Marking Time

 First of all, let me say I am genuinely excited for my hometown baseball team, despite the tongue-in-cheek title above. It’s just that I’ve been a Cub fan for a long time, and a fan of the pro game’s history in general. So I’m working very hard to keep the Cubs’ 2007 Division Championship in perspective, to not let my heart be trampled again. It’s the Cub fan’s lament, the classic dysfunctional love-hate relationship played out on a field of green.

Major League Baseball is the mythology of my inner world. I used to read stats books as a kid, and could throw around “ancient” names like Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson (not that any of my schoolmates were interested… I was the same geek at age ten that I am now). I have the autographs of Ernie Banks and Wade Boggs, both Hall-of-Famers, and thanks to dumb luck didn’t pay a dime for either one. I have eight of the nine innings of Ken Burns’ excellent Baseball documentary on home-taped VHS video (from 1994, when DVDs and Tivo were just a twinkle in some engineer’s eye). 

So as a committed fan, I’ve seen all manner and type of satisfying comeuppances (the 2004 Red Sox comeback on the Yanks and crushing of the Cards), immensely tense chokes (Santo and Banks’ 1969 Cubs), crackpot schemes (Milwaukee’s sausage races, and the playful, over-hyped 2003 whacking of a sausage racing fan by the Pirates’ Randall Simon), grand entrances (rookie Kerry Wood strikes out 20 in 199 and shameful exits (can you say “1986 Red Sox“? … the mere acquisition of that BoSox link was — I kid you not — enough to crash my Internet Explorer program. Spooky.)

For instance, here’s one hilarious crackpot scheme involving the above-pictured midget– excuse me, “person of small stature”– as quoted from Time magazine’s 2005 obituary for Bill Veeck:

In 1951, as owner of the St. Louis Browns, Veeck hired 3-ft. 7-in. Eddie Gaedel and trained him to crouch low so his strike zone was approximately 1 ½ inches wide… Next day, the American League barred all midgets. Veeck talked about demanding a ruling on whether Yankee Shortstop Phil Rizzuto, at 5 ft. 6 in., was a short ballplayer or a tall midget.

(Rest in peace, Scooter.)

Even before I did today’s web-search, I could fondly recall the above photo of Eddie Gaedel, like other people might recall their first puppy, or a favorite Big Wheel from when they were six. It’s one of the ten great representative photos of the twentieth century, in my opinion.

So why bring him up now? Because Little Eddie is going to be my own private Cub mascot for the duration of the playoffs: a gentle reminder that this is entertainment, not something of life-and-death importance. Eddie’s also a reminder that the Cubs division is full of some pretty bad baseball teams (midgets), based on the fact that the Cubs will move on to the playoffs with a record that barely topped .500 .

Uh oh, is Alfonso doing a Secret Sammy Sosa Hand Signal!?!

For those who are waiting for my prediction (i.e. Die Hard Cub Fans who would gladly follow the team off a cliff in the name of faithfulness and allegiance), here it is:

Cubs will play the Phillies in the Division Series, and lose in five games.

My head is spinning with all the math and rules about who can win what, and who will play whom, based on the results of this weekend’s NL games. If it goes another way, I believe the Cubs will beat the Padres in the Division Series, but will lose to the Diamondbacks and/or Mets. (And best of all, I predict it won’t be the Mets… hahahahahaha – take THAT, New York, ya big bullies!)

Plus if it’s the Padres, all the media frenzy will help us remember the ‘84 Cubs/Padres NLCS, led by all-time pud Steve Garvey, who helped boot the Cubs from the playoffs (thanks mostly to ‘84 scapegoat Leon Durham booting an easy grounder, and frequent pud Rick Sutcliffe’s sub-par pitching). Nevertheless, this Cub team has a spark of something, a slightly charmed existence, despite erratic guys like Zambrano and clutch/lazy Aramis Ramirez. Thus this year’s Cubs have the potential to overcome the weight of those past mistakes by other Cub teams, if they can somehow weld the on-off switch of their most erratic players’ brains into the ON position.

Whatever happens, the one player who inevitably does something remarkable to get the Cubs (or Padres, or D-backs, ya never know) into the next NLCS will become the temporary Big Story, next week’s Midget of the Week.

