Homosanctuality

Times change. Some would say more rapidly and violently than before. The guardians of the crumbling temples stand valiant, set against the blast of late vicissitudes. They lament that nothing bides as sacred anymore. One by one and ten by ten the altars are desecrated. There is no fear of doing this. There is no solemn homage rendered in the presence of the holy that. They have become the guardians of almost nothing. They mourn their world is left forlorn of hymn and temple.

But there is a thing these noble guardians have failed to realize: the brick and beam of their own temples are being looted and carted off, carted off to other parts where there is the building of another temple. Saw and hammer thunder day and night to fashion a resplendent shrine. There is yet a consecration in the land.

Conquered kingdoms are often brought to vow obeisance to a new religion. The old religion is sometimes swept away. But it is never just swept away. It is replaced by the new religion. Even when the new religion is a shining secularity. Even when the new religion denies itself. Even as its staunch adherents worship unawares. All the citizens subscribe to something of the holy. For every soul a sanctum.

I do not say this sanctum is profitable. I say that it is in fact inevitable. We the creatures of flesh and mind and heart and soul are unchangeably bent to consecrate. We consecrate the god, the dream, the tradition, the philosophy, the hero, the child, the lover. What is consecrated becomes to the consecrator the strictly inviolable and the unmockable. It becomes the spring of purpose, of truth, of good. It comprises the greater part of one’s hold on sanity I think, and if it is profaned then that hold might be shaken, or worse.

The nature of what is consecrated within the soul’s sanctum bears more thought. What is of interest is not the collection of people and things that decorate its outer courts. The question is what dwells in the innermost chamber, behind the veil. And here we find that with remarkable recurrence the thing behind the veil is merely worldstuff. Not supernatural. Not unapproachably holy. Not a well of mercy. Not the essence of goodness itself. Just a person or a thing, or some whisper of a thing. Just some particularity of what lies common outside the veil. Sometimes there is a book there, or a loved one, or a little mirror. Sometimes there is a slip of paper that reads, “Freedom”, or “Feed the hungry”, or even “God is irrelevant”. Heavy chests of minted gold are regularly found there. It is not without deep cause that greed is called idolatry.

Over and over in that sacred place is discovered creature rather than creator. What is hallowed is not holy. It is of the same substance as the man itself, and the man’s garbage. Yet the sanctum of the soul is evidently a place for something very other, a place for something outside creaturedom, of which the creature is at most the image or invention. We have uncovered an pandemic homosanctuality: the sanctum of a man’s soul unnaturally turned back toward its own kind, being supplied with its own essence although clearly meant for something other.

It is sensible to ask what sort of other answers to the configuration of the soul’s sanctum. I will say the only other that I know. It is the other that does not contradict reason but towers high beyond it. It is the other that exists of itself.  It is the other that is love. It is the other that offers forgiveness for sin freely, notwithstanding the terrible price. It is the other who has raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.

This entry I originally posted at platiphany.com.

Ands Auef

I was having trouble sleeping. It was not because of bitter

Ill intentions toward the lady queued in front of me. She shook,

Raging as she bellowed on and on about her gilded glitter

To the hapless boy who much bewildered manned the service nook.

All she seemed inclined to do was hately argue and finagle —

And the coffee shop, where often I a breaded breakfast took,

They today had gotten garlic on the bottom of my bagel.

— So I alternated spare and fitful dozes with a book.

I was having trouble sleeping. It was not because of bitter

Ill intentions toward the lady queued in front of me. She shook,

Raging as she bellowed on and on about her gilded glitter

To the hapless boy who much bewildered manned the service nook.

All she seemed inclined to do was hately argue and finagle —

And the coffee shop, where often I a breaded breakfast took,

They today had gotten garlic on the bottom of my bagel.

— So I alternated spare and fitful dozes with a book.

Restless, I meandered down the hall, in ricochet and stumble.

Then, I gadded down the stairs, with half an aimless thought to match

Lonesome socks. But subsequent to that, and mindless of my humble

Nightclothes, I went shabby out and onto, armed with some dispatch,

My front porch; the spring night air was to my vigiled face commended.

It was calm, warm, humid, with the light of many stars to catch,

As I idled, peering on my ready friend, the long untended

Meadow on the gentle hill adjacent to my acred patch.

There, I’d join the chicory and sorrel, clover, and their fellow

Virid flora, to peruse a text, or nap in vernal blest

Cordial sunshine on a tilted sheet of green and blue and yellow.

But there was no sunshine. And no naps. And leaving sleepy rest,

Even reading in that field, the lighter loads of life deflecting,

Would have been a grand infuriating — at the very best —

Flurry of the pages. For my stubbled chin was now detecting

A remarkably assiduous wind deriving from the west.

Leaving little starbreaks, flocks of fleshy clouds galumphy shuffled

Overhead, as aerial — invisible and wanting skill —

Fingers plucked the shaded blossoms of the dogwood. And this ruffled

Midnight bore an aggregate of sound. My ears took in their fill.

