“Spiritual resume” by DocHarvOtto@juno.com (October 2004)
Under construction 10-13-04
Construction comments
One of the ‘advantages’ of self publication is the permission to set forth wording of whatever worth. Harv has ‘fun’ reaching for writing, letting a week, or month, or year go by, and then rediscovering the glimmers of his thoughts put to words.
He has freed himself from tradition – he is not a minister’s son, yet can publish religious thought – an ‘audience of one’ is enough for his satisfaction. And he knows that better is in that direction… Harv feels excitement as he publishes this construction – that could be another fundamental joy in his life (human communication) added to his joy of donating blood every eight weeks (unexplained for now).
The object –
RESUME: noun 1: SUMMARY 2: CURRICULUM VITAE.
Harv’s intended application for the rest of his life time –
RESUME: verb transitive senses 1: to assume or take again: REOCCUPY <resumed his seat by the fire -- Thomas Hardy> 2: to return to or begin again after interruption <resumed her work> 3: to take back to oneself 4: to pick up again 5: REITERATE, SUMMARIZE.
Where Harv’s God is –
SPIRITUAL: adjective 1: of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit: INCORPOREAL <man's spiritual needs>, 2a: of or relating to sacred matters <spiritual songs> b: ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal <spiritual authority> <lords spiritual>, 3: concerned with religious values, 4: related or joined in spirit <our spiritual home> <his spiritual heir>, 5a: of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b: of, relating to, or involving spiritualism: SPIRITUALISTIC, - spiritually adverb, - spiritualness noun.
The first definition keeps spiritualness at Harv’s self center. He does not have a need to go outside of his self to experience the Wholly Spirit by whatever additional form of the definition – incorporeal, sacred, song, ecclesiastical, authority, lords, religious, values, related, joined, supernatural, spiritualism, or spiritualistic. Harv builds his life around the Wholly Spirit as God. Perhaps, in a sense, he has stepped up the ladder of human life – formal authority (Father), human life’s essence (Jesus Lover), and living human life (the Holy Spirit which Harv has tagged the Wholly Spirit).
Introduction
Coming from the specificity of a resume, many professional males view their selves as their job resume (note1) they simply give their life time for worth and value. Harv too, had long worked to bolster his jobs and careers resume, but as he grew older, that wasn’t enough of a representation of his life worth and value. Thus he said to his self, “How about a life resume?” This expansive idea can be applied even to a marriage resume – in Harv’s case female relationships resume. Those and other resumes are topics for another time. Harv’s current calling has come to be some wording specifically about his spiritual resume.
From a different perspective of Harv’s life -from the general view - he recently, after months of repose, returned to an interest in the front page of his web sites – akin to a diver coming out of the depths of some ocean trench and resurfacing to attend to earthen bearings. His latest front page evolution has a more prominent place for the indexing of a spiritual resume. The time seemed right for taking the time to begin the writing of his spiritual resume.
Thus, from the specific and the general, Harv found the moment to begin this spiritual resume. Harv has previously begun similar writing projects – not all have come to be published, many have been published without editing and rewriting, and perhaps some items will be withdrawn from publication. And many, if not all, want for editing and rewriting.
Disregarding those imperfections, Harv has created and published a self-pleasing front page totality of his life – his life is just one life, easily inconsequential when compared to the 100 billion humans of his world. Regardless, he uses these wording exercises to bolster his life consequence, and along with parallel discussion with others, to bring definition to his seemingly complex life, with the goal being to more effectively pursue his objective of a longer and more productive life before death. His spiritual resume will afford yet another facet to his web sites composition.
If his writings don’t disappear after his human death, he will have achieved eternal life. To the contrary of his eternal life, the disappearance of Harv as a recognizable human unit will come either as (1) a deselecting or excommunication on the micro scale, or (2) on the macro scale, by the conversion of all human minds back to astronomical matter.
Regardless, the essential part of Harv’s self-consequential productive future bases on his web sites publishing – amateurish, experimental, naive, and incomplete to say the least. In this context, he will never be retired. Yet a well adjusted retirement provides him the opportunity for the joy, love, and freeing that comes to him by way of working that composition as his uniquely human life process, thus ‘becoming’ perfect, and perhaps an attestation to being a Liberal Art-ist.
