God, Gold, and Fairy Tales

I would prefer to talk with God, the words crackling out of the burning bush, rather than store a tennis court-sized cube of gold in my back yard.  So, A conversation with God or all the Gold in the World?  What would YOU rather have?  Let's just think about how many people would really like to talk to God and how many would rather have all the gold in the world.  I say 50-50 but everyone's a lawyer now so we must frame the question carefully. Many Christians already claim to speak with God so presumably they would take the gold.  Atheists might insist on a real conversation, like Abraham or Moses had, or they would take the gold too.  I would be afraid the conversation could turn banal (due to my own stupidity) and I might regret not taking the money.  So do you think people are desperately spiritual and  90% would talk with God or are there more cynics out there, God? meh--Show me the money.  Do you think most would rather have the cash?  I propose this question speculatively since the answer would be illustrative.
     Is gold money or is it just a pretty hunk of metal?  Gold WAS money but most people have been talked out of considering it so.  Today gold (or silver) could be money but money is what most people will take in payment for something else they want.  Anything can be a unit of account (there is a presumptive wheat price for television sets) but the key is medium of exchange and store of value.  But today you cannot use gold at the store so it is NOT a good medium of exchange.  Paper money is shriveling fast and so is a poor store of value.  Gold might be better because of its scarcity BUT it first has to be certified as a medium of exchange.  If trading it is not allowed, then its natural value has been modified by state action.  If government says, "Use dollars" or I'll put you in prison like Bernard von NotHaus, then most are going to be compliant.  What if we insisted that taxes be paid in government money but otherwise freedom was the watchword--there would be an exchange rate between gold and other currencies.  Is that what we have today?   Can't you take dollars and buy all the gold you want?  I believe the answer is yes.  So is the current exchange rate between gold and dollars accurate? Or is it manipulated to make dollars look better than gold?  Gold is a commodity that gains and loses value with respect to dollars and is taxed on that change. We pay capital gains like on anything else if it goes up.  We are legally obligated to value everything in relationship to dollars, so changes in the value of the dollars themselves is merely a 'cost' to using it. It loses some value every year.  Each of us has a different dollar "decay rate" and I calculated mine at 9.5%.  The CPI or the GDP deflator are government statistics that show a smaller dollar loss but they may be biased.  Their average may not be your average.  Calculate your own.  I did the following:  I took a one year old Costco receipt with 25 items I buy periodically and found the new prices.  No prices had fallen, a case of Yuengling beer was still exactly the same, $18.97 and everything else was more.  9.5% on average more.  In July I get my Blue Cross/Blue Shield premium increase notice for my family policy.  Last year it was up 10%.  I received my daughter's college tuition bill in August--increase 8.4%.  State Farm wants 7% more for its premiums. In October the Utility Company went up by 6%.  I have a fixed mortgage and didn't buy a car so depending on how I weight my expenses, that will determine my personal inflation (or dollar decay) rate.
       Since gold is NOT MONEY it can be regulated.  A law can be passed that you cannot own it, buy it or sell it and so its moneyness may be adversely affected.  Gold today is an uncomfortable reminder of what money used to be. It is currently a money only for precious metal wingnuts.
    What is cash?  When financial advisors say to "hold cash" I mentally picture placing suitcases of small bills in the back of my closet or stuffing banknotes in the mattress.   I do not envision digits in a bank account.  A bank account is a loan to the bank.  Bankers dress up a big vault with a brick veneer building and open the vault so you can see how thick the door is and they put a lot of people with suits scattered around in cubicles but your money is not there.  It has been loaned to someone and you can have  some of your money now and the rest of your money next Wednesday if no one else is asking.  If it is in a Cash Account at some brokerage(Schwab or e-trade) they have swept it into some vehicle they can loan on and they could tell you to get lost, find a lawyer, we have other uses for your money.  John Corzine anyone?  So cash to me is a little nebulous.
