I am a girl and a boy and it’s 1944 and the world has gone insane, so the only thing they can hang onto is each other. I am the middle of their three sons and a friend to the girl up the street. I am the three comic book fans who helped me ground myself after the family moved across the state, and the one I can still call friend.
I am hundreds, or is it thousands, who shared a piece of their life with me for seconds, minutes or hours. I am the four women to whom I pledged not till death would we part, and especially the one to whom I kept that vow. I am the friend who has stayed my friend after decades, even when I was not a very good friend.
We are each the sum total of the lives we have touched, and who have touched us, the people we have loved and who have loved us, and even those we passed briefly on our journey from here to there.
And for this moment I am the sad-eyed canine who sits next to me, accepting my hand on the side of her face, and lies down patiently when it becomes clear I’m not going to get out of my chair until I finish writing this, no matter how much she wants to be outside. I shall not let her wait any longer.
“That’s it! You reached the quota! You’re a stinker and a fool, and I’ll never forgive you again!!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have sat here and smiled and told you it’s OK while you sinned against me 490 times — and I took it, because Jesus said I had to forgive you 70 times 7 times. But this is 491 times that you’ve pulled this kind of thing. No more!!!”
“You counted?”
“Of course I counted! How could I forget?”
“What about the part where love keeps no record of wrongs?”
“Oh. Crap.”
“If it’s any consolation, I didn’t realize I was sinning against you.”
“That helps — actually, no, it doesn’t. How could you be so dense and thoughtless?”
“You never said!”
“I was supposed to forgive you.”
“How’s that working out? Why didn’t you tell me? I would have changed.”
“You would?”
“Well, I would have tried, at least. I never want to hurt you, let alone sin against you.”
“You don’t?”
“Of course not. Remember the part where I love you?”
“You do?”
“Oh boy, we definitely need to communicate better.”
“We do.”
“Can you forgive me for the 491st time if I promise to try harder not to do stuff like that?”
“The rule said 70 times 7 is the limit.”
“I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it that precisely.”
I have been toying with the idea of spending less time and energy on the subject of politics and government in this space.
It’s the political season, and emotions are fever pitch. Lines have been drawn, sides have been chosen, and if social media feeds are any indication, folks are increasingly panicked because democracy itself is threatened by the other side.
I am certainly not going to change any minds, especially with my contrarian belief it doesn’t matter. First, if this was a democracy, do you really think these would be the choices? Second, I am of the firm belief that freedom is an internal thing that can’t be taken away. Yes, you can beat, batter and otherwise force a person into submission, even kill, but in the end all you managed to do is kill a free person.
The forces that warn that we will become a fascist state if the other side wins are conveniently overlooking their own concerted efforts to make this a Soviet state.
See? If I had any sense, I would talk about topics other than politics and government, while I still have a handful of readers. I’m pretty much a “pox on both your houses” kind of guy.
Through all of this, I keep hearing the sage words of the philosopher Tom Petty: “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”
Of course, how do I hawk my books like War IS the Crime, or Echoes of Freedom Past, or Refuse to be Afraid, if I step back from the fray? The easy answer there is that the books will still be there to be hawked after the election, Lord willing.
So …
What would I write about with everyone screaming in my ears about politics and government? Well, I have already spent a great deal of time emphasizing a very anti-political thought: “Love your neighbor, and everyone is your neighbor.” That’s certainly still a theme worth exploring.
And while I’m drawing a thought from the New Testament, there are plenty of directions I could go with this: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”
And, of course, “the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
I draw my blog post ideas from my journals, and those possibly will become my “Picture of Dorian Gray,” where I can tuck my dismay and my outrage and my irritation at the cacophony, and try as I might, no doubt some of that may leak out through my choices of words.
But I think I would like, from this day forward, at least through November, to make this a safe space, where the theme is first and foremost, “Let’s love, neighbor, and pursue whatever is lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy in a spirit of joy, peace, kindness and all those other fruits.”
I don’t know about you, but I feel healthier already.
