Fantasyland North of the 38th Parallel

            A boy with firearms fantasies kills little kids in their classroom, officials of one kind or another shake their heads and say they cannot understand how it happened because the lad had to know how terrible the consequences would be for himself..

            A mom buckles her children into the family car and drives into a lake, drowning them. Observers ask how can that be, because the mother surely knew she could easily have gotten professional help.

            An elected official held in highest regard is found to have embezzled government funds. Then his constituents ask themselves why a smart man anticipating a bright future would destroy his life so foolishly.

            The young and untested Asian leader takes a path perfected by Adolph Hitler and others, leading an army of a million men and women, perfecting his nuclear weapons and loudly declaring his intention to start a war. Then the policy professionals in Washington explain that this man is too rational to risk his own job in such a gamble. Their predecessors knew that Imperial Japan had no way to attack U.S. territories in 1941. When I was in my teens a popular slogan was “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

            President Obama said this week that he’ll put $100 million in the 2014 budget for brain research. This generation knows more about the universe than previous generations knew there was to know, but it does not know how the brain works. Obama’s research program can lead to healing of conflicts, diseases and defects. It can provide answers to those questions asked after every human disaster: How could a person who seems so ordinary do things so deadly and self-defeating?

            How can we be so slow to address this problem head-on? “I do not understand my own actions,” a famous writer said. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” He wrote this about 1,960 years ago, and we don’t understand it any more than Paul did.

 

   

           

 

 

           

  

Give Us This Day Our Daily Crisis?

 

 

It only seems like it; there is no rule requiring newspaper headlines to include the word “crisis” whenever the Catholic Church is favored by a story. We journalists know about crisis, as more and more of our periodicals disappear into electronic sinkholes.

 

The church has a crisis of serious misconduct by clergy, and a crisis of too few priests, and a crisis of communication, among others. A lot of people really dislike the Catholic Church. Many who burn churches strike their matches in the name of their own religion. Public authorities stopped siccing lions on Christians a long time ago, but there are government officials who still forbid Catholic churches and arrest converts.

 

There are warnings in news reports that because Christian Evangelicals are gaining believers in huge numbers, the Catholic Church is in a – what’s the word? – crisis! Actually, the Catholic Church is in crisis whenever it is not challenged to pray more, shape its message more clearly and lead the world’s excitement about Jesus.

 

About Pope Francis--he's an easy person to love. Francis is almost everybody's favorite saint. In stone, carved wood or plastic he's in a few million gardens. A pope who thinks and acts like St. Francis will be welcome.

However, St. Francis did not begin a new ministry at age 76.

 

Nor did St. Peter.

 

In my attachment to Jesus I sometimes wonder what he would have taught, and exemplified, in growing old. He was and is always young.

 

There's a lot of beauty and satisfaction in becoming old. I'm on the way myself.

 

Everybody I know in my age group gets on well enough, but our conversation is less about last night's dance or next Saturday's softball game than about arthritis relocating to some new joints. There are lots of things we do well, but God did not design our machinery to run forever.

 

There are better bets than the elderly to take on one of the most physically and mentally demanding jobs on Earth. Think of how many people depend on the leadership of the pope for spiritual guidance and prayerful assurance not just that gout is out, but that sin is not in.

 

Even so, I'm hopeful. Pope Francis appears to begin every action with prayer, offering an example that may be taken up by all Christians, whether lay, ordained or tentative. I read in the papers that there are two popes if you include Benedict XVI, the pope emeritus. Then there’s a pope called Jesus.

 

 

 

 

 

The S-word is out of the closet

 

 

 

When I was a kid in the 1920s and 30s I never heard any adult say the f-word or the s-word. The s-word was suicide, an unspoken word, kept at the back of the vocabulary. After I became a newspaper reporter I learned that it was seldom written about. I worked for one daily that reported the death of a prominent local official without mentioning he had shot himself in his hospital bed. I worked for another paper whose publisher suppressed the suicide of a family member.

