I hate to spring another portmanteau word on you so soon after the atrocity that was “Hypocrasisyphus”, but I have been seriously putting things together that do not belong together. For example, I have been binge-watching two Netflix series; Stranger Things 2 and The Punisher. Stranger Things 2 is the sequel to the Duffer Brothers’ hit last year, Stranger Things, and The Punisher is the return of a surprise breakout role for Jon Bernthal as the violent vigilante anti-hero, Punisher, from Daredevil, Season 2. 
I love the 80’s monster movie thing that is called Stranger Things mostly because of the kids. I mean, the most important protagonists in the story are the gang of Dragon’s Lair-playing kids that are so like the gang of kids I taught and played games with in the 80’s. They have the same cohesion and feel as the kids gangs in Steven Spielberg movies like the Goonies and E.T. They are the real heroes of the story who actually do the most to defeat the monsters they face from a looming evil dimension on the verge of taking over our world after taking over the body and soul of my relative, Will Byers, one of the gang.
I won’t spend much more effort describing that one, since I wrote about Stranger Things 2 in a previous post. Instead, I want to connect it to my most recent binge, The Punisher. As I said before, these two series have absolutely no relationship to each other beyond one nutty retired school teacher bingeing on and loving them both.
The Punisher is about war, violence, the trauma that those things create, and putting the shattered pieces of lives, families, and psyches back together again in a way that resembles making scrambled eggs from Humpty Dumpty.
The main character, Frank Castle, has been a special forces soldier with a talent for violence and a reasonable code of honor developed to combat unreasonable malevolence.
He has come home from war after having been a part of a covert, CIA assassination squad that has done terrible things, in fact, things more terrible than even the soldiers themselves realize.
The result being, somewhere along the way, a toxic secret has gotten out. Castle’s wife and two children are targeted and killed while Castle himself survives. He seeks to put himself back together like the King’s men attempt to do with Humpty Dumpty, through revenge, and killing the people who killed his family, and the people who were part of the plot behind it. Through two series he murders, assassinates, and otherwise exterminates bad guys, drug dealers, rogue agents, and others who have betrayed him in multiple ways.
But as mind-numbing and stomach-turning as the violence is, the story is about family. The family that Castle lost. And the family of the Edward Snowden-like character, Micro, who are still alive, but only because the NSA spook Micro is thought to be dead when he actually is alive and working against the same villains who killed Castle’s family.
And there are just enough scenes with family and guitar-playing moments of insight to convince us that Castle would’ve been a pretty great dad, if only he had been given the chance, thus amplifying the tragedy a hundred fold. Aha! There’s the unlikely link. The two things are both about the struggle to raise kids in a dark and dangerous world. I knew if I just twisted the puzzle pieces hard enough, I could make them fit together.
Ditty Bytcha who prefers to be called Fate is my number one son’s original character. He is a fighter wearing magic armor who loves to make things as an artificer (one who builds devices with magic). He eventually wants to cut his own arms off and replace them with mechanical ones. He is also quick to leap into the fray and is fairly deadly with his chosen weapons. He once made a crossbow that had explosive power enough to blast apart a ship and kill everyone on board, including the people he was trying to save. He is also a good leader and is always ready with a joke that can even make the Dungeon Master laugh.
Evidence There is a Living God
A humorist does well to remember that you should not joke about religion. God does have a sense of humor. But it is a sense of humor backed by the ever-present threat of being struck by lightning. And among religious types, a sense of humor is about as common as a nudist wandering into the midst of a porcupine convention just as the thistle-pigs begin arguing about whether or not God is actually a porcupine.
On the question of God and whether we actually have one, or whether he’s alive or not, we often turn to philosophers for insight. Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher with a hard to spell name. People often turn to him for evidence of god and the accompanying God-thoughts.
But it is entirely possible that Nietzsche did not get the absolute last word on the matter.
Nietzsche was a bit of a poozer when it comes to questions about God. He said that God is dead because the big guy in the sky didn’t seem to be active in the world. At least, not since Bible times.
And if we are supposed to believe that God Jehovah is real because he’s written down in a magic book that so very many people believe in, then why isn’t god Thor to be believed in anymore? He’s written down in some very old books too. And isn’t the story about how Thor almost drank the ocean dry on a bet just as impressive as Jehovah parting the Red Sea for Moses?
But Nietzsche wasn’t a complete and total poozer. He did have some wonderful things to say along with the klunky and hard-to-understand God stuff he said.
It takes a big mind in a big head to think of making the stars dance just by generating chaos-waves in your big old head. That’s the kind of big idea that could become a religion of its own… if Nietzsche wasn’t already dead, of course.
But I tend to believe there really is a living God. My sister posted an old picture of some of the reasons why on Facebook today.
My thing one, thing two, and thing three (in the baby carrier with her feet up) are all the reason I need to believe in miracles. Thing one was recently promoted to Corporal in the Marines. Thing Two has applied for a job at Walmart, and thing three will be a sophomore in high school this fall. Grandma Aldrich is in the middle between thing one and my sister’s girl. The little blond one on the left is my sister’s kid too. All of them are miracles in human form. Grandma Aldrich is gone now. She died not long after this picture was taken. But her life resonates through mine, and through me to my children and nieces and nephews also. I would not be me if it wasn’t for her.
So there is proof of a living God. Everything that exists cannot be erased from existence, even when it disappears from memory. So we are all eternal. We all have touched the stars… at least, in a metaphorical sense. And our bodies, science has proved, are made of star stuff in a literal sense. So it is not too much of a stretch to believe we can make the stars dance.
And if my quasi-religious joking around has God thinking about how to apply a good thunderbolt, well, I was making fun of Nietzsche… wasn’t I?
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Tagged as autobiography, friedrich nietzsche, having faith, making fun of Nietzsche, religion