Sunday Meme-ish-ness
Sunday, April 27, 2008

Phydeaux has pulled my ass out (again) by providing me with a blog-meme to pursue.

Teh Rulz:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

The Book: Animal-Speak, by Ted Andrews.

The sentences:

One was the Strasburg Brotherhood of the Crown, and another was formed by St. Nicholas of Vienna in 1288. In Germany, specifically, there existed a guild of meistersingers at Nuremberg. This schooling was to teach the power of sound, music, and voice -- physical and spiritual.

Since I believe in a synchronous Universe, I find it no surprise that the book delivered a perfect message for me.

I've been pondering, during the last few days, about when to speak and when to be silent. I want to always do so by conscious choice, not shying from speaking because I fear to speak, or fear the repercussions of speaking, nor speaking because I fear that I will otherwise not be heard, or that my silence will be construed as something it is not.

I had a very interesting experience today where I had been watching a very long blog comment-thread, and going back and forth and forth and back about whether to speak up. Through the day, I dabbled in various responses in my head (and in draft form in Wordpad), and when I finally made up my mind to post the response, the blog ate my comment. So, I let it go.

Then, hours later, I decided that I'd give it another go -- I added a few more choice words to my comment, and attempted to post it. It was, once again, eaten.

Must be a time NOT to speak up -- or at least, not until I'm a "meistersinger".

Posted byPortlyDyke at 11:32 PM 3 comments  

Labels: Blogging, Spirituality, Tagged, Teh Internet

Happy Solstice
Friday, December 21, 2007

Well, some of you may be glad to hear that one of my Winter Solstice pledges was to return to daily blogging.

For those of you who don't have a clue what it might mean to actually "celebrate" the Solstice, read Jeff Fecke's post over at Shakesville.

In the past, celebration of the Winter Solstice for me often meant sitting with others in some kind of sacred circle. In recent years, my Winter Solstice celebrations have usually been solitary by choice.

The pleasure of tuning into the Solstices and Equinoxes, the full and new moons, is the pleasure of touching a part of me that is purely physical/chemical/animal. I like acknowledging the cycles of the planet that I live on, and the solar system that contains it. It helps me make sense of my own cycles.

So tonight, at 10:08 PST, I was out in the wild December wind, preparing to put a Madrona log that I had carved a few months earlier into the fire, trying to sense that moment when the Earth began to tilt in a new direction in relation to the Sun.

No matter where you are right now on this planet, our mutual status as terrestrial residents gives us this shared experience. You may be moving from Summer towards Winter, or Winter towards Summer, but we are moving together.

Happy Solstice.
Portly Dyke

Posted byPortlyDyke at 11:23 PM 0 comments  

Labels: Consciousness, Fulfillment, Hope, Shakesville, Spirituality

My Video Deconstruction
Monday, November 5, 2007

I struggled for a long time about why, whether, and how to post my Proverbs 6:16 video in the Jesus and Teh Gay post. I talked it over in advance with my Beloved, who serves as an unfailing "integrity compass" for me when I am flailing in the deep waters of my own intentions and desires. I also asked a blogger for whom I have penultimate respect to preview it and give me feedback.

Here were some of the questions I asked myself (and then asked my Beloved) -- (plus questions that my Beloved asked me that I hadn’t thought about yet) -- before I posted that video:

1. What is my intention in posting this video at all?
2. If someone else posted a similar video about me, would I be mad/upset or feel that they had represented me unfairly?
3. Do I think this video will actually change anything, or am I simply succumbing to my “wit-demonz”?
4. Am I using tactics which, if used by someone who I consider an “adversary”, I would think were incomplete in presenting a “whole idea” or "whole picture"?
5. Does this video fit with my basic principles and ethics?
   

In truth, I haven’t answered all these questions for myself, and I opted to post the video and “let the shit fly where it may”.

I do have some answers to some of these questions though -- answers that I would never have had, if I hadn't asked these questions, or had them asked of me.

Question #1: What is my intention in posting this video at all?

My intention in posting the video is for people to understand that there are many, many, many interpretations and translations of the Bible, and that one of the problems with basing an institutional, legislative, or governmental structure on such a freely-interpreted religious text is that the text itself can be used to condemn or promote nearly any behavior that you want to either condemn or promote, a theme I've touched on before.

Question #2: If someone else posted a similar video about me, would I be mad/upset or feel that they had represented me unfairly?

I know that I am willing to be held accountable to the principles which I espouse.

When I breach my espoused principles, I'm willing to have others point this out to me, and I am willing to make apologies and amends if I think I've breached these principles. So, in that sense, I don't think that it's outside my own ethics to ask people who proclaim themselves as "Bible-believing Christians" to align with the things that they profess.

If I had claimed myself as an adherent to a particular text such as the Bible, and I weren't living in accordance with that text, I'd actually WANT people to point this out to me.

Question #3: Do I think this video will actually change anything, or am I simply succumbing to my “wit-demonz”?

I have found that I do have the hope that this video will change something.

I don't think it will (necessarily) change the minds of "bible-thumpers" (but I can hope, can't I?). However, I believe that many people in US culture are affected by "vestigial biblical overflow" (VBO) without realizing it.

