Category: Uncategorized

Un Rinconcito Soleado

This weekend I took my coffee out to the back porch and sat in the orange school-style chair that’s been sitting there since we moved to this house. It makes a good outdoor chair after all the nicer ones have been stored away for the winter. New Mexico is not easy on outdoor furniture. The sun is brighter here than, say, the Pacific Northwest — literally. It’s the elevation. The sun has less atmosphere to pierce through. It also gets hot, cold, and dry, followed by deluges of rain. Sometimes, the dogs’ water is frozen solid in the morning, but by noon, people are walking their dogs in short-sleeved shirts, which is to say that it vacillates between hot and cold within hours.

The sun was particularly bright this weekend, and I sat in the orange chair in a little corner of the porch, sweating. When I checked the temperature, however, I discovered that it hadn’t even reached forty degrees. I just happened to be sitting in a spot where the south-facing sun collected. The sun is powerful. Solar energy would work well here ninety percent of the time — it’s that ten percent worth of cloud layer that would be inconvenient. Of course, farmers don’t find clouds inconvenient, especially if they bring rain.

Some people are particularly gloomy and find all the dark shade they can. Others are of sunny dispositions and are annoyingly positive all the time. Yet others seek out sunny corners where they can rest for a while. To be honest, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I have a compulsion to write every day, and I’m so low on sleep, another 1000 words towards my ghost story or my memoir isn’t happening. Yes, of course, I’m writing a memoir. I’m always writing one, as the future will be curious about the past and want to know the thoughts of ridiculous secretaries. Unselfishly, I will oblige them.

I really love my ghost story, but I’m afraid it does require some intelligence to write, which I have very little of right now. In its initial version, a widow buys an old, decrepit house that’s haunted and manages to lure the hapless co-owner of a hardware store into helping her solve the mystery of her house. In its current version, I swapped the hardware store owner with a UPS driver…except I call the delivery service the PDex, and him the PDex man. I know, it’s dumb, but the name PDex makes me giggle like a teenage girl. Or guffaw like a teenage boy; I’m not sure which. I changed my male protag to a delivery driver because it occurred to me that delivery drivers in a city like Roswell know everyone’s names and where they live, and their presence on private property goes unquestioned. It didn’t just occur to me, honestly. One of the local drivers noted that she knew where I lived, where my daughter worked, etc., and I still don’t know her name. It wasn’t as creepy as it sounds. I just have an unusual last name, which she recognized after I started signing for the bulletins delivered to the church.

My ghost story ought to be gloomy, but it isn’t. I can’t help it. I want to create little sunny corners even when murdered femme fatales come out to haunt them. If you’re wondering how theologically correct my ghost story is, I’ll try to stifle a yawn…not because I’m bored, though. Oh, no. I’m simply too tired. I already said that. I find these are important questions to ask, as some Christians believe ghosts can only be demons, and not the spirit of the dead walking about, half here, and half there.

I don’t hold to such a rigid perspective, though. I’ve listened to enough question and answer sessions with exorcists to know that the “ghosts are demons” is the predominant position Catholic authorities take, too. But there is room for mystery in Catholicism. There is a willingness to accept that God might allow the spirit of a person in heaven to visit earth for a special purpose. I’ve often contemplated why there are places with weird “energy” to them, as well. I recognize that sounds new-agey. What I mean is, could there be places where the heavenly dimension has bled over into the earthly dimension? I don’t know. I don’t seek out these “energies,” as it were, and I certainly don’t go looking for ghosts with a special purpose. I’m only using the ghost trope because gothic elements in stories work. They work because we know at an inner level there is more to life than meets the eye.

Also, I think my poor widow woman needs help being ushered back to a land of hope where sunny corners can be found on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Whether it’s the spirit of a dead woman who will bring about a powerfully sunny justice, or the PDex man with his Santa Claus vibe (the real St. Nick was, after all, from the sunny Mediterranean world), who am I to deny my poor heroine her sun just because she will get a sunburn?

