Two nights ago, as a friend and I watched the Packers dominate Kansas City, we both could tell.  I have met quite a few guys, usually at some place where you drink beer, who know everything about a team, and sometimes everything about a lot of teams.  They know the linemen, they watch their blocking or tackling, and they can tell you if someone missed a match-up or were outmaneuvered in the backfield, all while still keeping their eyes on the ball.  That would not be me or my friend.  

However, we both could tell that the Packers  were hot; that Aaron Rogers, the quarterback, was playing to perfection, seeing everything on the field as if in slow motion.  And we both got the immediate impression that these guys were going to the Super Bowl this year.  The next day, the guys who know everything said much the same, but how did we know, Monday morning quarterbacks that we are?  

It's that something, that feel.  We all have it for some things.  I have played guitar for years, for instance, and I don't have to count frets or look for them.  The fingers know.  Traditional bow hunters - not the guys with lazer sights - get their accuracy from feel more than sight.  The same goes for skeet shooters, and probably everything  that requires expertise.  You just get to know.

I recall reading a physiologist describe the "art" of walking.  It is something so complex, requiring the coordination of so many muscles, that it would be extremely difficult to teach.  Yet we come to know.  Language is like that, too; it can be taught, yes, but it can only be mastered by thoughtless practice.  That is why a good language teacher will force you to answer questions in the foreign language in rapid succession.  It is nerve wracking to learn a new language this way, but it is the only way to learn it well where it is not generally spoken.  The plodding of the thinking mind has to be stymied so that a greater knowledge - an intuitive knowledge- can take hold.

This, of course, is at the root of "Zen and Art of" everything.  With Zen, the confusing koans of their wise men are aimed to stop thinking at a specific point. It is then that this something else can take over, this intuitive learning that is essential for mastering anything.  

Over the course of the the game, since it was so in the bag, this friend and I began to wander over religious issues.  We both have long agreed that church is boring, but, for some reason, fruitful for us.  This is, in a literal way, a mystery, for the most poignant point of a Catholic mass is when the priest raises the host and sings (softly), "The mystery of faith."  It is at this point that it is believed that the body and blood of Christ truly comes into the host and wine.  One can believe this or not, but the idea of "mystery" here comes into full focus.  There is blind faith, yes; but there is also informed faith - faith like that of an experienced archer before the target.  He does not know exactly how he does it, but he KNOWS how to hit the target.  

And it is often this way with spiritual faith; something in us knows when we are transcending the truth of this world to a larger, or different truth, even though we couldn't explain it. 

So it happened briefly to me yesterday while taking a walk.  I suddenly understood the truth of the truth of the mystery of faith - that is, I could feel the different but very accurate logic that this entailed.  It was as clear as the song of a certain forest bird I often hear up north, whose tone is so pure that it brings a cascade of memories and something else with it - a sense of something divine. Just like that song, which, when ended, brings the end to everything associated with it, so too with this intuition, the certainty of that knowledge.  In such a short space, that certainty, that hidden knowledge,was lost.  But I could still remember its presence, if not its substance (which is like no other substance).

We live in a world of faith - faith in our speech, in our walk, in our activities and professions, without ever denying their reality.  So what if we don't think about placing the object before the verb, the adjective before the object?  We do it anyway, and its effectiveness is its own proof.  Spiritual faith is much the same, but its proof is obscure - obscure because it is so obvious. We take "being," ours and everything's supremely improbable existence, for granted, for how else could we live?  But this is just like walking, or shooting the arrow - the answer to the mystery is in the hidden knowledge. This spiritual knowledge we know, and know we know now and then, whether from the incantation of a priest of the song of a bird.  But it only becomes conscious unconsciously, not at our beck and call.  When it does come, some call it a gift of grace, and others "awareness."  And in this awareness we see not only the logic of a larger truth, but also sense with certainty that this, more than anything else, is and always has been our guiding light.  Then it goes, leaving us only with a memory of birdsong and a naturally graceful walk. The mystery of faith.  FK            

In 1962, a positive/negative system in the US was in place to start WWIII with nuclear weapons - with either a response from one of the bases that missiles from the USSR were incoming, or with a non-response, meaning that the base(s) was destroyed. At one point, no messages were received from the Thule base in Greenland, the primary responder to incoming across the Arctic. When another base also did not respond, B-52's were scrambled and Polaris subs were notified.  This could be it.  Soon, however, B-52's returning to Thule saw that the base was intact.  The countdown was stopped.  

It came to light that a back-up system that was supposed to be put in by AT&T had not been put in, and that the primary had malfunctioned.  This appalled the high command, and Paul Baran, of the Rand Corp, came to the rescue with a plan "proposing a distributed network with hundreds of thousands of separate nodes connected through multiple paths.  Messages would be broken into smaller "blocks," sent along the first available path, and reassembled at their final destination.  If nodes were out of service or destroyed, the network would automatically adapt and send the data along a route that was still intact." (from Eric Schloser's Command and Control). 

