Inner Space

The starry, starry nights are spectacular in Landers.  It is impossible to stare at these stars for any length of time without becoming an amateur philosopher.  What does all that spectacle up there mean to me?  With a sense of wonder, we humans have been staring at the stars for 200 million years but it was only 600 years ago that we began to understand the workings of the stars when Nicholas Copernicus and Issac Newton ushered us into what has been called the scientific revolution.  The sun centered universe made the changing heavens predictable but the new culture resulting from this revolution wrongly assumes that science and the philosophers have all the answers.  These thinkers, at least most of them, would not make such an arrogant claim but they have inadvertently exerted undue influence upon us, influence that has driven us further from valuing our spiritual center.

    

As we look heavenward, outer space just keeps getting bigger and bigger while we feel smaller and more insignificant.  Outer space is composed mostly of nothingness but with an untold number of evolving rock systems sprinkled throughout the immeasurable blackness.  A frontier for man to explore, maybe, but despite our growing knowledge of the heavens our meaning among the stars has failed to be illuminated.  In fact, our looking up into the stars has made our place among the galaxies seem more and more tenuous with each new discovery.  Our ever-expanding insignificance has filtered down to our individual lives where we struggle with the enormity of our situation beneath the stars.  Could it be that inner space, the inner space of each individual human being, is the frontier that we most need to explore?  Could it be that staring into the stars is but one of those many earthly distractions we use to avoid exploring our inner space?

2500 years ago, Socrates was a stone mason and a courageous warrior for Greece who dared to enter inner space at around fifty years of age.  This experience propelled him to give the remainder of his years telling about inner space by questioning the accepted wisdom of outer space.  The Greek community of his birth was his mission field and daily he entered the markets and town square to engage the people in the wisdom of the ages, all the while denying that he was any smarter than anyone else.  He wrote no books, intellectual papers and sought no credentials or personal authority.  Avoiding the distractions of power, position and to a degree family, Socrates became a messenger for the wisdom of inner space.

At first the people flocked to his message and conversational methods but well into his eighties, the people turned on him.  What we hear most about Socrates today is that he committed suicide by drinking hemlock and therefore he died a failure. The truth be told, he was put on trial for upsetting the outer space status quo and given a death sentence by his own community.  Rather than run, which he could have done, Socrates drank the poison because that was the decision of his people.  Plato, the best student of Socrates, shared the wisdom of Socrates in his writings but scholarship is divided on how much of his book, the “Republic”, was his own.  In any event, together these two thinkers are credited with founding western philosophy.  Plato, however, cared little for the Socratic mission of communicating the inner space trek.  He did succeed, inadvertently, in burying the memory of Socrates in an ocean of philosophical group think. The inner space mission of the man, Socrates, was no more.

As did Socrates, just a few of us in every era have been roaming the deserts and crawling into caves to block out the distractions of our daily lives in order to find the wisdom of inner space.  They have been called hermits, prophets, monks, recluses and the like, their craziness was and is an attempt to get a glimpse at the inner stars.  These folks have emerged time and again to communicate to us the reality of inner space with marginal success for we, you and I, are prone to disrespect the inner space trek because it can only be entered with great personal discomfort.  Sadly, those courageous voices telling of inner space have been quickly drowned out and replaced by a group think that dilutes their message.  Modern philosophy, science and our many religions are the predominate group thinks that have spoiled the adventure of the few who advocate for the inner trek.  We, the people, have tried our best to bury the truth of inner space by burying the few.

 

Two thousand years ago Jesus, a mongrel human being like the rest of us, walked out of the desert and told the people about the kingdom of God.  The Jesus message was not for the religious folk who prized power and position above the wisdom of inner space.  The message was and is for those desperate human beings like you and I who seek spiritual survival amid conflict, failure, social disorder and daily drama.  After all, are not all these things our life realities, what else is there?  Jesus communicated to the people the “else” of life, the inner stars of life that can be had in the kingdom of God.  The people flocked to hear about the kingdom and the invitation to enter extended to all we interested unlovely human beings.  But as the people became aware that the kingdom message was not intended by God to relieve their immediate suffering and circumstance, they turned on Jesus just as they did with Socrates.

Jesus said our immediate circumstances are intended to drive us toward the inner stars and there, in inner space, we will find relief, reward, safety, nourishment and eternal peace.  Nowhere does Jesus promise everything we want in this world, he promises only that the inner trek will bring the reality we were born to experience and most need.  Plato gives us an illustration or parable of the meaning of reality, an illustration he probably got from Socrates.  In the parable of the cave, we humans are chained to the floor of the cave with our backs to the only light source, from our immobile position facing a blank cave wall, all that we can understand of the light is our own shadows against the cave wall.  The shadows are real but are they less than full reality?  Could this world be duping us into believing that we are only shadows?  Could this world be duping us into believing we are to be satisfied with the shadows of life, the survival priorities, friends, entertainment, family, race, religion, science or philosophy?  The few would say no way.

