Faith or Good Works?

If you hold "right" beliefs, are you justified in doing "wrong" things?  I suppose that St. Paul or Martin Luther would judge the question to be nonsensical, since, for them, right belief must necessarily lead to right action.  But that is fallacious reasoning, isn't it? (I.e., since I think right, I necessarily "do" right:  I believe that Jesus is my savior, therefore I am justified in killing my neighbor, who does NOT believe as I do.)  Such a subjective, hermetic, tautological philosophical system allows the person doing the behaving to himself determine the criterion for "correct behavior."  Right you are if you think you are.

That's all very convenient for people who like to feel good about themselves and hate people who are different. Or who want to justify behavior that the "hated" people might consider unacceptable.  But isn't there some kind of external, objective criterion which ALL humans can accept as a valid measurement of moral conduct? A justification of our worth as human beings?

Since no one agrees about metaphysics, that objective criterion could scarcely be FAITH--i.e., the "holy" doctrines of any religion, the "holy" book of any established religion, the "holy" leader of any religion, .

Obviously, too, GOOD WORKS, at least as defined by any of our thousands of subjective legal systems and social contracts, could not provide an adequately universal guide for conduct.

So what objectively justifies me, explains me, guides me, makes me OK?

No, Paul and Martin, I'm quite sure that a "just man" cannot live by "faith alone."  I understand how rotten you both felt about yourselves and how this neat formula relieved you of your anxiety about not being sufficiently good.  But it's a lie at worst, self-deception at best.  I have no idea whether God somehow decided to sacrifice himself to himself in order to pay himself for the debt that he himself was charging you for the shortcomings he himself had identified. But, at the end of your lives, AS FAR AS OTHER HUMANS WERE CONCERNED, you were still exactly what you DID during your lives, regardless of what or who you believed in.  Paul, you were a crabby, arrogant, self-involved man whose obsession with "saving yourself" from your self-hatred resulted in the creation of a whole new mystery religion:  Christianity--and in the seductively anesthesizing doctrine of a man-god Christ who resembles Osiris more than he does the historical Jesus of Nazareth.  Martin, you were a crabby, arrogant, self-involved man whose obsession with "saving yourself" from your self-hatred resulted in the RE-creation of this facile Pauline Christianity--and in the perverse notion that anybody who "believed" in this Christ/Osiris was himself a "priest" and could just decide for himself what was right or wrong.

As much as I am drawn to the mystery cult of Christianity--and as fascinated as I am by mysticism in general-- I don't want to let the "faith folks" get away with such an unverifiable and thus irresponsible conflation of subjective feeling with objective truth. We are not defined by what we believe in or by the "self" that we imagine/wish ourselves to be:  we are what we DO.  And until we die, we can create our true "selves" by doing things. Death, however, fixes us forever, and we remain, in the judgment of this world at least, the sum of our acts.  (Any other subjective criterion--some "uber standard" that might prevail in some other world, some other unknowable plane of existence--in heaven or in hell or in limbo or in hades or in neverland--that "reality" is not, cannot be, evident--and therefore relevant--to ALL humans.)  So I cannot escape (nor do I want to) the conclusion that our WORKS matter more than our FAITH.  Works, at least, are verifiable.

In short, I am confident that, in spite of the book of Romans, in spite of St. Paul and Martin Luther (not to mention Mohammed, St. Augustine, Savanarola, Jim Jones and Peter Pan),  the truly "just" and justified shall live--not by faith, which is subjective, self-serving and self-validating--but rather by GOOD WORKS.

Alas, what still escapes me is any certitude about what constitutes GOOD works. I understand the importance of action.  Works, as I said, are verifiable and objective.  But GOOD action?  The Good?  The Good?  Shoot, philosophers have been yammering about that for millennia--and herein an element of relativism remains.  I'm tempted to yield to the Golden Rule--which seems pretty universal--but even that, in its reliance upon the elusive "as you would have others do unto you," is a rather slippery slope. If I were a praying man (and, occasionally, I still am), I would pray to God to "Show me the Good."

Do you think I'd have more luck if I asked him to Show me the Money?

We Was Robbed

The Tea Partiers are, indeed, a mixed "bag," aren't they? They seem to feel that their country has been stolen from them, that Barack Obama and his criminal ilk have forced their way into America the Beautiful and pillaged, plundered and perverted all that was once so special about our country.

