Story of the day - Exposed at a young age to too many theme parks

Linda McCullough Moore writes in her short story, "Baby Doll" in her book This Road Will Take You Closer To The Moon, about Margaret who comes home after many years to visit with her family. The scene being described is a conversation among the family members and Moore writes about Margaret:

     "The only place we will not go tonight is me. Conversation never wanders there. I have been waiting ever since my first visit home from college, freshman year, for someone in the family to say, 'So. Margaret. How are you?' or, in some spoken way, to acknowledge my existence and the fact that I have been three states away, for weeks, for months, now suddenly, for thirty-seven years.

     "So tell me about Brandon," one of the sisters says.

     "Oh, he's too young for long-term care insurance, " Eileen says.

     Brandon, Eileen's son, a man who throughout his late teens and early twenties devoted his life to following professional wrestlers on tour. A natural consequence, I like to think, of his having been too exposed at a young age to one too many theme parks." p.54

My Kind Of Church Music - Fun, fun, fun, The Beach Birds

Can we depend on the proponents of predatory capitalism to save us?

Dr. Ovid Byron is the entomologist from California who has come to Tennessee to study the butterflies. He has set up his lab in Cub and Dellarobia's barn behind their house and even hired Dellarobia as an assistant and she is getting a lot of on the job training. One day, they are up on the mountain, collecting data on the butterflies and they take a lunch break and have a discussion about how climate change is not only affecting the butterflies but life on the planet. Here is part of how Kingsolver writes the scene:

They are talking about the carbon in the atmosphere and how it contributes to a warming of the temperature of the planet.

     "If you stop something, it stops," she said, sounding a little too fine.

     "We used to think so. But there are unstoppable processes. Like the loss of polar ice. White ice reflects the heat of the sun directly back to space. But when it melts, the dark land and water underneath hold on to the heat. The frozen ground melts. And that releases more carbon into the air. These feedback loops keep surprising us."

     How could this be true, she thought, if no one was talking about it? People with influence. Important people made such a big deal over infinitely smaller losses.

     "So it's not a question of having Floridian winters in Tennessee," he said. "That's not even under discussion."

     "Is there some part of this I can actually see?"

     "You don't believe in things you can't see?"

     She thought of Blancie Bise and Bible class. The flood of Noah, Jesus. She did try. "It's never been my long suit," she confessed.

     "Your children's adulthood?"

     That nearly floored her of course. Or creeked her. Since that's what was below this log, if she'd swooned off of it. How dare he belt her with that one?

     "A trend is intangible, but real," he said calmly. "A photo cannot prove a child is growing, but several of them show the change over time. Align them, and you can reliably predict what is coming. You never see it all at once. An attention span is required." pp.279-280

Ah, yes, an attention span is required, something that Americans with the 24 hour cable tv news cycle, social media, texting, etc. don't possess. We go through our days with blinders on from one task to the next, pursuing one desire after another, distracting ourselves with all kinds of drama to keep our minds off of the low level anxiety which rumbles constantly in our psyches as we attempt to deny the karma which we generate on an hour to hour and day to day basis which will hold us accountable not only for our guilty pleasures but for an irresponsible life style we take for granted and even feel entitled to.

And Dellarobia, like an innocent child wonders to herself, why people with influence, our leaders, the people who we depend on to lead us and take care of us, haven't concerned themselves with this impending planetary catastrophe. Good question! And the answer is............................

There are more immediate incentives and concerns like campaign contributions from fossil fuel corporations who lobby congress for policies and laws that enhance their bottom line based on the values of what Noam Chomsky called predatory capitalism. Protecting the commons, the air we breath, the climate of our planet is what the economists call an externality that interferes with the financial bottom line.

Every day people like Cub and Dellarobia, Hester and Bear, Dovey and Crystal have no idea what is being done to them, but Dellarobia is waking up. She senses something isn't right, and Dr. Bryon, a scientist, not a theologian or a philosopher of ethics, is sharing with her the science of what is happening which tells us truths contrary to the values of predatory capitalism and corporations, who, feeling financially threatened by the awakening to the truth, are cranking up the engines of what Shane Kuhn, in his novel, The Intern's Handbook, calls the Bull Shit express.

