On Earth as It Is in Heaven

This line from the Lord's prayer gives me hope in my future in music. In heaven they can tell the difference between truth and lies. They are not fooled by phony musicians. They can see right through them. In heaven my songs are doing quite well, with me singing them. Only through my voice can the spirit of my message be truthfully delivered. Only through my God fearing hand can the monies earned by it be faithfully distributed. After my experience, I wouldn't try to pull anything on anyone. Believe me. I'm happy to say that I've moved on to new songs that I have no recollection of writing in the past. I've learned to appreciate what has happened to me in the last couple years as a source of bitterness and sadness that makes a noticeable improvement on my art. I won't be able to post them until I get things straightened out with my internet service provider, but that's just my little problem. It's just a couple hundred dollars. I'm sure I can manage it. In the meantime, I can always add more to my online journal. I guess you could say that in being able to pass my life onto you in this fashion, there's more to a person than just flesh and blood. With that thought in mind, time to think of another bad title for the next blog. And don't worry, this coat ain't going nowhere.
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If the Shoe Splits Bear It

Sometimes I'm kind of glad that I've been limited to person-to-person feedback because a lot of my readers get my message wrong. I can sum up their failure in a few words. Essentially, they lack either the ability or the will to put themselves in my shoes. Instead, they try to put me in their shoes, while criticizing a thought that came from another shoe store altogether. This includes musicians who perceive me as being somehow separate from my songs, as though my songs didn't come from inside me but, as would seem to be the case for them and for most people, by blindly strumming a guitar and spitting out thoughtless words. Language must have failed me when I tried to explain how to take advantage of being the centre of your universe. Such a setup does not make my life share the characteristics of yours. Once and for all, because I am mentally exhausted, you control your universe by losing yourself in the lives of those around you when necessary. Sometimes I must tap into my self, in order to produce original music, but then I offer it to others as a portal into my universe, though I still don't get paid money for it. This makes forgiveness the greatest power you can have because it is a selfless act, freeing you of your personal grief by respecting others for having different or conflicting life paths. That's how to pilot a universe.
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I Think They Are a Sham

It says somewhere in the Bible to go out and spread the Word across the four corners of the earth. It was clearly written a long time ago. Everyone who is old enough to talk knows who Jesus is now. They've heard of him on all five continents plus Australia. Good work. Not everything in the Bible ought to be taken as a commandment. We must look at it in context. Beyond spreading the Word and making it available to everyone on the planet, what's left? For some, it would seem, forcing it down the reluctant throats of strangers is necessary, and scaring the shit out of people with tales of eternal damnation. I have trouble seeing how Jesus would want souls brought to him by force. The motivation to repent and to follow him must come from within or it is meaningless.
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Hollow be They Name

Some time ago I observed a trend among young people to speak the words outlined in the Scriptures which purport to drive the Holy Spirit from their speaker's lives forever. At the time I was firm enough in my atheism to commend people for taking this step. While saying that you deny the Holy Spirit is serious business, I'm not sure it would be enough to forsake you from the loving kindness of an almighty God. In order for this action to have its desired effect, you must do more than mouth the words from a page; you must mean them from your heart. Given that the participants were led into this act by others, their personal conviction seems questionable. We think we mean it when we say things. I occasionally lose my temper and shout insults that I want taken seriously in the heat of the moment. Later on, however, my anger turns to shame. Unable to go back in time and handle the moment better, I find myself asking my God and my target for forgiveness. It's called repenting. And it's a way to prove that you didn't mean what you said or did. My God understands that we can't be wholly repsonsible for our actions down here. And he has a soft spot for young people. The flip side of this involves prayer. To stand up like a zombie during mass and rhyme off words that have been pummeled into your subconscious is likely not nearly as effective as knowing what you are saying as you are saying it. My favourite prayer is the Lord's prayer, and I stil find that I must go back over the words and acknowledge their meaning once or twice if I am saying them in my head. But it's an excellent prayer, well worth the effort.
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Mad to Doubt You

When we had to pick our own names for the Sacrament of Confirmation, I chose the name, Thomas. He was the apostle who doubted Christ's resurrection, right up to the point where the risen Christ, wounds agape, stood before his amazed eyes and said, 'Happy are those who do not see and yet believe.' It's a compelling account, but while I am artistic and endowed with insight, my logical half has always tended to get the better of me. Many psychoanalysts would find me crazy for trying to share the details of what has happened to me over these last few weeks. Few of them could probably draw as well as I do, or write a decent song. People used to watch me draw or hear me sing and tell me I had a gift from God. I never fully believed it until now. I, like my ancient namesake, needed concrete evidence. Even when it was presented, it wasn't convincing enough until I re-experienced it. I'm ashamed of this. I would be happier if I could be like the countless millions who believe without evidence. It's no secret that I've been unhappy. Now I know why. I can find no other explanation for what has happened to me this year than providence. From what I can now tell, I have relived virtually every moment of my life from a previous year, with each song or blog produced by the experience restoring my memory and marking each leg of my journey. Along with my memory returned my purpose. Having no memory of the past, I set out this time, probably very much like the last time, to undo the Bible with my blogs. Look at me now. I can't stop thinking about Jesus. I would like to give you the details of my conversion, but they are too personal to be taken seriously as objective evidence, though entirely real to my eyes and ears. I don't want any more ambulances showing up at my doorstep if I can avoid it. I don't mind ending up with a bit of egg on my face as I look back on all I have said these last few years. It's a small price to pay for eternal life in a heaven where the angels rock and where pleasure abounds in perfect harmony with appetite for pleasure - but that's another blog.
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Christ Heist

