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It’s been a tough few months, and this blog/essay format has reflected it.  As a site for the spiritual and unexplained, however, perhaps it has reflected the troubles too much.  There are so many quotes in the Bible about worldly troubles that they are hard to corral, but the first I came upon while randomly flipping through is this, by Jesus: “Peace is my farewell to you, my peace is my gift to you; I do not give it to you as the world gives peace.  Do not be distressed or fearful.” (John, 15:27)  The peace he gives is not as the world gives; rather, as the Bible notes tell me, he is talking about the peace of the Holy Spirit – that is, a spiritual peace.  This is eternal and everlasting peace, while the peace of the world is temporary and illusory.  As another quote from the Old Testament says, “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.”  Yes.  Regardless of the most sincere promises by anyone, whatever peace he or they or their causes might bring will be only temporary.  They may, in fact, bring even worse conflict.  History is so replete with bad choices made in the name of worldly peace that it is almost nauseating to recall them.     
 
So I will not go there for now at least not directly. Rather, I want to comment on other things of the world, or better said, on things of this world, because lately that has been my thing. 
 
I have been fixing things lately, especially those things that have called out to me and that, until now, I have turned a blind eye to.  I have avoided them because they require the kind of long-term commitment and/or hefty toil that I left behind after finishing the cabin up north some ten years ago.  I have aged after all, and am now officially able to say, with government approval, that I am legally retired, sucking down government funds that I may or may not deserve as body parts fail, ache, or need replacement.   But I am a miser, and to pay a guy hundreds or thousands for something that I can do myself for tens or twenties seems a sin.  Also, even if I were to replace certain things, throwing things away is no longer a simple task.  Where do you toss a decrepit lawn tractor, TV, or manure wagon? 
 
You don’t.  Those things that I cannot fix, such as the tractor and TV, go into storage areas, which makes me weep thinking about what must be done when we can no longer manage the stairs and have to sell the place.  But those others such as the manure wagon, yes-sir, these are the ones that have given me the glimmer in the eye, the rock in the sock, the jolt to the jowls.  Maybe this is because fixing these things has given me temporary peace in these tortured times, but whatever, to this my life has been dedicated. 
 
I suppose we could cut to the chase, call a spade a spade, and name it for what it really is, but we will not.  Instead, let me tell the story of my glorious adventures in the world of home improvement first.       
 
It began with the corona virus.  If we can recall way back in time when America was still innocent – about three months ago – there was a toilet paper crisis.  Our son has long wanted a bide, and so, with the impetuousness of youth, he actually bought one and installed it in our main bathroom.  It was like a breath, or spray, of fresh air.  Not only were our butts left smelling like daisies, but the toilet didn’t clog anymore and we could laugh at the empty shelves where toilet paper once abounded in happier, simpler times.  But there is always trouble in paradise.  The foreign implants were made for flat toilet seats, not the mod American ones that are curved, and so the seat – then seats, for I got a bide for the second toilet too - pushed on the device, confusing the direction of the water jet.  It was then that I came to the rescue with a jig saw and file, and in a matter of an hour or so, made space for the bide with beautiful, smooth cut-out arcs in the seats.  Beautiful.  I admire them to this day.
 
Next: this episode began when my wife did the classic American thing and had us spend money to save money.  It concerned the TV service that we had and how its cost had tripled in the past ten or so years, and how we could change to a cheaper service if we had a “smart” TV.  Thing is, the smart TV was bigger than our old TV, too big for our old bureau or cabinet or entertainment center or whatever those things were once called.  My son was for throwing the massive sucker out, but it was a solid piece of furniture with a nice maple veneer, and I saw its potential as two pieces of furniture, one as an open table for our other smaller TV, and the other as a large bookcase that was desperately needed.  I was laughed at, but soon got to work with the circular saw, and before one could say “stupid luck,” I had made the two pieces of furniture exactly as I had imagined them to be.  Stupendous.  Once again, I still marvel at both each and every day, scarcely able to take my eyes off my brilliant creations.
 
There have been several other triumphs of skill and brilliance, not too many to count but too many for anyone but me to care to hear about, and I have taken to admiring them as well (the manure wagon takes the cake with those others).   All could have been replaced for, oh, a thousand dollars or so and would have been at least as good or better than what I have done, but no matter – I must worship at the altar of my creations. 
 
Which we all do, and all have done in astounding excess in these last months. 
 
Yes, I am back to those current events, but they don’t even have to be mentioned by name.  Instead, let us step back from the hullabaloo, from our own creations of social engineering and political engagement, so that we might see that we are marveling – sucked in might be a better word – at our own solutions to world problems, as if we were truly in charge and could fix such massive things.  We cannot.  We can add a dollop here and take away a dollop there, but ultimately our hands can only do small work.  To admire such work, to worship at their feet, would be as laughable as my own narcissistic behavior towards my creations, except that the consequences are potentially so dire.  We, or many, have been behaving like the self-worshipers who were building the tower of Babel, and we can already see that the hand of God has come to confuse our language, so that we might be torn from the doomed path of self- idolatry. 
 
