Richard L. Fricks

The Sweep and Force of Section Three

Why Donald J. Trump is disqualified to run for the presidency.

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What is ‘woke’? It’s my trigger word

Here’s the link to this article.

Avatar photo by JONATHAN MS PEARCE

AUG 19, 2023

Overview:

“Woke” is either the new “libtard” or it means nothing. Either way, it triggers me…

Reading Time: 7 MINUTES

Woke is the mot du jour. It’s everywhere. It’s what Tucker Carlson, formerly of Fox News, uses incessantly. It’s what presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis platforms against with his “anti-woke” campaign agenda. It’s what my father-in-law uses when he’s angry with, in his own mind, some new nonsense—“Oh what’s that word…yes, that’s it, bloody ‘woke’!” It’s what the Daily Mail rails against. It’s what the BBC supposedly is. Or Disney. Or Goodyear.

There is real confusion about what this now-surprisingly-common word actually means. So much so, indeed, that the conservative author Bethany Mandel recently had a car crash of an interview where she froze, completely unable to define what “woke” means. This is somewhat surprising given that she is an author of a book against “wokeism” (Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation) in which she attacks “wokeness” as “a new version of leftism that is aimed at your child.”

It seems commonplace that people on the right accuse the left of “wokeism” that underwrites a “cancel culture” instituted by the left. The reality is somewhat different, as I argued against evangelical Christian and 2016 presidential candidate David French on Premier Christian Radio.

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said in 2021, “What you see now with the rise of this woke ideology is an attempt to really delegitimize our history and to delegitimize our institutions, and I view the wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism. They really want to tear at the fabric of our society.”

I am probably the them to his us, the sort of person who wonders why “social justice” has become something bad to aspire to.

So what does “woke” actually mean?

In this general context, not what it originally did.

In its earliest iteration, woke was part of the phrase “stay woke”, being a phrase used within Black communities referring to being awake and “alert to the deceptions of other people.” It was “a basic survival tactic.” The phrase appeared in a 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys,” a protest song by blues musician Huddie Ledbetter (known as Lead Belly)—a reaction to nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women. Lead Belly said of it, “I made this little song about down there. So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there—best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

At the same time, “stay woke” also literally meant to stay awake, in Black vernacular. in 2008, R&B artist Erykah Badu released a politically themed album with the song “Master Teacher” that included the phrase being used in several different contextual meanings, bringing the phrase back to the fore.

Fast forward to 2014, when Michael Brown was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and the phrase came back to life. Needs must.

The context of the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement saw the phrase, now shortened to “woke”, being associated with anything to do with racial equality. It was only a hop, skip, and a jump to it representing anything and everything liberal in the world.

Because racial equality is the purview only of the left?

A Black person on a BBC show where you might not expect to see them? Woke. (Think the new Little Mermaid film or the recent Lord of the Rings series.) Silicon Valley Bank collapsing? Woke. Yale physician advocating sensible Covid policies? Woke (a “mind virus attempting to destroy civilization,” according to Elon Musk). It’s rather dizzying, keeping an eye on the myriad uses of the term.

In fact, here linked are more than 200 things conservative TV channel Fox News has labeled as woke. A few examples might help to show how woke has become the bogeyman of the right. And it’s a little embarrassing now.

So on and so forth. It’s a long list. And when you look at every subject included in that list, you quickly realize that “woke” is a very large umbrella term. Gathered under the protection of this term is every single liberal. And every single centrist. And every single person who happens to hold an opinion that someone angrily hopping about on the far right doesn’t agree with.

When you use a term so much, in so many contexts, to attack so many ideas and so many people, it loses any coherent meaning or utility. In economics, this is the Law of Diminishing Returns. The first pint of water in the desert is very useful and rather refreshing. The 31^st? Somewhat less so. We are now at a point that the term “woke” is empty, vacuous. It is the new “libtard”. If that’s where we are at, count me out.

It’s a very lazy term.

And the label now triggers me. If anyone mentions it, I take an instant dislike to their politics, to their morality. Because it says more about them than it does about me or their intended target. I can very often successfully sum up someone’s political positioning with their single use of that term in the same way that I can if they use the pejorative “libtard”. It carries about the same degree of nuance.

If you have issues with the use of pronouns and gender identity (and let’s face it, it’s something of a complex philosophical battlefield), then let’s have a reasonable debate. The same goes for climate change. And pandemic responses. And equality—racial, sexual, or otherwise. And…and…

However, if you are going to add into your debating rhetoric the use of the word “woke”, then you have lost me because not only is it completely simplistic, but it is a pejorative: It is used as a term to insult the opposition.

If I was to call every position or person I disagree with “fascist” or “Nazi” then these terms would lose their strength and utility and I would rightfully not be taken seriously. For “woke” I would prefer the term to be replaced with “progressive” in many of the cases because the intention of the target people or ideas is to make the world progressively better. The use of the word “woke” does a real disservice to the original meaning. When used as a pejorative like this, it becomes crass.

I am a socially liberal, economically centrist philosopher and politically motivated person. In the political psychology underwritten by the work of psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt (and his moral foundations theory), there are traits that are more associated with liberals than conservatives and vice versa. For example, liberals tend to be more inclined to an openness to new experiences, and fairness, whereas conservatives (the clue is in the name) tend towards conserving the status quo, being driven more by tradition.

We can see how some shifts in modern society might irk conservatives and motivate liberals. Some of these ideas are consistently seen as the beating heart of “wokeism”—perhaps gender identity, critical race theory and suchlike. (And so often, they are completely blown out of proportion.) Unfortunately, much of the problem comes when every other idea that (conservative) critics don’t agree with also get incorporated into the label.

We must remember that it is often ill-advised to listen to those with the loudest voices. The UK is following America’s lead when it comes to the right shouting about culture wars issues. All you need to know is that when politicians and pundits shout about the war on Christmas, or transgender restrooms, or political correctness gone mad, or the woke BBC, then they really have nothing substantial to talk about. Culture wars discussions belie a fundamental lack of policy.

We have seen this in successive US elections and it is starting to creep into UK campaigning. One side is serious about governing, and the other side has nothing in the locker but a woke checklist.

Do not be fooled.

The bandwidth of political discourse is being strangled with culture wars whinges about woke, and it helps nobody. We have existential crises facing us the likes and scale of which humanity has never faced: climate change and ravaging wildfires, the reignition of the Cold War into a very hot one, population, pandemics, wealth inequality, healthcare, and education. The list is long and worrying.

But when the right distract you with the woes of woke, they are deceiving you. They care little about these other topics, let alone have any actual workable policies on the matters.

There’s an awful lot of work to do without being misdirected by a shoddy magician’s sleight of hand.

