Fooling Around

“In a culture where con men, hucksters and others desperately seeking power and influence have decided that they can profit by making truth seem relative, we’re in danger of every day becoming the first of April.” — Seth Godin

First of all: 

It’s April Fool’s Day. Seth Godin wrote a brillant little essay that includes the profound, apropos thought I opened this post with. I wanted to somehow archive this, so I’m embedding the link here.

Next:

“The Fool On The Hill”
The Beatles. Magical Mystery Tour.

Day after day, alone on the hill
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him
They can see that he’s just a fool
And he never gives an answer

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

Well on the way, head in a cloud
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him
Or the sound he appears to make
And he never seems to notice

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

And nobody seems to like him
They can tell what he wants to do
And he never shows his feelings

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

He never listens to them
He knows that they’re the fools
They don’t like him

The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

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Next:

Our first born son wrote a piece recently. It was written as “A letter from myself in my 30s to myself in my 20s”. Here it is:

1. You’re going to have children—three girls. I’d tell you to prepare now, but there’s really nothing you can do. Good luck.
2. Your band won’t get signed. I’m just sayin’. You can keep playing music, but it will be nothing more than that.
3. You’ve gained some weight. You’ll gain more. And not just in your belly, your whole face will get sort of fat.
4. Your hair will get thinner while your eye brows get thicker. There’s technically no hair loss; it just relocates.
5. Religion. It’s a messy business, if it comes to that. You’ll get sort of disillusioned at certain points, but you’ll turn out okay.
6. Even though—right now—there’s all this uncertainty, you’ll eventually have a job that could be your job until you retire, and you’ll have a house that could be your house until you die, but sometimes you’ll kind of miss the uncertainty.
7. Finish your MFA. Do it now.
8. Don’t listen to NPR too much. It’s good to be informed, but not in heavy doses. It’s sort of depressing.
9. There’s a legitimate chance that Donald Trump will become president; work on thwarting that.
10. And I guess the last thing would be… You married a good woman. Don’t mess it up. You lose every fight you win.

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There’s nothing foolish about that exercise. Is it a fool’s quest though to think we might be smarter and wiser going forward by pondering the folly of our youth? Maybe.

Next:

I’m taking the challenge, thinking about a letter that my 60-something self would write to my 20-something self. 

1. Floss regularly and use sunscreen. (Did they even have sunscreen when I was 20?)
2. Except for the undeserved grief and stress it causes your parents, you will survive a journey to the land of waywards and it will have been, in some ways, worth it. On the other side you will have a deeper understanding of grace, and hopefully it will make you more empathic.
3. You will regret being so self-absorbed. Stop it.
4. Treasure those people and experiences that taught you to love the arts. Music, art, and writing will be food for your soul when you’re old.
5. The Methodists were right; the Baptists were wrong: you won’t go to hell for dancing (as far as I know).
6. You seemed to have been right to register to vote as a Democrat, although you were idealistic. The Republicans seem to adopt a strategy which hijacks, distorts and cheapens the idea of christianity for political gain.
7. You will be given an opportunity, a gift really, to work with teenagers, and you’ll get paid to do it, not much, but enough. It will be your calling.
8. There will be this thing called “Facebook”. It will allow you to sort of reconnect with people you haven’t seen or heard from since high school, and maybe you’ll wish you would have stayed in touch over the years.
9. You should have gone to Woodstock. They’re still talking about it today. Oh, and the VW Bus you’re driving, keep it. It will be worth a fortune.
10. Sure, you’re only 21 and she’s only 18, and you’re half in love and half in lust, but definitely marry her. 40-some years later, she will still be your best friend, mom of your sons, grandmother of your Grand-Girls, your Amazing-Missus. Life without her will be beyond imagination.

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Lastly:

A little April Fool's day humor from Gary Larson.

For Sunday, March 27, 2016. Easter.

DON'T GET ME WRONG, I love autumn: the turning leaves, the cool, crisp air, the Pumpkin Spice Latte. But, I can’t imagine Easter in any other season but spring. Can you?

How can we fully appreciate life beyond the grave without the imagery and poetry of spring flowers and colors, trees budding, and longer days, newness breaking forth?

Do those in the Southern Hemisphere dye their eggs in deep reds, oranges, and golds? Does their Easter Bunny wear a sweater? Probably not. But happy Easter and happy autumn to all our brothers and sisters Down Under anyway.

Springtime with Nora

Recollections

rec·ol·lec·tion |ˌrekəˈlekSH(ə)n| noun

the action or faculty of remembering something.
“to the best of my recollection no one ever had a bad word to say about him”
a thing recollected; a memory.

As I write, I’m listening to a song called “Recollections” by Miles Davis and band. It’s 19 minutes of free jazz and one of my favorites. I tend to be mindful of having a soundtrack to life.

This week I roadtripped to Nashville. I prepared for the trip emotionally and spiritually by listening several times to Loretta Lynn’s new record, “Full Circle”. The trip represented a sort of full circle for me. I was visiting Floyd and Ann Craig at their beautiful home in Nashville, AKA, The No-Agenda Retreat Center. Riding shotgun was my dear friend and mentor Doug Manning. Driving up from Atlanta to join us was my “brother” Gene Chapman.

For me this was a re-collection of people who have been there in some of the most pivotal times of my life. We spent hours recollecting and remembering the past better than it was. (As we’re apt to do.)