Thunder rolled. There was a baby somewhere, crying with consistence.

In the elms, a dozen crows were nodding out a choral shrill.

Curiously, I heard the Billings Bell, awakened in the distance,

And — but then I realized the wind had stopped. The air stood still.

Sudden ! Stricken ! Most tremendous shaking. Hill and building crumbled.

My screen door was splintered on its hinges — gone beyond repair —

As my porch was severed from my house. And I was roundly tumbled,

Canted back and into my decrepit wooden rocking chair.

Minutes passed. The churning motion stilled, curtailing to a token;

I, however, was still quaking, set with exponential care.

Half of everything, the nature-made, the artifice, looked broken.

I was knowing earthenkind affirmed both vincible and rare.

Crashing, violent smashing, was ubiquitous, and I was thinking

For a while I heard the fire trucks and ambulances ring,

But mysteriously, their howling sirens and their beacons blinking

Discontinued; there were hot impassioned voices on the wing.

I was merely sitting, nursing some inconsequent abrasions,

Yet a myriad of restive heinous questions made their sting.

From inside I heard my cuckoo cry on four distinct occasions.

— And I pondered how an earthquake sways the noble flying thing.

Soon, the wind returned; it brought a sulfurous powerful emitting,

The effective bitter breath of this, Poseidon’s recent yawn.

Flashing lights and too the lights of streets and cozy rooms of sitting

In my neighborhood and all the nearby countryside were gone.

And the countenance of stars was now entirely forbidden

By a veil of vapor: faster had the clouded curtain drawn.

From my porch the universe occurred caliginous and hidden.

Thunder stood for Chanticleer as morning loomed without a dawn.

Undulating tremors, lingering, my trepidations nourished.

I looked north of westward — slowly whispering the Apostle’s creed —

Where a savage squall of lightning set on the horizon flourished,

For the pressing darkness was compelled to somewhat there concede.

Monder’s Peak looked unfamiliar to my eyes, and oddly horrid;

Certain of the mountains, generally the ones of taller breed,

Were from off their crestings throwing growing sprays of something torrid,

And these mountains were themselves becoming larger at great speed.

I distinguished huge conic domes with summits strongly steaming.

Apices now spewed out, from the panging subterranean womb,

Ash and lava, leavening out a squalid sky with bloody gleaming;

And they also sent out crawling molten fingers groping on the gloom,

Firmly blushing in uncanny hues of orange and magenta.

The volcanoes next exploded close together, all in bloom,

Throwing half themselves up into air as loose ejectamenta,

Threaded with a vesseled self-invented lightning in the plume.

The conclusion came as those flammivomous enclouded fountains

Ceased disgorging calefaction. In regardance of those bright

Molten tendrils worming down the ‘mains of bleak beconèd mountains,

Rapidly their fervid phantom glow forgot its thermal might,

And those crimson emanations in the cloudage near and distant,

Also dwindled out. So the environs had reverted quite

Back to starless pitch, but this was with the moment inconsistent:

By this hour there should have been a decent show of morning light.

After lavic terrors passed, the fire came down. The sky delivered

Freight that set the world to burning — hell and heaven changing shift.

It consumed the mountain forests thereupon — my insides quivered —

Then it airborne spread to nearly everywhere — approaching swift.

As the smoke and flame drew close, my house rejoined with saucy creaking.

I could hear the heat. My respiration had forgone its thrift,

And I choked. The scorching dusky atmosphere was acid, reeking,

Scalding limb and lung, and every breath became a grievous gift.

And I wondered where the robin hides from such a close condition.

Chunky embers, by a great rampageous gale dispersed and blown

Lawlessly, were eager livid emissaries of perdition.

For an instant I was cringing there believing that my own

House had caught the torch, the onset of unscapable cremation.

In another instant, I was heeding and down to the bone

Feeling nothing. Then, I saw that, as a vital consolation,

Like myself my house appeared to be as I had always known.

Slender streaks now blazed on Babbin Ridge, a waste of scrub and thistle —

Which reminded me of Annie, scrounging out behind the store;

She was weathered, and she used to ride the railroad cars, and whistle,

And she used to say, “Now, what if fire is just a metaphor?”

The colossal fires had burned in bright and total conflagration,

But they suddenly collapsed; the starving flames went flagging to the core.

And so once again the realm was prived of dear illumination.

I surmised it would have been the time for bacon smells to pour.

Then, from out of smoky skies came varied flakes, by murky vection,

Of volcanic ash and cindered wood, obsidian and sear.

Some were large, some small, and some around their margins had a section

Glowing red, arriving franticly from regions then unclear,

Coming not so much by creeping as by whirling round and sweeping

On the gust. The shrouded cloudy airs were laying down a drear

Broad and heavy coaly blanket, as to set the world asleeping.

My apparent station was to sit — and wring my hands in fear.

In the wispy dismal dim my unconvening eyes were tested;

I could scarcely mark the Atherns’ nearer hedge of thorny sloe.