Año del Acordeón

Well, it’s certainly not the year of social media. I don’t have time for social media. Or I don’t prioritize it, I should say. What I have left is the blog that I’ve had since 2008 or 2009… don’t remember. Sadly, I meant to return to jilldomschot.com after killing it, but it was purchased by an Asian company and is parked with what appear to be Chinese words on it. So, while I’ve been blogging for over ten years, the blog has had peaks and valleys, and I’ve lost a lot of content. Not that I care really. Most of my posts were throwaway, trying to meet post quotas while following my interests at the time. I have some sadness over losing my 18th century historical content, but it does not go deep.

I’ve determined this to be the year of the accordion because it’s what I value at the moment. I don’t mean that I don’t value God, family, work, etc. Those are on another tier of value. When I was in my late thirties, I used to read a blog written by a British lady who had dedicated her forties to learning to play the accordion and to doing the other things she’d put off as a younger person. It was called Rainbows and… I can’t remember. I believe she also gardened and wrote poetry or did photography. I wish I could find her blog again, but alas, I don’t have a blogspot follow widget any longer. How time marches on. Her blog inspired me to dedicate my forties to several goals. Being that I will turn fifty in 2023, I’d like to assess how far I’ve gotten.

My goals were these: learn the accordion, write and publish a science fiction novel, and finish a mechanical engineering degree. Let’s start with the accordion.

When my husband bought me my Hohner, I had just turned forty, and it was therefore our 20th anniversary. We were a little drunk at the local pub, and he bought it from his phone, just like that. At first, I found it a little difficult to learn. The typical norteño accordion is a diatonic, with different notes played squeezing in vs pulling out. I went through the tutorial books that came with the accordion, one of which taught reading music in a handful of lessons before forcing the student to suddenly read it with no help. I have had little formal musical education. While I know the music system, I never learned to read music well enough to use as a guide for songs. I looked for other ways to learn my instrument but ended up leaving the accordion in Socorro when we moved to Roswell. This was no slight toward the accordion. I moved over here before the rest of the family and brought almost nothing with me, not even my books. At some point, I went back for the accordion and still did not play it for some time because I was busy and overwhelmed. Finally, I decided I would dedicate a half hour a day to really learning the instrument. You know the rest of the story, I think. Just as I was familiar and proficient enough to play my instrument sans craning my neck to look at the buttons while I played scales and songs, it was destroyed in a car accident, and I had to learn the feel of a new, slightly bigger Gabbanelli. I’ve since doubled my practice time. Have I learned to play the accordion in my forties? Yes, but there isn’t a magic line to playing an instrument, is there? In a year’s time, I will play it better than I do now. And a year after that…

Did I publish a science fiction book? Sure, a jokey one called The Minäverse and then one about the Roswell aliens called Order of the PenTriagon. I doubled my goal regarding that, and I somehow managed to do it while working full-time. This is where my forties began to blur into desperate attempts at achieving my goals in whatever manner possible. On my days off or before my shifts, I would take classes at the community college and stop at the local coffee shop to work for a while on my books. I did not, however, achieve the degree. There isn’t a full university here, in any case, but I still tried to scrap it all together. I even considered finishing a math associates degree and taking a welding course. But the welding course was very expensive and seemed an impossibility while working. The last attempt I made at this goal was to sign up for online classes in January 2020, but I had a strange feeling in my gut that it would be a bad idea to use my savings on these classes, and I dropped them at the last minute. When the Covid shutdown hit, I lost my work and didn’t have money coming in for months. I was a contract and freelance laborer by that time, and while I’d heard I could go before a hearing to get the Covid unemployment for this kind of work (I had several friends who successfully achieved this), I chose to wait until people stopped being ridiculously afraid and depressed and send work my way again. I could understand the tutoring and substitute teaching disappearing, as schools were closed and parents were afraid to have people come to their houses. But losing the editing I didn’t really understand. I had a number of books scheduled during this time, but the authors couldn’t concentrate to write, I guess. They were depressed and distracted. I tend to throw myself into work to avoid depression, but not everyone operates that way.