And so the internet was conceived, then brought to light, not with Al Gore but with the threat of nuclear annihilation over 50 years ago.  So, too, were the Titan II missiles made, for long-range nuclear deployment, the same missiles that would propel the astronauts of the Gemini series to the moon.  The nuclear threat would give us these and many other inventions that we consider indispensable today, but that is not its greatest legacy.  Instead, it was fear - fear on a level not seen in America, for our nation, for the first time, faced total annihilation.  And wonder, that we survived. How close destruction came is well chronicled by Eric Schloser, from information not available to anyone without top-secret clearance at the time.  

We all know of the Cuban Missile Crises, although it was not until recently that I learned that by the time of the US blockade, the Soviets had already delivered several hundred nuclear warheads to Cuba and a large armed force.  It was not only Kennedy who was playing brinksmanship.  Just as bad, or worse, was the Berlin Crises.  The USSR would strangle free Berlin by closing the autobahn from West Germany.  The US would not leave 2 million Germans to this fate.  Tanks were amassed along the newly-made Berlin Wall from both sides.  The military commanders strongly recommended a first-strike of the Soviet Union, feeling that war was inevitable.  Kennedy paused, sent soldiers through the autobahn, and the Soviets restrained fire. Both had been on the edge of initial strike.  Nuclear war was avoided by a hair.  

Schloser's book also details many near-accidents at our missile sites, detailing the obfuscation of such near-disasters - not just to hide from the American Public, but to hide our fallibility from the Soviets.  The PR game was difficult, and often made things worse - and ultimately made many of us distrust the military and the government at large, all legacies of the Cold War.  But the chilling fact was, we came this close, so close, to war so many times, either by political posturing or through mechanical malfunctions.  The probability of unintended nuclear explosion was calculated at 100 % over a two or three decade period, and the probability for nuclear war was estimated by many who knew to be just as high.  And yet nothing happened, nothing yet, anyway.  

Given Khrushchev's bluster and Kennedy's failings, it still seems that we should have gone up in a puff of hot smoke.  We know less of Khrushchev, but of Kennedy we know - in the final minutes, he had gone on impulse, on feeling, rather than the practical advice from his advisers.  Something had stilled his hand, had made him play this deadly game just right.  There was no time or place for error, and shockingly, in the final seconds, in all cases, there was none.  

Given the facts, it is not crazy or ignorant to detect a hand of providence in all this, so many 'but for the grace of God' moments.  But many other catastrophes have happened in human history.  Perhaps the  nuclear was simply too big to be allowed - could that be?  We will never know for sure, not in a rational sense.  Many of us, including this writer, have been saved from death by apparent miraculous means, often for reasons we cannot know.  Has human civilization been saved, too, for reasons beyond simply living?  The Cold war begs these questions.  I cannot give a definitive answer. But if one looks for the hand of God in a big way, there is no greater suggestion of its existence than in our current existence.  Perhaps this is a call for us to think about why we were saved, and to search for the meaning in our lives that would make us worthy of such a miracle.  And to pray that, for whatever reason, we remain worthy.  The game has paused, but it is not yet over.  FK      

                        

The Pope is here, as everyone knows, and he is a different kind of pope.  Like millions of other people, including non-Catholics,  I feel I have a special relationship with him, for we saw him two years ago in Vatican Square, along with 100 thousand others. We have a picture of him from our own camera, as he came riding by less than 10 feet from us.  I have, on my desk, a medallion of the Virgin that was blessed (en masse - we held our items in the air, like so many pagans, for the blessing) by the Pope.  He is quiet of voice, gentle of voice, understanding, not only willing to forgive, but anxious to.  

We feel that he is in our corner, this holy man, who Matt Lauer said was "Buddhist-like," as if only Orientals - I use the old term on purpose - had inner holiness and peace.  He wants not to condemn, but to heal.  That is clear.  A cloud follows him, that is for sure, one that is exhaled by our own political concerns, from Global Warming to Abortion.  But that is our problem, not the Pope's.  What he wants is clear - healing and brotherhood.  We might believe he caters to our own visions, or does not, based on his stances that are used politically, but that is not his point. If I can be so presumptuous, that is, for what do I know?  

For I cannot prove this intellectually.  It is in the feel of him, the Pope's aura, that I make that statement.  Talking to a friend of mine a few days ago, one who has long been dismissive of Catholicism, I was somewhat surprised to hear her say that this visit "is a point of change for the world."  She said she could feel it.  I coldly replied that, based on the normal stream of events, his presence was less than world-changing; that it palled in comparison to, say, Russia's involvement in Syria.  I reasoned that she, as an intellectual and foe of capitalism, found his presence important because he believed as she did on this issue. 

Now I am not so sure, and in fact am coming to believe, hoping to believe.  It is not only that Pope Francis's messages challenge everyone - would the anti-capitalists agree with his views on abortion or gay marriage? - just as Christ did, but that he operates on this different level, what Lauer called Buddhist- like. I do believe strongly in the strength of presence.  Miracles alone did not make Jesus the Christ to his followers, just as Antisemitism alone did not make Hitler.  Just as we have dream worlds that seem so complete to us in a dream, so we have other avenues of experience that deeply affect us.  Dreams are usually personal, but spiritual presence is its own world, one that can be universalized.  Dreams are unconscious, as we understand it, and we know full well that the unconscious is behind many of our greatest decisions - from whom we marry to our political and religious beliefs.  Yet we do not always know where these impulses come from.  Much of social science is dedicated to this mystery, and social science is far from answering decidedly this fundamental question.  