I personally know "inerrant-word-of-god" type Christians who condemn homosexuality, consign women to subservient roles, and entertain a host of other judgments, and who do so because they believe that they are required to do so by the Bible -- whether or not their own actions are consistent with the actual mandates of the Bible, whether or not their interpretations of what the Bible says match up with literal translations, and whether or not their life experience with gays, women, etc. give them other, observable facts that might contradict what they are "supposed" to think/do/judge.

Because it is their religion, and I respect the right of any human to believe as they wish to believe, all I can say is: "OK, so that's the path they've chosen."

However, I think that there are people who don't claim Christianity as their religion, who are nonetheless affected by VBO.

These may be people who were "raised Christian", but who had deep, troubling questions about the obvious contradictions that they observed in the religion of their upbringing. (For me, this manifested very early on, as I witnessed the Vietnam War playing out on TV and compared it to the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" that I received at church, Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, and Catechism classes.)

These may be people who were raised with no particular religious focus, or in an entirely different religion from Christianity, but who were nonetheless steeped in the Judeo-Christian background noise that saturates this country's media, holidays, and basic cultural assumptions.

Example: Many of us grew up with the notion that being homosexual, or getting divorced, -- or being different in any way -- is "bad" and "wrong" (or at the very least, "undesirable" or "strange"). But how many of us were actively actually encouraged to ask the question: "Why?"

In fact, if you grew up like me, you were actively encouraged to NEVER ask the question: "Why is it bad/wrong to be homosexual/get divorced/be different? How does this actually harm anyone?"

So, at a time when there are pundits and celebrities throwing around Biblical justifications for oppression and bigotry, and bullying others with a book, I do want to post information about the many other possible interpretations that are based on literal translation of this ancient religious text.

So that people can, perhaps, begin to see how VBO might be affecting them, and how arbitrary and numerous and varied the interpretations actually are.

Question #4: Am I using tactics which, if used by someone who I consider an “adversary”, I would think were incomplete in presenting a “whole idea” or "whole picture"?

Ah, and now I come to the thorny problem.

The honest answer, when I ask myself this question is: "Yes, I think I used tactics which present a partial picture rather than a whole context."

I find a million justifications rising in my mind as to why this is OK -- but none of them really satisfy me.

I find this maddening sometimes.

In truth, I don't think that I can ever provide a complete picture. In five or ten years, the images included in that video will be virtually meaningless.

Which is the same problem I have with the Bible, or the Koran, or the Sutras -- that we're trying to create a living code of behavior from a book or writings that were pertinent thousands of years in the past.

If I'm honest with myself, this video doesn't "sit" quite right with me yet.

Yes, I think it is "fair" (if that's the word) in terms of asking people who claim to be Christian to adhere to their own religious texts.

However, if I think about how little most people actually know about the Bible, it's possible that the even the espoused Christians portrayed may not actually know that much about the text they claim to be espousing. This seems pretty evident to me when I see something like Ann Coulter claiming that Christians are "perfected Jews" (a concept which does not appear anywhere in the New Testament, as far as I can read).

I guess the biggest difficulty I have with the video is that it points attention toward these people, while I would really like to point my attention elsewhere -- to more expansive vistas.

Which brings me to:

Question #5: Does this video fit with my basic principles and ethics?

No -- and specifically, it flies in the face of one principle I'm working with a lot lately: What you resist, persists.

And another principle which I work on daily: Don't preach to the choir -- if you have a beef, take it to the person you have a beef with. (This is a bit more problematic for me, as I don't know how I'm going to manage a heart-to-heart with Bush, Cheney, Limbaugh, Coulter, Gonzales, or Rumsfeld -- but then again, you never know!)

I learned a lot in this process though, and I think that's the real point of any experience.

Posted byPortlyDyke at 10:45 PM 3 comments  

Labels: Look How Clever I Am, Mainstream Media, Personal Ethics, Queers, Religion, Spirituality

Choosy Dieties
Saturday, September 29, 2007

So, commenter Nik.E.Poo asked:

"In terms of the infinite continuum of reality, where does choice fall in the D.U.C.?"

Commenter Lambness pointed out the term "recursion" and the concept of "discrete infinity".

All rather dizzying, no?

So, I will attempt to explain my view of this, starting from my primary hypothesis that the D.U.C. tastes just like chicken. (And tofu. And dust. And quark-poo.)

To understand what I am about to express, we will have to agree that the usual perspective that we, as physical human beings, have on Time and Space is just that -- A perspective.

Let's say that Time . . . . . perhaps . . . . (I include that "perhaps" for the explorationally timid) . . . . is not really linear. Let's say that all moments in Time are actually concurrent, and that we are choosing to perceive and experience Time as linear.

My favorite metaphor is -- a great novel -- perhaps you've already read it, perhaps you haven't read it -- but it's sitting on your desk, bookshelf, or in the basket on the back of your toilet. Let's say it's a novel that you read before, and you loved it. (If you "don't read" -- and I know some people who do not, and hold this as a point of pride -- simply substitute "move" for "novel" and "watch" for "read")

Jeez, I can't believe I just included that -- but I did.

Anyway, back to that great novel that you've read before --

Why in the world would you read it again?

But you do.

You read it again, even though you already know how it turns out.

