Notes - Hope&Prayer / Dressing the Dead / Word choice & Thoughts

Mid-morning. You are wondering why prayer is built in like hope. Hope has a mythology but prayer does not.

         Merriam-Webster’s first definition (at least the one I feel is appropriate in context) is “an address or a petition to God”. In this sense it would be as to hope something is to automatically address God with the hope. Is this your meaning?

         Yes.

         I would have never drawn the two words together. What of us agnostics – no, what of the atheists?

         Such is irony, at least in this blog and books. The brain needs to create order to function properly. A part of this order is a sense of the concept of God. To say the universe is chaos is easily said, but no matter, the brain creates an order out of it for physical survival of the body (which is an organic system of which the brain is automatically attached). Belief stems from hope.

         I don’t like the sound of this.

         It is a sub-set order based on hope. You may hope to deny this but you cannot deny the possibility. Hope is measurable whereas the combination of heartansoulanmind are not. Post. – Amorella.

**

Belief is as a dressing for a wound.

         Where did that come from, boy?

         I don’t know. I just woke up from a short nap in the chair and thought it. First, I thought of a belief as a dressing of sorts, a nightgown, clothes to be added or taken off then ‘dressing as for a wound’ hit as the wound of ‘original sin’, and it seemed to fit. Heartansoulanmind are not measurable but penetrations and salves perhaps might be. Then, the Dead. What of their beliefs? Their cultures hold them together socially but as they are originally a species and only have heartsansoulsanminds; no, they have nakedness, a self-awareness of nakedness, raw meat – only dead, not even that, raw unconsciousness perhaps, seemingly unordered or chaos, and perhaps so, before the mind makes something substantial and identifiable of it. Self-identity, self purpose, self-human with a sense of dignity if nothing else, and hopefully freedom, that is, freedom of choice.

         Post. – Amorella. 

         There was something in what the Archbishop said during the wedding ceremony yesterday that is the trigger. Clarity and word choice. A connection to nakedness. It is of interest to the Dead in the story.

I mean, I can make it of interest to the Dead in the story.

         Do what you enjoy. Research. 

You have the transcript of Dr. Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London’s wedding sermon, and have highlighted material you consider appropriate and while I will include it, I also will conclude with what I consider the most important aspect of the sermon.  – Amorella.

**

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day this is.

**

In the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to each other.

The spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

**

There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom. Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:

"Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the God of Love anon, Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon."

**

         [And from the concluding prayer written by William and Catherine]:

In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy. Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer.

** **

         Perspective shows itself in our minds’ difference on the text. It is well you disagree with my choice of words as you and I are not one no matter what your thoughts. – Amorella.

**

It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

**

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

**

We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.

**

(T)he Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads on to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can receive and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today will do everything in their power to support and uphold you in your new life. I pray that God will bless you in the way of life you have chosen.

**

From: the wedding sermon of Dr. Richard Chartres for Prince William and Princess Catherine at Westminster, 29/04/11.

        

** **

         We have our choices of the sermon text and they are therein put.

         Good. Post. – Amorella.

          Almost time for the evening news. You spent a couple of hours outdoors pulling weeds along the front walk and porch as well as fixing the lawn mower for better grass scatter through improvising – last year you used duct tape, this year, two well placed screws will hopefully do the trick better.

         In reading over the material we placed as important in the sermon you noticed that my selected text better gives the Dead’s perspective and you text, the Living. At least that is how you see it.

         True. I am surprised by that, but I enjoyed that a couplet of Chaucer’s was included, the Bishop stood not more than twenty feet from the London poet’s bones. I like that he chose those words. I enjoyed his sermon very much. I would insert it in a British literature textbook in a second. I would have run it off and we would be reading and discussing the text on Monday.

         Keep searching for a photo of your Aunt Patsy and Uncle Ernie. Post. – Amorella. 

         You and Carol finished mowing and raking the lawn a little after nine. You didn’t realize it was going to rain tomorrow. Carol did most of the mowing while you mainly raked. e

         I am catching on. Being Dead in these books really is a whole other experience.

