, must be a modern Ulysses on the battleground of his own soul.)

Locusts and Honey

I - Sons and Daughters

Sons and daughters ponder genetic shadows, watered reflections spread like oil over frigid waves of deluded legacies from the paternal past.

In their sleep they murmur: "What was that all about?

Dad fought private, quixotic wars—thought it his vocation to joust with random windmills."




28

"We saw the windmills, never dragons; but we could surely see the desert.

We were not part of his silence, could not ride his donkey, did not care to bump across the sands of his obsessively chosen desolation."

"Did he really think it noble to martyr himself down the tubes of America?

Blind from looking into the sun, he saw what he saw.

To us it was nothing but starved kites in solar orbit."

"We never fathomed what he tried to do, who he tried to become, or where he was going.

Where he went was nowhere we wanted to be.

We did not know him—

He never knew himself well enough for that."

"Anachronistic, he thought himself 'postmodern,' but grasped every mystery, save his own inevitability.

Time sprouted in a forest of trees too close to the fate at the end of his nose."

II - Fathers and Children

Fashioning artful spans with reverence into plausible, deliberate meanings few understand,

Fathers thrive beyond the philosopher's best of all possible worlds.

Residual angst from wars waged before privileged birth spilled over massed absurdity—

Splendid defects smack in front of faithless heard unseeing—

Mobs bored, flaccid yawns at minor dramas are their wages.

Children first perceive foolery, later ambiguity, finally mystery.

Advancing into the breach, they spy the quest, or else posit one where none exists (youth possessing more than it can know).

They assume fools and fathers possess knowledge of their own ends— their reasons for being.

No one perceives that a father's time is measured out in the coffee spoons of all children's souls.

III - Flesh and Spirit

Mirrors cannot perceive and reflections are conceived only when seeded light flowers on the retina.

Image is mere phantom without the eye's focus resolved and filtered by cortical mandates and neural cues.

Its illusion preying on instinctual reflex, even a shadow requires flesh to cast its spell.

Each generation has its own visions and its new eyes to see what must be seen, what must be assimilated into the whole, into the universe spinning out of a bang and a whimper.




29

Biology deludes us in the assumption the cell is devoid of spirit, bereft of the divine impulse dragging its DNA kicking and screaming to heaven, sometimes to hell.

History's constituents as redeemed matter gather around the possibilities of divine will.

Electric, they charge human purpose—numinously soluble, they permeate human vision so to regard the holy edict.

Below, an eternally new age is metabolized in the stomachs of desert fools and fathers eating locusts and honey in the sun.

IV - Fate and Faith

A father is a solitaire grinding the grains of the collective unconscious, easing tribal digestion.

Yes, he tilts at occasional windmills, regards the ladies when most see kitchen sluts, and pantomimes the quest to children like a cat modeling the death bite to its young.

He is the court fool who knows his role as jester, conscience of the king— one who mimes the patterns of life spliced from the genes of history's eternalized moments.

His narrative is familiar even to torpid audiences who recall primal verses of their own elemental purposes, yet fail to respond.

Ultimately, a father must be another Moses straining to see beyond

a water-laden boulder, while keeping watch as the children stumble into the Promised Land.

(A true parent is not allowed the luxury of playing fast and loose with philosophy and theology. Where children are concerned, these arts cease to be delightful pastimes and become what they in fact are: matters of life and death. Everything a parent teaches, either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, is grounded in human assumptions, premises, and positions dealing with reality and faith. Even logical positivists have been unable to develop a metaphysic devoid of assumptions. Furthermore, atheists have always fervently and resolutely held fast to their doctrine of a God who either died, or never was. How a parent teaches depends on the direct experiences of both parent and child. Existential experience in the moral and ethical wilderness of Eliot's wasteland will inevitably occur in a desert of faith where God and reality seem dead and distorted. In such a wilderness, faith must be forged and tempered if it is to ultimately penetrate and burn its way irrevocably into the soul's infinite depth. A parent's job is to guide his children to the threshold of the ever-present promised land of milk and honey. Praying he has not botched the job, he will resolutely remain in the desert until his children finally seize the land of their human and divine destiny.)




