Tagged: relationships

A Few Notes on Friends, Cultures, and Blogging through the Lens of the Gun Control Debate

I fear I may have driven one good friend away during my week of slandering the marchers. That’s no good. Time will tell. Here I want to happily prove that I miraculously still have one or two remaining friends, address some white/black cultural issues, and comment on the value of blogging as distinct from other forms of writing.

Remember my proposed Amendment XXVIII? Here it is again, “In time of peace, arms shall no longer be secured by the people.”

I still love it, but the sense I get is that most folks think it is quite ridiculous, if not totally immature, willfully ignorant, and completely impractical. While it’s always nice to be encouraged, I don’t find generality particularly beneficial for philosophical debate.

Out of the blue, however, one pal responded with, “What about new citizens? Your amendment doesn’t seem to account for them. Seems like you’d be fine with them securing arms during peace time.”

Two things should be readily apparent by that rejoinder. First, you couldn’t know this, but he responded within, oh, less than a few seconds. To note this is important to me because at the seminary the word “smart” is passed around and desired as if a mantle of holiness. It isn’t. And frankly, I cannot get anyone, professor or student, to coherently describe what they mean by “smart.”

Sidebar: I recognize only two traits of the mind. Speed and retention. Some people think faster, and some people retain more, but I have yet to meet someone who is smart. Consequently, then, my friend demonstrated that he is at least a fast thinker. I like to think I, too, possess a mind which is je ne sais quoi, rapido? and that that’s why we’re friends. Who knows?

Second, his particular reply–unlike general criticisms and/or silent anger–demonstrates that he respects me enough to consider my idea. This feels good.

In addition to this, I think I have just today gained some clarity regarding what drives my posts of late, the ones wherein I cry out for the remnant of living souls who know what we have accomplished in the United States to speak up before it’s too late.

You see, I have purposefully been engaging with other cultures. What can I say? I like to learn. While we’re all Americans, we are definitely not all the same culture. And I now see that my reactionary writing (such as the last joint movie review) is likely the manifestation of my own culture gasping for air.

Here’s the thing. Both cultures which I interact with, while I maintain that I am not fully a member of either (White Evangelicals and the Black Community), both of them believe in the Word of God in the dual senses of “…bread alone but every word that comes out of the mouth of God” and “…and the Word became flesh.” However, I reject the White Evangelicals because they preach that the Bible supports that mathematical truth is God’s truth. (Nowhere in scripture does any writer indicate that the LORD cares if one plus one equals two.) And I struggle with the Black Community because they preach that the Bible supports the notion that extra-biblical knowledge has no value. (These are sweeping generalizations. Rest assured, more are on the way. Rerax! It’s a blog post.)

By my thinking, the only important thing, the thing that the Bible explicitly states over and over again, is that there is a difference between the two. It’s not that man’s knowledge isn’t important, it’s just that it can’t possibly all be the LORD’s knowledge. There must be two types. And, point of fact, the word “holy” itself is just the church-ified version of the word “separate.” Again, the Word of God says that there are two types. Just don’t unify the two and you’re fine. (Seriously, don’t.)

The real question is how to get the White Evangelicals to stop insisting Christianity is the “smart choice,” and how to get the Black Community to care about math. As for me, I’m the smartypants who uses google for algebra problems. Bet the Arabs didn’t see that coming!

This takes me to blogging.

For me, it is holy catharsis. How about for you?

Lying Bullies

H- asked me if I’ve ever been bullied. This was at dinner. I’m sure it was after she’d shared that her second grade class is, yet again, learning about weather patterns (iz literasee evin uh konsern enymor?). But I cannot remember for certain whether it was after, that is, caused by the scene we witnessed at the restaurant or not. It must have been after.

We were eating at Freddy’s, which has turned into one of our favorite spots. While there, we were privy to some man walking back into the establishment with his recently purchased brown bag of burgers. He proceeded to theatrically unpack the bag and open the boxes in front of the watching staff, notably one unassuming teenage girl. Then, I recall him angrily adding the rejoinder, “…and now you’re wasting my time!”

Despite joining me on my other two trips, first to fill the sauce cups, second, the drink cups, and after displaying excitement upon our number being called, when I stood up to head to the counter where the man was, H- looked at me sincerely and announced, “I’m staying here.”

****

Uneventfully enjoying our food, in response to her bullying question, I finally said, “Do you know what war is?”

She replied, “Yes.”

“What is it?”

She answered, “It’s when you kill people.”

“Is that worse than bullying, do you think?”

She said, “Yes.”

“Do you think bullying occurs before killing or after killing?”

