Guest Post fr.YouTube: "I Think, therefore I'm Trans" speech by Alycia Woods

"The number of people identifying as transgender has risen sharply over the past several years, especially among young girls. This rise has caught the attention of journalists, scientists, and the medical community, many of whom have come to conclude that something is very wrong. Are gender and sex actually linked? What about those that “detransition?” And what about the fact that culture seems to be shifting its view of transgenderism? In this talk, we will look at some of the data that is coming out from various cultural sources as well challenge Christians to think about how we can be Christ to a hurting people."
by Alycia Woods

Retina Shadow

A commonplace minor moment in daily life brings back a life-changing experience:


Retina Shadow

The blinding resplendent brilliant blaze of sunfiring
In the translucent window
at the 'peak' of our old stairs,

Lighting to my eyes glaring defects
In the polished stairstep walls.

And afterward, for an hourglass,
That irised rectangle of remembered light
Luminous shining

Bright-blinds me to all lesser
Things than transcendent,

A euclidic image in front of my vision,
The 'optic mystic' nerve gleam
Of photo-receptors

Turned into lighted-ecstasy in my mind
As I trudge about the hectic scurry of my hour'd day,

That brilliance of aperture at the center
Blaze-blinding
Finite briefness

(Me, muddled primate
In this pit-caved depression
Of emptiness, and not.)

Yes,
The after shadowed light of Reality
Far brighter

Than temporary nature's harsh survivor'd death glare
Or the gray-dusted rituals of our
Decadent cultures of shame;

Look, not to this dark cavern,
But to the sun-resplendence,
Of eternal goodness, truth, and beauty.

Oh, the after-glowed
RADIANCE!



--Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in The Greensilk Journal
in different form

We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;
the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
-Plato


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Fish, Water, and Whatever...

First, a few quotes from David Foster Wallace’s fish story of water:

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

“…learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”

[Without awareness within, your only freedom will be] “The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation…”

“in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

“The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way?”

“But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently… [maybe the] lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line…been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department…”
Quotes from the 2005 Kenyon University Commencement Address by David Foster Wallace

Unfortunately, tragically, Wallace couldn't or wouldn't take his own advice in the end. For 20 years, he had been taking medicine for chronic depression. When there was a medical difficulty, he stopped taking the medication, and shortly thereafter, he hanged himself. Only 3 years after delivering this powerful speech on how one needs to be present and aware and giving, not controlled by inner or outer forces. Tragic.

The question is:
Am I (are you) living aware and seeking to understand others in the midst of daily irritants and serious trials, even tragic events?

Or are we like the two young fish?

Wallace’s wise words remind me of a passage in Scripture:

“…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8

Otherwise,

there’s the other fish story…

Two fish are swimming along not thinkingly aware (When do fish ever think aware, or humans for that matter? Read a little biology and a little human history).

Suddenly, the first fish crashes into an immovable object—and gills, “Dam!”

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox