Thanks-Giving

It is not enough to be thankful.  I must be thanks-giving.  I look back over my life from my current perspective, ever mindful that 100 years ago Einstein told us time was one of the 4 dimensions, and I see a life stream with peaks and valleys, people I loved still here, people I loved who chose to take themselves out of my life stream, and people I loved whose life simply ended.  I am so thankful for the people I loved who are still with me on this journey.  I am blessed by your love, even if we go years without talking.  I know there is love because we resume right where we left off. I feel regret for those who chose another path, I miss them, I mourn for them, but I did not make that choice.

I am thankful that physical things are not a source of everyday concern for me.  What a gift.  I do not worry about food, shelter, clothing.  I have all I need and my Christmas list is blank.  I am so lucky.  More than that, I am thankful that it is loved ones who trigger my deepest thanks, not things.  Take my house, my car, my computer and leave me loved ones and I will continue to be full of thanks.

More, it is the loss of loved ones that has always triggered the valleys.  Never the loss of things. Guess I'm just wired like that as I see no way around it save through it, and the "through its" have about killed me.

But I am here.  I am alive.  I am thankful.  I am thanks-giving.  Thank you.

Learning and Zip Codes

I am inspired (ignited?) to write regarding two recent incidents.  The first was a robot phone survey I responded to last night regarding education, and the second is an article in CNN Money entitled, “You probably cannot afford to live near good schools.”  http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/19/real_estate/neighborhoods-good-schools-affordable/index.html.  The impact of these two incidents has left me pulling out my hair and running screaming down the street.  Good Lord, when will we learn?

The phone survey asked me if I supported school choice using tax credits for K-12 students, did I think big labor unions were pouring millions into Texas to block the school choice movement, and who did I have a favorable perception about from a list of elected politicians, mostly the fringe right wing.  Unbelievable.  Should the group who conducted this survey ever use the results for a political issue we must all stand up and say the survey was so dramatically skewed that the results are meaningless.  For instance, nowhere in the first question is it mentioned that such tax credits are to pay tuition for rich kids to attend private schools.  It does not mention that only parents who are currently sending their kids to private schools will benefit from such a policy.  It does not mention that there are nowhere near enough private-school seats to serve parents who might choose such a setting for their children.  It does not mention that public schools are performing as well if not better than private schools when income is accounted for.  It does not mention that such a tax credit will reduce public school funding.  Amazing.  Clearly the question is worded to get respondents to select “I support.” 

The second question is equally slanted.  What big unions are there in Texas?  We have a right-to-work state so there are no big unions.  Why would UAW or Teamsters pour money into Texas when they are fighting the same issue in their home states?  The real truth is that an organization called ALEC is funneling millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of our elected representatives so that they will support charter schools, vouchers, increased testing, teacher accountability, etc.  No “liberal” groups are spending much money here because Texas is seen as lost cause for progressive thinking.  It is the ultra-conservative billionaires and their front-man organizations who are shaping public school policy.  We should scream “Enough Already!

And hell no you cannot afford to live near a “good school.”  The data replicated dozens and dozens of times concludes student performance is most influenced and predictable based on the wealth of the parents.  The wealthier the parents, the more likely students are to be successful.  The poorer the parents the more likely students will perform poorly.  This is very old news.  But it appears that even modern day reporters do not know this.  Yep, wealthy conclaves have good schools because they have wealthy kids and wealthy parents.  Yep, poor performing schools serve poor families.  The entire right-wing agenda has been to punish the schools that serve the poorest kids via standardized testing, and robbing what little money they have with private sector get-rich strategies like charter schools and vouchers.  If conservatives were truly interested in promoting student success in poor schools they would support student and family social services.  They oppose that as well.

Bottom line, in our country there is a clear correlation between wealth and academic success.  The more wealth, the more success.  That wealth tends to congregate in certain zip codes.  So, though every state constitution I am aware of declares that there will be free public education for all children, the reality is learning is tied to zip code.  Want to improve your scores?  Move to another zip code and/or increase your wealth.  “Choice” does not improve outcomes for kids.  Charter schools do not improve outcomes for kids, but they do improve the profit of private sector charter school groups.  Vouchers do not improve outcomes for kids, but they do give wealthy parents who send kids to private schools a tax break...  Standardized tests do not improve outcomes for kids, but they do allow conservatives to identify and hammer on poor schools rather than support them.  Tougher teacher evaluations do not improve outcomes for kids, they simply add stress to the noblest profession on the planet, and help serve to break up teacher unions so that teacher managers have more authority.  The motives for all these so-called school reforms are so blatantly obvious, why do we continue to support such un-democratic notions?

Ah, the answer to that may lie in your zip code. 

Or, you are middle class or poor and drank the Kool Aide prepared for you by the wealthiest of citizens and corporations.