         Another dimensional experience. This will become easier as you  learn to see the Living and the Dead as a single moment. That is what you will have to do in the writing. Post. – Amorella.

Notes - The Wedding and other Considerations

You and Carol awoke in time to see the royal wedding and stuck with it through two kisses and the fly over.

         I do love the pageantry as it is not often on display. The wedding was an existential moment with all the British theatre in place and on parade. “Long live the Queen”, that I say with open heart.

         You are at Kroger’s on King Mills Road near King’s Island amusement park and what used to the Jack Nickolas Golf Course and the present Lindner Tennis Center, all incorporated into the City of Mason these days. You and Carol have been up to the Warren County Democratic Headquarters to petition against the Ohio Republican passed Senate Bill Five. You and others want it on the ballot a year from now. Earlier you spent the morning reading the “Shakespeare” book and are now at the point where Edward DeVere’s wife Anne died unexpectedly at the age of thirty-three.

         Groceries home and now you are at Pine Hill Park waiting for Carol as you completed your much shorter walk with pains in left leg and hip (4-5) rather than the last walk a day or so ago where the arthritic pains were in the right hip and right knee (5 out of 10) instead. You like to measure things so we can measure that instead of heartansoulanmind. Your usual pains are a 3 particularly in the AM and when really bad 7 to 8. A ten, the first was when you were nineteen or so and having an abscessed tooth pulled by Dr. Thomas Pringle, Bob “the Poet” father. You moved causing the half out tooth to fall back into place and you raised yourself up out of the chair and fainted back down into it.

         Never have I felt such an intense sharp pain before or since.

         Papa John’s pizza for supper, last night’s “Bones” and “CSI” and tonight’s BBC News (which focused mostly on the wedding).

         It has been a good day, one of hope as far as the British Isle’s is concerned. People need hope even if it is some distance away.

         Hope, like prayer, is built into the species, boy. Sometimes they are one in the same. So much for putting such matters to measurement.  Post. – Amorella.

Notes - Considerations / a Measurement Question / F5 tornado

A walk in the cemetery, then a Subway picnic on the west bank of the Little Miami at Rae Park. A pleasant drive home via Columbia. Carol is working in the yard, you opened the windows downstairs after shutting off the furnace—fresh air feels and smells good – even perked up the cat since the sun went away about half an hour ago. More clouds and more rain coming tonight and tomorrow.

         You are feeling self-conscious about placing your email account on the blog, however, you are reminded of when no one saw your writing, when you realized you need to have at least a potential audience for someone to tell you when you have so far slipped into the story that you are not sure how to return to the shared reality of your earthly cousins.

         Not forgotten, Amorella. It is better to understand the world with human company than not. No doubt that fact had some bearing on having the Dead being a commune of sorts.

         This brings up the one other major incident that affected/effected you while growing up in Westerville. This one is heart related on the scale of heartansoulanmind as a unit. You are waiting as you have no clue. Nothing comes to mind.

         True, Amorella. Something just did. Watching the young woman, a teenager, die from drowning at Glengarry Pool, though it was not technically in Westerville and I was in upper elementary school at the time. The lifeguards had pulled her onto the walkway surrounding the pool. She was on a towel on her stomach with her forehead resting on her right forearm. I saw her look up and open her eyes one last time and she was looking our way; towards us small group of boys. She shut her eyes and did not open them again. If she could focus we were the last people she ever saw. It was quite odd to think on that. We boys whispered such things and left soon after. That was the first time I ever witnessed someone dying.  

         No, that wasn’t in Westerville. And, it just flashed in your mind. You have it right this time. Go ahead and copy what you have written from an earlier time.

         This was in the 19 August 2009 posting:

“. . . Richard shook hands with a neighbor of his grandparents, a Mr. Press Reynolds, who also on West Walnut Street in Westerville, Ohio. The story is that when Mr. Reynolds was a boy on the plantation he operated a tobacco press, thus he took it for his first name. Supposedly it was a Reynolds’ plantation so he took Reynolds as his last name. Richard remembers Mr. Reynolds as a kindly old fellow with a workingman’s hands. What does it mean to have shaken hands with a man who had been born and early raised as a slave orndorff?

