Marking Time

I’m reading real books again this summer, for a change. There’s a sort of weight and permanence to the printed word, on real paper, especially when bound in a hard cover. Maybe I’m a romantic, an old-fashioned old coot, but books still matter to me –in this age of dying newspaper conglomerates, bad novelizations of bad movies, and blogs (including this one) that seem outdated within mere minutes, as we move on to the next topic or political fetish. 

True to form, I’ve chosen some classic books and highly “literary” authors for my current reading binge: To Kill a Mockingbird. (O Harper Lee, Where Art Thou?) . Americana, a recent John Updike poetry collection. Grace (Eventually)  by Anne Lamott, which is my current book (I’ve slowed down, to savor it, not wanting to be done yet). And A Man Without a Country, a terrific, short, memoir-ish, doodle-filled, social critique sort of thing by the late great Kurt Vonnegut, the last book he ever put out. You might say it was his “parting shot”.

Kurt is someone I need to learn more about, partly because I am hoping to include him as a key minor character in my slowly-evolving Cape Cod novel (he lived there in the late Fifties and early Sixties, the time period of my novel). He’s the perfect mentor for one of the teenage kids in my disgruntled Eisenhower-era family, the McKittredges.

Vonnegut always lived the tough questions and contradictions: he was a WWII vet who became a pacifist, a scientist/anthropologist in disguise as a novelist, a pragmatic Midwesterner in spirit right up to the end (he was from Indianapolis) even while living in New York, a great American who knew that patriotism need not be reduced to jingoistic sayings and blind acceptance of stupid policies, an unapologetic Socialist sympathizer (but only the old 1930s brand of idealistic socialism), and one of the funniest mo-fos ever to walk the planet.

And it was a planet he loved dearly, too. A Man Without a Country has some of the best rhetorical arguments against fossil fuels that I’ve read anywhere. Though he’s cynical, too (or realistic, depending on your outlook), and doubts we can actually save the planet, one which he ruefully reminds us it took a mere hundred years for us to ruin.

Here’s a few choice quotes from Man Without a Country:

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. Freud said that humor is a response to frustration - one of several… I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all they time. They could be so easily killed.”

“How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, ‘If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not? …But if Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being. I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.”

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings… ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

“Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”

“There are two sorts of artists… one responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself… what you resond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”

This last quote was actually Kurt quoting another friend of his, Saul Steinberg, who he called the wisest person he ever met. For me, Kurt may be the wisest man I never met, except through his books. His novels take a long view of human history, and they expose our species as the beautiful fools we’re often too afraid to admit we are. He can speak eloquently about science and deny the existence of heaven in one breath, and then by the end of that same paragraph express more genuine gratitude and appreciation for the life and words of Jesus than most Christians I know. In other words, he was wise: he knew enough to admit that he really only knew very little, with any certainty. As an avowed skeptic and misanthrope, he didn’t have what one could call “faith” — in God, in politics, in humans, in anything, actually. But he had the guts to keep asking the tough questions, to stay focused and informed, and to express his brilliant, hilarious opinions, right up to the end (which was in April of 2007).

I can only hope to be so lucky, or even half as gifted.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good metaphor, and one of my favorite writers on spiritual matters, Anne Lamott, put me in mind of a very good one today: the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the ancient temple courtyard in Jerusalem. Here’s an excerpt from her most recent book, Grace (Eventually) :

… a picture of a young boy and his father in yarmulkes, pushing prayers written on paper into cracks in the wall. This is something I do all the time, shove bits of paper with prayers and names on them into desk drawers, little boxes, my glove compartment. I have found that… turning the problem over to God or the elves in the glove compartment harnesses something in the universe that is bigger than you, and that just might work.

Anne herself is a recovering alcoholic, and writes quite humorously and eloquently about her journey, about the various ways God chased her around northern California until she finally surrendered and came to Jesus. I’ve been thinking alot lately about the idea of surrender. Certain prayers and attitudes are a healthy form of surrender, as Christian and Buddhist theologians have been teaching us for years. They say that letting go, giving up control, embracing humility, is the way to peace and happiness. Yet in an uptight, me-first, macho, militarized, post-9/11 world, the idea of surrender is not fashionable. Then again, when have I ever been fashionable?

