The Choice Is Always Ours

Today is an anniversary for me of sorts!  It was fifty-seven years ago today that I enlisted in the US Air Force and traveled by air (the first time ever) to Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas for ten weeks of basic training.  I was 17 years old and had graduated from high school just a month before.  

In those days the “draft” was in effect.  Every young male upon reaching 18 years of age (who was not a farmer or a college student) was likely to be drafted into the army.  Wherever I went at the age of 17 to seek a job the response was always the same “come back after your military obligation.”   I don’t think those employers I contacted really wanted a 17-year-old anyway, especially one who didn’t have a car to travel to and from work.  There was but one thing to do—enlist and get it over with.

I knew nothing about the military, nothing about the Air Force.  The truth of the matter is that I didn’t know much about anything!  I soon found out about the Air Force and what I found out, I didn’t like very much.  

Fourteen weeks later, however, I decided that I did have some choice in the matter of how I would serve out my military commitment.  The choice is always ours!  That choice changed my time in the Air Force and changed the whole path of my life.  I chose to become what was then called a Chaplain Services Specialist (in brief, a Chaplain Assistant).  

One of the Ghosts of Christmas past in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, replies to Scrooge’s question:  “You are fettered,” Scrooge says, “Tell me why?  “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”  Our choices make all the difference and the choice is always ours.

"Yesterday, when I was young"--Mug Shot

The Old and The Young

Yesterday I had the wonderful privilege of attending yet another annual birthday party for grandsons Austin (21)  and Nick (19).  We have had that privilege since they were both just little guys.  They are not so little anymore.  Born on the same day, two years apart, it has become a family tradition to celebrate their special day.  We have enjoyed through these years not only observing  Austin and Nick growing up, but also their cousins, Andrew, Megan and Katie.  It has always been a special gathering and remains so.  Helen and Paul have not only given us the gift of these two grandsons, but have also faithfully hosted the big July party each year. 

Some say, humility comes with age.  In my early years I thought I knew just about everything there was to know.  I even thought I had most of the answers. The truth is that I didn’t even know then what the important questions were.  This malady of “knowing it all” was quickly cured as the experiences of life tumbled in around me.  I quickly came to the realization that there are no simple answers.  Simple answers are always wrong, because the world is not simple!  The mystery of life and the questions that come with it actually increase with experience and age.  I now know that what I do not know far surpasses what I know.

That being said, I am always delighted to be with young people and to hear “their take” on the questions and issues of our time.  Their answers, like my own in my early years, will be tried and tested as life tumbles in on them.  But we do ourselves and our world a great injustice if we simply say they are young and think they have the “the bull by the tail.”   To say such a thing is to suggest that we haven’t learned a thing about the humility of maturity.  They may know something we don’t know!

The Gift of Aging

This morning I seem to be focused on my aging.  I don’t know why that should be on my mind, but it is, and I can’t seem to dismiss it at the moment, so I’m just going to write about it.  Perhaps I am aware of my age because I just finished painting a bedroom here at home—moving all the furniture out, installing crown moulding, climbing up and down the ladder what seemed like a thousand times, stretching my arms beyond their capacity to put two coats of paint on the ceiling, painting the walls and the trim, cleaning the windows and re-hanging the curtains, scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees (using a knee pad, of course) and then putting all the furniture back in place.  It took twelve days (3-5 hours a day) to complete the project and I was aware of my age each and every day—aching arms, arthritic hands, stiff and sore legs, and all the rest! 

Is that really the reason I am so conscious of my age this morning?  Probably not, even though “the proof is in the pudding” when I tackle some project—I have aged and I am aging.  I’m not bothered by this fact except when I paint a room, or use a shovel or hoe in the flowerbeds, and the only “bother” is the realization that, “I ain’t what I use to be!”  At the same time, I know I am “more” than I have ever been before!  Robert Frost wrote a line that has always fascinated me, “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”  I know more about the “morning” now that I am living in the “afternoon.”  

Sometimes I think Mark Twain was right when he said, “Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.”  But, alas, it just doesn’t work that way, which is why Morrie says, in Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie, “Embrace aging…It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”  

Am I living a better life because I’ve aged?  Do I know something more now about the morning because I’m living in the afternoon?  I hope so, I believe so, and for that reason, I celebrate the gift of my own aging.

Morning

Afternoon

The War on Empirical Reality

A new war has been initiated.  It is one of the most dangerous wars ever waged.  It is a war to overthrow empirical reality.  The word, “empirical,” means:  “originating in or based on observation or experience—empirical data.”  This war is being fought right now and right here in the United States of America.  It is being waged against those who accept empirical reality by those who resist and reject it.  The new weapon in this war is the term “fake news” which is being used to shoot down the empirical reality forces.

This war is akin to the so-called “War on Christmas” which occurs, like an annual ritual, every December.  Henry Ford was a proponent of the idea that someone was waging a war on Christmas back in the early 20th century.  He blamed the Jews without having any empirical data to prove his point other than his own anti-Semitic stance. In 1959 the far-right John Birch Society entered the battle, alerting the nation of an “assault on Christmas” by United Nations fanatics. These fanatics, according to the John Birch Society, want “the country to utilize UN symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations.”  Far out?  You betcha!  It was totally untrue—having no empirical reality. Yet, the war on Christmas has continued, notably in recent years by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who first aired a segment on “Christmas Under Siege.”  “All over the country,” O’Reilly railed, “Christmas is taking flak…”  Liberals (or in O’Reilly’s words, “secular progressives”) are attempting to destroy Christmas with their “holiday trees” and “happy holiday” greetings.  Pat Buchanan couldn’t resist the limelight and declared that the people in “the world out there” were committing “hate crimes against Christianity.”  Sarah Palin joined the battle, promoting her book, Good Tidings and Great Joy:  Protecting the Heart of Christmas, in which she declared that atheists and liberals (who according to Palin, are interchangeable) were seeking to destroy Christmas. Mr. O’Reilly announced that major corporations were ordering their employees not to say “Merry Christmas,” a false statement, but one that resonated, creating in the minds of many an alternative reality.  

