Religion, sports, woodworking, the natural world, cars, technology, astronomy, farming, and whatever is on the grandkids’ minds. It seems it would be difficult not to have an opinion or two on current events– political, environmental, and otherwise.
A starter life, or the only one we get?
I recently had breakfast and a good chat with a pastor colleague. It was fruitful, to a certain extent, but I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to say, or share what was weighing the heaviest on my heart. I held back, for some reason. I feel I’m in the midst of an existential crisis, caught between the rock and the hard place, wanting to believe in the existence of God, but leaning toward the Harari-esque take on things.
There is so much about a journey of faith that’s difficult to reconcile anymore, and this saddens me. I’ve often thought that if there is no God, no rescue from this mundane, sometimes wondrous, and often absurd and savage life, then we have no hope. My hope, for the longest time, dwelled in a certain confidence in the promise of the Gospel message that Jesus indeed arrived on the scene, taught and revealed his divinity and power, died as an atonement for our weakness and sinfulness, and overcame death and the grave to live again– a sign and a promise of comfort for all who have faith.
I wanted to believe this because there was nothing in and of this earthly life that came close to such revelation, such good news. All we get here is a life we had no say in stepping into, a crap shoot, a lottery where the winners are lucky enough to be born into stable societies with leaders who have their heads on straight; into families that care about each other, who have healthy perspectives on what’s important, who show love and humility and have a sense of humor. The losers aren’t losers in the way immature high schoolers use the term. They’re losers because they’ve started at a disadvantage– they were unlucky enough to be born into situations where it would have been wiser and more considerate of the parents to have abstained from unprotected sex. For too many children, and for a number of reasons, their journey often enough is one long, or shortened, undeserved slog and endurance test.
This idea that one must have faith, keep the faith, has died significantly in me. I lament the familiar lament: how long? How long do we wait, do we hold onto the promises, before we start looking around at the plurality of belief systems and the billions who are waiting on their God to do something, not to mention the suffering and growing despair and misery, and throw up our hands and say “What are we doing here?!”?
It often feels like it’s been long enough.
The Big Move
I suppose some might feel that getting married is a risk, but I’ve never felt that way. I’m not a huge risk taker, I guess, but one I can think of is when we decided to head to seminary. We moved away from the area in which we grew up, not knowing for sure if certain things would fall into place and I would make it through the process. There are no regrets, though, other than the occasional lament that my sense of call has waned significantly since leaving Gettysburg.
In that moment…
Daily writing prompt
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
No specific instance yet, but I’m quite sure that over the years there have been moments of inaction that, with the benefit of hindsight, could have turned out differently, and better. It might have been some opportunity I let go by the boards– investing in land, taking certain things more seriously, behaving better, picking up on cues from my wife and either doing or saying something that would have paved the way for a better outcome.
OK. One thing that comes to mind is a missed opportunity to take the high road when we neighborhood kids gathered after supper one night and turned into a mob of sorts, picking on one of the other neighborhood kids who we, in our teenage mindlessness, thought was weird and annoying. I was neither emotionally mature nor brave enough to stand up and say that what we were doing was wrong and actually weak and awful. It still makes me cringe when I think about it.
The good thing is that with a bit of time, and grace and forgiveness, we mended fences and were able to move beyond that ugliness.
Unserious, yet Monstrous
There’s nothing that they won’t touch. Their intent appears to be so blatantly ruinous as to stagger the mind.
Bringing coal back? Drill, baby, drill? Shifting away from renewables—unlike much of the rest of the developed world? Refusing to take the lead and believe sound scientific data regarding what we’re doing to the planet? Just handing the keys to China when it comes to providing the world with, among other things, solar panels—something we invented back in 1954 and have seemingly conceded to our No. 1 strategic competitor and ideological enemy?
Pushing a heavy-handed, disingenuous, and narrow-minded version of Christianity? Burning bridges left and right, and striking up alliances with dictators and oligarchs and oppressive regimes everywhere? Thinking we can isolate ourselves and go it alone? Doubling down on haphazard and careless communication of military operations?