You read it again, and perhaps, even enjoy it more than the first time you read it, because now, you're not all about how it turns out, but about how it unfolds. You notice nuances and structure and meaning that were not apparent in your first fascinated reading of the novel, because your focus has change.

And every time you read this great novel, the novel itself is changed by the fact that you read it.

(If you can't handle paradox, you should probably stop reading now, or take two aspirin. Or four.)

In other words -- all the possible novels of this Universe have already been written, but every time any one of those novels is read/perceived/experienced (for the first time or the non-nillionth time) that novel is expanded and transformed.

This may seem counter-intuitive -- how can a novel be changed by being read? Well, even at the most physical, matter-based level, when you pick up a book and thumb through its pages, oils and residual tissue from your fingertips join with the pages -- that's why historians wear gloves when handling very ancient or valuable texts. If you sneeze while your reading, this matter exchange escalates even further -- or if you read it in the rain at the bus-stop, or while you're slouched over a table at Mickey Dee's. Perhaps now you're grasping the true spiritual depth of the ancient Koan:

"I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?"

"MY CHEEZBURGER. YOU NO CAN HAZ."

The point is, even when you put the book back on the shelf, or in your garage sale -- even if you never read that book -- the book still exists.

The notion that all possible stories of the Universe already exist may lead some to conclude that things are "pre-destined" -- but if Time is not linear but rather, concurrent, nothing can be "pre"-destined, as there is no "pre" and no "post".

So, the D.U.C. is like the owner (and author) of an infinite library of stories about Itself. In Its fully unified state, there's really no reason to "read" the books. So, It chooses to mitose into various forms and levels of enfolding intelligence, some of which (human, for example) are designed to forget that the entire library already exists, and so begin to read the stories one at a time (incarnation), in a linear direction (past to future).

Then, where is Choice? Well, there's one little thing I neglected to point out. Each of these novels is really a choose-your-own-path book -- you know -- if you want to find out what happens to character A, skip to page 73, if you want to find out what happens to character B, skip to page 91, etc..

This is the place(for me) that the concept of parallel universes comes in -- but that is a whole 'nother can of worms that is too big to stuff into this post -- perhaps another time (scratch that -- in some reality, I've already written it, and in some reality, I never will).

It kind of hurts my brain to think about this stuff sometimes, and I believe that is because the brain is actually designed as a tool to perceive Time in a manner (linear/finite) that doesn't fully represent its true state (concurrent/infinite). If you want to read something that takes you to a more transcendent, experiential version of these concepts, try reading Jorge Borges' The Library of Babel (What luck -- the entire text online!), or Donald Barthelme's excellent "Nothing is Not a Nail".

I want to point out that I don't believe that the human perception of linear time is necessarily the only way the the D.U.C. is playing with itself. I think it's entirely possible that other species and/or constructs are designed to play with various aspects of paradox and apparent limitation/separation in entirely different ways.

Some people say, for example, that animals do not (and perhaps, can not) perceive linear Time. Since I don't speak dolphin or turtle or snake or spider or cow (yet), I'm not ready to make a conclusion about this.

I will say that, so far, it's my experience that human beings are the only known earthly creatures who obsess on measuring Time and carving it up into calendar squares, hours, minutes, second, nano-seconds, etc.. It's almost as if by divvying it up, we're trying to make more of it. Which, if my hypothesis about time is correct, is an impossible (but interesting and, ironically, time-consuming) endeavor.

To sum up -- in my cosmology, there is Choice -- but the choice rests exclusively in which story to read/re-read, and how to interpret it. Since Time doesn't truly exist as linear, you might say that your consciousness of your own existence and the choices that you make in interpreting that experience are, literally, the concurrent creation of the Universe in "real time".

How 'bout those aspirin, now? Or, for being a dutiful reader and plowing through this post, you can haz cheezburger. Or not.

Posted byPortlyDyke at 10:52 AM 5 comments  

Labels: Religion, Spirituality

Explaining The D.U.C.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007

In my last post, I referred to my concept of "A Divine, Unifying Consciousness" and a commenter asked:

"Ok, seriously. In eastern philosophies, total consciousness is often equated to or represented by the sublime state of emptiness. In western philosophies, consciousness is often described as self-awareness, cognition and engagement. What is the flavor of the D.U.C.? How is it manifest?"

The answer is: The D.U.C. tastes like chicken.

Ok, seriously.

While I prefer using the term "Divine Unifying Consciousness", I once toyed with naming it "ATIWOSB" -- All That Is, Was, Or Shall Be . . . . . but it seemed, I dunno -- a little clunky?

(Warning: If you do not have a sense of humor, turn back NOW)

ANYWAY . . . . while I prefer the term D.U.C., I do not have any problem using the word "god" (capitalized or uncapitalized) and I often do use this word, for ease of reference when discussing matters of a spiritual nature with the more traditionally-inclined, for the purposes of connectivity.

There was a time when the "G" word caused me to break out in a rash, but, despite being a devote muff-diver for most of my life, I never went to the point where I used "Goddess" as a substitute (primarily because I had a lover who would shriek "Oh Goddess!" when taken to certain heights of lesbianic pleasure, and it was all I could do not to giggle every time it happened).

