Dinosaurs & Family/G. K. Chesterton

"The place where babies are born, where men die, where the daily drama of mortal life is acted, is not an office or shop or a bureau. It is something much smaller in size, yet much larger in scope...the home...it has a character of unity and universality that is not found in any of the fragmentary experiences of the office or the shop or the bureau." G K Chesterton, All Things Considered.

I was playing "dinosaurs" yesterday with my 2 year old grandson. I watched him as he meticulously gathered up all the dinosaurs, separating them into groups of three, "Da Da, Ma Ma and baby." He had some left over "babies," so, he proceeded to "award" another baby to each group of three until all were distributed. Now, we were ready to play!

Conventional wisdom is slowly coming around to the fact that our social fabric is broken. The issues are endless; the abysmal state of education, the widespread moral lassitude from sexual mores to corporate and politcal corruption, the oppressive tax system, only the tiniest percentage of which is used for national defense, the banishment of religious values, even religious discussion, including the concept of "virtue," from the public square, etc.

However, the assault on the family, the home, is the most egregious and heart rending. Chesterton said, "We shall never return to social sanity till we begin at the beginning. We must start where all history starts, with a man and a woman, and a child, and with the province of liberty and property which these need for their full humanity."

What is required for their "full humanity?"

Here are a few ideas. Eliminate the oppressive taxation on the family by getting rid of payroll taxes, give tax incentives to families where one parent is in the home daily, either not working or working from home. Originate economic policy making the first priority "nuclear family friendly." Encourage the utilization of the extended family for support and instilling values...the "Waltons" had it right! Get rid of "day orphanages." Eliminate the daycare industry along with the abortion industry! Purge the insanity wrought on our culture through modern feminism. Its legacy has been to destroy the family.

Yes, let's send women out of the home to be fulfilled, let's put them in servile jobs answering to the corporate structure, that's the way to make them happy! Let's take them away from their one uniquely feminine need to nourish and facilitate the family. Finally, there's that little thing, God.

In conclusion, overhaul the education system from top to bottom. Until this is well under way, run as fast as possible from the public schools, including and especially, the universities.

We need schools that will teach from day ONE, the history of western civilization, its philosophical tradition, it's emphasis on critical thinking, it's moral dimension, and the Christian theology which has undergirded and nourished our civilization. By the time a child graduates from High School he should know what Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Cicero, Duns Scotus, Sir Thomas More, Descartes, Pascal, Kant, etc., argued, and how each influenced western culture. He should have a firm grasp on what logical thinking entails.

(Recently, as I listened to "focus groups," (a "drive by" media, {Rush's coinage}invention,) I was appalled to hear every person say they liked Obama because he wanted change and was inspiring. Asked for one specific about his past actions or current plan, they were speechless! Thinking? These people were drowning in mob emotion! Where were the classes in critical thinking in their educational experience? Absent!)

A child should know how the concept of "virtue" originated. He should have an understanding of man's spiritual development. I remember how my father used to familiarize us with such classic poems as Rudyard Kipling's, "If." It would be a good class lesson for students to commit those lines to memory. When our children study Shakespeare, assuming they still do, are they given the opportunity to relate his poetry to the virtuous life and what Shakespeare is saying about man's spiritual faculty?

Thomas Jefferson said, in so many words, "virtue" must come first, before education can produce its fruits. I was volunteering last year in a middle school. The school board had recently made a decision that perhaps they should be teaching about "virtue." So, they started calling together the students in assemblies to explain "virtue." WHAT? I guess the word, much less the concept, had never come up before from Kindergarten to the present!

Do schools ever discuss spiritual values, ethics, in terms of the Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition of which we are heirs, rather than the politically correct amoral or immoral jibberish currently so ubiquitous?

We have lost our way, primarily because we have forsaken the family and the values which proceed from it outward to society. Each one of us must help to push the "pendulum" back in the direction of sanity!

Let's put the dinosaurs into their family units, then play.

Book TV/"Out damn spot!"

As I turned on Book TV last night, I saw a female author answering questions about her book. I couldn’t discern the subject matter immediately, but assumed it was a children’s book, since the name of the bookstore hosting the event was, “Women and Children First Bookstore.” The middle aged woman was standing at the podium, behind her, numerous book covers were visible; giraffes, tigers, fairytale characters, and enchanted and colorful landscapes peaked out from the background as her animated figure continued to address the audience.

In a matter of minutes, I became horrified to discover that she was an abortion doctor and was discussing her life as an abortionist. Struck by the stark incongruity of the scene, a seeming idyllic little play land surrounded by beautiful illustrations of merriment and fun, while, at the same time, a “mother figure” spoke blithely about the absolute necessity to keep abortion legal!

As sycophants in the audience kept plying her with opportunities to justify the intentional destruction of human life in the womb, she confidently hit her stride, elaborating on the nobility and courage required to stand up against the pro-life “radical right,” who constantly harassed “providers” like herself. She expressed her dismay that abortion clinics were being “marginalized,” in fact; many doctors were no longer doing abortions. Her greatest fear, that Roe might be overturned, could become reality, if they didn’t “ramp up” their fight.

As I sat there in shock at what was taking place in that children’s bookstore, one man raised his hand, the microphone was handed to him, he began by saying, “at the moment of fertilization a sacred human life has begun, as Mother Teresa…,” suddenly, the microphone was ripped away from him and the group went on as though the “offender” didn’t exist.

I noticed, however, a complete change in the body language of the abortionist. Her confidence seemed to vanish; a disturbed unsettled countenance overtook her features, although she was still “talking the talk.” I realized she was willing herself to this position, while in denial about the authentic struggle going on interiorly. My initial indignation subsided as the truth emerged. I could see utter vulnerability, an existential agony of separation taking place in her, underneath layers of denial and rationalization.

