As long time readers are no doubt tediously aware, I spent arguably the best years of my life in a Christian fundamentalist cult and for most of that time I was a True Believer; not only did I zealously adhere to the cult’s tenets myself, I worked tirelessly to convert others to my sorry theology. But for the last couple of years of my time with the brethren I existed in an odd and excruciating limbo. Though I was convinced that my erstwhile belief system was a crock of crap, I remained a nominal member of the church: in short, I had a decision to make. On the one hand, I could retain my family and half a lifetime’s worth of friends by continuing as a putative cult member. True, I would be living a lie, but in retrospect I am convinced that many of my brethren had made exactly this choice.

On the other hand, I could sever my ties with what I now recognized as a vicious cult. This might strike you as an easy decision… but there were complications: since this cult practices a severe form of excommunication, opting out of this false worship meant that I would also be opting out of community. Probably, it also meant the end of my marriage and to be honest with you, I dearly loved the wife of my youth.

But I did pass through it

So I dawdled a year or two, contemplating upon this weighty decision, and here is why I dawdled: disillusioned, as I was, with a particular religious ‘truth’, I wondered if it was such a great idea to risk, really, my entire life on a concept as nebulous as absolute truth. I thought there might, in fact, be an upside to hypocrisy. It seems a little presumptuous to say that I passed through what St. John of the Cross called the “Dark Night of the Soul”; let us say, instead, that I passed through a ‘Cloudy Afternoon of the Soul’. But I did pass through it. In the event, and as you have probably figured out, I did renounce my vows to the idiotic religion I had become ensnared in and I chose Truth. And, in fact, things turned out much as I expected. My so-called friends dumped me like a carton of sour milk, my marriage ended, and my children were coached to look at me with fear. For several months, life sucked. And then… things got better. New friends, new opportunities, a surge of creativity, and above all, a sense of joy and freedom that remains with me even now. In a very meaningful sense, I was born again.

So now I suppose I am that tiresome creature, a person with advice. For I am certain that a percentage of you, my readers—like a percentage of all humans—are living a lie. You’re in a loveless relationship, a toxic religion, a thankless job, or are existing in some other form of hypocrisy. And I am here to tell you… choose truth. And especially… choose your truth. I won’t promise you that your path will be easy or pleasant, for I know from bitter experience that it may, in fact, be painful. You could even die. But the fact is, when you live a lie, you are already as good as dead… and you may as well start acting like it.

Ties in well with my Rusty Nail post.

That’s gotta be what it is, right? Or is this pareidolia?

This quick scene happens immediately after Deb suggests that Dex might have something to “unload.”

Medicine wheels are great circles of stone, quartered by spokes emerging from a central hub. About 70 are known to exist, mainly in the northern United States and southern Canada. Little today is known about their use by past cultures, though it is assumed that medicine wheels were ceremonial or religious in nature.

We are not the first civilization to be puzzled by medicine wheels. Many of them are thousands of years old, and over the millennia many civilizations have flourished and receded in their territory. And all these cultures made some accommodation with these mysterious stone wheels. Above all, they maintained the wheels; they kept them in repair and extended them, made them larger. Even today they are carefully preserved. So the meaning attached to the wheels has changed over time, but for thousands of years humans have served these patterns in stone.

When I worked as a land surveyor, I served a pattern that stretches over much of the United States. The sectional survey system is the arrangement of grids that divide rural landscapes into square fields and straight roads. Parts of it are nearly 200 years old, and surveyors like myself maintain it by periodically restoring corner monuments. Like any civilization, the American experiment will someday be replaced by another, but the sectional survey system will likely survive—it is ingrained in the land, has reshaped the very contours of that portion of the planet in which it lives.

Patterns do live. They come into being and grow for a while. They evolve, multiply, and sometimes die. They interact with humans and other life forms. Their lives are played out in geologic time, but if we could somehow grasp their movements over thousands of years we would observe all the features of this thing we call life. And from that perspective, humans would seem like cells or helpful bacteria, small pink things rushing about, maintaining the patterns and extending them and eventually discarding and dismantling them.

Patterns are everywhere. Languages are huge patterns, continually maintained and evolved by humans over millennia. Some, like english or mandarin, prosper and grow while others die off.

