THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS 2019

                                

In looking at my archives I think I tried to post these thoughts a few years ago, but I believe I made a mistake in editing them and they didn't post.  Let me try again today, Thanksgiving Day 2019.

I am an unabashed fan of Norman Rockwell, iconic American artist of the 1940’s-60’s.  It doesn’t matter whether you are 21 or 101, I am sure you have seen his famous Saturday Evening Post cover of a family sitting down to enjoy their turkey dinner. Although I don’t know for sure, I feel strongly that the artist implied that a sincere prayer of gratitude was offered over that meal as an expression of this family’s gratitude for the blessings of family, freedom, bounty, opportunity and prosperity.

I am afraid, though, that in many of our homes Thanksgiving may not be celebrated any longer as a significant religious holiday.  I think many of our observances have become celebrations of consumption rather than spiritual feast of of  love, gratitude, and sharing. 

It hasn’t always been so. 

The first community Thanksgiving in what to become America was celebrated by our Pilgrim forefathers at Plymouth in the fall of 1621.  Theirs was a celebration of gratitude to a Heavenly Father who had sent a bounteous harvest to that beleaguered little colony.  Almost half of Plymouth’s original 101 settlers had died during the severe winter of 1620-21, just 11 months before.  Most of the Plymouth Pilgrims had been merchants and artisans in England, and they were woefully unprepared to live off the land.  Fortunately, a bounteous harvest came in that fall and the native Americans shared with them what they had and a grateful and relieved Governor Bradford proclaimed a three-day period of fasting and then celebration. 

That celebration was at least partially borrowed from the admonition found in the Biblical book of Leviticus that provides:  “When ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord. . . and ye shall rejoice before the Lord, your God (Lev. 23:39-40).

That first feast and many subsequent celebrations of Thanksgiving focused upon man’s relationship with God, our Heavenly Father.  Our  subsequent forefathers understood well their dependence on God. President George Washington, in his proclamation establishing the 1789 Thanksgiving celebration, said in part,

          “Whereas, it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor. . . that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country.”  

In a book of scripture sacred to me, The Book of Mormon clearly taught the sacred origin of Thanksgiving when he proclaimed unto his people:

          

         “O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!  I say unto you, my brethren, that if you could render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, that that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another. . . . I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.”  (Mosiah 2:19-21)

Regrettably, with prosperity came false and humanistic notions.  People who once rendered thankful praise to their God soon came to praise their own industry and intellect and forgot their God.  In like manner even Christmas and Easter have been grossly distorted. 

I would suggest that our task today is to reconnect to the sacred principles of the past—to proclaim with joyful hearts and voices that the Gospel of God has been restored to the world, that this land of America, identified by God as the choicest and most favored land above all others is our land and that we respect it, will protect it, and not defile it, and that we serve our brothers and sisters more than we do and resolve to never take more than we give.  

Remember always that it wasn’t our intellect or our acquired abilities that enabled us to be here today.  May an attitude of thankfulness to God always be with us, and not just in the time it takes to listen to a blessing on this lovely Thanksgiving feast we remember in Norman Rockwell's painting or on our own table would be my hope for people of all nations.  

CHECK YOUR SOURCES !

I copied the following entry from a Google search I did yesterday, Oct. 26, 2019:

        Daylight Saving Time 2019: A Guide to the When, Why, What and ...

         https://www.livescience.com › 56048-daylight-saving-time-guide

        Search for: What date do we turn the clocks back?

                      What day do the clocks go back 2019?

        Daylight saving time ends on Sunday October 27 in 2019, which means that clocks are going back this weekend. The time changes at 2am Greenwich Mean Time October 27, meaning that 2am will then become 1am GMT instead – and yes, it also means that on Sunday morning you can hopefully enjoy an extra hour of sleep.1 day ago"

What is wrong with this information?  

What is wrong is that it is wrong! 

What is wrong with me?  It is that I believed it without confirming it; moreover it is wrong that I did not give heed to my feeling that it did not sound right when I read it but that I went ahead anyway and changed all my clocks and ended up going to Church at the wrong time and missed a good chunk of my meeting.  It is wrong because I looked at the first source that came up on my computer (www.livescience.com) and the url sounded plausible so I went ahead and used it. 

What is the conclusion that should be drawn from this?  It is that I didn't check the 'evidence!'

 What is the other side of the coin?

It is to not automatically dismiss, out-of-hand, new information that is presented to you if it comes from a source that you already have some experience with and that you trust.  If the information received from this source has proven creditable in the past, and if it may be of some value to you if you pursue it further,  and if that evidence supports the new information, it may prove to be of great value to you.

Too many people reject new information or ignorantly assume that if they didn't already believe it, it must not be true.  Many people thus miss out on what could be a great boon to them because of their prejudice.  

