Great Scab Stories

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away,. . . no wait, this is authentic, not a fantasy. Skip the Star Wars music, maestro.

Okay, let me start again. Back in 1994, in the last century, I had occasion to break my ankle. Never having broken a bone before, and being 44, I thought I would do it up right, and really really bust it up good. Which I did.

So bad in fact that I had to have surgery to put it all back together again, much like Humpty Dumpty. With pins and plates, the brilliant surgeon tinker toyed my ankle back into some semblance of its original self, never mind that forever more I would set off alarms in airports.

For twelve long weeks, I was casted from knee to toe, and was not allowed to put an ounce of weight on said leg. I was a bit sedentary as you might expect, but did manage to get from place to place using a walker and hopping. It was all tiresome to say the least. 

Anyway, to make a long story somewhat shorter, I got the cast off and was given a very strict metal jacket to wear on it and also a pressure sock. So good was my new bionic ankle, that I soon discarded both, and for the most part went happily skipping along with no adverse affects.

The only thing I did notice was a tendency to retain water around said joint, especially on flights and in high altitudes. Raising it was all I needed to do. And so life went on it’s merry way for many a year. This year, the swelling has been about the same, tending to be bad when the humidity is high and I spend long hours at the computer.

Okay, Sherry, get to the point. A couple of weeks ago, I was walking down the kitchen steps outside to turn over some meat on the grill when a step gave way, and I ended up sitting on the next step, with one leg down through to the ground. Since I was not that high up, it wouldn’t appear to be too bad. But I felt a sharp deep aching pain, almost immediately.

As I looked back, I saw protruding from the riser, two nails, rusted and sharp. I envisioned pulling my leg, (if not broken) only to find deep bloody gashes. I was happy to find neither break not gashes, just a long scrap right along my shin. Need I say that it was the same leg as the bionic ankle?

The Contrarian came a running, and I began to moan as the pain began to sear. Little droplets of blood began to ooze along here and there on my shin, the skin was scraped raw. The Contrarian, after determining that I was not about to die, prudently went over and turned the meat, lest the dinner be ruined. I was deeply unimpressed as I continued to moan, bubbling about pain, trembling with tears about to be shed.

The upshot of which is that two weeks later, I have some fine scabs and the surrounding tissue is still mighty sore, yet all seems okay. It has, however, seemed to exacerbate my swelling problem and by evening, my ankle and lower leg are stretched and uncomfortable. I spend the night with pillows under my leg watching TV. By morning all is back to normal and we begin the entire thing again.

Okay, still not getting to the point, I know. I was talking this morning to the Contrarian about how by the end of the day the swelling is bad enough that it starts to stretch my scabs and they hurt. And then of course it happened. ”The Great Scab Story” came forth.

“Have I ever told you about my penis and the scab?” he inquired. Yes, dear, I recall the story. He begins to chortle. ”I forget, were you cooking bacon?” “No, no, not bacon, popcorn. I forgot the popcorn and forgot to turn off the burner, and well a fire started on the stove.”

“Yes, I remember now.” ”And you were naked, while making the popcorn?” The Contrarian gave an exasperated look, “NO, I was not NAKED, I had shorts on, course, I might have been hanging out when battling the fire. I didn’t have time to look.”

“Okay and you burned your penis, yes, I do remember the story.” “And it had a big scab on it, where the burn healed,” he reminded me.

“Yes, I can testify it was not the only scab you’ve ever had. In fact, you have scabs rather often. So what’s the big deal?”

“You said that your scab was pulled when your ankle swells, well my penis scab broke open when I got an erection.”

“I see.”

“You see?” ”Obviously you don’t see at all.” DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY ERECTIONS A THIRTEEN YEAR OLD BOY HAS IN A DAY?”

Put in the proper perspective, my shin scabs pale by comparison. Now there’s a story to tell around the water cooler today.

I Never Heard of Them!

Most everyone knows the story of how Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times before the cock crowed.  And sure enough, Peter, when asked if he knew Jesus, shook his head and exclaimed, “I did not know the man.”

Something akin to that is happening in GOP land these days. People are furiously removing bumper stickers and old yard signs from their property, lest they find crowds of people standing around and pointing, and of course laughing hysterically.

I guarantee if you go up to that co-worker tomorrow, the one who used to try to convince you to vote for McCain last fall, and ask him what he thinks “his” party is doing? Well, he will deny, deny, deny, claim he is an independent, just playing devil’s advocate, and is “certainly not a Republican.” How could you ever have gotten that idea?

Republicans are an endangered species, and there is even a medical condition now that seems to be attacking only Republican Governors across the land. The NEJM has the symptoms. You may want to take a look if you have any intention of even being close to one, since we don’t know at this point how it’s transmitted.

How this all got started is anyone’s guess. But things have definitely gone into bizarro land. No more the usual infidelities and money scandals we’ve become accustomed to. Naw, too tame in this new century. Now they add to their indiscretions, of whatever type, by losing the ability to speak coherently.

Things started to get noticeable with Governor Sanford who went off to Argentina for an “assignation” with his lady love, all the while letting the rest of the world think he was a hiking in the woods.

The Governor, caught dead in his lie, called the proverbial press conference and fessed up, in a rambling sort of way. He then proceeded to apologize to everyone, again, and again, and again. Word has it he even waited for the the cleaning crew to arrive at the office to apologize to them.

Of course, he apologized to his wife. But then he called more press conferences and went on at length as to how he couldn’t get his honey out of his head.  He then talked about all the extra times he had seen her, and finally how it was no ordinary fling, but rather the “real” deal, them being soul mates and all.

Michael Jackson conveniently died, pushing him off the top news spot, and he CONTINUED to belabor his teenage angst. Which all seems to cut against the possibility that his marriage can at this point be “fixed.” Finally Jon Stewart screamed! “ENOUGH.”

And then, of course, Sanford gets another chance to SHUT UP, when dear Sarah, the Moosey hunter and sometime Governor, decides it’s time to really out do the meanderings of said Sanford and go one better with her own press conference of stream of conscience remarks.

You no doubt have read and heard all this already so I won’t bore you with the details. She’s a metaphor girl, our Sarah, and she dished out plenty of them on Friday.  I like the fish one best myself.

The last couple of days have been filled with ideas, plots, and scenarios that somehow explain this fluff ball of a intellect. My favorite is Bill Kristol, who no doubt thinks he discovered her, and pushed her on McCain. He hasn’t a clue why she did it, but she’s “sly like a fox” and somehow this is all designed to win the Presidency in 2012.

Plenty of others suggest that a scandal is about to explode, but we can’t talk about that, cuz Moose mama claims she’s gonna sue bloggers who infer she’s well, scandalous. She claims her entire family was in favor of this abdication of responsibility. Why they would be, who could tell, but part of the family apparently was unaware.  Todd called his daddy and asked him to be there, but never told him why. Dad couldn’t make it and was stunned to learn that  Sarah was throwin’ in the towel.

Anyway, the Contrarian just loves Sarah now. She shoved Jacko off the pedestal, and finally put Foxy Noise and the other cable channels back onto the scent of more interesting prey. So I gotta thank her for that. The Contrarian was gettin’ a tad pissy if you get my drift. He’s back to being a happy camper and life in the meadow is once again blissful. 

Still if I ever run into the Northern Princess of Dumb, I’ll probably forget to thank her for that. Just continue to marvel that it can walk and talk at the same time. It surely can, and I still am not sure why.

