Merry Christmas...or else

There are those among us who believe that, at this time of year, everyone should say and/or be willing to hear, “Merry Christmas.” It’s as if there’s something wrong in not celebrating this distinctly Christian holiday, even you happen to be Jewish, or Moslem, or Hindu, or something else, or “none of the above.”

In the hands of some, “Merry Christmas” is not just a greeting, but a challenge, even a threat. “What, you don’t celebrate Christmas? Well, shame on you. You must not be a real American.”

Retailers who instruct their employees to greet customers with “Happy Holidays” or the like are absolutely doing the right thing. If I were greeted at checkout in the local grocery store with “Happy Hanukah” I’d probably think it was a joke, unless I were terribly offended. Public schools that do not allow Christian celebrations of the holidays are right as well; frankly, I don’t want my tax dollars being used to promote my religious tradition by someone who may understand it in a way that I believe is wrong.

So, if you meet me on the street and we are strangers and you want to share some sense of the joy of the season with me, just wish me “Happy Holidays.” I will know you wish the best for me, however I take “the best” to be, and that will be enough. I trust Jesus would approve your respect for me as a fellow human being, and I will strive to show the same to you.

Several years ago we received a Christmas card that carried a poem by Pedro Arrupe, SJ. It was produced by the Sisters of Joseph of Baden, Pennsylvania. I offer it to you, in the  broadest, most inclusive sense of what Christmas means.

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, that is,
than falling in love
in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.

It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you will do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read,
who you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in Love,
Stay in Love,
and it will decide
EVERYTHING.

Happy Holidays to you, my gentle readers.

A Wonder of Artists

Our Cleveland Singers’ Club sponsors an annual competition for male college and beyond student singers...male classical student singers. Aspiring rock, country, hip hop, jazz, and folk singers need not apply, or so it seems.

These young men dream of careers in opera, oratorio, art song, early music, and such arcane musical forms as are hardly noticed by the media and merit only the barest mention at the Grammy’s. For years they work and study and practice and then practice some more. If they succeed they may earn a comfortable living. Only the most wildly successful make it big and strike it rich. They know that the odds are against them, that most of American society doesn’t care, and that few of their contemporaries have any idea at all about what they are pouring their souls into.

I heard two of our contestants sing last Sunday afternoon. They sweated out their few minutes before four judges and a handful of an audience, but were worked very hard to make it look easy. One of them was an African-American in his 40’s - twice as old as many of the others - who’d apparently just started his studies. I’d love to know what drove him to want to learn pieces by Handel and Ravel at this time in his life. Perhaps he walked away with a $1,500 prize; but whether he won anything yesterday or not, he also received the invaluable experience of having been heard and critiqued. It’s something these artists do countless times on their way to any sort of success at all. Their art is exacting and its standards are astronomical...yet still, few notice.

Why do they do it? The question is close me because one of our daughters is perfecting her craft in the world of classical music. It was one thing when she worked for and earned a bachelor’s in music education, but when she wanted to go on and get a master’s in vocal performance I really wondered about her sanity, even though I had no doubts about her gifts. She earned that degree, and is indeed doing what she loves to do...and working retail to help pay the bills. It’s the way of classical singers. Why do they do it?

Let me guess from the outside listening in: it’s because they have fallen in love. Someone, somehow got them to listen to - maybe even put before them - a piece of music and they fell in love with a rare beauty. The object of their love is the power, the intricacy, the diversity, and the passion of the most extended and complex of Western music’s expressions.

They might have had other infatuations on their way to finding their true love, and they might still eye and enjoy and even be good at other forms of music. But the reason they do what they do is that have given their hearts to that enormous body of classical music that has moved generations of listeners,and even today continues to inspire and challenge and bring joy to people around the world.

I applaud all young men and women who are pursuing careers in art forms that continue to celebrate and to shape our understanding of human nature and history, of how and why we are here and for what. They are among our greatest hopes for our future. They deserve our notice, our encouragement, our gratitude...and a decent living.

Home to Ghosts and Memories

We spent two nights in northern Wales last summer, staying at Galedffrwd Mill B&B near Bethesda. Our host told us about a long-abandoned graveyard near the crumbling foundation of a stone church, and we went to find it toward dusk of a gloomy day. The next morning we returned to take a few pictures, which in no way capture the eerie aura of the previous night's visit.

Bethesda is part of a huge slate quarrying area of Wales. Whole sides of mountains remain ripped and shredded as a result of once-thriving, now lost, industry.

