He's Back!

Right after another frightening attempt to bring down an American airliner may seem like the wrong moment to say we might do well to ratchet back our fear, but that is what I hope we may do.

And, despite the criticism that Obama waited too long and made too tepid a response to the incident, I think he has it tuned about right.

The point of terrorism is to terrorize. Not to defeat a nation. Nor even really to kill a lot of people. The killing - if it happens - is more about terrorizing the rest of us than about those who die.

It looks as if there are some serious holes in our efforts to thwart terrorists. And I hope this latest will spur not simply more, but smarter efforts.

But two things about this latest give me hope. The first is that other passengers on the plane never hesitated to deal with the threat, quickly and effectively. On 9/11, once the passengers of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania knew what had happened to the other planes that morning, did the same. Terrible shame they died in doing their brave move. But who knows how many other lives they may have saved? Maybe the TSA hasn't learned all it should have from past experience, but it looks as if the rest of us know better than to respond to any threat passively, either hoping this is a hostage taking that will end on a tarmac, or assuming someone else will respond first.

Although that will undoubtedly result in some mistakes being made, and maybe innocent people being targeted (as it looks like the man in the head on the same flight a day later may have been), but better to err on the side those passengers did.

The other happy thing is that the stock market was steady as she goes through the incident. Perhaps it would have taken a wild ride had it been open the actual day, but the day after Christmas was a ho hum day on Wall Street.

I was in a broker's office one day a couple of years ago when an airliner was delayed on the ground in Dubai. All that was reported was that then plane was being held on the runway, no report of why. As the broker and I watched, the market tumbled a couple of hundred points in a couple of minutes. Then came the report that the plane needed air in one of its tires. And the market jumped up a couple of hundred points.

That didn't happen this time. If the stock market is the thermometer by which we take our second by second national temperature, December 26 was a good day to have it register as normal.

Terrorism is a nasty, and now daily, part of life, around the world and in our own country. It's purpose is to terrorize people so they will change the way they live and govern themselves. One can make a convincing case that the attacks of 9/11 succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of the men who planned and carried them out. Not because they brought down a potent symbol of economic life in the west, nor because they murdered 3000 innocent people. But because we have been in an almost constant state of fear and agitation since.

The Christmas incident may - may - signal our toughening, and our resolve to - while we try to protect ourselves - refuse to surrender the very things those terrorists would like us to.

Called By Name

Holy Innocents December 29, 2009

Gain a reputation for early rising and you may safely sleep until noon. (Yiddish)

*****

Good morning, Pinta, I greeted the tiny woman Cosmos and I see every morning on our walk. From the first time we spoke and discovered we both have places in Vermont, she has called me by name. Being unable to reciprocate is a chronic source of embarrassment. The name collection area of my brain, never impressive, having retired when I did.

But today the infallible memory method kicked in: Christopher Columbus’ boats!

Right, her name is Nina.

My grandfather had unjustified – but carefree – confidence in the association method. So certain it was working that some of the people he routinely greeted that way, came around to responding as if he had indeed called them by their proper name.

So it was that the man at the cleaners – Mr. Goodale - was forever known in our family as Mr. Badbeer. And the fastidious clock man who came to the house to do surgery on the grandfather clock when the weights got out of balance – Mr. Hartsdale – was re-christened Mr. Deerpark.

Jack Crocker (The Rev.) Headmaster of Groton School from 1940-1955, was renowned for his ability to call an old boy of the school by name years after he had graduated, even when meeting him under unfamiliar circumstances. Once, at a gathering where several Groton graduates were present, I expressed awe to a friend as I watched Jack warmly meet them, confidently calling their names.

A friend whispered in my ear, conspiratorially, Watch Mary. Knowing I was being let in on the mechanics of a magic trick, I kept my eye on Mary, Jack’s wife, who stood by his side. Each time an old boy approached, her face would light up and she would exclaim, Why Samuel Bodman, how wonderful to see you! I’m not sure we’ve seen you since you graduated in ’49.

