About this weblog

This is simply a temporary page while the backend for a real blog is being setup. The contents will be a mixture of religion, moral philosophy, social commentary, and sometimes computer technology.

Your host is Ed Hurst. My mission is to teach the moral laws of the universe as revealed in the Bible. The primary method for now is writing. This blog carries the practical half the load, while my other blog carries the pointedly spiritual half of the burden.

As this is a static page, comments must be submitted to the writer at eddie, an address at this domain. I'm not being coy, just avoiding any chance of spam. You should understand the comments are subject to my complete editorial control.

Steal my content! All I ask is that you link back to his blog as the source of anything you take.

Blogroll

This is not entirely reciprocal. I link to those I believe would bless my readers, are engaging similar material, or simply because I think what they write about matters. In other words, if you ask for a link here, I'll honestly pray about it. People of good faith and conscience will understand. I will never ask folks to add me to their blogroll, but anyone is free to do so.

Naked Listener is Robert, a financials print jobber in Hong Kong.

Old Jules is a curmudgeon currently living in splendid rural isolation somewhere in Texas.

D.G. Mattichak, Jr. is a professional writer, chef, and respectable pagan.

Tim Butler, my good Christian brother and webmaster.

Eduardo Sanchez, namesake and brother in Paraguay.

Mark Falcon, triathlete and a Catholic brother up in Patriots Country.

My other blog.

Archive

February 24-28, 2012

February 29 - March 04, 2012

Do What's Right

Theory and Practice of Morality

A personal blog for stuff not fit to publish elsewhere.

This blog is being suspended. It was a noble effort, but I managed to mess up too many things. The story "Pinch Me" has been finished and you can find it here. Enjoy. The rest of my work for now resturns to my WordPress site.

Pinch Me, Part 4

Having shared as much as was likely of her story, Greg told her some of his.

Right out of high school he began working where he was now. It was a way to pay the bills while he studied for the ministry. Any hope of going that direction was killed by the internal politics in the first two churches where he served an internship. That put him off church for awhile, but not his faith. After a decade or so of worshiping at home, he and his family found a church where politics didn't seem to interfere with important stuff. His kids got married and moved away, and he had more time to devote to volunteer work at church.

His wife was killed by a drunk driver just a few months before. Son of some politician, the other driver simply disappeared and the case was never brought to court. He didn't blame the police, and his relations with them remained cordial enough, but he had always seen them as part of a badly broken system. The company he worked for had quite a few contracts with local government agencies, so he dealt with police, fire and other officials quite often.

Destructive as drugs may be, he would much rather people have the choice to ruin their lives. It only needed the hand of enforcement when their stupid choices splashed over into the lives of others. Why wasn't important, only that they should be punished and made to clean up their messes. He figured a lot of so-called crimes were handled better when folks minded their own business. He had little use for governments, but didn't see a need to provoke them needlessly.

Then he described his church volunteer work. Mostly it was teaching how to keep marriage working. Melissa perked up on that and began asking questions. It was plain from the conversation his first guess about her was correct, that she had always been strong-willed and difficult. She had drifted from one relationship to another, always in turmoil.

She was a long way from reality, he knew. So he started at the very most basic explanations and told her about the vast difference between common assumptions and the way people actually behaved. Indeed, she was full of questions and often reacted sharply to things he said. He always kept an even temper, letting her rant and rage. It never got to him simply because he had heard it all before, a hundred times at least, every time he introduced the topic to yet another crop of counselees.

He kept a mental catalog of her objections, then pointed them out again when something she said or did simply proved his point. He guessed she could have been just a bit violent at times, but they weren't that close emotionally. He carefully avoided any suggestion his relationship with her was anything but avuncular.

She rode with him often, as there was no harm in her coming along on his work trips. His wife had done so quite often over the years before her death, so it wasn't anything new. It was just over a week of this, and on that day she had been strangely quiet on the long ride to one site. The place was utterly isolated.

When he finished his work and got back into the truck, they shared a snack and drinks. She stared at him for a moment. "I've dealt with older men before. How come I've never met anyone like you?"

"Depends on where you spent most of your time. Guys like me are pretty boring. We obviously wouldn't be interested in drugs or wild women, so unless you worked with the public in more mundane settings, we might be hard to find."

He had said in such a way she had to laugh. "Yet you handle me like a pro," she replied.

He snorted, then with a grin: "Professional what? I happen to believe I understand women, and you keep not surprising me at all."

She turned more serious. "Why do you keep your distance? Am I too young for you? Or is it my dirty past? Do you know you could have had me already?"

He looked directly at her. "First, let's dispatch the business of your past. The consequences of bad choices will follow you as long as you live in this world. In the other realm, all your sins are wiped away. You have scars, both literal and even more of them figuratively, but I'm quite willing to accept your past as is, sight unseen. And if you were badly damaged in some way, I'm pretty sure I'd know by now."

He shifted in his seat and leaned back against the door. "The real issue is, you aren't ready. You suffer from a powerful misplaced sense of entitlement. The world is a crappy place and fairness would mean most of us suffering considerably more than we do. You'll have to make peace with the fundamental nastiness of this world, and accept more of what you can't and shouldn't want to change."

