DON’T BOTHER READING THIS

It’s not worth your time to read it; it’s barely more about me just rambling, actually.

HOW DID I GET HERE?

By that, I mean HERE, here. The big cosmic here coupled with timing and politics.

How did I get HERE?

I think we Christian types are right to credit God for our being here and credit him for the blessings we find here, but I also think we have a tendency (I am being very generous to say tendency and not flat out complete capitulation) to just leap right past reason in doing it. Sure, God is behind everything, but that doesn’t mean God is just meaningless and random. So just saying “God” isn’t really saying much, now is it?

How did I get here?

Well, I don’t think I can get to a satisfactory answer at the moment, not even by calling the Christian bluff.

My grandfather(s) was born in the 1920s. Some, more than a few, of the life-lessons I ever learned, I learned from him (them). Some of those same life lessons he learned from people who saw the Civil War. I am just not all that far disconnected from that far back. Two degrees of separation, it would seem.

Of course, I don’t know which bits of life’s wisdom come from then by way of just two degrees separation. I hardly remember which bits came directly from Grandfather at this point. I know more of the bits which filtered through my dad (and mom), but those are three degrees.

Still, a lot of continuity. At least it seemed so.

I was born in the late 1960s. I have quite a lot of memories from the 1970s, but they are much more mature in nature from the 1980s onward. Still, I recall in the first grade a time when all the kids were called out to the playground during a fire drill. We wound up sitting criss-cross apple sauce on the ground waiting for the all clear signal, and one of the young teacher assistants comes around instructing us small children not to make the “peace sign” with our two forefingers. This was deemed “bad” by someone.

I was too young to know why. Too young to ask critical questions. I don’t recall discussing it with my parents later, but I do recall being puzzled by it.

Our boys had not all yet returned from Vietnam on that day. I understand that now. I also understand something about about youth culture and counter culture and protests and so forth from that time now that I had no idea about at the time. So, I try to piece these puzzle bits into the picture now, but I still have to guess.

I am not quite an OLD man, yet, but my kids certainly think I am. No doubt, as I reflect on my 20 something self, I look where I am now and see that kid thinking I am old. And now I have foster, adopted babies to whom I pass on life’s wisdom. I am teaching them not to burp or fart at the table, presently, and they are learning the words “bad manners” from me.

I don’t see my older kids teaching such lessons to the young ones. I think they would sooner disrupt such lessons. I am feeling obsolete. Me and my ideas about how the world works.

If I had been born somewhere between the Bronze Age and the Industrial Revolution (even the Nuclear Age), I think there is a very good chance that the life lessons my father taught me would be almost in lock step with the lessons his father taught him and his father and his father, and they would be deployed by me to my son and likely passed down to his son too. I am betting the continuity would be a bit more profound.

How did I get HERE?

Where is here? What do I do with it?

I might teach my kids not to burp or fart at the table today, but what value is that in a world where our nation’s leader sparks riots and insurrection against our own government to suit his own ego? This is a nation in which plenty of my friends, family, and neighbors are only too happy to oblige! Somehow I don’t think my kids are likely to eat at a table, but more likely a drive thru window. They are not near as apt to make a peace sign as they are to wave with the middle finger. And if not them, then practically all of their friends and family, so why not them?

My little life lessons are pointless if they don’t have a context in which to make sense!

And what was the sense I was supposed to internalize about that peace sign?

I FEEL like I belong in a world, not of cell phones with cameras and text messaging, but with kitchen phones with a LOOOOOOONG cord that barely stretches to the other room for the barest privacy of conversation. I feel like I belong in a world where porn is not available at a key stroke, but must be found behind the little curtain in the back room at the family video rental shop. I feel like I belong to a world of carburetors instead of fuel injectors. I feel like I belong in a world where computers make a “donk donk” sound and only nerds use them.

What am I doing HERE?

No wonder no one listens to me. I am outa touch with reality.

Funny thing, though. Reality left me here. I was doing pretty good with it when it seemed static. But now that it changes and revolves and evolves and morphs into my truth and your truth and all that stuff, I am just outa touch.

I thought insurrection was a death penalty offense. I thought that if you threw an insurrection, and were successful, you killed the king and started over. The victor writes history, and we call it good. If your insurrection failed, then you got killed for trying by the king. The victor writes history, and we call it good.

But we aren’t doing that.

We had an insurrection with a couple of deaths, but that is just collateral damage, I guess. Otherwise, it was a party.

Now we are talking about impeachment again, but you know what? As much as I think that is good and right, I also think it is futile and not helpful.

I hate to say it, but I really kinda suspect that until China and Russia come help us sort this out on their terms, we just aren’t going to be nice and have ONE NATION under God.

I used to be a conservative. I still think I am, but someone came along and changed what that means, apparently. While I have some liberal sensitivities (as it would seem), I am basically a very conservative type from a long line of conservative types. So, I don’t want to see all the liberal nonsense become the law of the land anymore than anyone else, but I don’t think Biden is wildly liberal. I think we have a conservative court now, and a moderate incoming president who wants to HEAL the nation. I respect that. I sure wish my conservative friends and family would jump on that and appeal to his moderate sensibility rather than antagonize him and give more and more ammunition to the wildly liberal portions of his party.

I think it would be very healing for Trump to find he needs Biden’s mercy and for him to get it.

But then I belong to a world where the phone is attached to a very long cord that reaches into the kitchen.