Optimal vs Ideal - Marriage is Not Disingenuous Enough for Gays

This is an essay I wrote a while back. The topic was divisive at the time (to say the least) and every time I bring it up, I usually lose a portion of my readers. The times since I wrote this have become far stranger and the terms seem even more archaic than they were five years ago. It is probably about time to alienate some folks. I just didn't want to do it too early and have readers think that this is my subject for the whole website. It is something I am happy to be passionate about, but certainly not the only thing. I wanted to get it said and frankly out of the way at this point, to reduce confusion about how I feel about such things. For those of you that will walk away, I accept your strident emotional and philosophical immaturity...

Let's begin with the concept of "ideal" and how that relates to marriage, something most of us will involve ourselves in for most of our lives, if we have a desire to obtain a greater portion of joy and happiness in our lives.

I think it is a no-brainer that to have both a man and a women enter their marriage with their chastity intact is "ideal". In a union that requires loyalty and devotion, it is so much better to have no skeletons in the closet, no embarrassing old fling to make a visit, no previous commitment or children that this new union really can never truly share. If nothing else, such a marriage has a better than average chance of being successful, just by not being "complicated".

Although I know that it is quite svelt to tear the Ten Commandments out of courthouse yards, I will make an appeal to old custom and the Bible, where you were supposed to leave your parents and cleave to your wife. That sounds like loyalty to me, even beyond your life-long ties to those who gave you birth. God seemed pretty wierd about being a virgin at the marriage altar as well, and even kindly Christ gave the idea extra umph by saying that if you even looked at another woman with ideas in your head, you were being disloyal to your wife. Called it "adultery", even.

Just think of the marriage every young woman wants and how tainted it gets if groom or bride had previously fielded their "wild oats". Even in these incredibly permissive times, everyone knows (and may actually admit) that this marriage is sad compared to what could have been. Obviously, in spite of the best efforts of mass-media and moral relativists, everyone understands when an ideal marriage is not happening, and no amount of white dresses, mounds of flowers, and smiling clergy can repair the obvious damage.

The great part is that ideal marriages are happening all the time! Even today, in the age of "everyone is doing it", there are still young people who "kept themselves" and present themselves unused to their new spouses, ready to give everything they have (and they still have everything to give) to their marriage and their future family together. My wedding involved two such people, as did my parents' and my wife's parents'. Such a thing is still very normal and expected within my culture, though I am sad to say that the rest of society somehow decided otherwise.

As a world, we have seriously deflated what our expectation of marriage should be. These days, many marriages are attended by the children of those getting married, often children with a father or mother who is not standing at the altar. Progressive couples may even invite former spouses or old flames, as if this is some freak-show mega-family being sewed together like body parts on Frankenstein's monster. What a wonderful jumble of mixed emotions on a day that people have supposedly waited for all their lives! The funny part is that everyone is supposed to smile and sigh with wonder just as if this were not the fourth spouse (or practical spouse) for everyone involved, behaving just as if this was an ideal marriage.

Now, I don't want to be accused of not being forgiving. My own parents divorced in my childhood and my father married a very nice lady, who was also a divorcee. Everybody had tons of baggage to bring to the union and there has been plenty of troubles caused by his, hers, and theirs. With patience, they have perservered, hopefully because nobody could expect anyone's full loyalty and devotion. No new family was being formed here, just a lonely man and woman who decided to love and care for each other and devote what they could to each other. Was it ideal? Of course not. But everyone wanted these two people to have another chance, even if there wasn't much of the ideal marriage stuff to bring to the table.

I have often wondered if it would be useful to call subsequent unions something other than marriage. As a person that avoids the whole idea of a "blended" family (I already have a family, albeit broken, thank you very much), I would really welcome some different terms to describe varying sorts of joining. My marriage is very different from my father's second marriage and as such, it is probably deserving of a different name to describe it. Where my wife and I having children was assumed and looked forward to with joy and anticipation by all, my father and his new wife, though still in their thirties when they married, wisely did not have more children. When you already have a family, even a broken one, a good man or woman feels the need to consider the ramifications of their actions in the lives of their children from a former spouse, as well as how their new spouse may feel as a redundant appendage. Any child brought into this tangle of relationships would have likely feel alienated enough by various half-siblings, divided loyalties, and where they "fit in" if they manage to at all. I have never come up with a word or phrase that I thought would adequately describe the frustrating feelings of my father and his second wife; feelings of being wedded yet not being able to feel like everything is really "ours" together. In a phrase, it is significantly less than ideal.

