Year’s End Round-Up Of Notes And Quotes

December 1996

(Kindling for the fire of your own imagination and inspiration):

“I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise.” (Rebecca West)

“When the Chinese government in the 1950s responded to a proliferation of rats who ate inordinate portions of crop by putting a bounty on them, the peasants started raising rats.” (Allan Bloom, LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, p. 29)

“Father,” said a small boy, “What is a demagogue?” “A demagogue, my son, is a man who can rock the boat himself and persuade everybody else that there is a terrible storm at sea.” (Source ?)

“Every man who possesses real vitality can be seen as the resultant of two forces. He is first the child of a particular age, society, convention; of what we may call a tradition. He is secondly, in one degree or another, a rebel against that tradition. And the best traditions make the best rebels.” (Gilbert Murray, English classicist)

Garbage: Americans produce about 230 million tons of refuse each year, amounting to 5.1 pounds per person per day.

A priest went with one of his parishioners to a baseball game. “Watch No. 21 out there,” said the padre proudly, “he always crosses himself before he steps to the plate.” “Tell me, Father,” asked his companion. “Does that help him get on base?” Replied the cleric wisely, “It does, if he’s a good hitter.”

“The good doctor is one who keeps his patient amused while nature works the cure.” (Alan Watts, PSYCHOLOGY EAST AND WEST)

“God is a devil who rejoices in human suffering. He may be. There’s no evidence to show he isn’t.” (C.F.G. Masterman, English Liberal politician and a a strong Anglican, quoted by Hugh Thomas, HISTORY OF THE WORLD, p. 592)

“Socrates, Aristotle, Jesus, Michael Servetus, Giordano Bruno, George Fox, William Penn, Thomas Paine were all condemned for blasphemy.” (Leonard Levy, BLASPHEMY)

“What makes man (sic) human are more than animal needs:

Homo Faber – from his need to make
Homo Credens – from his need to believe
Homo Ludens – from his need to play”

(Daniel J. Boorstin, CLEOPATRA’S NOSE)

“The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritations, concerns and duties.
Help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry.
Give us to go blithely on our business all this day.
Bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.”
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

Druids Were Distinguished

November 14, 1996

In THE CELTIC BOOK OF DAYS, November 14 is the day of “Scáthach, the eponymous Goddess of the Island of Skye, was the martial teacher of Cúchulainn and other heroes. The role of warrior woman and combat-tutor was a feature of Celtic martial education. She is the matron of self-defense and female independence, as well as guardian of young people who seek to know their full potential.”

The Druids have been the victims of serious misunderstandings.

I remember the Isle of Skye. After a train trip through the Scottish Highlands provided an abundance of fine scenery, the train terminated at a town adjacent to the ferry to the Isle of Skye. We boarded the ferry for the brief trip to Skye, seeing the ruins of old Castle Mull as the ferry entered the slip at Skye.

Skye invites a longer stay than was possible for the time between ferries. One would have liked to have talked with the islanders, learn something of their traditions, inquire how ancient was the large stone Celtic Cross visible on a nearby hill; and, although I didn’t then know about THE CELTIC BOOK OF DAYS, inquire if there were still any stories, celebrations, or beliefs about Scáthach.

The Druids have been a latter-day discovery in my historical readings. Many misconceptions exist about the Druids because they were seen through the eyes of Julius Caesar, and, later, Roman Christianity. Both conquered the British Isles and repressed the religions of the Celtic peoples – not only repressed, but failed to understand. Emil Ludwig noted, “Apparently religious fanaticism when joined with nationalism will make men blind.” (THE MEDITERANEAN, p. 47).

A more frivolous story about misunderstanding tells about the pair of Martians landing on a country road in the middle of the night. “Where are we?” one asked.

“I think we are in a cemetery,” his companion answered, “Look at that gravestone over there – that man lived to be 108.”

“What was his name?”

“Miles from Omaha.”

Relying much on THE DRUIDS, by Peter Beresford Ellis, published in Great Britain in 1994, I found much to reflect on.

The Druids were not a group of male priests. The Druids were an intellectual class of the learned professions, including not only religious leaders but also judges, teachers, historians, poets, musicians, physicians, prophets, political counselors. The Druids could be compared to the Brahmins of India. There may have been a relationship in ages before our history began, in that the Celtics were Indo-European peoples whose ancient origins may have been connected to the peoples whose intellectual class was the Brahmins. Migrations went East as well as West.

Julius Caesar reported that the Druids practiced human sacrifice. But other than the propaganda of a conquering invader, there is no substantial evidence that such was the practice of the Druids.

