Tag Archives: philosophy

Good Jesus, Bad Jesus

What is the heart and soul of Christianity in America?

If you pay attention to most of the news related to Christianity, what you see is hatred and intolerance, militarism and fascism, a lockjawed embrace of ignorance, and a blind adherence to principles which seem to actually fly in the face of those presented by Christ himself.

Last week I was fortunate (blessed?) to have the opportunity to see the two extremes of Christian behavior, and while the first was disheartening, the second was wonderful.

First, the suck. Continue reading →

Nails

I don’t know the source of this tale, but it’s one I needed to read and it found its way to me.

Grandson, why are you so full of hateful words?

Grandmother, because I am angry and I feel like saying what I want and who cares anyway, they are just words!

Grandson, here is a box of nails and a hammer. Go and every time you abuse someone or tease or say other hurtful things hit a nail into the fence.

Grandmother, I have used all the nails in your box what now?

Grandson, every time you say something nice to someone you have spoken badly to or even apologise for your words take a nail out of the fence.

Grandmother, I am finished but it took a lot longer to take them out then to hit them all in.

Yes, Grandson, and you see all these holes left behind from the nails?

Grandmother, of course I can see them..why do you ask?

Grandson, every time you hurt someone with words or deeds you make a hole in their hearts and leave scars you can’t see… so even when you apologize or do good deeds later, you remove the nails but a scar or hole remains and takes a lot more time to heal…

Trying

Fuck Yoda.

We all know his words of wisdom, right?

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

That’s all well and good if you’re a super-monk toad-midget with a glowy sword, living in an imaginary swamp, created by a man who’s getting closer by the minute to exhausting every good idea he’ll ever have. But in real life, sometimes trying is all we’ve got.

No one is perfect. Not all actions, no matter how resolutely performed, will be successful. The nature of the scientific method is all about trying, trying this and trying that, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t. And life is pretty much the same.

You want to “Do or do not, there is no try?” Then only act on simple things, don’t aspire. Stay in your safety zone.

Trying is good. Trying is noble. If you try and fail, learn from it and keep going. That is wisdom.

My status on Facebook as I wrote this:

  • Tim Byrd

    is trying, in both senses of the word, but trying not to be trying, so it can be just the one sense from now on.

“Though No Horns Adorn My Head” (A Poem)

Though no horns adorn my head
My spirit points to the moon’s sky.

Though my legs don’t end in hoofs
I walk a cocksure prance ‘cross sacred Earth.

My body is hairy.
I’m a proud-hung young buck.
Behind sharp eyes my soul stalks wild.

Horned God–
Horny As Hell God–
Reviled by  fundamental debasers of flesh sacredness–
You still live
in me.

I will drink red wine
I will eat bloody venison meat
And I will dance and sing and fuck and live
So that you may be sacred still.

So that I may be sacred still.

So that life will be sacred still.

“Threshold” (A Poem)

Planks solid underfoot

then

storm and waves and
wind bash and batter
splintering
that on which I stand.

I drift
looking at stars for guidance.

The dark god
has struck
is trying to keep me from
landfall
I have yearned toward.

My heart is strong.
I swim like a bastard.

Estuary.
River mouth roaring turbulence
and it seems I’m lost
just as I am saved.

I pray the god of this river
for sanctuary:

O great flowing god
god of life and motion
and change; 

O great god,
I ask your mercy
I am on my knees
your suppliant

and I see that in your flow
is wisdom gained
and strength born
if only I swim, and look,
and realize.

Grant me, o god,
sanctuary and
sanctity;
safe harbor;
calm shores to salve
my wounds…

and spirits to guide me.

And then were the waters
calmed;
then, the sky grew blue;
then, the bright sun
burned away darkness,
leaving shadow, plain to see,
but woven into the world of light,
unhidden
undangerous.

Landfall.
And I am alive.

And living.

Prayer In School As It Might Be…

Newt Gingrich wants to change the Constitution:

Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions.

Thanks to Cairelle Perilloux for this…

Wild To The Heart

An inspiring passage from writer Rick Bass…

If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it’s a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (heaven forbid) your job. It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else; if it’s what makes your heart sing, if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it’s wild, and if it’s wild, it’ll mean you’re still free. No matter where you are.

Watching Hunters

A memory from an old journal of mine…

I am sitting uncomfortably, strapped with my back to a pine, thirty-odd feet off the ground. It’s dark and cold, not yet five a.m. A periodic wind pushes the branchless length of trunk this way and that and cuts through the layers of clothing I wear. The worst part is my feet feel like ice sculptures in my boots. I can’t feel my toes.

I’m on a deer hunt, this autumn of ’91, but just as an observer. It’s bow season and I am unarmed. The men I’ve come with are spaced in hopeful stillness across several miles of night-dark Georgia forest, participants in a ritual much older than recorded time. Hunters. Predators. There is camaraderie, even when everyone is alone, frozen, quiet. Camaraderie building to beers to be shared, observations spoken, well-meant insults inflicted. But now there’s just stillness and darkness and cold.

Uncomfortable as I am, I have a thrilling sense of connectedness, an awareness of how alive I am, and how alive the woods are around me.  This place, this rural, undeveloped parcel of land, still dreams the deep dreams of wilderness, and I, not back in my bed partitioned from the earth’s breath by walls with their own vented, heated breath, am a part of those dreams. Continue reading →

The Passion of the Tim

"It's just the beast in me..." --Elvis Presley, JAILHOUSE ROCK

Hiatus over.

The past couple of days were rough ones. Kate and I were getting along wonderfully again, then POW, we stumbled over some truly picayune stuff and suddenly were back in the stress zone.