Why all this talk about midgets again? Because all the NL teams are midgets compared to the skills and power of the AL teams going into the playoffs. The Red Sox, Yankees, Angels and Indians (speaking of long World Series droughts) all have more pitching, better power, better defense, and more run-producers than the NL teams. They’re more balanced teams, in other words, who do not depend on just one or two really hot players.

Obviously, a Cubs/Red Sox World Series would be the Matchup for the Ages, the one to “save baseball” yet again from the steroids scandals, and the drooping TV ratings of playoff baseball the past few seasons. But I don’t think it’ll happen.

My World Series pick, in which my confidence is only about 38%:

Red Sox over the Phillies, in six games.

And now, let the annual crazy-making love/hate fest begin!

But remember: it’s not Sudan. It’s not a presidential race. It’s not World War II, Ken Burns’ latest controversial documentary subject. It’s just baseball. It’s midgets and “chin music” and last-hurrah-has-beens and billy goat curses and the coulda-woulda-shoulda dreams and dashed hopes of the ten year old fan in all of us. It’s the bullshit-laden, historically unpredictable, funny, dead-serious, revenue-generating pageantry and entertainment of October baseball: there’s nothing like it on the planet.

There are bigger giants to slay than the wealthy, well-run Yankees, or the demons of baseball seasons past, or some silly fan in a seven-foot sausage costume trying to amuse us between innings. So have fun out there, but let’s not go off the deep end, acting like children, or idiots, or politicians (but now I repeat myself). Don’t ever forget that our current president once owned the ridiculous Texas Rangers baseball club. That alone should have been enough to suggest we here in the U.S. look elsewhere for our true heroes and leaders.

I read a great book this week. It’s called Attention. Deficit. Disorder. It’s by an up-and-comer named Brad Listi, who lives out in L.A., I think. He also does a pretty terrific socio-political blog of the same name on MySpace.

It’s a book about grief. It’s a comic coming of age novel, especially (but not only) from the perspective of a young, white, middle-class Generation X (bordering on Gen Y)searcher, with a heart of gold and a whole lot of confusing choices to make. It’s a road-trip book (the Burning Man Festival figures prominently), though the journey is more spiritual than physical. Thus I’m tempted to compare it to Kerouac’s On the Road, but I’m just not sure that would help people get it, or drive them away.

And while I can’t fully endorse everything Brad says in the book– or in this interview at litpark– still, as a human, I was deeply moved. And as a writer I definitely enjoyed the following (from the interview):

In my experience, it’s the doing of the thing that always brings me the most joy, anyway. The greatest happiness I feel as a writer is not when I’m signing a publishing contract or looking at my book on the shelf or giving a reading at a bookstore. Those things are great, sure, but the most fun I ever have is when I’m locked in my bedroom office, hunched over my keyboard with the headphones on, trying to put the words in the right order. At times, the work can be incredibly frustrating. But even when it’s at its worst, I’m always careful to remind myself how much fun it ultimately is. It’s kids’ stuff, really. It’s storytelling. It’s imagination hour. So enjoy the doing. Make it fun. Make it big. Make it weird. Make it big and fun and weird. Why not?

Every time I sit down to blog lately, I quickly realize all I want to do is whine. Whine about the difficulty of teaching some pretty unruly kids. Whine about my local community and the many warped values I see. Whine about politics, about church, about Hollywood, about deadly Chinese imports, even about a terrific son who nevertheless has lots of anxieties and moodiness when it comes to bedtime.

But I assume that the taste of whine is bitter to many readers. (Sorry, couldn’t let the opportunity for a bad pun pass…) So now that I’ve done the above whining –condensing it into a few vague sentences stripped of all the emotional angst I very much wanted to put in there– I can spare you the actual details.  (You’re welcome.)

I need to break that nasty whining habit because my intention is that Marking Time can be more than just a Mark Nielsen thing, or a shrill, self-justifying repository for paranoid manifestos, or an ungrateful, wimpy little neverending Letter to the Editor. (Yes, God does read my column, … He just prefers to answer my complaints with private IMs… no paper trail.) 

My hope is that this blog, and others like it, can slowly create a new community of people more interested in building than in tearing down, more interested in creating or understanding than in complaining.  Not that there isn’t a role of criticism for independent micro-media outlets (or whatever you want to call the average blog, the ones read by hundreds of people, as opposed to millions). It is the new “free press”, after all. And while I wouldn’t trust most bloggers to get all their facts right (present company included), their potential as barometers of the social climate is becoming clearer every day.