Reducing once-proud agencies and personnel to less effective and more chaotic and confused versions of themselves? Attempting to smash the kneecaps of higher education and freedom of expression, freedom of speech; withdrawing funding for important scientific research, threatening to defund Medicaid and other pieces of whatever social safety net we’ve been able to muster, destroying USAID, hobbling critical drug and disease research by withdrawing funding and firing the legitimate experts in their fields; making snap decisions about who’s worthy of citizenship, deporting others—plucking them off the streets without warning, and sending them to detention centers or prison without due process?
In general, being the worst possible version of elected leadership many would have trouble conjuring in their worst nightmares. Every day there’s another dagger to the heart. Every day, when we think we’ve heard and seen everything, Trump and the rot around him come up with the next atrocious executive order or mindless statement or other indication that they really are inept, hate-filled, paranoid, and soulless. Embodied evil.
And they seem to be reveling in their awfulness, loving every minute of it.
This is what a vote for Trump has gotten us: a person whose only motivations were and are vengeance and winning at all costs, along with what looks to be a robust attempt to render America unrecognizable.
Legitimate Concern
The state of the world, and more specifically the condition of our politics in this country. All the ugliest tendencies are rearing their ugly heads here in America. We’re being called upon to take sides and take action, and it’s hard to know what that action is going to end up looking like, though it has started as vocal dissent and protest. We’re witnessing a stunning all-out assault on our institutions and norms, and it’s making a lot of us nervous.
Goal-oriented Evil
On a daily basis, one might wonder what the latest headline is going to be, the latest news out of the Oval Office and this sad and tragic entity people call an administration. Or regime, cabal, whatever.
On a daily basis, many of us roll our eyes, offer up heavy sighs or emit long, profane utterances because it’s difficult to believe we could find ourselves in such a predicament. Again. And this time on steroids.
“Clown car” is cliché anymore. We’re running out of ways to describe the lunacy, the incompetence, the sheer magnitude of awfulness. Pretenders, fish out of water—most descriptors come up short when trying to capture this intentional placement of such a cadre of misfits.
What we’re witnessing is what can happen when a group of malcontented, cold-hearted, angry fringe players have time to work on a plan. They find their needy, vengeful child, their hapless front man, and then feed him what he needs to say, who he needs in place. They throw competent, responsive governance out the window and replace it with self-serving indulgence and wanton destructiveness.
Their tools are minimal: time-consuming and costly litigation at every turn, and heavy-handedness. Fear. It’s a formidable attempt at running into the ground a perfectly good experiment in government of and by and for the people.
They can’t prevail.
Go-to Options
There aren’t many demanding days anymore, but if I spend time working with my son, or finish mowing and trimming on a hot day, I’ll sit in the carport with a cold ginger ale and just take in the sounds of the day– birds, distant traffic, etc. Most days still wind down with time on the iPad– daring to check the newsfeeds, playing Solitaire, reading an e-book. I’ll occasionally sit at the piano and plink away for a while. Sometimes a walk hits the spot, and there are lots of seasons of Doc Martin to get through.
Codger speak
As infrequently as possible, except for the texting app that came with my phone– if that’s even considered social media. I started a Facebook page a number of years ago, but am not sure why. It’s hardly ever used, except for checking what comes in via email notifications. My Instagram account is probably inactive, since I started that way back in its infancy and have never used it. As for X and Tik-Tok, just No.
I’m not sure how WordPress fits in. I’m engaged here pretty much every day, though there’s not much back-and-forth.
Deep and Wide
It’s both fitting, and ironic bordering on tragic, that we’ve arrived at the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord and find ourselves facing the prospect of fighting an enemy from within, a homegrown megalomaniac who dreams of being king. An authoritarian wannabe who counts Vladimir Putin and his ilk as heroic role models. He likes their style, cares way more about emulating their tactics than tending to the republic.
To no one’s surprise, the voters who put him in office matter little to him. Legitimate, capable governance matters little to him. He’s just a kid in a candy store, drunk on the power and how people prostrate themselves in his presence.
He’s also a willing surrogate, putty in the hands of the real masterminds of this assault on the republic that we are actively being challenged to keep.