Neither do we know how the spirit works, but it does work.  Faith has, indeed, moved mountains, but the mountains are, more often than not, not of this world - just like spiritual power.  It works in mysterious ways.  It does not work through proclamations about global warming, but in the presence of that something special.  It is this something special that Pope Francis has, and this, we could only hope, would be recognized definitively by the chattering political heads in the news.  Matt Lauer got it more right than he knew.  

They will not recognize this, but many of us already DO have a sense of this spiritual quality that we cannot explain.  It will not work its wonders through legislation, but, as Christians would say, through the heart.  That is the mountain that is to be moved. How it will be translated into action in this world, from a spiritual perspective, is not the most important part of it, but for us, it often is, and this we cannot know; thank God, for if we did, we would screw it up.  Who can tell what can grow from an unknown seed? But I can feel it, yes, and I hope my friend is right.  The spirit is there, but are we willing?  Are we willing to let our sails pick up the wind that blows us to who-knows-where? 

We should be.  As every heart beat I have tells me, this life passes.  There is something more, much much more, and sometimes it comes to us more clearly than at others.  Perhaps it comes to us now, with a force that we cannot know but that will lead this world with the wiser hand that comes from beyond impulse, from the heart of the mystery of being itself.  FK                 
               

This morning I was awoken by the click of the door, unusual as I am usually the first up, and when I entered the living room/TV room, the NBC morning show was already on, something we watch by habit to get the weather.  I stood before the screen, still fuddled by sleep, and saw one of the hosts interviewing a somewhat elderly man with soft blue eyes and a slightly unkempt appearance that made it clear he did not spend much time before the mirror.  He was the epitome of calm, and more, of kindness, as he spoke to the interviewer, his voice filled with compassion.  I kept watching.

His name was (something) Paul, and he had written a spiritual book titled The Shack.  This had been done while he was working at menial jobs, and he had self-printed a dozen of them for his friends and family, never meaning to publish it for the public. Somehow (I did not find out how), it had been published and, to this date, has sold 25 million copies.  Wow.  

After the interview, while helping my wife change the bed, I mentioned this ruefully.  "Man, why doesn't something like that happen to me?"  I was joking, but his story had prodded a little envy.  I, too, have written spiritually-oriented books, several of them, and all have been rejected by the agents.  I live with it. Life is pretty good, regardless, but still there is that prod.  Why, I asked myself, have I been "called" to such things without success, while actively trying to find a publisher, while this guy practically walks into a fortune?  

Yes, there was another part to the story, or the piece of it I had heard: Paul had been sexually molested as a child (not by a priest - he was raised an Evangelical), and, he said, he had spent the last 50 years working his way out of it.  He had paid a heavy price to find that we must all work towards knowing God, and that this was done through relationships - the very heart of the message of Christ.  He had, then, paid his dues, and they were heavy indeed.  Like Christ, he had lived and died in a way, and had to find his own form of resurrection.  This, clearly, he had done, only incidentally getting rich in the process.

Whether I would trade this type of suffering for success, however, is beside the point of this piece.  Lately, a few things (one thing in particular) have not been going the way I would have liked.  Just as almost everyone with some belief in a higher power, I have prayed that these things would work out to my liking, and so far, they have not - and may never.  I, again, have taken this ruefully, having determined that prayer of this sort does no good. Sometimes slipping into the blackness that believes there is no caring God, I eventually always go the other way - that is, that I determine that I do not know what is best. It is, I know, a philosophically sloppy way to think: that is, if God seems to grant a favor, then that is proof that It is a caring God; and if not, that I simply don't understand.  I could not win any skeptics over with such an argument.

However, there have been times of late - usually literally "of late," for they take place in the middle of the night - where I have truly considered my desires, and surprisingly, have found them not only very shallow, but perhaps not right.  At these times, a proposition has formed in my mind, one that seems genuine: "OK, if you really feel that these desires are right (and they are not for world domination or anything that would hurt others), then you can have them."  The truth of these then seemed to spread out, simply and starkly, and I have had to admit to myself that I do NOT necessarily want them; that, indeed, my desires have been presumptuous, a product only of mundane social values. That they might happen would not hurt anyone, as said, and only, as far as I know, help; but I could clearly see that I did not know their meaning, and what affects they would have on those involved in the long run.  I have had to admit, with a certain special insight, that the answering of those prayers might not be a blessing at all.