The upshot is, people can make all the plans they want, but life throws you the unexpected. For example, when I turned forty, I didn’t expect to move to Roswell, of all places. And while science fiction predictions have often become real, it’s difficult to ascertain which will and which will not turn into reality. The world wasn’t ready for the absolute ridiculousness of 2020 and beyond. So, that’s where I sit. I don’t know that I’m going to make any life goals or dedicate my fifties to anything. I’m just going to keep going and putting work in, as work is what I do; it’s what I’ve always done. Perhaps I will dedicate the coming decade to trying to hear God’s voice better and living in his will. Meanwhile, I’ve been learning a song on the accordion called Corrido de Juanito. It’s a very sad song by Calibre 50. I might or might not have posted the video before.

New Year’s Resolutions

I don’t make them, though they are, I’m sure, worthwhile if you have the gumption to carry them out. On the other hand, I’ve made all manner of resolutions to keep on moving forward, no matter how tired and listless I feel. There’s no choice but to do that. There’s no point in sitting around waiting to find out if something is meant to happen by design or fate.

Do you remember that old movie Stranger Than Fiction? As a writer of fiction, I enjoyed the concept of that movie quite a bit, in a which an author is writing people into existence. After her hero realizes he’s a book character, an English professor — a professor with an expertise on the phrase Little did he know… — recommends that he sit around and do nothing all day to find out how much free will he has according to the story world. Alas, a wrecking ball destroys his apartment, suggesting his deck is stacked. Rather than allowing this deterministic universe get the better of him, he chooses to live in a way he’d never allowed himself to live before. E.g., he learns to play the guitar and falls in love. Of course, this being an old movie, spoilers don’t matter, right? Ultimately, he chooses to live the purpose he was written for and sacrifice his life to save a little boy.

The author realizes that she’s unwittingly become a monster and decides that it would be wrong to kill off a man who’s willing to sacrifice his life for others. Therefore, she changes the ending of her story, despite that it ruins the great artistic aesthetic of the work. Movies like this are rare, which is why it stuck with me. It’s philosophical, it’s fundamentally pro-life, it’s funny, and it has a happy ending.

But mostly, I don’t want to be the person who waits for fate to bring her a wrecking ball. For that reason, I should make resolutions, but I’m sorry; I’m just too busy. My list is already full. If fate, that is, God, wants me to do more, he’s going to have to make that clear.

On the other hand, it’s the tradition to have a New Year’s song, which is, fatefully, whatever comes on the radio as the clock strikes midnight. Who listens to the radio these days? We used to in the car on the way back from Albuquerque after our New Year’s Eve movie (LOTR and The Hobbit trilogy kept us going for a lot of years.) I do listen to the radio, though. I have a radio app on my phone. To stay awake, we were watching a movie called Alpha (highly recommend). As it approached midnight, I put in my earbuds and tried to find a channel that wasn’t playing ads. My husband had fallen asleep despite the film, and it was obvious I had to find a song on my own.

Finally, just before it was too late, I clicked on a Tejano station, which began to play Un rinconcito en el cielo. I smiled at the accordion intro. You see, when I first explored Norteño by listening to the Mexican stations coming out of Albuquerque, that song had taken my breath away. I fell in love with the accordion, and there was no going back. This song was how it started, and now I can play it on my very own Gabbanelli. I’m happy and grateful my New Year song is this one. It puts a positive spin on my year. This might sound superstitious to some people, but it’s really not. It’s a game, and not so very different from choosing a word to be the theme of the year, except I let the radio choose it for me. Whatever the case, I must find inspiration in it. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to find inspiration in all songs. I cringe when I consider my New Year song could have been from a country station if it hadn’t been playing ads. Maybe if Garth Brooks sang Standing Outside the Fire it might be inspirational. But what are the odds of that? Then again, what are the odds of music existing at all unless there’s a creator? I don’t know. It’s kind of difficult to create a set of odds with an infinite God as the one given.