Religions, corporations, governments; these too can be seen as patterns, ordered systems that persist over time, made up of humans but living far longer than humans. And, of course, even the human body is a sort of pattern; we’re all very comfortable with the idea that our cells switch out every seven years or so, but think what that means. It means that the body is not constant, but some template for the body, some pattern, does endure.

Really, is it too much too say that everything is a pattern, made up of other patterns, nesting and interlocking in exquisite hierarchies of order that endlessly repeat and replicate and die back and rise anew? And that is something to think about; what patterns are we creating and being created by while we live, and when we die, which of those patterns will endure and even, perhaps, live forever?

I happen to be a Registered Land Surveyor, licensed in the State of Wisconsin. I am, therefore a government certified expert in the art of laying out large patterns, such as subdivisions, on the ground. So let’s talk crop circles.

My musings on crop circles usually take the form of an imaginary client who walks into my office and asks me if I could lay out a large pattern in a wheat field. “Sure”, I say, “I have the equipment and personnel to do that.” But then he says, “Well, the work has to be done all in one night. And you have to mash the wheat down neatly, without breaking it off – in fact, you have to bend it a few inches above the ground and weave it into a basket pattern. There will be people looking for you but you can’t be seen and you can’t leave footprints. The pattern I want you to make is quite large, several hundred feet across, and it’s kind of complicated. Oh and, by the way, it’s not my field – and the farmer has threatened to shoot trespassers.”

Oh and, by the way… it’s not my field

So I show my imaginary client to the imaginary door in my mind, but then I get to thinking… jeez, could I lay out a crop circle, given the above conditions? And you know what? Maybe. Maybe I could if I had a big crew and practiced a lot, and if the field was lit and it was dry… but then I think, no way. Not if the farmer wasn’t cooperating. Not without being seen.

But the fact is, at least some formations are hoaxed, and by some very talented people. Working for pay, some hoaxers have made very large formations as advertisements or for TV programs. But… all the formations that have definitely been hoaxed were made in the daytime, on rented fields, with the help of large booms so that the formation could be seen from above.

Here are a few things that haven’t happened: no hoaxer has ever announced a complex pattern in advance, no hoaxer has ever been caught in the act, no hoaxer has ever been interrupted and left a large pattern half-finished, and no hoaxer has ever demonstrated a good technique for creating the often extraordinary weavings formed by the bent crop.

In the end, beliefs about crop circles are a lot like beliefs about Bigfoot, the Illuminati, aliens, and God. One has to consider the swirl of evidence and counter-evidence, and make a decision. And as always, only fools and madmen are ever absolutely certain.

Well, you’ve listened to me this long; it seems only fair to tell you where I stand on the issue of crop circles. I believe that conventional hoaxers don’t account for all crop circles. I believe that at least some crop circles cannot be explained by use of any known human technology. I believe that crop circles are a manifestation of some advanced intelligence. And, most of all, I believe that a crop circle tattoo is a good way to secure a position of oversight in the post-alien-takeover world.

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Everything we see and even the thoughts that form in our brain are made of molecules and molecules are made of atoms and atoms are made of subatomic particles, and subatomic particles… well they’re made of nothing; what I’m trying to say is that everything comes from nothing and, therefore, everything is a miracle. To single out some things as being somehow more miraculous than other things is a mistake. A mistake I’m going to make now by telling you stories of three miraculous events: a visualization fulfilled, an answered prayer, and a direct, non-verbal communication from the Christian god, together with prologues and kickers, and an optional application to your very own life.

A Visualization Fulfilled:
Prologue: Finding myself jobless in Idaho, I talk myself into a position with a one-man software firm. I have a facility for the work, and prosper modestly, but there’s one problem: the owner, Gary, has always worked from his crowded basement office and sees no reason why I can’t do the same. Seeing no other recourse, and having just read a book on the subject, I decide to bring the perfect office into my life via visualization, which is a strange decision for me as the Christian fundamentalist cult to which I then adhered rather frowns on visualization, affirmation, meditation, positive thinking and… well, they frown on a lot of things.