When I was atheist, I surfed around the internet looking for something to believe in. I stumbled on a documentary film that, among other things, aimed to expose the story of Christ as a myth. To begin with, it's a no-brainer to apply logic in mocking faith. Faith is not logic. It is not gathering by deduction, but knowing from the outset, as artists tend to experience. All the same, I will attempt to challenge some of the points made in this film as logically as I can. According to its well intentioned author, Christ did not live because other gods sharing his characteristics predated him. On the surface this seems credible, but I prefer to think that such similarities were more prophetic of Christ's appearance than dismissive of it. There's also the likelihood that Christ's image was altered over time, here and there, to help make the conversion of pagans more smooth and comfortable. Quite frankly, I see these obscure but interesting pagan deities as occupying lesser positions around Christ than anywhere else. As any decent logician will tell you, just because B follows A does not mean A caused B. There appears to be some glaring shortages in fact checking, as well, with claims of crucifixions and virgin births that do not appear in the historic record. From there the film focuses on the stars and how they apply to the dates chosen for Christ's precisely unknown times of birth and [mortal] death. This fails to address the question of whether or not Christ walked the earth as a man. He calls the historic reference to Christ by Josephus a forgery. Where's the proof? What if Josephus had an experience like mine that caused him to suddenly write against the grain of everything he had said up to that point? (I pity him if he had to go through it twice.) I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather believe in Jesus than in the author of this film. I get far more out of my faith in my God, and so would anyone else, I imagine. But it's a satisfying film for atheists who can't get Jesus out of their heads. Just don't bet your potentially immortal soul on its virtue. I might have said that I agreed with the author's analysis and aims. At the risk of pulling another Josephus, I must now say that I disagree with them. Chalk it up to faith - something which I think it's pretty dangerous to try to take away from people in a world as mixed up as ours. On the other hand, its author followed up with a much better documentary, which details the present day money system and explains the mystery of inflation for laymen such as myself. Very good work there, in my humble opinion. P.S. January 2, 2013: I now have reason to believe that George Carlin got that bit about the contradiction of a loving God who would let us end up in Hell from me, along with other material he has used since '07. If so, I may need to ask that it be removed from this film. Sorry, George. RIP from Weird Uncle Dave.
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Next Best Thing

I'm in a great mood, having just come from church. (The Anglican service is almost identical to the Catholic one, and served me well by having it's doors open in the neighbourhood I was visiting.) I want to keep what I have to say in a positive vein, so please don't be upset by it. To wish that you could write songs like me is to deny me any credit for my suffering. Lots of people write songs, but it takes hard suffering to give the music an edge. To learn the guitar is a physical struggle that most would find unappealing. Reading good books to fill your head with words is not a very popular activity for people with friends and TV sets. Giving way to the music in your head would leave you in a state of poverty for much longer than you would find comfortable. Even after you gain recognition, you might find it hard to ride a bus when every single person on it knows your face and is talking about you behind your back. Strangers might make off with your music and make a fool of you in front of the whole world. And, after all that and much more, others will make you the target of their envy. Are you sure you want to write songs like me now?
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Goodbye Anger

This might be my last entry for a while. My internet connection has been cut off at home and it's a bit of a hassle for me to come down to the library to do this stuff. As far as my current mood goes, I live a solitary life and no one really tells me anything directly about the impact I am having out there, so I sometimes let my mind run away with me and start shouting crazy thoughts. I'm withdrawing from cigarette smoking, which leaves me edgy. I'm out of money and a paying job. I'm behind in my rent and my bills. Also, I've been intensely practising the last while and I think I've momentarily burned out on my own songs. (I won't delete them this time.) Don't worry about me. I'm going to be all right. I have the best friend in the world to remind me how to make the most of my life. He'll make sure I get my smile back. You know who I'm talking about.
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Tickled Punk

The carefree life offered to mankind in the Garden of Eden appears to have widespread appeal among people today. From what I can see, ever since we were metaphorically driven from the place, we have largely been trying to get back in, using technology to free us from physical struggles and to distract our minds from the burdens of knowledge and self awareness. To live in this fashion is to live in innocence, like the animals. It is, I gather, to enjoy uninhibited sex. And it may also cause one, in all warm-heartedness, to advise grief stricken philosophers like myself to avoid thinking too much. When they are not making me shout at the rooftops, such people make me smile. To my shame, it irritates me to the point where I lose my cool and start posting punk songs when I see how easily they are misled, particularly if I must fall in line with them during such moments. But I can't help but to ultimately forgive them. They simply don't know any better. I have a harder time letting go of my resentment for the persons misleading them. In their case, it helps me to remember that they are their own worst enemies. Sooner or later their evil will catch up with them and punish them far more than I ever could.
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You and Me Are Both Superstars