Not needing too much time to consider the question, she soon responded, “Before.”

“And you know I fought in war, right?”

Ever resilient, H-‘s eyes rounded out the word “Yes” with the innate understanding that her father couldn’t do wrong.

As I began again she interrupted, “But I don’t understand why people would kill each other?”

“Do you remember the video I tried to show you where the planes flew into the buildings?”

“Yes.”

“Look at this napkin, H-. Pretend that the napkin is the United States. Everyone in the United States is an American. There are people off of the napkin, people from different parts of the world who want to hurt us and kill us. The only way to stop them is to cause them to fear us. They must believe if they ever try to harm us again they will immediately be killed.”

****

“It’s okay now, H-,” I reassured her.

“How do you know he’s not mad anymore, daddy?”

“Well, he saw me approach to get our food and he backed away.”

Her eyes blankly looked out the window, as if searching for something.

“Plus I heard another employee defend the girl and say, ‘I’m sorry, sir. It was my fault. I’m new and still learning the job.'”

“Oh,” she said.

I then whispered, “But I don’t think he was new. I think he just said that to calm the man down.”

“You don’t think he was new?”

“I think he was trying to calm the man down, H-. That’s the bigger goal. Do you see how in this case the lie was okay?”

Her vertical nod showed me only that I was leading the witness.

“What about if it was not just a restaurant? What if someone was depending on you to tell the truth, should you lie then?”

“No.”

“Right. But here, it isn’t wrong that the employee lied. It would have been worse if something worse would have happened. Do you understand?”

****

Last night, I taught my daughter that, not only have I not been bullied, but that I have done more than bully to others. And that lying can be okay. What do you think? (As you answer, keep in mind that this was after we prayed over our dinner in the name of Jesus.)

I Love Conversation

My good friend and I are trying to civilly gain some understanding of each other’s opposed views which have surfaced alongside this whole “March for Our Lives” thing. If you didn’t see, he left a much-welcomed and presumably expensive comment on yesterday’s post.

We belong to the same Toastmaster’s club, having serendipitously met there some six years ago. Tomorrow morning after the meeting we both have time to chat. In order to make the short time we have most fruitful, I wanted to respond to his thoughts here. I also cannot deny that I think our back-and-forth is the best one on the internet at the moment. Enjoy!

To begin, a word of caution. Please, please do not hear my assertions in the tone of, “I am god.” Instead, here me say, “This is how I see it.” We clearly disagree on many things; I am aware of this. Even after your thorough comment though, I am not sure you understand how I see it. My reasons for not being sure include that you didn’t say, “Well, Pete, we’re coming at this from two totally different angles. You’re taking a more philosophical approach, and I’m operating within the practical, legal approach. I’m also not even sure we are addressing the same problem.” Or some such thing. Maybe that’s what you do think. Time will tell.

That said, to be as clear as I can be, for me (and the status quo which I portend to represent) the issue is not gun violence. Moreover, I don’t think stating this makes me incompetent or ignorant or any other unbecoming trait. Nor do I think anything you have written marks you in such a way.

When I write, “I want these shootings to stop too,” I do not have in mind that I would prefer the violence to be committed by some other weaponry. More specifically, I guess I could have said, “I want the instances of unarmed, unprepared, and unsuspecting deaths of any size group of Americans (or any folks standing on American soil) who are attempting to better themselves to stop.”

It’s intriguing to discover that I fight my seminary professors’ views on the Bible for the same reason that I debate you about the second amendment.

While I am happy to see such a thought-out defense of some position on an issue that it would include taking into consideration grammar conventions of the late eighteenth century, I would never go that route. I would never go that route for the foremost reason that grammar conventions are nothing more than completely baseless speculations, unless you can show me that the writers included a legend or key of some sort–in which case the very conventions you highlight are no longer unfounded and speculative conventions but actual fact.

If the Constitution (icapitalizedtheenglishlettercatthebeginningofthewordconstitutiontoindicateimeanamericas), if the Constitution included some sort of definition of terms similar to what you wrote, then I have no way to disagree with what you wrote about the value of capitalization in interpretation. (And perhaps they did, though I have not ever heard of that section). If they did not, then I, and everyone with my point of view, am free to say, “I’m sorry, friend, but people do not live or die because of capital letters, and neither did the founders want us to think they thought so.”

Words matter, not their shape on paper.