There is nothing wrong with doing a little carpentry, but we must admit that we did not make the wood or the iron for the tools, or even the cleverness of our fingers and the logic of our brain.  We have become increasingly ensnared by our own brilliance over the past centuries, and now seem on the verge of claiming to have reign over our very social and physical underpinnings, even unto every thought, and even unto death.  Michael Angelo understood that the marvel of his sculptures were already present in the block of marble, only awaiting his skill at finding them.  It seems to me that the world could do a better job at letting out what God has hidden within, rather than claiming that we have made everything from the inside out and so can control them with the skill of the gods.         
 
 
 
 
 

  

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A dream came to me early this morning of magicians and spirits, undoubtedly spurred by my watching of the Amazon series, “Britannia,” about the Roman invasion of Celtic Britain in the 1st century, but it was not of Druids alone.  Rather, I was drawn to another cinematic event, a movie called “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” in which King Arthur must cross a tenuous rope bridge hung over a vast gorge separating life from death.  There he is confronted by a ghoulish sentry/wizard who asks him a question that he must answer correctly or be thrown into the emptiness for all eternity.  In this movie, the question is silly: “What is the velocity of a flying sparrow?”  To which King Arthur answers, “The English sparrow or the North African sparrow?”  The ghoul hesitates, stumped, and is then himself thrown into the bottomless pit, which King Arthur then crosses with ease. 
 
Good humor, but the Monty Python crew must have been aware that a challenge after death is believed by people in many countries and tribes throughout the world.  For Christians, one is judged by Christ at the end of times; for Catholic Christians, one is judged upon death and then sent to his just reward until the Last Judgment, which might be redundant.  In any case, it is made clear by all such beliefs that one cannot come into the presence of the Holy without either proof of a good and/or heroic life on earth, or without some sort of purgation that makes one worthy.  What is also made clear is that this holiness is not an easy thing to come by.  Most cannot pass the test.  The great blessing for Catholics is that most will be given mercy and sent into Purgatory, and THEN delivered into the presence of the Holy, for without the mercy of God none of us of purely humans – none –are worthy.  What this means is that it is almost universally understood that most of us harbor deep imperfections in our character, so much so that no Christian would ever admit to being without moral flaw.  
 
Such I was reminded not only by King Arthur, but also by another series we are watching about Jeffrey Epstein, which I believe is also on Amazon.  In this, we are brought into the truly evil machinations of Epstein, who made his fortune running a Ponzi scheme on Wall Street - primarily, it seems, so that he might pursue his sexual obsession with underage girls.  Not one, mind you, but hundreds and hundreds, most brought into his orbit by other girls who had been lured to him by others.  We find, in fact, that Epstein had created a Ponzi scheme for young flesh by paying each girl who came to him $200.00 to bring in their girlfriends, who, after sex, were also paid $200.00 for each girl, and so on and on.  Clever and cold and evil. 
We also find that others, such as fellow crooks in Wall Street, certain sexually fortified politicians, and kinky billionaires, were brought under degrees of control by him.  Says a Wall Street partner in crime with near reverence (paraphrase), ‘He had a gift.  He could bring you under his spell with remarkable ease.’    
 
The series makes you aware of this spell, but of something else as well: that there was a certain degree of complicity with almost all of them.  That might be unfair, and certainly not in the legal code, concerning underage girls, but consider this: the girls were lured in to give a “rich old man” a massage, for which they would be given $200.00 dollars.  Even at age fifteen, most girls understand that something like this is courting extreme weirdness if not danger.  And then afterward, most went back after being molested to bring their friends in for another $200.00 a head.  Certainly they weren’t adult, but most could not have been unaware of the wrongness of their actions.
 
And so it continued.  The Wall Street partner was a crook himself, a regretful manager at Bear Sterns kept Epstein on after caught in lying because he made money for them, a billionaire let himself be robbed of 40 plus million because, as some say, he was ‘in love’ with him, and so on.  With few exceptions, there was something in most of the victims that allowed them to become victims, and like Satan, Epstein was able to see that weakness and exploit it.   Clearly, few of the victims themselves would have been able to cross the bridge into holiness.  Their flaws were found and used with remarkably accurate and evil skill.
 
As the world has long known, so it is with all of us.  We all have fatal flaws, and it is in the hero’s mold to overcome them, often after first succumbing to them.  We have St Peter as the greatest example, as he denied Christ three times, only later to die for him on the cross himself, but the list of such heroes is endless.  It is likely that each of us comes across his (her) weaknesses some time in life, and then tries at some point to atone for them.  It is not always easy, though, to make up for a murder or some rotten deed from long ago, and so it is that Catholics have the sacrament of confession.  Here it is believed that their sorrow at their misdeeds is heard by Christ, who then, by virtue of his sacrifice, can forgive them and let them cross into heaven.  So it is that they still have to meet the ghoul or Holy Spirit on the bridge, but are given a pass, albeit usually only after further purgation.
 
Some refuse to carry guilt.  Some, like Epstein, have no regret and so earn the label “evil.”  Most, however, are not evil, even after they do evil things.  In the making of the documentary, many of the girls confessed to intense guilt for bringing their friends in.  The financier in the Ponzi scheme also confessed his feelings of guilt, and for all of them, going public was their form of redemption.  We should admit that we are no better.   We can be and have been lured into wrongful behavior not only because the one who lured us was so persuasive, but because something in ourselves wanted us to do it.  In my own case, I can recall doing stupid, even some bad things in my teen years, not for the things themselves but for the social status they might bring me.  I was complicit in wanting to be admired and so fell into the trap.  The seed for doing wrong is there for just about everyone.
 