Like the disinformation campaign of the tobacco companies when science began to show that smoking caused cancer, the fossil fuel corporations are engaging in a disinformation campaign of climate change denial. Dellarobia is losing her innocence. Her naivete is giving way to disillusionment, and she begins to question why, if what the science says is happening, is really happening, the adults in our society on whom we would like to depend, have not been taking this information more seriously to protect us.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the seventh principle,  a respect for the interdependent web of existence, and in order to do this we need to have a right understanding of the world we are just a small part of, and this requires the application of the UU fourth principle, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Dellarobia is a lukewarm evangelical Christian but she is awakening to the significance of the Unitarian Universalist principles. Dellarobia is growing and it is in the honor and privilege of witnessing her growth and we begin to have hope in the face of a growing sense of impending doom.

"It's not fair!!!"

Fairness is not the same thing as justice as we have described in previous articles. Justice is compliance with laws, regulations, and ethical codes enforced by those with the power in our society to punish misbehavior. Fairness, equity, has to do with right relationship, balance, and often is proportional in the sense of "to whom much is given much is expected."

My thirteen year old daughter complained to me that I was not being fair since I was asking things of her I was not asking of her eight year old brother. I said to her, "Listen Katie, you're 13 and he's 8. You're in eighth grade and he's in third. You're a girl and he's a boy. You play the piano and he's tone deaf. He picked up and got the snake out of the house and you wouldn't even touch it with a broom. If I was to treat you fair it wouldn't be fair. The only way to be fair is not to be fair. Now go do what I asked you to do." She relented and begrudgingly did as I asked, and I had a moment of clarity. Fairness, equity, is not treating people similar or the same, but rather treating them according to what is right, meaning, what is balanced.

Fairness, equity, is about relationship, not about laws, and rules, and codes. Fairness can only be determined bilaterally or multilaterally with all the stakeholders in the situation and relationship participating in the negotiation. What might be fair and equitable for some, may not be equitable for all.

Fairness is something we feel in our guts, in our viscera. It is the first thing that children complain about when they put words together in a sentence, "Mommy it's not fair!!!!" Freud said that it was the libido which makes the world go around, our sex drive, but I disagree. Sex is nice and an important drive to ensure the perpetuation of our species, but what we, as humans, want more than anything, is equity; we want things to be fair and when things are not fair we struggle to rectify the imbalance sometimes in tragic and vengeful ways.

On the spiritual plane there is no justice, equity, and compassion because there is no need. We are one with the all and become aware that we are not separate egos but part of everything and what happens to our brothers and sisters happens to us. Our well being depends on the well being of our brothers and sisters. On this plane of unconditional love, justice, equity, and compassion have no meaning. The concepts are moot, unnecessary, irrelevant, not needed. So, what surpasses the virtues of the second principle, is Unconditional Love. Until then, if nothing else, strive to be fair, whatever that may mean in all your relationships. It is hard to experience love if things aren't fair.

Story of the day - Justice is a concept. Muscle is the reality.

Of course, there is Linda Blanford, whoever she might be, who is quoted in the Sunbeams section of The Sun Magazine issue of June, 2014, as having said, "Justice is a concept. Muscle is the reality."

It made me chuckle to read the quote and it made me think, "Right on, Linda baby, might makes right." Justice is what those in power want it to be.

And then you think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights protestors of 50 years ago now who taught us, as a nation, that we have unjust laws, even in the United States, the home of the brave, and the land of the free. So we are told by our rulers that in our democracy we should be grateful for our freedom, but then our names wind up on the no-fly lists, or we're driving while black, or just walking while black in New York City.

My wife says that I am too cynical and bitter and I tell her I am just realistic and she is wearing her rose colored glasses again.

The pastor preached this morning that people aren't perfect and we shouldn't expect them to be and if we are to have any peace we need to be compassionate and forgiving.

Ron Firbank, another person I have no idea who he is, is also quoted in the June, 2014, issue of The Sun saying, "The world is disgracefully managed; one hardly knows to whom to complain."

Good old Ron has got it wrong. I know exactly to whom to complain, but alas without muscle, as Linda said, they have no need to, and usually don't,  listen.

Story of the day - "Not actually"

Brigid was four and came into the kitchen as I was making dinner making stir fry on the stove. Behind me was the Hoosier Cabinet on which sat the cookie jar. Brigid asked me if she could have a cookie and I said she could after dinner which I was just making and we would be eating in five minutes.

As I continued adding ingredients to the stir fry I heard the top come off the cookie jar and I turned around and said evenly, "Brigid what are you doing?"

