The once-upon-a-time America known for its long lazy Tom Sawyer adventures through long lazy countrysides has changed. And you and I with it. Today nothing's lazy, everything's fast. News... scores...stock markets ... the Hollywood & Washington players. We want our information immediately, whenever and wherever we are. And now we've got the magic screens with us to get it!
As your therapist might say: How's that make you feel? We've been so busy becoming digitally timely about everything, have we stopped much to wonder how much of this we really need? There's the Timely (headlines, breaking news, back-stories) and then there's the Timeless (holy books, great literature, poetry). If you care to look at it this way, well there's really no contest.
Here, let me give you an example. A few headlines from this morning's tabloid: Paterno fired! GOP Debate Focuses on Economy Not Cain! Voter's Nose Nearly Bitten Off! Woman Gets 34 Years For Killing Teen! Dow Collapses On Italy's Troubles! Cheap Trick Moving to Record Row! Murphy Furious with Oscars! Cutler Learns to Smile!
With all due respect to the reporters, how important are any these reports to you? How likely are you to use or remember them a week from today? In other words, is "being timely" just another way of saying "here today gone tomorrow?" You know that old if-you-were-stranded-on-an-island-what- reading-material-would-you-want-with-you?
Chances are, not even these reporters would vote for their Tabloid. And so enter the timeless...
Kahlil Gibran: "If you love somebody let them go, for if they return they were always yours; if they don't, they never were." Emily Dickinson: "Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels or believes." Buddha: "Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship." Mark Twain: "A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
Then there's the Bible's timeless take on being timely: "And this too shall pass..."
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
AMERICA'S NEW BIG THREE: CAIN, CUTLER, LOHAN
Genetics has by now passed into parlor room conversation. Everyone can talk a few pseu-intellectual minutes about their "family genes" and how they affect us. But now comes a new twist: Epigenetics. It's telling some researchers at Stanford University that "environmental factors can actually switch our gene on and off." In other words, maybe the genes we're born with may not be the genes we have to live with....!
Whoa, you mean I'm not genetically destined to be bald like Grandpa or fat like Uncle Benny or racist like half my cousins...? Epigenetics is raising the prospect our environment not only interacts with our genes, but it may actually alter those genes via our exposure to diet, pollution and medications.
Well now. If this is true, might Epigenetics help explain our national passion for controversy? We Americans thrive on controversy. We love it, we create, we seem to need it. I mean, do the media ever report how politicians are "getting along"...how the players on the team "are a happy locker-room family"....how the stars in Hollywood are "ideal fathers and mothers"....how our candidates "have an unsullied personal history?"
Hell no. Not as long as we have Herman Cain, Jay Cutler, and Lindsay Lohan to kick around!
So here's the thing. We're a democracy. In contrast to a dictatorship where everything is passed down as good, here nothing is so good that we citizens can't -- shouldn't -- dig around and smell out the lies, deceits and controversies.
Look at it this way. If your morning newspaper or blog site didn't have anything bad to report...well, what would it do? Civics classes in a democracy prefer to call this the "marketplace of ideas" where everything and everyone is fair game as good citizens wrestle with the facts, smarmy or not.
Maybe so. But how did this come to pass? No one's quite sure. It's just the way it is. Is it good? Is it wrong? Is it necessary? Well now look, we've just started another controversy....
Whoa, you mean I'm not genetically destined to be bald like Grandpa or fat like Uncle Benny or racist like half my cousins...? Epigenetics is raising the prospect our environment not only interacts with our genes, but it may actually alter those genes via our exposure to diet, pollution and medications.
Well now. If this is true, might Epigenetics help explain our national passion for controversy? We Americans thrive on controversy. We love it, we create, we seem to need it. I mean, do the media ever report how politicians are "getting along"...how the players on the team "are a happy locker-room family"....how the stars in Hollywood are "ideal fathers and mothers"....how our candidates "have an unsullied personal history?"
Hell no. Not as long as we have Herman Cain, Jay Cutler, and Lindsay Lohan to kick around!
