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I voted today, because it’s such a privilege. Then I determined I wasn’t going to watch the election coverage, because I just can’t take it. We’ve even got turmoil here in my hometown with our mayoral election, which is a huge mess because the guy who won can’t be certified as mayor because he didn’t turn in all his paperwork on time. So even though he won the majority of votes, he’s out of luck. I understand he didn’t follow the rules, and while I hate it for him, I understand that it’s fair for him to bear the consequences. What I’m not OK with is that the new city council was deemed to have the right to choose one of its members to serve as mayor. I didn’t vote for any of them for mayor, nor did any of the other residents here. It’s a huge mess, and I don’t think anyone is going to be happy with anything unless we all just get to vote again, but I don’t see that happening. So the next 4 years are going to be strange ones locally, and now it looks like they’ll be the same nationally as well.
Obviously I’m a Republican and I voted for McCain/Palin. I am bummed about Obama winning, not because of his race–that wasn’t even a factor for me. I heard so many people talking about Palin’s lack of experience and that she was just too much of a gamble, but to me, Obama was the bigger gamble, because he seemed to be trying to be all things to all people, saying whatever he thought they wanted to hear. I deal with that with my dad, and I don’t think I can say clearly enough that I hate it. It’s lying, flat out. Since the beginning of the campaign, every time I thought of Obama, I thought of MGM Studios at Disney World. When you walk into the park, it looks like you’re in New York City. As you walk down the streets, the buildings look like the ones in the Big Apple. It even sounds like the Big Apple. But behind all that, it’s empty.
Obama made some great speeches and got everyone all excited. So excited that they ignored any information that portrayed him in any kind of negative light at all. “Change!” they cried. “We want change!” Well, now we’ve got it, and now we’ll see if he’s really NYC or just MGM.
When I saw online that McCain had conceded the election to Obama, I thought of the Karen Blixen quote from Out of Africa: “When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.”
I believe in the One, True God—not gods. And I believe that God is loving, not hateful and punishing. And I also know that when His creation chooses something other than Him, He will let them. He did it when the Israelites wanted a king, and that surely didn’t turn out all that great.
I don’t mean to say that McCain is all good and Obama is all bad. Nothing is ever all one or the other. We are all flawed, sinful, broken. I pray that Obama’s Christian faith is real, although I question it when I see some of the things he supports that seem so against what love and faith stand for.
In the last couple of presidential elections, at least, the outcome has teetered right at the top of the fulcrum and could have gone either way, but tilted just barely toward the more conservative side. It was just a matter of time, really, till it tilted the other way. I just wonder if most people really knew what kind of change they wanted. Did they have specifics for what they haven’t liked, and is it really the Republicans fault? Or did it all just sound good because it was different and therefore it had to be better? I guess we’ll see.
This was not my prayer, but it is now reality. May God’s truth prevail in the hearts of men, no matter what and no matter where—whether it’s NYC or MGM.
I’m so sad about the death of Dr. Randy Pausch. This video is from ABC’s Good Morning, America on May 18—just over two months ago.
“Find your passion and follow it. And if there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, you will not find that passion in things, and you will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and the more money you have, the more you will just look around and use that as a metric, and there will always be someone with more. That passion will be grounded in people ….”
A few months ago, I watched the HBO mini-series, John Adams, based on the book by David McCullough. Loved it, especially the realistic portrayal of life and conditions of the time. I was especially grateful that none of the actors displayed their Hollywood teeth; I’m sure they wore some kind of mouthpiece or insert to make their teeth look surely the way teeth must have looked in the late 1700s.
Prior to my vacation at the beach during the week of July 4, I wanted to get a new book to read while I lounged on the sugar white sand. I was in the mood for something good, something nonfiction. I chose 1776 by McCullough—”the story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence—when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.” Cool. Timely.
I took my beach chair, umbrella, cooler and bag and found a spot on the sand. The days were lovely; hot, bright and turquoise. I waded in the surf, I sunned for a while, I watched the people around me, and I read my new book. And as I sat out there, surrounded by my material “stuff,” on a stretch of shoreline weighted down with high-rise condominiums, watching a hot dog eating contest at the bar when I went to get a drink, I was smacked upside the mind by the thoughts of what all this freedom, this independence, cost. I know we celebrate Independence Day every year, but do I—do we—really stop to think about what we’re doing, or am I just mostly glad for a day off? Do I take any time to think about freedom, or am I just focused on grilling out burgers and watching fireworks?
The “soldiers” who helped build this country and establish its independence weren’t really soldiers at all. We didn’t have an army. They were farmers, lawyers, book sellers. They left their families, homes, farms, livelihoods to volunteer to fight for freedom. They rarely got paid. They had no uniforms and many of them ended up barely having any clothes at all. They marched miles at a time with no shoes on, in winter, leaving a trail of blood from the soles of their feet. We joke about the concept of that now, when our parents talk about how hard they had it, but these soldiers truly lived it. At every turn they were outnumbered, out-weaponed, out-trained. But they were never out-passioned.
“The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.” General George Washington; July 2, 1776
“I would not be understood that I should choose to march, but as I am engaged in this glorious cause, I am willing to go where I am called.” Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins, from Massachusetts
One Connecticut unit was comprised entirely of “aged gentleman. They were twenty-four in number; and their united ages reached one thousand. They were all married men, and left behind a hundred and fifty-nine children and grandchildren.”