This has relevance.  While I might read this a year from now with an attitude of “so what?,” right now we are suffering through the riots following the murder-by-cop of George Floyd and it seems like a big deal – just as it seemed during the riots after the Rodney King trial, and the Ferguson riots after the death of another black man who was not quite as innocent as Floyd.  We have all seen the video.  We all agree that what the cop did was wrong.  All the police involved are being prosecuted.  So why the marches? Why the smashing and looting?  What overall good is coming from it all?  What overall good came from the former riots? 
 
In retrospect, we might want to stop judging this event one way or the other to see clearly why what is happening is happening.  Is this phenomena, we should ask, ultimately the work of angels, or the work of demons taking advantage of our own weaknesses, including a lust for revenge and ego inflation?  If the latter, how can we expect a good outcome?  And if the latter, how can we come to terms with ourselves after this is all over and things are only worse?  History tells me that we can do so only by clearing our souls, if only for a moment, of the debris of our own insecurities and selfish desires.  Only then, it seems to me, can we cross the bridge separating us from self-delusion and truth.  In the end, this is the journey of the hero that all but the most evil are compelled to take.     
 
 
 
 
 

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I had forgotten.  I am not one of those, as is my wife, who look forward to going to church for Mass.  Much of it is boring repetition, but there is a kick for me in the Catholic version that never once stopped, even when I was anti- Catholic.  I have written of it many times before: the “kick” is in the moments before the Eucharist, and the moment right after.  It is there when time seems to stop and something soothing and mysterious and inviting comes across the mind like a welcome breeze.  Sometimes revelations come then and sometimes not, but it is always a special time.  For me, it was probably this time that brought me back to the fold, hardened critic of culture that I am. 
 
As I sat in church yesterday with mask at the ready and properly socially distanced, the memory of that special time came back.  How could it have been lost to my memory in only two and one half months?  We were not celebrating Mass that day, not yet, but praying the rosary with a man from Minnesota who was going back home to be closer to what remains of his family.  He had moved to Wisconsin about ten years ago to take care of his brother who was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s.  His brother had recently died, and now it was time to move on.  In the church, with the memory of that special time come back, all of it was natural.  All was calm, part of the plan, so unlike the past several months have seemed to be. 
 
We were not supposed to meet afterwards in the opening hall, but we did, masks discarded by most when it was realized that almost everyone was wearing them for others and not for themselves, even though the bulk of the people could be classified as seniors – some even senior seniors, like Barbara.  If you have kept up with this blog over the past year, you might remember that Barbara was the 85-year-old who had gone with our group to Israel last year, and who had seen the faces in the Dead Sea scrolls.  I could not at first, but then could, and very clearly, too.  No one else could.  It was an odd but not uncomfortable experience.  As far as I’m concerned, bring the miracles on.
 
Anyway…It was she I talked to as we were leaving the church, lodged between the outer and inner glass doors.  As we moved to go outside, I slid around to the outer door to open it for her, saying, “This door should work as a shield against Corona.”  Said she, “Oh, you’re worried about my spit getting on you when I talk?”  Said I, somewhat startled, “Why no, I was thinking of you.”  I was – she is, after all, 85 or maybe now, 86. 
 
“No,” she said, probably with a little shrug; “We have to understand that this thing will be with us for a long time.  We have to get used to it and get back to our lives.” She paused.  “Read psalm 91.  Don’t forget that number: 91.  It will help you understand.”  I promised that I would remember, and in fact would have my wife look it up on her IPhone as soon as we got to the car.
 
Fat chance.   I forget about it as soon as I pushed the starter button and did not remember it until an hour ago.  I looked it up to find that, along with most others, I already knew much of it from the song “On Eagle’s Wings.”  It is simply a statement that claims that as long as one cleaves to the Lord of the Jews – and now Christians – no tragedy can befall one.  “…You shall not fear the terror of the night/ nor the arrow that flies by day;/ Not the pestilence that roams in the darkness/ nor the devastating plague at noon….” 
 
Easier said than done, as usual, but spot-on.  What we demonstrate by our current panic is both our lack of purpose and our lack of faith.  In purpose, why else would we cling to strategies that are proven to not work, or are impossible to continue if we are to go back to work?  What else is driving us to embrace such things besides a lack of spiritual purpose in our lives? And faith: the truly faithful fear nothing.  Yes, I fear a whole hell of a lot, but my and other’s weaknesses are not the point.  Rather, calmness in the face of challenge and danger should be encouraged through the idea of faith, rather than panic, for our lives are ultimately and irredeemably perishable.  This moment in time, we should understand, is our opportunity to find our purpose and increase our faith, something scarcely thought of in happy or secure times.  It is, like the sacrifice of Christ, a gift wrapped in suffering, as the greatest spiritual gifts often are.
 
