If God appeared to you in a series of vivid and moving dreams and told you to leave everything behind, travel alone to the Red Sea and become a fisherman, what would you do?  What if you were told to sacrifice your child?

Well, since the Creator is pure spirit, He (and I use the masculine only because I can relate to it better, being male myself) would probably not appear in any dreams, visibly, except perhaps as a near-blinding light.  More likely the Creator would simply speak to me in such dreams.  That aside, I would probably leave everything behind, travel alone to the Red Sea, and become a fisherman.  Of course I’d have to operate from one of the nations that border the Red Sea.  My first choice would be Jordan (at the Gulf of Aqaba), and my second would be Saudi Arabia.  Though I have fished, many times, for pleasure, I’ve never done it for a living.  Still, I’d just go to Jordan (or Saudi Arabia), and await further instructions from the Creator.

As to the second part of the question–if I were told to sacrifice my child, I would know this was not coming from the Creator.  In one of my music-impression poems I state, “…I know not what God is, but what God is not.”  And our Creator, being holy, is definitely not one to tell anyone to do anything evil–like sacrificing his/her child.  Yes, I am quite familiar with the story of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Genesis 22 : 1-18).  But I don’t consider the Bible, or any other text, to be the all-inspired word of God.  As stated in my creed, “…God’s Word is not limited to one form of communication.” 

Still, as with most mythology, this story may be based on an actual event.  My mom, a devout Christian, yet an enlightened one, once explained the story this way: Abraham had come from a land where the gods were believed to require child-sacrifice.  So it’s possible that Abraham believed this new, monotheistic God required it too.  Yet as he prepared to sacrifice his son, something changed his mind.  Perhaps he realized the true Creator was not evil, thus wouldn’t suggest he do anything evil.  Perhaps even Abraham happened to be listening to the Creator, in that moment (I believe the Creator is always speaking to us, though we almost never listen), and received word of the Creator’s true nature.

So in summary, the Creator might suggest that someone do something good (leaving everything behind, traveling alone to the Red Sea, and becoming a fisherman would be good for me, since I have no wife and no children).  But the Creator, being holy, would never suggest that anyone do anything evil (like sacrificing his/her child).

Pining

Scott ____

He mails his latest published poetry

To a woman with no interest in poetry

A woman who’s never rejected his attentions

Yet never accepted them.

Jesus cautions him, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs

Neither cast ye your pearls before swine…”

To which he argues, “But maybe these words will win her, Jesus

Unlike those before.  Maybe this time she’ll share coffee and cake with me

If nothing else.”

He knows the inescapable wisdom of Jesus’ words

Yet foolishly mails his own words

To her, anyway.

Perhaps everyone needs someone for whom to pine.

(The woman for whom the poet pines resembles Gillian Anderson, though Gillian Anderson probably has much interest in poetry.)

Still Here

Langston Hughes

I been scarred and battered.

My hopes the wind done scattered.

     Snow has friz me,

     Sun has baked me,

Looks like between ‘em they done

     Tried to make me

Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’–

     But I don’t care!

     I’m still here!

I’ve been doing the online dating thing, for the first time.  I joined the site, not so much to find a girlfriend (though that would be nice), but to motivate me to get out and exercise.  My health has never been poorer.  I eat the wrong foods, have developed high cholesterol in addition to my high blood pressure, drink too much coffee, and don’t get any exercise at all.  Shortly after joining the online dating site, I joined a health club down the street.  I really wish I would have joined the health club first.  Because, instead of motivating me to get out and exercise (decreasing my risk of stroke or heart attack, under the self-pretense of becoming more attractive to women), the online dating has kept me indoors more, worrying with the online courtship of the same women.  It’s strange how personal plans work so well, in theory, but not in practice!

I’ve also been having one hell of a time with my psychiatric medication–one in particular.  This medication has always been the most helpful for my OCD, but it’s very difficult to get the dosage right.  Too little, and it doesn’t lessen OCD symptoms enough–too much, and it causes OCD symptoms to increase.

I write all this not to vent (though I appreciate your kind attention), but to let you know I haven’t forgotten you, my readers and fellow bloggers!

