Imagine George Fox Interacts with modern nontheist Quaker...

Consider somewhere countless individuals of real history and fictional ones exist and interact, coming together from human history, literature, media, and music.

What would Margaret Fell, William Penn, John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, Elias Hicks, Elizabeth Fry, Joel and Hannah Bean, Howard Brinton, Bayard Rustin have to say to each other?

Make your own educated guesses from your reading, viewing, and listening of past fictional and real individuals coming together to converse, act, and reflect.

Place all of the participating individuals in a particular place and time, a fictional or real setting.

Maybe, also have them talk with and interact with other actual famous individuals of history or the present time. For instance, Huck Finn (Mark Twain's novel), Wolf Larsen (Jack London's The Sea Wolf), and Captain Ahab (Melville's Moby Dick)
meet John Proctor (real individual of the Salen Trials) and Hester (Scarlet Letter).

Then they interact with Mayor Zohran Mamdani or President Trump or former President Biden, etc.

Playing around with time and space is a possible option, too. What if the European explorers didn't discover the Americas or the Reformation never occurred or Muhammad never existed
or the American Civil War didn't take place?

Or the current American political leaders show up in 1859...and meet Rhett Butler, Scarlet O'Hara (Mitchell's Gone with the Wind) and interact with Lucretia Mott and Martin Luther King Jr.?

The possibilities in this imaginative literary lounge are limitless:_).

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #2: Prayer and Fishhooks

Prayer and Fishhooks*

Our third daughter, Hope, learned-disabled early, Struggling with the squiggles and numeric symbols

Of unseen realities, of knowing, that set the stars In motion and our human minds in transition.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

Her childish zest died while, as her father and provider, I practiced disabling late, raised to belief's unreason

In the rigid way of Huck's Miss Watson, so stubborn In righteous doctrine, ignoring our doctor's suggestion, Not giving Hope medication, but certain in literal petition.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

So I prayed time-round-the-three for our daughter's minded healing, But just like gullible Finn and his never-gotten fishhooks,

Hope got none, and I— doubt, ill-gotten mishap, and bilge, Eventually lessening into cynicism, the wounded death Of an ash-filled, but empty-petitioning/requesting mouth.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

Yet unlike Huck, to this day I keep reeling out petitions, Focusing like the Widow (Huck's other guardian),

On heartened prayer, the learning of spiritual gifts; But not even the gentle fish lures of patience

And boundless joy ever ripple my faithless way; I, too, become the lost orphan in the dying of trust.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

No longer a fisher of miracles in the doubtful churning, Of the endless surging views of oceans seven

The world round, I struggle between trust And reason, earnest but lost in cruel confusion

Fearing those extremes — nihilistic negation And fishy delusion — doubting all to a hellish end.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

Still rises the good news of caring medicine: Briefly free of false hooks, we gave our dear Hope,

So dead to minded school, the late prescription And she was upward raised, yes, recovering soon A zest for learning — early for her, way late for me –

How wondrous thoughtful reason-decided invocations

Except to say the real hook of it all is that True knowing is not gulping barbs of pious deceit,

Nor being gilled or gulled into the dying of truth, But yearning and learning — like Descartes and Kant

Of old — finding in humble, reasoned trust The poetry and prose of spiritual growth, A Godly way of reasoned becoming,

How wondrous thoughtful reason-based deliberations

--Dan Wilcox

First published in The Centrifugal Eye then in the published poetry collection, Psalms, Yawps, and Howls

-- *From Huck Finn: “Well I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it."

"She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks."

"I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way."

"I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for...why can't the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up?"

"No, says I to myself, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant -- I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself."

"This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it -- except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go."

"Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again."

"I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more."

"I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.”

Wise words of yearning and learning from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel L. Clemens

-- In the Light of Hope and Reason,

Yearning and Learning, Trust and Skepticism,

Ideals and Science, Imagination and Fact...

Dan Wilcox

Musing about Prayer, the Exacting Scientific Study, and Reality

Does prayer change things as the famous aphorism claims?

Does God literally answer petitionary prayer—everything from requests for a parking place to the healing of severe disease to defeating the enemy in war?

Fifteen years ago, an exhaustive scientific study was done on praying for heart surgery patients with a grant from the religious Templeton Foundation.

Sadly, from a religious point of view, unfavorable results of study occurred in 52 percent of those who received prayer, 51 percent of those who did not receive it, and the worst results for 59 percent of patients who knew they would receive prayers.