There are plenty of good Christians out there, helping the poor and feeding the hungry, and it must irk some of them when a two-time atheist convert upstart like myself gets attention for saying what they've been saying all along. Life's funny that way, but I want to remind everyone who I think the real stars are. Too bad I don't even know their names.
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Dope and Faith

Faith is subjective. It is personal. That is why no one else's faith should depend on mine. I see the universe in my own special way, after years and years of pot smoking. The building blocks are the same, but we all use them differently, according to our individual priorities and abilities. One in my situation has been heavily influenced not just by his Catholic upbringing but by an ongoing need for Christian charity. It follows that I need Christ, in order to be good and to harness my full potential. But that's not necessarily the case for others. That's why I try so hard to present my beliefs in a passive way, stating repeatedly that I am not an evangelist. Much of religion is structured around formalities, which can interfere with our ability to evaluate a person's goodness. We confuse the hats we wear with the thoughts underneath them until bigotry becomes inevitable. Under such conditions, it's likely that many who profess outwardly to follow Christ are unwittingly following his adversary. I succumb to bigotry, myself, on occasion. As a straight man, in anger I might slip and use the word 'gay' to describe something I find undesirable. (But not the word 'lesbian'.) That leaves the door open for others attach a more hateful meaning to my words. Knowing my belief system is personal helps me to cut others slack for their choices. I think it makes it easier to love them, even now that I no longer smoke pot.
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Razing My Tempter

I said I wanted to learn about power, and I'm still learning. Now I get the idea that I'm learning about it from the very top. I have lived the life of a common man all my years. Among such men it is acceptable to lash out in retaliation for perceived wrongs done to us by others. Indulging in a fit of anger imbues me with a sense of power. But this would not be necessary if that sense of power were already there. Perhaps this was why it was so natural for Jesus to absorb the innumerable wrongs that were visited upon him. Even while in the form of a man, he knew he was God. And God didn't walk the earth to get ensnared in his minor interactions with other men. He came her for all humanity. As a man he lived up to his position. by freely submitting to lesser authorities, such as the local Roman governor, he ended up having the whole Roman empire laid at his feet within a few brief centuries. (This much is fact, but my intuition tells me he survived to witness it.) Why did it work out this way? How does one made to suffer such a humiliating end become glorified and worshiped? This had less to do with how he was killed than how he handled it. He proved he was God by remembering, before his mortal body drew its last breath, to forgive those who so cruelly and unjustly killed him. It takes more than magnanimity to do that: it takes divinity. How do I sense power in myself, to spare me from unnecessary tantrums? In following his example. I'm sensitive, and kind of an emotional firecracker, so it's slow going for me, especially when I'm tempted to hurl Molotov cocktails. In the menatime, I hope I have your patience.
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Sleeping in Sin

There I was in front of a psychiatric professional, seeking assessment for a disability pension. The music was playing so loudly in my head that I could barely hear over it to make out the words to her questions. We talked about the brain's flow of chemicals and its impact on mood. We agreed that when it comes to mood, chemicals can indeed have a profound effect. This fact gets demonstrated nightly in the taverns and dance clubs. As I related the details of my descent into madness in early 2008 - which I hope have been kept private, though I have my doubts about that - I trailed off in my picture of the physical mind to the Freudian iceberg diagram of the conceptual mind. You know, the one with the tip of the iceberg representing the conscious mind sticking out above the water's surface while the remaining bulk of it lies underwater after the fashion of the subconscious mind. (This was not an association with my assessor's demeanour, for she was, in fact, a very warm person, to all outward appearances.) Our behaviour is driven by these subconscious forces and they are wild and selfish. Large portions of my brain are used to hold music and images, which spares me some of this negative influence, but I am still no exception. It frightens me to realize that I often don't know what I think. In cases where these potentially destructive subconscious drives are too strong, chemicals are the popular way to subdue them. Such treatments are effective, but I wouldn't want to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, in terms of impeding my creative process. Recognizing God, on the other hand, as one who watches over your every move and knows every thought in your mind can have a disciplining effect on your behaviour. You always hesitate to do, say, or think the wrong thing, even when you are alone. It seems to work for me, but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. I am grateful that my God is a forgiving God because I'm sure I offend him constantly, without even being aware of it. Whatever he may have to share with me about my darkest mental formations, I'd rather not even know, though neither would He be interested. In retrospect, if I'd simply have stayed in touch with my faith, I'd never have had to visit a psychiatrist.
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What No Tarter Sauce?