It’s probably a tad inappropriate here, but the words of British comedian Kathy Burke (unlikely to be labeled “liberal elite”) are apropos: “I love being ‘woke’. It’s much nicer than being an ignorant fucking twat.”

If I was to be less abrasive and confrontational, I would simply say, “I’m woke. And?” Or, better still, “I’m nuanced. Challenge me on substance rather than throwing about lazy, childish labels.”

The progress towards a better future will be fraught with bumps in the road. We won’t always get things right, but shouting “woke” at anything and everything will end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Simply put, if someone brings up wokeism at the beginning of a political discussion, then they have their priorities firmly in the wrong place.

The Boaz Stranger–Chapter 36

Lillian and I had given Kyla a half-hour head start. She was dropping by Jane’s house and the two of them were going to Gadsden to see a movie at the Gadsden Mall’s Pitman Theater.

I was proud of my sister. Unknown to me, she had been grooming a relationship with Jane. That’s why she had agreed to help her last night feed the Fusion youth group at First Baptist Church of Christ.

With my permission, Kyla had read and reread Rachel’s ‘wall’ diary. Until an hour ago, I was unaware she’d also read The Cost of Discipleship. Well, at least the penciled notes. I still felt guilty for holding on to a book that was so important to my mother-in-law. I’d flipped through it shortly after removing it from inside the Hunt House wall and concluded the hand-written notes were a mix of Rosa’s and Rachel’s. The one’s I’d read were comments on Bonhoeffer’s Christology. Since I no longer believed in God, my interest was non-existent.

However, Kyla was smarter and more adept at recognizing patterns than me. Her near-photographic brain was a resource I had always envied. It, and my curiosity, had triggered the idea of Lillian and me paying a visit to Jane’s house while she and Kyla were at the movies.

Besides a general feeling that Jane was pro-Ray Archer, two objects had motivated Kyla’s encouragement. One was a timing issue. The other was a coded note. The first one was more embarrassing.

Given my focus on the ‘wall’ diary’s shocking details about Kyle’s extortion attempts, his brutal murder, and Rachel’s surviving pregnancy, I’d overlooked an obvious issue: the writings covered the same period as the LONDON diary I’d found in our New Haven basement.

Kyla had been more observant. Before reading the ‘wall’ diary, I’d shared memories from the LONDON diary, including its time frame. Sis had instantly asked two opposing questions: 1) why had Rachel written two diaries covering the same six-month period? and 2) what if someone else had written the ‘wall’ diary? Naturally, I’d responded to 2) with, “only Rachel could have hidden The Cost of Discipleship inside the Hunt House wall.” In some ways, I was as quick as Kyla, but my reaction speed often revealed confusion. Sis got a laugh out of my illogic, offering several other possibilities for how Bonhoeffer’s book could have gotten inside the wall.

I could still kick myself for not bringing Rachel’s basement diaries with me to Alabama. Of course, they were now gone forever, given the New Haven burglary. I, like Kyla, was also questioning the credibility of the diary, now in the hands of Marshall County’s District Attorney.

Another object had caught Kyla’s attention. Scribbled inside The Cost of Discipleship, on page 118 and buried among Rosa and Rachel’s reactions to Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, was “38 to friend.” Kyla believed this referenced the murder weapon and the fact Rachel had given it to a friend.

Ultimately, I’d agreed with my brilliant sister, although I had vehemently argued we didn’t know what to believe, which of the two diaries held the truth. Nor did we think Rachel was referring to a pistol in her coded message inside the book. Come to think of it, we didn’t have clear evidence of who had written it, Rosa or Rachel. Their writing was eerily similar.

Regardless of my confusion (and possibly Kyla’s still-developing pattern), Lillian and I set sail for 282 King Street, our third break-in since forming our detective partnership.

***

It was the second time Lillian asked to drive the Hyundai. The first was early afternoon when the two of us had gone to Walmart for Kyla. “I don’t know why you’d ever get rid of the Aviator.” I’d already made a mental note to investigate a used one when I returned to New Haven. It was by far the most comfortable vehicle I’d ever driven, not to mention its luxuriousness.

Lillian paused halfway to Kyla’s mailbox to change her mirrors. “What’s your theory on Rachel’s diaries, the two with the same dates?”

“Hypothesis.”

“Uh?” Lillian turned right onto McVille Road. Sometimes I was too exacting.

“Never mind. Your guess is probably as good as mine, but I think it’s connected to the pistol.” The time on the dash was 6:35. Kyla should have sent a text by now if there was a problem. It was her first opportunity to go inside Jane’s and determine whether she had a security system. No text by 6:45 meant mine and Lillian’s visit was a go. I’d opted for the opposite: a text saying it was a go, but I’d let strong-willed sister win the argument.

“You’re saying that since it wasn’t the murder weapon, the diary likewise was a fake?” I stole a sideways view of Lillian as she asked her question and couldn’t help but inspect her cashmere sweater and tight jeans. I chose against asking her if she knew someone made her sweater from a goat.

I too-quickly responded. “That may be a shallow argument.” She glanced at me with raised eyebrows. “I mean, you stated what I’m thinking, but I could be wrong. One side of me wants to believe Rachel in the wall diary is being more detailed and open, certainly pointing the finger at Ray. My other side believes she was undecided, that she was torn over whether to reveal Ray’s crime.” The more I talked about the two 1969 diaries, the more confused I became.

“Whoa, I better slow down. I love this car. It sure didn’t feel like I was going seventy.”

“What’s your thoughts?” Lillian was smart and perceptive. More so than I’d believed when we were kids.

“Let me start with an assumption, I mean, one that Rachel had.”

“What’s that?”

“No one would find her basement diaries. To me, this gave her permission to disclose the Hunt House hiding place?”

“I see your point. Obviously, she was wrong.”

“About?”

“I found her diaries. Which, come to think of it, makes me think she wanted me to find them.”

Lillian turned left onto Highway 431. “What if, and you might not like this, what if Rachel was lying?” Wow, that felt like a drill bit piercing my ear. The words repulsed me.

“No way.” I said, recalling the sick feeling I’d already experienced over the fake pistol, and possibly Rachel’s abortion.

Again, Lillian glared at me. This time not raising her eyebrows but silently breathing a big ‘whoa.’ “Lee, I’m sorry this is so personal, but we promised to be open, even brutal, when dealing with the truth.” Lillian returned her gaze to the highway and laid a hand on my knee. “Baby, dear, Rachel took her life. She was troubled. And I doubt her story about Kyle’s death is all fiction.”

