Love at a Reasonable Price

you say you can’t do this one god
that it just is too much for you
that you need to escape but
there is no escape and so you
just cannot handle

i know i dunno it is too bad

what if we just find the right girl?
what if we find someone who’d be so glad
so glad to be ours and who we’d be so glad
so glad to have be ours and then we’d
be happy so happy to have found each other
what if we pray for love and happiness
all around so bountiful that no one’s
left wanting? what if we pray for shared joy
and we leave the details to god?

what if every second was a prayer for shared joy?
what if every movement was a prayer for real love?
what if every word was meditation on happiness?
what if every heartbeat was a wish for spiritual, emotional, mental, relationshipal, and in-the-world success for everyone?
what if you take this lesson to heart: yes, you can’t take the loneliness, but that means no one else can either; so the only prayer possible is the one where everyone finds community, companionship, the path that is right for them, that leads them deeper into God and deeper into friendship, that allows them to unfold their whole selves — even those needy, gunky underbellies?
what if you pray for everyone all the time?
you can still find the one; in fact, there’s no other way for you to find your one — you can’t really open yourself up to life and love and what is possible for you without opening yourself up to God, and God is not a one-way-street: love of God flows into God and out from God into everyone: love of God overflows your sides and flows through everyone into God and through God into everyone.
the answer to a broken heart is not hiding from love but giving more love to more people; it is giving only love, having learned that there is no other Law that means anything to you or anyone else.

in the bible they have Jesus down as saying you have to leave your family to come follow him
did he really say that one? did he mean just the apostles who literally left everything and everyone and took off roaming and ministering with him? or did he mean that to follow God, you have to put your love for everyone ahead of your love for your intimates? or did he mean you have to reject everyone in your life who doesn’t follow your faith? but what is your faith? if it is faith in God’s love, then you can’t reject anyone; you might distance yourself from people who’s behavior is harming themselves and you — especially if you lacked the resources to resist their corrosions and thus have a chance at actually helping –, but why would you reject people with whom you had nice sane loving relationships? that goes too far.

who was Jesus? was he so wise that everything he said should be Gospel? how much of the Gospel did he actually say?

well, anyway, let’s focus on this interpretation:

to follow God, you have to put your love for everyone ahead of your love for your intimates

I think this is related to the Buddhist idea of relative and absolute truth
in a sense, we have to give more affection to and look out more for those closer to us
in the deeper sense, we have to give complete affection and look out for everyone
in a sense, we are separate individuals in relationships of varying degrees of closeness with others
in the deeper sense, we are all one Love and flow together as one Light
but you can’t respect the deeper sense unless you see and accept the whole picture; your spouse and children need your familial affection — you won’t do a very good job of loving everyone if you withhold that from them

that’s all
i don’t know what’s left
i don’t know what comes next
but that’s an end
to something

i just gotta warn ya
this guy
not rough ’round the edges
but sharp
got some sharp edges
not cruel in the belly
but sick at the nexus
where man and boy flow
and become some guy

i gotta warn ya here
this guy
not rough ‘long the edging
but sharp
razor sharp in spots
you might not expect

you won’t cut your hand
not on him
not on what he’s become
you won’t slice your heart
not on that
not on what you seek
but still ya oughtta know

no hatred
no anger
no jealousy
no greed

only love
only time
only peach
juicy wet soft
only teach
us forgive what’s lost

twenty-five years
that don’t come back
twenty-five years
lost and that’s a fact

but no
not lost
just converted
into what was to be

twenty-five years
without the love
that makes a soul complete
that’s alright
many never win
that summer light
many never hold her
safe and sound
in long-bending arms

twenty-five years
wandering lonely
that’s Okay
that’s the only
way for this way
that was yours

now they close the gate
that was yours alone
now they seal the way
and you’re either in or out
that’s cool
God’s on both sides

I know there’s a wound. But this is not how to heal.
You know entrenched shame. But this is not how to speak.
Come here and drop your weaponry. Come feel
what you are; where you’re strong and where you’re weak.

I know the floor’s rough and your mouth is full
of bitter sweat, of salty empty crime.
I know you’re lost because of how they pull
you close shove it in your face call it fine.

But that is over now. That’s yesterday.
Please join me here in today’s wider world.
We’ll make some friends and find a place to stay.
We’ll lay our head upon the dog that’s curled
up on the rug near firelight’s zagging glow.
We’re free to love — to live beyond what we know.

Author: Sam Spaded
Editors: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW

I’ll tell to you the truth about this boy
grew older became a sham kinda man.
I ask of God a way to take your choice
It can’t be love if you don’t need what I am.

A man may wish but absent her wish he’s
no lover. What is right for one is right
for all. Desire alone like this cries “Please!”
to it’s own self, ignoring the Light.