What, exactly, do the Tea Partiers want "back"?  Well, they don't all agree, of course, but from listening to talk radio and Fox "News," I conclude that most of these angry folks yearn for the restoration (at gun point if necessary) of a sort of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" world in which...

--all visible people (especially presidents) were white;  inferior races remained invisible and/or in the kitchen or barn where they belonged;
--all women were housewives, all men were wage-earners, all children mowed lawns;
--all good citizens were expected to attend a church, preferably of Baptist or Methodist denomination;
--milk was delivered in quart bottles to front doorsteps;
--Catholics knew their place and mumbled their Latin gibberish in private;
--Jews named Goldfarb changed their name to Blondcheveu and exchanged Christmas presents;
--Spring Break was called by its correct name:  Easter Vacation;
--all men belonged to one of three respectable organizations:  the Masons, the Knights of Columbus, the Ku Klux Klan;
--Negroes and other Coloreds were segregated from real Americans; poll taxes and literacy tests kept those of dubious ethnicity from perverting the electoral process;
--males who had sex with other males were arrested and incarcerated;
--lesbians did not exist--or if they did, they were dumpy elementary school teachers who wore sensible shoes;
--women could be secretaries but not executives or doctors or clergyMEN;
--slutty teenage girls who allowed themselves to get pregnant would just have to have the baby--giving it up for adoption, perhaps--but not to homosexuals or other sexual deviants;
--everyone could have as many guns as he/she wanted, concealed or unconcealed;
--all males had the obligatory privilege of serving for two years in the army, fighting for freedom against any country deemed to be an enemy by the (white) president;
--doctors would accept chickens as payment for treatment; there was no need for medical insurance;
--everybody lived in little towns with  a Main Street lined by businesses named Woolworth's or Duane's Grocery or Del's Diner;
--no Protestant clergymen drank alcohol; however, owing to the vagueness of both their theology and their character, Episcopalian priests were allowed sherry and claret--and Catholic priests, since they couldn't have sex, were patronizingly forgiven for hitting the bottle heavily;
--Catholic priests did not have sex;
--there was no global warming and you didn't need to worry about your carbon footprint;
--there was no welfare for lazy people; if you didn't have a job, you contacted the nearest church and its Ladies Aid sent you a basket of  windfall apples and canned Pork and Beans;
--you could burn leaves in your back yard if you felt like it;
--no nanny state would try to take away your inalienable right to smoke in bars and restaurants;
--you did not have to press (or dial) 1 for English;
--teachers didn't expect to make a living wage;
--children were encouraged to bully and ostracize other kids who were "different";
--young men became boy scouts, not drug dealers;
--all football players wore jock straps (known as athletic supporters);
--all women wore girdles and held up their stockings with garters;
--cheerleaders were the most popular girls in school, not athletes; they had jiggly boobs and dated football players who wore jockstraps;
--women's swimsuits had little "modesty panels" to hide the crotch (see photo above);
--The Girl Scouts of America had not yet become a lesbian conspiracy;
--the government and the FBI labored diligently to destroy the lives of anyone suspected of socialism and/or (if male) wearing a dress to a drag party attended by J. Edgar Hoover (also wearing a dress);
--husbands and wives slept in the same room, but always in separate beds;
--no one believed in atheism;
--no one visited France;
--no one wasted time on vacations;
--no one masturbated!

Well, this list is growing long, and I'm getting hungry.  I have some leftover casserole in the fridge, but I'm afraid the Tea Partiers wouldn't approve of its foreign, socialist ingredients. It's rigatoni topped with gruyère cheese. (Please don't tell.  I'm too old to survive either deportation or an internment camp.)

Looney Tunes (Pensées from Facebook)

 People's willingness to believe a lie is directly proportional to the outrageousness of the claim. The more improbable it is, the more willing they are to believe.

Now about swimwear and human illogic: men have little to cover, so naturally, they swathe themselves in yards of gaudily patterned fabric. Women, on the other hand, have more to conceal, so just as inevitably, they strive to cover as little of it as possible with the absolute "bare" minimum of material. This defiance of nature is what humans call "fashion."

While we're celebrating our independence, it might not hurt to remember how much we owe Evil Olde England: language, law, political and economic systems--and, perhaps rather less fortunately, ... "culinary" conventions. God Bless America, by all means--but God Save the Queen, too.

Most people will vote for a politician who persuades them that the best solution to every problem is to spend no money, take no action and just let "nature take its course."

