Life is many different things, but one thing for sure. It's motion. We are -- even in our dreams -- in a kind of perpetual motion. Traveling from there to here.
"There" is who we used to be and what we used to do. For those with short-term memories, their past is often a web of gossamer images. For others, their autobiographical recall is stunningly accurate. Either way, the roads we've traveled -- both as individuals and as nations -- helps determine and shape the roads we're taking now. We cannot un-walk the past; but what we can do is try to decode its map.
As it turns out, part of the code is locked inside the lives of those who are no longer with us. Parents, siblings, teachers, clergy, intimate friends. What they knew about us -- what often we didn't even know about ourselves -- is now gone.Virtually irretrievable except stirring in our personal remembrances and written in our national histories
But the road beckons. Life is motion. So the walk here continues.
"Here" is who we are at this point in time and what we are doing with it. Few of us are what we expected to be, fewer still are what we wanted to be, and perhaps none are what we thought we were. But we try. And the trying on this road is called: Life.
Biologists plumb the depths of our physiology to identify those genes and lobes and circuits which can help explain our personal journey. Historians plumb the layers of our parties and politicians and generals which can help explain our national journey. There are also philosophers who plumb the mysteries of our souls which can help us draft new and better maps. These are good men and women doing good work on our behalf. The kind of people we study in college, argue over in coffee shops, see reflected in our novels and theatre.
But once we move on, once we get caught up in the whoosh of everyday living and embroiled in the clash of everyday partisanship, how much head and heart do we devote to these wise ones...?
This is perhaps the epic question in the life of every individual. And every nation. Motion -- yes, it is the stuff of life. But direction -- now that is the essence of life. Traveling from "there" to "here" is either ascent or descent. Take your choice. While you still can....
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
I'LL NEVER LAUGH AT MY GARBAGE AGAIN
Some things are so funny they're downright instructive. Take stand-ups like Cosby and Seinfeld. How often you find yourself laughing at the punch line the very same time you're thinking: "How true!"
This morning, taking the garbage out to the front curb, I was laughing at my own instructive punch line. "Morning ..." says I to the truck driver whose automatic lift scooped up the container. "Nice morning..." The voice from the driver's seat replied, "Sure is...."
What's so funny? He drove off and I walked back without either one of us looking at the other. I can't tell you what he looked like, nor can he me. Here we're talking without looking, greeting without caring. In a sad sort of way, that's funny. But at the same time, instructive. When you think about it, it's very much how we go through our lives. Each day. Never quite looking at one another.
Popes and poets, novelists and neuro-scientists talk about this. But, as Mark Twain wryly reported, we always talk about the weather too; but we don't do much about that either.
When you look at the Greek's armless Venus or Michelangelo's stunning David, well you sorta feel good about our species. Consider all that splendid form and beauty. Whether a gift from the hand of a creator or simply the evolution of some distant stardust, humanity is spectacular to behold.
And yet....
Why is it we spectacular humans will devote more time to reading or watching about Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, and Donald Trump than we will about the guy who keeps us from drowning in our own garbage? About the neighbor who shares the same community? About the bus driver or airline pilot who makes our journey possible? Or -- lets be honest -- about our own family and friends whose value we so casually take for granted?
Extrapolate this to the way generals interact with their troops, bosses with their workers, coaches with their players, democrats with republicans, my generation with your generation, my countrymen with your country men. You can see why it can be so laughingly instructive. There's this peculiar passion for self that blurs the other selves with whom we walk the planet. Always has, always will.
Over the centuries we seek to overcome this dangerous blurring by bonding. Into families, tribes, societies, religions, nations. Now if I can just get to know my garbage collector better, and he me, then that might be one small step for me. And one large step for mankind.
This morning, taking the garbage out to the front curb, I was laughing at my own instructive punch line. "Morning ..." says I to the truck driver whose automatic lift scooped up the container. "Nice morning..." The voice from the driver's seat replied, "Sure is...."
What's so funny? He drove off and I walked back without either one of us looking at the other. I can't tell you what he looked like, nor can he me. Here we're talking without looking, greeting without caring. In a sad sort of way, that's funny. But at the same time, instructive. When you think about it, it's very much how we go through our lives. Each day. Never quite looking at one another.
