Passing Through the Eye of a Needle

by Carl Nelson (December 2025)

“I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ —Luke 18:25

Become Remarkable
For the shy Appalachian in us all.

Live alone long enough
and you become fascinating.
What is this glamour composed of?
I don’t know, but it slowly accrues.

Like hair and nails growing,
it slowly becomes remarkable.
Ordinary, then remarkable
that anyone could do it.

Become remarkable, that is.
Inch by inch, bit by bit, day by day,
drawing our notice
and then our attention
and finally our fascination.

To gain a following…
hermits, mystics, monks
all have this frightening pull.

Consider the withered legend,
in layered coats with walking stick,
who would tread the five miles
into Ripley, West Virginia
and back
followed by her two dogs
and three cats.

The TV series my wife and I habitually watch are a chain of unsolvable dilemmas, in which our heroes contrive somehow to live another episode. It gets so emotionally taxing, that I yearn for the characters to be given just a bit of a breather at times, so that we all (characters and audience) might relax and bask in the moment, if for just a pause. But the opportunity doesn’t come. So the next best solution is to ‘click’ and to let the TV rest a second, while I get up to take a break.

It reminds me of how we all suit up and go out to battle the world each day, so that by evening’s time we can rest and enjoy home. It’s ironic that I spend many of my resting evenings watching this stuff, when my personal nature is rather conflict avoidance. I just want my convenience and peace.

And who among us can really rise to the mark. You must have a certain level of “special skills” to save just one daughter, as does Liam Neeson, from the flesh merchants in the Taken series. I haven’t any.

But I’ll tell you what also seems true.

I recall a movie, The Apostle, starring Robert Duvall as a fugitive preacher on the run for a baseball bat assault, and finding himself a flock in an out of the way rural pocket where he again begins to rebuild his calling. But his church soon runs short of money, and the bank’s bulldozer is firing up to remove his small frame parish church. Duvall tries to talk the driver out of it, to no avail. Finally, as the driver lowers the blade to push forward, Duvall lays a Bible down before of the diesel cat’s blade. The driver can’t proceed. Checkmate. Duvall’s parish church gains a respite.

It would seem that whereas there is no respite for the action hero, that you can’t “beat the devil,” (either in the TV world or life) there does exist rest from the world within a state of grace.

If we are to get any rest from the world, this would seem to be the task of Religion and Art, that is, to hover like a butterfly out of the cruel reach of an actual world: to reproduce a world where beauty rules and is both queen and protectorate, in an artistic (creative) state of grace. Beauty and faith being a balm so powerful as to heal the worst wounds, and to beat back the enemy by chewing it up, swallowing, and re-configuring. To go at life something like the poet Bukowski, where in the worst of all sorts of behaviors is fuel for one’s art, an occupational creation. Or something like the leading character Guido in the Italian movie Life is Beautiful, where Mussolini’s fascists become props for the fun. Even middle-brow TV streaming gives this sort of strategy a try here and there.

I study and try to emulate these heroes of powerlessness. It is often these offhand occurrences, which appear where least expected, that evolve to upset power.

Recently, I saw a short video of a mischievous monkey teasing two tiger cubs, dancing about in an overhead tree, then swinging by to give them a thump or pull at an ear. The speed and agility of the spidery fellow was amazing, and his sense of freedom intoxicating. I could tell. He reminded me a bit of the young Bob Dylan; always landing on his feet with a clever retort and a revelatory tonal pitch. He didn’t seem to need much to get by. Or Mohamed Ali, floating like a butterfly to sting like a bee. It’s a dream of release from the oppressive and fierce reaches of power.

I love tales in which the modest, common hero discovers his calm at the center of the hurricane, that “Abracadabra” moment. A world where we needn’t become some quick-reflexed, agile and skilled Ninja warrior, but rather to wander freely in and out of situations; making the world our oyster, while going where we please with full aplomb. Traditional fairy tales, star vulnerable youth in story structured around such happenings. Some simple beans gotten in a foolish deal for the family cow, grow by the moonlight and become a ladder to the clouds where a giant guards the gold. Or a ragged beggar befriended offers our hero odd objects which play their important role late as the key to the lock of a posed dilemma.