Personally I love fairly tales.  They say it all about money.  Consider the story of the goose that laid the golden egg.  Richly human.  A sure thing if there ever was one and the dude kills the goose to get all the eggs--right now!  Could he do math?  Was he a Piaget simpleton--like not even 5 years old?  Couldn't he see that AT THE MOST there were six or seven eggs in there and the damn goose could lay eggs for years!  No I guess he couldn't do any volumetric analysis or simple math and so he cuts the duck open.  I think that is exactly what we have done to the environment--I am not going to get into global warming, pollution, peak everything, and other environmental disasters but I would like to point out that there are approximately 2,000 wild bengal tigers and 7 billion people in the world now.  I am worried about us becoming more numerous that honeybees. ( I don't think we will ever catch ants.)
Take Rumpletiltskin. Perhaps a handbook for women or maybe just a reflection on money.  Be very careful of ALL the men in your life--they may be stupid or exploitative.  Who wouldn't have sympathy for the miller's daughter?  Big blowhard dad goes bragging about what a swell daughter he has and ends up almost getting her killed pushing her on a savvy prince.  The prince doesn't care about HER but about her TALENTS and so she has to put out to be queen.  (Where have we heard this story?)   The prince is a complete jerk--requires the girl to prove her competence 3 times. And then she's GLAD to marry him!  Guys--always looking for the sure thing. And then there's the troll.  The little man knows he's a troll and could never find a wife BUT what about a kid?  So he deals for the child.  Women plays him as well as could be expected and then ends up having to pull out all the stops to retain the child she should never have promised but had to or she would have been strung up or back in Palookaville baking bread at 3:00AM with a brood of hateful children. The little man has a kind and gentle streak and a hateful streak but is amazingly stupid living in a hut in the forest when he could spin straw into gold.  In fairy tales everybody's an alchemist--think nothing of producing all the gold they need, like rubbing Aladdin's lamp, and getting a camel train of jewels as big as oranges. What did they think was going to happen to the scarcity value of their talent?  They think themselves  blessed by the gods and end up living happily ever after.  Happily ever after is where the stories should start.
        But I like the Midas story too.  What did King Midas think would happen to the value of gold if he could create it by just touching something?   Did he consider that to make the most valuable things-common-might reduce its value?  Does Ben Bernanke worry about these things?  Is money good because it is all around, like air, making people do valuable things like work?  Can you make too much of it and people suddenly realize there is no point in working?  I think the answer is yes.  Lets agree we CAN have too little of it.  So in a depression no one has any money but is it not true that there is a lot that needs doing?  How do you get people busy at what needs doing?  Pharoah I suppose said, "hey, you, tote this stone to the top of the pyramid."  but our handlers are more subtle-do whatever you like and send me half.  That would be fine EXCEPT they have so many big important projects being elites they have gotten to where they need more than half.  They need it all.  So the top 1% have almost half the money and the bottom 50% have only 1% of the money.  Whoops...
     Karl Marx has been out of favor so long it is hard to remember what he wrote but I think the big principles were something like the rising accumulation of capital in the hands of the owners and the gradual impoverishment of the Industrial Reserve Army (called workers).  Something like we have now.  If we get a dictatorship of the proletariat out of obese SSI recipients I would be flabbergasted.  So who will inherit the earth?  Those with money or those that can do without it?

