Month: February 2026

What do drunks do?

Well, besides being instrumental in the obvious havoc of which most, if not all are familiar to whatever extent they are that drunks cause; it is most often consequent to some undertaking in an estate hidden from the drunk. He earnestly believes in his own capability. Not only is he not as drunk as others may tell him, but also that new vistas of expansive opportunity for success now lay open for his proving. Why do we all too well understand:

“Watch this! Here, hold my beer” (?)

We can talk about relaxed inhibitions, or a reality being presented and accepted as skewed by the effects of alcohol upon the senses; and/or all the findings of molecular biology and neuroscientific discoveries. But at base remains that thing Eliot acknowledged (as mentioned in my previous blabbering) as present and active, the need to feel important. Necessary. Even singular.

To reiterate his quote:

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

(Drunks will often beat dead horses, as you may well see in me)

In the simplest terms I am allowed to apprehend and express there appears a resident something of “I need to be more than I sense myself to be, or am perceived to be by others; and to whatever extent remains this irritation I must express a better-ness…and not only so, but by whatever means of capability have it acknowledged and knowingly accepted of others”.

And again, in short and no less, “I have the goods to prove this”. (Or, “I will get them”)

And schools are forever churning out papers to staple to once candidates for affirming their now better-ness.

I hear the plaint. I hear the cry. I know the not so latent or vague rationale and argument. And God knows I cannot deny in any measure my participation and approval extended to “How else can any know who is qualified?!”. (I myself did not last see a YouTube dentist for paining teeth)

To quote another of perhaps less note than Eliot, but whose words were puppeted on a silver screen

“My hypocrisy knows no bounds”. (That scriptwriter probably knew something)

And what would any imagine is the very first impetus coming to fore in any who may have the slightest inkling of this but “I will show I am not a hypocrite!? (Here, hold my beer!)

Is it laughable? Condemnable? Too pathetic and embarrassing to consider or admit?
Just too plain and obvious that its mention is itself an embarrassment to any speaker? Is this news…to any?

Man…seeking to prove himself…and in so doing making full display of all his inability. We do find a quite manifest limit to flight, and as near to the sun as we may care to show ourselves we soon discover an inverse square formula relentlessly at work in heat and distance.

My need for singularity is all my undoing. And mostly I am convinced I can only speak to, or with, those who have either some inkling of this, or are familiar by experience. Science does not offer advice except by implications to be inferred (if they are). “Waxen wings melt at a certain temperature” is all science can say.

Take from that data what one must, or cares to, in regards to flying with them.

The arguments always and only arise from any contentions implied, directly or declared universally, that all fly with only those. There will always be at least a one or a some who will pipe up with the better-ness of their equipping exempting them from any necessity to acquiesce to a universality pronounced, and not subject to the declaration of some other. The “But I have aluminum wings!” stating and proclaiming crew.

Not knowing the melting point of aluminum will also soon be calculated.

Science has a lot to say in regards to the state and estates of things, even to where solids become liquids and liquids become mere vapor. And vapors disperse quite invisibly, now unhindered by bonds once maintained in a warm, comfortable, but frail…frigidity.

“I will show you whom you should fear…” is recorded as being said by a man who either knew of what he spoke…or did not. A distilling all of all fear, even all of terrors that might be known, surmised, or even yet obscure and unconsidered to the drunken…and in that distillation to find a purity for deposit toward a one, alone.

Some claim to believe him, or believe in him, and still another many find him of mention with only the greatest of disdain and mockery. So be it. All is precisely as it must be.

But he did not leave any without recourse to experiment…himself the utmost of the scientific in the strictest application of that word in regards to a knowing. He knows what he knows not as data points accumulated, but as source of any true knowing that even precedes all experimentation.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

He tells that a man can know.

But what?

God alone knows how I have tried. What I have tried. Whom I have tried. And in these very words I have no doubt He finds me trying. And if you know me at all, I have also no doubt you have found me trying.