Popes and poets, novelists and neuro-scientists talk about this. But, as Mark Twain wryly reported, we always talk about the weather too; but we don't do much about that either.
When you look at the Greek's armless Venus or Michelangelo's stunning David, well you sorta feel good about our species. Consider all that splendid form and beauty. Whether a gift from the hand of a creator or simply the evolution of some distant stardust, humanity is spectacular to behold.
And yet....
Why is it we spectacular humans will devote more time to reading or watching about Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, and Donald Trump than we will about the guy who keeps us from drowning in our own garbage? About the neighbor who shares the same community? About the bus driver or airline pilot who makes our journey possible? Or -- lets be honest -- about our own family and friends whose value we so casually take for granted?
Extrapolate this to the way generals interact with their troops, bosses with their workers, coaches with their players, democrats with republicans, my generation with your generation, my countrymen with your country men. You can see why it can be so laughingly instructive. There's this peculiar passion for self that blurs the other selves with whom we walk the planet. Always has, always will.
Over the centuries we seek to overcome this dangerous blurring by bonding. Into families, tribes, societies, religions, nations. Now if I can just get to know my garbage collector better, and he me, then that might be one small step for me. And one large step for mankind.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
GOD IS NOT DEAD; HE LIVES IN THE STADIUM
Everyone from theologians to televangelists, from philosophers to the Pew Opinion Center, are slicing and dicing America's faith and/or failure with traditional religion. They have pretty much dismissed western Europe as a lost congregation, but obsess over America's once-thriving religious allegiance. Is it still here? still growing? still real?
Regardless of what Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Sartre told you, God is not dead. The scholars have just been looking in the wrong places. He no longer dwells in churches, temples and mosques. At least not in America. Here you will find him, alive and well, hovering over the sports stadiums of the land.
Fellas like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris tell us there is such a thing as a God Gene, which pre-disposes some of us to believe in deity. I don't know about that, but I do know 100,000,000 worshipers gather every sporting event to believe and share their belief with their fellow congregants. To believe just the way traditional believers have always believed. In a higher power outside themselves which gives their life meaning, purpose, destiny.
If you've ever been swept up in the mass hysteria of team belief in those stands, then you know this to be true.
The god here is the great deity victory...the liturgy here is the precise way in which the service is divided into quarters or innings...the vestments here are as spectacular as any traditional worship service, from specially designated shoes to uniforms to helmets....the catechism here is bristling with heroic tales from the broadcasters in the booth to the high-fivers in the pews.
Talk about the faithful...! These stadiums pack 'em in like the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages once did. Fans -- pilgrims, really -- trek here for hours or even days just to catch a glimpse of the great deity victory. And his acolytes, the stars on the playing fields. It's not simply the greatest show on earth, it's the greatest adulation since Moses came down from that mountain with The Word.
Here The Word is "victory," and we gather in prayerful throngs to see it, smell it, share it. God is good...! God is here...! God is victory in which I can share for about 50 bucks and a couple beers....!
Regardless of what Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Sartre told you, God is not dead. The scholars have just been looking in the wrong places. He no longer dwells in churches, temples and mosques. At least not in America. Here you will find him, alive and well, hovering over the sports stadiums of the land.
Fellas like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris tell us there is such a thing as a God Gene, which pre-disposes some of us to believe in deity. I don't know about that, but I do know 100,000,000 worshipers gather every sporting event to believe and share their belief with their fellow congregants. To believe just the way traditional believers have always believed. In a higher power outside themselves which gives their life meaning, purpose, destiny.
If you've ever been swept up in the mass hysteria of team belief in those stands, then you know this to be true.
The god here is the great deity victory...the liturgy here is the precise way in which the service is divided into quarters or innings...the vestments here are as spectacular as any traditional worship service, from specially designated shoes to uniforms to helmets....the catechism here is bristling with heroic tales from the broadcasters in the booth to the high-fivers in the pews.
