Is anyone all right?

In Linda McCullough Moore's fourth story, "Is Anyone All Right?" in her book of short stories, This Road Will Take Us Closer To The Moon, she describes a first date between two people who apparently have met on Match.com. They have agreed to go to a movie. It is awkward and the guy keep asking the gal, "Are you all right?" thus the title of the story. Here's how Moore ends the story:

"Are you all right?" Bob says.
He's a nice man. He really is.
"Are you all right? he says.
"Of course not," I say.
I'm giving him the only hopeful answer that I know.
I mean, imagine: this my life, I all right.

And are any of us all right? As the title asks, "Is anyone all right?" And we are expected to be polite and say something like, "Yes, thank you. I'm fine." when we both know that is not exactly the truth.

My 91 year old mother was a day or two away from her death and she had been sleeping a lot. My 31 year old niece was sitting by her bedside when mom awoke and as I was walking by mom's bedroom door Magen was excited and said, "David, come in. Grandma's awake." I poked my head in the door and said, "Hi, mom, How are you feeling?" And very uncharacteristically my sweet, kind, submissive, usually tender mother snarled at me, "How do you think I'm feeling!"

Yeah, I thought to myself stupid question. "Like shit!" would have been the right answer. Two days later she died of only what I can describe as "old age" that is: just lost the will to live any longer. She apparently, was not all right.

Are you a person of faith?

The importance of the "why" question

Dennis Ford writes in his book, The Search For Meaning, "...asking 'why?' signals the point at which we self consciously step back from what we are doing to look for a reason or justification. With this simple, childlike question, the taken-for-granted quality of life suddenly loses its foundations, and we are left exposed to the threat of meaninglessness." p. 1

Our lives require no explanation when we take them for granted. It is not until we have choices that the meaning and truth question comes up. Prior to asking "why?" we are innocent and naive. We may be ignorant in the sense that "ignorance is bliss". The Unitarian Universalists, the free thinkers, have a long history of asking "why?" for which they have been shunned, excluded, dismissed, mocked, and punished.

Since the dawn of the philosophical, scientific, and postmodern mind the why question has gained greater and greater ascendency and the answer is?

It's in the book meaning the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud. Why should we believe and follow what's in the book? Because it's the revealed word of God according to the priest, the pastor, the iman, the rabbi. And for most of humanity, they go back to sleep and accept, submit, comply but there are some that don't. There is a very small group in societies who continue to be a pain in the neck with their questioning. And it is they, although they are persecuted by the majority, who lead the way on the evolutionary path to true salvation.

Climate change very disruptive for bird life in North America

The New York Times reported on September 8, 2014 that climate change will have a huge disruption for bird life in North America according to Audubon scientists.

For more click here.

Editor's note:

The UU A Way Of Life makes an effort to report on stories that exemplify UUs seven principles. Stories dealing with the affects of climate change are directly relevant to UUs seventh princple, the respect for the interdependent web of existence.

Incidents and dreams may be God whispering to us

"Incidents and Dreams" is the third story in Linda McCullough Moore's book of short stories, This Road Will Take Us Closer To The Moon." The story is about Margaret McKensie who is getting her performance appraisal done by Mr. Peterson who doesn't think her creative production is what it should be and suggests that maybe she is better fitted for sales at which point she resigns.

In the meantime Margaret McKensie has agreed to help care for the ailing Episcopalian Bishop who is dying of bone cancer and who gets her into bed with him for unclear reasons other than perhaps wanting an innocent snuggle and is discovered by his teen age daughter.

As unlikely as both these scenarios previously seemed Margaret McKensie marvels at how simple incidents can so quickly and irrevocably change the course of one's life.

Moore writes:

"These things happen to us - Peterson, my surprise retirement, my afternoon spent with a dying bishop - they are incidents. It is not reasonable to expect that they will change my life, but neither is it wise, I think, to rule out the possibility entirely. At any moment, when I least expect to, I might stop treating my life like a Wednesday matinee I got free tickets for. I might even strike up an old acquaintanceship with tenderness, the kind the bishop had in mind, tenderness that's been away so long I had forgotten that it might just be off on some vacation, one that got stretched out way too long, one that was pure and perfect foolishness from the beginning." pp. 43-44

If we are open to the whispers of the call, we can sense that the Holy Spirit, God, Jesus, the Spirit of Life, the Universe is leading us along to our destiny, our fate. We can easily ignore it and think that we know best, what is in our own best interest, but my favorite joke is "If you want to hear God laugh, tell God your plans."

From whence does my happiness come?

Solve, resolve, absolve

A guy by the name of T.V. Smith gave a lecture to the National Conference on Social Welfare back in 1955 entitled "Solve, Resolve, Absolve".

What he said was that problems occur at three levels and we, humans, get ourselves into trouble when we confuse the levels.

First, there are problems that can be solved. They are problems that follow Natural laws or logic. A water molecule is make up of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, H2O, or 2+2=4.

Second, there are problems that are a matter of preference or taste. What flavor of ice cream do you like best, vanilla or chocolate? Who will make a better President, Obama or McCain? There is no objective answer, disagreements and contradictions have to be resolved. There has to be compromise.

Third, there are problems that can only be absolved. A person driving down a busy residential street accidentally runs over and kills a two year old child who darts into traffic between two parked cars. Nothing can bring the life of the child back or compensate the parents for their loss. There is no solution or resolution to this problem only absolution.

Using the right management strategy for the problem at is own level can make all the difference in the world in the search for truth and meaning. Looking for truth at the first level in a political discussion not only won't work but is inappropriate, right? etc.