It was an important event in my life at the time. I was five, if I remember correctly. Too be honest, I don’t remember my thoughts at the meeting other than my grandfather and I were standing on an old side porch and Mr. Reynolds was standing on the porch with the screen door open. The house paint of the small one story house was blue I think. Almost directly across from the house stood, and still stands, the war memorial in the Otterbein College cemetery. Mr. Reynolds was like one of those granite stones that lined north to south across that cemetery. As I grew up I learned more about slavery as a matter of course. I mainly remember the event because I thought that here was a man who had witnessed the Civil War. That the war had not been that long a time before, since I could shake his hand in the present, which would have been 1947.

I had shaken hands with history. At five I had not thought much about that before, but I had an early understanding of it, because of the cemetery where as a child I toyed with my imagination while walking, running, or sitting among those stones. I understood the last names of some of those people on the stones because I had already met some of their living children or grandchildren. The concept of generations was something inherently important to me, and still is. The human generations is something I want to remember when I am dead and partially buried in that same cemetery. That is, if one consciously survives death. I think it is entirely possible because the human spirit and mind are very powerful and if anything can survive death they just might. If there is nothing after death, that’s all right too. Whatever is the natural inclination of the spirit and mind has something to do with it. Perhaps we inwardly fear death enough that we just survive it. That would be funny. If G---D exists, I feel SheanHe has a sense of humor. The universe is full of little jokes, at least to me it is.

Strangely enough, I awoke in the middle of the night [the 19^th] with a flash of memory of old Mr. Reynolds’ face. He had brightness within his tired eyes, short gray curly hair, and a warm, kind smile for a little one like me. “

**

         So, there you have it, boy. The Westerville mind: the Boy Scout oath/law and Apostle’s Creed; the Westerville soul: being play soldier tortured; and the Westerville heart: meeting and shaking hands with old Mr. Press Reynolds. They’ll be with you through your dying day, boy. How’s that?

         I assume there is a kind of equality in terms of these events affect/effect on my life. I would not have thought or realized this. It is interesting to think on how you measured these ‘impacts’ on my life, as I do not see these incidents as fiction in any way. How can matters of the heartansoulanmind be measured, even in a fiction how can this be done?

         Gives you something to consider, old man. Post. – Amorella.

** **

         You were watching the nightly news on NBC with Brian Williams and saw the many photos of tornados and destruction in the South yesterday. You were surprised to feel the nerve reactions to the scenes as you and Carol were personal witnesses to the F5 Sayler Park tornado in 1974. You watched it a few blocks west of the main Cincinnati library as it drove northwest towards I-75. It is the largest you ever witnessed. The sirens were on from four-thirty in the afternoon until about three o’clock the next morning. You were living in a Montgomery Road apartment in south Silverton area at the time (about three miles south of Kenwood). This same tornado leveled a major grocery store about five hundred yards from where you now live in Mason. Below is from Steve Horstmeyer's site. 

** **

"Sayler Park Tornado - April 3, 1974
The only tornado of 148 in the April 3-4, 1974 Super Outbreak to occur in 3 states
It touched down near Rising Sun, IN, moved to the NE, crossing Boone County, KY, then the Ohio River
into Ohio at Sayler Park.

The Sayler Park tornado was the most photographed of all the 148 in the Super Outbreak and Professor
T. Fujita of the University of Chicago used home movies (remember this is before the advent of home video
systems) and determined that the UPWARD wind velocities exceeded 160 mph while the HORIZONTAL wind
velocities reached 178 mph.

Fujita-Pearson Scale - F5

Path Length - on the ground 21 miles for 23 minutes

Average Speed - 54.8 mph

First Touch Down 5:28 PM - Lift-Off 5:51 PM

Note: I [Steve H.] witnessed this tornado from an overpass on I-275 between Milford, OH and Loveland, OH. The funnel at cloud base never dissipated even after the "rope stage". It touched down again briefly in Montgomery, OH, then in the Mason, OH area. This is listed as tornadoes 43, 44 and 45 of the Super Outbreak of 1974."