Faith, yes, it came back a bit yesterday as if on eagles wings, as light as the caress of moving air.  I remember it now, that touch that touches much more than our skin or even our senses.  There is in it the mystery of faith that gives us courage that is distinctly not the courage of a warrior, so much NOT so that it does not seem like courage at all.  It is, like Barbara’s faith, a courage that acknowledges our transience in the face of our eternal existence.  This is what that “kick” is: an introduction to what is at the base of everything, forever and for always.  It is intertwined with the power of St Peter, the rock on which the Church – meaning much more than the physical structure – is built.  It is there not to bore us or scold us, but to remind us of what really is and what is only passing.  I was forgetting, slowly drifting without the rock.
 
Psalm 92 adds: “Though the wicked flourish like grass/ and all evil doers thrive/ They are destined for eternal destruction; while you, O Lord, are the Most High forever….how just is the Lord, my Rock, in whom there is no wrong.”  By which I do not mean that “we” are holier than thou, the chosen few, but rather that those who live by perishable things will come to believe that they are as perishable as those things.   I thank the rock and the gentle breeze that flows from it and over it for reminding me of my – our - true and proper place in this world that is embraced by the spiritual, the foundation in us all that continues forever. 
 
 
 

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Since we are preparing our hot dogs and watching war movies, I will make this as short as my wife would want. 
 
War movies; the best in my youth were those from WWII.  It was big, my dad and everybody’s dad was in it, and we won big time and without question.  The worst, from the time I had become a young adult, were the ones on Vietnam, since it was smaller, I personally knew some contemporaries who had gone and who were more or less just like me, and we lost – although Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now were outstanding.  Then there was the Korean War.  Smallish, some dads had gone, and it was not exactly a loss or a win.  A ‘meh’ in the world of 60’s and 70’s war movies.  Yet last week it was the Korean War that I thought of the most.
 
Our trip to Michigan was fully legal as well as OK with the infamous regime of Governor Whitmer, as we have a second home – well, a small cabin we could call home – where we could “shelter in place.”  We did, or at least we mostly avoided civilization, and it was wonderful.  There were almost no people at the popular tourist spots and none, absolutely none, at the campsites, which left us all twelve miles of Twelve Mile Beach to ourselves.  The water of Lake Superior was just above ice temperature, but was so beautiful from the dune bluffs that it seemed to reflect the perfect heaven that has been promised to us – if.  If we do the things and don’t do the other things that we have been told about in Sunday school and Catechism class which many of us attended decades ago.  Attended so long ago, that is, that the Korean War had barely been over, but still we heard so little about it even then.
 
We know of the two Koreas now as seen on TV, one crowded and bustling and prosperous and the other quiet, slow, and depopulated.  We cringed when we heard of the torture of that foolish young man who pulled a fraternity prank in Pyongyang and ended up brain dead, and then just plain dead.   It was our forces in Korea in the early 1950’s that allowed for the former, the South, to exist at all, its start as uneven and ugly as could be, its result as good as a people with Korea’s past could make it.  It was a forgotten war that gave 50 million people the possibility of individual purpose, and it is not forgotten in Seoul. 
 
Nor was it forgotten when we traveled through Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Until a few months ago, the bridge that crossed the Menomonee River into Michigan had meant crossing to a greater freedom, regardless of the frivolity, for in Michigan one could then legally buy weed, and in Wisconsin, no.  Not that I care anymore for the stuff, but one could say that it was a blow – a puff? - for freedom.  But the bridge means something else now.  Since the state supreme court of Wisconsin invalidated our governor’s extended stay-at-home order, the state has been bustling, for better or for worse.  Time alone will tell, although the newspapers now run features every day showing people in bars and at restaurants, drinking and dining like there is no tomorrow, which the reporters wish us to think there will not be, if.  We shall see, but the difference now between one side of the bridge and the other could hardly be starker.  It once meant freedom going north, if only in the mind, but now…     
 
It was like crossing from South to North Korea, or so my son and I agreed.  Bustling on one side, a mask or two here and there, and starkly empty on the other side.  There was almost no traffic and little commerce just with a simple crossing of the river, and a brief stop in a pharmacy had us wearing masks under penalty of law.  It was this that made our stay farther up north so wonderful, so quiet and peaceful, but the trip overall so weird, even chilling.  Michigan was what our state was two weeks ago.  It may not be like it is now in two weeks, but it might, and it is a reminder of what we might be or could be as a nation.  South Korea on one side, North on the other, the contrast so obvious, the energy levels so clear; a divided country, the contrasting perspectives taken by the people and leaders also so clear. 
 
My opinion, too, might be split if that quiet had led to more contemplation and God consciousness – but the churches to the north are also closed.  I think I saw that on TV too.
 
I will not say the obvious in conclusion, but rather give my thanks to the soldiers who died often without knowing what they were dying for.  How many could foresee the state of the people in North Korea then, or even the corrupt dictatorship that has evolved in Vietnam?  If anything, those poor soldiers have shown us that the patriotic cliché of America is often true: that one must be willing to give one’s life for freedom even if the lines drawn are only clear in the parchments of 1776 and 1789.  To them I give my belated and unworthy salute.     
 
 
 
 
 

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I have heard of brave people.  I have seen pretend brave people on TV.  I know for a fact that they exist because they have gone to the moon, gone into underground bunkers of the enemy, floated thousands of feet below the ocean in submarines, and climbed El Capitan without ropes.  Brave people all, and I am not one of them.
 
