“Be Still” from the book ASK! by Walter Lanyon

This chapter, from the book ASK! by Walter Lanyon, came to me right when I needed to read it. I’m posting it here in hopes that it inspires you, too!

For a reading of this chapter on my YouTube channel, click here.

To the best of my knowledge, this work is in the public domain.

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BE STILL
by Walter Lanyon
from his book ASK!

“Be Still, and Know That I Am God.”

Suddenly, for the first time I began to see or hear what BE STILL meant. It is a letting go of every desire–every wish or idea–a blankness. When this is established, the Power of God has the unobstructed way of expression and comes through into manifestation. Manifestation is the last stage.

It is action in non-action–when there is no “THINK” action in this inactivity of the personal, the Divine comes into manifestation. Not to fulfill the wishes and desires and ideas I had treasured for a lifetime, but to bring out the things that “eye hath not seen.” It is a discovery that reality, which has been trying to come through for so long, is about to express itself with ease and naturalness.

It is not a mental stillness– not trying to be still. It is a sudden letting go of everything– a complete surrender into a place of “Divine Indifference”– sudden recognition that this is what “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity” must be– but it is God’s opportunity only when there is a “stillness.” As the non-action of thought finally becomes apparent then, “Let come what may” floods into your universe with LIGHT such as you have not yet known– and the veils of human belief are rent.

The glory (that indefinable substance) fills the house, the consciousness, and reveals that which is and always has been.

When you are still, all the mad human thought, desire, craving dies. The breath is quiet, flowing in and out of the temple automatically. You are imbreathed. Something happens that you have not yet known. Something starts pulsating. Life is manifested.

“Ye have not chosen me,but I have chosen you.”

At first it may be a mere platitude, a poetic thought. Eventually it must reveal a basic law– more accurate and unchangeable than mathematics. Awakening begins. Deep, deep in the heart something stirs. It is recognition. It is remembrance– “and he remembered” while he was yet Prodigal. “And He remembered.” He had gone through thousands of attempts to change and make something happen by man-made ideas and learning. He had sought the world over for a “teacher,” a Guru– and had finally landed in the “pigsty” with the husks of personal teaching around him, and the veils of human thought and belief still “grunting” ideas of how to “Get” things and change the face of the universe. He had discovered it was only a sort of “rooting” in the mud of ancestor teaching so filled with futility and frustration in the torrid currents of evil.

That which awakened him sounded remote and far away at first– impossible of attainment– yet there it was echoing in the inner recesses of his being: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” He could hear it with great longing and desire. That would do nothing. Finally he must HEAR it–discover IT. Not as something that had to be put on, or practiced, or made true, but as something which had to be RECOGNIZED as true. The Choosing of ME brought inaction of the human mind and provided a wide-open channel for the action of God. Action in inaction took place. “I can of mine own self do nothing” — “but with God all things are possible” cleared the way for a glorious revelation. A discovery that Jesus, unimpeded by the hypnosis of human belief, passed through closed doors into expression, even as the wind passes through the screen. Suddenly he DISCOVERS “that his father had enough and to spare.”

Somehow at the moment of NO thought, he was STILL and could HEAR for the first time the “Lord in the midst of THEE”– and it had something to say and do which had nothing in common with the gauche words of man’s wisdom; it began to extend all the senses into a place where revelation took place, and the “Look again” brought out that which had been impossible before. The miracle ceased to be the miracle and became the natural normal order and action of God in the Kingdom of heaven and he began to understand how it was that He had “twice as much as he had before” and how it was possible to “Look again” and see the hypnotic ignorance of man and ancestor teaching telescoped into nothingness. A thousand years are as a day.

He who chooses ME is chosen by ME– “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” The legitimate question would be “What for”? For the purpose of earning my living by the sweat of my brow? The answer could only come when the “still” state had taken place, and there was no question or answer, opinions or personal ideas in the mind of man, only a STILL-ness; a blankness of human thought. Then could the “NAME” be whispered to him– then could he hear, and for the first time hear “Be still and know”– and he could hear also the authority for this new dimension: “Call no man your Father.” If he heard this SECRET word and stopped trying to make it so, and let it come into being, he would drop the great weight of ancestor teaching. The avid desire to do something is suddenly spent.

He who is chosen by God finds suddenly that he is only discovering that which is. He is motivated by the ONE and accomplishes whatsoever he sets his hand unto, in way not possible to the labored human thought, even Praxiteles changed a piece of marble into the appearance of chiffon covering a Goddess. A Thousand systems “technique” will not produce it. The action of God through the inaction of man causes man to release a thing of beauty, to reveal that which is.