Surrender also came up in church yesterday (Redeemer Lutheran in Park Ridge), as one of the earliest of the Twelve Steps in traditional recovery program language. Here’s how people in “the program” usually put it:

Step 3
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

“God as we understood Him.” This phrase is where the conservative evangelicals that I occasionally keep company with tend to part company with AA, considering it either a respectable but non-Christian system, or else a cultish organization of anarchists and tool of the devil (though not many would go that far… given the number of recovering addicts and success stories, it’s hard to make a case that God does not support the program).

Why don’t conservatives accept Step 3 at face value? Because those who cling tightly to an exacting and narrow interpretation of the Bible would like to believe they already understand all they need to know about God, through relationship with His son Jesus. Surrendering to the possibility that some things just cannot be known or explained scripturally, or that God as someone understands Him would not include Jesus, is too much of a stretch for them. Therefore a more subjective view of God, however one is able to see or experience God, is also too much of a stretch. For me –getting more theologically liberal by the day in how I look at the biblical text itself– the jury is still out on some of what Jesus actually said and did, and what I should therefore do.

Jesus was just such a confusing cat at times, wasn’t he?

Don’t get me wrong, though. I have great respect for scripture, and the utmost respect for Jesus — at least on the days when I’m not a sinful, piggish, opinionated clod only out for myself. On those bad days, Jesus is my perfect older brother, and I have a severe distaste for Him, because how could I ever possibly measure up to such a high standard? Those are my depressive days. My lonely days. My angry days. My self-pitying, potentially addicted days, which I often fill with too much tv or non-prayerful computer use. Basically that’s Mondays, alternate Wednesdays, and any other day upon which I have to take some responsibility for the well-being of myself and my family, and yet don’t want to do that.

And there’s the rub: I have to surrender control, and yet still maintain an attitude of responsibility and steady service to the principles set down by a Higher Power. I can’t just give up, say WTF?, and move on with my own business. I have to follow the path that has been shown to work. I have to have self-discipline, and set goals, even as I give up an investment in the outcome (knowing that it will not exactly match what I want personally). At this moment of surrender, the proud young Turk within me wants to stand up and say, “Wait. What’s in this for me? Why should I follow, if this path is so hard, and the ultimate destination is unknown (or sometimes unpleasant, if you’re doing it right, like Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King)?”

At which point the Holy Spirit shows up (hopefully) and answers for God, saying, “Because this is the path to health, dipshit. The path to abundant life. Do you want to be healthy and growing, or miserable and lost, wandering around some more in your own private 40-year desert?”

See how God is not always as gentle as those nice evangelicals once told me He was?

Meanwhile, remember those old Catholics, the ones who used to whip themselves? Well they may have been overdoing it, but they were still onto something: they knew how to surrender, and they knew how tough it is to do, over and over again, every bleepin’ day of our whole bleepin’ life. 

Which leads me back to where I started, the Wailing Wall. It took God so many years to get the Jews to a point spiritually where they were wise and humble enough to build His City, and then to build those temples properly and with the right attitude. It took both strength and humility, as modeled by leaders like Solomon, to create and maintain the home where Jehovah and his Ark (containing the original “Twelve Steps”) could take up residence. And then God turned around and chastened His people yet again, taking down the Second Temple as well, leaving nothing but an old retaining wall that keeps the mountain from spilling over onto the temple courtyard. That’s our Wailing Wall… it’s a glorified earth dam, a retaining wall.

And here’s something I didn’t know till I looked it up today: that expanded courtyard and its Wailing Wall were built by none other than Herod the Great. This is the same guy who was one of the worst Roman collaborators ever, who was outsmarted by the Magi, Mary and Joseph when Jesus was a baby, and then later killed his wife and two of his sons. So why did they call this guy great? Goes to show you: power does not equal greatness. It’s no wonder God had to get rid of Herod’s precious Second Temple.  It was nothing but a monument to  gross injustices, slave labor and corrupt, reprehensible acts by a man who couldn’t carry Solomon’s jockstrap. 

Besides, with the coming of Jesus, God moved off the Temple Mount and out into the world anyway. So the remaining ruins of the courtyard wall aren’t much more than a tombstone, really — an important landmark to what once was great. The old Jerusalem, the old temple, the old ways — those are all gone now. We have to surrender to the future, to what’s healthy and best for everybody that has a stake in the New Jerusalem (which seems to cover just about everybody, right?).

Thus, a desk drawer or glove compartment will suffice from now on, as repositories for the prayers of those of us who still want to write down prayers for peace in Jerusalem, or for the healing of our wounds so we won’t drink or gamble or compulsively shop anymore, or for anything else that’s too big a problem for us to solve through merely human methods.

A computer and a blog work pretty good, too. Pardon me while I go finish my wailing in private.

For those that don’t know your arcane Hollywood film history, The Three Faces of Eve was an odd, but high-quality, 1957 take on mental illness, specifically multiple personality disorder. It starred Joanne Woodward, one of the most underrated actresses of the Baby Boom generation. If I were a film historian, or teaching college (which I may in fact do sometime soon if I get myself together), I might do a unit on the good and bad portrayals of mental illness in film over the years. For example, how many of you have seen the sweet, early Johnny Depp movie Benny and Joon (subject: late teen onset of schizophrenia… not Johnny’s, but Mary Stuart Masterson’s)?

Maybe I’m thinking about Eve and Joon because I recently watched Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo (1990), about another cuckoo, Vincent Van Gogh and his complicated relationship with his brother Theo. It was depressing and uneven, as many Altman films are, but I liked it nevertheless. Perhaps because I, too, am depressing and uneven.

Depressing, optimistic, whatever. All of the above and more. Therefore I finally put myself out there on facebook, which I think I’ve been avoiding for the past two years in the interest of NOT doing something trendy for once. Conformists like us all have to stake out at least one way to not be a lemming, right? (Same reason I’m not going to drive a hybrid, or probably get tats and piercings… I prefer to display my distinctiveness in what I say and do, not how I look.)

The cool part about facebook though –which, I know, will be stating the obvious for those of you who participate (sorry) – is the prospect of turning up old friends and returning them to New Friend status. Perhaps even friends you didn’t know you had, people you thought had dismissed you in high school as a dope, or nice but irrelevant. That’s the experience I’m having, anyway. Acceptance (or at least tolerance) from unexpected sources.

Still, nothing beats honest face-to-face conversation, like the splendid time that was had by all at the L’Arche Chicago Eighth Anniversary event on Sunday, June 22nd. My friend Spencer Foon was honored, along with State of Illinois disabilities advocate Sheila Romano. Sue and I caught up with old friends, made a few new ones, and just enjoyed the smiling faces of the core members.

Two highlights: Spencer in a suit and tie (it will be another five years before I see that again), and Reba/Sonshine Group pal Ron Polzella looking hale and healthy… and winning a bottle of wine in the raffle! I’ll drink to that, Big Ron.

As conspiracy theorists go, I am clearly bush league.

This week’s reminder of how far one can go down this strange, winding path is one Michael Tsarion. He was proposed to me recently as a writer who advances the cause of all things Irish and/or Celtic, and thus mystically and/or politically reasonable. However, in wandering around upon his complex private “interweb” of fact and fiction, I see that he’s just another in a long line of goofy astrologists, occultists and conspiracy theorists, those colorful cats out to take wild, random potshots instead of pointing out a productive path toward the truth.

By now, a small but dedicated handful of you are saying under your breath to me: “Oh, you poor simpleton. You deluded soul, already stolen away from us, we who were only trying to free you from the tyranny of lies and deceit, perpetrated over the past 5000 years.”

Nevertheless, I must defer to a higher authority, who calls me to sing out loud and proud:

“I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

Meanwhile, Tsarion and his ilk are out to convince us that every U.S. president was a Freemason, that the mystical, philosophical or biological descendents of Egyptian pharaoh/priest Akhenaton are in control of every Western government, and probably that monotheism in itself is the true enemy of mankind. 

Therefore the Yahweh of the Bible, for some of these theorists, does not love His people but has instead abandoned them to the slings and arrows of all these false prophets and tyrants. Or else the One True God is an invention by these past cults, to keep Everyman down, to keep us from accessing our inner power, which would allow us to practice magic, travel by astral projection, and tear down well-armed despots the moment we encounter them. I don’t know, maybe I’m getting it wrong though. These amateur symbologist types draw such tenuous and strange connections that it’s easy to get confused. 

For instance, did you know that Hitler was actually in league with the pre-Zionist Zionists, in England and elsewhere? Mr. Tsarion even has a photo of a young Hitler, kissing the hand of Elizabeth the Second  –though he mislabels her as Elizabeth the First! This is the kind of sloppy, stupid, ahistorical hogwash that his type loves to slip by us, under a veil of actual facts and plausible interpretations, of very vague details and far-reaching symbols.