 

Maybe that’s why I was so impressed by the candid talk about suicide on an Internet forum for folks who have MSA – multiple system atrophy – or who are their caregivers. How long, a newcomer asked, should a parent with the incurable disease be expected to last? Others spoke of deliberately departing if the last stages became too much, too much turmoil for the patient and too much distress for others.

 

Suicide in 2013 is still a touchy subject, just as it was in 1930, but the online discussions have been thoughtful, appropriately emotional, unapologetic and inquisitive. Disagreements, some based on religious convictions, are set out in friendly terms, often punched into a keyboard by disobedient fingers, one chosen or one unchosen letter at a time. This sharing of anxieties can be enormously beneficial to people who live far apart from each other, who may never be able to talk face to face with another MSA person. My guess is that it stimulates hope and builds faith in life.

 

I am not one of those who’s thinking about an early departure. In a few days I’ll turn 88, and I’m claiming that as a lucky number.  Whatever it is that made me nosy enough to become a journalist makes me want to know the rest of the story. Unjournalistically, I seldom leave home. I drink my hot coffee through a silicon straw and whip around my condo in my power chair and my skull is stuffed, I think, with jumping beans.

 

My family puts lots of smiles and satisfactions into my life with OPCA/MSA. Someday I hope to find out why Someone allows fear and pain to clutter up His universe . Or Hers. But I can wait.

Life is more than ashes

Death ends the chapter,

but Life is the name of the book

(A recollection on Ash Wednesday)

 

A. E. P. (Ed) Wall writes:

 To refuse to die would be more than a social

impertinence. It would throw off the scientific

rhythm of the universe. It would toss a monkey

wrench into the apparatus of the galaxies, and

challenge the very mind of the creator.

 

Death is designed as an inevitable consequence of birth,

providing needed closure for each of us. It is the kind

of closure that marks graduation from high school,

which is required before the graduate moves on to

higher education.

 

Death and eternity are mysterious, not mysteries

invented by Conan Doyle and not the

mysteries of gene and cell exposed in laboratories

like prisoners of undeclared wars. There’s the kind

of death that’s examined on an autopsy table, fixed

in time and place. There’s also an eternity that’s for

discoveries in space and hopes about time. Jesus

and Einstein speak a common language.

 

There could be no death without life. Life could reach

no conclusions without death. The system may be a mystery,

but it is part of the genius of creation. Suspense is necessary

to mystery, but fear is not. Nobody remembers being

born; nobody is told that birth is the leading cause

of death, inevitable rather than incurable, because

it is not a disease.

 

Life and death can be exciting. We are conditioned to

make the most of life and death, or to fear them.

Many never speak of death. Others deny death.

 

I was in my teens when I first heard someone deny

the permanence of life. An older woman said she hoped to

God — her phrasing —that there would be no life after

death. Her family, her education, her faith were all ad hoc,

she hoped,  and would vanish as she would vanish.

I wonder where she’s living now.

 

During my years in Hawaii I knew many

Buddhists, whose friendship included invitations to

speak at Buddhist celebrations and services. I

learned to appreciate Buddhist ideals and even

Buddhist controversies. Buddhism has its

denominations, even as Christianity and Islam and

Judaism have sects and denominations. Buddhist

concepts of life and death, of reincarnation and

transmigration, appeal to many. I’ve known

Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and other

Christians, including clergy, who believe in

reincarnation.

 

My belief in God, the Eternal, the Holy, the

Triune Creator, Love itself, gives meaning to life

and death. Not everyone who is offered this gift

has unwrapped it. Christ Jesus gives of himself. As

newspaper carriers used to call out when they had

an armload of Extras to sell: Read all about it.

Because of that gift I believe in the seen and

unseen. I believe in the human body, ocean waves

and printed words. I believe also in gravity, radio

waves, thought, love and eternity. I recognize a

desire for a good life and its companion desire for

a good death.