In support of this, I draw your attention to a verse from the Bible (naturally, as is my custom) that reads, "prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it" (Malachi 3:10).  A further verse regarding discernment reads, ". . . by their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20).  

Since some of my readers, I am sure, do not believe (yet) the tenets of Christianity I end by submitting an ancient secular caution to those who do not take the time or effort to find out the truth of a matter: "Ignorance of one's own ignorance is the malady of the ignorant" (M. de Montaigne).  

Before accepting or rejecting sources, check into them; ignorance of our own ignorance keeps us from doing this.  

GETTING FIRED --GETTING HIRED

The next two paragraphs have been copied from Dr. Jim Tunney’s most recent weblog posting from his The Tunney Side of Sports (“What Do I Do Now?”, September 9, 2019).  Jim Tunney, who has been called the Dean of National Football League (NFL) Referees, lives in California and works out at the Resort where I work.   I would recommend his inspiring (in a non-religious way) and motivational thoughts as worthy of your consideration.  This posting was generated by the reality faced every year around September 1^st when 500-600 aspiring college football stars get cut from the tryout rosters of the 32 NFL teams.

“Have you ever been cut or fired from a job? If not, you are missing out on one of life’s most personal challenges. One of the first things that comes to mind when that “grim reaper” appears is: “What do I do now?” Friends and loved ones will tell you: “When one door closes, another one will open?” Yeah, but when your world collapses, you struggle to keep positive. However, begin to look for that next door to open – and it will! It may not open when you want it to, but, as has often been said: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

“Hopefully, the person making the decision to fire you is someone who will look you straight in the eye, explain the decision and point out other opportunities – in and out of whatever your current job happens to be. You hope that person making that decision will wish you well and leave the door open for you to call if they can help further. It’s never easy. If, however, you are the one in-charge, be sure you express those feelings to those you are releasing. After all, you did hire/employ that individual and felt at the time it was a good decision. Unless the firing is for egregious behavior, you still are releasing an individual with whom you had confidence.”

I would add to Jim’s remarks that any person who has shown enough self-discipline and worked hard enough to even get invited to try out for a professional sports team will have a great deal of what it takes to be hired to some other profession. Desire, determination, and discipline (not only on the field but in the classroom and in interpersonal relationships) are what it takes—and with it you can do almost anything. 

(OLD) BOYS AND THEIR TOYS

 In the late summer and early fall of the year a peculiar change comes over the Monterey Peninsula in California. With the arrival of ‘car week’ and the automobile races at the Laguna Seca International racetrack the sights, sounds, and even smell of the air changes as hundreds of exotic, classic, and collectors’ cars fill the roads, parking lots and even golf course fairways.  The sights of outrageously expensive and untouchable cars, the pervasive sounds of rumbling ‘on-the-cam’ or accelerating high-revving engines, and the smell of Castrol engine oil in the old sports cars brings back old memories to thousands of car enthusiasts (usually affluent people or wannabes’ who grew up in the 1940’s, ‘50’s, and 60’s) from around the world.

Even if you are not an enthusiast, you can’t be neutral about these things as you find yourself stuck in traffic, or hear the cars winding out from five miles away at the racetrack, or hope to find a parking place within a half-mile of your destination because of the many venues that are displaying these works of superb engineering and art.  The untouchables are suddenly ubiquitous.

And the prices the auctioneers get for these increasingly older and rarer pieces of machinery are staggering—most well over $100 k up to a million or more dollars.  As a minimal case in point let me share with you something I found in a file I had at home. I had written, in April of 1964 (you read that right), a for-sale ad to place in our local newspaper for the second car I had ever owned—a 1958 Austin-Healey 100-6 deluxe roadster with all the ‘extras’ such as a radio, luggage rack, overdrive and tonneau cover.  The car was in very good condition, engine just rebuilt, new paint job, 48,000 miles and I was asking $1,375 for it.  The same car in the same condition, but sixty years older, is now selling, at auction, for $55,000-$75,000 with some examples going up to $100 k. 

  

But let me go back to what precipitated what I really wanted to write about today about boys and toys.

  

Where I work at a local resort golf course I yesterday heard and saw probably a couple hundred Porsches, Ferrraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens and similar marques of 500-700 horse-power cars accelerating for hours in 2-3 second bursts of what a police officer once told me, as he stopped me as a 17-year-old in the aforementioned Austin Healey, for “exhibition of speed and power.” The officer thankfully gave me only a warning.  He had to explain the language of the law to me after he observed me ‘accidently’ lay down about a 7’ strip of rubber as I pulled out from a stop sign.  Of course my ‘speed’ only reached about 20 mph (hence the warning instead of the ticket) before I backed off and my ‘power’ only amounted to a little over 120 hp compared to the cars I witnessed today in their constant “exhibition of speed and power” of 0-50 or 60 in about 2.5-3.0 seconds flat.  My A-H could do about 10 sec. flat. 