Oh, I have had my moments; I have stared down muggers with knives and Indians with spears and flown in sputtering airplanes over trackless jungle, all without soiling my pants, but I know me all too well.  Sometimes, as with that Italian captain of the infamously grounded cruise ship, things get “too a-scary!” Sometimes, and inevitably, we non-brave people blow it bad and have to hand in our Dirty Harry cards under an umbrella of shame. 
 
But there are other times that almost all of us share when we become unafraid of death itself.  This happens when we are suffering from certain kinds of long-term pain or illness.   In his beautiful but soul-searing book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl tell us of how people in Nazi death camps would “go to the wire,” that is, walk into the electrified fences used to keep people in.  These people were not looked upon as brave by the others, others who wanted desperately to live and needed community support, but what else could we call them if they had lost the fear of death?  More common, there are those among us today who are in constant pain, either physically or mentally, and come to welcome death.  Again, is this not brave?  If someone is dangling from a line on a cliff and has no fear of death, we call him brave, so why not those who are hanging by their nerve cells? 
 
Finally, and more common still, are those who are suffering from certain illnesses, and it is to this that I want to recall my own personal experience.
 
I was seventeen and in the best shape of my life, immortal in my own view of things, when the flu struck.  It was in the late spring and, as far as I can recall, there was no concern for any particular bug going around.  No one else in my family got it either, but I sure as hell did.  It came on as quickly as a shot of bourbon and sent me into intense sweats with a 105 degree fever.  I lay on the couch while everyone else sat around watching TV or getting snacks, almost as if I didn’t exist.  I was young and healthy overall and I’m sure they saw my illness as a simple passing bug, but it wasn’t a small thing to me.  My mind seemed to float on the kind of wavy haze one sees coming off of hot highways, bringing me nearer to a conscious form of non-existence than I had ever experienced.  That is, I was there, but not there.  More importantly, I did not care.  I did not care that I barely existed and, over several hours of this, started to believe that my existence was to come to an end.  Good.  I welcomed death then, not as a relief for a suffering I was barely aware of, but because of its soft allure.  It was a comfort rather than a horror, a final end to a resistance I had never understood had been there in my life all along.  I saw that life was indeed a struggle, an endless force exerted, and I was glad to let it go, not out of sorrow or self-pity, but out of shear relief.  The life force seemed exhausted and I was just fine with that.
 
It was literally a twenty-four hour flu, and by the next morning I was hungry and washed out but ready to take on the world again.  If I had known all the hassles that were in store for me, mostly because of my own poor decisions, maybe I wouldn’t have felt such renewed energy, but that is the power of youth.  “Come on, world, give me your best shot!” says life – until, that is, we have another Italian cruise ship moment. 
 
Or until we have another intense illness.  Then we just might find, as most of us have, that, although dying might be bad, death is not.  In fact, as the man on the cliff could tell you, even dying if often quick and painless.  In such cases, then, why do we fear? 
 
I have a theory.  Dying might be very painful and bad, but it is not that which we fear so much, but rather the death that might come of it.  We can tell this by the number of people who are willing to go through hell with cancer treatments and transplants and any other of the many startling ways doctors nowadays use to (try to) stave off death.  The cure, it seems, is often worse than the disease, but most of us would and will cling to the cure anyway out of fear.   I include myself, for as stated, I am not one of the brave few.  But still we have to wonder why.  Death itself is not only inevitable, but we are shown now and then in our lives that it brings relief from the never-ending stress of life.  It is peace.  We do not know what happens to consciousness after death, but we also learn that losing our present state of consciousness is not bad, either, and in fact, is necessary to gain that peace.  Someday we are going to lose it; so when that time comes, we should let go of the rope.  In the end, we all, or at least most of us, do just that, finding that we have courage after all and can learn to trust in the universe rather than in ourselves – at last.  What a relief.
 
Ah, but for the Era of Corona!  Our inherited fear of plague has been aroused, a fear that is justly founded in the periods of time when half of us would die from horrible deaths in a few years’ time.  With the old Black Death, massive dark-purple pustules would form on the faces of loved ones, blood would poor from every orifice, and our sparky children or spouse would become groaning, dying corpses that would add to the pile of stinking dead in the streets.  Could anything be more horrifying?  We do not have that now, to be sure.  Perhaps one in three thousand will die from this, with nearly no chance of death for those under fifty, and the symptoms are similar to flues and pneumonia, neither of these presenting a horror to the eyes.  Still, the source of fear is the same, and it is here that we come to the nut of my theory: we fear death not for how it is, but for how it looks to us, the healthy, both externally and internally in our imaginations.    
 
That is how it usually is, isn’t it?  We fear falling from the cliff because we have seen (at least on TV) what our bodies would look like after we hit.  We imagine ourselves shattered like that and are horrified, forgetting to acknowledge that we will not feel the hit for more than a brief instant, and will never see our broken bodies, at least not with mortal eyes.  We would drift painlessly for a few seconds in the air and then be dead.   It is different with disease-related deaths, as we do have times of great pain and panic when our horror at the prospects of death are aroused, but again, we will ultimately arrive at that moment when dying makes sense and becomes the best thing in the world.  Peace and freedom will be ours.  At last. 
 