No Knowledge to be Found

I’ve never been one to let the lack of knowledge stand in the way of an opinion. After all, speculation is a time honored pursuit. I would agree, that in some circumstances it might be prudent to announce before hand that one is engaging in the fancies of one’s own mind rather than relying on actual known facts. This is especially so for brain surgery, mountain climbing and plane flying.

Nothing brings more satisfaction that working a problem out logically, only to later find that you were indeed right. But the penalty for being wrong is not much more than a shrug of the shoulders, so the practice continues. I recall one day a number of lawyers sat in an office and ruminated about a set of facts. We all agreed, after much discussion, that the logical result was X. Of course we were quite wrong as it turned out. Law, alas is not well known for being logical, created that way, no doubt, to keep lawyers in business.

Which leads to another conclusion, or the first conclusion, whatever. And that is, that the same set of facts can logically lead to more than one logical result. One would think not, but it seems so. There are rather famous syllogisms that prove that rather clearly.

Which leads to the topic of the day, poetry. Yes, I’m sure you had already guessed that, being the logical creature you no doubt are. Poetry is illogical to me, always has been, and more importantly, it made me feel stupid, like I was the only one in the room who didn’t get the punch line.

Yes, yes, I get the simplistic poetry, the stuff that all rhymes and even I can compose. It’s that weird stuff that seems to have words willy nilly shoved together, bumping against each other in no discernible order or, dare I say, logic. I read it furiously, then grimace, then set it down, carefully looking around to make sure nobody has seen me. God forbid they should ask, “what did you think of that?” All I could say would be the mumbling, “oh, deep, very deep. Makes one think. I’ll have to ponder long before I can follow the extensions to their ends.”  Saying nothing, while saying enough to bring a nod of agreement. Ain’t language grand?

Then I learned. Or more particularly had it explained to me. It might have made some sense to the poet, or maybe not. Maybe he just liked the flow of the words, and the juxtaposition of certain phrases. But to you, the reader, it means whatever it means. It can conjure up any thought, memory or idea. There is no right or wrong. It’s meant to evoke, not make a statement.

At least some of it. I recall a prose writer or two being asked about the meaning, metaphor and allegory present in their work. “Never meant any of that,” they often insist. Such is the stuff of the literary critic, those who have created a way to make a living out of doing something unreal–telling the world what X “meant.” I’ve said the same about the art critic. Pretty much the same applies to the movie critic. You see the pattern here no doubt?

Last night we watched an interview with W.S. Merwin on Bill Moyer’s Journal. Bill kept asking, “this line, what did you mean?” and Merwin continued to reply, with something rather inane and simplistic and then turn it back on Bill, “what did it mean to you?”

Which when you think of it, is a pretty good gig. I mean, scramble and line up a bunch of words in pleasant sounding array. Then use a gimmick if possible, no capital letters, or in Merwin’s case, no punctuation. Paste a title on it that may or may not be mentioned anywhere in the piece, and voila’, a poem has emerged. Nice way to make a living, if you can do this in a way that makes people “feel” something. If not, then don’t quit your day job.

Merwin, it seems confirms my suspicions when he says that poetry emerges from what we don’t know. (See, I told you that I would connect it all up for ya!) And that also seems to be true, since we are about the business of evoking wispy feelings and thoughts, disconnected “present” moments of time. We get led to ponder the great mysteries of life as it were, and by definition, there is no “knowledge” only questions and tangents to follow to new forks in the road.

So, it all makes for a good way to wile away the hours. I’ve done it with prose, which I find an easier medium. Have I succeeded?

The Legacy of Fundamentalism

From time to time, I get asked the question: Why are you so against fundamentalists? Doesn’t this cut against your basic belief that people have a right to believe as they wish in terms of God? Goodness knows your particular conclusions are unique from mainstream ideas.

And there is truth to that. I personally wouldn’t care of people wanted to sit like the three monkeys, “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,” safely ensconced in their dream world of how God works. Trouble is, it doesn’t stop there. They think God demands that they are to force this “truth” they have discerned on everyone else, willingly or not. And that does drive me crazy. See they don’t care much about feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, clothing the naked and all that stuff, but good Lord, they must be active in changing the world to their God vision, even at the point of a gun.

The fact that they most resemble other extremists like the the Taliban and Al Qaeda, is beyond their comprehension, and sure to set off a wail of denials. But it’s perfectly obvious to the rest of us. This post comes via the latest attempt to reshape the world in their perverted vision: The Family Research Council is busily trying to stop Kevin Jennings from his appointment to the Department of Education on the grounds that he is gay.

This attack is aimed at the public and starts with “Would you choose this teacher to guide your children?” Just the usual anti-gay hate message. Based on the usual garbage that most of us discarded 30 or more years ago. Groups like the FRC still argue that people like Jennings are busy “recruiting” kids to be gay. Apparently they either don’t read or refuse to believe that you can’t be talked into being gay.

In any event, its but symptomatic. I drop by rather frequently to BEattitude’s blog and join in the comments regularly. What I find is so very weird is that most of the claims against Christianity come right out of fundamentalist dogma. In other words, find a atheist, and nine times out of ten, the only Christianity they know is fundamentalist in origin.

Yesterday there was a slam at Adam and Eve, and the claim that everyone believed that Adam and Eve were  real people until science made that view untenable, so Christianity keeps re-inventing the “inerrancy” to account for facts. Well, of course, first of all, fundamentalists ignore science in the first place, but the fact is that much of Genesis is seen as allegory and has been long before science told us anything about mitochondrial DNA. In fact Philo, writing at the time of Jesus, claimed that the the opening chapters of Genesis were allegorical.

No amount of explanations suffices. The bible is full of inaccuracies and contradictions, they cry. There, that means God doesn’t exist. Well, no it doesn’t, not by a long shot. You, dear atheist friend, believe that the bible is supposed to be inerrant, and thus you reach that conclusion. And frankly there is no logic at all in what you claim anyway.

The inaccuracies in the bible are well known, and have been for centuries now. And understanding the bible for what it is, has exactly nothing to do with believing in God. You might, and I say might be dissuaded from believing that Christianity is a reasonable theology of God, but that only means you might look elsewhere. There are plenty of faith traditions around the globe.

In all honesty, being an atheist is fairly stupid. Unless an atheist can prove the non-existence of God, then it might be better to simply say, “I can find no credible evidence that God exists, so I choose not to spend time on practices that may not be worth anything. I will continue to be a good person as best I can, and hope that should there be a God, he will be compassionate on me, an honest person.”  That is called an agnostic.

Bart Ehrman, who’s books I’ve reviewed here, is an agnostic today, though he once was a passionate and well educated fundamentalist. He eventually conceded to the great weight of the evidence that the bible was not inerrant. It is many things, and many of them are valuable, yet it is no way the “word of God.” But Dr. Ehrman has stated quite unequivocally that his agnosticism has nothing to do with the errors, conflicts and discrepancies he recognizes are in the bible. He says that a good many of his colleagues, who believe of the bible as he does, remain believers, and he thinks that is perfectly rational and fine. His issues deal with God in other ways, ones he doesn’t at present reconcile with any God he sees presented.

