Somebody Needs a Bifocal Adjustment

Tags

Alexander the Great, economics, God and the GOP, Herman Cain, History, Humor, Michele Bachmann, The Contrarian

It always starts out the same way. The way? I was minding my own business.

As is usual, in the early morning, MSNBC was on. I was busy with house stuff (I spend all the day cleaning and cooking as a good housewife should).

The Contrarian was sitting and watching Chuck Todd. Well, more to the point, he was reading the “crawl”.  Suddenly this:

“My God has California lost its collective mind?” he shouted.

I set down my pail and mop, wiped my weary brow with the back of my hand, dried my hands on my apron, and tucked a loose curl back under my kerchief.

“What has California done now?” I asked in the usual innocence I maintain, hoping against hope that the response will be sane.

“Why, they’ve banned miners from using tanning beds! Can you believe that?” he screeched.

My brain went into overdrive as I tried to fathom what, why and, well, how this impacted my life, and where was the sense in all this.  “Huh?” I managed.

“My God woman, those people spend the vast majority of their existence underground! To prohibit them from getting the vitamin D they need, in a relaxed environment seems draconian at best and downright evil. The TeaBaggers are right, we are turning into a nanny state!”

I hoisted myself up off my knees, shaking my head, and making my way to the living room, where his Highness sat in regal glory with remote control in hand. “What in the world are you talking about? This makes no sense.” I sighed.

“Here it comes again, read the crawl. See?” he smartly pointed.

I looked at the bottom of the screen. Sure enough I saw it. “California bans minors from using tanning beds.”

“You damn fool, it says MINORS, M-I-N-O-R-S, not MINERS! I should have known. Only you could misread it. Now let me get back to dinner. It’s Chateaubriand tonight, you lucky dog.”

♦

Ya gotta laugh. All the GOP candidates pretty much say the same thing. God called them to run for President. They resisted, they were noble in recognizing their own unworthiness. But God persisted, God will have his choices against all odds. Just ask Moses, or David, or any of the other poor Israelites who protested, “Not me Lord, you can’t mean me?”

Herman Cain is but the last to “answer the call.

I said all the candidates. I was wrong. One has never claimed God called him. Mitt, he still just wants it. He wants it so bad that it really makes you feel a little sick to your stomach watching him pander and plead. “Will ya like me now?” he asks as he wanders about the land, changing positions on everything, looking for “clear reception.”

♦

Aww, dang it. Can’t they let our heroes be?

Alexander the Great? Well, yes, he didn’t get the appellation “Great” for being a pizza delivery boy ya know.

Silly historians, always doing stupid things like research and changing what I thought I knew about something and somebody. Geesh.

I mean Alex was tutored by Aristotle for goodness sake.

Anyway, a delightful review of the books recently out on the Macedonian wonder. Or was he?

♦

The Grio jumps in with a good piece on Herman Cain, who is doing the bidding of the GOP, by adopting their racist rhetoric. Cain now claims that there is really no racism in America, sufficient to inhibit anyone of color who works hard.

There is a certain type of black American who actually believes this crap, they need to believe in their “self-made” status. Herm may be one of them, though it’s mighty hard to believe he can believe his own garbage.

Wearerespectablenegroes continues to probe the psyche of Herm. Not a pretty thing no matter what your conclusion.

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Slogans are fine things. They are usually easy to remember, and make fine rallying-round points. But when slick, easy to remember slogans are used to address serious and massive problems, like the economy, you can almost be sure they mask a lot of really bad thinking.

Take Herm’s 9-9-9 plan for the economy. Please take it! Oops, sorry, I was channelling Henny Youngman for a moment.  Anyway, Think Progress lays out the real real downside of Herm’s simplistic panacea for our economic woes.

Hint: flat taxes almost always hit the poor the hardest. This one is no exception.

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Talk about Occupy Wall Street. We got our own Occupation here in Iowa. That Woman won’t leave! Who? Michele (falling like a rock) Bachmann is desperately trying to remind everyone that SHE won the straw poll a few weeks ago.

In polling today, Crazy-Eyes is coming in a distant four or five. It’s creepy. She won’t leave. I can feel the state dumbing down by the minute. Somebody pry her cold dead hands from a microphone and send her back to Mina-SOTA.

