Thursday, May 29, 2008

A Clear and Present Danger

Okay, it’s time to stop beating around the Bush (pun intended). I believe that our “democracy” was usurped in 2001 when the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush president, a necessary step for the conspiratorial neoconservative (i.e. military industrial complex) movement to implement the September 11, 2001 attacks on American soil. Time after time—the most recent being former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s expose—we have been informed of the deceitful (and I believe what will someday be proven criminal) and manipulative practices of those for whom the Bush administration fronts. By successfully generating a climate of fear (remember what it used to be like to board an airplane?) these transnational war mongers are managing to bring the world to the brink of disaster for their own gain. So, risking the appearance of being a paranoid lunatic, I’m going to suppose the next step in this evil quest for global domination: there will be a catastrophic event even more horrific than 9/11 just before the November elections in order to justify an unprecedented declaration of martial law that will keep the present powers in place to provide “homeland security” until the (never ending) emergency is past. I cannot believe that we are so gullible as to believe that Rove, Rumsfeld, Perl, Wolfowitz, et al, are just quietly writing their memoirs these days. The same insidious calculation that felled the World Trade Center towers is now preparing the final stage for the demise of the United States Constitution. Not only do we need to elect an entirely new government in November, we need to immediately impeach Bush and Cheney and bring their entire criminal machine to trial. Or, we may want to spend our time figuring out how to get gasoline back to $3.00 a gallon.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Heart of the Matter

I suppose because nature abhors a vacuum, the absence of trust is quickly filled with suspicion, jealousy and paranoia. One needs look no further than contemporary infotainment to find an almost obsessive inquisitiveness with regard to fidelity, etc. The soap opera worldview is rife with intrigue and infidelity that seems to set the stage for reality to many minds. Yes, when trust is lacking or missing altogether, interpersonal harmony becomes impossible. If it was limited to fantasy this might pose no great problem, but the inability or unwillingness to trust truly serves as the great Satan for humankind. United States currency proclaims “In God We Trust”, but what does that really mean? “I love you” is the prelude to countless sexual encounters, but where is the trust? “Trust me” anymore almost immediately raises the red flag of skepticism. Many of the institutions and organizations which tout “values” quickly reveal the empty hypocrisy of their claims by proving to be untrustworthy. It was the clever name for a television show, but any hope for a better world resides in our honest answer to the question, who do you trust?

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

On Believing

Who your backup is constitutes a genuine concern in the realm of law enforcement because one may be literally placing her/his life in that person’s hands. As I reflected on my remarks leading up to Mary’s and my anniversary last Friday I realized how very much the same is true of any relationship where trust is necessarily grounded in confidence. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that confidence is as critically important to trust as trust is to love. Perhaps it says more about my limited imagination than anything else but I cannot conceive of a situation where trust is authentic without an almost absolute confidence in that which is to be trusted or where similarly an absolute trust is required for genuine love. As the components continue to be broken down it can be seen then how critical honesty and truthfulness are to the whole equation. As I ponder the call of the Christ to express our genuine discipleship by loving everyone as everyone is loved I am impressed by how profoundly moral the process is, especially when it is understood how the whole must necessarily include all. What does not tax my imagination at all is to conceive of the myriad of ways that trust is eroded by shattered confidence. I daresay that no one has not experienced the disillusionment of a lie or falsehood, a phenomenon much more integral to the harmonious coexistence of humankind than some figurative tally sheet that God keeps. More than being just pretty words from the Bible, the Christ’s admonition forcefully challenges us to consider the impact of not being true to our word and to envision honesty and truthfulness as key steps toward responding to the call.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Do You Really Mean That?

My May 6 post was actually written in anticipation of the anniversary that Mary and I will celebrate tomorrow. If I was to make a distinction between infatuation and love, it would most certainly center on the element of trust. For my many shortcomings as a father, I tried to the best of my ability to communicate to our daughters what a precious and fragile thing is trust. That trust is earned rather than imbued is certainly not original to me, but the concept is profoundly true nonetheless. What it takes days, years, even a lifetime to build can be shattered in a moment’s betrayal, whether intentional or not. And broken trust seems ever so more difficult to restore. I am going to be so bold as to say that what awakened Mary and I to our love for each other was the realization that we trust each other. Hopefully confession is good for the soul because I have to admit that of the two of us I have unintentionally come closer to breaching that trust than she ever has. The intuitive knowledge that the other can be counted on, depended upon unconditionally is the absolute basic required for love to exist and thrive. When we stood before God, family and friends that Sunday thirty-seven years ago and vowed to love each other until parted by death, the only meaning in that moment was derived from the trust and confidence that we could believe it. No legislation, regulation, or pontification can create the moral bond that comes from being able to trust the unconditional commitment of the words “I do”, and I am blessed to share life with one whose word is her bond.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