Interestingly it soon became apparent to me as the hours rolled on was that the drivers of these cars really wanted was to have was people look at them and their car and the person sitting beside them.  That person was always an attractive woman from 20-40 years younger than the driver (who was a man typically in his late 40’s to his late 70’s). These exhibitionists typically drove in little packs of three to four cars. Onlookers were always first attracted by the sound of gearing down and then the air being rent by 2-3 second bursts of fierce acceleration. (The captive –but not captivated—women were rarely smiling.) 

Now here is the thing about these old boys and their toys:  Psychologists are virtually unanimous in saying that these rich old boys are simply trying, in their old age, to project a rather pathetic image of power and ‘manliness’ in their display of “look at me and what I’ve got!”  Probably all they’ve really got is a huge ego, a big bank account, insecurity and a need for attention and a heavy right foot.

Is it much different—except for the bank account and the age of the girl—than a 17-year-old boy and his (or his father’s) car? Not in my experience as a boy who grew up, and fortunately out-of-it, in the 1960’s. 

FAMILY MAN

Being the father of a large family and child-sitting a grandson every week and having taught school as a profession it is surprising that I have never written about children. Perhaps it is because they are so much a part of my everyday life experience and thoughts I have taken them for granted.  I will try to begin to make up for that with a few observations (some my own, some from others) that may be funny, or not, but which I believe and have some or much truth in them that could help others.  

·       At the end there are three things that matter to a man, regardless of who he is; and they are the affection, understanding, and welfare of his family—every person in it. 

·       There are no real difficulties in a home where the children hope to be like their parents one day.

·       You can do anything with children if you only play with them. 

·       Before we had children, I had five theories about bringing up children; now I have five children (plus six step-children) and have no theories.

·     "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.  Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.  They no longer rise when elders enter the room.  They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs and tyrannize their teachers."  (Socrates)                                                               

·     "The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children."  (Duke of Windsor)

"I’ve seen kids ride bicycles, run, play ball, set up a camp, swing, fight a war, swim, and race for eight hours . . . yet have to be driven to the garbage can."        Erma Bombeck

·       Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.

·       One cannot see the evil deeds of one’s own children. 

·       Small children give you headache; big children heartache. 

·       Children are often spoiled because you cannot spank two grandmothers. 

·       He who takes the child by the hand takes their mother by the heart.

·       Child psychology is what children manage parents with.

·       The young always have the same problem: how to rebel and how to conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. 

·       With a child in the house all corners are full.

·       The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.

·       The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

·       If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.

·       A home is ruled by the sickest or loudest person in it.

·       The most important work you will ever do is within the walls of your own home.  

AN INTUITION TO THE ESSENTIAL THINGS

I heard a sports journalist, Jamie Diaz, use that phrase this morning as I watched the television run-up to The Open, formerly called the British Open golf tournament.  He was talking about one of the premier golfers of the world and his approach to preparing for major golf tournaments. 

Any reader of mine knows that I am a golfer.  But what a casual acquaintance with me as a person or as a reader may not know until they have spent a little time with me is that my interest and enjoyment in golf is but part of my internal focus on what I deem to be the much more essential things that make up my life—or any life.  Golf, for me, is an enjoyable end in itself, but it is also a means to looking at more important things.

If you are going to be a major player in anything in life I believe there is an essential approach to the essential ‘things.’ (This reminds me of the song ‘The Gambler’ sung by Kenny Rogers, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run . . . .”)

Golf has given me an enjoyable way of learning through the discipline that it takes for me to be a good golfer that it also takes the same type of approach and discipline to be good at anything that one may not have been naturally gifted.

A person has to be teachable.  That is to say, the person needs to discipline himself to not saying ‘I know,’ when he does not know; to not looking away or doing other things when a model or opportunity is made available to him that he could observe and try to replicate.  And if that is not possible, then looking up the answer when the model is not available to consult.  In short, it is to use the moment when it would otherwise be wasted, and then come back to it as soon as you can.  We can always learn from others—what to do, or what not to do. We need to observe and to ask them, and ourselves, ‘What is essential?’

A fundamental essential thing that we need to know in golf or in life is what our weaknesses are and then face them square on.  Next, we need to figure out how they could be remedied.  Then we need to work on those things using every resource that is available to us when they are available.  This includes time as well as people as well as books or other materials.  It needs discernment as to (from another song) ‘what to leave in and what to leave out.’ Then, when we find a success we need to immediately reinforce it.  Do it over and over until it starts to take root in our muscles and our memory. 

