Thanksgiving 2012

In case you were not a reader of this weblog last year and you would like to review my thoughts on Thanksgiving I would direct you to my archives (right hand column) and click the bullet beside 2011 and then the bullet next to November and then 'Thanksgiving.' My thoughts have not changed.

If you do not feel that you have too many things to be thankful for this year then I would suggest you do this:  kneel with a loved one, hold his/her hand, open your prayer to God,  wait, thank Him for what/who comes to your mind and then contact that person or do something related to that insight and see what comes of it.  I think you will, at that point find something else to be thankful for--related to that thing/person.  Then build upon it.  It will then be a day of thanksgiving for you.  The Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.

I give thanks for whomever you are reading this -- that you have allowed me to place a residual of thought into your mind this day.  May you be blessed. 

Fiscal Cliff / Moral Abyss

Fiscal cliff

First a word about the looming ‘fiscal cliff:’  This politically-imposed day-of-fiscal reckoning will, I predict, be just another kick-the-can-down-the-road date that will come and go (probably extended) as our lawmakers continue to play out what has become a personal and political national habit.  That habit is, of course, to postpone, borrow, mortgage, take, or steal from the future or from those who still have some resources, so one can get what he (or the liberal element in our government or body politic) wants now.  That is the crux of the problem. 

It is the issue, on the political/industrial front, that Ayn Rand’s 1957 book Atlas Shrugged so ably explored.  

The ultimate reality, the real cliff, will be when the national well actually runs dry and the other guy’s well, who the political Robin-Hoods were counting on, also runs dry.  Extending or expanding the debt will not do for our credibility will by then also have run dry. Then will come the severe belt-tightening, the political austerity ‘solution’ and the historical knee-jerk-lets-find-a-scapegoat revolutionary response that is likely to follow.  One thing leads to another. 

   

My view is that much of our fiscal problem—personal and national—is trying to buy or otherwise procure what we can’t afford or need, or have no right to. It is to spend what we don’t have: the too big or too expensive house, the expensive car when a more modest one would do, or the newest electronic acquisition we think we can’t do without.  It is also caused by trying to buy or demand what is, by then, much needed health care once we have squandered our health by acquiring poor health habits—overeating, smoking and drinking, not exercising, taking drugs.  Vices (a word no longer in our national vocabulary) cost money.

Our problem is caused by our increasing entitlement mentality.  It is caused by the takers not knowing what it costs the givers to provide—or not caring. It is a lack of moral understanding and self-discipline.

 Moral Abyss

It is the moral abyss so many of us have fallen into that causes/contributes greatly to the above problems as well as our nation’s many other social problems.  It is, for example, the attack on the sanctity of marriage and the family, the practicing of unhealthy ‘relationships’ in and out of marriage, it is pornography, the killing of unborn babies, a lack of respect for and disobedience to the laws of the land, and most of all, a disregard, even a repudiation of God, His commandments and the eternal principles that lead to happiness. 

“For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” (Henry David Thoreau) We have not struck at the root.  The root is moral weakness.  

We have become morally bankrupt and we are being forsaken by God.  He has to, because He is a God of justice. 

  

It is no wonder we have these problems.        

A 'Life Coach'

I met a man this week who said he was a ‘life coach.’  Think about that.  I asked him how he became qualified to become a life coach and he said he had read a book by Tony Robbins.  

Well, I’ve been a soccer coach, a wrestling coach, volleyball coach, football coach, golf coach, track and field coach and baseball coach.  But a LIFE COACH!? 

How would one become qualified to become a ‘life coach?’  I guess it would be to become well-acquainted with life.  Without putting a label on it, I suppose about forty years ago when I determined to continue on with school and become a doctor of philosophy that inchoate thought might have been on my mind. (I actually took my doctorate in education.) I liked history and philosophy and psychology and teaching and religious studies, and through my Church was starting to get a handle on life in ways, I have learned, that simply listening to Tony Robbins or Dr. Phil, or Ann Landers, or Delilah, et al., could not have qualified me.  

  

In process of time I have learned that by trying hard to be a good husband and father and serve with effectiveness in the Church and read as much as I could I was, in fact, becoming much more qualified to become a man of wisdom, or philosopher or ‘life coach,’ though I still hadn’t put a label on it, than I could have simply by taking every course in the university catalogue or by reading a book by a single motivational speaker.  (However, Stephen R. Covey’s writings will take one a long way in that direction if he/she has the other requisite life experiences.)

The larger question might be, why should one aspire to becoming a ‘life coach,’ or in former days a ‘philosopher’?  On one level the title does sound presumptuous, but I suppose there are a few counselors or psychotherapists, even sectarian pastors who are not in it simply for the money, or status, or power, but truly do want to help others come to a more abundant life.  And that is a worthy goal. 

 In fact, I think most legitimate ‘life coaches’ are known by more familiar titles: dedicated mothers, or fathers, or grandparents, or lay Church workers--even teachers, and I salute them. 

