Obama for President
My voting readers have fulfilled their civic duty–and elected as president Barak Obama. A full 75% of the four votes cast were for Obama. The remaining 25% vote was for “Other,” whoever that might be.
The Merits of Hedonism
I confess, I have a few hedonistic tendencies.
Last night, with the gift card from the mother of a child M babysat, a gift from a sister in law, and a few of our own funds, M and I indulged. At Olive Garden we ate bread sticks and salad, and then wine-baked beef rib tips and a golden fish fillet. N sat on my lap or in her car seat quite contentedly until we were nearly ready to go anyway, were just sopping up the remains of the wine sauce with the last of the bread sticks.
After resting in the car a few minutes, letting N recover from the restaurant hubbub, we walked the fifty yards to a Cold Stone Creamery.
The guy who dished my large “apple pie a la mode” must know what it’s like to be a guy, because he heaped that dish so tremendously full that I felt like an eight-year-old just handed a full half-gallon box. We didn’t finish it all until today’s lunchtime dessert.
But somehow I consider taking pleasure in food in a category far distant from current trends of entertainment dependency.
For example, our teenage guest this past week kept her cell phone ever handy in order to text her friends and, meanwhile, carry on a semblance of conversation with us, mostly about what her friends were writing to her. Which was basically mind-numbing chatter aimed at funny quipping to satisfy the hedonistic use of “friends” as entertainment to fend off boredom. (We did disallow texting at the dinner table; I wonder if we should have disallowed the phone totally.)
There was, literally, no good reason for her to constantly stare at her little screen and thumb messages of inconsequence, and yet somehow that pastime proved addicting. (Well, OK, so maybe M and N and I are just boring, but at least we have some good books on our shelves!)
Now, multiply that one-person scenario by pretty much our small church’s entire youth group, and you get a church row full of bulky teenage boys, each huddled over his phone throughout a sermon they desperately needed to hear without distraction. This is perhaps hedonism in its most innocent and pervasive essence: gadgetry that isolates users from immediate surroundings while posturing as human connectivity.
Now, extend the text-messaging phenomenon to video games, personal entertainment devices, and theme parks, and a strikingly flat picture of our machine-based, gimme-gimme world jumps out like a jack-in-the-box surprised at the vibrancy of the real world and eager to be stuffed back in his case of easy thrills.
I realize I sound like an old person complaining about the young generation. “At least they’re not digging the Beatles, or swinging their pelvises like Elvis,” some of those particular old farts might have said, much to the indignation of the now-adult rockinouters who today run much of the world.
The current question remains, however: Into what will this new generation amenable primarily to thumbed messages and roller coaster thrills mature? On what sort of resume does “purely hedonistic” look good? Will these youth be fulfilled, ever?
Or even filled?
Lotto Hindsight
Country singer Randy Travis’s “1982” proclaims that “hindsight’s twenty-twenty.” Too often that perfect vision is, well, hindsight, which leaves many golden opportunities for profound intervention out to dry as forever past tensical.
Today by randomchance I remembered a meeting for new teachers at my school. It was during the first part of my first year of teaching, and the meeting was the one shot our “mentor” took at doing anything at all with us. There were donuts, I recall.
Among our group of initiates was one unfortunate character, unfortunate because somehow he received–at times duly invited, certainly unwanted–distaste and even scorn from others not interested in his highly professional background that, to many, appeared somehow to place him in a self-appointed “wise one” category. It didn’t help that our mentor was–still is–a rather crass jokester with haranguing the unfortunate character on the brain.
Before the unfortunate character entered the meeting room, the mentor passed around party favors: lottery tickets. But for the unfortunate character, the mentor chortled secretively, there was not just any old real ticket, but one touting winnings of $30,000–and directions to pick up the prize at the Easter bunny’s house.
When the meeting was officially convened and we shared pennies to scratch and win nothing, the unfortunate character was at first stunned.
“Oh, My, God,” he said, dead serious. “I just won $30,000. Oh my God!”
I don’t remember what followed–perhaps giggles around the room–as he turned the card over and read the back’s fine print.
“Oh,” he said then. “I really don’t respond well to that.”
Ever since then, I have regretted not acting when I could have so easily intercepted the moment’s hurt and cruel glee.