That’s not a kind love — Ain’t no kind of love
like that. Find love and take your path upward
to where the angels laugh and swing above.
I’ll carry him from here. He’s weak — was lured
by promises of his own invention.
Not lies — but broke and scattered intentions.

Where’s our nuance? Where’s a just account?
I want what’s best for you. I couldn’t wish
for love that’s not for me. I couldn’t ask
for touch belonging elsewhere. I don’t want
pretend. I don’t want anything but both
people so so happy to have found each other so happy to have found love.
please pardon the mix-up.
I’ll duck out the back.
I’ll slip down the alleyway.
I’ll steal into a gentle never-mind.

Author: Some Twisted Peacetime Committee
Editors: Bartleby Willard and Amble Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson

Alcohol got you down?

Do you think you’ll just have a glass of wine with a meal but deep inside you know — the delicious panic pulsate-screams all through you — you are going to drink and drink and drink!

Drink by yourself while watching the same old music videos or some movie that you either wouldn’t get through sober or you’d get more out of sober.

Drink the whole bottle of wine and start crying about the Hurt that you cannot reach but that reaches you.

Drink as a way to embrace falling apart and giving up while jonesing yourself up on the inflamed sense that you are really doing something, you are really something!

Drink and drink alone and bored. Again. Another weekend where you don’t go anywhere or see anyone. Because you’d rather drink a bottle of wine alone. Except you really wouldn’t rather, so why does it feel like you’d rather?

Easier to accept the loneliness when you are alone? Afraid that love would hurt you and camaraderie would keep you from the grand victory that you at any moment yes I feel it coming on yes close at hand! are about to achieve?

Alcohol keeping you from being your full self and living your best life?

If I may offer a suggestion:

If I might share a system:

You sit down with that meal — make it chicken with sweet potatoes and rainbow chard the whole plate drizzled in olive oil — that you’ve wished for all week. And you pour yourself that glass of wine that you suppose is required to complete and digest the feast. But this time, you don’t stop there!

No! This time, you pour yourself a generous glass of red wine, a generous glass of (probably better stick to decaf) iced tea, AND a generous glass of alcohol-free wine.

And then between every sip of the regular wine, you have a sip of your two extra beverages. And try to hold and fathom and relish each sip and each bite. Draw the time out. Let the relaxation happen but within these new parameters, within this new outlook: “It is fun to eat and drink! The alcohol is just one part of the pleasure of wine and wine is just one part of the pleasure of beverage and beverage is just one part of feast and feast is just one part of the pleasure of and one way to relax.”

What’s the goal? Eventually it would be nice to leave your apartment during the weekend, but for now at least you are staying focused on your work and not drinking yourself sick and you’re learning to relax without drinking yourself silly. It is good to learn to indulge without having to completely fall apart.

Why do you have to completely fall apart to relax? What is going on there? And why don’t you talk to anyone? What’s your never-ending project bringing you? And meanwhile where is your life going? You’re so lonely because of the loneliness living in you and eating you from the inside out? Maybe that’s part of the situation, but you’re also very lonely because you are always alone. “No! Listen to me! It is lonely to be with other people because I am expected to lie about how I feel all the time! No one wants to hear about what is broken.”

Here’s something: The stiff-upper lip versus wearing your heart on your sleeve. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. They both have their places and their uses. Having to share every little ache and quibble inside of your being is a burden to yourself and others. But so is keeping all your broken parts locked up in your secret dungeon. How to get the balance right?

“No! You don’t hear what I am saying! I never get to meet anyone because no one wants to hear about how I am cut down the middle by some old wound some old attack some deep affront some long-rusted, always-twisting dagger.”

Addicts use drugs as a way to fall apart while pretending they aren’t giving up. Addicts use drugs as a way to give up while pretending they are chasing life. Addicts use drugs as a way to avoid admitting that they hurt and other people hurt and they need love and other people need love. It’s OK. It’s OK. You can tell the truth. We’re all in this together. No one’s going to fault you for being yourself.

Author: Shades Malarkey
Editor: Bartleby Willard
Producer: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andrew M. Watson

Dear Julian of Norwich,

If God is only Love and God does everything according to God’s eternal divine plan, then how could God ever condemn any of us?

But if God never condemns any of us, then even Hitler upon his death is thanked in front of all Heaven for his service on earth. And that seems a bit much. Still, so does condemning anyone, be he ever so vile, to eternal condemnation.

What is the system at work here?

And if all creation is a ball the size of a hazelnut, and God created and sustains it all out of Love, why does God drag this tiny ball through so much sin and misery? You said God gives us woe and weal to show us that God holds us equally in both, but how does predestining us to sin and the rejection of God help us? How is that done out of, through, and for Love?

You said that God loves our seeking as well as those moments when in a flash God allows some of us to a moment behold some portion of God’s wondrous Being. That sounds only fair. Here I have no particular question.