Most of the markers in this cemetery appeared to us to be made of slate. They surely mark the resting places of tough quarrymen and their equally tough families. They seemed to be in as good a shape as they day they were cut and inscribed...lasting monuments to the people whose labor blasted and cut them from earth's grip.




If you want to remember me, make me a grave marker of slate, not granite. In the meantime, if you want to wonderful place to stay in a fascinating corner of the British Isles, book a room at Galedffrwd Mill B&B.

Happy Halloween!

Mid-October Pansy Honors All Late-Bloomers AGAIN

Last week I cut back the sprawling remains of a peony, and this delicate pansy - a leftover from two seasons past - smiled at me. During the summer I had felt sorry for the poor plant’s ungainly stems, no match for the summer’s extremes of heat and rain. It was a being that held no promise. For some reason I decided to let it be, and forgot about it. But on October 10 it stood up to surprise me.

Proof of life’s tenacity? Perhaps, but something more than basic cell survival is at work here. I saw the pansy’s blossoms as proof of beauty’s durability. In the face of adversity beauty, when graciously protected and not yanked from its soil too quickly, can remain...can even surprise us and bring a smile to our faces.

Degrees of Truth

Sunday the Plain Dealer ran a piece by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer in which he took off (as usual) against all things Obama. His last point described the Occupy Wall Street protesters as “Starbucks-sipping, Levi’s-clad, iPhone-clutching,” and as “indignant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees...” Obama’s crime is understanding their cause.

I can let all of Krauthammer’s searing charges against Occupy’s forces pass except the one about having “English degrees.” ’Tis the unkindest cut of all. Garrison Keillor will not take it lying down. I won’t either.

Why would a columnist who uses the English language to make his living speak disparagingly of English majors? Because he is one of that company of writers and talking heads who abuse the English language to make their points. That way they can make a living off readers who have little regard for language’s primary responsibility to represent truth--literally or figuratively or however truth can be represented.

For Krauthammer and his fawning readers the difference between truth and falsehood is of no consequence if what he writes confirms their mutual prejudices. He uses the English language as a blunt weapon to pummel his targets into submission. He cheapens English by using it carelessly, randomly, and oh-so-very cutely. A person with an English degree who has learned anything at all can spot his kind in a minute and call their bluff. They are called “elites,” though I personally know few English majors who are elite in a convincing manner. But of course, he doesn’t care about them because he’s got his readership, and he’s got editors who have little concern for truth in opinion pieces if it sells papers.

There is a vast difference between an article that reasonably presents cases for and against matters such as Occupy Wall Street and an article that pitches junk words and phrases into the wind and hopes they land on some “enemy” somewhere. English majors know that, which may be why they are protesting corporate excesses that attempt to masquerade as reasonable corporate profit.

The Plain Dealer’s Kevin O’Brien is a second-rate minion of Krauthammer. Rush Limbaugh presides as glorious leader of the pack from out in talk-radio land. Sadly, the left also has those who forge English into blunt weapons: Maureen Dowd for one; Michael Moore for another. 

Krauthammer claims “the real (?) Tea Party”, unlike Occupy Wall Street, has “a program--less government, less regulation, less taxation, less debt.” All together now, you indolent English majors, “Do those things, one-by-one or taken together, constitute a ‘program’?” Not in any sense of that word, no.

One last confession: my bachelor’s degree is in philosophy. No doubt there are plenty of us elite philosophers out there in the streets, too. Something about searching for an honest columnist, I suspect.

apo's'trophe's'

A paper sign posted deep inside Cleveland's University Hospital complex reads:

EMPLOYEE'S

ONLY

EMPLOYEE'S

ONLY

EMPLOYEE'S

ONLY

What behind that door could possibly be some poor employee's only...? I almost opened that door to see for myself.

Franzen's Freedom

Freedom

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is a pretty good book, by which I mean it’s not, in my estimation, a book deserving all the praise it garnered from Time. The writing is generally engaging, and the characters are sharply drawn and almost believable. I read the first hundred pages or so while we were visiting my sister-in-law this summer: it was on the nightstand of the room where we slept. Those opening pages captivated me sufficiently to make me want to get Freedom for myself, which I did by making it my first new-novel downloaded to my Nook. Very liberating.

Around page 300 I was ready to give up. The characters seemed sorry mixtures of cluelessness, heartlessness, carelessness, and overall hopelessness. Page upon page of self-centered stupidity...or is it stupid self-centeredness? Even the noble environmental ideals held by some of the characters didn’t seem likely to save them from themselves (and they didn’t).

