Since I can only have one, it might be elemental manipulation. A region needs rain? Coming right up. Another needs a break from sub-zero cold or endless high temperatures? Break out your shorts and margaritas or bundle up. Of course, such drastic reversals would probably generate their own adverse effects, but maybe the power is so complete that I can maintain a healthy balance.
Elusive
Great question, but the only thing coming to mind is always wishing for clarity when it came to what I should do with my life. I still feel like I missed some hints, missed out on a moment when things crystallized, and revelation provided a path forward with regard to the work I should occupy myself with in order to make a living.
I did end up as an ordained Lutheran pastor for 26 years, but never really felt comfortable in that position, like this was my “destiny,” even though others gave me affirmation along the way and told me this was where I needed to be. Instead, I often found myself wishing some other direction was taken, some other door had opened, because most days I felt like a fish out of water.
I wish I could have been like the folks who somehow “know” from early on that they will be a doctor, or an athlete, or a musician. I never had that clarity, or a sense of assurance that I was where I was supposed to be. But maybe that’s more rare than it’s made out to be. Maybe that’s not how it works, anyway.
Maybe it’s more about following a dream and putting in the work.
Now that I’ve been writing for a while, I realize that life itself is often a mystery to me. Why are we here? Since we have the wherewithal to ask that question, it’d be nice to have an answer that satisfies, that stops in its tracks this endless inquiry.
Animal Farm
It would be great if we could all get to take a trip to the far side of the moon and look back at Earth, just hanging there in the blackness of space. We probably wouldn’t have to go that far to get the lay of the land, so to speak. To be awestruck, maybe humbled.
Astronauts returning from such excursions appear to be changed people. Their perspective has been widened and enriched, most likely changed for the rest of their lives, which is totally understandable. I feel differently after just seeing the pictures the Artemis II crew took, though maybe only slightly more convinced of the fragile, wondrous nature of being alive than after seeing the picture Bill Anders took in December 1968.
Ah, the blue marble, the orb that might have many an alien sojourner thinking, “Ooh, now that’s different. Let’s take a closer look.” The aliens I envision speak excellent English.
I guess my point, if there is one, is that the poignancy of this earthly life, its meaning and significance, its mystery, its raucous, ugly, beautiful reality, might be lost on the universe writ large, and on many of us earthbound beings. As I’ve written in a previous post or two, I won’t be surprised if we someday learn that we’re either alone in the heavens, or that we are relative Neanderthals in comparison to other beings from far-off galaxies, whose existence may never be confirmed.
Point 1a is that I wish certain people who call themselves leaders could find, in their scorched earth quest for notoriety and power and wealth, room for humility and awe and gratitude. I wish they could suddenly realize that, more often than not, no one died and left them king, that no one knowingly gave them permission to be tyrannical, self-important scourges of comparable value and usefulness to the average deer tick.
Maybe Jeff Bezos or Elon could arrange for missions that would take Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, J.D Vance, Stephen Miller, Kevin Roberts, Peter Thiel, Russell Vought, and the whole current Cabinet away for a while, on a trip around the moon, in close quarters, where no deals would be cut, only tasks at hand in service of remaining alive and taking a good long look at the planet and its inhabitants they apparently care next to nothing about—except as it, and they, can serve their agendas. I wonder how many would return alive.
A few may already be so dead inside that not even next-level space tourism would move them. Most of ’em probably wouldn’t go, anyway– I can’t imagine there’d be many steely-eyed missile people among that crew.
Admiration, Advice, and Inspiration
My wife, my siblings and most of their spouses, our children and their spouses, our neighbor next door, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Colbert, Albert Einstein, Paula Poundstone, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Paul McCartney and all the Beatles– and George Martin; Alanis Morissette, Jon Stewart, Desi Lydic, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Pete Buttigieg, Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, Alexei Navalny, Jon Leavitt, PoliticsGirl, JoJofromJerz, Pope Leo, Rachel Maddow, Brian Tyler Cohen, Leonardo DaVinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Jim Lovell, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, Gene Kranz, Harper Lee, Jonas Salk, most any ER doctor, RNs who take their job seriously, our GP, a good mechanic, a good carpenter or plumber or electrician, and a couple of local farmers who work as hard as anyone I’ve ever known and are the personification of what people must mean when they use the phrase “salt of the earth.”