Lillian and I stayed silent as we passed Piggly Wiggly and Old Mill Park. She spoke when she stopped the Hyundai before crossing the railroad track. “Do you remember our first date?” I turned and looked at her, but she was looking south, toward First State Bank, like she was making sure a train wasn’t approaching.

I did not know why Lillian would ask, but I didn’t have any trouble recalling the tenth grade Valentine’s Dance, one of the most embarrassing scenes of my life. “How could I forget? Horrible.” My words didn’t match my intent.

“Uh? So it was that bad?” We continued to sit at the railroad tracks. Now Lillian was looking north. Past what I felt was my reddening face.

“No. I meant my dancing, in public. My homebound experiences didn’t translate well inside the school lunchroom.” I paused, wondering whether I should be completely open. Oh, why not. “Other than most everyone laughing at me, it was a wonderful night.”

“That’s better, old boy.” She started laughing as she eased forward across the less than smooth tracks. “Just so you know, I wanted to go steady with you before Ray spiked the punch bowl.”

Even though there wasn’t a red light, I looked both ways when we crossed Main Street. As usual, the downtown was dead. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment or simply a revelation of how tipsy you got.”

“Don’t you dare go there.” Before I could respond, Lillian asked me another question. “Do you think Ray spiked the punch?”

“Maybe. Probably. What makes you ask?” We passed Marshall-Dekalb Electric Coop. The remodeled office was impressive.

“To drown his sorrows, I guess.”

“Uh?”

“You must have forgotten. But let’s see. Who was Ray’s date that night?” I hoped the Boaz cops weren’t out. Lillian had a heavy foot.

Again, it was a crazy question. I guess she was killing time by making small talk. “You. In your dreams.”

“Oh, that hurts. Absolutely not. You still don’t know how much I liked you.”

“It’s getting deep in here. Don’t miss your turn.” We were approaching King Street and Lillian was still speeding up.

“Whoa Nellie.” The Hyundai’s brakes worked, and the tires squealed. I don’t know how she made the turn. “Jane Fordham.”

“Now I remember. No wonder Ray was downing so much punch.” I hadn’t thought in half a century about the weirdness of seeing Ray walk into the high school lunchroom with Jane on his arm.

“Talk about a mismatch. As far as I know, this was the only date Jane ever had.” Lillian fiddled with the air conditioner and fan when she slowed at Snellgrove Avenue. I guess her goat sweater, or something, was causing a hot flash.

“I see your point. Jane, like me, was born with brains and not beauty.”

“Funny. You’ve always been the most handsome geek in the world.”

“Here’s a thought. Maybe Ray was desperate for, well, you know.” I figured Ray would hump a pig if that was all he could get. The mental image was repulsive.

“According to Jane, that’s exactly what he wanted, but she had the self-control to make him wait.” I couldn’t tell if Lillian was speculating or revealing facts.

“What does that mean?” We crossed Short Creek Bridge and Jackie Frasier’s dilapidated mobile home came into view. A single naked bulb cast light above the newly constructed front porch.

“The next week after Fusion, I asked Jane how her date with Ray had gone. She pulled me aside and said something like, ‘I’m in love.’ What she said next brought clarity. She said it had been Rachel’s idea.”

I interrupted. “For Ray to take Jane to the Valentine’s Dance.” I stated without asking.

“Yep. Looking back, here’s what’s weird. Jane also said, ‘Ray didn’t have a choice but to take me to the dance, but now he does. I’ll keep him waiting.’”

We were almost to Pleasant Hill Road and Jane’s house. “I’m lost. Maybe I don’t have brains after all. What did Jane mean?”

“Given Jane’s look, double eye raise, I took her ‘wait’ statement to mean sexual. What I don’t know is how Rachel could make Ray take Jane to the dance. Of course, you know, that was a month and a half after Rachel left for China.”

“Park under that Weeping Willow tree at the side of the garage. It’ll hide the car.” Lillian did as instructed. We exited the Hyundai and walked to the back deck. I hoped Kyla had been right about Jane not having a security system.

08/22/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride .

Something to consider if you’re not already cycling.

I encourage you to start riding a bike, no matter your age. Check out these groups:

Cycling for those aged 70+(opens in a new tab)

Solitary Cycling(opens in a new tab)

Remember,

Listened to

Here’s a few photos from along my pistol route:

Can Christianity Survive—With So Many Problems and Scandals?

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 8/18/2023

2,000 years of momentum probably can’t save it

Surely the clergy, those most in tune with God, must be the happiest people on the planet: they enjoy a personal relationship with their creator, nurtured through years of prayer and pious study. How can their constant refrain not be, “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it”? (Psalm 118:24) But this doesn’t seem to be the way things are working out. A few weeks ago I published an article here titled, The Morale of Christian Clergy Is Taking a Big Hit,

based partially on a study that many clergy aren’t doing so well. Then I came across this article, United Methodist pastors feel worse and worry more than a decade ago:

“A survey of 1,200 United Methodist clergy found that half have trouble sleeping, a third feel depressed and isolated, half are obese, and three-quarters are worried about money…[they] feel worse and worry more than they did a decade ago.”

I suspect that the vulnerability of Christianity might be a contributing factor—and its weaknesses had not been so openly discussed just a decade ago, although that discussion had been stimulated in 2001 with the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Sam Harris followed in 2004 with The End of Faith, and Christopher Hitchens in 2009 with God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Never before had the Christian faith been critiqued so publicly, so devastatingly—and other secular authors have been encouraged to add their insights. There are now well more than five hundred books—most published since 1999—that explain, in detail, the falsification of theism, Christianity especially. And, of course, the Internet has provided a platform for atheist/secular thinkers to spread the word that belief in god(s) is hard to justify.

And the books keep coming. A few days ago, Robert Conner’s new book, The Death of Christian Belief was published. Do a search on Amazon for Robert Conner books to see his full output. I recommend especially The Jesus Cult: 2000 Years of the Last Days (2022) and Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story (2018).

In this new book, Conner describes Christianity as we find it in the world today, but it’s not a pretty picture. In his opening chapter, Fade to Black—a theatrical term meaning that the lights go out at the end—Conner describes the struggle, the losing battle, of Christianity to survive in its traditional strongholds. In Europe, above all. This is hardly a mystery, since Europe was devastated by two world wars, with tens of millions of people killed—six million of whom were brutally murdered during the Holocaust. How can god-is-good theology maintain its grip in the face of such horrors?