Jesus said, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mathew 6: 31-33, TNIV).  Some of us prefer translating the Greek word for righteousness in this context "God centered reality".

Jesus was not talking about a religious rightness dictated by top down dogma but the God centered reality of inner space, admittedly more difficult to define clearly.  The reality of inner space is the place we are all called to travel as humans but the place we avoid at all costs.  And then, upon entering inner space, you and I will be increasingly less bound by the shadows of life and find for ourselves what it means to be wholly human.

    

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

  

Let's Dance!

This Landers resident is old school.  Be it music, movies, television, baseball or politics, the modern way seems divorced from reason and community.  This attitude places me in conflict with modernism, a conflict I try to ignore but it has a way of trying to force change upon we old school folk.  Music is a case in point.  In the 60’s one fun dance craze after another lite a fire.  One such craze was the mashed potatoes with ridiculous dance moves I never learned.  Fifty years later Dee Dee Sharp and Sister Act turned this tune into a craze for the gravy in life.  The gimme, gimme, gimme lyrics are now about getting all you can regardless of the cost to your own future and the future of others.

   

The valid women’s movement of fifty years ago similarly has degenerated into a gimme cubbyhole.  Today, the women’s movement is telling us that women are all about the right of the individual to dispose of any new life in the womb.  Please leave God out of the discussion or the legal abdication of the last fifty years, some of us believe that such an action is a sin against ourselves as human beings.  Which one of us has the right to determine who should live and who should die?  Which one of us is qualified to make that scary judgement?  Is an unintended pregnancy an automatic permission slip?  Forrest Gump lived by the wisdom of his mother, “life is like a box of chocolates', you never know what your going to get”.  None of us knows how our children will cope with life but it would seem that picking and choosing before birth is an animal decision that should be reserved for the farm yard.

The progressive left has largely captured the Women’s Movement because these political radicals value the movement only as another gimme voter block they can manipulate to advance their un-American agenda.  There are no rules or laws that the radical left respects, no agreed upon outcome to be honored, they respect only brute political power that translates into sneaky power over all the people.  The radicals within the Women’s Movement enforce this activism by bulling and threatening all who dissent from within and outside their ranks.  They would like to kill to advance their cause but whom they can’t kill, they will punish with slander and threats against family and careers.

The radical left has given the Women’s Movement a bad name, spoiling their proud history.  The degrading of the movement is best exposed by their T shirt advertising, which ought to read, if the truth be told, “Nasty Girls”.   They are not women but nasty girls.  This is the sad news of the Women’s Movement but some of us believe that women are not a monolith, while the radicals are screaming on the corner, those women who want a reasoned approach to the life decision have been intimidated into silence.  Some women would like to stand for greater opportunity for themselves and their children but feel no need to trash their birthright.  This would be the good news about the Women’s Movement that the radicals are desperate to hide.

A pregnancy is an opportunity for both men and women to set their personal agenda on the back burner and contribute to the future of family, even our greater family.  Old school, you bet!  Is the measure of a woman all about the right to destroy life?  Are women one issue thinkers as the girls on the corner want us to believe?  Stay tuned Yucca Valley, we shall find out soon?

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA      

Who are the Haters?

Mr. Bost, thank you for your response of July 13 to my guest box, “Lest We Forget”.  Your argument sounds rational but your history is scrambled, to say the least.  This may play with the under 40 crowd that has been educated by our failed educational system, but this old fart knows better.  Take the Civil War, I ask you, who were the haters, Abraham Lincoln, those Americans who died at Gettysburg?  My American history says that there are times in the life of men, when it becomes crystal clear that freedom for all is worth my dying.   Abe stood up among his fellow Americans, calling them and us to protect the freedom of all Americans, including those trapped in slavery and racial hatred.  It is a sorry truth that we won’t see this truth in our modern progressive history textbooks.  Can you handle the truth?

True freedom for all the people is worth the reality and finality of death for the few who are called.  Jesus is probably the best example.  Regardless of whatever else men may say about him, at least, he died to protest the inhumanity of men who rule over us, top down, for any reason, religious or political or sometimes both.

 

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

We can learn from the coyotes...