Though I’ve yet to crack and eat of this nut fully, (How long must this Buddha sit beneath his tree?), in my remarks above, I’ve shown that it has been done elsewhere.

You’ll see a bit of this power displayed in sales, in the unsuspected comeback (response) to the objection which turns the deal around. For example, recently our son, a new salesperson, had convinced the IT fellow of the worth of his copier purchase proposal, but he couldn’t get the anxious fellow to let him pitch it to his boss, who was the decision-maker. He’d rather my son just give him the proposal to pass along since the decision-maker was “very busy.” Knowing the decision-maker would likely also be “too busy” to give it a glance, our son sought my wife’s advice, as she is a retired copier salesperson herself. She said to tell the fellow that with a contract of this size, the President of his division had to meet with the decision-maker personally to discuss the proposal. This worked. It took risk and the need for a bold move off the IT fellow’s plate and was flattering to the decision-maker.

Grace seems to require an assertive quality of mind. Perhaps a display of unearthly confidence is as close as our powers extend to an earthly state of grace.

And what is confidence, but the appearance of controlling the situation. What did all the saints possess in lieu of anything but an extreme confidence in their position with God. That when Joshua blew, the walls would come down. Or that the Promised Land would be found, no matter how long one must wander in the wilderness. Extreme confidence creates a spell which enthralls; it’s the faith that can move a mountain. As in the leading poem of this essay, it is the extreme confidence with which the monk and the elderly woman lead their solitary endeavors which enthrall the watchers.

I was not born with (nor have I developed) an overweening sense of confidence. But I do have a great fascination with the power of a word, the bon mot as it were, to turn the tables.

A good riposte can do this. “No one likes a smart ass.” But why? (I learned in sales that when your extremely competitive colleagues displayed dislike—this could be a good sign.)

Artistic salons ran on this. Learning which prominent artists were to appear was like examining a fight card. Who were the contenders, and who were the troublemakers, wags, or the young Turks to get the pot bubbling? And who comprised the title bout, the lead on the main card who held the accolades, who would bring in the fawning fans? All those moths enthralled drawn by the intellectual lights. And how would the salon fertilize the situation to promote it? Good food, drink, sumptuous displays of the wealth that associates?

The psychotherapist Adler stated that: “”Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.” A good artistic scrap up could certainly elevate the social standing of a salon and its host. And lure in more contenders. My goodness, by holding forth with a drink in one’s mitt, the prevailing attitude towards a demographic, an artistic movement, or an entire country can be manipulated, with a ready enough file of facts, anecdotes and the supple wit to use them!

This notion of turning a situation on its head, so that the underdog lands on top, is akin to hypocrisy: “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform: pretenseme … from Greek hupokrisis ‘acting of a theatrical part,’ from hupokrinesthai ‘play a part, pretend.’” —Google

“And vice versa, of course” (—me)

Without hypocrisy there could be no theater And indeed, without theater it would appear there could be no civilization. Or as Shakspeare noted: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” (from the play As You Like It.)

Could a civilization endure which practiced no hypocrisy? And, could we endure it? “Humankind cannot bear much reality,” according to the poet T.S. Elliot. And moreover, what individual has even been powerful enough to stand in all ways against the preferences of the crowd, and yet retain himself?

Rather than fight reality, it’s this ability to interpret oneself so as to swim within it; a tactic so useful in all occasions that the Chinese sages recommended it with their common analogy to bamboo. (Bend, don’t break.)

We see this all of the time in the movies where our hero approaches (or is approached by) a very threatening group of people. Things don’t look good and then, oftentimes by happenstance, he says something which ushers him right inside the fold. (He isn’t boiled and eaten!) Currently, I’m reminded of Peter Navarro’s experience in prison as recounted in his most recent book, I Went to Prison So You Won’t Have To. He is in the prison yard when he is approached by a group of Puerto Ricans, and he is wondering how this might play out. “We like you,” one of them reassured him, “You’re not a snitch.” He didn’t think that his defense of the Constitution was quite equivalent to protecting a fellow criminal. ‘But’, he thought, ‘I’ll take it.’