I’m sure I’ll think of others after submitting this.
Seriously
Five thousand American troops pulled out of Germany, shortly after Trump has a 90-minute conversation with Vladimir Putin.
Anyone else concerned?
Is this just more of Trump being a thin-skinned child in his beef with the German Chancellor, or is there something more sinister going on? Can anyone stop this idiot from doing more damage? And who’s putting him up to it?
Civic Duty
More often than ever, even the local ones. By mail, like our dear President.
It’s About Time
Chris Hayes hit the nail on the head, and with some emotion.
Every day we hear about the high price of gasoline and diesel, in the context of the war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Every day, day in and day out.
Mr. Hayes finally named the irony of it all—that, day in and day out, much is made of high gas prices, but people keep buying gasoline, no matter how high the price goes. They keep complaining, day in and day out, but the price seldom responds to the protest.
As Hayes reminds us, this is not new ground. We’ve been here before, we’ve been complaining off and on about the high cost of fossil fuels for over 50 years, and we just keep paying for it, even as there are viable energy alternatives that have been knocking on the door for decades now. We’ve had unending opportunity to wean ourselves from the fossil fuel teat, but the powers that be won’t let it happen—even though there is a certain inevitability regarding our vulnerability to exactly what’s going on now: political unrest and war. And let us not forget the mounting environmental damage!
The Trump administration is in the pockets of the fossil fuel behemoths, who very well may be seeing writing on the wall but are flush with cash and able to lobby their way out of one tight corner after another.
At some point hopefully soon, one might think we reach a tipping point, a point of no return, when forces and realities conspire to render the fossil fuel hold-outs, well, fossils.
Value
A morning routine, our marriage, home improvements, involvement in the lives of our children and grandchildren.
Vocationally, there is nothing of which to be mindful anymore. Now I have to be more self-motivated, have a to-do list. When I was a pastor, there was always something to be mindful of, something to work on, another visit to make. But in retirement, the onus falls on me to generate movement and activity and any sense of direction.
I guess I’m not nearly as concerned with a sense of direction now, though a sense of purpose and meaning still looms large.
Pearls II
2500
The Best People
Pirro, Kennedy, Jr., Patel, Hegseth, Leavitt, Blanche, Miller, Vought, Graham, Comer, Tuberville… Trump. There’s just no let-up in the pretension and ineptitude and shameless bootlicking.
Yet another attempt on Donald’s life has juiced up the clamor for The Ballroom, a $400 million project now being funded by us, apparently. If Republicans get their way and this boondoggle comes to fruition, it will probably end up costing us way more than $400 million.
Meanwhile, there is no money for cancer research and food programs and infrastructure and help with medical insurance and a thousand other things.
This administration has given us nothing, and has no intention of paying attention to needs and issues we consider important. This administration exists for the benefit of the Heritage Foundation. Its MO is wallowing in old thinking and bad religion, and breaking America into a million pieces. All for the benefit of a relative few.
Imagine that. This is what 77 million of us have let in the door—a gaggle of power-hungry people with a terribly skewed vision who don’t care about anything beyond their own well-being and forcing their will. They are a living, breathing caricature of coldness and evil and monumental selfishness…
… people inspired by capital gains and tax shelters and impenetrable bunkers where they and their “loved ones” can usher in Armageddon while the rest of us suffer the consequences of the collapse they hastened.
Oh, sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just that it’s gonna be really hard to get excited about or inspired by our 250th birthday with these clowns running the show. They couldn’t care less about the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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