Most astonishing to the invading Romans and Christians was the place of women in Druid society. In ancient Greece and Rome, and then, Christianity, women were repressed, without rights, subservient to fathers and husbands. In Druidic belief and practice, women had rights: they could hold and inherit property; participate in the councils and political assemblies; woman could become Queen; a woman could divorce her husband; women were numbered among lawyers and judges. Thus, no surprise that the male dominant Roman/Christian conquerors defamed and debased Druidesses into
“sorceresses” and “Witches.”

But, as THE CELTIC BOOK OF DAYS reminds us, women were warriors and war leaders as well. Boudicca (Boudicea), Queen of the Iceni tribes, led the Celt in a famous war against Rome. Her statue adorns the banks of the Thames in London. There were others.

The oak tree was sacred to the Druids. There was at least one practical reason – acorns. Acorns were food that could be preserved. Acorns could be ground-up, milled and baked into a bread.

But the oak tree, quite apart from that, was sacred to the Celts As Yggdrasil was sacred to the Scandinavians. The tree was a mystic representation of creation, growth, life, death.

So if you happen to be one who believes that “Pagan” or pre-Christian religions were all brutal superstitions, a “reading-up” on the Druids is recommended.

The Greatest Of These (Postscript)

November 3, 1996

The newsletter of the People For The American Way, Fall 1996, reported on the Republican convention in San Diego, earlier this year. The control of the convention by the Christian Right Wing was complete, including the platform. Senator Dole, defensively, commented that he had not read the platform. He has said nothing since to indicate that he has yet to read it. This is an astonishing statement, if one thinks about it.

What caught my eye in the reporting of the events was the sight of T-shirts with the message, "Intolerance is a Beautiful Thing."

NO!! NO!! NO!! Intolerance is ugly; it hurts people; it destroys relationships. If the average Christian was asked if he/she could imagine Jesus wearing a T-shirt with that message, what would, could be said?

A Sea Story *

October 13, 1996

* Or, perhaps more accurately, an I SEE!! story

When the Titanic sank after hitting the iceberg in April 1912, I was about seven months old. I grew up with the stories of how brave the men were, standing stoically on deck, waiting to perish, as women and children climbed into the lifeboats. In the several movies made of this terrible tragedy,there was portrayal of a cowardly wretch of a man who dressed in women’s clothing in order to get into the lifeboat.

In the Oct. 14, 1996 issue of “The New Yorker,” John Updike reviewed the book, DOWN WITH THE OLD CANOE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE TITANIC DISASTER. I found the article informative, stimulating and somewhat disillusioning about the legends that accumulated about this tragic sinking.

The book was stimulated by the discovery of the wreck in 1985, “three hundred and seventy miles southeast of Newfoundland and two and a half miles below the surface of the Atlantic. There is an unresolved dispute as to whether the wreck should be a “sacred resting place” or that there should be salvage of articles and relics to be sold at high prices (lumps of coal from the Titanic’s bins can be bought for twenty-five dollars each).

The “unsinkable” Titanic “at its launching became then the largest movable object ever made by man – eight hundred and eighty-two feet (nearly three football fields) in length, forty-six thousand tons in weight.”

The disaster brought in its wake not only sorrow at the tragedy but praise for the heroic males who gave up their lifeboat seats to women and children, extolled as “that Christian knightliness which seeks not its own, but the good of others.” “The
stories were glorification of the ruling class.” Furthermore these brave Christians were Anglo-Saxons, as proclaimed by the Atlanta Constitution:

“The Anglo-Saxon may yet boast that his sons are fit to rule the earth so long as men choose death with the courage they must have displayed when the great liner crashed into the mountains of ice, and the aftermath brought its final test.”

The difficulty with that fulsome praise is that it is just not true. Mark Twain once observed that “The very ink which all history is written is fluid prejudice.” The findings demonstrate that maxim to some degree at least.

“Of the first-cabin men, 31 percent survived, compared with 10 percent in second-class and 14 percent in steerage. In all, 60 percent of the first-cabin passengers lived, compared with 44 percent of the second cabin passengers and only 25 percent of the steerage passengers.”

Think about that – my father came to this country as a steerage passenger. Good thing for me, and you, my sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren that he came on a different vessel some eight or ten years prior to the Titanic disaster. Incidentally, I remember him telling us that when he embarked from Sweden, he had with him three-dozen hard-boiled eggs which his mother had prepared for him. I surmise she did not trust steerage food for the son she was never to see again.

John Updike’s view goes into detail about how the romanticizing of the tragedy and the mythical heroic behavior of the men in first class reflected the class structures of the time. A Marxist thinker would make much of that. Walter Lord’s A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1955) pointed out that “somehow the loss rate was higher for third-class children than first-class men.”

