Relative Truth

The truth and I are cousins.
We had the same mother.
We didn't know it,
so we called her God.

Jimmy Cordoroys

Jimmy squirmed in his seat. His new corduroys were scratchy.
"Yes, I see you Jimmy", said his teacher.
Jimmy hadn't been watching his teacher and looked up in surprise to find her.
She was at the board with her back to him, finishing her list of math homework problems.
Without looking back she asked, "When are you going to write down your homework problems, Jimmy?"
Terrified of the eyes in the back of her head,
he snatched a piece of paper and began writing,
the itch from his corduroys now gone.

Notice the next time:
when someone knows where you're coming from,
they always seem to know where you are.

The difference between right and wrong

There is no difference between being right and being righteous,
except to the one who knows the truth.
One who knows the truth is always wrong.

The truth about life

The saying goes, "The truth is where you find it."
Actually however, we seldom want to find it.
We're afraid it will confirm what we already know.

When we accept that we're going to die tomorrow,
the truth gets very clear.
And so does life in all its glory.

Working to get somewhere

The sun comes up by sitting still.
Milkweed seeds float on a breeze,
and arrives in a calm.
Snow does not resist falling.
Flying is not work for birds.

Of all things in the universe
that journey to somewhere,
only we work to get there.

We are that getting somewhere in life requires effort -
somewhere being not here, not now.
We either get there or we don't.
It requires no work to be somewhere.

Having arrived somewhere in life we sometimes wonder:
"How did I get here?"
"Did I enjoy the ride?"
"How did this happen?"
"Was all that work worth it?"

Getting somewhere is work.
Being somewhere requires nothing.
To be somewhere, stop .

Belonging

I'm a pretty independent sort. My unsaid mantra, adopted I think when I was in early high school, has been I don't need anyone. It sounds like, "Ok, so they don't want me, I don't need them." I went on to live the life of the odd man out. Or at least it seemed to feel that way.

My only real comparison was my younger brother, who was as long as I can remember, the star - the big man on campus guy - always popular, always liked and with lots of friends. Belonging appeared to be effortless for him. I watched him work at his friendships in ways that appeared easy to him. Of course he might disagree with my characterization of the easiness of it, and that's how it occurred to me.

Oh I had a few school/neighborhood friends but it always seemed like they too were the odd men out, the fringe-of-the-popular crowd so to speak. By comparison my brother was a basketball and track star, while I was an art major and school photographer who went on canoe trips. I always wondered what it took to fit in and never, even to this day, figured that out. So with the exception of my wife Anne and my children, my strategy has been to go it alone.

I've done and continue to do lots of things alone, even today. And I find myself most content, most at ease and peaceful when doing so. I fish by myself, play golf by myself, and hike in the woods by myself. My most spiritual experiences are when fishing by myself.

When I lived in the Philadelphia area I had some good men friends, guys with whom I shared common interests in business, in transformational activities/interests/commitments, along with a local community of friends that both Anne and I played with, engaged with, and contributed to for 25 years.

Then we moved to NC to be near our daughter and that Philadelphia community faded into the background, kept in existence only by my participation in Facebook and occasional trips back north. I made some men friends here in NC mainly around the golf community of other neighborhood retired guys and through social activities fostered by Anne - she can go belong anywhere at the drop of a hat.

And still there has been no sense of belonging as in being anchored. It's always occurred like I'm just passing through, on the outside of the geezers group, tolerated, maybe even accepted, but not really in, you know? So back I went to doing things alone. Well this past weekend I had an experience with some men friends that confronted my strategy, with guys I would have in the past, called golfing "buddies".

We went to the Carolina coast for  3-day golfing outing. We drove three hours each way, played on three courses over the three days, cheering on each other's good shots, teasing about each other's bad shots, and solacing each other when the dreaded yips showed up during the inevitable bad run of holes. They teased me the whole weekend, about my lack of appreciation for southern sole food and vowed to introduce me to multiple foul sounding foods such as grits and gravy, Brunswick stew, Jones sausage, corn dogs and breakfast biscuits with meat gravy.