So here's the thing. We're a democracy. In contrast to a dictatorship where everything is passed down as good, here nothing is so good that we citizens can't -- shouldn't -- dig around and smell out the lies, deceits and controversies.
Look at it this way. If your morning newspaper or blog site didn't have anything bad to report...well, what would it do? Civics classes in a democracy prefer to call this the "marketplace of ideas" where everything and everyone is fair game as good citizens wrestle with the facts, smarmy or not.
Maybe so. But how did this come to pass? No one's quite sure. It's just the way it is. Is it good? Is it wrong? Is it necessary? Well now look, we've just started another controversy....
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
PICK YOUR FAVORITE PAGAN
Have you ever counted how many times Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Russell Crowe, and Andy Whitfield have been in togas? Hollywood, even historians, loves to draw parallels between ancient Rome and modern America. It indulges in protean examples comparing Roman blood sports, gluttonous banquets, sexual deviations, and imperial wars to our own modern counterparts.
I used to ask my history students: With so many pagans to choose from, who's your favorite? If you were to pick a starring part for yourself, who would you select? Almost every time, the winners were gladiators and empresses. Now if you think about it, their choices were pretty typically all-American:
* Today America has its very own gladiatorial class. Great brutes of toned muscle who enter our arenas in splendorous battle-gear to the cheers or jeers of the masses in the coliseums of our great cities. Just like the Roman athletes, ours have been scouted, trained, motivated, and sent charging into the field of play with a pre-progammed passion for victory. One difference. Then victory meant life. Today it means a ring, a trophy, or at least a phonecall from the emperor in Washington
* Today's empress classes are not found in Roman palaces or Tuscany villas. And yet they are often very much cut from the same imperial cloth with which to preen before enviously adoring masses at these same events. Indeed, our empresses like Rome's will often be gifted with one of the surviving brutes of toned muscle, later in their very own bed chambers
I used to ask my history students: With so many pagans to choose from, who's your favorite? If you were to pick a starring part for yourself, who would you select? Almost every time, the winners were gladiators and empresses. Now if you think about it, their choices were pretty typically all-American:
* Today America has its very own gladiatorial class. Great brutes of toned muscle who enter our arenas in splendorous battle-gear to the cheers or jeers of the masses in the coliseums of our great cities. Just like the Roman athletes, ours have been scouted, trained, motivated, and sent charging into the field of play with a pre-progammed passion for victory. One difference. Then victory meant life. Today it means a ring, a trophy, or at least a phonecall from the emperor in Washington
* Today's empress classes are not found in Roman palaces or Tuscany villas. And yet they are often very much cut from the same imperial cloth with which to preen before enviously adoring masses at these same events. Indeed, our empresses like Rome's will often be gifted with one of the surviving brutes of toned muscle, later in their very own bed chambers
You really don't have to push these comparisons too far to discover why most of my students chose gladiator or empress. What's interesting, though, is how a few of them actually picked a non-pagan from that pagan era. They mentioned the Christian martyrs!
When I pressed them on it, their explanations were revelatory. "Those were among the few authentic Romans back then!" "At least you can admire their kind of belief!" "Besides, if they were right, automatic free card into heaven!"
I'm not sure the martyr-choices were entirely serious. Nor am I sure there are any real counterparts among us today. But lets say there are. Who might they be? And why? Obviously they would come from society's counter-culture. Those few who break ranks from the-way-we-are majorities in order to stand apart from the safe. To stand above the consensus. To stand at the edge of some new and brighter shoreline.
Like who......?
I have some examples in mind. But let me bow out and ask you. Oh...? You're not sure...? Please, I'm hoping you can find at least two or three still left.
When I pressed them on it, their explanations were revelatory. "Those were among the few authentic Romans back then!" "At least you can admire their kind of belief!" "Besides, if they were right, automatic free card into heaven!"
I'm not sure the martyr-choices were entirely serious. Nor am I sure there are any real counterparts among us today. But lets say there are. Who might they be? And why? Obviously they would come from society's counter-culture. Those few who break ranks from the-way-we-are majorities in order to stand apart from the safe. To stand above the consensus. To stand at the edge of some new and brighter shoreline.
