open.substack.com/pub/ordinary...

I saw a headline, Snoop sells out. The person just noticed this? Have they not watched any television commercials in the last fifteen years?

Ever have the sense you are living your own future novel?

Even though I am in Arkansas and thousands of miles away from southern California, where I lived in the early 90s, I am feeling retraumatized by the fire there. My house burned down a few years ago in southern Oregon. To state the obvious, this is terrible.

I started a substack three years ago and have decided to reignite it. It's called Ordinary Gravity. In this letter, I include an interview of me that was conducted with my friend, Lisa Michelle Zega, for her podcast, Grief Heals. Check it out. It's free. ordinarygravity.substack.com/p/preamble-w...

I've put an image from D. Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return as my banner here. I just re-watched the series, and this time through thought it was well-plotted; however, it does not end well. I love the scenes portraying people in their foibles, such as when they project their own faults on each other.

I went to the barber Friday morning and cut my hair. It was long, growing for nearly three years. The barber was excited to cut it. Now it is short. I also shaved my beard. My hair is mostly white now, which I like. I guess I am entering young old age, or something like that.

I just read that Rupert Sheldrake thinks that baptism in early Christianity was a prototype of the movie, Flatliners. In other words, he suggests that John the Baptist was actually drowning and reviving participants in order to facilitate a near-death experience. Completely absurd for many reasons.

I like the idea of the soul as having as body, first appearing in Aristotle, though not as an animating force. The soul as psyche in Jung is appealing to me. This is also the teaching I received in the Orthodox Church as a catechumen 30 years ago, but I haven't heard it since.

Why do militant atheists insist that Christians believe in a sky-God with a long white beard? If I ever conceived of God in that way, I would be a militant atheist. I've never known anyone who thinks of God that way. Well, except for a sky-God with a long white beard who kept hassling me. Demiurge.

I converted to Christianity at age 18. I became Eastern Orthodox at age 26. I went through a crisis about 5 years ago that was intense. I became a psychonaut. I read the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Dhammapada, Huxley, James, and lots of commentary. I'm no longer anything. I'm transient.

I have been reading books on metaphysics, particularly on idealism, process (as exemplified in Serres's poetic philosophical works), and mind by people like Bernardo Kastrup, David Bentley Hart, and, well, okay...those two.

Alfred North Whitehead keeps coming up. I may need to read him, too.