So, I'll try to boil my cosmology down to a the simplest metaphor possible (nearly, if not always, a dire mistake):

I am a game that God is playing with Itself.

When I look into the laws of physics, and the tendencies of biological and chemical entities, I keep seeing this "many from one" and "many back to one" cycle, and a recurring theme of what I call "enfolding intelligences" (My body has organs and tissues, these organs and tissues have cells, these cells have molecules, these molecules have atoms, these atoms have protons, electrons, and neutrons, and the electrons and neutrons have quarks -- and I have a sneaking suspicion that, even though science generally names quarks as the smallest unit of matter, it is quite possible that we'll someday understand even smaller enfolding structures - - ". . . the book says we may be done with the past, but the past isn't done with us".)

When I look into the most ancient creation myths -- I see a consistent theme: The physical Universe always manifests first as some form of a dichotomy or paradox (Light/Dark, Male/Female, Heaven/Earth). This paradox often/usually arises from some sort "unknowable One-ness" (a cosmic egg, a pre-existent chaos, a zohar, etc.).

Stay with me here.

With all that mass of seemingly variant spiritual, religious, cultural, and scientific opinion swirling around me, how did I come to the conclusion that I am a game that God is playing with Itself?

I looked into my "natural tendencies", and the tendencies of matter and other beings around me.

If you remove the pressures of obtaining food/water, building/maintaining shelter, keeping children alive, etc. from a human being (for the more civilized, this would include removing the need to "go to work") -- what do human beings do? (Hint: We call it "vacation".)

They play.

They play at all sorts of things. The invent sports and crossword puzzles and sodoku and backgammon. They swing and slide and swim and run around.

You don't have to "teach" a child to play. You might teach it "what" to play, or "how" to play a certain thing, but generally, play comes naturally to humans. Most animals also engage in play, and I'm not so "form-ist" as to think it isn't possible that rocks may have some form of play (although their games are probably very, very long, comparitively).

Biologists will tell you that ecosystems are primarily governed by stochastic (chance) events. Meanwhile, designers of "artificial intelligence" face the challenge of creating "fuzzy logic" systems that can allow mechanization of tasks that are normally reserved for human beings, or harnessing certain algorithms that seem to govern stochastic, organic events such as evolution. One of the things the creators of AI work with? Game Theory.

So, what if the entire physical Universe is a great big crossword puzzle, with all the answers at the back of the book, or in tomorrow's paper? You don't work a crossword puzzle that is too easy for you (or not for long), you don't work a crossword puzzle that is impossible to solve (or not for long), and you don't (usually) cheat and just copy the answers from the solution page -- cause what would be the fun in that? Game designers understand that, in order to be "fun", the game has to have a certain balance of challenge and resolution.

I believe that the D.U.C. was, at one point, a single "un-self-conscious" point that got bored with itself, and created the diversion of mitosing itself into various bits of seemingly different matter. Just for fun. From a purely physical science POV, I would say that this happened prior to the "Big Bang", BTW.

Because all matter (and consciousness) arose from that original one-ness, but is seemingly different, the "clues" are embedded in every part of the universe -- in chemistry, spiritual experience, biology, astronomy, emotion, thought, etc..

So, in my spiritual practice, the "Golden Rule" is still applicable -- but not from any "moral" place, because it's "good" or "right" to treat others as I would be treated, but from a place of energetic integrity -- because, essentially, they are me, at some level.

That's a challenge, I'll admit -- part of the challenge, I would say -- because they don't always look like me at first glance (quarks, rocks, other humans, animals, trees, planets, galaxies) -- but if I believe that the D.U.C. is everywhere, in everything, I have to assume that anything that I see as "separate" from me could possibly hold a clue to 10-Down, or 25-Across.

So, far from believing that "God" is impersonal, I see "God" as being both intensely personal and trans-personal. However, I think that the D.U.C. is more interested in having experience than in judging it, and I think that if you present this concept to people, many of them take it personally, and think that it means God "doesn't care".

Just because I don't judge you doesn't mean I don't care about you, however.

As above, so below. As within, so without.

Now, many people may wonder how I came to such a belief system. I'll blog about that more in the future, I suppose, but basically, I believe asI do because I see it reflected in nature, in biology, in chemistry, and in my experience, and I suspect that there are more "clues" in the offing.

And truly, I believe this because I've found it simply works better, and is more fun than the alternatives I've tried.

IMHFO, the D.U.C. is manifest in the ecosystems that are all around me, and that form and adapt and re-form. The D.U.C. is manifest in the fact that I am breathing air and taking in molecules and atoms that might have once been a part of your body -- so where do "I" really start and end? The D.U.C. is manifest in the paradoxical nature of light itself (particle or wave?), and in the beautiful chaotic order of a mandelbrot set.

Like I said: The D.U.C. tastes like chicken.

Posted byPortlyDyke at 3:50 PM 21 comments  

Labels: Religion, Spirituality

Meta-Physician
Sunday, September 23, 2007

I recently got into a online conversation about my spiritual beliefs.

I often experience some difficulty when I get into these types of conversations, because there are so many “hair-trigger” words that seem set people off into assumptions about what they think about these words, rather than listening to, or asking about, what I might think about the words I’m using.

