The 2013 World Series is in the books, and it looks like the curse is still broken. It has become more or less a given that sports have come to define the "faith" of our nation more so than any particular brand of actual religion. People speak in reverent tones about the "integrity of the game," about the triumphs of the human spirit. Even in a year when a seemingly mediocre team can be world champions (let's face it, this wasn't exactly a bloody-sock sort of series), there is still a lot of sacred language bandied about with regard to the fall classic, and millions of people participated in the sacrament, even though the teams were: meh, and the play was: meh, and unless you were a Red Sox fan you probably turned off Game 6 after the flyin' Hawaiian did his RBI thing.
I have noticed another way in which sports have become like religion, in addition to claiming the adoration and devotion of millions of people and dividing us into tribes (or denominations) based on our personal preferences: sports are now over-ridden with cliches. Watch any postgame interview, you will hear things like "the will to win," "giving it our all," "playing the right way," "holding together as a team." Welcome to the family sports, you have climbed your way from being a diversion, to being an obsession, and now... now... you shall experience the pit of dogma. Where your own sense of self-importance keeps you from really thinking or saying anything honest and meaningful. The Theologians will be glad to have some company after all these years.
Don't worry, there will still be sycophantic sports reporters around to nod and record your drivel verbatim, and overall the people won't care much about what you say, as long as you keep providing them with the entertainment they crave. I suppose, being men of action, you probably won't start to feel the sting of existential emptiness as quickly as we "spiritual" types, but believe me, cliches will suck out your soul sooner or later. I'm speaking as an expert, the church does cliches like nobody's business. Here are some of our greatest hits:
"Too blessed for stress."
"His pain, your gain."
"If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it."
"My boss is a Jewish carpenter."
"God is my co-pilot."
And I'm not even going to go into the ones that express some sort of heresy, in fact, I've purposely narrowed my field to things that aren't theologically or scripturally untenable, but some of the above are just downright vomit inducing. We can take the best idea in the world and make it into a lame cliche: "saved by grace," and then use that as a talking point to illustrate how right we are compared to all those other wrong people. We can adopt cliches in other languages and sound really awesome: Sola Scriptura, Reformata semper reformanda, which are really great, and true on levels we don't even fully understand.
Basically, I think we religious folk have so thoroughly mastered the art of sloganeering that I wonder how anyone even feels a little bit good about saying: "we gave a 110 percent," I mean come on, that's not even mathematically possible.
So sports, enjoy your massive popularity and your status as cultural and economic juggernauts, but take it from the Church, you need to learn how to say something... anything... that's really true. Ditch the cliches, I know it's dangerous, and actually really difficult when you get down to it. You know, come to think of it, how about we make a deal, you keep running fast and doing neat things with balls, and we'll handle helping people find meaning in the universe. You can keep your "will to win" and we'll help people with the "will to live."
Why compete? There's certainly enough emptiness to go around. And all your athletes are always giving a shout out to God anyway. We should work together! There's no I in team. We could be a well oiled machine! We could be a dynasty! Let's get the job done! We could be number one!
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Running in a Pinch
I stayed up later than I should have last night watching game four of the World Series. I haven't watched too much baseball this year, probably because the Phillies are back to being terrible. I find that if I'm not "following" baseball, it's kind of hard to watch without falling asleep. But last night was a good game, albeit between two teams I don't even care enough about to dislike. It was 4-2 Boston, going into the bottom of the 9th inning. A St. Louis player with a bum wheel got on first base and was promptly replaced with a pinch runner. It was a no-brainer for the manager, the tying run was at the plate, and a little extra speed could make all the difference. That is, unless the pinch runner gets picked off and makes the last out of the game. The best laid plans you know.
I really felt kind of bad for that guy, a bench player, whose only job was to run the bases. I could hear it: "you had one job..." But I also felt bad for the manager, who had made the "right" move, who had put his team in a position to fight back and tie o win the game. Who could have known that the runner would stumble just a little trying to get back to the base?
It's pretty well established that sports are a metaphor for life. I think one of the reasons we take them so all-fired seriously is because they help us understand our place in the universe. I think that has a lot to do with why football is out-competing religion for the hearts and minds of Americans pretty much every week from late summer to the middle of winter. Sports show us the struggles of humanity against weakness and sin played out in high definition, and incarnates those struggles in games, where there's a lot less gray area, and fewer people get really hurt.
I also think that sports show us something about how God treats us: putting us in the place we need to be and then relying on our very fallible efforts. If we slip, if we drop the ball, it's not the end, the plan remains the same, and we were supposed to be there, and maybe somehow, our failure becomes a strength. It's really hard to imagine that making the last out of the game could be part of the plan, but sometimes it is.
As we know all too well in Philly, there's always next year. There's always more to come, defeat is never final.
Jesus has shown us that forgiveness, redemption and even resurrection are all parts of the plan.
As John Calvin points out, the fact that there is grace and mercy in the plan sets us free for joyous obedience. It sets us free to take that lead off of first, to strive to do our best. Sometimes we mess up. That doesn't mean the plan was bad, it just means that things don't always go according to plan. Faith gives us the guts to go back again and keep trying. Not just our faith, but the faith that God has in us, to put us in the right place at the right time, again and again, knowing that sometimes we'll fail and sometimes we'll succeed but we'll always be in the game.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
New and Wonderful Words
I absolutely love it when we come up with new words that work. Granted there are some (twerk springs to mind) that I wish weren't things, but by and large, when we language using monkeys come up with a new word, it seems to me like a triumph of the human spirit. So I celebrate today, the birth of "nontroversy." Which I first encountered here. I was vaguely aware of who Nigella Lawson was, and absolutely oblivious to the nontroversy that had surrounded her, but the article explains out who she is and what has befallen her in recent days (as well as several other obviously British cultural references), as well as explaining the phenomenon of a twitterstorm and doing a fairly good job of telling us why, in the name of all that is holy, it matters.
I think a good place to start is with the following excerpt, for those of you who didn't choose to read the whole thing:
Liberals have their propaganda too, and speak with decidedly uncharitable bile about the Tea Party and Ted Cruz. They blame the Fox News contingent and "big business" for everything that's wrong with the world, and claim that if the darn conservatives would just get out of the way things would be all hearts and flowers
Being a moderate, I believe that the truth lies somewhere in the nuanced positions between the extremes. I believe that someone does need to make sure that we don't give up our freedom for the sake of safety, but I also believe that we need to work a hell of a lot harder to create a just society where the deck isn't so stacked against the poor and disenfranchised. I have almost entirely stopped paying attention to television news. I thank the Lord for the interweb because it means that I can read and watch, research who is saying what and check the facts, and check the checking of the facts. But sometimes I wonder if it's just too darn hard, then I remember that the truth is never easy, and if its "obvious" it stands a rather good chance of not being true.
I'm a skeptic by nature, and so this makes sense to me. I have never trusted authority, and am generally suspicious of people who are too shiny (which includes most, if not all, TV news personalities). It seems to me that human community, real human community, sorry twitterverse, you don't really count, is necessary to combat the worst angels of our nature. We must be exposed and learn to care about people who are different from us.
As I was driving into work this morning thinking about the nature of dialogue in our society I was struck by an abiding thankfulness for the diverse characters that God has put into my life, people I am related to, people I call friends, people I consider adversaries (I almost said enemies, but I think adversaries is a better description).
