Who Am I to Judge? Nice Thought, But Impossible

A guy walks  into a bar and orders a beer.  He takes a sip and tosses the rest in the bartender's face.  Sobbing, he says, "I'm so sorry!  I can't help doing that.  It's so embarrassing!"  The bartender sees his sincerity and suggests he sees a psychiatrist. Six months later, the guy is back.  "Are you seeing a psychiatrist?"  With a smile the guy says, "Yep--twice a week.  He's great!"and then throws his beer into the bartender's face.  "Great?? You just threw another beer in my face."  "True, but now it's doesn't embarrass me."


At first I laughed at the joke, but then I began thinking about its ramifications and I suggest that it is a commentary on our culture in general, and a significant segment of the therapeutic community, in particular.  There is a pervasive belief that  there is no objective truth, no absolutes; rather, it is all subjective.  It's all about "what is true for you."  It's all about your own personal truth, which will vary from person to person, so you are neither sensitive nor politically correct if you disagree with or challenge someone's attitude or behavior.  It's all about your "personal preference."  If  I disagree with someone's personal preference I am regarded as imposing my values on them.  


The prevailing sentiment is "There is no moral or ethical absolutes or standards, and therefore who are you to question or challenge or my actions?"  It seems as though the goal is to rid ourselves, free ourselves from this prudish Victorian remnant which we call a conscience.  Tossing his beer in the bartender's face was not wrong or inappropriate. The beer-toss was his personal preference; who are we to judge?  The therapeutic goal was to get over the embarrassment.  The embarrassment is the problem.  Feeling guilty for his actions is antiquated; it interferes with his self-actualization.  


The problem with this predominant worldview is this--we cannot live consistently with that view.  It collapses on itself.  Sure, I'm fine tossing a beer in your face and who are you to judge me--are you going to judge me for exercising my personal preference?  But the minute you toss a beer in my face, how dare you!?! How insensitive and thoughtless can you be!?!  You're such a jerk.  What right did you have to do that to me?


Do you understand the inadequacy of the prevailing worldview?


If you don't, wait til  a guy tosses a beer in your face.

Eating Humble Pie

There are times when life affirms us; there are times when we are reminded there is no hat big enough to wear on our ego.


Last week I had a gentle and made-me-laugh experience of the latter.

My wife and I had a few hours with two of our grandchildren and went to play in a park.  They used their rich imaginations and turned a Jungle-Jim/monkey bars into, as they put it, a "rescue bus."  The scenario they created was that Nana and Papa were in a horrible car wreck.  (Aren't they beautiful kids?)  Their mission was to rescue us and save our lives.  Nana and I were moaning and groaning in life-threatening fashion. I made it clear that we could possibly die if they didn't get us to the ER asap.  "Mary" responded by slapping a band-aid on my hand.  Ok. I'm feeling relieved already.


"Mary" and younger brother "Chad"  assisted us into the rescue bus and Mary hopped into the driver's seat.  I was yelling, "Hurry! Hurry!"  She took off and we were en-route to the hospital.  Suddenly, she said,  "Oops.  We have to turn in here."   I screamed, "What's going on?!?   Why are you turning here?!?"  She replied, " It's the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-thru."


I know it's gotta be an agonizing decision--KFC or grandma and grandpa dying--but REALLY?


I am feeling much more humble lately.  And I'm boycotting KFC.

A Roxanne Volkert Moment: The Power of Our Words

It came out of the blue—a memory which had remained hidden for over 50 years.  It was a Roxanne Volkert moment.

Some background.  I was raised in a doctrinally rigid, emotionally frigid home and, as a child, felt very insecure and starving for affirmation.  As you can imagine, this led to some very poor choices on my part in my adult years, but I’ve learned and grown. God and I are still working on that insatiable need for affirmation.

 Recently, this memory surfaced and I was transported back in time to when I was a child. Maybe 6 years old.  I’m in church, standing by my mother and Roxanne Volkert approaches.  She was a beautiful woman, a wife and mother,  and through these 6 year old eyes she was a blond angel sent by God. She leans over and smiling at me says to my mother, “He’s such a beautiful boy.”  End of memory. End of any contact with Roxanne Volkert.  I have not seen her in 50 years.  This much I know—her words of affirmation were soaked up by my soul and psyche. Those few words she spoke about me were so powerful that 50 years later I am cherishing them and basking in their warmth.

