Doldrums

I often wonder about doldrums. I mean those times of life when you feel like everything is of no real count. This can even happen regarding things we love most, most of the time.

Church, or other perfunctory things we do from habit, seem most susceptible. We go, we sit, we see, we do: very little changes. Does more, or new, or different, or exciting make better? What is the "it" we seek that makes the doldrums go away?

One of my favorite teachers, Dr. Bill Ury, once talked about the difficulty of grading. He was diligent and caring, never one to make us think we were a bother. He only meant to be honest about life, and he was probably answering an overly-serious question with grace, as was his frequent role in life.

I understand now, by-the-way, how difficult grading must be. The best of students produce worthy material as do the most mature and wise. But even then there is the "too-much-said," "the over-weaning," "the missed-the-point." And most of all the plain drudgery of dealing with familiar material once again requires a discipline that must be akin to that required for eating dirt.

As he reflected on it, though, he used a sweet turn of phrase: "You must do the drudgery if you would have the ecstasy."

We love ecstasy, that which brings us out of stasis, that which saves us from the doldrums. But I am not sure "saves" is the right way to think on it. Setting all that aside -- and Dr. Ury is right as far as it goes -- I think doldrums are necessary and unavoidable, and they develop in us a willingness to press on if ecstasy never comes.

This is too much for me. I hate feeling down, ready to quit. But it is the pit that brings me to my knees, that lets me know again what matters, that helps me re-orient my life. The doldrums help me cry out for the true and good and beautiful. They make me ask God again to tune my heart to sing His praise.

The point? If you skip church because of the doldrums you coddle the sickness while ignoring the cure. God is the cure for all that ails us. Yes, all. Neglect His house, the place dedicated to turn your attention to Him, and there will be far more cause for doldrums.

That's how it seems to me. I need excitement, I suppose. And I need to be healthy in mind, will, and emotions. But most of all I need God, and it does me good to remember that on this happy doldrum day.

Little League Lessons: Some Things are Better Left Unsaid

The Little League field in Ulysses, Kansas was the best. Edge of town, just beyond the fairgrounds, at the end of a dirt road that turned off Patterson Avenue and ended in the parking lot a few hundred yards later. My Mom once let my sister drive our old Mercury on that road when she was twelve, but I shouldn't tell because my Dad was a Highway Patrolman and it was probably against the law. Maybe the statute of limitations has expired.

Whatever the case, I loved our field at the end of that road. We had bleachers, 10 cent pop at the concession stand, even an announcer in the booth behind home plate. And when a foul ball left the field you could always run it down and turn it in for a dime. Good days.

The memories are many, as life goes, and at 58 maybe I am learning long-term reminiscence makes up for all the daily forgetting. I don't mind too much because the memories are good and happy, with the occasional trouble, as today's memory brings to mind.

We were all people, of course, having no other option, and faults and foibles come out. Sometimes anger, sometimes loud mouths. One time there was a major disagreement and umpire flip-flop at a playoff game in another town. The umps had a tough job. 

And there was always the game chatter. When we were in the field and a batter was ready we would settle into that competitive cadence: “Hey batter, batter, batter” – repeating until the pitch reached the plate and we would yell, “Swing!!” I can still hear the youthful chorus of voices trying to throw the batter off.

There were also voices from the dugout intended to trouble the pitcher, though they were not as common. I can't remember any of them right off, except one. It fell my happy lot to pitch one night and as I worked through the inning I heard some noise from the opponents' dugout. And then it seemed like my coach, always low-key in my memory, was objecting to the ump about something.

The inning continued and then I realized the problem. Someone in the opposing dugout was yelling a sort of juvenile slur: “Pitcher stinks!” I don't know how many times they said it. I was absorbed in trying to get the ball across the plate. And then things came to a head. Turns out it wasn't just anyone yelling at me. It was the opposing coach.

I can still see his face, and I sort of remember the confrontation near the plate. After warnings, the umpire had kicked the coach out of the game. But the coach was having none of it. He stormed out and confronted the ump, who stood his ground. Next thing I knew the coach was leaving the field in his car, spewing a cloud of dust. They had to finish the game without him and I have no idea who won.