Specifically in Harv’s life time, his family tradition has progressed into different religious denominations. And more generally in the current world, different types of fundamentalism are popularly pursued to answer the frustrations of denominational members, even to the point of killing your supposed enemies. For Harv, that polarity of sadness, hate, and fear are the opposite of his fundamentals. His chosen polarity being joy, love, and freeing.
Reborn?
Born again? A born again Christian? Just last month Harv was approached by four Baptists whom he suspects had conversion on their mind – however, membership in the Baptist is expensive. But Harv and the four never got to that point, but for the result of the discussion Harv may be forever grateful to them because they may have put Harv’s key into the lock of religious freeing.
Two fundamentals arose – Fence Sitting and Jesus Lover. In the following weeks Harv realized through other Baptist encounters how firmly his self identifies with Jesus Lover.
Temporarily, several fundamental definitions from M-W.com (a non religious source thus hopefully not subject to bending to fit whatever) –
CHRISTIAN: noun 1a: one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ b(1): DISCIPLE 2, (2): a member of one of the Churches of Christ separating from the Disciples of Christ in 1906, (3): a member of the Christian denomination having part in the union of the United Church of Christ concluded in 1961, 2: the hero in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
CHRIST:
Christ is perhaps that thing that happened in 400 A. D. For now, Harv identifies with Jesus as a fellow out of the New Testament – from Harv’s life experiences he tags that idea as Jesus Lover.
Perhaps at the same 400 A. D. event, the idea of human Spirit was formulated. In short for now, Harv has tagged that as his Wholly Spirit.
Harv also knows where God is – within each living human as that indelible mark. It’s certainly a ‘holy war’ or ‘just war’ to set out to kill your enemies. The Red Devils were also enemies of another era, some advocating their annihilation.
Self development
Within the span of his life resume, shown on his web-sites front page, Harv developed his philosophy within the time frame enumerated as his twelfth life re-creation and sixth life phase.
Shakily, he took that philosophy into his seventh, and perhaps most perfect, life phase – a combination of his Initial Retirement, Retirement, and Mobile Homing re-creations – again stating that perfection is a uniquely human work-in-process, emphasizing the up slopes, and discounting the down slopes. The ‘up’ leads Harv to continue the creation of his self “until death do us part”.
Harv’s continued creation is both physical and spiritual. Yet he does not see his way to wording his physical resume, although he maintains nutrition and exercise spreadsheets in the pursuit of super health.
His spiritual crux
In Harv’s post marriage life phase, he looked back into his religious training to see what he was missing; he changed church denominations; he looked at Islam; he saw the eastern religious view through the eyes of Joseph Campbell. He studied other religious and spiritual views – for example, John Powell and Pierre de Chardin. And he made a grasp at summarizing the totality of the Bible – the ‘foundation’ of his religious training. The crux of his parochial Roman Catholic education was Jesus as lover exemplified in the New Testament as advancement over the respected Old Testament – perhaps simply stated as growth.
Later rather than sooner, Harv’s bent for growth carried him into several Doctor of Philosophy programs. At BGSU he collected the makings of his definition of the human self – a unique point of choice positioned on a pie that is quartered by the polarities of a joy-sadness continuum and a love-hate continuum. Additionally, a freedom-fear continuum circumvents the pie with freeing enlarging the one’s life pie, and fearing condensing the life pie, even to the point of the self confined as catatonic. In the longer term of a human’s life time, their self, through choices to action, can work through their environment of joy-sad, love-hate, and free-fear. Harv, over the span of years, one life hour after another, has worked for his position as joy, love, and freeing for his self, another, and others.
Bible study
Harv decided that the root word spirit was to guide his final life study of the Bible – because Harv faced the inevitability of his death and intervening life time hours – he had to take the worth of the Bible forward and leave the imponderables (note 2) and inconsistencies behind (note 3) his narrowing of writings that can be seen as imponderable. Some books included, some not. Different translations from the original language. Changes made when transcribing. Denominational publishing translations ranging from words, to phrases, to even a renaming of the entire package. And certainly, these reasoned choices, all claiming truth and righteousness, even taken to the act of killing other humans, or given as innumerable acts of ‘lesser’ disrespect of the God within each of the 100 billion who have inhabited this earth.
