Blessings Made Easy

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's talk about blessings.

I don't mean blessing someone out, which is bad, but imparting a blessing, which is good.  

"Blessing" is a great word and a great concept, but it has a crappy etymology.  It comes from an Old English word blodisoian which means "to consecrate with blood."  Picture doing that to someone's nose after they sneeze!

Like many things vocabulary, the word has undergone changes, so that it carries a meaning that inspires others.  Few words in the English lexicon are as positive as the word "blessing."

We say a blessing, receive a blessing, feel blessed, bless others, and before every meal some say The Blessing while closing their eyes even if they are in a restaurant full of pickpockets and purse snatchers.

I like blessings that happen easily.  They are spontaneous and go undetected until during a moment of meditation when the "blessing event" is revealed.

This happened to me recently at Mrs. Wilkes.

Here in Savannah there's a restaurant called Mrs. Wilkes that is one place where everyone in the world should eat before they die.  It opens from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM, Monday through Friday.  You better get there around 10:30 because the line builds up fast.

They seat ten people at one table.  Unless your party is a party of ten, you will be sitting among strangers.  Spread out on the huge round table were serving plates of meat and bowls of vegetables.  The experience has the enchantment of a meal that started out as a few loaves and fishes.  

Now, I love to talk to people.  I'm more than happy to take the lead at a table encircled by people looking at each other as if they are each an unfamiliar food steaming inside a serving bowl.  

The blessing event unfolded after all our plates were filled with multiple portions all of us hungry strangers had passed around and dished out. That took a few minutes while diners expressed how the cornucopia before them surpassed their prior culinary experience.

I asked the couple sitting nearest to us if they were tourists.  Well, of course they were.  How did they hear about Mrs. Wilkes?  They were passing by and saw the line.  Where were they from?  Texas.  What did they do in Texas?  He was a middle school band director.  She was an accountant.

Without missing a note, I told him how I owe my love for music to Mr. Charles Cassavant, my unforgettable junior high teacher who taught me how to play the clarinet.  I explained how I played "Air for Strings in G" by Bach when I was twelve years old, and it remains to me still one of the loveliest compositions I have ever heard.  

I said, "I love every kind of music there is because of that one teacher.  He transformed my life.  You may never know how you affect your students, but I can tell you that what you teach is rich and never lets go."  

I think I said it better than how I just wrote it.  I can't recall exactly what I said, but the band director said nothing at first.  He seemed stunned as if someone had given him the deed to Mrs. Wilkes.  His wife was grinning ear to ear.  

I did not think much of it until later.  I wondered how justified I would feel, and how consecrated, if someone told me their literature teacher put them on the path to everlasting wholeness.

Yes, I want to be the Forrest Gump of blessings.  I want blessing others to come natural to me.   

There is so much hatefulness in our shitty world that I feel a spiritual obligation to cancel out as much wrath and fear with grace whenever I can.  I count myself blessed that I do not have to try very hard.

Blessings...

  

The following is a revised version of a post from 6/22/2015:

CARBINES AND FELINES

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

      Welcome back.

     Allow me to start off by saying that I am not against gun ownership. Nor am I entranced by guns the way others seem to be. There is more magical thinking than science firing from the barrels of Gatling gun gullets prattling about the 2nd Amendment.  

     Gun preachers are the young earth creationists of violence. All the tragedy following a multiple homicide is as complex as natural selection, but to hear gungelicals talk, the problem of guns is as simple as making a tree without sunlight or a man from mud.

  We need more levity, less gravity. I suggest we laugh at the ideals preached by these gungelicals because they can be quite funny.

     Nothing triggers a good laugh from me than watching the politricks of politicians who legislate as if they are standing in front of a firing squad. They might have solutions in their sights, but the NRA got the drop on them as soon as they were elected.  

     And the shoot-first-think-never pundits make matters worse firing the same four bullet shit reasons why guns make us all safe. 

     I get a kick out of it, and to make it funnier, I imagine them using squeegee voices when they talk. 

     Indeed, we must laugh.  Reason and logic are prosaic to the average American thinking apparatus.  No matter how horrible, frequent, or shocking the increasing the number of multiple homicides have become they continue unabated within the impenetrable protective shell of gun lobby influence.  Laughter is the only remedy left to us even though a murderous deception happens every day in the United States that is not funny.

     The gungelicals preach a standard stock of false reasons why every American should own a Carcano 91/38 rifle, a .22 caliber Iver Johnson, a 30 06 Enfield, a Remington 30 06 rifle, a 10-shot Hi-Point model 995 carbine rifle, an Intratec tec dc 9, a Savage 311-D 12 gauge double barrel shotgun and Savage-Springfield 67H 12 gauge shot gun (they work best sawed off), a Bushmaster AR 15 assault rifle, a .40 caliber pistol, a Bushmaster XM 15 rifle, a Smith and Wesson M&P15 assault rifle, a Remington 870 pump action double gauge shotgun, a 9x19mm Glock, a 9mm Sig Sauer pistol, and a 45 caliber handgun like the one Dylan Roof used.