The problem comes in that the entire concept of marriage and family gets damaged as lesser forms use and enjoy the same term. All of a sudden, a fifth marriage looking back on twelve kids from eight broken union attempts is just as good as a bright young couple looking forward to total family unity, all because their descriptor is the same. I use a word for the way this seems to me: disingenuous. If the young couple are entering a marriage, with all the exciting expectations the circumstance implies, how can the fifth-time-around couple, with barely any expectations that a pre-nuptial agreement hasn't already codified, enter into the same sort of "marriage"? The only thing I can think is that to call the fifth attempt a marriage is to be (wait for it) disingenuous. The whole ideal of marriage is blackened by those who enter one missing most of the expected attributes and expectations. It is like calling a pile of rusted metal with two flat tires on top a "car" and expecting get in and drive it somewhere.

Now, some interesting people are proposing that we expand the ideal of marriage even further. With shouts of "fairness", practitioners of sexual perversions, sometimes euphemistically calling themselves "homosexuals", now demand to have ceremonies with flowers and clergy, and, with their sex-mates, enjoy the full benefits of "marriage". If anybody thought a fifth marriage was a bit of a farce compared with the ideal, this idea takes the cake!

In the one preceding paragraph, I have offended the "gay" heart multiple times. Let me expand on a few statements and offend these people further.

First off, it is impossible to be "homosexual" as a state of being, so I suggest that people stop using the term. "Sexual pervert" is more historically correct and far more accurate. First, one cannot be "homosexual" from birth, as many have conceded, unless someone ends up going to jail for a very long time for having sex with infants. Also, "homosexuality" is put forth as a sexual preference, which means you would have needed to have several instances of sex with several different lifeforms of several different persuasions to have developed such a preference for one over another. Given the term itself and how it is attained, there cannot be any honestly "homosexual" people. At best, you could have decided, at some point, to settle on a certain flavor after a time of sexual hedonism.

And please, don't bother to bring up the term "heterosexual". That would be a classic case of justifying a concept by defining its (perhaps) more acceptable opposite. As the trap is defined, if you are not "homosexual", you must be "heterosexual", and in identifying one way, you give credence and respectability to the other. I can honestly say that I am neither a "homosexual" or a "heterosexual" and there is no evidence to label me as either. I have only had sex with one person: my wife. I have not compared the sex I have with my wife with the sex I had with other women (because I have not had sex with other women). I did not engage in exploratory sex with other genders/phylum/genus, so I cannot really say what preference I would have among them. Therefore, I cannot honestly be called "heterosexual" much less any other "orientation" label. In fact, there really isn't a term for my sexual preference, beside perhaps "loyal".

Now that I have deflated any sense of respectability that sexual perverts have tried to build up over the past few years, I feel like everyone is ready to take a good look at the sickening effort [now success] being made to shoehorn the act of plank-mates "pleasuring" themselves on each other into the ideal of marriage. Hopefully, when I discussed the two concepts in the same sentence a moment ago, you had that twist in your stomach that says that these two things don't belong together. Hang on to that feeling because I am going to intensify it. A lot.

Everyone understands that sex is an important component of marriage. It can strengthen the bond forged at the time of the wedding. It can bring children into the family that the wedding created. Well, it could if we were actually talking about a union between a man and a woman who are striving to become one. These things aren't going to happen in a perverse same-sex coupling, no matter how hard genetic science or government funding want to make things "fair".

We need to talk about the word "optimal". It sounds like "ideal" but it isn't. Optimal is "the best you can do", given circumstances. In marriage or anything else, not everyone can have the ideal, but everyone can have the optimal. For instance, my father couldn't be a "virgin" for his second wife, which would have been ideal. My father could be absolutely devoted to his second wife after their marriage, which is optimal for him, given his circumstances. In my case, the optimal circumstance I brought to the altar was sexual purity, which was "better" or "higher" than the optimal circumstance my father could bring to altar #2 and certainly closer to the "ideal". This is meant as no disrespect to Dad, as he brought everything he could offer to his second marriage, which is all he had and is worthy of honor. Because of my circumstances, my "everything" that I brought to my marriage included more "ideal marriage" things than his did (and could have). Keep the terms "ideal" and "optimal" deeply set in your mind as we explore how the "optimal" proposed gay "marriage" stacks up to the ideal marriage between a man and a woman.