News flash!  There are coyotes residing in Landers.  The longtime residents of our community are not surprised by this news or the squealing in the night darkness, out there among the creosote bushes.  As the sun comes up the coyotes run for their hiding places and the security they crave.  Most coyotes dart away at the sight of we humans, they run scared, moving as fast as the jackrabbits.  Coyotes do not bother anyone for they are coyotes who fed off the scraps left by others.  Generally, this resident has very little respect for coyotes.  Then there is Donald.

This coyote is worthy of a name.  Donald is a coyote who is different.  Donald struts down the middle of the cart paths we call roads, he does so in broad daylight.  His strut is slow and deliberate, it could even be called a confident swagger telling us all that he is in charge.  Constantly looking this way and that, Donald runs off from no one, not even we humans, he only struts about his business.  Donald is to be respected and he earns it every day as the leader of the pack.

   

This resident of Landers is not a Donald for I am prone to hide among the bushes but that dog has my respect.  Would that the voters of America would learn to live out the Donald that resides in all of us.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

Lest We Forget

Since rejecting and being rejected by the church world, this believer has missed only the great hymns of the faith.  Hymns like, “Lead me to Calvary”, remain in my bones.  Published a hundred years ago, the chorus cries out, “Lest I forget Gethsemane, Lest I forget Thine agony, Lest I forget thy love for me. Lead me to Calvary.”  We humans are best at forgetting for our selective memories fade so quickly.  The hill upon which Jesus was crucified was a dark unjust place and we, as humans, are prone to try and put such experiences behind us.  The author, Jennie Evelyn Hussey (1874-1958), was an invalid from rheumatism who was forced by her pain to focus inward finding a greater vulnerability, forgetting.  Out of her suffering came the words that will live forever even if they are ignored by today's “pop” religion.

Oh yes, I forgot, this is written for a political opinion page but are not politics and faith close kissing cousins?  Do both not involve trusting into the future?  The question is who do you trust, something greater than ourselves or do we trust government (politics)?  Or, quite possibly, is there a workable partnership?  Most of the framers of the American Constitution believed in such a partnership and their unique experiment in governance sought to give the people control of their own destiny.  It proved to be a success for 250 years despite constant pressure from the top down advocates.  In the last 25 years, we the people have progressively lost any hope of remaining that unique system and the bottom up governance that our forefathers envisioned, how soon we forget our heritage.

The killers of this heritage are the top down progressives who seek to divide and conquer America.  The progressive label has been adopted by such folk because it is less threatening than the labels of the past and present, labels like aristocracies, dictatorships, communism and socialism.  All these forms of governance consider the destiny of the people theirs to control top down.  Even the term democracy can be misleading, most governments like to use the term but the reality is the same old.  Holding an election does not make a democracy, the people who vote must be given a real choice.  The presidential election of 2016 was the first time we the people were given a real choice in decades and the people spoke loudly.  In electing Donald J. Trump, the people remembered who we are.

The praise and gratitude given to Mr. Trump will never be enough but our democracy is not saved with one election, the Trump Presidency faces dangers within and without.  The push back from the without forces, the progressive left, is obvious, they are fighting Mr. Trump viciously with every political trick in the book.  Some of us are bored with their antics but the threat from within the Trump camp is subtler, it is the perceived threat of our moneyed aristocracy.  The rich folk of American have been the only people to benefit from the stock market explosion under Obama and Trump as zero interest rates have propped up the market.  Will this sliver of Americans control Washington to enhance their portfolios?  Lest we forget the economic debacle of 2008, only eight years ago, the people must be vigilant.

Money is not a party issue, the power it brings separated the interests of the people from their elected political leaders of both parties.  It is why nothing gets done for us, only harm.  The Wall Street tycoons and politicians inflicted great pain on the average American in 2008.  No one has gone to jail; the Democrats did not pay a price for their push to recklessly extend credit.  Wall Street was fined pocket change and now it appears that they could be running the country.  The key word is “appears”.

We the people who elected Mr. Trump believe that he and his administration are for the little guy but a healthy skepticism is warranted.  The people have not forgotten.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca       

Beware of the Dark Side

The best time of day in Landers is the early morning hours in the cool of the day when the summertime flies are still asleep.  It has become my retirement ritual to smoke a morning cigar and follow our national happenings on Fox and Friends.  This ritual has inspired me to write opinions about the national political debate on the opinion page of our local newspaper.  None of my opinions are really welcomed by the paper but to their credit, most are printed.  You see, I was before the election and am to this very day an avid Trump supporter who is, in my opinion, the greatest American hero of my lifetime.  His election by the people has given me great joy and a renewed hope that my country will return to being the land of the truly free.