    The reasons are four.  It just so happens those stock reasons are the same reasons for owning a cat. 

Reason#1

     I am safer with a cat in my home. Actually, I’m not. Even with kitty in my home, one killer or several could get the drop on me. They could kick my door down and blow me away before I am able to toss my cat onto their faces. Moreover, I am not safer away from home. I could take kitty to a movie, or a restaurant, and any gunman might blow me away before I have the chance to fire my cat back at him.

Reason #2

     Only a good cat can stop a bad man. That’s not true either. It is possible that some bad men might see my cat and stop what they are doing. I know I would, but it's not likely a bad man would. If I toss kitty at a bad man while he is firing away, I might miss.  Kitty thereby lands on an innocent person, disfiguring him with horrible scratches, and we have another mass shooting to forget until the next one.

Reason#3

     The government is coming to take away all of our cats. This makes as much sense as petting a stuffed cat. If the government sends a tank and a platoon of Marines to pry kitty from my cold, dead hands, he will be no match for their fire power, nor will he be anywhere near my cold, dead hands.

Reason #4

      If the government takes away our cats, then only criminals will have cats. Maybe, but they will be black market cats and will cost thousands of dollars. Kitty was given to me for free by a little girl looking to abandon him at a rock concert. I would not have paid a dime for him back then, but now, it would be abargain for me to pay the ten thousand dollars his value would command on the black cat market.

     Let us recall, a divine sage once said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”  

     

     Imagine substituting the word “sword” with the word “gun.”  It’s easy if you try.

     Blessings…

Knowing Advent

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

            Welcome back.  Every year my church publishes a daily devotional for the four weeks of Advent.  I was invited to contribute.  I have included my essay in today's post below:

           A vivid memory that will follow me to the grave, or perish in the black hole of Alzheimer’s, is the last Riddle family reunion I attended in the late 1980s. My maternal grandfather, who was a fundamentalist Baptist pastor from Alabama, announced that he no longer believed Jesus would return in his lifetime. His words stunned everyone.

            My grandfather remained simple and unchanged throughout his life, just like the churches where he served as pastor.  Any one of his churches could have been attached to poles and carried from town to town. They were not unlike the churches already built there.  

            For my grandfather and for the churches I attended throughout my life worship was simple: an opening hymn, a prayer, announcements, a hymn, an offering, a prayer, another hymn, a sermon, the invitation, and a final prayer. Easter, Christmas, and Mother’s Day were the only holy days observed. The calendar was not liturgical; it was Gregorian and tacked onto Sunday School walls throughout the building.  

   

            Now, I’ve been asked to write about Advent, which I had to look up. Until our pastor's wife kindly gifted an Advent wreath to my wife last Christmas, Advent might as well have been a Japanese car or a painkiller to me.

            Advent concerns the Jewish expectation of the coming Messiah. Advent is the Latin word translated from the Greek word “Parousia,” which means "second coming," that is, the second coming of Jesus the Christ for Christians.  Advent carries an expectation beyond yuletide. In the Christian liturgical calendar, Advent is the first of four weeks to spiritually prepare before Christmas arrives.

In his book The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg, a recently deceased religion professor and Christian writer, writes that Advent is one of those “thin places” spoken of in Celtic Christianity. Thin places are those times when God’s presence breaks into our awareness.

Hebrew prophets claimed to have such awareness. They envisioned a society where God’s rule would create justice among nations. Jesus came and proclaimed God’s rule. He was executed for it. An expectation that Jesus will return is church doctrine.

Are we waiting for Jesus today?  The spirit of our times is as brutal and unjust as any time in the past. A revival of religious murder wounds humanity even now though science has cast doubt on the thinking that undergirds holy book literalism. Like many Jews of Jesus’ day, Christians are waiting for God to show up and fix humanity.

There are signs that a profound expectation exists in the world. Consider the wondrous advent of Pope Francis in church history. The enthusiasm for this pope has been unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Roman Catholics venerate him. Many Protestants adore him. After he washed the feet of impoverished women at a halfway house, I began to follow his “popery” with admiring fascination.

Pope Francis’ ministry has shown a deep yearning for Christ that exists in the world. That is the only explanation for his ability to streak across the firmament of the media like a star captivating magi.  I sense that millions long to see the love of Jesus that was promised to heal humanity millennia ago.  The world has been waiting for two thousand years for Christians to reveal Christ and not something else that is like the world:  indifferent, mean, hateful, and violent.