Here’s another example, taken directly from Tsarion’s site:

The Bohemian Club - Elite members of this secret order (that includes most US presidents) meet at a time when the sun (Aton) is at its highest point during the year - at the summer solstice - June 21st. The summer solstice was adopted by Hitler and his Nazis as their most important day of ritual and celebration. It was the most sacred day in the Nazi calendar.

Dude, if you so smart, where’s my local Boho meeting being conducted tomorrow? I wanna be there! Are they really THAT good at keeping secrets?

Tsarion tries to make a case for the Nazis and others co-opting and altering many basic Druidic or similar ideas. Yeah Mike, it’s well-established already that Hitler co-opted everyone’s mythology, from India to Scandinavia to Ireland to God only knows where else. But that doesn’t mean he was secretly in compliance with some long-standing plan of the Knights Templar to rule the world. It just means he was crafty and evil, a tool of Satan, a disenchanted but brilliant nutjob who veiled his megalomania in intense nationalist, populist, pseudo-religious bullshit.

Tsarion’s not the first one to try connecting Hitler, Pat Robertson, Pope Paul VI, Satanist Anton LaVey, The Illuminati, philosopher Francis Bacon, and the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster (it’s like some fascinating but intellectually dishonest variant of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon  game!). Anyone with a will to think creatively can build a case and turn up potential evidence. Remember the Lone Gunmen, from The X Files? (Oh My Gawd!!!  I was such an X-Files fan… and here’s a thought: was it The Man who secretly killed off the Lone Gunmen’s short-lived spinoff show, or just really crappy writing?)

There are thousands of people like this out in the world, who believe they’re doing important work. In my opinion, a few of them actually are. But they get lost in the midst of all the noise, and because of the very nature of evil, which works to remain hidden and secret for as long as possible.

Every once in awhile, I get sucked into exploring this complex web of numerologists, Kabballah enthusisasts, astrology buffs, and ultra-conservative Christian Pentacostals on the lookout for secret but powerful cults to pray against. And again, I’m not saying these groups, alliances and spiritual connections aren’t out there. They definitely are out there (the “powers and principalities” that Paul speaks of), though I can’t claim any expertise in which theories are solid and which are misguided. Frankly, it just makes my head hurt whenever I read all the fundamentalist, neo-paganist or other misguided tripe that tries to explain every last war and historical development as part of some evil Master Plan.

Sometimes, you gotta just pick a lane and drive. The fact is, sin is real. A negative spiritual force or personality does exist in the universe. But so does the eternal Creator and Redeemer. Thus, every human ever born is capable of both incredible mercy and unspeakable evil, depending upon whom we align ourselves with, and how much ethical and spiritual discipline we are willing to practice.

Yet we are lazy and fearful by nature, and prefer to conform, so we mostly tend to aim down the middle, ignoring Jesus’ path of radical love (and political change, and true justice) because it requires us to feel like such aliens in a world gone wrong.  Even Christians, in most cases (myself included), can’t manage to be in constant, peaceful communion with the Creation and Creator, choosing instead to practice religion rather than faithful, risky, loving action and forgiveness like Jesus himself. 

On the other hand, if we are also hungry or powerless, or have not forgiven past wrongs against “our people”, we are then ripe for the picking by every jihadist, neo-con, or self-aggrandizing leader looking to play upon those fears and physical needs by promising a comeuppance for “the godless infidels”.

If you think about it, commiting to remain disenfranchised, to share equally amongst ourselves, to hang with the prostitutes and have nowhere to lay one’s head, doesn’t sound like such “good news”, does it? It’s so much nicer to sit with a big steak in air-conditioned comfort in front of an HDTV at the ESPN Zone and watch the Boston Celtics (BTW, did they have a Druid priest saying incantations, arranging for their victory?… or perhaps bribing the referees to call fewer fouls?). Fasting and praying under the stars in front of a Celtic cross, clothing the naked, taking in and feeding the orphan, admitting you’re wrong once in awhile… these are works of radical discipleship that require God’s grace precisely because  they’re so hard to perform without His help. Ignorance, of both the good and bad in the world, really is bliss. Anyone with the guts to look into his or her own soul will tell you this.

