Category: Grace

All Saint’s Sunday

All Saints Sunday

Jesus is deeply upset, even angry, when he learns that Lazarus has died.

Mary and Martha, and  many with them blame Jesus, if only he had been there to keep Lazarus from dying.

Jesus is upset again, he weeps.

Then Jesus makes it happen.

He has the people remove the stone in front of the grave.

Calling him to come to him Jesus brings Lazarus back to life.

Then Jesus tells the people to take the bindings off the hands and feet of Lazarus.

 

It takes people, doing as Jesus tells them.

It takes people to blame Jesus for the only end there is to life, death.

It takes people like Martha to protest the stench, before the miracle.

It takes people to free Lazarus from the bindings of death.

 

It takes Jesus, calling on the Father, to bring Lazarus back to life.

 

What is it that needs new life in your life, or is it your life itself that has died, even though you still breathe and your heart beats?

 

There is a long history of the church selecting people who have lived special lives and canonizing them, making them saints.

I grew up, studied and am ordained as a Lutheran, with the essence of my being to bring the visible grace of God into the experience of as many people as I encounter.

So I inherited and embrace a tradition that says all this special saints stuff is okay but misleading.

We don’t make ourselves special. Only God can.

We don’t usually see how it is that we or others are special, only the Holy Spirit can show us that.

And most importantly, God makes each and everyone of us into saints, even though we remain sinners, both at the same time.

Simultaneously saints and sinners,

is the phrase,

is the reality.

No perception is reality, or the other’s lies are made into reality.

We are all saints and sinners simultaneously.

So this is All Saints Sunday, it is our day, our day as we are by grace who we are not otherwise, children of God, and the people who reflect the light of Christ in the world.

 

Where did you shine to this day?

 

The snow hit this afternoon, as we made the last canoe ride across the lake against the wind that would become strong and filled with wet snow.

So we packed the canoe up, tucked it away, safe until Spring, and should have brought out the skis, because the snow is deep enough now for the first ski of the year.

 

Later we will walk on water again.

As the lake freezes and snow covers it we will ski on water frozen.

…

By grace, until the propane runs out. Then, who knows.

 

I suppose there will be those who will blame someone, maybe Jesus, that he was not here. But he is, by grace also suffering and celebrating life.

 

By grace, those who wish me dead and gone, will be disappointed for yet another year or twenty.

 

That’s life. That’s new life. That’s the resurrection of the dead.

Jesus has done it more than a few times.

 

Be alert. Jesus will do it in your lives, too.

Catch your breath now, for later, in the aftermath of new life, you may have little time to catch it. It’ll be filled by the Holy Spirit blowing fire and spirit through every fibre of your being.

 

All Saint’s Sunday.

Here’s to you, Spirit made saints, all.

Breathe.

We are all still sinners.  And one can expect sinners’ effects to roil into our lives.

Breathe.

Jesus is still raising us back to life, giving us new breath in spite of our expectations that we will no longer breathe.

Breathe.

It’s all gift.

Start of a Sweet Month

1 November,  All Saints Day
Start of a Sweet Month

It is a sweet month, November is, a month when winter is not set, though the sun sets early and rises late. The hard cold is not yet, and the water is still clear for canoeing.
A month to prepare, a month that is the end of the church year, a month when travelers are few and far between and solitude and peace are more easily found in old haunts and newly explored places.

Then on the first day of this sweet month, with temperatures already below zero often in October, the cold arrived over night at -7 with a low forecast of -4. In town it’s -3.
Halloween was a cold one again.
And November came in with just a skiff of snow.

 

Snow on the canoe.

 

 

 

 

A closer look at the obvious presence

 

Of a beaver, obvious because of the telltale tooth marks on the trees, as the beaver prepares for winter, setting the food of trees in storage next to the beaver house, not 50 meters distant downstream.

 

This, just a stone’s throw from the wake up view, is the outflow creek of the lake. The beaver have taken this creek, dammed and controlled it to keep the lake at high water marks and made a quiet pond, a home for them, and for us to canoe on just down the creek a bit, over a couch some fools left on the ice one winter past.