“There were no statistically significant differences in major complications or thirty-day mortality.” Wikipedia and Harvard Gazette, "Prayers don't help heart surgery patients; Some fare worse when prayed for"

But some raise the important question is prayer meant to be an action looking for literal results?

Most theists would say so including famous philosopher and science writer Michael Gardner, a theistic skeptic, cofounder of the modern Skeptic Movement. When it comes to miracles, Gardner disdains belief in those supernatural events, what he calls the superstitious “finger of God,” but Gardner argues for the reality of prayer!

In his book The Why’s of a Philosophical Scrivener Gardner states that petitionary prayer is real and true. He agrees with fundamentalists, creedal Christians, Muslim, Orthodox Jews that humans can literally petition God for help.

Most Atheists emphasize the exact opposite, that all prayer is a severe delusion.

This is in contrast to a third view of prayer best expressed in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Huck Finn is told by the Fundamentalist Ms.Watson that prayer works, so he sets about praying for fish hooks.

But none come. He waits longer, still none come. Huck is keenly disappointed—down right angry--and tells the Widow Douglas so. She gently corrects his confusion, telling him he has misunderstood the true nature of prayer.

Widow Douglas emphasizes that prayer isn’t for getting what we want, even if we are asking for something good.

Then what in heck is the nature of prayer? According to the Widow Douglas, prayer is for moral and spiritual uplift!

But is that so?

Maybe the Widow Douglas was right—that the true nature of religion is spiritual, not literal at all. Consider even the simple prayer of grace, that form of prayer that many religious humans say before eating supper where they thank God for their food. Or goodnight prayers with little children.

If we look at the actual situation of prayer at the dinner table, we see that God has had literally nothing to do with the getting of the food on the family’s plates. The parents at the table have gone to Wal-Mart and purchased salmon, green beans, and wheat bread from money they earned working 50 or 60 hours a week as engineers, clerks, or mechanics; the store owners have bought the seafood from ocean boats and produce from farmers; the farmers have planted and harvested the crops, and the fishers have gone out into the wild Pacific and caught the salmon, etc.

So where does God fit into the equation?

The answer is a spiritual one as Widow Douglas said. For example, the famous German thinker Fredrich Schleiermacher wrote that religion is a transcendent experience, a total abandonment to, and reliance on the Infinite.

God is the ultimate, infinite source of the meal, even though he doesn’t literally do a single action to bring it to the evening table. No, God isn’t literally in the business of growing corn, finding parking places or supplying fish hooks, healing diseases, etc. unlike what most humans think.

Rather, prayer is transcendent communion with the Ultimate, a sense of union with the Source of all, the Ground of all Being.

How many times have we humans said grace at meals, prayed for loved ones, etc. and felt uplifted and united!

The number is probably almost endless; and there are the countless prayers for individuals living in tragic circumstances, world crises, and prayers for our own spiritual growth.

PRAYER CHANGES US, not bad situations or terrible circumstances.

We humans in prayer can become more humanistic beings given to loving others as ourselves, even our enemies as Jesus, Martin Luther King, and othe wise leaders have stated.

But Huck and most people aren’t impressed with such an view. What they want are fish hooks, healing from diseases, success in their careers, and so forth.
Becoming more loving, kind, generous, and patient is, granted, nice but a real let down.

Literalism has its hooks in most of us, either believers or disbelievers.

To be continued

Dan Wilcox

"Strange...a God..."

"Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;
who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;
mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness
multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell;
who mouths morals to other people
and has none himself;

who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all;
who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man,
instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself;
and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!"

— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger*

1. This "a God" described by Samuel Clemens is horrific and alien to me--was so even back when I was a young Christian teen growing up in Bible-belt southern Nebraska. We certainly didn't believe in any such deity.

YET I do know--from my having read many tomes of history and theology, and from personally speaking with a few famous Christian leaders--that Mark Twain's "a God" is a fairly accurate view of creedal Christianity, especially of the Augustinian, Reformed, and Lutheran branches.**

2. Here is background for the assertions of Clemens' anti-creed:

A. "a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;"

It is very baffling why an, allegedly, perfectly good God would intentionally foreordain, before the creation of the universe, that all the many billions of infants be conceived and born totally "sinful" and "in essence, evil."