I have relatives who are:
White, black, bi-racial, conservatives, Tea Partiers, liberals, a heroin addict, alcoholics, people who believe that we're all going to be raptured into heaven any day now, creation scientists, mild racists, conspiracy theorists, welfare recipients, bourgeoisie, Protestant, Catholic, Atheist, profoundly agnostic, messianic Jews and some who are entirely non-religious.
I have friends and acquaintances who are:
Young and Old, Atheists, hipsters, anarchists, Universalists, survivalists, Zionists, observant Jews, secular Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Indians, Native Americans, Asians, Irish, British, Mexican, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Russian, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Wesleyans, Mennonites, and Quakers, hermits, schizophrenics, bi-polar, Punks, head-bangers, Hippies, folksie people, dance club types, even people who listen to the worst music you can possibly find, mildly eccentric and profoundly dysfunctional, addicts (recovering and active), drug users and teetotalers.
And I won't even get into all the people I deal with at work.
The thing is, while this list may seem somewhat derogatory in some directions, I am profoundly thankful for all of them, because they teach me things. When we talk, argue, or yell at each other, we are in community and in dialogue. I have no desire to segregate my life into the ghetto of people who agree with me. I have come to hate the term "like-minded" with a righteous hatred. What could you possibly learn from someone who totally agrees with you? Come to think of it, where would you find someone who totally agrees with you?
We need nuance, we need to learn to really see each other. It's sometimes useful to classify people, I had a blast rifling off those lists I just made, but you need to know that each one of those categories has a name and a face, and I'm glad they are or have been a part of my life.
Controversy or nontroversy can be a great thing as long as we talk to each other, I mean really talk, and a world that is drained of all our differences and the variety that makes so all fired interesting, would really be hell indeed.
I think a good place to start is with the following excerpt, for those of you who didn't choose to read the whole thing:
One problem is that the media landscape is structurally hostile to nuance, whether it's the gladiatorial debate format favoured by the likes of the Today programme, the pressure to generate kneejerk opinions at short notice, or the sheer volume of websites recycling unsourced, out-of-context and even mistranslated quotes. Subtlety doesn't sell. But bad habits aren't imposed from the top down. Across blogs and social media you can see how the internet amplifies and facilitates the impulse to think the worst of people you have never met and to ignore any facts or context that might take the wind out of your indignation.I spend more time than is probably good for me reading about politics and more time than is definitely good for me trying to keep up with pop culture. I have noticed that structural hostility, not just to nuance but to logic and reason. The point about it not being a top down decision is also insightful. The reason why Fox News and Bill Maher are both popular is because they give certain segments of the population something they want to hear. Fox News tells people of a conservative bent that the world is teetering on the brink of socialist, amoral, cultural collapse and that the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are some of the last, desperate prophetic voices of truth, justice and the American way. "Liberals" are the people who want to infringe on your rights and create a nanny state where individual freedom is sacrificed on the altar of "social justice."
Liberals have their propaganda too, and speak with decidedly uncharitable bile about the Tea Party and Ted Cruz. They blame the Fox News contingent and "big business" for everything that's wrong with the world, and claim that if the darn conservatives would just get out of the way things would be all hearts and flowers
Being a moderate, I believe that the truth lies somewhere in the nuanced positions between the extremes. I believe that someone does need to make sure that we don't give up our freedom for the sake of safety, but I also believe that we need to work a hell of a lot harder to create a just society where the deck isn't so stacked against the poor and disenfranchised. I have almost entirely stopped paying attention to television news. I thank the Lord for the interweb because it means that I can read and watch, research who is saying what and check the facts, and check the checking of the facts. But sometimes I wonder if it's just too darn hard, then I remember that the truth is never easy, and if its "obvious" it stands a rather good chance of not being true.
I'm a skeptic by nature, and so this makes sense to me. I have never trusted authority, and am generally suspicious of people who are too shiny (which includes most, if not all, TV news personalities). It seems to me that human community, real human community, sorry twitterverse, you don't really count, is necessary to combat the worst angels of our nature. We must be exposed and learn to care about people who are different from us.
As I was driving into work this morning thinking about the nature of dialogue in our society I was struck by an abiding thankfulness for the diverse characters that God has put into my life, people I am related to, people I call friends, people I consider adversaries (I almost said enemies, but I think adversaries is a better description).
I have relatives who are:
White, black, bi-racial, conservatives, Tea Partiers, liberals, a heroin addict, alcoholics, people who believe that we're all going to be raptured into heaven any day now, creation scientists, mild racists, conspiracy theorists, welfare recipients, bourgeoisie, Protestant, Catholic, Atheist, profoundly agnostic, messianic Jews and some who are entirely non-religious.
I have friends and acquaintances who are:
Young and Old, Atheists, hipsters, anarchists, Universalists, survivalists, Zionists, observant Jews, secular Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Indians, Native Americans, Asians, Irish, British, Mexican, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Russian, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Wesleyans, Mennonites, and Quakers, hermits, schizophrenics, bi-polar, Punks, head-bangers, Hippies, folksie people, dance club types, even people who listen to the worst music you can possibly find, mildly eccentric and profoundly dysfunctional, addicts (recovering and active), drug users and teetotalers.
And I won't even get into all the people I deal with at work.
The thing is, while this list may seem somewhat derogatory in some directions, I am profoundly thankful for all of them, because they teach me things. When we talk, argue, or yell at each other, we are in community and in dialogue. I have no desire to segregate my life into the ghetto of people who agree with me. I have come to hate the term "like-minded" with a righteous hatred. What could you possibly learn from someone who totally agrees with you? Come to think of it, where would you find someone who totally agrees with you?
We need nuance, we need to learn to really see each other. It's sometimes useful to classify people, I had a blast rifling off those lists I just made, but you need to know that each one of those categories has a name and a face, and I'm glad they are or have been a part of my life.
Controversy or nontroversy can be a great thing as long as we talk to each other, I mean really talk, and a world that is drained of all our differences and the variety that makes so all fired interesting, would really be hell indeed.
Monday, October 21, 2013
More Fun with Myers-Briggs
I just came across an interesting infographic that gives a breakdown of Myers Briggs personality type indicators to socio-economic position. I am either an INTP or INTJ, depending on what day I take the test, though I think I'm leaning more and more towards the P (perceiving) as I get older. What you might notice is that I fall into a group of personality types called rationalists, and that, as a percentage of the population, I'm in a rather drastic minority (10.3% of the American population).
Over the years, I have been through a couple different wrasslin' matches with the MBTI, usually I come away with some slightly new information, and a renewed question of whether or not the thing is anything more than a psychological parlor trick. Being a "rationalist" though, I love things that seem science-like, and when you start breaking down something as seemingly complex as the human persona into four descriptive continua, I can't help but get a little geeked up.
Funny thing though, if you look at my dominant personality traits in my case the NT part of my Myers-Briggs type, you will find that I am probably not very well suited to the clerical vocation. You may think, "well duh," being a Pastor doesn't really seem like a very good thing for a 'rationalist' to be doing." And the career counseling/psychological evaluation that I had when I was in seminary would agree with you, but here I am.
The test indicates that I would be better off as an architect or something of that nature, but life is funny, and often times human beings end up confounding all the fancy instruments and indicators that supposedly tell us what to be and do.
MBTI is interesting though, because it explains a lot of things that are prolifically verified by my experience. For instance, being an Introvert and also being a statistically rare personality type leads to feeling like an outsider rather frequently. Some people experience the feeling of exclusion from the majority based on race, gender or sexual orientation, I experience it as an ontological condition that has nothing to do with my physical nature.