Youth: acquiring certainties; middle age: acquiring property; old age: letting go of both.

Why on earth would the dish run away with the SPOON?  If I were a dish, I'd have nothing to do with any kitchenware less well-endowed than a 12" saucier.

Pure democracy is mob rule. Everyone has to become a rhinoceros. No thanks. Let's keep both the 1st and the 14th Amendments.

Alphas=bold but devious liars; Betas=cautious liars; Gammas=fibbers; Deltas & Epsilons= believers. Not pretty is it?

History Channel says that there's an "underwater alien base" in the Bermuda Triangle. This is "history" in the same sense that Fox Channel is "news."

We're told that death and taxes are inevitable. So why are the Tea Partiers protesting only taxes? Shouldn't they be blaming big government for death also?

Conservatives are firm believers in nothing:  spend nothing, do nothing, know nothing.

So, lemme get this straight. The Mayas, who never figured out how to use either the wheel or the true arch, DID somehow figure out when the world was gonna end? Remind me again: what's the name of that bridge in New York that's for sale?

All insinuendo should be refudiated.

Who is the slutty televangelist with big pink hair? She keeps wailing "Jeesuss Jeesuss," Is she praying or has she just broken a nail?

The only way to be happy is to live in perpetual illusion--or stupidity--or denial. The world is flat; Blue Shield cares; Godot is coming.

What is so holy about "saving" money. If God had meant for us to keep our money in the bank, he would not have sent us those credit cards in the mail. Whee!

To brag that one is "severely" conservative is as amusingly redundant as to state that one has received a "hot" water heater as a "free" gift.

What? There are probably a billion billion earth-like planets??? Now that's humbling. Makes me a little less worried about Glenn Beck.

People who have involuntarily lost their reason are insane. People who have voluntarily lost their reason are Tea Party Republicans.

All of my petunias have died, and I'm too poor to replace them. Alas, I am, once again, "impetunious."

Star-Spangled Church of America

"Excommunication":  an act of official censure severing an individual from a religious community and depriving him/her of the spiritual blessings of membership in such a body.


"Interdict":  an ecclesiastical penalty whereby the population of an entire country is suspended from membership in and denied the services of the established religion (essentially, excommunication of  a group rather than of individuals).


The "(No) Establishment Clause" of the First Amendment:  Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  


I've just been re-reading an old favorite:  Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.  Asimov is not a great writer--he's not interested in literary nuance--but he's a damned good story-teller.  And I enjoy his "psycho-historical" analysis of the seemingly inexorable forces underlying and propelling human evolution.


Early on in the Trilogy, Asimov's storyline involves the deliberate creation of a bogus religion whose priests are the only individuals having the power to produce and distribute atomic power on the four or five planets ruled by the Foundation. 


Thoroughly inculcated in this religion, the vast majority of the priest-technicians themselves believe unquestioningly in the Galactic Spirit, the Holy Food, the Space Demon, etc. They therefore accomplish their liturgical duties (maintaining atomic power plants) devoutly and meticulously, but without any deep understanding of the actual science involved. Only the high-ranking members of the Foundation--including the High Priest himself--are aware that the entire ecclesiastical edifice is nothing but an ingenious hoax, intended only to maintain control over the "faithful" inhabitants of the worlds dominated by the Foundation.


In the novel, this "government by religion" functions very well, for a very long time.  Indeed, at one point, in order to force rebellious Anacreon into complying with Foundation policy, the High Priest places the entire planet under interdict. And at the stroke of noon, all lights flicker off on the iniquitous planet.  Because, as Asimov drily notes, a religion grounded in physics (rather than metaphysics) actually works.


In 1208, Pope Innocent III--in a nasty mood about King John's refusal to appoint Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury--imposed a similar interdict on all of England.  Innocent, of course, did not actually control the power plants (or, should I say, the windmills) of England, but as the outcome of this confrontation proves, ACTUAL, physical power--in THIS WORLD-- is not necessary, provided control over human imagination about the NEXT WORLD is strong enough.  Thus, the king's barons and subjects, fearing that the loss of "holy food" would condemn them to hell in the afterlife, exerted enough pressure to oblige the sovereign himself to submit, albeit grudgingly, to the pope's will.


In European history, that episode may have been the high water mark for confrontations between religious and temporal powers. In any event, the religious authorities soon thereafter began to understand that conflict with civil authorities was really rather inefficiently messy and that their "spiritual" interests could generally be advanced more bountifully by ALLIANCE with their erstwhile adversaries.