This the stillness of wonderful weather, quiet from the throngs, and distance from the noise of the city, but not out of reach of the military jet sonic booms as they reach out to distant sorties.

Here the soul, on All Souls Day, can live well.
Here the saint, on All Saints Day, can live well.
Here creation is good.
Money is scarce, fuel for transportation and electricity (generator made) is short, and propane for heat is dwindling.
Ah, a wood stove in a shelter on a trailer, which would provide dry heat, a system for heat that costs labour and chainsaw gas and oil, and truck gas to haul in the wood. But that’s a pipe dream.

Even so, here, whatever may come,

all is well, all is well, all manner of things are well.

The View in Words

The View in Words
Wake orange on dark blue black water waving still in a hardly breeze.
No animal, then a neck or nose, a loon or a beaver?
A Sock under the water out a foot into the water, wool and warm and orphaned.
The wake joined by a second this closer and obviously a loon or duck maybe, and then the other moves and two new wakes colour the water.
The red spread of sun having set small in area with tinges of red reflected in water and clouds.

The muskrat’s footprints, and then a crow’s footprints. Clear water into the sand and reflecting amid the reeds bent in submission to the cold, doubled in their own reflection curved top and bottom breaking the water view, but still coloured by the setting sun.
The orange water catching the sunset not red but orange as if the sky were more beautiful than it is.

All these words

because I missed the sunset canoe ride and forgot my camera, even my cell phone, and must remember the view as it is, until another showed up with a camera and I borrowed it to record what I took note of in my mind as the view for tonight’s setting sun.

This is the sunset.

 

Tracks

 

The colours, the view, the sunset.

 

Words, as great as they are, are not as verbose as a photo.

Who Is My Enemy – In the Canoe

Who Is My Enemy – In the Canoe?
An ode by a man under attack by so many lies, and so many liars and those who acquiesce to evil; an ode in the form of a prayer to God, with you listening in.

Beauty
There is great beauty in nature, in photography done well, in the soul of so many people when they are met with Grace. There is beauty in my life.
Is there beauty in your life?

‘My’ Canoe
I am able whenever the weather allows, to jump in a canoe and paddle a lake, to breath clear air and watch the sun rise and set, to watch loons dive away and beaver swim by, to watch the ducklings grow, to see the geese migrate south in their noisy, majestic “V’s”.

Everyone has something of a canoe, even if it must be only in your imagination. And it is precious. So

Don’t Fiddle,
Don’t Faddle,
Don’t Piddle
Just Paddle

Paddle in your canoe.

Who is my enemy when I can be in a canoe?
No one can be, for I am free.
Being free does not stop the attacks on me, nor does it fix the ruin I have been brought to by lies at all levels.
Being free does not put Evil to rest, but it gives me and many others life, life abundant.

Am I hurt as my sunset may be forced early upon me?
Yes, beyond anything I could imagine!
Am I going to let myself become angry?
Beyond what I cannot control, of course not. I do not allow myself to be that kind of a person.
Why would I allow this, this worst of treatment, so unjust, unethical, and downright mean … why would I allow this or anything else to change me into something like the people who do this to me?
Would I want to become a bully? Would I want to become indiscriminately mean and even cruel like the many people who have together taken every thing from me except a sleeping bag, a tent, a bicycle, and my clothes?
Would I choose to allow them to take my soul too?
Would I want to choose that the Gaslighting that my own family started and carried on without pause, and is now regularly repeated in so many ways by so many people … would I want the Gaslighting to have the intended effect on me?
Would I want to forget which are the truths, which the lies, about me?

Who am I,
that I can be in a canoe?