♦

 

Related articles

• Herman Cain and the Glorification of Ignorance (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Noem Cain geen ‘Herm’ (electiondeskusa.wordpress.com)
• How Cain sat out civil rights activism at Morehouse – Source: The Grio (curmilus.wordpress.com)
• Herman Cain is proud to be ignorant about Uzbekistan (Video) (alwaysquestionauthority.wordpress.com)
• Herman Cain, he represents everything we should fear about the black republican (josephlynnkitchenjr.wordpress.com)

It’s Saturday, So It’s Philosophy 101

Tags

atheism, faith, gay rights, God, GOP, Humor, Republicanism

I just love it when I’m proven to be right. Or should I say that someone who has some real intellectual creds agrees with me.

Jonathan Rée, writing for The New Humanist, has a really lovely article on atheism. Writing as one, he points out a lot of the misconceptions of what the word means and has meant over the centuries.

Moreover, he chastises the “new, new Atheists” as he terms them, for not knowing the history of atheism, and engaging in a petulant and childish game with believers.

He points to the philosopher William James and says of him:

He hated the belligerent secularism that treats religion as a childish superstition which we will all put behind us once we reach the age of reason.

Much could be said of the new new atheists of today, he argues.

James spoke of faith in this manner:

Becoming religious was like falling in love, he said: not a process of intellectual persuasion, but not a delusion either, and it lent new aspects to the world, “an enchantment which is not logically deducible from anything else.”

I don’t think it can be better said or explained frankly.

While Rée certainly comes down in favor of atheism as being the more reasoned choice, he certainly does so in a gentle and non-judgmental way.

This is the stuff of real discussion. Read it and see if you don’t learn a thing or two.

♦

The chicken enchiladas? Pretty much of a bust. The recipe sounded good, but it failed on a number of levels. I’ve been pondering for some time, and think I may have a solution. I can’t tell you why I want a “perfect enchilada” but I do. So I’ll try my own hand in a week or so. You never know, the Pulitzer may be on the horizon. Surely they have one for cooking?

♦

I snatched this directly and entirely from Joe.My.God. simply because it needs to be said, and it’s said succinctly and with passion:

If you’re a Christian who believes that being gay is a morally reprehensible offense against God, then you share a mindset, worldview, and moral structure with the kids who hounded Jamey Rodemeyer, literally, to death. It is your ethos, your convictions, and your theology that informed, supported, and encouraged their cruelty. We Christians who believe that God created gay people as much in His own image as he did straight people are begging you to reconsider your theology — to do nothing more than be open to an alternative, fully credible, scholastically sound interpretation of one or two lines from Paul. How can you be unwilling to do something so simple, when you see the horrible ultimate cost of that refusal?” – Christian author John Shore.

♦

And this seemed to say it perfectly well too:

When the rich rain economic bombs on upon ordinary folks, that’s just capitalism. When ordinary folks point out the bombs, that’s Class Warfare ~Roshi Bob

And the beat goes on.

♦

I picked this up on Roger Ebert’s blog today, and thought it apropos.

♦

Brendan Beery is one very thoughtful guy. Please go read his latest post called, The Inelegance of Republicanism.  He writes a gentle but firm rebuke that could not fail to shame a rational person, but of course, for just that reason, it probably won’t.

♦

Humor is a necessity every day

. So get your daily dose from Political Irony and the best nuggets from the late night circuit. Actually he got all his stuff from Bill Maher today.

Frankly one of the funniest things I read yesterday was Billy Kristol’s remarks in his article about the latest GOP “debate”. Seems he got an e-mail from a “young and bright” Republican who was watching his first debate of the season.

“Why they ( meaning the field of GOP candidates) make us look stupid!”

Well, yes they do. Take a look at the House and Senate GOP, and you can add insane to the mix.

♦

From LOL God

Now go out and have one fine weekend!

Related articles

• John Shore To Christians Who “Hate the Sin”: Turn, Friend. (slog.thestranger.com)
• Why Many Religious Aren’t Bothered By Atheism (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Atheists are Differently Religious – and No, Atheism is not the/a Religion (theframeproblem.wordpress.com)

In the Name of God

Tags

American Exceptionalism, founding fathers, God, Islamophobia, Politics, racism, religion, right wing extremism

The atheists have a powerful argument when they suggest that millions have died in the name of religion. They are right. From the beginning, humans fought over land each claimed was theirs by right, given to them by God.