I have been repeatedly reminded of the insight once learned to ‘not get caught up in the thick of thin things.’  We need to cull out the ‘thin’ or unessential or unproductive things. There are essential things (lessons, best practices, approaches) embedded in nearly every activity—but there are, more importantly, best activities—the  essential thick things of life—our physical and spiritual health, our family, our contribution or ‘calling’ in life, our commitments and our covenants, our duty to God and country. Concentrate on and put your best efforts on these things.  

Take stock, identify the essential things, and then go from there.  

PERVASIVE RELATIVISM

If you are under about 35 you probably didn’t hear much about the term ‘relativism’ during your schooling in your teenage and young(er) adult years.  That is because it was so de rigueur (cool) by then and so pervasive (common) now. Since about the mid-‘60’s-‘70’s, life, as you are now experiencing it, is taken as simply ‘the way it is.’ But there was a time, before the cataclysmic epoch-changing 1960’s, when things were very different. 

Social scientists, philosophers, and traditional religionists looking back recognize a tremendous shift in the attitudes and perceptions young people developed in those years—a huge cultural shift.  Consider the words to an immensely popular song in the late ‘60’s:

“There’s something happening here

What it is ain’t exactly clear. . . /

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down. . . /

There’s battle lines being drawn

Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind. . .”

(lyrics from Stephen Sills’song For What It’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1966.)  

Explanatory to those views, here is how an esteemed university scholar and representative of the older generations (people born before about 1955) views the majority of today’s young people—especially high-school and college-age students (ages 14-39). Contrast it with earlier times: 

“Students are deficient in moral formation, in reading of serious books, in musical tastes, and above all in love [he rightly considers ‘relationships’ as a sad excuse for love].  They are shallow.  They have no longing in their souls for anything high or great.  Their minds are empty, their characters weak, and their bodies sated with rock and roll and easy sex—or at least with the belief that sex is ‘no big deal.’  These students come equipped with a simple-minded relativism that is quick to close off all discussion with the tag, ‘Who’s to say what’s right and wrong?’   Their relativism justifies [to themselves] an easygoing openness to everything, an openness which expresses their incapacity for being serious about anything.  Their proclaimed openness [today they call it ‘tolerance’] in fact, turns out to be a dogmatic closedness toward moral virtue.”

      (Thomas G. West, notes from “Allen Bloom and America,” in 
       The Claremont Institute, the Claremont Review of Books, 1988.)

The high schools, and particularly the universities, along with fractured families with the debilitating effect of divorce on children and the child’s capacity or motivation to learn and to love, are largely to blame for these distorted views.  Many  educational institutions (again, particularly the ‘elite’ liberal universities whose faculty are largely  children—those spoken of in the song lyrics quoted—of the 60’s and 70’s) have openly taught that life has no intrinsic meaning and therefore that there is no principled difference between good and evil (or that there is no evil). Therefore, law is a joke. Many of their students who believed these things have children (the current young adult generation) who also believe these things, who claim to be open to everything, who “are filled with boundless seas of rage, doubt, and fear and that liberty means nothing more than self-realization or self-expression with no intrinsic moral limit.  Their music, which is reflective of their culture, has anger and desperation in it. . . ” 
                          (Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind).

So what is the solution to this sorry state of affairs?  Well, for starters, how about revisiting America’s founding principles?

Even inspired foreign observers could see what we need or would need to salvage the mess our society has become. The French observer of society and culture, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of it with prescience in the mid 1830’s in his Democracy in America, and the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the 1970’s understood our founding principles better than many of our politicians and young people when he said, in A World Split Apart, “In American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature.  That is, freedom was given to the individual [by God, not by government] conditionally, on the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. . . . [They] have lost the concept of [divine principles and] inalienable rights which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.”  The language of the Declaration of Independence, of course, supports Solzhenitsyn’s claim: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . . .”

Men are subject to the laws of nature’s God.

The Founders were well-aware of the need for public-spirited citizens.  I think that they well-understood and welcomed immigrants who would desire citizenship with the duties and loyalty it required (and restricted entrance to those who wouldn’t).  They anticipated with clarity the consequence of a loss of public virtue by any who came here, or resided here by birth—even their own offspring, if they did not subscribe to these expectations.  They believed that a people accustomed to living however it pleased, who saw no higher purpose than, say, entertainment and having fun—or indolently living off a government and disrespecting its laws, a people demonstrably incapable of self-government in the sense of controlling selfish passions and interests—would also be incapable of self-government in the sense off democracy, making public laws for themselves to live by.  

Founder James Madison says in Federalist 55:

“Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities [men’s capacity for virtue] in a higher degree than any other form [of government].” But if a people ever becomes slavishly lacking in self-restraint, lacking in understanding or respect for law, if their "spirit shall ever be so far debased," they, alas, "will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty."

And so they have.  And that is the crux of the problem.

Some things--many things-- are not relative. 