When the Aliens Arrive

The price of gas at the pump continues to drop.  The Islamic State (IS) commits multiple acts of terror in Paris against non-combatant humans.  The French retaliate with bombing sorties in Syria likely to kill non-combatant humans.  Global temperatures are rising, not over thousands of years as they have before as part of a natural cycle, but suddenly over just 100 years clearly due to human behavior.  The population on planet earth is growing exponentially creating huge shortfalls in food and water.  I go to church and see a man wearing a T-shirt that says, “I am a good guy with a gun.”  Religious fundamentalists are seeking control of the US government and the Syrian and Iraqi governments.  The current thinking on education is that in order to improve the performance of poor kids we must test more and take money away from the schools teaching these kids to fund private sector efforts that are no better than public schools. 

There is more, much more, but I feel depressed just listing the above.  So I imagine a different scenario, a day when we suddenly realize what is important, a day when we finally see the big picture:

Extraterrestrial life exists as we have long suspected but could not prove.  Eventually contact will be made.  Our orientation to the universe will dramatically shift.  We are not alone.  We are but one of many intelligent life forms.  And the aliens send an ambassador for a first meeting with our world leaders.  I would love to hear such a discussion and imagine how it would go. 

World leaders will be overly concerned with the motives of the aliens and why they waited so long to contact us.  We would want their technology.  We would want treaties.  On and on.  But the aliens – and these are truly undocumented aliens because they are not humans of planet earth – have questions of their own.  They remain baffled by our behavior and they ask the following:

“If you know that burning fossil fuels and deforestation is destroying your atmosphere and threatening human life on this planet, why do you continue to do so?

Is increasing the personal wealth of some worth more than saving your planet?

Is increasing the personal wealth of some worth the starvation and suffering of so many more?

Why do you see each other as so different?  Men and women, Christians and Muslims, light complected and dark complected, etc.?  From space all humans look the same.

Is warfare and terrorism your solution to overpopulation?  There are many more effective, humane ways.

Is warfare and terrorism your strategy to get what you want at the expense of so many others?  Such ignorance baffles us.

Why must you compete with each other when collaboration is the model that yields the best results?

Why do you allow entertainers and athletes to prosper while your teachers of the young live in near poverty?

Why do you dream of going to some heaven and then fight to avoid dying?  Why is death such a source of fear for you when you know everyone alive now will die?

Why do you believe you are alone, you are special and you have a deity to turn to?  No other species we know is so arrogant.

If you would like to join an intergalactic group of sentient beings, you must answer these questions and address your own shortcomings.  If you do not mature as a species we will simply isolate you and allow all your self-destructive behaviors whether they are economic, political or religious to destroy your once beautiful planet.  We will not intervene or assist you.  We will monitor your progress or your self-destruction.  We wish you the best.  Goodbye.”

And they leave us as they found us.

The Samaritan Extinction

The war in Syria rages.  Out of that war IS emerges as a large, organized terrorist operation.  They believe that anyone who is not with them must die so they have no reluctance taking human non-Sunni lives.  They just did so in Paris.

But the Paris attacks, as awful and horrendous and inhumane as they were, demonstrates clearly why so many are leaving their homes in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere close by and are fleeing wherever they can go to be safe.

27 Governors in the US have now announced that their states will not allow any Syrian refugees to flee to them.  More than half our states.  I am so deeply sad that my state is one of the 27.  Of the 27 governors, only one is a Democrat.

It is my hunch that these governors campaigned on family values, Christianity in particular.  None of these governors claimed to be atheists or Muslim.   And I wonder if those most fundamental of Christians have in fact read the New Testament and understood the big picture.

If states are fools, do we not have a county or a city who will stand and say let them come unto us and we will give them peace?  We will not sort by religion.  We will not sort by ethnicity.  If we follow the notion of only allowing people succor who are “good”, who will ever qualify for admission? 

There are candidates for the Presidency who would rather bomb IS knowing they will kill innocent people.  There are candidates who would send American troops to the region, or at least Iraq.  Have we learned nothing from Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?  Are we not yet beyond an eye for an eye and international bullying?  No air strike will return the dead in Paris.  Will we ever be able to turn the other cheek and respond rationally?

My Christian heritage taught me it is the Samaritan who is blessed.  The enemy who responds to another human who is suffering and in need is the model to emulate. 

Have we no more Samaritans?  Are they now extinct?  Do we have a new interpretation of the New Testament that requires service to self and safety first and no obligation to our fellow humans?

I find that cowardly and blasphemous.

Friday the 13th

It is with some trepidation that I enter the realm of religious beliefs.  But it weighs on my mind.  Please forgive me if my ramblings offend you.