The Event: I form a mental picture of the office I desire. It is to have four components: high ceilings, elaborate millwork, a downtown location, and some interesting architectural detail. Several times a day I hold a vision of this ideal office. That’s all I do. I take no other steps, I simply… think about what I want. Within three weeks, our little firm is located in a downtown Pocatello office. The ceilings are 12 feet high and the millwork is nearly a foot wide. Oh, and the unspecified architectural detail? Turns out this office comes complete with its own jail cell.

they frown on a lot of things

The Kicker: Shortly after moving into this office, Gary appears to lose his mind. He begins by diverting company funds amounting to $30,000 into the construction of a backyard shed, a shed built to resemble a Japanese teahouse, on a rock foundation, constructed of high grade redwood, and roofed with… copper shingles. He next manages to fall prey to a recently released scam artist, who talks Gary into supplying him with a desktop computer, two laptop computers, and some cash for ‘investment’, all while taking meetings in a Motel 6…

Shortly thereafter I quit in disgust.

An Answered Prayer:
Prologue: While taking a bath in Idaho, I receive a phone call from my mother in Kentucky who tells me that my father has just had a stroke. My family and I leave the next morning and arrive two days later. My father’s right side is paralyzed and he is unable to speak. Since my mother has just undergone double bypass surgery, the situation is serious and we decide to move to Kentucky to help them out. I have one day to secure a job before returning to Idaho to pack. Since I am still a member of the aforesaid wacko Christian cult, and since visualization didn’t seem to work out so well, I offer up a fervent prayer to God, asking for His divine assistance.

I have been working as a land surveyor, so I take the yellow pages and a map and head to Owensboro, determined to apply in person to every survey company listed. I begin by driving to a firm named McDonough-Brown. I know that I am in the right block and have the correct address, but for the life of me I cannot find it. I walk up and down the block a few times and ask the locals for assistance, but ultimately I leave in frustration.

I manage to speak to every other firm on my list, and none have any openings. It is a long, frustrating day and, frankly, I am a little disappointed with God’s effort.

The Event: I impulsively try one more time to find the mysterious McDonough-Brown. This time, when I pull up to the address, I immediately see a fairly prominent sign that says, “McDonough-Brown”. I walk in. I launch into my spiel, which by now is well-practiced. Everyone seems surprised, no, shocked to see me, and they fall all over themselves to show me the place, explain what they do, and persuade me to work for them. It was weird… but I leave with a job.

I later learn why everyone was so astonished to see me. Turns out, moments before I arrived, the owners were abruptly forced to fire a long time employee for failing a drug test. If I’d looked over my shoulder while walking in, I would have seen him driving away. Had I arrived earlier in the day, there would have been no opening. My arrival at that precise moment struck all of McDonough-Brown’s employees as an act of… God.

The Kicker: This is easily the worst job I have ever had. I am away from home for weeks at a time, working in swamps, nominally in charge of a crew of pistol-packing politically paranoid rednecks named Wayne. The work is brutal and degrading, and sometimes involves lugging sacks of cement hundreds of yards from a truck to a boat, a procedure that systematically lines all of my orifices with a thin layer of concrete. Though still a Christian, I can’t help but wonder if there might be something to reincarnation and if I was, perhaps, a really nasty person in a previous life.

A Direct Non-Verbal Communication from the Christian God:
Prologue: In the beginning of the summer of 1984, my life is, frankly, perfect. I am on my university’s honor roll, I have been training for a triathlon and am an Adonis, I am sharing a beach house with friends, and I am beginning to realize that girls, though puzzles, are solvable puzzles. Even my hair is looking good. Clearly, this is going to be the best summer ever and I kick it off with a trip to a Grateful Dead concert in Sacramento.

At that concert I have a bad acid trip, the most harrowing experience of my life. To tell the story of that bad trip properly would be a separate lecture, but for your entertainment I am going to attempt the impossible and condense it into one sentence.

