Collegiate Diversions

When I first attended USF as an undergraduate in 1962, the weekend before start of classes we were treated one evening to a free movie:  Bell, Book and Candle staring James Stewart and Kim Novak.  It’s difficult to exaggerate how foreign this movie was to anything that I had ever experienced.  The movie took place in New York (I came from a small town in Florida), the theme was black magic (my background was four-square Methodist), the characters were sophisticated (I had only known the culturally unassuming), they drank scotch and bourbon often, (I was a teetotaler), they frequented the Zodiac, a night spot, (the only thing I regularly attended at night was prayer meeting), it was a love story with a designing woman (my reference point would have been my mother who tended to be shy and modest).  In short, the movie introduced me to college life—sophisticated, uptown, irreverent, worldly, hip, and forward.  I have come to think that college has great value, but not in the life it sometimes purports.  Like so many other human efforts, it attains value despite its pretensions.

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Closing Chapters

Last evening my brother and I visited using Skype.  He had returned to Florida from a trip to Georgia where he and Linda are hoping to firm up a contract for a house this Wednesday.  I viewed pictures of the house and it has beautiful dormer windows and high ceilings in the rooms.  But when I heard they planned to sell their home in Orange Park, Florida, I felt a little sad—not for them of course, but for me.  I could hear a chapter of my life slamming shut.  They have lived in their Orange Park home for seventeen years, and I have memories of visiting there with family and friends.  It’s a large two story frame house with a swing on the porch, with spacious yard all around and has served as a reliable gathering place in my mind.  The memory takes me back to when mother was still living.  I have memories of nieces and nephews propelling their children on a cabled ride spanning a sloping distance between two trees; and swims in a pool hidden away in back fed by an artesian well.  With this close of a life’s chapter, I feel a little older as I think of these experiences in the past when I was younger, when everyone was younger.  It is a great folly to think I can stop time by stopping change—as if I could stop either one.  I have always sought to find a home and put down roots.  I get a sense of security from that, no matter how insubstantial it may be in the end.  After the Civil War the South held its breath for nearly a hundred years hoping that nothing would fundamentally change.  To allow change would be to admit defeat.  But change did come in my lifetime and averted a terrible dead end of racial hatred.  When I consider this, I am grateful for change and acknowledge its necessity and usefulness.

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Today in Sunday school

Today in Sunday school we discussed Kunte’s declaration that you cannot always get what you want, you must first get what you need.  This moved to a discussion of prayer.  Mitch said that when we pray, we should be careful about praying for this or that specific thing which we think at the time indispensible to our happiness.  Instead, we should ask God to bless us.  This approach takes into consideration that we don’t always know what’s best for us.  God can bless us in unexpected ways. 

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Power Problems

Today I watched Bruce Almighty and laughed at the limitations of power.  The character Bruce Nolan is given unlimited power except that he cannot violate free will—he has the power of God.  But he uses this power mainly to perform self-centered tricks many of which have bad repercussions.  By saying “Yes” to everyone’s prayers, so many people hit the lotto that the payout for a winning ticket is less than $15 and riots result.  Unlimited power, rather than bringing happiness, brings despair.  The inherent limitations of power become duly obvious the moment such a fantasy becomes faced with the paradoxes of life.  This take on power seriously undermines the “greed is good” philosophy which can be seen as good only so long as fantasy dominates.

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Keeping in Style

Today I watched  the movie Remember the Titans.   It tells the story of a high school in the south (T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia) during the early years of racial desegregation and the resultant challenges facing a newly integrated football team.  It was a movie recommended to me in 2005 by an American National Government professor, Erik Lipham.  To me the central story was so compelling and the victory on many levels so significant that I overlooked the flaws found in the movie by critics.  One thing that intrigued me about the movie was the team’s development of a unique style during warm-up.  In musical terms the difference between the typical warm-up style and theirs was the difference between martial band music and jazz.  They found they were so unique and different, that they developed a style to express it.  Style (as a transitive verb) is defined by Encarta Dictionary as:  to give something a particular shape or design.  Since everyone is different, each person develops a unique style.  I’m speaking of the style that resides in a person beyond hair style or clothes worn.  I’m speaking of the style of verbal and bodily expression.  It’s what defines a person and makes their presentation different from all others.  It’s important to find one’s style and have confidence in its worthiness and faithfulness to the essential person.  If one is comfortable with themselves, they are not constantly shopping for a superficial style that imitates others.  Then their unique and true style will find expression.  They and their style are one.

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An Unspeakable Luxury

Today I was a taker. I took paid sick time provided by my employer.  I took a free ride to the hospital and back from Mitch, my Sunday school teacher.  I received first class medical service from administrative matters to preparation by nurses, to due diligence from anesthesiologists, to surgical skills by Dr. Burke.  My knee was repaired, one has to conclude, in the lap of luxury—not only of external material goods, but of untold hours of training and practice on the part of medical professionals.  Additional is the development of these practitioners in terms of character and attitude.  A host of people (medical and nonmedical) over many years provided this intangible but essential groundwork.  Plus there is the present state of all technologies that contributed to treatment.  It is an unspeakable luxury to have all these resources directed at a patient with a knee problem.  I must add when I arrived home, my wife Kathy prepared my meals and brought me fresh peaches to eat.  I was entertained by widescreen movies.  People from work called to express their concern.  Friends kept me in their prayers.  Is it any wonder that I am walking about without using a walker and shunning unnecessary pain medication?  I was offered the best of the best today; and I took it. 

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Expectation Blues

One of the greatest causes of stress and unhappiness in childhood is unrealistic expectations.  The tendency to expect the unrealistic follows us into adulthood and is the cause of needless frustration.  The list of assumptions upon which unrealistic expectations are based is almost endless:  assumptions can be made which leave out important realities such as the degree to which others are willing to accept our plans, the degree to which others are able to effectively deliver our expectations, the degree to which we are prepared to cope with consequences, the degree to which conditions such as health, weather, political or economic readiness are amenable, the degree to which the unexpected including accidents can occur, the degree to which technology is available, the degree to which delay and troubleshooting will be necessary, the degree to which money is available.  A central indicator of maturity is to recognize that the realization of expectations can require understanding, extensive planning and preparation, patience, and sometimes, in the end, denial.  Frequently the timing is not right.  Learning when to voice our expectations in the face of numerous complexities becomes a sign of wisdom.  A child wants fulfillment of their expectations immediately.  A mature adult, even in the express check-out line at Publix, realizes that unexpected delays should not come as surprises. 

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