A good blog entry should be a little educational, yet without taking itself too seriously: somewhere between Schoolhouse Rock and NOW with Bill Moyers, with a bit of After-School Special thrown in to increase the dramatic tension, and thus secure a steady repeat investment by readers interested in seeing what happens to Our Hero . (Hint: nothing much. )

The main problem is one of quantity and competition for people’s attention. There’s a lot of fluff out there, and a lot of bad writing, hard to read even if I do agree with the writer. For every great BookSlut or Drudge Report out there, there are dozens of single-issue fan sites, vapid celebrity-driven promotional blogs (the People magazines of the internet), and rambling, shallow mumblings by suburban twelve-year-olds with nothing better to do than waste our time.

Finally, a disclaimer: sorry if you feel I’ve wasted your time today. Because I also believe a blog should be ABOUT something other than blogging itself. I just wanted to talk it through, maybe see if anyone has something to add about what you think a blog can be, or should never try to be.

 No real post tonight, but a link to a soon-to-be classic comic by Tom Tomorrow.

I always thought something smelled fishy about Greenspan, a Reagan-era holdover (I think). But I got a D in college Econ 101, so I wasn’t smart enough to put my finger on what he’s been doing. Now, as the housing market and lending industries fall apart, we start to see the reality behind three decades of his maneuvering.

Another public official to file away in the “too good to be true” category.

My students in P.E. like seeing me run and do exercises with them. For the older kids — say fourth grade and up — I suspect it’s because they like to laugh at the lumpy old man trying to pretend he’s still 18.

So pardon me if I reminisce awhile — like those sad middle-aged characters in the classic Springsteen song “Glory Days”.

Despite my obvious academic and artsy fartsy tendencies, I was actually a decent athlete when I was younger. Quick-thinking, if not quick moving, which made me a good catcher and third baseman in little league baseball, up through freshman year of high school. Plus I was coordinated enough to hit well, so I made the all-star teams regularly. I might have kept improving, too, if only I’d been able to hit that damned curveball the pitchers started throwing in high school.

In football, I had some bulk, so I played offensive tackle for a few years. But this too ended after my freshman year. I was only ever average at football, probably because I lacked that “eye of the tiger” intensity that makes for good athletes in any sport.

Plus, sophomore year was when I started doing theater and forensics, which tapped into my Inner Brooding Brando (”STELLA!” ; ” I coulda been a contendah…”; “Why have you done me this disrespect, waiting until this, the day of my daughter’s wedding, to ask me for a favor? I am godfather to your daughter, but now tell the truth: until today, you did not want to be in my debt.” )

Plus, theater let me hang with the *girls* after school, who smelled nicer, and didn’t mind me using big words.

Oops. I forgot the subject today was sports. Go back to sleep, Marlon.

Anyway, I’m enjoying the chance to rediscover my Inner Mike Singletary (or my Inner Bill Buckner… sorry, Red Sox Nation, he was a terrific Cub, and my favorite player, before he ever became your goat.)

And now, the enthusiastic but chubby student has become the even chubbier (but fair and mindful) teacher.

“Snatch this pebble from my hand, Grasshopper.”

Now drop and give me twenty pushups!

I’ve been writing some this week, but it’s mostly been bitchy, shallow and self-involved. So I thought I’d self-edit for once and spare everyone the whining.

Instead, I’ll tell a cute story about my son:

Tonight we were reading one of those old Golden Books before bedtime, a mediocre retelling of the David and Goliath story from the Bible. (We don’t as a rule overdo the heavy-handed religious instruction with him, but a good story’s still a good story, and this is one of the more accessible ones from the Old Testament.)

At one point I broke in and said that David was “one of our ancestors”. Technically, it’s only true for Sue and Graham, as some recent family tree data uncovered by Sue’s sister revealed they had a German-Jewish ancestor about eight generations back. I must admit it stirred some pride and amusement in me, to think that my descendents will inherit a drop or two of Jewish heritage. As a Christian, I’ve always claimed David as a spiritual forefather (a great poet, a good dancer, politically savvy, and a passionate if flawed individual… sounds like my kind of guy!) But theological connection is just not the same as actual blood ties to the so-called Chosen People, so I’m glad at least Graham can lay claim to those ties.

Back to the story: as I mentioned the word ancestor to him, it occurred to me that Graham, being five, might not know this word yet. So I asked him if he knew it.