If, for example, I use the word “metaphysical”, a lot of people assume that I am just a woo-woo nutcase, incapable of rational thought, and probably burning incense to keep the bad juju away. (Come to think of it, I do burn incense to keep the bad juju away, but let’s just gloss past that for the moment. I promise that I will explain the scientific basis for my burning of incense at some point.)

I’ve experienced, too, that when I enter into conversation about my spiritual beliefs with people who say that they are atheist or agnostic, they often assume that I’m trying to convert them to my way of thinking or something. I don’t find this surprising, and I can hardly blame them for having a certain “spiritual gag reflex” -- since most public dialogue about spirituality (at least in the good old USofA) comes from organized religions that place heavy emphasis on the concept that they have the “right” answers, and strong, if not obsessive, tendencies toward proselytization.

However, precisely because of the spiritual beliefs that I hold, in my spiritual structure, proselytizing would be one of the few things that could even remotely parallel the concept of “sin” that exists in most traditional religions (I don’t really believe in the concept of “sin” as they express it). I may, or may not, expound on that as I continue, but I want to be clear that one of the foundational aspects of my own spiritual approach is that, not only is every being completely entitled to their own view of “what is so” about the universe and reality they inhabit/experience, but their unique exploration and understanding of that view is critical to the evolutionary nature of the universe and reality that I inhabit/experience.

So, if you hear me using the word “metaphysics”, what I mean is this: Metaphysics is exactly that – the “meta” version of the garden-variety physics we humans are still struggling to understand from a purely physic-al (chemical) level.

I’m strongly convinced that the concept “As Above, So Below – As Within, So Without” is valid – and not because I think some bearded dude in the sky has got it all planned out for me. I do believe in a divine unifying consciousness (what some people refer to as “god”, I guess) -- some thread that runs through this entire puzzle -- but I think it would be sheer arrogance to say that I understood the totality of that consciousness.

I have some very clear beliefs, a lot of questions, and a strong spiritual framework that works for me.

Get that last phrase? It works for me. I don’t need it to work for anyone else, cause it works for me. If it works for you, too, I’m glad to share.

Those of you who have hung around with me at Shakesville’s virtual pub on Fridays know that I cut out around 7 pm PST to “teach” – this is what I teach about:

How to create a spiritual life that works for you, and that you will actually put into practice in your physical/chemical existence.

I would say that I’ve tended toward the Seeker end of the spiritual spectrum ever since I was a youngster – I was raised with strict Lutheran doctrine, but my critical thinking skills kicked in early, and at the tender age of 6, I was known to plague my pastor with completely logical questions that frustrated him greatly and showed him up as the “baa, baa” type of Christian that he was (and that I was to become all too familiar with over the years).

Once I figured out that my status as a big old lesbo consigned me to eternal hellfire in the eyes of my Religion-Of-Origin (ROO, rhymes with FOO -- family-of-origin), I did a fuck of a lot of seeking. I studied archaeology and anthropology and sociology and history, I learned Latin and Hebrew to understand more about what the hell had happened with the Bible and Christianity. I know the Tarot inside and out. I’ve plumbed books on quantum physics, gematria, genetics, astrology, astronomy, philosophy, esoteric and practical geometry, Daoism, Buddhism, Sufism, Muslism, Bahaism, Shamanism, and Christianism (if I left anyone’s theology out, just ask – I’ve probably read about or practiced it at one time). I’ve sat to yoga, chanted mantras, attended sweats, cast the circle, jumped the fire, sung to the water drum, and studied with teachers from many, many disciplines and perspectives.

You might say that I was seeking my own personal “Theory of Everything” long before that phrase entered the common lexicon.

In many of the traditions, religions, and disciplines that I’ve directly practiced, my major complaint was that a lot of people who say that they are seeking spirituality are really just trying to get a whole bunch of their life, thought, and experience into the “DONE” box.

Let me explain what I mean by that. The “DONE” box is the box where you put things that are troubling and paradoxical so that you don’t have to think about them any more. Big F Fundamentalist Christianity is particularly useful is you want to fill up your “DONE” box – it tells you precisely what to think about certain troubling things, like the fact that your child is gay and you are not gay and this troubles you, because you’ve been given all sorts of different ideas and opinions about why people are gay, and you’re not sure whether it is something you did or didn’t do, and what the fuck do you do now with this kid who you thought you knew and what will everyone in the congregation think and oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! -- in situations like this, BigFundieC [tm] tells you precisely what to do:

I don’t want to get my life into the DONE box. I want to keep questioning.

I do keep questioning, and actually, I’ve come to some realizations that, to me, look like they might be pretty solid answers. Answers that inevitably lead to more questions (the best kind).

My answers come from disparate sources, some of which might be called “scientific”, some of which might be called “philosophical” or “metaphysical”, and some of which might be called “anecdotal”. For me, the key to finding a real answer is when the scientific (and I’m not talking diet studies funded by the makers of Dexatrim), the philosophical, the metaphysical, and the anecdotal all seem to align.

Example: The beautiful portly body that is now typing this post began as a single cell. (The beautiful body that you are now sitting in, either reading or listening to this post also began as a single cell.) That single cell very quickly either “underwent” or “practiced” mitosis (depending on your views about spiritual causality), and differentiated itself into anywhere from 10 – 100 trillion cells (depending on your sources for human cell counts), most of which specialized to become various parts of my current physical form, some of which (stem cells) still remain in an undifferentiated state to “fill in the blanks” in case of emergencies such as tissue damage, etc..