Until Joey, around page 388, faces up to his own crap and deals with it. Literally. You have to read the book to know just how literally. From that point on Joey leads the procession toward the “salvation” of the others, whose lives turn around along with his. Freedom lurches forward toward happily ever-after conclusions for most of its main characters.

It is hard to imagine that the same people could be so bad for 380 pages and then so good after a couple of hundred more. No, their transformations are not easy, and redemption comes at a high cost for some. Facing our own crap is not pleasant, even when it’s figurative. But the main characters seem so ideal and idealized at the end that it’s hard to connect the people they have become to the people they once were. Such complete changes in people usually only happen in religiously motivated fiction, which I generally distrust.

Despite my qualifications, I recommend the book. It writes large the frantic search for authenticity many Americans are engaged in today. It may force some readers to check through their own crap, and come to terms with it. Frankly, it did that just a little bit for me. But not enough to make me ideal. Not yet, anyway. Not until I stop grasping for freedom.

Here are some quotes from Freedom I like and why:

“Richard, flummoxed, kept stepping outside to smoke cigarettes and fortify himself for the next round of Berglund fraughtness...” (p. 141 [Nook]) Franzen may have invented “fraughtness” - a great addition to the English language!

“There’s a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else’s work in the morning; it’s as if stillness experiences pain in being broken. The first minute of the workday reminds you of all the other minutes that a day consists of, and it’s never a good thing to think of minutes as individuals. Only after other minutes have joined the naked, lonely first minute does the day become more safely integrated in its dayness.” (144-145) “stillness experiences pain in being broken.” I remember the first sounds of my mother in our kitchen on Iowa mornings.

“The angry words he’d spoken to his father had felt pre-formed, as if there were an aggrieved second self inside him 24/7, ordinarily invisible but clearly fully sentient and ready to vent itself, at a moment’s notice, in the form of sentences independent of his volition. It made him wonder who his real self was; and this was very disturbing...” (252) Ah yes, I know the experience well. “Who am I really, that I could say such things? And who are you that I would say them to you?”

“The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.” (400) I think of the Tea Party; some of you probably think of “ultra-liberals.” We’re all on to something.

“At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart...” (478) Good place to stop, don’t you think?

WAIT! One more...

“Walter had never liked cats. They’d seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals’ lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs.” (491) Can’t think about that one too much either, lest my heart break for our world.

Thanks for reading.

Cleveland Heights on the Watch

If one wants to maintain a blog I expect it's important to post things fairly regularly. So on the assumption it's better to post anything that I think may be worth sharing rather than nothing at all, here's something of mine that's been hanging around for a while.

My wife comes home from church choir practice frustrated and fuming, not because of the singing (she loves it), but because of the ticket she has just received from a police officer lurking on a street that is dubbed residential, though it is only half so – you know, that stretch of Superior that separates Cain Park to its north from the houses to its south, and upon which Cleveland Heights balances its municipal budget with fines levied on unsuspecting motorists by posting a 25-mph speed limit and a hawk-eyed cop there: he who must never sleep, eat, make love, or gas up his cruiser is always there, ready to bring down folks whose heavy right feet, briefly lulled to carelessness by the seeming isolation of that stretch (particularly in winter), cost them hefty fines plus court costs – the street that makes that guy Cleveland Heights’ most valuable employee minus, of course, all the ill-will he collects.


How long has it been hanging around? I wrote it in February for a class in Creative Writing at Cuyahoga Community College (an excellent class, btw; and free for seniors). The assignment was to produce a 150-word single-sentence paragraph.


And why now? Because I am paying taxes to Cleveland Heights for the privilege of working there, and I want to share with you an even bigger source of municipal income.


How many of you east-siders have met this guardian of public safety? And does he also relentlessly patrol quiet streets in far-off locales?

Post 9/11 Post

Friends:

Between starting a new job and having to buy and set up a new computer, I have not posted anything for a couple of weeks. That could be fatal to a newly-hatched blog, but I hope not. And I hope you are still with me.

Today's post came to mind as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 neared, and I thought about posting it then. I am glad I did not do it because the day was marked by solemn and generally respectful remembrance of those whose lives were suddenly taken from us. I think it's better to post it now.

It is not new. It is from the concluding section of a sermon I preached on September 16, 2001, in which I struggled with the same questions everyone was struggling with in the tragedy's immediate aftermath. I remembered it in general, but when I went back to look at it I found myself asking to what extent my prayer suggestions had been realized, and whether things would be different now if they had been.