Can I convince a skeptic of the righteousness of the world, even as it continues to be swaddled in very bad things?  I don't think so, for I can scarcely hold to this myself.  Has, for instance, the trauma the author Paul received in childhood been worth it?  Has the saran gas that was wafted through the neighborhoods of civilians in Syria been worth it?  If not, where, then, is the will of God?  But I can only say that I have seen a touch of my own foolishness, not in the guise of a punishing Divine Intelligence, but in an intelligent one.  The incidents make me no more worthy of anything, but they do make me a tad wiser, a bit chastened like a child caught doing foolish or mean things.  They have made me understand, just a bit more, that I don't know the answers or the way, which, I suppose, is a necessary step along this very way.  FK            

I normally leave weekends to mowing lawns and cutting brush, but an insight came to me this morning after reading the spell-binding non- fiction historical documentary, Command and Control by Eric Schlosser.  This is another book we picked up at the old nuclear missile site we visited in South Dakota a few weeks ago, and boy, is it appropriate.  There will be much more on this critical book this week, but for now, the insight:

It was so obvious that I almost slapped my head, V-8 style, regarding my last long (perhaps too long) blog about cultural structure from yesterday.  What, the question is begged, causes structural change?  If we compare it to biology, we can postulate that it can happen either gradually or suddenly - corresponding to the steady change often seen in evolution, or the sudden changes summed up in the term "punctuated equilibrium." Regarding culture, slow change would mean that the changes happen within the cultural structure itself - its natural unfolding. This is what Marx saw in capitalism - that it naturally would produce a unified world-wide proletariat.  He did not imagine, I think, sudden changes.  In this book, we find one thing, one really big thing that caused people to move outside the cultural box - the nuclear bomb.  It was with this, Schlosser points out, that normal Americans, including congressmen and military commanders, began to speak openly of a one-world government.  It was not for industry or making money, but for world safety, for they were sure that without a unified world, we would blow ourselves up.  The one- world was essential for survival.

And it might be.  As we move towards this entity, for we surely are, the converging unity of nations and cultures is being used (and caused) by industry for profit, most certainly.  But the greater impulse for this unity was not based on Marx's cynical view of Big Money.

And that, oddly, is where we might find the greatest hope, for it was probably the A-Bomb itself that made a greater number of people aware for the first time that human activity could cause major changes to the earth. The structure of capitalism, then, remained somewhat intact, but the dichotomy that exists in all cultures - that is, the internal inconsistencies that give them movement towards an end - was changed.  The notion of class struggle, once at the heart of capitalist society, had been changed for many; for many, then and now, the struggle has become, instead, a struggle between big money and the survival of life on earth.  And while this notion has often been co-opted by big money and Marxists alike, the original threat remains in the minds of most of us. This has now become a part of the expanding cultural psyche, and may make all the difference in the world.  In the end, survival tops power and money (almost) every time.   

Now to mow the lawn. Perhaps I should just buy some sheep. FK      

        

For a few years now, I've been looking at the campers that whiz by on the highways and set up at the parks, and I came to mention them to my wife.  Mention them is all, which is normally my way, but she's a doer, and after several uncomfortable nights in a tent on our trip out west, suddenly the search for a camper became frighteningly real.  A pop-up was the intention, because it is cheaper and has a low profile that allows for better mileage and easier handling, but really, I had never REALLY wanted one. Stuff!  As my father used to say, "You don't own things, they own you."  

True enough.  After I was forced to follow my words by looking at several, we came across one that was old but spotless, kept in a garage.  At 13 feet unopened, it was too big, but our son said, "get it!  If it's in good shape, go for it!"  So before I knew it, my stomach churning, we had forked over the cash and stashed the ungainly thing in the back yard.  With un-mowed grass already sprouting beneath it, it was decided - why not? - that we would visit Door County, the peninsula of Wisconsin jutting into Lake Michigan that formed Green Bay.  It was the only time to go, after all, for we had heard that is it was too crowded to camp before Labor Day.  It was famous for great beaches and cherries.  We started the drive almost early, with the dog pacing nervously in the back as the trailer bumped and squeak with every crack in the highway.  In a few hours we were past Green Bay, the city, and then the waterway that separated Door County from the mainland.  We had arrived as Gypsies, our tent-on-wheels behind us, our animal riding with us - just like a million before us that summer alone.

Soon we were engulfed  by the Taffy Towns, as I call them, memory going back to the kitsch of tourist spots on the North East coast where salt water taffy seemed to make up the bulk of the diet.  There were no Indian chiefs standing there to take a picture with, as there had been in many tourist spots in my youth before such things became politically in-correct, nor any live bears (for the same reason), but everything else was there. Whole towns had the look of a Disneyland replicate village, with quaint shutters and Norwegian designs on guest houses, as well as the McMansion additions from the 80's, whose facade tried to remind tourists of old Newport wealth.  A fantasy land, bright and cheery but somewhat depressing, too.  Depressing because real authenticity had been thoroughly commercialized.  Depressing, too, because so much of the land outside the parks had been turned into Fantasy Vacation Homes, with the same quasi-Scandinavian and New England Coast facades.  Where, I had to ask myself, had this design, this template, originated?  Not just the fantasy land facades, but the recreation of wealth, of over-building, of excitement over northern land that was never more than forest and, then, pasturage?

I have touched on this before, but here I think I can go deeper, for here we not only have the culturally- structured concept of wealth in recreation, but also of development.  This struck me as I read a park sign detailing the history of Peninsula Park, where we had bedded down with our old behemoth  pop-up.  The first farmer in the area had settled in 1850, and by 1900 the county was already filling to farming capacity, the woods largely fallen to the ax.  And so the park was proposed, and then enacted in 1914, give or take a year, to save the last of the land from development that everyone knew would come.  

