THE NEXT AWAKENING

BALBOA PRESS

Contents

Preface......................................................................xi1. The Portal................................................................12. Are We There Yet?.........................................................133. The First Awakening.......................................................274. Let Us Build a Church.....................................................335. Hiding the Keys...........................................................416. What Are the Keys?........................................................477. Oh Yeah, One More Key.....................................................578. Religion Had a Good Run...................................................779. The Next Jesus............................................................8710. Science and the Next Awakening...........................................10311. Darwinism: The Religion that Dare Not Speak its Name.....................10712. The Big Bang - In the Beginning was the Logos............................11913. The Hard Problem - Consciousness.........................................12514. Awakening – The Final Picture......................................135Bibliography.................................................................145

Chapter One

I came to earth for the experience.

In a formless, timeless realm, I was quickened for birth, pulled into a portal, and carried at the speed of light to my terrestrial place and time. It is mine to live and to be as I was to be. Bundled in me were my talents; done up tightly, bearing no mark. God saw my fear and only smiled.

For over fifty years now, my face has been a well-placed observatory for the saga of certain mundane events that are widely known but seldom noted. It is the earthly and earthy story of people of the common soil who were raised by it to move in widening circles of men, but for a lifetime are drawn back to its rough, uneven fields. Their course is a rendering and a harvest. Strength is given to the lifting and turning of earth, and it becomes their constitution.

The particulars of my placement would have caused the less curious mind to assume it had been assigned to an unremitting dullness. Hours flowed into slow-moving days on hills under the sun. The world extended to the end of a rutted lane, where it joined a road going to somewhere beyond. Always short of somewhere and isolated, there was nothing to see and nothing to learn. Yet some insisting, non-corpus instinct maintained that people were important. They were a puzzle of action, sign, and meaning, and if I wanted to live gainfully, I would have to look to them for answers.

I came to trust what I was told. My parents and my older siblings shouldered their natural role as mentors in dutiful fashion, though at times it fell to them unaware. I took what they said to me directly and the manners they acted out before me as a firm ground. I relied on their experience of having coped with the world longer, coupled that reliance with my lack of confidence, and negotiated the path of a good follower. In the unfolding plot of this rustic play, I focused my search for the sense of a purposeful, lucid, and deliberate life mission. I hoped it would look good on me.

I came to experience a great deal of church. To most, the common encounter is an occasional or somewhat regular church activity or service attended. For me it was more. It was the central outlet of my family when not occupied by the compulsory ones – working, schooling, and uncovering new ways to feel inferior. If the doors of the little church house were open, attendance was a matter of duty. We would be there.

A narrow road of graded creek gravel curved this way and that for about five miles from our house on one end of the ridge, circling past the knob farms and unpainted barns, to the church on the other end. I came to know its dusty curves well at an early age. It was a dry ridge of land. How dry? There was not one above ground stream of water, the nearest seller of beer and wine was thirty miles away, and drinking coffee was a sin.

I can't remember with certainty how many of the six boys and four girls were stacked into that old Chevy along with Mom and Dad. The older boys may have been driving separately before the latest of the girls came to join us. The Sunday morning contents of the vehicle could be calculated with more care, but the description is sufficient here to say it was elbow to cheek.

There are two things I remember most about those trips. One was the hum of the V8 in the two toned blue and white Chevy, which I did my best to vocally mimic for hours on end as I rolled or pushed anything that was round across the yard, pretending I was driving a car. The other was the occasion when Mom would notice my ears were dirty, then spit on a white handkerchief and ream them out. Eventually this served to focus my habits, somewhat on hygiene, but more on keeping my ears hidden. With my ears, this was no mean feat.

I came to learn how I was supposed to live inside the confines of that little church. Explanations were vague but certain. Some gaps were filled in by my parents and my grandmother on the occasions when I stepped out of line. My older brothers filled in a few gaps of their own, as they went to high school in the town ten miles away and learned things that were not taught on the ridge. Wearing cologne seemed primarily important.

I touched down right in the middle of the colony, being fifth of ten kids. Some people are born to be silent observers; others have it thrust upon them. If I had known the way it all would go, I might have done some things differently. But since I don't know how the different way would go, it might be as well as it is.

I still visit the little church. It gives comfort, in a way, to see its unchanging presence against the backdrop of new and bigger things. It is an uncommon place where we can know the playing field so well. Walking through its doors, childhood memories greet me with the familiar smell of the varnish on the oak pews. Some places are still held by the same faces from my childhood days there, but more deeply lined by the winds of time. It seems I can yet sense the spent energy of pondering every stage of growing up while sitting bored stiff in the same pews. Were these people a product of my consciousness? Were they conscious and contemplating me? How does it feel to be them instead of me? If they are contemplating me, which perception is the correct one – what I'm thinking of myself or what they are thinking of me? That was one way to kill an hour or two.