{breath}

Arriving early at the concert I begin to take any and all drugs that are offered to me and wind up gobbling acid, shrooms and unidentified pills by the handful which gradually engender in me a paranoid conviction that the concert is in fact a ploy to attract and slaughter would be hippies like myself and so I escape from the stadium by jumping a fence and running across an eight lane freeway only to find myself in a field full of thorns, stickers and burrs, convincing me definitely that this is no ordinary would be hippie slaughtering conspiracy but that I am in fact in hell, and if I’m in hell, of course, I might as well take off all my clothes and surrender to the demons, which I do, but the demons don’t show up so I run back and forth across the freeway, naked, looking for them and then I run into an apartment complex, still naked, to make a phone call, and the police show up and I’m actually pretty happy to see them, so I surrender and am handcuffed and placed in a squad car only to realize, too late, that the police are in league with the demons and now I want to escape so I kick out the police car door window with my bare feet and, yes, still naked, wriggle out and almost make it until four of them land on me like, well, a ton of cops and I am placed in four point restraint and taken to a hospital where I suddenly realize that I’m not in hell but, rather, am in the midst of a millennium-long, life and death struggle between good and evil and it’s absolutely imperative that I take sides in this struggle and after thinking it over for a while, I choose… good.

{breath}

The Event: Two days later I am sitting in my living room, trying to figure out just how one signs up on the side of good. I hear a knock on the door. And then something happens that I can’t explain; sitting there in my living room I suddenly feel as if a non-verbal stream of information is being beamed directly into me, as if God himself has decided to reach out to me, and the message I am given is the absolute certainty that whoever is knocking is bringing the Truth. It is a profound, soul-shattering, supernatural event. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure I’ve just been born again.

So whatever the folks at the door are selling, I’m buying, and when I open the door I am not particularly surprised to see a pair of… Christian cultists. The next evening, I attend my first meeting and am a faithful, true believing cult member for the next 18 years.

The Kicker: Being in a cult really sucks. I quit school and never do get a degree. For 18 years I attend five meetings a week and go door-to-door as many as 100 hours a month. I read four church magazines, a book or two, and a couple of pamphlets each month. I see no R rated movies, smoke no tobacco, give and receive no oral sex, celebrate no holidays, take no blood transfusions though I need them, offer no toasts, salute no flag and am generally an insufferably self righteous son of a bitch. I drop my non-cult friends, refuse to attend my own brother’s wedding, and take Prozac to suppress obsessive suicidal ideation. When I finally leave the cult, more than a hundred close friends immediately stop talking to me for fear of offending God and I leave behind an ex-wife and two children one of whom, frankly, fears me to this day because she believes that a heretic like myself is a sinner worse than a murderer, rapist or child molester.

What I am trying to say is that the holy sense of rightness that I felt, the conviction that God himself was leading me to Truth… led directly to the most… fucked up mistake I’ve ever made.

An Optional Application to Your Own Life:
So what am I saying? That visualization is useless, that answered prayers come with dark strings attached, that divine revelations are from trickster gods who seek to mislead us? No, not at all. My point is more subtle than that.

I have a truth to share with you, and it’s an optional truth because it’s mine, not yours or, at least, not necessarily yours. But my truth is this: you are your own gods. You are miracles creating miracles, you are the weavers of reality. And that’s a heavy burden and it’s tempting to lay that burden down and turn it over to some God or prophet, but here’s the thing: you can never lay it down. Never. Never, never, never; never.

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Is this a problem? Is it possible that the handing down of belief from one generation to the next leads to confusion, like a massive, centuries long game of telephone? Is it possible that as a religion gets older, it gets farther away from its roots? Does the survival of the organization become more important than the spiritual needs of its followers?

Should every generation make up their own religion?

I was thinking about these questions and a little story, a parable, occurred to me and I wrote it down as fast as I could. Frankly, it didn’t feel like something I’d written, it felt like a gift… and here it is.

Once upon a time there was a village in the hills, suffering from drought. The villagers searched for water and found, miraculously it seemed, a fresh pure spring high in the hills and far away. They were so happy. Though it was a difficult journey, they went to the spring often, to drink at the source and to haul back what they needed for day to day use.

But eventually they began to notice that it was quite a long round trip and that it was difficult to bring back all that they needed. So they conceived of a pipeline, the greatest task they could ever set for themselves, and with great effort and after many false starts they were able to build it and it made them happy. Now they could have water from the spring right in their village.

a funny taste now and then

Now the villagers were the first to admit that their pipeline was not perfect. Having no other material at hand, they were forced to use rather thin bamboo that limited the flow and the tar they used to seal the joints could give the water a funny taste now and then. So, although they were happy with their pipeline, some of the villagers would journey up to the spring on occasion, to drink pure water from the source.