30

Aum

Amber sanctum bruised gold-white, voice

Heard through void and silence, breathing

Where no bird can fly, velvet-pitched,

Eternal Aum, amber-gold hum, unrippled,

Silent song.

Faithful staying --- no one else anywhere as

Much as here. Glass / stained / wood / mosaic,

Icon / stained / bronze / glass / votive warmth,

Stained glass / candle fire / devotion flame:

No one, Everyman, all.

Vast heart beating eternal blood, unending

Life, no onus. Such transfusion, soul's plasma

Untrammeled --- spirit's veins expanded,

Circulation unobstructed, breathing stilled.

Touching: Melting what You see, touching

Whom You melt. Patience ... Body smashed

On uniting. Together: Obliteration. Apart:

Life lost, nothing ventured, no one gained.

Later, what can I consider? Everything: All

Is possible, nothing is lost, all is recovered,

Everything is considered, everyone is present,

Your flame never extinguished.

Staying away, losing time, losing time to

Find the time, the space, spending the time,

Losing the hidden agendas, the false schedules.

Flood Your image into the hollows of my

Bones. No one but You has what is mine,

What is Everyman’s. No one but You can...

GOLD REFLECTION ON THE SOUL

Why You love is no more reason than You.

(“Aum”…also spelled “Om”… is the sound of the contemplative chant of Buddhist monks as they directly experience the ultimate source of all reality. This origin of the true self vibrates subtly, deeply, and integrally within all individuals. Every nation, culture, and epoch of human history has generated a discrete expression for the supreme principle, word, light, and love all persons and things come to be through, exist by, and revert to at the end of their mortal existence. While the terminology for this unsurpassable reality may differ, the reality itself always was, is, and will be our same transcendent God. The contemplative experience is not a conceptual exercise in philosophy. It eclipses language, ideas, and thought. Nor is it a pious custom of religion, or even a clever construct of systematic theology; for it continues where rites and rituals leave off and theological systems wobble, fall, and crumble. So indispensable is the contemplative experience in nourishing the constantly unfolding life of the human person, it is easily within the inborn reach and innate grasp of not only Buddhist monks, but of all human beings.)




31

Nothing New under the Sun

(A Meditation)

“ What was will be again; what has been done will be done again; and there is nothing new under the sun. Take anything of which it may be said,

‘Look now, this is new.’ Already, long before our time, it existed.

Only no memory remains of earlier times, just as in times to come next year itself will not be remembered.”

--- Ecclesiastes 1: 9-11

The orange cat rubs its muzzle against my shin; green tea fills the kitchen air in the morning. Last night I looked at the moon—an owl appeared, and then disappeared. Fruit falls from the tree of knowledge. I eat it because it is no longer forbidden. I cannot hit the fastball as once I did, but now I am the pitcher, the ball, and the air supporting the ball. Why should I hit myself?

I read the newspaper and cry. They're killing themselves; they're killing you and me. I remember the dead, remember that I used to talk with them into the morning when they breathed this tea-filled air—now I breathe it alone.

That air is still here—nothing is gained, but nothing is lost either. It is all here for the taking and the giving.

All of these phenomena and much more are spliced onto one unending experience. Undoubtedly there will be time to rouse us from images that drown us in our sleep. Any memory, any perception can stir us from our slumbers, can shake dust from the corners of the soul. Just yesterday, we exploded from between our mother's legs, skin rosy from the friction of the upper atmosphere. We immediately began to cry, the great vision already disappearing from our eyes. We spend the rest of our lives trying to remember what we saw when we were not so encumbered with this slow flesh—with electric bills, college tuition, infatuations, job and boss, car repairs, and setting out the garbage. There was time for these, and there will be time for much more.

When we see all our experiences as one single strand, we awaken from under the elms. No more does the current event befuddle. All sing our songs, all is memory of what has been, is, and will be. No more do we walk over the bodies of our ancestors, no more are we left on a doorstep to whither into dust, no more is there anything ultimately frightening—we remember who we are.

This small work is not experience itself, but rather the artifact of a single experience—one strand of sensibility stretched out like an eternity of uncoiled

DNA. As the residue of an awakening, it loses much in translation.

