Faith (or lack thereof)

Interesting word, faith.

People sometimes treat it as a synonym for belief but of course, it’s not that.

I believe the sun will come up tomorrow but I don’t have to take it on faith. The empirical evidence of sixty years on Earth supports my belief that Orphan Annie was right. And a basic knowledge of physics demonstrates that if it doesn’t come up, I won’t know it, anyway.

I have faith in Mary, based on the definition “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” This is a faith based on confluence of life goals, physical attraction and twenty-six years of working together to build a life. It’s a faith based on experience and the sure and certain knowledge of shared truths.

I believe in the Constitution and our system of government. But my faith in equitable outcomes based on them is frequently shaken. Now, for instance. I won’t go farther, since this is not meant as a political treatise. Another time, perhaps.

Most of the time when someone suggests that I should have faith, they simply mean that I would be well served to assume a hopeful stance. I can do that. Usually. At least, I try.

Just recently, I have on several occasions encountered expressions of faith of a sort I can’t personally embrace. The trouble with religious faith is that it generally requires a leap of faith, a belief in something for which by definition no direct evidence can exist.

And that’s where I leave off.

I was raised a Roman Catholic, including parochial school through eighth grade, years of serving as an altar boy and lector, singing for guitar masses as part of a group in San Jose and Santa Clara and as a soloist in Glendale. I wrote and performed biblically-based songs and performed for Catholic wedding ceremonies innumerable.

Speaking of biblical study, I’ve taken bible class and read the thing from beginning to end twice. I‘ve spent hundreds of hours trying to find truth in its pages.

The thing is, I can’t.

Just the fact that I don’t see it as revealed truth (the word of a god) would be enough to make me walk away. But the damning aspect is that I just don’t find it likely.

I wish this didn’t bother some of my friends, but it does. And I can’t help that. I have to live by my own lights, and the whole discussion of religion has become for me – as I’ve indicated in earlier posts – moot. I don’t find it an important topic of discussion simply because I am pretty well convinced of two ‘truths’ of mine own:

·  No currently available religious tract adequately explicates the breadth and depth of the question, "From whence did humans arise?”

·  If there is such an entity as a god, the plethora of conflicting descriptions among the various sects indicates that the god in question has not revealed itself to humankind.

One of the most annoying postulates I hear is the old saw about our existence serving as evidence prima face of divine intervention (This could not have come about by accident.).  Sorry, doesn’t wash. In fact, in my mind, this existence in which we find ourselves could only have come about by accident, assuming you consider evolution to amount to an accident.

Of course, I could be wrong. There may be a god whose judgment upon my death will send me to dwell in the where/when in which people like me are sent to dwell. I know, tautologies aren’t logically defensible. But we aren’t talking about logic here, are we? Rather, we’re talking about the Great Unknowable.

If a god is going to send me to live with other people who lived their lives as did I, it behooves me to live that life in a way that will yield satisfaction with my eternal neighbors. I’m going to continue working on that.

I don’t have much to offer in the way of what you might consider faith. But I do have beliefs. And I believe there are right and wrong ways to order one’s life.

It comes down to the Golden Rule.

Center of the universe

I went for a half-hour walk during lunch time today. It was nice and blustery but not raining and loads of folks were out and about. I walked maybe a half dozen blocks and it was quite a nice break from a fairly stressful day. I’d been working several deadline projects after being out on the road five of the last seven weeks and while I love the work I do, the prospect of being on the road again next week was making me wonder if I would ever get caught up on my desk work.

My universe was a bit off kilter and since I’m the center of my universe, this does not bode well for the rest of you who occupy various nooks and crannies in it. Thus, the walking break. It’s about caring, you know.