What do you think?

Every decision made or not made by President Bush and his advisors in the next few days and weeks will have overwhelmingly real world consequences.  The stakes are higher than perhaps they have been in my lifetime.  Christians will continue to pray for them.

• We pray that a way to a just, lasting and secure peace be found, recognizing that walking that way may prove tough and costly.
• We pray that our leaders be as honest and forthright as as they can possibly be, so that the distrust of democratic institutions initiated by Vietnam not be heightened.
• We pray that we not strike out at just any target, or even at pretty good targets, intending to show our strength and resolve, but in fact only showing our frustration.
• We pray for the protection and preservation of all people, from the least to the greatest.
• Obedient to Jesus, we pray for our persecutors.
• We pray that dissent and criticism be considered and respected, even if not all are accepted.
• We pray that every genuine sacrifice continue to be valued and appreciated.

Peace be with you.

More Than Jobs

            When asked about increasing taxes, conservatives spout a unison response: “That would be a job-killer.” They still believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that large sums of money in millionaires’ pockets and corporations’ vaults alone somehow morph into jobs as those millionaires and businesses purchase new equipment and hire new workers. Unfortunately for the present state of things, such is not the case. Millionaires prefer by buy luxuries and corporations prefer to reward their investors with dividends. Government jobs are being axed right and left, so even they are not available.

Can we assume, as our conservative compatriots do, that “it’s all about jobs”? We cannot. Jobs are vitally important for individuals and for the common good. But there’s more to life than work and more to the wellbeing of our nation than jobs for those who can work.

Americans know that. All Americans—those who have jobs and those who do not—want to breathe clean air, drink clean water, eat safe food and take safe medicine. We value good police and fire departments, expect well-regulated air traffic, and need first-rate highways. We love our national, state and local parks. Given the choice, Clevelanders would rather live next to a lake teaming with fish than one blooming with algae. And we certainly depend upon our military and its servicemen and women. Without governments funded by taxes, we’d have none of those. Even if we all had jobs, life would be brutal and short.

          Moreover, if the measure of all things is whether they produce jobs, where does that leave those who cannot work because of age (too young or too old), because of illness or disability, or because of any condition beyond human control? Or those who have made mistakes that leave them on the outside of job fairs looking in; will they be given any chance to turn their lives around? If all government budgetary and program efforts are narrowly focused on jobs alone, what of the large portions of our population whose work is to get an education or who need programs that can help them redirect their adult lives?

There’s more to life than a job. There’s more to the power of our nation than its workforce grinding out widgets. Even Americans sipping tea at their little party know that. I long to hear a conservative commentator or politician support anything for the common good other than cutting taxes.

Several months ago someone took out an ad which listed most—maybe all—of the taxes Americans pay. No reason was offered for publishing the list, but I can only assume its intention was provoke an “ain’t it awful” reaction. But the ad never told what those taxes pay for, what they buy for us who enjoy the highest standard of living the world has even known and who, compared to much of the rest of the world, bear a light tax burden. Do we want our fellow Americans who are poor to live at level of abject poverty found in much of the world? How well we all live together is a product of private enterprise and public policy, including equitable and fair taxation.

We need jobs; good paying jobs in good workplaces; jobs that produce useful products and offer useful services. But we need more than jobs alone if we are to remain the beacon nation celebrated by the Statue of Liberty. After all, the communist Soviet Union boasted full employment…but who’d want to go there from here?

Finders Keepers...or Not?

30-year-old Leah Kleppinger of Twinsburg, Ohio, found a wallet containing $4,700 in cash in a Bed, Bath, & Beyond shopping cart in the parking lot outside the store. It also continued information identifying its owner.

What would I have done?

She took it to the local police station, and told the Plain Dealer that “it is what God would have wanted her to do and that she was just being a good steward of it while it was in her possession.”

What would I have done?

The police lieutenant who helped her observed “There are still honest people in the world.” The “very happy” owner rewarded her, which she said was “completely unnecessary.”

What would I have done?

When the story was reported on the local TV news, reporter Ramona Robinson announced the results of a “text poll” the station had taken which asked, “What would you have done?” About 65% would NOT have returned it; 35% would have. Ramona looked shocked. Such polls are notoriously unreliable…but I have to wonder…

What would I have done?

And you?

