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. 

VACATION

  I have been on vacation, for lack of a better word. If you don’t have a job and you’re not looking either, what exactly is a vacation? I suppose it’s when one alters their normal routine in favor os something more enjoyable, more satisfying but likely unsustainable. In the end, falling back on a commonplace routine would seem the unavoidable result. Vacation took me back to some old, fondly remembered places for a couple of weeks and I kept company with long treasured friends. For nearly two weeks the road kept winding through hairpin turns while my truck strained up 7% mountain grades, over 12,000 ft passes and groaned in a lower gear on the way down to the next green valley. Surrounded by 14,000 ft. peaks we made our way past cattle grazing in high, alpine parks and meadows. I anticipated the optical illusion where the truck kept kicking down to a lower gear on what appeared to be a gentle, downgrade and the stream next to the road seemed to flow up hill. It was as if the mountains were mocking us. I love the mountains but that should be obvious here. I love the sea shore as well, where the irresistible force meets an immovable object. Something has to give but that tug of war has been waging for eons; no winners or losers, just give and take, rise and fall. I can stand on a high peak and see in a straight line for a hundred miles to a distant mountain top. Standing barefoot in wet sand I can see only a few miles before the horizon gives way to the curve of the earth but it doesn’t matter. Waves lapping at my feet share a bond with ripples lapping at a beach on another continent. I like to think I share maybe a little bit of that connection.
In the beginning, when the first, modern people searched for food and shelter in mountain valleys and along seashores, all they had to work with were bare hands, the naked eye and primitive tools. Still they wanted to know how and why things worked. Maybe (perhaps) the most important attribute of humankind is that without a factual, qualified backstory we will use imagination and a threadbare experience to create one: the origin of myth. Nowadays there is another option, a legacy of critical thinking, research and creative problem solving but those old, primitive feelings are still deeply rooted in there, inside our neural vault. I understand the ocean’s (epipelagic - sunlit zone) and how it compares to the (bathypeligac - deep, dark water). I understand how tectonic plates subduct and override each other, uplifting mountains where there had been flat lands. Still, as much as I know, the sheer magnitude and overreaching influence of mountains and seas are too much to compete with. There is so much we don’t know or understand, I think we come undone in that vacuum. We like to believe we are the captains of our own destiny but that is our modern myth. We find ourselves in over our heads, simple pieces in a vast, open ended, mind boggling puzzle. On my bravest, most confident day, on the mountain or at the shore; I am reduced to feelings of awe and wonder. Mountain ranges and sea shores do that to me just like they must have with my ancient ancestors. Just when we start feeling important, even proud; Mother Nature serves us a strong dose of humbling irrelevance. That’s when we either fall back into the comfortable myth or swallow our medicine.
Early Greek philosophers surmised that tangible matters fall into the temporal realm while matters that can only be accessed with the mind are spiritual in nature. Later, theologians monopolized the language and presumed divine authority. In that climate anything that alludes to the spirit must conform to their religious persuasion. I prefer the old Greek model. When I experience something both incomprehensible and profoundly relevant I have no trouble playing the ‘Spiritual’ card. It is fixed in my experience and it speaks to something important, greater than my ability of process it but never the less, it is real as real can be. My life has been marked again and again by spiritual experiences that I cannot explain but neither can I blow them off like a sneeze. We (people) overestimate our ability to control and override our feelings. Truth is, they rise to the challenge long before we seek a rational path and that tendency is hardwired.
I will keep going to the mountains and to the shore for as long as I can move my feet. My feelings, and I can’t ignore my feelings, they reduce me to the role of a fly on the wall; I get to watch it all unfold. I don’t need the thrill of climbing the mountain. If I get the view from the top it doesn’t matter how I get there: and if my feet get salty-wet on any shore, they have been by default all over the world. 
Midnight, I was warm and dry on my folding cot, in the shelter of my truck-camper somewhere in western Kansas; pouring rain beat out a healthy rhythm on my aluminum roof. Raindrops the size of peanuts had been on vacation from their mundane commonplace, vaporized, gone for a cloud ride and then jettisoned. We were on our way home, each in our own way. On the road next day I thought about those raindrops booming on my roof. Where had the storm dropped them; maybe breathing new life into a thirsty sunflower. There I go; making myth again. Sometimes I can’t help myself. 