As part of their sexual explorations, "gay" people have collected a group (sometimes a large group) of "partners", which are basically failed spouses if there will be "gay marriages". This train of old exploits is an expected part of discovering one's "gay-ness" and considered "healthy" and "good" by most sexual perverts and their supporters. Therefore, the "optimal" circumstance in relation to sexual purity for nearly all committed "gays" entering a relationship is "devoted to you from now on". Some people, because of the strong hormonal pull of sexual feelings, get seduced into their first sexual encounter without intending to ruin their virginity, which is sad and unfortunate, but is also quite forgivable and, especially if it doesn't result in children, need not destroy the possibility of a positive marriage because it was an isolated mistake. "Gays" cannot claim this, for their sexual exploits become a journey rather than a mistake. For "gays", sex does not follow and enhance marriage, as it is supposed to do in the ideal; sex typically precedes any real commitment, cheapening any future relationship, and is often used as a litmus test before anything more than a "one-night stand" is considered. Although some marriages (that need another and lower term to describe them) follow a "try before you buy" "shack-up", everyone acknowledges that this is very sub-optimal and statistics show that this often leads to distrust, heartache, depression, and divorce. This circumstance is however the "optimal" one for almost all "gay" relationships, meaning that the best "gays" can do is roughly compatible to among the worst that traditional marriages can do.

I must say here that some "gays" justify the concept of "gay marriage" by comparing them to extremely sub-optimal marriages. "At least we love each other, which is more than I can say for those married people!" In subjective aspects such as love, this may very well be true, but each individual case will be different. Let us continue with more objective criteria for our comparison.

In an ideal marriage, a family is created. Through sex, children are created by this marriage, which is very ennobling for everyone concerned. Parents "grow up" and become more responsible and children are born into a stable and nuturing environment leading to the next generation of responsible adults. Of course, this is the ideal again and many families fall short of this. However, most nations and governments acknowledge that marriage-led families, on average, produce more and better adults than any other institution, such as orphanages, adoptive homes, and foster homes. In comparison, though, committed "gay" couplings cannot form such families and begin the relationship, again at the most "optimal", with a marked disadvantage of artificiality.

Now, "gays" can simulate a family, which I think is part of their push for "gay marriage". Children can be adopted or fostered, or brought from other relationships where one partner or another "slipped" from a committed "gay" lifestyle and had sex with someone of the opposite gender, among other possible perverse maneuvers. Before I introduced "gay-ness" to this essay, I described these sorts of "his, hers, and ours" circumstances and how inferior they can be when compared with the bright, young, "virgin" couple that is the ideal. Again, this is another case where the "optimal" thing a "gay" person can bring to the table in the way of family is comparable to among the lowest definition of marriage.

My wife told me a story the other day, as I was talking about this essay with her. She had heard a report of a "gay" coupling (men in this case) that wanted children. Knowing that nature only allowed one spermatozoa to combine with one egg, they arranged for an interesting solution made possible by recent science and tremendous infusions of money. With the sperm taken from each man, two donated eggs would be fertilized. A willing surrogate was procured and both eggs were implanted and carried to term. "Twins" were born and the "gay" partners took home "their" children, but not really.

The seemingly warm and cuddly human interest story ended there, but I started thinking forward. As those children grow, it will become likely obvious which child belongs to which father. If they are honest, the "gay" dads will explain the circumstances of conception and birth with the kids, revealing that the there is no biological tie between the siblings and that they are only really the true child of one of their "fathers". The natural inclination of almost all children is to 1) affiliate more with their natural dad when inevitable conflicts arise, and 2) to seek out their biological mother and try to connect with her. These two realities, which come up with almost perfect clockwork in those tween years, can cause terrible havoc in any situation. Ideal marriages handle these needs easily - natural father and mother are right there, already bound together and united both with each other and with their biological child in a unified family. The "gay" conglomeration has so many points against it, even in this particularly "enhanced" situation, that these needs of the child can often causes a serious rift, as it is easier to sever the manufactured "gay" coupling than it is to interfere with the very real bond between a biological father and his child. Where a proper marriage will tend to pull together because of their common bond in the face of most challenges, the simulated yet increasingly conflicted "gay" "family" will tend to come apart in favor of more authentic and natural ties. It may be painful for "gay" advocates to admit, but blood really is thicker than water.

