Drive-Thru LA: The Book of Swedenborg

“Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth: Now Hear Another: he has written all the old falshoods.1

And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro’ his conceited notions.2

Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further.3

Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paraclesus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborgs, and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number.4

But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in the sunshine.”5

-William Blake6

Carpenter woke up early the next morning and went down to the lobby to fetch a cup of coffee.  Jesse was inside sitting in an uncomfortable, yet functional, chair that you can find in nearly any place people are expected to wait in America.  Jesse wasn’t waiting.  He was reading a syndicated newspaper, whose name has been changed to protect my assonance.  The Globa Proba had information about all sorts of things that had happened in the previous fourteen or so days, with matrices of non-sense to the unaware observer.  In other words, if extra-terrestrials ever came down and all they used  were newspapers to reconstruct our culture and learn about us, well, we’re in deep shit. But for now, the shit was materialized, and was easy enough to wade through, although one ever got used to the stench of filthy rhetoric.7

There were five libraries in St. Joseph, and they collected and ordered newspapers and other periodicals in volumes.  I always wondered why people read the news. Logically, if something affects your life, you probably don’t need to read something in order to figure that out. The effect on your life should be evident, or at least noticeable before you need to question it further.  But the News was really a way of trying to predict the future. The News was trying to transmogrify into the Notyets. The premise was this: if you could gauge how shitty things were at the present, as compared to the past, you could establish a theoretical “trend” in society that might somehow allow you to make better educated guesses and less hypocritical hypotheses, but it could never predict what was really going to happen. It was merely forecasting.8

Carpenter didn’t know Jesse was going to be down in the lobby when he came to get his coffee.  It was news to him when he walked in and saw Jesse curled over the Globa Proba, straining his neck and his eyes on the small print.  Carpenter walked over to the coffee “bar”.  The bar was constructed from the finest in folding tables, shoved up against a wall so the legs straddled an electrical outlet, with two coffee makers plugged in and running full blast most of the morning.  Next to the coffee makers were two stainless canisters that were habitually refilled by the Desk Clerk who was hired to work the early shift through the recommendation of a psychologist who had diagnosed the Clerk with an acute obsessive/compulsive disorder that caused him to refill anything that became half empty, almost without thinking.  Carpenter hit the button on the unlabeled canister (since the other was boldly emblazoned with a piece of paper secured with four pieces of tape running parallel and perpendicular along the edges, that read in red marker “DECAF”) and a spit of coffee sputtered out, and he had to hit the button on the canister four or five times to fill his little styro-foam cup.  The sugar and artificial creamer were kept in elegant styro-foam cups just like Carpenters, with tongue depressors/coffee stirrers kept in a third replicate cup.  He dumped the packets of powder into his cup and whisked it up with a pair of the little wooden sticks.  He tossed the empty packets and the sticks in an old, used-up coffee can labeled “TRASH” in the style of the coffee canister.  With his newly brandished beverage, Carpenter walked over and sat down next to Jesus.9

“I want to talk about what happened the other day,” Carpenter said, “when you picked me up from Peter’s shop. The whole thing about the Garden of Eden and understanding the Bible.  I think we need to talk about this before you lose your faith completely.”10

“Who said I lost my faith?” Jesse said. “Just because I don’t believe in some of the Bible doesn’t mean I’ve never read it. I just think that teaching some things as fact that simply cannot be true is not a good way to preach.”11

The Clerk looked over, and leaned over on his elbows on the counter and concentrated in on their conversation. Carpenter saw this and immediately shot the Clerk a look of disdain, as if to say, who do you think you are, picking up audible symbols without even trying, and then being interested enough to consciously listen?  Or something along those lines.  12

Carpenter grabbed his Son by the sleeve and ushered him outside.  Jesse followed without question, since he could see the wrath imminent if anyone was to cross Carpenter at that point.  He hated eavesdroppers.  13

“Ok, now that we’re alone and can talk like real human beings,” said Carpenter, “I want you to understand one thing. Faith isn’t about what makes sense, and what those so-called science geniuses call facts. Their facts get changed every fifty years, and that’s if they’re good facts.  Our belief has never changed– it isn’t about facts, it’s about truths.  The truth is, if you don’t believe in the saving grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, you simply will not be allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven in the afterlife. That is the meaning of the messiah– he was to be the King to rule all Kings.  He does rule all Kings– in the timeless Kingdom of Heaven on High where all that wish to enter are welcome, but all who don’t believe in the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ will suffer eternal damnation, for they will forever regret not accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior once they have passed beyond this world. It doesn’t have to make sense.  It is, and that is all that matters.”14

Jesse took a sip of his additive-free coffee and looked his father in the eyes, trying to gauge whether or not he was being sincere at the time.  Throughout the repetitive pedantry, Carpenter had actually remained quite sincere– it was clear that he believed what he was talking about.  The last thing that Carpenter said pretty much summed up the only option left for Christianity to remain “valid” in light of the listless enlightenments that had taken place since its conception.15

