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I go back once again to the comedy-drama ‘Northern Exposure’ of the 1990’s to one particular episode.  In it, we have Ed, a young American Indian with aspirations to become a filmmaker, walking around the small Alaskan town of Cicely with his camera.  Reversing what white people have long done with the “others,” he is filming white Alaskans’ response to questions about their mythology.  In the end, he comes to the conclusion that whites no longer have a proper mythology with gods and creation stories, but instead have the movies.  Putting aside those white Americans who still very much have god(s) and creation story(ies), let’s just say that Ed is by-in-large true.  Then we would expect Americans, and non-religious Americans in particular, to not only get their clues to the meaning of life from the movies, but also to get their heroes or role models from them.  From these, they would receive choices for how they wish to behave or at least portray themselves to others.
 
Let’s start with John Wayne, aka, the Duke, one of the greatest prototype for males from about the 1930’s through the 60’s.  Out sized, big, swaggering and loud, he stands out immediately in every crowd.  He does not start a fight but is more than happy to finish it, as long as the opponent is both strong and wrong.  He accepts common failings such as drinking and womanizing, but is held to a strict code of humanized warrior ethics.  He does not shirk from duty, but is not afraid to go against the system if it violates his principles of honor and personal freedom.  And he most assuredly does not back down from difficulties, whether in the physical or the social realm.  He willingly puts his life on the line to uphold his principles, for without principles, his life would be meaningless. 
 
We largely did away with John Wayne’s anachronisms in the late sixties, but his prime virtues live on in the cinematic and TV heroes today.  Now, women also have true grit, and for the more edgy, so do gays and even trannies.  While superficial elements have changed, the core values of honor, courage, and self-sacrifice remain, despite blow-back from certain groups that continue to tear at the American aspects of this model, be that the use of guns or the expression of cultural privilege.   With all the changes we have seen in the past sixty years, The Duke’s movie persona has remained a durable model for America, expanding beyond the male audience rather than shrinking into the rural boonies, as some might think it should. 
 
Now, let’s take Don Knots, aka, Deputy Barney Fife from the old TV series, “The Andy Griffith Show.”  A scrawny, nervous man, in this show his badge serves as a crutch for his otherwise cowardly, bullying ways.  As a cop, he is the first to abuse his rank to round up weak and minor miscreants, but he trembles before real criminals.  He shrieks at those who might jay-walk, but has difficulty even pulling the gun from his holster with his trembling hands when danger confronts him.  He is the perfect foil for Sheriff Andy, who is calm, lets minor things go when possible, and is unflappable when confronted with difficult situations or people. 
 
Barney is there for us to laugh at.   We might not be as brave or calm as Andy but we certainly are not as cowardly and bullying as Barney.  He serves as our counter-weight, a character we wish most whole-heartedly to never be, even as we struggle to be Andy, and gaze from far below at the Duke.  Even more, while many of us might be content to slink back into the corners in our mediocrity, no one likes to be laughed at against his intentions.  That is the sharpest rebuke of all. 
 
The Duke is not everybody’s hero; we might look towards deeper (and real) role models such as Gandhi or Jesus.  Still, the bravery and self-sacrifice for noble values expressed by our heroes is cherished by almost all.  But Barney is no one’s hero, as long as he remains Barney.  At times in the role as sheriff, and in other roles Don Knots plays on film, he is loved for pushing past his cowardly instincts to enact heroic values, but he is never loved for being the coward.  Instead he is mocked and laughed at.  We love to laugh at him to assuage our own insecurities, and in that, reaffirm our commitment to the heroic and noble deeds of the Duke, and in this show, to Andy.
 
We all wish to see ourselves as heroes, or our cause as heroic.  In the past, people saw the greater actions around them in terms of their myths.  In the present, while many still see national and world events through religious beliefs, here we are accepting Ed’s proclamation that our new collective myth is found in film.   When it comes to bravery, then, we are often left to choose from the Duke vs Barney dichotomy.  We never wish to see ourselves as Barney, so we must convince ourselves that our roles in major events fall in line with the hero stereotype.  
 
Here is where it gets interesting.
 
