Where We Find Ourselves: Portrait of a Modern Infidel - Softcover

Risk, R. Thomas Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1463420935 ISBN 13: 9781463420932

Verlag: AuthorHouse, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

On Christmas Day, 6-year-old Randolph runs into the family room and cries, “Daddy!” Two men – William and Cyrus – answer his call. In his quest to unravel the mystery of two fathers, which leads to a reunion with his birth mother and the exposure of grim secrets William tried to bury half a century ago, Randolph rediscovers himself. Thirty-three years after that ominous Christmas Day, as William tries to atone from his deathbed for a lifetime of deceit, Randolph realizes that he has solved a far greater question: Does God exist? The practical implications of his answer will astonish you.

Where We Find Ourselves is a true story, told by one of those rare individuals in whom the old world and the new coalesce. In this tale of betrayal and liberation, R. Thomas Risk enlists the analytical skills of a lawyer, the savvy of an investigator and the eloquence of an award-winning poet to forever change your perception of society’s sacred institutions – the three most insidious of which are Religion, Celebrity and National Politics … a positively unholy trinity.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Randolph Thomas Risk was born in 1965 asking Why. He died in 1987 convinced that he knew Why. He was resurrected early in the new millennium, having discovered that Why has no answer.

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Where We Find Ourselves

Portrait of a Modern InfidelBy R. Thomas Risk

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 R. Thomas Risk, J.D., M.A.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-2093-2

Contents

Opening Statement.......................................................................1The Evidence: Sins of Our Fathers.......................................................9Chapter One Chase the Pain.............................................................11Chapter Two Too Much Room at the Inn–1965........................................18Chapter Three Thou Shalt Not Covetthy Neighbor's Wife..................................43Chapter Four Sweet Serendipity.........................................................59Chapter Five The Betrayal..............................................................70Chapter Six Honour Thy Father..........................................................82Chapter Seven Whispers from the Wilderness.............................................95Chapter Eight And the Truth Shall Set You Free.........................................104Closing Argument: The Modern Infidel—Renaissance of Integrity.....................121Dear Son................................................................................122Statistics—the Innocuous vs. the Insidious........................................124The System..............................................................................130The Developmental Dungeon...............................................................132On Your Parole to the Real World........................................................139The Juggernaut..........................................................................141Religion................................................................................141My Battle with Existential Schizophrenia................................................143Modern Atheism—Not Your Grandfather's Paradigm....................................162The Essential Characteristics of the Atheist Worldview..................................172The Mind as Body........................................................................172The Peculiar Parlance of Idiots and sociopaths..........................................175The Contract of Doom....................................................................178The Canine Conundrum....................................................................184Celebrity...............................................................................188National Politics.......................................................................192Atheism and Political Branding—the Devil Is in the Definition.....................207Conservatism Doesn't Know Whether it's Coming or Going..................................214So What Does It All Mean?...............................................................229Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It............................................233Postscript..............................................................................237

Chapter One

Chase the Pain

October 14, 2004

Fall in Oklahoma is a lot like the women of my past. In September a front blows through and the leaves turn, promising a welcome respite from the insane heat of August. Just as suddenly, an Indian summer creeps back from the south, shattering my hopes for reprieve.

On Saturday, September 11, my father was admitted to Mercy Hospital with severe back pain. He and his doctors surmised he had just slipped a disc playing golf and would be on his feet in a few days. With the biggest trial of my career set to commence that Monday, I devoted the weekend to witness preparation. Having heard nothing more from him or the hospital, I have assumed the best.

At 11:00 I stroll down to the lobby for a sandwich. By 11:20, I've finished perhaps two thirds of it when the receptionist buzzes to tell me my cousin, Rick, is calling. Before I have a chance to take the call, my cell phone rings. It's my sister, Cheri. Not only is Dad still in the hospital; he has been moved to the ICU with renal failure. His white blood cell count is over 6,000. I don't know a white blood cell count from a sperm count, let alone how many of either a man should have. But the terms renal failure and ICU are all I need to hear to know we're dealing with something far more serious than a slipped disc.

I've spoken to my father only once in three years. As my faithful pickup and I roar down the highway, I search for a feeling. All I can find is fear. When your dad is a doctor, you see a lot of sickness. But your dad is immune. He is the hero, patting tremulous hands and reassuring frightened faces. I don't want to see him on the other side of those hypoallergenic sheets. At the hospital, I push through the gargantuan ICU doors. As I near his room, I can hear him hiccupping loudly and painfully. Rick stands at his bedside. The nurse informs me he has come down with an infection known casually by the acronym MRSA. Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus is one of those new, antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cropped up in the late 1990s. When a patient has such a virulent infection, every visitor must wash his hands and don surgical gloves on entry, then wash his hands again on exit, not so much for his own protection (MRSA is not an airborne germ) but so the contagion won't spread to the other patients in the ICU, whose immune systems are already compromised.

As I wash up at the lavatory just inside the door, I catch my first glimpse of Dad. Unshaven, with his white hair growing out from beneath the desultory store-bought coloring, his eyes are clinched in pain. Periodically, he mumbles unintelligibly. Occasionally, he grasps at something invisible, then punches the air with his index finger as if to dial an imaginary telephone.

"Need to get ... man's x-ray."

"It's all right, Dad. I'll take care of it."

" ... mfsdiofiahjoghif demon man ..."

Rick looks at me. "Did he say demon?"

"I'm sure he was talking about me."

The nurse shoos us away so she can bathe him and draw some blood. Rick and I stroll to the waiting room to indulge in its perpetual supply of free coffee, where Cheri awaits. While she makes small talk with Rick, I draw a checklist in my head and begin to populate it with names of people I should contact. Then it hits me like a runaway bus—just months ago, I agreed to be Dad's proxy in a Power of Attorney for his wife, Verna.

Verna had been suffering from Alzheimer's for a few years. By then, it was so advanced that he was going to have to put her in a nursing home, but she had neglected to prepare an Advance Directive or any other estate planning documents. As though the events that had estranged us had never occurred, he asked me to draw up the papers. Ever the dutiful, guilt-ridden son, I complied. As it turns out, he didn't just put her up in any old nursing home. Dad's been shelling out three-grand a month for a geriatric Waldorf-Astoria. If my prediction of years ago proves correct, I'll be lucky to find that Dad has two dimes left to his name, so I will have to move her to a more affordable facility.

Cheri is ready now. We go back through the big doors, don our surgical gloves and reintroduce ourselves to the echo of a man who hasn't recognized anyone all afternoon. Every time he moans I think, I won't die this way. I'll take matters into my own hands long before I get this...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: AuthorHouse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1463420935
• ISBN 13: 9781463420932
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 266
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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