What I’m getting at is that our atheist friends seem to think that they can run over to Wikipedia and run up “discrepancies and errors in the bible” and then list them, sitting back self-satisfied, and announce: “There Christian–explain that!” As if that settles the issue. But the incredible leap in logic is obvious. Proving the bible is not what fundamentalists say is not saying there is no God, it’s saying that fundamentalist dogmas about God are suspect and not supported by the very book they claim represents God.

So in the end the fundie causes more harm than good on yet another level. It drives people to abandon God entirely, because they simply see the illogic of that theology. I see it too. In fact, we all (non-fundies at least) get that. That’s why we don’t vision God in that way, and frankly most of us never did. Sadly, some folks determine that realizing that the fundie position is silly, breath a sigh of relief as if a burden has been lifted. One less thing to have to be bothered with–goodbye God. And that is truly sad, since there are plenty of ways of seeing God that don’t involve this crazy denial of reality. Trouble is, the immature atheist never bothers to look.

I am a Blogger

Things have been busy in the Meadow for the last couple of days, and one thing that had to be put on hold was blogging. That’s getting more difficult to do, since I realize that I now think of myself as a “blogger.” Not as in, “what do you do most on your computer,” but more like “what do you do for a living?” And of course, since I’m not paid nor remunerated in any way, but for some free books (hey I’m not complaining, but of course I would die for a laptop and satellite service to do this more efficiently and thoroughly), that’s a fairly odd reply I think.

Yet, it’s undeniable that when asked what I do in the Meadow, I tend to remark as how I blog. This often brings on the question “what’s the name of your blog?” and then, I’m not always so sure that I should have said that.

Blogging, you see is somewhat personal. Yes, I know, sharing it with the great invisible world is hardly personal, but for the most part, readers are those I don’t know personally at all. So if they should gasp in horror at something I have written, well, it’s no skin off my nose as they say. So, I’m a bit unsure about the fact that people I do know, now know that I blog.

In any event, it is what it is, and the older I get, the more being authentic becomes, whatever the cost may be. Being me is most important. I’m not any longer interested in placing facades up for various “audiences” in my life. I suppose we do that, or at least most of us do. Age tends to dull the need for that, or the desire. Old people are rather notorious for “letting it all hang out.”

I recall someone saying, no doubt many have, that “I’ve never worked a day in my life.” They meant of course that they loved what they did to make a living, and never thought of it as work. That should be the goal of every human I believe, and blogging may be it for me. It fits me to a T as they say, (whoever They are, and why ever they say it if they do).

You see, I love to write, but I love to write in my own strange way, which fits perfectly this genre. I do not and have never written by the “book”. I have never in my life written a “draft,” first, second or otherwise. I’ve written several dozen rather large papers in my day, many of them quite technical, legal and otherwise. A couple have been more than one hundred pages in length with a similar number of footnotes and lenthy bibliographies to match.

I have a style of writing that is all to all my own. I don’t recommend it. But it is the way I do it. Let me explain:

I go to the library and collect the books I think might be useful. I start with one, and a notebook, with the name, author and all pertinent publishing information. They I take notes, and if I quote something I drop the page number at the end and circle it. At the end of my research, I may have several dozen pages of notes like this. Then I start from the top and read the first note, and number it #1. The second, if different is #2. I continue numbering each different note until I find one that relates to one I already have and that gets a repeat. So it might go as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 3, 2, 6, 7, 8, 1, 5, 3, 9, 10. You see?

When I get all done, I made have 40-50, maybe more, depending on the size of the project. Then I list all the “subjects” 1-however many. Then I look at the subjects until I start to see patterns and from that evolves a outline, until all the various category-subjects are  accounted for.

Then I write, straight through from beginning to end. Of course all this may take days, depending on the length, but I figure out the order and work out the paragraphs in my head, and then commit them to typing.

Once done, I reread from the top, usually out loud, and revise. Now this only consists of corrections in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure if incorrect. I don’t shift paragraphs, or rewrite sections or anything like that. I then reread again, spell check, double check footnotes and bibliographies for accuracy, and bam, I’m done. Oddly, I tend to put the name on first, but sometimes last, or in the middle. It comes when it comes.

So blogging comes naturally, given that writing drafts is a serious faux pax in the art of the blog. It’s supposed to be “earthy,” fresh, straight from the gut. And frankly, lazy person that I am, that is perfect for me. Doing this blog is not work, but sheer delight most days.

I’m certainly not a major blogger like those found at the HuffPo, Drudge, and other politico/entertainment sites. I’m not nearly as witty as Garrison Keillor, or as hysterically funny as Dave Barry. I could never carry my weight with an Erma Bombeck. I’m more the average size city newspaper columnist type. I could turn out a passably decent piece once a week of witty/humorous/commentary on a large variety of subjects. I could have made a living at it I think.

Instead I went and became a stupid lawyer. Duh, I coulda had a V-8!

Short Takes on the Day, 06/30/09

You know you wanna. I mean, it’s been too long without the Sarah fix hasn’t it? And who better to dish the dirt than Vanity Fair’s own Todd S. Purdum.

Nobody does it better and just everybody reads Vanity’s exposes’ of the celebrity best.

This one is actually very good. You’ll get lots of real insight into the queen of the North, who still refuses to waste time learning anything, figuring that her base would only get confused I guess if she actually knew anything.

In any event, a few of the staffers finally open up and tell all about the moose hunter from Alaska. The picture remains not pretty. She is distrustful and pays little attention to the experts around her, preferring to rely almost exclusively on the “first dude” for advice. There is but one motivating force, and that is pure, unadulterated, blatant blind ambition. That is what drives this little engine.

Why she continues to be upheld by so many in the Republican hierarchy is, well, but another question in the great book of questions as to why the Rethugs are hell-bent on self destruction. Enjoy the rather lengthy, but fascinating read.

***

This just in from Fermi Lab. A new sub-atomic particle has been observed. “Observed” may be too strong a word. Forget using the kid’s play microscope for this folks.

Named Omega -sub-b-Baryon, its composed of three quarks, two strange ones and a bottom. Not strange as in “weird” but strange as in physics strange which probably includes almost everything. Ever check out “string theory?” The bottom quark doesn’t refer to any sexual proclivity I don’t think, but don’t quote me.

This kind of thing makes physicists all giddy and ready to pee their pants, but I don’t know as it will have much impact on the average person.

It remains a good jaw dropping remark to make at the next cocktail party you attend.

***

Okay, you need to sit down for this. If you see this woman, call for the straight jacket people. Seriously. And Oklahoma is under quarantine until her capture.

Seriously, damnit, I really mean this. This is the photo you will find in all future editions of the Oxford Dictionary under the word CRAZY.

Said, state legislator, has introduced a resolution in the state of OK(we are a bunch of lunatics)lahoma, claiming that the reason for the the economic downturn is the prevalence of general “debauchery” throughout the American culture, and the failure of our President to follow the moral precepts laid down by our rich Christian heritage, as interpreted by said genius Sally Kern.

Need we add that Ms. Kern is a Republican? She gives their crazy Senator Inhofe a run for his money. Move over Minnesota and Michele Bachmann, there’s a new sheriff of wingnuttery in town.

You must read this resolution. It’s hysterical. (Oh, and just in case you forgot, if I don’t name a crazy person for the week, by default it goes to your choice of Glenn Beck, the aforementioned Michele Bachman, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Dick (the Dick) Cheney, —well you can go on forever can’t ya?)

***

You could have knocked me over with a bunch of feather’s, or fruit’s, or even baseball’s, but I had no idea that there were folks in this world who were troubled by apostrophes’s.