Time passed, and eventually all those who had discovered the spring and built the pipeline passed on. Their children had been told about the spring, and they believed in it. After all, they could see the proof of its existence in the steady supply of water that was delivered to their village. Few of them had actually been to the source, but they appreciated the water (not knowing it could taste better) and the pipeline, and they were content.

Still more time passed and the flow of water began to wane and it even stopped at times. The villagers assumed that the spring was dying away – but they could never have thought this if they had seen the beautiful spring for themselves. In reality, the pipeline was failing because it was old and because it was being neglected.

The villagers began to grumble and to doubt everything they had ever been told. Needing water, some moved to other villages. Most of those who remained tried to live off of the water that still came through the pipeline, though it was scarce now, and foul tasting. A few, a very few, went searching and exploring, and followed the old pipeline far back into the hills and discovered the spring for themselves, as full and as fresh and as pure as it had ever been.

And they were very happy.

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In our attempts to gain supernatural insight, humans have consulted tea leaves, animal guts, bird flight, umbilical cords, crabs, shoulder blades, runes, books, coins, clouds, fecal matter, mahjong tiles, logarithms and there are, literally, hundreds of other well defined systems for consulting the divine, which is to say, divination. Like drug use and magick, divination has a history as old as humankind and for all that time has been slightly disreputable; something about fortunetelling has always irritated established power structures, perhaps because it offers a direct and untaxable link to wisdom, an end run around the dreary formalities imposed by authority.

Typically, divination systems have three components: randomness, codified meanings, and interpretation. In tarot, for example, the cards are selected randomly, each card is associated with meanings collected in books, and the tarot reader interprets the cards and meanings that show up. And here’s an interesting thing: though divination tends to be associated with psychic abilities, in fact most methods are better suited for people like myself who exhibit no psychic talent; after all, why would a person with genuine psychic ability go to the trouble of learning the usually complicated systems associated with most divination systems? Wouldn’t it be easier to just, you know, be psychic?

as it happens, I have an opinion on that

But what you really want to know is, ‘does divination work?’ and as it happens I have an opinion on that, and the supernatural is not necessarily involved. I believe that an acceptable ‘minimum’ explanation for the uncanny insight received via divination can be derived from the combination of randomness, codified meaning, and interpretation I’ve described. It may be that the intersection of randomness and judgement is a reliable way to access unconscious knowledge, a relatively easy way to tap the kind of inner wisdom that we sometimes receive in the form of dreams, visions, hunches and other premonitions. A corollary to this idea is that all of the paranormal claptrap typically associated with divination—the gypsy robes, the ceremonies, the meditations—might all be useless window dressing, and that the real secret of divination lies in the entirely human skills that we bring to our chosen fortunetelling technique. And if that’s the case, the inescapable conclusion is that you might as well try it yourself, rather than relying on others. After all, who has more unconscious knowledge of your life situation than you yourself? And what are you risking, other than demonic possession?

All that said, I have had experiences with tarot that elude rational explanation, and curiously, these experiences have not tended to be particularly helpful—it’s more like I’m abruptly playing poker with an intelligence considerably vaster and less scrutable than my own… if you can imagine that; put another way, it sometimes feel as if I’m being trifled with. But on the other hand, these brushes with the divine inspire awe and a certain humility, and given my cynical, egocentric ways, may be the best reason of all to persist in divination.

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The making of vows seems hardly human

Though I can’t remember the details of the oaths I took as a Cub Scout, Webelo and Boy Scout, I believe I am safe in saying that I have violated both the letter and spirit of all of them. The same can be said for all the godly commitments I made at the various levels of the YMCA sponsored Christian brownshirt program to which I adhered for several years. I actually can remember the vows I publicly professed when being inducted into the cult in which I misspent my youth, but I am too embarrassed to repeat them here – suffice it to say that I have broken them repeatedly, and with gusto. Finally, the earnest vows I made to my first wife in a ritualistic church ceremony were broken just a few years ago and I have to admit, that one hurt and was also expensive, much like necessary surgery. But still, I did it, and I must acknowledge that I am by now a practiced oath breaker, a promise non-keeper, and a passionate disregarder of all my youthful commitments… hurray for me. The pleasures of idolatry, fornication, drunkenness, heresy, the occult and several other categories of taboo are magnificent and easily outstrip the pallid rewards of faithful asceticism. My mental and spiritual well-being are also improved, which only makes sense – it is always a good idea to escape confinement, in whatever form it occurs.