There are many provocative “ifs” and “only ifs” in the book and review concerning the ship, the voyage and the disaster.

Probably Biel’s book and Updike’s review will be criticized as “revisionist” history, casting doubts on the findings. But I believe the presentation of facts will be difficult to refute. Truth-seeking is, and always has been unpopular in most areas of human culture – economics, religion, politics, science – you name it.

In conclusion, I was reminded of the scene in Charles Dickens’ THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP (p. 466) where Brass is denouncing the despicable rogue, Quilp:

“If the truth has come out, as it plainly has in a manner that there’s no standing up against – and a very sublime and grand thing is Truth, gentlemen, in its way, though like other sublime and grand things, such as thunder-storms and that, we’re not always over and above glad to see it ....”

Old Age Is Not For Sissies

September 8, 1996

“Old age is not for sissies.” - Bette Davis, late famous actress

One of my co-residents at Jefferson Center, Helen Harwood, is the most remarkable person I have met since coming to Sarasota. She is 98 years old, small and thin in stature, fully alert mentally, has a cheery laugh and does volunteer work daily (sewing, washing, ironing) at “The Players,” the theater across the street.

We had immediate empathy because Helen is the daughter of John Murray Atwood, Dean of the Theological School when I was at St. Lawrence University. John Murray Atwood was a greater influence on my adult life than any other person. I had lived here only a few days when she phoned me and asked if I was the Carl Westman who was at Canton in the 1940s.

Sitting with her this morning in church, she asked me if I had ever met her Aunt Nora. I never had. Helen then told me that her Aunt Nora was very strict and straitlaced. When Helen was a little girl, she referred to her father as “Dad”. Aunt Nora was very cross because in Aunt Nora’s view, “Dad” was unacceptable slang. She dragged Helen into the kitchen and sprinkled pepper on her tongue. Then she shut Helen in a closet.

After a while, the closet door opened and there was her father, John Murray Atwood, holding out a box of chocolates for Helen and telling her she could call him “Dad” as much as she wanted. That’s how she still refers to him!!

If you ever knew the Dean, you are not surprised at all. That was typical of his generosity and wisdom, not only with his family, but also, frequently enough with his students on far more serious matters.

Then Helen told me of her recent visit with her daughter and how bored Helen was because everybody insisted on waiting on her, not letting her do things for herself. She was so glad, she told me, to get back to Jefferson and go across to “The Players” to do fifteen loads of wash. (costumes, stage garments, etc.)

As I noted, Helen is in her 99th year. When we held hands at the end of the church service, she could hold mine only with two fingers because the others are so crippled with arthritis. But what I will remember are her sharp brain and indomitable spirit.

Old Age is not for sissies!!!!

Briers

July 30, 1996

“O how full of briers
is this working-day world.”

(Rosalind, AS YOU LIKE IT)

In this election year, I could rewrite Rosalind: O how full of liars is this political world USA. The sound-bites, political one-up-man-ship, distortions, hypocrisy and self-serving blather surprises (a little) even a political cynic as I have come to be.

I am not condemning one party alone. The burden of responsibility is equally shared by Democrats and Republicans. I fulminate particularly about all the hypocritical cant about the deficit. In spite of the uncountable self-serving speeches and press releases, I am yet to be convinced that any substantial number of Congressmen, Senators or policy wonks in the White House give a damn about the deficit.

One instance among many that could be cited is that of Senator Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader who has succeeded Bob Dole. Lott is rated as extremely conservative on such matters as the deficit and “big government.” Yet, as Ben Franklin reported in The Washington Spectator, Trent Lott “steered billions of dollars into the Clinton administration’s military shipbuilding program to benefit Gulf Coast shipyards. This appropriation includes $1.3 billion THAT THE NAVY NEVER ASKED FOR, to be paid to the Ingall’s Shipyard in Lott’s home town of Pascagoula, Mississippi.”

Jim Hightower, the Texas political commentator, quoted U.S. President John Adams, “one useless man is a disgrace, two are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress.” While that seems to me to echo John Quincy Adams more than his father, it is a blanket indictment to which I cannot fully subscribe. There are honest, capable Congressmen and Senators. But there are not many.

Any predictions I suggest must be introduced by a story that I believe came from a medical journal:

A physician went to heaven and met God, who granted him one question. So the physician asked, “Will health care reform ever occur?”

“I have good news and bad news,” God replied. “The answer is yes, but not in my lifetime.”

I am not disillusioned about our system of government. I just wish we could penetrate the varieties of smoke-screens. E.g., take the deficit – most people believe it to be a sign of possible future collapse. Is this so? I’m not so sure.