Despite an almost genetic predisposition to feelings of alienation, despite a profoundly skeptical nature, despite the fact that I generally do not accept things that cannot be proven, I have somehow wandered into a vocation that revolves around faith and, probably even more difficult: people. The very core of what I do for a living is a mystery, not a sound and reasonable proposition or even a logical hypothesis, but a massive, and I would say intentional, void in our ability to comprehend our existence rationally. It's somewhat like the the black holes that some astronomers suspect exist at the center of galaxies. The hold clusters of stars by their gravitational force, but we can't directly study them because even light cannot escape the event horizon. We only know they're there because of their effect on everything else.
To me, God is sort of like that. I can't prove God's existence, but for some reason I can accept it, because I see evidence of it in so many other places, and I do see evidence. The evidence is everywhere, truth, beauty and love confront us in just too many places. The purpose behind things seems way too elegant to be random. Theology tells us that God is ineffable and unknowable, like that black hole that cannot be directly observed. We can only know about God because the effect God has on things we can see. Like God changing Saul: murderous zealot, into Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles. Or God calling a rationalist malcontent, who always feels at odds with the world, to be a pastor.
I wonder what type of personality does that sort of thing?
Over the years, I have been through a couple different wrasslin' matches with the MBTI, usually I come away with some slightly new information, and a renewed question of whether or not the thing is anything more than a psychological parlor trick. Being a "rationalist" though, I love things that seem science-like, and when you start breaking down something as seemingly complex as the human persona into four descriptive continua, I can't help but get a little geeked up.
Funny thing though, if you look at my dominant personality traits in my case the NT part of my Myers-Briggs type, you will find that I am probably not very well suited to the clerical vocation. You may think, "well duh," being a Pastor doesn't really seem like a very good thing for a 'rationalist' to be doing." And the career counseling/psychological evaluation that I had when I was in seminary would agree with you, but here I am.
The test indicates that I would be better off as an architect or something of that nature, but life is funny, and often times human beings end up confounding all the fancy instruments and indicators that supposedly tell us what to be and do.
MBTI is interesting though, because it explains a lot of things that are prolifically verified by my experience. For instance, being an Introvert and also being a statistically rare personality type leads to feeling like an outsider rather frequently. Some people experience the feeling of exclusion from the majority based on race, gender or sexual orientation, I experience it as an ontological condition that has nothing to do with my physical nature.
Despite an almost genetic predisposition to feelings of alienation, despite a profoundly skeptical nature, despite the fact that I generally do not accept things that cannot be proven, I have somehow wandered into a vocation that revolves around faith and, probably even more difficult: people. The very core of what I do for a living is a mystery, not a sound and reasonable proposition or even a logical hypothesis, but a massive, and I would say intentional, void in our ability to comprehend our existence rationally. It's somewhat like the the black holes that some astronomers suspect exist at the center of galaxies. The hold clusters of stars by their gravitational force, but we can't directly study them because even light cannot escape the event horizon. We only know they're there because of their effect on everything else.
To me, God is sort of like that. I can't prove God's existence, but for some reason I can accept it, because I see evidence of it in so many other places, and I do see evidence. The evidence is everywhere, truth, beauty and love confront us in just too many places. The purpose behind things seems way too elegant to be random. Theology tells us that God is ineffable and unknowable, like that black hole that cannot be directly observed. We can only know about God because the effect God has on things we can see. Like God changing Saul: murderous zealot, into Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles. Or God calling a rationalist malcontent, who always feels at odds with the world, to be a pastor.
I wonder what type of personality does that sort of thing?
Thursday, October 17, 2013
The Center Holding?
So the government is back. Huzzah.
I read the summation of the end of the latest shutdown this morning: absent the House of Representatives actually doing their job, the Senate did an end run around the increasingly splintered GOP and got a resolution approved by the Democrats and enough Republicans who were tired of being in the same boat as Ted Cruz. The Washington Post published an article about how the conservative factions, who had been doing a lot of chest thumping about their ability to stall the entire empire, were sort of glum this morning. They had played hardball against the Democrats. They suspected that those bleeding heart liberals were just too soft to stand up to them, they were wrong. They lost. And it may be a sign of things to come.
Democracy works, eventually. Yeats and Walker Percy have both said, "The Center Cannot hold," and that often has the ring of ominous truth, but the center usually does hold. It's not always pretty, and sometimes things seem pretty grim, and then you wake up one morning and guess what? It held.
In the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, where he says the center cannot hold, he also says, "The best lack conviction and the worst work with passionate intensity." You find passionate intensity on both extremes. Extreme radicals and extreme fundamentalists both have incredible intensity, and the moderates seem phlegmatic to the point of being lugubrious (I like words, get a dictionary).
So here we are. The vocal minority has been defeated by the silent majority, because they finally pushed the moderates too far. They committed political suicide because they thought they were in the right. It may seem that the Democrats and moderate Republicans all of the sudden grew a backbone, but the fact of the matter is that it was there all along. They knew something, which was perhaps invisible to the right-wing zealots, the American people are, in the vast majority, a compassionate, reasonable bunch. Most of us actually want to see the government function to protect the vulnerable and put some restraints on the worst demons of human nature. Unchecked greed is not an American virtue and is in fact not a requirement for a free market economy.
Those that, perhaps out of left over Cold War sentiments, or simple dogmatic thickness, think that laissez-faire is still a good idea, after over a century of abuse by the robber barons of the world (whether they are Andrew Carnegie or Bernie Madoff), are trying to defend a vacant citadel. Most of the world has moved past the conflict between Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and have found that there is something besides an apocalyptic wasteland. But there are some who still want to fight that battle, some for whom communism is still the "ism" of the "evil empire," even though the actual empire part went poof around 1989. Capitalism has proven it's flaws as well, and maybe (though this is a moment of uncharacteristic and probably unfounded optimism): we can finally structure our society in a way that is not beholden to a rigid ideology, but in a way that makes the most sense for the people of our nation.
Oh wait... we're going to have to go through all of this again in three months.
Turning and turning the widening gyre.
I read the summation of the end of the latest shutdown this morning: absent the House of Representatives actually doing their job, the Senate did an end run around the increasingly splintered GOP and got a resolution approved by the Democrats and enough Republicans who were tired of being in the same boat as Ted Cruz. The Washington Post published an article about how the conservative factions, who had been doing a lot of chest thumping about their ability to stall the entire empire, were sort of glum this morning. They had played hardball against the Democrats. They suspected that those bleeding heart liberals were just too soft to stand up to them, they were wrong. They lost. And it may be a sign of things to come.
Democracy works, eventually. Yeats and Walker Percy have both said, "The Center Cannot hold," and that often has the ring of ominous truth, but the center usually does hold. It's not always pretty, and sometimes things seem pretty grim, and then you wake up one morning and guess what? It held.
In the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, where he says the center cannot hold, he also says, "The best lack conviction and the worst work with passionate intensity." You find passionate intensity on both extremes. Extreme radicals and extreme fundamentalists both have incredible intensity, and the moderates seem phlegmatic to the point of being lugubrious (I like words, get a dictionary).
So here we are. The vocal minority has been defeated by the silent majority, because they finally pushed the moderates too far. They committed political suicide because they thought they were in the right. It may seem that the Democrats and moderate Republicans all of the sudden grew a backbone, but the fact of the matter is that it was there all along. They knew something, which was perhaps invisible to the right-wing zealots, the American people are, in the vast majority, a compassionate, reasonable bunch. Most of us actually want to see the government function to protect the vulnerable and put some restraints on the worst demons of human nature. Unchecked greed is not an American virtue and is in fact not a requirement for a free market economy.