Meditation on Elephants

Maxine and I took advantage of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo’s free “Senior Safari” last week to see the marvelous new “African Elephant Crossing” Exhibit. I imagined I was in Africa as I stood quietly watching one of the three female elephants (Moshi or Martika or Jo) break, strip, crunch, chew and swallow small branches of some delectable tree. I was amazed at the range of fine to large motor skills evident in her trunk, and by the ease with which she coordinated its movements with her tusks to get the job done. She was in no hurry, as if sharing a leisurely lunch in the company of her lady friends.

A couple of days later I picked up a copy of the September issue of the Metroparks’ program guide, the Emerald Necklace. I wasn’t too surprised to learn that an elephant’s trunk contains 100,000 muscles and ligaments, and can pick up something as small as a TicTac and also flip over a Volkswagen.

Then I was shocked by an additional statistic: “the [wild elephant] population has declined from 1.5 million to just 300,000 in only 20 years…about 100 elephants lost every day.” I don’t know how I’d feel about that stat if I were an African farmer whose crops were being destroyed by elephants, but I know how I feel about it as an affluent American worried about the future of our planet’s biodiversity. It’s depressing.

Zoos help us see amazing creatures such as elephants up close and personal, so that we might gain a sense of their unique and irreplaceable value, and perhaps take actions to help preserve their natural habitats so they can survive. Another stat from the same article: “There are 223 accredited zoos in North America, only 42 of which have African elephants.” I am proud of our Cleveland Zoo, and glad my taxes help support it.

I am also glad that Cleveland has a fourth elephant, 11-foot-tall, 13,000 pound Willie. Maybe in a couple of years we’ll be able to watch a baby elephant crossing our north coast slice of African savanna. It would be a blessed event, indeed!

summer's end

august 29
and summer's
on the line
(it's a sign)

Where Indeed?

Where are the liberal media when we most need them? President Obama vacations in a rented cottage for 10 days and the talking heads go on a feeding frenzy. Presidential candidate Romney plans to bulldoze his measly 3,009-square-foot vacation home in La Jolla, CA to replace it with an 11,062-square-foot cottage, and hardly a peep. Maybe I don't consume enough of the extreme rhetorical diets offered by either the right of the left, so I am out of touch.

Isn't this a great opportunity to press the "tax the rich" issue? Or is Romney excused because he's a Republican and such things are expected of Republicans? Did he at least think about saying, "Honey, let's put that new place on the ocean on hold until after the election? It just doesn't LOOK good given the economy most Americans are living in?"

Meanwhile, the Obamas had to leave early to go to another home they don't own to escape Hurricane Irene. Doesn't seem fair to me, but I imagine Pat Buchanan can explain it.

Obsolete? Never!

 My half-century old monaural (what was that?) LP recording of Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition contains a notice at the base of the back of the album cover that many Columbia records of the time carried: “This Columbia High Fidelity recording is scientifically (love that word!) designed to play with the highest quality  of reproduction on the phonograph of your choice, old or new. If you are the owner of a new stereophonic system, this record will play with even more brilliant true-to-life fidelity. In short, you can purchase this record with no fear of its becoming obsolete in the future.”

Ignoring the imponderable “When might it become obsolete if not ‘in the future’?” I wonder what company today might promise any product would never become obsolete? Or want to do so? Who’d buy stock in a firm that produced items that would never become obsolete?

One thing not obsolete to my ears: Bernstein’s performance with the NYPhil!

Welcome!

 Welcome!

"Welcome" in this case goes in more than one direction: I welcome you, and I welcome the new experience of writing/managing a blog, and I invite you to welcome me. Since I have no idea who might read this, and you may well have no idea who I am, and since I've never done this before, we all have something to learn together. So, welcome to all of it/all of you.

What is this blog about, and what is it for? We will have to see. I've been writing some stuff I do not know what to do with ("with which I do now know what to do"?). Editors and other gate-keepers of the print media thoroughly frustrate a guy who has been used to making his own decisions about what to say when and to whom. So I will try this for a time, and if you will try it with me we will see what comes of it.

My blog's title is pretentious, to say the least. I kept trying something simpler and more human, but my imagination ran out in the face of all that were already taken. So I plugged in "Coeli et Terra" and it was available. Wonder of wonders! It's Latin for "heaven/sky and earth." Say it all together: "That's really pretentious!" All it means here is that I will post whatever comes to mind about whatever interests me at the moment. But I am not smart enough to cover the whole known and unknown universe. Maybe you are. Let's do it together. Now I wonder what will happen when I hit "publish post..."

Welcome!