And that, I realized, was the point - everyone knew with certainty that this area, and all of the land of the country, would be developed, as in used, to the maximum extent of the technology and population density patterns of the time.  But how did they know?
  
It might seem a matter of practical observation, but I think it was more than that: it was that the Europeans who came to the New World had a concept of what "settled" meant, and were going to fulfill it. It was, that is, a cultural concept, a structure of mind that would be fulfilled without conscious thought, a future as structured as the buildings and towns of the tourist fantasy lands. It was how they thought, and it would be done - and was.

What, then, of our current structure of mind?  It is changing rapidly from the earlier European design, just as Europe's design is changing, to the post-industrial concept. This is  transnational, and relies more on the Asiatic structure of absolute utility, formed from its thousands of years of high civilization.  In it, Europe and its fellow developed nations are to populate and transform everything that can be populated and transformed.  It is a structure, a design, taken up heartily by our trans-national leaders.  We can see it in immigration numbers; as the developed West started having less babies, it also started importing more people, and then more, and then a lot more.  The Asiatic structure has taken hold of the ruling elite, and so it will be.  Door county and every place else in this nation will be packed until it can be packed no more, and then packed some more as changing technology and forms of government allow it.  The structure is the tail wagging the dog.  Only the parks and a few waste lands will be left.  

I don't like it.  I am from a different tradition, but many city people and new people from other backgrounds will find it very normal. Some will say the structure is a form of Marxist movement, in that all tribes and nations and ethnicities are being rolled into one, so that all humanity will simply be undifferentiated cogs in the productive, money-making machine.  It is then that the true revolution will occur, and is for this reason that the left is all for it. Destroy the old to make the new.  You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. 

From my perspective, though, so much of nature will be destroyed in the process that it is not worth the price.  And I wonder - Marx, writing from the 1840's, did not have a clue as to environmental concerns, as no one else did at the time.  But we do now.  My question, and hope, Is that our mental structure is not governed only by commerce and power.  Our minds, after all , are natural products.  Shouldn't our cultural concept of the future change as we take environmental concerns into account?  Not, as now, with little stop-gaps like recycling, but with an all- out rejection of the concept of build and fill to capacity (and then some)?  

I have often written here of the future - will it end in a bang or whimper, or will we start something new before the wailing and gnashing of teeth becomes global?  This is just another angle, but an important one, for it figures into the immediate environment.  Here, the old ways, from the Euro-American model to the tribal, are trying to pull us back from the new, transnational way, but the leaders' mental structures have already changed. But can they change again in time to save what the old ways did not even know they were saving?  Will the natural in our mind assert itself before the looming fate of endless cities and central planning becomes the global reality?  

As always, I don't know.  There is a hint, and a good one, that the new "one world structure" is already changing for the better.  But in some emerging economies, this new iteration is still off the radar.  It will all come down to timing.  FK 

It is not often that one sees creativity or anything out of mainstream thought in the newspaper.  Yes, there are decent analysis in the op-ed sections, but radical ideas?  No.  In fact, it seems imperative to newspaper people that they always maintain a "sane" public persona.  This is more limiting, I think, than most know, for they hem themselves into a herd, or in this case, the beltway mentality, which is often wrong.  Which is why psychologist Phillip Chard's syndicated column is so unusual, and so appropriate. 

Yes, he is a little too politically correct - you can hear the California Big Sur mentality in his voice a little too loudly at times - but his ideas are often strikingly off the beaten path, and often so right.  A sermon at church yesterday (the new priest is on a roll) reminded me of one of his latest, this on self-esteem.  How do you build it up for those in need? was the question.  The answer was - well, you don't.  

You don't because self-esteem is built on the image others have of you.  You may repeat to yourself "I am great" all day long, but as soon as others politely, or not so politely, reject your work or words, the self-esteem bubble is popped.  We are, after all, social animals, and biologically conditioned to respond to others.  It is why newspapers are so gray - to bring in the customers.  But also often wrong.  They work necessarily on self-esteem, with subscription numbers the reflection of the reporter's self esteem. It is a delicate castle of sand indeed.

Instead, says Chard, one must work for self forgiveness.  Admit that no one, including oneself, is perfect, and then treat yourself as you would a good friend.  OK, so you got a little drunk and acted like a fool the other night - so what?  It was entertaining. Forgive yourself.  Wouldn't you, if your self were a friend, simply laugh it off?  

Good advice, since it gets to the nut of the self-esteem issue, that it is a reflection of social interaction, and as such, mutable.  Too mutable to build a stable self-image upon.  

The Catholic Church has a different perspective, one that millions have fled, some fiercely.  It is easy to see why.  To the Church, we are all sinners.  It makes one feel bad, but one has to admit that it places us all in the same boat - all of us.  To put it crudely, for the Church, everybody's excrement stinks. But this, that we are all sinners and thus equal, does not complete the psychotherapy that the Church offers.  This the priest reminded us of the other day.  As I understood it, the "self" is not only a sinner, but not our true self.  For the true self to be revealed, we must peal away the superficial self.  How this is done is exactly the opposite of traditional self -esteem enhancement.  It is, as the priest said, a matter of slowly, permanently turning one's life and actions over to Christ, to fulfill His mission of complete love for all. It is denying the selfish impulses, many of which arise exactly because of the need for self esteem.  It is based more often than not on denying self-esteem.  