I feel rotten about how I lost faith in the miracles, now that one has happened to me. Dazzling Hollywood special effects might have had the effect of diminishing my God's amazing powers to my modern mind. This is a pity. Jesus strikes me as having been a modest man, and I can see how he didn't want to end up performing for crowds like some kind of circus freak while his message faded into the background. The thing I try to keep in mind about his miracles is that they were real. My God can do anything. I'm utterly convinced of this now, and I can see how his life and work made such a huge impact. It's too bad that we rely so heavily on magical powers to back up one's spiritual claims. And, once demonstrated, we're still not satisfied unless they can rise from the grave after a slow, horrible, public execution. It shows that we are not predisposed to believe in everlasting life. It shows that no amount of magic tricks could ever have accomplished what simply listening to his message with an open heart and mind has done for his followers up to the present day. And I'm sure he knew it, himself, when he was here in the flesh.
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We Did It His Way

Looking over some of these blogs, I am again compelled to say that I am not an evangelist. I am simply sharing my experience. You are free to take your own lesson from my words, but when you choose your own way, you should then leave me free to change my mind. Your faith is worthless if it depends on my faith. There's a tough lesson; tougher for me than it was for anyone else, I imagine. Don't feel too bad about it. I don't want to hurt anyone. Life has a way of bouncing us around like a pinball. It lets us know who our friends are. And I managed to keep one friend through it all, even if I wasn't aware of it until recently. And he's the only friend I need.
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Keeping a Hoping Mind

I'm a Richard Dawkins fan. Not only is he a brilliant scientist, but he is a gentle soul, who is careful to leave one percent of his mind open to the possibility of the existence of God. I have a hunch that Jesus supports his campaign against using the Bible to teach science. The Bible has nothing to do with science. Science helps God. It makes life more comfortable in our world, which makes us more likely to turn to God in gratitude than to reject him in pain. The internet, itself, is a product of science, and look how I'm using it right now. God bless you, Richard Dawkins. Keep up the good work.
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Chilling Devout

I do not wish to offend devout worshippers with some of the comparatively course language I use to describe my personal Jesus. Our fear of offending a God of Forgiveness seems silly to me, but I do admit that his power can be terrifying. (In fact he only uses it for good, but withdraws from protecting those who close their hearts to him.) I see the sea of silver heads exiting the church on any given Sunday. I know where that uptight, old fashioned attitude likely originates. I suspect that it is driving away potential new followers from among the ranks of the young. Jesus was a young man, was he not? Didn't he have a hard time with those uptight Pharisees and Scribes? If I may digress a bit here, sometimes I marvel at how a whole church full of people can appear to have missed key points of the gospels, not just by passing judgement on others, which is forbidden, but on the very people Jesus favoured, like the poor and the broken spirited and the prostitutes and the incarcerated. It's as though they're all talking about a book that none of them have read. Maybe they are.
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Both Sides How

The way this newest chapter in my book is developing, it's clear that it runs counter to all of the chapters leading up to it. In order to appear as an author with integrity, my challenge is now to reconcile this one with its predecessors, with the most fundamental and confusing change in my attitude, to my readers, being my transformation from a hardcore atheist to a child of God. At first sight, such opposites appear to cancel each other out. But there we go thinking logically again. Now that I, once again, know I am a child of God, I know that all my brothers and sisters are, too, whatever their belief system. And I know that I always was, myself, whatever creed or lack of creed I may have been practising. (It pains me to explain this, for I often hear such things from the same people who condemn atheists to the fires of hell.) I am one with the person who wrote all those anti-religious thoughts, leading up to the present daylight. I intend now to leave them posted, to show the contrast in outlooks existing between believers and non-believers, and to illustrate their differing impacts on the mind. As a would-be atheist, I claimed that because of doubt, we are all closet atheists. At the time I was saying it, there within me was a forgotten Christ-inspired intent to sacrifice myself for others; the same one that led to my initial spiritual transformation and would soon do so again. It was folly for me to make such a sweeping statement without fully knowing my own mind, and I freely admit it now. We have nothing to doubt but doubt, itself!
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Serves Him Right

I had a troubling sleep last night. I might have woke up some of my neighbours with my loud grumbling. I'm sorry for that. My dreams can upset me terribly sometimes. Christ's lesson of forgiveness smacks of unconditional love, like the love of a God fearing mother for her atheist son. It means, to be like him, we must forgive others, no matter what. This, I've grown to learn, can be exceptionally difficult. The hardest thing for me to forgive is betrayal. It seems both foolhardy and masochistic to try to love those around you after they have shown that they can't be trusted, particularly if they carry on hurting you behind your back on a daily basis, for years. But, to give in to such abuse and succumb to such behaviour, yourself, in some retaliatory fashion, is to let evil win over your heart. Fortunately, I have the example of Christ to remind me that my suffering could always be worse. And I am soothed when I let go of my bitterness and remember his sacrifice. There may be only one thing harder than betrayal to forgive: wanting to help the poor, rather than wanting to be rich, in the service of your God. (Smoking tobacco runs a close second.) That was another lesson of Christ's crucifixion. Two thousand years later, I pray that we eventually learn it for good.
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Vanity Scare