How did this work? Simple.  By "Establishment" and "Establishment Clauses."  I.e., the CEOs and practitioners of a particular religion simply cajoled and fulminated to get a ruler to "establish" their doctrines as the official cult of the state.  This was relatively easy to do when the kings themselves took seriously a threat of excommunication (i.e., no holy food and hence no salvation).  Pope Gregory IX's famous confrontation with Emperor Frederick II is a good example of such religious intimidation.  And so, in the early days, the church may have been the senior partner in these establishment covenants.  But rapidly, the kings girded their loins--this was never a lovey-dovey alliance, after all--and then, the two "establishments" moved forward, expanding their mutual control over a) the physical (external) landscape of conquered lands and b) the psychological (internal) landscape of conquered peoples.


But to what end, you might ask?  It's clear why the temporal leaders wanted to extend their influence:  power means wealth and wealth means...well, more power--dominion, superiority, self-gratification.  Why, though, would the supposedly disinterested (nowadays we might say "non-profit") religious authorities seek to extend their influence?  The conventional answer, of course, is "to ensure salvation to those not yet saved:  'holy food' for more people." A verbal sop to the theoretical altruism of organized religion.


But I think that empirical evidence permits us to doubt that most religious establishments desired outcomes much more altruistic than those sought by their temporal brethren.  The churches, too, wanted land, wealth, dominion, superiority, self-gratification in the HERE AND NOW.  In short, they, too, wanted political power.


And so, conflicts sometimes arose between the two allies, since, in fact, they were BOTH after the same thing:  wealth, power, dominion (i.e., "profit").  And, very occasionally, such conflicts provoked an actual breakup of one alliance and its replacement with another:  we inevitably think of Henry VIII ("Defender of the Faith") and his new covenant with the conveniently-concocted Church of England.


But, in general, as the spiritual powers became less sincerely spiritual and ever more avid for real-world privilege and security, they grew increasingly willing to operate as the ostensible "junior" partners in the enterprise--always present, always pulling strings, but in the background--the eminences grises behind the throne--thereby ensuring that they still received a good chunk of the pie, but at a significantly lesser cost. Cool! The kings and princes had to pay for everything!  


And so, for centuries, "Christendom" was rent by wars that were essentially political in nature, but that were justified and sanctified by established religions.   The last of these--the Thirty Years' War--destroyed so many lives and devastated so much territory that, at its end, most of central Europe lay prostrate.


I suspect that it is the horror of that war, together with the inconclusive bloodletting of the English Civil War (again, a combination religious/political conflict), that led many Enlightenment thinkers to denounce ALL alliances (overt, covert, whatever) between political institutions and religious institutions.  Might such a revulsion have prompted Thomas Jefferson to ponder the advice of Voltaire to crush the "infamy" of established religion?


Unlike Glenn Beck, I cannot pretend to understand exactly what was in the minds of our Founding Fathers.  But one fact is very clear:  for whatever reason, the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights DID decide to FORBID any alliance between religion and government! Obviously, they feared the possible consequences of a partnership between civil and religious authorities.


In theory, then, since the United States has no established religion, there is NO religious Grand Pooh-Bah who can dictate or share in temporal law-making.  No high-priest or pope or archbishop or ayatollah has the authority to declare our people, our president or our leaders "outlaws" and "unAmerican" by imposing some sort of excommunication or interdict. No one has the constitutional right to switch off our lights.


In theory.


In actual practice, though, I wonder.  I think there's dirty work afoot, and I'm going to try to get to the bottom of it.  That means scraping the very depths of the politico-religious barrel, of course--and it's there that we dredge up the icky remains of that rottenest of rotten apples, Richard Nixon.  


You've heard of him.  He's the self-declared non-crook who dreamed up the Republicans' "Southern Strategy" and managed, by incorporating both explicit and implicit racism into the Republican "ideology," to convert the majority of southern whites from Dixiecratism to Republicanism. Though Nixon's principal strategist, Kevin Phillips, might disagree with me, I'm persuaded that Tricky Dicky also realized that the Republican Party, in order to reinforce its dominion in the South, would have to ALLY itself with the fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity that so often justified such Bible-based racism (not to mention homophobia, antisemitism and anti-feminism).


