An Irreverent, Licentious Remark on "God!"

My December 24, 2008 blog entry, entitled "MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY HOLIDAYS," included the text of an email message I sent out to all my Friends, Family & Colleagues (on Facebook™ & elsewhere) as a Holiday Blessing, in which I discuss my responsibility to discover my "other" God-given gifts & aptitudes in light of my life's mission being interrupted & canceled as a result of my unfortunate, tragic disfigurement.

I received plenty of positive responses to this message from various of its recipients, all expressing their gratitude & their admiration of my enduring sense of hope & purpose, in light of severe illness & injury. So far, I have only received one apparently negative response to that message, from a (former?) Facebook™ Friend: Jeff Parker in the San Francisco, CA Network [CLICK HERE! to link to Jeff Parker's Facebook* Profile].

Jeff Parker's single, seemingly ir reverent, licentious remark included in his email response to my original Holiday Blessing was "Good luck Matthew. Talk of god shuts down rational conversations" (January 2, 2009 at 10:19AM). He wrote nothing else. He did however refuse to capitalize the first letter of the proper noun: God, in his phraseology, to perhaps intentionally strip the word of its magnitude, power & meaning.

And I believe that after sending his response message, in frustration & disgust, he canceled our Friends' Connection on Facebook™, for when I went to visit his Profile, I found an option available for adding him as a Facebook™ Friend, which otherwise wouldn't appear if we were in fact connected. In reaction to his polite but rather mean-spirited end to our Facebook™ Connection and to his remark on "Talk of God," I wrote the following in a Facebook™ email message:

While I find it divinely poetic that you'd argue the denigration of rational thought when there's "Talk of God" in dialogue & communications, in so far as the majesty of a Higher Power should rightfully influence intellect & reason, I can not say that I agree with your obdurate assertion.

I am perfectly capable of both professing my Faith in the Divine and maintaining cohesive, coherent rational thought when expressing an opinion, discussing a particularly secular topic or when arguing for or against modern conceptions of Faith. In fact, I've just posted a new blog entry, entitled "PIOUS CELIBACY : Nobler Children of God!" (January 02, 2009 at 06:58PM) in which I intelligently rationalize an argument which defends the role of "group/family" relationships in our unfathomably complex individual experiences in Faith and which claims that pious celibacy is an antiquated route to Redemption or Enlightenment.

The new blog entry was written in response to my in-home Chaplain's January 02, 2009 Homily on readings of the Holy Gospel acc. to John 6:35-42, 48-52. Each week, on Fridarys, since I was discharged as a patient from Laguna Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center, my priest visits my home to offer me Holy Communion, the Day's readings of the Holy Gospel, his Homily on those readings and a blessed anointing. Each week, he rationalizes for me the immensity and grandeur of Faith in the Divine and guides me in my pursuits of righteous thought & action and in my attempts to discover & reasonably define my uniquely individual journey into God's graces.

My in-home Chaplain continues to demonstrate to me in his preachings his distinctly stoical & sound intellect, unblemished (but rather empowered) by his resoundingly rational Faith in God. He helps me understand my own individual Faith in God (i.e., "God" being a construct of the Human Mind: a sublime idea derived by a culmination of human experiences in our Civilization's long, tumultuous evolution, that is meant to conceptualize covetously irrational mysteries & miracles).

Faith in a Higher Power is defined by an individual's uniquely rational, physical & emotional interpretation of the Sublime, in so far as Divine Faith reconciles the purely human yearning for greater meaning in our lives with the infinitely numerous, monumental limitations of the Human Intellect. You see! You can't mistake it! You've caught me right here all emotionally enveloped in turgidly rational rhetoric on Faith. What IRONY! But, it is possible, as I've demonstrated in this small dissertation and in other portions of my journaling, to sustain (and yes, sometimes suspend) rational thought when talking of God.

I'm sorry if my Holiday Greetings email/blog message offended you in any way or struck you as obtuse and exceedingly reverent. I'm sorry if you can/will not be able to share in the joyfully innocent, enlightened examination of that which defines our very human, rational experiences of Faith in the Divine, for you seem to have declared a distinctly atheistic argument against talk of God. I'm not meaning to proselytize & preach, to convert or to convince you to bend to my own personal inclinations in Faith.

I'm just hoping to help broaden your intellect enough for it to be able to incorporate, experience & understand the Divine (or the spiritually "irrational") in all its Glory! I hope that this response is not resented and tossed away angrily, in frustration & unconvinced, but rather that my words here encourage your input & feedback and your courteous continuation of the conversational thread.

What are your thoughts on all that I have said? Has it been miserably difficult to follow my rambunctious train of thought, or have you well understood my arguments? Please respond in due time with extended personal thoughts on this elementary, polite dissertation! I look forward to receiving some sort of insightful response to my message. Thank you for taking the time to read this message and for giving full consideration to my points of view! Thank you for replying to my original Holiday Greeting message in the first place, with however slight & meagerly licentious a statement that you provided! Please respond! In due time...

Regards,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew Blanchard
San Francisco, CA 94109
[01.03.2009 @ 09:14AM]

While I'm not certain of any ill-intent of Jeff Parker's part, I was struck rather affrontingly by his curt, concise response to my Holiday Greetings emal message, due to his refusal to ellaborate a full, thoughtful response, beyond the few purposefully parceled words that he wrote to me in Facebook™.

What I'm grateful for is to have been stimulated by his response (However short it might have been!) and to have been motivated to continue in my intimately personal intellectual rationalization of my experience in and understanding of Divine Faith. I believe that I achieved a certain level of rational discovery & comprehension of the sublime mysteries of Salvation in God's Love, with these recent blog entries & emails.

I think that there will be much time before I return to these subjects of "God," "Faith," "Gifts/Vocations" & "Human Intellect," because I fear that I am beginning to depict myself as passionately pious ascetic Believer who is bent on preaching & proselytizing to others & on trying to sway certain people in their Faith. I am not a profoundly religious person; although, I do have Faith in God: a resilient Faith that has survived with me through immense, harrowing tragedy in Life.

I was momentarily inspired by my participation in Christmas Eve Midnight Mass Services at The Church of the Advent of Christ the King (San Francisco, CA) and by ongoing discussions with my in-home Chaplain, which led to my original Holiday Greetings email message to Friends, Family & Colleagues and to the posting of yesterday's blog entry : "PIOUS CELIBACY : Nobler Children of God!"

I'll take a pause for now, for a good while, "to regain a command of rational thought" (So Jeff Parker would so like to believe!) or at least, to calm my passions and desensitize. Long phases of contemplation should always be followed by a period of much deserved rest & repose!

However, I suppose I will continue my blog opinion discussions on GLBTQ Civil Rights, Marriage Equality and on the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, just to stay in-tuned to current developments & decisive issues related to these three topics. I also think that a blog entry discussing my intentions to pursue professional development through participation in altruistic Nonprofit Organization Development Volunteerism is about due. To be further discussed in the near future... Auspicious Wisdom, Enlightenment & Immense Karmic Blessings to you all! Peace Out! Cheers! — Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF : Matthew Blanchard; San Francisco, CA 94109; 01.03.2008 @ 11:15AM.