PokemonGo and perception of reality

Someone I know was recently upset at the treatment he'd received from general public while playing this game.  This aligned with things I've been thinking lately, so I decided to jump off from there.

If you don't know, Pokemon Go is a location-based, augmented reality video game.  Location-based means the players have to go to physical locations where the game will release certain aspects of play.  Augmented reality is where a smartphone, for instance, will lay digital content over the camera image and the real can interact with the digital on the screen.  Think of it like a live green-screen.

So we've got lots of people walking around playing this game and it's caused a lot of sideline problems, like trespassing, property rights, etc.  But that's not my point.  I'm more interested in arbitrating the latent battle that has already begun to break out, as evidenced by my friend's comments and the vitriolic backlash from sympathizers with him against those who offended.  These games aren't going away, so we might as well learn how to live peaceably.

I think the controversy comes down to a fundamental mismatch in views of reality.

But before I get to that, I want to be clear, no one should ever harass another person for any reason.  Regardless of your opinions on the game or the people playing it, or not playing it, respect the other and be decent, if nice is too much to ask.  That said, I'm going to attempt to illustrate what each side of the argument perceives.

The players love the imaginative aspect of the game.  They like the merging of innocent fantasy and reality.  They like the interaction with technology.  They like video games in general, and here is finally one where they can get outside and interact with the real world.  Maybe they even get a little exercise.  When they play, they are looking at the real world through the screen and find it a novel way to enjoy themselves.  Their imagination fills in the gaps of the game and they see the two in a merged fashion.  It's a harmless way to bring a little magic to the mundane.

Those who oppose it see people, many of whom self-identify as geeks (i.e. people overly enthusiastic, often in an off-putting way, about  a topic, many of which are not physical or sports-related) walking around, sometimes absently, staring at blinking lights on a plastic box.  What's so fun about that?!  It's just one more way to disengage from reality and pretend to do something real.  They don't perceive the merged reality, or the fantasy.  They view the world in a more concrete fashion.  Players aren't catching anything.  They aren't seeing anything.  It's all fake!  Hopefully, if you're from the other camp, you can see how this would appear.  The players appear to have almost lost their minds!  Take the screen away and you've got the exact image of the homeless dude who babbles to invisible people as he walks around...though perhaps players are cleaner.

Again, I'm not justifying rude remarks in any way.  Just trying to help one side see the other's perspective.

I recently had a similar discussion with my son when he was saving replays of video game exploits to share with friends.  He kept wanting to show me his accomplishments and I was decidedly uninterested.  He couldn't understand until I told him to cover the screen and pretend to do whatever he had done to get that accomplishment.  Then I copied him with the screen covered.  He was shocked at how stupid it looked.  Essentially all he did was touch buttons in a sequence, and I was supposed to be impressed by that. 

But to him, it was a much greater experience.  The thing I tried to get him to see was that the experience only existed in his imagination, aided by complex coding of pixels and key sequences.  When talking to people on the same plane of imagination, it was great.  From outside that, it was worse than mundane.

So I'm stopping there.  No judgement on either side, except to say that you must first understand your adversary before you can defeat them.  And in so doing, you'll find that most of the time, you really have no adversary at all...it's just in your imagination.

Not a Miracle

I debated whether to post this or not.  But then, I realized that hiding the truth even to spare someone is a kind of lie.  And letting them believe a lie is not doing them any favors.  At the same time, I don't want to damage anyone's faith or reputation unduly, so I am going to stay very anonymous and use pronoun swapping to further shield the person's identity.  Chances are he will never read this, but someone who knows her (see how that works) might.  If you decide to share it with the person, that's up to you.  I ask any reader to be sensitive.

The other day I met someone who walked into this place and very quickly introduced himself to me with a good deal of flourish and formality about who had invited her and why he was there, etc.  I don't know why she introduced herself to me, perhaps he thought I was someone important.  But being the kind of person I am, I am instantly turned off by any pretense at someone being special because of who they know or what they do.  So in an effort to politely express that, I returned the introduction, "Hi, I'm Cav.  I'm nobody."

As soon as I said it, his eyes softened and she began to concernedly explain that I truly was somebody in a mealy voice that further turned me off.  "Here, we go," I thought.  "I should have seen this coming."  But I just politely excused myself from the whole thing and went about my business.  Soon, though he was back asking me if I was an artist.  No?  Maybe a musician?  No, huh.  Finally trying to end this unnecessary bolstering of my self-esteem, I said, "I organize.  That's what I do."  Which I was actually doing at the moment; trying to set something up for her, which she was too involved in my bolstering to help me with. "I set stuff up for ____." I said indicating what I was doing and inserting his self-proclaimed title in the blank.