Indeed there are. And some people call my blog trivial! Well I can show you trivial sister!

Travel to Apostrophe Abuse, and you can see how some people react to the misplacement’s of a few highly placed commas!

If you’re one of those folks who can’t sleep at night for worrying about whether your last e-mail contained an unwanted and unneeded squiggle. If you can’t bear to stray more than three feet from your Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. If you are simply apostrophophobic, then by all means, sneak over and get your fix. I’ll not breath a word, I promise’s.

***

I’ve been wondering what common denominator exists in all the right wing nuttery from the GOP side of things. You know, food, drink? I thought maybe bibles, the KJV specifically, but then I figured, heck it doesn’t seem like they ever read that much.

So, I’m stymied on that. But another fine piece of illogic emanates from none other than our dear old friend, Rush (DB to his friends)Limbaugh.

Seems he’s figured out what caused poor Governor Mark Sanford to go off the deep end and off to Argentina to woo a certain senorita.

It was, hold on to your hats friends, Barack Obama!

Yes indeed, the President himself. You see, Sanford, so distraught over having the fine people of South Carolina override his veto, and having to accept that stimulus package, found it all was just too much. He lost his mind, you see. Couldn’t cope, with the about to ensue communist takeover by the federal government.

Had to run away from all the red scare Stalinistic tricks, into the arms of a lady who represents, apparently, some form of democratic perfection. Well, it’s A theory I guess.

I think Rushie forgot that the affair has been ongoing just a tad longer than Obama has been President. But heck, why should facts get in the way of a good smear?

Beam Me Up Scotty!

Michael Jackson is dead. Just in case you have been traveling the outer planets and missed the news. I don’t mean to be cruel or unfeeling by the way. He wrote some great songs, was a great dancer, was a superb showman. He was also filled with self-loathing which translated into some of the worst plastic surgery money can buy. He was probably a child-molester and deeply troubled.

That said, I’m exceedingly tired of the media coverage, which is virtually non-stop. It seems that all our media outlets, but of course especially those who run 24-hours, are at pains to reduce their work load even more than usual, giving us nothing but one insipid “interview” after another with every “hanger-on” they can find, down to the pool boy.

Enough already. The Contrarian is busy trying to tear out what is left of hair on his head, muttering, “Good, God, doesn’t anybody have anything else to talk about?” I explained, “This is all you’re gonna get until at least the funeral. And be ready, there will be full coverage of that, probably even on the major networks.”

This is their chance to take a summer vacation. Just bring out the footage, of which there is a plenty, and the aforementioned “interviewees” and we have a plan. It’s just the usual game plan, with the usual issues, that we have so grown to love and admire in our “super stars,” movie or music or sports.

The “weird” doctor who was the “personal” physician, now cast as the mad enabler of the addictive personality. The legions of family members, who just days ago didn’t speak to one another, all now in loving support of the “tragedy.” The children, subject of endless speculation as to who will raise them, poor things that they are. The money angle, how much, who can get the most, who can turn this into a money maker, all for the kids of course. The autopsy, the toxicology, all dripping with possible causation, but far enough off in the future so that we can speculate with abandon for weeks. The slimy “employees who will inevitably be caught trying to “sell” the inside story, and steal mementos on their way out.

Oh the fun is just getting started. Except that a majority of the freakin’ world doesn’t give a rat’s behind. Yet, we will be forced to imbibe this tripe anyway. BECAUSE THAT’S ALL THEY TALK ABOUT.

I have visions of the future. Earth is trashed, and humans have long gone in search of a new planet to ruin. Aliens stop by and begin wandering through the trash, trying to figure out who these beings were.

I rather think they would assume we had committed mass suicide. That is if they got a look at our data stream from the media.

“If it smacks of sensationalism, and portrays another human as failed, they will come.”

That seems the battle cry of those that pass themselves off as journalists these days. Oh I cry a cry long made. There are innumerable articles, books and so forth decrying the demise of journalism in favor of the slick silly celebrity “breaking news.”

They do it because we watch it. You can’t get away from that. That is of course, contrary to what we claim. We claim we don’t want it. We always, it seems, have loftier allusions about what we will do or say or think than we end up doing. Don’t we? Who hasn’t planned to spend vacation time reading that stack of books we “just must read,” only to find we watched a bunch of junk movies and read a couple of romance novels instead.

We don’t watch PBS news. We do, for a while, then we hunger for less “serious” fare. We miss the fluff. And they read the numbers, and then grin at each other, and sip martinis and nod as one says, “The great unwashed love this trash. They don’t have the intellect for serious journalism.” And the great unwashed are all of us who are not them.

And politicians and other CEO types, and all the hangers-on  K Street types,  nod at the cocktail parties around the Beltway, and agree that they need to do what’s best for the great unwashed, since they are too simple minded to make these decisions themselves. We, the elite, they tell themselves,  are destined to care for the serfs and plebeians. It comes with the territory of  being superior.

And it goes on. We’re way to busy carting kids to soccer games, getting the groceries, trying to make a difference somewhere to someone. So we sit down exhausted and flip on the TV for some diversion, and there it is in all it’s glory. The same old crap. We have enough to argue about, no time for this fight.

Oh, by the way, did you hear that the mother of Michael’s children is claiming she doesn’t want custody? Just want you to keep up with what’s important today. Stay tuned!

Don’t Blame God! (Part IV)

Sometimes when I read or listen to someone tell me why they no longer believe in God, or at least Christianity, I feel so very sad. Sad, because at least in my case, God continued to bug me even when I ignored him in my agnostic splendor.

I’ve come up against a good many “issues” with conventional Christianity over the years, and frankly, it’s never caused me to reject it or God, but to dig deeper. That’s why I feel sad, since the reasons given are always those that relate to a very “basic” bread and butter type of Christian understanding. I could use the word fundamentals but then we get into THAT issue.

Today, we deal with BEattitude’s third reason for rejecting Christianity.

The statements, “God works in mysterious ways,” or “It will all make sense in heaven,” are little more than irrational cop outs. This God allows horrible atrocities to be committed against innocent men, women and children every day.

Hey, I couldn’t agree more! I find those excuses just plainly unconvincing and frankly not even comforting. They aren’t so much irrational as they are thoughtless. I want a reason that is both sensible and comforting, and one that holds together.

The issue of suffering in the world has caused no doubt more than a few folks to opt out of religion, and sadly also God. Instead of, as I said, causing one to investigate further, some it seems, use this wall as an excuse to not be bothered any more with God. Instead they turn to making fun of what they once believed, and referring to believers as wrong headed, lacking in intelligence, and other demeaning things. They finally have gotten smart you see, while believers, they now recognize for the fuzzy headed, rather illogical and light minded individuals that they really always were and are.

That this is absurd on its face is apparent. Since at least the beginning of Christianity, there have been billions of believers. A goodly number, numbering in the millions probably, are smart; in fact some, (tens of thousands) might be termed brilliant. To suggest that suddenly you’re the bright light and they are all dunces, is presumptuous at the very least, and beyond arrogance at the worst.

I won’t argue that suffering is a thing that causes one to think deeply. Arguments that, somehow we will understand all this in heaven, are insufficient. Telling us that there is “grace” and value in suffering, as the Roman Catholic Church does, is also sounds good on paper, but I doubt that it suffices much for the sufferer of misery, physical or emotional. A better explanation is called for.