Be STILL — very STILL — yes, even stiller than STILL.

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I’ve created a PDF e-book of another Lanyon book, The Laughter of God. It’s edited from several online sources and formatted for optimal reading on most phones and tablets. For more information on that, including a link to the download page, click here.

“The Twins Turn 21” – ebook collection of adult comics

The first e-book of my TWINS comics, The Twins Turn 21, is a 61-page collection of full-color uncensored adult comics, some of them published originally in tamer black and white versions in my ‘zine Metanoia, and some of them never before published. It’s a full-color PDF e-book, readable on any device without loss of formatting.

Click here to see some sample comics!

THE TWINS TURN 21 is available as a PDF e-book from my Ko-fi shop. Click here to order!

“Distilled Neville”

(This article originally appeared in issue #16 of my newsletter Metanoia)

With Neville Goddard’s teachings, I find myself often trying to distill the message he put across into the simplest terms possible, so that when I feel “stuck,” I can find a quick and easy way out.

See what you think of this:

Our unconditioned awareness of being is God.

Neville: “When you say ‘I am,’ that’s God.”

Athanasius: “God became man that man might become God.” We are God, the Elohim: “a compound unity, one made up of many.”

This is why the two greatest commandments are said to be “Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

If we are all God, then there is no “other,” and the Golden Rule becomes not prescriptive (“Thou shalt do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), but DEscriptive (“When you do unto others, you are doing unto yourself.”)

When we condition our awareness of being (I AM) with feeling, it is a creative act.

We have been using this principle of creative imagining– bringing forth reality via our assumptions– our whole lives, only we weren’t aware of it.

Neville: “A man does not attract what he wants. He attracts what he is,” or what he feels to be true.

All things bring forth after their kind.

If I feel “I am rich, I am poor, I am healthy, I am ill, I am loved, I am unloved, I am worthy, I am unworthy,” or other things to be true, then they bring forth after their kind; they reproduce in my world.

Few people want to be poor, ill, unloved, or unworthy, but if they feel that they are, then their world will reflect this.

To quote William Blake: “What seems to be is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences, to those to whom it seems to be. But divine mercy steps beyond and redeems us in the body of Jesus.”

The “body of Jesus” is our capacity to create and redeem using our imaginative faculty, or, as the Apostle Paul said, “Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

The acts that Jesus performed in the Bible were more than just stories of one-off “miracles;” they were intructive parables meant to show us how to use our imaginative powers creatively to bring forth desired ends.

The “good news” of the Gospel is that this principle can be used deliberately. We don’t have to settle for “what seems to be.” We can create a better reality for ourselves and for others by imagining deliberately.

Quoting Blake again, “All that we behold, though it appears without, it is within, in our imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”

Neville: “An assumption– though false, though reason denies it and the evidence of my senses denies it– if persisted in will harden into fact.”

If my reality has come forth based on my assumptions –what I feel to be true– then it follows that if I assume (feel) that something is true– even though it’s denied by my senses– and I persist in that assumption, it should come forth in my world.

This is the test that the Apostle Paul called us to.

“Come test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course, you fail to meet the test.”  (2 Corinthians 13:5)

The method of testing and bringing forth a desired reality is via prayer.

Prayer is not supplication, wishing, or begging.

Prayer is the act of assuming that your desired end is already an accomplished fact.

Neville: “Go to the end. The end is where we begin.”

No matter what we desire, the end is always: How would I feel if my desire was an accomplished fact?

“When you pray, whatsoever you desire, believe that you have already received it and you will.” (Mark 11:24)

And: “But as for you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber and lock your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret shall himself reward you openly.” (Matthew 6:6)

In order to bring forth a desired end, it’s not only necessary to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, but also to turn away completely from any undesired fact or reality.

Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt when she looked back. (Genesis 19:26) Salt is a preservative. By looking back at undesired facts, we “preserve” them in our world.

Neville: “Don’t accept it as permanent. Don’t even accept it as temporary. Use the law to get out of it.”

Finally: “When Job prayed for his friends, his captivity was lifted, and the Lord gave him twice as much as before.” (Job 42:10)

Since “there is no other,” since “the Lord our God is one,” and since the Golden Rule is descriptive and not prescriptive, the highest use of prayer and imaginative principles is to use them lovingly on behalf of others.

How’s that for a start?

This article originally appeared in issue #16 of my biweekly print-only ‘zine Metanoia.

Metanoia is my biweekly print-only ‘zine, usually two, sometimes four, pages.

To receive the latest issue of it, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to
Max Shenk
39 South Main St, rm 138
White River Junction, VT 05001

OR
You can go to my shop at Ko-fi.com, where you can get either a subscription or back issues. Or both!

