Old Habits Die Hard

The post-election finger pointing is in full swing over at the GOP circus. They haven't figured it out yet. The circus turned into a freak show and most voters knew it. The GOP spent the last four years saying "no". They decided that the best plan was to play to their extreme base by trying to humiliate and degrade President Obama. The birther claims, the socialist/communist claims, the Muslim claims all were intended to degrade and dehumanize Obama. They only served to bolster the extreme elements who feed on that stuff and the party leaders did nothing to stop it. They claim to be righteous and God fearing but there is something about bearing false witness that they missed. This was finally manifest in the bizarre performance by Clint Eastwood and his empty chair. Obama had diminished in their eyes to a nonperson. They ate it up. But that didn't translate into votes -- it only made them feel good.  So now they wonder how on earth they could have lost the election... 

 

But after all of this, they are still at it. Old habits die hard. I've actually heard people saying that they lost because of Acorn.  Acorn went out of business in 2010. It's pretty sad if Karl Rove and the other fund raisers collected several hundred million dollars for Romney and were beaten by an organization that doesn't exist. Rove claims that the Democrats were engaged in vote suppression. How much longer until they figure it out?

In the end, Obama was not an empty chair. While they chose pandering and self-defeat, Obama and the Democrats worked to win. The GOP defeat was decisive. Not only the presidency but they lost ground in the senate. There are more elections in two years and they will lose more seats if they don't clean house and decide to work more productively with Obama.

The Meaning of Life

I assume that almost everyone has one or two memorable cemetery experiences. When we are little we get taken to cemeteries at times of sadness or solemnity and, while it looks like a park it obviously isn’t a fun place. I recall going to a cemetery as a child for the burial of one of my dad’s uncles – somebody I never knew existed until we got that late night phone call from Ste. Genevieve. We very rarely got a happy phone call from Ste. Genevieve. She was usually the bearer of bad news.

Cemeteries are places where people create monuments or markers representing how they want to be remembered after they are gone or, more often, how others want them to be remembered. This is an intentional relic of a person’s existence. The ruins at Pompeii or Tikal or Mesa Verde are unintentional relics of someone’s existence. I find them both to be interesting. But what about those folks in unmarked graves? My Irish immigrant ancestors are buried two to a hole in unmarked graves in the same cemetery that holds Tennessee Williams, William Tecumseh Sherman, Dred Scott, Kate Chopin and Father De Smet.  My ancestors left behind lots of grieving relatives but none of them had the resources to mark the graves.

I went to college in a very old town with a very old cemetery on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River. There were French folks buried there – the ones that settled the place. There were rows of unmarked graves identifiable only as a faint dimple in the grass. I recall one section of about forty unmarked graves that were known to be the victims of a horrific steamboat wreck. Only their date of death was known.

As college students with time on our hands and looking for something to do we would make our way to the cemetery and just ponder the meaning of life. We usually did this at night and with a few six-packs. One can come close to discovering the meaning of life at night in a spooky cemetery with a few six-packs. We were not disrespectful or up to mischief, we were just under age. We had to be careful where we stepped. The cemetery was riddled with large holes where the earth had subsided or local ground hogs had burrowed into some of the graves. The tree roots would reach out and grab your feet if you weren’t careful.

On one of these excursions we came across a woman’s headstone that made us stop in our tracks. The stone was by itself – not in a family group. It gave her name followed by the word “Spinster” and her date of birth: October 31, 1815 (yes, Halloween), and her date of death: December 31, 1899. The poor woman lived 85 years and almost made it to 1900 but instead, somebody decided to label her as “Spinster” and leave her there by herself. That's how they wanted her to be remembered.  She was certainly on our minds when we pondered the meaning of life that night. The next day, probably a Saturday or Sunday, we went back and made a charcoal rubbing of her headstone and another headstone we found of a Revolutionary War soldier. We taped the headstone rubbings up on the dorm room wall…for some reason. Not as a trophy but sort of a remembrance.