Jesus was called rabbi (teacher); indeed, he could have been called the true ‘Life coach’ since he came “that [we] might have Life, and. . . have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) If we need a model, and we do, He is the One—the Life Coach par excellence. 

Our National Destiny

I cannot imagine anyone who is not glad the election of 2012 is over.  Well maybe the advertising people who earned millions of dollars or the critics who delighted in finding targets at which to sling their darts of outrageous fortune or derision or invective.  

  

I am sorry that Mitt Romney lost.  He is a good man, a man of character who could have brought a very different tone and a restoration of foundational political principles to the leadership of our country and perhaps could have brought Washington together.   

Though I have little confidence that it will happen, I hope President Barack Obama, having competed against such a good man and won by such a narrow popular vote margin, will be able bring our political leaders and the body politic together this time around.   It can only be done by leadership and all of us having a better understanding of history and by the earned grace of God.

I am afraid, though, that the America, the United States of America that those of us born before about 1960 knew, the America that had/has been the magnet for so many immigrants, will no longer be recognizable unless we truly become ‘one nation under God.’

A house divided cannot stand. 

 I came upon a revealing statement Mr. Romney made, that was not broadcast on CNN or other vilifying sources: 

            “Over the years, I have watched a good number of people live out their lives in the shallows.  In the shallows, life is all about yourself.  Your job, your money, your house, your rights, your needs, your opinions, your ideas, your comfort.  In the deeper waters, life is about others: family, friends, faith, community, country, caring, commitment.  In the deeper waters, there are challenging ideas, opposing opinions, and uncomfortable battles. [A man I know] told me that his life ambition was to be listed in Forbes among the four hundred wealthiest people in the world.  His ambition, his preoccupation with self, overshadowed his marriage and his loyalties to his friends—so he lost them all.  He became wealthy in the way he hoped.  But he swims in the shallowest of waters, because he swims alone.” (from his commencement address at Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts, May 23, 2004)

We need to clean up our inward act, become united, and then reach outward with strength of each other and Almighty God to help us reach our worthy personal and national goals. 

A New Start

After a hiatus of several months I have determined that I will once again share my thoughts, observations, hopes, and frustrations with all who might value the worldview of a Christian early- Babyboomer white male who loves his wife, family, Church and country and despairs of where our culture and nation seems to be headed. 

My agenda is forthright: I would hope to influence my family, friends, and inquisitive strangers with my views.  Like nearly everybody, I think my opinions have value and wish others saw things as I do.  I especially think they have value because I have arrived at that age where I have seen and experienced much; I have had enough education to have critical-thinking skills that temper my utterances so I am not just shooting from the lip; I have been and continue to be a student of history;  I greatly value the wisdom of great men and women of the past (and that of my wives, present and past) and wish to re-present some of their views; and I believe I am worthy of spiritual guidance but am humble enough to acknowledge that I am not a prophet. 

My special mission, as I sense it, is to be a voice of warning—maybe even a small latter-day voice of “one crying in the wilderness” as the world approaches  ever closer to the brink of self-destruction.  I hope to encourage the preparation that will be needed to detect and weather the signs-of-the times.

If you are a new reader or one who is unfamiliar with my writings of the past several years I would encourage you to review the titles in the archives of my work on the right side of your screen.  I can testify to you that a number of them were, I believe, truly inspired for I know how the thoughts came to me.  If you can overlook my sometimes clumsy presentation I think you can find something of value.  

I thank you for your readership and would welcome your comments.

Authorized Married Love

In August of 2010 I wrote a weblog entry titled ‘On Love Songs and Love.’  My first paragraph today is an extension of my views on the latter part of that earlier posting. Subsequent paragraphs today expand the notion of ‘love’ into God-ordained marriage. I wrote then:

Love is an attitude, an orientation of character that has as its focus the pleasing and well-being of another. It is a giving for another, a giving of one’s self, not a ‘trying to get’ from another ( yet in the giving process one does, in fact, get as well). It is achieving a ‘oneness’ with another person and a losing of the separateness of and focus on one’s self. It is a ‘standing for’ someone, not a ‘falling for’ them; you stand in love, you don’t fall in love. Love is a synergy; it is complementary by definition.  It involves care, responsibility and unfailing commitment, respect and appreciation. Lovers are “each in love with the other for the sake of perfecting their mutual work.” (Rumi)

A purportedly Christian nation should remember that God said, in the beginning, that “It is not good that the man [or woman] should be alone.” He established, from the beginning, that marriage between a man and a woman should be the solution for that unnatural state of being alone.  The marriage, by God, of the man Adam and the woman He brought to Adam to be “an help meet [appropriate or ‘to conform to’] for him” set the pattern of all that should legitimately follow. 

Homosexual ‘marriage’? Gay ‘rights’?

What has illegitimately followed with some sad and lonely souls (only about 1-2% of the population in the United States is homosexual according to the latest analysis, notwithstanding the stridency of the proponents which is out of all proportion to their actual numbers—see The Atlantic, June 29, 2012) is the coming together of two persons of the same sex.  To excerpt a line from an old song, these lonely people are “looking for love in all the wrong places.” 