Hypocrisy is a survival tool which will never go away, because there is no one individual whose power is great enough to combat a crowd – or to face a reality, frightening as the face of any god. We must tip our hats daily to a the potentates of self-defeating regulations, rules of etiquette, social customs, and even the established pillars of ignorance in order to be left to go about our lives undisturbed. Or should we aspire as a celebrity action hero, and take on the world of which our understanding is but a thumbnail’s? Only in the movies.

The shape shifting required is imaginatively challenging, the egotism immense … up to the point of being preposterous. That is the idea of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. So that, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ —Jesus of Nazareth

And there it is.

Unfortunately, this powerful trick of re-defining the situation, has a lot in common with its darker brother, ‘spin.’

Currently, after acquiring the most money, nowadays the very rich often aspire to acquiring the most virtue. Bill Gates believes he has achieved a workable business plan for this bifold success by increasing his money while giving it away (Supposedly so that he’ll have even more to give away). For example, using a “hybrid engine”, his “creative capitalism” is able to pursue personal opportunity in fresh markets by creating business opportunity through funding of the Gate’s foundation altruistic projects, while supplying the need generated through his conglomerate of private companies.

For twenty years Bill Gates has been telling people that he is working hard to give away the vast majority of his money because he cares so much. And in those twenty years of giving away money his fortune has more than doubled. —Gates of Hell by Daniel Jupp, p. 82

(What it actually is, is business government collusion. If you give away fifty dollars to a philanthropic program which is matched by an equal grant from the government, and then sell the needed products to further the goal—you exit with twice the money you entered with. It’s basically a governmental money siphon. The government does ‘good works,’ but on projects initiated and directed by Gates. Ones which his companies are organized to facilitate.)

In the face of Bill’s largess, Bill the Camel is pretty chipper about his chances, I would suppose. It’s as if he’s financed a renovation of the portal to God, greatly widening the needle’s aperture.

Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation use the term ‘philanthrocapitalism’ to describe their approach to productive philanthropy. The foundation also emphasizes the importance of maximizing impact through investments and innovation, a concept it has been developing and refining over time. —Google

Like I noted, Bill the Camel must be pretty chipper about his chances, I would suppose, feeling he needn’t seek a state of grace as he has already acquired it. (A hostile takeover?)

A cousin of spin might be to change one’s perspective and to interpret all situations as they might subjectively feel. That is, by taking a ‘woke’ perspective, in which reasoning and enforcement are placed at the service of a chaotic Id, and the perspective is nihilistic. The following is an example taken from the recent essay, “Marked for Life” by Theodore Dalrymple about tattoos:

Although by no means beautiful, with an unfortunately jutting chin, useful perhaps for symbolizing determination without a cause, she is now a model. ‘Photography permits me to repossess my image. I live a kind of freedom in front of the lens.’

‘My tattoos,’ she says, ‘are scars that I have chosen. Reminders that I am still standing, that I have made myself what I am with all that life has given me … or taken from me … My style is not a role: it is me, no longer synonyms of an expression of rebellion, they represent what I am.’

What I am, of course, is admirable, ex offiicio. This is because man is born good, I am a man, therefore I am good. I am also interesting, of course, thanks to tattooing: ‘From that girl whom no one saw, I became the girl that everyone looked at.’

In this case, the calm one has found is well outside of the worldly hurricane, and is the calm of a sort of death, a sealed solipsism. It is very hard to speak with the dead. One must somehow entice them back into life. This seemingly comprises our current civilizational work.

Charlie Kirk was making some serious progress. But he was shot.

(My current thinking that it is the feminine demonizing of the male, which has made the world without male protection frightening, which has fed a “snowflake” solipsism. But that’s a notion for another essay.)

Table of Contents

Carl Nelson‘s latest book of poetry titled, Strays, Misfits, Renegades, and Maverick Poems (with additional Verses on Monetizations), has just been published. To have a look at this and more of his work please visit Magic Bean Books.

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