Why is it so great that you chose only Jesus as your salvation? I don’t understand how it can possibly be best to believe that Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins and then rose on the third day. This seems too mythic to be either True or Good.

What’s really going on, Julian of Norwich? I’m so lonely and tired. I don’t want to go back to this job tomorrow. I’m stuck between dreams of escape, vague plans and faltering maneuvers, and an ever-returning fall-apart. What should I do?

Some of what you write makes me think it doesn’t matter at all what I do, since God already decided how things will go and everything that happens in life happens by God through humans. If that is so and God is only Love and all creation is made and sustained out of God’s eternal Love, why should I do anything except abide and be glad of God’s Love? But where is this Love divine? And don’t I still need a way to pay for myself that doesn’t make me miserable? And wouldn’t it still be better if we could avoid the collapse of democracy, global warming, nuclear Armageddon and other impending dooms? And how can you say that you chose Christ if God set up everything since before timespace began?

Is it like Leibniz suggested: everything’s preorchestrated with God’s knowledge of all our choices (freely chosen) built into the schema? But you said God is doing everything and nothing is actually good or bad; that seems to imply that neither freewill or a coherent criterium for judgement exists. But then in other places you speak of the saved and in another of the unique horror of hell (despair) — traditional abode of the eternally damned.

This everything was created out of a happy lark, out of Love by a Love infinitely greater than all possible created things. How could there be room for spiritual agony there? Bodily, emotional, and intellectual agony: OK, sure — I can believe that those are as you say: quickly passing and insignificant when compared to the eternal perfection of God’s Love and our celebration within God’s eternal embrace. But how could this fun overflow of creative Love have space for anything truly sinister? Such possibilities again seem neither True nor Good. But here you don’t dwell much, and in places, though you go at pains to point out you are not contradicting scriptures, you say that God revealed to you only the saved. And in some wordings, it seemed to my understanding like you imply that everyone is saved.

I don’t know what to do.
It is 4:30pm
I wasted the day.
I must return to work tomorrow.
What should I do?
I don’t know how to make use of your shewings.
They don’t cause me to experience or believe in God’s eternal infinite love more or less.
I believe you, but I already believed that God was Love and loved us all, though I could not experience God’s Love in a way that allowed me to Know that God is Love. So nothing’s changed by my reading and believing you.
The details about Jesus’s pain and passion and love are like strange, meaningless stones to me. I can’t and don’t wish to connect any particular historical characters and their story — however compelling — to God’s Love.
I don’t understand you, Julian of Norwich. Who are you? I’m half way through the book. But I don’t see how finishing it will help all that much.
Everything in creation is a ball the size of a hazelnut. So we’re incomprehensively tiny beings inside an incomprehensively tiny multi-verse, and we only think we’re bigger than hazelnuts because we’re living an illusion? This story I understand allegorically; did you?; would a disagreement here matter? And if not, could we go further?: Could we we still understand each other if I understand the Jesus parts as an allegory and you don’t?
Or is everything really the same size as a hazelnut?
How can this book of shewings help us to live?
Living is making decisions, but the book’s worldview seems to consider our decisions to be empty illusions, while simultaneously delighting in a choice. Not only that, but the correct choice — basing our every moment around a faith in Jesus Christ — doesn’t make sense to many of us, including me.
What should I do?
I want to go home.
Another weekend wasted.
Still stuck in this dead-end.
Lonely
Nothing terrible is happening to me, but I can’t seem to move. I’m stuck in place while time carries me towards weakness and death and various dangerous threaten to crack the world apart. What should I do? God is Love and God Loves us all and all is well and there’s nothing to do but trust in God and be glad in God? But I’m lonely! And frustrated. And scared. I want salvation someday, but right now I just want health and safety for me and others, a task that is fulfilling and helpful, a world that doesn’t fall apart, and a partner to cuddle into. what do your shewings tell me?

Sincerley,

Pudd Inn Taine

Author: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW

too many years ball-huddled over gut
can’t matter who’s to blame that ‘ya just can’t
too crashed as clench-up twists too deep the cut.
i wished in you my place to find, heart to plant

but i became a wooden board and fell
down overboard, scrape-tumbling steel ship side
as i closed more over my private well.
i might’ve slipped slunk low; i might’ve lied.

this love is meant to flow from wellspring out
to wellspring in — from one thtrough other one.
this love would bind two hearts beyond all doubts —
so may two sparks ‘twine, wind and grow a sun.
I’d find you there where share us all us all.
I’d hold you near and uncurl out this ball.

Authors: BW/AW
Copyright: AMW

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

When you’re done, you’re done.
When you’re through, you’re through.
Give up, come back to yourself,
find what’s left,
start again
from another way

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]