Thus, Nixon--and his Republican successors--Ronald Reagan, certainly--but most notably, the two Bushes--by pandering to fundamentalists and by ALLYING the temporal power with the religious power of evangelical divines (e.g., Billy Graham)--these latter-day Defenders of the Faith managed to perpetrate an incredible boondoggle on the American people.  Devoutly distracting us with Sunday-School soporifics and patriotic sanctimoniousness, they simply circumvented the First Amendment's No-Establishment Clause.  They just ignored it!  And thereby, in effect, they established a state religion!!!!  The Star-Spangled Church of America!


Oh, I know that the actual wording the Constitution was not altered a tittle. I suppose that's the "beauty" of the scheme. But a constitution is what common consensus (and five judges) say it is. It is a society's "default setting." And alas, as I write this, I believe--I truly do--that thanks to the machinations of the Republicans' cynical strategists, the United States now has a de facto official religion:  fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity.  It's become our default setting, our ESTABLISHED church.


In a sense, then, contemporary Americans CAN be excommunicated (declared ungodly and hence unAmerican), even entire regions can be interdicted (e.g., wicked San Francisco) by the religious authorities and, accordingly, punished by the civil authorities for--well--impiety! Of course, the religious justification, like the Established Church itself, is de facto, shrewdly hidden beneath a veneer of insipid, star-spangled de jure language.   

Evidence to support my claim is not lacking.  Gay couples usually can't get married--because the established religion forbids it (*in June 2015, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all states--but most southern states continue to impede full compliance); Muslims are told they can't build mosques where they wish--because the established religion forbids it; embryonic stem cells cannot be used for scientific research--because the established religion forbids it; Muslim immigrants are harassed and demeaned--because the established religion encourages it; the Pledge of Allegiance requires school children to acknowledge God--because the established religion demands it.  Oh, it's too depressing to go on.


I realize, of course, that the Church of America has not yet fully accomplished what appears to be its ultimate, albeit inchoate, goal:  the de jure overthrow of the First Amendment.  Holdouts exist, fortunately, and continue to give some hope to leftover Jeffersonians.  First-term abortion remains, tenuously, legal--despite the opposition of the C of A.  A few states obstinately allow same-sex marriage and/or forbid capital punishment--despite the opposition of the C of A. (*same-sex marriage is legal as of 2015, by Supreme Court decree, not legislation)


But WHY (in GOD'S NAME) have we ordinary, freedom-loving Americans tolerated this all-too-obvious sabotaging of the First Amendment?  Do we really wish to return to the "good" old days of the Crusades, the Muslim Conquests, the Spanish Reconquista, the Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War? Any decent historian will acknowledge that the alliance of religious authority with political authority has almost always been a means of restricting the authority and autonomy of individual human beings.  

For instance, what if some self-proclaimed High Priest of the Church of America works himself into a veritable old-testament snit about America's supposed abominations (the usual perversions plus, perhaps, gluttony and gambling) and proceeds to place the whole damned country under interdict?  


Will the lights go off in Las Vegas? 


Oh, it DOES seem far-fetched, doesn't it?  Perhaps it's time to stop worrying and be happy.  Tomorrow IS another day, after all.  And tonight, I could go and get myself supersized at MacDonald's.  


With holy food.

Belly Fat

I have a secret to confess:  I sometimes can't resist watching programs on the religious channels--EWTN (Catholic) and TBN (Evangelical).

Why do I do this?  Because I am both horrified and fascinated by the madness that these mountebanks fabricate, dispense and, most astonishing of all, manage to "sell" (both literally and figuratively) to the credulous salvation-seekers of the world.

And there's some real catharsis (or, perhaps, kenosis) involved, too.  Watching one of these shows is what I call a "sauna" experience.  After an hour spent with Kenneth Copeland, for example, in his TBN sweatbox, I am prostrate, limp, withered up--completely emptied of all pride in human reason, all delight in human creativity, all optimism about human thought--what Bertrand Russell once called (silly git) the "chief glory of man."

Nothing, nothing, nothing to hang on to.  All just dehumanizing and dehydrating theological twaddle. And so embarrassing. Makes me want to jump into a cold river and not come out.

But still I subject myself to these sauna ordeals--because, as I said before, I am masochistically curious--and also because, after I emerge from the intellectual flogging, I find that very few other lunatics (Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter) have much effect on me. Like the moron who hit himself on the head with a hammer because it felt so good when he stopped. Thanks to the pain, I seem to acquire (at least temporarily) a kind of immunity to inanity.