This is pretty tame compared to some things that happen at games. And for my part I was all but oblivious. But I am glad the ump believed in a sort of decorum that means the coach can't taunt the young pitcher with personal slurs, even if they are mild. Baseball teaches life if we let it, and sportsmanship is a big part of that.

I felt bad for that coach and didn't see him much after that. I'm sure it was rough – most of us have been in the ditch of hot-headedness and errant words. And the ump had his job to do as well. In all the joy of a summer baseball evening we all learned some lessons: people matter, young people need good examples, we all answer to someone, and when we get out of line someone has the tough job of setting us straight.

In that beloved Little League field we learned this and a hundred other life lessons, and it will always be happy in my memory.

Nothing

"Nothing is nothing"
philosophers say;
rock thinks of nothing 
its consciousness may.

"Beyond us is nothing"
non-theists intone,
conscious that nothing

can even be known.

"Who does the knowing?"
I hear myself ask.
The knowing-things agent
is wearing a mask

that covers his visage,

or is it a she?

The meaning intrinsic

is too much for me.

Home>Travel [100WW]

Chesterton reminded us, as any wise grandmother might, that travel may serve a purpose but it can never bring more excitement than home. Travel is escape from excitement. Rightly considered, the real excitement of life, the honest stuff right where we live, that which demands the most and gives back more, is right at home in the normal everyday living. Go away for a new view, to gain perspective, to know again how much home matters. Then dare again to give your all and find home is more real and wonderful than all the travel this beautiful world can offer.

Writing: A Five Month Journey [10'TU]

When one muses for reasons -- reasons at random or otherwise unknown -- one never knows where it may go. And one who is musing in print may muse about that musing. Such is the self-reflection that can be it's own dead end. Or not.

Perhaps it is OK to reflect on this writing journey. It is personal, for sure. The door has not crashed in with money as an incentive to write. But somehow, spurred by the encouragement of a loved one and a friend, I have managed to write in my blog 6 days a week for over 5 months now. Yes, perhaps 10-20 of those posts were re-use of previous writing. And many of them -- who knows how many? -- might should have been left in the latent mind of the attempting writer.

But I have deeply enjoyed the journey and do not know all it means. As a young man I heard a dictum attributed to Mark Twain: "Three words of advice if you would be a good writer: 'write, write, write'." For some reason that triggered a response in me. I knew I would love to write more, but lacked the discipline and focus. But I would still write from time to time, with some pretty good occasional success back in the day when letters-to-the-editor were a thing and people read daily news and etc. in real paper news publications.

When blogging came along a friend helped me do some. And before that I had a wonderful class in Seminary that scratched the itch in particular, while all the other classes did it in general. Before that I had a nice piece published in a church magazine and was told they only accept 2% of unsolicited submissions. So that was sweet to me. And a long time before that -- Why am I going backwards? -- I was deeply encouraged with a high school essay that a competition judge rated at 100%. And -- in forward order now -- there was "Advanced Composition" in my beloved Bible College days with a teacher I will always appreciate for her skill, breadth, and love. In those 15 weeks I continued to scratch the itch and learned a lot that stayed with me.

So this is 10 minute Tuesday and a rumination of writing. I feel a connection with readers even if I have none. But it is ok. As there is a joy in the journey, there is a joy in the writing that only writers know. I guess I am one of them now. For 5 months anyway, and today for 10 minutes (plus a bit).

Knowing is Impossible: Living is Doable

Some things are true to the way the world is and some things are not. And to deny this truth is to embrace a deadly irrationality.

The gurus -- their ilk burgeoning -- who tell us screen life is killing us, are right. And I say so while typing on a (perhaps) more benign version of the killer.

In an obscure satirical book from the 1980's – A Modest Proposal for Peace Prosperity and Happiness – people were depicted with those old computer monitors in place of their heads. I never finished the book, but one Harold Fickett and one Franky Schaeffer were the authors. Franky is the son of the late renowned author Francis Schaeffer and is himself the author of numerous NYT best-sellers.

But I digress. Screens will do that to you.

Of course we now carry those monitors in our pocket and see the world through the screen. And maybe it is ok. Times do change.

But this change is collapsing our world. I mean this literally. And I also mean it is a leviathan which to wrestle with is to die. We all die of something and we are wrestling this match whether we wish to or not. So here's my best amateur analysis, knowing vaguely I am in the broad and learned wake of folks like Marshall McLuhan and Jonathan Haidt.