"See, there's something!" was the sappy reply.

So chalk it up to different strokes, it takes all kinds, whatever.  I went on with my evening.  But later as we were about to leave this person finds me again and has to, "give me a Word."

OK, sidebar.  If you aren't familiar with the term, "give a Word", it's used in certain sects of Christianity to indicate a special message from God.  If you do know the term, please understand that those from other traditions (like me) find it, at best, an excuse to tell us whatever emotional sentiment happened to occur to you at the moment.  And opinions on it range down from there through insipid, presumptuous, and even heretical.  So if you want to get along with someone from a different sect, hold off on this phrase until you know where they stand.  End sidebar.

So, now I'm totally completely uninterested in anything he has to say.  But in the interest of polite brotherhood, I opted to simply listen politely rather than start an argument or offend someone who might be legitimately thinking she's doing good.

The "word" was that I was a craftsman and artist, even though I don't thinkso and when I expressed it by dancing as she had seen me do a few minutes before it had "changed the atmosphere."  Then he capped it with some vague Bible references that I knew but didn't see the relevance of.  But I thanked her and I could tell he was looking for more of a response.  So I turned the conversation to other more general topics and ended with as genuine of a 'nice to meet you' as I could manage.

So, you might be thinking, what a jerk I am for discounting this sensitive soul's attempt to help me.  But if someone is thinking a duck is a flamingo and publicly declaring it, am I not cruel to leave them uncorrected?  Or to be more realistic, if someone is repeatedly calling a new acquaintance by the wrong name, am I not right to point that out, even if it results in momentary embarassment?

So here is what I want to say to this person.  Please read it with as much love and tenderness as you can:  You were wrong.  You weren't hearing anything special from God about me.  You misinterpreted just about everything I said.  And you were very nearly offensive to my brand of faith.  I won't go so far as to say there is never anything true in the way you practice your faith, but in this case, you were totally off.

I know who I am, good and bad.  At least as much as any human can, and probably a good deal more than most, as evidenced by this blog.  I know where my true value lies.  I give God the glory for that.  But culturally, I find it offensive and morally wrong to place any human above another.  So I wasn't going to brag about myself to a total stranger. 

I can't honestly say, I've never dropped a name or asked for a special introduction. But I view these times as failings and ask God to help me become more like the servant Jesus was, who wouldn't even answer the false accusations against him.  In fact, like I said, I wouldn't even be saying this if I didn't think it wrong to withhold the truth when I have the power to potentially open someone's eyes.

Secondly, I come from a tradition where what you do is not considered to be from God.  We read the same verses and arrive at different conclusions and styles.  Neither of us can categorically prove the other wrong.  God will reveal the truth to us as we grow.  So until that time, I'm willing to respect your beliefs and ways.  I ask that you also respect mine. 

So reader, if you find this sounding uncannily like you (whether it was you or not) please know I don't hate you.  I think you were trying to do good.  But please recognize that not everyone understands or even approves of what you do.  If you would call those of us brothers, then maybe you should tone it back a little, especially if this is the first time you meet someone.

Imagine how much damage you could do to someone's faith if they believed you were hearing from God but were totally wrong.  Does that mean God is wrong?  Or are you a liar?  Or maybe just a lunatic?  I'm not saying this is what I think of you, because I understand what you were attempting.  But this is what you might look like to someone who doesn't know better.  So don't bruise a reed.

I speak for the trees.

I'm pretty sure Jesus just rode past me on a bike

OK.  Long title, I know.  It's also been a really long time since I posted anything.  Bygones.

When I run in the swamps every week, it's a real spiritual time for me.  Like John Muir, that's my church.  It's common for me to come out with a revelation of some sort.  Sometimes these are very profound, sometimes kind of silly...like the time I realized that "catch your breath" is exactly the opposite of what happens.  More like we outrun our breath and it has to catch us. But no one says, "I have to stop and let my breath catch up."  But I digress...

This week, the place was entirely deserted when I got there.  Humans are usually pretty scarce when I go, but this day, there was not a sole around.  That alone makes the wild places more majikal (my spelling distinguishes between the real otherworldy supernatural quality and the performance art).  Things just come more alive, seriously, there's more animals visible, etc.