I found myself making note of some of the people I encountered:

·         The guy in the Purdue sweatshirt, pushing a baby in a stroller;

·         The imperious woman with her  hair in a severe bun and wearing a trench coat with neither crease nor wrinkle;

·         The young Asian guy who was wrapping up and putting away his ear buds while he walked;

·         An African mom and little daughter in animal patterned head wraps, looking at the walk-through fountain (they opted not to walk through);

·         The monorail driver who looked as bored as ever a man has looked;

·         A mother and daughter from out of town, carrying shopping bags and gazing around in wonder;

·         An older, thin gentleman (okay, he could be an ass, but I imagined him a gentleman) in tight pants, with a tightly wrapped umbrella in one hand and holding his shirt collar tightly, tightly  closed with the other as he walked primly down the precise center of the sidewalk;

·         Howling tourists on the DUKW (yes, a duck tour);

·         The girl on the cell phone around whom others were steering because she was clearly not going to alter her course to avoid collisions;

·         The CADMAN transit truck driver creeping slowly through the crowded intersection because you just can’t stop a loaded cement truck in a hurry;

·         The ancient guy with long, gray hair selling Real Change and shivering;

·         The busker just breaking out his guitar and getting comfy on his stool;

·         A beggar on the corner with a sign that read “I need a fat bitch.” While I watched, not a person put money in his cup. Justice lives.

·         A couple of hard hats walking the perimeter of the shopping center remodel area, making sure there were no safety hazards.

Each of these folks is a center of the universe. It’s all about point of view.

That walk calmed me right down.  Walks do that.

Things about which I decline to care

All things Kardashian

Professional football

Or baseball or basketball or hockey or…

Fancy cars

Dancing with or without stars

Bifidus Regularis

The latest sale, unless of course, it’s a really good one for something I want

Republican politics

Democratic politics

Celebrities in general

Cats or other rodents

Whether it will rain tomorrow

Almost anything currently shown on the TV news

Upcoming movies, except of course the next in the Hunger games series

 It’s possible I’m in a bit of a mood this evening, so I could possibly care about one or more of these things tomorrow. But probably, not.

A bunch of women in Valley City, North Dakota

I spent the week providing training and technical assistance for one of our affiliated agencies in Valley City, ND. Tuesday and Wednesday were taken up with workshops for the supervisors from several non-profits and I had a great time with some wonderful people. Thursday was the capper, though.

Thursday, I spent time shadowing supervisors in various work areas, mapping their processes, asking questions, putting in my two cents when it seemed appropriate. Most of what I had to offer they already had well in hand. I helped one supervisor re-imagine her work area to make for a more efficient layout. She’ll be able to train and supervise her crew of persons with learning disabilities with less strain to herself and therefore, have more of herself left over to help her workers expand their horizons.

This is what I do for a living. I notice things. I read and research a fair amount but mostly, I watch people do good work and then I put that learning into my memory banks so I can share it with other folks down the line. Hardly ever do I think up something original, mostly because I don’t really need to be all that creative in order to steal other people’s good ideas and hard won experience.

Mainly, I just have to notice and if you’ve picked up one thing from reading this blog, it’s probably that noticing is kind of an obsession with me. Noticing required no particular effort in Valley City. I would have to be an utter dolt not to have realized what I was seeing there.

Gene the maintenance guy spent three decades in law enforcement before coming to this agency as a sort of retirement job. He told me he loved being a cop but even so, wished he’d made the change twenty years earlier. And after spending Thursday with the women who run the Open Door Center, I understand why he feels this way.

I watched them operate a food preparation business, mixing, filling, bagging and boxing, labeling and packing for shipment. The work is mostly done by the disabled clients under the supervision of women who could be running a fill operation for any packager in any city large or small but choose to do it here, in this town, with these workers.

I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to spend a few hours with a woman who is both eager to hear what I might have to suggest but sure enough of her own competence and knowledge to quickly sort through my comments to get to the nuggets. What nuggets there were, that is – it was difficult to find good suggestions to offer when they were already doing so well.

Perhaps the most joyful and heart trending was my visit to the day activity center, where the most severely disabled citizens spend their days. I watched one guy crush cans for recycling. He works from his wheelchair, taking the cans one by one from the hands of a staff member and dropping them in the chute, where the machine does the rest. On a good day, he can crush fifty cans.

This doesn’t qualify as high tech, high volume production, I agree. But for this guy, it represents achievement. Engagement. Membership in the great ‘us.’

While I was there, other staff were helping severely disabled adults eat, entertain themselves, interact with each other. As I left, I glanced to my right into the room where a young woman was changing soiled sheets after having changed and cleaned one of her charges. She grinned and waved. She was dealing with the detritus of an adult client’s bodily functions, performing a function that would make most people gag. And she grinned and waved.

