LESSONS FROM HOME

The older I get the more I acknowledge that people have absorbed from their parents (wittingly or unwittingly and probably more from one parent than the other) lessons that continue to color their lives.  At least so it was from my father to me. For many of the people I know it was their mother.

When I was a boy growing up I just assumed most other fathers were like my dad.  I took him for granted, resented him for some things, thought for a while he knew everything, was proud of him, then embarrassed by him, knew I needed him because I couldn’t maintain myself, and finally, shortly before I got married and moved out of my childhood home, couldn’t wait to leave.  By then I believed I knew as a college student many things dad didn’t know and I wanted to know more that I believed he couldn’t teach me. Besides, at age 19 it was time to go. 

    

Well, there were lessons he taught me that I didn’t know at the time he was teaching me that I now know became a large part of my personality for good. 

Here are some of those things: 

I was taught that “if you don’t find or take time to do it right the first time, when are you going to find time to do it right when you have to do it over? Work at it until you get it right. Work never killed anyone.”  A deliberate, contemplative approach to things that I have to do/should do has helped me not make any serious mistakes in my life;  but I have sometimes procrastinated and failed to do things when they ought to have been done—when I didn’t work like I was taught and time was wasted and I regret that. Dad often paraphrased this quotation by Benjamin Franklin: “Lost time is never found again.”

I was taught that “if you make a promise or commitment to yourself or to others, follow through on your promise. Do it.  Hold up your end of the bargain.  Don’t be a slacker or prove untrustworthy or unreliable.” He disdained these types of people. I don’t disdain them, but I try to never be classified with them.

I was taught to not be a “taker, one who takes but does not give back at least as much as he receives.” As a child, or one who is in need, we often take what is offered through the kindness of others, but do we, now, in turn give back with interest, so to speak, what we can as we gain resources and competencies to do likewise? He taught me self-reliance and he taught me service.  He served.

I was taught to not expect anyone or any agency (such as government or even family or friends) to do for me what I could and should do for myself.  If I did, how could I grow?

He taught me to never take advantage of people, whether because of their color, social or economic status, age, or physical or mental capacity.  I interpreted that to mean live the ‘golden rule’ at all times, in all places, and with all people.

I was taught to go into debt only in the direst of circumstances, and certainly not for anything frivolous.  Save for it and pay cash.  I was taught to stay out of any kind of bondage—whether to creditors, or to bad habits.

He taught me to pay attention, watch carefully, listen first and talk last.

 

Dad never helped me with an algebra problem, or a spelling word, or anything academic, but he did teach with his actions many of life’s most important lessons.

Dad died nearly eight years ago but his lessons remain with me.  I think of him more now than ever. 

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

When I was young we used to ask that question as an informal greeting. We didn’t give the question or receive the answer tendered by our friend much thought.  Now, as we have grown older, if we ask that question not as a greeting, but in sincerity and really try to find out we will find the answer disquieting. America is beginning to look nothing like the America of the recent past.

America is in the throes of a demographic transformation. Huge generational gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our national racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious life, and our technology use. Our present is marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a half-century.

Today’s Millennials are well-educated in terms of technical expertise but when they step off the campus whether as a graduate or a dropout many find they are still unemployed, still dependent, unmarried, lacking religious faith, and the American Dream has become, for them, very dim.  They have to settle for becoming underemployed and are finding they are becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents; and they are historically illiterate.  Meantime, on the other end of the generational spectrum our researchers say that currently well over 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they’d hoped, and many are now reaping the consequences of poor health practices choices of their younger years. These generational and social changes are contributive in polarizing our people.

People are struggling, and emotional depression is increasing.

Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed.  Our population is rapidly becoming non-white, and our median age will soon edge above 40—both unprecedented milestones in our nation and in other ‘developed’ nations.  It is not so with the ‘developing’ nations: they are younger and darker and hungrier and want what we have—or had.  

  

My take? We as a people need to get our moral, religious and social values back on track to mend the breech.  We need to restore the foundational pillars that have been yanked out if we hope to get out of free-fall. The government cannot do it for us. 