Retirement Reflections

Savers are foolish because interest rates are ridiculously low.  The bank pays .6% for a 1 year CD and will go all the way to 1.2% if I contract for 18months.  So my $100,000 CD returns $600 a year.  If I had a million dollars it would give me a retirement income of $6,000 a year.  Unless of course I trust some Wall St. shill who wants me to sign an 80 page small print "disclosure" to make me a better return.  They want to put me in SIVs of such sterling quality that I cannot help making the historically fabulous return of 8% or 14% or 21 % and certainly better than whatever industry benchmarks they can find.  I can't wait for the eventual explanation that I only lost x%, 2 or 3% better than industry averages. 

So why the big outcry that Americans are not "saving enough" for retirement?  You cannot simultaneously lament that people are not saving enough and then implement a policy of financial repression and monetary largess that savages the value of the saving.  Is this not obvious?  If the purpose is to encourage saving so that the government can borrow it and spend it, could we say that is a little disingenuous?  In the real world, saving is a good idea.  Everybody should save for a rainy day.  But I believe that the government has stated that they would like to target inflation at 2% which means, reduce the value of money saved by 2% every year.  To borrow money they would like interest rates to be something low, say, infinitesimal, like .1%.  They are currently creating $85 billion/month of new money that they hand out to purchase bonds so that the rate will stay that low.  This is convenient because "somebody" gets to use the new $85 billion for buying things.

 I did a quick calculation.  My neighborhood is a nice upscale Southern subdivision of about 1,000 homes. They have an average value of $400,000: a good number of rich doctors and their $1.2 million homes and some main street 3 BR 2 Bath older homes of $175,000.  Won't $400 million buy them all?  So every month enough new money is created to buy all the homes in MY neighborhood AND 200 other neighborhoods in similar cities. What is this money used for?  Banks sell iffy mortgage backed securities (MBS) to the Federal Reserve and get new cash improving their "bottom line".  The Fed gets lousy paper.  What does the Fed do with this "asset"?  Holds it until it becomes worth more. At some point the Fed may sell it.  What if it just forgave it?  Well the Fed would be "insolvent".  Can the Central Bank, source of an infinite fountain of liquidity, be bankrupt?  Now that The Fed is holding everybody's mortgage why not cancel them all?  Whoopee! Boom. Done.  Everybody's better off and who is complaining?  Perhaps the 22% of homeowners who have already paid off their mortgage and maybe the rest of America that realizes if they had gone impossibly deep into debt, they would now be living in a gift mansion instead of still renting from the same crummy landlord.

So we are currently playing in a rigged game.  Savers know this and that is why they are not saving.  The entire idea of money for retirement is an illusion, a fantasy.  The amount of money you have must be an order of magnitude higher than what is currently needed to cover unfortuitous re-evaluations of your assets. That may be why the super rich are hoovering up all the oxygen in the room.  And as for planning--what is the cost of a knee replacement and a Grand Circle tour of Spain in 15 years?  Who knows?  You might have enough money today but the future is dependent on what government decides to do about the value of your money--it has little to do with how much you decide to put aside.  If the probability of a black swan event: stock market crash or hyperinflation is figured at 5% (or statistically unlikely) there is NO protection for that eventuality.  Again, everyone with money is running a 5% chance that money will be worth much less.  Pick your own likelihood over the next 25 years.   People under 30 have to be laughing at these odds.  What are their chances of getting a nest egg to 65? They would be saving like crazy if they thought it was true that inflation will be "only" 2% for the next 25 years. And by the way how can they consume and save more with a low paying job?  The other strategy is to count on comprehensive deflation. What little money you end up with when everyone pays their debts will be worth MORE.  The likelihood that the government would allow this when they can simply print all the money that people need is vanishingly small.

 Retirement calculators cannot figure the most likely scenarios for the future. Given an unstable monetary system, the completely unimaginable is the future we are going to get.  The term collapse does not do it justice, something personal like screwed would be accurate.

Monetary Mahem

The more I think about the strange conditions of our current monetary arrangements, the more puzzled and then angry I become. Many people worry about the debt we are leaving our children and I confess it is a staggering sum BUT no one is really expecting to pay it back. We each owe some $70,000. The government is in an enviable position;  it can borrow more money to retire old debt or  it COULD forgive as much debt as it likes. Consider, the Treasury “produces” (sells) a bond, the Federal Reserve creates the money to buy the bond and puts it on its balance sheet.  Since 2008 the Fed balance sheet has gone from $800 million to $4.5 T. It could go higher—there’s no ‘debt ceiling’ vote for the Federal Reserve balance sheet.  Why can’t it be $10 T? Is it possible to create "off balance sheet" obligations, a kind of special folder that's not part of the general balance sheet?  And if the balance sheet became $10 T, why couldn’t the Federal Reserve forgive $5 T?  Who would mind having their debt cancelled? Of course the Central Bank would be “insolvent” but let’s just not tell anyone and keep handing out money. Doesn't the Central Bank determine who is and is not "solvent"?  Is there a Trust issue here?