I say “his or her” above, but let’s be honest: most spinners and practitioners of these crazy conspiracy theories are men — emasculated or psychically wounded men, pseudo-religious pirates, a much different brand of “outsider” than the disciples of Jesus. They’re the fickle followers of Barrabas, the Judases who took a wrong turn, or the self-appointed shamans looking to justify themselves, while leaving others (especially in the undeveloped Two Thirds World) to fend for themselves.

Most are looking for a systemic or external explanation for why they’re forever on the outside personally. Some want power, others merely acceptance. Meanwhile they’re in denial themselves, avoiding the “dark night of the soul” that might actually transform them into credible  witnesses to the true Eternal Light and the truth. This is why other outsiders (you may call them geeks, but we all need to embrace our inner geek) find these theories so attractive. It’s cafeteria-style, libertarian, serve-yourself, super-sweet philosophical candy in an attractive package. The theories free us from any responsibility for our own situations, be they personal or political. They let immature, adolescent, me-against-the-world attitudes fluorish and find justification, irrespective of any higher authority or personal call to holiness and service.

What’s more, the anarchic, non-theistic, or factually fuzzy solutions these theorists often recommend don’t account for the contentiousness and will to power that inevitably sets in among all us sinners. They make it easier to attach blame beyond ourselves, to the eternal THEM – whether THEY are the liberal Jewish media, the conservative fundamentalist Zionist warmongers, the Black Jesus-denying racists, the imperialist/royalist/fascist aristocracy, the Wahabist (or Shi’ ite) usurpers of the true Islamic faith, the Socialist/Communist hippie baby-killers looking to give away the store and crucify Christ again, or the Christian witch-hunters out to kill every horned owl and tree sprite that ever sought to set us free.

Sure, a few modern conspiracy analysts are on a genuine quest for the truth. But many are just the next generation of pawns and liars in the eternal struggle of good and evil.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not advocating we remain ignorant. Just that we consider the source, question authority with a healthy but non-obsessive skepticism, and then lead with our hearts … but without disengaging our heads. Be faithful first. Then be smart. And be careful not to get caught on the wrong side in this battle of disinformation and distraction, only to find out too late you could have instead been enjoying the fulfilling fellowship of true believers all along, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

As Peter once said to Jesus when Jesus gave him leave to abandon their difficult journey: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life? We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

‘Nuff said.

“Because, in truth, because they have misled my people, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace. Therefore thus says the Lord God: In my wrath I will make a stormy wind break out.”

Ezekiel 13:10a, 13

Apparently there has always been a public relations industry, and spin doctors to put a positive face on a steaming pile of lies. If I read this passage correctly, that is.

Yesterday at a simple desire, we had a good look at the difference between exaggerated, metaphoric violence and actual physical violence, between “outer” peace and inner peace among the people of God. I think today’s verses make the case pretty clearly that Ezekiel’s is a story of the battle in the heavens for our souls, not the ones on earth for our property or ideologies. In verse 5 of Chapter 13, the Lord uses the image of the false prophets as those who have not repaired “the breaks in the wall”. This way of equating physical objects (a destroyed temple, a city, a whitewashed tomb) with the spiritual identity of a follower of Yahweh (one who is under threat of attack, who must guard his or her heart from sin, lies and false deities) has precedent throughout both the Old and New Testaments. For example, Nehemiah and other minor prophets put the rebuilding of Jerusalem in this same context: the city IS the people, and vice-versa.

Here, Ezekiel’s Lord talks about “flimsy” walls covered with “whitewash” (v. 10) , walls that will not be strong enough to stand in a coming battle. It’s not much of a stretch to see that they’re not talking about brick and mortar walls here, so much as a religious and political house of cards, based on lies and denial, that will not stand against the coming opponents. It reminds me of something… a battle entered into with faulty, made-up information from the leadership; a shoddy, patched-together, whitewashed mission thought to be “accomplished”; battles for which we’re not prepared… where have I heard this before? Ah well, it will come to me later.

Chapter 13 ends, on the other hand, with a merciful God, a saving Lord. He’s still angry, yes – and not only at the liars but also those foolish enough to believe them. But He just wants His people restored, his family set back on the right path. Here’s more of what He tells Ezekiel to convey to the false prophets, the pundits of that era, making up predictions off the top of their head:

19b By lying to my people, who listen to lies, you have killed those who should not have died and have spared those who should not live.