God is alleged to be omniscient, all knowing, he is moreover thought to be omnipotent, capable of all things. Why then does he allow suffering? Most Christians are smart enough to realize that God, even of traditional orthodoxy, doesn’t cause suffering. He allows it. He in a word, allows us to suffer the consequences of our own mistakes.

But this doesn’t really address natural disasters, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and all that ilk. Why doesn’t God prevent them?

My answer is that it’s part of the authenticity of  being. God creates, and he does so by means of establishing physical laws to govern the universe. Those things play out in a perfectly scientific manner. Sentience, develops here and there, as conditions for it fortuitously occur. Biology, driven by evolution, creates DNA that is not helpful, causing disease. This is all quite natural. Mutations are neither good nor bad, they drive life or they inhibit it.

Why does God not meddle? I see it as God being authentic with his creation. He experiences through all of his creation, but if he controls how it acts and turns out, then he’s merely creating robots, not authentic life with all its ups and downs. If God is to control these things, then of course we all ought to be perfect in every way. We aren’t.

If God meddles, saving this person and not that person, they God is tampering with the evolutionary model. And worse, he is tampering with human free will at some point. If natural events point me to death on the highway next week, then changing that changes the future, and who knows who else is affected adversely? You see the issues?

I’m convinced it’s just part of the deal, that God doesn’t intervene and save us from ourselves if you will. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t intervene of course. It means he doesn’t do so by supernatural means. He intervenes through those whom he touches enough that they graciously grant God to use them as his instruments. So perhaps, on that highway next week, I don’t die, because the person who would cause that accident, or would be in a position to prevent it, acts in a different way by being more mindful than usual at that moment.

God allows, because our lives become mere puppetry if he doesn’t. We can’t choose God, God chooses for us. Nothing authentic about that at all. Nothing in it for God, nothing worthwhile for us as human beings. So God doesn’t.

What He does do, is remain with us as close as our breath. He suffers with us, unbearably pained at our misery. He aches to be felt by us, as he waits with perfect patience and politeness for the invitation. He is deeply saddened no doubt that some give up so easily based on what men and women concoct about Him. But He waits. He will wait until you return to Him.

That’s the way I see it at least. Which means nothing of course necessarily to anyone else. It’s how God speaks to me.

It’s Easy!

Nothing is ever as easy as you think it will be, and when something is advertised as “easy” you really better watch out, because you’re really in for it. More about that in a minute.

I’ve been going every week to work on the church library. We’ve been cataloging books. We now are working on thirteen boxes of books donated by our late priest. Have you ever wanted to just lay in a pile of books and just hug them? Well, never have I come upon such a collection that so made me drool. Virtually three quarters of every box are books I want to read RIGHT NOW.

I finally sighed as I oohed and aahed picking up one treasure after another, “I can’t live long enough to read all these!” Oh how I wish my dream would come true and somebody would play me to read books, but only the ones I want! Fat chance.

The library is coming along nicely. What started out as a fairly simple idea to update and integrate this new collection, has become a real chore. But happily, it’s a labor of love. I do love libraries and bookstores, and I  approach with a sense of awe, this is holy ground folks.

I have additional duties in regards this project, being the co-chair of the newly instituted “Standing Committee for the Library.” Busy times indeed, making sure that everyone is notified of everything, writing news inserts for the church bulletin, organizing, thinking, planning, executing, puzzling, brainstorming. Such is committee life. Never as simple as you expect.

Mostly I’m blessed to be working with a fine group of people, all talented, all smart, all hard workers. We work three laptops now, each of us putting in name, author, publisher, location, copyright, section. Spreadsheets are most useful for this. I had already broken the existing stock into various categories, so that went smoother than this new stuff, which has to be determined book by book. But we got close to half of the thirteen boxes done. Another session next Friday may finish it off, or nearly so. Just in time for the next full meeting.

Which brings me to strawberries. You must see the connection? NO? Well, read on. After I left the church, I went to the farmer’s market in search of strawberries to make some jam.

Now I arrived only fifteen minutes after the official opening, so I was rather distressed to find a line nearly 30 people long, maybe more, waiting to buy strawberries. No lines anywhere else in the entire market, mind you.

I dutifully got in line and proceeded to stand there for a full thirty minutes, in the heat and humidity (90 degrees + and 100% humidity). Joy of joys for that. I got a flat, approximately six quarts, figuring I should be able to get a good dozen pints from that.

I proceeded to the Walmart to get some lids and unflavored gelatin, which the recipe called for. So far so good. I bought a dozen extra jars just in case, having about 18 available at home from other jams (raspberry and grape already used up). I got a couple of bags of sugar. Good to go. Stop at the Whopper for my dinner, the Contrarian having saved a Subway for himself for dinner without me.  (You can see I’ve been a tad lax on dinner during this ungodly weather.)

Today, I get the recipe out. Crapola, it is a recipe for fake sugar. So I go online and look for no pectin recipes, since I got only a single box of pectin. Nope, none. I wanna make “freezer jam” cuz they SAID IT WAS EASY! Right.

None of this makes sense. I’m supposed to get about 2 cups of squished strawberries per quart. That makes about 12 cups. I look up the sugar requirements. Four cups per every two cups? That is insane. That means in 8 cups of berries I need 16 cups of sugar. I’m gonna die of sugar overload. I check the box of pectin. Yep, 4 cups of sugar to 2 cups berries. This is crazy.

I clean my berries and measure them out. I get 16 cups divided in half. That means I need 8 boxes of pectin and 36 cups of sugar. This is going bad.

I call around. The Troy Store girl giggles, “what is pectin?” “It’s for making jam, ” I patiently reply. “Just a minute, I’ll go check.” A short delay. “No, we don’t carry it.”

I call Sherbons in Walker. “Do you have pectin? ” “Sure, how much you need, everybody is canning.” “About 6 packages?” “Just a minute—-yup, I got enough for ya.” “Good, I’ll send my husband up.”

Pectin in hand, I start pouring in the sugar, mumbling, “this is insane,” again and again. Soon my biggest bowl is nearly overflowing. I draw the line at 15 cups. Enough!  I’ll cut the pectin a bit, split it in half, see what happens.

I gotta split the first bowl so I can get the pectin and water in. I begin to look at my jars. Oh lordy, never going to work here. Not enough jars.

I start to ladle. Boy this stuff is getting jellied already. I fill the twelve new jars. I got half of it left. Oh lord. What hath I wroth here? I drag out another dozen of extra jars. I use ten more. I got 22 jars of jam and I have half of my berries left.

They go into the fridge until tomorrow. I’ll have to stop at Walmart after church and buy more jars. I’ll have nearly four dozen jars of jam. Enough until Armageddon or the new millennium whichever comes first.

Easy? Well, if you consider that a job I thought was gonna take an hour and half actually takes two days, then yeah, it was easy. Oh I can’t wait until the blueberries come on! I guess I won’t buy six quarts of those!

All are Not Equal

What a shockingly busy day it was yesterday for news. Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett both die. I’m not good at talking about the “breaking news” first because I am not that quick on the button. Face it, you’re not here to get the latest news. I need time to synthesize things a bit, and then perhaps some angle pops up that I think is worthy of comment. So I’m not talking about either of those people today.