The above material is taken from www.shorstmeyer.com/tornadoes/1974.html

Steve Horstmeyer is still a meteorologist covering the Cincinnati area.

** **

         I am continually surprised at how this storm has effected us over the years. The sirens go off and Carol and I are in the basement, no questions asked. Never will we forget that night. – rho

         One of several life changing events. In this case the change was psychological. You have tremendous respect for the power of nature. Everyone has life changing events, some are not consciously remembered and in some cases they are partially imaginary. The world is full of such people. You asked how can such things be measured on a heartansoulanmind scale. You ask the wrong question. All for tonight. Post. – Amorella. 

Notes - Signature / No Proof / eMail Address / Westerville incident

Late morning. Chores early on. And, you woke up earlier this morning because a conclusion popped into your head that did not arrive on time last night.i

         Of course people call it a thunderstorm because you can hear the thunder from a long way off even though you didn’t see the lightning. This kind of revelation allows me to feel quite foolish in the moment. This is a problem with my long experiment in writing down thoughts. Many of them are just as well not noted.

         You do not think I am real and am spending my time trying to legitimize myself as a personality. You feel I agree with you as a form of flattery and that my analogies are a way to string you along (just as this book four is). Do you see your  humanity reflected here? What if I were real, an alien or angelic? The same questions would arise. Human beings are built not to trust themselves too much for obvious and not so obvious reasons. Obama set forth his birth certificate this morning as proof, and you and Carol remarked that some will come back and say it is a forgery. Keep pressing the lie until people don’t know it from the truth. You see where you are? Your society? Your world? Most anything can be faked, even you orndorff. Me, however, you have no proof one way or the other. If you think, you will see this is a blessing from my perspective. More later, and more on your early Westerville events. – Amorella. (By the way, if my signature, which you sign, makes me more authentic, what does that make you?) Post.

        Amorella knows how to make a point. I had never thought about how it would be for an alien or even an angelic figure to be proved legitimate. Good grief, if people can manipulate ‘facts’ (and use the media accordingly) concerning the President of the United States they can do this about anyone.

         The problem then arises, without proof what does one turn to, belief? Another set of problems arise when you don’t even have to manipulate ‘facts’, a supposedly holy text will do. How much harm (enemies and/or martyrs) need we produce within our own species over such matters? I find this significantly troubling even within the fiction. Surely these are questions the shamans would have asked and come to some conclusions as the shamans can coexist with other cultural shamans.

         Yes, orndorff. They found a way early on. Post. Later, as you have errands to attend to. – Amorella. 

         You have been at Barnes and Noble after a quick outside lunch at Penn Station. Carol is working on the four couple’s September Maine trip to Arcadia National Park. You brought your April blog material up to date on the computer. One of your observations on the blog’s statistics is that people are reading individual daily postings that are scattered about on the calendar. You do not understand the reasoning.

         I wouldn’t have brought this up, but it is interesting. I check to see how many people have taken a look during the week in particular and what country (culture) these readers are from. Last week for instance I had one hit from South Africa, the first one as far as I can remember. Carol thinks half of the hits are accidental and she is most often right on such notations. I have my fifteen regular readers, or at least they signed up as such. I get few comments so that shows me something also. Some time in the last couple of months Doug suggest I ask for comments – I neither encourage or discourage them. It is a bit of fuss to do so on the blog, but if anyone has a comment sheorhe would like me to address, I’ll see what I can do (as long as the question or comment is relevant to my topics or the books themselves). For now, let me know if you have a question. Please give me a legitimate email address. I will respond if Amorella agrees it is appropriate to do so. Actually, it may be Amorella that responds. Thank you.

My email address:

rhorndorff@gmail.com

      Richard is not usually up to trying new things. As this was Doug’s suggestion originally and not his own we’ll give it a try. Post. – Amorella. 

      Almost twenty-two hundred hours and you are thinking of Westerville and early life haunting events previously bestowed. Here is one that comes to mind, one that effected your soul.