WORK--You won't return home without it

As one, who, from the outset of this corpus of little essays, reflections, and observations, acknowledged the positive influence of great men, I also gratefully acknowledge the profound influence of the great women in my life (particularly my wives) and add with this essay yet another to my pantheon.  As a female counterpart to the astute Christian mentor of many of us—C. S. Lewis—I add his British contemporary, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)—essayist, novelist, poet, theologian, dramatist and scholar. In 1942 she published an essay titled ‘Vocation in Work’, in  A Christian Basis for the Post War World (WW II). When I read her essay, I immediately resonated to it.  It helped gel my views on the value of work, which I give here.

For us in our time work is often viewed as but a means to some (we think) higher—usually some economic, commercial, or leisure-focused—end. I, Ms. Sayers, and other old- schoolers would suggest a contrary view.  The economic end taken alone or intentionally chosen over other options is ultimately a dead end.

In the opening years of the 1940’s, a time of economic uncertainty, a coalition of religious leaders in Britain concluded that “the sense of a Divine vocation must be restored to a man’s daily work.” An esteemed leader in the Church to which I belong some ten years earlier voiced a similar plea: “Let us as a people re-enthrone work as a guiding principle in our lives” (Heber J. Grant). He said this in response to the troubles of the early years of the Great Depression in this country which soon spread to Europe.

‘Restored?’ ‘Re-enthroned?’

 As much as this prescient man knew that people needed food, they needed hope; they needed purpose; they needed vision; they needed meaningful work and work needed them.

Mr. Grant posed a more correct view of work than the usual, by traditional religious interpretations, rather negative interpretation of the so-thought-of work from the beginning of life on earth as being the ‘curse of Adam’: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life . . . in the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread, (i.e., you must work) till thou return unto the ground; for out of it thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3: 17, 19).

But look closer.  Notice that the ground was cursed, not Adam (man). The antecedent for the ‘curse’—the partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—by our first parents was, rather, to become the catalyst for God’s gracious response. Readers of scripture also seemed to overlook the caveat in that verse, “for thy sake.” Because of this choice God sent to earth a Divine Redeemer—to redeem fallen man and to redeem the fallen earth.  It was all part of the plan. 

Remember, too, before Adam partook of the fruit of the tree, he was told to “dress this garden (Eden); keep it (or take good care of it).” He was moreover given dominion (stewardship) of all living things and the Earth itself. To me that means purposeful, productive, meaningful and rewarding work was his (Adam’s—man’s) charge, but would now be carried out in a different venue—in a world where things wouldn’t be so easy for him. He would be required to constantly make choices. He learned that the Creator Himself not only valued work, but it was the very thing that comprised the focus of His—God’s—life. Moses, recorded God as revealing to him God’s purpose in the creation of man: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1:39).  God set the pattern; meaningful work was to be man’s work also.  Man needed to work out his salvation but to keep God in the equation because he couldn’t do it alone. 

To repeat: God was and is a creator—that is His work.   Man should be a creator also—that is his work.

And how is it done?  It is for us to turn to our own work—whatever we are motivated to do, whatever we are called to do, whenever we can do it.  Serve work that is intrinsically compelling for you—something that you can be really good at if you will discipline yourself to put in the time. If it is good for you (and it will be if you are creative, that is, you too are a creator) it will surely be good for others.  But note this caution: your chosen vocation will not necessarily be found by simply looking within and finding your passion, as graduation speakers are prone to say, but rather by looking without and asking what life is asking of you.  When you ask, ask to know what life is calling you to do.  And then do it.

 One who follows this pattern will be satisfied because he will have lived a life of purpose—and you will always find it will include other people and that your vocation in some way served them. 

A divine vocation will always serve others.

MAINTENANCE and ENTROPY

As a young person I took a lot for granted.  I guess I just assumed that if things were good when I wanted to use them, they would be good when I was finished with them.  If I wanted to use dad’s truck, for example, all I had to do was ask and then put some gas in it after I used it. I didn’t think there was much more to it. I didn’t realize, or think about it, that Dad took care of everything I didn’t see.

As I got older and got my first car I quickly realized there was much more to it than just saving up money to buy the car.  There was insurance.  There was an annual automobile registration and license. There were innumerable repairs that needed to be made to a second or third hand automobile. And, I found, the thing just wore out and continued to get older by the day.  Moreover, I had to maintain a good driving record to have the privilege of driving on roads that I didn’t build or maintain myself.

There were owner responsibilities to maintaining my investment. 

I have always (in my mid-years and beyond) been impressed with the commercial advertisement run many years ago by the Midas muffler and brake shop: “Pay me now – or pay me later,” meaning, take care of your vehicle maintenance now or pay me ‘big time’ for a repair job later when the thing breaks because you neglected it.

The concepts of maintenance and neglect carry over to where you live and other possessions as well as to your health, to your job, and to human relationships.  You can’t just take for granted that everything will stay the same as when you first took interest in whatever it was. 

