Bishop in Time algorithm (def- a set of instructions that leads to a predictable result)

by Bryan Merck

At the 5 points fountain, a common pigeon rests on the owl on top of the Goatman’s crozier who is seated on a pedestal and teaching, from a book, an assembly of animals all under the aegis of water falling like rain. Five toads at the points of a pentagram jet the water from their uplifted mouths and pause; water that would escape something succumbs to gravity’s tether and returns, again and again.

Always.

Life is riddled with magic, shot through with it. Spirit impinges even into the realm of sleep, a gentle kingdom of sense, nonsense and nightmare. A syncretistic place. Slumber. (Once, on the Argentine grasslands, I saw a great white heron rise on angel wings big enough to fly a man.)

John Galen Holliday MD is alone, today, really alone. No chorus. Alone. His chorus is 6 grungy old men, 2 semi-hot women and Jeanette, a project-dwelling cynic. They have refused to accompany our John for a day or so. He tried to have them exorcized. Truculent Doc and his obstreperous self.

For the bronze-green Goatman, sheened in water, auraed in sunshine…  surely he does not signify for darkness, an encroaching apocalypse, a sinister thing requiring “rapture,” so bad no one wants to be here for it. Conspiracy. He is only a representation of a Goatman. He is impervious to water, weather, malice, love. Some artist forged him. Did he exist before the melting of the metal, the pouring into the mold?

Across town, at the New Crescent Temple, food is set in front of the various statues. Someone wakes them up each morning and bids them goodnight each evening. “The gods and goddesses are all the same god, nameless and without form.”

At St Pachomius Catholic Church, candles burn in front of statues of Joseph and Mary. Joseph’s staff is in bloom, indicating his fitness to be the foster father of God. Mary wears a crown in May.

In the nearby intersection of the 5 said streets, Doc sees the Knights of Dixie Marching Band. It is 1965 out there, just now. A phalanx of mean white guys burdened with various musical instruments seethes under the traffic lights, trying to form in a past day’s traffic.

(I am a gaucho. I ride the pampas and throw a weird lariat.)

Time shifts. Time’s sleight of hand, a magician’s pass. Doc finds himself meeting Wanda Kowalski for the first time. That time expands all around him. It is for Doc. They are hugging. Soul stuff. Doc has never been so sure of anything down to his marrow and the busy depths of his subconscious.  

Something about life begins, again. At the fountain.

Now.

The parade was the next Saturday.  The center is not here. The center cannot form, here. This is the past. Exactly 22 years from this particular past day, around the corner, at the New Women’s Clinic, someone will leave the dumpster door open. A crow will peck at a blue baby eye.

Doc’s chorus is of the classical-Greek-play extraction. They once did an amazingly thorough job of ruining his present moment. Catastrophic. Stuff.

Sherriff Buford Ramspiddler, the real life hero of the Talking Tall movies, told the Knights of Dixie to march, today, in 1965. He is lately doing senescence in a vegetative coma on the edge of a white man’s bardo. And so on.

Doc likes his peaceful mind. He is content with it. He is actually considering his chorus to be a bunch of exorcized demons. His head did not spin. He did not vomit and spew. Strange runes did not form on his stomach. He smokes by the fountain. His weight. He feels light, airy.

Time shifts. Time’s sleight of hand, a magician’s pass. Doc finds himself as a newly minted MD. That time expands all around him. It is for Doc. His father is hugging him. Today, he is a grateful survivor of a most impressive education. Healer. A new life begins, again. At the fountain.

Now.

Our Goatman never blinks. He cannot move. He is only a sculptor’s whimsy in a fountain in a city in the South of North America. Goofy white men want to lead off a parade set for another day in a long-gone present moment. They are unfortunate earthbound spirits, all the time. And time carries them. As long as they want it to do so. Freight.

The Goatman informs various animals. What? What is he teaching? Frogs, dogs, sheep, rabbits. Time is unstuck, here. Doc is going back and forth through the decades. And he always does this; and he is always doing it; and he will always be doing it.

Doc is unmoored in time. Doc is alone. His mother died in childbirth when he was 7. It was the day, 9/14/1963. Four girls would die in a Sunday School class the next morning.

The Goatman does what bishops do. (I am become the Lord of Time. I expand. I am boundless.

I am the sum of a lot of peoples’ prayers.)

Time shifts. Time’s sleight of hand, a magician’s pass. Doc finds himself joining the Catholic Church on the Easter Vigil, 2007. That time expands all around him. It is for Doc. “The body of Christ. ‘Amen.’ The blood of Christ. ‘Amen.’”  Father Kevin hugs him. Heaven begins, again.  At the fountain.

