Candid, Candide, and the Candidates

“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cars in order to win the game.”
― Voltaire, Candide

Oh, this road has been long and hard.

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”

1) We started going to church again. I am not taking back anything I've said about the Church. I will not apologize for observations or feelings. I will not pretty up the damage growing up in church with legalistic influences has done. I've had to find my way back, and that's iffy at best.

He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado.

"We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually.”

If for some odd reason your pastor decides to preach from Candide, this is the part where he'd say, "We need to have an El Dorado attitude!"

2) I'm still unemployed (walked out of my job nearly 2 months ago). I had a dream I went back to work where I walked out, and the reasons I quit were still there. No lie. In the dream, nothing had changed. Perhaps it was better to stay there? Or to leave? Whatever, no going back!

“Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”

3) Reading's still okay.

“For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”

4) Writing's been bad.

“A great work must be novel without being far-fetched, frequently sublime, but always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense.”

5) Oh yeah, and on a larger level, American politics has reached an all new level of low: Pissing contest for the ages!

“In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.”

I'm sure I've mentioned it before: Candide is probably my favorite classic. Because I can give my blogpost a proper commentary with quotes from that slim treasure.


This is the world God created, therefore it is the best of all possible worlds. And everything happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

I would have that in quotation marks as well, but I can't seem to find it either on Goodreads or my own pretty copy of the book. At least, not in so many words.

In light of Point 1, looking at Point 5, and thinking back to things I've said:

1) God appoints.  Guess what, Christians? WE, THUS FAR, HAVE SURVIVED OBAMA.

2) If Jesus said He would be there until the end of the world, do you believe it or not? I don't recall Him saying it was easy. He just said He'd be there.

3) Jesus also said somewhere not to worry about tomorrow.

I find this sound advice when it comes to American politics.

(I also think if I read my Bible as much as I looked up Candide quotes, maybe I'd be better off. Or maybe not, because this is the first time in a long time I played on Goodreads quotes.)

At the end of the day, I have no control over what happens. If I don't have control over it, I don't want to worry about it. At the end of the day, it gets filed under "Not My Problem."

I try to file as many things as possible under "Not My Problem."

I did not ask to be born. I did not ask for most of what's going on in this world. Don't believe what our generation is like? Go on Tumblr.

I do have to live in this world. Come hell or high water, I do have to live here until a new one is created. I will live here. I will have a good attitude about it.

Fine! I will try to have a good attitude about it.

“All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden.”

It's That Time of Year Again

I came into work today to find some of the Easter stuff out.  Christmas is over, Valentine's came and went, and now the next commercialized holiday on the docket is my personal favorite.  Yippee.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this.  I've been having a lot of mixed feelings about God in general lately.  This has been going on for a while now.  Perhaps even for years.

This time, except for what I've said here, I haven't shared my thoughts or feelings on the matter.  I really don't like being preached to.  "Just a season.  You need to pray more."  I've heard it all.

I like studying every mythology but my own.  The thing about this, however, is that often I see connections and similarities between "theirs" and "ours."

"Something.  Happened."*  Over time, the stories changed and spread.  So now you have a bunch of world mythologies with similar stories.

What makes Christianity so special?  Because it says it is?

Because I can't just accept that.  It's Insurance Policy religion.  Christianity (and a lot of its denominations within) is one of the few to say it's the only way.  A lot of other religions don't care how you get there.

The Bible says don't know too much about the wickedness in the world.  Does that include other religions?  Is that so we don't see the similarities and begin this doubting I'm going through now?

I don't like that notion.  One of the historical eras we learned about, I don't remember which one, had a mindset that if God gave us a brain, the ability to reason, we should use it.

But then, wasn't that what got Eve?  The fruit was knowledge of good and evil.  Yeah, yeah, it was disobedience, but the fruit itself gives me pause.  He didn't want them to have knowledge.

Am I wrong to have questions?  Am I wrong to like learning, to like knowledge?  I think I'd rather a religion--better yet, a spirituality--that doesn't create a bunch of ignorant followers.

And we all know how Christians are at the bottom of the totem pole for intelligence.  Not all of them.  Plenty of great minds have been Christians or at least deists.  In the yesteryears.

You understand my confusion, don't you?  I don't know if there's anyone I can go to about it, because I'm always dismissed out of hand.  