Neither of us acted as well as we might have, both of us being human, but I have to lay claim to the lion’s share of the blame. I overreacted to some things, then my mind wouldn’t let me release it even as I kept trying to. Kate was visiting her family, and wanting to go be with them, and we were arguing via text. I kept saying stuff like “It’s okay, go, I want you to enjoy the time with your family,” and I was sincere…but there was a rhetorical snapping turtle in my head that would only let me sit calmly a minute or two before throwing some new antagonistic comment out and insisting I send it her way. And I would try to maintain self control and not send it, but would lose the fight. Then after some more shared friction, I’d be back to saying I didn’t want to keep her from her family.

And, I wound up damn near destroying our relationship, which we’d managed to rebuild from our earlier problems. By the time I went on “hiatus,” I felt I’d lost all hope, and was so devastated I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything positive or productive for a long time…if ever again. Continue reading →

“She Stalks Starlit Wilds” (A Poem)

She stalks starlit wilds
Hot sweat slicking her skin.
Naked skin.
And under that, Blood.
Hot and Red and Lusting.
Life blood.

Her hair is a wild mane cascade
Catching the wild winds–
And scintillating stars spark and spin
In its curls.

She loves to Hunt
To Eat
To Fuck
To LIVE
Feeling her godness in her body moving
Muscle and bone and tendon
And Blood, tided to the Moon forever.

She stalks the Wild.
She hunts for Passion.
Blood. Moon.
Life.
She stalks starlit wilds.

And I dream that she is hunting
For me.

“First of May” (Song of the Week, Beltane 2011) [NSFW]

To my pagan friends, and anyone else of good will, I wish you all a happy Beltane.

I had hoped to celebrate properly this year, as in the Jonathan Coulton song below, but ’twas unfortunately not to be. I hope your day is more enjoyable.

“Wild Soul – Nature, Civilization, and the Ecological Spirit” (Now Available, Just 99¢)

 

JUST 99¢!!!

My essay “WILD SOUL – Nature, Civilization, and the Ecological Spirit” is now available from Amazon as a Kindle download for 99 cents.

In the near future, it will be going up at other online venues, in other ebook formats. (If you don’t have a Kindle, you can still read Kindle books with free programs downloadable from Amazon, like Kindle for PC. I read Kindle books on my iPhone and desktop computer.)

Traditional tales across the world describe mankind’s joyful rise in a wild paradise like the Garden of Eden. But they also tell of our fall from such lives of bliss and natural grace.

Our technology, our cities, our toys, our wealth, all have done nothing to ground us as individuals or as societies. If they had, we would live in a near Utopia, rather than the reelingly chaotic and violent world-on-the-brink around us, for surely our affluence and level of comfort is greater than it has been for any people in the history of the earth.

Is Eden forever lost, or is there a way back?

Can we access that marvelous, mythic place in our souls, find a path to its joyful, natural wonders? Or have we slumbered so long in civilized ways that our vital selves are banished for the rest of time?

Can we reclaim the power of the primitive without denying ourselves the comforts and wonders of the modern world?

Exploring sources ranging from the Old Testament and Eastern mysticism, from poetry to popular fiction, from ancient fable to contemporary deep psychology, novelist Tim Byrd finds the prescription for our ills.

We need to live and love more fully, and do things that matter.

We need a renewal of a sense of sacredness towards the natural world, and intimacy with that world.

We need wild soul.

Taken By The Wind (A Personal History, Part 3): The Beard of Loneliness

When things never get better, when do you give up hope that they will?

I’m not there yet, but I’ve been on the edge of that chasm for a long time.

For most of my life, I’ve alternated between times when I have to struggle to get anything at all done, and times when I was on task, organized, and convinced I could make permanent change. Note that these have never been “manic” times, just times when I was operating closer to the norm, closer to what I should be, what I might have been had it not been ripped out of me as a child.

But those productive times are always followed by collapse. To-do lists curl and die like leaves in a fire. Lonely chapters gather virtual dust on the hard drive, awaiting fellows who’ll never show. The bed forgets what it’s like to be made. And my chin thickens with whiskers, a barometer of my efficacy in my own life because I do not want a beard.

I have one now. Continue reading →

Just How Selfish WAS Jesus, Exactly?

It’s not often you see a true man of faith who’s a public figure in our culture who actually walks the walk.

Stephen Colbert is exactly that.

A devout Catholic (who actually teaches Sunday school), he not only bases his political views on principles like compassion and rationality, he’s extremely active with a long list of charities. He’s clearly a much better man than the buffoon he lampoons, Bill O’Reilly (who this week hilariously tried to one-up an atheist on his show by telling him we don’t know what causes the tides to go in and out).

Taken By The Wind (A Personal History)

Okay, so here’s the deal…

I suffer from depression.

To the unenlightened out there, that means I’m moody or lazy or mopey or too sensitive or whiney. I’m none of those things. I’m not even really sad, for the most part, though after suffering this affliction pretty much all my life, there is certainly a constant hum of melancholy way back in my mind. And despair. And anger.

On the plus side, I’m 6′ tall, naturally fit, agile, and strong. The baldness that colonized my father’s head has found no home on mine. I’m blue-eyed, square-jawed, and apparently reasonably attractive. I’m highly intelligent, and can write very well. These things and others I’m grateful for.

In onerwhelming opposition to those blessings, I apparently have the genetic bug that makes you vulnerable to depression. Apparently, though anyone can get depressed (usually through some sort of trauma), most people are innately capable of recovery. But when you have the gene for it, it’s harder to recover, and if you are repeatedly traumatized, the depression can settle in for good.

Kids, especially very young kids, with this neurological fuck-up are particularly susceptible. Their brains are still forming and such trauma can do permanent damage. Kids who lose a parent early or who are abused are at really high risk.

I was both. Continue reading →