I could go on, but I see no need to provide further examples of how a "gay marriage", even at its absolute best, is so tragically and purposefully inferior to the ideal marriage. In an age where many people feel that "gays" are more in touch with their feelings and far more sensitive and caring than others, given their downtrodden status, I strongly charge the sexual perversion community with heartless cruelty to themselves and to everyone touched by their perversion. What "kindly" person would militantly demand that intelligent adults enter into purposefully sub-optimal commitments and then possibly drag in innocent children for the sole purpose of playing a childish game of "house" that only honors political opportunists? We already know the answer to this question: perverts (and not just the sexual variety).

After thrusting a sword into the hearts of "gays" and twisting their irresponsible yet cherished beliefs a bit, let me offer some hope. Not just a tiny sunbeam of hope, but "bright sunshine on a clear day" kind of hope. Wherever you are and whatever you have done in the past, you, like everyone else that wants happiness and to give more happiness to someone you love, can have a more "optimal" relationship, bound together by age-old custom and better approaching the ideal of marriage.

If you have considered yourself "gay", you can simply put that aside and move on to a much brighter set of possibilities! Every ideally married couple will tell you that, although sex is an essential part of their relationship, it does not define them or their marriage. How you have chosen to have sex in the past does not demand how you must have it in the future. You can have sex that is more natural and infinitely more productive and you can still marry someone of that "other" gender to enjoy such sex as part of a much more fine and more rich relationship than you may have ever known before. Just as you chose your current "partner" from the field of available "same-gendered" people around you, you can chose to look for the person you can marry among the "differently-gendered". You can have far, far more than the selfish and self-serving "gay" community offers you and, if your supposedly enlightened "gay" friends are any friends at all, they should cheer your striving for the "optimal" -- the best you can possibly do and be!

So, instead of fighting political and judicial battles to legitimize a bad facsimile of the marriage ideal, why not simply abandon the un-useful labels that defined you in the past and "go for the gold"? You, your future spouse, and possibly your future natural children will be very glad you did!

...before the morning he is not.

Just because God is punishing Israel for covenant abandonment, it doesn't mean the conquerors are "good guys" in God's eyes.

Isaiah 17:14

14 And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.

Great things are not happening just because something like Babylon is destroying Judea. It isn't like the Lord got a new friend. They are "not" for spoiling the children of Israel, suffering the consequences for oppressing God's people. 

Jews are being punished for turning from the Lord, who is really being a judge to all, punishing one for their sins and punishing another for their sins. The Lord doesn't change favorites nor does he walk away from covenants - the Jews are the covenant people and their inattention to their promises will be punished. 

Milk vs Pablum: Which leads to the Meat?

I perceive a troubling trend in religiosity, the fact that too many Christians prefer their religion to be overly simplistic and maternal, and expectations to be forever infantilized. I think this comes from a misinterpreted scripture.

1 Corinthians 3:2

I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

This is a snippet from a much larger citation that was meant to explain why Paul didn't "go deep" in Christ's teachings with the newly Christianized people in Corinth - He taught basic principles first because that was all they could handle at the time.

Incorrectly, many modern Christians have re-translated this idea as an eternal infancy where Christ and his Gospel is simplified into some watered-down milk and matured adult followers of Christ should be satisfied with such a insubstantial religious diet. "Milk before meat" where, for many sincere seekers, the real sustaining meat rarely comes from modern churches.

It reminds me of one description of Pablum, the old infant cereal:

Pablum

Something overly bland, simplistic, especially speech or writing

When I read this, I think mostly of "pre-digested". The baby food industry plows away at making nutrition easily bottled and "slid down the gullet" effortlessly. There are even packaged tubes of "easy food" so that older children (perhaps even adults) don't have to endure chewing and can simply suck down ground-up nutrients from some factory. Yet, there are voices that decry this pre-digestion trend and that post-infant humans are not designed or meant to suck food out of toothpaste tubes.

We are witnessing a similar infantilization of public education - pre-canned and packaged for the ease of both teacher and student and the profit of industry. The act of acquiring and using skills and knowledge has been reduced to staring at screens and taking easy-to-grade multiple-choice tests. The literature is screaming to anyone that will listen that such "pre-digested" education is less-than-inadequate and even the machine-graded tests are making the poor schooling plain to see.