Rather, I’ve had some time to think about the fortunes of S. Carolina’s Governor, Mark Sanford and I have some thoughts. This was in some ways prompted by a post by Eileen over at Episcopalifem who voiced sympathy for Gov. Sanford’s situation, basically on a theory of “who hasn’t pontificated on some subject only to fall victim to it themselves.” I can relate, but in the end I come down differently on the issue.

Let me state categorically, that I don’t have a bad thing to say about Sanford vis-a-vis his “affair.” Far be it from me to judge him in any way. It takes no genius to know the divorce statistics in this country, and any of us not lucky enough to marry our high school sweetheart, can testify to numerous relationships that failed for one reason or another. We as humans are plainly not good at picking the “right persons” or maintaining our relationships well at all.

I find it best usually, to not comment on the inner workings of anyone else’s private life when I feel pretty busy addressing my own. So, I repeat, I make no judgment about Mr. Sanford at all on the subject of his personal life per se. But you of course notice that caveat.

I am also forgiving of the fact that Governor Sanford, apparently during his faithful period, was excoriating in his disdain of then President Clinton and his troubles regarding his own marital indiscretions. As Eileen said, we have all been hypocrites at one time or another, usually more than once. I’m willing to cut the guy slack, even assuming that when he said the things he did, (namely that Clinton should resign because he had violated the public trust), he truly meant them.

I’m willing to assume he was speaking honestly out of his God-induced rectitude of the the “family values” genre. Unlike the likes of Newt Gingrich, who in the style only Newt can affect, puffed himself up with righteous indignation and spewed at what an awful God-less vile person Clinton was, all the time engaging in the exact same behaviors himself, at the very time he was so spewing. His rant was for political reasons, and he only used morality as a tool.

But I do claim that Mark Sanford should resign. He is unfit in my mind to be in the business of public care. Why you say? Well, for starters if you claim another should resign because of marital oopses, then I guess you should too, when you oops. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye,  all that rot. But really, I am prepared to concede that the dude has seen the light, and perhaps that shouldn’t be the main reason.

The main reason is that the guy has shown me that he has no ability to empathize with others. And that is a characteristic that makes him unfit in my book to represent the people. Whether you favor the Hamiltonian type representation where one elects a person whose character you respect and trust them to make the right decisions, or whether you follow Jefferson’s approach and elect people who are expected to discern the public position, and vote accordingly, I think Sanford fails the test.

Sanford seems to be the sort who cannot stand in my shoes and even approach trying to see the world through my eyes. Apparently he can see it only through his own, and if I don’t share his vision in every respect, then my causes are lost to him, no matter how reasonable or important they might be.  I’m told, though I haven’t verified this, that Sanford has been overruled by his legislature some four times recently, suggesting it seems, that he may be a tad out of touch with the rest of his state. I’m told he’s not well liked by the electorate these days.

I think we have to ask for his resignation simply because we have to send a message, that the wealthy and well placed cannot live in their world and ignore the rest of us, because they are unable to even begin to understand our lives. If they cannot do this, having never been there themselves, like say a John Edwards, nor had it ingrained since childhood like the Kennedys, then well, they have no business in the public arena making decisions about my life.

This whole thing is merely exacerbated by the fact that Governor Sanford apparently went to great lengths to mislead the public on all this. Leaving one’s car at an airport, filled with hiking gear, traveling to another airport and flying off, and returning, hoping I guess to show up, no one knowing the better, suggests he’s just a tad too sneaky for my taste. Issues of public monies also seem to be swirling around, and promises to reimburse the state fall rather on unhearing ears at this point.

What this continues to say about the GOP, one can only speculate. One seems to be witnessing a debacle the full nature of which will take decades to understand. The sheer scope of the self-inflicted damage is nearly incomprehensible. This is not implosion, but suicide by ten thousand cuts.  

I say throw the guy out. What say you?

Somebody’s Gotta Know

Okay, perhaps I have too much time on my hands. But this issue has been bugging me for a couple of years at least, and I have never had an answer from anyone. And I’m not particularly sure where to look anyway to find an answer, other than plowing through obvious tracts on brain physiology and evolution.

You see I got the idea from watching something or other on dogs and cats and how they think. And it occurred to me, that at some point in human evolution, hominids must have faced the same issue.

The question is exactly how do you think when you have no language? Ha! bet I caught you on that one. Have you ever thought of that? Do you have time in your normal lives to even contemplate such issues? Well, for whatever it means, I seem to. I fear this disease is catching. On the road today, the Contrarian in the midst of driving on the freeway with cars and trailer trucks zooming willy nilly left and right, he pointed to the glove box and said, “why did they call it a ‘glove box’ do you think? Why not the flashlight or tool box or map box or registration box?”

Well, that set me back a step or two. Like a gnat buzzing around my ear, interfering in my life, he drops this lovely little notion into my unprotected and not prepared for combat, ears, and I have to start contemplating that instead of the fine look of the passing cornfields. But we aren’t going to discuss glove boxes so just stop thinking about it if you were.

We are discussing thinking, in general, and thinking without language in particular. Now, I am firmly aware that all of us, at least those considered sane, and those not proficient in the meditative arts, are engaged in a general conversation with self all our waking hours. We chatter about the past, rerunning any number of old films about what could have been, what should have been, what didn’t happen, what did, and what we should have said, not said, and so on. We wander around the future in the same way, playing out plans and scenarios that we hope, want, plan, expect, are afraid, will happen to us or others we care about, love, dislike, hate, wish were dead in the near, middle or far future.

We chat along, as if there were indeed two of us, all the time explaining to self what the self is drudging up in memory. It’s all quite strange and odd when you come to think about it, but we all do it, and we don’t often talk about doing it. I don’t know if we are mildly embarrassed or what. We are somewhat curious about others doing it, since on occasion, we inquire, “penny for your thoughts,” or just the mundane, “whatcha thinkin’ about?”

Anyway, we spend a lot of time, and goodness knows how many words we might utter in this silent talk, if they were all written down. I’m rather surprised no one has done a dissertation on that, but of course, maybe they have. Given the output of the planet in terms of written material, I can hardly be expected to keep up with it all. It’s hard enough to keep track of the grocery list most weeks as it is.

So, there was a time before language. That seems obvious. Chimps don’t have a verbal language, and neither do the apes. We have a common ancestor, and we once were even more like them than we still are, so language developed from grunts and pointing, to grunts that had lilts and drops and became at some point multi-syllabic I assume. I assume, since I’m way too lazy to look all this stuff up. That’s what blogs are about, I trust somebody out there knows and can save me the trouble!

Anyway, when Oscar, (the hominid) had put the kid to bed in the cave, and the wife was tidying up the campfire, and Oscar was burping from a fine meal of mastodon, or cave lion, picking his teeth with a stick, and looking up into the night sky, he starts to wonder what that big old pock-marked grey thing is up there. How exactly does he contemplate it? How does he wonder? How does that conversation go with no words?

This drives me nuts to think of actually, since I spend some time every day, doing my darnedness to stop the yackety-yack of my head so I can ummmm, reach a higher plane of “being.”  Inquiring minds want to know!

The best answer I’ve come up with is what I came up with for dogs and other less intellectually stellar creatures, namely that their heads are filled with pictures, that flash one after the other. Now with animals it may function crudely enough that they can’t string them together in long “movies” if you will. Which is why animals seem easily distracted into new pursuits so readily. Perhaps we can string pictures together in our mind that tells a story of sorts, and is akin to “thinking.”