Former President Obama has taken up residence in the Dark House of Washington to direct radical left politics.  I am sure our paper will call this term racist but it is really about morality, about honesty, about truth and fairness.  The term, Dark House, reflects the divide between good and evil, between the oppression of government and the interests of the people, it is the divide between Darth Vader and Han Solo in the Star Wars saga.  The dark side navigates the national interest by protecting those who are complicit with the dark agenda and punishing those who stand with the people of America.  This dark side small ball reduces the political discourse to hate mongering when the function of our government should be to protect and facilitate people opportunities.

The dark side ignores our laws, deceives and condones violence against Americans as necessary to further the dark agenda.  Our political system, our justice system, even the medical community are only tools to punish all who may dissent.  Our court system is about making political statements not the law of our land.  The Internal Revenue Service is about making political statements not administering the collection of taxes in a just manner.  Our intelligence services are about making political statements not protecting the security of the people.  Our foreign services before Trump have been about making political statements here at home and not making our world safer.

The dark side has only one creditable issue that must be addressed by our current Republican politicians.  Politicians of the left rightly disparage the wealth gap in America but wrongly champion the redistribution of wealth as the solution.  The so-called Affordable Care Act is not really about the health of the people but about further depleting the wealth of the middle class.  Redistribution from on high is a perversion of our world as it exists. Our world is a competitive place.  In biological terms, our world moves according to the survival of the fittest.  In economic terms, our world moves according to the effort personally expended to build a future for you and yours.  Effort does not always bring the results we crave but effort always results in a more fulfilled life.  America has always been about hard work and the pride it brings to the individual.

Instead of the middle class carrying the burden of healthcare for the poor and those with pre-existing conditions, let's be fair, our hard-working politicians should tax stock market transactions.  A $1.00 healthcare tax per transaction would bring $30 billion a month to the crisis.  This seems only fair but the swamp will resist.  Politicians of both parties, including Barack Obama, are in debt to the special interests of the few.

   

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Our Human Dilemma

We humans are either a byproduct of nothingness or our lives are about something else.  This is the human dilemma that is beyond empirical proof.  Those of us who have accepted the nothingness of this present life form are either very courageous or very stupid.  The nothingness life is simple, get all you can while you can and at the same time console your moral sensibilities with a few good deeds.  The nothingness life may be enough for some of us but what if life is ultimately about the something else?  Are we not looking over our shoulders, wondering and hoping that there just may be something more to it all?  Though we hope, most times the something or someone else seems to be a foggy vapor, our future vision clouded by a multitude of conflicting interests.

When our earthly aspirations come up short, when our expectations are crushed, when we prove to be our own worst enemy, even when we stubble onto a sweet spot in life, changing circumstances will return us to the dilemma of meaninglessness. Despite the progress of modern man to pull back the celestial curtain, we humans stuff our dilemma into a comfort coping cubbyhole, a cubbyhole with a prescribed group think, be it money, success, relationships, religion, politics, good works, the many varieties of excess or an approved ancient text.  Through history we have devised almost as many cubbyholes as there are those of us willing to think on these things.  Philosophers, theologians, writers, scholars and the scientific communities have debated and written a plethora of volumes, each claiming to have a semblance of understanding. 

Each of these thinkers may have something to say to us but none has a verifiable solution for our dilemma of meaning.  To the atheist we could ask, how does it feel to be a byproduct of nothingness?  To the agnostic, we could ask, where did your remote creative force go?  To those of us with a religious definition of the someone else, we could ask, where is your evidence except ultimate faith?  To those of us who champion an inherent human spiritual goodness, we could ask, why is this dynamic a vestigial appendage in so much of humankind?  There is no widely accepted fix for the dilemma of meaning and most of the world lives without the hope for a meaningful hereafter.  When it is our turn to die, what will each of us discover to be the eternal fix, if anything?

This is not an exclusively religious question but a universal human question we all confront, either directly or passively.  As young people, we take our chances but sooner or later the dilemma of meaning looms larger and larger.  The nothingness dilemma is ours to take to the grave while we search for answers in this life.  All we humans have this searching imperative, we want to know, all of us, regardless of age, sex, race, religion or national origin.  Will we experience illumination or black nothingness?  Will we experience a Utopian bliss or eternal hell fire?  Do we get to choose?  What are the qualifications for eternity?  Are there qualifications? 

The cubbyhole voices are out there advocating for their own understanding of what life is about but who shall we trust into the grave?  Where is the truth?  Who knows the truth?  Are we merely to be satisfied with making a small contribution to the flow of humanity?  These are just a few of the questions that bug some of us and to those of us who are profoundly sure of the future, cubbyholes and all, we envy you.

G.Goslaw