I am:
Kind
Gracious
Unconditionally loving
Forgiving
Slow to anger
Healthy focusing the energy of anger towards healthy changes
Honest
Clear about reality
Clear about what I have done and what I have not done
Tremendous with children, at a momentary meeting, as an acquaintance, as friend, as parent.
Sexually healthy, respectful, faithful,
Loyal
Respectful of all genders, colours, faiths
Healthy:
Mentally resilient and creative and as always uniquely equipped to help others, and remaining very healthy despite continuing efforts to Gaslight me.
Physically proactively providing for my health care needs and remaining very healthy despite all efforts to deny me my health.
I am a pacifist, a practical pacifist.
I am a sacramental mystic.
I am simultaneously a saint and a sinner.
I am a child of God, a saint in the eternal light of Christ.

This is who I am not:
I am not mean,
I am not crass, profane,
I am not hateful or begrudging
I am not vengeful
I am not quick to anger
I am not reckless with my health and my health care
I am not dishonest, I do not lie,
I am not confused about reality, projecting falsehoods on to others
I have not forgotten what I have done and what I have not done or confused what others falsely say with what actually happened, what I said, what I did, what I thought, what I strove for
I am not abusive to anyone, especially not children, I certainly am not perverse with children
I am not a sexual deviant, nor promiscuous, nor a misogynist nor a misandrist.
I am not disloyal, I do not betray anyone or any trust.
I am not ill, though this sustained attack on my person has landed me in emergency surgery.
I am not mentally ill, nor psychopathic nor psychologically disordered in any way.
To all and any who accuse me of being suicidal I say very clearly that I am immune.

To my enemies:
I ask the plethora of my enemies, is this, the person I am not, really who you want me to change to become, as if that would relieve you of your responsibilities for bullying, cruelty and lies?
Would you like that I succumb to the constant Gaslighting and become mentally ill, psychotic, disordered, or not resilient?
Would you like that I respond to accusations that I am going to kill myself that I say instead, “Ok, when and where and how?” [Now wouldn’t that be perverse, and wholly unnatural!]
I am not reckless with my physical health, nor passive about it, nor uninformed, nor un-engaged.

I am certainly not passive about anything that I can change for the better:
Rather I take to heart the prayer:
My I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I am not violent nor unrealistic about my part and place in life.
Instead I choose not to become vindictive, or even angry, because I would not want to be that kind of a person. I’ve sacrificed much in life to remain a pacifist, one who forgives instead of being vindictive.
Would you prefer or recommend that I become vindictive and destructive, violent and scheming?
I am not disconnected from my Creator and this Creation, in all aspects and dimensions I am able to participate in Creation I do.
Would you want that I become a one dimensional idiot?
I claim no goodness on my own merit, but all good I am is a gift from God. I accept full responsibility for all bad that I am, think, do and allow by inaction to happen. I can do this because I fully trust God’s forgiveness and blessings.
I am not a child of the Devil, Evil, or Decay.



Who do my enemies think they want me to become, when I can be in a canoe?
How is it that you wanted me to change?
You said you want to provide services to me, for me to choose to become more stable. You suggested that I move in with my wife from whom I am separated. I have told you and told you again, that my ex would then attack the few assets my wife holds onto by a threadbare string, and two more people would be out on the street, homeless like I am. And you thought that would be an improvement? You said yes that I should choose this!?!

What kind of an upside down world do my enemies think they can force on me?

How can I respond to the lies and terrible things done to me by so many people?
How can one respond to such cruelty, such destructive cruelty, against me and the children, against so many other men and children?

Cruelty comes in many forms. One is this Gaslighting, this telling me that somehow I am responsible for and able to change the fact that lies by so many at all levels in the Justice system have made me homeless, and that these lies have put the children at great risk.

Cruelty comes not only as commissions, but also as omissions.
It comes from people who stand by and do nothing to know the cruelty done.
It comes from people who close their eyes, ears, and mouths in the face of evil.
It comes from people who know full well what is done, especially people with authority, and they do nothing because it is risky to do anything in the face of evil.
“The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.” Albert Einstein

What am I to do?
I tell you, I bind sins, and continue to live with Grace.
I choose, as an ordained person, to continue as the gracious person I am, but to name these acts against me (and similar acts against so many other men and children) for what they are: they are evil.
I choose to ‘bind these sins’, those of commission and omission. God will judge those responsible. The judgment will be in the afterlife, but as God is not bound by time, the effects of that judgement begin already now.