Talk about the faithful...! These stadiums pack 'em in like the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages once did. Fans -- pilgrims, really -- trek here for hours or even days just to catch a glimpse of the great deity victory. And his acolytes, the stars on the playing fields. It's not simply the greatest show on earth, it's the greatest adulation since Moses came down from that mountain with The Word.
Here The Word is "victory," and we gather in prayerful throngs to see it, smell it, share it. God is good...! God is here...! God is victory in which I can share for about 50 bucks and a couple beers....!
Saturday, January 1, 2011
20011, IT CAN'T BE! OH, BUT IT IS!
A new year. A new series of trials and triumphs. Among them, new lessons to be learned.
Well, frankly, none of them are all that new. Same old lessons, because lets admit it we've been trying these very same lessons on for size for years. Will we ever ever get the fit right! For example:
* Every December ends with the same unanswered questions ~ Where did the time go? Where did the money go? Where did the true meaning of Christmas go? Am I not ever going to get this thing right? Hmm...why do all these questions sound exactly like last year's!
* Every January begins with the same unexamined expectations ~ This time I'm going to work smarter not harder. I'm going to take time to smell the roses. I'm going to remember to let the people I love know I love them. Hmm ...why do all these resolutions sound so darn familiar!
* Every spring arrives with a fresh fragrance in the air, a new bounce to our step, a renewed passion for life ~ It's time to clean out the garage. It's time to plant that garden. It's time to organize those old photo albums. Hmm... come to think of it, I made these very same plans last spring. Certainly are fine plans!
* Every summer looms with dreams of beach-side delights ~ But beaches mean bathing suits, and I never look good in a bathing suit. On the other hand, the older I get, the less I care about how I look in a bathing suit. Is that progress or just indifference? Hmm... I suspect it's progress, because after a few hundred beaches you find out everybody else is too busy worrying about how they look!
* Every fall means the same things ~ Harvests. School. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Wait a minute -- I'm right back to December again, and nothing about me has changed. Hmm...I guess it's true, we're all born originals, but we all die copies!
Only the first day of the new year, and here's some grumpy skeptic dismissing it and all its promises, right...? Wrong...! The only thing that might be wrong here is the way we choose to live this perfectly un-lived new year.
Well, frankly, none of them are all that new. Same old lessons, because lets admit it we've been trying these very same lessons on for size for years. Will we ever ever get the fit right! For example:
* Every December ends with the same unanswered questions ~ Where did the time go? Where did the money go? Where did the true meaning of Christmas go? Am I not ever going to get this thing right? Hmm...why do all these questions sound exactly like last year's!
* Every January begins with the same unexamined expectations ~ This time I'm going to work smarter not harder. I'm going to take time to smell the roses. I'm going to remember to let the people I love know I love them. Hmm ...why do all these resolutions sound so darn familiar!
* Every spring arrives with a fresh fragrance in the air, a new bounce to our step, a renewed passion for life ~ It's time to clean out the garage. It's time to plant that garden. It's time to organize those old photo albums. Hmm... come to think of it, I made these very same plans last spring. Certainly are fine plans!
* Every summer looms with dreams of beach-side delights ~ But beaches mean bathing suits, and I never look good in a bathing suit. On the other hand, the older I get, the less I care about how I look in a bathing suit. Is that progress or just indifference? Hmm... I suspect it's progress, because after a few hundred beaches you find out everybody else is too busy worrying about how they look!
* Every fall means the same things ~ Harvests. School. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Wait a minute -- I'm right back to December again, and nothing about me has changed. Hmm...I guess it's true, we're all born originals, but we all die copies!
Only the first day of the new year, and here's some grumpy skeptic dismissing it and all its promises, right...? Wrong...! The only thing that might be wrong here is the way we choose to live this perfectly un-lived new year.
Friday, December 31, 2010
AT NIGHT EVERYTHING BECOMES DIFFERENT
The cities of the world -- from my Chicago to your New York or London or Bombay or Cairo -- wear many different faces. But when you examine them, they really only come down to two: Day and Night.
