The Orthodox Situation

The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) and the Antiochian Church in America (the Arabs) have become an Evangelical sect. How this happened is interesting and complicated. But the Russians are largely responsible and, at this point, it is probably impossible to undo. Right now, the Orthodox Church is where “serious” Evangelicals go, and the Greek Church (the biggest) will soon be identified as “ethnic” in the worst way.

I Am a Faggot

That is, I am one of the small number of men erotically attracted to other men. We have been around throughout history, and though we have always been a minority, and reports of us as a percentage vary greatly, we are never more than ten percent of the entire population, and usually less.  (Women’s sexuality is a whole different thing, and percentages probably don’t mean the same thing).  We are related maybe to birth order or something archetypal, but it doesn’t matter much because it’s unchangeable, no matter what “cures” are touted.

New Poetry, April 2020

Limerick about Enlightenment
The Buddha sat beneath the bodhi tree,
And vowed to get enlightened one-two-three.
Mara said who d’ya think you are?
A scholar?  King? A movie star?
The Buddha touched the earth for all to see.

Commentary on the "Our Father"

Our Father, Who art in heaven.

Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Amen.

The Embarrassment of Two Identities

Around 30 AD, in Palestine, a guy woke up to the fact that he was what had been referred to as “God.”  He then saw that as god, all he could do was sacrifice himself for others, to the point of his own nonexistence.  And then he saw that death really didn’t matter in the face of all this.  So those who listened to him thought he didn’t die (though their accounts varied wildly and those who put together the record of it slyly knew that.)

Recent Poetry, November 2019

St. Seraphim and the Bear

The bear looked in on Seraphim,

“Unusual” he’d say of him.

When Seraphim woke up at last,

The bear, he chose to eat him fast.

Because when Seraphim awoke,

He was like any other bloke.

Where I'm from, and What It Means

I come from the Northern San Joaquin Valley—about 90 miles east of San Francisco. But I was born long before people moved there because they couldn’t afford to live in the Bay Area. When it was still “Oklahoma with grapes.” It in fact reminded people of Oklahoma, and many of its denizens came from that part of the country, though we had no distinctive accent or regional identity. Rose Maddox and her brothers came from my hometown, Modesto, and had their first successes there. Wrestling was very popular. (My own forebears came from Iowa and Missouri; the Iowa people originally came from the Palatinate in what’s now Germany, the Missouri folks were from Ireland).