The Americans who are served by the Open Door Center are routinely marginalized by many of the ‘able-bodied’ in this country. These are the folks who are used as punch lines by the Ben Stillers of the world.  They are the ones that Peter Singer would encourage us to euthanize if born this way and Clint Eastwood would smother with a pillow if they came to their conditions through accident or illness. They are the folks whose protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act Rand Paul would erase with a quick vote and the stroke of a pen.

The women (and a few men) who run the Open Door Center see people as people and dedicate their lives to making a society in which we all work together to make a life for all of us, not just those upon whom the good fortune of healthy bodies and facile minds has been bestowed. These folks are why our society works.

I have a couple of weeks at home now and I’m glad for the time to recharge and catch up on my admin and other work. But pretty soon, I’ll be itching to hit the road again. There’s a lifetime of learning out there waiting for me in various nooks and crannies of this country. And having come late to it, I need to suck it in as quickly and fully as I can.

I wish my daughters could spend some time with the strong women in Valley City. We all have a great deal to learn from them. The Ann Coulters of the world may get press explaining why their use of words like ‘retard’ is perfectly fine. The women of Valley City don’t get national notice. But what they do is far more important for this country than any of the ‘accomplishments’ of the Coulters and Eastwoods and Singers of the world.

Noticing in North Dakota

Alice, ND is not a major destination city. In fact, I guess it’s not a major anything, except perhaps to the folks who live thereabouts. To them, it’s the world. If you Google the place, most of the information you’ll see involves census figures. Forty residents as of the 2010 census.

John Steinbeck mentioned Alice in Travels With Charley, and I guess that’s why my eye was caught when I passed the sign for Buffalo and Alice as I motored along I-94 / US 52 on my way to my appointment with Delta Airlines in Fargo. I’d really enjoyed that book many years ago and had always wondered about Alice.

And here it was.

This is a tiny crossroads town, unnoticed even by most of those who pass within three miles of the town center as they cruise by on the interstate. Other than Steinbeck, the biggest celebrity known to have come within a country mile of Alice – and they’re all ‘country’ miles out here – is Alice Cooper, who was given the key to Alice during the ‘Alice Cooper in Alice’ celebration in May, 2006.

Eleven miles north of Alice on the other side of the interstate, Buffalo provides local area residents with much more in the way of infrastructure. At 200 souls, Buffalo boasts a library, a licensed day care center among “several business to make life pleasant,” according to the town website. The motto “Shuffle off to Buffalo” banners a site that is clearly meant to encourage immigration.

Driving through this corner of one of our least populous states made me feel good. There is something to see in each and every mile between Valley City, where I spent the week teaching, and Hector International Airport in Fargo.  Even the trucks on the highway provide a show, hauling machinery and goods never seen on the roads around Seattle.

Folks, this is a drop dead gorgeous part of the country. Especially with so many of the crops at or near harvest. Miles of green and a true horizon view. In spite of the tininess of some of the farm towns, this part of the country is an incredible and fascinating economic engine, its agricultural output forming the bedrock upon which much of our national economy is based.

 I know it’s popular in some circles to poke fun at the rural parts of our country. Even when an Academy Award-winning movie was set in and around Fargo, rather than celebrating the lushness of the farmland and the honest hard work of the people who live hereabouts, we all sort of chuckled at the characterization of the area as, shall we say, quaint. Shame on us.

One of the truly glorious things about my job is that it takes me to places where I’m reminded of how this country really works. I wish all of you could have shared the experiences of my last week. I’ll probably share more with you in the next few days.

News

I consider myself a reasonably bright guy. If I’m not, about ninety people are going to be real disappointed with the workshops they’re attending this week.  Not brilliant, not earthshaking intelligence but bright enough. So how come I can’t decide what news to read and then understand whatever I choose?

It’s getting late and I need to get some sleep before my morning flight. So when I pop onto Reuters or CNN  or Le Monde to check out the haps, it’s disconcerting to be confronted with a sea of topics, for any one of which I would have to do an hour’s research just to be able to understand import of the post.