But remember the famous Puritan, Michael Wigglesworth, in his poem "The Day of Doom" emphasized that infants will get the "easiest room in Hell." :-( Line 370-72, http://www.bartleby.com/400/poem/171.html

No wonder that Twain was so bitter about this ethical obscenity.

B. "who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;"

If you had a dollar for every Christian book which emphasizes that Christians ought to accept, even glory in their suffering because it brings glory to God, you would soon be rich.

Titles will be added here later.

Of course, think of the millions of young children and young adults who suffer and die terribly from cancer and other agonizing and death-dealing scourges which God pre-planned for his own glory and "good pleasure."

One of the last tragic cases that happened shortly before I finally realized that organized Christianity CAN'T be true was a young lady of about 32 in our church who suffered and died leaving her 3 pre-schoolers without a mom.

C. "mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness
multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell;"

Strange as it may seem to many, the sort of Christianity dominating the U.S. where Clemens grew up--and which still dominates some areas--does emphasize that even Hell was created for God's glory.

Heck, one famous Christian theologian said that even the Jewish Holocaust will bring what ever glory to God that he wills!

D. "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;"
and
"who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all;"

This is called Divine Command Theory in the Christian religion, or God's total sovereignty. According to many Christian leaders, God has two separate contrary wills; in one he commands humans to obey certain laws, but in the other will, God's hidden will, God causes every evil including molestation, rape, murder, slaughter, natural disasters, diseases, plagues, famines, etc.

Not a molecule moves in the cosmos but that it is by this "a God's" will.

Because God's ultimate nature is his absolute sovereignty, then whatever God wills, then becomes "good." That is why God could order slaughter, slavery, abuse, lying, stealing, and so forth in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament.

If you question this, Christians will ask you, "Who do you think you are to question God?"
--

"That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence
slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven,

whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm,
and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing
to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most
dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften
it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame;
but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it;
and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting
about that nigger goes to everlasting fire."

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie-and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie- I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville
and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell...

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again;
and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too;
because as long as I was in, and in for good,
I might as well go the whole hog."
--from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens on the theme of his book: "A book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience [because of Christian society and the Bible] come into collision, and conscience suffers defeat."

*As a literature teacher for many years, I used some of Clemens' bitter satire and deep ethical insights for a whole unit on the nature of ethics, and the dangers of conscience, duty, and honor.
But I've not written on Twain or his books for a long time.
Thanks to Bruce Gerencser and Infidel753
for bringing up Twain's keen ethical passage this week on their blogs.

**I won't bother with ranting and raving against the bad three, have done that enough in the past here on the blog. And, since encountering their theological and ethical horrors first 55 years ago have virtually driven all my close loved ones to drink;-), especially my patient wife. She, being non-theological and non-philosophical, doesn't worry about what famous leaders and famous Christian denominations teach. Maybe that is why we share a margarita or wine once in a while for dinner. Much better than the bad spirits.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

"Yearning and Learning": Science, Religion, and Fish Hooks

The skeptical science writer, Chet Raymo, wrote, “Why do so many of us see...flying saucers in the sky...
the spinning of the Sun at Fatima,
canals on Mars?"

19th century image of canals of Mars versus modern Hubble photo

"We yearn to be part of something greater than ourselves. We learn by hard experience that miracles don't happen."

"Yearning and learning are integral parts of being human. We can't be fully human without both. Finding the proper balance between yearning and learning can keep us occupied for a lifetime."

"Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion."

"Learning is...reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz..."

"In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief."

"Yearning without learning is seeing...the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues...and the meaning of life in horoscopes."

"Learning without yearning is pedantry...believing that we know it all...that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is rote science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty.”

--

A true story of a family, yearning and learning--


The Nature of Fishhooks

My youngest daughter, Hope, learned-disabled early,
Struggling with the squiggles and numeric symbols

Of unseen realities, of knowing, that set the stars
In motion and our human minds in transition.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

Her childish zest died while, as her father and provider,
I practiced disabling late, raised to belief's unreason

In the rigid way of Huck's Miss Watson, so stubborn
In righteous doctrine, ignoring our doctor's suggestion,
Not giving Hope medication, but certain in literal petition.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

So I prayed time-round-the-three for my daughter's minded healing,
But just like gullible Finn and his never-gotten fishhooks,

Hope got none, and I— doubt, ill-gotten mishap, and bilge,
Eventually lessening into cynicism, the wounded death
Of an ash-filled, but empty-petitioning/requesting mouth.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

Yet unlike Huck, to this day I keep reeling out petitions,
Focusing like the Widow (Huck's other guardian),

On heartened prayer, the learning of spiritual gifts;
But not even the gentle fish lures of patience

And boundless joy ever ripple my faithless way;
I, too, become the lost orphan in the dying of trust.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

No longer a fisher of miracles in the doubtful churning,
Of the endless surging views of oceans seven

The world round, I struggle between trust
And reason, earnest but lost in cruel confusion

Fearing those extremes — nihilistic negation
And fishy delusion — doubting all to a hellish end.