People sometimes marveled that I would stand in the church door greeting people by name each Sunday. Looking back it is clear that necessity, with an assist from apprehension, can reroute massive blood flow to brain areas previously in drought. And because I had gained a reputation for remembering names, those Sundays the name place in my brain remained arid, the smile and warm embrace kept my undeserved reputation intact.

The last couple of years I was often joined at the door by Rita, a 4’8” black woman who lived on the street and who befriended me. She had only one hand, and she would drape the handless arm around my waist as if we were sweethearts, and, as each parishioner approached, she’d look up at me and say, Idn’t he the most wonderful man you know?

Not only did no one take issue with her judgment, but those days, thanks to Rita’s unbalancing distraction, I was excused from coming up with names.

Names have power. In Semitic culture the divine name was never to be spoken. It is represented in scripture by breathing marks we translate as YHWY, which most agree is a guess. When the Bible means to show how much God(we westerners never developed the pious sensibility) loves someone, it says, God has called you by name.

When I saw my father’s grave marker last summer, for the first time since he died 18 years ago, I was startled to see my name, save Jr. where III will be.

The happy news this Christmas is that there is some indication that Alzheimer's disease may deter cancer in some people.

Not long after 9/11, there was a consensus among the literati that irony was now defunct. The horror of a handful of terrorists able to bring the world financial center to its knees, using airliners as missiles, had made irony too painful.

9 years later the news that losing your mental capacity may immunize you against growing a lethal tumor, has restored irony to its rightful place in the human drama.

Irrepressible is what we are.

Scientists discovered that a species of bee mummifies its enemies alive, wrapping predators in resin, wax, and mud until they can no longer
move, then lets them starve.

Staff at a British aquarium, worried about the flatulence of George the
turtle after feeding him Brussels sprouts, lowered the water level in his tank so that escaping gas wouldn't trigger overflow sensors.
-two heretofore unknown factoids revealed by the Harper’s Index

*****

When I was young, and, even then, even needing to hang onto my day job, having a rough time keeping my mind on anything anyone else thought worth the effort, I preached a sermon in which I asked, Have you ever practiced Eutrapelia?

[Eutrapelia comes from the Greek for 'wittiness', referring to pleasantness in conversation. It is one of Aristotle's virtues, the "golden mean" between boorishness (ἀγροικια) and buffoonery (βωμολοχια). It is a controversial word in Biblical exegesis, appearing only once, in Ephesians 5:4, where it is translated "coarse jesting" in the NIV. Fr. Wikepedia]

I explained to a chronically bored congregation, eutrapelia really means God’s laughter. I offered an alternative creation story to the pair in Genesis, in which God played giggle belly with the lesser gods. As God’s head bounced on the belly of an out of control god, God (that would be the GREAT HIGH GOD) found the fun so infectious, his laughter spilled its boundaries and…well, that’s what we are and where we live.

God’s laughter. The stuff of our fiber, and our home address.

You’ll wonder that I was never made a bishop.

I developed a fierce following in that parish as I remember, of an industrial designer who dedicated his life to eliminating billboards from America’s highways, and a couple of others who were curious about why the Episcopal Church could never find a sommelier to provide a decent communion wine.

All this came back to me in a dream the other night after Lacey had bucked established custom and the flower guild and bought an extravagance of amaryllis rather than poinsettia, to adorn the high altar Christmas Eve. I was thrilled because there is something about the size and deep red color of amaryllis that seems slightly unseemly to me.

I had no idea they are so fragile and fussy. The girls – as Lacey has taken to calling them – are sitting on our back porch, sheltered from weather that southern California almost never sees. They were until 3:45 this morning when the alien sound of raindrops woke us and Lacey raced to rescue the girls before they suffered blemishes. Pointless to ask how there can be a flower too delicate to withstand rain. They are now in the dining area of our small apartment, reviving on our generous offerings of CO2, resting safely until their debut as the color splash in Thursday night’s ecclesiastical drama.