To address just one of the ‘pillars’: when I went to school in the ‘60’s we talked about a ‘Social Contract.’ This was an age-old compact—parents (must) take care of children and children (should) take care of parents.  Every society and each family has an unspoken covenant between the generations—I care for you when you’re young; you care for me when I’m old.  Support flows toward need.  There needs to be generational fairness—it is not all ‘take’ and no ‘give.’ We have a shared and mutually influenced destiny--or could have--but sometimes we forget that.

Conclusion:  We should more willingly try to get along with and serve one another. Elders should do a better job inculcating traditional historical, cultural, and religious values to our young. 

All generations see the world through a lens shaped by the ups and downs of their own life. Some gain wisdom from their own experiences, but fewer, unfortunately, of those who preceded them.  The young hopefully will appreciate that experience—the experience of their elders—has value and can help bring us back.

Our (my) generation’s last big mission might be to help rebuild the citadel for today’s young by starting to rebuild the pillars. Without that, what will our children’s inheritance really be?  A Greek proverb says that societies become great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.

  

Cultural and social expectations enforced by custom, convention, traditional civic and family values or conscience are cracking.  We need to fill the cracks with the cement of moral virtue.  Identify what those virtues are (and you won’t find them on ‘Dancing with the stars’). Talk with your elders and look in the history books and the world’s great literature if you are serious about restoring this country’s greatness. Answers can be found there.

We all have an obligation to do our part to get things back on track. 

A MUSIC BOX GOOD-BYE

I want you to visualize this:  You have a music box and you wind it up.  You listen to the music—many notes, up and down the scale, some repeating themes, a few notes held long, most others very short, but finally, if it’s programmed right, more or less the music comes to a conclusion as the song starts to wind down.  The song doesn’t usually end, though, as it might if you experience it in a concert you attend or as you hear it on a recording or on the radio.  Rather, it starts to slow down, and slow down, and finally almost stops, and then a last note or two and then . . . stops.

So it is with most lives and most deaths.  So it was recently with Aretha Franklin and John McCain.  So it will be with almost all the people we know and so it will be with  us. 

There will be lingering memories of the pitch they sang in, the songs they sang, the concerts they performed in, the speeches on the floor, the places they walked, or sat, or built, or spent time in—the  notes they emphasized in their lives.   And then they wind down and the music stops . . . or does it?  Or should it?

Who, in our generation, will not remember Aretha belting out R-E-S-P-E-C-T whenever we hear it replayed for the next how many years of our lives, or visualize and ‘hear’ the voice of John McCain reminding us of stoic and heroic patriotism when someone invokes his name? Or when we remember special times in the lives of our loved-ones, or ourselves with them, at unbidden moments, when just their name is mentioned, or you see a picture, or a scent, or go to a place where they once walked? 

Just remember the music box.  It didn’t just stop; it just wound down and we no longer hear it.  But it will be wound up again by another hand and its music will play on another stage and delight and inspire and add to the music once played by billions and billions of other sisters and brothers . . . and one day, too, by our music box. 

PRIESTHOOD

In my little biographical sketch on the right side of this weblog home page I indicate that I find it a great honor to hold the priesthood in my Church.  I have felt that way from the day I was first ordained many decades ago and I do today.  It is because in the Church to which I belong priesthood really means something.  It means that I have authority and power to act in God’s name for the salvation of all of God’s children provided I keep myself worthy to exercise it.  And that is a worthy purpose. 

I am embarrassed for those faithful members of another Christian denomination, those who trusted their leaders who called themselves ‘priests’ of this denomination.  I am more embarrassed and even appalled regarding those fallen men who have not kept their sacred vows and have violated some of the most fundamental commandments and expectations of God. They have befouled the very title of 'priest.' But most importantly, I feel sorry for those who were violated and who had their faith and lives damaged by these trusted ‘priests’ who were in reality weak men and unworthy imposters.

Jesus said, “Whoso who shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). 