Except I have forgiven my family, those I was asked to and did promise to love unconditionally, those who I have at great cost forgiven, and whom I continue to forgive. Because I know where their sins begin, and I trust that it is not in maliciousness, but in mental illness. But even if it is maliciousness, how can I not forgive and continue to forgive people who were so close and so powerfully loving and so life changing for me (both good change at first and then so terribly destructive against me, without reason from me)?

Having left this cruelty against me and others in God’s hands, I am free.
Free to respond with grace to the doers and those that acquiesce. It is not as if I have forgiven them (other than my family), but their evil will not define me, nor will it change me but for the better. I will work to stop this cruelty to men and children, as much as God makes me able.

Most of all, I will not forget Beauty, in all its aspects, in this world; the beauty of nature, of light reflected in photography, the beauty of hard work and physical health providing for oneself and for others, the beauty of words that inspire, and the beauty of love.

All of this is possible because God provides story upon story for us, through which we can know something of God as

God who loves unconditionally all people, God who wishes us all life, and life abundant.

Who can be my enemy when I am in the canoe, steeped in the beauty of God’s creation?
Only Evil is my enemy, and God has defeated Evil, it just does not know it. But I can live that it is defeated.

[Last minute addition:]

The RCMP will not though, just minutes ago they evicted me, so that homeless, with a borrowed trailer on Crown land, I now have no place to live except on the run from this borrowed patch to the next with my tent. In this random camping location I was there no more than 14 days at a time. I now have really no where to go that is even a bit safe. This sin is bound as well, for while I move out every 14 days and stay out for 72 hours, as per the requirements, there are frequently others who do not, who stay for months … and not the RCMP, nor any other authority, do anything to them, even though they are clearly living there setting up for the winter, clearly set up having spent months there. I abide by the regulations, and am evicted. Others who clearly do not abide by the rules are not evicted.

If this bothers you let them know.

This is how we deal with homeless people. We make it impossible for them.

God save us. God save me. God show me the beauty available now, still with my canoe, which now is no canoe at all. It is another nothing, taken from me. And yet I will find a way to live determined not by my enemies, but in Grace.

 

 

What about you?
Who is your enemy when you are in your canoe (wherever and whatever it means for you to be in your canoe)?
Where is beauty and grace for you?

Home-Bittersweet Home

I’ve been away for a while, missing the beauty of home.
One of the first things I did is put the canoe in the water just after sunset
And
Immerse myself in
the Colours
the Fresh Air
the Quiet
Of a pair of loons calling to each other.

Sunset drips colour into solitude.
These attributes reach well towards Plato’s ideals.

It took a while to get everything safely secured for the fall.
But with a warm fire burning, the stars in full view, and the air just cool enough to keep almost every bug at bay,
I settled in for a sleep in a bed custom made by me for this old body, firm for my arthritic back, a hip hole for the arthritic hip, raised for the GI that is so challenging and warm against even the deepest cold.
Waking before sunrise the stars were clear but the lake deep in fog so obvious even in the dark of night.
After a short walk I took this shot literally out the window, weathered grime and all on the window, with the fog back-dropping the trees, water and reeds.

View from a room.

Before the walk,
Before the sunrise,
Before breakfast,
I stepped out to the fresh quiet and put this together in a panorama.

Birch Frames, Water Fogged, Reeds Galore.

