(POST) ELECTION DAY HOPE

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A good read in these days…

A quote from the article in Mockingbird, “The rules of social convention ensure that we behave in a reasonable, courteous manner most of the time. But certain situations bring our baser instincts to the fore, and we discover we were not actually seeking the common good, but our own — that is, if we are even capable of that degree of self-reflection. This present moment in American history, like so many before it, is an hour of revelation, a moment of truth in which our real nature is displayed.”

https://mbird.com/politics/election-day-hope

Life goes on…

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Back in the ’90’s and aughts I worked on a lot of websites, including my own. My tagline still remains, “This is my signature.” It was fun during the halcyon days of web development when everything was still just HTML (well, maybe some FLASH, CSS, xml – you know, cutting edge stuff!). My old website is still up, I still pay for the hosting service, but I haven’t updated it in probably 12-years or so. I have great intentions of still playing in the web-world… but nothing is the same as it was back then and that world has passed me by. WordPress works just fine.


It’s interesting going back and clicking on all the old links to websites that impressed and inspired me by creatives, designers, early blogging pioneers, etc.(I even got a free Blogger hoodie from Google when it bought the company), and issue oriented websites that seemed to say something significant other than the status quo blah, blah, blah. Most all of the sites are now gone. I suppose for most of those people, their lives moved on… like me and my own 12-year out-of-date simple HTML-CSS website. At least my URL still works.


Do I take the time to go back and update everything… make it right, relevant, or just let it go as a window into an earlier time in my life?


I can’t help thinking about relationships that I’ve let go of in similar ways. I just stopped “updating” them. Like my website, I think about most all of them from time-to-time and even visit with old friends and extended family on occasion… the URL’s still work… but what about those relationships? Fond memories, now, or…

How do we live?

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“O God, you know my foolishness, and my faults are not hidden from you.

“Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek you be disgraced of me, O God of Israel.” [Ps. 69:6 & 7]

Sobering thoughts for those in positions of moral and spiritual leadership, leaders in the Church, priests and bishops of our Church. If this consideration was in the forefront of our thoughts, much of the mess within the Church might be alleviated.

We are to be…

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When there is an attack on a synagogue, it is an attack on my church. When there is an attack on a Muslim, it is an attack on me.

The Command I follow calls me, demands that I, consider others before myself, treat others as I want to be treated, no matter how the other may view or treat me. If someone wants to think him/herself a “Christian,” this is how s/he is to be (even if imperfectly) not because I say so, but because the One we follow demands it. How different the world would be if only we abide this call.

We are to be…

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When there is an attack on a synagogue, it is an attack on my church. When there is an attack on a Muslim, it is an attack on me.

The Command I follow calls me, demands that I, consider others before myself, treat others as I want to be treated, no matter how the other may view or treat me. If someone wants to think him/herself a “Christian,” this is how s/he is to be (even if imperfectly) not because I say so, but because the One we follow demands it. How different the world would be if only we abide this call.

I hope to live up to…

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Moving enables me to look through long kept stuff. When I left employment at Kent State University, among the good folks of Undergraduate Studies (who I still miss, today) for seminary in NYC, they sent me off with a lovely bound folio of written remembrances and well-wishes. My dear friend, Amy Quillan (now Dr. Quillan, PhD.), with whom I shared a great deal during our graduate studies and life at Kent afterward, wrote a long bit to me. One paragraph probably hits closest to my hopeful self-perception (or self-delusion, depending on who one talks to), and here it is (a bit of self-indulgence, if I may):


“You are a man of vision and passion, a lover of life, and a tenacious pursuer of the greater good. And you unabashedly call others to that great good, too, challenging and encouraging them to think, reflect, and ponder, and maybe change for the sake of a higher calling. You’ve done that for me, and I am forever grateful.”


I guess if one is to have a legacy, what Amy wrote about me, then, would be a pretty darn good one to have. I can only hope that I have lived up to her perception of me over the passing years, and now live even more fully into such a way of being. With a bit of self-reflection, I have to admit that I’ve missed the mark, but my hope is that I will be such a man for the rest of today and tomorrow and the remainder of my life.

Steampunk Priest and the Helpers

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I’ve been thinking about Halloween and comments some make about how easy it could be for me to just dress up as a priest. Well, it could, but that seems too irreverent, so I never will. However, I was thinking about how dressing up as a Steampunk Priest might be fun. So, I googled it, like any good, red-blooded, American male, to see what others have done, if anything. There is a bit of stuff and some good ideas. However…

I came across a blog: Steampunk Vicar. His latest post had a quote from Rev. Rogers (that’s “Mr. Rogers” to you and me, of Neighborhood fame, who was, in fact, an ordained Presbyterian minister). This little quote may be one of those things that just shifts my whole perspective (kind of like what Steampunk does). Here it is:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'” (Fred Rogers)

Mr./Rev. Rogers’ mother was a profoundly wise woman, and I am sure much of Mr. Rogers’ sensibility came from her.

Look for those who are helping! Instead of absorbing the blathering of crazed pundits or protesting ditties, look for those who are helping. It is easy to talk and can be fun to march, but to roll up one’s sleeves and be in the midst of those who smack-you-upside-the-head need help – on the ground, in the field, beside the one prone in the gutter – will be a much better and in the end more satisfying-for-the-soul thing to do. In the midst of the worst of everything, look for the helpers! I want to be with the helpers.

Nothing, yet all

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“To reach satisfaction in all
desire its possession in nothing
To come to the knowledge of all
desire the knowledge of nothing
To come to possess all
desire the possession off nothing
To arrive at being all
desire to be nothing

To come to the pleasure you have not
you must go by a way in which you enjoy not
To come to the knowledge you have not
you must go by a way in which you know not
To come to the possession you have not
you must go by a way in which you possess not
To come to be what you are not
you must go by a way in which you are not

When you turn toward something
you cease to cast yourself upon all
for to go from the all to the all
you must leave yourself in all
And when you come to the possession of all
you must possess it without wanting anything

In this nakedness the spirit
finds its rest, for when it
covets nothing, nothing
raises it up, and nothing
weights it down, because it is
in the center of its humanity.”

St. John of the Cross

Realities

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For a good number of years, every spring I would go to Boarders or Barnes & Nobles and buy books for summer reading – always one book only because of its cover. When I started reading books on my iPad in earnest, I fell out of my spring habit. Yesterday, I walked by a B. & N. and a book displayed caught my attention, so I bought it and a few other tactile summer books.

This particularly book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” was written by a J.D. Vance whose “people” (extended family) originally was and is from the coal country of Eastern Kentucky – Jackson, KY. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School, now lives in California, and still refers to himself at heart as a “hillbilly.”

In his writing, I see where my “people” are from in both the incredible goodness and beauty of the place and also the horrific conditions people live under and through.

He uses his experience and observation to comment on the profound crisis among economically poor people throughout the country.

My own experience and observations lead me to this question – Why do we continue to tell ourselves (those of means and bleeding hearts) that a place and a people can exist on government assistance/handouts and still retain their dignity, a hopeful future, and cohesion as a beneficial community? Helping people in need isn’t the issue, but how that help is understood and delivered continues to be an issue. We have to approach all of this in a different way, because the way we are going isn’t working. (Until certain segments of the population understand this, they will never, ever understand how someone like Trump is elected President.)