And just like Phillip Chard's method, it is better than "esteem building." In fact, it is better than Chard's rather tepid method of self forgiveness, for Chard  forgets one thing: in the real world, beneath the surface, life is a dark and scary place.  The real self cannot be sustained by niceties such as Chard's self-forgiveness. But to position oneself next to God - to strive to work with the will of God - is a goal that is inexhaustible.   It can work under any conditions, no matter how brutal.  It can support the self, the deeper more serious self, always.  

Religion demands a hell of a lot, and many simply do not want to give what it demands.  I certainly understand, for I am often among those who run from it.  On the other hand, what it gives back is much more than self-esteem, or even forgiveness - it is, rather, the power of life in the face of death, the death all selves know they must face.  I can't think of a psychotherapy that can top that.  FK    

Just as the mass migration of Middle East and Northern African people into Europe hit the news, I had finished the second of two books this week which eerily point out the different perspectives for those who seek what to do about it.  The first, Mama Koko, by Lisa Shannon, is a non-fiction that focuses on the trials of a woman from the Congo, Francisca, who has moved to the US with her American husband, but has heard disturbing news of atrocities by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in her home town. Shannon, a self-employed humanitarian reporter and activist, convinces Francisca to take her back there, so that Lisa might interview and film her family, to make the plight known to the world. 

It is written in reportorial style, sometimes carrying in its simplicity more impact than a more emotional journal.  People are being killed, tortured, raped, and children are being forced to be soldiers and sex slaves.  The central government's forces are sometimes as brutal as the guerrillas.  Shannon begs us for more action - for food, for US intervention, for something to stop the death in the Congo (now called the Republic of Congo, once Zaire) where, since independence in 1961, nearly 6 million have died because of the violence.  We feel for the people, of course, as we come to know them.  What a waste, we think; these were not refugees, but  self-supporting farmers and shop keepers who are now forced to live on scraps and hand-outs.  Shannon also points to the US role in this - the overthrow of Lumumba (sp?), the first democratically elected leader, in the early 1960's.  He had cozied up a little too tightly with the USSR at the height of the cold war.

I mention this last bit to show how Shannon both looks to the US for aid, and finds blame in its actions.  It is often the way of the great powers - that whatever their intention, the fallout from their actions makes things worse.  It is relevant to the crises in the Mideast - intervention in Iraq may have made things worse, but non-intervention since has also led to the humanitarian crises of the refugees.  Even in this, action or no action, the world becomes suddenly very complex.

The the next book, a fiction titled One Second After by William Forstchen.  It is about what would happen if an enemy nation burst an atomic bomb over the US in the upper atmosphere.  We find that, in the real world, most electronics, from those in computers to those in cars and energy distribution plants, would be fried.  Almost nothing requiring electricity, outside of the simplest of machinery, would work.  Tech would go back to the mid 19th century in a world dependent on 21st century technology.  

The fictional story is set in a small college town near Asheville, NC.  After the EMP (electo magnetic pulse caused by the high atmosphere nuke) stops everything, people begin to die.  Within a month, Asheville tells the small town that it must accept 5 thousand refugees from its city.  The small town considers what would happen - how they would all starve in a matter of  weeks - and tells them to pound sand.  After that, a cordon is kept at the highway, forcing those on the road to continue moving past their town.  Little children die.  Women offer themselves for scraps of food.  It is disturbing, and likely, because it is exactly what happened in other areas of the world in such situations, from post WWII Europe to current areas in Africa (and now, the Mideast). But the small town persists, for its own survival.  We understand it must, or all would die.  It is the classic case of triage that comes about in almost every area of extreme disaster.  

What, then, to do in Europe?  Shannon's view would be that we have to help, but everything that outside powers have done, and not done, has helped to create this situation (it is still largely, though, a result of domestic unrest).  Forstchen, on the other hand, would probably have Europe turn most of the refugees away, perhaps containing them in camps and feeding them, as much as they could, until things got better at home.  He, too, is right; taking the refugees in will increase the flow, until Europe is no longer Europe - and until, perhaps, Europe, too, is impoverished and fomenting with the same anger as that in the Mideast.  For Forstchen, they, we, all must first look to their own survival.  

Pope Francis has called for the most open of compassion, as he must.  But it might lead to the demise of everything, all the humanitarian compassion and wealth, that Europe now has.  It is easy to give if it does not hurt, but a different story when it does.  

I do cannot tell anyone what to do here, in this situation or with our own problem with migrants and refugees, except for this: the Pope should tell us the whole truth, the truth that he works from, from the words of the Gospel.  As Christ said, we must not look for our rewards here, but in heaven; and when asked for our coat, should give our cloak or another as well.  For Christ, the loser is the winner; the town that sacrifices its life even though all will die, the better one.  I cannot argue with Christ, and I can say simply enough, that if we have extra, we should try to find a way to help - one that will not make things worse.  But it should be noted, and the Pope should remind us clearly, that being Christian more often than not does not come with earthly rewards.  Wealth and power go to those who take and keep.  Failure and starvation and death go to those who don't fight to keep what they have.  It is the greater reality of our world.  

