Paul – Explained

“Yes…Yes…Yes…  That’s it exactly!” he pronounced to an empty room.  Again, Tolstoy came through.  Leo just finished explaining that the “chief cause” of the false interpretations of Christianity’s and Jesus of Nazareth’s message was Paul.  What caused Tolstoy to decide this?  The fact that Paul was the apostle who connected the Old Testament to the New Testament.  Tolstoy concludes, “…this doctrine of the tradition, this principle of the tradition, was the chief cause of the distortion of the Christian teaching and of its misunderstanding (xxii).”  Tolstoy’s premise?  Simply that Jesus’ words should rank higher than any other persons.

“This all makes so much sense,” he thought to himself.  Finally, someone said what he had been feeling.  But it was not that simple.  He still believed and needed some of Paul’s ideas.  In particular, Paul’s assertion, “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.  There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus,” for him, had singular merit.

So, what should be done with Paul?  For years, this question vexed him.  During a sermon one Sunday, in an instant the answer came:  end the special treatment.  Some of what Paul said was true and had value.  Some of what Paul said wasn’t true and didn’t have value.  His task was to treat Paul no different than any other thinker.  The issue wasn’t black and white.  He had to discern the value himself, idea by idea.  In other words, he finally remembered that Paul was just a man.

Despite the profound meaning and encouragement he gained from this statement, he felt it would be too radical for other believers.

Holding his breath, he hoped instead to discover that it resonated.

*****

Tolstoy, Leo, Leo Wiener, and Greg Oviatt. The Gospels in Brief. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004. Print.

What Was She Thinking?

Sitting across from her, he took took a breath as he finished talking.  He could only wonder what she was thinking.  Reminiscing, they discussed how they first met.  He told her how nervous he was, how excited he was, and how all he wanted was to be able to know her thoughts.  She smiled politely at this, and replied in kind.

Wrapping up the meal, they walked silently to the car.  He couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking.

He told her about his day, and she laughed at the funny parts.  He told her how he learned a new joke, “How do you make an octopus laugh?…Give it ten tickles!”  She laughed harder.

Arriving home, they began their separate nightly routines and he sat down to his computer.  As he piddled around, he heard her turning pages, walking around, and turning on the tv.  Her thoughts eluded him.

He’d had enough of the screen for one day, so he went to her.  She was watching tv.  Watching her, he lingered in the hall a little before entering the room.  He asked himself, “I wonder what she’s thinking?”

The next morning as they ate breakfast they chatted about the headlines.  He asked her how she expected her work to go, and she said, “Good.”  She volleyed the question back, and he told her how he had a 10 o’clock meeting, followed by lunch with a friend.  Continuing, he told her that his afternoon was booked with two more meetings, but he should be home at 5 o’clock because the last meeting won’t go long.  She said, “That’s good.  So will I.  Chicken tonight?”  He agreed.  She had to get going, as hers was the longer commute.  As she walked to the garage, he wondered what she was thinking.

Arriving at the office, he ran into Jeb, his co-worker.  Scanning the room to be sure the wrong people weren’t around, Jeb whispered, “Hey man, you ever wonder what women are thinking?”

“Yup.”

Disappointment

When that Aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,/And bathed every vyne in swich licour/Of which vertur engendred is the flour…*  

“Okay, Chaucer, that’s enough Middle Earth or whatever for tonight,” he thought, exhaling.

Straining to lift the book, heavy reading seemingly adding to the already heavy weight, he placed it beside him on the couch.  He closed his notebook, and placed it too beside him.  In a move foreshadowing a time not yet, he pushed the couch with his hands to stand up and proceeded to the kitchen.  Water cup in hand, he turned the faucet on, and confirmed a cool temperature with a rapid flick of his fingers.  He nearly finished in one swig, but habit caused him to stop early and pour out the remainder.  The slightest feeling of guilt pestered him as he wasted the water.  “Whatever.”

As he walked back towards the couch, he eyed an open bag of tortilla chips.  “Pretty sure I’m doing chips and salsa tonight,” he announced.

At first, head movement; pupils adjusting to reality next.  Finally, his friend smiled.

“We finished off the salsa the other night.  It’s all gone,” the friend disclosed.

“That’s fine, we still have the Pace in the fridge,” he said, knowing his friend would never stoop so low to eat, let alone serve others, bottom-shelf salsa.

Like Aesop’s cloak-removing sun, his friend’s smile only grew.

“You finished the Pace?” he asked in disbelief.

“Well, there was only so much good stuff left, so I just mixed it all together.  I didn’t want to run out with people over,” informed the friend.