And God forbid any mistake (for I now know only God alone can forbid such) that this mumbling be taken as, or for, testimony of my diligence in attempt. As though I am presenting many many strivings or labors for some approval or proving, or in anyway pointing to either a beneficial motive or some weird sacrificing into a matter for any note. As in “See how hard I have tried!”, as the plaint of a victim’s soul. Yes, God forbid. That is not what is meant, at all.

No. If it could be more clearly stated it is only this in regards to trying…I have burdened a thing. Actually I have burdened everything, tried everything in a creation for some achieving as though by using rope to move a stone I have impelled it to some weakening, brought it closer to failure than it was in its prior estate, or if using a machine have shortened its service life, or more pointedly in regards to other beings like myself used something up of their being to justify my own being. That I did this in a blind ignorance, which some might find excusable (for blindness often offsets to a mercy) does not make it less grievous.

But what does indict in a way blindness does not (as it does appear pitiful) is the promotion of a lie, and that adhered to quite diligently, promoted tirelessly, advanced often in a brutality (as lies do to justify their virulence) is this:

“I have believed I have had something to add”. That innately in, and of myself, there has been a something for which creation has both waited, and waited with need.

This accusation I cannot dodge. It has drawn from the grossest of presumption(s) and misaligning of understanding…

“I am here, therefore I must be needed, here”.

That I myself am not a drain on all, at all; no, I am here to present as a stop, even a stop of the draining. I have the goods to end a deterioration, a means of ending (even if by small addition) the operational entropy observed and identified. I can add to! Not detract from!

O! the folly and pernicious nature of that lie. I…am…needed. I am needed to reverse a degrading! (And how stupid it sounds when so clearly seen and stated)

But it may be the most pernicious of all lies, if not also given to a ubiquity some far better versed have stated. TS Eliot said it this way:

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves”. 

“… because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves”.

A poet, huh? A poet cum philosopher? Sociologist? Sadhu? Prophet? Neuroscientist? Seer of unseen motives…but able to identify them with an uncanny accuracy? Would you like to sit with him over tea…and tell him who and what the world needs? Or doesn’t need.

Risky for you?

Maybe you are not convinced.

That would not be surprise.

For that may well be indicator of how it can remain the rarest of surprise of all. Exceed only by such relief as comes from learing…it is not incumbent upon you, nor ever was “to think well” of oneself.

Drunks do it…all…the…time.

Well, here you are now, in a real pickle. Liberty has lifted you up as it must and you barely know, or remember, how to move. In fact, you feel pinioned. Even the smallest of movements seem to require the greatest of will, where once was all undertaken at almost mere whim. What is this strangest of experiences in response to liberty’s wooing?

Did you follow wrongly? Did you chase a phantom…a myth? A specter of your own mind’s devising’s? Or, did you go too far? A bit like Icarus? Have you brought this upon yourself? In enjoying flight and seeking ever greater ascent now finding all your strength spent trying to pull up against a recalcitrant elevator control in what feels like a death spiral? A flat spin? Again, have you brought this upon yourself?

(I have mixed metaphors galore, not limited to feathers vs airframe controls)

O! But who knew how much power flight takes! Who knew what is required to stay aloft?

Yes, who?

In this circumstance who knows anything of anyone, or anything for that matter? As the only thing in seeming sight is the ground approaching with gaping maw to conclusively end in final swallowing.

Am I falling toward it, or is it rising to consume? References for fixing positions, for mapping out, for the gleaning of advice from, like handbooks or flight manuals (read at leisure, even if with great interest)…are useless here…this is not a scenario, it is real, and too real. This is not on paper. This is not imagine…”but what if…”

Has it always been chasing me?

Dirt, was that you in all my dreams…pursuing? Was that you always menacing? In all the faces macabre? Are all masks off, now? Am I too, just all and only…dirt?