I say all this from a distance.  Bring me to the hospital in a screeching ambulance as I struggle to breath and you would see what a coward I can be.  Still, the big picture is the truth.  While we hate pain and certain moments when we struggle to stay alive, in the end the worst comes from how it looks and how we imagine it to be.  It is this, this perspective from the outside, which I believe is driving the fears of this pandemic to such troubling heights.  Good ‘ol FDR put it best with his “nothing to fear but fear itself” phrase, although that doesn’t account for interim pain and discomfort.  It does account, however, for our irrational destruction of a way of life that was imperfect but still comparatively good.  A drowning man will pull down his own mother and even his child with his uncontrolled terror.  It appears we are doing the same to our nation with this drama that at times seems more made from TV than anything else.   
 
In the end we have to realize that we were made for death – not to seek it, but to lay in it when the time comes.  Most of us cannot control the sudden panic of drowning, but we certainly can control this slow-burner of a disaster that has run on way too long.  In another era, many people on the Titanic truly went down with the ship with just the kind of resigned peace that much of us will find on our own death beds.  Here in the Era of Corona, almost all of us will remain only as spectators, and it will be fear alone which brings down the ship. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Going out with the dog this morning in the new quiet of the covide-lockdown, I was reminded of a few phrases from one of my favorite pessimists, T.S. Eliot: “Into the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michael Angelo” and “My life is measured out in coffee spoons.”  These are from, I think, The Wasteland, describing a man of culture’s empty life, of how it passes in worthless conversations confirming intellectual status, and genteel but shallow meetings around tea.  Tick toc, tick toc, it tells us, not really speaking of Michael Angelo, but of the pointless life of the idle rich of the early 20th century. 
 
Now these same people would be sunbathing on a beach in Thailand, talking not of Michael Angelo but of the new Botox treatment, but we get the idea.  What a waste of time. 
 
I know the feeling well, but from a very different environment.  I spent two years living in the forests and savannas of the Venezuelan Amazon with autonomous Indians, and it felt very much the same: chop wood, wash, cook, hunt, dig for a little information while trying to avoid the language and cultural and historical barriers, and then go to sleep, all on and on under the same milky-blue sky and tropical heat.  The life there was a-historic, moving not towards a goal or a climax, but spinning round and round in the circle of life.  To have felt this way, even just occasionally, makes me feel very superficial, but that was sometimes the way it was.  It was then that I realized that we of our time and culture need a point and a goal in our lives.  Without it, we fade into meaningless ennui like the idle rich. 
 
We all, I think, are getting to know that feeling now.  The quiet time of shutdown is no longer unique, a fun vacation from our normal lives.  Rather, it has become a suspension of our plans which is beginning to look like the final end of many of our plans.  Work may disappear, meat is disappearing, Scott single-ply toilet paper that does not clog has disappeared, and so have our vacation plans and much of our money.  We are sinking into personal a-history, and a dark stagnation is setting in.  Suicide is on the rise, along with drinking and drugs and, for many, waist size.  Welcome to the life of the idle rich but without the money.
 
Eliot bemoaned his privileged fate of pointless ritual and financial security, but the Indians I lived with did not look upon their lives as bleak and meaningless vacuums.  As with all of the traditional cultures, meaning was put into their world by myth.  When the moon moved, it was the first woman moving towards a father sun to rejuvenate the world, or something of that sort.  When they hunted, the animals told stories in their movements that mirrored the actions of their kind in myth.  Travels along the rivers showed spots where ancestors fought spirit demons, and where real battles were fought with foes of mythological evil.  Life might not have had an historical point, but it had a personal point.  All was alive, telling stories far more meaningful than idle chat around a spot of tea.
 
I knew that about the Indians even as I sank into a loose kind of personal despair, as if my life were being measured out in shotgun shells. I did not and could not share this vision of their lives and territory.  But now, we don’t have to have this same despair, even as our government, wisely or otherwise, keeps us locked up on the sidelines along with all our former plans and dreams.  Rather, we can come to see that what we are now experiencing is not only an altered life, but one that is far more interesting than our former lives.  We can, that is, come to understand that what we are living through is exposing something far greater than the reality we left behind. 
 
This just might prove to be a new era of myth.  It is already happening, sprouting out in conspiracy theories concerning one-world government or communist plots or a Chinese world-wide coup.  The weirdness of what we are living through makes it possible that one, or more than one of these theories is essentially correct.  That is how weirdness works; it opens our eyes to far greater possibilities, possibilities that were often already there but were not perceived because our normal lives covered them like a face mask over our minds.  Now the world has become fresh again, even magical, even though it never stopped being so.  Now we are being allowed to peer beneath the curtain, and what we find is myth; what we find is a reality so strange that only tall tales can approximate what it means to say.
 
What is your myth?  Why do you think this world-wide phenomena of “lock down” is occurring?  It is not in response to anything like the Bubonic Plague or small pox or even cholera, but rather to a somewhat strong flu-like illness that is killing less than other strong flues such as the Hong Kong flu of the late 60’s – when we did nothing about it at all.  Its symptoms and even way of death are familiar to us all, and are not particularly gruesome.  So why?  True, in part it is due to the world-wide web, certainly, but there is something more to it, isn’t there? 
 
Yes, we are all developing our own myths.  Here is mine.
 
