Big Blue

I like to think of myself as a peaceable man. But I have to confess. I’m a Giant’s fan. Football is not a peaceable sport. People get hurt. I should not enjoy this kind of thing. But watching the Dallas game last Monday, I began realizing I was considering the game in teleological terms. Eli Manning’s mistakes in the beginning of the game were the mistakes of youth, as he grew he demonstrated balance and wisdom as he picked apart the Dallas defense. I caught myself. When we become philosophic about our ism’s, national, sex, race, or any of the other horrors that run Lucifer’s agenda among us, we are finding ways of excusing the terrors we promulgate upon the universe.
Perhaps the only way of making any sense of my joy at Dallas’ defeat is to admit that I am a human being. That cannot be an excuse, but it can be an edge for growth. Perhaps somehow I can be a more peaceable Giant’s fan. Maybe I can grieve at the way the Giant’s defense stops their run and runs over their quarterback. Maybe I can affirm their attempts at finding a ray of hope in the brutal onslaught of BLUE.
Oh well, I could say I was trying that, but I’d be a hypocrite. I enjoy the game. I enjoy the competition. I love cheering for Big Blue.
Does that make me a bad man? Well, there’s one thing about being a Presbyterian. We accept the reality that we are broken beings. And we accept the truth that without God’s forgiveness we are all up the creek.
OK, got that covered. Whew! Now I can get back to the game. Go Giants!
You got a problem with that?

Deontologize the Principle of Parsimony

I had a hard time determining a major in college. I vacillated between History, Anthropology, English Lit., and Geology. I like field trips. There was one professor who fascinated me. He was older than the norm, played the cello, rode an ancient but shinny three speed bike around the campus, enjoyed good sherry, chuckled around his pipe, and faced the tirades of adolescent arrogance with the aplomb of calm courage. His questions bothered me like fleas. I itched at them long after class. Dr Strodach was a Philosophy professor. I took any class that had his name on it. I learned. He’s why I majored in Philosophy. My fathers Phd from Princeton in Metaphysical Philosophy had absolutely nothing to do with it. Congenital disorders often go unnoticed.
Dr Strodach gently goaded us toward a consideration of our own place in the world by inviting us to consider the monsters of the contemplative discipline. He refused to accept rote repetition of Plato. He wanted us to wrestle with the shadows on the wall of our own lives. What were our ideals? He poked holes in each and every balloon I lofted. And in the grand deflation I discovered how the defense of my own foolishness limited my journey. He taught me not to tolerate fools. But he taught me how to have enough manners to not make myself one by considering myself far separated from their foolishness. This guy was the real deal. He reminded me of my father without all the Oedipal baggage.
In my Senior year he got sick. Not the flue kind, the hospital surgery kind. We had just started a year long trek through the metaphysicians. I was devastated. His replacement was a teacher who shall not be named here. The guy made me nuts. He loved to demonstrate his superior knowledge and use it like a lash to move us through the material. He was boring in lecture and did not deal well with questions no matter how insightful or desperate they were. The day we dealt with Occum’s razor was the final straw. This philosophic principle came from a Scottish monk, naturally. He said, the simplest construction is best, the KISS principle comes from him. Keep it simple stupid. The not-so-esteemed professor held forth on the metaphysical chaos that swirls about our heads, calling forth Occum as the shining knight of logic to wield his razor in our defense. He then announced just what that razor was. “Deontologize the principle of parsimony.” It was like getting a garbage compactor for a romantic gift(that’s another story). It was like… This…boob(and that’s generous) just cut himself with the razor he was showing us how to use. So much for keeping it simple.
In my stunned bewilderment, I suddenly heard Dr Strodach chuckling. He never took his pipe out of his mouth. He just chuckled around it. I calmly held up my hand. Our ranting boob of a professor ground to a halt and glared at me. Raising his chin as to consider what kind of bug was presuming to disturb him, he pontificated, “Yes?” He made it a three syllable word.
The bug humbly asked, “Sir, what does ‘deontologize’ mean?”
The boob stared at me, considering exactly what would be the best way to squash me. But realizing this gave him another moment to demonstrate his mental superiority he launched into a tirade of multisylabic baulderdash. Finally considering me sufficiently squashed he checked his notes and rebooted his destruction of Occum. I raised my hand again. He shuddered to another halt. He again addressed me with all the scorn of a Phd to a fool. “Yes?” This time it was a four syllable word.
The bug humbly begged, “Sir, what does ‘parsimony’ mean?
Now to you this may not seem like a horribly offensive set of questions. You may have been wondering yourself. But to the class who had become numb under his lash it was clear there was a ray of Strodach sunshine beaming into our darkness. The boob stared at me for a good thirty seconds, looked at his notes and dismissed the class.
Small victories mean a lot to slaves. We had to pass the class with a B if we were Philosophy majors. Small victory or not, we were still bugs in the amber of multisylabic baulderdash. I considered this as I plodded into the boob’s room for the next class. I was waiting to pay for my small victory. I was late. The class was silent as I closed the door. I was afraid to turn around. As I came into the room I had seen Dr Strodach sitting on the window sill smiling around his pipe. I was terrified that I would turn around and realize I was still in the boob’s hell.
Dr Strodach said to my back, “What’s the matter Mr. McKirachan? I thought you believed in the resurrection of the body.”
That good humored master teacher gave me a gift, ‘sweeter than honey.’ He taught me the validity of grace under fire, and demonstrated the courage to claim it. He also taught me that the truth will make us free.
God bless you Dr Strodach.

