“Burn it?” questions the fat man whose fascination with the “naughty and nice” book has inadvertently eclipsed the genesis of Christmas—the true story of God making a way where there was no way, to save the lost when the lost could never be found.

As far back as the classic Greek period, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle believed that whether truth is represented by universals or particulars, all truth emanates from God. Christian theologians and philosophers from early to late Medieval periods, such as St. Augustine and St. Aquinas, believed that even pagan truths have their source in the Lord. And from the late medieval period through the scientific revolution, philosophers and scientists agreed that God was the author of two books—“the book of nature” and “the book of scripture.”

Sean happens to be thinking the same thing. “If I were to revive his brain, will he end up in the first body or the second body?” A sudden pang of doubt deflates his hope of winning the Nobel Prize for the first successful brain-transplant. “What if his brain doesn’t make it? Then the two people, who’ve put their trust in me and donated their bodies in the name of ‘brain research’ when they died, died in vain. No, I can’t believe that! I know what I believe: logical possibilities ground metaphysical possibilities. Option one is logical and thus ontologically possible.” He swallows a gulp of air. “I have to keep working.”

Blood in my saliva is my tribute 

to the expired letters never sent

of soldiers in the ground—

Loyalists’ battles almost won

and Patriots’ battles almost lost. 

Call me “Driftwood.”

I’ve been all around the world,

offering my flesh as a sacrifice

to the highest bidder—

a loved-starved sinner—

stretching my skin

and my limbs and my sins

till their breaking point 

to fashion a sunburned sail—

a jib unlike any other headsail—

pulled up high-and-tight

by my lustful entrails.

The reason EMGs are so destructive, no matter how great the accomplishments, is because the person who is unaware of who she really is, sadly, is merely a shell of a person like an oyster that creates a pearl from an irritation inside itself. No matter how many layers of beautiful minerals that give it its shiny iridescence, it’s still a foreign object to itself at the core of itself. Perhaps Socrates was right: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“…or we can explain further

that story gives truth meaning 

like Aesop’s fables 

and Lewis’s Narnian Chronicles 

or better yet

think of Christ’s agrarian parables

that strum the soul

on a spiritual level

with a celestial harp of gold 

and hands of clay that bleed when cracked.”

Friends feed the inherent desire in every single one of us to be seen and heard and remembered. And that makes us feel immovable and immortal as if the universe itself came alive to witness a miracle. And nothing we say or do will ever be forgotten. (This hints at the foreshadowing of a personal relationship with the ultimate Being—immovable and immortal—who is closer to us than a brother and who created us to know Him and to be known by Him.) But what if this convivial concept of friendship escapes us?

Godspeed

if you’ve dropped your keys,

hat or hash pipe

into the “rabbit hole”

of delusive fantasy,

whirling and writhing down

an eternal abyss of insanity,

further and further away

from the drain of objective reality.

Our reassurance

is His willingness

to be caught in the cross hairs,

a red dot

at the intersection

of an atoning fare

and a predetermined time-slot.