For with sureness by Apophis on this day great Ra was bested,

If a day it was at all; the mien of night would not let go.

Shaven darkness fell for monotonic hours, augmenting dramas

With the sames, and as I in defiance of the warm black snow

Swatted ash that had collected on the legs of my pajamas,

The impulsive spinning winds resolved to just a steady blow.

Roar of flame and blast of hot extravasation had retreated

Into time. A quietude had come without the quiet joys.

Siren sounds were gone. I heard no vehicles, no voices heated.

Gone the simple nuthatch; gone the lilted rhymes of girls and boys;

Gone as well the thunders, cross and ever fond of coarse unloading.

I sat rocking on my porch, devoid of power, devoid of poise,

Sweating and atremble. Ash came down and down. I was with boding

Giving thought to this pronounced peculiar deficit of noise.

Quiet quietness. The land at last had ceased its clamored seething.

But it was unnatural. It went too far, too fine — unmeet.

Motion mimed in muted cinema. I could not hear my breathing.

Destin had, I feared, perhaps, in an immoderate retreat,

Happened irreversibly upon a plane of aural pallid.

Nothing sighed or called or wailing cried. Could I forget the sweet

Sound of birds? And even the unwavering breeze traversing calid,

Stealthy herald, went its way unheard. The silence was complete.

And what other oaths could correlate with sonancy forswearing?

This meracious dreamy silence was the silence of the slain,

Yet inhaling deep it swallowed mingled themes of thick despairing.

I had stood ashake beside my chair. The sultry air was vain.

It was nearer noon than morningtide, but darkness hung in tarry;

Light was less than night when summer’s moon is slivered in the wane.

At the end, the hush was broken by the antic sound of very

Many chanting frogs, and then it started placidly to rain.

Gentle dirty tacit raindrops somehow seemed to clean the aching

Surface of the earth and dangle on a clear but humble slope.

For a moment all that was was drip and slosh. But quick the waking

Came of storm and rains of greater weighting, quenching specul’ed hope.

Wind and thunder, torrent, lightning, brimly mounting and unwincing —

An affair with which my long-neglected gutters failed to cope,

Overflown with turbid swells of grubby wash. The suited rinsing

Had become a roaring pouring down of pith and mortal scope.

The intensity suggested yet another judication,

A diluvian event involving all and sparing none.

But on further observation I discerned a moderation

In the strobal iron tempest and the grumpy rumble thun.

Easing to an even rain, the daypoor day was wringing flashes

From the sky. I watched a thousand filthy little rivers run,

And the puddles — faces freckled with disordered fleeting splashes —

Were expanding, fingered disconnected wets becoming one.

Then, a gravid turn: I ascertained a more abundant splatter.

Something else was slantly filing under an obstructed sun

With a mounting sound of manifold coincidental clatter.

The evolving pools grew island piles. The hailing had begun.

Shocking ! Mighty ! A percussive blast of savage bare supernal

Tearing for what reason into battle well already won.

I was brought to realize that this was doom’s unfolding kernel

And that I would surely be brought low before the hail was done.

So it raided loud and stiff, the stones an inch or so in thickness,

At the outset, bearing fury on a crenelating slide,

Disamalgamating windows with a frost and fearous quickness;

I stood quaking at the breaking of this tapiocal tide.

On my porch and scrimply sheltered doldrums I remembered splendid

As the hail came on. The layered lumps were being resupplied

Heavier and closer than before. For all of three extended

Hours the hail did not abate. It steadily intensified.

Tripling twice, and strewn with ash, the storm profused its long subtracting

Of precipitates directed to a plangent earth collide.

Through the rave of galing wind and through the crash of stones impacting

Blew the moan of some poor calf with dozens planted in its hide.

On the edges of the knifing ices sickling inhumanely

I observed the recent leaves of maples violently divide

Then commence profane aeolian interment. It was plainly

Not a wholesome while for animal or vegetable outside.

Ash and ice and leaf and petal gathered into thick conferted

Cumulations on the ground. The world I knew lay happed and pied

Under lofty watered furrows bringing forth sustained inverted

Teeming yields of pearly waving nimbus grain, a whelming wide

Overcastled sovereign reigning both magnificent and sorry —

Seventh bowl and seventh plague for sage and shadow posed astride;

Mjolnir’s stroke had shivered heaven’s dome to fragments keen and starry.

All the flowers in my slopy drowsing field abruptly died.

It was strange, this hail, unearthly strange with eerie piercing power

Lately set upon these arrows of an airy host unskied,

Power unsurpassed by quake or flame or seething vulcan tower.

Ancient swollen oak and sturdy brickened wall it sharp defied,

Penetrating, perforating, as an unabridged destroyer,

Like a mowing, almost every standing thing relinquished pride.

I desired intensely to retreat within my bounded foyer,

But with trembling hands I clutched the railing of my porch — and cried.

Then, emerging from the turbid spanse, disturbed and battered,

Was a solitary sparrow, on the cindered winds conveyed.

