Opus 2023-180: Ode to Old: Badges of Age

Yes, I dribble.  Your eyes are not playing tricks on you.  That is spilled breakfast on my shirt.  Today it was oatmeal with cinnamon.  Tomorrow will be the same but spots might be bigger.  Or I might have a good day and you would not guess how fallible I am.  

It isn’t senility.  I am not wandering around mumbling to myself.  If I do I try to keep the conversation silent.  I am aware the spots are there.  I even tried to brush them off, but no luck.  Maybe if I switched to donuts.  

It could just be Old Age Ornery Syndrome:  I don’t care because I am a slob.  That has possibilities.  Although I try to keep things clean I am not obsessed with neat or stylish.

It could be laziness.

It could be many things.

I still dribble.  Deal with it.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-179: Gold Ring Still Offered

For some reason I was thinking of the dentist and oral hygiene.  Maybe I was grateful for my last report from the dentist.  Maybe it was the new Oral B electric toothbrush.  Maybe I had a popcorn hull stuck under my gum.  Who knows.

It struck me that there are two major factors involving tooth decay:  Natural processes and personal discipline, things you can’t control and things you can.  At one end you have genetics and the capricious chance that determines how healthy your teeth are.  At the other end there is your discipline at brushing and flossing along with regular trips to the dentist.

There is nothing you can do about one but you can encourage it or discourage.  The other is totally in your lap.  If you live on sweets and never brush you can expect certain results down the road.

How like life.  When I have these kind of thoughts I always look at the pattern and see it duplicated in every day experience.  There is absolutely nothing I could do about my birth:  Parents, location, timing and conditions around me were concepts I could not even comprehend, let alone influence.  Down through life there have been many similar situations.  There have also been many choices I have made that have consequences.  

There was a prayer I have mentioned before about things we can and cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference.  It occurs to me that the clever statement never grows old.  I am past my 70th birthday and I still find that my future depends on the same two factors.  I cannot just give up and say, “What will be, will be.”  I must continue to engage my world and act like it makes a difference.  All of us in the upper years need to realize that the choices we make will influence not just us but our children and grandchildren.  If you have no family, consider your neighbors.

Stay in the race.  Go for the gold ring.  This may be your day.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-178: Should-a-Beens: Sorry, Girls

My heart goes out to all those poor women who did not marry me.  I hope their plans to marry Prince Charming worked out.  They might have been happier if they had taken Old Faithful.

In college as we sat around commiserating that we did not have a date for the week-end, or any other part of the week, we created two badges of achievement.  One was the NGB medal and the other was the Brown Helmet award.

The NGB stood for Nice Guy, But....  If you are a prince charming you never had a chance for this one.  It is what would eventually come out when we were talking to a young lady we considered a prospect.  My opinion is that nice guys made better soul mates, but what do I know.

As for the Brown Helmet, that was often awarded to the guy who thought he was making progress our would not settle for the NGB competition.  I will leave it to your imagination to decipher the imagery.  

For those of you who missed your chance, all I can say is, “Sorry girls, I am already taken.”  After 48 years if anything should change I want you to know that I do bear a grudge.

I am not sure my wife would agree with this.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-177: Bubble Dance

We have been living in a bubble, a bubble of history.  I was born in the midst of that bubble.  I did not realize it was a bubble until I was surrounded by people that were trying to pop it.  Welcome to the world of the loony liberals, a.k.a., Proregressives*.

My grandchildren are at the age where they love blowing bubbles.  It might be more accurate to say that they enjoy someone else blowing bubbles while they chase them.  Most burst almost immediately.  Others make it out into the sunlight.  Every once in awhile you get one that defies everything and soars off into the trees across the driveway.  It bobs and weaves like a politician being asked a simple question.  You hold your breath and root for the bubble, knowing it will pop at any moment.  If it had a brain it would probably think it was normal.

Long lasting bubbles are not normal in history or the yard.

There have been blips in history where life is good.  I am sure there have been individual families that have done well for a time.  Perhaps tribal groupings existed a few generations without being overwhelmed.  Small communities might have stayed off the radar of the barbarians.  It was well expressed in the movie Fiddler on the Roof where the rabbi expressed the blessing, “May the Lord bless and keep the Czar.....as far away from us as possible.”

We have lived in one of those long dancing bubbles.  Historically we are an anomaly.  In some ways we have danced for a few centuries.  Now we have the Marxist menace that has oozed into the heart of our culture while we were warm and comfortable.  They are working hard to pull a quiet leveling of Bagdad so they can pile up our skulls.