Somehow, these cells, all originally deriving from a single cell that formed more than 51 years ago (with contributions from mom and dad – thanks folks!) – and some say that the current cells in my body have all been regenerated within the last seven years or less – somehow all these cells are, right now, conspiring to obey my command to type: “Yippee!”

And I don’t think of that as a huge, big miracle (unless I’m having a particularly conscious day). I take it entirely for granted. Even though 10 trillion cells (conservatively) are participating to keep me upright in the chair, process the beer I just drank, and parse the complexities of the English language -- meaning, syntax, grammar – not to mention the astounding act of typing approximately 90 words per minute. While slightly drunk.

How is that possible?

Here’s where the scientific, philosophical, metaphysical and anecdotal align for me on this one: For some strange reason, these variable parts have decided to cooperate to be ME. Scientific evidence points me to an understanding that my cells will pass on my DNA signature to the cells that replace them, or which derive from their mitotic activity. Philosophical evidence points me to an understanding that my concept of myself as a cohesive “I” will also tend to attempt to replicate and imprint itself, attempting to pass the “genome” of my particular personality on, even in my writing here. Metaphysical evidence points me to the an understanding that, while I am an individualized cell in a larger body (“I” am a part of the human species, “I” am a part of the planet Earth, “I” am a part of this solar system, galaxy, universe, and who-knows-what-beyond-that, etc.), I participate with these larger organizing structure according to the rules of those structures, just as my cells participate with me and my “rules”. (I’m glad to take particular questions about this if you want to ask, but I’ll gravely oversimplify by giving the example that “I” and all my participating cells are subject to Earth’s gravitational field and that laws of aerodynamics while within Earth’s gravitational field). My own anecdotal evidence points me to the understanding that I can observe how I am affected by these various levels of what I call “Enfolding Organizations” all the time.

So, when I look at the dizzying possibilities of interactions with all these levels, I find myself searching for a common thread, and I find this:

My physical body arose out of a single thing and became a complex thing, although certain tiny parts of myself are always standing by in a undifferentiated state that is less complex, waiting to become more complex, if necessary. I am also part of several levels of more complex structure, each of which quite possibly may have risen from a single thing. It’s possible that I’m just a stem cell in those structures, or that I’ve already differentiated into a specialized bit.

Two areas of what some call “empirical research” or “real science” have been very, very helpful to me in my seeking: Quantum Physics, and Oncology.

Of all the “scientists” I have known, read, and interacted with, theoretical Quantum Physicists and practicing Oncologists have been the most willing to admit: “We don’t know how that works, but we see that it does work, and we are interested in asking more questions about it and finding out.”

I’ll probably write more in the future about the various connective tissues that I see between these two types of scientists, but for now, I want to write about what in the fuck any of this has to do with my usual Portly Dyke blog-spew.

So here’s my temporary wrap-up to this portion of my spirituality revelation:

To me, when I hear someone say something like: “I’m an atheist because I only believe what can be physically explained using the existing data,” I don’t see this as much (if any) different from someone saying “I believe that homosexuality is an aberration because most of the people I know are heterosexual.”

That said, I’m perfectly willing to allow other people to have whatever opinions they want to have, as long as they don’t insist that I have them too, and attempt to legislate so that I have to live according to their opinions.

In 51 years, I’ve seen too much that I cannot explain using the existing data – not stuff I’ve read about in newspapers – stuff that I’ve experienced directly.

In 1676, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the “father of microbiology” had a very “strained” relationship with the Royal Society (the main recognized “scientific” society at that time – think present-day National Academy of Science, or CDC, etc.), because he had reported his first observations of single-celled organisms under the microscope. Even though he’d already been an accepted member of this august assembly, it was only after the Society sent a vicar, some judges, and some doctors to verify his claims was he finally vindicated for his “radical” proposals in 1680.

Think about that. This man spent four years of his life trying to convince the scientific powers-that-be (not even the general populace) that something existed beyond the currently-accepted world-view – something that we now take for granted as “scientific fact” – microbes exist, and they affect our physical bodies. Without his observations, and his insistence that he had observed what he observed, Louis Pasteur might never have been.

If I took a four-year tissue-slice of American history – let’s say from the years 2003 to 2007, and attempted to make an analysis of “what is so” about the USA, don’t you think that I’d get a very different analysis than if I took a slice from the years 1969 to 1973, or 1992 to 1996?

If I took a four-year tissue-slice of scientific observation from 1676 to 1680 as opposed to 2003 to 2007 – same thing.

So, my spiritual stance arises, not from some biblical training about what is “right” and “wrong” – not from the currently-accepted view of what is “real” and “not real”, but from an amalgam of: First – what I have directly and personally observed and experienced, Second – what others (scientists included) have observed and how their unbiased reporting of what they have observed meshes with what I have observed, and Third – how this might align with the body of information about previous observations.

I’ll probably keep blogging about this from time to time, and include a few more details about what exactly I believe and don’t believe, but that is a huge fucking mouthful as it is, so I’ll stop now.

