The Have’s and Have Nots

I detest alcohol and do so principally because of two haunting images in my mind.  One day when I was about twelve years old, I was walking on the sidewalk next to Highway US 301 as it passed through my then hometown, Ellenton, FL.  Directly in front of me a car was parked by the sidewalk.  It was a hot day. The car windows were rolled down and I could hear distressful screams of children coming from within the car.  The car was next a tavern.  It hit me that the children could be excused for wondering in lonely hours whether they or alcohol mattered more to their parents.

Years later I carried a carload of children from Saint Petersburg to Anna Maria Beach.  On the way we stopped in Bradenton to pick up my mother who had prepared a picnic lunch.  On our arrival, the children hit the beach while mother and I found a table in the shade under Australian pines and began to set up the picnic.  Further over was another table around which sat a family with children and adults.  The adults were drinking profusely.  Suddenly…the visual that will not go away…a tipsy woman with beer can in hand attempted waveringly to embrace a child.  The child at once cowered and drew away.  It occurred to me the child may sometime find it troubling and difficult to discern alcohol induced mawkishness from the genuine caress of love.


Another visual now comes to mind—a scene from the play Death of a Salesman written by American playwright Arthur Miller.

First a trailer:




Next a Little Bit of Truth:




We know that life can level on all of us strong measures of unjustified pain.  But there is a sense in which some pain is more enduring and inured from redemption than others.  It is crucial to remember that in the Death of a Salesman even if Willy and his sons had stuck it spectacularly rich, the problem of veneered pain and the desperately driving need to assuage it would not have abated.  Piles of money in such cases mask symptoms rather than treat causes. 

I am aware that many Christians who share with me an old-time religious heritage can express some measure of support and encouragement for Donald Trump. Partly I think this is because we have been taught to sense those in pain and pray for them.  Notoriety as a snake oil elixir for deadening unendurable pain should always be quaffed from a chalice emblazoned with skull and bones crafted by the very hand of Satan himself.



Print Page

The Democratic Party and the Rise of Personal Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance: (Psychology): the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.  (New Oxford American Dictionary)

========================

I remember with much happiness the days when I was a full-blooded Democrat. The Democrats then were the unabashed champion of the poor, women, and those denied civil rights due to race or physical handicap. There were no discordant notes in my psyche. My deepest religious and political convictions dovetailed seamlessly. Now, not so much.

Suddenly it seemed with no regard for the sensitivities of those like me, the Democratic Party incredibly began to CHAMPION abortion. Likewise, it began to CHAMPION homosexuality. Like many, my sex life is not so sanely wise and pure that I would want it fully portrayed on the silver screen. It is my conviction that no human--bless our hearts--is fully wired to handle all the implications and emotions aroused by this persistent and insistent drive. And the issue is further complicated by the fact that all of us have a driving need for companionship quite apart from any baseline sexual activity. With all this said, I think that it is absurd to counsel a 14-year-old that he is gay and simply must accept that fact. The assumption that we have anything like complete understanding of carnal knowledge must be seen teetering upon the flawed foundation of ignorance and arrogance upon which it is based.

========================





Print Page

Mythology and the Mind Blowing Palaver of President Trump

From our earliest years we are taught to weave together truth and fact. One of my earliest experiences in this regard came early one morning on Christmas Day. Santa Claus purportedly brought our family a present – a carom board. On helping open the present I noticed postage stamps on the box containing the game. This at once shattered my belief in Santa Claus whose existence hitherto I had been taught as a fact. Immediately I wondered if Jesus and God were likewise of human manufacture. It seemed incredible to me that a world of adults would invest hard earned money, time, enterprise, and sometimes their very lives for centuries in something that had no basis in fact. This thought I kept to myself. Like the rest of my culture I soon learned that Santa Claus was, while not factually in residence at the North Pole, represented profound truths relating to innocence, wonder, anticipation, generosity, and parental love.  We experience this undeniable apprehension throughout our lives--that fact often pales in relevance to the power of experiential and emotive truth.  Say a lifelong friend of ours dies; we read a lengthy obituary in the paper that is replete with facts.  Yet to us, this in no way comes close to painting the person who meant so much to us.