It’s never ended. Down through all these millenia. We have continued to fight over land and control of populations, all the while upholding our efforts as the “will of God.”

It continues today in a war being waged between Jews, Muslims and Christians. All claim they are doing God’s bidding.

There is always a good argument that mankind would have been better off not listening to the small voice within that urges us to believe that we are destined for more than just a brief sojourn upon this planet only to return to dust.

The truth is, all these wars instituted to protect, promote, or to destroy a religion, are done in the name of religion. There is no objective proof that any of this is called for by God. The deeper you look, the more you see human motivation driving the crusade to install “our” God.

Any fair reading of the Old Testament raises a very obvious question. Isn’t it awfully convenient that God has been on the “side” of the Israelites, thus allowing them to then justify their genocide of whole towns and settlements? How convenient to declare that God has said, “why this land I give to you, so go and subjugate all those who oppose you taking their land.”

Muslims feel utterly justified in controlling the Holy Land, as do Jews, as do Christians. Over time, each has held sway for a time, and been more than willing to kill to retain power. All in the name of God. All in the name of an interpretation, that just might be a bit self-serving.

Religion versus religion, and religion versus secularism erupts in mostly non-violent war in this country today. It has been growing steadily, or resurging I should say. We can be sure that the US expansion into the West and our suppression of indigenous people, either red or brown, was done in some sense in the name of God. We are the City upon the Hill, and as such, God’s new chosen.

This convenient “American Exceptionalism” poisoned with religious righteousness, has justified in the eyes of its perpetrators all kinds of injustice, from genocide to land grabbing, and slavery.

For periods of time, we placed religion in mostly its rightful place–as a facet of each person’s life as they chose or not. Government stayed out of faith, and faith stayed out of government. Religion was a good place to develop ethical, moral, and just responses to issues of the day. It was not the only place however. Government did it’s best to cull the best of the just response and act upon it for the greater good of all, and so that minorities were not walked upon.

I was thinking of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, whatever his personal beliefs about God were, certainly believed that it was a personal issue, not one for the public square. Washington was so loathe to be seen as promoting a particular tradition that he didn’t go to church at all as president.

What must they think of the goings on today? One can only imagine. I suspect they would see it for what it is, shameless religiosity to justify what people want to do anyway. A serious segment of the religion right who intone  “marching in lockstep with Israel” do so only because they believe they are promoting their version of the end times. This of course is not lost on the Israelis, but they accept their friends where they can get them.

Herman, Step-‘n-fetch-it, Cain argues that in his uninformed mind, most Muslims are Sharia law followers, and as president he wouldn’t have time to ferret out the few who aren’t, so don’t blame him for not putting any Muslims in his prospective administration.

A segment of the religious right rejects Mitt Romney only because he is “not the right kind of Christian”. Warren Cole Smith, associate editor of the World, a right-wing magazine, argues:

Placing a Mormon in that pulpit would be a source of pride and a shot of adrenaline for the LDS church. It would serve to normalize the false teachings of Mormonism the world over. It would also provide an opening to Mormon missionaries around the world, who could start every conversation: “Let me tell you about the American president.” To elect a Mormon President is to advance the cause of the Mormon Church.

Non-Christians likely don’t care much about this point one way or the other. But for the Christian, this is a vital issue. One of the strongest warnings Jesus issues is to those who “lead little ones astray.” He said it would be better for that person if a millstone were put around his neck and he were cast into the sea. The validation of the false religion of Mormonism would almost certainly have the effect of leading many astray. Evangelical Christians should have no part of that effort.

This is no different from back in 1960 when a goodly sum of Protestants were pretty darn sure that electing a Catholic to the presidency would be tantamount to installing the pope in the White House, and for some, that was Satan himself.

The UCCB, the official spokesman for the American Catholic Church, has written a letter to Speaker John Boehner, basically condemning the Ryan plan and other GOP plans to gut Medicare as unfairly burdening the least able, while gifting the rich with more riches. Arguments go back and forth within the Catholic world as to whether or not voting for this person or that can be justified under definitions of intrinsic evil.