 

Jack Wall, my dad’s brother, was born in the

1890s with a form of paralysis that was to end his

life when he was in his early teens. My dad and

another of his brothers have each told me this: The

family was gathered in the garden of their

Liverpool home. Jack, cheerful and much loved by

everyone in the family, was on his father’s lap.

Suddenly he said, “Listen. Can you hear them?”

No one heard anything unusual as Jack said,

“Can’t you hear them singing? Listen to the music.

They’re coming; they’re coming for me.” He

slumped dead on his dad’s lap. Other families have

similar experiences.

 

Maybe it is because I’m a writer that I think

of life as prose and religion as poetry. The

holiness in holy scripture is poetic. That’s why

myopic literalists don’t notice God’s bigness while

they squint at scripture with watchmaker’s loupe

and tweezers, magnifying some words and

plucking at others, like links pried loose to

disconnect a chain.

 

Death clobbered me when I was 10 years old

and living in my grandparents’ house. I was called

home from school, no reason given, and was

barely off the streetcar when I spotted the hearse

parked in front of the house. The place was

swarming with people and I headed for the privacy

of the basement to try to sort it out. My beloved

grandma, I knew, had died while I was choosing

true or false for a history teacher. I was numb, but

not at a loss for words. A memorized poem was

there for me,” The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not

want…”

 

When I heard about William Cullen Bryant,

a newspaperman who wrote poems, I was already

primed for his “Thanatopsis.”

 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan, that moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of the couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

 

Thanks, Miss Rector, Mrs. Bracken, Mrs.

Humm, Miss Featherstone, Mrs. Routon, Mrs.

Peters and all you who taught restless teenagers

with smiles and a beat.

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson grabbed me as a

teenager when one of those teachers opened the

book to “In Memoriam” and especially to “Crossing the Bar.”

 

Sunset and evening star,

  And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

  When I put out to sea,

 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

  Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

  Turns again home.

 

Twilight and evening bell,

  And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

  When I embark;

 

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

  The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

  When I have crossed the bar.

 

And then there was (and is) Walt Whitman:

 

At the last, tenderly.

From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,

From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the

   keep of the well-closed doors,

Let me be wafted.

 

Let me glide noiselessly forth;

With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,

Set ope the doors O Soul.

 

Tenderly—be not impatient,

(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,

Strong is your hold O love.)

 

We who love life embrace it with enthusiasm.

We know that death is an element of life,

if not its fulfillment,.

 

Jesus died. Jesus lives. Way to go, Jesus!

 

 

Posted on Ash Wednesday 2013—

 reprinted from a 2005 edition of Wall’s Paper.

 Except for the quoted poetry, © A. E. P. (Ed) Wall.

 

 

About those 33,000 yesterdays

 

I’ve been asking God why on earth I’m here. In the huge mass of uncounted and unaccountable created beings, why me?

 

 God is eternal love, a constant presence, creative mind, everyone’s father and mother, giver of all life.

 

 So why, one March day in 1925, did God give me life and put me here?

 

God is the great healer, so there must be a reason why God allows so many diseases. God is the great provider, so there has to be a reason for hunger, homelessness and wretched poverty. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that God is the great teacher, patiently waiting for some great learners..

 

Now, after more than 32,000 days of this life I ask God why all the fuss? I think of the endless hours people have given me during all those days. Mom and dad were there, clergy and relatives, friends and school teachers, employers and co-workers, doctors and dentists, they and teams of others were there.

 

Why? God, who doesn’t need a wristwatch or even a calendar in the realm of timelessness, let me wait a long time before answering my question. God has given me 33,000 days, and let me learn that the most important one of all is always today.

 

Now I know I was not created for spiritual or intellectual triumphs, but with biological intent. Having abandoned the rib method, God used me as an element in the birth of three remarkable children and six grandchildren, also remarkable. God needs each one of them, and that’s why they’re special. And they gave, with their spouses, whatever meaning there is to my years.