“Oh.”

*****

*Chaucer.  The Canterbury Tales

How To Be Angry

(If you’re short on time, skip to the bottom for numbered instructions.)

“I’m not going to the dinner tonight!” he foamed.

“But you always go,” she responded.

“Right, but this one is about (insert hot button issue), and I’m not going to sit there and listen to those morons act like they know what they’re talking about!” he retorted furiously.

He knew he was right.  He knew what he believed.  And he knew they were wrong.

He could destroy their ideas with logic.  He could destroy their ideas with evidence.  He could destroy their ideas with history.  Listen to them?  Associate with them?  How could he?  He didn’t even understand how they could exist.  How could he possibly be expected to keep his cool when they were so blatantly wrong?  No, he’d made up his mind, he wasn’t going.

Waking up, he saw he had a few more morning emails than normal.  Several of his friends wrote that they missed his presence at the dinner.  One said they were all looking forward to a dissenting opinion, and without him it was a rather bland evening.  Immediately, he felt a pang of regret.   He didn’t expect anyone to even notice he wasn’t there, let alone miss him.  Kicking himself for forgetting that people are not arguments, people are not ideas, and people are not principles, he stood up and laboriously began his morning.  At 55, he thought he’d have learned his lesson by now.  Oh well, lucky for him the memories of his friends always welcoming him back with open arms burst through the floodgates.

Instructions for How To Be Angry

Step 1 – Make a decision without all the information.

Step 2 – Cease contact with anyone who disagrees with you.

Confusion

“Here it is,” he thought.  Finally the call he’d been waiting for.  “What the hell took so long?”  It had been over two weeks.  The guy’s tone wasn’t cheery.  Does anyone actually enjoy the small talk in these situations?  “Enough about how everyone is doing, just get to it.  ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”

“Fuck.”

“No,” he says.  “…and I have no feedback to offer,” he volunteers.

“Chicken shit.”  “No balls.”

“Look on the bright side.”  “One closed door opens another.”

At least respect him as a person.  “What kind of company would waste so much of someone’s time and energy?”

“But there is that other similar position…maybe there’s still hope?”

“No fucking feedback?”  How is he supposed to learn from this?  What lesson is there?  He gives it his best, they say “no” and…(crickets)?

The day a person gets a new job is a pretty freakin’ great day in their life.  What does that say about the day they don’t get a new job?  Pretty freakin’ bad day in their life?

No reason given.  “Thanks for nothing, fucktard.”

Easily the most epic failure of his life.  What does it mean?  Is he so out of touch that he couldn’t tell how the interviews went?

Asking for help regarding meaningful employment seems so weak to him.

“There’s a flip side to every coin.”

“Who knows…”  For so long he had seen the future.  No longer.  What did that mean?

But all the literature demands staying positive.  “Tomorrow will be a wonderful day.”  Probably.  For someone.

As for him, there was just shameful embarrassment for an immature reaction.

And confusion.

Same Sh!t, Different(?) Day

Unless you live under a rock, you heard that President Obama recently had three dictionary’s (Google, Merriam-Webster and Cambridge) add the following entry to the definition of literally:  “Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling.”

In typical fashion, that isn’t the only, or most impactful, word/definition that the president had modified.  While everyone was abuzz over the fact that a definition clearly in opposition to the word’s actual definition was added, nobody noticed the other word the president had changed: different.  (Of all the words for this to happen to, that he chose ‘literally’ to accomplish his ultimate goal is genius as it is so fundamental to a dictionary that it necessarily would draw attention.)

If you go to dictionary.com and look up different you’ll find, “not alike in character or quality” as the number one definition.  However, the same three dictionaries the president has in his pocket have caved to the pressure yet again.  Instead of just adding a definition to the number two spot, though, they actually erased all the previous definitions and instead put, “being the same.”

Now, we could discuss how, yet again, the president’s actions–always hiding bigger changes behind smaller changes–are disreputable, but let’s not.  We could discuss how, yet again, the president’s actions–endlessly overstepping the limited nature of his power–are illegal, but let’s not.  We could discuss how, yet again, the president’s actions–his surprisingly unsurprising changing definitions of words–are narcissistic and disrespectful to all mankind, but let’s not.  Instead, we will focus on how his most recent action, changing the definition of  different, clearly illustrates how he has a fundamental misunderstanding of his main campaign promise: change.

