Lamar Howell's Weblog

Cannibalism is the practice of killing one’s enemy in order to harvest and then eat the body part the killer envies. It is usually one of the major organs, organs which people consider the center of the person’s character, like the heart, or a large organ like the liver.

The rationale is that if I want the characteristic that makes my enemy brave or strong or fierce, I can transfer that quality to myself by eating the organ where it resides.

In the world today, we have something I think is analogous to cannibalism, in a moral sense: homosexuality. Homosexuality is–at its deepest essence, hurt, and longing–an attempt to find one’s
own gender wholeness. It is idolatrous in that it makes the object of desire an icon of perfection.

“I can be whole if I just have that perfect example of masculinity or femininity.”

But the whole process is a delusion, just like in the mythological story of the hunter Narcissus, from which we get the word ‘narcissistic,’ obsession with oneself. Narcissus was stuck at the pool enraptured with himself his whole life, and just before his death realized that his love could not be fulfilled.

It is eerily prophetic in that he was said to have been lured there because he had refused love to the woman Echo, a mountain nymph. So in a sense, homosexuality is an attempt to find love in an ‘echo’ of oneself, rather than the Echo (compatible opposite) that exists in nature.

The answer to moral cannibalism is not easy, but it is true: finding wholeness in one’s relationship to the one who is absolutely the model of paragon perfection: Jesus Christ; and whose love brings a person beyond gender identity or struggle, intimately deeper than sexuality, and closer even than one’s mirrored reflection.

Then the question “Who’s there?” will result in not an echo but an answer, “It is I; do not be afraid.”

John Kerry said that East Jerusalem is eventually going to be the capital of a country called Palestine, which historically has never existed. So that is the position from which he is brokering.

If we force Jerusalem to be divided, then God will cause the United States to be divided. I’m not sure if that means a physical divide, but I know it will mean a divide of some sort.

Ariel Sharon is on his death bed. Immediately after he signed over Gaza to the Palestinians, he went into a coma and has been in one ever since. His body shrank down to a mere 80 pounds. He diminished the mass of Israel, and his physical mass shriveled as a sign of judgment. If he dies, this may signal a swift change to the situation in Israel. What, I just don’t know. Maybe war? And it would seem the war would be unfavorable toward Israel.

I know that Israel will ultimately triumph, but the role the U.S. plays could shape our destiny in a major way. We will have to see.

“He who blesses Israel will be blessed; he who curses Israel will be cursed.”

I don’t care if people think this is a radical view. What’s radical is to try to take away territory that God clearly gave to the Jews. The Bible is a more binding document than the Balfour Declaration. Even the Koran never mentions Jerusalem nor does it suggest that Allah gave that territory to Mohammed’s followers.

Prophets, to be heard, must masquerade as poets. Their soliloquy, once admired, seeps into the soul, like raindrops through a nylon tent. But the art lover must reach out to touch the lining and break up the droplets. Then truth’s moist kiss moves from fingertips to shirt, then to the breast.

The fiat sword is masked as a letter-opener; the fiery words as a warm dancing glow; any divine ultimatum laid out like a lover’s desperate lunge across the threshold of a fleeing paramour. The prophet’s goat-hair garments hidden beneath a spider-web-thin sheer of rhyme and rhythm; its earthy smell muffled by lows and highs, no–aloes and hyacinth–of intonation, and the whirr and myrrh of accented, scented speech. His hewn, crooked staff doubles as a poker, ribbing now and then with eye-rolling puns amid small doses of cherry-flavored satire. He taps on the stony path, as if to clear the way for the truth-blind, yet poetically inclined 20-20 mind.

Anatoly Siedem . .

Doctor whose daughter married a mafia boss. The mafia sandwiched him in between two cars and caused him to have an accident. They took him and demanded ransom. His daughter’s boss gave the ransom, which also included the right to marry Anatoly’s daughter. This is a true story.

A teenager named Bratt rebels against his parents and leaves home, vowing never to return. He has his last name changed, essentially divorcing himself from them. Thirty years later he returns, demanding they give him everything he could have had during all that time and the best room in the house. Bratt wants the property and his inheritance spelled out in the will. He will not speak to them nor acknowledge their presence in the home. He lives like he is the only one there. He pays no bills, buys no groceries. He hates his so-called parents and all they stand for. Do you think the parents would accept Bratt’s terms?

A woman named Luz gets a job as an intern at a Fortune 500 company. The company requires her to start a training program, which involves college hours. Luz is asked to contribute to a 401B for her retirement. She has three weeks vacation time and seven sick days. But the woman refuses to go to college, doesn’t do what is required of her, nor does she contribute to a retirement plan. She takes more sick days than she is given.  Luz comes in late and often leaves early and takes a longer lunch. Eventually Luz is fired at age 25. When she turns 65, should the company give her a service metal and a full retirement package based on her history and performance?

