What’s Going On 03

It turns out the symptoms exhibited by my tower system point to a simple hard drive failure, after all. I’m waiting until I can afford to replace it and try again. I’ll probably try to run FreeBSD on it; I’ve used that for general desktop operations in the past, and it’s quick to run it as a server, as well. It’s a little more work to set things up manually, but it should work well enough. So if you feel the urge to donate a little money or a hard drive (500GB to 1TB, preferably 7200RPM SATA drive), now is a good time.

There’s a person using the name “Steven” who likes to comment on the Kiln blog from time to time. He posted recently and I can’t do anything about it. Not only is the blog admin function still broken, but I can’t fix the blog software directly. Steven also posts from random IP addresses and leaves no valid email address, so I can’t even tell him what’s up. He’s notorious for not getting the full context by actually reading here at all, it seems. His comments betray a cerebral fixation and he doesn’t seem to get the symbolism of parables or the mysticism angle at all.

Truth be told, I sometimes wonder if he actually has some kind of unspoken agenda. Maybe not in the sense of trolling for the sheer fun of destroying, but specifically targeting this mission itself. The effect of his comments seeks to tear down just about everything I’ve been doing here. I’m not bothered by it. One thing about people asking questions that fall into the gaps in my teaching is that it prompts me to toss it against my heart-mind; I get answers my brain didn’t previously know. That’s the true advantage of drawing your awareness up into your heart and away from the brain: The logic is already there, fully formed by faith. It’s not a question of building an intellectual logical system, but seeking the logic of God’s moral character.

Steven seems unable to grasp that I’m not making this up from my own intellectual resources. If that were the case, I’d be one of the most bizarre keyboard commandos chasing every conspiracy theory out there. I’d buy lots of guns and ammo and mortgage my soul for all the latest in prepper gear. I’d be living in some travel trailer or motor home and constantly moving. That’s what my brain would come up with on its own. Instead, I live by the heart-mind. Or if you prefer, I walk by the voices I hear from somewhere in the back of my head. I tend to believe it’s One Voice coming from my heart-mind, and it reflects the heart of my God.

Either way, I cannot be mainstream because I simply cannot trust the system any more. Long before I started this blog, the system threw me under the bus while I was still a very loyal servant. Once I was chewed up and spat out on the ground, I knew I had to find another way to live or crawl off and die. I was torn between several contradictory tendencies for quite some time. Those days are long gone, but you can catch a hint of it from the early years on this blog. The eight-plus years of archived posts here together illustrate someone coming to terms with the heart as a superior faculty to the mind.

I may well qualify as bonkers by most peoples’ definition, but that started when I knew the system was my enemy. Madness or not, I stand in the full commitment to that One Voice in my soul and subject my intellect to whatever that Voice says.

And that voice says I need to take another ride today. It’s already warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt outside, but I have to take care of the laundry first. You know how it is with us old retired guys: A house-husband’s work is never done. I’ll get my ride later; I need to commune with some of my tree friends, part of the “standing people” as the Native Americans call them. That’s what I miss the most when I can’t get outside for whatever reason.

Update: Turns out Steven is not so difficult as I had first thought. I want to note that I regret the harshness of my description above, but I leave it so that this all makes sense.