Triadic Tales - The Failed Cleric - Short Story (Part One)

EDGES BEYOND Adam met the failed cleric because he got up the nerve to nod. It was not his habit to do so. He lived in the middle of the city next to a narrow park and streets cleared of cars. It afforded him a daily walk. He was not in a social phase. These walks were intensely personal. But when he saw Jim on the park bench, looking like Samuel Beckett, he nodded. 
Jim said hello as if he knew him.
Adam hesitated, then sat down. 
Within ten minutes, he discovered Jim to be a tourist, a resident of Des Moines and the operator of a shelter for battered women on a hill in the middle of that city. What brought Adam up short was Jim's final statement.
"I am," Jim said, "a failed cleric."
"We might be doubles," Adam said. "If there were such a thing. I too am a failed cleric." He laughed softly. Jim was expressionless.
There followed an hour of biographical talk. In both cases,the men had stumbled on the Creed. Jim said: "I could no longer embrace a faith so exclusive with such a record of inflicted harm." 
Adam said: "I am not Ivan, but I am a universalist." 
It was agreed that they would meet again and so it was that Adam found himself on a plane to Iowa the following Sunday morning.   In the center of Des Moines, there is indeed a hill and in the stone building at the top there was then a shelter for battered women.
"How did you get the money to fly out here?" Jim asked. 
"Thievery," Adam said. "Dylan calls it luck. But money from a family is nothing I earned. I know where it came from. My dad was skilled in assisting people with much more money than he had avoid taxes. I believe in taxes. Unless they create harm."
"You have collapsed six conundrums into a few sentences," Jim said. "I had nothing. I still have nothing."
Adam looked at the listless women and thought of a Sargent painting and then about sexual abuse and cringed inwardly, remembering his own brush with same.
"So we are failed clerics. And at least one of us is also a sinner."
"Huh. Huh." Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store



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Triadic Tales - The Conversation - Short Story (Part Three)

Triadic Tales - The Conversation - Short Story (Part Three) 
The next day Adam hesitated to go out. Something told him he might face something that he was not ready for. He knew all the lingo of the religion he rejected. About how fearsome it was to fall into the hands of the living God. Adam had no fear but one.- the possibility that he would find he was talking to himself. 
An inner sense of dissolution, like being the bank of a river, subject to being lopped off in chunks to dissolve in the current or, if the flow was warm and languid, to be slowly moved by a hesitant gravity to the bottom.
But finally he willed himself standing and pulled on the things he would need against the March cold.  These days when he went out he often repeated his mindfulness mantra:
Gently moving forward. 
It steadied him. Sometimes it carried him all the way to the street and out to Broadway where he would begin his half hour of communion with Abba.
The most powerful four lines of the twelve he had fashioned into the melody that played in his head were the middle ones:
Give us this day our daily bread  Forgive the wrongs that we have done As we forgive those who do wrong Lead us not into temptation
It was that act of forgiveness to all who do wrong that fastened Adam irrevocably to the very truth more denied than any other in the shattered culture where he lived.  It was not just the truth of forgiveness as the center of a viable philosophy of life. It was the reciprocal thing. The communal thing. The absolute and universal thing. This was the key to unlocking the freedom at the very center of each human being. 
We are forgiven only as we forgive, not just those whose memories hound us, not just those we know, but every  soul on the planet. We sit loose every day to everyone. We cut slack beyond belief or comprehension to every being on the planet.
Adam got lost in these thoughts. He was composing an essay in his head. The time went on. He repeated the whole prayer three times but he did not talk to Abba. The conversation did not take place today. 
But Adam knew that the conversation was secure. It wouldn't end. He wouldn't stop until he could take no more steps. 
He had never been one for broadcasting what was happening inside him. But some how, some way, he felt compelled to speak. He had given his days to an exploration and it had led here, to this simple daily round, a round any human being could do, simply walking and musing, reciting a prayer which, 
Adam believed, held every truth within it.
The conversation was secure. 
But the sharing of its power had hardly begun.     Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store 