Nonetheless, you as reader can render a little of it for your own good. May it indeed do you much good. Perhaps you will even be spurred to mount your own raids to rediscover, recover, and reclaim some of what we think is new under our sun.




Postscripts and a Prayer

“In Thy light shall we see light.”

--- Motto of Columbia University

"Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito."

(Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them.)

--- Virgil's Aeneid

"No matter how bad things get, you’ve got to go on living, even if it kills you.”

--- Sholom Aleichem

"Let nothing disturb you, let nothing affright you— all things are passing,

God never changes.

Patient endurance attains all it strives for.

With God as your portion, nothing is wanting:

God alone suffices."

--- St. Teresa of Avila

32




33

Bibliography

The Great Conversation

Stan Kajs once posed the rhetorical question: "Have you ever noted the conversation which has been unfolding for as long as humans have committed their experiences, thoughts, and dreams to the written word?” Lamenting that much of our society seemed to be listening to and taking part in another conversation---one far from noble, he added that soap operas had supplanted Plato's Academy and St.

Benedict's Monte Cassino. Although Dr. Kajs' observations were made more than thirty years ago, sadly they are truer now. Today we struggle as a people whose educational philosophies revolve around a technology that allows us to speak to everyone at once—yet we have nothing to say. Many have forgotten what human life is all about, others want to forget, and some have never known.

A human life cannot emerge from a miasma of spirit and protoplasm to be born into a world constantly reinventing the wheels of Faith, Hope, and Love unless the parents and society of that child are ignorant of and/or unstirred by the intact wisdom of the entire human experience. Such wisdom truthfully interprets the past, enervates life in the present, and sets a reliable course for human development in the future. Knowledge of universals is always timely, and the awareness of what it means to be a person is perennially relevant --- in fact, the most relevant knowledge of all.

To what distant country do we journey to listen to that conversation of wisdom? Where is such a forum to be found today? The following list represents likely traces of the great conversation to which Dr. Kajs may have been alluding some years ago. The works from this roster provided much of the language and fertilized the experience that fueled Raids on the Inexplicable. The bibliography is necessarily fragmentary because it contains works solely in written form. (The numerous other

meaningful indexes of life cannot be so conveniently alphabetized.) Nevertheless, the sources below cast light on the walls of our caves. They reveal shadows of what we cannot perceive through our senses, but what is engraved on our souls, and what we must infuse into our children in order to fulfill our vocation as authentically human persons.

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy

How to Think about God

Adler, Mortimer & Van Doran, Charles

How to Read a Book

Aesop

The Fables of Aesop (Translated by 'Estrange)




34

Anonymous

The Cloud of Unknowing (Translated by William Johnson)

The Philokalia (Prayer of the Heart) Translated by Palmer, Sherrard, & Ware

The Way of a Pilgrim (Translated by Helen Bacovcin)

The Pilgrim Continues His Way (Translated by Helen Bacovcin) th Century) Translated by Thomas The Verba Seniorum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers of the 4

Merton

Aquinas, Thomas

An Aquinas Reader: Selections from the Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (Edited by Mary T.

Clark)

Augustine of Hippo

The City of God (Translators & Editors: Walsh, Zema, Monahan, & Bourke)

The Confessions of St. Augustine (Translated by John K. Ryan)

Barnett, Lincoln

The Universe and Dr. Einstein

Barrett, William

Irrational Man

Baush, William J.

Storytelling: Imagination and Faith

Becker, Carl

The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers

Bellow, Saul

Henderson the Rain King

Benedict of Nursia

The Rule of St. Benedict (Edited by Timothy Fry)

Bible, The (the Bible itself and some helpful books about Christian scripture)

The New English Bible (NEB), The Jerusalem Bible (JB), and The Revised

Standard Version of the Bible (RSV) are all suitable translations, as are some others. The JB and the NEB have many scholarly notes, as do some editions of others.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Bible: Now I Get It! (A Form-Criticism Handbook) by Gerhard Lohfink

The Bible: An Owner's Manual by Robert Hawn

Christ in the Psalms by Brian McNeil

History as Myth: The Import for Contemporary Theology by Taylor W.