He folded his hands together in front of is chest, fingers interlaced. "You want more of my affection. I can't offer it on your terms. What I need from a woman requires something you don't have yet, and it's the reason you've never stayed with anyone else. Aside from the fact you keep choosing men who excite you but don't have a clue why they're here on earth, you keep trying to run the show, or too much of it. That might be partially justified with some guys, but I'd rather do without at that price. I know what my life is for, and I won't let anything get in the way of that. Sex means nothing unless it's a celebration of shared commitment to something much bigger than both of us. As long as you keep finding things to attack and demand changes, you aren't ready to have sex with me. All the other factors don't matter at all. I'm not going to tie you to me emotionally when it would only make you miserable."

As he turned to start the motor, he added, "You are the only person who can make you happy. I believe you need to reevaluate what you think will do the trick."

It was the first time any man had ever turned her down, and it lit a fire in her soul like nothing else.

Ed Hurst
06 March 2012

Pinch Me, Part 3

During the ride to the address she gave him, which required some backtracking, and a side trip some miles away from the storm path, she told him her name was Melissa.

He decided he didn't want to be close enough to hear anything anyone said after they arrived. After a rather short wait while the tempest raged inside, Melissa emerged with a small duffel bag. Still wearing the muddy socks without shoes, she mounted the bike behind him without expression and said quite simply and firmly, "Let's go."

She was silent the entire ride back to his house. He mused she must of have been roughly two decades younger than him, in her mid-thirties. Since the burger stand was open as they passed, he asked if she would eat food from there. They pulled up under the awning and she rattled off her preference in the abbreviated chatter of the carhops. So he activated the speaker and repeated what she said and added his own.

She seemed well practiced at riding two-up, and kept the food from slipping without any problem, yet managed to stay huddled up against him comfortably in front of the cooler and chainsaw strapped on the game rack.

Once inside the house, she shed the dirty socks and put on sandals she took from her bag. He showed her the spare room, and pointed out the sheets for the bed were stored in the closet. While she stowed her stuff, he spread the food on the table and began to eat his share. She joined him soon enough and ate in silence, never looking up to meet his eyes. He guessed it would be like that often enough, and occupied himself with thoughts of how he might get back to work. He could return the bike, since folks had completed some of the cutting he had started in his effort to get out that morning. Having his truck with all the equipment would make things a lot easier.

He cleared off the trash and sat back down, letting her decide if she was going to tell him anything else.

She looked up and locked eyes with him. "Greg, I have just been released from the half-way house. That was following three years in the women's prison. I was staying with my aunt, but she was making rules like I was still in junior high. She hates religion and wouldn't even let me go to church." She paused a moment.

He interjected, "I'm glad to hear you're a Christian, too. I do a lot of volunteer work at my church."

She almost smiled. "I grew up a good Christian girl, but my old home church turned out to be run by slimy hypocrites. The youth leader introduced me to drugs and sex. I escaped his clutches soon enough, only to run deeper into that crazy lifestyle. I won't bore you with all the details, but I was just two steps away from crack whore when I got arrested. My connection was angry because my performance while jonesing wasn't quite up to par, and slashed me with a knife." She pointed to the faint scar across one cheek, which he hadn't really noticed before now.

He mumbled, "I know what you mean about corrupt churches..."

She continued. "When I went to the emergency room, they reported the drug metabolites in my system and I was arrested. I gladly turned evidence to get a lighter sentence. He already had a mile-long rap sheet, so he won't be back out before he dies. While in prison I realized what happened in my church back home wasn't Jesus' fault, and renewed my faith, even started working out again. At the half-way house I thought I had found some sisters in the Lord. So we all got released at the same time, and they called me from some part of town I've never seen, and invited me to join them for a pool party where they were staying. They said I should bring my Bible, so I figured it was okay."

She stared out the window for a few moments. Her hands were twitching. "After all the Hell I raised, I was ready to turn it all over and do it right. My aunt yelled and screamed, but I left anyway. Caught a cab, and when I got there, these two guys came out and paid. Real gentlemen, they escorted me to the back yard and there were my two friends and some other people I'd never met. The girls simply said, 'Hi Melissa.' I was waiting for someone to introduce me when those two guys came up behind me. One grabbed my left arm and took my Bible. The other grabbed my face and turned my head where he had a gun pointed at me. They marched me to their car, took my purse and made me get in the back. I could hear them laughing in the back yard as the door was closed."

There were tears in her eyes. "I had been clean and sober for a long time. They knew all about me, what I had done. They told me I could go along and get back to my 'old work' or they would simply inject that crap and make me do it anyway. They were going to drive me over the state line, but the storm hit. When the driver couldn't see well enough to keep going, he pulled off on that side rode, turned around and faced the car out of the wind. He had just shut the motor off when the tree fell."

Her hands were shaking, as she clasped them together on the table, looking at them. "I was stuck in there for hours. I was pretty sure God had abandoned me. Up to that moment I was considering how I could kill myself to keep them from using me that way, but when they were killed, I was just afraid. I don't remember when I passed out crying, but it was still dark."

The image in his mind was almost too painful to contemplate. He reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. "Sometimes there's no accounting for God's sense of humor about things. But He got the last laugh on those two, and He's not through with you yet. I'm just sorry I couldn't get there any sooner."

He stood up. "I won't make any rules for you. I'll ask you to help carry your share of the load for living here. Otherwise, take some time to put your self back together. No one can get to you easily here, because all the neighbors are pretty tight. We take care of each other. Dogs will bark and shotguns come out if any tries to sneak around. We can't prevent you being rearrested if the police take a notion, but at least they'll be busy awhile with other things. Unfortunately, I still have to work for a living. I need to run by at least two locations. You can ride along or stay here and freshen up."

She turned her face up at him. "I don't want to be alone right now. Can I go with you?"

Ed Hurst
05 March 2012