It’s good to be home.
It’s bittersweet to be home.
It’s part of the colour of life to be home having survived so many threats to my well-being and life.
If you pray, pray for me and mine; but pray most of all for all those whose lies brought my life to be threatened, and for those who threatened, directly or indirectly.
I cannot imagine what it is like to live, knowing one’s own lies, blatant and obvious, ignored as lies by others, any who have added their own lies to the perverse saga, bring such cruelty to another human being.
I cannot imagine what it is like to live, knowing that one’s own willful blindness invites and allows others to lie, blatantly and obviously, and then to bring threat upon another’s life.
That kind of winning is …
Well …
It’s not winning, it’s losing in the ultimate way, it is to lose one’s integrity and being. It is to sacrifice what cannot be regained or bought or undone. It is to sacrifice one’s own good, to bring rot on another human.
My life may have been, may still be under threat, very real and present.
But I still remember the actual events of history, the loving kindness given and received, the abuse and false accusations, the wondrous times of trust, the unpredictable outrages, the marvelous times of affection, the danger to myself and the ones given into my care, the delight for us all, the Gaslighting and perversions, the truth and my resilience,
My survival.
My yes’s and my no’s.
My clear response to attacks on my person: my insistence that reality be participated in and NO I was not going to kill myself as I was constantly accused I would.

Who in their right mind would say it is a crime to answer one’s spouse’s constant barrage of false accusations that one is going to kill oneself by saying that one is immune, one has been inoculated, the side effects of medicine no longer make the abuse beyond intolerable, though the abuse certainly continues. NO means NO.

And in this case NO is a clear statement of LIFE at it’s best. How could that be criminal? Or possibly create fear? Or be unnatural?

What’s unnatural is one’s spouse’s constant barrage of false accusations that one is going to kill oneself….

And this is home … where this does not stop.
And I stay, because this is where I am, if barely.
When, though, will it become as important to listen to a man say NO, as it is a woman say NO.
Today, I say YES, an amazing YES  … this is the wonder of home.
Today, I say NO, NO, those who have done me evil will NOT determine my life. God will adequately deal with them, and I am thus able to remain gracious and kind.
Who would want, given the opportunity to leave all judgement and consequence to God … who would want to become vengeful after a life of forgiving and unconditional love?

Let’s see: on the one hand one would become Evil personified, one would consume life, one would rot from within, one would live in torment and in order to make it through each day one would have to live in denial.
Or one can by grace choose to be Goodness personified, and therein one gives life freely to so many around, one grows, matures, and blossoms as beauty within, one lives at peace with the universe, with others (even one’s enemies) and with God, and one can embrace truth, both the evil and the good of truth … and one can delight in things small and great.

How do you choose?

As for me and my household, we choose to serve the Lord, and to trust and live out amazing Grace.

For now it is Autumn begun,

Winter ahead.

Always then Spring!

It’s about TIME

It’s about TIME

The way to defeat evil is to live a good life.

A trip to friends brought us to a familiar, wonderful view out over the mountains.

Though our visiting took priority over getting high on the mountains until the sun was well up in the sky. The sunrise was less rise than rain fall. So we enjoyed the clear air clean of the wildfire smoke from the many BC fires. The clear mountain air.

A breath of fresh air as good as good friends: priceless.

And after a jaunt up we went down by the riverside to enjoy the flow of wonder,

As water roiled serenely reaching for the sea across the rocks.

 

The last outing I had was a while ago, when ice still held the water under wraps

Just nice.

 

and the moon stuck itself hidden in clear view over the ice.

 

The greatest marvel though was definitely the golden

Wonder of the setting sun spread through the warp and weave of this universe.

My mind

Full

Ness

…

of what may come.

Grace is the only aspect of life that brings real rewards.

Breathe ….

Time is always on the side of truth.

Goodness shines bright. Think. Live. Be courageous,

The truth will win out.