Stevenson

The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Editors: Brown, Fitzmyer, & Murphy)

Opening the Bible by Thomas Merton




35

Bloom, Allan

The Closing of the American Mind

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich

The Cost of Discipleship

Borg, Marcus

Jesus: A New Vision

Buddhism (a helpful book about this topic)

The World's Religions by Huston Smith

Buscaglia, Leo

Living, Loving, and Learning

Love

The Way of the Bull

Cather, Willa

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Caussade, Jean-Pierre de

Abandonment to Divine Providence (Translated by John Beevers)

Cavalletti, Sofia

The Religious Potential of the Child

Chardin, Teilhard de

The Divine Milieu

The Phenomenon of Man

The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin by Henri de Lubac

Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning by Henri de Lubac

Chesterton, G. K.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, "The Dumb Ox”

Orthodoxy

Christianity (See also “Bible, The.”)


Comparative Religion and Comparative Philosophy (helpful books about these topics)

Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions by Jeffrey Moses (Forward by the Dalai

Lama)

The Practical Cogitator: The Thinker's Anthology (Edited by Curtis & Greenslet)


Confucianism (a helpful book about this topic)





Copleston, Frederick

The History of Philosophy

Cox, Harvey

The Secular City

The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of Religion

Damasio, Antonio R.

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Dante Alighieri

The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, & Paradiso

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

The Idiot

Durant, Will

The Story of Philosophy

Eckhart, Meister

Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons (Translated by Colledge & McGinn)

Edinger, Edward F.

Ego and Archetype

Ehrlich, Eugene

Amo, Amas, Amat and More

Eliot, T. S.

"Ash Wednesday"

Four Quartets

"Journey of the Magi"

T. S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950

T. S. Eliot: A Life by Peter Ackroyd

Endo, Shusaku

A Life of Jesus

Engler, C. J.

My Other Self (In Which Christ Speaks to the Soul on Living His Life)

Evely, Louis

That Man Is You

Feuerbach, Ludwig

Principles of the Philosophy of the Future

36




Fichte, Johann Gottlieb

The Vocation of Man

Francis of Assisi (helpful books about this figure)

I, Francis by Carlo Carretto

St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton

St. Francis of Assisi by Johannes Jorgensen

Frankl, Victor E.

Man's Search for Meaning

Frank, Anne

The Diary of a Young Girl

Franz, M. L. von

"The Process of Individuation"

Fromm, Erich

The Art of Loving

Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics

Frye, Northrop

The Educated Imagination

Ghandi, Mohandas

Ghandi on Non-Violence: A Selection (Edited by Thomas Merton)

Gibran, Khalil

Jesus, Son of Man

The Prophet

Sand and Foam

Gilson, Etienne

St. Bernard's Mystical Theology

Gruber, H. and Voneche, J.

"The Concept of Stage in Piaget's Theory”

"Piaget's Theory of Intellectual Process"

Guardini, Romano

The Lord

Hamilton, Edith

The Greek Way

The Roman Way

Hammerskjold, Dag

Markings (Translated by Leif Sjoberg and W. H. Auden)

Haughey, John C.

The Conspiracy of God: The Holy Spirit in Us


37



38

Highet, Gilbert

The Art of Teaching

Hinduism (helpful books about this topic)

Hinduism by K. M. Sen


The Upanishads (Selected and Translated by Juan Mascano)

Huxley, Aldous

Brave New World

The Perennial Philosophy

Ignatius of Loyola

Modern Spiritual Exercises: The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (By David

Fleming)

Islam (a helpful book about this topic)


Issa

The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa (Translated by Lewis Mackenzie)

Jeremias, Joachim

The Sermon on the Mount

John of the Cross

The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (Translated by Kavanaugh &

Rodriguez)

Juliana of Norwich

Reflections of Divine Love (translated by del Mastro)

Judaism (helpful books about this topic)

The Living Talmud: Wisdom of the Fathers and Classical Commentaries (Translated by

Judah Goldin)


Jung, Carl J.

Answer to Job

"Approaching the Unconscious"

Man and His Symbols

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Kajs, Stanley

“The Role of Literature in a World of Technology”

Keating, Thomas

Finding Grace at the Center

Keillor, Garrison

Lake Wobegon Days




39

Kennedy, John F. (some helpful books by and about this figure)

Kennedy by Theodore C. Sorensen

"Let the Word Go Forth" - The Speeches, Statements, & Writings: 1947-1963

A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur M. Schlesinger

King, Jr., Martin Luther (some helpful books by and about this figure)

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. by David Garrow

The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Edited: J. M.