We went to see, and all enjoyed, The Martian at the movies. We had our meals together. We shared our politics, our war stories, and our childhood stories - finding as the weekend unfolded that we have a good deal in common. The weekend left me feeling  we had a mutual respect and fondness for each other. It certainly occurred that way for me.

I came home from our outing having thoroughly enjoyed the time together and realizing it was so much fun because I got to share it with the other guys. Even today, the day after we're back, I still feel it. They of course may be unaware of the gift they gave me. And it was truly a gift - given without anything expected in return, without any ulterior motives, leaving me finally, here at 74, belonging.

A bud on a tree

A bud on a tree
and a drop of rain.
They are different,
and the same.
While one nurtures the other,.
they both hold promises
of what will be.

The Whole World is a Stage

It seems to me that the whole world is a stage.
If that ever sunk in, we'd all have a case of stage fright.
Thinking about it gives me goosebumps.
Can you imagine a worldwide case of stage fright?

I think that's what we call the "second coming".

Gun rights at any cost

This is an attempt to do some thinking. To do some out loud thinking. To get a sense of where I am about this. One way I am is troubled. Troubled by things I seen said on TV in the past couple days by Ben Carson and Donald Trump in the wake of the shootings in Oregon.

I'm writing this to kind of work my way through my own thoughts. I'm a bit uneasy about anyone else seeing it as I'm committed to being honest with myself and wondering who will be offended by anyplace I arrive as I ponder my way through this. But there aren't many who follow my blog and the ones that seem to are people I trust and respect.

I'm surprised no one in my community of friends, including my Facebook "friends", has said anything about Ben Carson's statements yesterday and today about how he'd handle a shooter if he were around (charge them), and how 2nd amendment gun ownership supersedes protecting people in importance. I thought I'd hear a barrage of opinions. Nope. Just silence. I'm astonished by these gun-ownership-rights-at-all-costs-arguments I've been watching on TV. And finally I'm annoyed that my past internal conversation has been to say to myself to let someone else figure it out.

As a starting point I am someone who has owned guns, since I began hunting as a teenager, who belongs to a gun local club, and likes to shoot there, and who is an NRA member - AND who agrees by-the-way with the majority of NRA members that gun ownership, safety, and usage should be more regulated to the benefit of all, despite the constant shrill pronouncements and fear mongering published by the NRA.

As for Ben Carson's proposition, I assert his imagined reaction toward a killing shooter in a classroom setting is a self delusional hypothetical. Unlike a cop or a soldier who is trained and has learned to how to react to that sort of danger, Carson has got no idea how he'd react. It's a delusional hypothetical and speaks to the utter stupidity of those who claim this as a way to justify gun rights at any cost.

Unfortunately I seem to be part of a hopeless community of citizens who do not see any way to punch past the juggernaut of gun business interests, NRA's lopsided single-minded narrative, and idealistic constitutionalists who argue the infallible righteousness of that document to justify taking no action to bring the use of guns under a more rational system of control in order to at least, even if imperfectly, quell some of the actions of these mentally ill killers, and criminals whose neighborhood collateral damage killings reign unabated.

I'm resigned that the direction this so-called debate is taking will require still more, and dramatically more outrageous, acts of killing, which Carson, and Trump so blithely admit they expect will continue, accelerate, and grow in their honorifics. And that it will inure to perhaps my grandchildren's generation - when the scale and consequence of this killing have finally become so horrific as to become unacceptable to enough people, to finally step up and find an equitable way to deal with this in the U.S.

It occurs to me that one of the costs of our so-called freedoms and the financial disparities we have allowed to segregate our melting pot have provided for institutionalizing group think - molding the narrative inside of which we all live in this country to the self-serving aggrandizement of the opinions, interests and wants of the few, the most powerful, and those who can afford to create and mold this country's governing narrative.

We are currently living in a group think of righteousness. We are battered by voices from all sides of who is the most "right" - has the most righteous claim to their brand of righteousness. The claims are based on historical justifications, religious justifications, and justifications of traditions that have long out lived their usefulness or rational applicability. And of course any righteous position carries with it the automatic "wrongness" of any who disagree.