In the daytime we and our cities wear very much the same face. The streets and boulevards and work places all melt together into a kind of impressionist painting. The subjects and features are a little blurred, and everything tends to blend into everything else. Sameness is splashed all over the canvass. Attacking the morning traffic, getting to the job, working the agenda, lunch break, traffic home -- it all pretty much gauzes together.
But at night, ahh, here's when and where we become different. When the different colors of us sharpen and become more distinguishable.
Notice how the universality of our 9-to-5 selves gives way to the particularity of our night-time selves. When we go forth into the great dark city to find our own particular oases of pleasure. Perhaps the local bowling alley. The neighborhood saloon. Or the cineplex. Or the theatre, Or a jazz club. Or a favorite long-talking-over-dinner restaurant. After the sun gives way to the moon, we seek out our own particular diversions and satisfactions.
The people who in the day time looked and sounded so very much the same -- in traffic, on the train, at the desk or derrick next you ours -- quite suddenly and perhaps surprisingly shed their sameness for their selves. They briefly drop their mask, open their heart, speak their feelings. Be they bowlers or artists, doers or dreamers, by golly, you never quite knew them before!
Want to travel the world...? Taste its many places and populations...?Travel your city at night...!
In the daytime we and our cities wear very much the same face. The streets and boulevards and work places all melt together into a kind of impressionist painting. The subjects and features are a little blurred, and everything tends to blend into everything else. Sameness is splashed all over the canvass. Attacking the morning traffic, getting to the job, working the agenda, lunch break, traffic home -- it all pretty much gauzes together.
But at night, ahh, here's when and where we become different. When the different colors of us sharpen and become more distinguishable.
Notice how the universality of our 9-to-5 selves gives way to the particularity of our night-time selves. When we go forth into the great dark city to find our own particular oases of pleasure. Perhaps the local bowling alley. The neighborhood saloon. Or the cineplex. Or the theatre, Or a jazz club. Or a favorite long-talking-over-dinner restaurant. After the sun gives way to the moon, we seek out our own particular diversions and satisfactions.
The people who in the day time looked and sounded so very much the same -- in traffic, on the train, at the desk or derrick next you ours -- quite suddenly and perhaps surprisingly shed their sameness for their selves. They briefly drop their mask, open their heart, speak their feelings. Be they bowlers or artists, doers or dreamers, by golly, you never quite knew them before!
Want to travel the world...? Taste its many places and populations...?Travel your city at night...!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
FACING THE NEW YEAR FROM A NEARBY LOBBY
Another new year looming...! Where to go for enough hope and healing to face and embrace another 12 months...?
Well, we have choices. Perhaps a trip. Maybe a church retreat. Possibly some of those books we've been meaning to read. Or -- unconventional as it sounds -- what about the nearby hospital? No, not to enter; but to experience.
Now before you leave, let me explain.
Sitting for a half hour in the lobby or waiting room of a city hospital is a reality show that truly deserves the name. No lights, cameras, and make-believe people posturing their greedy little needs. The people here enter without makeup. Not only just like you, they are you. Only this time it's them not you with real needs in search of real answers
Watching them, experiencing them, is the drama of life played out on a stage where healers and hopes come together. You may have at one time been a member of this cast. If not yet, chances are someday you will. Either way, in this age where everyone is so obsessed with "reality," here's the real deal. A quiet but galvanizing reminder not to take anything for granted this year.
So...
Life in another new year comes at us with high hopes and expectations. All within our grasp, as we resolutely go through the ambitious ritual of good resolutions. Every time we do, it's like a ship about to voyage into the winds. We do it with full sail. Full speed. Bring it on, I'm ready!
And yet, no voyage is all sail. It's also rudder and anchor. Something to get your bearings by. So wait...don't turn your back. Those bearings, my fellow voyagers, are what you just might find in no better place than that nearby hospital lobby.
Well, we have choices. Perhaps a trip. Maybe a church retreat. Possibly some of those books we've been meaning to read. Or -- unconventional as it sounds -- what about the nearby hospital? No, not to enter; but to experience.
Now before you leave, let me explain.