Washington)

Knox, Ronald

In Soft Garments

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

Think on These Things (Edited by D. Rajagopal)

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth

Death: The Final Stage of Growth

On Death and Dying

Questions & Answers on Death and Dying

Kung, Hans

Does God Exist? (An Answer for Today)

On Being a Christian

Kushner, Harold

When All You've Ever Wanted Is Not Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters

Le Soux, Henri

Prayer

Lewis, C. S.

The Abolition of Man

Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer

Mere Christianity

Reflections on the Psalms

The Screwtape Letters

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow

Gift from the Sea

MacKendrich, Paul

The Roman Mind at Work

Maritain, Jacques

Art and Scholasticism

The Frontiers of Poetry

Mauriac, Francois

Life of Jesus




40

McLuhan, Marshall

The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects

Mello, Anthony de

One Minute Wisdom

Sadhana, a Way to God: Christian Exercises in Eastern Form

The Song of the Bird

Wellsprings: A Book of Spiritual Exercises

Merton, Thomas

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Contemplative Prayer

"He Is Risen"

Life and Holiness

The New Man

New Seeds of Contemplation

No Man Is an Island

“On St. Bernard of Clairvaux”

Selected Poems

The Seven Story Mountain

The Sign of Jonas: The Journal of Thomas Merton (1946-1952)

Spiritual Direction and Meditation

Thoughts in Solitude

The Waters of Siloe

Moltman, Jurgen & Metz, Johann Baptist

Meditations on the Passion

Montessori, Maria

The Child in the Family

Moon, William Least Heat

Blue Highways: A Journey into America

Moore, Sebastian

The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger

Moore, Thomas

Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday

Life

Mortenson, Greg and Relin, David Oliver

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations . . . One School

at a Time

Muggeridge, Malcolm

Something Beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta




41

Nouwen, Henri J. M.

The Wounded Healer

With Open Hands

O'Connor, Flannery

The Habit of Being

"The Moral Meaning of Flannery O'Connor" by H. McDonald, H.

Mystery and Manners

Peck, M. Scott

People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil

The Road Less Traveled: A Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, & Spiritual

Growth

Pelikan, Jaroslav

Jesus Through the Centuries

Pennington, M. Basil

A Centered Life: A Practical Course on Centering Prayer

Daily We Touch Him: Practical Religious Experiences

A Place Apart: Monastic Prayer and Practice

Phillips, J. B.

Your God Is Too Small

Pieper, Josef

Leisure: The Basis of Culture (Introduction by T. S. Eliot)

Prather, Hugh

Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person

Rilke, Ranier Maria

Letters to a Young Poet (Translated by M. D. H. Norton

Possibility of Being: Poems of Rilke (Translated by J. B. Leishman)

Selected Poems of Ranier Maria Rilke (Translated by Robert Bly)

Schillebeeckx, Edward

Jesus: An Experiment in Christology

Schweitzer, Albert

Jungle Doctor: The Story of Albert Schweitzer by D. Salmon

Shinn, Roger L.

"Some Leaders of Christian Humanism: Tillich, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, de Chardin, &

Maritain"

Short, Robert S.

The Parables of Peanuts




42

Stevenson, W. Taylor

History as Myth: The Import for Contemporary Theology

Tillich, Paul

A History of Christian Thought: Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism

Tagore, Rabindranath

Gitanjali: A Collection of Indian Songs

Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore (Edited and Translated by William

Radice)

Taoism (some helpful books about this topic)


The Tao of Physics by F. Capra

The Way of Chuang Tzu (Translated by Thomas Merton)

Tate, Allen

The Essays of Four Decades

"The Hovering Fly"

"The Man of Letters in the Modern World"

Tennyson, Alfred Lord

"Ulysses"

Teresa of Avila

St. Teresa of Avila: Vol. I - The Collected Works (Edited by Kavanaugh &

Rodriguez)

Therese of Lisieux

Story of a Soul (The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux) Translated by John

Beevers

St. Therese of Lisieux: Her Last Conversations (Translated by John Clarke)

Thomas a Kempis

The Imitation of Christ (Edited by Harold C. Gardiner)

Thompson, James J.