The Trump administration uses the phrase “alternative facts.”  This phrase makes many of us blow a mental gasket as something that threatens society itself.  Are we to tell our young children to play with fire since it’s merely an alternate fact that fire can burn you? 

The issue before us has immense import. This issue pertains to the mythology of governance.  Truth is largely determined by what one’s mythology defines as legitimate.  Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol pits the mythology of Scrooge against the mythology of Christmas.  The parsimonious Scrooge defined truth as dramatically different from those celebrating Christmas.  It follows then that Scrooge’s world had alternative INTERPRETATIONS of fact.   A pile of money to him suggested only that the pile rightly and legitimately be even more towering.  The spirit of Christmas from its mythological perspective saw the same pile of money as the slave master of a spiritually immature Ebenezer Scrooge.

Where one stands in the mythology of governance clearly is determinative in the valence one ascribes to facts, their interpretation, and their perceived predictive implications.

=============

The Eye of the Beholder





Print Page

Cruising with Jesus -- Not for the Clock Watcher

Jesus Calls His First Disciples
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-20 NIV)

========================

I am a senior citizen and at that time of life when one tells oneself (or is told by others) you’d better do it (fill in the blank) while you still can. If you're ever going to do it, do it now!  For many my age that means travel--perhaps a cruise to Alaska to experience majestic towers of nature.

I can imagine that one day while I’m walking along in Saint Petersburg, Jesus pulls up in a Land Rover.  He asks "How would you like to go with me to Lake Junaluska (a beautiful Methodist Resort/Retreat in the Great Smokies).  I've known for years that a major aim of a Christian is to walk with Jesus faithfully and with perseverance.  Since I daily pray for this "walk with Christ" I am overjoyed by this opportunity to ride with Jesus to may favorite Christian retreat. From my past road trips there,  I know that the journey will take about 10 hours--an incredible opportunity to fellowship one-on-one with Jesus.

In good time we neared Jacksonville and stopped at a little diner for lunch. A small group of people were gathered there including locals and some travelers like us.  The blue plate special of the day was fried catfish (caught locally) served with hush-puppies, fries, and slaw.  Just like in the Bible Jesus loved to connect with others, and our quick meal soon turned into a 2 1/2 hour rendition of parables (we would say, "stories with a point") and conversation that seemed to me at times too intimate and personal.  Yet Jesus never intruded.  The people seemed to sense that Jesus was not there to put them down, but to listen and encourage.  Finally we stood to leave when a local there mentioned that a distant cousin of his in Louisiana was a prisoner of stress and anxiety.  To my utter astonishment Jesus at once ditched our plans to travel directly to Lake Junaluska.  Instead we added days to our journey just to see this man's cousin.  The man, I might add, drove with us from the diner. So my private time with Jesus was extremely short-lived.  While Jesus ministered to the cousin in Louisiana, we learned of a treatment center in Lincoln, Nebraska that was encountering unusual success in treating the mentally disturbed.  With way too little deliberation from my point of view, our plans changed again and were off on a journey to Nebraska.

The gist of all this is that my ride with Jesus to a North Carolina resort was repeatedly preempted by other destinations. While I thought I was going with Jesus on a precious one-day road trip, it turned out instead to be something very different.  I then remembered the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”

For Jesus the bucket list is less about places to see so much as people to free.

===============================




Print Page

Coming Ideas

My mother was often the engine that reliably imbued family projects with energy and optimism. Sometimes she would pause midstream in our activities and say “I’ve got coming ideas” when a new way of approaching a challenge occurred to her. I thought of this recently when I traded in a 2012 VW Beetle for a new Volkswagen Jetta. My motivating idea was to acquire a new car with virtual bumper-to-bumper maintenance coverage for a good number of years.  It never occurred to me to make any other transportation changes.  Yet on driving the Jetta home from the dealership, it dawned on me…dah…that I would no longer need my Mazda CX-9 for its additional cargo space. The next morning I sold the CX-9 (which action had been the furthest thing from my mind just a day before).

