{"id":966,"date":"2026-02-17T10:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/?p=966"},"modified":"2026-03-29T06:16:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:16:56","slug":"r-i-p-tom-robbins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/2026\/02\/17\/r-i-p-tom-robbins\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Tom Robbins"},"content":{"rendered":"

BACK TO HOMEPAGE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

     It’s just a few days past the one year anniversary of Tom Robbins’ move through The Veil to The Other Side (2.9.2025). That said . . . ERLEICHDA! (Lighten Up! from Tom’s novel, Jitterbug Perfume<\/em>.)
\n     Here’s a link to a page where this notion is considered in depth, via quotes and links to some of Tom’s writing on the matter: ERLEICHDA!<\/a><\/p>\n

     Here’s one of the best bits from that page:<\/p>\n

The Soul<\/strong><\/p>\n

     If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It’s a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.
\n     To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.
\n     Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing.
\n     But say you’ve inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it’s soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure.
\n     More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn’t get any better than that. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BACK TO HOMEPAGE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BACK TO HOMEPAGE        It’s just a few days past the one year anniversary of Tom Robbins’ move through The Veil to The Other Side (2.9.2025). That said . . . ERLEICHDA! (Lighten Up! from Tom’s novel, Jitterbug Perfume.)      Here’s a link to a page where this notion is considered in depth, via quotes and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-church-bulletin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechurchofbuvu.org\/PortTownsend\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}