What's Next

This summer has been different. Things usually, at least for the last fourteen years have slown down. There has been time between activities, meetings, crises. The have to’s haven’t been packed in against each other. There has been room to breathe, to water the garden, to paint the porch, to listen to the birds.
This summer has been different. Each day resembles the one before, an adventure in shuffling priorities, triage at its best, or worst. I would assign this to my advancing chronological development, creeky knees to boot, but other people are having a hard time fitting in the meetings that I need to have with them because they’ve got too much to get done this week. What about next? No, wait…. It ain’t just me.
I called a Pastor’s office the other day, to get the names of people on a committee I’m chairing. Gotta set up a meeting. He was on vacation. I said, “Oh, good.” His Ad. Min. told me I could e-mail him, he would be back to me within twenty four hours. “But he’s on vacation.” “Well,” she said with some sadness in her voice, “he took his blackberry.”
I heard a lecture by a professor on technology. He’s an expert on oil extraction. He said our technology, what we have invented is out beyond our ability to manage it. We’ve got toys that we can’t handle. They’ve evolved faster than we have. Thus blow outs in the Gulf. But I think we’ve got blow outs a lot closer to home. We think we need to be connected. To what? We’ve got so much coming in all the time, we have no place to stand that is not pulsing with stuff that we ‘have to’ deal with, emotionally, logistically, spiritually.
If we are to be human, we can’t be servants of our machines, or the multiple agendas of others. We need places and times, UN-connected. We need to claim some silence. We need to listen to the languages of the earth and the whispers of the wind. We need to be quiet long enough to hear God’s still small voice.
I think I’ll cancel a few things and go paint the porch.

What's Next?

Why can't they...

I’ve had a few cell phones by this time. My kids think I should get a new one weekly it seems. Sure, I’m up for a deal. I can get one of those snap front, smaller than a business card, computer literate, able to take movies, play movies, compute the orbits of most asteroids, and make sure I don’t miss any appointments machines. I think once in a while you can even talk to other people on it, with and without your thumbs. I’d love to have one. There’s only one problem. When you try to recharge it, you have to find a whole new system for plugging it into the wall. Where do you plug the thing into the phone? And if you lose the charger, none of the other chargers that have been accumulating ever since you’ve been been using cell phones match the plug in dingus. They’re like sox. None of them match. The whole thing just isn’t worth it.
I’m positive it’s a conspiracy. I’m not sure what they’re conspiring to accomplish, but it’s nefarious, no doubt about it. There is absolutely no reason they shouldn’t match, unless… I’ve got it! They don’t want us to plug in our phones! Hmmm…
I think I need to talk to somebody about this. But my phone needs recharging.