Those that, perhaps out of left over Cold War sentiments, or simple dogmatic thickness, think that laissez-faire is still a good idea, after over a century of abuse by the robber barons of the world (whether they are Andrew Carnegie or Bernie Madoff), are trying to defend a vacant citadel. Most of the world has moved past the conflict between Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and have found that there is something besides an apocalyptic wasteland. But there are some who still want to fight that battle, some for whom communism is still the "ism" of the "evil empire," even though the actual empire part went poof around 1989. Capitalism has proven it's flaws as well, and maybe (though this is a moment of uncharacteristic and probably unfounded optimism): we can finally structure our society in a way that is not beholden to a rigid ideology, but in a way that makes the most sense for the people of our nation.
Oh wait... we're going to have to go through all of this again in three months.
Turning and turning the widening gyre.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Parenting and Puncture Wounds
Parenthood is a very strange thing. The last thing I want is for my kids to get hurt. My first impulse, from the time they were born, has been to protect them and keep them safe. However, stuff happens. Yesterday afternoon, stuff happened to Jack. He was out in the shed working on a project with his pocket knife and the knife slipped and went into his thigh just above the knee. It was a nice, deep puncture wound. He said he felt sweaty and cold at the same time, he said things started to go black (the signs of your body going into shock), but he took a deep breath and came inside to Mom and Dad. There was blood, there was a nasty little wound, and there was a nine-year-old boy trying to be brave, even though he was really on the verge of passing out. There was also a Mama freaking out about her wounded cub, and there was a Papa, freaking out on the inside, but trying to stay calm and figure out what needed done. Mama held his hand and tried to keep him calm despite her own panic and Papa got the wet paper towels and cleaned it up to see a little better. Mama held his head up and Papa put on a dry bandage. Mama stayed home and worried while Papa took him to the emergency room.
We functioned the way parents often do, each of us taking a role and doing what was necessary. Papa was the one that said he was old enough to have a knife, Mama was the one that worried about it. Our son is a builder, he loves to take things apart, he loves tools, he loves to make things. It's what he does, he's going to have accidents like this one. He was pretty lucky this time, no stitches no major damage, but he learned some lessons and he dealt with some consequences, and he was pretty brave, and pretty tough. As much as I really don't want to repeat that drama, I was actually rather proud of him. He wasn't doing anything really stupid, he just had a knife slip on him. It happens to grown-ups all the time.
What encouraged me as his Dad was the way he handled the whole thing. He was scared and hurt, but he didn't panic, he dealt with things a step at a time. As much as I don't want my kids to run into hard times, I do want them to learn to deal with them. I was really proud of Jack for not shriveling up into a sobbing mess, or getting into a panic about the possibility of having to get stitches. I'm not generally a Dad who tries to macho up his boy, I try to tell him that it's okay to express his feelings, but I'm pretty proud of him for being tough enough to get through his first stab wound.
Yesterday, on the way home, he said that I seemed really calm when he came in with blood all over his leg. I told him that I wasn't really calm on the inside, but that I had to figure out what to do instead of yelling or getting all scared. I told him that courage is being able to do the right thing when you are afraid, not being without fear in the first place. As much as I want my kids to be safe, I also want them to face life as an adventure. You learn things from making mistakes, you grow by facing challenges. If you don't do anything, you won't get hurt, but you certainly won't have an adventure.
These are the lessons that I hope he really learns from me as he grows up, in addition to being really careful with knives.
As usual, these little parenting dramas help me understand something about God. People often wonder why they have to go through such hard times. I'm not one who likes the notion that God brings us to difficult times, I prefer to think of the world as a more or less objective arena, where things just are. I think God has made good and beautiful things for us to experience, but they're not without dangers. I think the danger is there so that we can really appreciate the beauty. I think that God wants us to have adventures, and adventures aren't safe things. I think that God gives us tools that we can use, but which might also be dangerous. In that respect God is like the Papa who gives the boy the knife and teaches him how to use it, knowing there's a risk, knowing that things could easily go wrong.
God is also like the Mama that holds his hand and comforts him, and who maybe gives the Papa a sideways glare that says: "see I told you a nine-year-old shouldn't have knife!" Yeah, the Trinity really is a relationship after all. But in the end God is like both parents, who want to see their kids launch out into the world with the tools they've learned to use the right way, and have some great adventures.
We functioned the way parents often do, each of us taking a role and doing what was necessary. Papa was the one that said he was old enough to have a knife, Mama was the one that worried about it. Our son is a builder, he loves to take things apart, he loves tools, he loves to make things. It's what he does, he's going to have accidents like this one. He was pretty lucky this time, no stitches no major damage, but he learned some lessons and he dealt with some consequences, and he was pretty brave, and pretty tough. As much as I really don't want to repeat that drama, I was actually rather proud of him. He wasn't doing anything really stupid, he just had a knife slip on him. It happens to grown-ups all the time.
What encouraged me as his Dad was the way he handled the whole thing. He was scared and hurt, but he didn't panic, he dealt with things a step at a time. As much as I don't want my kids to run into hard times, I do want them to learn to deal with them. I was really proud of Jack for not shriveling up into a sobbing mess, or getting into a panic about the possibility of having to get stitches. I'm not generally a Dad who tries to macho up his boy, I try to tell him that it's okay to express his feelings, but I'm pretty proud of him for being tough enough to get through his first stab wound.
Yesterday, on the way home, he said that I seemed really calm when he came in with blood all over his leg. I told him that I wasn't really calm on the inside, but that I had to figure out what to do instead of yelling or getting all scared. I told him that courage is being able to do the right thing when you are afraid, not being without fear in the first place. As much as I want my kids to be safe, I also want them to face life as an adventure. You learn things from making mistakes, you grow by facing challenges. If you don't do anything, you won't get hurt, but you certainly won't have an adventure.
These are the lessons that I hope he really learns from me as he grows up, in addition to being really careful with knives.
As usual, these little parenting dramas help me understand something about God. People often wonder why they have to go through such hard times. I'm not one who likes the notion that God brings us to difficult times, I prefer to think of the world as a more or less objective arena, where things just are. I think God has made good and beautiful things for us to experience, but they're not without dangers. I think the danger is there so that we can really appreciate the beauty. I think that God wants us to have adventures, and adventures aren't safe things. I think that God gives us tools that we can use, but which might also be dangerous. In that respect God is like the Papa who gives the boy the knife and teaches him how to use it, knowing there's a risk, knowing that things could easily go wrong.
God is also like the Mama that holds his hand and comforts him, and who maybe gives the Papa a sideways glare that says: "see I told you a nine-year-old shouldn't have knife!" Yeah, the Trinity really is a relationship after all. But in the end God is like both parents, who want to see their kids launch out into the world with the tools they've learned to use the right way, and have some great adventures.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Snit Fits
I often learn things when I'm teaching. I am certainly not one of those teachers/preachers who sticks to their manuscript or outline very well. My homiletics professors would probably be rather appalled, but I find that going off script every now and then has wonderful effects. Like you learn something, or discover something, or articulate something much better than you had planned.
Last night, as I was teaching week two of a course on evangelism, we were talking about why we go to church, and of course the inevitable correlative of that conversation: why others don't go to church. One of the ladies in our group talked about how this congregation has "let people slip through the cracks," and what she meant by this was that people have left over the years because they stopped attending and no one went running after them to get them back. They read this as rejection, as an indicator that we just don't care about them. I could tell where this conversation about evangelism was going to go next: down the "we-oughta-get-back-all-those-people-who-used-to-come" road. Which is one of my least favorite roads, it's bumpy (especially for the pastor), and it's a dead end.
