Grieving John McCain

I keep trying to wrap my head around the way many are reacting to John McCain's death.

Apparently today's far right is not willing to grieve for him at all, which underlies President Trump's flagpole insecurity. I guess the less-far right is willing to grieve for him a bit since he is a military hero and supported most of our military endeavors, as well as for other reasons.

From the other side of the aisle (as they say) the left is, as usual, torn asunder. Far, far leftists see no good in him ("war-monger," and the like). I am offended by the vitriol. Others on the left give him credit for his integrity, even when they disagreed with him.

Given our current cultural divides, none of this is surprising. Disappointing, but not surprising. We can and will politicize anything for our own purposes.

What really mystifies me is the near deification of McCain by progressives I know. It is as if they've forgotten they disagreed with him on many things because they thought he was simply wrong about them. Where is this coming from?

I fear it is John McCain's opposition to President Trump that is driving the hyperbole from progressives about him. McCain articulated a clear and principled challenge to Trump, for which he is to be honored. But to remember him with unqualified approval because of that one, admittedly important, quality mystifies me.

It is very hard to remember clearly people we've known at the time of their deaths. Our grief blocks our objectivity. I know this because I've winced at many a funeral, and likely have caused wincing in others by what I've said about the deceased.

John McCain was a man to be admired and honored for many reasons, not the least of which being that he was a man who served our country to the very best of his ability. I honor him for who he was. But I didn't vote for him.

Being a true leader John McCain could not serve everyone's interests just the way they thought they ought to be served. To truly honor him we have to come to that elusive place we call "the center" where no political stand is beyond questioning. Not enough of us are willing to go there these days.

Sneezing and Smoke

Hard-core climate change deniers must be working overtime to protect their positions in the face of the daily and abundant evidence that the predictions of climate scientists about what a changed climate will look like are coming true.

Today’s Plain Dealer reports that the date of the onset of the ragweed allergy season is advancing. We will be sneezing longer. If we lived in California, sneezing would be the least of our breathing problems. The fire season is starting earlier, lasting longer, and being more devastating. Fire and smoke are more dangerous to most folks than is pollen.

Last week I read a 2016 report called “The Rockefeller Family Fund Takes on ExxonMobil.” (Let not the irony escape us!) It is part of the Fund’s explanation of why it is divesting in the fossil fuel industry. It details how ExxonMobil has marshaled and focused its resources to influence public opinion and political players into believing that if climate change is taking place, it’s not that bad, and in any case human activity is not responsible for it.  It compares ExxonMobil’s activities to the long-successful attempts by the tobacco industry to deny the adverse effects of smoking on health.

In both cases, the deliberate confusion caused by corporations’ manipulation and denial of scientific data means death to many. Deaths by smoking will look nothing compared to what deaths by unmitigated climate change may well look like.

One of the arguments deniers mount against the massive evidence for human-caused climate change is that it is the result of a conspiracy on the part of climate scientists. One can hardly imagine tens of thousands of scientists working on every continent pulling off such a hoax. If you think it would be easy to organize such an effort, you don’t know science and you don’t know scientists.

Which is, of course, my point.

It is a major tragedy in the making that our federal government is pulling back from even the modest advances we’ve made so far in the fight against climate change. Of course, denial of science (and of truth in general) is not new to these people. How long will the American public let them determine humanity’s future?

"Ideas of value always shun verbosity"

“When the door of the steam bath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escalates through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less that the mother of the wisest thoughts.”

Those are the words of Diadochus of Photiki, one of the Church’s “Desert Fathers” of the fourth and fifth centuries, CE. Henri Nouwen quotes them in his little book, “The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry” (1981).

I recently came upon them and was startled to read them. Nouwen was concerned about the over-abundance of words in his world…in 1981! It is difficult to fathom his level of concern if he were alive in today.

As a retired preacher and amateur writer/author, words are my business. So I am mightily tempted to comment upon Diadochus, which would no doubt do little more than demonstrate that I had missed his point.