If I could rewrite that story, I would have, unbeknownst to the mentor, switched my lottery ticket with the fake one at the unfortunate character’s seat. The risk of doing this would have been tremendous (What if the ticket originally mine really was the big winner of the week?), but certainly well worth the look on the mentor’s face when I could have jumped to my feet screaming, “I won! I won!”
Destruction of Property
“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,” reads Psalm 24. If that’s the case, and if God is at all like me, then “ticked off” might describe a godly reaction to the view from the highway near my house.
In the midst of the purple mountain majesties, under cloud-swept
skies, tower three pristine crosses. The middle one is taller, of course, and flanked by a duo of American flags that are just barely visible, from this vantage point. (Note the pictured traffic, too–a gasoline tanker, for crying out loud.)Certainly my church isn’t perfect (I wouldn’t deserve it if it were; I was practicing the consumption of fuel even as my outrage sparked along behind the tanker), but the responsible congregation’s ludicrous, ugly, and blasphemous projection of these synthetic, lit-up-at-night behemoths onto such serene mountainry commands only lament.
What, in the name of all that is good, were they thinking?
Potentials Education (continued)
Avid goodbadi readers might recall this recent photo:
If those readers were concerned that little N was obtaining a less-than-at-least-partially well-rounded political perspective, here is evidence to the contrary:
According to M, McCain’s autobiography will soon follow.Gas Pains Relief Worsens Problems
If Hillary Clinton’s plan to drop federal gasoline taxes for the summer driving season is appealing because it will allegedly ease prices at the pump, then that’s shortsighted allure.
The government should stay out of the oil business–or maybe tax it more heavily–so that consumer costs will increase, thereby making the green and sustainable alternatives market blossom and mature. Higher fuel prices may be the only available impetus to effect a retooling and refueling of the U.S. economy so that domestic transportation manufacturers can lead the rest of everyone into a less polluted, quieter, more eco-friendly existence.
What will Clinton’s plan, so similar to John McCain’s, really do? It will let people buy more gas and pollute more with no concern for the environment or our longterm national security.
Names
The sermon today was about names, about their meanings or indication of qualities desirable or learned. The speaker noted various Bible figures whose name changes signaled deeper life changes.To accompany the spoken word, the song leader chose a variety of “name” hymns. Two stuck out at me, one (“There’s a New Name Written Down in Glory”) that was a frequent favorite at the little church in the valley where as a youngster I lived briefly, and another that got it all sort of wrong.
The latter hymn is called “Is My Name Written There.” Here below I’ve copied select lines, lines that gave me pause as we sang, from the text from a helpful website that even, um, plays the melody for the visitor.
1. For me to sing “Lord, I care not for riches, neither silver nor gold” would be a flat-out lie. I’m loving the economic stimulus package (now tucked away in our savings account awaiting future material conquests).
2. It is probably an equally false falsehood to sing that “Lord, my sins they are many, like the sands of the sea.” There is a l-o-t of sand in the sea, no doubt more grains than seconds in my life thus far or ever. (But could it be possible that I am actually sinning every second? Even twice every second? Even thrice every second? I don’t have that kind of energy!)
3. Of course, too, the hymn is a blood song (“Thy blood, O my Savior, is sufficient for me”), propagation of a theology I find counter to the teachings of Jesus. But I’ll let that rest for the moment, as one yet-unpublished novel (which I’ve been lucky to read) deals thoroughly with that sort of schizoid understanding of The Loving God.
4. Finally, while the song’s question in the first verses, “Tell me, Jesus, my Savior, is my name written there?” is, I think, a valid one for all of us concerned that we are living the kingdom, the song’s final verse requires its vocalists to commit the most egregious of sins–playing God: “Yes, my name’s written there.” Really? Can we just up and decide this? Is that really our decision to make? How judgmental!Perhaps at the base of this critical hymnology is a discomfort with theology far removed from Jesus’ teachings about life’s nuts and bolts, teachings relevant to so many of us nuts and dolts who perhaps need new names.
BluesN
N has been thoroughly enjoying her ever-increasing situpability:
ParkN
We took N to the arboretum today, to try out the sweet ride given us by M’s now former coworkers:
On our walk, M smelled a princess tree (some sort of snapdragon, from China):
We rested, too, as befits Sunday afternoon:And finally, N listened carefully to the sounds of the realest of worlds:
skies, tower three pristine crosses. The middle one is taller, of course, and flanked by a duo of American flags that are just barely visible, from this vantage point. (Note the pictured traffic, too–a gasoline tanker, for crying out loud.)