I have learned that you must give proactive attention to all these things.  You must pay a small price early on, or every day, to keep what you’ve got in good repair.  Moreover, you must make further investments in the object of your interest or need.  It will, like you, get older and need ever-increasing attention and care. Even your education (temporal and spiritual) need regular attention, maintenance, and upgrading.  If you just let things slide you will regret it.  If you let it slide too long, the thing you once valued will be destroyed.

There is a physical law called the Law of Entropy that says that everything in the universe is running down and tends toward disorganization and eventually wins all battles.  That may be true in the physical universe but it doesn’t have to be true in one’s spiritual life. 

Think about it.  Then fight entropy in all areas of your life with maintenance, and better yet, with proactive attention. The tools are out there. 

ETIQUETTE and peoples' names

Except for in golf, or in concerns about where the silverware is placed on the dining room table when ‘company’ is coming over, few people of generation Y or Millennials (born 1981-1996), and even fewer of generation Z  (born between about 1997-2015 or t.b.d.) know or care much about the concept of etiquette in social settings. Generation X (born 1965-1980) had other things on their mind.

But these behaviors were more-or-less drilled into the baby-boomers (born 1946-1964) and taken for granted by earlier generations in the Western World. [Generational cohort designations are provided by Pew Research Center.] I’m of the overlapping generation between baby-boomers and traditionalists who took it for granted and, lest we forget, had it drilled into us by our teachers and some of our parents and surely our grandmothers.  

I am not too concerned about the complexities of table manners and first-time formal introductions, but I am concerned about the principles of respect and the value of certain traditions that, I am convinced, go far to maintaining our very civilization.  Awareness of conventions of etiquette is a part of any good education.

I use as an example of these concerns respect for persons’ names, positions, gender and age as an important starting point.  Names are important to people. Demonstrating a lack of respect or courtesy is not necessarily a moral failure, but it surely and quickly pegs the person doing so in a negative manner—such as in interviews, introductions, and interactions with older, higher social status or ‘better-off’ people—and  contributes to stereotyping of a category (as I’ve done with the Millennial generation whose education in this regard is wanting). When traditional conventions are maintained, however, the person maintaining them is elevated in the eyes of he or she who is honored.  It is worthwhile knowing these things.

Let me show you how this works:  When being introduced to a person it is good etiquette to call him or her by their formal names: Mr. Robert Jones, or Miss Barbara Wilson (Mr. Jones or Miss Wilson will do). Do not call them by their surname (last name) alone, or by the nickname you may hear their peers call them (e.g., ‘Bobbie’ for Robert or ‘Babs’ for Barbara) or even their given first name, Robert or Barbara, but rather by  their title, Mr., Miss, Mrs., Dr., President, Captain, Elder, Sister, Your Honor, Officer or other honorific or appropriate formal titles.  And then, until told otherwise, or time and circumstance dictate, continue this practice. Later, less formal means of address may be employed, but still using the words, sir or ma’am, or miss does not hurt.   

Though it is common, a younger person should not use the term ‘you guys’ to adults older than you—especially when women are among those addressed; they are not 'guys.'  Rather, you might use the term, ‘you folks;’  and ‘ladies,’ and ‘gentlemen’ is almost always appropriate even when addressing young people or athletes in a group setting.

When in a totally informal setting, one-on-one, especially when invited by the person you wish to address asks you to call them by a certain name then do it.  But even then, when you and this person are in a group retain the more formal address out of respect.

Being sloppy or casual about names or titles is just one symptom of a lessening of respect honoring traditions and courtesy in general.  Sloppy speech, insensitive, insulting and offensive language and dress, and failure to respect customs and culture also contribute to a degrading of civilization.

I would highly recommend the reader to spend a little time with a good college dictionary which likely would contain a reference supplement or index to useful features which addresses issues of political or cultural ‘correctness.’  One that I use with regularity is the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary.

If I were to write a longer essay I would add to it, because we are living in such a super-sensitive, divisive world, information on sexism, race, ethnicity, and national origin, ageism, depersonalization of individuals with disabilities or illnesses, patronizing or demeaning expressions, and avoiding language that excludes or unnecessarily emphasizes differences. 

But even then, you would likely offend someone.  I knew I would on my recent essay on 'Abortion,' but the seriousness of the subject overrode niceties of etiquette. 

Welcome to the 21^st Century.   

AN EARLY FATHER'S DAY TRIBUTE

I am getting this posting off at the last moment, the 31^st day of March, because I have had a nagging feeling that I needed to put down what someone, who reads these things, needs to hear. I also put them down because I need to say them.  And I do it because I’ve been thinking about my father who died eight years ago. Dad was a mechanic—a man who fixed things.