     So the Federal Reserve CAN forgive any amount of any balance sheet debt.  It has paid for it—it can tear up the note. We owe copious amounts of money to China, other countries, and pension plans and they want their money back.    Whoever sold the bond—Treasury, JP Morgan, has the cash and the Fed has the promissory note and the revenue stream from the bond.  But they don’t need any money, they can get more.   So they forgive it.  They "buy" Mortgage backed securities (MBS) at par value($1) when they are worth 60 cents on the dollar.  They turn around and sell them for 40 cents on the dollar and allow the banks to go to work collecting the 20 cents.  The Fed can buy anything because it creates money and it can sell it (which reduces the money supply since somebody has to give them money for it) or it can write it off, like I have to do when I "loan" my children money and they “promise” to pay it back.  
    Now I ask, Isn’t this a deranged, immoral system? Here is the Federal Reserve, a fountain of liquidity, spewing dollar bills into the economy at whatever rate seems necessary. Many of us work to acquire our dollar bills and here is an organization that can just “counterfeit” whatever it needs.  It doesn’t call it cheating to create money, it calls it ‘managing’ the money supply. When the money supply goes down, fewer will have any money to buy my dental services.  So the plan is to give money, lots of it, to favored recipients so it can trickle down to the rest of us who need to find some way to labor for it. So who cares what Congress decides about its budget? The budget is a theoretical construct, a sort of internal “I should lose weight” irresolution that is not matched by eating fewer calories.  Produce the money for whatever you want to do and never worry about paying it back.  The only worry is that the dollar is "not accepted" for payment. When a sufficient number of actors--countries, trading partners, banks, people consider not accepting dollars for payment, the jig is up.  I will admit this is unlikely.  Infuriating but true.

       So another question is, whose debt gets bought and for how much?  I have some bad debts I would like to sell but I don’t think the Federal Reserve is interested in my failed loans.  When they buy $40 Billion MBS a month they are controlling the market and gradually re-floating the biggest TBTF banks. So you see my problem—Unelected Federal Reserve Governors give money to whoever they think needs it to keep the system afloat:  the Treasury, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, whoever.  If the system doesn’t get new fresh cash, it sinks (or deflates) and “assets” like bank accounts are in danger of disappearing.     It is ALL funny money. But if you have enough of it you can buy real things.  I quickly calculated that in my neighborhood of approximately 2 square miles, there are 1,000 homes with an average value of $400,000.  Obviously $400 Million in cash could buy them all.  So the Federal Reserve in one month is able to ‘buy’ 100 neighborhoods like mine.   If they bought all our mortgages and tore them up, we’d all be a lot richer.  Could that be what they are doing for the banks?  They replace non-performing lousy bonds with cash and still allow the servicers to continue collecting from the retail debtor. 

     There is no reason to ‘worry’ about the debt. The government should obviously do the right thing and balance its books but it can’t and it is not going to.  It is going to be inflated away, defaulted  on or “forgiven”. There IS a reason to reflect on the justice of the arrangement that allows the unelected to cut themselves checks and forgive selective debts. A good and responsible steward could make this system work and I thought this was what we had.  I thought we had prudent men with vision and a heart for justice working with the best and brightest economists.  But no, we have government policy apologists who want the government to do everything it finds useful and “necessary”.  They do not consider the moral hazard of controlling the value of money.  They should have begun tightening a long time ago to prevent the derivative fraud and bond fraud that is now consuming us.  I knew this in 1995 by shorting the over-valued S&P, was proven right in the LTCM collapse but lost money anyway when the system was “saved” from disaster by central bank intervention. This System is so fundamentally unjust and corrupt that it requires a re-configuration. The elites of government and business are in partnership to maintain their privilege.  They do not have a plan that includes the vast middle class and poor.  The elite are circling the wagons as more and more drop out of the favored class and they are instituting a system where greater and greater benefits flow to a smaller and smaller group.