We are now past the panic stage in the Corona Crisis and have fallen into two large camps concerning national and international acts.  On the one hand are the “openers” who believe that a vast wave of economic collapse is coming that is much worse than the disease that has caused the world-wide shutdown.  They see those who wish to continue to “shelter in place” as trembling cowards afraid to confront the one in 10 or 20 or 50 thousand chance that they might die from the disease when the upcoming rates of poverty might kill far more and will negatively affect everyone.  They see themselves as brave, reasonable and independent people proudly stepping forth into the Wild West of social disapproval, willing to put up with doxing and hostility to overcome the fearful “proles” who are willing to give up their freedom to the government for some highly dubious security that will magically protect them from suffering and death - forever.   In sum, they see themselves as the Duke or Andy and the rest as the quaking, foolish Barney.   
 
Then there are the “closers” who wish to see the lock-downs continue until everyone is safe.  They see themselves as brave people willing to give up the pleasures of the community and the benefits of good wages to “save grandma.” Rather than trembling in place, they, too, see themselves as the hero, as the quietly competent Andy who will not fly off the handle at the mention of personal sacrifice for the good of the country.   For them, the Duke image is too aggressive and thoughtless, a destructive force driven by raw ego, but they too see themselves as tough and resilient in a more evolved version of the hero.  They do not believe that the Openers are as openly cowardly as Barney, but reflect his twitchy, nervous reactions to danger.   They have in effect tweaked the hero prototype and its counter-type to suit a more civilized version of the hero, just as the patriarchal image of the Duke was modified in the 1970’s.  With this, the Closers come out as the heroes and the Openers as nervous nellies unable to keep their fear of economic failure and their reckless egocentrism in check for the good of us all.
 
And there we have it, a dead-lock where the two main opposing sides envision themselves as the hero standing out against the coward.   Because both see themselves as heroes, neither will budge, for to do so would mean backsliding over to the cowardly side.  Compromise from either side will be hard to reach, for how much economic depression can one side take, or how many dead grandmothers the other?  It seems the log jam might only be broken by a truly grave disaster that shows definitively that one side is more right than the other.  This is a terrifying probability and it is hard to see how it can be avoided without the mediation of someone in power who is truly impartial and well-intentioned. 
 
When I began this essay I hoped that it could be shown that there was a great spiritual way for all of us to solve this, but it seems that there is only one rather small way: for all of us to pray for the appearance and prescience of the right mediator.  For America, this must include the president, but it might not be him who shows the way.  Rather, it might be that the necessary prophet will show up at his door and give him the direction he needs.  In that case, we need to pray not only for a prophet to appear, but for the king to have the wisdom to listen.   In the Judeo-Christian “myth” of the Old Testament, the king often does not have either this wisdom or the good of the people in mind.   In such cases, things usually turn out really, really badly
 
Regardless of what happens, in the end we will see ourselves as heroes, stoic in calamity or joyful in triumph.  We should, however, hope for triumph from whichever side it comes.  The Duke always had to be courageous, but sometimes he had to admit that he was wrong.  Even in the movies, that, too, takes courage.   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

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The last two essays eventually focused on abortion, although it was not mentioned by name in the latter (only as “a clump of cells.”)  This had not been my intention with either one of them.  Rather, something compelled me to roll that issue into the mix.  In the end, for both it made sense and added greater depth and poignancy to the each.  Still, I have always considered abortion a woman’s issue, and until the birth of our son I had no interest in the topic whatsoever.  The question is, what compelled me to write of it now? 
 
Compulsion.  We all have it.  Heck, our dogs have it.  Golden retrievers must fetch sticks from water, border collies must herd, even if it is just people, shepherds must guard and so on.  With people it is not so evident, being as complex as we are.  We’ve all known the kid who turned everything into music, or the one who KNEW that he was going to be a doctor, but that is not the standard course.  Still, something leads us, often against our better judgement or in lieu of any judgement.  What exactly is it that leads us?
 
Back in unwoke days we had some pretty astounding cartoons that spoke to both children and adults.  I recall that several had a particular motif for the cartoon character when he had to decide upon something.  A ghostly angel would appear on his right shoulder and give him benevolent advice, and on the left a devil, to give him selfish advice.  In the cartoons, the character almost always chose the selfish, and was punished for it.  This, deciding between good and evil, certainly might involve a form of compulsion if it concerns a vicious emotion such as vengeance or greed, or if the decision is tainted by drugs or alcohol. 
 