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Triadic Tales - The Conversation - Short Story (Part Two)

Triadic Tales - The Conversation - Short Story (Part Two) PART ONE
Bitter winter in March. Global warming. Wars afoot. Contention galling. Hypocrisy rampant.
Adam kept to his routine. Going out each day. Rain, snow, sleet. Each day repeating three times, in five minute segments, the entire prayer that started -
Abba whose home in heaven is Hallowed and holy is your name Let your realm come your will be done Till earth and heaven are the same
He alternated  this twelve line prayer, his slight adaption of the original, with five minute segments of guidance. A half hour in all. Just a short walk. Today he conversed with Abba. Other days he listened.
"I must assume," Adam said. 
He stopped. He'd forgotten what he assumed. Something about speech. Stilted speech. He waited.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Abba," Adam answered.
"And do you know who Abba is?"
"Father. Friend. Lover. Jesus said to pray to you."
"Do you know who we are?"
"You and Jesus?"  
"People forget Jesus was about losers, failures, the doomed, no counts, dregs."
For several paces there was silence.
"Where is this going?" Adam said.
"To something we were talking about yesterday. The mystery. Heaven. Transformation. A side of Jesus few comprehend. He knew the simple patterns at the root all.  He knew the source of beauty. It was he who wrote the prayer."
"Does he live?"
"Of course. So do you. Many don't. Many are simply lost."
"I don't get it. You just said Jesus was for the doomed." 
"No one is deleted, to use something you understand," Abba said. "But people can grow or they can diminish. Your world has so macerated thought that it is hard to put it all together again. Suffice to say thought includes some attention to the role of you and everyone else in bringing about the transformation. That is the magic of the freedom of the whole thing."
Adam was cold. Yet he knew that he was back on the cusp of comprehension. "The whole thing," he repeated.
"Get inside," said the voice. "Get warm."  
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Why Triadic Philosophy Makes the Most Sense

DAWN
The more I delve into  academic languages and philosophies, the more convinced I am  that Triadic Philosophy makes the most sense. Here are three main reasons.
1.
We desperately need an agreed basis for thinking, one that transcends disciplines, is not dependent  on reductive theories and that accepts certain basic premises, explicitly the utility of an open triadic pattern. for the ethical and aesthetic  achievement of  pragmaticist results.
2.
Hitherto we have not had  a universal philosophy that explicitly declares a reasonable hierarchy for carrying out thought processes, subject to the caveats in 1 above.
3.
Triadic Philosophy is an open source mechanism for universal thought whose hierarchy embraces universality itself  in the Root Triad Reality Ethics Aesthetics
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You can follow the labels and use the search function to explore the merits of Triadic Philosophy. Two books of aphorisms are now out on Kindle. Please visit -
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Triadic Tales - The Conversation - Short Story (Part One)