After a while, things started happening (of course). One of the guys was awakened during the night when he felt someone sit on his bed…there was no one there. Things moved around from place to place when no one was in the room. Other things that were hanging on the wall fell on the floor but not the headstone rubbings. Finally somebody saw the figure of a young woman come out of the dorm room closet and walk across the room and disappear. That was enough. She came down off the wall and the old soldier did too, just to be on the safe side. Was it just the power of suggestion? Once one odd thing happened, did we imagine the other occurrences? When the old woman’s headstone rubbing came down the strange occurrences stopped. This was followed by a self-imposed silence on the entire topic. I don’t recall it being discussed or mutually agreed to…just that none of us felt comfortable talking about it. We stopped going to the cemetery after that. We found other ways to explore the meaning of life

Experiment with sound

hmmm. didn't get close enough to pick up the sound -- whoosh...whoosh...whoosh
The sound is my shoes on the gravel but it came through loud and clear.

An Odd Post About Faith

Sometimes events or discussions take place that cause me to re-examine my beliefs and how I live my faith -- or what passes for my faith. Sometimes I'll find myself in a casual discussion on religion and realize that I hold more traditional Christian beliefs than many of my peers. I find this odd because I don't consider myself to be deeply religious. I do consider myself to be part of an organized religious church body...although I do not support or proclaim all that this church body adheres to. I go to church very rarely but primarily due to inertia and that I don't like going alone, not because I've fallen away or reject religion.

The news for today includes a headline that there is a rapid decline in the number of Americans who count themselves as "Protestant" Christians. I'm not at all surprised. The actual story is that Protestants no longer are in the majority. The news outlets are getting it confused either due to ignorance of intentionally to stir up controversy. This is really more about statistics than about religion. What is a Protestant? Perhaps the statisticians have a working definition but the respondents probably are not so sure. Some Baptists do not consider themselves to be Protestants. Are Mormons Protestants? How about self-proclaimed "Evangelicals"? If respondents are self defining their religious status, my guess is that there are not sufficient categories on a survey form to capture a meaningful aggregate response. The survey definitions are very likely out of date.

There is also the issue of non-Christians living permanently or temporarily residing in the US. There have been increases in Bosnians, South Asians, Muslims, Chinese, or other ethnic groups who would not consider themselves to be Protestants. Mexican or other Central American or Caribbean immigrants would probably consider themselves to be Roman Catholic rather than Protestant.  I'm not too worried about the survey headlines.

I am regularly asked to fill out survey for a national polling organization because I signed up to be part of their polling universe when they pulled a survey sample. All of these surveys have various political questions or policy questions (Who did you vote for? Are you a Liberal? What do you think about __whatever__ policy?). They frequently have questions about commercial products...like those pod coffee makers or some other product. They always ask about religious affiliation, whether I consider myself to be an "Evangelical", and how often I attend church. They ask other questions about income and location. These are used to sub-analyze the responses. Are Evangelicals more likely to be gun owners than Muslims? Are low income people more likely to want coffee pod machines?

I must admit that the whole label of "Evangelicals" irritates me and I never consider myself to be an Evangelical. My perception of Evangelicals is negative on several levels even though my church could be considered to be Evangelical. Evangelicals -- as popularly and commonly defined and recognized -- can't keep their nose out of other people's business or private life or personal decisions. I'm sure there is a spectrum or degree of Evangelical-ness and not all Evangelicals behave the same way but those who act out or profess the loudest seem to be the most extreme and most obnoxious.

I tend to favor tolerance and inclusivity more than one would think considering my church's position on some issues. I noticed an article in my monthly church magazine that cautioned against attending church services in other denominations or going to Bible study groups outside of our church. Our church practices "closed communion" meaning that only church members, or members of a very few other churches who meet certain criteria of belief or practices, may take communion in our church services. There are more conservative churches than mine but we are pretty far away from most Christian denominations. I can remember when women were first given the right to vote in church affairs.

Instead of being an Evangelical, I like the idea of being a "carrier for Christ". I use the term "carrier" almost the same way as if someone was a carrier of typhoid or polio but in a positive rather than a negative way. I think it is better, generally, to profess your faith in the way you live, act, behave, carry on business, raise your children and love your spouse and family. If Christians would be "carriers for Christ" we wouldn't need Evangelicals poking around in other peoples' lives. We would also be in conflict with others less often. The "Culture Wars" that Evangelicals seem eager to wage are often conflicts of their own making.

When you look at the basics, Jesus says we should love God and love our neighbor. The Ten Commandments say we should love and honor God, watch what we say and keep our hands to ourselves.  I don't see anything there that says we should maim, murder, persecute or hate people who have different beliefs, look different or live different lives. I don't see any admonition or encouragement for us to righteously poke our nose into other peoples' lives. Do you?