Back in the early 70s I was going through a crisis of faith and calling. Floyd was my go-to guy during this and he introduced me to Doug. If you’re interested in more of that story, I’ve told a bit of it in a post last year about this time. Gene and I met a few years later as I was seeking to live out my calling on the other side of the crisis. I've always felt I could be completely real with Gene.

Hopefully you get a sense of how important these guys are to me, as are the recollections that have rushed in through being with them again.

photo by Krystal Brauchi

I also hope that in the midst of the bunnies and eggs and chocolate and ham this weekend, you will re-collect your friends and families and that there will be good times of story-telling and recollecting.

Most of all I hope for a time of anamnesis for all of us.

anamnesis |ˌanəmˈnēsis| noun
(from the Greek word ἀνάμνησις meaning reminiscence and/or memorial sacrifice), in Christianity is a liturgical statement in which the Church refers to the memorial character of the Eucharist and/or to the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. It has its origin in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me”, (Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25).  -- Wikipedia

Anamnesis is just a fancy word for recollecting, for remembering, but that is powerful stuff. I heard a doctor speak one time about remembering. He explained that when someone loses an appendage, let’s say a finger, it is called “dismembered”. He said that when it is reattached it should be called “re-membered”.

That’s what happens when we remember: we reengage, we reconnect, we re-member and we recollect. That’s why families and friends gather and stories are told; to re-member.

At our No-Agenda Retreat in Nashville, we all gathered around a table for lunch in a restaurant. Floyd asked, “Do you all remember the way Grady Nutt used to say the blessing before a meal?” Grady Nutt was a special guy to all of us there. Grady, unfortunately died in a plane crash many years ago, but we remember him.

So Floyd led us in the blessing, just as Grady would have done. We all joined hands and Floyd said exuberantly in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “He’s done it again!!!!”

What a beautiful acknowledgement of the provision of God. It was so wonderful to re-collect and recollect.
 

If I Had A Hammer

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

That’s one of my favorite “proverbs”. I’ve used it for years and always attributed it to Abraham Maslow. But, have I been correct in doing so? Wiktionary to the rescue:

From the book Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham H. Maslow (1962):

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Similar concept by Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science, (1964):

“I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”

This blog post is about tools and utility and reductionism and throwing away some of life’s wonders like so much ephemera.

One of the frustrations of aging is losing your tools, not your physical tools like your screwdriver or tape measure, but finding you don’t hear as well as you once could, or see, or smell, and that wonderful tool of memory, where did I put that? Years ago a guy named Stephen Covey reduced the concept of being “highly effective” to seven habits. Number 7 was, “Sharpen the Saw”. Sometimes these days I can’t even remember where my saw is, much less how to sharpen it.

But even more tragic than losing tools through aging, is when we recklessly throw out tools—reducing the options in our toolbox by seeking simple, quick solutions—casting aside the tools of wonder, creativity, inquiry, spiritual quests, and in their place adding dogma, doctrine, principles, processes—tools that certainly have their time and purpose, but ugly and dangerous when they become the only tools we have.

If Kaplan is right about his “law of the instrument”, then I can probably look at my behavior and attitude and learn something. If I’m constantly pounding everything, there’s a good chance that I’ve reduced my toolbox to a hammer. You know what I mean?

So today, I’m taking stock. I’m thinking of my worldview, my politics, my religion, my relationships, my motives, my dreams, and I’m asking myself: what tools do I have in the box?

I read a column in the Washington Post. As I read I thought, I want more hope, that somehow we can collectively see that it’s going to take more than a hammer to pound everything, more than a screwdriver to continue to do what screwdrivers do. The proof is in the opening paragraph of the story:

There is so much anger out there in America: “Anger at Wall Street. Anger at Muslims. Anger at trade deals. Anger at Washington. Anger at police shootings of young black men. Anger at President Obama. Anger at Republican obstructionists. Anger about political correctness. Anger about the role of big money in campaigns. Anger about the poisoned water of Flint. Anger about deportations. Anger about undocumented immigrants. Anger about a career that didn’t go as expected. Anger about a lost way of life. Mob anger at groups of protesters in their midst. Specific anger and undefined anger and even anger about anger.”

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I love poetry. Since our culture tends to reduce the idea of manliness to a caricature that real-men shouldn’t enjoy reading much of anything, especially poetry, I’m including a manly-esque poem, written by John Updike, author of works every guy should read. I share it because it has helped me take the measure of my tools.

Tools
By John Updike

Tell me, how do the manufacturers of tools
turn a profit? I have used the same clawed hammer
for forty years. The screwdriver misted with rust
once slipped into my young hand, a new householder’s.
Obliviously, tools wait to be used: the pliers,
notched mouth agape like a cartoon shark’s; the wrench
with its jaws on a screw; the plane still sharp enough
to take its fragrant, curling bite; the brace and bit
still fit to chew a hole in pine like a patient thought;
the tape rule, its inches unaltered though I have shrunk;
the carpenter’s angle, still absolutely right though I
have strayed; the wooden bubble level from my father’s
meagre horde. Their stubborn shapes pervade the cellar,
enduring with a thrift that shames our wastrel lives.

IF I HAD A HAMMER. Click and listen. Makes me long for the beautiful complexity of the 60s and my first Coming-Of-Age, when my toolbox was full, even though I often tore up more things than I fixed or built. At least I was alive.