Following in the footsteps of a failed system of Pablum, Christianity itself is being run through a mindless factory where the Gospel of Jesus Christ is crushed through a tight sieve, filtering out any challenging or demanding concepts or effort, mixing in some re-interpreted scripture passages like so many crushed-up vitamin pills, and presenting a constant watery gush of "Jesus" slurry that goes down easily for spiritual toddlers.  Your typical church may only serve up religious Pablum, the sanitized bible stories and easy-to-swallow morals of huggy-Jesus and some "unconditional love" that we used to reserve for naturally-ignorant children, now offered to religiously anemic adults as the whole Gospel.

No wonder so many people, especially young adults, abandon Pablum-saturated religions and turn to other sources in hope of spiritual fulfillment, despairing that there always will be large empty spaces in their souls that slide into social and physical vandalism of all kinds and often prisons of mental illness or physical degeneracy. Pre-digested Bible-babel is literally an existential sham, where deeper meaning and fulfillment is substituted with a baby-jesus who cannot possibly "save".

The scripture about "milk" actually describes a religious infancy, from which we are to develop into maturity. The days of being spoon-fed bible stories by mothering nursery-teachers must graduate quickly into each individual person accessing scriptures themselves, studying what God, Christ, prophets, and apostles actually say, unvarnished by the opinions or "watering-down" of translators. Ultimately, we should go to God directly, praying for clarification and answers for ourselves, listening for the Spirit of God to tell us what is true. That is the "meat" that Paul was referring to - not being a follower of one preacher or another, but getting the truth of the matter from Christ himself through spiritual confirmations to our own spiritual struggling.

Satisfactory mature answers will NOT come through some milky Kindergarten Pablum curriculum alone. We need to actually *chew* on these transcendentally meaningful things.   

"...an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations."

I have read of the priesthood of Aaron and its continuation in the service of God to the children of Israel. This priesthood and its priestly office was given to Moses' brother Aaron and his sons using terms such as "everlasting", "for ever" twice, and again "everlasting". The priest's charge of "atonement" to Israel was propagated through Aaron's sons and grandsons, "throughout their generations", by "anointing", "statute for ever" and by "covenant" thrice - "the covenant of an everlasting priesthood", as follows: 

Exodus 40:13-16

13 And thou shalt put upon Aaron the holy garments, and anoint him, and sanctify him; that he may minister unto me in the priest’s office.

14 And thou shalt bring his sons, and clothe them with coats:

15 And thou shalt anoint them, as thou didst anoint their father, that they may minister unto me in the priest’s office: for their anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations.

16 Thus did Moses: according to all that the Lord commanded him, so did he.

Numbers 18:19

19 All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto the Lord, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a statute for ever: it is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee.

Numbers 25:10-13

10 ¶ And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

11 Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy.

12 Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace:

13 And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel.

Modern Jewry has put aside the priests of the Lord. Most have used New Testament verses to flush the idea of the Old Testament priesthood away as finally as it can be done.

As a male-line descendant of the biblical Aaron, I have a connection to the priestly caste of the Israelite nation, set up by God through Moses to bring his covenant people to his worship.

I am heartened by this scripture from the Lord in modern times. The Aaronic priesthood is reconfirmed alongside the higher Melchizedek priesthood.

Doctrine and Covenants 84:18

18 And the Lord confirmed a priesthood also upon Aaron and his seed, throughout all their generations, which priesthood also continueth and abideth forever with the priesthood which is after the holiest order of God.

Continuation through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There is scarce insight into its role after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, but added instructions from the Lord could clarify.

"...hasting righteousness."

Isaiah is describing what he sees Christ and his servants doing in the future. I think.

Isaiah 16:5

5 And in mercy shall the throne be established: and he shall sit upon it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging, and seeking judgment, and hasting righteousness. 

Christ will be the Judge and putting his people in place as under-judges (one man can't do it all!) in circumstances reminiscent of the government in the Book of Mormon and in the Old Testament book of Judges.

Then there is this phrase about "hasting righteousness". This is could cover the range of promulgating scripture and prophets that preach righteousness, all the way to eliminating unrighteousness (people). It is said there will be a burning of chaff, which is emblematic of this elimination of bad folk (a much larger group than many are ready to acknowledge).