Exactly what Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers feared, has come to fruition. The public forum is now embroiled in an increasingly vitriolic war of words over whose interpretation of sacred scripture is controlling.

And underlying it all is the ugly raw truth. It still comes down to using God to justify why somebody’s vision of the world should be the one everyone else should be forced to live under. And it’s wrong, period.

End of rant.

Thoughts Dripping From My Disheveled Mind

Tags

Al Qaeda, editorial, Obama, Osama bin Laden, terrorism

You may consider me either sin personified or a saint. I don’t believe I am truly the former, and I am certain I am not the latter.

I am to put it quite bluntly, caught between these two images. I have been for several years.

We were watching the usual Sunday night fare on the TV when suddenly it was interrupted with “breaking news”. We sat momentarily queasy as we wondered what terrible thing might have befallen the world.

We learned, as did everyone, that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a commando raid on a compound in Pakistan.

My first reaction was one of relief that nothing horrifying had occurred in the world.

But then, I didn’t know quite what to feel.

I have always been struck by the fact that my first reaction to a photograph of Bin Laden is that he reminds me of paintings of Christ. Especially those that are more Semitic in nature.

This is always quite a shock to me, since OBL is clearly a man who has guided other men to die and to kill innocents in large numbers while doing so. I thoroughly reject everything about his methodology, though in some very basic respects I can sympathize with his anger at the West.  For the West has much to answer for in its treatment of Middle Eastern peoples down through time.

I am reminded too, of Matthew 25, wherein Christ reminded a confused audience who were sure they had never failed to minister to him in his needs, that when they did not do it to the least of his children, they did not do it for him. In other words, as Mother Theresa reminded us often, we are to see the face of Christ in everyone we come upon.

I am reminded too that I am to believe that God loves every one of his creation as perfectly as I am loved. While I can note the “wrongness” of another’s actions, I cannot make claims of self-righteousness.

I am reminded that I am thoroughly and utterly opposed to the death penalty, and by all accounts this was a pure assassination.

I am reminded that a man I deeply admire, Barack H. Obama, gave the order with the intention that this man die. I can but image the awesomeness and awfulness of that moment to him. I am truly glad that he is our President.

I am reminded that OBL was separated from the day-to-day workings of al-Qaeda and that whatever plans are being made will continue.

I am reminded that it has long been thought that the death of OBL would bring forth an attack, planned for just this occasion.

I am reminded that the streets of America filled in many places spontaneously and people are joyous at this death. And I feel utterly utterly uncomfortable.

I am reminded that the stock market went up, and the oil futures went down.

I am reminded that the President will undoubtedly receive a huge bump in the polls.

Should I be happy at these political plusses?

I am deeply confused and pained by it all.

Ironically, or as I like to think in a fit of serendipity, this is the first thing I read this morning:

“We are living in the greatest revolution in history–a large spontaneous upheaval of the entire human race: not the revolution planned and carried out by any particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental boiling over of all the inner contradictions that have ever been in man, a revelation of the chaotic forces inside everybody. This is not something we have chosen, nor is it something we are free to avoid.

This revolution is a profound spiritual crisis of the whole world, manifested largely in desperation, cynicism, violence, conflict, self-contradiction, ambivalence, fear and hope, doubt and belief, creation and destructiveness, progress and regression, obsessive attachments to images, idols, slogans, programs that only dull the general anguish for a moment until it bursts out everywhere in a still more acute and terrifying form. We do not know if we are building a fabulously wonderful world or destroying all that we have ever had, all that we have achieved!

All the inner force of man is boiling and bursting out, the good together with the evil, the good poisoned by evil and fighting it, the evil pretending to be good and revealing itself in the most dreadful crimes, justified and rationalized by the purest and most innocent intentions. [Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander 54-55, reprinted in Seeds, 27, Thomas Merton]

I am angry because I don’t know what is appropriate to think or feel. Although people will talk of “closure” and of “justice” they are words only, and in the dark night as I sit pondering how we so seemingly give legitimacy to murder, I am not comforted in any way. I am the opposite.

I wonder at how no one questions any of this. How all is smiles. “We got him!”

