Seeing, Knowing, Doing [100WW]

“If you overstate your case you undermine your cause.”

How easy it is to fall in this trap. Passion for the right way, the good path, the known facts and obvious truth: the passion carries the day but, for reasons, won't overcome objections. 

I've felt this failing painfully, oblivious to the reasons. though I think I've learned some reasons. A mentor once told me, reluctantly, “You have to prove yourself in task planning and performance before your opinion has weight.” That was true for me, but others, smarter/wiser help us know and see without performance. It's a thorny problem.

Of Waiting and Joy [10'TU]

"Less is more" the saying going, conceding quietly that we always think "more" is better. This is a bane of my life, perhaps of all people in measure. For one of countless examples: "If one chapter a day is good, five would be better. wouldn't it? Of course it would, who could think otherwise!" 

And so it's off to the races with nary a question as to why or whether, by some odd and wild chance, the assumption could be wrong.

"Patience is a virtue" I always heard, but I never believed it. My disbelief was a mix of incredulity and simple denial. "How could waiting be good in any life, on any planet, for anything, anywhere? Really, how could it? Tell me, tell me now!"

This business is at the core of life and the right answer offers keys for life well-lived. A happy life is a good life and goodness is not easy in the early going as habits are built and desires denied. Suffering is required, sometimes suffering for a long time. But it is a trade off -- suffer now and odds are you can avoid suffering later. This is also known as the ability to wait, the willingness to delay gratification.

Life is in the waiting -- one might even say life is waiting. Waiting for what? The better, the good, the joy, the eternal. Bearing with the weight of waiting now is wisdom distilled. It surrenders to reality, that more is not better, that being underlies all good doing, that eternal good will come, will come, in time.

So wait and sing and dance, for joy -- eternal joy -- comes someday and it will make the pain of waiting seem as nothing.

A Musing on Wendell Berry and Sabbath

What might the heart and mind know when we finally rest?

  

Wendell Berry will be ninety this year. What an amazing guy. You should read A Letter to Wendell Berry by Wallace Stegner. It reveals two gifted men, depth of friendship, joys of life that call us higher and make us feel the sweet pain of tasting the best and knowing there is even more and better. There are secrets to seeing and being thus.

Wendell comes to mind today because for some decades now he has written poems on Sunday. This hints at how much can be done with regular effort over time. He writes more than he can use and he doesn't use a laptop to enhance quantity. His life-long habit is to write long-hand and then his wife, Tanya, types it out for him.

I would wish for such a record. It would grow a writer, though few will be in league with Berry. I began with a stretch for free verse because I like the idea of Sunday poems. Weekly Sabbath is a gift and discipline. Who needs it? All of us do, and very much. What might the heart and mind know when we finally rest?

Wendell Berry

Today

I write because it is today, a day when I am supposed to write. No one cares, I suppose, about said rumination, especially since it is only to fulfill a task. And yet, tasks are committed to pull us forward, or in some direction.

There is always, always, the question of worthiness. Are all tasks equal in value? Hardly. 

Comes to mind the old word,  first heard from my beloved pastor during college years, G. R. French. He said, "Big people speak of ideas,  average people speak of events, small people speak of people." He was quoting someone. I took it to be true in the main, and still do.

Yet, many people are unable to speak of ideas, perhaps quite literally so, and we should not look askance at them. Nor do all who speak of ideas do so well, with clear-headedness, thoughtful rationale, devoid of fallacy or severe bias, etc. 

In a word, we need help with all kinds of talk, and writing blogs is no exception. I love ideas but such hardly makes me a "big person." (A too easy fallacy sticks its head in here. The pastor did not say all who speak of ideas are big, but that big people do it.)

The only answer for me, really, is prayer, though I easily and often fail it. Seek the living God, ask His presence, ask His forgiveness, ask for wisdom and good sense. Pray for your loved ones: yes, because they need this or that, but more because you need to learn to love them and praying for them is non-negotiable if you would be successful that forever journey.