My dad and I were never particularly close; he was pragmatic and I had, he said, my ‘head in the clouds’.  I was in awe of his tenacious ability to figure out mechanical things.  I resented his disrespect of education, or better, of 'educated' people and 'book knowledge', but I respected him and I knew that he always had my welfare in mind, and most importantly I knew that he loved my mother.  That may be the most important thing a father can do for his children-- love their mother.

That which follows are positive things that others have learned from their fathers that I connect with and remind me of my dad because he said similar things:

·        If you can’t find time to do it right the first time, how are you going to find time to do it over again? (Dad said this often.)

·        Do what you have to do first, and what you want to do second.

·        Get to know and show respect for clerks and secretaries; they are the gatekeepers. 

·        Don’t let other people’s actions govern yours.

·        If you ever get taken to jail, don’t waste your one phone call calling home.

·        Don’t brag; it’s not the whistle that pulls the train. 

·        Never replace just one spark plug.

·        Drive with care.  Life has no spare. 

·        If you work with your hands you will never go hungry. 

·        Practice hard.  You’ll play the way you practiced.

·        A clear conscience is a soft pillow.

·        If you got something you didn’t work for, then someone else worked for something they didn’t get. 

·        You’d be amazed what you can do when you have to.  

Thanks, Dad(s)

GRADATIONS in JUDGMENT

The concept of gradations in judgment is so ubiquitous in our life experience that we have maybe never given it much thought—or maybe it is all we think about.  A few examples:  as a student in school we may have been obsessed (or not) with our grades, A, B, C, D, or F; or in the choosing players for a team or being accepted for a university whether or not we made the ‘cut’;  if we were on diving or gymnastics or dance team our score on a scale of 1-10 the judges gave us on our performance; as an engineer or designer or technician whether our product was within ‘tolerances’ or specifications; or if we were still under our mother’s supervision whether our bedroom was ‘clean.’ 

The fact is, we are constantly being judged for good or for ill based on standards. Usually people other than ourselves set the standards and make the judgments (chances are, your mother’s standard of a clean room is of a higher standard than yours). We need to know the standards—the rules, the expectations.  We need to know what rewards us, what is ‘good enough,’ and what disqualifies us.

Standards of judgment are not just hurdles or obstacles we must overcome; they are guidelines of what we need to do to be acceptable, safe, or successful. View them as such; balking against them or disregarding them often just retards our progress.

What often confuses us, though, is that things that are presented to us are not always black or white. They may be near-black, or near-white or any degree of gradation that blurs our vision or compromises our performance or character. They could be, God-forbid, Fifty Shades of Grey (which I did not read or see), or the Sirens in Homer’s The Odyssey that the sojourners were warned not to hear.  They may be sounds that are soft or loud, or somewhere on the decibel scale that we cannot detect or that may damage our eardrums. They could be speeds that expedite our arrival at our desired destinations or they could put us out-of-control and kill us or others. They may be quality of goods such as a Rolex watch or Mercedes Benz automobile that could give us fine service, or they may be a Yugo—junk—or somewhere in between. In most of our lives we settle for something in between. 

So how do we judge and what do we settle for? 

I would suggest that we seek out the best as our standard and draw a line in the sand beneath or behind which we will not go.  For example, we will not go to a bar or a terrorist recruiting rally to find a virtuous potential mate.  We will not hang out whiling-away our hours in a smoke-filled pool hall if we hope to prepare ourselves to take the LSAT or MCAT.  We will not feed with the chickens if we hope to fly with the eagles.

We will establish or embrace a scale that has parameters or guidelines for judgment and we will stay between those lines—always leaning toward the upward end of the continuum. We identify our values, cull out those things, people, and products or activities that don’t measure up to minimum standards, and we let our educated conscience be our guide. I put the stress on ‘educated.’ It becomes ‘educated’ by reading out of the best books, seeking out the best people, and not blunting our God-given conscience by disregarding its promptings.

  And this is key: We will make up our minds ahead of time and remember our rules and standards of judgment every day before we step out into the arena of our world.   

A BOY'S LIFE (a little biography)

At the outset I must say that I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone.  It has been a happy life.  Secondly, I acknowledge that I have had models—even  heroes and that their influence has been enormous.  Many of these models and heroes were recognized at a young age and many vicariously came to my attention through reading. Thirdly, I considered myself then and even now to be a very average person in terms of my natural endowments, but I have accomplished some things that continue to amaze me. They may not be as amazing or funny as the life of author Bill Bryson who lived in the same era as me (Bryson wrote about his life in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid) but there are some parallels with his boyhood in my boyhood and probably in nearly every boys’ life if they grew up in the United States ‘50’s . My life, to the contrary of some old Pennsylvania(where I was born) adages, belies the notion that ‘you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’ I have been made into something, thanks to answers to my prayers and being around the right people and staying away from the wrong people. For what it’s worth, I should mention that I was an early 'Baby Boomer,' at the end of ‘the Greatest Generation,' living the life of a middle-class white Christian youth in a suburban neighborhood. 