Yes, but who are we?

Can I Have an Extra Day Please, with Sugar?

Tags

abortion, brain, budget, cosmology, David Barton, Eric Cantor, evolution, founding fathers, History, medicine, Mike Huckabee, Planned Parenthood, psychology, soul, teabaggers, women's rights

Everybody has those kinda days. When you get up already behind. This is usually the result of “sleeping in”. I’m a 7 am kinda person. I find that a humane time to arise. Some days, I don’t quite make it. Thus, I’m behind.

Tomorrow, I’m shopping, so I’m not sure I’ll get to blogging.

The Contrarian, however, puts his time to good use. He’s a thinker. Remember his desire to hold a thinkathon? Much easier than having a walkathon he thought.

When he thinks too much, well, I usually get concerned. His latest “breakthrough” is a humdinger.

The Contrarian has long pondered the existence of the soul. That has led him to toil in the backyard of the differences between humans and other animals. That place, he contends is where one might locate the seat of our divine connection. With me so far?

The places tred by medical men and women, philosophers, and theologians. What of the soul?

And, as I said, he thinks he has had a breakthrough.

He asks this question:

Is there any other animal but humans who react with distaste to the fart?

I know, its blasphemous. It’s crazy. It’s absurd, illogical, and downright unpretty. It is the Contrarian. Don’t blame me. I’m just reporting the news.

♦

If’n you didn’t know, the right-wing religious are, as you know, against abortions. And they are very against Planned Parenthood, and they devise all manner of nasty things to “prove” that PPH should be shut down. One of their more ingenious methods is to claim that PPH is about the business of genocide of the African-American population. This because statistically more black women obtain abortions than white or Latino.

Now the fact that this has to do with poverty and lack of access to medical information and contraception at the same level as their more wealthy white counterparts is ignored. No, it’s so much easier to suggest that PPH has as an unstated goal, the destruction of an entire people.

I imagine that the NAACP and other African-American groups are so grateful to the white folk for being so concerned for them. Yes, I guess we can all be grateful to those benevolent white people.

♦

Roger Ebert talks about what he understands as the Universe and evolution. It’s a lovely piece. Makes ya feel all warm inside for reasons I cannot explain. Least it do for me.

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See, now we know that serendipity is real. I mean, after writing about the Contrarian and his “breakthrough” I come across this article: Natural History of the Soul. Nicholas Humphrey argues that spirituality is essential to consciousness. Read it in The New Humanist. Humphrey is an evolutionary psychologist, and he’s written a book called Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Looks like a very interesting read.

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If there were any question about the agenda of Mikey Huckster, read on. It seems Mikey attended one of those uber right-wing  conferences, one that featured pseudo-historian David Barton and his revisionist history of the founding of this country. Why Mikey was just adoring of said Barton and said the following:

 “I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced–forced at gunpoint no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it.”

Of course, in the “official” video of the event, the “joke” was scrubbed. And of course, Mikey meant every word, until he realized it wouldn’t play well outside his crazy base.

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Good news to report. I don’t have a link, but I’ve heard or read it in so many places that it is obviously true. The teabagger phenom is beginning to wane. Their unfavorables are now above their favorables. Which is all the more amusing since the Prez wannabes are all still dancing like marionettes to the teabagger tune, afraid to pirouette too far from the dark force. 

This is causing all sorts of problems with the budget. Word is that Boehner wants desperately to make a deal rather than shut down the government, but he dare not piss off the wonkettes, who are picketing in Washington, even as we speak. Well, we all knew this would happen didn’t we?

And who might you ask is riding to the rescue? None other than boy wonder Eric Cantor. Cantor has introduced a bill that will be voted on in the House on Friday, entitled, “Government Shutdown Prevention Act.” What it does it tell the Senate to act on the budget bill before the deadline and if it doesn’t the House passed bill will become the law of the land.

Yes, you heard that right. Cantor is simply tearing the Constitution up and making up his own new one. Yes, that’s some pretty strict construction there Mr. Cantor. Uh…do you dance too?

♦

What’s on the Stove? Fajitahs!