Author interview

Many thanks to Carol Anne Kauffman, who interviewed me for her literary blog Vision and Verse. God knows I tried not to take myself too seriously; I only talked until the string in the back of my neck retracted.

Here’s the link…
https://visionandverse.blogspot.com/2024/04/interview-humorous-author-max-harrick.html

James Thurber on rough drafts and revision

“A story I’ve been working on was rewritten fifteen complete times…”

This is an excerpt from an interview that James Thurber gave to Max Steele and George Plimpton of The Paris Review sometime in the late 1950s; it’s included in a book entitled Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, published in 1958.
The interviewers asked Thurber if he devoted a lot of time to “prefiguring” his work.

Thurber: No. I don’t bother with charts and so forth… I can’t work that way. [Playwright and Thurber collaborator Elliott] Nugent would say, “Well, Thurber, we’ve got our problem; we’ve got all these people in the living room. Now what are we going to do with them?” I’d say I didn’t know and couldn’t tell him until I’d sat down at the typewriter and found out. I don’t believe the writer should know too much where he’s going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint– old man propaganda.

Interviewers: Is the act of writing easy for you?

Thurber: For me it’s mostly a question of rewriting. It’s part of a constant attempt on my part to make the finished version smooth, to make it seem effortless. A story I’ve been working on– “The Train on Track Six”– was rewritten fifteen complete times. There must have been close to 240,000 words in all the manuscripts put together, and I must have spent two thousand hours working on it. Yet the finished version can’t be more than twenty thousand words.

Interviewers: Then it’s rare that your work comes out right the first time?

Thurber: Well, my wife took a look at the first version of something I was doing not long ago and said, “Goddamn it, Thurber, that’s high school stuff.” I have to tell her to wait until the seventh draft, it’ll work out all right. I don’t know why that should be so, that the first or second draft of everything I wrote reads as if it was turned out by a charwoman. I’ve only ever written one piece quickly. I wrote a thing called “File and Forget” in one afternoon– but only because it was a series of letters just as one would ordinarily dictate. And I’d have to admit that the last letter of the series, after doing all the others that one afternoon, took me a week. It was the end of the piece and I had to fuss over it.

Interviewers: Does the fact that you’re dealing with humor slow down the production?

Thurber: It’s possible. With humor you have to look out for traps. You’re likely to be very gleeful with what you’ve first put down, and you think it’s fine, very funny. One reason you go over it and over it is to make the piece sound less as if you were having a lot of fun with it yourself. You try to play it down…
Still, the act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even rewriting’s fun. You’re getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.

_{James Thurber / photograph credit and date unknown. Yes, I did notice that, in this photo, he is, in fact, drawing and not writing.}

Postscript – I looked online, first doing a general search by author and title, then in the New Yorker online archive, and finally in Edwin’s Bowden’s 1969 James Thurber: A Bibliography (Ohio State University Press), and nowhere could I find a published story entitled “The Train on Track Six,” so it’s possible that, even after all that work (and Thurber’s talk about all that work), Thoreau either abandoned the story, or decided it wasn’t worth publishing, or maybe even submitted it someplace and had it rejected.

Mild ambivalent February

I loved this passage about winter, from Thomas Merton’s journal, 17 February 1958 (excerpted in a book entitled A Year With Thomas Merton). Merton’s monastery was in Kentucky, and he observed one morning after prayers “the sun coming up slowly and shining on the sunny pastures and on the pine woods of the dark knobs, which I see through the novitiate window. Lovely blue and mauve shadows on the snow, and the indescribably delicate color of the sunlit patches of snow. All the life of color is in the snow and the sky. The green of the pines is dull and brownish. The dead leaves, still clinging tenaciously to the white oaks, are also dull brown. The cold sky is very blue, and the air is dry and frozen so that, for the first time in years, I see and breathe the winters of New York and not the mild or ambivalent winters of Kentucky.

“The strength of the cold, the austerity and power of the landscape, redeems the snow colors and delicate shadows from anything of pastel shading. I can think of no art that has rendered such things adequately– the nineteenth century realists were so realistic as to be totally unlike what they painted. There is such a thing as too close a resemblance. In a way, nothing resembles reality less than the average photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial, you have to use a sign, which is itself substantial and exists in its own right.

“Man is the image of God and not the shadow of God.”

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My favorite phrase in this journal entry describes perfectly my dislike for Pennsylvania winters: “mild or ambivalent winters.” As Neville Goddard said, “we learned this from Revelation: let a man be hot or cold, not lukewarm.” I miss the sub-freezing winter days of Vermont this February, and have no love at all for the 40- or 50-something midwinter days in Pennsylvania.