Conner mentions watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, with all the pageantry, ritual, and costuming that royal funerals entail—and the pious assurances that she must now be with God:

“Yet as I watched these solemn ceremonies, I wondered how many of those gathered really believed the queen had entered the Pearly Gates. Based on recent polling, almost certainly less than half—including the child choristers—at best. Some 2000 churches in the UK have closed in the past ten years and a recent survey paints a bleak picture of current Christian belief…church membership in the UK has plunged to less than ten percent…” (p. 7, Kindle)

Conner notes that, “Across most of western Europe the numbers are similarly grim.” (p. 8, Kindle) He provides statistics about the situation in Belgium, France, Spain, Ireland. Even in super-Catholic Poland there is slippage in belief. He also mentions the hit Catholicism has taken in Canada, in the wake of the residential schools scandal, which even prompted a papal visit to apologize for what had happened: “Priests and nuns from various religious orders systematically brutalized and sometimes raped these children, some 3000 of whom died of disease and neglect while in the custody of the Church.” (p. 11, Kindle) Connor mentions the dramatic decline in church membership and attendance in America as well.

In Conner’s giant Chapter Two, Death by a 1000 Cuts, he describes the really ugly manifestations of Christian belief. He lists the Seven Deadly Gospels, i.e., the gospels of hate, grift, lawlessness, lies, division, submission, and violence. Given the wealth of information that Conner provides here, it can surely come as no surprise to devout nice Christians that their church and their faith are in deep trouble.

For example, the gospel of hate has been horrifying, in our modern era demonstrated by Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church:

“The Westboro Baptist’s ministry of hate rose to national attention in 1998 when Westboro members picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay university student abducted, tortured, and left tied to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard died of his injuries in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. Westboro Baptist, which preaches that AIDS represents God’s righteous judgment against homosexuals, often picketed the funerals of AIDS victims where members held up placards that displayed their trademark, GOD HATES FAGS.” (pp. 16-17, Kindle)

Just one more example, from the gospel of violence. There is quite enough in the New Testament to fuel violent behavior, including Jesus-script: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) This results in “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war…” and worse, as Conner notes:

“Gospel Jesus told his disciples, ‘You are the light of the world.’ (Matthew 5: 14) Sadly, there is little evidence from history to support that claim. Indeed, the history of Christianity is a nearly unbroken history of moral darkness. In the 1930s, Das Licht der Welt in Germany united behind an authoritarian regime that unleashed the darkest era in world history. The leading German theologians of the day threw their support behind Hitler’s rise to power, and soon German forces invaded their Christian neighbors, repeating a slogan from the Thirty Years War, Gott mit uns, ‘God with us.’” (p. 59, Kindle)

Perhaps Christianity has been losing ground because there is growing awareness that theology can manifest in such destructive ways. But die-hard believers tend to shy away from facing realities. And one of the major realities is that the New Testament itself is failed theology.

Conner deals with this in his Chapter 3: The Clothes Have No Emperor, which opens with the heading, “The New Testament isn’t history.” There is commonly a knee-jerk reaction among the pious to such an assertion: “Yes, it is—who in his right mind would make such a claim?” The blunt answer is: New Testament scholars themselves, many of them devout Christians. Conner traces some of the history of critical analysis of the gospels. He mentions Bart Ehrman, who has published so many books describing the faults and failures of the gospels especially (check out his list of books on Amazon).

For a long time, devout scholars have been trying to justify taking the gospels as history, but without much success. The first three gospels share so much in common, because Matthew and Luke copied so much from Mark. Conner points out that the author of John’s gospel added

“…a thick layer of theology to the stories, but we’re still left with a question that has no answer: where did Mark get his information? If Mark was written about 70 C.E. and Jesus died around 30 C.E., at least a generation passed before anyone thought to collect the stories about Jesus and put them into a gospel. To make matters worse, in the years between Jesus’ death and the writing of the first gospel we know a destructive war supervened that devastated the cities of Galilee and Judea, killed thousands, and scattered the survivors which presumably included potential witnesses to the career of Jesus.” (p. 73, Kindle)

Conner also discusses the confusion added by the apostle Paul, who never met Jesus, and bragged that he didn’t find out anything about Jesus from the disciples. His knowledge of Jesus came from his visions (= hallucinations). This undermines the claim that the New Testament is history.

The very helpful information in Chapter 3 is precisely what Christians don’t want to hear, acknowledge, or think about. When I was working on my first book (Ten Tough Problems in Christian Belief), I asked a few devout believers to review and critique a few of the chapters. Oh, no, they couldn’t do that! They had to focus on strengthening their faith. I sensed their doubts lurked just below the surface—and they didn’t want to check below the surface. I gave copies of my 2022 book, Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught, to several Christian friends. The response was silence. They didn’t want to think about the issues I raised.

But they’re not alone, as Conner notes:

“In many cases the problem with Jesus Studies begins with scholars merely seeking confirmation for their presuppositions, but arguably in every case a related problem lies in the very nature of the evidence, evidence that has passed through multiple hands, is possibly (or definitely) corrupted, or evidence that it was simply a pious story to begin with.” (p. 81, Kindle)

I would say that Conner’s Chapter 3 is a must read—but I fear that devout readers will consider it a must not read.

In my article here next week, we’ll take a look at Conner’s next three chapters: Certifiably Crazy for Jesus, Where Christianity Goes to Die, and The Valley of Death.

By the way, I suggest that Conner’s book can be paired nicely with Tim Sledge’s book, Four Disturbing Questions with One Simply Answer: Breaking the Spell of Christian Belief. Of all the hundreds of books out there that make powerful cases against belief in the Jesus cult, these two deserve high ranking.

Full disclosure, by the way: I wrote the Foreword for The Death of Christian Belief, at Robert Conner’s invitation. He and I were interviewed together by Derek Lambert for a MythVision podcast. In his Chapter 3, he recommends my book, Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught—as well as Seth Andrews’ brilliant Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot.

No, not even 2,000 years of momentum can save the faith!

I’ll close today with this insight from Conner:

“Churches retain power partly by keeping believers in the dark about the crazy stuff the New Testament says, as well as keeping their financials opaque and concealing the sexual predators within their ranks. “The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God” (I Cor. 3:19) is an affirmation of ignorance and an inadvertent admission that knowledge is the mortal enemy of belief.” (p. 104, Kindle)

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten ToughProblems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.

His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.

The Boaz Stranger–Chapter 35

It was Thursday morning. Ray sat inside an attorney/client interview room next to Judge Broadside’s courtroom. Patience had always been an ephemeral idea, which, to Ray, made it a vice and not a virtue. Quick decisions and immediate actions were the stalwarts of his success. Or, so Ray believed.

It was ten minutes before his bond hearing and Morgan Selvidge was nowhere in sight. Ray’s attorney had not called or visited since Ray’s Tuesday afternoon arrest. Equally troubling was his cuffed hands and shackled feet. Apparently, the Deputy who walked him to the courthouse this morning hadn’t communicated with Deputy Jared. Thankfully, only his hands were cuffed in front and the shackles weren’t tight.