In 1917, a vision of a woman who Catholics believe to be the Virgin Mary, came to some children in a field in Fatima, Portugal, and told them that the world had a chance to avoid a catastrophe even larger than the Great War (known now as WW1).   People were to repent their sins, and the Church was to consecrate Russia to the Virgin.  Neither was done and WW11 became a horrible reality.  However, the prophesy did answer Scrooge’s painfully unanswered question to the Ghost of Christmas to Come: “Spirit, is this what WILL be or what MIGHT be?”  From the Fatima vision, we see that it was the latter; that the fictional Ebenezer had a choice, just as we were given a choice one hundred- plus years ago at Fatima.  We can change what seems to be inevitable, we were told; the vision was not a certainty, but a warning.
 
A few years ago, my wife and I went with a group to Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where several people have been having visions of Mary since the early ‘80’s.  We have kept in touch, and recently heard that Our Lady told one of the visionaries that the world would soon be sent a trial as a warning.  We would get over it, but we were told that if we didn’t shape up, a punishment far worse would follow.  This is what I (and many in our group) believe is happening today.  However, as usual in these things, the prophesy holds more subtleties than we usually might think or even could know.  For instance, in the spring of 1917 when the Fatima warning occurred, Russia was still Tsarist and Christian.  Just a few months later, the Tsar would be overthrown and Russia would begin its horrible fall into aggressive atheism and religious persecution.  Russia had needed spiritual help far more than the world could then have known.
 
What is happening today?  Certainly the disease is a warning to us all that we ultimately are not in charge of our life and death.  That alone should be enough to bring us back to a more spiritual path.  But there is something else going on.  The Free World, which includes the traditional democracies of the world, has given over much of its freedom to its leaders for the sake of safety.  This is supposed to be temporary, but this group of nations has conceded its liberties so easily and for so long that it is disconcerting.  Even today, two thirds of America wishes to be ‘sheltered in place’ to further protect itself from a disease that, compared to other epidemics, is only of marginal intensity.  Further, the disease came from China, the new powerful and aggressively- atheistic kid on the block, and we are wearing face masks and having lock-downs just as the Chinese have done.  The disease, that is, has not only come from the greatest enemy of religion today, but most of the world democracies are adopting its tactics as well.  This is not only because of power-hungry politicians.  A majority of the people are not only willing, but insistent on allowing the suspension of their rights.  Could this, then, be the newer twist on the old warning of pestilence and disease?
 
I believe it is.  I believe we are not only being reminded of our dependence on the will of God, but are being shown just how easy it would be for us to fall into an authoritative dictatorship.  Such dictatorships not only stifle our all-important free will, but also almost inevitably forbid serious spirituality and worship, as these take power from the state.   This is the new wrinkle in the warning. 
 
Or so I believe.  True or not, however, I, along with a growing number of people, are filling in the grind of our shut-down with greater meaning by arranging new myths.   These may or may not point to a genuine greater reality behind the scenes, but they do point to a greater reality in general.  Perhaps that will be its greatest benefit.  Just as the Indians could face the drudgery of the eternal cycle through a deeper vision of that life, perhaps we are being steered towards a greater reflection on the reality of the spiritual in our lives.  That is a good thing –as long as we avoid its shadow side, which begins with the need to preserve life at all costs, and ends ironically and inevitably with the cheapening of all lives in dictatorship.   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 
As a Boomer, I can say in hindsight that we were spoiled and privileged and arrogant.   Worse of all, many of us kept on with our arrogance, espousing naive and outright ridiculous policy and opinion to this day and probably until the day we die of old age.  I say this not just to be humble, but because it is true.  I also say it so that I can criticize the Millennial youth group shared by my son, as filtered and presented to us by the comedy/coming of age movie, “Brittany Runs a Marathon.”  Granted, it takes place in New York, which never exactly shared Heartland values, but still, such hot spots often serve as cultural bellwethers, as California and California Dreaming did in my ill-spent youth.
 
Poor Brittany: she is a fat, age 25 -plus girl in the city of fashion, where the young and hip still wear suits and skirts and dresses.   She is the girl her hot and chic “best friend” goes to when she needs an ego boost, because she knows she can never be as low as Fat Girl.  Just wanting to be loved, Fat Girl plays along, making everything into a joke including herself, not only to be loved, but to protect her dirt-poor ego from direct criticism.  We get to know her life from the beginning: sharing her apartment with Chic Friend, she works at a crummy job selling movie tickets, and parties almost every night with drugs and booze and some kind of smoking that might be vaping.  Her love life consists of giving BJ’s in the men’s room or wherever but she is way too proud to accept advice.  She is the classic case of the crying clown.  Then one day she goes to the doctor to get prescription drugs for partying.  The doctor is wise to her, but performs a check-up anyway, where he finds that she is 5’6’’, 197 lbs., has a BMI of 33 and has high blood pressure.  She is strongly advised to diet, cut out the booze, and work out. 
 
We know the story.  Little by little she overcomes her false pride and self-doubt and starts to run.  Little by little, she slows down the partying and loses weight and gains self-esteem.  She develops real friendships with her running partners who also have problems and idiosyncrasies.  She begins dating, and then is drawn in the classic movie fashion to a guy who is a pest at first, then a bothersome friend, then a lover wounded like herself.  She has a crises, finally runs the …oops!  I may have said too much.  I will leave it there in case you are like me and need something passingly decent to see because you are watching waaay too much TV due to our bizarre national emergency which, well, don’t get me started.  Let’s get back to the Millennials. 
 
