You want… friendship, love, to be one of the guys, an opportunity to prove yourself.  And you don’t get it.  No.  Not with us, they say.

Maybe its you, you don’t know.

He was despised and rejected of men.

There you are, moving along like you have so many times before… ouch!  Dang dang dang!   You’ve stubbed your toe.

Which actually tells us a lot about the mortal condition.

Kings shall see that which they have not considered

(more…)

One moment you thought everything was fine, you were among friends, then something happens and your face burns and they are all laughing at you.  It feels awful.

Even years later, you can feel your gut clench when you think of it.

If it happens enough, or you worry about it enough, it becomes a permanent injury.  You are always about to cringe.  You have a permanent psychic injury.

Perhaps, eventually, it will lead you to either Pride or  the peace of Humility.  But either way, it hurts.

He was despised and rejected of men.

You are bored, you are flat and restless and irritated and dull.

I spur to action, to mischief, or sometimes to nothing.

That acid taste of despising yourself.  Perhaps in some distant day you will look back and see it as a spur to repentance and growth.  But for now it is just a bitter fire of feeling sick at who you are.

When the bells justle in the tower
  The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
  Of all I ever did.

Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

It’s annoying.  If it goes on, almost maddening.  Sometimes it is a warning or a precursor of worse pain to come–stop now while you can!–sometimes it is a sign of healing–sometimes its just an itch.  Part of the  mortal experience.

It is all hopeless. There is no point.  You despair.

(more…)

For Lent, I conceived the quixotic notion of posting about some different kind of pain and suffering each day.

Here’s the list of what I have got.

Any suggestions or refinements would be welcome.

(more…)

Your world is dark.

Perhaps it was always dark.  You only see colors, if at all, in weird flashes in dreams.

Perhaps it came on you. You can still remember the light.

But  now you are blind.  Your eyes stare without sight.

There are compensations–your other senses get sharp  There are kindnesses.  But this is a world for those that can see.  Every hour, every day, you are blind and need help or to live in a rigid constraint.  Perhaps you are cheerful about it.  Perhaps not.  But if you could, you would see.

You cannot.

And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways

There once was a rabbit whose sire was named Recklessness and whose dam was named Cowardice.  Now in that warren at that time the weasels and other predators became so numerous and  bloodthirsty that the rabbits determined to leave.  They set out into the unknown forest but by ill chance a band of wolves came across their scent and started to follow them.  The rabbits fled in good order until they came to raging water flowing through steep and rocky banks.  They were almost in despair, because the wolves were not long behind, until one of the chief rabbits found a log laying across the rush of the waters.  It was narrow and uneven and wet, and rabbits were not climbers and balancers by nature, but the chief rabbit thought that by courage it could be done.  He cajoled the other rabbits and one by one they made the frightful attempt.  All except the rabbit whose sire was named Recklessness and whose dam was named Cowardice.  With great gasping breaths and wide staring eyes he sat immobile, frozen with fear.  The chief rabbit pled with him, bumped him, whispered love and affection and courage to him, but still he sat frozen, until in a few minutes the wolves came and the chief rabbit had to dash for the log and barely escaped with his life.

When the wolves came, the frightened rabbit fled madly, blindly, off the edge of the bank and plunged into the frothing current below, where he died.

The name of the rabbit was Panic.

When you are used to being clean, and you are dirty.  It gnaws at you.

When you are used to being attractive, and you are now scarred, or fat, or disfigured.

When you were never used to these things, but  you have always been scarred, or fat, or disfigured.   You see the thousand subtle ways people treat you differently without even realizing it.  Sometimes with kindness, but still treating you differently.  You are mostly used to it, but sometimes it stabs.

Sometimes you are invisible.  Sometimes you are acutely visible.  It hurts.  You find refuge in being alone or in being online or in charm and accomplishment.

he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

There once was a man who had a cancer of the throat.  Afterwards, he discovered that his voice was raspy and if he talked too much at a time, he got hoarse and eventually couldn’t talk at all for awhile.

He went to the doctor.  The doctor told him that this condition was permanent.  He would always be like this.  “Just don’t use your voice much,” the doctor said.  “Rest it a lot.”

But much of the time, the man kept talking until he went hoarse.

When asked why,  he replied, “voices are talking.  If I don’t talk, what am I resting my voice for?”

Economic laws would tell you focus on developing your strengths.  Your comparative advantage.  And,  indeed, that is often a good idea.

But in the long run, specializing is terrestrial.  Improving your weaknesses can be just as valuable, and more satisfying.  Everything you have is part of you and meant to be used.

There are some scriptures and other sources which suggest that our first parents really did sin (or transgress).  At least, that there may have been a better way to do what they were trying to do.

I think the sin of the Fall may have been thinking that since it had to be done, it must be possible to do it.

Like, you are on a high mountain and you have to get down.  You notice there is high avalanche risk but you can’t think of any other way to get down.  So–this is human nature–you assume it must be possible.  It isn’t.

Down you go, and down goes the avalanche.

The sin of many Christians is different, though.  It is to take the Fall as an instructive story about how we are to behave.  As if it were primarily a moral lesson.  “Watch where you step,” they say.  “Speak softly.  You don’t want to trigger an avalanche.  That’s avalanche behavior, bro, that’s what got Adam and Eve in trouble.”

But the avalanche already happened.  We are born in the avalanche.  The avalanche is still roaring down.  As anyone knows in our moments and days and seasons of despair and frustration and sickness and evil.  We are being tossed in the air and then buried again under tons of plummeting snow.

A vice pair, from a reader:

and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they tremble and anger against me; and when I use no sharpness they harden their hearts against it; wherefore, I fear lest the Spirit of the Lord hath ceased striving with them.

–Moroni 9:4

–with sharpness, they tremble and anger

–with no sharpness, they harden their hearts

They respond to pointed rebukes by getting mad at the rebuker – ‘how dare you talk to me this way’

But if someone tries a gentler approach they ignore it, laugh ‘em off.

they have made themselves impervious to criticism and therefore to improvement.  Being unable to progress is the definition of damnation.

A lot of popular modern psychotherapy is designed to achieve damnation as far as I can tell.  There is a non-damnable version of “learning to love myself” but that version doesn’t seem to be what’s often on offer.

A man stood on a peak at sunrise.  He saw the world turn pink before him and then the pure radiance of the sun warm his cold.

The man stood there all day long.

The man stood on the peak at sunset.  He saw the world turn yellow and gold, then slowly fade into a turquoise at the horizon.

When it was dark, an angel came down to him.  “Choose,” the angel said.   He gestured east with his left hand and west with his right.

“It is too hard,” the man said.  He climbed back down the mountain and went home.