overDub

This entire article can be found here:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

This is the most interesting part of it -

“Polarization also has affected the two parties differently. The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.

Two well-known Washington political analysts, Thomas Mann, of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agree. In a forthcoming book about Washington dysfunction, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” they write, “One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.””

I just failed a test, flat failed. Failure is a funny thing, if your not careful it can snowball into an irreversible chain of events that result in a type of permanent set back. I haven’t failed a test since my freshman year of college. My excuse back then was being “to cool,” to study, I have no excuse now. I studied for this test, hard. Fortunately this failure can, I guess, result in several realizations.

1) I’m simply not cut out for a life analyzing risk and gambling with, and against, people smarter than I am.

2) Everyone, at some point in their life, will experience failure…this is by no means my first experience with it, and hopefully it won’t be my last.

3) I only have 5 classes left after this semester to complete before I’m finished with a Masters Degree…hey, that’s pretty cool, and it’s something that I would have never thought myself capable of a few years ago.

4) I still have no idea what my “niche,” is but, I do think I’m getting closer to understanding myself enough to make a long-term career decision.

My uncles response is below. I sincerely hope to someday understand the world, and faith, the way he does…

Number one: I don’t think less of you for sharing your honest thoughts! Ever.

Number two: Man, there’s a lot to respond to here! I may not cover it all, but will try. If I don’t respond to something, shoot it back my way.

Re: your pastor’s political opinion- a wise man once said, “be careful when the politician’s start talking religion and when preacher’s start talking politics.” I think that it’s OK to disagree with your Pastor’s opinion on things like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. I would too, probably. But, on the other hand, I have strong negative opinions about the Tea Party movement. I would not use the pulpit to voice my objections, because I don’t think that the church should be co-opted by a political movement on either side. However, the church does have something to say about the poor, justice, and peace. While you may disagree with your Pastor on political things because you have strong feelings about national health insurance (for example) does not necessarily mean that you shouldn’t remain a faithful member of the church. It would probably be a good thing to have a face to face discussion with your Pastor and raise some of your objections. Sometimes we Pastor’s state things more strongly than we really feel (because people like dramatic statements from the pulpit). At least with the conversation you could more honestly acknowledge your different understanding than his. This might be helpful to him as it offers him a chance to think through things too.

Re: church. Not a perfect one anywhere because it’s made up of sinful people. Like me and you. So, a lot of tolerance and understanding is in order. If you feel good in the community of faith, warmly accepted and loved, that’s worth a lot. So, don’t throw it out for the sake of passing political fads and opinions. 10 years from now people probably won’t care about either the Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party movements. People will still care about fairness, justice and peace. Let the bigger issues be your guide.

Almost 30 guns? Really! What for? Are you planning an armed uprising?

I think you’re absolutely right to fight for health care for Joanne and people like her. People at the top don’t know, or have forgotten, the struggle for life’s basics. It’s a justice issue.

Regrettably, the church can be a source of intolerance too. Would Jesus relate to, and love, a Muslim praying for peace? I think so. Xenophobia is a fear of people that are different than we are. I think there is ample evidence in the Gospels that Jesus was not in favor of Xenophobia! I agree with you: if what is being expressed is in line with the kingdom of God, it matters not so much the instrument (Cyrus the Persian was the instrument of God to liberate the people from the Babylonian Empire; Paul the apostle went to the ‘Gentiles,’ etc. I think we Christians shoot ourselves in the foot with our unwillingness to relate to other people in a positive manner. I also believe God loves all of the people he created.

Neither Corporation, Nor Government, Nor Church is immune from corruption. Do the best you can to be faithful. However, you will not escape Corporation, Government (or Church!) if you want to be involved in life larger than your immediate family. The challenge is to remain as faithful as you can while realizing that all of our human organizations are “fallen” in the sense of original sin. Expect perfection here and you will reap disappointment.
Corporations chasing the bottom line and engaging in unethical practices have forgotten their basic purpose, which is to serve human life in some specific ways. Banks, while needing to be profitable, also should never forget that they are offering people a chance to gain capital for business, etc. which provide something useful or necessary for a better life. If a Corporation becomes unethical (all will be unethical to a certain extent - like there’s no perfect church) to the point that your personal moral sense is violated consistently, look for another job. Your integrity matters.