Feather-short she came, yet passing hope her wings remained unshattered.

Streaky-backed and yellow-billed, she landed soft. She briefly swayed.

Then she hopped around in looping routes and pecked in fits and dithers.

The relentless thrashing hail composed a strident serenade,

And the boarded house across the road collapsed in riddled smithers,

And together we were witness to the crystic cannonade.

I was counting it a wonder that my dwelling held formation —

Now an isolated vessel on a sea of bane unbarred,

A disordered vinyled ark of bird and beastly population,

Gawking from the gangway. Everywhere I saw it, blasting hard,

The spectacular aggression that the heavens down were throwing —

Everywhere except a certain region in my neighbor’s yard:

There I thought I saw a rising form, cerulean and glowing,

Undiminished in the wreak, impassive to the frozen shard.

To my sundered eyes it was a blur though something solid seeming,

Likely consequentless, not in any vital way profound.

Icy missiles pulverized. I stood beside a sparrow deeming.

Was it tangled light? Or was it common reasoning unwound?

I endeavored hard to focus, manifolding apprehension;

Then I recognized it nearly, once my sight was fully sound:

Neither convoluted glimmer nor irrational invention

But a man or something like one standing almost on the ground.

His ensashened robe displayed the golds of sunsets and Septembers;

Diadems adorned his head with gem and silver filigree.

Feet of bronze sustained; his fractured crystal hands held living embers;

And his hair was like the snow at night descending fine and free —

Wrapped around him was a spheral mist that rolled with mild precession —

From his face a blue light flowed candescent to the last degree.

He was scanning slow our shaded space, arrayed in grave expression,

Eyes aflame with ivoried fire. And then he turned his gaze to me.

Of a sudden, I was struck infirm, for I beheld the mantic

Splendor: beauty for the eyes unmeant and virtue bare of veil,

Meant but forfeit; death and sleep were flying close. My soul was frantic,

Faint and vile, but he was bright serene, undaunted in the hail.

As his beams of azure countenance were quiet contradicting

All the sooted fervid murk, a bending fever mothered pale

Ends. Majestic rushing throbs ran through, good cognizance evicting.

Sleep came down in hawk’s claws, sinuous. My fingers lost the rail.

Some time later waking reeling I was not by my decision

Groveled on my dingy stoop, before the halidom defiled.

Then he made towards me. Ash and dread enveloped all my vision.

Touching firm my downcast brow he spoke distinctly words unmild,

Umbral fundamental wonder both beginning then and ending,

Voiced as falling waters highborn deep in heaven’s holy wild,

“Vacate fear! And mark the awful arm of God come down attending

Strong and swift the staid entreaty of His meek afflicted child!”

This entry I originally posted at platiphany.com.

A Rather Difficult Logic Puzzle

Would you be interested in a curious logic puzzle that I have been thinking about lately?

Recently, my son Matt shared a logical riddle with me, and for the past several days this puzzle has consumed a large portion of thoughts. I can sometimes be a sucker for puzzles and logic riddles; this foray has turned out to be a splendid example of my occasional puzzle-OCD-ness. This writing is an attempt to persist a few of my thoughts, especially an interesting derivative problem that has come to my mind, and to culminate this diversion so that I can get back to other, perhaps more profitable, ones.

The problem that Matt propounded involved precisely identifying, with just 3 questions, each person in a group of three which contained a liar, a truth-teller, and a random answerer. In pondering the solution to this problem I have discovered that this problem is derived from a well studied problem called “The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever”, of which more can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardest_Logic_Puzzle_Ever. Briefly, this problem is as follows:

“Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are 'da' and 'ja', in some order. You do not know which word means which.”

This problem is very challenging, but possible to solve, and solutions have been widely published. Derivative and related versions of this problem have also been proposed. One of the most popular things to do with this problem is to try to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking just two yes-no questions. However, this usually involves asking unanswerable questions, such as asking the truth-teller "Are you going to answer this question with the word that means no in your language?" In the parlance of the study of this problem these sorts of questions are said to make the subject’s head explode.

While these head-exploding problems are very interesting, they seem to be almost a trick that is used to provide a response that cannot be produced by the other two members in the group. Also, the bit about answering in a different language is a clever twist but is easily overcome and could detract from the core logical goodness of the riddle.

So I have been thinking of a different sort of problem, one that I haven’t seen described in my very brief searching (but surely this puzzle has been studied before). Here is what I am calling “A Rather Difficult Logic Puzzle”, and a fun solution to it, I think:

“Three men are called, in some order, Truther, Liar, and Random. Truther always speaks truly, Liar always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of these men by asking just one multiple-choice question; however, this one question may be put to at most two of these men, all of whom will converse with you in English.”

Here are some clarifications:

·         The multiple choice question must have a finite number of possible answers, either explicitly or implicitly provided. For example the question “Do two and two make four?” implicitly allows for answers “Yes” and “No”.