Any questions?

(ps -- this series is especially for Nik.E.Poo and Burning Prairie ;), who asked for it. )

Posted byPortlyDyke at 11:45 PM 7 comments  

Labels: Religion, Spirituality

The Abe Lincoln/Will Rogers Manifesto
Sunday, September 16, 2007

I've been thinking for a while that I might list some of my basic tenets and principles -- oh, just for information's sake -- or maybe you might actually find some of it interesting enough to try it out as a philosophy.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that most everything I wanted to express had already been said.

So, here is:

Posted byPortlyDyke at 9:02 PM 4 comments  

Labels: Hope, Humor, Spirituality

Finally -- Sunday School Comes in Handy!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

OK, I have a confession to make: Not only was I raised as a Christian, which meant that I was forced to attend church every Sunday until I was confirmed at age 13, at which point it became my choice whether to attend church (which I did -- Missouri Synod Lutheran -- I even became the church organist for a time), then I became a "born-again" Christian at age 19 (at the urging of my first lesbian lover -- yeah, that's weird, but it gets weirder), and to this day, I actually have a soft spot in my head for the teachings of Jesus -- you know, the real teachings, like "Love one another", "the meek shall inherit the earth", "suffer the little children to come unto me", etc. -- THAT Jesus? Remember him?

Later in life, I explored some of my less-known religious heritage -- like the fact that my father's fore bearers (who had converted to Bible Baptist a long, long time ago) were actually practicing Jews at one point . I studied Hebrew because I wanted to know what the Old Testament really said, and because I was curious to know what my genetic ancestors had been reading (and so that I could converse in some halting way with a friend in Tel Aviv). Throughout all these wild and woolly forays, I was a dyke-dyke-dykey dyke, since I knew from 12 years of age that I was a big old queer.

So, I know the Bible (Old T and New T) pretty well. It was drummed into my head at "Vacation Bible School" while I sprinkled glitter onto my tongue-depressor crosses at age 5, it was railed at me from the ornate pulpit of my midwestern church throughout my "formative" years, it was crooned to me by my lesbo-lover after a vigorous session of muff-diving, and three bibles still inhabit my book-shelf to this very day:

1. My confirmation King James Version
   
2. An NIV gifted to me by my sister when maybe she thought I might actually repent and be saved --the fly-leaf inscribed "The covers of this bible are red -- it's hoped that what lies between them will be" (Isn't that cute?) -- AND
   
3. A gigantic interlinear Hebrew/Greek/Aramaic version (the only one I open now). It is large enough to qualify as a deadly weapon.

Suffice it to say that I knows me sum bible.

Until today, though, I hadn't really understood the Cosmic Plan for all this biblical absorption. Now, I have seen the Light, and Grokked the Purpose --

It was all part of the Creator's Divine Intention to Make Me Ready! . . .

. . . to deal with internet trolls.

On a couple of blogs that I read regularly, there have recently been recurrent appearances of comment trolls who spout things like: "You would all be fine and learn to love our glorious president if you just let the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christs into your hearts and minds! . . . . . . Until you do, you suck."

It took me about two weeks to put it all together, but finally, G-d's Grace broke through to me -- I realized that I had been selected -- little old me -- to carry the Good Book into troll territory -- to recall all that I had studied and pondered over, and to hurl it with wild abandon under bridges everywhere -- yes, I have found My Way . . . My Path . . . My Dao.

So today, I began responding to my favorite "Holly Bibel" Troll simply by thanking it for reminding me to turn to the one source of real answers -- The BIBLE, and then citing an appropriate Bible verse for the situation at hand with the troll.

Luckily, the Bible has all the answers that you need -- no matter what position you are seeking to attack or defend.

Need to protest a war? Just try: Matthew 26:52 "Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

Need to defend a war? Well, just a couple of chapters back, we have: Matthew 24:6
"You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come."

See -- how cool is that?

It's like there's just one book that you can answer ANYTHING with -- Are you excited yet?

But wait, there's MORE!

The Bible is like the Popeil Pocket Fisherman! You can justify or denigrate nearly everything with this single volume! Self-righteousness and cosmic one-upsmanship has never been so easy!

You may be saying: "Hey Portly! I wasn't as privileged as you -- I didn't get a thorough, brain-numbing education in Bible studies from the time I could walk! I don't really understand the Bible -- it all seems so long and complex! How can I quote scripture if I'm taking it out of context and not really sure what it means?"

Don't worry -- the biblicul trolls you might deal with don't seem to understand it either -- they use the Bible this way all the time -- and if they can take a single passage, separate it from its entire surrounding text, and use it to browbeat another human being -- so can you!!
======
In all seriousness, I do think that the real Jesus rocks. He was a social activist (he advocated and intervened for the poor, down-trodden, and even whores) -- a rebel (which is probably why they killed him, unfortunately) -- anti-establishment (f*ck you, Pharisees! Rich people who care for no one else -- you're not gettin' into my heaven!) -- the real Jesus was a fucking radical.

So, maybe I'm a true Christian after all.

Posted byPortlyDyke at 11:54 PM 10 comments  

Labels: Religion, Spirituality, Xtians

I Do Everything I'm Not S'posed To Do
Monday, August 6, 2007

On purpose, even.

