rising to something HIGHER

i got involved in a facebook thread about a horrible situation that took place 2 days ago in a nearby small town, circleville, ohio. what happened, apparently, is that a domestic dispute broke out, a 21-year old mother intervened and tried to stop it, and she ended up getting beaten to death by 2, maybe as many as 4, adults. on top of which, supposedly several bystanders did nothing except stand by.

as you might imagine, practically everyone who commented on the facebook post wanted to see the people who have been arrested for this to be shot, execution-style. line 'em up and POW! hang 'em high! let 'em rot in hell! blow their heads off and THEN let 'em rot in hell!

foolishly (it was foolish because this country is STUPID), i offered that, while i am as horrified as the next guy about this whole thing, we do have this teensy little thing in this country called presumption of innocence. until proven guilty.

WHOA. you'da thought i'd just suggested that we give the men and women who have been arrested for this the nobel peace prize or somethin'.

the conversation in the thread switched from railing against the sons of bitches who did this awful thing to railing against me for coming to their "defense."

i very calmly and dispassionately clarified that, my opinions notwithstanding and their opinions nothwithstanding, the fact of the matter is, this is how the justice system works in our country. i reminded the other commenters that i wasn't the one who established this system (although i think the ones who did were spot on), but i am obligated - as are they - to respect it. i even threw in the fact that if the tables were turned, we all would probably want everybody to respect it for us.

but, nope. nothin' doin.' everybody wanted my head on a platter just as much as they wanted these other people's heads on platters.




i tell you this story because it exemplifies something with which i have been struggling mightily for months. years, really. and that something is this........why the hell won't any.body rise the hell up and over? for once, go after an ideal higher than your own intellect, your own thoughts, your own gut feelings, your own de.mands.

but hardly anybody ever does. it makes me sick. we are all so about ME. and when you get right down to it, most of the people who are the most all about themselves are the very ones who think they aren't! they're the very ones who think that all of their passion and all of their fight and all of their drive is being offered for the good of someone else.

but most of the time, it's not. if it were, Christ never would have had to come.


and He never would have had to die.



(last sentence written by my daugher, abby bowman)

kumbaya used to have a nice little melody to it.

why................if we are supposed to be evolving to a more tolerant, more accepting, more loving society, are we getting worse? we're worse!

it has been said that "the one thing i can't tolerate is intolerance." well, the one thing i can't tolerate is the tolerant being intolerant! better to be intolerant and admit it than to present yourself as tolerant at the same time as you hurl invective all over creation! come on, people. come. on. you know who you are. you know how angry and strident and so sure of yourself and your opinions that you get. knock it off!

and so will i.

was it martin luther king, jr.  who said that you can't cure hatred with hatred? that only love can do that?

martin luther king, jr. would be horrified.

he'd be horrified.

 

barometer for oldness

i never thought i'd be this age. if you're this age, you never thought you'd be it, either. but, alas.

if dry wine is so good, why isn't dry skin? why isn't dry hair?

i remember when i was a teenager (and even a young and not-so-young adult) and how my skin was so freaking oily! drove me crazy! it never really broke out all that much, but it was so stinkin' oily all the time. my hair, too. sometimes washed it more than twice a day! i remember back then, reading that as a female ages, her skin gets drier and her hair gets drier (of course, i don't remember reading this about men). and i remember thinking, ohmygosh, i can. not. wait till the day when my skin and my hair are dry. it sounded like heaven to me.

well.

true confession time.......i just this week realized something.......i do not need to wash my hair once a day anymore (much less more than once!). i don't even need to wash it every other day. i know, gross, right? but, it is so, so true. the way i figured it out is, i had been having SUCH PROBLEMS with my hair turning out all dry and fly-away and disgusting for so long that it finally dawned on me.......remember those magazines you used to read, nancy? remember how they said that as females age, their hair gets drier? well.........freakin' bingo. so, i ran a little experiment this week......i went two days in between washing my hair and guess what? i got more compliments than usual, which, not bragging or anything, but i do get my fair share of compliments about my hair. (shout out to cindy bernhard, my stylist.)

anyway, i no longer wash my hair on a daily basis. i feel like i'm coming out of the closet or something, just admitting this out loud, in public.

which reminds me.......what, pray tell, besides sexual orientation perhaps, do men ever have to come out of the closet about?

why relevant is irrelevant

(aren't you peeps glad you have me to straighten you out and explain how the world oughta work?)    :)

ok, so, speaking of the world - here's what's wrong with it: relevant. relevant is what's wrong with the world.

'round about the '60s, everybody decided that everything needed to be "relevant." which is a fancy way of saying that everything needed to be about moi.

look, i love moi as much as the next guy. and i fell for all that "relevant" crap, too. but i have wised up. and i want you to, too.

in my lifetime - and, likely, yours - the '60s were the beginning of the end. (despite the fact that we thought they were the beginning of the beginning.) we thought that having things free and not uptight and not according to anybody's rules and appealing and satsifying and meaningful - and relevant - and peace, love, flowers, blah, blah, blah - GAG ME - would make us all happy. 

well.......how happy has the world been - really - since then? (if this is happy, who needs enemies? to turn a phrase.)

in other words, the world is not happy. the world is a freaking wreck. and you know it and i know it and  the reason it's a freaking wreck is, well...... relevant. we all wanted it to be relevant...... to us. if it didn't make sense to you, then it didn't make sense. 

in hindsight, i now see that givin' a flip about what makes sense to me is the first step to hell.

here's what doesn't make sense to me: that i should forgive the person who murders my daughter. should that hideous thing ever happen.

what doesn't make sense to me is that the secret to making myself happy is making somebody else happy.

what doesn't make one iota of sense to me is that if i put myself last, i will have put myself first.

it doesn't even make a whole lotta sense to me to love a God that i can't see. and who, as pope emeritus benedict very honestly said, sometimes seems like He's asleep.

the point is, it doesn't matter if it makes sense to me. and it doesn't matter if it makes sense to you. hell, chemistry doesn't make sense to me (and, don't lie - it doesn't make a damned bit of sense to you, either) - but i believe in it. and so do you.

you know how there's no "i" in team?

well,

there's no "i" in relevant, either.