For example, why has the stock market surged to such “highs” after the 1987 stock market slump? Does the so-called “smart-money” consider the deficit such a sure harbinger of economic gloom?

I have not seen figures comparing the percentage ratio of deficit to the GDP. What is the comparison as against, say, the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s? Is the inflationary creep that occurred during those years and since been put into the equation?

Then, too, I recently read that the U.S. has the smallest percentage of debt to GDP than any of the G7 countries (industrialized European countries). So what gives?

Secondly, what of the political future? Sometime, not in my lifetime, but in that of many of you, there will be more than two effective political parties. There have been third parties in our history. While short-lived, relatively, they have had influence. The Progressive Party led by the La Follettes is an example.

Third Party talk increases these days. The Reform Party led by Perot, while largely discounted, may have an effect, particularly if Perot plays less of a role. There are rumblings in organized labor about a Labor Party. Ralph Nader’s “Green” effort may gather more support than anyone now thinks possible. Coalitions are not impossible.

After all, multi-party governments have survived in European democracies.

What this all amounts to is this: Look beyond the easy political generalizations. Ask:

Is this so?

Who are the big contributors to a campaign fund?

What is NOT said as well as what is?

Qui bono? Who benefits — follow the buck.

Whenever possible, read investigative journalism.

And never give up trying one way or another to make things better. There is no political system superior to ours in theory. We must improve its practice.

Of course, Rosalind, this working-day world is full of briers. The stings are stimuli to keep at our tasks.

The Abundant Life

October 25, 1992
Lakeland

July 7, 1996
Sarasota (re-written)

[Introductory Reading: Genesis 1/26 and ff. RSV

CJW Note: That paternalistic permission and recommendation to subdue and have dominion over everything else on earth, allegedly granted by God, represents some of the worst advice ever given to humankind.]

Sermon:

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” So plain-speaking Jeremiah warned his people. (8/20) Jeremiah was no naive optimist; neither am I. There are shadows on the rosy hopes for human progress most of us once held. In speaking of the abundant life, I am an aging humanist curmudgeon, and speak not for your comfort.

In the Middle Ages a monk framed the Law of the Monastic Cycle: “Discipline begets abundance, and abundance, unless we take the utmost care, destroys discipline; and discipline in its fall pulls down abundance.” This Monastic Cycle applied to those monasteries and religious orders which had through a stern routine of work and prayer accumulated wealth, lands, and power. But yielding to the temptation to spend and enjoy the riches led to varieties of corruption, unseemly pomp and luxurious possessions, greed for more money and sumptuous living, violations of the oaths of chastity, with many monasteries deserving the name of brothel rather than sanctuary. (Roland Bainton, REFORMATION OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, and other sources.) Henry VIII, by proclaiming himself Head of the Church in England, and by severing allegiance to the Pope, not only secured his divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn, but also gave himself the power to seize the immense hoard of jewels, wealth, and large estates of the monastic orders. Which he forthwith did, giving much of these to his favorites; thereby altering irrevocably the distribution of land, wealth and power in Britain.

The “law of the monastic cycle” may not be a universal rule. But it merits thoughtfulness in any place and time. We live in a nation of much abundance. (How that abundance is distributed is a dilemma of values and economics that is not the subject today.) Has our abundance destroyed discipline, and consequently, will abundance become scarcity?

Our land has rewarded us abundantly. For two centuries discipline was required: dawn to dusk hard work to clear, plow, seed, tend, and reap the crops; hardship and determination to push ever more West, seeking the furs, gold, silver, lumber. The great rivers became channels of profitable commerce. Engineers and sweated labor built the railroads that created and transported abundance. The ancient forests provided lumber for houses, barns, masts, furniture, and other uses beyond counting. The rivers and streams irrigated the arid West, producing fruit, vegetables, wheat, beyond any visionary dreams. We became the richest nation that history records. The paternalistic promise of Genesis was being fulfilled – we had dominion.

But in the last century or so, something went wrong. We polluted the rivers and streams. Fish died. We dumped immeasurable tons of garbage into our ancient Mother, the sea. Forests were denuded and became barren, ravaged hills. Chemical pesticides poisoned not only insect life, but also farm workers, not to speak of the unknown but probable toxic effects on many people who consumed the produce. One could go on in book-lengths how we have harmed ourselves and our posterity because we believed the natural world was ours to use for unlimited abundance, rather than recognizing that, we, too, are the natural world and certain to be maimed by our own excesses. Shakespeare has Hector say to Troilus, “Nature craves all dues be rend’rd to their owners.”