And Bill and Jean Begot Mary

American boy, American girl,
Most beautiful people in the world!
--The Doors, Morrison Hotel

Both Mary and I were amazed by how quickly our love blossomed. From that first date forward we grew in our understanding of being first and foremost each other’s best friend. Over nearly four decades we’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on how and why things have evolved as they have. It is hard to calculate the profound influence of two very similar worldviews. We both grew up Methodist, which I had learned from an earlier relationship with someone reared in the Lutheran tradition can and does make a difference. Our respective family values were very much the same, and as a result our two families grew as friends along with Mary and me. I know that it is probably corny to think about such things, but I do believe that they gave the two of us the solid foundation upon which we have built our life together. I try to be open minded when people dismiss such matters as irrelevant, but as we defy the ever increasing trend toward separation and divorce I know that both of us harbor deep gratitude for the nurturing environment of family from which strength we continue to draw.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

What A Lucky Man He Was

Mary was as beautiful then—inside and out—as she is now. I would savor passing glimpses of her in physical sciences class, in the hallway of C.C. White as I passed her on my way to do my radio show, with her friends at football games. There has always been something magical about her smile. And those eyes! Let me tell you about those eyes! If the eyes are truly the window to the soul, Mary’s radiated a kind of beauty that I thought could exist only as fantasy. I know the reader is going to find this hard to believe, but I was the quintessential geeky nerd before the term was even coined. I mention this only to set the stage for how truly miraculous it was that Mary ever agreed (thanks Sacko and Peterson!) to go to the Valentine’s Day dance with me. Naturally, she couldn’t remember ever having seen me (see Happy Earth Day!) on campus, a fact that I intended to take advantage of for as long as I could. To that point, I was definitely not a “to know me is to love me” kind of guy, and so my plan was to cherish every moment with Mary that I could until she realized she could do better. That’s how this ongoing miracle of thirty-eight years began: an Alpha Gam innocently fell into the carefully laid snare of a gnarly independent and then apparently couldn’t figure out how to get untangled. Am I a lucky guy, or what?

Monday, May 19, 2008

How Time Flies

This coming Friday Mary and I will have been married thirty-seven years. We’ll celebrate in part by flying to Fort Collins to see Rachel and Steve (who will celebrate their second anniversary tomorrow) in their new Colorado home. I’ve challenged myself to remember the details of our first anniversary, and I vaguely recall that we spent it in Win Schendel’s New York Life office as I prepared to make the transition from Coca-Cola route salesman to field underwriter. Mary was preparing to graduate Metropolitan State College and our yuppie future seemed imminent. In the years since, we have become something of an anomaly with regard to both our own peers and our children’s. Even I consider it rather remarkable that since that first date on Valentine’s Day 1970 I’ve never once thought about leaving Mary. She is my life. She is my soul mate. She is the yin to my yang and the whole would be irreparably damaged if taken apart. Some readers may already be ahead of me at this point in realizing that this is all testimony in praise of the one for whom all adjectives and superlatives fall short of sufficiently describing. I’m thinking that a relationship of such duration is worthy of at least a week’s worth of reflection, and so if this isn’t your cup of tea I suggest taking a week’s break and see if I have anything more worthwhile to think about next Monday.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Green Math

My round-trip from home to work and back is 17.8 miles. Since I filled the Prius with gasoline last Sunday my average miles-per-gallon (according to the computerized readout on the dashboard) is 54.7. So, 71.2 miles (I’m privileged to work four ten-hour days) on 1.3 gallons of gas that cost $3.49 per gallon means that I’ve commuted for a total cost of $4.54. I’ve taken the bus, but not that inexpensively. Plus, I’ve emitted virtually zero greenhouse gases by driving a hybrid. I really have no patience left with anyone who’s complaining about the price of gas these days.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Of Cyclones and Earthquakes

The toll taken by Myanmar’s cyclone and China’s earthquake is horrific, but so necessary until humankind advances to a genuine reverence for all life. It is the same principle which questions the authenticity of the “pro-life” movement in this country that is blind to the anti-life realities of procreation unchecked. Jesus’ salt-of-the-earth analogy was very appropriate to his time, because salt was such a rare and desired commodity that it served as currency in the first-century. Salt is so commonplace today that it has become a dietary no-no that has little or no economic value whatsoever. So it is with the ever increasing human population. What are a few hundred thousand lives here or there when subtracted from exponentially increasing billions? I work forty hours a week in an environment where children are literally nothing more than chattel exploited for their income producing potential to sub-humans that reproduce at will with subsidized impunity. Until we collectively reach that point where every life is sacred, we’ll need brutal natural selection to weed out the increasingly invaluable crop of humans.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Not the Best of Friends