My God! There might not even be enough left to identify! Dirt from other…dirt.

Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani.

From where, or whom…do I know that?

Yes, who?

Or whom.

A substantial part of any ‘being used’ in the Kingdom for the growth of the church, if we would know ourselves so, is to the end as Paul described in all giving of the gifts of ministry in the church.

But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.

(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:…(Eph 4:7-13)

We learn a great part of this work toward us which we apprehend in differing measure is often that, when coming to some light appearing new to us, the area is already clearly marked and that we are indeed ‘not crazy’ (except to the world). We are neither alone in this seeing nor understanding…the territory is, and has always been the Lord’s. We just neither knew nor understood.

Now this would, at first glance, seem to steal some of the newness or freshness…even wonder of it…but it does not. On the contrary, the assurance(s) we may find there are themselves no less than marvelous and breathtaking in seeing a path clearly laid out and already tended for us to bring us here. Yes, that is a great marvel. Our ‘being guided’ never gets old in either experience or the beholding of the hand and heart guiding.

And it especially rightly deals with any solipsism and /or tendency to self exaltation or a unique specialness feeding a sense of superiority to any others. As though we are the ‘sole-est’ of seers…ever.

As to the crazy (or drunken) the world might seek to hang upon us comes Peter’s “this is that!” on the day of Pentecost. A thing written once of some obscurity but now made manifest. A matter kept in holding (for Peter ‘kept’ that scripture) but not quite understood till the fullness of it had come. So it is with us…of the many things written, and of which we too have read (and perhaps hold, even dearly)…that when seen as very present before our eyes in unmistakable light…we too are astounded.

When Peter spoke of Paul’s words often described as ‘hard to understand’ he was leaving that room that not all is either easily grasped or available immediately to all. Paul did indeed speak ‘very much ahead’ of things, lining a path with light(s) but also in such manner that not all was immediately lit to the disciple. He understood the benefit of such appearing as even prophesy, knowing that in many things he would not be understood…but nevertheless given to endorsing such form of sight in writing “seek that you might prophesy”. It would not matter at its lack of general reception…if it is the Lord He will confirm His word.

Now, I know our views are so often influenced in matters of biases of which we are not even aware. Paul’s letters come to us in great leather bound volumes, handed down over a great length of time as sure…so that we easily think that, and no doubt, in ‘his day’ everyone would have been flocking to him, his ‘cred’ beyond reproach, and so on. But his own words tell a different story.

“If I be not an apostle to others…” he wrote, for obviously something was being called into question for which he was constrained to write for establishment “yet doubtless I am to you…”

No less is he pressed to write Timothy:

Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity.

A man only protests his honesty when a question of it, or his legitimacy, is already about.

And now I am writing this for that some of you who may read…that some of you who may even be experiencing entrance into ministry, or some (even) seeming successes in it, or delights of many things being manifest before your eyes as promised and that must never lose their wonder. Even a ‘grand acceptance’ or endorsement of colleagues and brethren in some recognition of your calling. You may even much like “amens”. Or, ‘not like’ rebuff.

But, for those who already know, you know. God is showing you things that are even in some ways ‘hard’ for you to accept, and would likewise be almost laughable (or you would think so) to ‘the many’ at large. Things perhaps of which you may even find it ‘not lawful to utter’.

I make no claim for myself. Yet, I am persuaded some have gone…and are even ‘going there’ as this is written. And some of you may be so locked up to Him as to seem to have no notable earthly presence, nor influence…at all. I will not tell you have valuable your prayers are, their weight is already measured in a blood far too precious to be calculated.

Yes…God can so set free a man to be locked up to Him…and without a care as to being understood to his own satisfaction ‘among men’. And deliverance and salvation take on a much different hue than once observed or understood, but which is as real and true, and more so, than previously able to experience or describe. And part of the wonderful matter of it all is that you may not even know, or care, who you are, at all.

But what you know, you know.