  

Cranking out bias

　

　

The first time I saw my grandma cranking her telephone, which was mounted on the kitchen wall, and then talking to an invisible operator I knew something amazing was going on. That was in the early part of the year, before 1929 became shorthand for panic on Wall Street. The manufacture of hand-cranked magnetos had a high-profit future, except that all of a sudden neither phones nor Fords needed cranks.

When my grandpa lathered up, fortunes could be made in selling straight razors and razor strops. My first cold earned me a mustard plaster on my chest and a raw onion in the room to attract the germs. It efficacy was established when the onion eventually turned dark with, presumably, dead germs. Mustard plasters and leeches and other medical favorites had short commercial lives.

At school every student desk had a built-in inkwell, and nothing was brighter than the blue ink business. Wooden pencils were sharpened away by the millions, and millions more had to be made.

When I landed my first newspaper job in 1942 every desk had a paste pot and typewriters were purely mechanical, responding to the force of fingers, not electricity. Building a future on the sale of typewriter ribbons almost guaranteed lifetime success.

But there’s more than matchbooks and amateur night at the movies to shrug off. I was about 14, already a Lincoln enthusiast, when I visited a segregated black school in the South. The principal showed me textbooks which had been discarded by white schools, giving me a teenage attitude that led eventually into life membership in NAACP.

Some writers today, like temporarily lapsed liberals, ridicule white men with the mindless fervor of crackpots.

Certainly they are not referring to the white Supreme Court justices who gave judicial certainty to civil rights, or to the white journalists who kept the issues alive, or the Union soldiers dying in the Civil War to clear the way for the emancipation proclamation. They cannot be referring to the white church members, legislators, teachers and artists who are committed to racial justice.

The tools of communication, justice and education are reinvented and rebuilt almost constantly. We can use the tools without cranking them in rebuilt bias.

　

What were the generals thinking?

          Generals are in the news. David Petraeus, who resigned as CIA chief, and John Allen, who denies any inappropriate behavior, confirm the plain fact that emails are not private. The military heroes stimulate our thinking as we ask, What were they thinking?

          God is Mind, many priests and philosophers affirm. God is Mind, not Brain. People need brains (and feet and fingers and the bodies to which those things are attached). God doesn’t. Mind is reliable. The brain isn’t, even though it provides a place for the human mind.

          We approach God, Mind, Father, Spirit, Mother, the only way we can, through prayers and other thoughts. We don’t always recognize Mind’s answers. We pray for good health, and don’t notice that God has already given us the wholeness of loving friends and families.  
          Sometimes we make deals. I was invited to dinner at the home of a physician, his wife and their teenage children. The wife’s knife and fork stayed in place, because she ate nothing. Years before she had promised God that if one of her children survived a frightening condition she would deny herself the pleasure of sharing dinners with her family for the rest of her life. The deal concept is familiar to students at exam time.

          The mom who gave up dining with her family kept her promise, but many deals with the Almighty evaporate in the mist of resolutions, diets and exercise plans.

          Christians have offered a trillion promises to forgive others the way they want God to forgive them. It is right there in the heart of the most famous of prayers: Our Father who art in heaven…forgive us…as we forgive.

          Having lived a long time, and having offended many, I have a substantial stake in the way humans think about forgiveness.

          Accounts I hear are not reassuring. Forgiveness is scorned in families, where you might think it would have its greatest strength. Think of the moms whose unresolved anger leads them to keep their offspring away from grandparents who love them. Think of the brothers who have not spoken to each other for a decade. Such folks have immersed themselves in icy mindlessness, mocking God and committing perjury each time they mumble the Lord’s Prayer.

          Forgiveness is an enabler of reform. Cheaters, stealers, liars, gossipers, killers, persecutors and predators challenge religious believers especially to show them ways to reform and renewal. Forgiveness of offensive behavior does not erase it, but it does encourage rewriting it.