The root of all evil

Maggie's bike was stolen from our driveway last night. Let me tell you, she was violated. She and I spent about an hour last night driving around in a futile after-dark attempt at finding it. This morning, while Megan went up to Maggie's school to help with Christmas program rehearsal, Lennon and I spent another hour-plus searching the square mile around our house for signs of the bike. It turns out there are a LOT of bikes in that square mile.

Maggie couldn't sleep last night; she came out of her room crying, saying she "just wanted her bike." You know, it was such a challenge and a victory for her to learn to ride that thing, and whoever has taken this little girl's bike has no appreciation for her struggle.

To make her, and me, feel better I asked her to assume that some dad out there who isn't lucky enough to have a job like me, but loves his daughter just as much, wanted that little girl to have a bike for Christmas so much--and he was so desperate to make her happy--that he took Maggie's bike for his little girl. It wasn't to be mean, he just didn't know what else to do; little girls' happiness means that much to their daddies. So we're trying not to think of it as a crime, but as the symptom of a bigger world crime, where people are made desperate by our culture.

That's the need scenario.
But it also got me thinking about the greed scenario.

I think need and greed can consort to account for about all of the hurt in the world. People either greedily take things from others, or need things that others won't share; so, people war with each other. On large and small scales people are either hoarding or trying to survive. Greed and need.

Now, religious wars are a different ball of wax, I suppose. Even so, though, I think factions may be warring over a greed for righteousness, or a need to be left alone to explore God. Greed and need.

So, someone was either in great (hopefully ethically challenging) need of a bicycle, or greedy for their own selfish (probably fleeting) gain. In any case, I need to figure out how to get a bike up on the roof for Christmas morning.

Thanks from just me

My wife and kids
My colleagues
My friends
Obama
Bill Self
Rigby the dog
The Tao Te Ching
The Beatles
Pearl Jam
U2
The Human Mind
Police, Firefighters, EMTs, all who TRULY SERVE the public
Acoustic guitars
Bethel College
Shalom Mennonite Church
Birds
Own-skin-comfort
Education
Drive
Simplicity
Old people, more every day
Lemons, in every way conceivable
Hope
Hope
Hope


hope...

Bothered by these days...

Self-righteousness in the church(es)
A lack of respect for others
Poverty in the world; in the nearby world
An unwillingness to learn and grow
A need to hold our convictions with an closed fist instead of an open palm
A fear of difficult questions
Arrogance
The speed of it all
Danger
Consumerism
Americanism
Crappy, canned music
War
Getting fat
People who can't cut to the chase
The Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family and the rest
Coddling
Nuclear weapons

Hippies and Peaceniks

The other day I pulled into traffic behind a car that sported a "Support Peacemakers" bumper sticker in English and Spanish, and I thought to myself, "There's a Mennonite." Then I thought to myself, "Why would you think that?" While that was an easy question to answer since I know a preponderance of Mennos who support peace and who have spent time promoting it in Spanish-speaking lands, I also know that in no way should that definitively categorize the person in front of me. First of all, all Mennonites are not pacifists. Settle down, now; it's true. Nor are all of the Menno pacifists particularly interested in Spanish-speaking service. So, with those two generalities debunked, I got to thinking about knee-jerk reactions to the concept of peace and which of those I've ascribed to during my 32 years.

Hippies
Now we still hear this one a lot from nationalist conservatives: "What are you a hippie or something?" So did hippies really want peace? Well, without doing any research, I think we can safely say that some did. Some were more focused on getting high and others were more focused on getting laid. I knew some people who claimed to have been hippies (though they were on the young end of that group) who were actually quite against peace. These would have been more at home on the Hell's Angels end of the counterculture spectrum. (Sidebar: I did a paper on this spectrum once that focused on the popular conception that counterculturalists were all peace-driven, liberal hippies. Hell's Angels, while certainly being a countercultural force in the late 60s, were violent, misogynist, militant, nationalists who dreamed of a bloody revolution whereby they would take power by force. Read the autobiography of Sonny Barger, Hell's Angels founder for more on that.) The "hippies" that I knew growing up expressed some regrets about not volunteering for Vietnam, preferred a fistfight over a discussion, and invested money in drugs instead of social programs. Ultimately, though, the hippie movement was overrun by addicts and perverts who saw the philosophy of peace and love as an opportunity to feed their demons. George Harrison said it best in an interview that can be found in The Beatles Anthology, 3:

You know, I went to Haight-Ashbury, expecting it to be this brilliant place, and it was just full of horrible, spotty, dropout kids on drugs. It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn’t what I thought of all these groovy people having spiritual awakenings and being artistic. It was like the bowery, it was like alcoholism, it was like any addiction. So, at that point, I stopped taking it, actually, the dreaded Lysergic [LSD; Lysergic Acid Diethylamide]. I had some in a little bottle, it was liquid, and I put it under a microscope, and I looked at it, and it looked like rope, just like old rope, and I thought, "I’m not going to put that in my brain any more."