So, let me tell you about today's metaphysical flagellation.  Rev. Copeland (who cain't pronounce "can't") was denouncing the moral and spiritual depravity which has descended, like a great plague, upon America and which has resulted--the wages of sin--in a national affliction (verily, verily of absolutely Biblical proportions) of...excessive belly fat.

Belly fat.  Yes, friends, there it is!  Did you know that fully 60% of all Americans have too much belly fat?  Gospel truth. And this fat is the direct result of perverted eating which, in turn, is the sinful behavior engendered by a nonexistent or improper relationship with Jesus Christ.  Don't you see?

It's really very simple.  Get right with Jesus and the fat will melt away!

That, at least, was the implication of the little presentation made by Rev. Copeland's bespectacled guest, a certain Dr. Don Colbert, author of a number of books, all apparently ghost-written by Jesus himself, and all entitled The Bible Cure for Something or Other (fill in the blank:  Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Yeast Infections, etc.).  Today, Dr. Don was holding forth about The Bible Cure for Weight Loss and Muscle Gain.  

Though at first I was puzzled about why, exactly, "weight loss" needed to be cured, I soon realized that what the good doctor really meant was something like this:  "how to use Holy Scriptures in order to lose weight."

Of course, there was also an actual "diet" involved (i.e., lettuce, bran flakes, cottage cheese--nothing particularly unusual).  But, asserted the doctor, none of these conventional cures for belly fat would actually "work" unless the dieter had devoutly read the scriptures and, ipso facto / sine qua non, been born again into a right relationship with Jesus.

Positively ingenious scheme, Dr. Colbert!!!!  The would-be dieter buys your book (you win); then, he tries out the diet and either--a) it works (you win and so does he), or b) it doesn't work (his belly fat persists--but, and this is the best part, YOU STILL WIN.  Because the dieter's failure has nothing to do with you or with the diet--rather, the fault lies with the dieter himself--and, most especially, with the inadequacy of his spiritual development.)


This, then, appears to be the Belly Fat Doctrine:  the fatter you are, the more wicked you are.  Jesus loves thin people.  Satan rules the fatties.  So I guess Wallis Simpson had it right (albeit backwards).  You can never be too thin or (I'm sure Rev. Copeland and Dr. Colbert would agree) too rich!

P.S.  But what about the Rev. John Hagee?  Or the Rev. Rick Warren?  Aren't they both a little on the chubby side?  Just asking...

Matres et Patres

Last night, I had a dream about Alex Kroff,  my major professor when I was a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin.  He was, officially, the director of my Ph.D. thesis--the thesis that for several years I pretended (and even partially believed) I was writing.  I suspect that Alex knew, better than I, that Ken Kirkeby was not cut out to be either a scholar or a denizen of Academe.  But he never said anything.  He never got in my face about my lack of enthusiasm for second or third-rate nineteenth century French plays.  He never insisted (not, at least, very seriously) upon seeing concrete results of my supposed research.

OK.  It's true that Alex was a bit of a dilettante himself--believing, I have no doubt, that sophisticated eating mattered more in the "great scheme of things" than did pretentious or trendy thinking (he was a stickler for proper footnotes, though).  Still, I'm pretty sure that because he cared for me as a person, he was willing to cut me some slack as a student.  He trusted me to work though my own identity crisis, without any gratuitous needling or nagging on his part.

I loved him for that.  And I still feel a bit guilty that, somehow, I didn't turn out as he would probably have preferred.  In the fullness of time, I muddled through and did the best I could.  But perhaps my lingering awareness of the "road not taken" accounts for why I so frequently dream about Alex, just as I do about my mother, father and grandparents (all of whom I disappointed in some way or another).

"Uncle" Alex died unexpectedly in 1976, not coincidentally the year I definitively abandoned all doctoral pretensions.  Late that summer, at the absolute nadir of my life, I left the University of Wisconsin pour de bon  and moved, with neither money in pocket nor objective in mind, to Washington, D.C.  But on my last day in Madison, as I piled my pathetic belongings into the old Dodge Dart that my parents had given me, I still couldn't resist jamming into the trunk--behind the worn spare tire--a small box containing ALL of the "research" I had completed in eight full years of fraudulent travail. It was a very modest parcel indeed.