“Be ye hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm I spew you out.”

Photo by Max Shenk; Carlisle, PA; January 2024

Home improvement?

In the two dozen or so acres of woods behind my mom’s house, there are both finished walking and running trails of crushed stone, and dirt side trails which wind off and between the finished trails. I walk the side trails, but also, unfortunately, mountain bikers like them, too.

There are countless abandoned animal holes along the side trails, like a groundhog or fox or some other burrowing animal lived in them years ago. One of those holes, this morning, clearly looked like it’d been renovated since the last time I walked past it a few days ago. It’s the season when female foxes hunker down in dens to have their litters, and foxes are notorious for taking over old abandoned dens and making them their own, so I’m guessing a mom did some work here the past week. Unfortunately, this concerns me, because this den is right next to a side trail that gets walked and biked heavily, sometimes by people walking dogs. Foxes are also notorious for switching dens frequently, so I guess I have to trust that if this is the work of a fox, and she finds that there’s too much traffic in this location, she’ll move deeper into the woods.

Anyway it’s consistent with my experience of foxes in this woods: I don’t see them directly, but see (this den, tracks in the snow) and hear (occasional yelping) evidence of their presence.

I hope I luck into seeing them this spring, but only if they’re safe from human (or dog) interlopers.

“It’s MINE” / “But she GAVE it to me!”

This is an excerpt from book five of my serialized coming-of-age novel Meeting Dennis Wilson.
Spring 1976; Quaker Valley, Pennsylvania (“Like Gettysburg, except nothing happened here”). A rainy day ride prompts narrator Brian Pressley to tell the story of his girlfriend Christy Kelly, her big sister Kathy, Kathy’s ex-boyfriend Paul, Paul’s little sister Liz, their best friend Margo, and a Penn State Swimming Sweatshirt.
See the bottom of this post for more information on Meeting Dennis Wilson.

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Liz hadn’t always loved Christy, nor Christy Liz. Before Kathy started seeing Davy, she’d dated Liz’s big brother Paul, and not only did it not end well, but when they broke up, Paul accidentally (or “accidentally,” depending on who you asked) gave Kathy a stylish PENN STATE SWIMMING sweatshirt that belonged to Liz. When Kathy got the post-breakup box of stuff (because there was always a post-breakup box of stuff… or, as I learned once with Christy, a bag…), she looked at the sweatshirt and said “This isn’t mine! Why’s he giving me this for? I don’t want this!”

“I’ll take it,” Christy said, figuring that the STOCKER written in indelible ink on the collar tag was for “Paul” and not “Liz.” But when she wore it, innocently, to school the next day, Liz confronted her. “Where’d you get that sweatshirt?”

“Kath gave it to me. She got it from your brother.”

And Liz, according to Margo, “lost… her… crap. ‘That’s MY sweatshirt.’ Which, of course, what did Christy know? You know? ‘No… Kath said it was Paul’s and he gave it to her!’ And so the sweatshirt drama went for the next two weeks, every time I’d see one or the other of them: Liz with ‘It’s mine and she should just give it back,’ and Christy with ‘I don’t know what she’s talking about. Kath gave it to me.’ Yeesh!”

Finally, Margo got so tired of hearing them both –“of being pulled into the middle of it against my will”– that she got them together at Pizza House, and over a small pie, she played arbitrator. “Look, woman,” and for a moment, neither of them knew which one Margo was talking to, “the tag says STOCKER on it. Right? Kathy assumed it was Paul’s, but Liz says it’s hers, so… you should give it back.” And before Christy could let out a “But–” Margo looked at Liz. “But Liz, look: Paul did give it to Kath. Right? So maybe you ought to talk to your brother and find out why he’s giving away your clothes to his ex-girlfriend. Right?”

Liz smiled. “I have a better idea…”

The three of them left Pizza House together and went over to Christy’s house, up to the bedroom that Christy and Kathy shared, and Christy showed Liz which dresser was hers and which was her sister’s, and which bottle of perfume atop that dresser was Kathy’s favorite, and Liz said, well, was Christy sure, she didn’t want to waste that, but Christy said, “Believe me… she won’t think it’s a waste…”

…so Liz grabbed the bottle and aimed the atomizer of Kathy’s Amarige de Givenchy perfume right at the collar of Liz’s-through-Paul-to-Kathy-to-Christy Penn State sweatshirt and spritz spritz spritzed… then, for good measure, aimed some at each of the cuffs (“Do sweatshirts even HAVE pulse points? Let’s pretend they do!”) and finally at the XL right in the middle of the chest: spritz spritz spritz spritz spritz!