God Confounds the Wise

The end of this phrase should be in their own eyes. Our intelligence is finite and our ability to act out wisdom is limited. When Solomon asked God for wisdom, he was rewarded for it because wisdom is what we should be attempting to achieve in this life. But even Solomon failed to fully achieve it, bringing Israel down with his foreign wives and their imported idolatrous religions. Religious freedom has a dark element to it; it is not an ideal God encouraged in Israel. In fact, he forbade it. Sometimes, I wonder what our founding fathers were thinking when they determined religious freedom to be a high ideal. Actually, I don’t have to ask because I know. They thought, unwisely, that religious freedom would mean they could practice any form of Christianity they wanted and had little foresight that spiritual battles are indeed real, and if the dark spirits could destroy Christianity in America through our foreign “wives,” as it were, then that is exactly what will happen. They also had little forethought that freedom of speech and assembly would result in pornography, gay pride parades, and drag queen story hours.

Of course, all of this is hindsight 20-20 on our parts today. We know what’s happened in America because we are living in the aftermath of our beloved cafeteria of ideas. We also know what happened in Israel due to Solomon’s lack of wisdom because it’s recorded in the historical accounts of the Israelites. What we are less able to see clearly is our own inability to have perfect understanding and wisdom. Oh, sure, we can see it in other people, generally those who disagree with us. I can go right now to YouTube and find numerous videos of people spouting off who have no humility in their declarations at all. A lack of humility does not, obviously, mean someone isn’t speaking the truth, but it will most decidedly mean that person isn’t open to correction when he or she (hardheadedness and/or hardheartedness are not gendered concepts) is wrong. Everyone is wrong at some point, but not everyone has acknowledged their receipt of that memo. Thankfully, most people arrive at a place where they can admit to being wrong or at least to not fully understanding an issue. When a person doubles down under challenge and refuses to listen to counter arguments, I generally just walk away. Generally. Not always.

In the “cafeteria of ideas,” there are many I won’t entertain at all, even if I’m considered hardhearted. The fact is that, in every field of knowledge, there are foundational concepts that can’t be removed without toppling the entire field. Within Christianity, for example, if you argue that there was no resurrection, you have just toppled Christianity. It doesn’t exist anymore — so what is the point of this argument? This is why the early church fathers condensed core beliefs into creeds while also holding to the ten commandments and their New Testament counterpart, loving God first and then your neighbor. Even if it is impossible to understand God or his Scriptures perfectly, it is possible to know the gospel and how we should live as Christians.

When it comes to God confounding the wisdom of the world, you can see it all over the Bible, e.g., in God choosing the youngest sibling instead of the eldest for kingship or a birthright; or in God granting wisdom to a woman instead of to a man regarding family decisions. That’s one that will irk our modern patriarchals, but the examples are recorded for a reason: e.g., Rebecca chose the son whom God had chosen; Isaac did not, and Abigail had an understanding of who God’s chosen king was, even though her husband either did not or did not care. There are more examples of this phenomenon, in which God reveals that we don’t understand as much about the world as we think we do.

The above thoughts came about because I always ponder Solomon at the start of a New Year. I ponder him because he’s a classic old world version of a nihilist, and nihilism creeps into my soul in January. Years ago, it was so difficult for me to cope with this nihilism that I avoided reading Ecclesiastes. It’s not easy reading, and Solomon’s answer to it is easier said than done. I don’t avoid the book any longer; after all, God wanted it in the Bible for a reason. Still, I don’t go out my way to join Ecclesiastes Bible studies, even if I read it as part of liturgical or yearly Bible reading.