The Hearing was at 10:00. Ray countered his sweaty forehead and aching stomach by reflecting on the past forty hours inside Marshall County Jail.

Cell Block D had been worse than expected. Although the food was acceptable, the privacy was not. Unlike what Deputy Jared had promised, the jailer forced Ray to share an eight-foot by ten-foot cell with another inmate. Now, waiting at the courthouse for his defense attorney, Ray acknowledged things could have been worse.

The bad appeared shortly after breakfast yesterday morning. Ray had been told the visitor was his chef and kitchen manager. Neither were true. It was Billy James, Buddy’s brother, sitting opposite the thick plexiglass inside the visitor center. Ray couldn’t recall when he’d been so angry.

Billy demanded money, his share of ‘the job.’ Ray almost hung up the phone and called for the guard. What he learned from staying and listening confirmed the stupidity of what he’d done, the entire endeavor to burn the Hunt House for an estimated quarter million-dollar profit. The irony was that Buddy had disappeared with Ray’s hundred thousand dollars, leaving him zero profit, given the likelihood the insurance company would balk at paying the claim.

Another thing Ray had learned was that Eric Snyder, the man discovered in the ashes, had bragged about making a quick ten thousand dollars. Of course, Buddy had never paid him. This was the money Billy demanded. His twisted thinking convinced himself he deserved a share of Buddy’s windfall despite his lack of participation.

Before Billy left, Ray concocted a plan and promised he’d pay fifty thousand dollars, but it would have to wait until he was released. Billy left with a fist bump toward the plexiglass. Ray reciprocated with two hands for double assurance. Secretly, Ray knew he had no choice but to quiet the James brothers’ unpredictable tongues. They could no longer be trusted to protect him. How he could accomplish this goal was now merely an idea.

An unknown deputy entered the witness room and relayed to Ray that his attorney had called Judge Broadside and announced he was running fifteen minutes behind. After an affirmative head nod, Ray considered firing the uncommitted Morgan Selvidge and asking the Court for a continuance. Unfortunately, that would return him to his jail cell. Ray waited.

Orin Russell had been the good thing about Ray’s two-day stay inside the Marshall County Jail. By luck or the grace of God, Russell had the makings of a trainable and trustworthy replacement for the incompetent and disloyal James’s brothers.

Orin Russell was from Albertville, nineteen years old, and charged with the kidnapping and sexual assault of his stepmother’s 15-year-old daughter. The tall and muscular jail mate reminded Ray of his younger self. Both had been star athletes in high school and had dreamed of going all the way to the pros. Both had a commanding presence and an entitlement attitude. Like Ray, Orin had an insatiable appetite for women and wealth. Yet, he lacked a viable pathway forward, especially when considering his inept and lethargic court-appointed defense attorney. Last night, it had taken little for Ray to convince Orin his ticket to success lay with his sixty-seven-year-old jail mate.

Ray always believed he had the near-supernatural ability to discern real from fake. But he’d always been cautious to double-check and verify. So, Ray anchored his plan for him and Orin in high moral principles and undetectable coded language.

After an hour of Ray sharing a brief biography, his hopes and dreams for Rylan’s, and the name of a criminal defense attorney who’d be in touch, Orin had accepted Ray’s generous job offer. His primary responsibility would be to mirror Ray’s daily activities and learn the intricacies of real estate development. In sum, to perform duties as delegated by his boss. Like Ray, Orin had made good grades in school and learned quickly. He eagerly promised to devote “every waking hour to making Ray happy.” This morning, before the deputy arrived to walk Ray across the street to the courthouse, Orin had jotted down all his new boss’s contact information.

It was 10:20 AM when Morton Selvidge joined Ray inside the interview room. “Before you go ballistic on me, let me share the good news.”

Ray listened. He could always give his lackluster attorney a pink slip after leaving the Marshall County jail.

“The DA’s agreed to my offer.”

“And that is?” Ray would quickly agree to ten million dollars if that’s what it took. It was only money.

“A million-dollar cash bond and an ankle monitor.”

“I’d rather pay more money and keep my freedom.”

“I expected that. DA won’t have it. To her, you’re too much of a flight risk.”

After offering to put up ten million dollars, Ray asked for details concerning the ankle monitor, primarily whether he could leave the Lodge.

“Five-mile diameter. From your home. Otherwise, we’ll have to ask special permission.”

Ray finally agreed and Morton left to tell the DA and Judge.

***

What Ray didn’t know was that his jail mate hadn’t been completely truthful. Although he was Orin Russell, nineteen years old, and a former Albertville High School star athlete, he had already accepted another position working for private investigator Connor Ford. His assignment was to gain information. Ford hired Orin to snitch on Ray Archer.

The idea hadn’t originated with Connor. Last Saturday afternoon, Lee had received an email from Linda Smith, his former English teacher. As promised, she had sent a copy of Kyle’s tenth-grade essay, a complete manuscript. In it, Kyle had learned of Ray’s secret involvement with a girl he referred to as Babe 2. She had been a young and beautiful Albertville High School cheerleader. That was before she disappeared. Kyle had used this to persuade Brute to “do the right thing,” about not only Babe, but Babe 2’s family. To Lee, it strongly suggested Ray had learned Kyle had become a threat to his success, even his freedom. And this was before Lee had conducted any investigation.

Lee’s sources were the archives of the Sand Mountain Reporter and The Advertiser Gleam. Articles dated during the summer and fall of 1969 revealed the girl, a Sharon Teague, had disappeared after being raped and before she had disclosed to her mother the name of her attacker. From these definitive facts and Kyle’s nondescript essay, Lee framed the hypothesis that Ray killed Kyle to prevent the disclosure of his criminal actions.

Lee’s call to Micaden Tanner had triggered a causal reaction. Micaden shared Lee’s hypothesis with Connor Ford, who conferred with his longtime friend Mark Hale. Fortunately, Hale was privy to investigator Avery Proctor and the DA’s recent interest in cold cases. Proctor had revealed the name of Orin Russell, the grandson of Susan Vick, the late Sharon Teague’s sister.

Orin’s recent arrest was a fortunate occurrence, or a gift from the gods. To avoid future evidentiary reasons, the DA’s office had declined involvement. That hadn’t stopped Ford from meeting with Russell and motivating him to seek justice on behalf of his deceased great aunt, especially when the opportunity came with hopes of probation or a much-reduced sentence if convicted.

Legal experts argue this is why Trump can’t hold office again

08/21/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride .

Something to consider if you’re not already cycling.

I encourage you to start riding a bike, no matter your age. Check out these groups:

Cycling for those aged 70+(opens in a new tab)

Solitary Cycling(opens in a new tab)

Remember,

Listened to

Here’s a few photos from along my pistol route:

Ten Commandments for Our Time

Here’s the link to this article.