Isaiah sees this process going faster into the future. It is interesting to think about how this vision is describing the present situation. It doesn't sound lackadaisical and letting wickedness act as it has done in the past, basically "I can get away with evil for a long time with impunity". It sounds like this won't happen so readily as it had previously. Righteousness is coming and it is coming quickly.

Who Is Driving Your Car?

In a previous post, we talked about the proclivity of some to surrender control of their lives. As mentioned in the Psychic Proximity Principle, there is something I like to call "weak magnetism" provided by God that gently guides you toward your best potential. The interesting part is that you always have to make a conscious choice to follow that slight intuition - it isn't of sufficient strength to actually run your life. The spirit of God cannot force you to do anything - it can only gently point out the next step forward when we are paying it some attention.

Let's explore an analogy...

It was both a scary and exhilarating day when I got behind the steering wheel of a car.  What a powerful thing. I could now go faster and farther than ever before!  My range was greatly extended from what I could realistically travel on foot or on a bike on any given day.  On the flip side, my ability to do great harm to others (and myself) and damage to trees and buildings among other things was also broadly enhanced. "With great power comes great responsibility" someone like Spiderman's uncle would say about those who operate motor vehicles!

Life is a pretty important thing, best not left to chance. There are plenty of forces that are very willing to push or pull you in any number of directions and if you don't exercise your own will in your own life, there is no telling where you will end up but it will probably involve a "gutter". The great test of this life is how you choose (or choose not) to control it. Imagine if you just let go of the steering wheel of a car and step on the accelerator...

Sometimes, it might be better if you let someone else drive for a while, especially if you are steering toward a cliff. You don't want someone else to be in the driver's seat forever (it is YOUR life), but if the road is particularly dangerous or unknown to you, or it is late at night and you are very tired, it is great to have a fresh and experienced "relief" driver so you don't get yourself killed.

We are mostly weak by nature. It is a practical necessity to attach ourselves to others as guides and sounding boards for our ideas, plans and actions. That is why family is so important, where we have parents, grandparents, and others who have our best interest at heart and provide us with some of the maturity and experience that we lack. We might choose for a time to let the advice of others rule our actions through rocky times, but no one else besides you bears responsibility for what happens to you.

More important, we should not live life alone. We need the deep partnership that marriage was intended to be. In things of such importance, you should accept no cheap substitutes.

Of course, the greatest guide in the meaningful life is God. My advice is always to find more effective means to approach him and get his quiet advice.  I suggest an exploration of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which God established to help us along life's path.

Who do you take advice from?  As a "driver", who would be the best "GPS" system to rely upon? The choice could spell the difference between a rather pointless existence or a life full of meaning and happiness!

I have finally finished my high-school study-hall writing project

I began writing fiction when I was a boy living on my family ranch north of Clovis, New Mexico. I started out writing long-hand and used up so many erasers and blackened the side of my palm so many times. I eventually got into home-made computers, just because I couldn't afford a word processor (the era's premier writing tool) as a teen, and I needed a better way to write in spite of my poor spelling and constant need to make annoying corrections. I ended up as a "computer guy" only because recycled computers and open-source software served as my writing and publishing tools and I got decent at their use.

It became obvious very early in my marriage and our child-rearing that there was no prospect of making my style of writing a paying venture. Although one of my short stories has been published in a literary anthology and a collection of my stories was considered once by a Christian publisher of note, I had to work a seemingly endless string of "day jobs" to feed the family and justify my writing/publishing computers and time. If people think I have a "successful" "career" in information technology O&M management, it was actually only a distracting sideline to my un-remunerated spiritual journey in composition.

This book series is a result of my tedious school days and a mandatory study-hall period in my junior year of high school. There, I began writing the beginnings of what would become the Navigiary Rumination that I have just completed a few days ago.  I can't say that it was a constant labor - it was certainly done in fits and spurts - but I found it was an obsession for the first 59 years of my life. I certainly am not a successful (or particularly popular) writer in any sense, pursuing themes and concepts that are far from universally appealing and therefore completely unmarketable. What I can say is that this project is finally done, you can read it, and my life can move onto other things (if possible).

Navigiary consists of three books - Godsend (which is actually the final series book) finished in 1998, Escape (the first story of the series) finished in 2012, and now Prophecy (the middle book of the series) finished in 2026.