The lady who raised the question is one of the most dedicated members of the congregation and a genuinely nice, caring person. I'm not just saying that because I know she reads this blog either. It is always the nice, caring people who are saddened that people feel left out and hurt by the church. It's always the dedicated disciples whose hearts ache for those who wander away from the fold. My reaction to hearing that concern for about the thousandth time since I began serving churches over a decade ago, was rather strong.
What people, who are leaving the church because no one chased them, are saying is that the church did not provide good enough religious goods and services. The church is supposed to care about them, but when they disappeared for a month nobody checked up on them. They threw a tantrum and nobody paid any attention. This happens all the time. What I realized last night is that it is every bit as much a symptom of religious consumerism as people who shop for churches based on worship style or youth programs. They are looking for a spiritual country club.
For years this has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I was and still am, a little unsure about whether it is righteous indignation or just personal bias. The idea that the church is supposed to serve God's people is deeply ingrained in our hearts and minds, it makes sense. But maybe it's wrong. Maybe the church is supposed to be the Body of Christ in the world and maybe we're here to be a part of that. Maybe the Church is supposed to serve God and not people. But it's easy to get confused, because how do you differentiate between serving God and serving God's people?
See? I lost my clarity already.
So I went back to go. I put myself in the shoes of a person who felt let down and left out of the church. It was easy, because I'm an introvert, and yet I have to go to parties and social functions with annoying regularity. At these parties and social gatherings, sometimes I find my way into a conversation with a group or an individual, and I enjoy myself, even if it does require a nap later. Other times, I fail at the mingling phase of human interaction. I don't happen upon an interesting group or individual to talk to, and I just sort of stand there feeling awkward. If this standing there feeling awkward lasts too long, I start to get annoyed. It gets worse when I see sparkly extroverts flitting about the room, jumping in and out of conversations whether they are welcome or not, but not ever seeming to care whether they are welcome or not. I wonder why nobody flits over and talks to me, and I get even more frustrated and angry. This mental feedback loop can get pretty bad and put me into a major pout, and then I'm positively sure that I put out these really black, you should steer clear of me, vibes.
Isn't that pretty much what people who storm out of the church because people didn't care about them enough are actually doing?
I totally understand how that works.
But I also know that it's my own fault.
One definition I have heard of maturity is, "taking responsibility for your own emotional, physical and spiritual well being." My eight-year-old throws tantrums and in the course of those tantrums she is likely to blame her brother, her mother, me, one of her stuffed animals or some random occurrence that makes you think that perhaps she needs a psychiatric intervention. I have tried telling her about the definition of maturity, and it doesn't seem to work, because she doesn't know what the word maturity means.
I wonder if maybe we as the church have forgotten that we're supposed to be making disciples, which by almost any definition is a mature follower of Jesus Christ. It starts with welcoming, and trying to make people feel a part of the community. At some point though, it requires that people grow up and start taking a responsible role in their own growth and development. As a pastor, I often feel the pressure to be the one who deals with the tantrums, but I know it's not going to go well. First of all, it's probably not going to work. I can calm Caitlyn down by hugging her and telling her to breath, but sometimes it's hard to be able to do it, to take this devil-child in your arms and remain calm and soothing. I love her more deeply than just about anything else, and so, even if I'm angry, I usually can do it.
I wish I loved everyone in the church that much, but I don't. Plus adult tantrums are different, and I just can't go around hugging everyone when they don't want me to, I would probably get in trouble.
It bothers me that the church can be cliquish, and that sometimes we don't welcome the stranger and care for God's broken children as well as we are able. However, I know that the only way church really works as a community of faith is for us to understand that the church is never more than what we make it, because it's a human thing.
That requires some theological explanation. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world, but God did something rather audacious called incarnation, God became a human. Jesus was not a superman, he was just a man, and he was also God. Jesus showed us that we are capable of amazing things: miracles, healing and such, however, he also showed us that we are never immune to suffering, or above temptation. Most of all, he showed us that our greatest triumph is the ability to forgive. In the church, you will be guaranteed the opportunity to forgive people, because for all our high-fallutin' God talk, we're just a bunch of sinners who break and let each other down.
That's not a flaw, that's the way God designed the darn thing. If that frustrates you to the point where you just want to stomp off and pout, I'm sorry, but I can't really say it's likely to change much.
If you come into the church expecting it to "meet your needs," no matter how good that church is, it's going to let you down eventually.
So what is the church good for?
It's good for growing, if you're willing to grow.
It's good for healing, if you will let God's people see your wounds.
It's good for forgiveness, if you're willing to forgive and be forgiven.
It's good for loving if you're willing to love and be loved.
It's good for encountering God, if you care enough to really look for him in the faces of people who, despite what you might think, are really glad you're there.
Last night, as I was teaching week two of a course on evangelism, we were talking about why we go to church, and of course the inevitable correlative of that conversation: why others don't go to church. One of the ladies in our group talked about how this congregation has "let people slip through the cracks," and what she meant by this was that people have left over the years because they stopped attending and no one went running after them to get them back. They read this as rejection, as an indicator that we just don't care about them. I could tell where this conversation about evangelism was going to go next: down the "we-oughta-get-back-all-those-people-who-used-to-come" road. Which is one of my least favorite roads, it's bumpy (especially for the pastor), and it's a dead end.
The lady who raised the question is one of the most dedicated members of the congregation and a genuinely nice, caring person. I'm not just saying that because I know she reads this blog either. It is always the nice, caring people who are saddened that people feel left out and hurt by the church. It's always the dedicated disciples whose hearts ache for those who wander away from the fold. My reaction to hearing that concern for about the thousandth time since I began serving churches over a decade ago, was rather strong.
What people, who are leaving the church because no one chased them, are saying is that the church did not provide good enough religious goods and services. The church is supposed to care about them, but when they disappeared for a month nobody checked up on them. They threw a tantrum and nobody paid any attention. This happens all the time. What I realized last night is that it is every bit as much a symptom of religious consumerism as people who shop for churches based on worship style or youth programs. They are looking for a spiritual country club.
For years this has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I was and still am, a little unsure about whether it is righteous indignation or just personal bias. The idea that the church is supposed to serve God's people is deeply ingrained in our hearts and minds, it makes sense. But maybe it's wrong. Maybe the church is supposed to be the Body of Christ in the world and maybe we're here to be a part of that. Maybe the Church is supposed to serve God and not people. But it's easy to get confused, because how do you differentiate between serving God and serving God's people?
See? I lost my clarity already.
So I went back to go. I put myself in the shoes of a person who felt let down and left out of the church. It was easy, because I'm an introvert, and yet I have to go to parties and social functions with annoying regularity. At these parties and social gatherings, sometimes I find my way into a conversation with a group or an individual, and I enjoy myself, even if it does require a nap later. Other times, I fail at the mingling phase of human interaction. I don't happen upon an interesting group or individual to talk to, and I just sort of stand there feeling awkward. If this standing there feeling awkward lasts too long, I start to get annoyed. It gets worse when I see sparkly extroverts flitting about the room, jumping in and out of conversations whether they are welcome or not, but not ever seeming to care whether they are welcome or not. I wonder why nobody flits over and talks to me, and I get even more frustrated and angry. This mental feedback loop can get pretty bad and put me into a major pout, and then I'm positively sure that I put out these really black, you should steer clear of me, vibes.