Three years ago today I learned that I have CML. It is a testament to the miracle drug Gleevec that I am here to write about it. A recent flare-up of my RA, which fortunately has been in remission for several years, reminds me that my body and I have not been the best of friends over the years. One of my earliest memories is of having my elbow stitched back together after slicing it on a typewriter ribbon can (yes, I’m that old and, no, I don’t remember how I managed self-mutilation at such an early age). It wasn’t too long before my parents were informed I had Nephritis by the same doctor who stitched my tongue back on after I bit it off jumping from an apple tree in the back yard (I was always rather amazed that the State of Colorado allowed me to run around packing heat for six years). I had a couple of trouble-free years until my appendectomy at age nine, failed-surgery on my right pinkie during junior high, and a summer off between my junior and senior year while being diagnosed with Gilbert Syndrome. Since turning fifty I’ve had my right foot reconstructed and my left knee replaced. It all makes me think that I’m probably the runt of the litter and lucky to have made it this far. It also makes me think that I may someday join in the angelic chorus, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I’m free at last!”

Monday, May 12, 2008

Consumers’ Report

Still not fully acclimated to being empty-nesters, Mary and I spent Mother’s Day afternoon at Costco. We racked up a few hundred dollars worth of necessities including the security that comes from knowing you have several weeks’ worth of toilet tissue on hand. I actually tried to entice her with organic cotton polos and form fitting capris, but while you can make Target more palatable using the French pronunciation that trick just doesn’t work with Costco. Bulk quantities were usually too much when there were four under the roof, but they’re obviously absurd for just the two of us. Nonetheless, we got a great deal on Folgers that satisfied our consumer compulsion. Next year, Rachel and Rebecca, why don’t you invite us to your place so that we can save a little money?

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Happy Mother's Day

I take some ribbing from my wife and daughters because my mom has never been reticent to inform any who will listen how precious I am. I cannot deny that Mom has held this regard for as long as I can remember and I suspect before. How do I begin to estimate or evaluate the profound affect her love has had, and continues to have, on me? To have been immersed in such love from the very beginning is my greatest blessing; something that the wisdom of age has made me keenly aware is not true for every child. More pronounced at some times than others, humankind cries out “what will ‘save’ us, redeem us from our myriad wrongdoings?" For us Americans, today offers the occasion to ponder the answer: motherhood. Our destiny is borne of our mothers; heaven and earth embrace every time a child is found precious in its mother’s eyes.

Friday, May 09, 2008

Friday PM Las Vegas Style

I find the distinction between explanation and excuse to many times be ill-defined, a blurry ambiguity drifting between the objective and subjective. To explain something purely in the spirit of enlightenment incorporates many excusatory techniques and vice versa. To use explanation for the purpose of excuse—particularly if that which is being excused is/has been perceived negatively— simply develops into more complex functions designed to persuade and manipulate. Selectivity further serves these purposes by choosing discriminately what exactly is to be explained and why, often resulting in bias and prejudice. Pure explanation ideally has no purpose other than comprehension.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Not Yet High Enough

Take it easy, all you stoners out there, I’m talking about the price of gasoline. I have not been reticent to express my opinion of those who drive gas-guzzling behemoths in defiance of reason, but I’ve observed their idiocy compounded by the fact that the majority of them insist on driving ten to fifteen miles-per-hour faster than the posted speed limit. That’s right. The guy who’s complaining about having to spend a hundred bucks to fill up his tank is the same one burning it up as fast as he can. Some of us are old enough to remember the implementation of the double-nickel as the method to conserve gasoline back in the seventies. But guess what? People who didn’t feel like obeying the 55 mph speed limit flaunted it with impunity. That was also the era when small cars with better mileage started appearing with greater frequency, but the return to bigger engines and higher speed limits belied the sincerity of Americans to seriously conserve. My theory is that when gasoline hits $10-15 per gallon, a kind of rationality is going to dawn upon the mindless. Only when an hour or two’s wages spew out their criminal tailpipes will some of these twenty-first century Neanderthals catch the spirit of conservation.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Man of the Year

Stephen Colbert and I share the disappointment that neither of us was chosen as one of TIME’s 100 most influential people. Colbert just has a larger audience to complain to. Obviously, TIME was not aware of recent polling by Me, Myself, and I that confirmed me as the most influential person in cubicle 406-02. From where I sit, I have absolute control over a Dell Optiplex 745, a Canon P23-DH II, a Nortel M3903, and a Starbucks Barrista Aroma Solo. Their oversight, their loss. I take strange comfort in not having to be responsible for my influence reaching any farther. Heaven knows how heavy the responsibility of managing my own self weighs. Actually, I want to thank TIME for ignoring me because it helps bring me one step closer to accepting the fact that I’ll never make the Milestones section either.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Who Do You Trust?

Faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. Paul’s eloquent posit as found in 1 Corinthians 13 comes about as close to the perfect explanation of what it’s all about as any I know of. There has been a growing realization on my part, however, of the integral role that faith maintains in the dynamic. When replaced with the synonym trust, it becomes apparent—at least to me—that it’s hard to imagine love existing without it. Love entails making oneself vulnerable, and it seems unlikely to take that position in an environment of mistrust. I have always found merit in the centrality of sex to the Freudian paradigm, and now I’m beginning to understand why. Where the colloquial expression may have been that you should only engage in intercourse with a person you love, it makes just as much sense to contend that consensual sex can occur only in the context of mutual trust. If one of the partners does not or cannot trust the other, then by its very definition the engagement is not consensual. This generalizes to nearly every aspect of being human that I can think of. Can you trust your parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, coworkers? If not, any notion of loving these others becomes moot, as does the attempt to love one’s self if trust of self is lacking. Believers are called upon to have faith in God, a virtually impossible challenge if genuine trust does not exist. I agree with Paul that love is supreme, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t critically dependent upon trust.

Monday, May 05, 2008

The Rockies Are Calling

Rachel and Steve safely arrived in Fort Collins yesterday with their worldly belongings in tow. The process has recalled the many moves our family made compliments of the United Methodist church. Rachel and I agree that she has chosen her career path more wisely than did I which hopefully will mean that she and Steve won’t have their lives disrupted every three years by episcopal edict. Both Rachel and Rebecca now reside in their native states, and this leads Mary and me to contemplate our exodus from Las Vegas. I am not the first to consider what affect contemporary mobility has on all sorts of things including family, but it is certainly necessary to take this phenomenon into account as one of the major influences upon what post-rural America is becoming. I thank our children for demonstrating that where we live is actually our choice, something this formerly dutiful pastor had almost forgotten.

Friday, May 02, 2008

Spur-of-the-moment Fables

“Hey Joey! wanna go throw rocks at a hornet’s nest?”
“It doesn’t seem like a very good idea.”
“Come on! What good are hornets anway?”
“I can’t think of anything. But it still doesn’t seem like a good idea to agitate them.”
“This nest is little and close to the ground. We can knock it out with a couple of easy hits. Then we’ll scram!”
“Hank, you go ahead and throw rocks at it. I’m not going to.”
“I’ll bet it was a wasp from this nest that stung your cousin.”
“That could be.”
“And he didn’t do anything. He was just standing there.”
“I know.”
“We’ll be doing everybody a favor by getting rid of it.”
“You know we’re just gonna make ’em mad and then we’ll get stung. Why would we go make trouble for ourselves?”
“You’re afraid, aren’t ya? That’s it! You’re yellow!”
“I’m not scared! I just don’t want to start trouble!”
“Wait until everybody hears that you’re afraid of hornets! What a sissy!”
“You’re crazy! I never said I was scared of hornets!”
“Little momma’s boy doesn’t want to get stung! Go on home and bake some cookies while I go show those little gnats who’s toughest!”
“Fine! But don’t come runnin’ to me trying to get away from ‘em!”
“I ain’t gonna be runnin’ from anything ‘cause the nest’s in our yard!”
“God! It’s hard being your brother!”

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Dear Barack:

I am assuming from your e-mails to me that we’re on a first-name basis. I am proud to be among the thousands (millions?) who have contributed financially to your campaign and my increasing hope for America’s future is grounded in the fact that it is We the People who are funding your effort, not the special interests. It is for this reason that I find myself now asking you to have a little faith in us who are placing such great faith in you. We the People are not falling for the chicanery of your opponents and their manipulation of the commercial media. We the People do not require you to defend the relationships you have had with your former pastor and others. We the People do not expect you to lower yourself to politics as usual. Indeed, the reason that we support you is because you exemplify the hope that, yes, we can change a corrupt and immoral system in order “to move [this country] closer to perfection.” Forget about rebutting Clinton and McCain so that you may continue to expound upon the greater nation we are striving together to become, and do so in the confidence that We the People will see to it that you are elected our next president.