Wednesday, December 20, 2017

JOB HUNTING: ECCENTRIC DRAGON SLAYERS NEED NOT APPLY

In Plight of the Cultural Mutant I did my best to lay out the absurdities of 25-odd years of my striving for some sort of identifiable professional career. All of my attempts proved to be fruitless. That is, they did not “gather food.” In retrospect, it was almost hysterically funny to look back at it—a true tragi-comedy.
 
My best years, my younger days (in which I felt the full hormonal vigor of testosterone coursing through my veins) have waned, or are waning. I lost the race; failed; won the booby prize in life. Now I am becoming an ancient, looking back wistfully at “wasted days and wasted nights.” But I won’t cry “sour grapes.” No way!
 
My quixotic naiveté was, in a sense, priceless, as I went about the world always sensing that I was on a mission. And I doubted seriously whether many out there could ever understand this man’s quest. My life, even to me, was more like “organized confusion.” That is, serendipity played a major role. It was life as a series of accidents, as I bumbled onto this or that road, idea, aspiration, endeavor.
 
I followed thread after thread, clue upon clue; all for naught, it seemed. But wait! Perhaps not. After all, wasn’t my failure, my “career identity disorder,” a “badge of honor” to proudly display before a world that was and remains hopelessly corrupt? I said so in my book. Wasn’t, therefore, my not-having-succeeded-in-this-corrupt-world a clear sign I had retained my moral compass; that I was “not of the body”—wherein the body was essentially “the Beast” (The System, comprised of Establishment and anti-Establishment)? Maybe so.
 
But I never used a compass, at least not overtly. (He who lives a life of “serendipitous synchronicities” never really cares for gadgets.) Rather, I relied on some sort of intuitive sensibility while charging at wind mill after wind mill. No, I was no Don Quixote. I was more like Quixote’s jackass—being ridden by an unruly consciousness—and my dulled lance was my own inborn incredulity about the true nature of the world.
 
How hilarious! It only took me over 50 years to begin to “see through it all”; to start getting acquainted with the true nature of the world around and within me. (But, as I said, by this time I am a bit more beat-up than I wish to be.)
 
Imagining dragons to slay isn’t all that profitable in the money-sense. It builds character, in a masochistic way. Still, you (the cultural mutant) are viewed as being more and more eccentric—or angry—for not giving up fighting that good fight, though what that “good fight” is, is anybody’s guess. It’s best left as a testament to the guy who penned it and made it a famous phrase—St. Paul.
 
No, I’ve just been a big galoot who idiotically “followed his bliss,” who got side-tracked for about a half-century by cultural Marxist infiltrators in the guise of…well, it’s best not to go there as I already (and colorfully) did so in my afore-mentioned book. Suffice it to say that I was blinded by the GLARE while being entranced by shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave.
 
Now, in my near-crumbling condition, I see the light of the real Sun. It is shining down and warming my face. And it makes me feel good again—not too unlike how I once felt in much younger days: suffused with optimism, light, and directed enthusiasm.   
 
This dragon slayer jackass continues-on in his plight, however, forever looking for that just-right-yet-elusive job. These days I apply for writing and editing jobs. But if I get any response at all from applications and resumes, what keeps bouncing back to me, subliminally, is this: you're too old, too weird (or as I put it, "Dragon slayers need not apply").
 
Maybe this little thought essay will win the day—land me that perfect-fit job—the job I have been working my way up to all of my life! HA! Don’t count on it, ya jackass!
 
Then again, “hope springs eternal.”
 
Surely, somewhere, there’s a like-minded weird task specialist that would appreciate where I’m coming from. I sort of found it once in Santa Fe, in the person of politico/writer/editor/Orthodox priest Jack Flynn, who hired me to write for him and even started a brand new newsletter to feature my writing. Too bad that was yet another temporary assignment in yet another wave of go-nowhere positions. But, not to wallow in bitterness and despondency over “what might have been…”
 
If, as I have stated on more than one occasion, I am doomed to live the scruffy life of a bluesman, then let it be. I hereby enthusiastically embrace my fate (while wishing I could do just a little bit better than that).
 
Yes, I brag sometimes that “I have worn many hats and walked in many worlds.” I like saying that about myself. I like putting that kind of spin onto my crazy life. What it really means is that I remain on a mission; yes, I cling tenaciously to my mission. After all, when I was a kid that was what I wanted to be: a missionary. Much later I even created an alter ego along those lines that I called Bro. Gumpus, O4B (the “Order of the 4 Bs”—Bewildered, Befuddled, Betwixt, and Between). Maybe my mission is to continue on as a bumbler-through-life, as a well-intentioned fellow doing good works, fighting the good fight.
 
Until I get gainfully re-employed (and NOT under-employed yet again) I will do my best to enjoy these days, creatively loafing my time away. I dream of a job/ a big job/ in an office/ with miles and miles of carpeting/ with windows and a view/ yeah/ a big view of the cityscape below/ and me/ doing important work/ that little-big-work I was born to do.
 
Some might say, “Dream on, jackass. Dream on…” But I say that I will forge on, doing what I do best, praying for a better me, in a better world, filled with people doing better things with themselves, in the true spirit of what it really means to be a human being.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

For we wrestle not...


For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 
Ephesians 6:12  
 
Forget the players on the worldly stage, those you see and hear: political people, people pushed into the limelight, people who entertain, people in the news who may have done this or that. Forget them all.
 
In fact, if you haven’t thrown away your TV yet you’re a masochist whose discernment is severely impaired. Even saturating your mind with info from internet sites via your computer or tablet or phone is ill-advised.
  
Think about it: is letting the world in to program you, as you satiate yourself with entertainment, the news, etc.is this what you really wish to do in your free time? Do you want to be “[a] merely well-informed man?” (As Alfred North Whitehead describes it, to be such a person makes you “the most useless bore on God’s earth.”)
By getting your daily fix of “news” aren’t you simply tapping into a framework of domestic and world “events” that are really an agenda that is set by “outside forces”? Aren’t you being programmed to accept or reject a viewto take a stance, pro or con; to fill your mind until it whiles away in a kind of way-of-all-flesh loop? Aren’t you falling for a con job? Think about it.
What matters is “spiritual warfare”wrestling against the unseen forces that are behind what is seen and heard: those “principalities” and “powers” and “rulers” of “darkness” and “spiritual wickedness in high places.”

But what is “spiritual”? What is “spirituality”? Most folks today tend to draw a blank or to point to religion in some manner to define “Spirit.” Is that because moderns identify overwhelmingly with the material world? With their bodies? With their existence as physical beings in a material universe?

It certainly does not help that religions have been infiltrated and horribly corrupted from within, viz., The Most Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (now the “Occult Renaissance Church of Rome,” as renamed by Catholic author and revisionist historian Michael Hoffman, and for good reason).

If one has already been “spiritually disabled” by modernity and the holy power of the Church has been blunted by its enemy infiltrators, how can one understand his or her spiritual nature? Where does one turn to commune with the Spirit of God? Is it enough to simply have faith? To love? To hope that one can effectively commune with the Godhead so that we can begin to grasp and know our spiritual selves? Can we then become “spiritual warriors”?

We can pray. We can stop the bombardment of interfering thoughts by taking time out to find that “stillpoint” every day. Yes, pray and yearn for God; for the grace of the Holy Ghost; for the sovereign union with-and-of the spiritual self. And if you are fortunate enough to find a real priest, take the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist regularly. In this way Spirit will re-awaken in you and you will soon possess the power of soul to battle principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, and spiritual wickedness in high places.