     Let me re-iterate, the debt cannot be paid in present value money.  Inflation or default:  our two choices.

The above screed is my own rant at a problem well known to the thoughtful.  Money is political.  It is used for political ends to maintain control and order.  So who has political power?  Do “The People” have any say in this game? There is supposed to be a quid pro quo or a responsibility on the part of the government to maintain the value of the money we use.  Proper stewardship we would say.  The monetary authorities were not supposed to fundamentally intervene AT ALL in the system. They are arbiters not actors.  They are not supposed to support a plunge protection team, they are not supposed to bail out anybody LTCM, NASDAQ, TBTF banks, or the Treasury  by increasing liquidity. So now all who have worked hard for the last 15-35 years are about to be savaged by the requirements of the moment that the elites in business and government have KNOWINGLY allowed for the last 15 years.   Congress! What a bunch of paid shills.  It should have been inconvenient to have Congresssmen scrutinizing the Fed Reserve balance sheet. Instead we get off balance sheet obligations that we (the taxpayers) still owe. We get TARP-an unbelievable hoax of a policy that wound up supporting the miscreants who created the problem.  It didn’t solve a problem, it enabled the greedy to keep what they had and keep playing! 

    If we wanted money to support individual freedom we would need a free market system of money.  Free market money does expose us to private greed and malfeasance while public money exposes us to government graft and corruption. (What we are currently experiencing)  Banks that issued private notes and went bust were a fixture of 19^th century America and caveat emptor was the rule of the day.  Having a gold system did not mean everyone kept their promises.  If you trusted the convenience of the private market then periodically events would leave you swindled. The private money system had its failures.  It may be however that our public money system is merely leading to a bigger failure.  That in essence is the core of the free market criticism.  The abuses necessary to maintain the system are distorting economic decision making.  Besides the frequent abuses of private money there is the larger problem from the government perspective of the tax consequences.  Private money is ‘outside’ the taxing authority.  It could be said to be part of the shadow economy.  It is not denominated in “legal tender” or tax consequence money.  It is like barter—I cut your grass and you babysit my children.  No tax event.  The government would like ALL economic activity to have tax consequences.  Their pound of flesh so to speak.  Private money facilitates economic transactions without tax consequences.  The government considers that illegal.  Thus if we instituted a free market system of gold, silver, bitcoin, or alternative currencies that were exchangeable into a legal tender system then numerous transactions would happen “off the record” so to speak and taxes would be dodged. Can’t have that.

   So the government has a one true value money system called the legal tender dollar system and all transactions MUST be denominated in this currency.  The government controls the currency but it has reneged on its responsibility to manage it fairly.  It has instituted a policy of financial repression that is designed to save the profligate at the expense of the prudent.  It is an intentional effort to set conditions of the monetary regime that the prudent cannot win.  Let me count the ways:  1) The government has decided that 2-3% inflation is OK AND they define how the 2-3% is calculated.   Calculated  inflation of 2-3%  may actually be closer to 9-10%.  Manipulating inflation statistics holds down mandated payments (federal pensions, SS, etc) and captures additional tax revenue by calling nominal increases that have less purchasing power, gains subject to taxation.  2) the 0% interest policy– shafts savers.  In this universe—any money saved is merely reduced by inflation with no return.  The implication:  Buy something.  Anything.  Or not.  Watch the future consume past earnings like a snake eating its own tail.  3) Investment or capital formation is muddled for all but the savviest thinkers or players.  Perhaps only the connected can ascertain what will survive (Citi) and what will fail (Lehman).  If you are out of the loop, just go shoot yourself and quit complaining.  It works for them.   Politically what can we do? 

First, Know the Game. It is your responsibility to change it if it is rigged. Voting for candidates may not be the best strategy.  Removing your "money" from the system may be a more potent vote. What if you opt out?  Take your money and go home.  Operate under the table.  Set up your own monetary arrangements with friends, link it to the system but keep score in an alternative currency and the currency of human feeling that really matter; love, trust, and affection. 