But those are the simple ones.  Deep compulsion is something that often lies outside of careful consideration or even emotions.   It is a persistent nudge that has little to do with making sense.  It is simply a force that informs us of a direction for our lives, whether that involves a career or a move or a choice of a husband or wife.  It is a singular force, I believe, not a collection of “forces,” which, with its subtle nudges, comes from the same source.
 
These nudges do not always lead us to health, wealth and prosperity.  I spoke of the compulsion I had to include the subject of abortion in the past two essays, even though this had not been my original intention.  As said, this topic has not been a major concern in my life.  I also know that by voicing an opinion on it, I might lose a portion of my audience.  But should we deny what is persistently being asked from us?  The source of this “asking” is buried deep within us as a primary motivation for our lives.  We are more closely united with it than to our conscious self.   Compulsion involves the sense that, once tested to make sure it’s not just an emotional bubble or notion, it must be followed.  This is what, colloquially, is called “being true to oneself.”  Thus I have found that we cannot be content in the long run if we do NOT follow that compulsion, even if it leads to material disadvantage.  I know.  Denying that calling in the end usually means being disappointed with ourselves in the long run.  It is like being present at an unfair fight, where we avoid any involvement to save ourselves from harm or ridicule.  In such a case we often learn that by avoiding the immediate negative consequences, we are met with cringing regret from ourselves for years to come.  
 
Such compulsions do not always show themselves to be the best ways to go, even in our lifetimes.  There are many unhappy marriages which began with a calling, and we might never know if the people we affected through it or the children we produced from it will lead to the good.  In fact, we may never know if anything we ever do will ultimately lead to the good.  A prosperous business begun by such a compulsion might lead to spoiled children who do bad things or die from overdoses; we just never know.  Rather, we follow such callings because of their gentle persistence.  Lacking selfish or mean or violent motives, in time they just seem right.  And I believe they are.
 
We must go back to the source.  Few of us will ever be like Moses, with direct conversations with God, but I believe this subtle compulsive force is an aftershock of God’s will, like ripples in a pond.  It is not direct communication, but a call to align ourselves with the will of God and the overall plan of the universe.  And while the will of God is ultimately the greatest of good, in this post -Garden of Eden era we are often called to sacrifice ourselves one way or another.  Our calling, then, is not meant to bring us prosperity or even happiness, but rather a kind of fulfillment that unites us all on a larger plane.  For Christians, the suffering aspects of responding to a deep compulsion is called “carrying the cross,” which they believe is both the duty and privilege of us all.  For the rest, if they are mature, it is simply called “life.”
 
Examples abound.  I, for instance, received what I believe to be a calling for anthropology.  From my current advanced age, I could not have chosen a more economically disastrous profession.  It has led to everything I have now, which at times seems to be some sort of hiatus, like a years-long ‘shelter in place’ scenario.  My life has been changed profoundly by following the calling, however, and has certainly not been placed on hiatus.  Rather, in retrospect, it has been led to a combination of redirection (aka, punishment), reward, and blessing; the first, for the humbling aspect of having no prestigious employment, the second, for all the good things such as family that have come from it, and the third, for the spiritual blessings that have been given me.  These, the spiritual blessings, would almost certainly not have come had I been an involved academic.  In my case, the world of social prestige was forfeited for the spiritual, while the familial was given both as a compensatory bonus and as a path to the spiritual through the heart. 
 
This understanding comes from long years of struggling with the course of my life.  While we must first follow that gentle, persistent compulsion to find our proper way, our camino, and then live it, there must come a time when we look back to understand.  If done honestly, each life then becomes a tale of pivotal choices which, like a crime committed or a lottery win, define what we will be and become.   The compulsion sets the plot, and if followed, brings us to places we could never foresee.  Whether that is for good or bad depends on the faith we have in following the calling and what we learn from it.  Such reflection is often a painful and difficult thing to do, but no novel is any good without tension, conflict, and a profound resolution.  
 