She said with a guilty expression, "Nothing daddy."

I said, "Yes, you are. You're taking a cookie."

She said to me very seriously, "Not actually."

I had to stop myself from laughing. Where, at age four, had she learned this word, "actually" and used it correctly in a sentence to minimize, if not eliminate, her culpability?

I can imagine God saying to any one of us, "And why have you polluted the earth with plastic water bottles, plastic shopping bags, and exhaust from SUVs, Hummers, and all sorts of combustion engines?"

And we, of course, would plea ignorance, saying we didn't know the consequences, and God will say, "But having learned the consequences, you have continued with your harmful ways." And we will say, like four year old Brigid, "Not actually." and we will each have our excuse about why we continued with the rape and pillage of Mother Nature.

I don't know if God, like me, will attempt to stifle a laugh at our naivete, but let us pray that He extends some matter of mercy for our sins, and treats us like innocent four year old children and not like responsible adults.

Mercy and repentance are appropriate at this time in the planet's history.

Dellarobia's son, Preston, goes to kindergarten where he has met a classmate, Josefina Delgado, who is a daughter in a migrant farm family from Michoacan, Mexico where the Monarchs usually go to roost in the winter time until flooding caused landslides that not only destroyed their traditional roosting site but also the village where the Delagados lived as well.

The Delagados had heard about the Monarchs on the Turnbow property from their daughter and came to visit Dellarobia hoping they could climb the mountain and see the butterflies. Only the daughter, Josefina, speaks any English and Dellarobia speaks no Spanish, so Josefina translates for the adults as Dellarobia learn their story. The chapter ends with this paragraph:

"They all sat quietly for a long time. Dellarobia had ridden out prayer meetings aplenty, but had no idea what to say to a family that had lost their world, including the mountain under their feet and the butterflies of the air." p. 103

Indeed what does one say in the face of ecological devastation. The grief is palpable but unspoken as it is so fresh and new as to be mind numbing and unbelievable. And yet, here, through the facilitation of their 6 year olds, they grapple with the phenomenon which they literally don't have the words to share with one another because they don't speak each other's languages, but even it they did, they would still find their words unsatisfactory in describing the enormity of what they have witnessed and lived through.

With hubris, human beings have been polluting the planet and Mother Nature is not pleased. Those of us old enough to have adult children and grandchildren and maybe even great grand children will not live long enough to see the consequences of our insensitive behavior but our grand children and great grand children certainly will, and we should be ardently praying for mercy, and as best we are able, repenting for our sins.

Story of the day - Would you rather be right or be happy?

She said, "You made your bed so you got to lie in it. Don't look to me."
No, no, no he said to himself. It would be, is a big mistake, to look to her for anything, because she was so hurt, so closed hearted that she had nothing to share. It would be too risky like letting her guard down, taking a brick out of the wall that not only surrounds her but has ivy growing thickly all over the walls. She'd been like that all the years he had known her. She had been abused as a child and carried very heavy baggage which for the most part, went unacknowledged.

For 35 years she was never wrong about anything, never apologized, never, not even once, said she was sorry, and he had sucked it up to make the marriage work, but no longer.

"I'm not even talking any more about it. You just do what you want to do anyway!"

He'd never done just what he wanted to do anyway because he was too scared, too scared to rock the boat, and get her upset, and then there would be hell to pay for days if not weeks. In his panic, the Holy Spirit whispered to him, "This is no way to live. There is a better way."

So in his panic attack he stuttered, "Yeah, yeah, well...............you're right. I am going to do what I want to do anyway." He walked away and he knew it was the end. This was the very abandonment she feared, and her suspicion that he would one day abandon her turned out to be true. She would rather be right than be happy. She had backed herself into a corner and sued him for divorce. She couldn't chance his opposing her again.

And so it passed that they got divorced after all those years, and there is no mercy, not for his sins. There is no forgiveness in her heart, she can't afford it. Can't get blood out of a rock as they say.

Compassion, justice, equity? Not here, not in their house. Not in this relationship, not in this life time.

He turned it over to his Higher Power, God's will be done and all that jazz. Since the time he told me his story, he has gone to heaven, and she, she still resides in the hell of her own making. One day perhaps she may realize that she could have had peace instead of what she created which the children, now adults, have described as a dysfunctional hell on earth.