This is a twofold testimony.  It attests to the powerful abilities of the mind to recall and store God-given experiences.  More importantly, it suggests that our words and actions have much more impact and influence than we realize.  I’m sure Roxanne Volkert was not on a mission to be charitable and reaching out to the down-trodden little Steve’s of the world.  She was simply expressing an affirmation.  She didn’t give it a second thought and surely would have no memory of that brief conversation. But, for me, those words constituted validation and blessing and have stuck with me for decades.

I encourage you to create memories.  You and I have no idea of the power of our everyday words, our acts of seemingly ordinary kindness.  Do not allow words to remain internalized--speak them.  If you get one of those “nudgings” act upon it.  You have no idea the blessing, the affirmation you may be imparting. 

I encourage you to create Roxanne Volkert moments in the lives of others.  You see, those moments last a lifetime. I know that to be true.

The Draw of the Cigarette: Life Goes Up in Smoke

Smoking kills.  But if you package it right, millions will take their chances.


According to the Federal Trade Commission Report of 2006, the annual marketing expenditures by U.S. tobacco companies was approximately  1.25 billion dollars--in 1970.  In 2006, it was 16.7 billion .    In 2008, they spent nearly $29 million each day and 52% more than they spent at the time of the 1998 settlement of state lawsuits against the industry, which was supposed to curtail tobacco marketing.


Yeh, I know.  An individual has a choice; the tobacco industry does not and can not force anyone to inhale.  But they do a masterful job of alluring, enticing, and convincing someone to take that initial drag.  And, in time, the addictive substance begins to alter one's sense of choice.


Smoking is marketed to the child/adolescent and adult market as being cool.  The "in" crowd.  Virginia Slims and others entice girls/women who are assaulted with body-image difficulties.  Men are portrayed as manly and rugged if smoking. Or cool ( my James Dean poster would not epitomize the cool factor if he had no cigarette in hand.)


The tobacco companies spend billions to convince us.


I wish the marketing gurus had been with me last week at the visitation as I stood and wept with my friend, now a widow of three days, as she mourned the loss of her 51 y.o. husband who had smoked for a long time.  Married only 8 years she had found the love of her life only to lose him and with a mere month's notice as the cancer ravaged his body.  


There was nothing cool or manly or rugged about it.  


I would think marketing meisters avoid standing in visitation lines.

A Sincere Prayer If There Ever Was One

We were visiting one of our daughters and her family.  Seven year old Keegan and I were downstairs in the lengthy family room shooting child-high hoops and throwing a football back and forth with only a mishap or two.  His mom called down, informing us it was time for lunch.  We all gathered around the table and being the patriarch I was asked to say grace.  We all bowed our heads and I thanked God for our family, for providing this food, and asked his blessing upon us.  Amen. 

And before we even had time to raise our heads, Keegan chimed in, "And please don't ever let that football hit me in the nuts again."

Amen.

Shakin' Bootie by the Time They're Ten

If a girl is "sexy" at 10, what is she by the time she's 12?  Slutty?  And by 16?


Let me explain my intensity.  My daughter called me and said she had just attended a fourth grade boys basketball game.  And there were 15 fourth grade girls comprising the cheerleader squad, pompomming them on. First of all, on frivolous note, why do the boys need cheerleaders?  Fourth graders aren't going to make any baskets, so what's there to cheer about?

Now it gets serious.  The 10 year old girls performed a halftime show.  They choreographed their routine to "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  REALLY?  10 year old girls are sexy?  And they're flaunting their supposed sexiness?  And the parents are encouraging and applauding their daughters in this endeavor?   How and what does a parent affirm?  "Nice pelvic thrust, Hillary!"  "You know what your Daddy likes!!" 


Here is a sampling of several lyrics, in case you're not familiar.  "I got passion in my pants and I ain't afraid to show it."  Have we plummeted to a moral low wherein we endorse aggressive sexual behavior in our 10 year old little girls?  Are we really prodding them on to cultivate, at 10, passion in their panties?  And there's no hint of modesty or self-restraint--"I ain't afraid to show it."


Another lyric-- " I pimp to the beat walking down the street. . . "  Are we grooming our  little girls to strut their stuff down the street?  Sorry, but they don't even have "stuff' yet to strut; I guess it's never too early for Mom and Dad to exert their decadent influence.  We're teaching our babies to shake their bootie.  Sadly, that's not all that's being shaken.  I fear that the very foundations of our ethical and moral integrity are also being shaken.


One more lyric--"I'm sexy and I know it; check it out, check it out."  Have we arrived at such a suave, nonchalant level of sexual sophistication that this is the trajectory on which we are launching our 10 year old little girls?  Are we now encouraging and sanctioning them as they invite boys and men to "check" them out?