I smoke. I drink. I'm "fat" (from now on, I'm going to be using quotes around that word, because I think it's penultimately subjective, but according to the Holy BMI, I am F.A.T.). I don't "exercise" (likewise, "exercise" will be in quotes hereinafter, because I don't consider gardening, teaching, the ability to lift heavy objects, or sex as "exercise" -- even though these activities, for me, frequently involve heavy lifting, pushing, sweating, panting, pushing, groaning, grinding, thrusting . . . oh, you get the picture).

I curse. I blaspheme. I lose my temper. I whine.

I am a big old homo. I have consumed nearly every illegal drug that exists at one time or another.

I choose not to send birthday and christmas cards to my family of origin.

I let my leg hair and armpit hair grow without harvesting it.

I allowed my kids to watch TV, and play video games when they were growing up. I watch TV and play video games myself to this very day.

Clearly, I must be a menace to society.

I am a statistical anomaly -- according to "conventional wisdom", I should be, at the very least, rampantly unhealthy and unhappy, and at the most, dead -- but I'm none of these.

So much of status quo media and advertising seems to be concentrated on nailing down some formula for "health" (completely subjective), or some bomb-proof prescription for "happiness" (completely subjective), or the demarkation of some standard of "normalcy" (not even subjective -- non-existant -- normal never existed, and never will!) -- that it seems to me that many people that I know spend a great deal of time trying to figure out where they are on some farcical (and ever-shifting) scale of healthy/happy/normal, rather than spending much, if any, time figuring out where they actually are.

I was born in the 50's, an era which had its happy/healthy/normal prescription pretty much sewed up -- all you had to do was a) graduate from high school and possibly college, b) marry someone of the opposite gender, c) squirt out a couple of babies (if you were female) or get a job (if you were a male), d) buy a house, e) sell your soul to your employer for 40 years or so, then f) retire and prepare for your ultimate fate (nursing home, followed by Death).

Easy, right? And Oh-So-Satisfying!

Except it wasn't. Not for anyone that I have ever known, even amongst the biggest dispensers of this prescription -- my parents' generation.

For me, the prescription broke down when I realized that I was queer, and that Step B was going to be a bit tricky for me. Once I figured out that I hadn't, and probably never would attain Step B, and I was still healthy and happy, while my sister, who had followed the prescription to a "T" seemed both unhealthy and unhappy, I really started taking a second look at that prescription. That was back in the 70's.

What is shocking to me is how many smart, educated young people these days seem convinced that the 1950's protocol of School, Mate, Babies/Job, House, Retirement is actually viable. Even though it didn't really work for their parents, or their grand-parents. I'm struck by how many young parents I hear repeating the same old cants of "Well, you don't know how hard it is to stay home with the kids all day!/Well you don't know how hard it is to go out and work all day!" -- I mean, hasn't this been done to death, already?

I'm struck by how many parents who are my age or slightly younger, who snuck out to smoke pot, drop acid, and/or drink alcohol as teenagers are absolutely shocked and outraged when their now-teen-aged children do the same thing. ('Cuz, like, their own parents shock and outrage was such an effective antidote, and kept them from doing these things, right?)

It's just weird to me.

That's why I no longer follow the prescription that Mr. Socio-Cultural Wizard handed me in 1956, and I'm pretty wary any time I see some new prescription that guarantees health, happiness, and normalcy.

In the 1960's, everyone knew that margarine was "healthier" for you than butter. Except now it's not, because trans-fats will KILL you, and everyone knows that. In the 1960's, everyone knew that you needed to eat meat every day to get all your protein needs met. Except now you don't, because meat will KILL you, and everyone knows that. Except the Atkins people, who know that meat will not kill you, but Carbohydrates will KILL you. In the 1960's everyone knew that drinking 3 glasses of milk every day was an important part of the "nutrition pyramid". Except now, it isn't, because milk has fat, which will KILL you. Or maybe it is, because it has calcium, which will help keep you from being KILLED. Or maybe it isn't, because you're allergic to bovine dairy products, and your gut will swell up, which will KILL you.

One of the wonderful things about getting a bit older is this: You get to watch a lot of "science" tell you a lot of things about what will KILL you, and you get to look around for yourself and notice who's actually dead, and who is actually not dead.

Personally, I think the number one thing that will KILL you is being dead while you're still alive -- paying so much attention to crap that doesn't really fucking matter that you have no attention left for the things that do matter, or plastering your consciousness-windows with so much bullshit "science" (which in most cases is funded by food and drug companies with something to sell) that you can no longer see clearly into the world that you inhabit.

Facts: I'm a "fat", healthy, dyke, who enjoys tobacco, alcohol, red meat, video games, and television. I also read voraciously, breathe and get around just fine, thank you, have work that I enjoy and that people are happy to pay me to perform, and most importantly, am vibrantly alive, and "happier" than probably 90% of the people that I know or know of. Like I said, I'm a statistical anomaly.

I credit this to the moment I stopped paying attention to that man behind the curtain -- you know -- the one who was supposed to make everything all better?

That is all.

Posted byPortlyDyke at 1:24 AM 4 comments  

Labels: Fat, Queers, Spirituality, Truth, Very Personal Details