Perhaps it is not only weak men, but an ecclesiastical structure that traditionally has disallowed these men to marry that drives some men (many more we are now finding) of the 'cloth' to engage in these reprehensible practices.  I am not saying that this church encourages such behavior—because it does not—but it does not recognize or put sufficient weight on God’s observation or foreknowledge that “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18).   That ‘helpmeet’ was a woman who God gave to Adam to be his wife.  The sexual drive which was given to procreate the human race and to bind, through marriage, a man and a woman together in love was to be used in no other way and for no other purpose.

And it was not to be used to exploit children.

These attacks on the innocent not only psychologically damage the victims, but they damage the very institution of religion in the eyes of an increasingly skeptical public.

My own father was agnostic or maybe even atheistic because of what he saw, read about, or perceived as common among false priests, or hypocritical preachers who drove the big cars and held in charismatic bondage those who belonged to the big-box, ‘feel-good’ churches he saw on television. 

Don’t, like him, throw the baby out with the dirty bath water.  The invitation remains, "Come unto Christ and be saved." But be sure the church you attend is truly led by a man of God.

SECULARISTIC SCRIPTURES

Well, not exactly.  These scriptures (holy writings) come from the Bible but are not theological writings nor do they express dogma (a doctrine formally proclaimed by a church) of any kind. Any jaded, cynical, existential atheist non-believer (as well as a theist/or any religious believer) could well benefit from their application and not feel compromised in their unbelief.  The source of words of wisdom, or the person who is given credit for uttering them should make no difference to any honest person who is looking to make the world, or his or her own life a better place.

 Let’s look at a few:

·        “. . . all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so them . . . ” (Matthew 7:12).  In our vernacular we would say, ‘do unto others what you would have done to you.’ We call this the 'Golden Rule.'

·        “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).  This truism is commonly called ‘the law of the harvest.’

·        “. . . do justly, love mercy, walk humbly. . .” (Micah 6:8)

·        “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. . . .” (John 7:24)

·        “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose . . . “ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8-11.

·        “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29::18)

·        “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)

·        “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)

·        “The love of money is the root of all evil.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

·         

Civil War general Robert E. Lee said:  “In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength.”   

IDENTITY and SELF DEFINITION

In making a new acquaintance it is customary in our culture to inquire of a person—or have them ask of you— “How are you?” (do you or they really want to know?), or “Where are you from” (does that really matter to you—or them?), or maybe, “What do you do for a living?” That is how most people identify themselves.  But is that going to make a difference to how you view them or how you want them to view you?  It is less common to ask them (or yourself) questions such as, “Who are you?”, or “What’s important to you?”, or “Why are you here?’ or “What do you value?” or, “Where are you going?” or, in short, “How do you define yourself?”

When we were kids we were asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  We probably replied that we would like ‘to be’ some occupation—an athlete of some kind, or a ‘star’ in something that brought celebrity or a job that would earn us a lot of money—maybe a singer, or an astronaut, or a doctor. But we really didn’t know what it would take to ‘be’ those occupations.  We didn’t know that it wasn’t even entirely up to us--being in the right place, at the right time, with the right opportunity and the right people there to help us or recognize us, or inspire us.  These things would play a big part in an ‘occupation-defined’ life. In fact we probably didn’t think much beyond what we would ‘be,’ occupation-wise. Somehow it would come, we thought,  but in the meantime all we wanted to do was have fun.

As a child we subconsciously defined ourselves as thinking we would be or could be competent to do whatever it was that we wanted to do and that we would, in fact, do it.  As we got a little bit older, say in our early adolescence, we found that things weren’t that easy.  We had to earn it.  We then sometimes did a 180 degree turn and discouragement set in and we viewed ourselves as worthless because things did not come to us automatically, or we bought into the social mirror (which is almost always distorted) and didn’t really realize that young people rarely look outward but focus on themselves as the center of the universe.  We were victims, we thought.

We were looking at the wrong issue and in the wrong direction.

We thought about what we would be but didn’t think about who we would be. Do we yet? That was the larger question.  How do you look at others, and how do you define yourself? 