“The land was ours before we were the lands’”. It may not have been Robert Frost’s poetic intention, but that opening sentence grabs me. The land was ours before we loved the land. We possessed the land; we used the land; but we did not love it. And scarcities loom on the horizon.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: You may recall that the last lines of Frost’s “For John F. Kennedy – His Inauguration”:

“It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”

The legend has it that for one brief moment there was Camelot – a radiant aura of high hopes. But we did not experience the glory of a next Augustan age. There has been no golden age of poetry and power.]

Is the “Law of the Monastic Cycle” in effect? Will the breakdown in discipline lead to scarcity? Who knows the future? But there are ominous portents.

A culture of consumerism prevails. There are t-shirts and shopping bags with the motto, “shop till you drop.” Comedy or tragedy?

Last month there was a news story reporting that the shopping malls are now considered tourist sights. The story takes as an example the 225-store Potomac Mills discount mall, Maryland, where last year 17.2 million shoppers spent 358 million dollars. Of these shoppers, 4% million people were tourists – more tourists than visited nearby Arlington National Cemetery, Colonial Williamsburg or Mt. Vernon. There are other examples: in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where only 3,300 people live, an outlet mall drew 10 million visitors, a million more than visited nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

There is much political noise about the goods we consume and where these goods were manufactured. My walking shoes were made in Taiwan, my typewriter in Korea, my little calculator in Thailand. Thumbing through some of my shirts, I see these countries of origin: India, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, Panama.

Should I feel embarrassed or disconcerted when I see a bumper sticker, “Buy American?” In all the cases I mentioned, I’m sure the labor cost of shirt and shoe-making and assembly were far less than the minimum wage a worker would receive here – as low as one dollar an hour for skilled and semi-skilled work. In some poverty-stricken countries, a dollar a day is not unheard of.

My older son, who is considerably smarter than his old man put it this way, “those exploited workers are contributing to our affluence.” Those provided some of my abundance. If we paid U.S. skilled wages for shirts, shoes, calculators, typewriters, we could not afford them, or so many of them. Prices would soar, inflation run wild, sales plummet. Then jobs would vanish in the shopping malls for sales clerks, buyers, truckers, warehouse, and office people. There is an interdependent web.

How to solve this? I don’t know whether I should feel guilty or positive about the shirts I wear or the TV, VCR, and radio I use. I don’t have any economic suggestions. But it is increasingly evident that any proposed solution that fails to recognize that this is a world economy is ultimately unrealistic and unworkable. Another reality is that not in my lifetime or any of yours will there be any just balance in the world between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Not that we should give up on the principles we advocate or the hopes we hold – but Emerson said, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”

In the May 20 issue of NEW YORKER, there was a review of the show, VENUS. John Lahr commented, “In this well-directed tale, evil is demonstrated as the inability to imagine the suffering of others....”

Now that definition would not be acceptable to most philosophers and theologians, but does it not have at least an element of truth? Emerson’s words still resonate.

[Deleted for 1996 version: Our national economy seems to rely on constantly accelerating consumer purchases, preferably, “big ticket.” An article in the business section not long ago pointed out that because only interest on home mortgages is now deductible on the Federal Income Tax return, buyers were paying up credit card debt because interest on that is no longer a deduction. A parallel consequence is that people are buying less in order to to limit debt interest, thus reducing sales. Such a mercantile and marketing worry is a reminder of Emerson’s judgment, “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”]

“Discipline” is a much re-iterated word. Too often it is a scapegoat term – blaming school teachers for failing to enforce discipline when it is obvious, to this old feller at least, that discipline, like charity, begins at home. Discipline is a big word in the military services. Whether the concept prevails widely in our civilian culture is arguable. In one of Saki’s (H. H. Munro) inimitable short stories, set in the days of the British colonial empire, there is a cutting satire about discipline. An army regiment mutinied and killed its officers because the food was deplorable. “...(the) War minister saved the situation by his happy epigram, “Discipline, to be effective, must be optional.’” Ridiculous? Of course.

However, if there is not a strong motive of self-discipline, coerced discipline, in the long run, fails. The famous naturalist, John Muir (1838-1914), once said that he was richer than railroad multi-millionaire, E. J. Harriman. Said Muir, “I have all the money I want and he hasn’t.”