George Orwell wrote that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,”  for we are easily misled.  We can, by “impudently twisting the facts,” convince ourselves of “things which we know to be untrue.” A whole society, Orwell said, can deceive itself “for an indefinite time,” and the only check on that mass delusion is that “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against a solid and empirical reality.”  There is a reality and there is (according to some) an alternative reality.  One is based on empirical data; the other is based on lies and the twisting of facts or the ignoring of facts.  Lincoln’s words from the Gettysburg Address apply, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any other nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”  If you have persisted in reading this all the way through, let me wish you and yours an early “Merry Christmas.”

War is tragic, no matter the form it may take..

Patriotism

Since the Gulf War (1990-1991) Americans have been “feeling” patriotic.  This patriotic “feeling” was ramped up to an even greater degree with the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan (the longest war in American history) and Iraq.

Patriotism, according to Merriam-Webster, is “love for or devotion to one’s country.”  Another source says a patriot is “a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.”  I would suggest that patriotism is more than love of country, if by country we mean “amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesty.”  Patriotism is more than a blind allegiance or trust in our leaders.  It is more than being able to vote, or having the right to do so.  It is more than  “flag-waving,” which can be an outward sign of patriotism, but is only a sign, not patriotism itself (and those who attempt to make it so cheapen the very meaning of patriotism).  Patriotism is not “The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag,” nor is it the “National Anthem,” or even a blind support of our men and women in uniform!

Patriotism is something far deeper.  It is a reverence for the ideas that our forefathers set forth for this nation; the ideas for which they were willing to put their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the line.  All men (people) are created equal.  All are endowed not by government but by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—like the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Government exists only by the consent of the governed.  The ideas found in the Declaration of Independence create a patriotic feeling in me and they define me as an American.  It is freedom.  It is liberty.  It is the bedrock on which this nation is founded. It makes life worth living and that makes the ideas worth fighting and dying for.  Love of country just doesn’t cut it for me.  It is love for what the country is supposed to be and is meant to be that calls forth my feeling of patriotism.  It is reverance for the principles of the Declaration of Independence that I celebrate and honor today.

The American Dream begins with a Declaration,
and is lived on the long road to its fulfillment.

Independence

The Fourth of July is a celebration of our nationhood, commemorating the passage of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence adopted by the Second Continental Congress announced to the world that the thirteen colonies, already at war for over a year with England, regarded themselves as independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule.  These thirteen colonies formed a new nation—the United States of America.  Thomas Jefferson wrote the original draft of the Declaration, and it is important that we know what the document proclaims.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (all people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.  But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—…”

The underlying theme of the document is revolutionary—“all men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and thus “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish…”  Later, these ideas would be expressed in the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Preeminent among these ideas is the right, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, to gather, publish, and distribute information and ideas without government restriction or censorship.  Such restriction includes any attempts by the government or leaders of government to decide, announce, or disparage what is real news and what is fake news.  Both real and fake news are a fundamental right of a free press and a free people.  A free people must be able to think clearly on their own and decide for themselves.  This is fundamental!

Hal's Sunday Rant

Someone declared in the late nineteenth century that Christians “are dying of complacency and insipidity, of vulgarized and minimized truths, of a religion reduced to our standards.”  This declaration still rings true.  In fact, the decay has become more pronounced, particularly with the rise of what some erroneously label as Protestant Evangelical Christians.   Some call it Fundamentalism—“a group that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.” 

These alleged Christians have no interest in searching for truth because they believe they have already gotten hold of it. They ignore science, seeing it as an enemy of the faith.  They have chosen to make the Bible (biblioidolatry) their god without any serious study of its contents.  “If it is written in the book, it is so,” they say, but they only subscribe to parts of the book that fit their standards.  The earth is not flat!  Facts, embedded in stone, tell us the world was inhabited millions of years ago.  This evidence is rejected out-of-hand.  Instead, alleged Christians cling to Bishop Ussher’s (1650) calculation that creation occurred on  October 22, 4004 BC.  Ussher’s calculation is not in the Bible—it is not scriptural—but Fundamentalists adhere to it as absolute truth anyway, in spite of evidence to the contrary.  They don’t want to know why they believe what they do, or feel the way they do, or think the way they do.  They don’t want to deal with introspection—“the examination of one’s own conscious thoughts and feelings.” They want it in black and white—and they want it according to their own standards (which they never examine).

This same “decay” is happening in our beloved nation—we, too, “are dying of complacency and insipidity, of vulgarized and minimized truths, of a [democracy] reduced to our standards.  

Aristotle said that the true nature of any being is what it can become, not what it once was or what it is now, but what it can be.  The only way we can know and live out the Christian faith is by being aware of our own inner workings (introspection).  “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The same is true of our democracy.  It is not what we have been, or what we are now as a nation, it is what we can become.  Without introspection, without thinking, without knowledge, we remain mere “runts” in the faith.  Without these same qualities at work in every citizen, democracy cannot become what democracy is meant to be.

The Road is Long--but we must travel it wherever it goes to find  Truth.