Occasionally I came upon new, more practical questions, like the ones asked during discussion in Sunday school. I preferred to sit in with the adult class when I could, as sometimes a willing teacher for the kids could not be found. The most interesting participant to me was an older guy we called Brother Frank.

Frank asked questions I have puzzled over to this day. One in particular was when he spoke up and implored of the teacher, "If you had a bicycle upstairs and wanted to bring it downstairs, what would you say?" It still bothers me. What did it mean? What is the answer, if there is one? Why would the bicycle be upstairs? Why would the person bringing it down need to say something?

These were the coordinates of my portal entry. I can't recall where I was before. I remembered it once, but not now. Life here started simple and easy on the mind – a coincidental benefit of not knowing anything. I miss that sometimes. Not knowing who I was or why I was there, I waited impatiently to be told. Early on, from the best sense I could make of it, I was meant to take up as little space as possible, be quiet, and not screw anything up. That seemed fair enough to me. So I endeavored to be good at it.

I started to school at age six. I stood that first day with my back against the blackboard and watched as kids of all shapes and sizes milled around and talked to each other. That was weird. I immediately distrusted every person in what seemed a very large room. A lady about the age of my mom was walking among them and taking names. She wore glasses and a knee-length skirt. "So that's what a woman's legs look like", I thought. But I didn't know why I thought of it. Just as I feared, she eventually came to me and asked "What's your name?"

I froze. I had never laid eyes on this woman. Why would I tell her my name, even if I could remember it at that moment? Why was a grownup interested in me? I could think of no safe reason. So I stood silent and stared at her with wide brown eyes and pursed lips, hoping if I leaned back against that blackboard hard enough, I would disappear into it, or she would get bored and bother with someone else. The strange chamber of the realm was outside any and all things I knew.

I had only been off the ridge a few times. On occasion, we would pile into the car and visit cousins, though I had never met all of them. I excelled among the related kids in the sport of wrestling, finding most of them not as strong as my older brothers. They were a lot like me; poor but imaginative. There were no toys to speak of. But one group had a punching bag fashioned from a burlap sack filled with dirt and hung from a tree. They gave it the name of a guy who hit their brother in the head with a rock, and punched it with clan-like fury.

I determined that it would be best not to tell my name. My name, along with the baggy side-pocket jeans, my new striped pullover shirt, and a pencil were all I brought there with me. They could see the clothes and the suntanned face. The only power I controlled was what I knew and they didn't. This seemed, strangely, a familiar tack. For the sake of some ancient seed, I would reserve more to my mind than to my lips. I would fight with what I had. I knew my numbers and my armaments, scant as they were. These secrets would be kept close.

She never laid a glove on me. She persisted with the identification questions for a while, but ended up in full retreat, shaking her head as she ambled away. My mouth never opened. I gloated silently by repeating Ricky Lee Cox over and over in my head. I could have gotten it right if I had tried.

Eventually I learned that the teacher was a tactician in her own right. When we had a student who was a talker, as they would say, she would place my desk next to him. He would talk to me, and I would stare him dead in the eye and remain totally silent. The talker would soon give up and fall quiet, a little freaked out, it seemed. I sensed that the teacher took satisfaction in manipulating my talents to her own ends. I admired that, and began to like her.

During this same phase, I started to understand what was being said at church. I was told, to my distress, usually by someone tall and loud, that when you reach a certain age, that age being no particular one, you must accept that you are a sinner; you must repent, not privately or personally, but in front of the wholeness of the church. I was not certain what I was to repent of, but it was very bad, whatever it was. I would then be saved by our savior, and I was to never sin again. If I fulfilled these requirements, I would go to heaven when my life ends. If I failed to carry out this process, I would burn forever in hell. On top of that, failure to comply would make me mostly miserable along the way.

Bucking that system struck me as offering no advantage. Hell sounded, well, hellish. Life there had furnished occasional previews. Even brushing aside the never-ending torment deal, not a consequence that recedes lightly, non-compliance would make me stand out now, and not in a good way. So out of fear, and partially out of guilt, I complied. I suppose I believed it at some level. I convinced myself, at least, that I believed it. I was afraid to do otherwise, even though it seemed mismatched somehow with faint recollections. Once again, I drew to my secret weapon, which was my secret-weapon. Nobody had to know what was in my head.