Love means forgiveness and tolerance. Even of other Christians (the misguided ones, of course J) and of Pastors.
I too, sometimes wish I could have God and not the church! However, the Bible seems to support the notion that God wants to be involved with communities of people (nation of Israel in the OT and the church in the NT). In fact, I believe that God calls us to be in community with each other. Messy! Church would be OK if it weren’t for the people! Yet, those are the very folks God loves and asks us to love in the same way God loves us. Tough to do, but is there any other way to be faithful? If you can think of one, let me know!

Be wise in your faith as well as discerning in your actions. I think I agree with Christie: be as widely tolerant as you can honestly be of other people’s (misguided) opinions (including your Pastor’s - although I would still encourage you to take him to lunch and share where you disagree). And, hope that the other people in your church will be widely tolerant of your (perhaps misguided) opinions. It’s called Grace and it’s at the heart of the Gospel.

Love you!

Richard

This post is probably going to be long, rambling, and full of things that don’t make a lot of sense to anybody else, but I need to unload and that’s why I started blogging in the first place…so here goes.

Below I have copy and pasted a letter that I just finished typing to my uncle. He is the pastor of a United Methodist Church in little Rock Arkansas and I respect his intelligence and opinion…I’d feel bad about doing this at work, but I have paid my salary 5 times (getting close to six) in pretax profit from sales this year…so F’em. I’m boiling over in frustration right now, and I’m conflicted because as much I want to I just can’t look away…

Richard,

I hope you’re well, and I’m excited for our get-together next month.
Grandmother mentioned something on the phone the other day about you
thinking about retirement…how far away do you and Becky think that
might be? I often wonder how pastors manage to make it 20, 30, or 40
years on the job. Religion has always worn me so heavily that I can’t
imagine someone dedicating their life to it. This note is going to be
difficult for me to write for a couple of reasons. The first is that I
have some built in innate fear of offending and/or disappointing
people, I have no idea where it comes from but I am petrified of
letting people down. The second is that the subject is just not good
“table talk” so to speak, and I have no idea what you might say…what
if we don’t agree? I tend to ramble when I write, and I don’t want to
take up to much of your time or bore you to death so I going to do my
best to provide you with a little bit of background and then just get
to the point.

Christie and I have settled into a great church up here. We managed to
reconnect with a pastor that was a part of our wedding and we have
really enjoyed him and the church family; they are very inviting and
loving people. I think the fact that we like him and the church so
much has made all of this just that much more difficult. Sunday our
pastor, Dennis, gave a sermon about getting results. The sermon was
rooted in a biblical story of Paul speaking in a synagogue after being
wrongly imprisoned in a neighboring town (I believe in Thessalonica
but I could be wrong about that). The story continued on to say that
Paul spoke the Rabbi’s and Jew’s who did not agree with him began to
stir up trouble in the town by recruiting troublemakers and starting a
kind of riot…they did this by pointing out that Paul had been in
prison and that he was speaking of foolish things like someone raising
from the dead. After reading this story and explaining it Dennis drew
parallels to the “Occupy Wall Street” protests that are happening. He
called the protestors ignorant, saying things like, they sit there
taking video’s on their iphones protesting corporations, and even
worse they don’t even know what they want changed. The entire sermon
continued about the ignorance of liberal politics, he said that while
he is all for helping the poor there is a big difference between
helping someone and giving people things who think they deserve it but
will never be willing to help themselves. He warned that as these
protests grow they will turn violent and gave examples where in some
areas there already have been clashes with police.