Related Articles

• Mike Huckabee thinks all Americans should be forced at gunpoint to listen to David Barton (heartchasms.wordpress.com)
• Huckabee Wants Barton to Teach All Young Americans [Dispatches from the Culture Wars] (scienceblogs.com)
• David Barton: Bad Preacher, Terrible Exegete (scotteriology.wordpress.com)
• Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey – review (guardian.co.uk)
• The Books Interview: Nicholas Humphrey (newstatesman.com)
• Anti-abortion billboard using Obama’s image raises ire (windsorstar.com)

Divine Transcendence and the Culture of Change

Tags

Book Reviews, David H. Hopper, Francis Bacon, God, reformation, religion, Transcendence

Let me first thank Eerdmans Publishing Company for sending along a copy of David H. Hopper’s Divine Transcendence and the Culture of Change, for review.

David Hopper has set out an interesting premise in his latest book: Namely have we gone too far in tolerance? He essentially argues that statements such as “It doesn’t matter what a person believes just so long as he/she is sincere,” are the product of ill-educated minds who know very little of theological matters. In other words, it’s one thing to be tolerant in a prudent sort of way, but it is wrong to have no standards at all.

He argues that the divine transcendence of God has been lost in this thoughtless attempt to not step on toes.

Many have perhaps come to the same conclusion, but they have done so by laying the blame on the “scientific revolution,” and its concommitant inference that nothing is beyond the mind of mankind.

Hopper argues that the Reformation, in the guise of Luther, Calvin and others of the same persuasion also played a part, perhaps unknowingly, in fostering this climate.

He starts with the model set out by H. Richard Niebuhr in his Christ and Culture.  In it Niebuhr posited five expressions of Jesus and culture:

1. Christ against culture
2. Christ of culture
3. Christ above culture
4. Christ of culture
5. Christ the transformer of culture.

He places various movements, the monastic, Calvin, Mainstream Protestant, Catholic, Feminist, and so forth within this model at their most agreeing points.

Hopper sees in the Reformation movement and the following Enlightenment, a movement away from a “religious church-dominated culture” to one predominately secular, and one that has largely discarded its timeless orientation to the changeless and divine.

Luther addressed a church largely caught in the medieval concepts of Christ both above and against culture. The Church controlled the life of people by its claim to control their entrance into heaven. Luther of course had no intent to found a new sect, but rather intended to reform from within. And he of course failed, as the Church, seemingly receptive at first, recoiled at his more “heretical” thinking.

Heretical only in the sense that Rome rejected it, and so labeled it. Martin Luther’s “justification by faith” eliminated the idea that salvation was controlled by the Church. Indeed, Luther shockingly argued that it was faith in and adherence to the Scriptures, available to all of God’s people that was above the Church, and where mankind’s salvation was found. Free gift of grace.

Along with Calvin, others joined in and began to see Christ and the scriptures as calling for a salvation that was deeply imbedded within culture. In fact Calvin claimed that each person’s vocation was his opportunity to live out the Gospel message in service to neighbor.

While Luther did not extend his “Christ in Culture” to include much in the way of serious revamping of political institutions, Calvin did.

What is really new in Hopper’s analysis is that he brings Francis Bacon and the English reformation also into the mix. Bacon, in his “idols of the mind” laid the groundwork for a new way of looking at nature. In fact Bacon saw this as God’s will, that man was untruthful to God in leaving all things as mystery in God.

Bacon freed the mind of all the preconceived notions and “worldviews” and brought forth inductive thinking, pursuing a method of critical thinking. He claimed there were “attainable” truths “hidden by God” in nature, and these were open to being discovered.

Whereas Luther’s holy grail was 1Corinthians 1:18-23. The folly of the cross was God’s foolishness, wiser than that of men, Bacon believes that God has created man to discover the secrets of nature and to use them for the betterment of mankind.

Once married to American pragmatism and work ethic, scientific exploration exploded, and as our grip on a transcendent God seems to have slipped away.

In the end, Hopper argues for a return to a solid foundation in that transcendence. We are mired in our “consumerism” spirituality. We are driven by change for its own sake, and no longer see the limits of our own abilities. Only with a return to this foundation in the transcendent he argues, can we realistically address the common problems in our global world.

This is an interesting book, one for the more serious reader of theology and culture. But one that will seriously re-orient your thinking about progress and the price we are paying for it.