I like to keep up to date but the “information age” seems to be getting closer to the “confusion of channels” age. With a few keystrokes, I can locate and peruse much more really important information than I can possibly absorb on a given day.

So, why is it that the TV news rooms in this major market spend most of their time talking blood and guts or laughing at each other’s stupid jokes?

Apparently, I'm a stalker

A young woman of my acquaintance has recently entered into a relationship with a young man, not of my acquaintance. Or so I am to believe, based on the comments recently posted on Facebook, then confirmed in conversation with the young woman.

Naturally, I’d like to know more about the young man in question. So I clicked on a link and checked him out on Facebook.   The young woman would be happiest if I would accept her assessment of the young man and just stay away from his FB page. She even accused me of being a stalker.

Call me what you must but keep in mind my primary identity: I. AM. A. DAD!!!!

Note to daughters everywhere: When you find a universe where dads don’t care to know all they can about boys who might come sniffing around daughters, feel free to move there. Meanwhile, deal with this simple truth: WE. ARE. DADS!!!!

So as soon as she realizes whose page I’m perusing, she starts in on me. You know the rant. “Don’t be a stalker!” Et cetera.

First of all, it should not fall to a 60-year old semi-geezer to explain to a twenty-something college graduate how FB works. But just in case the young woman in question feels the need to be schooled in the basics of social media, here it is: Facebook is not private. It is more about advertising than communication. It is not a place to cache information over the distribution of which one means to exercise any measure of control.

Humph!

Moving on…

Referring back to the preceding paragraph, it seems clear to me (but of course, I’m only a geezer with little significant life experience, so what do I know?) that if there are aspects of his life and times that the young man would as soon keep out of the realm of inquiring Dad-minds, it might behoove same young man not to post them on social media. And to borrow a phrase from their generational lexicon – Ya think?!?!?!?

So the entirely unrepentant and thoroughly self-absorbed Dad of this story went merrily traipsing through the young man’s life history or at least, that portion of it that can be espied through his FB page. I shamelessly read posts, I looked at photos, I checked out friends and friends of friends.

Here’s the tragic, crushingly disappointing truth – I think maybe I’ll like this guy.

Crap.

Space frog

I was looking through the “Week’s Best Pictures” on the Reuters site and one of them just cracked me up. It’s a picture of the liftoff of NASA’s latest rocket, replete with the usual clouds of smoke and steam and the foreshortened perspective achieved by shooting obliquely from below. The gantry has been pulled back and a mechanical arm of some sort is falling away, almost off screen to the lower right.

All in all, this picture is just like any of the thousands of photos we’ve seen since Project Mercury first caught our imaginations.

Except for the frog.

You read that right. In the middle distance we see a frog silhouetted against the clouds of space machine effluvium. The frog ‘s limbs are splayed in skydiver-in-freefall style and it’s clear it leaped from somewhere. Perhaps it was sunning on the gantry and is now in mid escape from the roiling clouds of exhaust. Perhaps it just happened to jump from an off-camera platform at the perfect moment. Or perhaps it fell from space.

Doesn’t matter to me from whence it came. I just really love this picture. The frog leaping just as the rocket lifts off. We make cool machines. But we can’t make a frog.

Spending the future that remains

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Barack Obama

No, this is not going to be a tribute to the current President. I don’t know or care if he wrote this himself or if it came from an off-camera speech writer. Doesn’t matter. It speaks to me.

I’m sixty years old and (one hopes) currently working at what will be the last job of my career. My children are pretty well launched and have proven self-righting when the occasional rogue wave hits. I’ve finally finished the degree so my bucket list is shorter by one major item.

So I have x number of years remaining to do the things I should do. But what are those things? And what is the fundamental principle that should drive my choices and decisions and efforts going forward?
I have an incredible life partner, better friends than I probably deserve, a decent education and lots of varied experience. Time to get down to it.

How do I bring these things together in aid of – something – so that when I leave the world my last sense can be of a deep and abiding satisfaction?

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll have lots of time on airplanes or sitting in hotels. I plan to spend some of it contemplating this question: If I am indeed the change I seek, what should be the nature of that change?

And what am I waiting for?