I’m not exactly sure what bothered me the most, the fact that he was
preaching opinion/politics, or the fact that I so furiously disagree
with the things he had to say. My wife and I don’t identify with one
party or the other, and when we talk politics between ourselves its
usually in a somewhat somber tone…neither of us seem have much faith
in our political arena. However, there are certain things that I am
probably very liberal about. My little sister works 35 hours a week,
goes to school fulltime, and has never asked for anything from
anybody. She makes a little bit too much money to get state health
insurance, her work won’t insure her because she isn’t fulltime, and
the cheapest private insurance we have found is still far too
expensive for her to try and buy. So, she relies on places like
Planned Parenthood (one of those evil social programs) to get
check-ups…the last 3 have come back abnormal but we simply can’t
afford to send her to a Dr. and get a biopsy done. My wife and I have
both worked full-time, or close to it, sense graduating high school
(I’ve had a job, without any significant break, since I was 16) and
our daughter still spent the first 6 months of her life without health
insurance…we had to save money up for each of her check-ups…we got
lucky as all get-out that Christie’s work offered health insurance for
her (it was almost $500/month to add me and even more to add Aydia
when she was born). We saved every penny we had for those 9 months
that she was pregnant to make sure we could pay the $3,500 of
out-of-pocket expenses we knew we were going to be responsible for.
Now, I don’t necessarily think that what we passed into law was the
right fix for healthcare, and I have no idea what the right fix is,
but what I do know is that it’s broken and at least we tried…I don’t
believe in abortion, I own almost 30 guns, and I live in the Midwest,
I save as much money as I can and I do my best to stay out of debt, so
naturally there are a lot of issues that I am just as passionate about
on the conservative side of the spectrum…but if someone came up to me
and said, “hey, I can give everyone in this country health insurance
but unfortunately I’m going to need you to give me 6% more of your
income to do it, is that ok?” I’d say yes in a heartbeat…even if by my
standards ¾’s of those people didn’t deserve it, even if that 6% was
8% or 20% or whatever…

How is that not the “Christian,” thing to do? I’ve struggled so much
with religion in my life that I’ve come to the point that the only
thing I do know, is that I don’t know…but the few times when I do feel
strongly enough about something to take a stand it’s because that
something just feels right to me…I wish I could just have God and get
rid of church. Before Christie began working for the hotel she is at
now she worked for the Assemblies of God. She thought working in a
moral and faith driven organization would be a refreshing break from
the corporate norm. Boy was she surprised. Within days of her starting
she began to feel out of place. I’m not going to dive super far into
why, because I’m sure you have experience with the challenges of
working within a religious organization, but what I will say is that
it came to head when she was invited into a prayer session…they wanted
to call upon God to stop Obama from letting a group of Muslim’s gather
and pray on the white house lawn…it was my understanding that they
wanted to pray for peace and understanding between our faiths. The God
that I know would hear that prayer, no matter whose mouth it came from
or what name they called him…maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what feels
right to me.

At work not too long ago we were told that if we notice an account
that does not have a high profitability rating (they are rated by a
series of if-then statements) that we should not go out of our way to
refund fees or even offer standard customer service to the account
holders, in hopes that the account holder might move to a different
bank. I don’t think corporations are evil, I completely understand
that to survive a company must be profitable…but at what point does
that profit become more important than morality? At what point do
energy traders at Enron shut-down power to the entire state of
California just to drive prices up and show a higher profit? When does
Bernie Madoff go from a moral human being to running the largest ponzi
scheme in history. Granted, those are probably poor examples because
of how extreme they are, but that type of disregard for people happens
every day in the corporate world. Would we be better off being
governed by corporations, or by the people…is that what this boils
down to? A corporation is a machine driven by money…if you profited
800 million this year, by God next year you better profit 900 million,
even if you have to cut pay, benefits, jobs, or stop buying your
employees writing utensils…whatever it takes, just make sure you
increase market share and earnings. Don’t worry about the people
questioning your motives either, if they say something about it we
will just tell them to be quite because we provide them with the jobs
they need to buy the things we provide them with.