Wisdom Wisps

Tags

Essays, God, philosophy, theology, wisdom

I think about wisdom. Perhaps more than the average person. It’s hard to tell. It’s not something that is a great conversation item.

Some years ago, I realized that perhaps more than anything else, I’d like to be wise. Wise in the sense that people wanted to listen to me.

But I’m not wise, nor, I suspect, will I ever be so. You see, the people who I consider to be wise listen more than they speak. And I’m the antithesis of that.

I’m convinced that wise people become wise because they listen. They absorb the wisdom nuggets of others. They also read a lot. I read a good deal, but not a lot. Not as much as I should.

I consider Socrates wise. But he was wise in realizing that he didn’t know much. His wisdom was, through questioning, showing others that they didn’t know very much either. In some sense, he invented the idea of true serious thought, deeper than the surface–probing, winding, turning, backing up, circling.

It’s hard not to think of Buddhist monks and Indian yogis as wise. They sound wise. Perhaps it’s because they say things that I don’t quite get, and I equate wisdom with statements that puzzle me. So, I’m not sure.

Lots of people, mostly dead, seem wise to me. Henry David Thoreau for instance. He said two things I never forgot:

“Most men live lives  of quiet desperation.”

I think that is one of the truest and saddest things I’ve ever read. We all live encased in armor, a total mask. Presenting ourselves as “normal” when inside I suspect most of us are very unsure of most everything. And that frightens us.

“I went to the woods to live deliberately.”

I don’t think you have to go to the woods, but every hermit, every monk, everyone who is serious about their spiritual journey knows that isolation is essential, if only for a few minutes a day.

Thomas Merton was wise I believe, but perhaps in some sense what we define as wise is that which we believe is true. For the same reason I think Lakota healer and visionary, Nicholas Black Elk was wise.

The bible speaks a lot about wisdom, and addresses wisdom as female. Sophia. That’s a nice thought, wisdom being the female aspect of God. Yet, I don’t think of God as having “aspects.” I see God as an integrated whole, a singleness, not a duality or triad. These are human constructs designed to help our minds understand the transcendent quality of the Godhead. At least so I believe.

The dictionary suggests that wisdom is the ability to discern what is right and true. Philosophically it is defined as the “best use of knowledge.” The problem with this, is that again, it seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

A Cameroon proverb says of wisdom:

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

That seems to confirm that wise people aren’t big talkers.

We watch a television show called An Idiot Abroad. It’s produced by Ricky Gervais, a real favorite of mine, and is about the travels of his friend “Karl”. Ricky refers to Karl as a moron, an idiot. We were unsure of watching, since we surely had no desire to laugh at the goings on a person who had mental defects.

That was not the case. Karl is completely normal mentally. He’s just a simple home town boy, sent a travel across the globe. And he says rather funny, but often quite wise things.

“It’s better to be an ugly person and to look at good-looking people, than to be good looking and have to look at ugly people. “

Isn’t that true? Karl drops little pearls like that. Yet, Karl is not wise by any standard I know.

Which means that even rather simple average people can drop a wise bomb from time to time.

Sometimes people refer to a young child as a “very old soul.” I’ve never met one myself, but I assume that they mean that the child says things that are wise “beyond his years.”

The Contrarian is wise a good deal of the time, about a lot of things. He’s worth listening to. He once met a kid, still a teenager who had quit school. He found it worthless. He left home, and made his way as best he could. Most of his time he spent in the library, reading. He was probably wise then, and no doubt is even wiser today.

I know a couple of my Internet friends, one I’ve known a long time, another I’ve just “met.” Both write exquisitely. Tim, many of you know, from Straight-Friendly. The other is Paul and many of you may not yet visit his blog. You should it’s called Cafe Philos. They make me think, more than I want to sometimes.

I think wise people have an open mind. About everything. Nothing is sacred, so to speak. Everything is up for grabs. Some things, over time, are probably true, but the door is always a bit ajar, just in case something new comes along that causes a need to re-evaluate.

I’m good at this too.

Now if I could only shut up long enough to work on that listening thing. With Lent approaching, I guess perhaps I’ve found at least one of my Lenten practices. How about you?

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