No longer did they want religion to make sense; they continuously proposed that senses were meant to trick us, and were completely irrelevant in the afterlife.  That is true, the CNS does shut down at time of death. Christian ideas sent people on missions around the world to show people who God was, so they could save them. They concocted elaborate mind-fucks that made people accept out of fear. This was the same type of technique that the Lone Ranger would use to force confessions out of people, and it was quite effective. With the threat of an eternity spent in Hell, many people would accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior simply to make sure they had covered their bases. Gambling became a metonym for life, and they couldn’t help but buy a couple tickets with some advice from Pascal. They didn’t know what having Jesus in your heart meant, and completely missed the point. The words, the baptism, the acceptance ceremony– it was all an act.  Accepting Jesus into your heart was a completely different thing altogether. Churches merely staged baptisms to acknowledge public acceptance into the community. Most had no clue how to emulate Jesus– and others insisted that emulation wasn’t necessary. They all had one thing in common: they worshiped him like an Idol. He became nothing more than another icon; just like the Palaces and Pyramids he was trying to draw people’s attention away from. Now people built eschatologically irrelevant fits of architecture– great resonating halls with one pulpit and many pews filled with elaborate hymn books that outnumbered the Bibles. Few of these people could interpret the Parables of the New Testament in relation to Modern Society.16

The thing was, the Parables weren’t meant for Modern Society. Though many of them used social settings, and promoted communist ideas, like the Workers in the Vineyard for instance; they were all symbolic so people that lived in that Society could understand them.  The point was to go through a medium that people understand, so they can make the leap to the greater idea hiding behind the symbolism.17

But at the root of the teachings was one simple idea; giving up the worldly for something spiritual.  In other words, focusing less and less on society and more and more on the devotion to missionary work, since the word of God didn’t spread on its own.  Not until the King James Version with its Shakespearean flair and poetic wording did the Bible become enjoyable to read simply because of the way it sounded (in English, mind you).  Although the Hebrew, Greek and Latin had their own strong points, like relative distance from the original meaning of what was written. But the sound of reassuring words became all important, and they chanted these words in pandemonius hymns of Praise for the Lord on high. Speaking eventually drowned out private reading of scripture.  Unless it was a speaking point of a Minister’s sermon a passage in the book was useless on its own. The Minister would direct the congregation to a passage, and their search would serve to bide time for forty seconds between the Minister’s ambles. Once found, the passages  were usually misinterpreted and ironically irrelevant to the sermon. They were inherently relevant though, since they did serve to familiarize the people of the church with the Bible, or at least how to use one. Apparently it took instruction to pick up a book, open it, look at the words on the page, and understand them. 18

If only to spur the confusion even further, I had made a habit of making notes in the margins of every Bible I used in the various Churches I attended during my experiment. I wondered sometimes what poor schmuck would think when he encountered the parable of the ten virgins and see my notes in the margin that read:19

Courting ten women at once in our 20

society would be referred to as pimping; 21

and none of them would remain virgins 22

for long. Which ones were the five 23

foolish ones? The five that didn’t get in, 24

and thus stayed out of Harem-style25

courting? Where was the closest mini-26

mart? If it happened now, they might be 27

able to run and get some batteries for the 28

flashlights. That should be the new 29

title of the ten Virgins; the ten30

impressionable girls with flashlights.31

The same was true for the parabolic meaning; there was a church in every town in America, practically one lurking around every corner.  The time of redemption was always; and although people never knew when the time would come, they knew that their time would come, and many had done their repentance deal at some point to be sure of their destination in death. 32

Carpenter didn’t sell assurance, he sold insurance. He bought into assurance though, as many before and after him did in turn.  Faith was the essence of the belief; you had to be ready to kill your own son because God wished it to be done. That was faith.  It wasn’t some half-cooked idea. Faith was something found in the cockles of the heart, deeper than deep, the metaphorical heart, not the blood pumping engine. . .It was something introduced to society by the poetic mind. . .Where liberty means release from the environment while appreciating the nature of things. . .Where the free-versed Bibles without indexes roam free. . .For the guidance of God would always lead the person to the right page. . .33

But not everything was sufficiently described by tangential poetics.  I always found ellipses to be great disguises for incomplete thoughts. . . as if to leave the rest of the statement up to the reader to complete on their own, yet giving the illusion that the thought is already complete and merely left out so each thought doesn’t drag on with miles of description that diminish the feel of the subject at hand. Since when did words have a feel to them? Besides, the feeling we get when we hear the words of the Bible or read them on the page is irrelevant– Helen Keller would change that one day, but in the time that the Bible was written, words didn’t have a feel to them, they had meaning, and not only that– words were things. A word meant something else. A word didn’t have to have any aesthetic connection, objective qualification or feel associated with the concept the word was trying to describe. Onomatopoeia, as we now know it, wasn’t formally practiced in writing until much later.34

Jesse thought about what his father had said, and had seen the sincerity in his eyes. He was disappointed because he didn’t agree with him. Really, he wanted nothing more than to follow in his father’s footsteps up until a few years before; then it became all too apparent that he was to live a completely different life indeed. He started thinking of his father’s job as an insurance salesman as something that inherently fed on the premise that shit happens. Jesse didn’t want to wait for shit to happen, he wanted to go out and fix the assholes in the world before they dumped all their shit on everybody. They both failed in different ways. Assholes were necessary and natural, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop the shit from coming. Trying to clean up the mess afterwards didn’t really solve the problem of shit in the first place.  Where they both went wrong is that thinking the shit was just shit; in fact, much of it was fertilizer, necessary ingredients in the soil of life that people needed to grow.35

Ezekiel seemed to know quite well the value of shit; with a perception of the infinite, we all can see that shit is merely at a different stage in life than the Daisy or Mayflower.  Anything can be, was, and is everything.  To say everything that lives is Holy; that is another story. Feel free to start it here with the remaining empty space.36