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER

  This will not be entertaining or informative but I’ve had a few weeks where the illusion has worn thin and the need to recenter is too much to dismiss. It’s been over twenty years since the movie, A Few Good Men and the hook line from that movie is what we remember. The scene is set in a courtroom during a military court martial where Tom Cruise is an aggressive young prosecutor and Jack Nicholson is the uncooperative witness. They are in the throws of a heated exchange and Cruise tries to regain control with a passionate plea; “We just want the truth!” Nicholson’s response comes like a cannon shot, full of rage and contempt: “You can’t handle the truth!” My illusion has to do with how slippery the truth can be and whether or not you can deal with it once you have it in your grasp. 
Buddhism leans heavily on the Four Noble Truths. Simply stated they tell us: This life is rooted in suffering, that suffering has a cause but the suffering will end, and that has a cause as well. I am not Buddhist but I think the overarching ideas there are profound. Buddha informs us that separation & avoidance help us along the path of enlightened. Rather than engage, we should strive to isolate from worldly distraction; not with a pious, submissive religion but through our own virtual self (meditation). 
I like the message but I cannot resist, do not want to abstain from the stuff of suffering. I want to warm in the shine and drench in the rain, so I suffer like everyone else. The fact that we are self aware, combining imagination and language to write our own future, it does not save us from whatever destiny has in store. But living in that (deliverance) myth allows enough wiggle room to offset the suffering, at least a little bit, at least for a while. Can we brainwash ourselves into a comfort zone, not all that different than hitting on cocaine or marijuana; maybe so. But you have to keep taking the pill. 
Stoicism is a school of philosophy that I am drawn to. The principle is that one should use reason to overcome self destructive emotions; it defaults to rules and patterns that are consistent with nature. That is truly a tall order as we (humans) have evolved to fall back on emotional conditioning long before we ever consider reason. That observation deserves repeating (long before we ever consider reason). In my attempt to recenter if you will, one's ability to push back against instinctive emotions is central to my purpose. If you have no concept of a parachute or its life saving potential then the thought of jumping out of a plunging, out of control airplane will never move you to action. I tend to be stoic, even skeptical and it (almost) always leaves me in the lurch between my own mortality and human mythology. 

I remember enough from my own experience and have filled in the blanks to see how people fumble the (truth) like football players drop the ball. Germany in 1936, a groundswell of self obsessed patriots put their faith in a narcissist demagogue to make Germany great again. He surrounded himself with subordinates whose first loyalty was to the despot himself rather than their responsibility to their country. We know how that turned out. Germany will never completely shed the embarrassment and shame of that folly. Now, some 80 years later there is groundswell support in America for another narcissist demagogue who is promising to make America great again. He parrots the same racist, nationalistic argument that propelled Adolph H. and his 3rd Reich. I get it! I’m old and irrelevant but I get it and it is terribly disappointing. If one cannot define narcissist, demagogue and despot then they should go dig in the nearest dictionary, right now. The collective history of demagogues reflects and repeats the same scenario, all ending with really, really bad news. 
I like to think I no longer need a buffer (an emotional preset) to ease the suffering. If my logic is nothing more than an unidentified emotion then the joke is one me. But iI'm not afraid of the unknown or life's undesirable, unavoidable destination. It simply is what it is. Meditation and withdrawal are not a cure. I am convinced that a short but exciting ride is better than a long nap. Maybe I’ve brainwashed myself into accepting my insignificant little part in disbursing the human genome. My ego and my culture would favor a comfortable afterlife and a plaque on a pillar somewhere but the illusion and the myth have no legs of their own. There in lies the truth that is so difficult to reconcile. Regardless of how the story goes after I’ve gone; I was here. I identify with Jack Nicholson. If you can’t handle the truth then someone who wrestles with the math and trusts the numbers should be trying to get your attention. I suspect I will wake up tomorrow and take comfort in the new day. It will be good enough but not all that wonderful. After all, a true stoic wouldn’t know how to respond to artificial sweetener. 