Remember

Friday the 13th
Remember
All the things that happened on Friday the 13th.
All the times joy grew by leaps and bounds on Friday the 13th.
All the times by the oceans of loss and grief that the Spirit brought comfort invisible on Friday the 13th.
All the times the water flowed freely, seemingly even uphill, on Friday the 13th.
All the times the joker arrived once again on Friday the 13th.
All the times the rain fell softly, the snow fell silently on Friday the 13th.
All the times that humour bounced off walls like soccer balls inside on Friday the 13th.
All the times the hole in the wall was lit up with joy on Friday the 13th.
All the times that love flew freely on Friday the 13th.
All the times that honour and honesty embraced us all on Friday the 13th.
All the times we desperately needed God’s grace on Friday the 13th.
All the times we sat alone beside each other on Friday the 13th.
All the times in crowds of millions we’ve known screaming loneliness on Friday the 13th.
All the times the birds in the trees sang, the deer in the woods danced free, the coyotes howled their cries across the miles, the water lapped the sand of the shore, the canoe plied the deep water, and the loon sang it’s cry for solitude’s repair on Friday the 13th.

Remember …
Gently, carefully, hopefully
For without memories true
The chaos of evil’s deceptions will ruin life, love, trust, faith, and hope on all days including on Friday the 13th.

Remember and see clearly:

The sun sets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look more closely if you hope to see it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


And more closely yet, get beyond the weeds and distractions.
Do you see it yet?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


There do you see it?

Do you see even the fresh pristine white snow is turned purple with the red of blood mixed with the blue of the sky on Friday the 13th.
My blood, your blood, our blood, everyone’s blood, spat back onto the earth from the sun’s energy in a mix of sky and evil,
God’s offer of passion, love, and life
Rejected so often by me, you, us, by everyone for so long that even the sun cannot absorb the chaos of this evil exuding from us
Not only on Friday the 13th.

Yet, not the red of chaotic re-spat blood of rejected passion, love and life,
This red is the price of Grace, freely given, fully bought and paid for Grace.
Red of passion, love and life, re-sent to colour every inch of our world
With beauty.

Look closely
or not.
Regardless Grace flows freely also on Friday the 13th.

A View on a Walk Before Bed

A View on a Walk Before Bed

After a day of writing, skiing, and grocery shopping, the sun set at 20:00 ish and though the solar power had held out through the whole day I was ready for fresh air and then to be done for the day, not to run late with generator power.

So out I stepped, took just ten paces west to take in the whole western sky after the sun had slipped from sight.

 

I looked at the photo thinking that the camera had somehow changed the clouds to be edgy.

Not at all, to my surprise. The clouds were identical in the sky as on the display.

But some of the view simply was not in the photo, so

I set the camera to panorama and turned it to portrait to capture more of the view.

And the results are a file ten times larger, and a photo without the intensity of the first, but with the whole view.

Satisfying to be able to capture the whole great view, but then lacking in the focus and intensity of the experience that is captured more with the first simpler photo.

A small adjustment to the exposure brings the photo closer to the actual view.

 

Which do you like better?

 

And which do you prefer for questions of life,

To see the larger view, a bit distant and aloof, an observer detached and able to forge a path towards a goal,

Or

To engage in each moment fully focused on the intensity of it, letting it slip out of its context and allow oneself to move from moment to moment without a compass, a context, a tradition, an ethic that would guide and inform you of what you see?

Or

Do you want both and cannot keep them both in view

OR

Do you have it all in view and cannot sort out the big issues from the intense events

OR

Can you see everything, live each moment to its fullest, and know the greatest peace assured that the big picture is both in view and not your own direct responsibility, only that you see the world

Through eyes of Grace, with Forgiveness your primary mode (for yourself and for others) of responding to great beauty and destructive ugly evil from where/whom-ever, just so that you can still experience the beauty of grace dancing on the light sparkles and shadows of the mundane spectacular!?

 

Forge a path, it is not foreordained where or how you will step next.

Choose wonder, grace, beauty, truth, and always faith, hope and love.

They say you can’t go wrong …

But you can and you will … so learn to forgive yourself and others freely, so that your next step is graceful.

Finding Ones Way Home

Finding Ones Way Home

There are developments
So late
In life
That they really are
A part of
Death,
Or rather
The final stages
Of living.