How else do we “figure” out how to shape a cutting tool, or a spear or throwing spear? We must be able to control the sequence of pictures in some coherent manner than allows us to progress in “thinking” through a  difficult problem with  some degree of sophistication. Anyway, the more I think of it, the more my head hurts. If you have an answer, why I’d be happy to hear it.

By the by, in closing lets go to something completely different: I’m wondering what you like, dislike, would like more of, less of on this blog. I write first for me, but also because I think some of you enjoy reading. Too much churchy stuff, not enough? More politics? More humorous nonsense like this post? More reviews of the news today? Something else you’d like to see? Can’t say as I’ll comply, because of course this is a personal thing first and foremost, but I’ll consider ideas certainly with great interest. Let me know!

The Value of Conformity

 

We watched Edward Scissorhands the other night, and I was struck I think this time by issues I hadn’t thought of previously.

As you no doubt recall, Edward, played by the wonderful Johnny Depp, (who is playing the Mad Hatter, I have just learned in the new “Alice in Wonderland,” by the eclectic Tim Burton) is a created being, whose inventor dies before being able to give him hands. He is thus left with an array of scissors attached to his arms. He lives in his own world in the castle at the end of the street of suburbia. He is discovered by the Avon lady, who takes him home as her personal “project.”

All manner of interesting things occur after this, as the neighborhood men but mostly women strain to meet and learn about this odd new person in their midst. It is quickly discovered that Edward has a talent for topiary, then clipping pets, and finally cutting women’s hair. His future seems secure, until he resists in confusion the seduction of the neighborhood vixen (the one who seduces all the repair men who enter her web). She turns viciously on his lack of interest, and starts whispering that he attacked her.

Then Edward is enticed into helping the real love of his life, daughter of the Avon lady, into helping break into her boyfriends home. Edward is caught. The police learn that he has never had a proper upbringing on issues of right and wrong, and he is released, only to save the Avon lady’s son from being hit by a van, while slightly injuring him.

By now the neighbors are intent on driving him out,or killing him as evil. The upshot, is that they think him dead and he returns to his castle, living alone with his topiary and ice sculptures.

From the start, Edward is pushed into conforming to the status quo of the neighborhood. His new “step mom” immediately gives him new clothes to wear, finding his leather suit inappropriate. When his talents are discovered, the husband starts explaining to him about getting into a career and being like others. After his arrest and release, he is told about the morality requirements of social living.

Edward is quite acceptable when he can and is used to satisfy the neighbors’ needs for novelty or because he can function as a service person to their everyday needs. When he turns out to be “different” he is just another “other” in the world and to be expelled quickly.

The boy-man is more a toy than a human being to them. His views are not solicited, and his comments are largely ignored. He is merely presented and told what to do and how to be. When he cannot or will not comply, there is no further use for him.

I juxtapose this against Tobias from the HBO series OZ. Oz is a prison section, some sort of experimental section, but unnatural in many ways. Lifers are housed with first timers who are doing short time. Poor Tobias is a lawyer, who drunkenly killed a small child with his car and is “made an example of.” He is soon the bitch of a white supremacist, not by choice of course, but he soon learns that it may be better than other alternatives offered him.

He quickly conforms to what mere months ago would have been anathema to him. His instincts for justice, when another inmate is on death row for a “murder” most everyone commonly knows was self-defense, urges him to let it be. He refuses until other inmates make it clear that his life may hang in the balance. He decides that justice ain’t so great after all.

Which all raises the issue of how much we demand that those we “help” are required to be what we want or expect them to be in order to receive our gifts of assistance. I suspect we do have expectations and when the recipients of our aid don’t act in approved ways, we are quick to draw back.

We served lunch yesterday. I found it hysterical that the kids were so demanding on what they did and did not want from the menu. Kids are picky, and that doesn’t change whether they have refrigerators full of food or not. Adults are more accepting, but even here, many wanted this, not that, more of this other.

I recall, as we hurried along trying to prepare trays, while getting special requests which required more attention, feeling, “hey this is free, take what is offered and be quiet!” No one said such a thing. Every request was honored, and they should be honored. Human beings have the right of choice, and being poor doesn’t eliminate that.

A percentage of the homeless don’t want the responsibility of apartments and jobs. You can’t help them by giving them that. Many do, don’t get me wrong, but some have opted out of the society that places those burdens on people. Offering them low cost housing and jobs isn’t what they want. They aren’t lazy. They are not able to cope with the stress of such responsibility. We need to adjust our help accordingly in some cases. I’m not sure we do.

See our realities are our own. Much as some insist that there is but one truth, one reality, that is simply belied by the facts. My reality is that going to jail would be impossible to withstand. I adjust my behavior accordingly. Others don’t view that experience as the end of the world, and they behave differently. 

 I don’t mean that I don’t commit crimes and they do, but rather that I am careful not to give the “appearance” of doing something wrong, while they may do things that allow police a better chance to come to the wrong conclusion about them. Do you see the difference? In fact, the very place they live places them at greater risk, and means they must be more vigilant than I need to be.

It seems to me, we don’t spend nearly as much time as we should on trying to vision the world through the eyes of other people. Maybe if we did, we might learn a thing or two, and maybe we might learn how to help better, and maybe we might learn to see the “other” as us. I don’t know. I just think these things at times. Do you?

Life Sucks!

The weather here in Iowa is atrocious. What’ new? It’s sweltering here with humidity through the roof.

To make matters so much worse, the monitor went out on the computer. So I’m hooked up to a 14 inch one, having to reconfigure everything, and most of it won’t work right.

My reader now doesn’t allow me to access individual subscriptions at all, I have to wait until they come up by time on the list. All the individual subscriptions lie beneath the bottom menu now.

Anyway I’m way to bummed to write anything. I had to move everything around on the compose page in wordpress just to write this out.

The Contrarian will be on craigslist looking for another one. No doubt another hulking monstrosity that weighs 40 lbs. Don’t pay attention to me, I’m just feeling rottenly sorry for myself.

We are working a lunch service for kids tomorrow, so don’t expect to see a post tomorrow either. Hopefully I’ll get some enthusiasm back soon!

Be well everyone and blessings.

Learning from Iran

If you are like me, you’ve been keeping a close eye on Iran, and the results of the last election. I at least, have remained measurably hopeful. I don’t suppose that is very realistic.

A country that cheats as inelegantly as Tehran has done, probably is not likely to respond with a “my bad” when their deception is uncovered both at home and abroad. I don’t expect they will be announcing a “do over” any time soon.

It is painful to watch as people struggle to just have a fair election, where their voices actually count for something.  I think we take that for granted here in the US. Everyone alive in this country has never known anything different if they were born here.

Of course, we are not free from our own dirty tricks. There are plenty of election shenanigans to go around, mostly in attempts to suppress the votes of opposition voters through “legal” objections to voting rolls. But by and large, we think they are pretty fair. I mean if ever there was one that wasn’t, we can look to 2000, and Gore bowed to the right of the SCOTUS to have the final word. He signaled that that stamp was authoritative and was “fair.”

Because of this overall complacency, we are in danger here, and few realize it, or even believe it. We stood by as the Bushites pushed through “Patriot Acts” designed to take away freedoms such as privacy and speech, making it seem “unpatriotic” to oppose such legislation.

We’ve learned that there are ways around Congresses sole right to declare war, and we have now lost that means of control over our government as well. Plenty of people when polled, are happy to give up rights we claim to hold dear in the name of “national security.”