         You were five and it was summer. You were playing on an empty lot on the north side of Plum Street, next door to where a local minister lived, at least that is how you remember it. It was a sunny afternoon when older boy came by, threw you to the ground and held you on your back while a friend of his tied your ankles and wrists to tent stakes they quickly hammered into the ground. They talked to you like you were a prisoner of war while they rigged up a triangle of wood above you and placed a string on your wrist and up over the meeting of the three sticks about a yardstick high. Then they tied an open knife to the cord and dangled it just below the top of the triangle of sticks and told you that if you moved the knife would fall, stick in your heart and you would die. Then they ran off laughing.

         I lay there bewildered. I don’t remember who the boys were only that they were older and at first I thought they were playing soldier or war, but when they put the open knife in the cord above me and tied the other end of the cord to my right wrist I was afraid to move, at least at first. Then after some time I rolled to the right or the left quickly thinking that if the blade did stick in me it might  not be fatal. I jerked the cord too hard and the blade did fall but it glanced off my shirt. I don’t think it would have actually stuck because it didn’t fall as fast as I thought it would. I left the stuff in the yard and walked home to Grandma Orndorff’s on the corner of Knox and Walnut. I never told anyone as far as I can remember. I was embarrassed that I thought these boys were playing, and perhaps they were, but they made the trap pretty realistic. I guess I just let it go because I didn’t know how to talk about it, after all, they might have just been playing, as we all did. Playing soldier was a big thing for a boy after the war. I don’t know how this affected or effected my soul though. I knew what being dead was because the cemetery was my playground. I wasn’t afraid of dying, I was afraid that being stuck with a small hunting knife would hurt. The idea of being hurt was worst than having my heart stop. That’s the way I remember it.

         You looked at death in a new way through this experience. You looked at the possibility of your own death and it reminded you of how everyone had said that they thought you would die within a week after being born. And, you made a connection, that this was twice you could have died and you hadn’t even started the first grade yet. Then you let it go consciously.

         I just now happened to think, this is about the time I developed my imaginary friendship with Aunt Jemima on the pancake box. I wonder if there was a connection? Never thought about that before. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. Perhaps I just don’t remember the truth of those moments, that I just made up stories about them. That would be a lot like me to do such a thing back then. The cords that tied my wrists and ankles were real though, so were the posts they were tied to and the sticks with the knife hanging down. It was a real incident.  - rho

         Enough for tonight. Post. – Amorella 

Notes - Environment / the bed below the river bed /

Mid-morning. Chores, bath, breakfast, paper and kitchen police. Carol is readying for a luncheon at eleven-thirty. You want to mow the grass but it is too wet presently.

         Lunch of three stalks of celery painted inside with peanut butter and a diet drink while watching last night’s “Event”. You saw a slip up in logic in the plot which is bothersome to you, perhaps two slip-ups when last week’s show was so good.

         The Vice President had confessed secretly, why wasn’t it brought out for debate, why work with only present evidence? People could not have died of the 1918 flu so quickly. Nor would they today as implied. Perhaps I am missing something, perhaps not, but the series is weakened for me – I’ll have to wait until the next episode (which is obviously the point). This series has had some good surprises and has a forward march to it. Here I am being critical of something already put together unlike book four.

         Carol said she was going to the Polo Restaurant, which we have never eaten at – about the only thing left of the real polo field that was in the area before the shopping area itself. It rains just enough to keep the grass wet and it is supposed to keep raining until Friday which will make this one of the wettest Aprils on record in Cincinnati. I think I need a nap.

         You discovered a 12 January 2011 BBC science article on intelligence and environment and this is an area being discussed in this chapter:

 “Is there a genius in all of us?”

. . . They now know that genes interact with their surroundings, getting turned on and off all the time. In effect, the same genes have different effects depending on who they are talking to. . . .

"There are no genetic factors that can be studied independently of the environment," says Michael Meaney, a professor at McGill University in Canada." And there are no environmental factors that function independently of the genome. [A trait] emerges only from the interaction of gene and environment."