 

 
 
 

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            For some reason these days I have come to appreciate the feel of cool air, of breathing deeply and simply being outdoors.  It is spring and that is probably why, although I can’t remember feeling this way before.  Whatever it might be, this feeling has reminded me again of our trip to Shiloh two years ago last August.  I remember the date well, because the park ranger we talked to brought up the Supreme Court Cavanaugh hearing, telling us, “I know which party to never vote for again,” in his thick Tennessee accent, which seemed to fit so well the site of a Civil War battle pitting, as they say, brother against brother.   At that time, we were on our way to visit my wife’s relatives in Mississippi and were near finishing an audio book about the modern-day search for the Ark of the Covenant, which, when boiled down to its essence, was a box containing the tablets of Moses and the Rod of Aaron – as well as the concentrated presence of God.  It was astoundingly appropriate, for after our visit we looked up the origin of the name Shiloh, and found that the original had been the home of the Ark after the settlement of Israel by the Jews.  
 
            America’s Shiloh is a wonderful place, as rural as it had been in the days of the war, and just as quiet, lending a solemnity to the hundreds of Yankee tombstones that run along a high bank of the Tennessee River.  It is that open space there that connected my new love for the outdoors and Shiloh, which then naturally brought up the story in mind about the Ark and King David.  During David’s time, the Jews fought and lost a battle with the Philistines.  Since it was the custom to carry the Ark into battle for God’s power, when the Jews were defeated, the Ark fell into Philistine hands.  It was a Pyrrhic victory.  Shortly after, the Philistines suffered all sorts of plagues, until they finally dumped the Ark at a site near a temple to Baal, along with a good portion of gold as a guilt offering.  The Jews rejoiced, and David danced as they carried the Ark to its new home in Jerusalem.  Unfortunately, the men carrying the Ark on long polls stumbled at one point, causing one man to reflexively grab the Ark to steady it.  Whereby he fell dead on the spot, which was The Law.  God did not kid around back then.
 
Which brings us at last to the point of this story: that the life of an individual in the Old Testament was worth very little.  During the Exodus, for instance, God plagued the people with poisonous snakes after they had been particularly unfaithful, killing untold thousands.  Later, when the people went against the will of God again by not invading the Promised Land, He had them wander about the desert for 40 years, until, as was said, the last of the disobedient generation of the Exodus had died off.  And on and on it goes from there, the individual and even the masses slaughtered through God’s hand to teach a point.  Obviously, since God made us, He has the right to undo us; but where is the love?   
 
What a difference a thousand years make.  Jesus changed the current of the old beliefs, where people were basically chattel of the king of the realm, to a new one: that each person, no matter how lowly, counted.   In fact, the lowly might come first, as did the poor man Lazarus in the Gospels.  That tale made it incumbent upon us to help the lowly lest we end up as the rich man did, dying of thirst in hell while Lazarus sat at table with Elijah and Moses.  The last was often first in heaven, and the first last.  Let us repeat: now, every man (and woman and child) would count.  No longer should we slaughter a whole nation or even an annoying neighbor without consideration of each and every person involved. 
 
Let’s jump forward a few more thousand years to now, the Ano Coronus – the year of the corona virus.  As the weeks go on of “shelter in place”, aka, “stay at home” edicts, the controversy over when to open up the world and, most importantly, the economy is moving from a simmer to a boil.  The big question is, at what point should we pull the plug on potential victims of the disease to save our economy?  While that question can sound crass, we can rephrase it to sound a little better: at what point should we go back to work to provide for ourselves and our families?  In other words, if this shelter stuff goes on, not only grandma but all of us will eventually die.  This is no longer the Garden of Eden; eventually we all have to live by the sweat of our brow.  But when to change gears?  As our society has switched from the Old Testament to the New Testament model, such decisions have become increasingly difficult.  When do we let someone go so that we might save the masses?  And on whom should that burden be placed?  
 
Of the latter, that is easy: that would be the president, and if we don’t like his decision, we can elect someone else.  But how should he judge?
 
We have been following a bible class by Jeff Cavins on the computer in these times of staying at home, where he expertly weaves the Old and New Testaments together into one seamless fabric.  In a nutshell, we are brought to understand that it is not God but the people who change over time.  In the days when the individual did not count to anyone in authority, be that the king or the head of the house, so they were dealt with by God.  Back then, if some men stumbled over a bump with the Ark and one was smitten to teach a lesson, so be it.  A thousand plus years later, divine judgment decided that people could now understand that everyone counted, which started us on our long and bumpy road to a more humanistic society.   Another such bump brought America to a war that killed hundreds of thousands so that each and every slave could be free.  A hard decision had to be made.  In hindsight, we have seen that it was worth it, although with great sacrifice for many.   
 