Besides having to work on Christmas, and feeling ridiculously responsible for providing something brilliantly innovative for the midwinter festival that rooted in Druid time – beyond human memory – my Scroogeness, for which my family can’t forgive me, is really about my fear of having fun.

To have fun is to trust the world will manage while you mess around. It can feel like the most dangerous impulse in the human panoply.

This may not seem like a ho ho message, but the secret the Spanish have kept to themselves for centuries is their expression for orgasm: la pequeña muerte – the little death. Get it? Death = ecstasy = let go, turn it loose. And why not? Just this once.

There must be 10,000 reasons at least to dis Christmas and its excesses. Here’s one for falling headlong into its embrace. Those intense amaryllis.

Living in the real world is a constant trial. I have no idea whether the reality President Obama has been dealt since he took office has come as a surprise or been more or less what he anticipated. I thought his Oslo speech was a masterful summation of how he means to govern. As president of the world's lone super power, sworn to protect us (against competitors as well as terrorists), he hasn't the luxury of Dr. King or Gandhi. Yes, he lives in his head. can you imagine were he to do otherwise, at least publicly? Who knows why he wanted to be president, but now that he is, he must deal with the hand he was dealt. No one is smart or strong enough to stand against the power of the culture in which he stands. I, too, have dreams of a just world in which compassion rules and violence is a rarity. It is an eschatological dream. As a young man I resented Rinehold Niebuhr, the darling of my seminary professors, because I thought he was a cynic. in my old age I have come to admire his willingness to wrestle with the world as he finds it. I think Obama is doing that the best he can. In the real world, that best is far less than my dreams.

Is there anyone left who understands whether a public option is needed to effect either better or less expensive health care?

The polls apparently say public support for any health care bill of any sort is waning. If I had to bet, it would be that this is more petulance than a change in opinion. Having read that all true liberal insist on a public option one day, only to read the next that it may not be important, I am now a mixture of sick of the whole thing, and feeling petulant about the impossibility of a fairly vigilant citizen to track all this with any confidence we can make sense of what's going on.

The most sensible thing I have seen so far is the suggestion that this issue does not have one BIG IDEA that will produce the less in cost, more in quality health care we all keep saying we want and need. Rather, it will be a long series of small, incremental trials across the country that will gradually chip away at what has become an intolerable wart on the body politic.

Whether this is going to sink President Obama in the 2010 by-elections, as it did Bill Clinton in 1994 remains to be seen.

And maybe you saw the piece in today's news that Iraqi insurgents have been able to use a $26 piece of software to hack into the computer instructions guiding the predator drones that we have been so excited about. For a couple of kids to be able to sit in front of their computer screens in North Dakota, and use their joy sticks to hone in on a man leaving his house, and then fire a missile at him, gave us a momentary thrill, thinking we could take out our enemies without ever leaving our home town.

Turns out our enemies know how to use computers, too.

Oh yeah, and the stock market took offense at the stronger dollar, weak employment, and likelihood (even though just yesterday the Fed said it wouldn't) that interest rates might not remain at zero forever.

You know, there are some tough issues facing our species.

I used to think only George W. Bush could find my hot button merely by his photo appearing in the news.

But Joe Lieberman has joined that exclusive club and even surpassed the former president in having my number.

It began way back during the Senate posturing over the unseemly blow job Monica Lewinsky provided POTUS in the solemn setting of the most iconic office space in the world.

Lieberman was the first Democrat to express his horror at the collapse of morality in the highest places.

And, for that, won himself second place on the ticket in the 2000 election, a place he would otherwise have had as much chance at as Saddam Hussein. His whining voice is enough on its own to put me off, but his constant pandering to the Republican mindless right wing, was - and is - insufferable. His being on the ticket was nearly enough to make me vote for Bush, who, at the time, looked like an ineffectual baseball team owner from a rich, well-place political dynasty.