Christian Classics Revisited

Tucker, Nicholas

The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration

Uhlein, Gabriele

Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen

Van Doran, Charles

The Joy of Reading




43

Virgil

The Aeneid

Williams, Charles

The Forgiveness of Sins

Wolff, Pierre

May I Hate God?

Yogananda, Paramahansa

Autobiography of a Yogi

Healing Affirmations

Man's Eternal Quest

Metaphysical Meditations

Spiritual Diary

Songs of the Soul

Yukteswar, Swami Sri

The Holy Science

Zen and Zen Buddhism (some helpful books about these topics)

Christian Zen: A Way of Meditation (By William Johnson)

Games Zen Masters Play (By R. H. Blyth)

The Gospel According to Zen (Edited by Robert Sohl)

Haiku (4 Vol. - 1942-52) by R. H. Blyth

An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (by D. T Suzuki with a Forward by C. G. Jung)

The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry (Translated by Stryk & Ikemoto)

The Way of Zen (By Alan Watts)


Zen and the Birds of Appetite (By Thomas Merton)

Zen in the Art of Archery (By Eugene Herrigel)

Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics (By R. H. Blyth)

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen Writings (Compiled by Paul Reps)

Zen and Zen Classics: Selections from R. H. Blyth (Compiled by Frederick Franck)

Zen without Zen Masters by Camden Benares

For Further Consideration

Gerz, Donald

 “Critical Theory and the Boy in the Sycamore Tree: A Lecture in Search of a Story” http://www.orgsites.com/ga/donald-gerz-literary-academic-works/Boy.doc

 “Personal Mythologies: Meaning and Truth in Tall Tales and Other Narratives” http://www.orgsites.com/ga/donald-gerz-literary-academic-works/Paper.doc

 “Understanding Literature” http://www.orgsites.com/ga/donald-gerz-literary-academic-works/Understand.doc




44

Acknowledgments

Each of the persons below (and so many others) motivated , inspired, and sometimes provoked me to compose Raids on the Inexplicable . Thank you. – Don Gerz

Sister Josephine, O.S.B., Sister Thomas, O.S.B., Sister Lucy, O.S.B., Sister Fidelis, O.S.B., Fr. Frank Miesch, and others (Grammar School Teachers: 1953-‘61)

Mr. William Schuster, Mr. Henry Joubert, S.J., Mr. Patrick Hunter, S.J., Mr. Frank Renfroe, S.J., Fr. T. L. Herlong,

S.J., Fr. Daniel Barfield, S.J., Fr. Benjamin Wren, S.J., Fr. Richard Stoltz, S.J., Fr. Joseph Rivoire, S.J., Fr. Peter

Bayhi, S.J., Mr. Milton Gaudet, Mr. William Durick, and others (College Prep Teachers: 1961-‘65)

Dr. James Burkhead, Dr. Frank Abernethy, Dr. C. A. Roberts, and others (Professors from Stephen F. Austin State

University: 1965-’70)

Dr. Benjamin Petty (Professor from Southern Methodist University: 1972-‘73)

Dr. Nina Morgan, Dr. Cindy Bowers, Dr. Gwen McAlpine, Dr. Jim Cope, and others (Professors from Kennesaw State

University: 1990-2004)

Mr. William Schuster, Mrs. Dollye Haskew Goodman, Fr. Thomas Francis, O.C.S.O., Mrs. Lu Voight, Mr. Jonathan

Mortimer, Rev. David Wayland, Rev. Doris Graf Smith, Rev. Ted Coleman, and others (Mentors: 1963-Present)

Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Evelyn Cramer, Mr. and Mrs. Elwood and Ester Gerlitzki, Mr. and Mrs. Les and Hattie Ewing, Mr. and Mrs. George and Maureen Yentzen, Mr. and Mrs. Don and Jan Woodman, Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Joan Franzen, and many others (Wise Elders)

Ginny Butow, Dr. Stan Kajs, Don Dorsey, Tommy Marion, Fr. Peter Bayhi, S.J., Joyce Joslin, Kay Frigo, Jim Franzen,

Bill Schuster, Fr. Neil Jarreau, S.J., Bob Darrouzet, Vicki Guest, Fr. Jack Heaney, S.J., Susan Rulon, Jim Guertin, Fr.