Toward a Provisional Rational Decalogue

MICHAEL SHERMER

AUG 18, 2023

In my previous Skeptic column, Deconstructing the Decalogue, I offered a personal view on how to think about the Ten Commandments from the perspective of 3,000 years of moral progress since they were first presented in two books of the Old Testament (Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21). Here I would like to reconstruct them from the perspective of a science- and reason-based moral system, a fuller version of which I developed in my 2015 book The Moral Arc, from which this material is partially excerpted.

Note: This is a purely intellectual exercise. I am not a preacher or teacher of moral values, nor do I hold myself up as some standard-bearer of morality. Since I do not believe in God, nor do I think that there are any rational reasons to believe that morals derive from any source outside of ourselves, I feel the necessity to offer an alternative to religious- and faith-based morality, both descriptively (where do morals come from if not God?) and prescriptively (how should we act if there is no God?), which I have done in 30 years of publishing Skeptic magazine and in a number of my books, including How We Believe (1999), The Science of Good and Evil (2004), and the aforementioned The Moral Arc. Here I am building on the work of secular philosophers and scholars from the ancient Greeks through the Enlightenment and into the modern era where a massive literature exists addressing these deep and important matters.

Galileo Demonstrating the New Astronomical Theories at the University of Padua. Painting by Félix Parra, 1873. Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.

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The problem with any religious moral code that is set in stone is just that—it is set in stone. Anything that can never be changed has within its DNA the seeds of its own extinction. A science-based morality has the virtue of having built into it a self-correcting mechanism that does not just allow redaction, correction, and improvement; it insists upon it. Science and reason can be employed to inform—and in some cases even determine—moral values.

Science thrives on change, on improvement, on updating and upgrading its methods and conclusions. So it should be for a science of morality. No one knows for sure what is right and wrong in all circumstances for all people everywhere, so the goal of a science-based morality should be to construct a set of provisional moral precepts that are true for most people in most circumstances most of the time—as assessed by empirical inquiry and rational analysis—but admit exceptions and revisions where appropriate. Indeed, as humanity’s concept of “who and what is human, and entitled to protection” has expanded over the centuries, so we have extended moral protection to categories once thought beneath our notice.

Here are some suggested commandments for our time. Feel free to add your own in the comments section below.

1. The Golden-Rule Principle: Behave toward others as you would desire that they behave toward you.

The golden rule is a derivative of the basic principle of exchange reciprocity and reciprocal altruism, and thus evolved in our Paleolithic ancestors as one of the primary moral sentiments. In this principle there are two moral agents: the moral doer and the moral receiver. A moral question arises when the moral doer is uncertain how the moral receiver will accept and respond to the action in question. In its essence this is what the golden rule is telling us to do. By asking yourself, “how would I feel if this were done unto me?” you are asking “how would others feel if I did it unto them?”

2. The Ask-First Principle: To find out whether an action is right or wrong, ask first.

The Golden Rule principle has a limitation to it: what if the moral receiver thinks differently from the moral doer? What if you would not mind having action X done unto you, but someone else would mind it? Smokers cannot ask themselves how they would feel if other people smoked in a restaurant where they were dining because they probably wouldn’t mind. It’s the nonsmokers who must be asked how they feel. That is, the moral doer should ask the moral receiver whether the behavior in question is moral or immoral. In other words, the Golden Rule is still about you. But morality is more than just about you, and the Ask-First Principle makes morality about others.

3. The Happiness Principle: It is a higher moral principle to always seek happiness with someone else’s happiness in mind, and never seek happiness when it leads to someone else’s unhappiness through force or fraud.

Humans have a host of moral and immoral passions, including being selfless and selfish, cooperative and competitive, nice and nasty. It is natural and normal to try to increase our own happiness by whatever means available, even if that means being selfish, competitive, and nasty. Fortunately, evolution created both sets of passions, such that by nature we also seek to increase our own happiness by being selfless, cooperative, and nice. Since we have within us both moral and immoral sentiments, and we have the capacity to think rationally and intuitively to override our baser instincts, and we have the freedom to choose to do so, at the core of morality is choosing to do the right thing by acting morally and applying the happiness principle. (The modifier “force or fraud” was added to clarify that there are many activities that do not involve morality, such as a sporting contest, in which the goal is not to seek happiness with your opponent’s happiness in mind, but simply to win, fairly of course.)

4. The Liberty Principle: It is a higher moral principle to always seek liberty with someone else’s liberty in mind, and never seek liberty when it leads to someone else’s loss of liberty through force or fraud.

The Liberty Principle is an extrapolation from the fundamental principle of all liberty as practiced in Western society: The freedom to think, believe, and act as we choose so long as our thoughts, beliefs, and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. What makes the Liberty Principle a moral principle is that in addition to asking the moral receiver how he or she might respond to a moral action, and considering how that action might lead to your own and the moral receiver’s happiness or unhappiness, there is an even higher moral level toward which we can strive, and that is the freedom and autonomy of yourself and the moral receiver, or what we shall simply refer to here as liberty. Liberty is the freedom to pursue happiness and the autonomy to make decisions and act on them in order to achieve that happiness.

Only in the last couple of centuries have we witnessed the worldwide spread of liberty as a concept that applies to all peoples everywhere, regardless of their race, religion, rank or social and political status in the power hierarchy. Liberty has yet to achieve worldwide status, particularly among those states dominated by theocracies and autocracies that encourage intolerance, and dictate that only some people deserve liberty, but the overall trend since the Enlightenment has been to grant greater liberty, for more people, everywhere. Although there are setbacks still, and periodically violations of liberties disrupt the overall historical flow from less to more liberty for all, the general trajectory of increasing liberty for all continues, so every time you apply the liberty principle you have advanced humanity one small step forward.

5. The Fairness Principle: When contemplating a moral action imagine that you do not know if you will be the moral doer or receiver, and when in doubt err on the side of the other person.

This is based on the philosopher John Rawls’ concepts of the “veil of ignorance” and the “original position” in which moral actors are ignorant of their position in society when determining rules and laws that affect everyone, because of the self-serving bias in human decision making. Given a choice, most people who enact moral rules and legislative laws would do so based on their position in society (their gender, race, class, sexual orientation, religion, political party, etc.) in a way that would most benefit themselves and their kin and kind. Not knowing ahead of time how the moral precept or legal law will affect you pushes you to strive for greater fairness for all. A simpler version is in the example of cutting a cake fairly: if I cut the cake you choose which piece you want, and if you cut the cake then I choose which piece I want.