This time though, I was also wearing some natural bug repellent.  With zika on the rise, I figured some form of protection might be prudent.  But this stuff smelled intoxicatingly sweet, like standing in a field of wildflowers.  If you haven't stood in a field of flowers and felt the light-headed giddiness of the perfumes, you don't know what you're missing.

So these two factors were making the place seem way more majikal than usual.  I kept seeing shapes move in the periphery that were gone when I looked, hearing sounds that seemed to have no known cause, feeling chills and shivers, and I thought, it's easy to see why Romantics were so taken with the idea of Faeries.  If they were real, this would be the time and place, you'd find them.  I half expected to fall into a toadstool ring and find myself in different world. Or to stumble across a party of them and be whisked away into a some adventure.

Then I thought, well maybe they aren't real.  But something sparked the notions, so perhaps other forms of being were actually afoot.  That's when I quickly recognized the danger of courting spiritual forces, which I have ample experience with.  So I turned my thoughts to God and thought whatever was up, He was in control of it.  And I asked if I could meet anything like that. Just have a peek behind the veil for a moment.  Then it occurred to me, that if I was asking for that, how much grander would it be to meet God himself moving through the swamp and how all it's glory would ignite with His presence reflecting and radiating through it.

That's when I felt the wind at my back.  It's hard to describe.  It's not there until I start running, and then I feel it pushing up from behind as well as running into it.  Stop and it stops, start and it starts.  In the extremely humid Florida swamps, much of this may be the very air flowing around me as I move through the thick vapor.  But if I've learned anything from my predecessors, it's that one must never assume that because something has a rational explanation, it doesn't also have a majikal dimension, like Uncle George's faerie realms where every flower and sunbeam is a palpable metaphysical argument.

I say this because as the wind whips around me, I often feel it urge me on, like a ethereal being swirling and gamboling around me.  I can almost hear it telling me to run.  And then it struck me deep inside like God often does...crack...Divine Wind...boom...like lightening in my deep brain.  What if that WAS God flowing around me.  The Gentle Blowing.  The Kurios Pnuema!  And I whispered, "God show me."

I kept running.  Through the hotter places, the new growth forest and the heat rippled sand flats.  Eventually I made it to the edge of the swamp.  Just like in a movie, this is the line where it goes from hot to cool, Sun to shade, open to heavily treed.  This is my cathedral.  Just in, I slowed and climbed the vine I usually scale.  4 meters up and then hang in the air.  Then slow back down.  It's my gate to the swamp, the antechamber of the sanctuary.  If God was going to meet me, it would likely happen in there. 

I slow to breath and cool down a minute, when out of nowhere I hear a clatter of bike wheels and a young muscular man with slightly long sandy brown hair erupts over a rise and cranks down hard.  I stayed to the side of the trail.  He made eye contact as soon as he came over the rise.  As he passed he smiled a big knowing smile, gave half a nod, and blew past me down the trail.

I padded off behind him as he disappeared out of site.  I thought how weird it was that he would come out of nowhere (usually I can hear them coming farther off)  and was going so fast in that heat that far from an entrance, and the look on his face was not the usual polite trail greeting; almost a knowing smile.  And then the second of my revelations hit me.  Maybe that was Him!

As I ran, my intellect argued, "Come on, just some guy.  He was probably smiling because you and he are the only crazy ones out here. Or he saw that we were half covered in dirt or something."  But I answered myself, "Yeah, but how else would we expect Jesus to look if he was to show up out here?"

My intellect responded, "Good point."

So I continued, "Heck, for that matter, he could be anyone!"...crack...Angels unware...crackle...least of these...rumble...When did we see you...BA BOOOOOOMMMM...

My intellect, my soul, my skeptic, and all the other parts of me stopped in their tracks...Whoa...

Christmas Wish

I have one wish for Christmas.  Stop celebrating it please!  Every year the US fires up this billion dollar industry that spans 3 or 4 months.  There are tons of traditions and ideas and novelties.  There are countless TV specials all talking about wishes and meanings.

But you know what, it's a really simple holiday.  It's really of no significance at all to anyone who isn't a Christian.  But for Christians, like me, this is one of the two most important memorials of the year.  But it isn't about snow, or lights, or gifts, or sharing, or a warm community feeling, or a dog finding his way home or some old man reuniting with his son.  And it definitely has nothing to do with stupid cheap cups.  It's a memorial of what we believe to be a pivotal moment in history.  The event where THE GOD takes on human flesh.  But if you don't beleive this, it's just the birth of some ancient guy, so why do you need to make such a fuss over it?