And to uphold my reputation as a connoisseur of hot women, let me post the following photo.  This actress, Sandra Gould, is best remembered for her role as Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched, but she was well-known long before that.

Taqasim: Improvisation in Arab Music

Scott ____

Maqam Kurd

This humble gravestone vibrates as one amidst Stonehenge, or on the Egyptian or Mayan pyramids might.  Every stone vibrates, I suppose.  This stone is not alive.  And it’s not the deceased who vibrates it.  It’s the mason, the maker of the stone.  He poured his energy into every grain, and his energy remains.  I see her among stone columns, a dark woman in a bright land–or a fair woman in a dark one.  She I can see, yet cannot touch.  So I distract myself with the hawk that hits my living-room window, in error–and with the stray kittens I take to the cat orphanage, to protect them from the hawk.  The hawks that grace my lawn are drawn to me, I would like to believe.  How presumptuous!  For I know it’s the squirrels, the songbirds, and the occasional rats to which they’re drawn.

Maqam Nahawand

Pour me not a glass of tequila, but a cup of coffee–here in this Mexican space I revisit, Juarez, which could just as easily be Persian.  How strange in my hypertensive state that I prefer the killing coffee to the calming tequila.  For that which powers me to write most wildly could render me powerless to write at all–I swallow spit, at the thought.  What vibrations saturate my skin, as strings are plucked like plums!  Sometimes they sound like motors revving in the distance of space, or voices calling in the distance of time–or heartbeats amplified twenty times over.

Maqam Bayyati

What of the steeple, the minaret, the pagoda?  Each points skyward, as if toward the Creator of the sky.  Yet so does the oak, the pine, and the bamboo stalk.  There is something higher here.  Some try to deny it, most try to define it.  But few realize that human arrogance is simply ignorance.

The first part of my poem uses actual dreams I’ve had.  And the second poem uses real-life experience.

Sarangi: The Music of India

Scott ____

Rag Bageshree

She meows as she wakes, time to feed her.  Yet then she’s my wife, time to feed me.  I roll over to touch her, and she’s gone.  No, this is reality–don’t wake me to my daily nightmare.  And I’m back in the surreal life I love.  My sister, Elaine, is Mary–holding our infant, Jesus, as I watch for thieves in the Egyptian sand.  Then I’m in a grocery store, eating cookies off a shelf, as a banquet of wealthy families looks at me with indifference.  And I step outside, into a 1950′s darkness.  I approach a group of rebels who welcome me in their stance, near a street sign.  When they ask my name, I reply, “I was freedom, before they modeled you.”  And though I’m as clueless as they, as to what I meant, they smile and offer me a beer.  Now I’m back in a classroom at Mobile Christian School.  My fellow students fill the room, yet there are no teachers–indeed no adults at all.  I turn to Jamie, and ask her to go home with me.  She agrees.  When we return, I ask Denise the same, and she agrees.  I take home and bring back one girl after another, until I hear a gavel.  I am forty-five again, yet at the U.S. Capitol.  Senators from West-Coast states declare secession from the Union.  But before I can ask why, a senator smiles, and shows me to a window.  He opens the curtains to an Ireland-green land, and I am there.  The prehistoric people seem to say I’m related to them.  And when I motion that I cannot understand their words, they direct me to a golden wall adorned with alphabetic characters unlike any I’ve seen on Earth.  I’ll be here long enough to learn their language, to choose a wife, and hopefully to remember them.

Thumri

A rooster calls dusk into dawn, as I watch a train below in Brownsville.  I walk on.  I speak to no one on Cervantes, but the buried in the Jewish cemetery, to whom I say, “Shalom.”  And as I pass the projects, I pray for the poor.  Yet as I pass mansions on Scenic Highway, I scoff at the thought of praying for the rich–until I realize they have problems too, beyond the financial facade.  And I pray the same prayer for them.  Upon returning, I stop beneath an oak overlooking Escambia Bay.  I stretch my arms skyward, and pray for myself.  Then I breathe the knowledge that my waking life isn’t such a nightmare, after all.

Olivia de Havilland

Joan Fontaine