The Worm King

In 1485, King Richard III forfeited his life in the process of losing the Battle of Bosworth Field, thus opening the way for a Tudor ascendancy and ending the War of the Roses. But of course, that would be old news.

The new news (Redundant? Just news, you say?) is that Ole King Ricky had worms. Roundworms, to be specific.

According to a story posted today by CNN online, researchers digging in the soil around the monarch’s pelvic bones found roundworm eggs just about there his intestines would have been, had they not rotted completely away about five centuries ago.

The dude was buried in the then Greyfriars’ Friary (Hey, if ‘new news’ is redundant, how come they get to call their church Greyfriars’ Friary? I guess they had fewer annoying grammar rules in the fifteenth century A.D. ) and after much research and hand ringing, scientists determined the burial site lay beneath a current parking lot. So they dug down and sure enough – Kingly soup bones.

Scientists compared DNA from the bones to that of a couple of Richard’s modern descendants in order to confirm the identity of the corpse.

Is anyone still reading? And if so, why? And why do we spend money and the time of what must be some really smart people in finding out this guy had worms? Aren’t there more important pursuits these scientists could, you know, pursue?

Hmph!

If you are still reading – and I certainly don’t blame you if you aren’t – you may want to know that the remains will be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral. Refreshments back at the parking lot immediately after.

Gordon Lightfoot

I was listening to some Gordon Lightfoot while sweating at the gym today and I got to thinking about the lyric. I can get lost in his words. Lightfoot is still performing occasionally at age 74 and I wish I could see him once again before, well, I can’t. But no matter - I’ll be listening to and singing his songs until, well, I can’t.

I’ve always loved his songs. In the days when I was singing for tips – with Bill and with Vala and with Mike G. and solo at various times – I always had Lightfoot songs in the mix. His lyrics are so human and it felt like he was speaking directly to my life.  For example, anyone who has found themselves still longing for a lost love will be moved by the opening stanza from I’m Not Supposed to Care:

I think you have somebody waiting outside in the rain to take you away
You got places to go, you got people to see, still I'm gonna miss you
But anyway
I wish you good spaces in the faraway places you go
If it rains or it snows may you be safe and warm and never grow old
And if you need somebody some time, you know I will always be there
I'll do it although I'm not supposed to care.

He wrote If You Could Read My Mind when his marriage was breaking up but even if you didn’t know that, the song sings just to you. Old Dan’s Record’s can’t fail to put one in mind of family good times. Canadian Railroad Trilogy brilliantly captured the timbre of the Canadian Centennial and a whole country embraced it as its own.

A Minor Ballad is one of the shortest and perhaps one of the most touching love songs ever written in English. I believe I’ve sung it a thousand times and it never gets old. Other faves include Crossroads, Your Love’s Return (Song For Stephen Foster), Did She Mention My Name, (In The) Early Morning Rain, Ribbon of Darkness, the list goes on and on.

I love singing Pussywillows, Cattails simple because it feels so good to sing it. Race Among the Ruins and  Rich Man’s Spiritual  are great up songs to balance out the heart renders like That Same Old Obsession.

I don’t go to concerts a lot – not a fan of long lines and big crowds and half the time you can’t hear the musician, anyway. But I’ve been to a half dozen of Lightfoot’s over the years. And once through an odd happenstance I sat next to him at someone else’s gig that we both attended. Wish I had a cool story for that one but I’m not into doing the drooling fan thing (okay, okay, there might have been drool involved but my heart was in my throat and I could hardly bring myself to look – what of it?) so we basically just exchanged pleasantries. Nice enough guy, it seemed.

I could have him to dinner I think except what would we say? He’s said things in his songs that are so perfect, they need no further discussion. The back story is in most cases revealed in the lyric. Such as in Song For A Winter’s Night:

The lamp is burnin' low upon my table top
The snow is softly fallin'
The air is still within the silence of my room
I hear your voice softly callin'

If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
Upon this winter night with you

I don’t care to explore Lightfoot’s personal life. I suppose he’s had his foibles. But at the end of the day, he’s spoken to me in a way that illuminated some of the best and worst times in my own life.  I hope each and all of you will take the opportunity to come to know at least some of his songs.