 20 ” ‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against your magic charms with which you ensnare people like birds, and I will tear them from your arms; I will set free the people that you ensnare like birds. 21 I will tear off your veils and save my people from your hands, and they will no longer fall prey to your power. Then you will know that I am the LORD. 22 Because you disheartened the righteous with your lies,… 

As a disheartened peacemaker in the 21st century, I take hope from this. The veil behind which a liar hides can always be torn away by our protective Father, revealing what was hidden and scurrilous (but often seductive, complete with flashing graphics and seemingly plausible statistics) about the false prophets’ message. Except nowadays, instead of “peace”, they say “War!” when there is no war… at least not the kind of war – with nukes and guns and IED’s – that they’re telling me we need to fight. 

I may or may not be righteous, but at least now I know that I’m not alone and abandoned here, utterly unable to sort out the truth from the lies, on the eve of still more battles for the hearts and minds of God’s people.

“Here’s looking at you, Dad.”

I know that –as Humphrey Bogart/Rick Blaine said in Casablanca– my problems “don’t amount to a hill of beans” in the context of wars, floods, earthquakes and supermodel Kate Moss’ hair extension malfunction. But the problems are real enough to me, and thus the truest reporting I can do (at least while sitting in a comfy cafe eating biscuits and gravy… I mean, I’m EMBEDDED here, people).

There was supposed to be an 8am tee-ball game at the “big field” today (Sunday) –with a P.A. announcer, teams lining up on the baselines while being introduced, and kosher hot dogs being sold (at 8am?). I looked forward to the whole baseball-fest pageantry – the older kids would follow, getting the same treatment. But it started pouring at about 7:55, and the games (or at least ours) were canceled.

Happy Frickin’ Father’s Day: up at 6:30 for NOTHING!

So I went to breakfast… alone, since Sue dislikes restaurants (and breakfast), and Graham already had a Pop Tart before the rainout. Dropped them off, then found out that Prairie Joe’s, my favorite breakfast joint, isn’t open till 9am on Sundays. Had to settle for Le Peep… this shee-shee (chi-chi?) place in Evanston with no character and middlin’ food. It was packed, especially with grinning dads out to breakfast with their families, and in some cases even the grandparents. Made me feel even more rained-upon.

By most accounts, when they were making the movie Casablanca, it was a mess not unlike my spoiled Father’s Day morning. They had multiple writers trying to clean up the story, Ingrid Bergman was a no-name actress still learning English, some actual WWII events changed the plot midstream, and it was not expected even by the filmmakers to be the classic that it became. Nevertheless, I didn’t hold out much hope that my Father’s Day would improve (and it really didn’t). Maybe I should have brought in a few more writers to clean up the plot: get Sue and Graham to join me for breakfast, have a great breakthrough at church, watch Casablanca together on DVD at night — that sort of thing. Oh well…

Sunday marked the third major event for me affected by excessive rainstorms this spring. The first two were at school: the Peace March for which we’d spent months preparing, and Field Day, where multi-age groupings compete for school bragging rights in relay races, Tug of War, and other events. That one got moved from a Friday to a Monday due to the storm. But the CMLC Peace March was just scaled back to a pathetic little parade around the gym– a complete waste of the attention-getting costumes, signs, and choreographed chants I taught the kids. I was quietly crushed, though I put on a brave face. (A metaphor for how most of the school year went, by the way…)

They say everything happens for a reason. My faith and perseverence notwithstanding, what could possibly be God’s reason for raining on every celebration I had a leadership role in this year? Yeah, I know: it’s not all about me, His rain falls on the just and the jerky alike, but my patience is getting pretty thin by now — enough to turn me kind of jerky.

In Casablanca, Rick and Ilsa would “always have Paris”. Meanwhile, what do I have to look back on fondly in the first six months of 2008, in this Father’s Day war of dampened spirits?

My friend Ruth “blog-tagged” me the other day… oops, it’s been over a month ago now, where did the time go? I don’t often get involved with chains, or forwarding stuff, but since this one is more like shameless self-promotion disguised as a game of tag – and I’ve always been a fan of shameless self-promotion – here goes…

Here are the rules if you decide to play along:
1) Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4) Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Ahem… and now, my seven facts (for which I make no claims as to their randomness or their weirdness, as I’m too far gone by now to distinguish weird from normal):

1) My earliest memory is a traumatic one: bleeding profusely from my right forearm, after snagging it on a cabinet hinge at about age two and a half, or three. (Yeesh… what a way to start, you sicko.)