RIGHTEOUS: adjective 1: acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from guilt or sin 2a: morally right or justifiable <a righteous decision> b: arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality <righteous indignation> 3slang: GENUINE, GOOD. Synonym see MORAL - righteously adverb - righteousness noun.
SELF-RIGHTEOUS: adjective: convinced of one's own righteousness especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others: narrow-mindedly moralistic - self-righteously adverb - self-righteousness noun.
FENCE SITTING: noun: a state of indecision or neutrality with respect to conflicting positions - fence-sitter noun.
Thus Harv solidified his non religion stature, providing a platform that permits the meeting of any human regardless of race, color, or creed. Harv sees the God within every human – be it called spirit, soul (that “indelible mark”), id, ego, psyche, heart, center, …
Chronological spiritual resume
2004 October – after hearing a sermon of panic political theme (George 43 was slipping in the polls), Harv challenged a Baptist with, “How do you love someone of different beliefs or views?” Answer was, “You can’t!” The sermon referenced Old Testament righteousness references. Harv thought that the direction was out of line with what Harv sees as synonymous – that of Savior Jesus’ Love. Harv is very curious about his increasing use of religious words for discussion with religious people.
2004 September – while eating dinner at Fazoli’s, Harv was joined by four Baptists. Harv’s meal was delayed an hour while, surprising to him, he led the discussion through a gamete of issues. Another surprise was Harv’s introduction of the fence sitting idea.
Marriage – assumed that if you followed religious guidance and ‘intelligence’ one would have the ‘good life’.
College age – was guaranteed entrance to Marquette University via religious education progression within miles by foot.
Spiritual significance so far – the religious order members literally dedicated their lives for the health and well being of the community. The price was filling the collection plate but nowhere near tithing. The Jesuits made the simple statement of “service” as their mission statement.
Probably age 5 – Recollection of Capuchin Fathers in St. Francis Parish rectory. No specific recollections of first grade. Slight recollection of the church lobby.
Age 4 - Public kindergarten. Recollection of napping on household throw rug that, with others of the same type, matriculated to the next house.
Age 3 – Recall looking up to see Mother Connie at the very high St. Michael hospital window from coaster being pulled by Father Harvey Senior.
Age 2 maybe – Definite recollection removing stones from semi trailer tires, with Father fishing at the Milwaukee River Bluehole, getting disciplined for standing in crib ‘asking’ what was going on in the other bed, and spooning unfinished meal into garbage burner that could be reached from high chair while Mother went downstairs to check the laundry.
Age 0 – Father and Mother were married a week before Harv’s birth. Baptized in south side Milwaukee.
Age -1 – Family morality opted against an abortion.
Bible study
Note 1 - In 2004 Harv met a fellow on the trail, and the two spent an immediate hour sharing and discussing various things. They exchanged e-mail addresses. The fellow read Harv’s web site to whatever extent. In the fellow’s first communication he presented himself as his job. He was a Harvard graduate and his love was the history of art. Harv, not being an art aficionado, asked for, and received from the fellow, a reference for a primer in art history. Off Harv went to the library, resourcing various references. Subsequent study provided several results: (1a) Harv chose his favorite art history period as 400 BC in Greece, (1b) Harv’s favorite art is the flat canvas that looks like three dimensions and you have to go to the side of the canvas to prove to yourself that the canvas is flat, (2) a progression of e-mails, until (3) as best Harv can tell from the drastically changed tone of the fellow’s last e-mail, the fellow was drunk in whatever form, then (4) neither wrote a next e-mail. Return to narrative.
Note 2 – For an example of the imponderable Bible, in 2003, Zach volunteered that his grandfather was reading the Bible for the 38th time. A fictitious spiritual resume for grandpa could well read: Spirit dulled by whatever legal drug or codependent facilitation, attended services 3000 times never discussing the message from the pulpit, contributed $200,000, vacationed as a missionary, ushered and passed the collection plate, attended 1000 bingo nights, and read the Bible 40 times. Return to narrative.
Another example is that of the Roman Catholic Christian denomination.
Note 3 – Return to narrative.