How dangerous those fish-hooked praying supplications

Still rises the good news of caring medicine:
Briefly free of false hooks, we gave our dear Hope,

So dead to minded school, the late prescription
And she was upward raised, yes, recovering soon
A zest for learning — early for her, way late for me –

How wondrous thoughtful reason-decided invocations

Except to say the real hook of it all is that
True knowing is not gulping barbs of pious deceit,

Nor being gilled or gulled into the dying of truth,
But yearning and learning — like Descartes and Kant

Of old — finding in humble, reasoned trust
The poetry and prose of spiritual growth,
A Godly way of reasoned becoming,

How wondrous thoughtful reason-based deliberations



--Daniel Wilcox

First published in The Centrifugal Eye
then in the collection, Psalms, Yawps, and Howls


Chet Raymo:
Professor Emeritus at Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts...author of Skeptics and True Believers

"...more than a dozen books on science and nature...is a winner of a 1998 Lannan Literary Award for his nonfiction..."

Science Musings appeared in the Boston Globe for twenty years...informed and provocative meditations on science as a creative human activity and celebrated the grandeur and mystery of the natural world."

"Blog.sciencemusings.com...will appeal to visitors who value reliable empirical knowledge of the world, yet retain a sense of reverence and awe for the complexity, beauty, and sometimes terror of nature."

--

From Huck Finn:
“Well I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it."

"She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks."

"I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way."

"I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for...why can't the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up?"

"No, says I to myself, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant -- I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself."

"This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it -- except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go."

"Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again."

"I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more."

"I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.”
Wise words of yearning and learning from
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel L. Clemens

--

In the Light
of Hope and Reason,

Yearning and Learning,
Trust and Skepticism,

Ideals and Science,
Imagination and Fact...

Daniel Wilcox

What's in a Name Bowdlerized?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a “slave”
By any other name wouldn’t drive home Twain’s anti-racist satire.”

Well, that isn’t exactly how Romeo and Juliet goes, but, heck, the old play needs to be updated to keep up with the modern Orwellians who have improved on Huckleberry Finn in a new edition, just like Thomas Bowdler who in the early 19th century improved on Shakespeare…er I mean his sister Harriet did, but she couldn’t be recognized, you know, because of being a woman. But, of course, we can’t expect students to understand such historical wrongs, right? We need to hide the fact, distort the text; “war is peace”; it might offend and harm little overly sensitive girls and boys somewhere.

I can’t wait to see what these new publishers will do with the Song of Songs in the Bible.

I hope Orwell and Bowdler won’t sue me from the nether regions. Well, technically, Orwell wasn’t really Orwell, nor was Twain, Twain. (Was Bowdler, Bowdler?) But two chose to alter their names themselves, didn’t give others the right to write their works, right? Right on!

I hope hog farmers don’t change Animal Farm too. Or sue me…you know, sooey, sooey! Suing, it ain’t right! Oops, some ignoramus out there may be upset that I didn’t follow the rules of standard usage. “Ain’t” might harm some student somewhere who can’t learn the difference between dialect usage; ain’t likely, isn’t that right?

And speaking of suing, that makes me think of the controversy of white people using the word Sioux. Allegedly, a few Indians are protesting. In’jun Joe isn’t among them as he has been eliminated in the new Huckleberry Finn, that is his name has been changed. Why would they be upset at anyone using the French name, since according to scholars it had negative connotations?

What if, for heaven’s sake, we let literature including terms and names remain as the authors created them? What if, instead, we taught students how to interpret the texts rather than alter the texts?