Now I am not so uninformed and dense to assert that everyone with abundance will be victims of the Law of the Monastic Cycle. I have known and know many many persons who have acquired abundance and maintained their self-discipline. They have found the balance between authentic needs and fleeting desires. They know the difference between a sales pitch and an answer to the issue at hand. They are less likely to strike out on a split-finger fastball or an illegal spitball. They have not fallen victim to the Monastic Cycle. May the numbers of these self-disciplinarians increase. Millions more are needed if if there is to be some grasp on susceptibility, waste, calculated appeals to self-interest, pollution, corruption. Individually and in our institutions we need the guts to to resist easy, pleasant (and wrong) answers to hard unpleasant problems. If a thousand loggers are scheduled to lose jobs to protect a forest, which candidate gets the votes, the one who says “we must protect and conserve the forest”, or the one who says, “jobs are more important than trees.” If a weapon of war is no longer needed or is obsolete, there are instances where it will continue to be produced because a Senator or Representative fears the votes of those in his home state who would otherwise lose their jobs. Taxes and deficits – those are big emotional words these days. There is much shouting and conniving about who shares pieces of that enormous Federal pie. Dim, almost unheard voices may be saying, “yes, but we must pay for what we get.” It is said that a politician once answered the problem by saying, “don’t tax me, don’t tax thee, tax that feller behind the tree.”

You well might ask, “Any suggestions, Old Timer?” I could refer you to the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew scriptures. But although I am no naïve optimist, I am not as gloomy or sorrowful about our times as that author was over the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of of the Jewish people. Instead, I’ll use an extended metaphor about the Beetle Ring.

Thirty-four or so years ago, I conducted services at the Cobblestone Universalist Church on the shores of Lake Ontario. Both area population and membership had dwindled; there was just an Annual Service. This Universalist Church was built in 1834, using lake stones smoothed by aeons of wind, wave, freeze, thaw. The building is a gem of the stonemasons’ craftsmanship. The laying of cobblestones was much more difficult than brick. Bricks nest solidly together, but cobblestones do not. The layering of mortar so that precise uniformity of tiers could [be] achieved was a skill that the stonemasons kept to themselves. The cobblestones were uniform in size and the method of selection was not a secret.

The stonemasons used the Beetle Ring to sort the cobblestones. Nothing to do with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Those Beetles would not be born until more than one hundred years later. The Beetle Ring, either iron or stone, was a slab in which a hole had been cut away. If a cobblestone could be passed through the Beetle Ring, it was not too large for use; too small cobblestones would be obvious.

If many of us would use a Beetle Ring in our handling of abundance, perhaps self-discipline would be less vulnerable. We have needs; we have wants. Many times our “wants” are disproportionate to our needs. With a Beetle Ring of the resources of our minds, emotions, and values, we might discern if our “wants” are too large for our Beetle Ring. Then we could decide not to put that “want” into the building of our lives. All of us have desires beyond our basic needs. That’s OK – reasonable self-indulgence is not a vice. I hope not, for I have many times of self-indulgence. Midas would have been happier if he had used a Beetle Ring. So could the so-called “jet set” of the “rich and famous” if there is truth in the stories of their extravagance, frantic relationships, and the lack of happiness. Every one of you could cite other examples.

There are many issues which need a Beetle Ring to emphasize that not only stonemasons of 1834 but also those of us now alive in 1996 need to make careful and discriminating choices. There are many causes of depletion of natural resources, starvation, and despair. Over-population is directly connected to all these ills. There are now more than 5½ billion people in the world, and this number increases by 95 million every year. Globally, almost one billion people suffer from malnutrition. In Mexico City, with a population of 22 million, the world’s largest city, 40% live in slums.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: But officially, the U.S. opposes planned parenthood and birth control methods. The current administration vetoed an appropriation for International Planned Parenthood. The combined power of the U.S. and the Vatican kept family planning off the official agenda in the recent Rio conference on global resources. Quoting an article in “Time”, “the Reagan-Bush administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on birth control.”

In 1970, Congressman James Scheur, (D-NY) co-sponsored “the first national program to fund family planning clinics. The co-sponsor (of all people) was a new congressman from Texas – George Bush. As George Bush changed his political mind about that, maybe he can be persuaded to change it again – although I have not the slightest expectation of that.]

The United Nations has made high and low projections of population increases by the year 2050. The high estimate is 28 billion – a figure completely unthinkable. One can predict with assurance that plague, famine, or war would kill billions before that total was reached. The low projection is a peak of 8 billion by 2050. That lower figure assumes family planning on a global scale and there are some hopeful beginnings: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Trinidad. Our UUSC has been involved in some pilot projects.

If I may say so, I have been a supporter of Planned Parenthood for many years, have served on the Board of Central Florida Planned Parenthood. I resent the lies and slanders heaped on Planned Parenthood by so-called ‘pro-life’ groups.

Perhaps I am too pessimistic, but I am not confident that politics as played out in our country will make any substantive change in the wasting of our resources and the transfer of an ever-increasing deficit (now 4 trillion) to our children and grandchildren. The money, power, and control of voting blocs seem overwhelming countervailing forces, no matter who calls himself the next President. I do not discount the strong efforts of conservation groups of many kinds, but they are candles in the wind.