The people with whom I attended church seemed like very nice people. My parents were certainly nice people. There was great reluctance on my part to cause the agonizing that would have necessarily filled their hearts to know that I was in constant, daily danger of eternal damnation.

It is better being an insider than an outsider. Ask any twelve-year old. I was not above nor a stranger to the occasional ruse. I remember in grade school during those times two of my friends got wristwatches for Christmas. I didn't have a watch or a window to throw it out of. But there was an old one that didn't work on top of the dresser in the room I shared with some brothers. A little tinkering to shorten the band, and I wore it semi-proudly to school. Every few minutes I would set it by turning the stem, so that it would appear to be a working watch. It got too tiresome after a few days.

Of no minor appeal to me, being an insider meant I could be mostly left alone. It would be a matter of choice, once inside, as to how far I actually wanted to run with the whole idea. It allowed me to be swept along with the natural flow of life in these parts. I could live here on the golden buckle of the Bible belt mostly free from the suspicion of such unwholesome things as would be naturally expected of a sinner. No family or church member would be saddled with the unpleasant responsibility of reminding me, "If you get killed today, you'll be lost." Apparently, the daily fear of having my brains spattered across the school bus, which was a realistic fear, in light of what passed for roads in our area, was a secondary concern.

I was a pretty good guy anyway, for the most part. I did commit the occasional misdeed, freely and willingly, for which I suffered guilt. I also had carnal thoughts, fight as I might, and sometimes I didn't fight all that hard. This complicated things a bit, as I was taught from the Bible that the thought was equal to the deed. I always figured I was screwed, so to speak, on that one.

A lot of things changed when I ventured outside my home and church. If you are poor, there is no shortage of ways for people to let you know it, and many volunteer with glee. I suspect this is the instinct that draws us back to home and church, to the pre-inequality times. In time, I grew far less concerned with writing poems for my teacher and more with what people thought when they looked at me. The tricky thing is I never got a clear read on this. I just assumed that the image needed a lot of work, and whatever enhancement I could squeeze from circumstances would put more of the picture within my control. There had to be a better way than being seen for who I was.

I also learned that there were other gospel truths competing with my inherited gospel truth. While it seemed like heresy at first, I found that some people, while still Christians, were of the belief that you could be saved, remain an insider, and continue to commit sin. I had heard about this belief in church. I think it was disparagingly called "once in grace, always in grace". Obviously, both versions could not be true. I resisted the more permissive version – at first. It eventually occurred to me that I could not live a perfect and sinless life, not for any length of time, anyway. By any length of time, I mean a twenty- four hour day. If I was able to comply in deed, I most certainly could not in thought.

I had coped with this problem by assuming there was something terribly wrong with me. From what I was told about me by my older brothers, this was a distinct possibility. I must have some inherent weakness, I thought, some deep-seated carnal flaw that kept me from rising above sin and reaching that sinless state. Maybe I wasn't really saved. Maybe I just went through the motions to please those around me and it was just another ruse. What if, after going to all this trouble, I ended up in hell anyway?

Eventually I noticed that I was not alone. In fact, I never saw anyone who did attain that state. I still haven't to this day. My parents were the best people I knew, and I was pretty sure they committed an occasional sin. I had seen them angry. Some of the things they said about other people, and directly to the livestock, seemed to express thoughts that were unkind. My dad once said to my mom that the reason we kids didn't have any sense was because she didn't let him beat us enough. But I assure you, the gentle man's bark was much worse than his bite. I can't recall a single whack from him that would qualify as harsh or even unmerited. I now suspect he was just scapegoating for his transmitted genetics. At least no worry was due that I might be a sequestered genius.

So, I opted for the eternal security. It sounded safe. It held the advantage of being at least possible, or if not possible, at least conceivable. I could accept, on a cognitive level, being a Christian meant all my sins had been atoned for by the sacrifice and it applied to past and future sins. It was an undeserved grace that acted as a blanket under which all my possible actions were covered.

Then the only way I could end up in hell was by failing to say "yes". And once I said "yes", my ticket was stamped for eternity. It didn't matter much what I did after that, at least in regards to my eternal fate. There was no limit, to my knowledge, of the number of times I could fall flat on my rear end. Sure, ideas were put forth about bigger and better crowns, with more jewels in heaven that would accrue to those who sinned less and did more good deeds. I saw this as trifling. If I have a ticket for never ending paradise and bliss, you won't get me too worked-up about the accessories. Besides, I always suspected they made that part up to get people to tithe.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE NEXT AWAKENINGby RICKY L. COX Copyright © 2011 by Dr. Ricky L. Cox. Excerpted by permission of BALBOA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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