Ministry
Today, my brother sent his usual Thursday musings to me by e-mail. He used to be a gospel evangelist and musician, but now he's more of an inspirational speaker, writer, and music producer, well respected after years of grueling travel and even more grueling deprivations that come with living in the cold fire of career independence. Although I think he still rejects the idea, he and I were born of the same blood, as were our brothers, all of whom took their own quite interesting, volatile walks through the world of people who observe our kind with disdain even as they watch our showmanship with envy.
In my brother's message, he wrote that he had done well in front of a Wisconsin audience the other night. He seemed equally proud and amazed that, even at his age, he could still press his talents in the service of bettering the lives of a crowd of strangers.
He told me that he wanted as much for me and asked if I could do what he does, so I am using this forum to answer him. I do so here because this is where, for a long time, I have put some of my stronger talents on show to no material success in changing the world.
Dear Brother and Fellow Traveler:
As the song, "Turn the Page," puts it: "Out there in the spotlight, you're a million miles away/ev'ry ounce of energy, you try to give away..."
I am a teacher. My career is in its nightfall: technological substitutes for masterful teaching are winning the day; hence, I am driven into the night, alternately fancying my life behind me a rock star's self-narrative and an incomprehensibly long run of brilliant lectures and students elevating to scholarship and civilized reasoning.
Here's my secret, good brother. When I walk into a room full of students, I imagine that I am bringing with me a lake. I set it in front of the students, and then I walk across it. Many have been my superiors who have diminished my career, my reputation, even my aspirations because of this overarching arrogance I parade in crafted defiance of my betters.
Few have been my academic fans. Far more have been my students who will never forget me.
On balance, this choice of how to live my life has not been good: I will die and go to Hell, and the music of life will skip not a single beat for my life or its passing.
Sometimes, though, resignation to failure is the assurance of victory.
The good news is this: I shall live awhile longer, which means I will remain for that while an annoyance to those better than I could ever be.
We—you and I—are out there in the spotlight, which is where we were made to be. It might not be the brightest light we could have had, but it sure keeps the nightfall at bay, doesn't it?
Be well, brother.
Be well, good readers. Very soon, I shall return to publishing articles.
Maelstrom
In comment to Father Tyme's recent post, "The Black Hole," at Big Brass Blog, his fellow contributing writer, Peter of Lone Tree, drawing from Edgar Allen Poe's story, "A Descent into the Maelström," quotes Anglican minister, philosopher, and merchant Joseph Glanville (1636-1680):
Anon, I must rejoin, and in so setting my thoughts to an epistle, carry good news back to Mr. Glanville, and thence forward, to Peter of Lone Tree and Father Tyme. I invite others to read that which follows and comment as they will.
The ways of God in Nature are such that our Religions, along with their cousins in obligating belief, the Sciences, cannot see them; yet, still, in our spiritual contemplations and our physical experiments, we seek to know, even to that which is on the other side of that maelström we call Death, itself. Surely, the magnificent Augustine, himself, called us to inquiry in necessary preface to the singular and last step of belief. I would dare to speculate that this iniquity of doubt, which might easily descend to sinfulness, is the very essence of the victory of the Prodigal Son and the sweet fruit of joy upon his return that his father felt. Should we be of no father other than ourselves, our joy will be no less as the pulp and juice of freedom flow from the fruit of the tree of knowledge which shelters us from the wind's hateful chain of inexplicable Fate.
It is when we mistake our journey out of ignorance for our arrival in certainty that we fail where that God of Nature resides, for it is in that awful blackness of eternal night that we are forever compelled to travel into a light we can only imagine but never see.
That, my fellow walkers through the unending night, is just and always what distinguishes us from that God of Nature so dear to holy men, philosophers, and fools, alike: as God stands still in the light of certainty about all things now, then, and forever, we — that imperfect, mortal, and soiled Creation; that flesh falling inexorably into the maelström — move on, animated by nothing but our dreams of that which we shall never find.
Rejoice in Life and in Death: the former is our journey; the latter is our Fate. In both, we are victorious over the maelström, even as we are consumed by it.
The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.
Anon, I must rejoin, and in so setting my thoughts to an epistle, carry good news back to Mr. Glanville, and thence forward, to Peter of Lone Tree and Father Tyme. I invite others to read that which follows and comment as they will.
The ways of God in Nature are such that our Religions, along with their cousins in obligating belief, the Sciences, cannot see them; yet, still, in our spiritual contemplations and our physical experiments, we seek to know, even to that which is on the other side of that maelström we call Death, itself. Surely, the magnificent Augustine, himself, called us to inquiry in necessary preface to the singular and last step of belief. I would dare to speculate that this iniquity of doubt, which might easily descend to sinfulness, is the very essence of the victory of the Prodigal Son and the sweet fruit of joy upon his return that his father felt. Should we be of no father other than ourselves, our joy will be no less as the pulp and juice of freedom flow from the fruit of the tree of knowledge which shelters us from the wind's hateful chain of inexplicable Fate.
It is when we mistake our journey out of ignorance for our arrival in certainty that we fail where that God of Nature resides, for it is in that awful blackness of eternal night that we are forever compelled to travel into a light we can only imagine but never see.
That, my fellow walkers through the unending night, is just and always what distinguishes us from that God of Nature so dear to holy men, philosophers, and fools, alike: as God stands still in the light of certainty about all things now, then, and forever, we — that imperfect, mortal, and soiled Creation; that flesh falling inexorably into the maelström — move on, animated by nothing but our dreams of that which we shall never find.
Rejoice in Life and in Death: the former is our journey; the latter is our Fate. In both, we are victorious over the maelström, even as we are consumed by it.
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Your host of this Weblog is an award-winning college teacher and writer who specializes in economics, finance, mathematics, business administration, computer hardware and software skills, and English grammar and composition. His extensive writings on the history of the English language appeared on About.com in the avatar of the Selig Wraith in the 
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