President Barack Obama promised to change this country, presumably for the better.  We turn again to dictionary.com and find that change is defined as, “to become different.”  Do you understand what has happened?  The nature of all the president’s flaws are revealed perfectly in this one seemingly minor action.  He wants to have it all.  He wants to “have his cake and eat it too”.  He wants to “have it both ways.”  However, as long as there is one other human–functional backbone included–in existence, he’s going to have a problem reconciling his ‘wants’ with reality.

His changing the definition of different doesn’t even make sense if he doesn’t have these ‘wants.’  How can a man who promises change fulfill his promise if everything is the same?

Some of us might be inclined to let this minor change be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  Let’s turn to a dissenting opinion:  His entertainment value alone has been worth it.

For those of us who first learned how inept presidents were with Clinton, we were even more disappointed in Bush II.  And out of these three presidents that have done nothing but drop the ball, has President Obama not been easily the most enjoyable to watch.   Will you join me in admitting that rather than getting upset, you actually hope President Obama never leaves office?  Long Live King Obama!

Public Speaking Is Not Our Biggest Fear

For the last year and a half he had attended a most unique gathering of personalities on Thursday mornings.  What began simply as a self-interested attempt to network for employment led him down an entirely different path than expected.  More than a job, he found life.

Most groups and organizations he had joined were disappointments.  But try as he might, it seemed he couldn’t avoid joining groups altogether.  Hypocrisy acting as the evicting agent, he left nearly every organization he ever joined.  But this one?  This was different.  This group offered nothing more than literal time and space to improve a particular life-skill.  Each member joined in order to improve their ability to speak publicly.  He found that hidden within an improved ability to speak publicly was the ability to communicate.  Unexpectedly, he learned that lurking within communication was being.

He didn’t doubt that in the organization someone somewhere hungered selfishly for more and more members–humans-in-group will never satisfy their need to evangelize.  Yet, for this group, any recruiting efforts more than admitting existence proved silly.  Ultimately, convincing someone that they should face their largest fear and, over time, dis-cover who they actually are–all while in the presence of others–was not possible.  Like the horse that can’t be forced to drink, people had to want to join.

While Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” was a chapter essential to telling the story, the time had come to turn the page.  Experience illuminated that he ‘was not’ without other people.  Therefore, the next chapter began, “I communicate, therefore I am.”

Are you?

The Third Most Important Day

Confused, this was the first time he could remember seeing anything other than milk in a one gallon jug.  He eyed the waitress suspiciously.  Licking his lips at the mention of homemade root beer, he believed the milk jug proved its homemade claim while simultaneously casting a shadow of doubt regarding the health code.  The root beer was fantastic.

Hannibal, MO is where he found himself.  Why?  Who can remember such things?  Besides the root beer, he remembered hearing about Mark Twain.  He has yet to meet a man who can forget about Mark Twain once they become aware of him.  He also remembered his parents being at the restaurant, so he knew it wasn’t a boy scout trip–the main reason he would’ve been in Missouri.

Ahh, boy scouts.  Some of the happiest moments of his childhood occurred because of the boy scouts.  Almost every boy scout event etched at least one memory into his mind.  Those green Eureka Alpine tents.  At first, his fourth grade hands had trouble setting them up, but the older boys gladly taught him to work smarter not harder.  Building fires, hiking, sleeping out under the stars, canoeing–all things he would’ve never done if it hadn’t been for troop 428.

Boy Scouts.  That was a long time ago.  As he grew to be an older teen, he wanted to own more gear himself.  Coincidentally, his family was on vacation in Wyoming, on a ranch, where he first laid eyes on a Cabela’s master catalog.  Not knowing the treasure he’d stumbled upon, he fumbled through the pages at first.  It was the tent section that caused him to slow down.  And slow down he did.  Reading the description of the 3-person, 4-season, dual door, dual vestibule Eureka Summit XT, he could hardly contain himself.  And for only $229!  Unfortunately, even though a second trip to Wyoming from Kansas required a drive through Sydney, Nebraska where the flagship showroom store was located, and even though they stopped and it was near his summer birthday, his mother wasn’t having it.  (Whether his father would’ve bought it is another issue.  Let’s just say he learned too late in life that the man had a harm time saying ‘no’.)  While crushed, the damage was temporary as he was at least happy to be heading back to the Cheyenne River Ranch.

The chance to regularly shop in a Cabela’s came into his life once again with the advent of the Kansas Speedway in 2001.  This brought Cabela’s, the #1 tourist attraction in Kansas, to his home town.  No more ordering from the catalog.  But at this point the trouble was that he was in college and college had landed him back in NE Missouri on the Mississippi, near Mark Twain’s ol’ stomping grounds.  Shopping in a Cabela’s was becoming a fantasy that was just too good to be true.