Isn't that pretty much what people who storm out of the church because people didn't care about them enough are actually doing?
I totally understand how that works.
But I also know that it's my own fault.
One definition I have heard of maturity is, "taking responsibility for your own emotional, physical and spiritual well being." My eight-year-old throws tantrums and in the course of those tantrums she is likely to blame her brother, her mother, me, one of her stuffed animals or some random occurrence that makes you think that perhaps she needs a psychiatric intervention. I have tried telling her about the definition of maturity, and it doesn't seem to work, because she doesn't know what the word maturity means.
I wonder if maybe we as the church have forgotten that we're supposed to be making disciples, which by almost any definition is a mature follower of Jesus Christ. It starts with welcoming, and trying to make people feel a part of the community. At some point though, it requires that people grow up and start taking a responsible role in their own growth and development. As a pastor, I often feel the pressure to be the one who deals with the tantrums, but I know it's not going to go well. First of all, it's probably not going to work. I can calm Caitlyn down by hugging her and telling her to breath, but sometimes it's hard to be able to do it, to take this devil-child in your arms and remain calm and soothing. I love her more deeply than just about anything else, and so, even if I'm angry, I usually can do it.
I wish I loved everyone in the church that much, but I don't. Plus adult tantrums are different, and I just can't go around hugging everyone when they don't want me to, I would probably get in trouble.
It bothers me that the church can be cliquish, and that sometimes we don't welcome the stranger and care for God's broken children as well as we are able. However, I know that the only way church really works as a community of faith is for us to understand that the church is never more than what we make it, because it's a human thing.
That requires some theological explanation. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world, but God did something rather audacious called incarnation, God became a human. Jesus was not a superman, he was just a man, and he was also God. Jesus showed us that we are capable of amazing things: miracles, healing and such, however, he also showed us that we are never immune to suffering, or above temptation. Most of all, he showed us that our greatest triumph is the ability to forgive. In the church, you will be guaranteed the opportunity to forgive people, because for all our high-fallutin' God talk, we're just a bunch of sinners who break and let each other down.
That's not a flaw, that's the way God designed the darn thing. If that frustrates you to the point where you just want to stomp off and pout, I'm sorry, but I can't really say it's likely to change much.
If you come into the church expecting it to "meet your needs," no matter how good that church is, it's going to let you down eventually.
So what is the church good for?
It's good for growing, if you're willing to grow.
It's good for healing, if you will let God's people see your wounds.
It's good for forgiveness, if you're willing to forgive and be forgiven.
It's good for loving if you're willing to love and be loved.
It's good for encountering God, if you care enough to really look for him in the faces of people who, despite what you might think, are really glad you're there.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Self-evident Truth
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I know, I know, they would probably tell you that President Obama is actually the bad guy here, but in order to believe that you need to have an utter lack of understanding of how our government functions. If the current President, or any other President for that matter, was capable of the type of tyranny that ignorance and paranoia cause some to imagine, our Constitution would be an abject failure. The fact of the matter is that many of the same guys who wrote and signed the Declaration, did work on the Constitution, and they had, as a sort of MAJOR PRINCIPLE the idea that one guy should not have that much power.
The whole idea of democracy is that you spread out the power so that one person can't simply bully the rest into doing what they want. For all it's faults, it's meant to be a majority rule sort of system. So what does it say when things that the majority approve, and try to institute, gets sandbagged and waylaid by a minority on the grounds that they don't THINK it's going to work?
I'm not proposing armed insurrection, but I am proposing that we the people have the "right to alter or abolish" a system of government that has become "destructive" and toxic to our nation. Luckily for us, a long time ago, a bunch of guys with muskets and canons fought a war so that we don't have to roll out a revolutionary army, all we have to do is vote them out of office. I hope we have the stomach for that fight.
-The Declaration of Independence
I read the Declaration of Independence this morning. I think I was hoping to feel better about politics and things, but, as it turns out, it just made me feel worse. I wanted to think about the true purpose of government, and I chose the Declaration because it is the bold and clear statement of purpose that brought forth upon this continent a great nation. The Constitution is important too, but I don't have that kind of time. I had in my mind certain apocryphal facts about the Declaration, like the fact that the "original" wording was "life, liberty and the pursuit of wealth," but that it was changed when even the rich white guys who wrote it thought it sounded a little crass. And I know, by the way, that it represents the thoughts of rich white men fairly exclusively and when they say "all men are created equal," they literally mean males, and pretty much exclusively land-owning white males at that.
That being said, I couldn't help but be impressed by the guts it took a them to say what they said in the face of an imperial power like Great Britain. It's like the speech that Shakespeare's Henry V gives before the battle of Agincourt (you know when they were aiming their imperial aspirations at France instead of the New World), it makes you want to take up arms and fight for liberty and justice for all.
Then I read the list of grievances they had against good old King George, particularly the first two on the list:
- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
I know, I know, they would probably tell you that President Obama is actually the bad guy here, but in order to believe that you need to have an utter lack of understanding of how our government functions. If the current President, or any other President for that matter, was capable of the type of tyranny that ignorance and paranoia cause some to imagine, our Constitution would be an abject failure. The fact of the matter is that many of the same guys who wrote and signed the Declaration, did work on the Constitution, and they had, as a sort of MAJOR PRINCIPLE the idea that one guy should not have that much power.
The whole idea of democracy is that you spread out the power so that one person can't simply bully the rest into doing what they want. For all it's faults, it's meant to be a majority rule sort of system. So what does it say when things that the majority approve, and try to institute, gets sandbagged and waylaid by a minority on the grounds that they don't THINK it's going to work?
I'm not proposing armed insurrection, but I am proposing that we the people have the "right to alter or abolish" a system of government that has become "destructive" and toxic to our nation. Luckily for us, a long time ago, a bunch of guys with muskets and canons fought a war so that we don't have to roll out a revolutionary army, all we have to do is vote them out of office. I hope we have the stomach for that fight.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
A Letter to POTUS
Dear President Obama,
I doubt you will ever read this, but the interweb is a neat thing, so who knows. Right off the bat, I would like to tell you that this is not a letter of complaint or criticism, it's a letter of encouragement. I want to encourage you, not because I think you've done everything right, but because I understand what it's like to do your best and have a bunch of people totally not get it.
See, I'm a pastor, I spent ten years in Rural Western Pennsylvania serving a couple of small churches and trying to do some things to inspire change and new vision. It didn't really work. We liked each other well enough and some people seemed to get it, but the systems never really seemed to change much. Now I'm just getting started with a church right outside the Beltway in Southern Maryland, and we'll see how it goes.
What I have learned in the past ten years (and I suspect you are feeling this too) is that people really don't like change. You ran on a platform of change, it got me, I voted Democrat in the Presidential election for the first time in 2008 and actually changed my party affiliation shortly after that. It was partly the wars, and the economic crisis, it was partly being a parent and considering what sort of world I wanted to hand to my kids, it was partly just way too much W. The straw that broke the camel's back was all the personal attacks on you. Not because I thought you need protecting, I'm pretty sure you're a tough cookie, but because of what it said about the people I had chosen to affiliate with politically for my entire adult life.
I was a Republican from the time I was 18 because I generally believe that the government ought to do it's job and stay out of my life as much as possible. I believed, for a good while, that the conservative camp, best represented my perspectives and interests, until they didn't anymore. It had a lot more to do with what i hear Jesus saying that what you said, but the two things, every now and then, do connect. What's more, a party that I once supported fairly consistently revealed themselves to be vulnerable to being hijacked by narrow-minded, paranoid bigots, and they have done nothing in the past 5 years to show me that is not the case. Over that time, despite having some frustrations with the Democrats, I have at least been convinced that you are all at least trying, and that is really all I can ask.