Now.

In his bones, Doc knows he exists in this lively benediction suffused with love, sense, Spirit. This stuff is easy for him because these predominate. Yes. Really. God pours himself into time in a myriad uncountable ways and floods Doc’s heart which is shaped, always shaped, for that.

Middle Way

by Bryan Merck

I ride my lawnmower in and around my yard.
I will weedeat the various edges, later.
I remember life before weed eaters.
I remember the non-motorized mowers in Grandmama’s  garage.
Her yard man, King, rode a bicycle to her house.
He carried an empty half-gallon water jar.
Grandmama filled it with ice and water.
Thank God for the internal combustion engine.

I experience the joys and profundities of life.
I can exist without doubt.

Grass is a wonderful plant. St Augustine grass is amazing.
My days are like a field of grass. A strong wind passes,
and there yet remains abundant evidence of my being here.

My lawnmower is of the same brand as serious farm equipment.

Like the women at Jesus’ tomb, I am sometimes “afraid yet filled with joy.”
John “leaped with joy” when he heard Mary’s voice prior to his birth.
The angel brought the frightened shepherds “good news of great joy.”
Jesus told his listeners they would “leap for joy” over their reward in heaven.
He told the disciples that “no one will take away your joy.”

I go about like Abraham at testimony meetings
all the years between when Isaac was promised
and when Sarah conceived.

I ride my lawnmower into my garage.
I have resolved not to live my life seeking pleasures.
I have resolved not to live my life seeking mortifications.

My main identifying label is “human,” above all else,
and I am a man; I am of the male gender. Every man, woman, and child
blesses me, and I in turn bless them.
We can do this in a real and substantial way.

If I ask Western human beings “Where is mind?” they will point to their heads.
If I ask Eastern human beings “Where is mind?” they will point to their hearts.

If I never walk in darkness,
light will mean nothing to me.
If I never experience the severities and sorrows of life,
joy will mean nothing to me.

The Incredible Strength of Belief

by Bryan Merck

At the Kingdom Hall, Elder Shorty defines the nature of love:
“Love opens us up to a world of pain?
If I care for someone, it hurts me when they hurt.
It hurts me when they die. We all die.”

Shorty ran moonshine for years.
He was also a serious drunkard.
This was high-level stuff until he found God.
He had sought to inculcate the Playboy philosophy in Gillsville, Georgia,
until he met the Tingle sisters, Dottie and Zooey Lou.

Shorty goes around on Saturdays and witnesses for Jehovah.
People knew him then; people know him now.
He once rode a go-cart all the way to Gainesville to find liquor.
His son, Bubba, liked serial-killer collectible cards.

Shorty and Zooey Lou Tingle married.
The Tingles are Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Zooey’s great-grandfather died in Aushwitz
along with a bunch of other Witnesses.
As a group, they refused to kill any fellow human beings.

“There are Witnesses in high places,” continues  Shorty.
“Michael Jackson was a Witness. He had all that plastic surgery
to keep from being recognized.”

Shorty backslid into a brief stint with snake-handling Pentecostalism.
Zooey would have none of it, however.
Shorty was rebaptized in the name of Jesus.
Luther, an old friend, got bit by a canebreak rattler.
He refused help and died.

At their first meeting, Zooey Lou Tingle changed the life of the miscreant Shorty.
He had just done three years for stealing a nice bass boat.
He spent most of that in solitary for general meanness.

He saw Zooey Lou downtown one morning.
His heart broke. He asked her if he could see her.
She said “Yes, if you are a gentleman.”
And so from that day on he became one.

Wild Animal Doctor

by Bryan Merck

Petesy is Pete’s wife.
She and Pete and I are fishing with shiners at Oak Mountain State Park.
A wild duck in some sort of distress has caught Pete’s eye.
The duck, a male Mallard, is a few yards down the bank.
It keeps dipping its head into the water.
It doesn’t fly off when Pete approaches it.

Pete sees the problem. The duck has a fishing lure in its mouth,
a minnow with two treble hooks. It stays in its spot on the bank
even with Pete hovering right above it.

Petesy sees the problem and gets emotional, crying a bit.
“Poor thing, Daddy, what can we do?” she laments.
Pete is already at work. He gets a bath towel from our picnic table
and a pair of needle-nose pliers from his tackle box.

