THINGS GO BUMP

  I used a word recently that translates a general feeling rather than a concrete meaning. It seems every popular dictionary has its own definition, similar but then not quite and I settled for Merriam-Webster. If you (search your soul) 3 words separately they all have their own purpose but together in that order it requires a presumption that we (all of us) do have a soul and something there in should be examined. ‘Soul-searching’ is hyphenated, technically one word with the same overreach and can be used creatively. This may seem like navel-gazing but I tend to look under every stone for what may be there and this ‘soul-searching’ will take me somewhere. 
Merriam-Webster: “. . . examination of one’s conscience especially with regard to motives and values.” I will cut back on the gazing but the word ‘conscience’ here links the soul with a brain function that is beyond our control. We don’t get to decide what is right (righteous) and wrong (immoral), that stuff was planted there at an early age by an influential, older someone with more experience and it unfolds without permission. One’s conscience is updated and reinforced by a continuous stream of fresh experience still, it can be stifled when competing values like greed and generosity have been nurtured simultaneously but under different circumstances. Then you lock horns over an unanticipated complication. When that happens, most of us simply default to the value that feels more ‘right’ (less wrong) in the moment. The other default is ‘denial’, to know better and behave as if one or the other does not exist. By definition again; conscience is an acquired guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior or belief. 
In my case, soul searching is a frequent, necessary, scheduled maintenance on my moral compass. If I don’t go there, it is easy to get bogged down in one of those unanticipated complications. My parents did not spend much time telling us what to believe or how to behave but they modeled those values with consistent, repetitious clarity. Take care of each other, we’re in this together. Treat others as you want to be treated. Don’t be stingy, share. Take only what you can eat and eat all you take. Discipline teaches ‘right’ behavior and punishment teaches how not to get caught. I revisit those competing values, weigh and measure for what their worth and then go face the day. If there is a fundamental ‘right’ way to live then my experience tells me that in the game of life everyone should play fair. If in fact we are nothing more than high functioning animals (and I could make that argument) then poverty serves as a necessary link in the food chain. But if that curious, intelligent, creative bump that evolution blessed us with makes us not only unique but also superior and borderline divine, then there is no excuse for Poverty. But civilization likes winners and without losers, what’s the difference? The human animal doesn’t think twice about fair play. The only rule is ‘Win’ by whatever means necessary. “What’s mine is mine and if you can’t stop me, what’s yours is mine too.”
I have known families and students whose only mistake was being born at a bad time in the wrong place to parents whose sins were, when and where they were born and to who; a wicked scheme of opportunity denied and culture deprived. The bell curve works, it always has. If you are born at either (rich or poor) extreme the likelihood of rising or falling toward the middle (normal) arc of the curve is almost nonexistent. The trick is; choose a good time and place to be born and pick nurturing, educated, affluent parents. Occasionally low-born people overcome obstacles and a privileged child will stumble and fall from grace but in both cases, the farther your data point from the mid point (bell curve) the more difficult it is to slide past (statistical) normal and sustain that momentum. 
I’ve been fortunate, managed eight decades of well intended, good places & right times, random good fortune and sweet people moving through my space. Sometimes things go BUMP and I try to fix what I break. So far my trespasses have been forgiven and I get to keep my good name. I have a thing about good communication and the written story. Words have power and I don’t want them to be squandered or misappropriated so I move them around on the page until they have legs of their own to stand on. When I am spent or the words lose their salt I go make sawdust or play with my guitar. When I notice people who never go soul searching or  their conscience suffers from a case of arrested development I fall back on my mother’s best life lesson: There but for the Grace of God go I.

SUNDAY MORNING

  I went to church this morning, not that unusual but I agreed to work a recruiting table in the lobby before and after the service. Some programs are totally dependent on volunteers and the HOT (Hunger Outreach Team) is where I plug in. We work together with another volunteer organization to feed several hundred homeless folks three time a week at a park in the city. We have the kitchen facilities and usually a dozen or so of our regulars show up to cook, make sandwiches and distribute food at the park. There were two of us at our table and we talked with some nice people. We didn't get any firm commitments but several who basically said, “Maybe”. You can volunteer as much or as little as you like; there is always something to do. 
There is a lot of change going on at All Souls. I think it’s due to changing times as well as natural attrition and new faces in the congregation. Fifteen years ago the old guard would have bristled at anything biblical coming from the pulpit. But most of them have either passed on or softened their tone. We have too much on our plate to be finding fault with well intended believers. We all have strong beliefs about one thing or another. What we believe comes after the fact, manifest in what we do, in this life, here and now. The difference between faith based and secular religion is that the one requires a supernatural power (being) and the promise of eternal life. We skip the supernatural mythology and control politic, cut straight to human relationships; love and take care of each other. We recognize the nature of nature, that it needs to be nurtured, not exploited. 
Next week a different group (program) will be working the recruiting/information table. It might be Green Sanctuary, Racial Justice or one of several others but you cannot make it through our lobby on Sunday morning without being informed and, or solicited. Gandhi told us “As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him. That is the divine mystery.” Since then the idea has been reframed to, Be the change you want to see. I think that’s what we are trying to do. 

HOPE FOR THE BEST

  I went to a bon voyage party the other day for a lady in my coffee group. She splits her year between Kansas City and her native France. But this year is different; she isn’t coming back next year; or the next. Jackie is well into her 90’s. Simply said, people 92+ are old, they just are. Jackie has always been health conscious, exercise, diet, the whole scheme and she has been healthy all along. She is still astute; she does the math and checks the numbers. Long story short, sooner or later attrition catches up with everyone. You don’t have to get terribly sick, you can just wear out and Jackie is hedging against that day, either way. With dual citizenship, she does’t want to be in the United States when something necessary wears out. Any time is a good time but at 93 for sure, you hope for the best but plan for the worst. 

I didn’t know when I began, just where this was going. The socialized medicine versus health care for profit argument were not on my radar but it popped up there as I wrote. I realize that competition is a driving force for everything that can be monetized. Civilized progress depends on it. But it also leaves in its wake, a divided culture where privileged affluence is offset by unforgiving poverty. Affordability and access to health care are obvious issues that separate the Haves from the Have Nots. The leading cause of bankruptcy in America is health care and I am insulated from that fate by no more than an untimely mishap and a few weeks in ICU. 

There is an unholy alliance between health care and the medical insurance industries. Both are profit driven even though both claim their first concern is patient care. Stockholders, administrators and medical staff care far more about their own finances than about faceless, nameless, strangers in need somewhere else. Jackie knows this without me making my case. Whenever her time comes it will come without a $1,000 charge for bandaids or a $2,000 charge from a consultant who looked at her chart and nodded his head. No one in her family will be leveraged into paying her outstanding debt. I wish I could say the same for me.