I want the Affordable Care Act to succeed, I want it to work so well that it leaves no doubt in anybody's mind that it was a good thing. I have long believed that our healthcare system is a black eye on our great nation, and it needs fixed, and the free market has proven, rather catastrophically, that it won't do the job. I actually wish we could do more than just try and tweak the insurance situation, but I know how things work, and I know it's a tough row to hoe. The fear that is out there is rather staggering. People are afraid of change, even people who deeply believe change is necessary. You should see it in churches! Minor tweaks in "the way we've always done it" produce widespread panic and hand-wringing. Things that seem like absolute common sense, become emotionally charged and then it becomes obscenely difficult to get anywhere.
I know you're frustrated, I can hear it, even in your well prepared speeches, and I know how that feels. I've been there, but what I know is that the leader has to be the cool head, and the steady voice. Don't back down, but don't go on the warpath, people will learn their way around the roadblocks.
Here's where I start sounding like a preacher; it's something my Dad (also a Presbyterian Minister) told me one time when I was wrestling with some stumbling blocks: "The Devil always overplays his hand." Like when your political opposition decided to call you a Muslim or challenge your citizenship, or now, when they've forced a government shutdown because they're bad losers, eventually people figure out what they are. The American people may be a lot of things, but we don't like people who hold us down. We will figure out who they are and get rid of them eventually.
I believe in this grand experiment we call the United States, I am proud of our nation, but I know we've got a lot of growing up to do. I'm praying for you and your family every day, and hope you can lead us through this mess somehow. I'm not far away if you want to stop by for coffee, Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church is right over the river in Waldorf and it has a big enough lawn to land your helicopter.
Yours Truly,
Mark Gaskill
I doubt you will ever read this, but the interweb is a neat thing, so who knows. Right off the bat, I would like to tell you that this is not a letter of complaint or criticism, it's a letter of encouragement. I want to encourage you, not because I think you've done everything right, but because I understand what it's like to do your best and have a bunch of people totally not get it.
See, I'm a pastor, I spent ten years in Rural Western Pennsylvania serving a couple of small churches and trying to do some things to inspire change and new vision. It didn't really work. We liked each other well enough and some people seemed to get it, but the systems never really seemed to change much. Now I'm just getting started with a church right outside the Beltway in Southern Maryland, and we'll see how it goes.
What I have learned in the past ten years (and I suspect you are feeling this too) is that people really don't like change. You ran on a platform of change, it got me, I voted Democrat in the Presidential election for the first time in 2008 and actually changed my party affiliation shortly after that. It was partly the wars, and the economic crisis, it was partly being a parent and considering what sort of world I wanted to hand to my kids, it was partly just way too much W. The straw that broke the camel's back was all the personal attacks on you. Not because I thought you need protecting, I'm pretty sure you're a tough cookie, but because of what it said about the people I had chosen to affiliate with politically for my entire adult life.
I was a Republican from the time I was 18 because I generally believe that the government ought to do it's job and stay out of my life as much as possible. I believed, for a good while, that the conservative camp, best represented my perspectives and interests, until they didn't anymore. It had a lot more to do with what i hear Jesus saying that what you said, but the two things, every now and then, do connect. What's more, a party that I once supported fairly consistently revealed themselves to be vulnerable to being hijacked by narrow-minded, paranoid bigots, and they have done nothing in the past 5 years to show me that is not the case. Over that time, despite having some frustrations with the Democrats, I have at least been convinced that you are all at least trying, and that is really all I can ask.
I want the Affordable Care Act to succeed, I want it to work so well that it leaves no doubt in anybody's mind that it was a good thing. I have long believed that our healthcare system is a black eye on our great nation, and it needs fixed, and the free market has proven, rather catastrophically, that it won't do the job. I actually wish we could do more than just try and tweak the insurance situation, but I know how things work, and I know it's a tough row to hoe. The fear that is out there is rather staggering. People are afraid of change, even people who deeply believe change is necessary. You should see it in churches! Minor tweaks in "the way we've always done it" produce widespread panic and hand-wringing. Things that seem like absolute common sense, become emotionally charged and then it becomes obscenely difficult to get anywhere.
I know you're frustrated, I can hear it, even in your well prepared speeches, and I know how that feels. I've been there, but what I know is that the leader has to be the cool head, and the steady voice. Don't back down, but don't go on the warpath, people will learn their way around the roadblocks.
Here's where I start sounding like a preacher; it's something my Dad (also a Presbyterian Minister) told me one time when I was wrestling with some stumbling blocks: "The Devil always overplays his hand." Like when your political opposition decided to call you a Muslim or challenge your citizenship, or now, when they've forced a government shutdown because they're bad losers, eventually people figure out what they are. The American people may be a lot of things, but we don't like people who hold us down. We will figure out who they are and get rid of them eventually.
I believe in this grand experiment we call the United States, I am proud of our nation, but I know we've got a lot of growing up to do. I'm praying for you and your family every day, and hope you can lead us through this mess somehow. I'm not far away if you want to stop by for coffee, Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church is right over the river in Waldorf and it has a big enough lawn to land your helicopter.
Yours Truly,
Mark Gaskill
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Fear
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
-Bene Gessarit Mantra, from Frank Herbert's Dune
People are afraid of many things. Death and public speaking are high on most people's ranking of things they fear most (for some death is #2). These days the fear seems to be bubbling up all around, and it's mostly a result of perhaps the most fearful thing for human beings: the unknown. We don't know what's going to happen, in Syria, or Afghanistan; we don't know what's going to happen if Iran manages to procure or build an nuclear weapon, we don't know if the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is going to work or create a bureaucratic monstrosity that leaves us all dying in the streets from Cholera. We don't know if Congress is going to be able to compromise and get the government up and running again, we don't actually know if we care. When you get down to brass tacks, we don't really know much of anything, and the things we think we know are largely contingent assumptions that more or less glaze over a whole bunch of uncertainty.
At some point fear is a biological response, it heightens our senses and kicks our adrenal system into overdrive. The rather peculiar thing about adrenaline though is that it's addictive. People can become "adrenaline junkies" and that's not just a euphemism. The chemical substance that is adrenaline, can actually form addiction. It's why we can get addicted to gambling, because winning (and actually losing too) generates a rush of adrenaline, your body likes it and says, "hey, give me some more of that stuff!"
But the responsible part of your brain says, "not so fast, that stuff is dangerous and expensive and we can't just go doling it out willy nilly, we need to save it for when we really need it."
Then the irresponsible part of your brain teams up with your body and figures out ways to force that adrenaline into your system: jumping out of planes, risky gambles, sex or it's easy cousin pornography, drugs that mimic the feeling, you name it, anything that works.
I think that's why I keep reading the news; the crass stupidity of the leadership of this country regularly gives me just enough of an anger/fear boost to get me through to the next cup of coffee. Man, brain chemistry is weird sometimes.
Anyhow, back to biology, adrenaline inspires highly autonomous physical reactions; you don't think, you just do. Sometimes this leads to almost superhuman accomplishments, like a diminutive wife lifting a car off her husband (true story, not mine but true nonetheless), a feat which the conscious mind says is rather impossible, but the body, functioning without the interference of logic, does rather promptly.