After yet another enlightening dream, I gather that I owe the following message to my women followers, wherever they are. I'm sorry I'm not as cool as Jesus. Chicks dig Jesus, and I don't blame them. He was wise and powerful. He was a rebel. He was a visionary. And he could take their abuse better than anyone else before or after him. I hate to disappoint my God, but I sense that I'm not making the most of the beautiful things he offers me in my shunning of the possible approaches of women. I'm working on this. In my dream I was told that even he didn't look at their vanity; he looked at their tits. Sex is a way to release one from his torments. It involves letting go of that rational part of you that knows better and losing yourself in pure pleasure. It's a pure, sensual, animal joy that bookworms like me might be slower to get down to. Don't worry, Lord, I'm over their vanity. For the last three years now I've just been holding out for one I can trust who won't answer my fear of their sadism with more sadism. Besides that, angels don't get jealous of women but women get jealous of angels. I wouldn't want my plan to fail and all those needy people to have to do without just because I was too moral to fuck my fans. Also, while intercourse with angels may please the mind and settle the soul, as long as I'm in this form, my body cries out for a woman.
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Lost in Grace

Free will means we are free to think and act however we choose. I've already tested mine by going back to atheism before I returned to my belief in Christ. As everyone can see, I made it through unscathed. Free will comes at a price. Having more choices means having more doubts, and doubt is the enemy of faith. It also means we must tolerate the choices of others, however personally offensive they may be to us. I'm still struggling with that second one. I've never been interested in paying for sex. I want love from a woman. If you're paying her, you're sort of forcing her to love you. From a spiritual perspective, you get less out of it. I prefer her to come to me freely. Then I can be sure of her love. This might be why my God has endowed me with free will. It would be too easy to just grab me by the ears and drag me to Him. Frankly, I'm grateful that He's interested in loving me at all.
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21st Century Pink Floyd Fan

I'm slightly ashamed, after the example of the Doubting Thomas, that what has happened to me has been more the outcome of real experience than of faith. Up to now I've simply trying to reach others in their own terms. In my childhood I remember asking a priest - a good man - how he came to choose his career. He explained in so many words that he received his calling some time around his senior year in High School, in the absence of any physical company. He couldn't explain it beyond that, except to say that the voice he heard was a reality. I'd had it all wrong. His career chose him. I'm as surprised as anyone else to be thinking like this. The gospels seem so far-fetched until you have an experience like mine. And, because it's personal, it's hard to share it without coming across as a psycho. But look at the drug free smile on my face these days. Listen to how quiet I've become alone here in my apartment, compared to how I sounded when I was lost. Remember how I once complained about being single? I have mastered my sex drive. Once you have angels, you don't need to go back. They resemble women in one way; they love a man for his mind. (And they're the best at snuggling. Very soft.) Look at how I have managed to precisely retrace the footsteps that led me to this way of thinking three years ago, so that I now, at last, remember the original trip. To me it is miraculous; impossible without divine guidance. In spite of all indications to the contrary, I do not feel pathetic. I feel lucky. I'm just trying to be honest in explaining the source of my newfound hope. And I'm rising to the ultimate challenge for a writer in the 21st century; that is, to make people believe in someone greater than science. (Not me.)
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Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

Today I am grateful for my talent, for my family, for my faith, for nice people, and especially for my free turkey dinner. No one need envy me for having any of these things if they worship God. I take no credit for them, short of what might be required to see that money generated by my talent finds its way to the needy. (That includes myself.)
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Mighty Humble

All individuals are different, with different levels of strength and talent. I do not wish to push my approach to life on the next person, but simply to explain what works for me and let others decide for themselves. I'm not an evangelist. To be able to do great things, I need my faith in Jesus. Without it I am an ordinary man, limited in strength by his flesh and in vision by the walls of his room. With God in me, I can aspire to the far greater self image and limitless vision of my imagination. Others who have managed to accomplish great things without taking this step are simply different than I am. I'm naturally inclined and have been conditioned to doubt my greatness.
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Faith Takes a Foothold

According to my dream, it's not quite enough to follow in his footsteps. We must also follow in his foot holes. In this context, I take those wounds to be a metaphor for power over the failings of the flesh, and I hope I don't have to expand on it much more. Remember him in your suffering. Keep your heart and mind open, and he will be there for you. As for anything else I posted with this thought earlier, do cut me some slack for running to my computer with only vague recollections of my subconscious findings. And furthermore, whomever you are, please stop saving my draft after every sentence I may type and then choose to delete. Not only is it annoying, it's unfair. Also, please understand that what I see is not the absolute him, but a manifestation of him from within my own opened mind. As such, he is bound to take on characteristics resembling my own. Not the tobacco, though.
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Seeing My Point