They went to parts of the country they hadn’t seen before, and they didn’t have GPS or night-vision goggles; they barely had maps at all. Can you imagine how hard it would be to fight a battle in a place you were unfamiliar with? You have no advantage over your enemy at all, and you’re on home turf.
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Thomas Paine, The Crisis
It seems fairly easy for me to be grateful to the men and women who are serving our country now; I mean there are news stories every day to remind me of them. And there are more reminders on Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, but I confess I do not go back far enough in our history and thank those first soldiers. If not for them, there might not have been any soldiers since. There would be no Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving.
So this year I tried hard to refer to it as Independence Day, rather than the generic 4th of July. I read and continue to read of their sacrifices, passion and commitment. I am awed by their vision and their understanding of the importance of their actions, which seemed to transcend time. And even though I sat on the beach on a lovely summer day thinking about all this, I prayed that I was not and will not be a sunshine patriot. I want to understand and truly appreciate my independence, OUR independence. And I want to be thankful for it on January 8, June 25 and October 7, not just July 4.
“There’s a story in the Bible about a man named Jacob who wrestles an angel. The Scripture’s not really clear who he’s struggling with, whether it’s actually an angel or whether it’s a man or some sort of divine messenger, but they struggle hour after hour by the side of a river. And at daybreak, the man says to Jacob, ‘Let me go,’ and Jacob says, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me,’ and the man says, ‘Well, what is your name?’
“Now, this question has a bit of history to it. When we meet Jacob, much earlier in the story, he’s trying to deceive his father into thinking he’s actually his older brother, Esau, because in that culture at that time, the father would give the older son a blessing. And now their father is blind, and so he’s disguised himself as the older brother. Their father, Isaac, senses something is not right, so he asks, ‘Who are you?’ and Jacob says, ‘I’m Esau.’ When we first meet Jacob in the story, he’s trying to be someone else.
“Now his older brother, Esau, finds out what he’s done and he’s furious, and he threatens to kill him. So Jacob leaves, and he’s on the run.
“In the ancient Near East, your name was more than just words—your name was identity. Your name was reflective of your character, your substance, the very fiber that made you ‘you.’ Your name told who you are. So when this man asks Jacob, ‘What is your name?’ the real question he’s asking him is, ‘Who are you?’
“How much of our pain comes from not knowing how to answer that question?
….
“It’s written in the Scriptures that we work out our salvation. Do you know some of the things we need to be saved from? We need to be saved from all the times when we haven’t been our true selves. All the times we’ve tried to be someone else. All of the lies we’ve believed about who God made when God made us. All the times we’ve asked the wrong questions. ‘What about him? What about her? What about them?’ And we’ve missed the voice of Jesus saying, ‘You … follow me.’”
from “Name,” by Rob Bell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sq8nWwKdpQ
I’ve been determined throughout my adult life to live so that I have no regrets. Of course I can’t do this perfectly, but I try. Still, there are times when I wonder ‘what if,’ not in regret but just for the sake of wondering. What if I HAD written a book and it had actually sold a lot of copies? What if Oprah wanted me on her show? What if I had a million dollars? What if I HAD chosen to pursue a counseling degree from Liberty? What if I started my own design company and did that on the side for a while, just to see how it would go?
Then there are other things I think about, like how I like craftsman homes and stacked stone and recessed lighting and little lights along my sidewalk, and yet I have none of these things and likely might not ever have them. [I've totally been watching too much HGTV, but bear with me.] There are so many things I’d like in my house that I don’t have. So many cars I like other than the one I drive. So many hairstyles and physiques.
Seems like I’ve been thinking of this a good bit lately, probably because I’ll be 45 in a few months, and that’s just feeling like an awfully big number, and it’s making me really ponder the state of my union. Also contributing to my philosophicality [new word I just made up tonight] is that a good friend’s husband died last weekend after giving cancer one heck of a good fight, and there’s nothing like a funeral to get you thinking about life.
Tonight I read these lyrics by Andrew Peterson, and it just joined right in with the little philosophical conundrum going on inside my head:
“A thing resounds when it rings true
Ringing all the bells inside of you
Like a golden sky on a summer eve
Your heart is tugging at your sleeve
And you cannot say why
There must be more”
Sometimes I wonder when I’m going to discover what I’m really good at. Meanwhile, my life is passing me by and I just get through the days making the best guesses I can. I started to wonder if maybe there’s too much going on for me to hear a true thing resound. Maybe I’m trying too hard, or not enough. Maybe I’ve got too much crap in my life for for me to even hear a clang, much less the truth resound.
My initial response was negative. But then as I was brushing my teeth—and for some reason I often get some pretty good insights then—I was lamenting the fact that there are just too many options. There’s too much I like and want to do/have/see/be. Then I realized that maybe it’s not that I’m trying too hard or not enough—it’s just that I want too much, and mostly in a good way. Sometimes I want too much technology, and that’s not always a good thing, but for the most part, I’m focused on quality of living, not quantity of things.
I like that about me. And I like it that, in this insight, I was kind to me. I’m not sure, but I think this might resound.
