February Brown And Green

Our weather here in New Home continues to frustrate:  we oscillate between what could effectively be considered as early Summer days and lows at night that remind one that we still remain in the relative depths of Winter.

Our cold fronts, when they come, are not the generally slow moving cold fronts that I remember of my youth, a gradual transition that happens over days.  They are wild sorts of things, violent in their arrival, wrenching the trees from side to side, hurling yellow clouds hither and yon to the detriment of allergy sufferers everywhere.  Even I, who have been largely immune for years to the local versions of pollens, find myself sneezing uncontrollably and reaching for a combination of something to wipe my nose and allergy medication to hopefully let me function without having to close my eyes and restrain sneezes every 10 seconds.

It is undoubtedly frustrating and disorienting to the plant life as well:  our trees, having weathered a freeze that cracked branches and shattered trunks, now find themselves assaulted by the other extreme of heat.  Wind cracks branches already failing but not collapsed and so, a new tunnel of branches along the roads is likely.  This is also our second leaf fall:  beyond the usual sorts of dead leaves that would always fall will be the addition of the shocked leaves that fall and the withered leaves from branches now dead but that no-one noticed until now.  They fall upon the grasses which were sun-scorched and water deprived from the last Summer, leaving everything a dreary, dead brown mess.

Raking - one of my least favorite tasks - yields piles of decayed leaves and dead grass in piles that resemble not the classic red-brown piles of Norman Rockwell but the cinders of burnt out volcanoes, dotting the landscape as if the tectonic plates themselves were creating an island chain in my yard, to be captured into containers before the wind scatters them or simply blows back to cover what appears to be a row of dead lawns down the street, bodies laid in order on the coroner's tables.

There is life still, of course - but it is the life of the native plants that thrive in this environment as they have for thousands of years.  They rise a little every day, green and thriving, almost reaching the point of need to be trimmed, making a mockery of everything that society and social constructs have spent time and money putting in place.  These plants exist not for the benefit and pleasure of the homeowner but for their own purposes, living a life in ordered society of the landscape but at this moment living a life beyond the landscape and its conditions.  The cultivated and cultured struggle and die, while the uncultivated and not cultured seem to thrive in exactly the same conditions.

I watch the the wind swirl the dead leaves and grass even as it riffles the living green into waves that hide and over-run the dead things surrounding it.  Life, as Michael Crichton said, will find a way.  It is those who demand of it to find it in their way and in their confines that are always surprised.

The grasses, of course, always knew that they would grow.

Our Own

 "If all this is true and we are not silly nor playing a part when we say, 'Man's good and man's evil lies in moral choice, and all other things are nothing to us', why are we still distressed and afraid?  Over the things that we seriously care for no-one has authority, and the things over which men have authority do not concern us.  What kind of thing have we left to discuss?

- 'Nay, give me directions' - What directions shall I give you?  Has not Zeus given you directions?  Has he not given you that which is your own, unhindered and unrestrained, while that which is not your own is subject to hindrance and restraint?  What directions, then, did you bring with you when came from him into the world, what kind of an order?

Guard by every means that which is your own, but do not grasp that which is another's.  Your faithfulness is your own, your self-respect is your own; who, then, can take these things from you?  Who but yourself will prevent you from using them?  But you, how do you act?  When you seek earnestly that which is not your own, you lose that which is your own."

- Epictetus, Discourses, Book 1

Embody It

 Perceptive and long time readers of this blog will know that in point of fact I often tend to incorporate different aspects of whomever and whatever I tend to be reading at the moment - in that sense I am somewhat of a chameleon, adapting as I come into contact with new ideas.  Some of that will dissipate of course as I move to something else, but it always seems as if something remains.

As I am paging through Epictetus and thus the philosophy of Stoicism, I am finding both a buttress to my faith (I would argue that Epictetus is as close or closer to "Christian" thought as Plato is perceived to be) as well as a different methodology and framework for expressing beliefs and philosophy through life.

Of the Stoics I have read - Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and now Epictetus  - one common theme I am finding is the living out of the Stoic philosophy.  Philosophy for them was not just an thought exercise, it was a life practice that was to be lived out daily.