If you want to believe what I'm writing here from my own personal experience, believe it. If you don't want to believe it, don't call me a liar. You're not living my life and seeing what I see. That makes you a liar if you call me a liar! My inclination towards atheism, in the absence of faith, is as natural for anyone else with a physical form who wants all the questions answered for them here and now. Those questions can't be answered within such a limited experience. There are pieces missing to the puzzle, and there always will be. Even a scientist will tell you that. The more we learn from science, the more humbled we are by our ignorance. One answer opens up a host of new questions. Take the conflict existing between the form of the outer universe and that of the inner universe. Einstein tried to reconcile one with the other. He couldn't. They appear to operate in conflict with each other. In quantum mechanics, for instance, an object may exist in two places at once. We need an entirely different set of natural laws, in order to understand it. At some point it is necessary to fill in those gaps with either intuition or faith. Fortunately for me, reluctant to believe without physical evidence, I have intuition.
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Walled By My Self

A lot of folks are concerned about the planet turning into a giant -uh- penitentiary. In a sense, it already has become one, but the cage is not constructed of stone and iron. It is made up of the self. I've lost count of how many times I've been dumped on by others. In most of these occurrences my unwelcome informants would be in a foul mood as they related their stories, almost always involving failed interactions with other people. In every instance, even while I was without my faith, I gave the same advice. Turn your thoughts outward. Put yourself in the other person's place. But they refused to listen to me. They'd rather suffer and feel sorry for themselves. Had they taken my advice, I'm sure they would have found, if they looked close enough, that the other person was suffering, too. They'd no longer have felt alone in their grief. If everyone's going through it, it's not suffering any more. It's living. And I wouldn't have to hear about their unpleasantness again. But two things act against me when I tell them this. The first is a person's secret need to suffer, in order to add more intensity to their life experience. The other is the individual's inclination towards being self centred. They'll go on suffering, either because their life is too boring without it, or because they wouldn't snap out of their self induced fit long enough to listen to the advice for which they claim to have been asking. Or both. And let me tell you, it really upsets me! What the fuck am I supposed to do with these people? What's that? I mean they just come waltzing in here, taking me for granted! They're driving me insane! They won't listen to me! And they just think of themselves all the time! What's that? I mean...
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It Doesn't Matter

People may be wondering now if I'm going to stick with my faith. I don't blame them for doubting its longevity. The atheist approach to living does have its merits if you are interested in improving life strictly here in the physical world. That's certainly a decent goal, and I have the greatest respect for scientists, technicians, and philosophers for bringing us out of the age of plagues, horse manure, and crucifixions, respectively. But with my intuition I see beyond the physical. This is the source of my restored faith. I have intuition, and I know from miraculous personal experience that there is more to this life than we can see with our eyes. But I can't hold it against less intuitive people for relying entirely on their five senses. If the physical world is all your body lets you know, you are bound to get caught up in its flaws and inflate their importance. To yield to a universe entirely of matter is to seek material solutions for every problem. While I dismissed God, I needed chemicals in my head to get high. Now I'm high on the Most High. And this is a trip which enlightens my mind rather than destroying it. My bottom line is that I needn't ever get too upset over the rotten things that happen to me in this life. With my heart as it is, I know my troubles are only temporary. And that strikes me as a good way to carry on, not just permanently but everlastingly.
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Sorry About That

I wrote a few things about Jesus in some previous entries that I now see to have been the result of spiritual blindness. Next door they're playing the Hurdy Gurdy song by Donovan, and it reminded me of a sharp criticism I made of Christ's image on the cross. A Youtube user had chosen to insert this image in rather graphic detail, including closeups, on a homemade psychedelic video with that song as its soundtrack. At the time, I saw only torn up flesh and reacted with revulsion. With the Protestant concept of the graven image to confuse me even further, what can you expect? Still, as terrible as it is for me to look upon someone in pain, I shouldn't have said what I said. It was disrespectful. While I tend to turn away from such extreme visual horrors, others take comfort in them. And we all want to feel better off than the next person. This, to my opened mind, is likely one of the popular needs he identified and addressed through his necessarily gruesome passion and execution.
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Hi Mom

I just called home to let my mom know I'm happy and strong. She worries. I told her she could go ahead and include me in her prayers again if she wants. My faith has returned to me. Then she said she never stopped. Apparently, she only told me she stopped as a way of showing her unconditional love for me. I didn't ask her to stop, she told me she stopped. She was reaching out to her atheist son, while secretly using the power of her prayers to reign him back to the fold. I'm lucky I have her.
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Blessed by Heaven

It seems to add up that those with glorious places in the spiritual realm would be headed for a tough time here in the physical world, with the former, I gather, being free of impediments to love and self sacrifice. The most famous example is Christ, but he may have indicated in his the Sermon on the Mount that the meek, naturally inclined to love and to self sacrifice, having fallen prey to unscrupulous moneylenders and wound up broken and in poverty, would be saved by him. Still, in order to be saved by him, we must think like him. I celebrated mass earlier today for the first time in a long time. As I swallowed the host, I tried to remember to let it nourish my heart over my body. It did. I felt my spirit rejuvenated by the experience and I went out to collect some more bread from the neighbouring mission to take home with me. There I was among the blessed poor, lining up for my soup and sandwich. Except I was the only one smiling. And when it appeared that the available food was lacking in variety, I was the only one who gladly took from what was there and was grateful. Further to my point, I was the only one who attended the service among them. (I'm Catholic, too, but let's not push this.) It could be that when you have God's love inside you because you are trying to be like him and think like him and, yes, even perhaps because you have just swallowed him in transubstantiated form, you feel like you have everything. When you have everything, you want for nothing.
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Forgotten