I now maintain that breaking vows is not nearly so sinful as making them in the first place; after all, when you think about it, a man who makes a vow is a man who has decided not to change, not to adapt his beliefs to new knowledge or circumstances. He is a man who has decided not to think and, at least in my book, is a grievous sinner indeed.

The making of vows seems hardly human, and it’s interesting to note that the nefarious practice most often occurs in political and religious settings. Governments and churches are very eager to bind us with our own words, to tie us up with guilt and fear. It’s easy to see what these corporate entities get out of the arrangement – armies of self-policing followers. But how, exactly, do humans benefit? Can it ever be a good idea to agree in advance not to change my mind? Doesn’t it seem a little paradoxical to use our human capacity for reason and commitment to commit to not reasoning?

The whole thing stinks to me; if what I am agreeing to is such a good idea, why can’t everyone involved trust that it will continue to be a good idea? Why must my very soul be subjected to an eternal, non-negotiable contract? I wouldn’t sign such a contract with a used car dealership or a time-share condo association and nothing in my personal experience – or world history – suggests that religions or governments are any more reliable.

Perhaps I need to make just one more vow, one that settles the matter once and for all. I swear to God, I am never going to swear to God again or, for that matter, to any other entity.

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Some of the most fascinating and persistent occult phenomena to afflict our planet are the continuing apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who first began to appear to the faithful in 352 A.D. and whose appearances continue in modern times.

It is tempting for non-Catholics to assume that the Church has a vested interest in certifying Marian apparitions, to impress believers and non-believers alike. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case, and the elaborate bureaucracy and methodology for evaluating miracles conforms rather admirably to scientific method. The great majority of Marian apparitions – well over 95% – are flatly rejected because they don’t meet the miracle investigators’ high standards of proof. The miracles that remain, the intransigent few, are grudgingly dubbed ‘worthy of belief’.

One of the approved apparitions, and my personal favorite, is Our Lady of Guadeloupe, who appeared in 1531 to the peasant Juan Diego of Guadeloupe, Mexico. The Lady asked Juan to be her messenger to the local Bishop and, charmingly, provided not one but two miracles of manifestation to aid poor Juan in his task. One of these, a bouquet of flowers produced in winter, is long gone but the other survives to our day and continues to awe the credulous and puzzle skeptics. It is an image of the Lady herself, printed or painted on Juan’s tilma, an apron-like garment made of agave fiber. Though the tilma’s fabric is quite coarse, the image on it is photographically crisp, with no visible brush marks. No one has ever explained how such precise work could have been done in 1531.

So the image is one of these confounding things

But even more astonishing is the tilma’s very survival. Ordinarily, agave fabric disintegrates in 20 years or so, but for almost 500 years the Guadeloupe relic has survived exposure to candle smoke, incense, and handling by many thousands of believers. Even the colors of the image remain surprisingly bright and clear which is, simply put, impossible. The frail fabric even survived, unscathed, a 1921 bombing that shattered the surrounding building.

So the image is one of these confounding things, a persistent, incarnate mystery, like the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film or the Voynich manuscript; they don’t seem to really belong to our world and yet, unquestionably, they are in it.

When formulating an opinion about odd objects like the Guadeloupe image, it seems to me that there are two ways to go wrong. One is to reflexively deny the miraculous aspects of the object; the other is to accept it at face value.
Reflexive skepticism is a mistake because it pointlessly shrinks our world. It takes the mystery out of something that is, in fact, mysterious and, over time, diminishes our ability to accept the miraculous aspects of day to day existence.

Simple acceptance goes wrong by pretending to more certainty than is actually possible; after all, the defining feature of the Guadeloupe image is its inexplicability – and if we can’t explain the object, it is mere hubris to say we understand its maker.

We have to find a middle ground between these two responses – to acknowledge the miraculous intrusions into our world, while not blindly accepting the intruders story at face value.

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