That’s my Jeremiah. My hope is that there will be a rising tide of national and world consciousness to the end that not a few thousands, but many millions, raise their voices and direct their votes, so that even the most greedy of special interests will of necessity change their ways.

Lest you think I am an incorrigible old gloom and doom curmudgeon, let me make an observation. One of the memorable opening sentences in a novel that I have remembered for many years was in Sabatini’s dashing story, SCARAMOUCHE: “He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” If you think enough about that line, you may come to believe, like I have, that living could be worse. If we can’t now and then chuckle and laugh at absurdities, even painful ones, we will miss ways we can cope with the strangeness of it all. Pogo said, “you’re lucky to be here in the first place.”

I’ll write no Book of Lamentations. No one of us is compelled to obey the Law of the Monastic Cycle. Each of us can create his/her own Beetle Ring. We need not assent tamely to institutions, government, corporate or religious, who mistakenly believe they are exempt from that law.

But essential to avoiding or conquering the Law of the Monastic Cycle is not only the efforts of small groups but also a growing national and world-wide conviction that that this Earth is our only home, and to continue despoiling it is not only to foul our own nest, but also to curse our posterity.

Closing Words (Ulysses – Tennyson)

“Come my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ...”

The Greatest Of These...

June 24, 1996

In the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, Paul wrote, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” This has been quoted millions of times in the ensuing nearly two-thousand years, but I have been asking myself in recent years if the most dominating of religious emotions is HATE.

This musing was sparked yesterday when our minister, Richard Benner, read a letter from a religious fundamentalist which excoriated Richard and predicted that he would burn forever in a “Lake of Fire.” (Revelation). Why was so much religious hatred heaped on Richard? Richard Benner had taken a public stand to defend the rights of gay and lesbian individuals and couples. Dick, like so many of us Unitarian Universalists, thoroughly believes and preaches “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and “justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” These sentences are the first two of the Statement of Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The writer of this vituperative letter demonstrated his invincible ignorance. He was obviously untouched by 150 years of learned scholarship about Bible literature and origins. The matter may be too serious to joke about, but I could not help recalling the story of another fundamentalist who was greatly angered when later translations of the Bible differed from the King James version of 1611. The angry fundamentalist asserted, “If the English of the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.”

Such ignorance would be either funny or pathetic if it were not so dangerous. Historian Barbara Tuchman described the sack of Antwerp in 1576 by the troops of Roman Catholic King Philip II of Spain. The troops killed everyone in their path, indiscriminately, and setting the city ablaze, not forgetting however “to fall on their knees in a prayer to the Virgin to bless their enterprise.” Tuchman then cogently observed, “It is a peculiar habit of Christianity to conceive the most compassionate and forgiving divinities and use them to sponsor atrocities.” (THE FIRST SALUTE, P.31)

The same historian writes of Peter Bayle, a rationalist forced to leave France and find shelter in Holland because of his belief that “popular religious beliefs were based on human credulity rather than on reason and reality.” One hundred years before our Bill of Rights – freedom of speech, freedom of religion and separation of church and state – Bayle wrote, “an ideal society would extend its protection to all religions, and that since most theological problems are incapable of proof, man should pray for those he cannot convince rather than oppress them.” (op. cit. p. 41)

It might be just a matter of historical sorrow if such atrocities were all in the past, but one would be naive not to recognize that there is present danger.

James A Haught, who in his earlier book, HOLY HORRORS, chronicled many of the religious atrocities of the past, in the “Washington Spectator” of about a year ago, details present dangers.

We know that “pro-life” fundamentalists murdered workers in abortion clinics in Florida and Massachusetts.

There are hate groups vaguely or specifically identified with the Christian Right and are armed. Currently there are church burnings and the continuing hate-mongering of the Ku Klux Klan. There was violence in West Virginia in the 1970s when fundamentalists turned violent in the “textbook war.” These rioters proclaimed textbooks, “godless.”

In other parts of the world, there are killings, lootings, tortures in the name of religion: Northern Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bosnia/Serbia. The “Supreme Truth” cult in Japan lethally gassed hundreds of persons in the Tokyo subway system.

These instances are current history, not the past. I fear for a world where fanaticism rules. Your truth and my truth need not agree for us to live in peace. I could write on, but let me conclude with a paraphrase of the English historian/sociologist, L. T. Hobhouse:

Essentially (religious) freedom does not consist in like-mindedness, but in the toleration of differences; or, positively, in the acceptance of differences as contributing to richer life than conformity.

“The claim of the free individual, not the impossible one that the common decision should coincide with his/her own, but that his/her decision should be heard and taken into account. He/she claims a part in the councils; he/she takes his share of responsibility.”