As the world seemingly becomes more chaotic and unsettled and things start to fray - or perhaps simply that I am getting older - I am coming to appreciate how meaningful this sort of philosophy is.

We live in an age where many people say things, make pronouncements, decree actions and thoughts.  We also live in an age where not living by what one preaches is considered completely acceptable and not at all worthy of comment.  It has always been this way I suppose; it is only the modern world and the fact that we can both see the present and history so quickly thanks to technology that such things become so evident.

If we want to be different - if we want to stick out in a good way - we need to not tell people about what we believe - our philosophy, our religion, our way of life - we need to embody it.

The world has plenty of examples of those that speak of great themes and mighty actions.  The world is well short of people that actually live by it.

It is not just a thought exercise.  How many times have we heard of someone that we think would be like us in thought or belief and then we meet them or hear them and suddenly realize that they are not the sort of people that we would at all want to imitate?  And it does not just have to be in the actions and words, it can be in their demeanor and presentation as well.  

How often - we have all had it happen, I think - we have recommended a person or an author to someone based on their ideas or their philosophy only to be appalled when we hear of something that does not at all comport with who we are or what we believe?  It is not just embarrassment for the thing itself; it is an embarrassment for our friend or associate, who now has to walk through the issue of what they had heard or seen and how we likely could endorse such a thing - what does that say about us?

If we want to make the world a better place - a place that we claim, in some form or fashion, we want it to be, we need to not just talk about such things.  We need to be - "embody", as Epictetus would say - the beliefs and philosophies we espouse.  We have to live them out to make them credible.

I know the counterarguments.  "It is hard" - it has always been hard to live out beliefs, especially in a world that by default and nature tends to promote everyone being the same.  "Those that our our opponents have all the control" - most great movements that actually improve the world always start small, in the face of opposition.  Yet they have succeeded.  "Everyone else is inconsistent and gets away with it" - but this is exactly why we are where we are; everyone has become used to people not living what they profess.  Can we blame them if they believe it is the only way things are?  "Anger and rage are the only way to accomplish things in the current world" - anger and rage can indeed make great changes but they are fueled by something that cannot last or make lasting changes; they will all eventually collapse upon themselves.

As I have grown older - possible wiser? - the people that I find the most credible and the most admirable are those that live out their philosophies and beliefs on a daily basis.  It costs them all, sometimes in material goods, sometimes in reputation, sometimes in simply snide remarks by a world that does not understand and does not care.  These are the ones I want to be like, because they are not only living what they profess, they are demonstrating that such a thing is possible.

You cannot speak one way and live another or live in a way that belies everything that say you are for, and then somehow believe that people will want to adopt your way of thinking or philosophy.  It is incumbent on all of us who want reasoned, self-sufficient, thoughtful, independent, and polite society to not only desire it and believe such things, but to live them out in practice on a daily basis.

The only way to truly be that thing is to show the world that it works, in our beliefs and practices and actions and works.  We can be the most credible example of what we believe - or its biggest detractor.

On Respect And Lively Discussions

During my last visit to Old Home, I attend Stations of the Cross with Uisdean Ruadh.

He, of course, is Catholic; I am a Protestant of varying vintages.  That said, he constantly invites me to such things and I am happy to attend when I am able.  There is something to be said for a universal Christian brotherhood, even if we do not agree on everything (and I do not know that we to on every single thing).

After dinner and at our usual post-walk yogurt, he asked me what I thought about the service.  To my Protestant eyes, there was very little different from other "higher church" services I had attended (except the genuflecting, of course).  I asked him if the attendance there - perhaps 30-40 people -was indicative of the usual.

This spun off into a question of faith and the purpose of church and encounters with God - a worthy discussion which I should probably separate out into its own discussion, as this is not the point of today's missive.

At one point in the conversation, when we were discussing why membership is dropping at many churches (not just the Catholic), we got into a sensitive area of discussion about the recent history of the Catholic church (Author's note:  Do not, do not, do definitely not put some sort of silly Catholic bashing in the comments. It will not make through).  It was somewhat tense for a moment as he and I have different perspectives on the issue in terms of how people see something from the inside versus the outside.

Yet strangely enough, we got through the conversation.