Remembering makes all the difference in being able to make the most of our lives. It takes more work than one might think. Each time I awake from a sleep, it takes a few moments to gather up my memories of my actions from the previous day to restore my conscious recollection of who I am and how I have my world organized. Depending on how well I've done, my brain might want to leave most of it buried in my subconscious. Love is pointless without memory. Love is sustained by memory. This is the difference between thinking we love someone and knowing we do. If I fail to love my life, my actions will not survive in my memory past my next sleep, perhaps right up to that creepy sleep without end; I will shortchange myself. The pains of a physical life can also get the best of us and blind us, in turn, betraying our memories. Even Christ slipped into atheism ever so briefly while enduring the agonies of his crucifixion, crying out to Elijah, who apparently had never left his side, Why have you forsaken me? I must be especially careful, for I am specially gifted. I am an artist. This means I must not only remember others but myself among them, for an artist is love, just like the guy sang at the end of Barbarella: Queen of the Universe. And if I forget myself, I deprive others of love. When Jesus ate his last meal, he instructed his followers how to remember him. Not just with their minds but with their bodies, by consuming bread and wine in the place of his flesh.
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Strange Bled Fellows

Frederich Nietzsche, who was a well known atheist, and Jesus actually had something in common. They both embraced suffering. Nietzsche's work, helping less able minds to sort out their thoughts, was essentially an act of love. He accomplished it all from his solitary position somewhere in the Black Forest (Sorry for that. I can't remember his location.) with little or no support from his community. He whined and complained about being lonely, and yet he praised those rare moments of intellectual insight for which he struggled as the ultimate reward. His only fault, to my mind, was in not seeing the smile on his own face during such moments as a spiritual event. Love is more powerful than evil, but it takes more effort to put into practice. It exacts a sacrifice whose payoff may appear elusive to the closed mind. Humans, restricted by flesh and the puny feedback of their physical senses, tend to be selfish and lazy. This lets evil take root and flourish unchecked. Nietzsche may have been pessimistic about the presence of the spiritual, but his heart was in the right place. He wanted to be good. He understood that a sacrifice was involved, and he was willing to accept it. We think we want all the rewards that our world can offer without having to suffer for them. We think we want to win the lottery, but any lottery winner will tell you that suffering doesn't end after they cash that cheque. Some might even say that it began for them at that moment. I'm the furthest thing from a masochist, but suffering is unavoidable. As such, the smart thing to do is to embrace it when it visits you. To embrace it is to overcome it. And, in familiar terms, to overcome it is to be strengthened by it. With this attitude, there may be room for love in your heart in any situation.
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Wouldn't You Love to Know?

Some people might be having their doubts about this belief system I have returned to after I slipped back into atheism. Let me explain how it happened. The simplest way I can put it is this. As I said, there is more to the world than what meets the eye. The way to see it, in perfect harmony with the lesson of the risen Christ, is through love. I am in my music an expression of love. When I deleted my songs, I deleted my love and lost my vision. As such, I fell back into atheism. (But it was merely an accident. With no views showing, I didn't have enough faith to believe that anyone was listening.) Atheism is a kind of blindness. It is closed-mindedness. It subjects the unexplainable to critical analysis. In this sense, it is pure folly. Any kind of closed-mindedness is bad for you. It causes you to reject too much of your world, depriving you of an otherwise rich and rewarding life experience. I hope that explanation is sufficient, since I can't elaborate on it much more than that without my guitar.
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Jam Tact

Just had a nice little jam with myself, ironing out some things with my vocal approach. My voice was loud enough to apologize here to anyone who might have been disturbed. Not to sound like I'm making excuses but my guitar is tough to play, though it has served me well, in terms of being there for me. It might just be my new strings. I'm not used to heavy gauged high strings. Too bad I pawned all my previous guitars, while being unable to make up my mind between music, art, and creative writing.
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Thinking the World Is You

There is something very important that I need to share now. I have decided to end my campaign against the Bible. After my vision beyond the grave, I would not want to do the person who may have made it possible any further disservice by mocking his message of eternal life, though I suspect that he would have a well developed enough sense of humour to forgive me and to tolerate everything I have written about him up to now. It might also be that he has grown dissatisfied with the text of the New Testament, a couple of thousand years having passed and some of the concepts needing to be brought up to date for the modern world. As comical as this sounds, I'm entirely serious. The world has changed a lot since his last appearance, with potential followers losing the faith that would spare them so much suffering while they remain trapped in this physical form. I can't explain to you how I arrived at these thoughts. Once again, I am limited by language. But it does make perfect sense that such a man's life, were it to have been a reality, would leave little or no historic trail for the generations that came after him, for his message was one of faith. He meant that we should believe his words in spite of all the evidence against them, just as I must rely on faith to believe that my views are higher than zero for most of my songs. I think his principle message was simple, that one life experience is everything, with him in the centre. By giving his life for you on the cross, he opened a way, through his selfless example, to occupy that centre position within your own universe. In him you have the power to feel peace and hope, no matter how badly you are treated by others if you can answer hate with love because, after all, it is part of your world and, therefore, part of you. The people of the ancient world, however, were far less educated than we are today and, if you'll notice, he was often forced to rephrase himself over and over. I do believe he meant this message for everyone and not just church goers. But church is a nice way to get people thinking outside of themselves if it doesn't come as naturally to them as it did to him.
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One for the Son