I breathed a sigh of relief when Lieberman was defeated in the Democratic primary in Connecticut. But, like Richard Nixon, he was determined to find a way to give us longer to kick him around. His posturing and pandering was enough to get him elected as an independent in a three person race, so now we have him as a so-called independent, promiscuously using his unattached status to tease both parties into giving him far more sway than he would have under any other circumstance.

The shameless, unprincipled way in which he has emasculated any hope of a health care bill that might actually address the debacle we are facing, is among the most despicable performances I have ever witnessed in American politics.

And I am old enough to have been around for McCarthy's mischief.

The difference between Lieberman and McCarthy is that you had the sense that McCarthy - horrible and insane as he no doubt was - actually believed in what he was doing. Maybe that was why his Senate colleagues - a circle the wagons crowd if there ever was one - was willing to finally bring him down.

But Lieberman cows his Senate colleagues, because they see in him the absolute worst of themselves. Feigning shock and concern, while he collects debts from those who desperately want his vote.

There is a special place in hell reserved for his likes.

The Ides December 15, 2009

******

The disposition to admire and almost worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or at least neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is…the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. – Adam Smith (1723-17900

******

The sign in the window of the surf shop across the street – If you are lucky enough to live at the beach, you are lucky enough – happy thought it is, I was nonetheless inclined to toss it into the same trash bin with – Just another day in paradise – fatuous efforts to persuade ourselves Bill Gates and Goldman Sachs have nothing on our life as beach bums.

Fatuous, until the dark, rainy, cold evening last week as I walked along the promenade by the ocean.

I thought I saw a brief flash of bright light down by the water, followed by peals of high-pitched raucous laughter. I stopped, watched, another flash, in this one I thought I saw two human forms. And another, yes, two women. Naked? Dancing? As my eyes adjusted, I saw the two come together immediately after the flash, put their heads together over a tiny light, then the laughter.

On perhaps the fourth flash, I could make out two nymphs, in the briefest bikinis, taking turns leaping into the rain-swept air at the edge of the surf, while the other tried to capture her image before she descended. Perhaps they were dancers, the height and length of their flight seeming to defy gravity.

Their screeches of unrestrained pleasure as they put their heads together to see the image on the camera, could be heard by a hard-of-hearing old man, even over the pounding of the surf from 50 feet away.

I stood in the chill rain for perhaps five minutes, transfixed, thinking, If you’re lucky enough to live at the beach, you’re lucky enough.

When I was being interviewed for the job at St. James by-the-Sea, the search committee gave a dinner for Lacey and me on the beach at sunset. Having spent my life on the east coast, I had never seen the sun set over the ocean. We must have had serious conversation during the course of the evening about the job, but all I remember is saying to Lacey when we got back to our hotel, I haven’t figured out the job yet, but let’s do it anyway!

Every morning on our walk with Cosmos, we stop to check in with Inside-Wave Dave, the Mayor-by-consensus of La Jolla Shores. That’s Dave in his van in the photo. He is a board shaper, keeper of surfing lore, enforcer of
surfing etiquette, source of information about any locals who have gone missing, the glue that holds together a disparate band of aficionados that gathers every morning at sunrise.

Inside-wave, because, after 50 years surfing, and injuries to almost every part of him, Dave mostly rides the inside waves. But if you watch, you’ll see he still walks his board like the kid who will forever live inside him.

A few years ago a new guy, broad-shouldered tough, took exception to Dave’s suggesting he might be less aggressive, let some of the old timers who get in the wave more slowly, take their turn. The new guy took a swing at Dave, a welterweight who stands 5’7”. The speed and ferocity with which the oversized new guy was run off, spoke of the affection in which Dave is held.

I suppose it’s silly to think the severe economic dislocation is going to cause us to take a new look at whom we admire. What a disaster were we all to emulate Dave and his happy band. But maybe it’s not beyond imagining that, having suffered from our worship of fabulous wealth and its keepers, we may be ready to take another look at those whose focus is on the simplest sort of delight. And recalibrate.

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