 What makes it so wrong, in addition to the fact that God called this distortion of human intimacy an “abomination,” is that it is so unnatural.  It cannot lead to God’s fundamental commandment to “multiply and replenish the earth.” Common sense tells you that two keys do not make a lockset—and two locks do not make a key.  Metaphorically it takes a key and a lock (a lockset) to perpetuate and lend stability and give a future to the human race.  Two men can be close friends, and two women can be likewise but to call it a marriage is to rewrite the dictionary, the moral code, and the decree  of Almighty God. 

Love and passion and commitment and recognition of natural gender roles establish marriage and, if honored and given wings to grow,  gives purpose to the earth-life experience of all humans and permanence to human society.  Supreme Court Chief Justice Burger some years ago said, in the last throes of our pre-social revolution age, “To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is a fundamental right is to cast aside a millennia of moral teaching.” This and like acts are wrong and they are not ‘rights.’

Human sexuality as an expression of love, not simply as an ‘activity,’ finds its highest human expression in the holy matrimony of a man and a woman where their vows and behavior toward each other are not simply a legal contract but a covenant.    It is a procession of the soul from within outward; it enlarges and encompasses and invites children and never constricts or demands or demeans.  It puts on the yoke and aspires to vast and universal aims. Married love is a private and tender relation of one to another, which is the furtherance and enchantment of human life.  It does not inherently introduce disease (physical—consider AIDS; or emotional—consider profound gender confusion in children) into the relationship.  The purification of the hearts of the lovers from year to year and the invitation of children by their approved and natural sexual intimacy are components of a morally authorized marriage.  This level of love is the process which leads to the deification of persons—the two who have married, and the natural extension of their union—an eternal family.  

Homosexual ‘marriage’ should not be honored with this noble title; it is an institutional desecration and a counterfeit of the highest magnitude.  ‘Gay rights’ is a demand for respect and a demand for validation that is inherently disrespectful of God and his highest creation and invalid as a protected inalienable right. ‘Marriage’ of a man to a man or a woman to a woman is simply an attempt to try to dignify their deviancy or legitimize the illegitimate and it should not be given the status or protection or promotion by government or by law.  This type of behavior does not build or stabilize society therefore does not merit governmental involvement under the law.  

    

I do not believe in criminalizing a private consensual deviancy between adults or subjecting these individuals to ridicule, but I am disgusted by it and do not want it taught in our schools as 'normal' or supported by our tax-dollars.  If the couple’s deviancy were private and not paraded about and flung into the face of the larger normal society as a challenge and a demand for privileges that are protected by law as a basic stabilizing societal influence, as in a genuine marriage, I would think most Americans would let it pass in the name of ‘tolerance.’  I would.  But redefining this fundamental, historical, and God-given institution of marriage to accommodate a minority’s deviance is unacceptable to me and may be the final insult that brings down God’s wrath upon what has become an unholy nation by its acceptance.

Fractured

(I posted this last year and in checking found that nobody read it. Maybe nobody wanted to.  In case it was just a bad week for all of us I resubmit it for your consideration.)

In doing research for my doctoral dissertation (Character Education and the Development of Moral and Spiritual Values … Brigham Young University… [1984]) I read a 1978 address given at Harvard University by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn titled “A World Split Apart.” His address, and a book he wrote a few years before, “The Gulag Archipelago,” had a profound influence upon me. Now, thirty-three years later we are still a world split apart, we are still imprisoned—only in different ways. We are not split apart by communist or fascist totalitarianism, but we are split apart by other ideologies, by political loyalties, by religious beliefs, by unkept marriage vows and forgotten family hopes. We are imprisoned by selfishness.

When we have a broken limb we splint it, we cast it and protect it, we rest it; we don’t just automatically cut it off. Most of the time it will heal just fine. In the meantime, we do things for the person who is doing the work of trying to heal. We serve them, and when we do we come to love the object of our service.

In seeking for freedom, for expression of individual pleasures, for wealth, for ‘entitlements,’ we have lost our sense of unity, of ties that hold us together as ‘one nation, [or family] under God,’ indeed we have lost our connectedness as a human family. In fighting for our ‘position,’ or our distorted ‘identity’ we lose sight of the larger picture and our place in it.

We need to seek things that encourage our cohesiveness as families and as a nation and as a world community of people who have the same fears and aspirations, the same needs and hopes as we have. We are more similar than we are different. We all bleed when cut. We all can rest when the noise ceases and the cold is kept out, when we are fed, and we have some place to lay our head.

One thing that holds us together is our history—family history and national history. We need to learn it better. We cannot expect an individual or a family or a nation which has lost its memory to keep its vision. There may be rough brush strokes in what we paint of our families, there may be blemishes in our national history, but we are much more than the flaws—we are more good than bad. We must remember the good things and emphasize these things and hold out hope. And we must do this for others.

Things can get better; fractures can mend. Remember, “Faith, hope, [and] charity [all are needed]…but the greatest of these is charity.”