So I was reminded at a funeral this past week. Instead of the usual disheartening eulogizing, her son repeated some of the beautiful humour Carolyn shared with them in her final days, humour and care for them, when they least expected it.

One needs to find the beauty
That is all around
While one can.


Sometimes the wonder is clear as the sun sets.

… and the humour …

That comes in so many forms.
Take the pallets burned with garbage left all around by some fools a week or so ago:
Yesterday
two people full of humour
Decided to visit the same campsite,
with rocks bared showing the fire ring,
And burn a few more pallets, wood and nails, right next to the fire ring.

They must have had lots of joy,
Because they were simply too full of themselves,
Too busy,
Too important,

and/or

too stupid
…
To pick up the countless nails the burned pallets left behind,
Which is actually criminal.

Then there is the humour and beauty of being alive when so many people have threatened my life,
and
Of being gracious to the cruel enemies whose lies have brought so many people to think that my life
Is only worth ending,

that my life is their’s to claim in a false or misplaced revenge

for things I did not do, but others have done to me.

 

They find their way home, foolishly resolving their conflict by
inflicting on me the repute and punishment that is properly their own.
Their homes must be crawling with invisible mice and rats of great humours.

My home is a huge place, the whole outdoors
and a small place that may indeed
(if just one error picks it’s day to appear here too soon)
sink as ice becomes mush.

But for now the beauty is all around.
Breathe,
One has at least a few more days
To share the goodness of life,
Before the cost of one’s enemy’s lies are unjustly one’s own to bear.
At least the left over nails from the pallets cannot be used in a crucifixion
…
Or can they?

Is this
The path
Home
Through wind blown
Snow?

 

So today there is the beginning of path or roadway of sorts that may survive long enough to allow home to move on top of soil before it is too late.

How are you going to find your way home, today and each day,

while you still can?

Solipsism and Perception is Reality

Solipsism and Perception is Reality
Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders -> Chaos
OR Beauty

Solipsism is a way of defining how it is that reality can be known, and it limits that knowing to only the individual.
Everything else is at most something that the individual mind makes up or knows.
So interesting
So interestingly subjectively hopeless.

Defined per Wikipedia solipsism is “is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.”

I am not patience enough to list the foolhardy problems that arise from such a position. There is a mound of evidence to contraindicate taking such a position, if one thinks or feels at all. But then this idea is to deny all that one thinks exists or feels outside of one’s own mind.

Nonetheless this manner of approaching the world is very alive and active as is reflected in many people’s behaviour.

Take the two truck crews that showed up for a weekend of drinking hard ice tea, a fire and lots of smoking. One truck had a camper in the bed, the other brought in … well what passes for firewood if one thinks the world does not exist outside of one’s own mind:
This is after a few snowfalls covered the worst of it and the cans and garbage were already cleaned up.
Any intelligent being will recognize that these pallets are a number of pieces of wood (which burns) assembled using many nails (which do not burn, adaaah.)
And that partially burned pallet sits on the ashes of at least one and likely a number of other pallets.
No effort was made to clean up the nails after the fire went out …
Or the cigarette butts, packages, broken cigarettes, all the aluminum hard ice tea cans or other garbage left strewn around the previously well kept campsite.
The real stupidity is that there is a fire ring just a foot further to the right in the photo from where the pallets were burned. There at least the nails would be contained with others through the years left behind and only partially cleaned up, not for lack of trying by myself and others. But we just do not have a strong enough magnet to make the work plausibly possible.

Of course there are laws against not packing out all one’s garbage, but apparently only what is in these people’s minds exists, nothing else …
Including punctured tires, feet, and injured children … oh did you all get your tetanus shots lately?
Solipsism … a fool’s excuse for living with no respect for the land and other people … and even for one’s self.
Which leads to some pretty dark experiences in life:

There are other variations of this destructive take on life as if it was all about oneself. High Functioning Borderline Personality Disorder hfBPD sits right there at the top, along with Narcissistic Personality Disorder NPD.
We used to have such respect for the neighbours to the south’s leader, but everyone knows his proclivity to extreme and extremely destructive narcissism. Now it is more than a personality disorder, it’s nationalized and affecting world order/chaos.