Guess what? I didn't throw out that box until twenty years later, just after I had made a commitment to teach English (not French) for the remaining ten years of my career.  Try to figure that one out.

Do I have regrets about all of this?  Yes, of course.  I cannot really be proud of the time I wasted and the love I squandered in my abortive attempt to avoid the truth about my nature, viz., that I am  not an intellectual and that I have no aptitude whatsoever for the mental discipline and systematic thinking (or nitpicking) of Academe.

But I am smart.  And as a result of my "lost" decade, I learned a number of things, the most pertinent of which--for the theme of this blog--is the vital, immeasurable, incomparable worth of TEACHERS.  The loss of Alex stunned me and the depth of my reaction to his death obliged me to examine my own life.  After all, I had often sought to avoid my major professor, indeed all professors--hoping thereby to evade my own sense of failure as a student.  But Alex's sudden departure, more than anything, made me acknowledge, with deep emotion, the great affection that I felt--not just for A.Y. Kroff--but indeed for every teacher I had ever had.

Teachers.  From the very beginning, I had always loved school (if not always my schoolmates).  In many ways, the classroom was more home than home. Alma mater.  And teachers, even the weak ones (including those, like Joe Rivers, whom I tormented), were truly my foster parents.  Almi patres (?)  Thanks to Alex--and, in particular, as a result of his precipitous and wrenching departure from my life, I realized that--though I would probably never be a biological father, I COULD be the next best thing:  an almus pater, a "nurturing father," a teacher.  That was the central "turn around moment" of my life.  I woke up and was born again. Hallelujah, amen.

Recently, many years after my personal Great Awakening, I was moved by a writer to the local paper whose letter paid tribute to the teachers who had formed him. Quoting Hippocrates, he affirmed what many of us feel:  the Mrs. Brundgardts, Miss Engs, Mr. Bianchis, Mrs. Kalmeses, Mrs. Peterses, Mr. Livingstons, Mr. Glausers, Mrs. Knops, Mr. Kroffs--these teachers have also been our parents, and in consequence, we owe them an enormous debt.  Here's what Hippocrates wrote:

"I swear... to hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture."

Well, I don't imagine many of my former students will soon be sharing their wealth with me. Nor would I expect it.  But I'm happy that I finally realized what I could be good at.  I couldn't be a scholar, like Alex.  But I could be a good teacher--also like Alex.

I miss you, Alex Yale Kroff. Though I don't even have a picture of you, you were my almus pater. And a model for what, I hope, I too became.  Où que tu sois, même si tu ne vis plus que dans mes rêves, je t'embrasse bien fort et bien affectueusement.  Merci mon très cher père.


P.S.  Please excuse any Latin expressions that I may have mangled in this post.  I loved my high school Latin class because reading about Caesar's Gallic Wars appealed to my incipient Francophilia.  I also thought togas and vomitoria were pretty cool.  But I never bothered to learn very much of the actual language.   

Bats in the Belfry

More and more I realize just how fragile--and unreliable--is human reason, my own included.

Is anything true?

I know that I have two trees in the yard--one a maple, the other a Japanese crab.  But what good is knowing THAT?

I don't know how to fix the economy, how to bring peace to Afghanistan, how to stop global warming.

Did Paul ignore the historical Jesus and fabricate Christianity out of his own mystery-cult-obsessed imagination?

Did Allah speak to Mohammed and through him dictate the Koran?

Should adulterers be stoned?  If a woman tries to defend her husband by poking another man in the balls, should she have her hand cut off (Deuteronomy 25)?

Would lowering taxes make big corporations employ more people?

Is affordable health care a "right" for everyone or merely a privilege for those who are more important in society?

Freedom.  Freedom.  Freedom.

I don't know what "freedom" means.  I worry that it has become a loaded word, full of emotion but detached from any definite referent in the real world.

Or, isn't it possible that freedom means simply being "disconnected"?

Do you want to go to war all around the world in order to disconnect everybody from everything?

My head spins.  I suppose I should turn off the television:  in the silence of my room, I would have to confront only my OWN idiocy--not the lunatic ravings of millions of others.

"No mosque at Ground Zero because Muslims don't believe that Jesus is Lord."  "God kills American soldiers because America tolerates fags." "Save America from Mexicans:  repeal the 14th Amendment."

Bats in the belfry.  Bats are blind, like my ideas.  They go bump in the dark.  My life is a tale told by an idiot. And then?...