His reply was classic: “Yeah. It’s like our aunts and sisters.”

I laughed pretty hard at that. He had used odd, childlike logic, sound-alike linguistic thinking, and an intuitive sense of context to arrive at a definition that –while not entirely accurate– was at least in the ballpark.

Okay, so maybe it’s only a funny story for a geek like me interested in linguistics and word origins. Nevertheless, it seemed a tale at least worth repeating. Especially since most of what I ever learned about good comedy, I got either from Jews or from children.

Graham Nielsen: the Henny Youngman/Woody Allen/Jerry Seinfeld/Jon Stewart of Generation Z… coming soon to a comedy club or kindergarten near you.

I’ve been convinced for years that the old adage, “All politics are local”, is much more true than we generally acknowledge. Despite all our water-cooler political talk about wars, presidents, gay/not-gay senators, hurricanes and Medicare, most of us say very little about the state and local government issues that more directly impact our daily lives. And why is that? Because we can’t talk about what we don’t know!

It’s a cruel irony that, even as communication technology has become so widespread and powerful over the past century, it has generally become less and less relevant. Frankly, I don’t care about Paris Hilton in jail, but apparently I’m in the minority, because Larry King bumped Michael Moore (and a relevant conversation about healthcare funding) when he landed Paris’ first post-prison interview.

Using the same warped values, detailed coverage of most state government news gets pushed to the back pages of newspapers — newspapers being read by fewer and fewer people every year. And unless there’s a fire, a fistfight or a cute little doggie costume ball to fund some good cause, we can’t count on the local news stations to cover statewide issues in any depth, either. Budget debates make for really bad entertainment, which is the primary role of most local news shows (except for public television, occasionally).

Now I’m no dummy. I know the real reason we pay so little attention to state and local government: IT’S BORING. Yes, it’s tedious. Yes, the two-party bickering is often just as petty and silly as on the national level. And yes, the level of detail needed to understand what’s at stake is often hard to come by. But we are grownups, aren’t we? We can do this. We manage our own household budgets, school PTAs, and grocery runs  (on increasingly crowded, overdeveloped streets). So why can’t we see how decisions made about taxes and environmental initiatives and education on the statewide level affect the kind of actual context we live in everday?

Therefore, despite the tedium of local issues,we still should be paying attention, and our news outlets should do more to help, lest we or our children be sold out yet again, while we’re not looking.

Take, for example, the matter of public transportation. Here’s an excerpt of a news item (from last June) on Illinois state representative Julie Hamos’ website:

In addition to leaving uncertain the fate of Blagojevich’s “Illinois Covered” health-care proposal, the legislature’s inaction also left unresolved efforts by the Regional Transportation Authority to seek state help to fund city and suburban commuter rail and bus operations and improve its infrastructure.

Earlier … a House panel advanced RTA-backed legislation that would allow sales tax increases in Cook County and the collar counties and impose a new real-estate transfer tax in Chicago to raise an estimated $452.5 million for regional mass transit. Blagojevich has vowed to veto any legislation to increase sales taxes. But sponsoring Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston) said she hoped to convince the governor and other lawmakers that it was a “regional tax” for a “regional issue.”

So apparently Ms. Hamos was on the case way back in June, whereas the rest of us, and the news outlets, only caught up on this sticky issue in mid-September. But now is the last-minute crisis point when CTA/RTA service is about to be drastically cut. What’s up with that? Can’t we get our homework done on time?

Now I’m not even taking a position on the actual issue of how to fund the need. What I’m bothered about is the sensationalist coverage (TV news loves a fight, as we’ve said), and our public inattentiveness to detail. Not to mention the two-faced nature of a Democratic majority that says it cares about the environment but never gets serious about reducing the number of cars on the road.

As for the September transit proposals, one of which involves putting casinos in Chicago to fund the transit system, I’m pretty disgusted.  Gone are the days when gambling was considered a vice. Gone is the common sense of building the infrastructure because it’s the right thing to do (Roosevelt’s WPA-type thinking). Now it’s all about trading favors and making compromises, figuring out what will sell and then selling it, and ultimately pandering to our most basic instincts: self-interest, competitive edge, maintaining alliances, gluttony, laziness, and greed greed greed.

I’m moving to Canada. Call me when you figure it out, guys…

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Matt. 5:5 

I find it difficult to live by that principle. But I’m trying real hard… 

My five-year-old son is an only child, and it’s beginning to show in how he acts with other kids. Basically, unless he’s running the show, he doesn’t want to play. You’re either doing it his way, or you’re doing it wrong.