6. The Reason Principle: Try to find rational reasons for your moral actions that are not self-justifications or rationalizations by consulting others first.

Ever since the Enlightenment the study of morality has shifted from considering moral principles as based on God-given, Divinely-inspired, Holy book-derived, Authority-dictated precepts from the top down, to bottom-up individual-considered, reason-based, rationality-constructed, science-grounded propositions in which one is expected to have reasons for one’s moral actions, especially reasons that consider the other person affected by the moral act. This is an especially difficult moral commandment to carry out because of the all-too natural propensity to slip from rationality to rationalization, from justification to self-justification, from reason to emotion. As in the first commandment to “ask first,” whenever possible one should consult others about one’s reasons for a moral action in order to get constructive feedback and to pull oneself out of a moral bubble in which whatever you want to do happens to be the most moral thing to do.

7. The Responsibility and Forgiveness Principle: Take full responsibility for your own moral actions and be prepared to be genuinely sorry and make restitution for your own wrong doing to others; hold others fully accountable for their moral actions and be open to forgiving moral transgressors who are genuinely sorry and prepared to make restitution for their wrong doing.

This is another difficult commandment to uphold in both directions. First, there is the “moralization gap” between victims and perpetrators, in which victims almost always perceive themselves as innocent and thus any injustice committed against them must be the result of nothing more than evil on the part of the perpetrator; and in which perpetrators may perceive themselves to have been acting morally in righting a wrong, redressing an immoral act, or defending the honor of oneself or family and friends. The self-serving bias, the hindsight bias, and the confirmation bias practically ensure that we all feel we didn’t do anything wrong, and whatever we did was justified, and thus there is no need to apologize and ask for forgiveness.

As well, the sense of justice and revenge is a deeply evolved moral emotion that serves three primary purposes: (1) to right wrongs committed by transgressors, (2) as a deterrent to possible future bad behavior, (3) to serve as a social signal to others that should they commit a similar moral transgression the same fate of your moral indignation and revenge awaits them.

8. The Defend Others Principle: Stand up to evil people and moral transgressors, and defend the defenseless when they are victimized.

There are people in the world who will commit moral transgressions against us and our fellow group members. Either through the logic of violence and aggression in which perpetrators of evil always feel justified in their acts, or through such conditions as psychopathy, a non-negligible portion of a population will commit selfish or cruel acts. We must stand up against them.

9. The Expanding Moral Category Principle: Try to consider other people not of your gender, sexual orientation, class, family, tribe, race, religion, or nation as an honorary group member equal to you in moral standing.

We have a moral obligation not only to ourselves, our kin and kind, our family and friends, and our fellow in-group members; we also owe it to those people who are different from us in a variety of ways, who in the past have been discriminated against for no other reason than that they were different in some measurable way. Even though our first moral obligation is to take care of ourselves and our immediate family and friends, it is a higher moral value to consider the moral values of others, and in the long run it is better for yourself, your kin and kind, and your in-group to consider members of other groups to be honorary members of your own group, as long as they so honor you and your group (see #8 above).

10. The Biophilia Principle: Try to contribute to the survival and flourishing of other sentient beings, their ecosystems, and the biosphere as a whole.

Biophilia is the love of nature, of which we are a part. Expanding the moral sphere to include the environments that sustain sentient beings is the loftiest of moral commandments.

If by fiat I had to reduce these Ten Commandments to just one it would be this:

Try to expand the moral sphere and to push the arc of the moral universe just a bit further toward truth, justice, and freedom for more sentient beings in more places more of the time.

The Boaz Stranger–Chapter 34

“I have a theory,” was the only thing Lillian would say as she drove us to her place off Cox Gap Road.

For the fourth time, as she unlocked the back door, I repeated my response, “let’s hear it.”

Inside, she motioned me to sit at the kitchen table and said, “I’ll be right back.” I did as I was told and wondered if she was playing some silly game.

I waited several minutes. She finally yelled, “Lee, come in here.”

I stood and shook my head whispering to myself, “is Lillian playing a new version of hide-n-seek?”

She was sitting at a makeshift desk in the spare bedroom, half piled with unloaded boxes. “What you got?” I asked as she pulled two folders from an opened box.

Without introduction or pretext, Lillian announced: “Ray’s been paying Rob and Rosa for years. Grab a chair.” She pointed back toward the kitchen. I returned and sat beside her before an unlevel platform constructed from a weathered door and three semi-squished boxes on each end.

“What in Heaven’s name makes you say that?” Lillian had placed one folder on the desk and was rifling through another one lying across her lap. I could see the documents were bank statements.

“I’ve long wondered what this $2,500 was for.” Lillian pointed to a line item on a July 1990 First State Bank of Boaz account, and the same amount on the October 2020 statement she had removed from Ray’s study on Monday.

“I’m lost. What makes you think this monthly disbursement had anything to do with Rob and Rosa?”

“Two things.” Lillian flipped the 1990 statement over, revealing an index-sized hand-written note taped to the back. It read, ‘It’s your turn. I no longer will pay for your mistake. Pay or sink, your choice.’ It was signed, ‘Dad.’

“I’m guessing Dad is Ray’s father.”

“Right, and this is where the $2,500 per month draft started.” Lillian returned the older statement to its place in the folder and stared at the one she’d just stolen. “See, it continues.” She reached for a highlighter and swiped across the disbursement.

“Sorry, I’m not seeing the connection, but you said you had two reasons. What’s the other one?” I was thinking Lillian was trying to see a non-existent pattern.

She laid the thick folder on top of the other one and started clicking at her laptop. She must have turned it on when she first came in. After a couple of screen changes, I could tell she was at First State Bank of Boaz’ website. Two keystrokes later she said, “look here.”

“Okay, I see a bunch of debits and credits. Ray’s account?”

“Yes.” She scrolled the screen, stopped, and pointed to two withdrawals. “This is Ray’s discretionary account.” One is for $150,000, the other $100,000. “This one was for me.” Lillian pointed to the larger amount.

“What about the hundred thousand?”

“I bet the Aviator it’s what Ray paid Buddy James. Look at the date.” It was the 25th of November, the day before Thanksgiving and two days before the Hunt House exploded and burned the interior to a crisp.

My feelings were mixed. I was happy Lillian had ongoing access to Ray’s online banking but was frustrated by her interpretation. I couldn’t see any connection to Rob and Rosa other than the obvious property-destroying fire. “You’ve got me where you want me.” I said. Our eyes met. She smiled and nodded.

Lillian reopened the bank statement folder and removed a single sheet of letter sized paper with a large paper clip at the top. “Union Central Bank.” She handed it to me and pointed. The sheet contained a copy of both sides of a much smaller document, one the size of a personal check. “That’s both sides of the $2,500 draft I copied. Notice the bottom picture.” It appeared to be a rubber stamp. It read, ‘Union Central Bank, Roanoke, VA.’