Nick Schiro, S.J., Ben Smylie, Bryan Clasen, Philip Gray, Kevin Gray, James Beaumont, Richard Anderson, Kwan Lee,

Kelli Watson Coletti, Cynthia Traylor, John McConnell, Kelle Vicknair, Jaime Gutierrez, Jack Withrow, Errol Sanders,

James Sampson, Roberto Tijerina, Paul and Gail Kreher, Diane Lewis, Philip Martin, Kay Morrison, Mathew McConnell,

Sherry Robinson, Leila Smith, Lynn Stallings, Cindy Thorne, Sheila FitzGerald, Carolina Ayerbe, Jason Butler, Greg

Bodeep, Charlotte Flores, Vaidehi Rallapalli, Daniel and Maritza Gracia, Carol Adams, Chet Burnes, Brian Buxton,

Gerald Colson, Janet Ford, Jay Hudson, Laurie Jones, Taniah Jones, Jaime Gutierrez, Victoria Jones, Katy Kane,

Christine King, Donna Moore, Keith and Kathy Muma, Jonathan Marston, Judy Martin, Kathleen Swift, and others

(Former Teaching Colleagues: 1970-2007)

Mr. Jack Cramer, Sister Janet Cambre, O.S.U., Fr. Patrick Koch, S.J., Mr. Jim Dennerline, Mr. Michael Radcliff, Ms.

Annie Kelahan, Mr. Dennis Attick, Mr. Bruce Brownlow, Mr. Blair Fisher, Mr. Robert Murphy, and others (Supervisors:

1970-Present)

Bobby McGlothlin, Sandra Mayer, Jerry Griggs, Laurie Erspamer Chessmore, Ed Yentzen, Gary Haler, Elaine Willow,

Clarissa Moore, Dana Wangler Grimes, Jack Woodman, Jim Franzen, Vicki Sampeck, Maryhelen Bronson, Joe

Fellhauer, Joan Huff, Richard and Fran Lauderdale, Bill & Claire Smith, Lauren Lindee, Marlene Beaumont Pitts,

Monica Healy Miller, Dr. Rebecca Kajs, Lu Voight, Rosemary Buttermore, Annie Kelahan, Stan & Janet Glasofer, and many others (Friends from 1953 to Present)

Billie Swisher, Don Hammer, Janelle Hunt, and others (Former Customers and Lasting Friends: 1978-Present)

Former Students (more than 1,200 of them from 1970-’71, 1973-’76, and 1989-Present), especially John Church

(1975-’76), Jarrett Baptist (2000-’05), Chelsea Phillips (2000-’03) Brit Butler, (2001-‘02), Jack Caruso (2001-’02), Reid

Haynes (2001-’02), Jordan Silver (2002-’03), Sarah Harrison (2002-’03), Rebecca Paisley (2005-’06), David Toler

(2005-’06), Jenna Nurik (2005-’06), Eric Brown (2005-’07), Samuel Collins (2006-’07), Alex Buttermore (2006-‘07), and so many others

Donald and Grace Gerz, Jr., Linda Gerz Shaw, Rose Williams Gerz, Brian (and Renee) Shaw, Kevin Shaw, Joseph

Glasofer, and Melanie Oster (Father, Mother, Sister, Stepmother, Nephews, Son-in-Law, and Steady Friend of My

Son)

Andrea Gerz Glasofer and Paul Gerz (My Extraordinary Children)

Carol Brunhoefer Gerz (My Remarkable and Beautiful Wife)

Finally, I acknowledge whoever sent the jellyfish whose painful sting roused me from deadly complacency.

Perhaps God sent it, or possibly the jellyfish and I just got lucky. Anyway, thank you for the blessing. Grace can be painful…but with faith, it always gives life. – D.G.




45

Afterword

How Raids Came to Be

Raids on the Inexplicable represents the substance of my experiences on what I consider the most important matters and subjects in this life. Here are some general facts on the manuscript, as it exists at this date (March, 2008):

Its category is Nonfiction: Spirituality/Philosophy/Inspiration/Poetry and

Comparative Religion with a trace of social, political, and educational commentary.