Truth, Beauty, and the American Way

My own creation story is very simple;  God existed as perfection for an infinite period of time but found it "tedious?"or "limiting?" and so exploded her essence into a million billion little God pieces that are now scattered across the Universe. God's essence is then constantly forming the Real.  Some would call this materialism and it probably is but I think it has a "divine" spark.   Just beginning from nothing seems a forlorn epistemology.  The particulars of Life are not usually very godly but instances of godliness sometimes appear.  God is in all things and can re-start or re-order the show whenever.  All Religions seem flawed as paths to God in this scenario. They assume what is necessary.  Religious faith may be better by far than wandering solo in the wilderness but it is an illusion, a mistake about the nature of Reality.  I am a cultural Christian.  This means I am unconvinced by the supernatural underpinnings that require Faith but am a believer in the social interaction demanded by true Christianity  We are asked to love God (the Natural Order) and love one another.  We are also counseled to love our enemies as a means to convert them to our virtue.  Much of our western heritage of belief about the intrinsic rights of Man are supported by a God-centric culture.  If we dispense with God, then we are threatened with the loss of Goodness.
      I could go on but God is not directing Life in a way that is intelligible to us.  There may be an afterlife but that is a question for its own time and place.  Once in heaven or hell we can debate the purpose of what we experienced here.  I don't pray.  Why would I?  I try and be attentive to  what could be considered Good.  I am as right or wrong as everybody else and try to be tolerant.  If God makes you a better person, I am not interested in making you worse.  If we take the Apostles Creed one statement at a time, I vote no on most of it.

Money or spirituality? Two dangerous choices that require some reflection.  Since Darwin, God has been under attack.  Progress and technology seem to have provided more miracles and given more measurable results than faith in God.  Many of us have elected to sign up with the promises of Progress.  But it is looking a little threadbare these days.  The flying arrow arc of Progress, shot so confidently into the sky, is turning down.   It has been a marvelous 150 year run but our powers are waning markedly.  Our success has been based on an unsustainable hubris and we now feel the onrushing chill of a life of austerity.  We do not see a steady state life of hope.  We see the outline of Nature "red in tooth and claw" and we tremble.  Our Progress was our real God while we paid deferential respect to the "old ways" of god fearing religion.  

Truth seekers are always in dangerous territory.  Man appears to be a meaning seeking or meaning dependent creature and truth elusive. So illusions often replace Truth.  Illusions are more predictable and become more comfortable.  Think of some of the fundamental truths:  God loves us, he sent his son to save us, Mohammed is the “messenger” of God, eternity and the afterlife are more important than our transient lives, Humans matter more than dinosaurs (we exist and they don’t).  Money is the best way to organize complicated human activity.  Long term “growth” is possible on a finite planet.  Progress can continue indefinitely with technology.  Human civilizations cycle, rising and falling.  Unlike Tolstoy’s observation about happy and dysfunctional families, a civilization differentiates into its peculiarities while ascending and falls to its lowest common denominator when descending.   Thus rising societies become more idiosyncratic while declining societies become more alike.

So our own preferred illusion is what we call Truth.  But Change is happening every day and as our truths become less “true” they may require re-evaluation.  If we found an Ultimate Truth, life would be spoiled.  We would have only our duty to it, slaves building pyramids.  We are compelled to pursue our truths but advised to open our hearts to our own weaknesses.  Love if you can, fight if you must.   As for philosophy, Man does not live by bread alone but by all the words that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.  In my estimation this would be true if we could agree on what we hear.  But maybe Faith is just more important than Rationality in a search for Truth.  How do we “discern”?   Which is the right tool to find Enlightenment?  Faith is easier than changing. 

We live in peculiarly interesting times.  Our lives are complicated and our truths diverse.  We would join together but we are afraid of losing something important.  We cannot hold in our hearts all our possibilities because we are afraid of losing some of our essence.  And perhaps it is not truth, but power we seek?  If we find power we may be able to compel truth.  And if we seek humility can we stumble into deliverance?  If we deliver our Life to that which is bigger than us, do we not join some kind of immortality?  God?  National Socialism? Progress?  So our sacrifice to a cause becomes our truth.  We can believe in ourselves and die a small death or believe in something larger and live in that truth.  If God exists, well there you are—immortal and saved. 