“It smells so pretty,” Liz said as she set the perfume bottle back on Kathy’s dresser. “I can’t believe Paul would want to give this away… can you?”

And so she and Christy went over to Liz’s house, up to Paul’s bedroom, and stuffed the sweatshirt in the bottom drawer with his other sweatshirts and sweaters… “no, maybe in his underwear drawer… or his sock drawer… no, maybe with his t-shirts… or his jeans…”

By the time they left, according to Christy, “Paul’s room smelled like the perfume counter at Gimbels. No, correction: it smelled like Kath. And Liz and me have been buddies ever since.”

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About Meeting Dennis Wilson…

“Today marks the day that I officially add Meeting Dennis Wilson to my ‘Favorite Coming of Age Books’ list. I adore John Green and his work [and] I fell in love with this book just as easily as I fell in love with Paper Towns or An Abundance of Katherines. Meeting Dennis Wilson can easily be compared to a teenager who’s just coming of age: awkward, quirky, hilarious, and loads of fun to be around.Meeting Dennis Wilson is incredibly comical, sweet, and ultimately feel-good.” (The Literary Connoisseur)

Meeting Dennis Wilson is available in both softcover print and Kindle editions, in either seven serialized installments or as an omnibus edition gathering all seven books.

To read excerpts from Meeting Dennis Wilson, click here.

Click here for ordering information for both print and e-book editions. 

More of the TWINS in color: a second sampler

Here is a second gallery of THE TWINS IN COLOR: a handful-and-a-half of comics that were (mostly) originally published in greyscale/censored versions in my ‘zine Metanoia.

If you missed the FIRST gallery of THE TWINS IN COLOR, click here.

To see a post about how I created one of the comics in this gallery, click here.

Oh, and there’s a TWINS e-book: THE TWINS TURN 21. Info about that can be found here.

I think that’s all, except the girls send their love.
Each in her own way, of course.

“Out of Sight”

“Out of Sight” is one of those fully-realized pieces in my story/character universe for which, for some reason, I can’t seem to find a place. It was a chapter in an unpublished novel that I drafted, and I decided that it worked as a stand-alone story, so I published part of it in a literary journal; then published the whole work as a Kindle short story. Meanwhile, though, I took elements of that unpublished work and incorporated them into two other published works, my novel You Don’t Think She Is and my serialized novel Meeting Dennis Wilson.

The part of me that wants to adhere to canon asks myself where “Out of Sight” fits into the timeline of those two (and other) works, but as far as my storyline goes, canon has been pretty much shot long ago. So I’m left with this stray story about which I’m uncertain in so many ways: does it fit the timeline, or the stories that I’ve published, or, or, or, or, or.

I’ve just decided that the best way to answer these questions is just to leave it out there, and let readers decide. If they like it and it works for them, then that’s enough.

“Out of Sight” is now available as a PDF e-book on my ko-fi page; click here for more information and to order a copy.

Here’s an excerpt (the opening page-or-so of the story, actually).

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As soon as I saw the bag, I knew that it was serious.

No, actually, when I saw the bag, the first thing I thought was “What in the hell is that??!!” It was sitting at my place on the kitchen table when I got home from school the Tuesday after the breakup: one of those big, plastic-handled heavy-duty white paper shopping bags that they sold out of racks for a dime a piece at department stores like the Bon Ton, Wanamakers, Gimbels, Penney’s…

…or Woodward and Lothrup.

Christy’s Dad always took her and Kathy and their Mom to Woody’s when they went down to visit him in DC.

So… it was something from Christy.

Maybe a gift. Or, seeing as the bag was stuffed so full it was almost round, several gifts.

How nice.

I approached the bag hesitantly, almost sneaking up on it. I felt like I didn’t want to get too close… I mean, what if it went off?

Closer… didn’t see any wires… closer… right on top of it now… I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to see what was inside, but I stood next to it and peeked in the top.

O.K…. I saw grey twill… which would be… a sweatshirt… and… the maroon bill of a Phillies cap… my Phillies cap… or rather the one I gave to Christy… the one that she wore like it was hers but it was mine and she knew it and she wanted to know it… except now it seemed like it was mine again and she wanted me to know it.

I stood next to the table, exhaled, and I swear, just as I was thinking “When did she leave this?” the Omniscient Voice Of Mom rang out from some unseen corner of the house.

“Christy dropped that bag on the porch after school, Brian.”

O.K. I’d kind of pictured her just tossing it out the window of the bug onto our driveway as she cruised by, so that’s good, anyway…

“Out of Sight” is now available as a PDF e-book on my ko-fi page; click here for more information and to order a copy.