Reading widely in news and analysis and perspective, including the infinite world of common comments, collapses my conceptual world. I no longer know what I believe, or I believe it less firmly. And the zeitgeist rejoices that I believe less and, it is alleged, know more.

What do I know? That the world is full of competing ideas, that what we call atomization expands incomprehensibly in the digital world where everyone is a publisher. Like what I am doing now. I am begging to make sense of it all. And I am arguing for a kind of fundamentalism that will do so.

The world collapses not just because I see all these views, but because I have no tangible relation with any of the purveyors or commenters, to say nothing of the publishers or those who manage the algorithms that manage me. At the end I am left distraught, knowing a bit of what “doom-scrolling” is, longing for peace, stability, sense.

I think for me and countless others this can only lead to a return of fundamentals and yes, fundamentalism. Did I say that again?

Whatever else fundamentalism means it means you believe some things just because. I DO NOT mean you believe in an irrational way, though that is always the accusation.

I mean something like this: knowledge, so called, is oversold. What we believe about reality is always intermingled with faith. Our conclusions will be rattled and shook by countless counter-perspectives. Many of which have merit. Any of which, if we could see more clearly, may have merit far more than we can know.

But how does anyone sort through the myriad views and discern that which is right? And this does not even address the question of how one determines truth in fact-bases.

Take the most recent former president. Ok I went there. The vitriol I see is shocking. And the viewpoints run the gamut. He is worse than vermin and anyone who disagrees, same. Or he is our only hope for stability and hope as a nation (conviction be damned.) This is helpful. Not. I have my own considered views on the subject which I will share with you now at great length. Again, mercifully, not.

Wiser people leave this impossible continuum alone. Wiser and more healthy. And, I dare say, more fundamentalist.

Fundamentalism has become it's own four-letter word, identified with radicals from Topeka or Somalia, meaning, always, an extreme expression of fixed notions opposed to all things modern. Something like that. 

But I mean it like this: you cannot survive unless you have some fundamentals that define and govern your life. You have to know what you think is true and live by it or you go crazy. The screen will drag you there, so one of the fundamentals it to get rid of it.

So why don't I stop typing now? Good question. Because I think I can manage a certain measure of screen-dom. That's one of the fundamental notions that also guides my life. And no, I can't prove it to you.

The morass of ideas on all things political and cultural is distressing. At the end of the day I am left with what seems true about the world. I believe in God. Of course I cannot see Him or pretend to prove Him to a materialist, or anyone else for that matter. And, perhaps more stretching but also fundamentally, I believe in something I call the “human metaphysic.” And for any readers who have not yet given up I will try to describe this and then be done.

I mean by “human metaphysic” something similar to what is often called natural law: those things we “can't not know.” I believe these are values that are not up for grabs and if we undo them we undo ourselves. This is the idea of objective moral value. Some things are true to the way the world is and some things are not. And to deny this truth is to embrace a deadly irrationality.

Terms are strange and we should try to be clear and basic with ideas that define life for us. Fundamentalism goes there but has been maligned as something equivalent to irrationality. “I just believe the Bible” can be helpful but needs both context and real human community. So how do we cut through the mess?

The only answer I know, as an expression of my belief in God, is that all which is true aligns with Him, the infinite personal God who can be known (Schaeffer again, the elder). And we do best when we try to walk as Christ, knowing we will someday die, holding life loosely and, perhaps, our ideas more loosely still. In the end, if there is a God and we trusted Him, we will be safe with Him. If not, it didn't matter anyway.

I believe “it matters” – even this meandering attempt to make sense of it. And I am walking into the day with loved ones, co-workers and friends, reveling in the gift of life, holding loosely what I think I know, learning to give my life away.

For in all my uncertainty, that idea is one that seems as safe as any, and may even have real merit.

It may even be a fundamental.

At Random

We hear "as you were" or "at ease"; do we ever hear "at random"?

In spite of the billions of bytes in blogosphere, each one meaning my contribution is worth less, I am reluctant to post "at random." Few see, it matters to less, so why?

Many reasons, but to explicate them would move me out of the random territory. It is enough to say sometimes one needs to speak. 

That is all.

As you were!