Therefore–in my overly worried mind–he’s either bound to be a friendless, rigid, powerless, self-absorbed nerd, or else he’ll become the stubborn, bullying but charismatic leader of the free world. (Funny question: which path would be worse in the grand scheme of things?) 

I know I’m overreacting. Still, I often wonder if we spoil him. Do we indulge too many of his impulses? Do we restrict or direct his activities enough? I also wonder if we don’t give him enough chances to build cooperative, sharing experiences with his peers. He’s been in preschool, and now kindergarten, but has not had very many non-institutional chances to develop the give-and-take necessary for strong friendships. 

Then again, maybe every five-year-old is a self-absorbed tyrant who won’t take no for an answer, or at least not without a fight.  

The basic question is this: how do we develop a child’s ego strength and independence, while also teaching him/her humility and flexibility? And how much can any of those things even be taught, as opposed to being inherent traits of one’s personality?  I know it’s a bit of both, that parents and teachers model these things as much as they can, but as kids grow, they have to learn much of it on their own. And eventually the kid will learn, probably the hard way. I can’t and shouldn’t try to prevent that. But it’s hard, waiting for that other shoe to drop. 

My son knows, conceptually, what the word “consequence” means. It amazes me how smart he seems sometimes. But he’s still behind in his social skills. Only when kids start walking away, tired of being ordered around, will he truly understand what a consequence is. And it’s going to hurt pretty bad.  I can only hope to be watching closely enough to help him understand what just happened. Then I’ll help him jump back in and try again at the hard compromises necessary to building relationships, instead of licking his wounds and burning his bridges.  

We all know a grownup or two who never learned these lessons: how to relinquish authority (either real or imaginary), how to apologize, how to be part of a team. They tend to be fairly awkward, lonely or unhappy people, in my experience.   

But now and then, this type learns to fake it, and they may even ascend to positions of great authority and reponsibility. I’m thinking of people like Bill Gates (who did learn eventually, to be fair), Dick Cheney, or that boss you had once, whom most of her employees feared and despised. Intelligence, confidence, stubbornness and ambition make for a potent combination. But I’d hate for my son to be like that. I’d prefer he achieve and define success in other more responsible and communal ways. Getting ahead doesn’t have to mean always being selfish and single-minded. 

Yet I can’t prevent the pain of rejection or isolation my son will experience if he persists in his bull-headedness. In the real world, he has to learn to adapt, to cooperate, to follow, and to share.  The alternative is too awful to contemplate, because even the Dick Cheneys of the world have their Moqtada al Sadrs and Kim Jong Ils. So I suppose I really do believe that the meek will inherit the earth… I’m just not sure how, when just about every community on earth values power over meekness.

“He who is aware of his folly is wise.”

This is what my fortune cookie told me this morning. It wasn’t much of a breakfast. But it serves as a good starting point for discussing the Iraq war status reports from our ambassador and General Petreus yesterday.

I’ll start on a hopeful note (to work against my natural pessimistic tendencies.) What I’ve heard that’s encouraging so far is an overall tone of competence from the military. They sound like they now know the folly of past decisions. While the adjustments they’ve made this year are probably too little, too late, at least they’re not in denial anymore. Whether or not the politicians will make good decisions, given what we now know — that will be another matter. But I’m actually inclined to trust the military leadership charged with carrying out the policing, training, and building of practical local alliances with the people of Iraq. Mistakes will still happen, but it seems they’re learning from them finally, at least more often than in the beginning.

The bad news is that our non-military leaders, in both nations, have not gotten wise to the ineffectiveness of military or terror based solutions in the first place. The only thing violence gets us is more instability, more chaos.

I believe the mayors, merchants and mothers of Iraq understand this. They’re more interested in stability than in ethnic or theological purity. But they don’t have enough power or money to compete with the mullahs and thugs. So in most cases, they just cover their own asses and leave the fighting to those who have the stomach for it.

So I’m afraid that, while we are achieving a few symbolic victories in the short run, ultimately we’re just propping up a broken system… one that will break apart when we try to extricate ourselves from that country’s ancient rivalries and start focusing more effectively on our own problems.