So, give, give all, if that is what one, or a nation, wants to do.  It is the Christian thing.  But do not expect a reward, either now or later from the countries that have been helped.  We should all understand this.  If one wants to live by true Christian compassion, expect the worst in this world, for it is more likely than not that it will come.  One's reward will be in heaven only. Once understood, once understood that one's children might be the next ones dying of starvation at the side of the road, then act. Act from the truth.  That is what the Pope should be telling us, and Europe, now.  FK 

Like many of us, a year or two ago, my PC suddenly gave me Yahoo as a face page.  Before, it had been MSN, which reported at least some of the news in near-real time, but Yahoo gives me something else - that is, everything.  While I once had boned up on popular culture while standing in line at the grocery store (alien babies!), I now get to know everything that's happening in the breathless world of schlock at a glance - Kimye and Caitlin, ex-wives and divorce rumors, nipple slips and baby bumps, and something even more - I learn how to find myself.  

Be it how I sleep - if on my back, I am stingy or artistic - or the length of my index finger (not what men think, alas.  Supposedly, the length will tell you if you have more testosterone, which will make a man more likely to cheat), they give me the ways to find out about the most marvelous person in the universe - ME!  How mysterious is this fellow living inside me!  I had no idea.  Tell me again - am I an artist, a recluse, a good lover?  Without such tell-tale signs, after all, how could I possibly know?  

My sarcasm is not hard to find here, but they are on to something.  Back in my early years, there was a character in, I think, the Rocky and Bullwinkle show called Mr Peeble.  Small, bespectacled and with a ridiculous mustache, he was the epitome of the humble, introverted man.  Anyone could see it.  But could Mr Peeble?  Or was he more like James Thurber's character Walter Mitty, a hen-pecked man who imagined himself a daring hero much like Indiana Jones?  Did Mr Peeble fool himself into thinking that he was something else?  Would Mr Peeble have to examine how he dots his I's to find, according to the experts, that he was really only a milquetoast?  

I suspect that to be true, at least in part.  I have been surprised more than once to find out through the grape vine that others had commented on me in ways I didn't think possible.  And I have found through introspection that the lovable self that I see has not always been lovable - or brave or squarely moral.  Often this has come, from my self, as news to me.  Then again, the reverse has happened.  Clearly I do not know my self.

In fact, others often seem to know a lot more about us than we do.  They see the swagger for what it is, a cover-up, even as we choose to believe the swagger.  Although we could always ask others who know us well what they think of us, we shirk, and for good reason. Those who wish to remain our friends, in spite of everything, don't want to tell us of our foolish aspects.  And so, we look to the index finger and the doted "I" for information as to our true nature.  It's about as dumb as finding alien babies at the grocery store, but still we are fascinated.  Who is this secret self?

At church last night, the new priest (a German with a Scottish accent) gave an interesting account of a saint ( I forget the name) in 405 AD who heard a voice from God - go to Rome!  He could not refuse, of course, and he made the long trip from Anatolia to Rome on foot, at last arriving at the heart of the Western world.  Wanting to understand Rome, he went to the Coliseum to see what the fuss was about, and there saw the gladiators involved in fights to the death.  While others  applauded in a frenzy of excitement, he was appalled, and said so.  No one heard him.  So he jumped into the arena saying, "in the name of Christ, stop this senseless killing!"  When the gladiators found that he was not a clown for entertainment, they cut him to pieces.  The crowd became silent, and then they and the emperor left.  The following day, the games were decreed officially over.  They had, collectively, found shame.

As the priest put it, they did not know themselves, could not see their diversions in a different light, could not understand their barbarity until it was pointed out to them.  I will not get into the argument about moral relativism here.  It is not the point, because the nation suddenly saw itself in a different light, for better or for worse. What had once been obscured had suddenly become clear, like a man confronted by his family and friends over his drinking.  

Others see in ourselves what we do not, often more clearly.  We know that we do not know ourselves.  But, as a politician once put it, we often do not know what we do not know.  We often have no frame of reference, unlike the Romans in this case, to mirror our true selves.  We know that we are missing something, as others see us differently, and as out dreams tell us, but we are unaware of how much we do not know.  There is far more to all of us than Mr Peeble or Indiana Jones.  We can know this only if we leave behind our normal references, which is not easy, but which has been done.  It is here where we learn that mortality, that success, that being human is something entirely different from what we have ever been told.  The Kingdom of Heaven is right here, right now, if we have, as Jesus said, eyes to see.  Our reference, here, is only unadorned reality itself.  It shouts "this is an eternal mystery of which you are a part!  This is greater than your greatest desires or dreams, if you could just stop what you're doing and SEE!"  But reality does not speak to us like the priest in Rome.  It references something that we know, but have made unknown.  We do not know it, but we do.  And like the Romans, one sight of it would clear away all the others in an instant.  At least for that instant.  