Today is a Friday the 13th.  I am not superstitious.  Seems to me that if one is superstitious one would have to believe there are predetermined performance based plans at work behind the scenes and free will is a myth.  In other words, if I walk under a ladder, break a mirror, etc., then negative forces behind the scenes will punish me.  The opposite would also be true as in throwing spilled salt over the shoulder, knocking on wood, a rabbit’s foot, etc., would automatically trigger the good forces behind the scenes to reward me.  In such scenarios I am a puppet of fate.  And to that I say poppycock.  But it has got me thinking about whether random luck or a comprehensive plan is at work here.

The Houston Texans and the Dallas Cowboys are having tough years.  Sports commentators in both cities as well as nationally, (sitting around glitzy tables adorned in pin stripes, checkered shirts and stripped ties – who dresses these guys?) announce, “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

The same is true for every team that will not make the playoffs, and for every team except the winner of the Super Bowl.  One winner.  For all the rest, it wasn’t meant to be.  Is Tony Romo’s broken collarbone and Andrew Luck’s lacerated liver part of a plan?

A Georgia high school football player collapsed at football practice on September 22.  He died Monday, October 5^th.  His coach told the media that they had all been praying for his return, but “it wasn’t meant to be.” 

There have now been 7 high school football players who died this fall.  Kids who went out to play a sport and never came back.  For each of those families, watching their sons grow up was “not meant to be.”  Or was it?

Jeb Bush like Forest Gump before him tells us, “Stuff happens,” implying life is random and death is inevitable.  How can random “stuff” be a plan?

So, which is it?  Is it a grand plan that we remain ignorant of until we see a sudden and unpredictable wicked twist in the plan?  If so, then such outcomes are designed and everything is meant to be.  Or is it all just random, some live, some die, some win, some lose.  Life is hard and then you die.  It is all about luck, good luck, and bad luck.  Or, is it a weird combination of the two wherein there is a quasi-plan, but there is a supernatural observer who can intervene in the stuff that happens and may make a plan for which only some benefit?  (Always amazing to me is that those who benefit seem so often to be scoundrels.  Good guys finish last?)  Sure would be nice to know which way it goes.  I use the word “know” here as opposed to “believe.”  I believe most operate on one of the two belief systems.  No one really knows.

And in the wee small hours of the morning when we find ourselves on our knees calling out, “Why him, Lord?  Why her, Lord?  Why me, Lord?” what we are really saying is, “If this is Your plan why are You being so mean and why don’t You change it, or if it is not Your plan why don’t You intervene?  If it is all just random what am I doing on my knees?”

My thinking may be juvenile and superficial on this topic.  Great minds and renowned scholars have pondered the issue of determinism and predestination as well as chaos theory and free-floating radicals.  I have read much from each camp, but still have a hard time deciding where to pitch my tent.  Will I learn where I’ll camp via logic or emotion?  Faith or facts?  If I knew, I would be building a campfire and inviting others over for S’mores.

Here is where I am, not that it really matters to the universe.  If there is a plan it is mean-spirited.  Too many die too young.  Too many are suffering.  Groups of well-meaning folks gather in prayer for the sick and injured.  Some recover and we say, “Miracle!”  Some die, and we say it was not meant to be, that is, the grand plan ordained their death.  Seems mean.

In some cases it feels like negligent homicide.  If God can intervene and is capable of intervening and chooses not to do so, then that sounds like negligent homicide to me.  When the co-pilot stole control of the Germanwings jet and intentionally nose-dived into the French Alps, passengers on board had 9 minutes to pray and surely they did!  Can God save a jet doomed for destruction like Supergirl and Superman?  If He made heaven and earth and all within, snatching a plane from the jaws of destruction should be a piece of cake.  If I can save lives and choose not to we call that negligent homicide and I go to jail.  God did not intervene.  All died.  I should not be too surprised.  We say that His greatest gift of love was to allow His own son to die for each of us.  Wow.  If one looks at that from the other side of the coin, what would we say of parents who allow their child to die so that generations of strangers can go to heaven when those parents could easily stop it?  I cannot fathom that.  If He had to die to save us, why not make a new plan where that was not the caveat?  I don’t get it.  Is considering such in and of itself blasphemy? 

And that, of course, is the rebuttal.  I am just a guy at a keyboard.  God is so far beyond me I am but a grain of sand on the beach.  There is a plan and though I was formed in God’s image, I am not smart enough to get it.  I am not meant to get it.  It is after all God’s plan.  When times are tough I should just “Job” my way through it.  But my plan would look different.

Of course if it is all random then this discussion has no purpose.  We live.  We die.  Some are lucky, some are not.  Stuff happens and we are all superstitious.  But declaring stuff happens seems to me to be an ungodly position.  And, if the “stuff” is part of a plan we should pray for a new plan so that all tragedies are not “meant to be”.  Happy Friday the 13^th.