While we have been busy with life, our elected officials have had their power eroded and controlled by mega conglomerates, beholden to only themselves. They dictate just about everything these days. Obama and his team promise a dismantling of all this, but it’s so far unclear how much they can and are willing to do. Much too much ends up being aimed at re-election rather than the public good.

You can ask, and I invite you to, and plenty of folks will tell you that unfair police practices are okay, because, like national security, crime must be stopped, and “honest” people have nothing to hide, right?

I used to get asked a lot, and still do occasionally, how I “can/could” represent criminals when I “thought they were guilty?” The short answer is that because the law doesn’t assure them a lawyer who believes they are  innocent, but a lawyer to hold the state to its burdens of proof.

The long answer is that we have a country of laws. If lawyers don’t have to represent those they deem guilty, then why have courts or juries at all. Let the cops do justice on the street by personal whim. If you, your child, or loved one were charged with a crime, you’d want the best lawyer in town, not the ignorant sap who “believes” you.

We’ve grown soft in democracy, or federalism as you wish. We actually think we are doing our civic duty by voting. Precious few of us can even bother with that. Far fewer than that go to town councils meetings, and join groups who actively work for issues. I’m not wagging my finger at you, because I fall in the same category. I try, but fail, to convince myself that blogging is my contribution to improve the “public discourse.” Uhuh.

And don’t tell me that this happens to all democracies. We have the lowest voting record of any of them I believe. We are complacent. Well, not all of us. White people are complacent. When we move off that  demographic, there is at least a lot of folks who have been the recipient of our less than “fair” democracy. Like African Americans, Latinos, American Indians, Asians, all the non-whites actually. Yet even here, there is  a lack of co-ordinated voting of any kind, and poor turnout as well.

Can you imagine Iranians not voting because they had something better to do? Or Iraqis? Perhaps it is our less than long history of oppression in a real and obvious way that allows us to sink so rapidly into shrugging our shoulders and assuming nothing bad will happen. I don’t know, but I do know, that Iran is important.

Important, not just because we could use some more rational people to deal with there on big issues that face them and the region. We can look repression dead in the face, and place ourselves there, on those streets, in that fear of what will happen next? Will I get out of this alive? Will I be free to say and do what I wish?

We have lost any sense of how precious our freedom is, until of course, we wish to strut it around as giving us permission to dictate to the world on any issue under the sun. They we parade it and our flag high and strong. I find that I can use a remark of  Jesus’ often and well. America, remove the plank from your eye before you go about instructing the rest of the world how to live. Iran reminds us, we recently retreated from the edge, and we can peek over the edge once again all too easily.

Freedom requires vigilance. We best not forget that, or we too may one day face the streets, the batons, the water hoses, and the bullets.

Don’t Blame God! (Part III)

Today we continue in our series based on BEattitude’s post, “Losing my religion. Why I recently walked away from Christianity.”

You can visit his blog by linking along the sidebar under the category “atheism.”

I continue to post comments on his blog, not because his posts are particularly intriguing, but that he has a large following and their are some very interesting commenters there, and I have found some of their points thought provoking. You may or may not feel the same way.

Today we explore his second reason:

The act of throwing people into infinite torture and punishment for not believing a Jewish guy from 2,000 years ago was God’s son, or unknowingly worshiping the wrong god, is extremely cruel and sadistic.

Quite frankly, I would tend to agree. But of course I don’t really believe in hell.  I haven’t made a study of hell in general, across the various religious faiths, both modern and ancient, but I do think the idea of an eternal damnation is somewhat unique.

In Egypt, heaven was eternal, hell was not. Punishment was meted out, but annihilation was the end of the wrongdoer. The Greeks considered those judged wrong were sent to Tartarus, where they were punished. It is not clear how long this lasted. Celtic and Middle Eastern ancient faiths led eventually to annihilation as well.

In the America’s the dead traveled a difficult and adventurous journey. It is unclear if that resulted in anything like eternal punishment. At least the Aztecs believed that there was a “neutral” place one could traverse to. Hindus have no concept of Hell, but do claim that punishments ensue for ”sins”, again not permanent,  and Buddhists teach that there are places of discomfort but that none are permanent, rebirth always is in effect. until one reaches nirvana. 

Muslim belief is more akin to Christianity, but there are levels of “hell” depending on the seriousness of the infractions.

Most important for our discussion is Sheol, or Gehenna, as known in Jewish theology. It was not considered a place of eternal damnation, but rather as a sort of purgatory where depending on one’s misdeeds, one spent some time reflecting on one’s failings and shortcomings. The maximum length was considered to be eleven months. Additionally, it was not thought to be necessarily a physical place but a place of internal reflection.

This is important, because it would be the type of “hell” that Jesus was familiar with. In fact in the NT, three words, all having rather different meanings are used. Tartarus, the Greek, means incarceration. Hades refers most closely to Sheol and has it’s connotation of a limited period. Only Gehenna is the destination of lost souls.

I would conclude from this, that Jesus, when he referred to concepts that we now identify with hell, was referring to the limited location of souls after death, usually for no more than eleven months. He no where as far as I can tell made reference to any different concept he was referring to.

It is undoubtedly true that later Christianity enlarged and in some sense went backward in making hell a place of eternal damnation. For the most part, historically we don’t seem to see that. And indeed, many Christian theologians today would argue that this cannot be, rather than annihilation must follow those found totally unsuitable for heaven.

First it should be understood, that even in Christianity, damnation doesn’t apply to those who are unaware that Jesus is the “only” means of salvation. And indeed, much of the Christian world would not make that assertion, though some sects surely would.

One is never punished with damnation for “unknowingly” worshiping the wrong God, as BEattitude suggests. One must in fact know God to be God and Jesus to be God and actively knowingly reject them.

That of course raises an interesting question. What does “knowing” mean here. Surely a poor peasant in Indonesia presented with the world’s worst evangelizer, should not be subject to hell if he rejects the poor efforts of a illiterate and poor speaking “evangelist.” And no one would condemn anyone who is mentally infirm either.

No, the hell seems to be reserved for those who “know” and then reject. I don’t frankly “know” God exists. I believe he does, and God seems inclined to keep it that way for most of us. I have argued that there is no meaningful journey to companionship with God that is not based on belief rather than knowledge.

If this is so, then it seems to me rather impossible to send anyone to hell. For if that rare person actually speaks directly to God, or in some way is presented with incontrovertible proof of God’s existence, then rejection must be the result of pure madness, and God cannot punish madness can he?

At least that is how it comes down for me. As I ‘ve said before, this drives some people quite mad with anger. They deeply want to take satisfaction in the knowledge that enemies and anyone whom they deem as failing to live up to their standards, will suffer eternally. To me this is making God do as you wish, rather than recognizing that God may see things a whole lot differently. But we do tend to make God in our image as it were.

In any event, I find the second reason advanced to be badly untrue on its face, and short sighted in its analysis. That seems often what we see in those newly atheistic. I don’t mean to pick on this particular blogger for he is but symptomatic of those I have described as “immature, a term this blogger would have every reason to be upset with, no doubt.

But being busy showing us all various contradictions within the bible, is in fact, immature. This is not new news. It’s quite old news. It is not shocking, nor does it suggest to the believer that they have been duped. It means a book is flawed, but many of us know that. It has little to do with faith. Our faith is in God, not in a book, no matter how valuable it might otherwise be.

Next: How to explain the inexplicable?