That expectation is Advent. The Church must fulfill that expectation so humanity can be saved from itself. We, the Church, may truly have always been the last best hope for humanity. If that is true, then humanity yet waits to see the incarnation of Christ in the lives of church members all over the world.

Were my grandfather alive today, I would remind him that Jesus did return during his lifetime. Others, like Simeon in Luke’s birth narrative, beheld Jesus each time my grandfather’s love revealed the salvation of God. 

Blessings...

Gundolatry

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Below is an article I wrote recently and submitted to some magazines.  

         Here in Savannah, citizens are shooting each other, it seems, every day. In some cases, people are just shooting other people with no apparent motive except they can. We have a device the police uses that can discern the difference between firecracker sounds and gun shots. Between January 1 and September 14 of this year, ShotSpotter detected “4374 cases of gun fire.” (Savannah Morning News) 

Even worse, our local news anchor included a bit that explained to viewers what to do in case a shooter is “in the building.”  She delivered her instructions as if she were explaining how to change the batteries in a fire alarm every equinox.

Guns are not making anyone safer. There is no greater lie than the lie that guns make me safer. Guns are not making me safer. Guns are not making my wife, or my daughters, or my other loved ones safer. I am safer because there is no gun in our home. There was never a gun in my parent's home. Guns are not making my students safer either.

You hunters and law abiding gun owners are not making me safer, yet you are in greater danger of being shot than I am. This new turn in gun politics that many of you let happen and others of you fervently support is making us all less safe. An insanity has gripped minds, throats, balls, and morality, strangling everything. The insanity is saying that what we need is more guns, more people carrying guns, and more guns and also more guns and the passing of more laws allowing more citizens to carry more guns. A condition is festering in our society whereby all are being surrounded by gun violence and we all fear one another.

Killers and good people are stockpiling weapons because the lie is being used to scare people into believing that an arsenal is the answer to our security woes.  The problem is exacerbated when a few good men snap for whatever reason and their clips snap too.

You're afraid the government will take over and take away your guns? Well, this new gun politick is arming police with more dangerous weapons. Soon we'll see groups of murderers from the right of America and the right of Islam coordinate attacks on multiple targets. Soon we'll see people being shot on back roads, side roads, and interstates just because someone doesn't like their bumper sticker, or their pretty wife, or maybe they just don't like the way they look. How long will it take the government to post military personnel in the streets? Trump that possibility.

There are so many ironies here. The more guns, the more killing, the more we accept that powerful weapons for cops and soldiers are normal.  That is a huge irony.

Here's an economic irony: a lot of gun customers are being murdered. How many NRA members are being gunned down?  How much is the dollar cost per citizen ruined or killed by these weapons? “(See Mother Jones: June 2015)  I reckon we who are alive must purchase more guns to make up the lost revenue gone from those cold dead hands.

Guns are affecting my consciousness. I bet they are affecting yours too.  The other night I sat in my car on a side street in Savannah, waiting for my wife and my pastor's wife who had gone into a house to care for a pet. Their good deed took about five minutes.  A car turned down the street, driving slowly. My first thought was about people who had been shot sitting in their cars in Savannah, Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville, and Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. My next thought was how unsafe I was--being without a gun--and how unsafe I would be with one. It would not have mattered either way if someone had driven past and blown me away.

By the way, the American Sniper was armed.  Someone got the drop on him.  He wasn’t safe.  He is a well known example among thousands of armed people who are gunned down and get recorded as statistics.  I mean no disrespect to Chris Kyle or his loved ones.  I’m just pointing out the truth, but people sure get mad at me when I bring him up.  I wonder why.

Guns are affecting my consciousness in new ways now.  Once they existed on a shadowy wrack in my imagination.  Now, I see a stranger enter my church, or a late arrival enter a movie theater, and I look at their hands and pockets.  I look at what they are carrying.  I try not to be obvious, but I cannot help but wonder if they are going to go Aurora on me. Indeed, I know and respect a lot of people who put their faith in guns as if their belief is an Apache ghost dance that will keep them safe, but I would not want them packing in a theater when someone seems to be attacking or when someone is mowing innocent people down. I do not like my wife’s or anyone’s chances of surviving in a place where fools start firing at lunatics. 

Lies get their power from illusion. Gundolatry creates the illusion of security, which is what an idol does. At least an idol is safer in the sense that you aim a hundred dollar bill at me, or a statue of Zeus, they do not blow my brains out. Idolatry gives security without providence. True security is the result of something else...usually sheer luck, the company we keep, the places where we live, you know, providence.  And providence is the culmination of the luck, the company, and the safe places.

Those places are safer without murders of people carrying guns.

Blessings...