The hfBPD is perhaps less well known, and partially therein lies the fact that it is much more disruptive to order, more chaos producing, chaos so severe that those close to the effectively ill person end up trying everything to mollify, contain and then escape the chaos, even going so far as killing themselves.

Spouses, friends, parents, children, no one is exempt who is close.

The destructive force is so severe because the hfBPD person learns very early on in the disease, usually with roots in childhood abuse or trauma, to write a ‘script’ for every situation in their lives. There is no room for self-failure or critique of self. Anyone in the script is absorbed into the person’s life without border or restraint … at first.

But then the craziness starts: control and abuse of every kind overwhelm life with vilification and projection of fault, relentless criticism, isolation, financial control, sexual control, gaslighting …

The hfBPD person uses everything and anything that will manipulate the other into fitting into their part in the script. Everyone in their script must adhere to their role or they are exiled. And exile is brutal: by manipulation to suicide, or ruination of reputation or even charges and convictions before the Courts for what one has not even possibly done.

But the hfBPD person is so adept and convincing and charming and adroit at creating scripts (it’s been a daily requirement since childhood) that the rewrite of one’s ‘history’ to bring ruination is believed by nearly everyone … and the Court’s love it. The false story is so simple, so easy to believe, so naively familiar … and the courts go to all sorts of contortions to convict without any solid evidence, transforming obvious truths to be judged lies, and blatantly obvious lies to be facts.

Truth is lost, as if everyone watching lemming-like agrees that ‘perception is reality’. That’s solipsism in its most recent and destructive form:
It’s true if we perceive it to be.

There are many pieces of life that must be ignored in order to embrace solipsism in any form, and that is true of embracing ‘perception is reality.’
Perception is wonderful. It can, under good circumstances, provide us hosts of information about reality.
But perception does not determine reality, and oh what a spiral out of control into dark chaos it brings when a person starts to behave as were that true and reliable. When one embraces that perception determines reality then all truth is lost in a meaningless competition to make up history from as many falsehoods as one can string together… all so that one comes out on top of the heap of chaos that one creates.

There is reality and we can experience it.

The pink west sky at sunrise is real, a pastel touch of beauty.
Yes, the sun rises in the east and yes, at this moment in the pre-sunrise suspense the western sky is lit up and the east is still dark. That’s just a matter of physics to understand the sunshine of the morning sun hits the western clouds before it shines below on us on the ground observing the sun’s progression, which is actually the earth’s progression in it’s rotation.

The gentleness of the red against the blues and greys on white of winter entice one to marvel.

Looking across the sky the colour paints a small piece of the morning.

It is when one submerses oneself in the place and the moment that one marvels that such beauty follows so dark a day just hours before.

 

And then after the sun rises bright white above the eastern trees the brilliance reflected off the snow is mesmerizing.
Waves of blown snow provide contour and depth perception to the otherwise too simple snow covered ice.

It is here that reality, not perception, touches one’s soul and inspires one to also recognize a corollary truth, similar in words but universes distant from solipsism in all it’s forms:
How we respond to reality, to all that happens to us, determines more of our lives than what happens to us.
Or to say it another way, if you cannot notice beauty, you cannot know it either.

Reality offers perception.

And if you choose to experience reality informed by faith, hope and love then you will know beauty,
And you will be one that contributes to the world by inspiring others to see the world, wrinkles, evil and all, in all the beauty that it can convey.

After all the sunrise, the pastel sky, the brilliant sun on waves of snow … all this or any other day’s experiences are all that more precious and beautiful
when one also does not deny the reality of willful lies and destruction, ugly chaos, and evil.
One can fight that part of reality, or one can choose to forgive it, in order that one can still notice, with faith, hope, and love all the beauty that the world has to offer.
And then one shares the ability to see beauty with others … or not.
Which will you choose to be today?