I’m so sorry to unload like this on you, I know that this type of
thing isn’t fun for you to hear, or have to discuss, but I guess it
may just be difficult for me to listen to anyone else. Church is very
important to my wife and I, and she is scared that I’m going to have a
difficult time getting past this (she isn’t interested in changing
churches)…when we spoke about it she said that she is tired of finding
things wrong with churches and has come to the point that if she
disagrees with something that she is willing to look past it…she is
much more mature (and intelligent) than I am. I have no idea what I am
asking you for, maybe I just need some encouragement to not lose
faith…I sincerely don’t know. I didn’t mean for this to be as long as
it turned out, and I hope you don’t think less of me for thinking the
way I think.

~Jonathan

Since writing this I have had an hour long lunch break to stew more and more about it and it seems like I’m going in the exact wrong direction. I want to be ok, I want to not care and just move on…but it simply infruiates me..in order for my daughter to grow up with a family that participates in church do I have to try and explain to her that sometimes Pastors speak their opinion and twist the bible to reinforce their views? Should I be happy if she comes home from summer camp and burns her CD’s and every piece of clothing she has the doesn’t fit into some Godly mold that she was presented with while being sleep deprived for a week? What is the alternative? If not those things then should I be happy when she comes home at 2am on a Saturday night because she is acting out against all the goody goodies? Is there no happy medium? If we only partly participate wouldn’t someone label us “luke warm?”

Here’s to a brighter day tomorrow.

I loved haircuts growing up. I’m not exactly sure why or even when I started to enjoy getting my haircut, but I do remember the way I felt when it was done. I felt confident, I felt like I looked good. Unfortunately, like most kids, I went through a very awkward stage in 4th, 5th and 6th grade. I was overweight and I fixed my hair with a delightful side-part.I still remember the banter I received for the way I looked, but I also remember that the reason I fixed my hair the way I did was because that’s how my dad fixed his, and that’s how my mom had combed it growing up…I didn’t know there was any other way to fix hair.

The gentleman who cut my hair during this period of my life was named Richard. He owned a curious looking salon in an old house that he and his roommate had restored. They lived together in the upper part of the house and operated the salon on the first floor. I wish I could remember the name of Richard’s roommate, but for some reason I can’t. I do remember that he played organ at my church; that Richard often sang to his accompaniment, and that he was a very quiet and private person. My mom and dad were very close to Richard and his roommate and I remember quite vividly that we use to have family meals together once in awhile.

One day I came home from school complaining to my mom that people were making fun of me because of the way I fixed my hair, I don’t remember how upset I was, and I don’t remember my mom’s initial reaction or the way she comforted me. What I do remember is that she called Richard, I don’t know what she said but what I do know is that my mom took me to see him later that night. Unlike normal though, she just dropped me off and told me that she would be back to pick me up when Richard was done. When I got there he went through a fairly normal routine. He washed my hair and made normal hair dresser small talk and then asked me about my day. I trusted him so I told him what had happened that day and that I just didn’t know how to change my hair or how to fix it any other way. It took me years to understand the significance of the talk I was about to have, but it only took me a couple days to appreciate what he did for me. Although the details are somewhat muddy I can recall the gist of the conversation. Richard told me that all we had to do was find a haircut that would look natural on me. We looked through books and I picked a fade type haircut that was popular at the time. Richard cut my hair and taught me how to put a little bit of gel in it to spike it up. During our little visit that night I remember Richard encouraging me to always do what I felt was natural, no matter what other people thought about it. I remember trying to understand him but most of it flew over my head at the time. The next day at school though I got compliment after compliment on my new haircut…man that was a great feeling.