But what ultimately got me thinking along the lines of God confounding the wise was listening to a Christian YouTuber who mocks almost every Christian leader, pastor, or musician who exists in the world today. I listened to him because I clicked on a link where he reviews The Chosen. Solomon this man isn’t. Most of us aren’t even capable of the wisdom, power, or, conversely, the sinfulness of Solomon. I mean, how many of you men have 700 wives who are building temples to their false gods? Aside from that, though, it’s not that men like this YouTuber have first principles they stand for. Everything is a first principle to men like him. It gave me a chill up my spine because I’ve been dealing with a narcissist in my life, and my husband and I have both been gathering information regarding this personality disorder. One of the telltale signs of narcissism is never admitting to being wrong unless it’s for the purpose of manipulation. So, although God confounds those who are wise in their own eyes, the entire world will be able to see it, except the narcissist. They will instead view it as persecution and be protected from the fallout…to an extent, as they will eventually burn all their bridges and be left with no one but God for help.

If you want to know who the YouTuber is, his name is Spencer Smith. I haven’t listened to enough of his videos to claim he’s a narcissist; nor am I a psychiatrist. All I know is he gives off the whiff of it from a distance. Of course, YouTube is no doubt rife with narcissists because it’s an open platform for engaging with people. Narcissists will burn their bridges and retreat as victims to lick their wounds from time to time, but their mental illness requires an audience. Assuredly, they will be back for more. If you are wise, you will avoid them, and I don’t think God will confound such a decision unless he (cringe) wants to use you to penetrate the armor a narcissist wears for protection.

A Rio Grande Christmas

The River Valley is a culture distinct from Roswell. When I first moved here, I didn’t like it much. I thought perhaps it was too close to Texas, and I had silly prejudices against Texas culture. Now that I’ve spent a good bit of time in West Texas, I’ve come to the conclusion that Roswell is its own culture. Like most of New Mexico, it is (largely) composed of people who do whatever they want; however, they are the red version of this Wild West mentality, while the River Valley is blue. I always found the quietly rebellious people who vote for blue politicians to be an odd cultural mix, but that is a common attitude in New Mexico. There will be people who protest this aspersion, who claim that most people here are collectivists who do their government’s bidding, and I suppose that is more frequently the case now than it ever was. That is the end result of public school education, unfortunately. The more traditional attitude of New Mexicans is summed up in a conversation I had with a young New Mexican woman who used to babysit my children:

“My ‘buelito just got a deer,” she said.

“Oh, nice, I wish we could go hunting. I wonder what it costs to get a tag.”

“I don’t know. He never gets one. He just goes hunting.”

Being an agreeable libertarian at the time, I said, “I don’t believe the government should regulate hunting and fishing. The federal government stole huge swaths of land and now forces us to pay to use it.”

“There should be laws because otherwise people who don’t need to hunt will just kill anything and be wasteful.”

“But your grandpa doesn’t follow the laws.”

“It’s okay that we don’t because we’re really poor. We don’t waste it.”

“So, the laws are only for some people and not others?”

“You just have to know how to not get caught.” She shrugged. That was her final answer.

You see, people in New Mexico are like Hobbits in the Shire. The Hobbit doesn’t want to leave his Shire, and I very much doubt he would take kindly to being told he couldn’t hunt or fish without permission. On the other hand, Hobbits don’t like making waves, so they are quiet about any rebellions. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the people of the Rio Grande valley. It’s a beautiful valley — who would want to leave it? I certainly didn’t until Lujan-Grisham demonstrated what it really means to live in a blue state: baby killing up until birth and shut-downs that make little sense unless the government is trying to destroy the economy and create more dependence. Also, since Lujan-Grisham came into power, the homeless rate, which used to be one of the lowest in the nation, has skyrocketed. That is not to mention that in a desperate attempt to gain control of the Southeastern area, she gerrymandered so that roughly half of our congressional districting is now with Santa Fe. She did that in Socorro County, as well, which is mostly rural and hence more conservative.