This means that everything about us - our personalities, our intelligence, our abilities - are actually determined by the lives we lead. The very notion of "innate" no longer holds together.

"In each case the individual animal starts its life with the capacity to develop in a number of distinctly different ways," says Patrick Bateson, a biologist at Cambridge University.

"Like a jukebox, the individual has the potential to play a number of different developmental tunes. The particular developmental tune it does play is selected by [the environment] in which the individual is growing up."

From: bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12140064

** **

This shows more evidence that our environment (and our reaction to it) shapes us perhaps more than our genes. This certainly lessens our sense of free will independence. This applies to the Living. What about the Dead – do they have more or less of a sense of Free Will than we do?

         Carol arrived home, enjoyed her lunch and company. You wonder about Free Will – we need to finish those three important aspects of your Westerville environment. Post. – Amorella.

          You had a nap then mowed the yard and helped Carol rake the consequences. Both tired, you ate at Panera, came home, watched the national news and last week’s “Bones” which neither of you enjoyed. Heading to bed within the next half hour as it is now dusk. Post. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow so you will be rested and have the time. Later, dude. – Amorella.

         I have to say I agree. I mowed without help and hurriedly because I was interrupted by showers several times. Lots of grass clogged and was injected in cow paddy sized heaps which took time to rake and dispose of. At least it is done before this next set of real rains begin later tonight. . . . Accuweather says two to three inches of rain before tomorrow night – several thundershowers in the process.

         I wonder, why is it people say  “thundershowers” and not “showers with lightning”? People say “thunder and lightning” rather than “lightning and thunder” which is much more logical and just as easy to say, is it not?

         I find these seemingly little things quite disturbing. I am not being unreasonable in questioning such aspects of our linguistic nature. I am sure our grammatical nature changes our processes of understanding our underlying environment. I am sure this is going to affect the way the Dead from various ancient cultures consider one another.

         You forget they have been dead for a time. They don’t speak English and “thunder and lightning” or “lightning and thunder” do not apply. These thoughts are unimportant in the story even if there may be a legitimate point to them. Besides, the shamans have already consider far more important problems, real problems, when the Dead rise together beside and over the River Styx. What about the underbelly of the Styx – the bed below the bed of the river? The importance of depth lies near the bed of the river, not below it. How is your analogy going to take into account what holds the analogy in the first place? Now there is something to think about, boy, don’t you think?  Post. Amorella.

         I want to have these analogies in order and in my head before we go further. This  bringing together of the Dead for this Rebellion has to make sense.

         We agree, orndorff. Now, post. – Amorella.

         I feel you are more legitimate when you sign your name.

       Really. 

Notes - Anger / Honest

I woke up thinking – I don’t agree with you that the Apostle’s Creed was so important. Being a Boy Scout was because ethics are involved with the Boy Scout oath. I probably confused ‘Creed’ with ‘oath’ and diagonalized my thinking and opinion. I was not being all that mature, I was mostly angry because I was in a situation I did not want to be in. That’s much more like my character.

**

Scout Oath

On my honor, I will do my best; 
To do my duty to God and my country;
 To obey the Scout Law;
 To help other people at all times;
 To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.

Scout Law

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. The original version by Lord Baden-Powell had only 10 points to the Scout Law (the last two of the BSA version were added when the BSA was founded).

From Wikipedia

**

         Wow. I haven’t seen these for years. Talk about ethics. I don’t always do my best. Duty to God and country meant to obey God and obey the laws. I was/am not a good Boy Scout. I’m sure I was more conflicted with this oath and law. Morally straight would have involved avoiding the seven deadly sins completely.

         No, I didn’t realize the differences between being a good Boy Scout and being human. That was the conflict. I could never equal a good scout because I took these words literally. The ‘Creed’ just added to the misery and my lack of ability to be good. No one else seemed to have this conflict, I do remember that.

         Everyone grew up with ethical conflicts of one kind or another. You grow up though and forget all about it. Indifference. How else to deal with it. Shoot, I forgot the oath and the law. The world is not made for such oaths and laws. Nature certainly doesn’t follow them.