·         “I don’t know” answers cannot be required and are not allowed.

·         No unanswerable questions (aka ‘head exploding questions’) are allowed.

·         Random may be thought of as producing his answer by secretly casting lots or throwing a dice to determine which of the possible multiple-choice answers he will give.

·         The choice of which man will be asked the question on the second asking may depend on the answer given the first time the question is asked.

·         Truther, Liar, and Random each know the identities of the others.

Space Preceding a Solution

This space intentionally left blank to protect you from seeing the solution if you want to try to solve this yourself.

A Solution

It seems to me that the best that one could hope for is to find a solution that uses a multiple-choice question having four choices. I haven’t worked this out on paper, but a three-choice question doesn’t appear possible. There are 6 possible arrangements of the men. Once you have asked the question one time you automatically have 2 possible arrangements where the person you asked the first time is Random, and, if not, you still have only specified at most 3 of the possible 4 other arrangements. This would leave at least one case where there are the 2 possible arrangements from asking Random plus 2 more possible arrangements in the case where your 3-choice answer had to cover 2 distinct possibilities. This makes for 4 possible arrangements that must be distinguished by asking the same 3-choice question one time more, which seems rather more than unlikely.

So, I will endeavor to describe a four-choice question that allows for the solution of the puzzle.

The first thing that we can do is to arbitrarily give each person in the group a number, a ‘position number’ if you will. So there is a person number 1, a person number 2, and a person number 3. We can now claim a solution to the riddle as, for example, 1) Liar, 2) Truther, and 3) Random, or LTR for short. So if I say the solution is RLT you will know that I am claiming that person number 1 is Random, person number 2 is Liar, and person number 3 is Truther. So we can say that we can refer to the members of the group as R, T, and L, or as 1, 2, and 3 as need requires.

Now, on with the solution. Of course, the most important part of the solution is the question that we use to ask two of the men in the group. However, the question is somewhat complicated (but very fun I think) so we will need to take it steps.

The question involves the possibility of performing what I am calling the ‘sifting maneuver’. So we need to know how this thing called a sifting maneuver would be performed.

The first thing to know about the sifting maneuver is that we cannot perform the sifting maneuver. Only the men in the group of three can do it, Liar, Truther, or Random. For purposes of the sifting maneuver it will usually be more convenient to refer to them as 1, 2, and 3.

To begin the sifting maneuver one must decide which person 1, 2, or 3 will be doing the maneuver. For convenience let’s call this person A for right now. The first thing that A must do in performing the sifting maneuver is to identify 3 people in the group, not necessarily different people. We will call these persons B, C, and D. Persons B and C are relatively simple to describe. Person B is the person with the next number higher than person A, and if person A is actually person number 3 then person B will be person number 1. Then person C will be the person with the next number higher than person B, and if person B is actually person number 3 then person C will be person number 1. So for example if we have selected person 2 to perform the sifting maneuver, then persons A, B, and C would be persons 2, 3, and 1 respectively.

Now for person D. This person is a little bit more difficult to describe. Basically, person D is the one person in the group who is not person A, and is not Random, and has the highest person-number (that last requirement has to be here just in case person A and Random are the same person). Note that if person A is random then person D cold be either Truther or Liar, but if A is Truther then D has to be Lair, and if A is Liar then D has to be Truther. Person D is a very important part of the sifting maneuver. He is the only one explicitly mentioned in the question. He is known as ‘person D’ of the sifting maneuver.

The next step in the sifting maneuver, believe it or not, is to break out a brand new fresh never-before-opened deck of standard playing cards. What are we doing with a deck of cards in a stark logic puzzle, you ask? Well, let me tell you. The first thing we will be doing is taking out and discarding all four Kings in this deck of cards. Next, Person A will pass out a few cards to himself and to persons B, C, and D precisely as follows: Person A gives himself the Queen of spades and the Queen of clubs. He then gives person B the Jack of clubs and the Jack of hearts. He then gives person C the Jack of spades and the Jack of diamonds. Then he gives person D the Queen of hearts and the Queen of diamonds. Note that he must do this secretly behind closed doors so that we don’t see who person D is, after all, we don’t know who person D is, but person A does. Finally, also behind closed doors, person A takes any Queens held by Liar and any Jacks held by Random and returns them to the deck. This resultant deck, is the principal result of the sifting maneuver, and will simply be referred to as ‘the deck’ after the sifting maneuver has been performed.

There is something important to note about the deck at this point: If person A is not Random, then there is exactly one suit that has no face cards present in the deck. This is because 2 of the Jacks have been turned in (by Random) and 2 of the Queens have been turned in (by Liar). We know that if person A is not Random then Random must be among persons B and C, who received the Jacks. Similarly, if person A is not Random then Liar must be among persons A and D, who received the Queens. What is more, the Jacks and Queens were distributed in a staggered way so that there must now (if A is not Random) be one suit for which neither Jack nor Queen has been turned in. This ‘key suit’ is the key to the entire problem:

·         If the key suit is spades, then Random must be B because C received the Jack of spades, and Truther must be A because A received the Queen of spades.