Mennonites
Well, although I am a Mennonite by virtue of belonging to a Mennonite church, I'm not a Mennonite by heritage or by blood, so I don't really speak from a place of authority on this. I am, however, completely certain that not all Mennonites are in favor of peace. Now most are in favor of service and helping humanity, but I know of a number of Mennonites who have joined the military, as well as a number of Mennonites who believe in the divine right of the United States to wage a just war on behalf of its interests. I can remember being particularly angry with some of these folks after 9/11 when they were calling for war when I felt pretty certain that they'd take a conscientious objector status if it came down to it. So again, this general assumption about peace doesn't work.

Cowards
I can think of two specific times when relatives of mine, both veterans, described the peace position (nonviolence or conscientious objector position) as "cowardly." Now, both of these conversations revolved around Mennonites, but the objection was not to any theological philosophy, it was strictly expressed as being "cowardly" to refuse to fight for their countries.

Hmm.

Well, I've already established that we can't define peaceniks as Mennonites (there are pacifists in every religious tradition) so let's ignore the context of those discussions and focus on the view that pacifists are cowards. First and foremost, any number of pacifists from any number of philosophies or theologies have been killed for believing in peace; of those, untold numbers actually chose to die for their beliefs. Not cowardly. Second, it takes guts to stand for your convictions even when your life is not on the line. Not cowardly. Third, peace is not the mainstream focus, so it takes chutzpah to form your beliefs outside of the accepted norms. Not cowardly. Frankly, there's nothing cowardly about believing in peace over war. It's downright brave.

It's frustrating sometimes to look around me, near and far, and see and hear the warmongering, the nationalism, and the bigotry. I salute all of you who work to make it a more peaceful world every day. Many members of the military believe that the work they're doing will someday bring peace. I disagree, but salute them for trying to reach that end. Keep working, keep trying. Never give up. As John Lennon said at the concert to free John Sinclaire in 1971:

Apathy isn't it...we can do something.
So Flower Power didn't work. So what. We start again.

Be well.

Not much to tell

I feel like I haven't had anything worth saying recently, so I haven't been posting much. Since I hope, however, to have interesting thoughts again someday I don't want to fall out of the habit of posting. So here, I guess is a filler, random post.

If you've never utilized the "Next Blog" option at the top of the page on Blogspot blogs, I recommend it; it's fascinating. Be warned, however, that it just cycles you through random blogs. I can't quite tell if it has some sort of ratings filter or not, but I have come across a few blogs (or at least posts) that I wouldn't want to open at work. It's a crazy big world we live in and it's enlightening to use the "interwebs" for finding out more about its people. Even if it is slightly voyeuristic.

Megan is most of the way through her first semester of grad school. Poor woman; she's having a very frustrating time with the fact that some of the faculty are less than helpful. She's going to do great, I know it! Still, it's too bad to watch her tear her hair out just asking for the same respect that she gives her students. I'm proud to say that Megan is a college instructor with "only" a BFA, teaching kids at "only" a two-year school, but she is dedicated to her work and to her kids and cares enough to make a difference. Too many (and working in higher ed we see this) people believe that once they tack that PhD on the end of their name they no longer have to give a rip. Megan will never be that person. She believes in people. She's always used a quote attributed to Anne Frank to describe her point of view: Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart. I'm proud to be married to such a person, dedicated to all things good. It is this goodness of heart that has served and will continue to serve her well.

Maggie is doing well I think. She's often a hard kid to read. She's got a flair for the dramatic and seems to enjoy injecting melodrama into a given situation to up the ante. No disciplinary conversation is ever straightforward with her! She's a prolific artist and really quite skilled. One of these days I'll get some of her art on to this blog. She's an empathetic soul, but a typical older sibling (or I should say, typical of my behavior as an older sibling) to her brother--always annoyed by him. She really wants to get a Nintendo DS, but has to earn it. This summer we gave her the goal of learning all of her multiplication tables through 10s, but that never happened. Now she's challenged herself to earn all "E"s and "P"s on her grade cards at the end of the semester. If she can do that I'll gladly get her a DS! She's playing the part of Cindy Lou Who in the school Christmas program, which obviously is "The Grinch." She sings all the time and I think is going to be another fine arts person. No big surprise there. Everyone knows Megan studied and teaches theatre, but maybe everyone doesn't know that I displayed some theatrical talent earlier in life, as well. Beyond that, Megan is an excellent artist and I play a fair guitar with bit of a singing voice. Look for the kids to be encouraged in musical directions this Christmas!

Lennon is something. He is like Maggie, especially in appearance, but so much his own person. I don't have a good feel for my public image, but Lennon feels to me like a personality entirely unique in our family. Ornery doesn't begin to touch it. He's completely haphazard, totally contrarian, always energetic, a know-it-all, constantly talking, devilish, adorable, winning, etc., etc. I don't mean to gush, but he's just a cyclone of a human being. He completely idolizes Maggie and wants to be in the middle of everything she is doing. (It seems worth interjecting that, as I type, the kids are pretending to be poor, homeless street musician kids who sit on the corner and sing Beatles' songs for food money. Really, they are.)

I love watching these two grow (an inch since July, each) but I know one of these days I'll turn around and they'll be grown. What a life. What a world.