All that griping aside (Texas sounds really amazing at this point), I’m still in love with my hometown of Socorro. That is where my inheritance property is, that is where my parents live, and that’s generally where I go for Christmas now that I’ve been relegated to Roswell. This last Christmas was no different, except that we had to stay in a hotel due to my mother-in-law adding an extra person (my parents have a very small adobe house). It was a pleasant Christmas with all my children and son-in-law to be (my eldest is engaged). Aside from the splendid view of the valley and mesas from my parents’ house, the best part of the trip was going to midnight Mass at the Old San Miguel mission. I’ve written before about this church, which is a treasure that doesn’t get the acclaim the old churches in Santa Fe and Albuquerque get. On Christmas Eve, candalarias grace the old plaza and park, and then light a path all the way to the old church. This tradition goes together with Las Posadas, as the candles are meant to provide light to the weary travelers, Mary and Joseph and the Christ child in Mary’s womb.

Las Posadas, however, occurs every evening from the 16th to the 24th of December, and it’s a kind of traveling Nativity play, in which Mary and Joseph go from house to house looking for a place to stay. Many churches have the final play at the church building before the midnight Mass. Las Posadas can be elaborate or simple — in the case of San Miguel this year, it was simple, with only a call and response from parishioners inside and outside the church. Covid has destroyed many elaborate traditions, sadly, and I wonder when they will return to normal. Las Posadas is, naturally, a Spanish tradition, and I relished the opportunity to sing in Spanish. I do this quite regularly; I wonder if someday, when I’m in a situation where I have to speak Spanish, if I will be more comfortable breaking into song: I’m sorry, I’m like Selena. I can only sing in Spanish. Except that I’m an Anglo. And I’m old and not gorgeous (if she had not been murdered, she would be older than I am, though. How heartbreaking. She might have had children and grandchildren by now). So just like, except…

After a quiet Christmas with my family, my husband and I decided we needed some time away to soak in the hot springs in T or C. T or C is along the trail from Santa Fe down to El Paso, albeit, it is a strange town. Its culture is different from the rest of New Mexico. You see, it had a heyday with Hollywood back in the forties and fifties, before being abandoned by that fickle set, leaving the town capsuled in its prime. Many of the hotel and spas there are what you might call shabby chic owing to the forties and fifties decor, with many old tubs still flaunting their original tile. We stayed in such a place, called the Pelican. The room we rented would make a nice vacation spot with its courtyard, its kitchen and reading room. Its bathroom was simply awful and a bit of a deal breaker. I am very thin and could barely fit between the toilet and sink. I can’t imagine anyone able to reach the shower for cleaning. That is the kind of oddity you find with shabby-chic.

I have many memories of T or C; it’s about an hour south of Socorro, but just under an hour, whereas Albuquerque is just over an hour to the north. We used to take the family to soak at the Riverbend, which I still highly recommend, although it is no longer family friendly because the new owners want to maintain a relaxing, meditative space. I also wrote my book Anna and the Dragon there, in the Charles Motel, which is yet another shabby-chic enclave with old soaking tubs. My husband and I have also stayed in the Firewater Lodge for an anniversary. That particular lodge has been completely revamped and was more chic than shabby.

We enjoyed our stay there, but it didn’t come without sadness. The town has always been down-at-heel, but it seemed more that way post Covid than it had in the past. For example, what few restaurants they used to have available were not open. It was difficult to tell, due to the general shabbiness, whether they were closed permanently or closed for Christmas — even though we went the week after. For a tourist town with hot springs, it seems short sighted for businesses to close that week, but we still concluded that it was probably a little of both. Almost no eateries did not keep tourists out; we had trouble finding a room, as we booked at the last minute. And we certainly were too late to soak at the Riverbend. We had to settle for the Pelican tubs. They aren’t terrible. They’re indoors, unlike Riverbend, which has gradient outdoor tubs that have a view of the river. By gradient, I mean they make use of downard water flow to regulate the temperature of the water. The hottest is at the top, the coolest at the bottom.