Now we have been brought to another crossroads, another bump in the road, again not by a changing god, but by the interaction of man and nature.  Now we are being forced to decide between the life of certain individuals and the bulk of the world. It is clear that at some point we MUST move beyond our crises mode, to save the many by the death of a few.  However, if we are to understand that all crises work beneath the gaze of cosmic forces, how must we understand the reason for this dilemma?  What is this scenario trying to work out for us?  At one time, one man-god sacrificed himself for all humanity.  Hundreds of years later, thousands upon thousands of men sacrificed themselves for an ideal that spread across the world.  Now, once again a decision has to be made. 
 
The ending of a crises is not always good, at least in the short term.  In the Old Testament, the Jews were slaughtered and/or enslaved again and again because, as the authors understood it, Israel had strayed from it covenant.  In the era of the prophets, the northern half of the Jewish kingdom was warned again and again to mend its ways.  When it did not, the northern ten tribes were scattered to the winds by the Assyrians for all time.  A few hundred years later, the Jews of the south were also warned, did not listen, and were captured by the Babylonians.  However, this time they woke up before it was too late.  Returning to the faith, they were also returned to their lands to rebuild the Temple and their collective lives. 
 
Trying times can move us in many ways and for unexpected reasons.  It might just be that we have been stressing the wrong point about our decision at the crossroads.  Maybe it is a different kind of lesson, one that concerns sacrifice and the rights and limits of person-hood.  When we look at ourselves as a culture, when have we sacrificed ourselves for others?  When have we asked others to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole?  And when, to the contrary, have we sacrificed those with no choice or understanding for our own convenience or whim, just as the kings of old did? 
 
Now we are being forced to realize the importance of all lives even as we must decide sooner rather than later that some must be left behind so that others might live.   Life and death on a large scale are once again no longer mere abstractions, whether as an idea or as a clump of cells.  In effect, we are being brought to understand that the handling of life and death is not a simple political game, but rather a hard lesson that probes the depth of our national soul.   Will this new crises wake us up to our selves so that we might come back, sadder but wiser, from whatever our exile has been?  Only God knows.  
 
 

 
We think we have it bad, all ‘sheltered in place’ (who makes up these clumsy phrases anyway?).  When the Jewish revolution against the Romans reached its peak, the Romans did what Romans did best – exterminate.  The Jews who survived either ran to the hills, or grouped at Masada, a mountain redoubt equipped with an underground water supply.  The Romans knew this, but had plenty of time and goods on hand.  They dug in for a siege, to starve the Jews out.  It was, as the writer said, the worst of times for the Jews. 
 
We know the siege worked, not only from the outside reports of the Romans, but from the inside reports of Josephus, a trained Jewish historian who was freed from Roman hands to go with his fellow Jews into Masada.  The Romans, oozing hubris, guaranteed his safety after the assumed fall of the fortress if he would write about what went on behind the walls for the Emperor or any other Roman to read later at his leisure.  He did, and the tale was one of misery.  In the final throws, he told of how the Jews violated one of their greatest Mosaic laws by sacrificing their children, not to Baal or Murdoch or to a golden calf this time, but to their own bellies.  The women, he wrote, would stoke the ovens and roast their own with whatever was left from the grain supplies.  The Roman readers feasted on the horrors, which were even beyond common Roman sensibilities.  Even Josephus was revolted with his own people.
 
We do strange things in crisis, but often times we do not recognize the crises.  Right now we do have one, an adversary that is very well recognized: the ‘Wu Flu’ or corona virus, and with that, we can formulate an attack plan, however mishandled or overblown that it might be.  But Masada warns us that we have another crises that has fallen beneath our collective radar, and as it was at Masada, it is best realized through our children.  At Masada they sacrificed their children for the fighting men to retain strength, because they understood that a lost battle would mean all of their deaths; in the Western world and elsewhere, we are now sacrificing our children because of a spiritual starvation that cannot be measured in decreasing waste size.  Rather, it can only be measured in the degree to which we sacrifice our children.
 