2) My first job out of college was with Kartemquin Films, producers of the acclaimed film Hoop Dreams and dozens of other social-issue documentaries featured on PBS and in theaters. My name is even in the credits. I got fired from that job, though. (I was 22, and in over my head in terms of the specific, sales-oriented job I was supposed to be doing.)

3) My middle name is Sebastian, which was my maternal grandfather’s first name. (My son’s middle name is Brice, my dad’s first name, …and his first name, Graham, is similar to my father-in-law’s middle name, Gorham.)

4) I once missed a plane home from Paris, and was forced to stay an extra day or two. Not the worst place in the world to be stuck, let me tell ya…

5) Best comic timing I ever exhibited: my little sister spilled a glass of milk at supper, and some of it dripped into Dad’s lap, and he started screaming and swearing, and she started crying. After ten seconds of that, I piped up with this classic: “No use crying over spilled milk.” Everyone cracked up, including Dad. Crisis over. But my ambition to be a comic, or a humorist, or somehow use words to make people’s lives better was just beginning.

6) I took a date to a Cure concert once in the Eighties, mistakenly thinking it was the Christian rock band The Call. Never felt so out of place and awkward in my life, out there at Poplar Creeek Music Theater among 30,000 pre-goth, brooding, black-clad brethren, and me like a doofus in my yellow Izod LaCoste shirt. It was my one and only date with that girl, too.

7) My favorite food is lasagna. For all my other favorite this, that, and the other, check out my MySpace Profile. It’s one of the few things MySpace is good for anymore…

Seven other blogs I frequent:

1 - Brad Listi - A.D.D. - An actual published novelist. Doing a younger, hipper blog that has as many funny commenters as I’ve seen anywhere. Brad’s also funny, and capable of serious political and cultural analysis, too.

2 - Will Fitzgerald, aka Will.Whim . Words are the air he breathes… and he’s a fledgling Mennonite pastor, to boot.

3 - Jesus Manifesto - started by Mark VanSteenwyck (I think), this blog has grown up into a cool little webzine.

4- Alternadad - former Chicago Reader journalist and sometime novelist Neal Pollack, doing a blog about parenting a wild-ass six-year-old, much more colorful than my own kid. Neal leans more toward the profane side of my sacred/profane duality, but as the only person in this list who makes any MONEY at blogging (at Parents.com), he’s my hero anyway.

5 - Pastor and Author Greg Boyd’s Random Reflections. I first caught this cat on Charlie Rose’s interview show, on PBS. Then I read his book Myth of a Christian Nation. Then I started listening in to an occasional podcast of his sermons, and reading this blog.

6 - Rafiki James - one of my first and most consistent supporters for the MySpace side of MT. He does some fine spiritual and political essays himself, I must say.

7 - Carolynn Todd Burbee’s chatty little blog without a name. It’s primarily personal news and reflections, by an old college friend who teaches history. I mean… she’s not old. A year older than me, but then… oh never mind. I’ve already gone and stuck my foot in it…

Kind of hard to write something snarky and cute when the breaking news this morning is about the attempted bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan. Yes, that’s right: Denmark — home to the much hated and threatened cartoonist a few years back, who depicted Muhammad with a bomb on his head in the shape of a turban. Who knew that such a middle-of-the-road country could stay so relevant? I’m part Danish myself, and we had a Danish exchange student live with our family for awhile when I was a teen. All in all, I consider it one of the most “vanilla” cultures in all the earth. Once you get past Hans Christian Andersen, what have you got left? Germans with a dash of Scandinavian humility and a pinch of fun thrown in, that’s what. Nice people, yeah. But interesting? Bomb-worthy?

But… such is the atmosphere in Pakistan nowadays. If this is what goes on in democracies (and I use the term loosely), in places where supposedly they’re friendly to the EU and America, what can we expect in more lawless, out-of-control places like Iraq and Afghanistan? What kind of diplomatic improvement is possible in middlin’ nations like Egypt and Iran?

Oops, now I’ve gone and done it. I brought up Iran, but not in the context of some discussion about a mythical Axis of Evil. (If there was ever a term that belonged in comic books instead of politics, Axis of Evil is it.) In my opinion, Iran could be occupying the position of co-peacemaker with the U.S. in Iraq, a role that Pakistan has been very bad at pursuing with us in Afghanistan thus far.