The source for the title is found in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, "East Coker."

The reading, consultation, and study for Raids began in late 1976 (when I

came to Atlanta) and continued through July of 1995—200+ volumes over a 19-year span!

The manuscript contains material from as early as 1968 (the poems,

"Skydiving" and "The World Is Too Much with Us") to Summer '95 (the poem,

´"Through Void and Matter")—a 27-year span!

The rest of the poetry was composed from 1983 to 1995—a 12 year span. My favorite is probably "Locusts and Honey," but all of them produced the effect I was looking for when I knitted them into the overall whole.

I began to commit Raids to paper in February '84. The story, "The Jellyfish's

Sting," tells it all.

In early November '95, I wrote the notes for each of the poems. Originally, I intended this commentary for my father's eyes only, but I decided to include them in the manuscript. (I guess this means I am more of a poetical philosopher than a philosophical poet!)

The big breakthrough was the diagram, "The Expanding Spheres of Reality."

I devised it to explain to my son how the Santa Claus myth works on many different levels of reality. I think it pulls everything together into a coherent package. (In 2008, I revised it, adding Nature.)

Finally, in March 2008, I wrote a preface.

Whether or not I will ever be successful in getting Raids on the Inexplicable published, I am very proud of it. It represents the very best of me with little of my baser qualities. I was brought up to put 100% effort into whatever I do. I have not always done that, but I did put everything I have into Raids!

Don Gerz, March 2008




About the Author

46

Don Gerz graduated from Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Texas.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and philosophy at Stephen F. Austin

State University in Texas with minors in psychology and secondary English education at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. He taught composition and literature for over twenty years at private high schools in Texas and Georgia. As well, he has thirteen years of experience in the sales and marketing of clinical and research laboratory instruments. Since 1978, Don has made his home in the Atlanta, Georgia area with his wife, the former Carol Brunhoefer. They have two productive and responsible adult children, Andrea and Paul. For more of his work and background, the following sites are on The Internet: http://www.orgsites.com/ga/donald-gerzliterary-academic-works/index.html

(a portfolio), http://www.orgsites.com/ga/millsprings/index.html

(an online classroom), http://www.orgsites.com/ga/writers_workshop/index.html

(a writing workshop), and http://dongerz.livejournal.com/ (a blog).

A.M.D.G.


T - Raids on the Inexplicable

Raids on the Inexplicable

Artifacts of an Experience

Reflections, Observations, and Realizations on the Vocation of Humans

By Don Gerz

Contents

Dedicated to My Children,

Paul and Andrea

…and to All Who Read This Work

Paul Gerz and Andrea Gerz Glasofer

but it must be read and considered carefully and prayerfully if it is to be of any actual use

The Context of Raids

raid

…from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “ East Coker”

Preface

Ignition

Peculiar Grace: The Sting of the Jellyfish

Raids on the Inexplicable

Expanding Spheres

(Note: Spheres E, F, G, and H should intersect each other instead of overlapping, but the software refused to cooperate!)

Expanding Spheres Considered

Articulations

Shells

Between Sleep and Consciousness

A Cost of Living Index

Skydiving

The News

Lost Moments

The World is Too Much with Us

Dust in the Air

Dogs and Stars

Haikuesques 1-10

Observation Status

Infant Mortalities

Words on the Floor

Flying

Warrior

Locusts and Honey

Aum

GOLD REFLECTION ON THE SOUL

Nothing New under the Sun

Postscripts and a Prayer

“In Thy light shall we see light.”

--- Motto of Columbia University

"Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito."

(Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them.)

--- Virgil's Aeneid

"No matter how bad things get, you’ve got to go on living, even if it kills you.”

--- Sholom Aleichem

"Let nothing disturb you, let nothing affright you— all things are passing,

God never changes.

Patient endurance attains all it strives for.

With God as your portion, nothing is wanting:

God alone suffices."

--- St. Teresa of Avila

Bibliography

The Great Conversation

Bibliography

For Further Consideration

Acknowledgments

Afterword

How Raids Came to Be

About the Author

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