I don't have a problem believing in God.  Perhaps I have a tough time believing in what the Bible says about God.

The Bible, inspired by God or not, was still written by people.  Fallible people.  But this book written by fallible people is still supposed to be infallible.

I've also read somewhere that God is bigger than the Bible.  Thank God.

I would like to think God's okay with someone who has questions, looks for answers, turns the idea over in her mind, and comes back to the mindset she had previously. Or comes to the answer she's looking for, whatever that might be.

But I've been wrong before.

I'm still looking forward to Easter.  I mean to get my chocolate bunnies and make my brother and godchildren their Easter baskets.  I'll probably have an Easter post, hopefully.  As I said last year, the show must go on.  It might not be the greatest, but it'll be honest.


*Why yes, I did take that from Stephen King's Revival.

The Other Divine Comedy, part 2: The Best Lie Ever Told

"Life is fair."

I am usually one of the first to say that life isn't fair.  And nowhere in any religion does it say life is fair, or that it should be.  You might find it in Marxism, but we generally don't like that in this part of the world.

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
Genesis 2-16-17

~~~

“No! You will not die,” the serpent said to the woman. “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:4-5

Uh huh, hm, well that's interesting.  ...  Fairness is often thought of in the same vein as equality.  The old snake made it sound like it was a good thing to be on par with God, at least on this level.

So apparently, this has been tripping us up from the beginning.

The Lord God said, “Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.”
Genesis 3:22

And don't forget, Cain killed Abel in a fit of jealousy.  It wasn't fair God favored Abel over Cain.  Cain gave God the leftovers, when Abel had given God the best of his flock.  But they both still gave something, right?

The idea of fairness, really, is dangerous.

If you've never read "Godfather Death" by the Grimm Brothers, pick it up.  Death makes all men equal.  Not everyone's born, not everybody really lives, but everybody dies.

Yes, yes, God will be fair:  everyone dies.  Death is life's great fairness.  Death is life's great certainty.  Taxes aren't a certainty anymore, but death still is.  Rich, poor, white, black, Mexican, Chinese, Christian, atheist, Buddhist.

Sometimes I wonder if God has a dark sense of humor.

You will certainly die.  Even Jesus died once.

This is really morbid stuff, I know.  I tell my nephews all the time, "Life isn't fair."  But I think, once you realize that, it kind of opens up new stuff.

“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”
― Oscar Wilde

Just imagine if everything you ever did came back to bite you in the butt.  Some people get what they deserve.  But turn that inward:  what if you got what you deserved?

Even the most successful people won't attribute it all to hard work.  There was a little luck involved.   There was a lot of hard work, but a lot of hard work can come to nothing.  If life were fair, it wouldn't be so, but it's not.  Case in point:  most writers put their heart and soul in their writing.  Do they deserve to hit the best-seller list?  Probably.  Will they?  They might only sell a few hundred copies.  Hard work will only take you so far.  Work hard, but sometimes it's not enough.

Life's a lot of work, some blessings, some curses, perhaps some luck thrown in for spice.  But it is not, nor is it ever fair.  And perhaps it shouldn't be.

Tale from a Tabloid

I've mentioned Candice Hern's website is the place to be for Regency information.  Scattered along her site are the Tales from the Tabloids.  I'm assuming they're actual newspaper stories.

This one is my favorite.

"Southampton, April 4: A circumstance has occurred in the neighborhood of a large town in Hampshire which has occasioned much conversation. A young lady, twenty-three years of age, who will inherit a large property upon her father's death, was recently discovered by him to be pregnant; and on the enraged parent's demanding to know who had been the seducer, she, to his utter astonishment, answered that it was her maid, Harriet. Harriet was immediately called before him, and an examination took place, when it appeared that the young lady, during a visit last June at a friend's house near London, became acquainted with a handsome youth, who was shop lad at a circulating library, of whom she became enamored, and a secret marriage was the consequence. Fearing her father's anger at such an unequal match (the youth being poor), the idea of being obliged to part with him gave birth to the following stratagem: The youth assumed the female habit and accompanied his fair bride to her father's house, where he has, until within this fortnight, figured away as her maid. The old gentleman, however, is now reconciled to the loving couple, and Harry (alias Harriet), is as happy as wealth and beauty can make him."

- The Lady's Magazine, April 1809