Drought

July hasn’t only brought heat. It was like a timer switch was hooked to the clouds. Droughts are nothing new. They’re a result of so many random bits and pieces of atmospheric minutia that even experts who study the complicated engine can’t predict what’s next. It’s the butterfly moving its wings in China affecting the path of a tornado in Kansas phenomenon. Who knows what causes drought?
Two of my friends have four kids close in age. Camping was their way to get out of the house without taking out a mortgage. Every time they put up the tent, wherever, whenever, it rained. Camping in the rain became normal for them. One day I came over to their house during a drought. It hadn’t rained in three weeks. The tent was set up in the back yard. “The kids camping out tonight?” “No, I figured it’s the best way to break the drought.” We laughed. I had to turn on the wipers for the drive home.
Who knows? Someone once told me that a coincidence is God’s way of being subtle. I have a hard time with some sort of deterministic dude running the show. But I like the subtlety thing. So much of what happens is a result of so many other things. Nothing specifically determines the outcome, but each and every is significant. And we have absolutely no idea how one works with the others to create a result far beyond our expectations. We just aren’t that aware.
But we can be more aware. There are so many ways we do have direct power. A word, a touch, subtle, yet so powerful. We discount our own authority, our own capability. We live at such an intersection of potential and actual, of spiritual and material. Both have incredible power. Both move and change and offer us moments of synergy, of energy output that transcends the energy inputs. To be part of those moments, to reach out and allow creative potential to move through us takes either an incredibly fortunate accident or wisdom that allows us to see into the chaos and patterns of our existence. Fortune is luck. And unless we want to rely on such a fickle acquaintance, we must spend some time and energy paying attention to the currents and tides that ebb and flow all around us and perhaps to others who already have.
Most are more than willing to duck. It’s easier to exist than it is to live. Habits are simple. We get efficient at accomplishing them. But there’s this lovely feeling when the drops begin plopping down so big they splash. The smell of the breeze as it carries the promise of coming rain. And we know that somewhere, somehow something has harmonized with something else and moved reality. Times like these make it worth wondering and reading and dreaming and listening to people and to tree frogs. For at such times we understand, with senses that so transcend formula as to make them silly. We understand that we are part of it all, connected, organically tangled with all of the world and even beyond.
There can be no denying all of this. Well, denial is possible but what does it accomplish except to make a fool of the denier. We are tangled together. What we do effects everything, including each other. So, if we would not be fools, it’s time to start paying attention to the score. We’ve got some dancing to do.
Time to go find my tent. Or maybe it’s specifically their tent. I think they sold it. I wonder if the new owners can make it work. Maybe it’s the tent in conjunction with the laughter of our kids. Looks like we’ve got some studying to do. After all, life is for learning.

Whose fault is it?

I looked at pictures of oil soaked sea birds today. I’m not good at watching animals suffer. In some ways it’s easier for me to deal with human suffering than to see the suffering of animals. Don’t judge my lack of empathy. I think it has something to do with innocence. They are just being where they are. Doing what they do and they have no hope of competing with our capabilities. Our capabilities to destroy, pollute, damage, and make a profit in the process far exceed their ability to survive. So, the pictures bothered me.
The metaphorical dichotomies that resonate through the scenes are hard to handle. Flight and freedom traded for limitation and death, a deal based on the appetite of our machines. But this isn’t about all of that. This is about the responses written by other people who looked at the pictures.
There were a few who empathized. Almost all of them were looking for someone to blame. There were a few common targets. The president of our country dominated the list. Then there were the people running BP. Blame’s a great thing. It points a finger, corners another between vengeance and self righteousness. The blamed have no way out because the only reason anyone has to blame is to convince themselves that they are powerful. Vengeance always demonstrates a good reason to walk away from the avenger. Their motives have nothing to do with solving anything near the problem. And there they all were, spouting good reasons to walk away from them and refusing to address anything near the pain occurring on the beaches or the marshes.
We are all connected, whether we acknowledge it or not. We are bound to each other whatever our opinion of each other. But more, when we try to use each other for our own emotional gratification we reduce our ability to cooperate, to share responsibility. It occurs to me we don’t want to take responsibility, we don’t want to share in creating a solution or a better world. We want to beat our chests and act powerful. We want to rant and rave and sit in judgment. It is so much more comfortable than actually trying to help. It is so much more convenient than to reduce our dependence on the wells and the refineries. It is so much neater than putting on gloves and washing off the birds.
When are we going to stop throwing stones? When are we going to stop wasting opportunities to actually start being a people who are willing to be responsible? The birds are waiting. So are our children. Will we teach them to be responsible or will they be just like us.