Like who......?
I have some examples in mind. But let me bow out and ask you. Oh...? You're not sure...? Please, I'm hoping you can find at least two or three still left.
Monday, November 7, 2011
SCHOOL REUNIONS, OR RETURNING TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
Think about it. Aren't school reunions one of life's two-edged swords? One blade slicing through the years with a sudden sure swiftness, the other with a ragged reluctance to return to the scene of the crime?
Eight times out of 10 you go anyway You're not sure whether or how they'll remember you, but now 10 or 25 years out, you feel this compulsive need to find out for yourself.
Admit it. The real need churning inside you is to see if anyone will still recall any of those disasters you've lived with all these years. You know, the stupid answers you gave in chemistry...the election you lost...the teams you never made...the dances you missed because you didn't have a date. Or -- please God! -- maybe a few of them still remember your better angels. Like the time you were cast in the spring play...won the dance contest at the prom... did pretty good in PE.
You finger though the yearbook for some help. Faces. names. events. gotta look sharp tonight. Also, you finger through the closet for the right look. Confident. successful. yet not over-dressed.
Driving to the hotel, it's the entrance that bothers you most. I mean, when you walk in, will anyone recognize you? If they do, what will they say? Gotta be prepared for no one knowing who you are. Twenty pounds is a lot more of you than any of them ever saw before. Oh hell, they've probably changed even more than you. You don't have to be so defensive. As a matter of fact, if I don't feel comfortable the first ten minutes, well I'm outta there. And good riddance. Who needs them anyway.
What's that....? Someone calling my name....? Gee, it's Jake! [or is that Willy?] Anyway, smile. You may not remember him, but wow he remembers you. That's a good start! Now don't mess it up. Keep smiling. But wait -- lets start by not getting his name wrong. Names are important. You know that. So how do I play this?
"Hey tiger," you hear yourself smiling, "how long has it been!" Jake [or Willy or was that Ray?] gives you a big bear hug. You know, the kind of hug that says help. Hmmm? now that I think about it, we're probably all here for some of the same searching reasons.
Eight times out of 10 you go anyway You're not sure whether or how they'll remember you, but now 10 or 25 years out, you feel this compulsive need to find out for yourself.
Admit it. The real need churning inside you is to see if anyone will still recall any of those disasters you've lived with all these years. You know, the stupid answers you gave in chemistry...the election you lost...the teams you never made...the dances you missed because you didn't have a date. Or -- please God! -- maybe a few of them still remember your better angels. Like the time you were cast in the spring play...won the dance contest at the prom... did pretty good in PE.
You finger though the yearbook for some help. Faces. names. events. gotta look sharp tonight. Also, you finger through the closet for the right look. Confident. successful. yet not over-dressed.
Driving to the hotel, it's the entrance that bothers you most. I mean, when you walk in, will anyone recognize you? If they do, what will they say? Gotta be prepared for no one knowing who you are. Twenty pounds is a lot more of you than any of them ever saw before. Oh hell, they've probably changed even more than you. You don't have to be so defensive. As a matter of fact, if I don't feel comfortable the first ten minutes, well I'm outta there. And good riddance. Who needs them anyway.
What's that....? Someone calling my name....? Gee, it's Jake! [or is that Willy?] Anyway, smile. You may not remember him, but wow he remembers you. That's a good start! Now don't mess it up. Keep smiling. But wait -- lets start by not getting his name wrong. Names are important. You know that. So how do I play this?
"Hey tiger," you hear yourself smiling, "how long has it been!" Jake [or Willy or was that Ray?] gives you a big bear hug. You know, the kind of hug that says help. Hmmm? now that I think about it, we're probably all here for some of the same searching reasons.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
OUR OWN SECRET STREET HERE IN CHICAGO
As the holiday season arrives, I want to do you a favor.
The favor of taking you by your most sentimental hand and walking you down Chicago's great street State Street when it was still an amazing, awesome, astonishing midway of childhood desires. When exactly was that...? Exactly the last time you and I took the time to stroll it like a child.