Where to begin?  First, there is no one in the crowd who is normal from a pre-millennial perspective.  All have major parent issues, generally of the lack -of –parenting variety, which would be the fault of the early Boomer generation that so poorly raised or failed to raise their children due to divorce and ego issues; all have a (to me) odd habit of never dating anyone from the same racial or ethnic background, a flag of honor for most nowadays but still fraught as always with special issues once the hormones and virtue signaling end; and all treat sex so casually that Brittany puts on the knee pads immediately once she gets back to the dating scene.  With sex, we find that no boundaries exist nor should exist.  One of her bestest buddies on the running club is not only a gay married man, but also the proud “father” of two boys who are shown bouncing on the morning bed of the same-sex couple just like we used to with mom and pop. 
 
Yes, I found much to my distaste as an old man would, with the little boys jumping in the bed of the male gay couple being particularly disturbing.  I know, I know that times change and I can scarcely claim to be holier than anyone.  All told, I am aware that much of my distaste is simply old man claptrap.  But there is something far more disturbing that I found floating in the ether behind the celluloid.  The writers are telling us something, are gifting us with a five-minute crash course on wisdom.  For one, we are told that everyone is majorly messed up one way or another.  We are told that this is due primarily to parental malfunctions which have led to serious self-esteem issues.  Contrarily, we are also told that this brave new world, just a variation of the one that ruined these poor young ones, is just fine.  Listen you old ones, we are told, we young’uns are now FREE of your BS and can live our lives any way we want (just as you did)!  Which we find – surprise - has led all the characters to even darker places of self-hatred and misery, something that they will almost certainly pass on to their kids, if having kids just so happens to be part of their ego parade.  Finally, we are given the antidote: this darkness can be dissolved by caring for others, finding fulfillment in career, and having a passion such as running that demands absolute dedication, toughness, and sacrifice. 
 
I cannot agree with much of the haughty lecturing of this new brand of do-your-own-thing youth, which is loaded with the same ignorant and self -absorbed solipsism that my own generation once and sometimes still does carry.  But how can I disagree with being caring and dedicated?  How can I not agree that the triumvirate of career, partner, and passion will not firmly hold one up ‘till the parting of death?  Let me give it a try.
 
I had a certain uncle, now deceased, who on his deathbed demanded that no monument or service or public notice of his passing would be enacted.  As far as I know, he did not believe in anything “beyond the great blue sky,” as Genghis Khan is reported to have said.  In his life he had his career, teaching math in high school, a tremendous passion for participating in sports, and a marriage that gave him three kids.  Yet I do not believe he was fulfilled in his life, although that is only from my perspective.  I am not aware of how much he loved his work, although the tough boys who caused trouble loved him because he was so fearlessly tough himself.  He did get through to that difficult demographic, which must have given him some meaning, but he also retired as soon as his pension fund hit its maximum.  As for his marriage, when his youngest was still in high school, his wife left him for another woman.  That is not a misprint.  He married again, but that, too, ended in divorce, and with that, he remained an elderly ‘swinging bachelor’ for the rest of his life.  As for sports, he ran marathons into his early 70’s until he began to pee blood and his knees were permanently ruined.  After that, he continued with whatever sports he could, but without knees those remained limited.  Then, as per request, he ended as a shadow passing through this land.
 
The latter shows an element of humility, but also elements of depression, and he did have reasons to be depressed. His primary relationships did not hold out, his ability to play sports necessarily left him in older age, and his work disappeared with fairly early retirement.  What pillars did he have left towards the last ten or even twenty years of life?  This is not an indictment of my uncle’s life.  He lived a life far fuller than I could even dream, but in the end he still had nothing besides himself and the great blue sky.  
 
It is blindness to the fallibility of those three pillars that bothered me most about the movie.  Yes, it is only a movie and movies always claim to give us the path to happy endings that don’t really exist, but I think it was the self-righteousness displayed that created the annoyance.  Just as with us Boomers, the Millennials are making the same mistake, believing that the past holds no wisdom.  They are then left to find it themselves, and they find it in the very type of things that all young people have always believed will bring fulfillment: gratification of bodily, emotional, and ego needs.  It will not be until old age when they discover that none of these needs are ever gratified for long, and for those moments when they are, gratification becomes so routine that it no longer serves to gratify even temporarily.  Such it is and such has it ever been known by the wise. 
 
Brittany the Fat Girl did get the initial impulse right, though.  She gave up on instant sex for a deeper relationship, disciplined herself to not eat and drink and party to excess, and settled into the hard work of a true career by accepting a lowly apprenticeship in her field that would work in time with dedication and suppression of queen ego.  These are the beginnings to what the great religions teach, but she must someday understand that this new-found maturity is only a corrective for her former path.  It still is not the great path itself, which rests on the eternally enduring pillars that are harder to achieve than the completion of a marathon.   The movie brings us to a proper turn, but promises absolutely nothing more.  But then again, Brittany and her real-life contemporaries would never see the next upcoming sign with such newfound happiness.  As with the rest of us who thought we were beyond and above the ancient wisdom, they won’t be able to see the way to truth until what they thought would work no longer does.  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 

​ 
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.   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

​ 
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.