The most obvious way is with abortion, in quantities that would shock even Ancient Rome, over one million a year in America alone.  Most are done not for hardship but for convenience, causing some people to scoff at the shallowness of our younger citizenry.   However, just as the Jews did not kill their own in normal times, neither do our own young women.  Rather, they sacrifice because they are starving for something else that they believe is just as necessary for the continuation of life.  “Convenience” here really means some sort of self-actualization that people feel cannot be achieved with the burden of children.  That it is as pointless as the sacrifice of children at Masada is borne out by studies that show that women, as well as men, do not report being happier or more fulfilled than people from pre-abortion America.  They are, as many might intuitively guess, less fulfilled.  They have, that is, mistakenly concluded that their need lies in freedom of movement, when it is really based on something else entirely.
 
We have passed on our anxious needs for personal self-gratification to our children, our cultural mavens extolling a vast expansion of a child’s freedom of choice.  This self-appointed aristocracy tells us that we should no longer define the rolls our children should have in our society, including such fundamentals as sexual preference and even, irrationally, gender.  We are told that this frees each child to actualize ‘it’-self as its inner spirit calls.  And yet such freedom seems to have created more chaos, not more happiness, as suicide rates among the young have hit record highs and dating, marriage, and birth rates have hit record lows.  The aimlessness and lack of initiative among Millennials is so well known that it has become cliche.
 
We can add many other things to the list, but also make exceptions, knowing that not everything always goes one way.  For instance, I’m sure that the people at Masada had a firmer grasp of their mission in life while under siege, but at such a cost as to make that statement worse than dark humor.  But the trend is fairly clear – we are sacrificing our children for some kind of survival, for that is the only time a people collectively sacrifice their own - but from what do we fear our “genocide”?  Who or what exactly is our enemy?    
 
The answer is fairly obvious to anyone familiar with spiritual realization through any of the traditional religions.  As G.K. Chesterton put it (more or less), ‘every man who opens the door to a brothel is looking for God.’  Of course, he is looking for God in exactly the wrong place, but that is the problem.  The opposite of paradise is disguised to look like paradise, reflecting the lies of Satan or, as they would see it in the East, of material reality.  Sex or drugs, along with rock ‘n roll, seem like paradise until they are taken in the quantities or ways that the paradise- seeker needs.  It is then that the doors to paradise are seen for what they are – the doors to the House of the Rising Sun of ‘ol New Orleans fame.  Bummer.  Mothers tell your children/ not to do as I have done/…
 
We know the rest of the lyrics and the hackneyed moral.  And while the hackneyed moral is none-the-less true, so is the refrain, “Tell your children/ not to do as I have done…”  This we are failing to do.  Instead we kill them in the womb before they can understand a word, or push them forward so that they might continue our futile search in exactly the wrong place, the house of the rising self-gratification.  We – that is, those who follow our rarified culture leaders – reap the same despair as Gautama Buddha’s contemporaries who believed in self-realization through the world.  Both the best and the brightest and the worst and the most despised seem to have made this same mistake throughout the eons, following the siren song of the forbidden fruit.  As God said to Adam and Eve, “To eat of this fruit means death.”  And that is what we are running from, even as we are running to it.  It is the same old foe, death, which had the Jews eat their children, a remedy that proved worse for its moral travesty.  As our children are killed, or “trans-ed,” or kill themselves, we are only conjuring the ghosts of the parents at Masada blocking out the screams of the innocent.
 
It is not so easy to turn around.  Grant me fame and fortune and see if I don’t accept it and fall into the same trap.  The turn towards unlimited moral freedom is easy to do and hard to escape once taken.  After all, we are posing objective success against subjective – or invisible – well- being.   The fate of our children, however, can be measure and weighed, and although it is not all doom and gloom – many of us ignore the pundits of culture – it is clear that the general trend is towards the negative, even as (until the Virus) we have never experience so much success and so much behavioral freedom in our national lives.  Clearly, the reason for this anomaly lies in the fate of all flesh.  Death can never be vanquished through the personal experiences of earthly life.  As history tells us, not even the sacrifice of our children to the gods, or to our own fears or fantasies of greatness, can deliver us from the great equalizer.