Christmas - 2012

As Christmas approaches, I cannot escape bad memories of my childhood’s experience of the holidays. However, I can be happy to know that they are only memories. My adult life has been blessed beyond anyone’s rightful expectations.

Recently, I listened to Bill Moyers interview James Autry, a poet that I had never knew.  In his past, he was a fighter pilot in Vietnam and then a business executive who discovered another dimension of life. First, he started to feel the personal anguish resulting from his being forced to let people go because economic forces strained the company. And then, the birth of a son who was subsequently diagnosed as autistic made him see life from a totally different perspective. Life was simply more than a matter that is measured by economic or social status.  His other son dealt with addiction issues. Yet, he came to see that there was deeper meaning in human experiences that belie common measurements.

Moyers asked him to read his poem of sentimentality, which was essentially a thank you to his wife of twenty years (at the time). The poem touched me in a strange way. First, his poem.

A Sentimentality PoemI know that contemporary poets,
If they are to escape the wrath of critics,
Must avoid the curse of sentimentality,
But here I am, 20 years married today,
With nothing to write about love that is not sentimental;
A tumor, a surgery, a scribbled prayer and the one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm;
The diagnosis of something wrong, something wrong with our child;
Hours and days and years of working to help him find himself in this world; deaths of a father, a brother, a beloved sister, more surgeries and recoveries, a son in a struggle with addiction.
And I haven’t even gotten to the joys,
Not talked about the celebrations of life,
The friendships, the gatherings of family, and the great and enduring spiritual quest.
If I am doomed to write of sentiment,
Then let it be said that I also write of blessing,
All of it, the pain, fear, anguish, laughter, whimsy, joy, blessings all, because you arrived in my life with an expectation of blessing,
A sure belief that there is nothing but abundance and our job is to face it all with gratitude.

As I approach the Christmas holidays, I become sentimental too. Compared with my childhood, I have been at peace. For our nearly 44 years, we seldom become upset, far less angry. We talk and come to some sort of resolution that we can live with. We really had no major aspiration of success, except to make the most out of what was possible. And so, as I approach Christmas season, my poem of sentimentality is different since I have been spared personal or family problems.  We have enjoyed good health, good children who in turn are healthy and made the most of their opportunities, who in turn gave six grandchildren, all of whom are healthy and well.

And so,

A Sentimental Poem at Christmas

With a world that cries so often with pain,

The anguish of Newtown parents,

The sorrow families torn by war and conflict,

Children who are left alone,

No parents, no support,

I wonder how my life was spared.

There is no logic to life’s journey,

So many good people suffer,

For no good reason,

Their efforts to be all they can be,

Thwarted by random chance.

Of course, seers vie over explanations,

But none explain “why me”, “why us”,

It is so unfair to witness the vagaries of life.

In the midst of sadness enveloping so many,

I look to Christmas somewhat like I see my life,

A pure unexpected joy that no one deserves.

Watching Joan magically grace the days,

With family members sharing their children,

Excited with no known threat of pain or sorrow,

Rejoicing in the normality of the somewhat abnormal.

My Christmas will be filled with the people so close to me. I share my family.

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The Newtown Tragedy

Newtown Connecticut may become the precipitating fact that enables Congress to join the civilized world with laws that control the use of guns.  The tragedy will cause many, if not most, people to consider the meaning of life and death itself.

My thoughts start from the rather unexpected experience of my mother’s death when I was 13. While nothing as meaningless as the brutal and violent killings in Connecticut, it was sudden and quick. My life changed even if I cannot detail any particular aspects to the change. Spending the last five years of public schooling without a mother was a somewhat complicated experience.

Death became a special focus of my higher education.  I was totally involved with existential philosophy. Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard became favorite authors who zeroed in on death as most significant. It essentially gave meaning to life. While my theological education provided other sources of meaning to death, the “angst” associated with our lives remained as a source of appreciation of the fragility of our existence.

The fragility of life was epitomized in the Newtown tragedy. Sending one’ s child to school is such a routine act. The routine generally ends with questions about what was learned. When the routine is lobotomized by violent and senseless murder, there is a gaping hole of despair.

Since there is no rationale response to such tragedy, religious beliefs often are the main support system. In the past, I would be quick to provide interpretations of the tragedy what were intended to comfort the grieving.  At this time, I can imagine how relatively meaningless such words would be.