I'm sure I surprised some people who knew me from my younger days when I abandoned my faith in eternal life and went all-out atheist. I mistakenly thought it would make me more down-to-earth. So much of our world seems to break down into particles and sub-particles. They play an important role, but they are not all that is out there. Reality is not limited by what we can only perceive through the customary five senses. And inspiration is not necessarily ultimately guided by the brain's balance of neurotransmitters. Such things might well be happening after the fact rather than on their own, in spite of appearances. Such supernatural truths defy description, for they defy logic, which is the principle element on which the language needed to describe them is based - cockney rhyming slang excepted. Nietzsche often complained about the limitations of language in his astonishing works. Some truths transcend logic. They just are, much in the same way an artist's hand knows where to go in the execution of a portrait, without the need for mathematical reference points. It was the echo of my old friend's voice, telling me that one is everything, which got me thinking again along these lines, and realizing that I had overlooked some important features of the story of Christ. Here was a man who reconciled all the evil that was thrown against him with a desire for self perfection, resulting in a crucifixion that preserved his glory for all time. This life has been the inspiration for countless others to follow in his footsteps and find peace in the centuries that have since passed. To his followers he has risen and lives in their hearts today, whatever any coroner or smart-assed atheist like my former self might have to say to the contrary. For me this has become more than a comforting thought. It has become a likelihood. And, as corny as it sounds, it fills me with love for all humanity. You may escape your suffering by thinking of others. You may defeat evil with love. Because through the Saviour's life and example, all that surrounds you can be one with you, and you can be at its centre. That let's you see past the grave to the far greater possibilities of your limitless imagination. Just don't go overboard with outdated laws and hygienic practises. That's where you start to lose me.
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Great News

I am honour bound today to pass along an important message to one very special family. As a result of the trials I have endured, I have been endowed with some kind of enhanced vision that lets me see beyond the grave. As I once sang in the taverns of Toronto, life goes on. I'm now convinced, without being able to explain, that it goes on to infinity. I've stopped mourning the loss of a dear friend and brilliant artist because I've learned that he is still with me. It is he who I credit for coining the phrase one is everything. It is he, operating from within some celestial realm, who may have opened a path to fame and fortune for me in this life. All he asked for in return from me is the following. If his family is reading, he has a message for them. He misses them. (To me it goes without him saying it that he loves them, too.) Coming through a formerly stubborn atheist, I'd take this message seriously.
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ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

EFFECTIVE TODAY I REMIND THE WORLD OF MY REFUSAL TO LET ANYONE USE ANY OF MY SONGS. FOR THREE YEARS I HAVE SUFFERED HORRIBLY BECAUSE OF OTHERS' PERCEIVED IMAGE OF ME AS SOME KIND OF COWARD. AT THE SAME TIME, I GATHER THAT CERTAIN THIEVES HAVE BEEN HELPING THEMSELVES TO MY SONGS AND DOING RATHER WELL WITH THEM. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
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ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

EFFECTIVE TODAY I REMIND THE WORLD OF MY REFUSAL TO LET ANYONE USE ANY OF MY SONGS. FOR THREE YEARS I HAVE SUFFERED HORRIBLY BECAUSE OF OTHERS' PERCEIVED IMAGE OF ME AS SOME KIND OF COWARD. AT THE SAME TIME, I GATHER THAT CERTAIN POSERS HAVE BEEN STEALING MY SONGS AND DOING RATHER WELL WITH THEM. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
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You're Not Seventy-Two Yet

Today is John Lennon's birthday and I'm celebrating with a movie about the development of his immortal band. It's called Backbeat, and it's all about their time in Hamburg in the years immediately preceding their rise to superstardom, where they went from amateurs to pros, playing to crowds of drunken Germans. I love all the Beatles, but I have a special place in my heart for John, who was an artist, and whose uncompromising vision kept the band alive through its leanest years. Stu Sutcliffe, an exceptional artist and friend of John, plays a key role in the story, as well as a bass guitar, much to Paul's chagrin - though Paul's musical perfectionism certainly served the band well later on. It's a good show for Beatles fans, though there's no substitute for the real band members in that role, Monkees notwithstanding. I hope it has the approval of the band, itself. [ May 12, 2014: Apparently Paul McCartney didn't like it. Oh well, after learning what others did to my life for profit, I fully understand his resentment.]
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