If you want to celebrate a mid-winter holiday, go right ahead!  Just stop trying to coopt my Holy Day.  What would you think if someone decided to have a barbecued pig for Ramadan?  Or a kegger for Passover?  Or ate all the food on the butsudan at Obon and covered it with cheap plastic balls?  So why is it ok to trash this Christian holiday?

The answer probably has to do with so-called Christians themselves.  Many don't understand the day either.  Or have grown up in the midst of all the other crap so they actually associate all that with Christmas.  Many I know may include some Bible reading or church service as the obligatory tradition, and then go right on with any other cultural event of the season.  But they'll be hot to make sure you leave Christ in there!

Once again, I'm not knocking those events in themselves.  I'm just saying that isn't Christmas!  So just stop calling it that.  Keep Santa Claus and snowflakes and trees and presents.  Just don't keep Christ with that mess!  Better to drop it altogether.  If you did, I might actually be able to find some of it fun.  But as it is, it's a season of painful disrespect of the single most important part of my life.

Leave Christmas for those of us who hold this to be a serious part of our lives to keep as we should.

Other Side

I'm pretty sure I've never blogged about this.  At least not in any discernibly direct way.  But I'm going to give it a shot.  This blog is primarily a way for me to process thoughts or feelings.  As such, it tends toward the confusing and angry, occasionally the mystical.  But that of course is not all I experience.  It's just that times of clear understanding or emotion don't need processing; they're just experienced.  So I don't write about them.  This other side makes up a significant portion of the contemplative Christian experience, at least for me and for many I read about and talk to.  It's hard to describe, so I'm going to muddle on.

Right now, I'm coming off a brief mild illness.  Just a cold.  But it follows a stressful period and I have received it gratefully as an excuse to rest.  I've been overwhelmed by a sense of peace in it.  Just a deep soul-whisper of "thank you" for bringing me into the rest I could not give myself.  Throughout it I've felt at ease.  I've felt cared for.  The back of my mind has been haunted by strains of music of a gentle love toward me and from me toward my God.

Please know that for me, this word 'God' is loaded very differently than most may use it.  It's like the deepest self-giving love you may feel for a loved one, combined with an awe or respect given a hero or excellent father, and a sublime (look this word up) reverence as if looking into something huge and vast and powerful, yet gorgeously beautiful.  There is nothing of punishment, nothing of justice.

Jody Foster echoes it in Contact when she cries in the fetal position in her journey.  CS Lewis describes it in the Pevensie children burying their faces in Aslan's mane.  It is a safety and a rightness found because of the power sheathed in gentleness, like a small Tarzan baby sound asleep in a gorilla's arms.

This is not why I became a Christian, but it is why I stay a Christian.  This is why I can't accept any form of Christianity that takes away from this.  This is irresistible love.  This is looking into the dark chasm of the universe and finding everything you've secretly hoped for and never even admitted to yourself looking right back at you and smiling with a face that is more human than your own.

So Broken

Someone once said to me, "Bro, you are so broken."  It was in a slightly intense conversation patching up a small disagreement.  So I wasn't sure if this was meant as a positive or negative statement.  But the particular circumstances are not important now.  What is important is that at the time my internal reaction was, "Yeah!  Of course!"  But not knowing how it was intended, I didn't respond at all.

Still, I haven't forgotten it because it was so direct and confusing.  It's not something you hear often, even in Christian circles.  But recently it came back to me due to various circumstances involving something I was reading and something I was feeling, etc.

The thing is, my reaction still hasn't changed.  Yeah, of course I'm so broken.  That's WHY I'm a Christian!  Jesus said he came to seek and save that which was lost.  The word, "lost" means literally or figuratively destroyed, dead, lost, marred, perished.  He said it isn't the healthy that need a doctor but the sick.  He said that all the weary and burdened should come to him.  He was called the friend of drunkards and prostitutes.

It should go without saying that I follow him, seek him, hope in him exactly BECAUSE I'm so broken.  I have no other hope.  No other place to turn.  It shouldn't be a surprise, it should be a matter of course.  "Oh, there's one of those Christians...you know what they are..."