A Winter’s Reverie

February 13, 1996

“Abide the change of time,
Quake in the present winter’s state and wish
That warmer days would come.”

Shakespeare, CYMBELINE

While I live comfortably in a Sarasota “winter,” the severe winter in the Northeast and Midwest called up a childhood memory. This recollection was also triggered by the request of grandchildren to know more about my early days and family memories.

The small house at 32 Oliver Street was equipped with a coal/wood burning furnace in the cellar and a black iron coal/wood kitchen stove. The containers for trash pick-up were “ash barrels”, not garbage cans. The ashes were also used to spread over icy steps and sidewalks. Some home gardeners dug in ashes in the vegetable plot for fertilizer.

Taking out ashes was a daily chore. We also sifted the ashes to reclaim the coals, or coke, which were not completely burned. Although I have no memory of doing it myself, there were boys and men who walked the railroad tracks to pick up coal thrown or shaken from the steam locomotives (no diesel or electric then).

On very cold nights, I have vivid memories of sitting by the kitchen stove, with the oven door open, while (of course) reading. When the weather was frigid and the stove well-stoked with anthracite coal, the top of the stove would turn color from black iron to red-hot – literally, the top would be a glowing cherry-red.

Because my parents could not always afford to have coal delivered by the ton into the cellar coal bin, sometimes the kitchen stove was the only heat in the house. Then, when bedtime came, the flat-irons which had been on top of the stove were wrapped in old cloths and placed under the blankets thus comfortably warming the bed, at least for awhile.

There is a childhood memory which I have thought about many times, although there are gaps in the recollections. After all, it is seventy-eight years since I was six or seven years old; and memories can play tricks.

I’m fairly sure it was the winter of 1918. Because of the World War, there were shortages. In this case, the difficulty may have been getting the coal delivered. For whatever reason, there was no coal in the house and the weather was bitterly cold.

There was coal available in a place in Malden, about three miles away. But it had to be picked up, no delivery was available. In my memory, in those days coal was brought by horse and coal-wagon. Icy streets were a hazardous and sometimes fatal trip for the work-horses.

At that time my parents had no automobile. My father must have been at work. My mother took my sled and me to go get a hundred pound bag of coal. The snow was coming down steadily. Why wasn’t I in school? I don’t know. Maybe there was “no school” because of the snowstorm; maybe it was Saturday. Who took care of my sister, then about four years old? I don’t know.

I have a memory-image of crossing Broadway (Everett’s main thoroughfare) from High Street to Hancock Street. I recall helping to tug the burlap bag containing the coal onto the sled and helping pull the sled. But a seven-year-old boy could not have been much help, even though the last third of the journey home was down-hill. How my mother managed, I have no idea. She was always thin, but she must have had a wiry strength.

As the years went on, more and more homes had oil-burning furnaces and installed oil-burners in kitchen ranges. But these devices were never installed at 32 Oliver Street.
I have a more precise memory of the time a few months after my father’s accidental death when Uncle John Granstrom had about 20/25 dining room table tops delivered for the stove and furnace. I don’t know where Uncle John acquired the tables. They were the round variety which would get a fair amount of dollars these days, although then they were not antiques.

The tables were veneered – walnut or oak veneer over cheaper woods – certainly not the pressed sawdust or composition board found under veneers today. The veneer over the wood inside made the tables the very devil to chop. I had to smash them with a sledge hammer first; then chop with a long-handled axe. This must have been a short time before I went to work afternoons and Saturdays at the John T. Connor grocery store.

As I look back, that hard work swinging the sledge and axe may have been therapeutic, although that was not Uncle John’s intention. He was just doing a good turn for my mother. But the labor may have vented some of the anger that I felt and didn’t express. I was angry because my father was dead – angry at him, angry at God (I was not yet an agnostic), angry at Uncle John because he survived, angry at my cousin Henry because his father survived the boating accident which took the lives of my father and Andrew Granstrom, Uncle John’s brother.

The labor with sledge and axe may have helped – although when I reflect, I didn’t get over that trauma for many years. Perhaps I never have, fully.

Introduction To Musings VII

Introduction to Musings VII
1996

For the seventh year, my “Musings” reach out to those close to me (emotionally, not geographically). They bring my varied thoughts, sometimes impulsive, sometimes brooded-over at length.

But more than being one man’s journal of fact and opinion, Musings is a holiday greeting of remembrance, affection, and deep-seated good-will to every one of you. Reflecting on my good luck to have reached the age of 85 a few weeks ago, I have wondered if I, or anyone, could have reached that number without the many persons who have cared, and for whom I care.

So, reach out, embrace and hold close; be glad for the bright day, rejoice in the restful night; and share your love.

Grandfather W