So I begin with my boyhood.  Pertaining to the title, yes, I used to read Boy’s Life. It, along with Outdoor Life, and Sport magazine, and the Scout Handbook were staples of my reading from about age 10-13.  I also liked the early editions of Mad magazine and other comic books featuring Superman and the like.  Of course I also read many adventure and outdoor books and daily read the sports page and funny page of our local newspaper.  And I read and wore out my King James Bible, given to all the young people of the church I attended by the pastor of a protestant church in my hometown.  In this I was following the example of an early hero, Abraham Lincoln.  As a young boy I loved to play outdoors since my trailer home didn’t have much of an indoors. My more organized life seemed to begin around age 10 with Cub Scouts and fireworks (sounds strange, I know) and attending a concert by the U.S. Air Force band which stimulated my desire to participate in a band in the horn section. 

 But I get ahead of myself. 

I had an ancestry of German and Italian parentage, a ‘back East’ infancy, and an ‘out West’ childhood and a home for the first eight years of my life in a 28’ house trailer without a bathroom, a refrigerator, a television or an air conditioner. We did have a little a.m. radio. My personal possessions were a baseball and glove and bat, marbles, yo-yo’s, some model planes and cars, and stuff I could find or trade for. I also had two younger brothers and a dog.

My sentient life began from about age 11 when I entered junior high school and centered around baseball and baseball practice, and baseball cards; golf and golf practice and junior golf tournaments; and my friends who were all, like me,  budding athletes. We all loved to practice our sports. 

My love of the outdoors continued and I always looked forward to hunting and fishing trips with my dad.  I took many solitary hikes in hills with my dog, my sling shot or my dad’s .22 rifle and with my friends from Boy Scouts.  I killed a few birds which I later rued.  Discovery of girls and dancing with them at school dances, which was nice, arrived in junior high as did popular literature of Hemmingway and Steinbeck which supplanted boys’ outdoor adventure novels.  In school I liked physical education (somehow I was always chosen one of the first on teams except in basketball), science classes, English, history and band.  I always liked and did well in spelling, and even math until I hit high school.  My grades were above average but not great; my focus, as you can tell was elsewhere. I had chores at home like all boys—feeding and caring for my dog, raking the millions of oak leaves that fell from our trees, mowing the lawn, and drying the dishes. My life was full. 

  

In high school my activities and social life centered on attending dances, spectating at basketball games, working at a local golf course, saving money for a sports car (I did finally get a used Triumph in my senior year), enjoying cars in general, and being ‘cool’ in my Levis 501 shrink-to-fit jeans, Converse ‘Chuck Taylor’ low-top tennis shoes, and hair with the proper amount of pomade.  I remember enjoying playing the trombone—pep band, marching band, and orchestra; riding my Schwinn one-speed bicycle, Boy Scouts, caddying, making model airplanes and cars, and, yes, blowing up things with firecrackers. 

 

My friends were all boys except for my girlfriend, Karen, who lived in a nearby town and who for many weeks I saw only at church—where our respective mothers took us  every week.  She was my only steady girlfriend from age 13 through all my high school years, even though she moved with her family (her dad was an Army officer) to Germany for three years. We corresponded by letter.

    

While my girlfriend was out-of-country I started reading more serious literature: philosophy, politics, and deeper religious writings.  I became even stronger in my Christian discipleship but not so strong in the congregation of my youth.  I sensed that there were better answers than I was getting from the Presbyterian approach to the Bible and sought diligently for answers in the doctrines of other churches. I knew, though, that I was getting closer and that Christ’s true church had to be out there.  But still, with these more serious intellectual and spiritual endeavors, I did not abandon my interest in professional football and baseball (we had a little 19” black and white T.V by now) and playing junior tournament golf and participating fully in my school’s music program. My girlfriend finally returned in my senior year.

 

 It was then I started to put boyhood behind me.  I began to seriously think of a career and began to buckle down in my studies.  A military career, or one in forestry, or even professional golf were briefly on my ‘screen.’ I also thought briefly about orthopedics but knew my mathematics preparation was not good enough to pursue medicine. But as a 17- year-old student in junior college, as it was called in those days,  I had good teachers and interesting classes in anatomy and physiology and kinesiology and started to think about a possible career in coaching sports or teaching physical education or biology. With my girlfriend’s encouragement I committed.

Following my graduation from j.c. and the moving out of my parents’ home I was more than ready to transition from a good boy’s life (take that either way) to that of a married ‘man.’  I was also ready, with my bride, to seriously look for answers to my quest for a more substantial religious life.  My ‘boy’s life was over as a happily married life began at the young age of 19 ½.