But if we focus on the Now, we are in no hurry for “salvation”.  We mean only to live well.  What is the philosophy of living well?  Epicureanism.  What is the philosophy of living honorably?  Stoicism.  What is the philosophy of living sacrificially?  Buddhism or Christianity.  What is the philosophy of living selfishly?  Trick question.  We cannot help living selfishly.  Whatever we sacrifice, we hope to gain.  If it’s love we give, it’s love we hope to receive.  To be thoroughly altruistic would be bizarre.   It is almost nihilistic and suicidal.  Where can I give my Life to no discernible purpose?  So what about Happiness?  The pursuit of happiness seems a flawed goal.  It is bound to be disappointing.  Connecting it to life and liberty in the Declaration has elevated its importance.  It is a result.  It is causes and principles we sacrifice for and the results are what we live with. 

We have done wars on terrorism, poverty, and drugs.  I would counsel making war on people, groups, nations, and leaving  tactics, conditions, and temptations to other organized amelioration.  Actually, I do not counsel making War.  I prefer making Peace.  I only meant that War works best when focused on our supposed human enemies. They may ultimately become our friends.....

 

MEANING

Life is short but not worthless. It is intrinsically good not certifiably good.  Infinity extends at least two directions so God COULD have already existed an infinite amount of time.  Having already been infinite it pleased him to become temporal and so he exploded into a million billion little God pieces now scattered across the universe.  He will take now an infinite amount of time to get back together.  The Big Bang was not necessarily “the beginning”.  There may have been an earlier bang.  God writes the rules of the universe so he can, at his discretion, re-order the parts.  Currently God is present in your neighbor’s heart, so you should try and find him there.  Naturally you should look in your own heart too.  When hearts get together-God quickens, that is why love is so satisfying.  Many hearts as one acting in harmony suggests divinity.  This Humpty-Dumpty metaphor suggests WE will never put God back together again.  We will have to be satisfied with the shards of the Godhead.  Worship then would not be about us “pleasing God”.  It is about sharing hearts of hope and love.

     Christianity is somewhat oppositional to the Humpty-Dumpty metaphor; thus, God is good, personal, just, and exists.  There are then two realities in the Christian model:  the infinite God reality (the one we will someday join) and the almost insignificant concrete reality we experience every day. In other words “spiritual world” like some dark matter filling the universe and the time bound visible world.  The H-D metaphor is a God-with-us, not “above”, caring and/or controlling, but here. We are participants in the spiritual force.

How does God 'act'? Secularists, like myself, say he does not “act” though He could empower human hearts with right desire but he does not, Zeus-like, throw a thunderbolt. Will he, can he make things right?  That is our deepest need-justice-for what we have experienced here.  If all go to heaven, it doesn't matter what we experience here, we have yet an infinity of ?pleasure?.  Since we don't know, best to assume the best.  The worst usually comes round a few times. 

So what we believe about God only has relevance for us and how we touch the hearts of others. My belief, your belief- vapors.  God did not exist, like it is suggested he does now, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  Now we are asked to read Bibles and sit in pews to find him but that will not be necessary when the kudzu covers the steeples.  So whether we have a God whose gentle breath blows our little boat toward home or not, we are all stuck by gravity to a revolving ball and our human similarity will always be greater than our differences.

My problem with religion is exclusivity and the false apprehensions that lead to idolatry.  The religion, the means of seeing or linking becomes more important than the spiritual fact:  God-Reality.  PEOPLE consider me Presbyterian because I sit in a pew with that label, not God.  Presbyterians have an unusual way of "seeking" God.  They look in a book and they worship together. God is not in a book, he's not in the tomb, and if he's running things--it's an interesting but piss poor job.  If this world doesn't have any meaning then the pain is just an "experience" like Jesus suffered through. Our deepest need, more than love, is justice.  Justice will requite the love we have shown.  Finally, if this is all there is--we'd better keep trying to find our better selves.....