·         If the key suit is clubs, then Random must be C because B received the Jack of clubs, and Truther must be A because A received the Queen of clubs.

·         If the key suit is hearts, then Random must be C because B received the Jack of hearts, and Liar must be A because D received the Queen of spades.

·         If the key suit is diamonds, then Random must be B because C received the Jack of diamonds, and Liar must be A because D received the Queen of spades.

So if we can somehow know that A is not Random  and determine the key suit then we can solve the problem because we know (by definition) what numbers A, B, and C have. Note also, that if the key suit is spades or diamonds that we know that Random is not in position C, and that if the key suit is clubs or hearts then we know that Random is not in position B. This will also be important.

Now, to ‘the question’. This is the question that we will be asking to two different people in the group. Here it is:

“If you were to perform the sifting maneuver, what is a possible suit that person D would answer when asked “What is a suit for which there is a face card present in the deck?””

Consider what happens when we ask each of the three possible persons in the group:

·         Random: He will just give a random suit.

·         Liar: In this case person D is Truther, so we are asking Liar what Truther could say is a suit that has a face card present. So the only choice for Liar is to name the suit that has no face card present, and that is the key suit.

·         Truther: In this case person D is Liar, so we are asking Truther what Liar could say is a suit that has a face card present. But liar has only one choice if he wants to lie. He must name the key suit, and this what Truther will faithfully report.

So, now let’s apply our question and solve the riddle. We will ask person 1 the question. There are two possibilities here: If person 1 is Random then we can safely go to either person 2 or person 3 to ask the question and be confident that we will not be asking our question a second time to Random, so we can expect to learn the key suit. This means that we will be safe in choosing a second person to ask if we base it on the information that we get from the answer to the first question even if person 1 is Random. So we take the answer to the first asking of the question and (safely) presume that the information will lead us to a person who is not Random. If the answer to the first question is spades or diamonds then we choose person 2; otherwise we choose person 3 as the one to whom we will pose the second question.

We know that we are not speaking to Random when we ask the second question so we may accurately deduce the correct answer based on the answer to this second question.

For example, suppose we received the answer ‘diamonds’ to our first question. This would, according to the logic described above for finding a person who is not Random, motivate us to choose person 3 as the object of our second question. Now, suppose person 3 gives us an answer of ‘hearts’. Then, by the logic described above, Random must be person 2 (aka ‘C’) and Liar must be person 3 (aka ‘A’). So the solution to the riddle is TRL; that is, Truther is person 1, Random is person 2 and Liar is person 3.

Belonging to God (reprise VII)

When I think of belonging to God I think of belonging, just belonging. Admittedly, sometimes belonging appears a mundane and ordinary thing, unworthy of a moment’s reflection (ironically this is often the case when I am being most blessed by it). But at other times all my senses are trained on it; belonging becomes the unison note of my soul symphony. By God’s grace I have daily bread, and I am safe; but belonging, fitting in, having a place to be, being situated for love and usefulness and purpose, seems the unattainable plum. It is that sweet piquant orb borne by a branch far too high to reach, set aloft in a tree bethorned and recalcitrant to climbing, or shaking. With bones unfit for heaven and soul unmeant for earth I live now. It is hard to win belonging here. One does not simply ‘belong’ oneself. And it is hard to not belong. It is hard to abide the fear, the frustration, and deficit of purpose. There are few things more unpleasant than being the only rock at a convention of sticks. We might fancy that we can go it alone, that we can be islands unto ourselves and forego all concern about belonging. But in our honest moments we must admit that it is not enough simply to exist. We were made to coexist.

To be sure there are happy glimmerings of belonging here. There are families and friends and loves. There are careers and trades and societies. There are springtime walks in meadow and wood. I enjoy and have enjoyed these and thank our heavenly Father for my share in them. But somehow, as bright and warm as they may be, they fall short. They don’t last forever. Desires go unmet. Gifts remain untapped. The house burns. A loved one dies. The restaurant closes. Bitterness breeds in the den of an irksome habit. Harmonious refrains inexorably cloy. The table of sweet fellowship is folded into memory.

But there is a better belonging. There is a belonging in God through His Son Jesus Christ that excels all other belongings. It is ‘The’ belonging. It is the forever and perfect belonging. It is the place we are meant to be for all eternity and that has been planned from all eternity. This belonging is our place in Christ, and I am ever so glad that there is this place for me and that I can enjoy at least a taste of it through the Holy Spirit in this mortal skin. When we received our Lord Jesus Christ we were ushered into a place where we finally fit in, a place where we are entirely meant to be. And to discover just where this place is we can turn to the Apostle Paul. He says that, “…God…made us alive together with Christ….and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians 2:4-6). So, in a very real but as-yet-mostly-unrevealed way, we are seated in the heavenly places in Christ. O, what a place to belong! In Christ! We are supremely safe. We are immersed in love. We belong in a realm of perfect peace. We are privileged to share in His holiness. And we are put in environs of everlasting joy. Of course we see this exceedingly dimly now, and remain somewhat away from it until our bodies are adapted for its magnificence. But we do see it, with ever keener eyes of faith, and we do enjoy the fringe its eaves, as His Holy Spirit indwells us, ministering graces of God’s kingdom until it is fully revealed and we are brought in triumphant with bodies supernal.