I am not a member of the NRA because I want to be, or because I agree with their positions. I am a member because it's the only way I can hold membership in any local gun club and so have access to their shooting ranges. I have enjoyed building rifles. I have enjoyed making my own shooting ammunition, trying different load component combinations to improve accuracy and the performance of guns under different target challenges.

My favorite gun is a civil war era black powder Navy Colt "six shooter". And every time I go through the 30 minute process it takes to safely load and fire that gun, I marvel to myself how any civil war soldier ever effectively used that gun to hit anything, especially when they were being fired upon. Forget about any idiotic notions that anyone could fast draw and fire that kind of gun from a holster at waste height and hit anyone standing 30 feet away. Not going to happen.

I quit hunting over 40 years ago after being twice shot at by other hunters in the Pocono woods in PA. Once the fear, and anger of those near-miss moments passed, I found myself wondering what possessed those hunters to such heights of stupidity. As I wondered about and confronted that adrenalized moment that I and all shooters experience - that moment of unintelligible fear/excitement/power, I had an epiphany. It occurred to me that shooting and killing (killing anything) were two different states, and that I could enjoy one without needing the other.

I was hunting with my dad and had spotted a nice buck among a herd of dear. I was sighted in on him and expected to drop him in his tracks as was my practice. As I watched him through my scope, I had this sudden overwhelming sense that I had no need to kill this creature. So I fired under the deer to chase him and the herd up the mountain, walked out of the woods, and never went hunting again.

I continued to shoot, to enjoy the science of ballistics, the craft of guns and ballistics and the fun and skill of shooting hands guns - but no more hunting. I've no desire to kill. Through this all I am clear that the emotional charge of shooting - of controlling the power of this instrument - addresses some deep need to assuage the final helplessness we all spend life avoiding, working around, overcoming, conquering, or in some cases drugging away.

I'm also clear that although I have permits to carry a gun and were I have one with me in one of these shooting situations, and with all the shooting, training and facility I have with using a gun, I have no idea - NOT REALLY - how I would behave in the face of some murderous person trying to kill me or others around me. Could I shoot and hit him? I expect so. Would I have the control and practiced reaction to do so if he were shooting at me? I really have no idea. Would I have dreamed or pre-imagined myself charging in to save the situation, such that it would be a dependable response? I'd like to think so. But thinking so and actually doing so in that split second are very different things. The truth is I DON'T AND WON'T REALLY KNOW UNTIL IT HAPPENS.

The difference between me and Ben Carson is that I know I don't know. He's deluded himself into thinking he does. I don't want a president who deludes himself and is comfortable in his righteousness.

A journeyman plumber watching the ease with which the master plumber was threading a thick pipe - a continuous smooth easy arcing of the big thread cutting die back and forth as new threads were created. Every now and then the master would tell the journeyman to squirt a little cutting fluid on the pipe and forming threads.

Suddenly the journeyman realized that he was witnessing two unusual occasions - the master was doing work that was usually done by apprentices or journeymen, and he was doing it without the typical struggles of threading thick pipes - with extraordinary ease and smoothness. . "Why is it that you're threading this pipe?", he asked. "Isn't this work for our apprentice to be doing?"

"I enjoy doing it myself once in a while. It contributes to the quality of everything else I do." replied the master.

After pondering the answer for a few minutes, the journeyman said, " That seems so easy for you. I've never seen anyone do that so smoothly. You must have practiced that for a long time."

The master replied, "It's how you set it up. When you set your work up to be easy ahead of time, it gets to be that way when you do it."

"How do you set work up to be easy ahead of time?", asked the journeyman.

"By making your work be an expression of your self. Happiness is a smooth, even pipe thread.", answered the master.

And the threading die continued in it's smooth unbroken circles in the hands of the master.

Humor

There are two kinds of humor.
One bubbles up.
It comes from who you are.
The other responds to external stimulus.
It comes from who you think you are.