You probably said “No” to the two above scenarios, but it is surprising how people are unable to transfer these obvious truths into the realm of spirituality. I know so many people whose lives reflect the following scenario:

I live my whole life rejecting God. I do not care for his life handbook and I reject his words and his authority. I decide daily to live for my own pleasure and goals. I have no fear of the consequences of living this way. I choose not to change my actions or my character to be compatible with his.

However, at the end of my life I expect him to accept me regardless of the forbidden pleasures I’ve love, the harmful secrets I’ve held, my disdain for him and rejection of his plan to save me. I insist on him accepting me into his presence where everyone is in love with him but me, where everyone worships him but me, and where I can continue to curse and laugh at his son and his followers.
It seems we normally live our lives based on logic and cause and effect. But we mystify revealed truth and live defying our own logic and ignoring cause and effect. Why? I think it is simply because we do not believe anything will happen if we are passive.

We can imagine a child predator getting life without parole. We can accept a mass-murderer getting the death penalty. But we see injustice written all over a God who cannot forgive us for rejecting his forgiveness, his exoneration, his gift of life, and most of all—the way out of our moral morass: his son Jesus Christ taking the fall.

If there is any injustice in all this, the mortal wrong is that God made the hardest of choices, and we cried ‘Foul!’ God’s toughest verdict is not turning people away from heaven’s door. He already made the hardest decision: becoming one of us at the risk of wholesale rejection.

If we really want absolution and a fresh start, we would take it while we have the chance. If we reject the saving of our souls when it is the better choice, how can we arrogantly demand it when it is no longer a choice?

I am the one who goes to garden centers in late fall

to look for something that can dare the coming frost

I’m trying desperately to keep the cold away

where everything turns brown and gray

and go against the grain with green

Plant the lonely holdouts who wait

stuffed and root-bound in buckets.

I trust the life still inside them.

I am the one who longs for the first green of spring

the first sprig of grass or yellow of dandelion

and I too am lifted up with the buttercup.

I often go out in the dead of winter to scrap the skin

of any planted stick, and discovering green

lament the scar that I made in my doubt.

Yes, I am the guardian of the extremes,

the limits of life.

I could care less during the verdant, soggy

growing season where everything sprouts

climbs and twists around posts or rails or trees.

In a time of prolific green it all feels too common

too easy too abundant too mow-able

Of course, I can crush anything underfoot with no remorse

in the heyday of fertile fields and gardens and lawns.

But let it struggle, let it be rare,

let it await a life-detective like me

and I will give it mouth-to-mouth and CPR,

constant care

put all my faith in a single stem or bud or pale flower.

Because I seek life

Not for its fulness

but for its rarity!

Jesus was

Afflicted for our arrogance

Beaten to a pulp because of our behavior

Cursed for our carnality

Denied rest because of our addiction to pleasure

Exposed in the nude because of our sexual fantasies

Forsaken for our fallen nature

Gutted for our godlessness

Hurt because of our hatefulness

Injured for our insolence

Jacked up for a generation of jerks

Killed for our crimes

Laughed at for our license to sin

Murdered for our moral morass

Nailed to a cross for our narcissism

Ostracized for our outrageous acts

Pierced in his hands because we shake our fists at God

Questioned because of our crimes

Robbed of human rights so we could demand ours

Stripped to cover our shame

Tortured because of our autonomy

Undone because of our unworthiness

Vilified because of our vanity

Wounded for our transgressions

Xcommunicated by the religious

Yelled at by young and old alike

Zeroed in on but had done nothing wrong.

Jesus Christ . . .

hung naked for our pet sins

took the fall for our guilt

bled for our blood-borne pathogens

sweat, praying for our sorry souls

was separated from God for our restoration

He forgave despite or mockery

He loved despite our rejection

He prayed despite our carelessness

He suffered disgrace to win heaven’s grace for us

He smelled of blood and raw flesh to take away our stench

He laid down his life to give us eternal life

He was humiliated to restore humanity’s honor

He poured out his life so we could be forgiven

He was marred to restore our beauty

He starved in order to fill our lives

He died as a common criminal to save criminals

He died in darkness to save darkened souls

He died alone to save one person at a time

He died willingly to save whoever will receive Him

He died with the sins of the world charged against him

He died to impart forgiveness

Jesus tasted death for every person

Jesus was tempted in every way that we are tempted

Jesus suffered as the Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice

Jesus Christ died for our sins

the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God.

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