Of course, she had had an abortion, most militant pro-choice advocates have, and, not only had she repressed the guilt for years, she had also shared all this with her daughter, who now, in support of her mother, was also radicalized.

It was all so transparent and brought to mind the heart rending pathos of Shakespearean tragedy. “Out, damn spot! Out, I say!” “What’s done cannot be undone.” Another way must be found.

No longer mad, just heartbroken, heartbroken for all of us. We torture ourselves with denial and avoidance, while the only Person capable of “redeeming time,” of undoing the knots in which we have become entangled, waits outside the city, “Oh, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you under my arms, as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not.”

Time/Contemplation

Gerald Schroeder’s, The Science of God, relates the following event which took place on February 23, 1987. To paraphrase and quote from his account:

Ian Shelton went to work as usual at the Las Campanas Stellar Observatory on top of an 8,000-foot mountain in Chile. His job, to photograph stars in another galaxy, took an exciting turn just as he was getting ready to close another day. As he was processing the last photographic plate, a spot appeared, which had not shown up on any previous plates. It was so large he knew it would be visible to the naked eye, he went outside to check. There it was, a supernova, right before his eyes.

Schroeder goes on to explain that that star had actually exploded 170,000 earth years ago. That would have been about the time of Neanderthals. Of course, if a Neanderthal had looked up at the black sky, he wouldn’t have noticed a thing. However, the light of that supernova was speeding “silently through space, bursting out in all directions, a part of it heading toward the place where the Earth would be at 3:00AM in the morning on February 23, 1987.”

During all the time it took for the light of that supernova to travel to Earth, man's own history began. Humankind progressed through all the ages of development, Iron, Bronze, agriculture, industrial, through WWI and WWII and into the 20th century, and, “still that light beam sped silently, secretly through space, undetected.”

“And, then, without warning, on the night of February 23, 1987, it arrived," and, was noticed by Ian Shelton on his photographic plate

Ok, here’s the punch line…

If you had somehow been able to “hitch a ride” on the photons of that supernova and ridden along with it for all those 170,000 earth years, how much time would you have experienced?

ZERO!

The reason is that you would have been outside of Time. You would have been outside the “temporally linear flow” of our existence. Everything that happened on Earth in all that 170,000 years would have “occurred” simultaneously!!!

I also read somewhere, maybe the same book, that some physicists refer to time as the (mechanism) God uses to keep things from happening all at once.

T.S. Eliot also deals with the whole “time” issue in Four Quartets.

Thinking about "time" eases one into the spiritual, almost effortlessly.

Tomorrow’s another day…….that is, if one exists in the created universe!

Lent/Finding "Sermons in Stones"

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

Shakespear, As You Like It

Lent always seems to find me even as I scurry away. Looking back on our adversities, we seem to see their lessons, their beneficence. Yes, "sweet are the uses," but that is hindsight.

I wonder if Moses, just for an instant, doubted, before he struck that stone. Doubt gives us the opportunity to forge ahead as Dante says, from "height to height."

Heave Ho!

Dedicated to my grandson/T.S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot wrote the following:

“We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we have started, And know the place for the first time.”

I have recently applied these words to a spiritual aspect of the grandparent/grandchild relationship, specifically in regard to my grandson, who is a 2 1/2 year old toddler. What, at the deepest level, constitutes the salutary nature of this bond?

The child , who is yet to capitalize on deductive thinking, is optimally at ease in the "moment." In a sense, he, (by the way, I refuse to succumb to politically correct writing, therefore, my pronoun is universal,) lives in the "now." Within this context, he is one with Reality. He is innocent, non self-conscious, unrestricted by convention; growth is before him, the mind of God, behind him. And, he is "now."

The grandparent, at the other end of the spectrum, is looking back on life, rather than forward. He has spent years becoming civilized, and, rightly so, it has protected and nourished him through the vissitudes of life. Now, however, he begins to perceive, almost imperceptively, that the entire journey has been sculpting his soul toward childhood. We lay our atoms down, trusting in the Sculptor, just as those atoms were once picked up, in our mother's womb.
These two souls meet at what Eliot calls, "the still point of the turning world." (Burnt Norton) Each is uniquely equipped to help the other into their 'future.' The child helps the aged into "simplicity." The grandparent helps the child into "growth."

On an earthy level, and all mysticism is utterly earthy, Grandma says to the child, "I've been there and back, it is a glorious adventure, everything will be fine." Grandchild says to the grandparent, "welcome Home, you have made it back to being itself, to pure love." All of this "communication" takes place solely through spiritual intuition, perhaps even, unconsciously. It is my belief that herein lies the spiritual meaning of the relationship.

Thanks T.S. Eliot, my friend, my mentor, in the Communion of Saints.

And, thanks, Thomas Howard, who wrote a great book on Four Quartets, called,

Dove Descending.

Ben Franklin's wisdom/Michelle Obama's words!

Michelle Obama's comment about finally feeling pride in America, as her husband runs for President, illustrates the narcissism, ignorance and superficiality so rampant in our culture. How could any Princeton educated person make such a thoughtless, insensitive statement?

Perhaps a detour on the campaign trail, let's say, on Memorial Day, to any veteran cemetery might modify her opinion? Maybe, as she looks out on the sea of red, white and blue flags, reverently marking white granite altars stretching out to the horizen, she might be moved to awe, to pride, to humility.

This kind of rhetoric, so common from the Left, belies a mindset utterly undeserving of the White House. The "people's house" exists only because of blood, sweat and gushing self-sacrifice of the virtuous souls, on whose shoulders we stand!

Oh, but her husband is all about fixing our "broken souls," as well.

The paucity of this presidential field! I can only shutter as Ben Franklin's words, "a Republic, if you can keep it," shout a warning in my mind.