“Don’t Call Us; we won’t call you…”

This article originally appeared in issue # 23 of my ‘zine METANOIA. Scroll to the bottom of this post for info on sample issues and subscriptions.

I read something years ago in a biography of Henry Miller where an acquaintance of Miller’s talked about Miller’s aversion to banks. I don’t know that he necessarily “hated” banks or had a phobia about them. He just didn’t like them, didn’t feel comfortable going into them, and, in fact, avoided going into them at all.
As a result, according to this acquaintance, Miller often had numerous uncashed and undeposited checks in his home which would have certainly helped him out financially during a time that he sometimes desperately needed it, “but he wouldn’t go inside a bank.”

I understand how Henry felt, because I feel that way about the phone.

I used to think that cellphones and cellphone culture was what I hated. But I own an Android smartphone, and I love it. It’s Star Trek technology come to life. Like nearly everyone else over the age of seven in western civilization (as well as most of eastern civilization), I carry it with me everyplace I go. It’s mainly my link to the internet, but it’s so much more. Just this morning I’ve used it not just for internet and social media, but to send an email, check the weather (essential for springtime in Vermont), watch a birding video, run a timer to make a grilled cheese sandwich, jot down (in the memo pad function) an idea for a story, take a couple pictures, pay for an item on eBay… all just in the five hours since I’ve awoken.

I wouldn’t say my smartphone is “indispensable,” but it’s one of my most frequently-used technological tools. With apologies to Gene Roddenberry, it’s better than a communicator OR a tricorder; kind of the best of both, and it fits into my pocket…

…but oddly, seeing as it’s generically referred to as a “phone,” I seldom if ever make or take calls on it.

I love my smartphone, but I hate “the phone,” if that makes sense.

The distinction, to me, is between the handy little pocketsized device that allows me to perform all those functions and many others quickly and easily, and the actual telephone feature of that device… the mobile phone technology, in other words.

More than the technology itself, though, I hate the cultural conventions and expectations that surround notjust cellphones, but “the phone” generically.

I realized that this isn’t necessarily solely about cell-phones a few summers ago, when I spent some time at my parents’ house, helping them out while my mom had surgery. Almost every night, Mom would go to her usual fuss (“Oh, it’s not a fuss”) and trouble (“Oh, it’s no trouble!”) to make and serve a nice formal sitdown meal for me, my dad, and her. She’d set the table just so, apportion the servings just so, take those servings to the appointed places at the table, and we’d sit down to this nicely-set table of this fantastic mom-cooked meal; my Dad would say as much of his traditional family grace as he could remember (“Bless us, O Lord, that we may taste in grace and gratitude. Bless us that we may not waste a morsel of thy food. Bless the bread, and bless the meat, and bless us all who humbly eat”), and then, as we started to eat, first my dad would complain under his breath that it was “too much food,” and second, on at least four out of seven nights, sometimes immediately, sometimes following a four or five minute grace period, we would hear…

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG from the phone on the kitchen counter.

As one of them (usually Mom) would get up from their hot meal to answer it, thus committing to whomever or whatever was on the line for the duration of the call, I’d say “You know, you have an answering machine. We’re eating. Just let it ring through.”

But they always picked up.

It made me realize that one of my biggest objections to phone culture– not just cellphone culture, but phone culture dating back decades– is the unwritten, unspoken law that WHENEVER THE FUCKING THING RINGS, WHEREVER YOU ARE, WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING, IT’S EXPECTED THAT YOU WILL DROP EVERYTHING AND PICK UP.

“Whereever you are” is perhaps the thing I hate most about “the phone” on a cellphone. There is no end to the list of “whereevers” that people feel totally comfortable not only placing and taking calls, but speaking during those calls in a loud voice about proprietary, sensitive, private information. Busses, bus stops, trains, train stations, grocery stores, gas pumps, restaurants, restaurant rest rooms, hotel lobbies, hiking paths, picnic tables at parks… those are nothing. I won’t even try to catalog my most egregious “places that have become a phone booth;” your list would probably trump¹ mine anyway.

Suffice to say that anyplace where one might go hoping to not hear someone yammering on a phone has become someplace you’re likely to encounter someone yammering on a phone.

Further, that old school expectation of my parents’ (“If someone calls, you pick up”) has carried over to “the phone” on mobile devices:

If they call, you must pick up.
If you call, they must pick up.
Whenever the call occurs.
Wherever you or they are when it occurs.

And that’s why cellphone culture and I don’t get along. Sorry, but I drop everything for very few things (close friends or family in need spring to mind), and phone calls are not one of them.