One way of expressing our personal relation to God is to say that there is a ‘God-shaped’ space in all of us. This idea was expressed perhaps most famously by Pascal in his Pensees when he said, "…What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself". While this is a deeply insightful way of viewing things, I believe our belonging in God is almost an inversion of this. Instead of there being a God-shaped space inside of me, there is a me-shaped space inside of God. This is more reminiscent of Augustine’s prayer in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." If ever there was an antithesis to not fitting in it would be in knowing that God made us to belong in Him. That place has been designed and created by God for us and it is there (or here as the case may be) waiting for us to flourish in.

A great perfection of our belonging in God is that its perfection will never end. God will not leave us. He will not die (any more). Heaven will not burn down (apart from a new and better one waiting in the wings). The table of sweet fellowship with our Savior will be ever-filled with His excellencies and wisdom and praise. God has no irritating ways to embitter us; all His ways are wonderful. And our veritable wardrobe of irritating ways will be cast off as we put on our completion in Christ. What a love it took for God to make me a new creation in Christ in order to place me in the one precise place I was meant for in all of eternity, though I had fallen and was utterly unable to reach it myself. Only those in Christ can ever know such perfect belonging, and nothing can take it away from us.

It must be noted that our belonging in God coincides with an exclusion, a towering not-fitting-in. In placing us in Christ to belong in Him, our jealous God separates us, sets us apart from the rest. This is the essence of holiness and true sainthood. God’s people Israel were circumcised, tangibly setting them apart from the rest of the nations. As believers in Christ we are called to be tangibly separate, to divorce ourselves from the love of this world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. We are also placed in Christ to walk in the calling with which God has called us, not in the calling of another. Remember our Lord Jesus was called to belong on the cross and not (immediately) on a throne. He was a hated outcast. So in our belonging there is a great unbelonging. This may very well have the consequence of our feeling even more out of place at times here on this earth, as we navigate our Gethsemanes and partake sometimes painfully of His holiness while the world is laughing at evil. But we will never deeply enjoy our belonging if we are forever resenting our unbelonging. Belonging in an earthly family might mean having a toothbrush with our name on it. Belonging in the heavenly family means there is a cross with our name on it, and a crown.

There is something else we can learn from an earthly family about our belonging in God. Membership in a loving earthly family does not depend on one’s usefulness to the family or one’s talents or one’s appearance. Belonging in the family is not just for the beautiful but also for the deformed. Belonging in the family is not just for the gifted but also for the Down syndrome child. It is not just for the commander, the CEO, or the class president; it is also for the awkward, the autistic, and the black sheep. It is not just for the warrior and the athlete; it is also for the sickly and aged. The family standing in the cold bleachers cheering for their rising son, the hometown hero quarterback, is the same family praying and whispering and weeping at the bedside of their dying grandmother. It is the same way (only better) in our belonging in the family of God. And this is a boundless encouragement. Although by God’s grace He has gifted His church, the body of Christ, with great preachers and teachers and evangelists, strong and courageous generals in His army, it is all too evident that many of us are not great leaders and generals. Although we are each gifted (according to His will and plan through the Holy Spirit for the building up of the body of Christ), so many of us are weak and needy. It is as if there are so many of us that are dull minded or frail bodied; many of us have been gravely wounded in the battles and perils of life. We are not many noble and mighty. This beloved family of God is bursting with the leper and the amputee, the timid and the pariah. And He loves all of us, welcoming us to belong in His family not on the basis of who we are or what we have done but on the basis of Who His Son Jesus is and what He has done. This means that each one of us, prince or pauper, has found an everlasting significance in our place in belonging to God in Christ.

I think in this world we have at best a partial appreciation for belonging. The problem is that once we belong we enjoy things like comfort and peace and easy familiarity. These are not at all problems but our human weakness makes quick work of turning them into problems. Human nature (adult human nature) is so easily tired of repetition. We are easily habituated to pleasantries or just about anything else by repetition. We so easily come to take belonging for granted. Husband takes wife for granted. Wife takes husband for granted. Children take parents for granted. Parents take children for granted…and so it goes, until sometimes it takes a Christmas or a great feast or a disaster to rekindle human appreciation for belonging. To some great degree we cannot help it (though perhaps we can be on guard against it). This is our nature. As the adage goes familiarity breeds contempt, and the drug addict needs more and more to attain the same euphoria. We are so prone to ignore familiar comforts that the best we can sometimes say about it is that at least it doesn’t hurt. It is not so much a fault as a deficiency that we will say along with C.S. Lewis, “…A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice…” So someone might suggest that it is a hard bit of luck that we humans are like this, being so prone to neglect the blessings of belonging. But perhaps there is some blessing in it. Perhaps this makes us much more sensitive to abrupt changes: the sting of fire, the rush of a storm, or the peril of battle. Perhaps it is just the necessary attendant of an adrenalinized species. We need such a nature here where fire and storms and battles rage. It is good that we can be quick to the ready upon some sudden danger and that we can become somewhat inured to the throbbing pains of a soldier’s all night march in rescue of the besieged city. However, this inuring does I think limit our ability to appreciate the tremendous beauty and sumptuousness of belonging. But not forever. We are destined for a better place.