My very first time was in the dark days of the Great Depression. Looking back now from the Great Recession, I remember it more vividly than I do this very morning. It began as a long, noisy ride with Mom on Chicago's Lake Street L train....inhabited with all sorts of tall, heavily-dressed people sternly reading their newspapers...feeling the tug of her hand when someone called out "State & Wabash" ....then being led down the bustling station stairs to a large gray building marked Marshal Fields. [I understand something from New York City called a Macy's has since usurped that grand old store].
The air was crisp, the crowds thick, and the place rang with bells, chimes and carols. I could only see it from down about Mom's waistline, but it felt like some magical crash of sights, sounds and smells unlike anything I had known before. It quickly grew louder as we turned a corner and -- then! -- State Street itself. A long wondrous blaze of ornamented street lamps, store fronts, clanging streetcars, shoving adults, fat red Santas tinkling their bells, angelic choirs from loudspeakers somewhere. If this was heaven, Father Cunningham hadn't been misleading us.
Mom efficiently took me by my little gloved hand to gawk at each of those celebrated Marshall Field window displays. They looked out on State Street, which in turned looked in at them. At age eight I had witnessed the excitement of giant coal trucks, horse-drawn milk wagons, screaming ambulances, and Dad's splendid new 1937 Dodge sedan. But nothing quite like this. Nor, did it seem to me, did any of the other oohing and awing kids at the end of their mother's hands.
Animated Victorian living room scenes with slippered children gathering around ornamented trees...Jolly Old St Nick squeezing down wreathed chimneys...puppy dogs and kitty cats and winking elves by what seemed like hundreds...oh and all those incredible dinner feasts around which the families would gather...plus of course the Nativity Scene reminding adults and kids alike what this whole day was supposed to be all about.
I remember instantly deciding I never wanted to leave. Very much like my own children the first time they walked Disney's dazzling Main Street. But leave we eventually did. Not only State Street but also that delicious fourth-floor toy department inside. It seemed to me it held all the toys in all the towns in all the world!
I've since learned all those toys are actually in big-box warehouse stores like ToysRus where they have now turned in their credentials as Christmas magic for their new status as boxed-and-ready stuff. Sometime I miss being eight. I think maybe sometime you do too.
The favor of taking you by your most sentimental hand and walking you down Chicago's great street State Street when it was still an amazing, awesome, astonishing midway of childhood desires. When exactly was that...? Exactly the last time you and I took the time to stroll it like a child.
My very first time was in the dark days of the Great Depression. Looking back now from the Great Recession, I remember it more vividly than I do this very morning. It began as a long, noisy ride with Mom on Chicago's Lake Street L train....inhabited with all sorts of tall, heavily-dressed people sternly reading their newspapers...feeling the tug of her hand when someone called out "State & Wabash" ....then being led down the bustling station stairs to a large gray building marked Marshal Fields. [I understand something from New York City called a Macy's has since usurped that grand old store].
The air was crisp, the crowds thick, and the place rang with bells, chimes and carols. I could only see it from down about Mom's waistline, but it felt like some magical crash of sights, sounds and smells unlike anything I had known before. It quickly grew louder as we turned a corner and -- then! -- State Street itself. A long wondrous blaze of ornamented street lamps, store fronts, clanging streetcars, shoving adults, fat red Santas tinkling their bells, angelic choirs from loudspeakers somewhere. If this was heaven, Father Cunningham hadn't been misleading us.
Mom efficiently took me by my little gloved hand to gawk at each of those celebrated Marshall Field window displays. They looked out on State Street, which in turned looked in at them. At age eight I had witnessed the excitement of giant coal trucks, horse-drawn milk wagons, screaming ambulances, and Dad's splendid new 1937 Dodge sedan. But nothing quite like this. Nor, did it seem to me, did any of the other oohing and awing kids at the end of their mother's hands.
Animated Victorian living room scenes with slippered children gathering around ornamented trees...Jolly Old St Nick squeezing down wreathed chimneys...puppy dogs and kitty cats and winking elves by what seemed like hundreds...oh and all those incredible dinner feasts around which the families would gather...plus of course the Nativity Scene reminding adults and kids alike what this whole day was supposed to be all about.