Additionally, when I say, “the amendment,” I do not meant to claim that I know what the second amendment means in the sense with which you shared in your self-declared legal opinion. Besides what I wrote in that post, I believe that (philosophically) the law is the act of people giving up their rights in order to be free. With the so-called Bill of Rights, and specifically the second amendment, I believe we have, within the law and as one particular law, some one designated arena which the law is not–that being arms. In other words, I believe that in the act of people giving up their rights in order to be free, the second amendment declares that when it comes to arms, the law has no place. Put another way, I believe that the second amendment (along with the other amendments in the Bill of Rights) declares (both philosophically and actually) that there are some rights which if given up do not beget freedom.

The beautiful part of the Constitution, and by beautiful I mean spectacular, is that it provides for change. And here is the pay dirt.

The founders lived in a pre-hyrdogen bomb world. Yesterday former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens advocated repealing the second amendment in a NY Times op-ed piece which featured an image of a musket juxtaposed against an AR-15. Ultimately the ex-Justice and I see the same reality. But he did not make the not the proper comparison. The proper comparison would have been that of the most destructive weapon of 1791 and the most destructive weapon of 2018. I’m imagining an image of a cannon vs. a mushroom cloud. One reason the second amendment could be repealed these days (and along these lines I think I might be fine with it being repealed) is because guns are melted by hydrogen bombs. Life is, I believe, fundamentally and irrevocably different today. The American people do not stand a chance against some dystopian American tyranny. Who are we fooling?

Do I think the American founders knew that future battlefields would be able to be melted by the heat equivalent to that of the surface of the sun when I support the Constitution so dogmatically? Do folks who think these weekend marches are pointless think the Constitution should never be changed? No to both questions. But I do think that the Constitution writers showed almost divine philosophical foresight in their writing, and I kindly ask that you re-consider whether these shootings (or, “these instances of unarmed, unprepared, and unsuspecting deaths of any size group of Americans ((or folks on American soil)) who are attempting to better themselves”) can be stopped by anything less than a re-evaluation of whether the overall arms circumstance on planet Earth has changed since the Constitution was written.

If so, amend.

If not, look in a different direction to stop the shootings.

Perhaps towards Christ.

Review of Zhang Zuo’s March Seventeenth of Two Thousand Eighteen Performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto (Emperor) with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at Boettcher Concert Hall

I should have known the night was on my side when her dress fit.

She briskly, confidently, and oh-so-perfectly entered Boettcher Concert Hall, holding the thin, race-car red fabric of her dress off the floor with her soon-to-set-the-piano-on-fire fingers.

Red is my favorite color. And if dresses could direct their attention, her dress pointed directly at my heart. Did I mention that it fit? It fit.

Beethoven is said to have said something like, “Music is God’s final revelation to man.” Of course, with an understanding like that, he could only have meant the LORD. Amen, Brother B. Amen. And thank you, LORD.

All I really want to do here is call to your attention this pianist. If she comes to your town, drop everything–every single thing that you are holding, whether in hand or mind–and pay any dollar amount to see her play. (Or any other currency for that matter, you uptight legalists.)

This woman turns the concert hall into the cathedral.

Do you believe that there is more to music than sound? Good. Me too. Zee Zee three.

You will not be disappointed.

Three Reasons the Bible Is Not Pro-Gun Control

By most accounts, I am not even “old,” and yet I feel old enough to say it is time to take the gloves off. I want to maintain what grammarians might call a syntax of gentleness, but truth is important too. This might be more true than gentle. We’ll see.

First: You’re a sucker, or what Jesus called a sheep, if you think the Bible has anything to say one way or the other about gun control. Just sayin.’ It is not pro-gun anymore than it is anti-gun. In fact, in all my reading of the Bible, in the words of three different languages and many more different dialects of English, I have never come across the word gun. Let this first point, then, be a lesson from a friend: don’t play the fool.

Second: The Bible is most certainly pro-death and it is most certainly anti-death. We die. All of us. If any written words have ever been indubitably aware of this fact, they are found in the Bible. This is a good thing. Only upon understanding this situation can we begin to see the invisible, to see the spiritual.

Third: One way– *one*–that I, the-looking-through-the-dim-mirror-sheep-that-I-am, view the school shootings is through the story in the end of the book of Judges wherein some Israelite’s concubine was raped and abused through the night by men from another tribe of Israelites with whom they were staying, presumably for safety. She ends up dead, lying at the threshold of the man’s door in the morning. He then chops her up into twelve pieces and sends a piece to each of the twelve tribes of Israel and the recipients say, “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day when the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day. Consider it, take counsel and speak up!” At this, civil war was the determination. The LORD did not spare his own people.