That’s my cultural objection, one that I’m sure many people share, but my other objection, as stated above, is technological. For as advanced as the other tech on my smartphone is (lightning fast internet, HD camera capable of taking still photos and HD video footage, plus apps to edit those pieces, etc etc etc), the actual phone on a cellphone, quite frankly, sucks. I still have no idea where the actual mouthpiece is on the thing. It feels impossible to hold the phone to my ear AND my mouth at the same time. The sound quality of the call is awful, and since I can barely hear the caller, I naturally assume that the caller can’t hear me, SO I SCREAM INTO IT!!!

Yes, I’m one of those people who screams into their phone when I’m on a call. (Except I’m not. Because I’m never on a call. Ha, ha.)

This takes me back to Miller and his problem with banks. I dislike “the phone” on my smartphone so much that I do not use it even when I “need to.” Walking back from the grocery store today, I thought of three recent examples where I could have, should have, but…

~ I dropped my last vehicle off at a mechanic’s and they called back and told me that the car (a 2000 Subaru) has underbody damage that renders it not only irreparable, but “condemnable;” and would I please call them to arrange getting the tags, etc so that they could donate it to charity as salvage…
…TWO WEEKS AGO. I haven’t called back yet. It would mean using “the phone.”

~ Since my last employer closed because of the pandemic, I was eligible for and receiving pandemic unemployment assistance, and over the past winter, I went through a spell where those benefits lapsed. With no income coming in, I applied for food stamps online. After a few days, the state agency sent me a letter telling me that I needed to call to arrange an interview to review my eligibility for the program. At that point in the winter, the extra $200 or so boost in monthly grocery money would have been HUGE, but I couldn’t stand the idea of doing a benefits interview on “the phone.”
So I never called and the deadline passed.

~ A Neville-based teacher whom I really admire passed on word to a mutual acquaintance that he’d gotten copies of this letter that I’d sent him, and he wanted to get my phone number. Part of me would love to chat with him and have a dialogue of the kind that is so rare around these teachings and the people who are familiar with them (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: too many self-styled “Neville coaches,” of which this fellow is, refreshingly, not one).
But I’d have to do it on “the phone.” And… well, reference my objections stated above.
I told our mutual acquaintance to pass on that “I’m not a phone person.” (Insert You and he can tell me what kind of sociopathic misanthrope you think I am; I won’t mind here.)

Like Miller’s uncashed checks, opportunities come in via “the phone,” and I let them slip away. It’s not that I don’t appreciate them or the potential that they might represent; it’s just that, like Hawkeye Pierce refusing to brandish a firearm in a foxhole (“I HATE GUNS THAT MUCH!”), I just hate “the phone” that much.

I’m not sure what to add to this, except that the last time I went home to see my parents (last year around this time), we were eating one of my mom’s amazing homecooked suppers, and, after Dad’s “TOO! MUCH! FOOD! MARGE!” came the obligatory BBBRRRRRRIIIINNNNNGGG!

Mom didn’t move.

Dad said “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

Mom stabbed a forkful of meatloaf. “We’re eating. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.”

And she popped the forkful into her mouth, and the phone, after four more rings, was silent.

No message left; no disturbance.

Progress, however miniscule, is progress.

1. Are we allowed to use that verb again yet, or is it too soon? Or has it taken on other meanings? ↩︎

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Perverse frowardness

“To understand (the Bible) you need a little intelligence and much intuition– intelligence enough to enable you to read the book, and intuition enough to interpret and understand what you read.” ~ Neville Goddard, from his book Freedom For All

I’ve bookmarked a “random bible verse” website on my laptop, phone and tablet, and any time I feel like I need a shot of inspiration, I refresh the page, and more often than not, what I get is germane to whatever my needs are at the moment.

This morning, when I logged on, the verse on the page was Proverbs 10:32. By default, the site shows the translation from the New International Version (NIV), with alternate translations below that. Here is the NIV translation:

The lips of the righteous know what finds favor,
but the mouth of the wicked only what is perverse.

One of the things I learned from the most astute biblical scholar I’ve yet read, Neville Goddard, is that I need to read it critically. The Bible, he wrote in Freedom For All, was “written in an Eastern symbolism… by the Eastern mind and therefore cannot be taken literally by those of the west…. Why was it not written in a clear, simple style so that all who read it might understand it?… All men speak symbolically to that part of the world that differs from their own. The language of the West is clear to us of the West, but it is symbolic to the East, and vice versa.”

Goddard cites as an example the phrase “on the rocks.” “The man of the West would unintentionally mislead the man of the East by saying ‘This bank is on the rocks,’ for the expression ‘on the rocks’ to the Westerner is equivalent to bankruptcy, while a rock to an Easterner is a symbol of faith and security.”