Fear is indeed the mind killer, because if you're being chased by a leopard, you don't have the luxury of pondering the precarious nature of human life, you just need to run, fast. The problem arises when the fear is not of the sort you can outrun. What if you need to think things through? What if the danger is not of the slavering, predatory sort?
Well, then biology is working against you, and you need to rise above it, apologize to that logical, responsible part of your brain and ask it to please help you sort through the confusing feelings and conflicting information.
Humanity has evolved a rather unique capability to harness the fight or flight impulse and do something different. At some point our ancestors realized that we weren't going to be able to outrun those leopards for very long, but if we armed ourselves with pointy sticks, we could become a rather more formidable organism.
When we're scared of the dark, we make a torch, gas lamp, an incandescent light bulb.
When we're terrified of disease, we find the cause and locate a cure.
When we're afraid of anything, we immediately begin trying to solve the problem and overcome our fear, and many times we have to conquer our fear, before we can approach a solution.
We're pretty amazing that way: don't be afraid.
Or be afraid, but then get over it and figure something out.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Shutting Down
The duly elected leadership of this great country of ours has decided to pack it in and shut down, because they can't agree on much of anything. I feel rather sorry for all those government employees whose paychecks are now being pinched by the ineffective squabbling between Republicans and Democrats, this is really not how things should go in our country. I wish that things like this didn't always end up punching the working/middle class so squarely in the teeth, but they usually do. I think we need to seriously re-evaluate the system, because apparently it's broken. Here are some signs:
1. We spend a lot on War. Our defense budget, which is consequently, not being cut off, because it's considered so essential that even Congress wearing their butts as a hat should not be able to mess with our military spending, was 4.4% of our GDP in 2012 according to the World Bank. Now, any fool will admit that being able to defend yourself is a rather important thing for a nation that has made it's share of enemies, after all we can't all be Switzerland (0.8% of GDP in 2012). Most of the nations that beat us in defense spending as a percentage of GDP are places like Lebanon and Sudan, where bullets are flying, and where the GDP is a significantly smaller number. The United States makes a LOT of money, and our defense spending is something like 20% of the total budget of the Federal government. This sort of skew made sense in a world where imperialism was the modus operandi, but nowadays we're at least trying to say that's not the case. We're still spending, and setting our policies, as though we're trying to secure the spice trade routes (in the same parts of the world too, hmmm).
2. The rich are pretending like they're the victims of an unjust system. You hear a lot of yelping about taxes from people who earn rather comfortable incomes. If you listen to certain news outlets, you might be led to believe that a person making a six figure income is somehow being unjustly robbed by a bunch of shiftless poor people who just leech off the system. However, I would offer the premise that, if you are making a six figure income, something in the system has worked out rather well for you, and you ought to be willing, if not eager, to invest in the security and stability of the system that allows you to drive your BMW down well maintained streets that aren't marauded by roving bands of hooligans. If you think taxation is such an injustice then, by all means, take a job that pays you less than a living wage, provides no healthcare, and requires you to sign up for foodstamps and welfare in order to feed your children. You won't have to pay any income taxes (They'll still get you for Social Security though), and you will experience the immense luxury that all those on welfare have been keeping greedily to themselves.
3. Reasoned dialogue is in rather short supply. If you watch how some of the most educated, articulate and successful people (yes I'm talking about Congress) in our society have been talking to each other, you can hear Plato and Socrates screaming in agony from the realm of the dead. I have seen high school debates use more sophisticated rhetoric than what is taking place in the United States Congress. A Yeats poem once said that "the center cannot hold," and that is being rather graphically illustrated in the halls of power at this very moment. The ability to put aside personal preference, political expediency and general common sense for the greater good has somehow been undermined, and what we are left with are fragments of a splintered dialogue, where talking points are substituted for rational discourse.
4. The world, or even our nation, is not a better place because of the way things are. We have such power, such wealth, such stability and freedom, and we're not using it to make the world better. You can say it's not our job to improve the world, but that's just selfish. You can say we're trying, but we're primarily trying to do it through force, and that's just backwards. We are a living experiment in diversity, rationality and freedom, and we should take that very seriously. If the grand social experiment that is the United States fails, then I think humanity will be the worse for it. As much as some people seem to hate us, I think their hate is amplified because at the core they see what we could be, if we could just get over ourselves. When I look at what's going on in our government I feel the same as when I'm frustrated with one of my children because they're just not trying very hard, or they're letting their petty squabbles get int he way of realizing their full potential. I want to send Congress to bed without dinner and hope that they wake up with enough hunger to realize what they are wasting.
1. We spend a lot on War. Our defense budget, which is consequently, not being cut off, because it's considered so essential that even Congress wearing their butts as a hat should not be able to mess with our military spending, was 4.4% of our GDP in 2012 according to the World Bank. Now, any fool will admit that being able to defend yourself is a rather important thing for a nation that has made it's share of enemies, after all we can't all be Switzerland (0.8% of GDP in 2012). Most of the nations that beat us in defense spending as a percentage of GDP are places like Lebanon and Sudan, where bullets are flying, and where the GDP is a significantly smaller number. The United States makes a LOT of money, and our defense spending is something like 20% of the total budget of the Federal government. This sort of skew made sense in a world where imperialism was the modus operandi, but nowadays we're at least trying to say that's not the case. We're still spending, and setting our policies, as though we're trying to secure the spice trade routes (in the same parts of the world too, hmmm).
2. The rich are pretending like they're the victims of an unjust system. You hear a lot of yelping about taxes from people who earn rather comfortable incomes. If you listen to certain news outlets, you might be led to believe that a person making a six figure income is somehow being unjustly robbed by a bunch of shiftless poor people who just leech off the system. However, I would offer the premise that, if you are making a six figure income, something in the system has worked out rather well for you, and you ought to be willing, if not eager, to invest in the security and stability of the system that allows you to drive your BMW down well maintained streets that aren't marauded by roving bands of hooligans. If you think taxation is such an injustice then, by all means, take a job that pays you less than a living wage, provides no healthcare, and requires you to sign up for foodstamps and welfare in order to feed your children. You won't have to pay any income taxes (They'll still get you for Social Security though), and you will experience the immense luxury that all those on welfare have been keeping greedily to themselves.
3. Reasoned dialogue is in rather short supply. If you watch how some of the most educated, articulate and successful people (yes I'm talking about Congress) in our society have been talking to each other, you can hear Plato and Socrates screaming in agony from the realm of the dead. I have seen high school debates use more sophisticated rhetoric than what is taking place in the United States Congress. A Yeats poem once said that "the center cannot hold," and that is being rather graphically illustrated in the halls of power at this very moment. The ability to put aside personal preference, political expediency and general common sense for the greater good has somehow been undermined, and what we are left with are fragments of a splintered dialogue, where talking points are substituted for rational discourse.
4. The world, or even our nation, is not a better place because of the way things are. We have such power, such wealth, such stability and freedom, and we're not using it to make the world better. You can say it's not our job to improve the world, but that's just selfish. You can say we're trying, but we're primarily trying to do it through force, and that's just backwards. We are a living experiment in diversity, rationality and freedom, and we should take that very seriously. If the grand social experiment that is the United States fails, then I think humanity will be the worse for it. As much as some people seem to hate us, I think their hate is amplified because at the core they see what we could be, if we could just get over ourselves. When I look at what's going on in our government I feel the same as when I'm frustrated with one of my children because they're just not trying very hard, or they're letting their petty squabbles get int he way of realizing their full potential. I want to send Congress to bed without dinner and hope that they wake up with enough hunger to realize what they are wasting.
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