CUMPLEAÑOS

  Feliz cumpleaños para me. En la fecha de hoy, mi madre me lanzó en un viaje que me traería aquí, hoy. Gracias mamá y gracias a todos. Hoy se cumplen ochenta y cuatro años de historia de fondo para mí. Todavia tengo la mayoría de mis dientes y todos los huesos rotos han sanado. Soy un milagro que camina y habla.
Mi vida ha sido larga con muchas recompensas y solo unos pocos fracasos. Aún así, esta vida se trata de la lucha y uno debe recordar eso. Comparto la misma fecha de nacimiento pero año diferente con Barrack Obama, un buen hombre pero presidente mediocre y con Percy Shelley, un escritor maravilloso cuya reputación e ideas mejoran. Feliz cumpleaños a mí también a Obama, que sigue vivo, sigue convirtiendo el buen vino en orina. Y no se olvide de Shelley, cuyo legado aun vive.

BIG & LITTLE DOG

  These are the Dog Days of Summer, July 3 thru August 11 if it matters. The Greeks responded to the sultry midsummer and gave it a name. Midsummer was generally associated with drought or storms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs (why I don’t know) and particularly the heat. The “Dog” comes with the constellation ‘Canis Major’ (or Big Dog). The moon rises in the east just like the Sun but it can come up any time of day or night, depending on just where it is in its orbit around the earth and likewise, the stars keep their own schedule but they have a different story. There are ten stars in Canis Major and the Greek astronomers were quick to note that one of them (Sirius) was the brightest star in all of the sky (except for our Sun of course but it does’t count because it is so close to us). So the Big Dog rises in the east, sometimes sooner, sometimes later and they (Greeks) kept close track of that schedule. 
Just so happens; on July 3 (Gregorian) calendar the last constellation to rise before the Sun comes up is Canis Major; The Big Dog. They couldn’t miss it then, we can’t miss it now because Sirius is so bright. Shortly after that the sky turns pink and the Sun comes up. By midwinter the Big Dog has been up all night, starting to sink in the west. So said, they associated Sirius and the Sun coming up so close together as a signal if not the cause for summer’s heat and discomfort.
There is a proud story that accounts for the order in which constellations follow one another across the night sky and what their business is; why the dogs, there are two (Canis Major & Minor) following Orion, the hunter and whose trail is the hunter on? I loved the story when I first heard it but the complexity of two satellites both in rotating and revolving relationships with each other and a relatively fixed star (Sun) if you will; that had to wait for me to grow up. But the Greeks were famous for their stories. 
These are the Dog Days, 2023 on the current Gregorian calendar. Nowadays the Dog reference is no more than cultural carryover from the early Greeks that has found a niche. Back then it had astronomical significance that no longer prevail. The official dates are Greek but we will still be in the Dog Days (Hot) thru August and into September, as long as it is stifling hot and we’re longing for cool nights and some fall color in the trees. We don’t need the stars to tell us, it’s hardwired into our comfort zone. 
But it is hot how, uncomfortably hot. Today makes three days in a row to register three digits, 102 degrees today and a few more forecast in the next week. Some rain on the way and a break in the heat, down into the mid 90’s and then back to lethargy and watching the voltage dial on the electric meter spin. I have a new, improved air conditioner and I can take comfort in that my bill will be less that with the old one. I keep the thermostat set on 80 or 82 while most of my family and friends think I’m trying to prove something. They need it down in the low 70’s or they think they are being punished. I don’t think I’m different, I just remember 100 + when I was a kid and we didn’t have to be told, just go play with the water hose to keep cool. We acclimate to what we’ve got. That is worth repeating, and I don’t want to be fixed on a hook at 68-70 degrees when the Dog Days are set on parboil. If I stay acclimated to the mid 80’s then a 15-20 degree bump can be tolerated; a 35-40 degree bump cannot. With my new AC, if the air is dry and moving I can cope, even take a nap. 
But I hear on the news that all over the world, even here in the U.S.A., people are dropping over from heat exhaustion and some don’t get back up. I should count myself lucky and I do, not just for the heat but the cold as well. I used to brave the blizzard with frost in my nostrils and eyelashes but I come inside now before I have to. If I don’t like the weather where I’m at I can go someplace where it checks to see what I’m wearing before it makes up its mind. By the way, Orion the hunter is following Leo the lion with only a sword and two dogs that don't seem to care one way or the other if they catch up with the lion.