THE RULE
Triadic Tales - The Conversation - Short Story (Part One) 
"So how were we talking then?" Adam asked. 
"Before we talked?"
"Right."
"It works like this. Every life is marked by the freedom to discover all that can be discovered. Some exercise it. Others do not. Everything is under everyone's nose."
Adam took these strolls every day. The doctor said it beat an apple. He walked back and forth, avoiding people who passed by at a fast clip. His pace and cadence varied, depending.
"So I had a sense," Adam continued.
"Let me tell you the access code, Adam. It's simple. Ask. Seek. Knock.  Abba. A universal key. Millions use it. Billions sense it. You know well enough who finds it. And why others do not."
Adam allowed five minutes for these and other guidances, alternating with five for the prayer. Six segments in all. He took in what had been said. 
"OK," he answered. "When I looked for you in the eyes of strangers as a kid -- "
"You were on the right track. It took you a long time to see, or rather to act on, how simple it all could be."
"It renders all our language absurd."
"Well, stand back, Adam. You talk. You hear a voice. Who are you talking to?"
"I name you."
"Of course, just as millions of others do. But who is this Abba  you name?"
"The voice of reality beyond me."
"Yes. But what if I said it's your higher self? You are no stranger to that vernacular. What if I said it was you talking to you?"
"You are not my higher self," Adam said.
"No, I am not. But you see beyond me to the edges of how things actually are.  You always did but you lacked the power to go with your sense of things."
"I could talk to you about that," said Adam. "At least how I see it now. And experience it. It's different than talking to you. But not entirely."
"I think we have finished for today, Adam."
"Onward," said Adam.
Panflick went back the prayer. The last four lines. Simple. Profound. Desert Island.
Deliver us from evil, Lord. And guide us safely to your shore. Yours is the power to heal and mend. Yours is the glory evermore. 
He walked slowly to the back entrance of his building. 
Someone was entering. Adam hastened to get in before the heavy metal door shut. The guy saw him. Yelled sorry. Pushed the door back open hard.
Adam was glad his head wasn't taken off. And he knew that if there was providence, it was unfathomable, even with what he experienced.
"Thank you," he said as the man disappeared through an inner door.
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Triadic Tales - The Ball - Short Story (Part Three)

Triadic Tales - The Ball - Short Story (Part Three) PART TWO PART ONE
TEN YEARS LATER  
Alice and her mother now live in a cyber community in Metropolis. Metropolis fills almost all of Reality.
Alice is thirteen, She has completed her tests. She  reads philosophy.  She has a girl friend.
Alice's mother is different these days.  She's svelte. Her lusts are not obvious.  She has no lasting resentments. And the  Daily Discipline she scorned is now a cornerstone.
On earth as in heaven.
She knows about gently moving forward. She knows how to make instant decisions. She gives time to herself.
Alice is still a handful. She's choosy.  She's fresh. She's unpredictable. And very, very smart.

The ball Alice called "icky"  has a prime place at the Reality Research Center. Among more than a hundred such balls. each once an inhabited planet - Alice's is now the most revered.
The Research Center is a community like every other in Reality.  Alice ascends its gentle ways. She passes entrances of homes and kiosks, schools and squares.  After years of refusal, she has come here to see her ball.
A woman sits at a desk.  Twenty feet beyond, Alice  sees the ball resting on velvet, behind glass. 
Her eyes identify her. "Hello Alice, welcome," says the woman.
Alice looks past her. "Why was this such a big deal?" she says.  
"It's one of the oldest. It almost succeeded. They were starting to end wars."
Alice walked  toward the glass.  She wanted to touch the ball. 
"What else?" she asked.
The woman stood and walked toward Alice. 
"They were starting to accept death," she said. "Fighting less. They looked inside themselves. Cut themselves more slack. They were on their way to being where we're going."
Alice nodded.  The ball seemed to emit a translucent ray that enveloped her hand and moved through her body. Something inside Alice spoke her name. She heard with crystal clarity. 
Later, at home, she was unusually silent. 
"What are you doing?" her mother asked,
"Nothing," Alice said with an open smile.      Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store  



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A Note on Peirce's Way of Wisdom Sent to the Peirce List

A Note on Peirce's Way of Wisdom  Sent to the Peirce List
On page 250 of  Kenneth Laine Ketner's  A Thief of Peirce  begins a remarkable short essay  on the importance of  religion for Peirce.  Ketner says,  "Perhaps we we should refer  to his whole output  as being a way of wisdom."  I have, instinctively,  from my background  in theology and  radical criticism of Christianity,  assumed this  from the beginning  of my recent exposure to CSP.  Anyone interested  in how I have parsed this  can find bits and pieces  on my blog.  This is the best gateway:  Search results for Triadic Philosophy  http://buff.ly/Yq5sYQ  or in two short Kindle Books at Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store 

Ketner's book features Walker Percy 

who was a good friend of 

my 40 year colleague and friend 

Will Campbell 

who would probably pass muster 

as a person after CSP's own heart.

Best, S

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