Enough for today. I fulfilled my task. No, not that task, my pesky writing goals. But the greatest gift of life,  i.e. to hear within the call to God and to kneel in heart and life before Him.

I hope you will join in that eternal joy and pursuit. 

How do we meaningfully ask adult males to be men?

How do we meaningfully ask adult males to be men?

There is no end run on life which is another way of saying there is no end run on character.  The only way to ask adult males to be men is to be men ourselves.  This requires first of all something which should not need to be said:  it requires we believe there is such a thing as manhood, as masculinity.

The very need to define this is without doubt universal and old as time, but we cannot pass without mentioning that feminism has been no friend in this arena.  I mean clearly and plainly this: insofar as feminism and other sex/gender ideologies have made masculinity wholly subjective -- to that extent it has not been good.  That seems axiomatic to me, though I would of course listen to rejoinders and admit freely that it is -- as are all things in our current life-of-mind -- all but impossible to prove. (Which indicates it is premise level knowledge -- you either accept it or you do not.)

So, assuming there are universal and identifiable aspects to masculinity, if I were to give a minimalist answer to the above question it would look like this:

1. Men should always be honest, hard-working, provide for their own, and do their best.
2. Men should be sexually responsible.  This means saving sex for one woman, and that after marriage; and then keeping it within marriage with that one woman until death.  Singleness is a sound option, to be seriously considered as preferable for some men.  But it is not honorable unless chaste.
3. Honor really matters. Honor means to do what is right, reward rightness in others, look down upon un-rightness in others.
4. Men should use their gifts to the best of their ability to serve their loved ones and communities.
5. Men should cultivate and promote a willingness to protect their homes, communities and fatherland -- with force as necessary -- with the goal of protecting the more vulnerable and assuring that maximal life is preserved and prolonged.

That's my best effort and I hope it helps someone somewhere, just as I was helped by my own Dad, Uncles, Grandfathers, brothers, and other male examples.  Which underscores the main point: the best way to help boys become men is to be faithful to those we father by loving their mother and staying home; and by living faithfully otherwise as an example to sons not our own. For after all, when we adopt a modicum of C. S. Lewis' moderate realism about masculinity, we know that it is an innate characteristic in all men, to be cultivated, enriched, and strengthened.  This, as they say, quite literally "makes the world go 'round."

These simple truths, lived out though in weak vessels, give solid foundation to any community and nation.

Cross

“It's really my cross,” he said, “This thing I did not plan.”
Nor would he, nor would he know why it could ever be good.
How do we know what is good and what is not, when
our best is known to be otherwise by the Eternal God?

“Be careful what you pray for” the elders say, an echo of the
ancient text: “God gave their desire but sent leanness....”
We strive and wonder why we have not, forgetting that
which we are sure is good may be nothing of the sort.

Are all crosses good, all burdens beneficial if borne with
patience and faith in He who does all things well?
What of self-caused burdens? What of eyes washed with tears
so we see the beauty and joy that make the cross all worth it?

If I knew I might not say for would be too much for me.
But I pray for grace to bear my cross – whatever it may be – with gladness.
For if, as we hope, there is good in the very bearing,
then imagine the joy that awaits when we lay our burdens down.

Dealing with Life as it is [100WW]

[I've long wondered about the role of motives in life: how easily we assume them, how painful presumed motives can be, how easily we are wrong about our own motives and those of others, yet can scarcely be dissuaded in our opinions. It is a minefield of pain and difficulty. I thought I'd try to address it week by week with a few of these 100 Word Wednesdays. It is all fictionalized, drawing from life as I've seen it, experienced it, and thought about it.]

“Why didn't you let me play baseball?” Father and son were in my office. The son, age 30, was trying to heal a divide with his Dad. “Didn't you want me to succeed? Didn't you want me to have fun?” The son continued with questions that put his dad in a corner of assumed bad motives. It was, to say the least, painful. Parents do what they do for all kinds of reasons, and they don't always get it right. The son's face was more pain than anger, but both were at play. I wondered how this would go.