All of this political correctness reminds me that back in the 90’s, allegedly, a school named Mark Twain Junior High School banned the book Huckleberry Finn. I wonder if that improbability actually happened. A real grave turnover of Twain. Nah, no one would do that or change the title of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, because California wineries got upset at the disapprobation of wine grapes—might hurt them;-) LOL

Seriously, we adults can still be sensitive to the needs of students. When teaching Huck Finn to remedial high school students years ago, I was concerned about the word, concerned that one African-American (Black, then) might be offended, so I discussed it with him. He laughed—turns out he understood literature enough to realize that offensive words in a novel aren’t a personal attack on him. But he said, still grinning, what I could do is say “brother” out loud whenever the word came up, just in case some students might be troubled.

So I explained to the class the reason Samuel Clemens used the term, how he was writing an anti-racist but realistic, local color story, a narrative that uses five authentic dialects of English. Students were to read the actual text in their books, but I said I would use the word “brother” in my daily oral reading. I did and it all worked out fine. Indeed, dealing with the controversial term actually helped the weak readers gain an understanding of satire, 19th century literature, and controversial words. Plus, the minor humor added to the laughter students often experienced as they read along in this, one of the funniest books ever written.

Individual words are very important in literature (ala Edgar Allan Poe), not just fluff which can be excised or altered by censors. Consider, for instance, a character named Rennis, in one of Anthony Burgesses’ novels. When a reader asked Burgess why he called his character such an unusual name, Burgess said he didn’t know. Rennis was a good person who regressed backwards gradually turning to more and more evil behavior. A critic noticed the character’s name Rennis is an anagram, a characteronym, “sinner” spelled backwards just like his behavior!

Lastly, remember if someone in print calls me a “paddy” because I am Irish, I’m not going to sit in the corner and cry or pout until a publisher alters the term to Finn;-) or “slave.” Talk about slavish political correctness! Roll over Twain…rolling on the river of life, on the mighty Mississip…

I'm going to light out for the territory with Huck and Jim...we all need to be free.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Of Fishhooks, prayers, and miracles

I read through too many tomes in the last 50 years trying to figure out the truth of God and existence--being condemed to doctrinal hell and convoluted mental gymnastics. Then--I don't know why--I then tried to write an analytic essay on the nature of prayer and miracles and the disappointment with unfulfilled answers.

But when I finished writing it, I realized the long-winded reflection didn't really shine forth Light. It was mostly pessimistic and more along the line of those tomes that doorstop my mind.

So instead, I am going to share my "fishhook" poem on the same topic. Hopefully there is more Light of God in the poetic vision. I think there is. Jesus never mentioned abstract theological creedal tomes; he spoke in images and parables, and told us to become as children.

Of Fishhooks, Prayers, and Miracles

My youngest daughter, Hope, learned-disabled early,
Struggling with the squiggles and the numeric symbols
Of unseen realities, of knowing, that set the stars
In motion and our minds in transition.

Her childish zest died while, as her father and provider,
I practiced disabling late, raised to belief's unreason —
In the rigid way of Huck's Miss Watson — stubborn
In righteous doctrine, ignoring the doctor's suggestion,
Not giving Hope medication, but believing in literal petition.

So I prayed time-round-the-three for my daughter's minded healing,
But just like gullible Finn and his never-gotten fishhooks,
Hope got none, and I— doubt, ill-gotten mishap, and bilge,
Eventually lessening into cynicism, the wounded death
Of an ash-filled, but empty-praying mouth.

Yet unlike Huck, to this day I keep reeling out petitions,
Focusing like the Widow (Huck's other guardian),
On heartened prayer, the learning of spiritual gifts;
But not even the gentle fish lures of patience
And boundless joy seem to ripple my faithless way;
I, too, become the orphan in the dying of trust.

No longer a fisher of persons in the doubtful churning,
Of the endless surging views of oceans seven
The world round, I struggle between faith
And reason, lost in cruel imbalance
Fearing the extremes — nihilistic negation
And fishy delusion — doubting all to hell's end.

Still rises the good news of caring medicine:
Briefly free of false hooks, we gave our dear Hope,
So dead to minded school, the late prescription
And she was upward raised, recovering early
A zest for learning — early for her, way late for me —

Except to say the real hook of it all is that
True knowing is not a gulping of the barbs of pious deceit,
Nor being gilled or gulled into the dying of truth,
But yearning and learning — like Descartes
Of old — finding in humble, reasoned
Faith the poetry and prose of a spiritual rebirth,
A Godly way of reasoned becoming.


In the Light,

Daniel

(Previously published in The Centrifugal Eye)