Coming back to some of the existentialists, I am now more than ever sensitive to the relative uncertainty about our lives. While the Connecticut tragedy fills us with raw feelings, we know that violence in the world is snuffing out many, many lives, of so many, including children. We read about a bombing and another type of invasion in the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia and turn to the next article without feelings of horror that surfaces when reading about Newtown. There is such absurdity to the inhumanity of so many humans that assignment of meaning to these deaths seems cruel.

In short, I now see no way to minimize the horrendous pain that is associated with a violent tragedy as experienced in Newtown. What I am now focusing on is our appreciation of life while it is present. No one can undo the tragedy, but we can work together to make the world more peaceful and loving. And we can surely begin my focusing on those living in our presence: our families, our children, friends, animals, plants and all that is alive. I can appreciate each day’s experiences in gratitude and do my best to help others in anyway possible.  It is so inspiring that many people, whose lives have been touched by tragedy, proceed to dedicate their lives with even more vigor to dreams nourished by the memories of those who were died.  Would that we could use this recent tragedy to express the values of life wherever we are.

So Sad! So Revolting!

Chris Hedges has become one of my favorite writers and thinkers. He is everything that I wanted to be. I never came close to his great life. He has written many books, clearly with a strong liberal bias. In fact, one could say that his bias is pro-human. In his latest book, "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt", he is capturing the human destruction associated with our capitalistic system. He is not against capitalism, per se; he is against anything that is destructive of humans.

The book focuses on the effects of capitalism and our policies that undercut human worth by looking at Native America Indians in South Dakota, wasted urban America as symbolized in Camden, N.J., destruction of American environment and its people as epitomized in coal industry in West Virginia,and the enslavement of humans who cannot escape poverty as captured in immigrant (mostly illegal) population that works the fields that produce what we eat. If there is anything that ties all these scenarios, it is that WE tolerate, if not command, that some humans are expendable if we want to satisfy our needs as well as possible in the least costly way.

I recognize that nothing is simple, especially when we consider a nation's economy. Capitalism is built on the idea that competition will achieve the best results at the least cost. I know that when I shop that I consider the price as often the most relevant aspect of my decisions. I don't consider the human waste that was associated with the stated price. The Native American Indians were expendable because they had land we wanted and we could take it away because of our superior fire power. Industry that made our urban cities productive were expendable because we could produce the same quality somewhere else. Nature could be destroyed because we wanted energy at the cheapest cost. We wanted food, good food at cheapest price, without considering the cost to those harvesting the food.

I read much of the book with anger and disgust. It is not that I was totally unaware of these situations. It is that I live my daily life without attending to them. We can only feel the genuine "angst" analyzed by Kierkegaard if we are open to the realities that impinge our lives. If President Obama can be neutralized by the forces of the Tea Party and their comrades, I can feel somewhat relieved to know how impotent any of us are as individuals.

It is only in collective action that we can make a difference. For example, clothes made for many of our more "competitive" retail stores, e.g.,Walmart, were sewn in Bangladesh. One of those factories where people worked for little money and long hours was destroyed by fire and killed 112 people. Not only did none of these corporations compensate for the losses, you can be relatively certain that they will put all their efforts in finding another source for this work at a similar price. It all comes down to the fact that we can treat humans as expendable products, useful only as long as our needs are met cheaply.

The only way to ensure that humans are guaranteed to be treated as humans, with rights protected by government, generally in the form of fair labor laws and unions. There should be no exception, no option, or we won't pay for the goods. Can you imagine if the American public essentially boycotted Walmart until it abided by fair labor laws? I really cannot imagine it because I can't imagine enough of us willing to do it. It seems so "unamerican" to spend more in order to allow others to live as humans!!!!

Chris Hedges closed his book on a positive note by recognizing the Occupy Movement as a step in the direction of trying to correct some of inequities resulting from capitalism. I would hope that the impact of many unemployed or underemployed young and educated people would drive home the point that suffering caused by the greed associated with the focus on profit over people is painful for anyone caught in the web of exploitation that is so often associated with capitalism as we know it. Just consider the amount of cash on hand in most of our corporations that could be used to provide more work at better wages for more people. Even if there is a demand problem now, i.e., there are so many unemployed and so much loss of wealth resulting from the fiscal crisis of 2008 that results in less money to purchase goods, the focus of corporations remains exclusively on their profits rather than considering how we could improve the lives of others (and, in fact, increase demand for goods). The current fiasco of trying to deal with the fiscal cliff issues is so frustrating since the Republicans are focusing more on protecting the wealthy without considering how to help the many who struggle.