I’m happy to report the wait is over.  Today, August 15th, 2013, not one, but two Cabela’s locations are opening in the Denver Metro area at 10:30 am.  He moved to Denver on a whim, a decision rooted in passion.  Some might foolishly count this turn of events as coincidence.  He knows it to be fate.  Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”  He now knows the third most important day in your life is the day you learn someone loves you enough to not give up on you.  For him, that day is today.  Long live Cabela’s!!

Before You Subtract…Abstract

What makes a person want to learn?

What makes a person want to teach?

What does it take to convince a 14-year old that knowing how to add/subtract/multiple/divide fractions is valuable?  Is knowing how to manipulate fractions valuable?

I spent some time reading a book about algebra recently, and noticed the author put special, but still less than I would have, emphasis on some major moments in the history of math.  The first being the invention/recognition of the number “0”.  Another being the move from numbers being practical to being abstract; that is, from counting 5 apples or 5 sheep to understanding that “5” can be a useful concept without the practical application.  Did you catch that?  Numbers began with practical application.  Afterwards, the giants of math discovered numbers and math in abstraction.  Because of these giants, we’ll be colonizing other planets in our lifetime.

In reviewing this chronology, I think I picked up on something.  The problem a high school teacher faces is not convincing several-grade-levels-behind teenagers of the practical application of fractions, but convincing them of the importance of abstract thought.  You might be thinking that reminding students that if Matt pays $3.75 and John $1.25, unless Matt is feeling nice, John should only get 2 slices of the Hot’n’Ready seems the better route at this juncture.  Don’t be foolish, it is not.  Really, who cares how many slices of pizza a couple of high teenagers eat?  The bigger problem is that there are four years left until these two knuckleheads will never again be members of a captive audience.  There are four years until they will officially become adults in the legal sense of the word, regardless of their not having achieved manhood in the abstract sense of the word.

How to proceed then?  How about heeding Thoreau?

“No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; — not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.”

Lock ‘Em Up – The Other Option Is Too Frightening

Windowless, the classroom was in a little known corner of the university library.  But that classroom was the place he first heard of the movement to abolish prisons.  Yep, that’s a movement among some circles in this world.  Just in passing, think how you felt as you read those words: abolish prison.

As if a starter’s gun, this concept set his mind racing.  He began to develop perfect reasoning explaining why it would be a big mistake.  First, it didn’t make sense logistically.  Where would all the prisoners go?  What would we do with the bad people?  Then, the abstract problems began to attract his attention.  He wondered what the point of prison actually was?  Why were there prisons?  To protect the un-imprisoned?  To punish?  To rehabilitate?  All three?  Were there other reasons?  Were prisons an illusion of safety, or did they actually facilitate a more safe and civilized world?

Passing the start-finish line which signaled the end of lap one, his mind continued on.  What was he to do with all that data that says American prisons are filled mostly with drug offenders?  This mention of “drugs” acted like a shot of adrenaline.  He couldn’t help but think about all the people he knew who had broken drug laws, yet never been caught.

As his mind rounded the turn marking the race’s midpoint, he lost focus and was unable to tell if it faltered or sped up.  You see, he wouldn’t ever turn in a family member for a drug offense.  He also wouldn’t enable a family member, that is to say he would cut off all contact with, and support of, any family member who he determined actually had a drug abuse problem.  Acknowledging this act of cutting off led him to ask myself why?  Why did he think that was the best solution?  Was it simply out-of-sight-out-of-mind?  And if so, is that what prison was?  Was prison simply the macro-level version of what he would do on a personal level?  Were all the relatives of the prison population happy they didn’t have to deal with their family member’s bullshit drama any more while simultaneously hoping they’ll get a clue and mature before they were released?  In his mind, he would use ‘tough love’ on a relative, because he believed the individual must recognize he has a problem before any progress could be made.  Integral to his theory working, of course, is that he’d help the minute he was asked.  Having never been tested, he had his doubts as to his ability to actually follow through, though.

Finding his mind alone on the home stretch, he was unsure whether this was because it was in last place or first place.  Himself selfish and vain beyond belief, he’d be the first to confess that he rarely admitted that he made mistakes.  He wondered what it would take for him to admit he needed help.  Certainly, he didn’t want any strangers to think he had flaws.

The race drawing to a close, he found his mind standing where the starting blocks were.  The big question of the day was still unanswered.  What would the world look like if we didn’t push our problems out of sight?  Or as he was first asked in that industrial windowless classroom, what do you think the world would look like if we abolished prison?