Now I was catching up. “That’s odd and interesting.”

Lillian interrupted before I could continue. “Earlier, after you got off the phone with Rosa, you mentioned the cabin being in Roanoke. I didn’t know that, but when you said Rob and Rosa owned the place, I remembered this monthly draft going to a bank in the same city. Don’t you think that’s more than a coincidence?”

“Not sure. I’m skeptical of your conclusion. It appears unwarranted.” Lillian slapped my knee.

“You damn attorneys, needing to read the entire book, twice, before you fathom the ending. This all fits with Ray being Kyle’s murderer.”

“How so?”

“Remember, I told you Ray does nothing for free or out of generosity. When Rosa told you about the extra funds he’d paid Rob for the Hunt House, he got something in return. Now, I believe he, and his father before him, have been paying Rob and Rosa for years and years.”

It was now my turn to interrupt. “For what, Shirley Holmes?”

“Let me answer with a question. What subject would be so important to Ray, again assuming he killed Kyle, to motivate him and his father to pay a shit pot full of money over all these years?”

Lillian had a point, but I was nowhere ready to reach her conclusion. But I could craft a hypothesis. “What if Ray has paid all this money to Rob and Rosa in exchange for their silence?”

“Good boy.” Lillian swiveled toward me in her chair and nudged my knee with hers. I won’t say how I felt. “And, let me say it for you, what would your in-laws know that would motivate Ray to keep the money flowing?”

My legal hat nestled downward around my head. “Here’s another question. Would my in-laws, for any amount of money, keep quiet for Ray alone? Do they, did they, have another reason to keep quiet?” Lillian’s leg pressed against mine, easy, but firm.

“Let’s continue this discussion on the couch. This chair is hurting my butt.” I stood and caught the scent of lavender. Funny, I hadn’t noticed it before.

***

I followed Lillian to the den and to the couch. Just as we sat, she quickly stood and headed for the front door. “I’m expecting a package.” She walked outside and immediately yelled, “Lee, come here.”

The near pungent smell dominated the air. “Wow, I haven’t smelled chicken litter in a while.”

“Burning rubber?” Lillian reached for a small box seated in a rocking chair.

I looked across Alexander Road to the neighboring house. There was a streetlamp on the far side, maybe half a football field away. Smoke was circling the pole like a swarm of bees. “I don’t know if it’s rubber, but something is burning.” I pointed to the ghostlike figure.

“Oh yeah, I see. Let me grab my phone to call Neva. Do you think we need to walk over there?”

“We can.” I wasn’t too interested, given the cold. The wind had picked up, and the temperature had plunged since we arrived an hour earlier. At least it wasn’t raining.

Lillian was in and out of the house in no time. “Come on, I’ll call while we walk.” Again, I trailed along, wishing we’d grabbed our coats.

By the time we reached the far side of the Clifton’s house, we heard a fire truck’s siren, and saw the flames. Nestled between a detached garage and a six-bay clean-up shop was a large barn. They had stacked round hay bales three high as far as I could see. The fire had engulfed the far-right corner of the half-sided pole building.

“She’s at the fire,” Lillian said, pulling me forward. “Tony’s in Atlanta and Neva’s spraying water.” I marveled at how quickly Lillian had met her new neighbors. She’d already entered Neva’s phone number into her iPhone’s contacts.

The firetruck arrived as we rounded the corner at the clean-up shop. “There she is.” I saw a woman standing thirty feet from the barn arching a pencil size stream of water from a garden hose onto the chaotic flames.

Neva and Lillian exchanged a few words as the firefighters positioned their truck, and the heat from the growing flames grew.

“Stand back,” a big burly man with a thick gray beard said, unfolding a hose in our direction. I retreated toward the shop. “Ladies, please move.”

I grabbed Lillian by the elbow. “Come on, they’ve got this, and I’m freezing.” Once we circled the firetruck, I felt a shy hand engulf my own. Oddly, I seemed to forget the knifing wind and numbing cold as we scurried across the neighbor’s yard to the home of the woman who had broken my heart half-a-century ago.

Strangely, I did not disconnect hands during our entire walk. Lillian did that when we stepped onto her front porch, and she reached for her package. “Hurry, let’s get inside.” I opened the door, allowing her to go first. She set the box on the coffee table and hustled to a wall mounted gas heater I hadn’t noticed before. “I’m so glad I had AllGas install this. My central unit sucks.”

I asked for details. With no response forthcoming, I complied with Lillian’s head motion, ‘come here and warm.’ I stood beside her while we both held our hands close to the welcoming heat. In a minute, she pivoted her body to warm her backside while I continued to massage my hands.

I’m not sure how it happened. We both had pursued a pivot-and-warm routine at least three times. The last one was defective since we made it only halfway. Now, face to face, our hands reached out and pulled the other one close. I must admit I’d considered this moment since I’d laid eyes on Lillian two weeks ago at Old Mill Park. What had started as a fantasy had evolved into reality.

As Lillian laid her head on my shoulder and clutched both hands behind my back, she was the first to talk. “Lee, I’m so sorry. Please know I have always regretted what I did. Can you forgive me?”

I normally didn’t enjoy plowing the same ground more than once, but I sensed her seriousness and need for affirmation. I nuzzled my mouth close to her ear. The lavender scent grew stronger, triggering feelings I feared. “I know, and I forgive you. Ask me tomorrow and I’ll tell you the same.” I gave her a squeeze.

Lillian popped her head back and said, “are you being a smart ass?”

“Maybe, but a serious one.” She smiled and returned her head to my shoulder. Our bodies couldn’t have gotten a hair closer.

Without thinking, I brushed back her hair with my hand and kissed her neck. Once, twice, three times, each time exploring a unique spot. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.

By now, I was sweating. I manipulated us both a yard away from the heater. “Whew, I’m on fire.” Secretly, I laughed at my involuntary statement.

“Me too, for several reasons.” We untangled ourselves and what started quietly transformed into a knee-slapping roar. Finally, Lillian returned to the heater and dialed it down from HIGH to LOW.

Just as quickly, she returned to me and pulled my head to hers. The kiss was intense, inciting, and irresistible, a one-way ticket to her king-size bed.

It was after ten when we reassembled our clothing and exited her back porch. We said little during the drive to Kyla’s. Tonight, for me, was something I’d never experienced with Rachel. It really wasn’t the sex, although it was the most passionate I’d ever experienced. It was the time, touch, and talk we’d exchanged under the covers. This new road was going to be a leap into love or a stumble into the abyss. I hoped it was the former.