Others, or handwriting, or how we sleep may tell us what we do not know - or hide - about ourselves.  Small potatoes, this self. That other self, which no one can see in us if they do not see it in themselves, exists in the everlasting stars, as well as in the grain of sand.  We DO have the eyes to see.  What we lack, but can have, is the vision.  FK                             

Years ago, when I lived in Ann Arbor,  I was given a questionnaire that spoke of "taking stock" of your life.  I was not sure what that meant then, but I do now; for just as spring is the time for new beginnings, and fall is about storing up, the later - for those old enough - is also about "taking stock."  For me, this usually is shrouded in a gauze of nostalgia, of remembering past summers, friends and lovers and good times, things I think are past simply because summer is now past.  

This year, I have to admit, it is also tinged with a dose of depression.  At my age, there are few great things that I am likely to accomplish.  At this age, seen through the bifocals of fall, it is more about failures, of poor choices and lazy attitude that have led to a mediocre life.  It is not part of my usual disposition, but here it is.  As it is not part of my usual disposition, my first reaction to this is, to hell with it.  How better can we waste our time than to worry about things that have not been and can never be?  

But it remains, and it reminds me of the last blog, of Levi-Strauss's contempt for the northerner as he bustles about every fall to lay in stock.  I now see his reason.  It is not only because of the seasonal variations of the north that we do so, but because the variations have caused social expectations that massage our emotions.  For instance, early winter is a time of excitement because of the holidays we have placed in it, not because of the cold; and spring is a time of bustling, not because of the new green so much as our (historic) reliance on agriculture.  The emotions raised are largely contingent on the social aspects of the seasons rather than the seasons themselves.  We, our core emotional states, are manipulated by the expectations of those around us.  In spring, the good man tills the soil; in fall, he places the fruits of his labor in the barn and, if he is successful, has this to boast about.  If he is not successful, he not only places his family at jeopardy for the winter, but shows himself to be inadequate before all his neighbors.  Everyone, then, gets to "take stock" literally, and assign themselves to a position on the social totem pole.  

This has led us, in this post-agricultural age (for most), to access ourselves still in the fall, even as our barns are no longer built. And while this taking stock might adequately represent our economic fragility, it usually does more: we assess ourselves with the eyes of our neighbors, with our social links and ultimately with our greater society.  Today, one is not a failure simply because one has not cultivated his crops properly; instead, one compares oneself to a social ideal that had been set within ourselves before we could remember, before we could carefully choose which expectations we valued.  Our values, then, often become the values of those whose values we do not consciously wish to share.  Against our will, we assess our "barns" with others eyes, and often come up short.  Perhaps, always come up short.

I have just finished one book and am reading another, the latter titled Mama Koko by Lisa Shannon.  It is about a woman from the Congo who married an American and came to live with him in Oregon.  Years later, another of several bloody episodes has erupted in her natal home, this time perpetrated by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army, a different take on the current zealots of the notorious Boko Haram.  The woman flies with the author to the city of her relatives, and we relive the horrors of the past as well as the horrors of the present.  I am not yet finished, but there, the people only wish things to go back to normal; there, they only want to go about their chores, planting crops and dancing with friends and relatives.  They only want it as it once was, now and then, without war.

The other book is The Summer of Deliverance by Christopher Dickey, son of author and poet James Dickey (Deliverance).  I ordered the book because, back in 1971, James Dickey came to our school as a coup for my English teacher, who had been a college friend.  During lunch the day after his arrival, my teacher came up to me with horror in his eyes, to ask that I introduce Dickey as he entered the dining hall.  With a 17 - year old's bravado, I glad-handed him in, only to see this tall, somewhat fat man staggering towards a far-away table, supported by my teacher.  He was dead drunk at noon.  Later, we learned that he had gotten horribly drunk at the faculty reception the night before, until the host had hid the liquor.  He then wandered the town looking for more, walking into a stranger's house and causing, as can be imagined, quite a stir.  

Dickey's story is far from unique.  He had sought fame desperately and gotten it, but his life had run out of control.  His first wife died of alcohol, drinking with him as company, but also to forget his frequent affairs.  His second wife became a violent drunk.  His children all suffered.  As he died, he still had a barn far fuller than most of us, but the 'house', the family, was in ruins. The book spoke of a final deliverance, but we know that the damage done by his quest and his success was permanent, forever.

Whose assessment do we choose?  In the Congo, I would be seen as a success, with a full barn and a decent family.  From the steps of academia, or the golden ghetto of Greenwich , Ct., I would be seen as a putz, a light-weight.  I have taken the harsher views.  But neither are truly correct.  Self-assessment should ideally be the work of the private will.  Is an impoverished priest working with the poor a failure?  Is the thrice-married rocker with five platinum records a success?  Socially, we think we approve of the former, but, in the darkness of the social unconscious, we really approve of the latter.  Both views, though, might not fit; both might not fit YOU.  For in the end, it is not about the social view of success, rich or poor, but of the success of one's inner goal.  Happiness is to be found, I believe, with finding this inner goal, this imprimatur that I believe we all have stamped on our souls from the beginning.  It is about finding self, first and last. The Greeks had it right - to thine own self be true.  The trick is in finding it; the trick is not to be tricked, to not size up one's barn from another's perspective.

Even as I have proven myself the fool in writing this, I feel better. I await the coming darkness with a bit more light.  And spring - it will come again.  FK