We have objectified our daughters.  To objectify means, simply, "to treat, regard  or present as an object."  We do it all the time in other arenas.  In war, we do not regard the soldiers of the other country as "fathers" and "sons" and "someone's daughter."  That would  make it much more difficult to kill them; you can't attribute to them personhood.  We objectify them; they are "the enemy," "gooks," "Cong," "scum," "animals."   It's much easier to pull the trigger on objects.


 We are not only objectifying "the enemy;" we are doing it to our 10 year old girls, as well.  We are turning them into sex  "objects."   That may not be our intent, but it is most certainly the outcome.  Our girls are becoming mere bodies;  in particular, they are becoming body parts for them to shake and others to view and exploit.  And we applaud this in our gymnasiums.  God help us all.


Henry Nouwen, in The Way of the Heart,  quotes Thomas Merton, "Society. . . was regarded by the Desert Fathers as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life. . . these were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster."  Nouwen then comments on this.  "Our society is not a community radiant with the love of Christ, but a dangerous network of domination and manipulation in which we can easily get entangled and lose our soul.  The basic question is whether we. . . have not already been so deeply molded by the seductive powers of our dark world that we have become blind to our own and other people's fatal state and have lost the power and motivation to swim for our lives."


Nouwen wrote that 32 years ago.  If we haven't already we are perilously close to being so "entangled" and "molded" that we have not only lost our soul but are glibly sacrificing our children on the altar of sexual conquest.

God help us all.


If you're one of those cheerleader parents I ask you to really look at your little girl.  Do you--can you--see her for who, not what, she is?  I beg you to ask her to forgive you for what, not who, you've made of her thus far.  It's not too late--yet.


 I hope all of us can "swim for our lives" and the lives of children we know and love, and chart for them a different course.  Can we teach them to swim toward self-respect and dignity?  Can we teach them to know the difference between loving themselves and flaunting their bodies?  Can we swim against the current of our culture and cherish and protect our children, bestowing honor and instilling moral sense within them?


God help us all. God save our girls.

What Story Lies Under the Cemetery Slice of Marble?

When I am seeking peace and quiet there are times I go to a cemetery on the edge of town.  It was unseasonably warm this past Thursday, Feb.2, so I decided to visit my haven. I was taking in the quiet beauty of the surrounding countryside when a car stopped a few hundred yards from me.  A middle aged woman got out of the passenger seat, walked around the car and assisted an elderly man out of the driver's seat.  She had a bouquet in her hand.  She walked slowly with him, as he had a noticeable limp.  They ambled over to a few scattered headstones.  These several  marble headstones were flush with the earth, no protrusion.  Small and simple, maybe 24"x6".


The old man slowly bent over and began tidying up the marker, pulling grass that had begun to creep over the perimeter of the memorial.  After he completed his task, she stooped and gently placed the bouquet on the grave marker.  She stood up, assessed the placement and bowed again to adjust the flowers of tribute at just the right spot. They stood there, looking down, for several moments and then made their way back to their car.  She opened his door and helped him into the car, closed his door, and after she entered her side of the   car they drove off.


I wondered about their story.  Who had died?  What is the relationship between these two?  What place of honor and love did the deceased hold in their lives?  In light of their ages I surmised that they had come to honor the passing of his beloved wife of years, her cherished mother.  I walked down to the site where they had paid their respects and the first thing I noticed was that the surrounding grave markers--all recessed into the ground as was this one--were commemorating the deaths of children.  I will not make public the name on the marker; somehow to do so feels like it would invade their private sorrow.  The date reads Febuary2, 1981.  Most of the other markers contain the customary two dates--birth and death.  Not this one.


This little girl died the same day she was born.  Was this Grandpa and the still mourning mother of this child?  The child was given a name and, most profoundly, a deep, deep place in the hearts of these two mourners.  Feb.2.  This was the anniversary date of this infant's death.  I am led to believe that thirty one years ago, on this very day, this mother gave birth to this child, to hope and joy.. This grandfather was beaming proud and shedding tears of joy for his own daughter. 


And within hours  dreams were shattered and Grandpa was weeping for himself and his daughter.


What astounds me is this:  it's been thirty one years.  The baby lived outside the womb less than a day.  How is such a deep, irrevocable attachment made in that brief a time that three decades later they are visiting the cemetery?  Are there are times when the heart loves deeply and quickly and forever?   Are there are times when one's entrance is so anticipated that their departure, though immediate, is never forgotten?


Frail infant girl, rest in peace.  You are still loved and missed.
Mom and Grandpa, go in peace.  My heart tells me you are still loved and missed, as well.