I remember instantly deciding I never wanted to leave. Very much like my own children the first time they walked Disney's dazzling Main Street. But leave we eventually did. Not only State Street but also that delicious fourth-floor toy department inside. It seemed to me it held all the toys in all the towns in all the world!
I've since learned all those toys are actually in big-box warehouse stores like ToysRus where they have now turned in their credentials as Christmas magic for their new status as boxed-and-ready stuff. Sometime I miss being eight. I think maybe sometime you do too.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
THE TWO THINGS YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO WEIGH ON YOUR SCALE
That menacing scale in your house -- you step on it in desperate hopes your recent gorge of fast foods hasn't worked it's evil ways. Hopefully there was a little gustatory miracle. Whatever your scale reads, you've just encountered two of life's least understood phenomena: evil and miracles.
The problem of evil has haunted us from the very beginning. It's preoccupied every major religion along with history's most prolific writers from Shakespeare to Dostoevsky to Stephen King. The ancient Greek tragedies literally gave evil a face. Whether we see it in theological, philosophical or psychological terms, evil remains an issue that runs a lot deeper than just booing the other team.
Right now we see it manifested in organized terrorism to genocidal wars to the won't-go-away threat of atomic annihilation. While some of us say evil is something found in the deeds of evil-doers, others insist evil is a spiritual force that in some way walks the earth.
As for miracles, well we're calling events miracles every day. The miracle, against all odds, of a cure, a victory, an intervention. Probably the biggest all-time miracle worker has been the Virgin Mary who has been active in apparitions from Joan of Arc to Lourdes to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The stand-off between science and faith in these affairs is well known, and chances of converting either side would take, well, a miracle.
The next time you ease onto your scale, you don't have to believe in either evil or in miracles. However, you do have to ask yourself: Are some things in life measured in ways that have nothing to do with the science of weights, sights, sounds and test tubes? These measurements all have to do with the sensory, but what about what's not sensory? Recently there have risen serious studies of what has been called the extra-sensory (ESP). Now here's what's funny. These studies consider themselves scientific. Which makes them like the science of the unscientific.
I don't know if you react like I do to the science of your morning scale as something either terribly evil or this time something surprisingly miraculous. But I do know this. I'd love to see the reactions over dinner between a successful neurobiologist and a successful shaman. And then watch who afterwards would vindicated enough to pick up the check.
The problem of evil has haunted us from the very beginning. It's preoccupied every major religion along with history's most prolific writers from Shakespeare to Dostoevsky to Stephen King. The ancient Greek tragedies literally gave evil a face. Whether we see it in theological, philosophical or psychological terms, evil remains an issue that runs a lot deeper than just booing the other team.
Right now we see it manifested in organized terrorism to genocidal wars to the won't-go-away threat of atomic annihilation. While some of us say evil is something found in the deeds of evil-doers, others insist evil is a spiritual force that in some way walks the earth.
As for miracles, well we're calling events miracles every day. The miracle, against all odds, of a cure, a victory, an intervention. Probably the biggest all-time miracle worker has been the Virgin Mary who has been active in apparitions from Joan of Arc to Lourdes to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The stand-off between science and faith in these affairs is well known, and chances of converting either side would take, well, a miracle.
The next time you ease onto your scale, you don't have to believe in either evil or in miracles. However, you do have to ask yourself: Are some things in life measured in ways that have nothing to do with the science of weights, sights, sounds and test tubes? These measurements all have to do with the sensory, but what about what's not sensory? Recently there have risen serious studies of what has been called the extra-sensory (ESP). Now here's what's funny. These studies consider themselves scientific. Which makes them like the science of the unscientific.
I don't know if you react like I do to the science of your morning scale as something either terribly evil or this time something surprisingly miraculous. But I do know this. I'd love to see the reactions over dinner between a successful neurobiologist and a successful shaman. And then watch who afterwards would vindicated enough to pick up the check.
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