         Therein lies a greater conflict, old man. One that becomes a part of what you are – still angry. Post. – Amorella.  

         Safely home before twenty-three hundred hours. Only thing forgot was Carol’s book and my phone. We’ll survive.     

         You added “amen” after survive. I took it off as inappropriate. Tomorrow, dude. – Amorella. 

          I didn't mean it literally. 

          You really did not mean it at all, boy. It was just for a left over flavor or flare. Got to keep you honest, my man. - Amorella. 

Notes - Busy-ness / Book / Reflection

Yesterday

         Late Saturday afternoon. Late breakfast at First Watch, and calzones for supper last night at Pizzazz, a couple blocks southeast at the south corner of the Jesuit’s John Carroll University brick buildings campus. Kim, Paul and Carol are working on Easter dinner within the hour.

         You have spent part of the day reading the Shakespeare book and as you were, earlier, you received a note from Jim Powers on a Wikipedia article on the anti-Stratfordians.

Today

         Up for a Sunday breakfast of pancakes (with ripe banana rather than egg), maple syrup and bacon. Very good from your perspective. Carol is getting ready, meeting Mary Lou for lunch and Aunt Patsy and Uncle Ernie for supper, then you are returning to babysit again tomorrow as Owen, though better, is not up to par. Home on Tuesday.

         It is going to be busier than I expected. I am slower on patience than I used to be. I am up to page 213 in the Shakespeare book though – very interesting. Easy to relate to as a lot of literary reference and I am seeing the writer as a whole personality rather than a writer of individual works. Good stuff.

         Post. Enjoy the day with relatives. – Amorella. 

         As you are in the Westerville area Carol is shopping with Mary Lou and you are presently sitting outside MCL Cafeteria in the Westerville Shopping Plaza on the south side – not too far from the Taco Bell where you and Bob used to meet for lunch both in fiction and in reality.

         Westerville, Ohio is one of my favorite haunts and I’m not even dead yet. I have lots of memories of friends, events, and even bursts of childhood imagination still floating about from time to time – some of which is already scattered about the blog. I am trying to conjure up the three most important events that ever I witnessed in town and can’t come up with a one. Not good news, that is.  

         You want ‘sacred’ reflections first, those that composed your earliest sense of self identity. I’ll fill you in from what struck your heartansoul the earliest – in those days you hardly had a mind. Let’s go with the mind first, then the first two to strike your heartansoul (at least from my interior perspective). Copy this from the 25 August 2009 posting:

“. . . I, Amorella, do see this man from the inside. He assumes he has a heart and soul or some equivalent because this is what he was taught as a youngster. He grew up Presbyterian through no fault of his own, and twelve-year old Richard had problems thinking through the Apostle’s Creed when he joined the church. He has been questioning his world ever since. It is no wonder he considers himself an agnostic when it comes to any religion as it is portrayed today.”

** **        

         This is pretty blunt, Amorella, and on Easter too. Not a good sign.

         This is the first time you ‘thought’ and reacted to an oath you gave to join the church even though deep down you did not believe the oath you gave “Under God” in church. You felt you were either lying to God or lying to yourself but the circumstances were such you couldn’t think of a way to wiggle out of the situation. Just yesterday you mentioned this to Kay Hall a twin you were ‘in love with’ at the time. She and her sister Ann were in that same Bible class. Kay said she didn’t remember you were in the class, so obviously you didn’t raise a ruckus with the minister publically.

         I probably didn’t say anything other than ask how Jesus went to Hell and rose from that place. Who witnessed this so that an oath could be made?

         Before this incident you were mostly mindless, at least as far as depth is concerned. This was an ethical question of a mature adult not a twelve year old. It affected not only your mind but also your heartansoul, still does. – Amorella.

         You had a good time chatting with family members not always seen. Good visit, especially with Aunt Patsy and Uncle Ernie. You are back in Cleveland before twenty-two hundred hours. I’ll let you think on the other two early Westerville events that affect/effect you even today. People are built from such things and many times they have no idea how they came to be who they think they are. Tomorrow, then. Post. – Amorella.