My hometown. I spent several days in Durham to visit with some old friends. Now life has resumed for me in Batavia. I have lived nearly all of my adult life in the Midwest. The values and viewpoint of the middle of the Midwest are the composite self that most easily presents to my…
In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is…
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. Nothing but imaginary causes (‘God’, ’soul’, ‘ego’, ‘spirit’, ‘free will’, – or ‘unfree-will.): Nothing but imaginary effects (‘sin’, ‘redemption’, ‘grace’, ‘punishment’, ‘forgiveness of sins’). Once the concept of ‘nature’ has been devised as the concept antithetical to ‘God’, ‘natural’ had…
Spring by Alan L. Strang Spring time is here with its sunshine and showers, All nature is waking from its long winter sleep. The gardens are blooming with beautiful flowers, The song-birds are carolling melodies sweet. Alan L. Strang (1908 – 1919) was born in Spokane, Washington. His family moved to Redwood City, California…
The internet service is intermittent today. I am unsure whether I will be able to finish a post. The connection is unimportant. Today, the sun shines a majestic power, warming seeds, bulbs to sprout upward to light. I’ll be at the show. Maybe to capture some photos. It is a one of a kind…
Sunday dawns as one more day. This day is incomparable, a day only superficially similar to any other. We Americans have designated the seventh day Sunday, as a day of rest, reflection. To say it in a degraded form, “the Lord’s day,” a day for collective worship. Degraded you say!? Yes. Do not feel…
My home is Batavia, a river town established at a time when Americans were settling the West. The importance of Christianity for past generations is borne witness by several substantial churches at the center of town, steeples with a Crosses piercing the sky. Even if forms of Christian thinking are not as close to…
If we transport ourselves back to the ages in which the religious life flourished most vigorously we discover a fundamental conviction which we no longer share… In those ages one as of yet knows nothing of natural laws; neither the earth nor the sky are constrained by any compulsion; any season, sunshine, rain can…
Every mistake (in every sense of the word) is the result of a degeneration of instinct, a disintegration of the will: one could almost equate what is bad with whatever is a mistake. All that is good is instinctive — and hence easy, necessary, uninhibited. Effort is a failing: the god is typically different…
The most general formula on which every religion and morality is founded is: “Do this and that, refrain from this and that — and then you will be happy! And if you don’t…” I call it the original sin of reason, the immortal unreason. — the first example of my “revaluation of all values.”…