We are, of course, back in Roswell now. It is pleasant and sunny. The temperatures that didn’t rise above thirty last week have become more temperate. Outsiders are often surprised that you don’t need a passport to visit the Land of Enchantment; they are also often surprised that it can be well below freezing here in the winter. New Mexico, the Rio Grande valley, Roswell — they are the Land of Contradictions. Maybe the contradictions also make it enchanting. Hard to say. When I was back in my office at the church on Thursday, a local man regaled me with true tales of Big Foot and aliens. He is also one of the most devout Catholics I have ever met.

Yearly Reflection

I’ve had a number of posts lingering in my mind that haven’t made it to WordPress yet. There are reasons for that, the first being that I found it more difficult than I thought to write a eulogy of my coworker who passed away just before Thanksgiving. I will eventually write that post, but I often don’t realize the emotions I have operating under the surface because I’m disconnected from them. They show up in unexpected ways such as resistance to action and daydreaming. Okay, so those aren’t exactly unexpected. Grieving still happens for logical people; it is uncomfortable when they wake up and realize they can’t make a logical argument to get out of the process. This is quite startling and can be entirely avoided for the less aware logicians in the population, who will instead use alcohol to maintain a pretense. Or they will conversely become grumpy, taciturn, and withdrawn.

The other posts that are in my mental queue are political or apologetic in nature. Political posts are an easy out, and so I haven’t allowed myself to write them. What I ought to be doing are apologetics posts, but I haven’t found a way to bridge the gap between where I was when I was younger — cold and argumentative — to where I prefer to be, which is more akin to my patron saint, Francis DeSales, who was gentle and kind, and through that method, brought many Reformed back to the Catholic church. That is fine for a man, but it is not beneficial for a woman to show that kind of weakness. When women show kindness or any vestige of weakness, their arguments are then written off as emotional. As a young woman, I used to make people, especially men, very angry, but I was never accused of having emotional arguments. I’ve only been accused of that after the age of forty, when I decided that emotions were important to humanity, even more important than logic when it comes to human interaction and connection. However, my ability to grasp logic is still unfortunately a point of pride for me that needs to be eradicated if I’m to move forward. I can’t go backwards; I understand that deeply. I’m therefore stuck in a state of apathy. That sounds emotional, doesn’t it? That’s because no one can get around emotion. At best, most people won’t acknowledge they are making decisions and arguments based off emotions and will rationalize — that is, use reason — after the fact. Rationalization is for a materialistic population that prides itself off eschewing emotion. This obviously will create much psychological conflict, which one sees in the world around. Ultimately, our culture has the special distinction of worshipping logic while simultaneously leaking emotion out the edges and never learning critical thinking or logic in school. We worship something *most of us* don’t understand. Not that we really understand God, either. So maybe the worship of logic is simply another type of illogic based off faith. Woe to those who truly grasp logic, for theirs will be the way without faith.

That was a little more than I meant to say. In other words, I’m finishing off the year very much where I started. I’ve long felt (emotion, ha ha) that God is prodding me to do more in apologetics, and here I sit, waiting for a bolt of lightning or something. I’ve been doing what I always do: writing fiction, playing the accordion, studying Spanish, and reading. I’ve read so many books this last year, mostly mysteries, but a handful of biographies and nonfiction. I will end the year with my two current reads, a historical fiction about King David (not my typical choice; a friend and coworker lent it to me) and a reread of Augustine’s Confessions. Speaking of an inability to understand logic, I find modern approaches to St. Augustine bizarre. Augustine tended to start with a premise, work it through a logical framework, and then determine whether the initial premise stood up. Why is it that moderns look at his initial premises and hastily decide that they were also his conclusions? That is so frustrating. Our educated modern population doesn’t hold a candle to men like St. Augustine. That was an emotional statement, for the record, though no doubt objectively true.

You know what gets me really emotional? Music. Spotify and YouTube have informed me (creepily) that my most listened to artist last year was El Coyote, and my most listened to song was Te Vas Amor. It’s true that I can listen to that song on repeat. It’s been one of my favorite songs for over twenty years*, I’m going to say. I’m sure I’ve posted it before, so I’ll spare you this time.