I am reminded of the related statement made by Martin Luther King, Jr. who said “I have a dream that my . . . children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character!” 

An intelligent man or woman will always consider character far more important than skin color or physical appearance, or place of origin, or place of residence or size of bank account or, yes, occupation.  And character is developed.

I would suggest you do something really radical: consider your life as a moral drama.  Consider that a quality life is not only to do good or be prosperous but to be good.  Don’t just float along from day-to-day.   If you measure the success of your life at all (which I hope you do)—choose not to measure it against the false standards we so often see and hear around us, but against the principles and values upon which the best societies and cultures and people have been built.  And then choose from this day forward to change, to build your life around the principles, and people, and purposes that set you apart and promote peace, external and internal, and define you as a person of substance.  Be honest.  Be kind.  Be genuine.  Be of service.  Be a friend. Be good.  And remember, passivity is not necessarily good.  Get engaged.

You’ve got it in you—just bring it out and bring it on and then see how you define yourself—your changed self.   You might be amazed!

OH SAY WHAT IS TRUTH?

With just a minute or two spent in consulting your dictionary you can easily fathom what this 19^th Century British author was saying in his insightful poem Oh Say What is Truth?  It is especially relevant for our times (John Jaques, 1827-1900):

Oh say, what is truth? ‘Tis the fairest gem That the riches of worlds can produce,   And priceless the value of truth will be when The proud monarch’s costliest diadem Is counted but dross and refuse.

Yes, say, what is truth? ‘Tis the brightest prize To which mortals or Gods can aspire.  Go searching in the depths where it glittering lies, Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies: ‘Tis an aim for the noblest desire.

The scepter may fall from the despot’s grasp When with winds of stern justice he copes.  But the pillar of truth will endure to the last, And its firm-rooted bulwarks outstand the rude blast And the wreck of the fell tyrant’s hopes.

Then say, what is truth?  ‘Tis the last and the first, For the limits of time it steps o’er.  Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst, Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst, Eternal, unchanged, evermore. 

Interestingly, two millennia ago Pontius Pilate asked the same question, "what is truth," of Jesus but didn’t recognize that he was in the very presence of  the embodiment of The Truth or stay for the answer to his question (see John 18: 37-38; 14:6).  As Christ and His message was rejected by His people, and God’s prophets have been largely rejected (and thereby much of Truth rejected though it remains “Eternal, unchanged, evermore”), needful governance has been vested in what was left: to highly fallible men. 

  

Never in my lifetime (even in the schoolyard!) have I ever heard in the media such back-and-forth vitriol regarding truth and lies as it relates to the crises in our social and political life. The heart of this crises, though, is the corruption and failure of personal integrity of men in power, but not men in truth.  And it is the failure of those who put them in power or who allowed(s) them to stay.

In the 19^th Century, America was politically saved by a man of integrity, a great man, Abraham Lincoln, who didn’t purge God out of the equation or solution to America’s divisiveness. Likewise were the great men among our 18^th Century’s Founding Fathers who did not displace deity from their deliberations.  And likewise in the mid-20^th Century the Western world was saved by a great man, Winston Churchill, though not a stout Christian, but a stout believer that truth was the consummate weapon.  He used the power of truth and persuasion in his powerful radio messages to fortify his people and to move America to come in the nick of time to the rescue of  western Europe.  

Winston Churchill was able to save the West because he had truth on his side.  Truth—which includes the divine principles of honesty, of decency, of respect for life and for sovereignty and freedom.  And he had the guts and willingness to give his all--to stand against evil which was swallowing up the free world.  Churchill recognized eternal principles of truth which guided him and which transcended politics—and which enabled him with magisterial force to see when others could not, to speak when others would not, and to persuade a reluctant America with God’s imprimatur to do her duty.

Oh that the world had men today of that caliber today in Washington, in Moscow, in Pyongyang, in Damascus . . . .   

It cannot be said too often:  Come back to the foundational principles!  In the hurricane of words and lies today remains the eye of the hurricane, which is calm, which is The Truth—“an aim for the noblest desire.”