The reason that comes to mind is because of the emphasis it has on that the atrocity was committed by their own people–their own family, as it were. While our culture isn’t as segmented by bloodlines as those ancient cultures, I am comfortable with saying that when some current or former student murders his own classmates, in his own town etc. that it is similar enough to be meaningfully the same.

A lot of you like to say, “History repeats itself.” Or, “Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.” Bullocks, I say. History does not repeat itself, nor are any two situations ever the same. But the LORD is righteous and he will not tolerate sin for forever. Accordingly, from today forward we can give future historians the data they need to record how these shootings turned out to be the preamble to civil war (or the less extreme, more simple crumbling of Western civilization), or we can give future historians the data they need to record how these shootings turned out to be the warnings we heeded to return to the LORD. The future has never been done before. I say let’s return to the LORD. (The Bible does talk about this being welcomed by him–every time.)

Her Tricep

She had plugged the laptop directly into the wall outlet. I couldn’t believe it. One year has passed, but it still sticks out in my memory.

Before the babysitter left, I tucked H- in for the night. After paying her and saying, “Thanks again!” I showed her the door and she exited. There was always a peculiar tension to our interactions, likely due to the fact that she was young and happily married and I was divorced and didn’t buy it.

But she had plugged. The laptop. Directly. Into. The wall. Who does this?

Moments like these confirm that I am not meant for marriage.

Did she not know how much a laptop costs? Or how much of me she placed at risk?

Quickly, I double check that, sure enough, the surge protector is on the ground, visible, and within reach of the wall outlet–right where I left it.

But come closer now. There is something else. I want to tell you something that I already feel guilty for sharing. There is a part of a lover that I miss dearly. I don’t hear much discussion of it among the ranks of men, but I find it to be enchantingly erotic.

It is the feel of the tender, meaty flesh of the inside of your upper arms. You only offer it as you lie naked beneath me, having willingly allowed me to push your arms over your head in worship.

Now there is only longing. Longing for my thumb to again devotedly caress the skin that spans from the bones of your wrists to the muscles of your arms as I finally and firmly enclose this part of you in my palm.

Vulnerability, your scent intoxicates!

****

And what of this confession?

Surely

If Handel’s Messiah is playing near you, go. H- and I went tonight and it is amazing. Every word is from Scripture. The most striking and awe-inspiring songs included For Unto Us a Child is Born, and All We Like Sheep (whose last part was unexpectedly dramatic), and, also unexpectedly, the new-to-me song Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs.

Most of you know I am a member of a black church. I mention this because the first song that the chorus sang made me tear up and I thought about how I would react to the Hallelujah Chorus and whether I would stand by myself or not. For those who do not know, it is a tradition to stand for that one, and so we did. It was sublime beyond compare. Praise Yahweh. Praise the LORD. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

How Hot Was It?

“It’s so hot, it melted butter!” H- exclaimed as we entered the car after the service.

He immediately and uncontrollably voiced aloud, “Why is there butter in the car?” While silence filled the air, he recounted the latest and most butter filled experiences of their past.

Sure, there was the camping trip to the mountains wherein they stopped at the convenience store to pick up the butter necessary for successful and tasty breakfasts which he forgot to pack–the convenience store who’s possibly-attractive-enough-to-turn-men’s-heads-nine-years-ago-in-high-school-blonde-haired clerk suggestively asked him, “Whaaaaaaa-tcha makin’?” as she rang up the butter-

(A suggestion that he might have accepted if first, he were younger, second, he was not presently reconsidering leaving his daughter alone in the car for so long, and third, he was less aware of divine commands against extramarital fornication with heathen women.)

-But no, he could distinctly picture that box of butter and its remaining three sticks in the door of the refrigerator at home.

The salacious and provocative memory addressed, he now returned to the warm car and continued his interrogation of H-, asking, “H-? Why is there butter in the car? What are you talking about?”

Unperturbed by the question, H- answered, “It’s just a little bit, here on the handle.”

Without turning to view the location, he asked, “Okay, but where did it come from?”

Then he remembered that her bagel was simply buttered–no schmear.

“H-. I still don’t understand,” he rejoined, “Why is there butter on the handle? Where did it come from?” he continued.

“It’s not a lot, daddy,” she said. “I just, you know, had a little extra butter on the bagel and used the napkin to wipe it off and put the napkin in the door handle.”

‘Okay,’ he thought to himself. ‘So we’ve got the origin of the situation explained. Now we need to discuss the how-and-why of the fact that butter does not quite possess the right attributes to base exclamatory remarks intended to indicate uncomfortable realities of life in a car without air conditioning.’

“Yeah, well next time, H-, just eat the butter. Okay?”