One of the complaints heard about going to heaven is that it sounds boring, what with just sitting on clouds and playing harps all day. And one of the common responses to this is that this is not at all an accurate picture of heaven; there will be lots to do in heaven, forever. Although the clouds-and-harps picture of heaven is indeed not at all what the Bible describes, I think we err when we resort too quickly to the ‘lots to do in heaven’ theme. While I can’t deny that there will be a lot to do in heaven, sometimes I wonder. Maybe some of the most glorious realms of heaven are governed by infinite repetition and constancy. I don’t think we are without hints of this in some of the Bible’s descriptions of heaven. One of the recurrent figures in the Bible describing our experience of heaven is the phenomenon of rest. We tend to think of rest as a sort of liability, something we are required to do when we are fatigued until we are replenished and ready for ‘living’ again. But the Scriptures seem to be pointing to something much more when they speak of our hope of eternal rest. The first occurrence of rest, where God rests after creation, is not a matter of fatigue; it is something much deeper I think, but perhaps not entirely without that sort of still constancy that we now associate with the idea of rest. And because of this I believe that we are probably unable to grasp the full riches of this rest. If we were to experience the resplendence of heaven right now in our current state (forgetting for a moment the inability of mere flesh and blood to withstand the display of God’s glory), I think it is highly likely that we will find some of the itinerary rather boring. Is it possible that part of our completion and perfection in Christ will be to be blessed with the ability to be unsated by repetition? We may have no need for adrenaline-of-the-moment to warn of pain or storm or war. So we may be fully and finally free to enjoy to the uttermost the wonders of belonging. On earth the melody takes the foreground and the rhythm is relegated to the background, but perhaps in heaven rhythm gets equal billing, or maybe even center stage. Perhaps it is just beyond our capacity at the present time to comprehend the delight of the monotony of heaven.

It might be that I am being too broad in contending that human nature renders us unable to appreciate the monotony of heaven. Perhaps it is just adult human nature that is so inept at it. Children may be naturally inclined in this skill and it may be just one more artifact of childhood that we would be much the better for retaining rather than leaving behind on the nursery floor. I think G. K. Chesterton expresses this beautifully in the following passage from Chapter 4 of his “Orthodoxy”: “All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.”

Belonging to God (reprise VI)

When I think of belonging to God I think of giving myself to God. Although by rights every created thing belongs thoroughly to Him, God has given me the capacity to belong to Him by willingness. I have unceasingly the uncommon opportunity (who besides redeemed men and angels have this?) of offering my life by choice to my Heavenly Father, to serve Him, to praise Him, to cast my foolish weak soul into the ocean of His infinite mercy and wisdom.

When I walk the trails at the Springfield Nature Center (a sort of sanctuary for me) I have at times taken up two different views, both of them fertile for meditation. The first view is to look on all the trees and frogs and turtles and water and grass and recognize that all these things without exception continuously and faithfully fulfill God’s calling for them, in perfect unwavering submission to His will. It is only I and my fellow human travelers who rebel. Like a tarantula in the flour bin I stick out ghastily in the midst of an otherwise behaving creation. And as if that were not enough, this behaving creation is bent over almost double under the weight of a curse, a curse undeserved. My Edenic kin, those ancient gardeners, grew a spreading grass. This is a most sharp and humbling view to undertake.

The sharpness of this first view is inverted, but no less sharp, in the second view to which I have more recently come. And it yields a fuller fruit, I think. This second view is to consider that among all these trees and frogs and turtles and squirrels and flowers I encounter in my amblings, it is only I and my fellow human travelers who have been granted the prerogative of faith. Yes, as is evident from my first view, I and the rest of humankind are the singularly unfaithful specimens that are brushed by those breezes coming in off the water. We are the darkest blots on land or sea; and yet we have that exclusive invitation to bow our monstrous wills and seek forgiveness and new life in Christ. We have the privilege of choosing to give ourselves to God. And it is in our very weakness that God demonstrates this His greatest power and glory. The trees are majestic as they lift their arms in praise. The flowers unfold beauty in their appellations. All the rest of nature single-mindedly offers a sacrifice of pure devotion to the Creator. But only we sinners have the capacity to dazzle creation in shining with the brilliant redeeming glory of Christ. May our heavenly Father give us grace to shine that glory in love and holiness.