It will come to an end.  That is the way history works.  Is that now?  Can we do anything about it?

Pray.  Vote.  Speak up.  Take a stand while you can.

*(Liberals, educators, the media, socialists, communists, crony capitalists, fascists (I repeat myself), elites, Rinos, Democrats, leftists, Never Trumpers, Antifa, BLM, MSM, Deep State, etc.  Synonym for swamp dwellers)

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-176: New Terms: Gestalt Theology

I am advocating an approach to the Bible that I call “Gestalt Theology”.  I did a search on the term and all the references that came up were about gestalt psychology.  So maybe the term is mine.

According to Google the Oxford dictionary defines gestalt as “an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.”  I like that.  I think it is the best way to look at the Bible if you are looking for truth.  I know people who like to ignore anything in the Bible that they don’t like or doesn’t fit into their system of belief.  Many commonly accepted foundations of faith are based on an isolated verse and what Jesus would have called the “traditions of the elders.”

Gestalt Theology starts with a belief that the entire Bible is the inspired word of God.  That means that not only is it true, it is one continuous statement that must work together.  That means if you find something that conflicts, you cannot reject one and teach the other but must come to an understanding that includes both.  We have done that with the doctrine of the trinity.  We have a clear statement,

(Deu 6:4 KJV)  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

And yet we have references to the Son and the Spirit that also attribute divinity.  The church came up with a complex explanation of three in one because that is what the gestalt of the Bible requires.  

One that is often overlooked is the universally accepted statement,

(Eph 2:8 KJV)  For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Christians agree this is true and proceed to get out the scissors to remove much of the Bible because you find calls to obedience and upright living on just about every page.  The problem emerged when enthusiastic theologians add a word to grace, the word “alone”.  I have heard it expressed, “If it is grace plus anything then it is not grace.”  While their friends agree with that I am not sure God does, and it does not stand the test of gestalt.

Yes, we are saved by Grace.  It is a gift.  We cannot earn it.  We don’t earn it but unless you want to have a totally arbitrary God who sends most of mankind to hell with not even a first chance, let alone a second, you need to ask yourself, “What standard does God use to decide when He extends His grace.”  Since you can read you simply say, “The standard of faith.”  Then you have to decide what that means, what you are having faith in and so forth.

The good news for me is that God is the one who will make the decisions and we know that Jesus came to save sinners not to see how many He could cast into Hell.

If you took psychology classes somewhere in your life and heard about gestalt psychology don’t lay that on my theology.  The mental approach focuses on feelings and emotions.  The spiritual root is in the Bible.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-175: Headlines: Adams Family at Work

Did you see this one?  I came across it while cruising the click bait on The Daily Wire.  It seems that the Democrat Mayor of Democrat cesspool New York City has shipped some of the illegal aliens he received from Texas to other locations.  I have two reactions:  Hypocrisy and Genius.

The hypocrisy is doing the same thing that Abbot and DeSantis have done after attacking them for doing it.  Don’t they have any awareness.  I am always trying to see how the Democrats are even smart enough to steal elections.  You would think if these people are smart enough the Republicans could do it too.  Maybe that says something about Republicans.

The genius comes in the part where he seems to have shipped some of them out of the country.  The headline said the destinations included China.  What an idea.  Maybe Texas and Florida can follow suit since it must be okay if the Democrats can do it.  I already had the idea of finding an old freighter and loading the illegals on with a few MRE’s and grounding the ship on the coast of Venezuela.  No one liked it when I thought of it.  I guess I was just channeling my inner Democrat.

Life can be entertaining if we just pay attention and connect the dots.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-174: Changing of the Guard

I am watching Eric Metaxas interview Michael Medved on Socrates in the City.  All the discussion is interesting but what struck me was that Medved looked old.  How can this be?  Then I realized how many of our cultural fixtures are getting up there.

Think of the list of geezers who are on borrowed time.  Start with Thomas Sowell.  Then you have Victor Davis Hanson.  Clarence Tomas and Samuel Alito have been solid fixtures.  We already lost Rush.  I would go on but my memory is not what it used to be.  I guess that puts many of us on the list too.

Do we have another generation coming up to fill these shoes?  The guys that took Rush’s slot have been a big disappointment.  Every once in awhile you hear about people who come out of the big name schools with their minds and morals intact but they are few and far between.

Of course there may be a rich vein of intellectual gold still buried out there.  Keep browsing and looking.  Check out books from the library but don’t feel committed to finishing unless they are worth it.  If you find an author that is consistent then begin to invest by actually buying what they put out.  They will be impressed.

homo unius libri