The hard part of this story is telling it in its entirety. We moved to Aurora not to long after all of this, but before we did my parents received a frantic call from Richard. He and his roommate had received some type of threat. I doubt I’ll ever know the severity of the threat, but it was enough to run them out of town. I have no idea where they moved…for some reason I have a vague memory of it being north, but I doubt I’ll ever know for sure. I wish I could tell him how much he changed my life, and how much he has affected my perspective as an adult. I don’t think I reflected on all of this until after high school. I asked my mom about it and she explained things very frankly to me. She told me that Richard and his partner were gay and that she and my dad had tried to make sure that they had friends in the small town in Kansas where we lived. She said that things had just gotten too difficult for them so they had to find a place to live that might be a little bit more tolerant of them. My mom went on to explain to me that when she was studying animal science at the University of Arkansas that she often had bulls that would only mount other bulls, and when they looked deeper into the causes of this that most of the time all they could find was that the bull had more female hormone than male. Although she didn’t just come out and say it, what I took away from that statement was that the bulls were scientifically a female animal, stuck inside a male animal’s body. That may be wrong, I have no idea, I’m not an animal scientist and I’ve never studied hormones so I have no idea exactly how they can affect behavior…maybe they don’t, but it seems like that might make sense.

I met a girl named Sarah several years ago while working at Old Navy. She had just come out to her parents and unfortunately they had reacted very poorly. I tried to encourage her, but it was obvious that she was completely devastated. I asked her once if she had ever dated in high school. She said that she had a boyfriend her freshman year but she broke up with him after their first kiss. Her memory of that kiss was awful, she described it as the most unnatural and horrible feeling she had ever had. Sarah was very literary just one of the guys, she talked to us about video games and sports, and 90% of the time she came to work in jeans and a t-shirt. I think about her a lot. Not just because I miss my friend, but because I remember how difficult everything was on her. I remember thinking that if there was someone out there that deserved to have an easy life it was her. She was one of the kindest people I have ever met. She never lost her temper, she never judged anyone, she was never flamboyant or in your face. She was shy and humble but never weak or wishy-washy about who she was. To my delight the last time I talked to Sarah she was living in St Louis, she had finished a nursing degree and was a RN at a local hospital and most importantly she had a partner that she was very fond of. She also mentioned that her family had come along and it was easy for me to tell how important that was to her.

I’m not gay. I know that. I’m married to a beautiful woman and I love her company. For me it’s difficult to imagine someone enjoying another person of the same sex in a physical way, but what does that mean? All it means is that it’s hard for me to imagine, there’s nothing more to it than that, there’s no secret somehow hidden in simplicity of the statement. People are people, and we are all born innocent.

Yesterday marked what I consider to be a wonderful day in American society. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was one of the most completely backward and un-American policies in our history. I’m not going to rant about why because I think it’s important for us to move on now. It happened, it was wrong, and as a country we fixed it. Cheers.

Christie and I had an interesting conversation the other night about the things in life that change a person’s perspective. It’s a somewhat dated monologue but I’m really not afraid to state how exactly backward life is. Anyway, it made me think a little bit about the experiences I would eventually like to have, or be able to provide for someone else (most notably my wife/children). I’m usually not much for lists because my Father told me once that people who make lists tend to stop as soon as they check off the last thing on their list…and that’s simply not a good reason to stop. However, as wise as that sentiment is, and even though that wisdom probably fits this situation better than any other, I feel that a list might be appropriate, but only because I want some type of record of how I felt right now, a record of the things that I thought were important at 27yrs old on the night of August 21st, 2011. I guess this is kind of a bucket list, but I think I’d rather consider it a list of things that are just more important to me personally than waking up every day and going to work so that I can fulfill the obligation I have to the frivolous things I’ve managed to surround myself with. So, here goes…

Things to do:

1) See as much of the world as possible

2) Try to understand the perspective of someone completely different than me

3) Learn a foreign language fluently

4) Watch my wife and child/children discover or rediscover something profound

5) Smoke a cigar with Eric Lewis in a place we never thought we’d see

6) Live, at least for some portion of my life, somewhere outside of my comfort zone

7) Play host with my wife to our children, their children, and our great-grandchildren at a dinner table large enough for all of us some fresh bread, and a whole lot of fried fish

8) Learn how to play the piano, well

9) Teach a young boy how to bait a hook, walk quietly (heel first) through the woods, drive a boat, and to appreciate the things you hear when no one talks