Two of the barbed hooks have pierced the duck’s lower bill.
Pete moves close and in an effortless series of actions
drops the towel on the length of the duck and takes it up in his arms.
Petesy squeals in dismay. The duck tries to fight its way free.
Pete’s grip on it is sure, gentle, unyielding.

The duck and Pete sit down on the bank.
With a deft hand, he snips the barbs off the offending hooks.
The duck is quickly free of the lure.
Pete gently releases it into the water.

Petesy squeals in some sort of fit of increased love and devotion.
She hangs herself around Pete’s neck. I am truly amazed.
My opinion of him has just gone from “tolerable hill trash” to “amazing human being,”
a wild animal doctor. I am envious.

I immediately think of St Francis.
I have a statue of him in my garden, holding a refillable bowl of birdseed.
Pete is a tool user; tools are his natural extension of will.
Now he has shown himself to be a man of nature, too.
He possesses esoteric knowledge about internal combustion engines
and electromagnetic motors, even if there is  a computer associated with either.
He is versed in the ways of lumber and brick.

Life is smiling on Pete.
I can see trouble in his eyes.
If it involves an animal, he always abuses me about my leanings toward reincarnation.
He untangles himself from Petesy.

“Was that a relative of your’s, brother?” he earnestly asks.
Pete is now more than just a tongue-talking handler of venomous snakes in church.
He is escaping the clutches of samsara; he is approaching original mind.
“I know what you’re thinking, dude,” he says.

Faces—I have been, I am, I will be

by Bryan Merck

Kookoo, my friend from Haiti, has exported her old ways.
She collects footprint dust, hair clippings, nail pairings,
waxen kewpie dolls. She is a user of hatpins, pins with
knobs on one end. She is a chanter of blessings and curses,
a friend of many loas.

Her mythos explains good and evil and joy and sorrow.
In her world, if I am adroit, I can avoid at least egregious suffering.

But there are two in my world that remain: physical hurt, emotional hurt.
The last is the worst. Alcohol once helped.
Twice I have spent years addicted to pain meds
and benzodiazepines. It was my feelings, my rollercoaster,
sometimes hour by hour, up, down, up and down.
I lied about severe headaches. I did have some arthritis.
I lied about my level of physical pain.

For me, it is easy to believe in “the fall of man.” My will is disordered.
History declares me to be dangerous. There is a savagery in my nature.
I am the Arab slave trade. I am World War 2.

I am also capable of great love and forgiveness.
I am Nelson Mandela. I am the Dalai Lama.

I ask myself if the Catholic God’s justice is too much other, if it is just too pure
for me to understand. Can a choice I make or do not make in this brief life
affect my being for eternity? Sometimes I would choose annihilation.
 If I believe God’s ways are as high above mine
as the stars, I can better make sense of suffering.

I have studied eastern religions.
What if reincarnation were true? What is the point?
There is still some fundamental inadequacy in that universe, too much suffering,
too little chance to escape it. An endless cycle of birth and death.
The blind turtle and the golden yoke floating on an infinite ocean.
Endless karma to tote from life to life, to satisfy for.
A terrible justice to be appeased by my suffering
over aeons.
                                                                                                               
Kookoo tells me about a man in her village who was turned into a zombie.
One day he became sick and died shortly thereafter.
She attended his funeral. Some months later, he was seen laboring on a distant farm.
He had no will or volition. He did not respond to his name.

What is the cause of disorder?
Why do 99 point whatever percent of humans seek its explanation
in metaphysics?

Did I have a face before I was born?
Will I have a face after I die?

Kookoo has a potbellied pig named Henry.
Henry pees in a litter box. He opens the refrigerator door
with his snout and grazes. He sleeps with Kookoo.

Henry is basic, simple. He moves between pleasure and distress.
He seeks the former. He vocalizes both. He is an open book.
His subconscious is all about mud-puddle coolness and slop.
It, like Kookoo’s and mine, is directly connected to God.
Henry dreams in his sleep.

This morning Henry has a can of premium dog food for breakfast.
He has been in captivity since day one. As he eats, he is loose in a hardwood forest,
in the fall. He grazes for acorns under a live oak. He possesses no knowledge of humans.

In that glen, his face is always pig. There is no concept of past and future.
It has always been a pig face. It will always be a pig face. It is a pig face.
For Henry, bliss is an ongoing state of being, something in which he moves.
No catastrophic scenarios play themselves out in his mind.

Henry does not move with fear. His joy is basic.
Henry is continuous. Henry is.
Kookoo and I may or may not ever be.