*it came out in 2002, so right around 20 yrs

Hirelings

If you live in the world, you learn early not to trust worldly authority figures. Even if you have even-handed, loving parents, you find that the authorities in schools are unjust, biased, and operate off bad information. In fact, they often don’t want their bad information corrected, especially if it’s coming from a child they’re biased against. That kind of loss of trust can happen before children are out of kindergarten.

By the time children are in middle school, they will begin to notice that the media also operates off of bad information, intentionally spinning stories the way they want them to be perceived. It will probably take a few more years for them to distrust government in general, but it can and should happen. I suppose that’s the purpose of a two-party system, to change the general distrust into distrust solely toward the party one isn’t a member of.

There is something of the Stockholm Syndrome in all or most of us that allows us to align ourselves with our captors, as well. People realize if they shut up and toe the line, do the things asked of them, their lives will be okay. They can go home after their mandatory schooling and watch their favorite show, play their favorite videogame, eat their favorite junk food. That’s not bad in itself, especially if authority figures want the best for their constituents, despite being hypocritical humans. If people live rule- and law-abiding lives, things will go better for them. That’s the reality.

But it’s not always the reality. Our authority figures can go from being unjust and foolish but largely benign to evil in a heartbeat. And when that evil comes, people will be blindsided. They might try to find refuge in their churches, but they won’t find it because their churches are run by worldly authority figures. Jesus warned us of this: hired shepherds run away at the sign of a wolf. Jesus is the only trustworthy shepherd. I want to repeat this. I want to pound it in Christians’ skulls who are demoralized by Christian authorities who have let them down.

Go back and review what happened during Covid. The pastors who stood up and tried to keep their churches open were almost nonexistent. This was true of Protestants and Catholics alike. I view the Covid time as a warning. If your pastors ran away over something that small, be aware that they might not be there for you during harder times.

I have never trusted authority figures, and yet, I’m like most “decent” people: I want to live peaceably as far as is possible. I want to follow a moral code. I even want to follow a code of conduct that prevents chaos. Even though I understand that hirelings are humans and will fail, I recognize that God left us human authorities anyway. From the beginning, he left us church authorities — his apostles — who ran away when Jesus was sacrificed on the cross. They were terrified and concerned for their lives. Later, they were willing to be martyred for the Gospel, but they certainly weren’t so resigned at the beginning. They were probably confused as well as being terrified. They weren’t so much different from the rest of us, in other words.

I want to trust, and I believe it’s right to trust our God-given leaders. I have a hard time doing so, but I find I’ve become complacent over the years. I don’t want to be watchful because it’s exhausting. Besides, look what happened to Alex Jones. He was martyred in a way, his money stolen and reputation destroyed, simply for being watchful, mistrustful, researching and asking questions. Alex Jones was not and is not crazy, as people imply. I’ve never thought so. He’s never called himself a prophet, and I’m sure his theories are sometimes wrong, but his behavior resembles the prophets of old, wild-eyed and appearing deranged to those who don’t want to or can’t believe our authority figures could be so evil, could betray us to such an extent as he puts forth…due to our Stockholm Syndrome.

I don’t want to be watchful, but I would be a fool not to be. I would be a fool not to remember that all the church authorities in my so-called “red” county betrayed their people. The local sheriff was stronger in his willingness to stand up for the people than the church leaders were. I can’t forget this reality. I won’t forget it. I would like to think it was a situation of fear and confusion, and that they will be willing to sacrifice even their lives in the future, just like the apostles and many saints in history. That’s the hope. At the same time, I’d much rather put my hope in the Good Shepherd, whose image I hold in my heart.

This subject has been weighing on me lately, no matter the busy-ness of the past week and the other posts I was supposed to write. Those other posts will come, God willing. St. Augustine pray for me.