Ok then, what kind of person is Jesus not for?  The only harsh words he ever spoke were to the religious, the pompous, the self-righteous, the hypocritical.  Those who are unaware of or who hide their brokenness.  He even turned away a man who had too much invested in his money and standing.

But I don't mean broken in some theoretical or rhetorical sense.  I mean literally broken.  Broken-hearted, broken-minded, emotionally spent, physically unsound.  BROKEN!  This is me guys.  Good God, it's so frustrating to keep saying it and have no one understand.  I'm not OK.  I'm the depressive cutter with anger and authority issues who can't focus for more than like 10 minutes unless I'm hyper focused in which case I forget everything else.  These hollow sunken eyes?  They're from an autoimmunue condition which is also why I'm so skinny.  What you call comfort food puts me in the hospital.  I know what a gun barrel tastes like and I have to stay extra busy because if I get too idle that's when the demons start playing havoc with my senses.  Which may or may not be really happening, but feels the same either way and will eventually end in me hurting myself.  But I'm also a really good liar because when you try to tell people things like this they freak out in various ways, none of which are helpful.  So the me you know is probably only the merest bit really me and you probably think I'm just making this stuff up for dramatic effect.  And maybe I am...which would evidence a whole different set of issues, none better!

In short, I know my need for help.  I know my struggles.  I see my flaws.  I am still in this world only because I gave up control over myself in one of the worst moments of my life.  And I'm so stuck on the hope I have in him that if it's not real, if it's some delusion produced by a overwrought mental state, then there is truly no hope for me.  Because I really and truly deep down believe what I'm saying.

If there is a God, then he has to be the God that Jesus talked about.  The pure loving light that is all creative unchanging good.  That's the only being worthy of the name God.  And if Jesus is right about that, he has to be able to save me like he said he could.  I can't prove it.  But I'm convinced of it.  If I dreamed the strong luminous presence that drives out the dark, and silences the fits and fills me with hope, and whispers good things in the back of my mind that somehow keep me getting up every morning, then I am lost.  I hope in him, because I've got nothing else.  Like Steve Taylor, I say, "Jesus is for losers...just like me...broken at the foot of the cross."

If you claim to hope in Jesus and aren't that way, who are you hoping in?  Because we obviously don't know the same guy.

Good Question...

My son asked a deep question recently.  He asked, if God knew everything was going to go wrong with his creation, why did he let it?  Some form of this question has been debated for years.  The truth is no one but God knows for sure.  He hasn't told us.

But when he put out this question, I felt it deserved some response.  I first told him I wasn't sure.  Then quickly opened my mind to God hoping he would fill it as he's done in the past when the need arises.  This is what then came out of my mouth in answer.  I'm surprised by it myself, because I truly tell you I have not thought this before.

Before I get to it, I need to establish a little background though or it won't make sense.  First of course is that God exists.  There are proofs, but I won't belabor that here.  Next is that God is almighty.  He can do anything and nothing can stop it.  And if there's anything he can't do, it is truly impossible in the most literal sense...like cease to exist or something.

Next is that God is good.  This has to be the case or he would be no God.  A god perhaps, but not God.  Because good is clearly better than bad.  Every serious religion, minor or major, and even hardcore athiests believe this.  So God can't be a lesser thing or he wouldn't be almighty.

So here we are.  How could this type of God let things go so badly if he knew it was going to happen?  Wouldn't it have been better not to make it all rather than make it so it could destroy itself?  So there would be suffering and evil?  Doesn't sound very good, does it?

But here's what came out of my mouth: 

Maybe he did it to show something that has never been done before.  Maybe he did it to demonstrate to the universe that he is almighty.  That even a creation which owed its very existence to him, could not live apart from him, but which chose to annihilate itself...even this most evil of evils he could work out to be good in the end.  That even the worst thing that could possibly happen could not stop him or thwart his goodness.  He WILL save his creation.  He WILL NOT allow it to be lost.  Even that which is given free will to go its own way even to the point of denaturing and destroying itself...even THAT, he can and will make right.  EVERY wrong will be righted.

Wow.  That did not come from me, I know that.  Thank God for this.  Both for it being true, and for how he revealed it.

I believe more than ever that God is not what most of us have been taught.  He is closer than our own thoughts, more loving than we can imagine, more powerful than we can fathom.  Everything we call good is epitomized in him.  If there is anything that can be trusted it is him...or he would be no God at all.