Sorry if I repeat myself, but I must return to one of my favorite targets this week. I’ve had an ongoing debate for years with people who defend Oprah Winfrey as only a positive influence on our culture, who don’t see how she also confuses the issues sometimes. Lately, that debate has revolved around Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, a book, DVD, CD set, and “achievement” movement that is one of Oprah’s latest pet causes.

I admit Oprah’s done some good things: her book club got people reading something more than just Danielle Steele, her occasional focus on Africa and other Two Thirds World development issues reminds us that with privelege also comes responsibility, and she has not ignored the problems of urban America, either.

Nevertheless, with The Secret, she’s gone too far out on a limb for us to follow.

First of all, a disclaimer: I’ve only read excerpts of the book, and I have not seen more than a few minutes of the TV shows or DVD materials. So anyone who takes the position that I should not criticize what I have not checked out firsthand would be partially accurate. But I have read some of the book, and also have some knowledge of the earlier ideas The Secret’s authors use as source material (religious, economic, psychological and philosophical). The Secret’s self-help gurus on steroids have used smatterings of Norman Vincent Peale, Eastern philosophy, and the uniquely American (and non-Christian) ”prosperity gospel” to build their so-called success system. Just add in some “if you build it, they will come…”-style, romanticized New Age ideas about risk vs. reward, and you get The Secret.

I’ve also read highly credible reviews and critiques of this program, first on Salon.com , and then from Fr. Richard Rohr of the Center For Action and Contemplation (one of the leading voices in a growing centrist spiritual/political movement, one that is both inclusive and incisive).

The criticisms have come from several arenas. Science-minded skeptics are concerned about the vague and emotionally-laden terminology that The Secret uses and confuses. Take, for example, The Law of Attraction, a foundational idea in The Secret which says that consistent positive thinking plus positive behavior will attract more positive people and results in one’s life. Now it’s been awhile since I took grade school science, but even I know that when talking about magnets and energy, what actually happens is that positive charges repel other positive charges.

Now that’s what *I* call a “law”: something that’s repeatable, that happens every time, because the essence of the universe requires it to happen. Yet with The Secret, if I don’t see the results I want, it’s my own fault. I broke “the law”. Or I didn’t use and apply the law of attraction well enough (more “blame-the-victim” thinking… great!). The reality is that –other than providing a mediocre metaphor– science has nothing to do with The Secret, even though the system loves to dress in fancy scientific clothing to make what is basically a souped-up motivational sales pitch sound more credible.

Religion and philosophy experts have their own criticisms as well, among them the always questionable claim that The Secret does not contradict the basic tenets of any world religion. Besides being presumptuous, this false claim is just plain illogical.

First of all, the major religions themselves disagree substantially on a few basic points, the most important of which for this discussion are 1) humans’ sinful nature, and 2) the role of money. I’ll spare you the long, boring details on how The Secret misrepresents the very clear (and different) metaphysical teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, Moses, and other historic religious leaders on just these two topics. Let’s just say history has proven it impossible to propose a comprehensive system that doesn’t contradict either one religion’s exclusive claim, or the other’s. They can’t all be completely right if they’re not all saying the same things. So The Secret has to contradict somebody. And it does — quite clumsily, in fact.

I may not be doing the best job of making my point here. I’m not very eloquent when I’m aggravated (in this case, aggravated with the American public, for having such a faulty B.S. detector). So I’ll quit ranting, and let Father Rohr do the wrap-up for me:

“The Secret” is probably a classic example of something that is partially true, and even good, being made into the only lens through which you read reality, and then it becomes untrue. Heresy could be defined as when we absolutize a partial truth, and I believe that is what is happening here. But I would also love for Christians to learn the partial truth, and that is why we teach the contemplative mind…

BUT, it is also a first world luxury to think this way! Suffering people, poor people, oppressed people know very clearly that “your thinking does not make it so”! It will help their ability to love and survive within this painful and sad world, and that is indeed wonderful; but to make it into an entire metaphysical principle is just not true. Reality has plenty of reality to it before my mind comes onto the scene… Left to itself, it would be the continual recurring heresy of Gnosticism, which asserts that spiritual reality is the only reality…

“The Secret” will actually do a disservice to many people when their mind cannot control the death of their innocent child, or make them a million dollars, or make their former husband forgive them, etc. It will also keep people from that much more honest, humble–and REALISTIC–position of Incarnational Christianity. God comes to us disguised as our life, not as a Platonic world of ideas, even positive and good ideas.