Is that a word? Co-peacemaker? Let’s say it is, for sake of argument. Iran, if we can be grownups and talk straight for a change, is in some ways the best ally that Europe and America could have in the region. If we’re willing to play fair and set aside the past, that is. Iran is already quite Westernized and developed, by many standards. The country is chock full of what we would normally call intellectuals and middle class families, if we weren’t so busy listening to our leaders, who (in playing out childish revenge fantasies) would rather we see them as blindly loyal terrorist sympathizers. From my semi-informed perspective, the Iranian government is not made up of religious extremists, either. Or at least they’re not imposing Sharia law to the oppressive extent that the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Non-governmental interests in the country are certainly more extreme. But we have that here, too… or was that just a big family picnic/orgy down at the polygamist ranch in Texas?

Sure, the Iranians have their prejudices, like the classically tribal, knee-jerk, ill-informed, anti-Jew attitudes that exist throughout the Muslim world, and pre-date the twentieth century. But the average Iranian is not anti-American. They just want a seat at the table with the grownups, perhaps in the same way Europe and America have been so willing to overlook the sins of our “friends” in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (note: Iran is overwhelmingly Shi ‘ite, the Saudis are Sunni… are you getting the picture yet?) . And by now, we need to consider whether the Iranians have earned that seat at the table.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar… ain’t that what the hillbillies ’round here is always sayin’? But it will be hard to offer that honey, as long as the powerful and equally-prejudiced Israel is whispering in many an American politician’s ear.

I’m prepared to be challenged on this, but I maintain that the current impasse is due to the reality that we in the West refuse to acknowledge that our “friend” Israel is not helping one bit. Those anti-Jewish (and by association, anti-Western) flames are fed every time Israel allows Israeli settlers to trump up charges and commit injustices in the Palestinian territories. Muslim suspicions that they’ll be pushed off the worldwide map are confirmed every day that travel restrictions and oppressive, apartheid-like conditions go unchanged throughout Palestine. And when the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier or two leads to the bombing of thousands in Lebanon, twenty years of diplomatic possibilities are erased in one fell swoop, not just in Israel/Palestine, but throughout the Muslim world.

So, rational or not, Islamic jihadists in Pakistan (Sunni), Iran (Shia) and worldwide are not basing their bias on nothing. They see evidence all around them. They know they’re the little brothers, and that their dysfunctional middle brothers and sisters in places like Iraq are getting all the attention, while big brother Israel is Mom and Dad’s favorite. Can you guess who Mom and Dad are?

It’s 3:24am on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, I’m in Wisconsin at the cottage (Grayhaven), and I already have a mild case of “fun fatigue”.

I was shaken from my slumber over a hour ago by a dog wanting to go out and tinkle/explore, and I dutifully indulged him. Then I decided to stay up awhile, maybe read a bit. But in the era of blogging, webzines and the Palm Treo 700p, reading doesn’t always involve turning the paper pages of some classic tome like *Light In August* (has anyone out there read it?) or a light magazine about classic August vacation getaways.

All of which is to say: I’ve done my rounds of web-surfing and logging on and creating DisqUs accounts and commenting and pondering, and boy are my thumbs sore. Thumb fatigue for non-texters: the malady of choice for remote bloggers such as myself.

I’m not complaining, though. (Okay, I am… but you’re here anyway, so indulge me for a few minutes.) All this surfing and scrolling helped me turn up Michael Cline’s thoughtful article at Jesus Manifesto. It’s on various peacenik Christian responses to Memorial Day’s inherently nationalistic celebration of war, both just and unjust. (I’m not convinced any “just” war will ever be fought again, just for the record.)

I also caught a positive book review of Greg Boyd’s new book, *The Jesus Legend*. If you’re curious, hop over to my WordPress blogroll (at left?) to click on Pastor/Professor Greg’s own blog,maybe see what he’s all about. One of the more gutsy Christian voices of the past decade, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, in checking email, I see that my son has a tee-ball game on an upcoming Sunday at 8am. Apparently I’m not alone in blurring the line between “fun” and “work”… 8am?!!! To watch/coach a bunch of runts hopped up on Froot Loops, all converging on the ball at once and falling on it like it’s some suburban athletic variation of a hand grenade. Oh, and by the way, turns out there IS crying in baseball… if you’re five and you don’t get to bat first.