This made me aware that I needed to look beyond the surface to glean meaning from the Bible, but then confounding the issue further is the fact that there is not one “Bible,” but numerous (dare I say “countless”) translations of “the same” work. That’s another thing I learned from Neville: I need to both consult multiple translations of the Bible and use a concordance. If a word or passage doesn’t “feel right,” he said, don’t accept it: cross-reference it in multiple editions and look it up in a concordance or another exhaustive scholarly work (The Interpreter’s Bible and The Encyclopedia Biblica are two such works that he mentioned frequently).

The “random bible verse” website presented six translations of the “same verse” quoted above, and I also consulted my own varied translations. Depending on which translation you consulted, Proverbs 10:32 tells you the following:

The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable:
But the mouth of the wicked speaketh frowardness.
(King James Version)

The lips of the godly speak helpful words,
but the mouth of the wicked speaks perverse words.
(New Living Translation)

The mouth of the good utters wisdom
but the perverted tongue destruction.
(Ferrar Fenton)

The speech of good men is a breath of pleasure
but bad men talking breathe out malice.
(James Moffatt)

The lips of the righteous know what is good;
but the mouth of the wicked speaks perverse things.
(George Lamsa)

Finally, perhaps the most reliable translation was in The Amplified Old Testament, a work which endeavored, in the editors’ words, “to reveal, together with the single-word English equivalent to each key Hebrew word, any other clarifying shades of meaning that may have been concealed by the traditional word-for-word method of translation.” The translators used parentheses for those “additional phrases of meaning included in the original word, phrase or clause,” and brackets for “clarifying words or comments… which are not actually expressed in the original text.”

The “Amplified” translation of Proverbs 10:32 is…

The lips of the (uncompromisingly) righteous know [and therefore utter] what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked knows [and therefore speaks only] what is obstinately willful and contrary.

That might be the translation that “feels” correct, but I had to go through six others to find it!

The amplified translation pointed me to a word that I found troubling in the other translations: perverse and its forms. At least six editions presented that word choice translated from the original Hebrew word (transliteration) tahpûkâh, which, according to Strong’s concordance, means “a perversity or fraud:— (very) froward (-ness, thing), perverse thing.”

Only the King James (ironically the first English translation of the batch, from 1611) opted for frowardness. That word intrigued me, so I went to Merriam Webster’s online dictionary (even though I have a compact OED at hand; sometimes, though, I don’t feel like using the magnifier!) to get its meaning: “habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition.” That word, although archaic, “feels right,” especially given the Amplified translation.

For as right as froward felt, perverse and perversity felt wrong. It’s not that perverse is not one of the shades of meaning of the original Hebrew word; rather, it’s that to my 21^st century mind, perverse and its derivatives have connotations which probably weren’t in the original text.

Merriam-Webster defines the primary meaning of the root word perverse as “turned away from what is right or good,” followed by “improper, incorrect,” “obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable or accepted,” or “arising from or indicative of stubbornness or obstinancy.” Those all seem to be the traditional senses of the word’s meaning, and I’d guess that those senses are what the translators were attempting to convey in choosing perverse.

It was with the fourth sense of meaning, which cross references the derivative perversion, where my problem with the word comes in: “a perverted form especially an aberrant sexual practice or interest”(their emphasis).

That was my gut level response to the word “perverse” in those multiple translations: that it conveys a sense of sexual deviancy.

While that may be the limited modern use of the word, I don’t think that that’s what the original Hebrew text was attempting to convey. “Fraud” (from the Hebrew) seems closer, and “habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition” (from “froward”) really hits home. The Amplified translation seems to capture both of those, without the limited, commonly-held, modern implications of “perversity.”

Interesting: according to Merriam Webster’s website, the original use of “froward” was as an antonym for “forward.” “Froward meant ‘moving or facing away from something or someone,’” which may have led to its other original early meaning: “difficult to deal with, perverse.” The King James Bible was published in 1611, so both of those shades of meaning probably influenced the translators.

Of all the translations, again, the Amplified version not only felt like it resonated with my current situation (that was, after all, the original point of the exercise), but, objectively, it seems to capture the depth and dimensions of the original text’s meaning best, without using words which our modern sensibilities might shade with limited understanding. If I hadn’t read that, I’d go with the King James choice of “frowardness,” which, again, conveys shades and dimensions of meaning that include but are not limited to the most common choice, “perverse.”

It’s a cautionary tale to translators: in translating ancient texts to make them “more accessible to modern readers,” be sure that your word choices are as close to all senses of the original meaning as possible.

Lest the original meanings of the texts get perverted.

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