Dwelling Places

Dear Luce: I take a risk by communicating directly with, you, “the devil”. You wonder: “Can I gain the Deacon’s allegiance?” No, Luce, I’m not that stupid. Granted, you are immensely more intelligent that me, you cannot read my thoughts, Luce. You work with the statistical odds and get humans to believe you are omniscient. You are not. You cannot “incarnate” into this realm though you would like us to believe this as though you are equal to the God-Man from Nazareth. You feign the “victim” very well.   As “spirit” you do not know what bodily “feelings” really are. I, on the other hand, am both flesh and spirit.   You invented “scapegoat-ery,” giving reason, basis, and justification for your proffered illusion of self-misery.   Instead, you are like a black sunspot. You explode into electromagnetic havoc and chaos but “feel” nothing. You convince miserable “underlings” to join your ranks so they might fall off the edge of the fake “flat-edge” wo...

The Devil writes to me once again after he has pondered my published comments: Dear Deacon,             You really disappoint me. I am not a crook. I am not a schemer. Yes, I have always been in the shadows. That is why I do like bureaucratic settings. I am just the guy in the next cubicle. I am safe from all the apocalyptic paranoia about my intentions. In the quiet shadows, there is nothing like water cooler drama to make me laugh and blush.             My stealthiness is not my choice.   I obey those certain powers. They govern nature and the universe. I am no different than, let’s say a whirlwind or an “earth-tide.” Yet, I am accused of being a cyclonic rebellious spirit. Didn’t I have the right to ask “why?” And after my “why,” I suddenly found myself marginalized by jealous Judases of my own species. They threw me out. It’s complicated, but there was no God to os...

            How would “the devil” communicate and sell his wares to the public? How would he market his products? I’ll wax philosophical later, but I thought I’d share over time a series of letters written by the Devil to convince me and the readers to consider rethinking our general critiques of his utility to the world. These letters are not unlike those once written by the likes of C.S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters . I thought it best if in my version of devil letters, that he would communicate directly to me as a potential recruit for his forces. The first of the letters is as follows:   Dear Deacon Tom: You have no idea how much I have wanted to get in touch with you. You see there are misunderstandings about me and the rumor mill of course seems to me to be a bit unfair and my dignity seems to be affected. I want to begin sharing with you my frustrations and thoughts so that we can, at some poi...

The Lady of Guadalupe is considered cultural phenomenon. I have seen this image. It has been imitated in diverse formats including tattoos, sculptures, t-shirts, and coke bottle tops from El Paso to Sheboygan. But I have seen the real thing; It hangs almost 500 years after it was, dare I say created, by an artist "yet to be determined. "Unlike the Lady of Jasna Gora, in Poland, also a "cultural" icon, the image is one wherein paint strokes could not be detected by even the most advanced scientific techniques. This image has outlasted the ravages of the second law of thermodynamics: entropy. Jasna Gora is painted upon survivable material. The Lady of Guadalupe is imposed upon material that should have deteriorated at the most in 40 years. Yet it still exists almost 500 years after its debut. According to reports by NASA studies, the colors are actually floating a hundredth of an inch above the ayate fabric. Ayate is a cactus fiber used by indigenous tribes in...

Robyn Williams shocked the world. Who knows why Robyn jumped from the brink of the precipice, that high rock of despair. He did know one thing. By taking such action, he would end his heart beat; his lungs would breathe no more.   He knew this. I have had good friends jump from the same brink. Most recently, my friend, Steve jumped. His life with the woman of his dreams and their six children ended in a divorce. This rendered my young friend alone in an apartment paid for by his soon to be ex-wife without the life he previously knew and the children he raised as a stay at home dad. It rendered him “difficult to employ” because of the measure of years he spent unemployed by choice. Add to that medications meant for other purposes, alcohol, it becomes easy to come to the conclusion that perhaps it’s better if you fall asleep and never wake up. Fame does not make suicide more acceptable or even understandable. Suicide is not ok. There may be no culpability in the moral sense...

    Project Oak Tree, is a Las Cruces based project which demonstrates the virtue of “hospitality” to the lost, the forgotten, the immigrant fleeing from violence and poverty in their homelands. The project gets its name from the story in the book of Genesis where Abraham hospitably welcomes three strangers. He had no idea who they really were. They could have been angels, the Holy Trinity, men from outer space, or whatever appeals to you if you are a Scientologist.   He welcomes them by the “shade of an oak tree” and decides to set up tents for each of them. He asks his wife, Sara, to bring them refreshment as they must have come a long way in the sandy desert.   In this sense Bishop Cantu’s overture in behalf of the Church is not a political statement, but rather a recognition of the God created dignity of all human beings. Borders do not attenuate dignity. Poverty does not attenuate dignity. And our country can claim it’s overabundance not by our own effo...

It is speculated that two factors of our development as a species differentiate us from other primates: 1) opposable thumbs; and 2) larger brain size. Anthropologically, anthropomorphically, and paleontologically the opposable thumb and the larger brain size is theorized to come about because of the following: A. Opposable Thumb development stems from an evolutionary adaptation of the need to develop refined tools (for hunting) from stone, copper, bronze and iron in order to survive being eaten by either our Neanderthal or the tiger. B. Larger brain development came about as our waning need to have a larger mandible (chewing mechanism) to masticate bone or as a defense. As we began to genetically trigger development of smaller mandibles, our skull capacity for larger brains increased the development of cerebral structures and material conducive to the development of "consciousness."   That's a new way of appreciating the epithet: "hand to mouth existence." ...