14 May 1958

14 May 1958

This morning I felt faint on the toilet seat. Fear gripped me and I got so damn mad! I reread my 5/5/58 notes again and regardless of Blanche and a bunch of the worst kind of Christian prattling about be Job! Accept your suffering and sorrows, and all that kind of bullshit – I think this kind of “Christian” thinking stinks!! It is one of the worst aspects of Christianity. Mrs. Brack died of it. Mrs. Mahorcic suffers an aching finger of it. Such foolishness!! Such foolishness!! This suffering sweetly.

To hell with that kind of business!!

Christianity was unique in that Christ was a militant person; he threw the money changers out of the temple. He didn’t sit sweetly and patiently while people starved – he – how was it – changed the water to wine – conjured up bread and fish and fed the multitude.

Ben Williams gave me “The People’s Life of Christ” which indicates the militant Christ – not an oily mouth pre-Christ concept of ‘accept your pain and sorrow.’ No sir!! He says: Fight your troubles!! Don’t sit and wait for the ax to fall. I have also read somewhere about a doctor who treated death is an enemy. I believe this was in the “Story of San Michelle”.

Dammit!! If people don’t fight for fairness, if they don’t fight to conquer disease, if they don’t fight hunger and pestilence and injustice – the whole concept of the positive, militant value of the Christ personality goes down the drain!! He might just as well never have existed.

Somehow, I feel too many expedient sons-of-bitches have twisted the essence out of the new concept of philosophical thought brought into the world through the Christ story, so they may pervert the militant aspect of positive thinking and return to the slave ideas preceding the Christ story thinking. Maybe that’s the whole trouble with this world of ours. When the clock is turned back to the suffer and accept idea of the Old Testament humans become putty in the hands of thousands of manipulators who exploit the “keep them dumb and under our thumb” kind of thinking. This sort of thing is so aptly described in “Stranger and Alone” in connection with the negro problem, where the elite negro, in with the white man, strives to keep his own people down because he hates his own kind and wants to be fancier and more important himself.

Now! To try to poop again!!

. . . A few minutes later. . .

So, I pooped, and I was so mad over this fear of pooping. I must have rushed some adrenaline through my system. Instead of being faint again, I was just fighting mad and the adrenaline kept me sharp and alert, instead of faint and ready to collapse on the bathroom floor.

Boy! If anything proves my theory about Christian militancy – this does!! And confirms my notes of 5/5/58 when I say “nature, (the creative force) can be devastating, cruel, ruthless, pain inflicting and destructive” . . . Surcease (from the cruelty and hardness of creation and natural forces) comes only from resting the secrets out of nature. . . battling (the creative force). . . and striving to make genuine pain, agony, suffering, and injustice more bearable on earth. The petty little materialists who are influenced by local fashion a la “The Hidden Persuaders” – those who quibble over silly materialism, . . . people whose only ambition is to live in “Euclid” and not associate with the cruddy slum dwellers of “Cleveland”.

Such silly false values, I have very little patience with . . . One just has to learn to get angry over the right things.