Sitting for a half hour in the lobby or waiting room of a city hospital is a reality show that truly deserves the name. No lights, cameras, and make-believe people posturing their greedy little needs. The people here enter without makeup. Not only just like you, they are you. Only this time it's them not you with real needs in search of real answers
Watching them, experiencing them, is the drama of life played out on a stage where healers and hopes come together. You may have at one time been a member of this cast. If not yet, chances are someday you will. Either way, in this age where everyone is so obsessed with "reality," here's the real deal. A quiet but galvanizing reminder not to take anything for granted this year.
So...
Life in another new year comes at us with high hopes and expectations. All within our grasp, as we resolutely go through the ambitious ritual of good resolutions. Every time we do, it's like a ship about to voyage into the winds. We do it with full sail. Full speed. Bring it on, I'm ready!
And yet, no voyage is all sail. It's also rudder and anchor. Something to get your bearings by. So wait...don't turn your back. Those bearings, my fellow voyagers, are what you just might find in no better place than that nearby hospital lobby.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
IS THIS WHO WE REALLY ARE...?
If Arizona is the land of the Right, it is also the home of the Retiree. Which is perfectly fine, although the Alaskan Queen Sarah Palin is still there rattling her "death panels for seniors" shaman stick. But lets not tarry with the fatuous. There is something far more telling coming out of the Grand Canyon State.
Remember those "mean girls" from school days? Well, they're back!
To be more precise, they never left. The Arizona Department of Economic Security reports that those legions of bratty, pushy, intimidating girls so many had to endure in school are still with us and flourishing in retirement communities. The counter-intuitive facts are that these distasteful little creatures never quite grew up. And never quite grew out of their ignoble ways.
Today these are the blue-haired harridans who hold court at the dinner tables...make sure only the seal-of-approved residents get to sit in the card games...see to it that the wrong-people don't mix in with the right-people. Arizona State University gerontology expert Robin Boniface reports that "10 to 20% of older people in care homes experience some type of abuse from fellow residents. You are either in the clique or you're among the banished."
There's something terribly despairing about such reports, for aren't they a sticky thumbnail sketch of the human condition? One more reason for the Candides of the world to stop counting on Dr Pangloss' myth that the world is getting better and better every day in every way. Apparently it's not -- at least not in many senior communities.
But now to extrapolate...! Because truths once discovered in one place call for learning what they may tell us elsewhere. Elsewhere in society and in its ways. For instance, despite formal education, fine books, good churches, and Oprah's best intentions, the human condition still seems stuck in post-Eden envies and animosities. Crimes and violence. Greeds and wars. From Arizona to Alabama to Afghanistan, it seems like we just don't make much progress as a species. What we were is what we still are. How we behaved then is how we pretty much behave now.
Long sigh.....
Remember those "mean girls" from school days? Well, they're back!
To be more precise, they never left. The Arizona Department of Economic Security reports that those legions of bratty, pushy, intimidating girls so many had to endure in school are still with us and flourishing in retirement communities. The counter-intuitive facts are that these distasteful little creatures never quite grew up. And never quite grew out of their ignoble ways.
Today these are the blue-haired harridans who hold court at the dinner tables...make sure only the seal-of-approved residents get to sit in the card games...see to it that the wrong-people don't mix in with the right-people. Arizona State University gerontology expert Robin Boniface reports that "10 to 20% of older people in care homes experience some type of abuse from fellow residents. You are either in the clique or you're among the banished."
There's something terribly despairing about such reports, for aren't they a sticky thumbnail sketch of the human condition? One more reason for the Candides of the world to stop counting on Dr Pangloss' myth that the world is getting better and better every day in every way. Apparently it's not -- at least not in many senior communities.
But now to extrapolate...! Because truths once discovered in one place call for learning what they may tell us elsewhere. Elsewhere in society and in its ways. For instance, despite formal education, fine books, good churches, and Oprah's best intentions, the human condition still seems stuck in post-Eden envies and animosities. Crimes and violence. Greeds and wars. From Arizona to Alabama to Afghanistan, it seems like we just don't make much progress as a species. What we were is what we still are. How we behaved then is how we pretty much behave now.
Long sigh.....
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