We got through the conversation because we both have respect for each other as people (and friends) first.

Respect can be exercised in such conversations in a number of ways. In this case, rather than press into the recent past for the Catholics, I pressed into the recent history of a prominent evangelical who after death was revealed to have quite a different life than what he portrayed.  Suddenly the conversation was not about "this" or "that"; it was about principles.  And in turn when I had a comment about a practice that I do not find as engaging as others, he in turn was able to discuss the very differing opinions and uses of the Rosary.

It was, to quote a commenter yesterday, a "lively discussion" but it was a discussion that both of us were able to learn from (I did, hopefully he did too), walk away from without rancor - and then finish another mile loop talking away.

It strikes me that this sort of respect for each other is precisely a major underlying component for a great many reasons why we find ourselves where we are today.  Without an underlying respect, things simply become weapons and large missiles we hurl (hopefully only verbally) at each other.  Intrinsically or extrinsically, at some level we have no belief that we are going to "convince" the other side of anything; we have to bludgeon them into submission.

And there may be submission.  But it will be of the slimmest sort, ready to fracture under the first sign of strain.  And more tellingly, we will find over time that other parts of the relationship - be it personal, professional, religious, or a group association such as a nation-state - will weaken as well. Because people are very cognizant of when their thoughts or opinions become unimportant, and they will simply keep them to themselves.

I risk in writing this dissolving the conversation (yet again) into a discussion of issues about which we do not talk about here.  And that is not my intent.  My intent is really aimed at myself in all of this: am I practicing the sort of respect that would engender even "lively discussions" that might move an issue along in a way that I would like to see it moved?  Am I, as Gandhi said, "Being the change that I want to see in the world"?  

I can never control anyone else; I can only control myself.  But I can certainly be that example of what respect for others - even when I may disagree with their opinions or decisions - looks like.

Memento Mori

In his book It Is A Good Day To Die, Herman J. Viola and Jan Shelton Danis record the biographical remembrances of the Sioux that faced the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn.  A phrase - attributed to Crazy Horse but apparently originally recorded from the Sioux Low Dog - is the phrase "Today is a good day to die."

In the case given, it was (I think) intended to both inspire courage and remind the warriors that this was exactly what they were called to do.  But as I pondered it more - in the context of the Birthday of TB The Elder - I had (at least for myself) some additional enlightenment.

In Western Civilization of course, we know this train of thought:  during the Roman triumphs someone walked beside the victorious general, speaking the words "Memento mori" - or so at least the stories go - to remind the general that he, too, was mortal.  Marcus Aurelius - that last of the "Five Good Emperors" - dwelt on this a fair amount in his Meditations as well:  "Death smiles at us; all a man can do is smile back" and "It is not death that man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."  And yet we have lost the immediacy and reality of death - that we could die at any time.  

Even Christianity, which should constantly be a reminder (to us Christians, anyway) that we are literally one heartbeat away from death has largely become a "long term activity" that we engage in.   "For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little while and vanishes away" says James 3:14(b); we have gone from "remember that you are dust" to "we really do not talk about death here" in one to two generations lulled by increasing life spans that keep push out the age that death is somehow "too young".  The martyrs looking down on us must shake their heads in disbelief.

What does it mean, for those of us not faced with the immediacy of armed conflict, - or perhaps any armed conflict at all - that today is a good day to die?  As I pondered it, I realized that today should be a good day to die because I have made it so.  

I have made things right where I could.  I have put things in order where I needed to.  I have said the things that needed to be said.  I have confessed the sins I needed to confess.  Where I was needed - truly needed, not just where society or my peer group or even my "feelings" said I was needed -  there I was.

Today should be a good day to die - if it comes to that - because I have lived fully and to the best of my ability have not left what was critical undone.  I have tried, to the best of my ability, to do the work I was given to do.  

If I am so fortunate as to live to tomorrow as well - then, tomorrow should be just as good a day to die. The same governing thoughts should apply.  

Some will speak about "your best life now".  I wonder if, instead, we should discuss "your best day - now".  And the next.  And the next.

At some point, of course, it will be the day to die.  Let us so live and conduct ourselves that, when it comes, we can say "Today, too, is a good day to die".