There is a phrase I think well describes much of human behavior – “muddling through”. More often than not we launch a project congratulating ourselves that it has been well-planned. Yet, if we’re lucky – and I really mean that, lucky – we will actually end up with something astonishingly different.  Now regarding my car trades, I could now with dubious intent/effect seek to enhance my gravitas and muster all kinds of claims to wisdom (however factually “alternate” that would be) by saying that weeks in advance I meticulously planned to bestow greater efficiency and effectiveness upon my transportation arrangements through exacting cost-benefit analysis.  I could indeed say all that with dignified sanctimony and would probably do so if there were a ghost of a chance that my readers had not long-since lost their virginity.

Since I associate turgid goals and tedious plans with a will of steel, the French psychologist, Émile Coué (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) comes to mind.  He said: “When the imagination and will power are in conflict, are antagonistic, it is always the imagination which wins, without any exception” (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/emile_coue.html).

In way of dedication: Thank you mother for having “coming ideas” and ditching the steel will for something more redemptive. That is why even today I run to you. 

============================

Check this out for a great instance of Coming Ideas:
https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_bierut_how_to_design_a_library_that_makes_kids_want_to_read


Print Page

Gotcha!!! Justice

Human beings are wired to pursue justice and to pursue it passionately for self and for all one identifies with self.  The behavior of toddlers makes this abundantly evident as does the behavior of adults before the Supreme Court.

Within the nature of man is an insatiable thirst for justice: “...let justice roll down like waters/ And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24 NASB). In addition to the felt open-ended dimension of justice, this scripture also recognizes an additional key component of the justice drive--its association with our perception of the ultimately and absolutely right--the way things compelling should--even MUST--be.

It is little wonder then that the pursuit of justice within the diversity of human experiences, interests, and values is often accompanied by violence.  Hostile pursuits can perversely enmesh even the strong and victorious within Pyrrhic legacies of spiritual defeat.  We must be cautious, then, that some twisted pursuit of justice does not headlong morph us into monsters.  Extracted from countless centuries of very real blood and tears is the hard lesson that single-minded drives for justice are traitorous even of ourselves unless alloyed with empathy--a moderating force allowing room for the shared mystery of diversity and the unrelentingly universal character of unjustified pain--with mercy, with grace, and--especially for our own good--with forgiveness.

=================================





Print Page

Unfounded Optimism

If around at the time the United States government was initially constituted, I might well have been--depending upon "where I sat"--a supporter or opponent of slavery.  Aware of my tendency for optimism, I might well have thought along these lines:  "The opposing point of view regarding slavery is dead wrong.  But given time, the other side will come to align with my point of view.  The benefits will be so obvious, that a broad consensus will develop eliminating any need for strife or conflict."

Of course we know that such optimism would in time have proven to be entirely unfounded.  In my last blog Playtime is Over I suggested that the debate regarding the proper role of government has been seen in something of this rosy light (the embedded video is an excerpt of a debate between William Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith).  There will be plenty of time for leisurely and friendly--even playful-- debate over the matter (seems to be the tenor).  The proper role in time will come to be so obvious that consensus will pop up overnight like mushrooms.  We are assuredly approaching no precipice or crisis; all ahead will prove to be (to use Churchill’s phrase) “broad, sunlit uplands.”

In fact, we see that quite the contrary appears to be happening.  Each side posits that their approach would have proven hands down its overwhelming rectitude but for the treacherous sabotage of the opposition.  And now cable news intensifies convictions confirming that our perspective is absolutely right, and the other insanely and nefariously wrong.  And since our chosen point of view so greets us in the morning and bids us goodnight, our little gray cells deeply entrench our pet perceptions through regular reinforcement.  If you are like me, you have been astounded that a friend you thought you knew well could so inexplicably and nonchalantly be captured by the totally absurd. Should we ask: Is there a grueling Civil War in our future in which the Mason-Dixon line becomes replaced by multiple bloody and contentious “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent” (T.S Eliot)? 

=====================







Print Page