Monday, August 26, 2019
Monday, August 5, 2019
Dear woke community
Are you a woker (one who is woke, have I coined a term?)?
I don't know much about the 'woke' movement, but out here in the hinterlands it seems to be a bunch of self-congratulatory people who have the 'right opinion' about all the different sorts of people and this right opinion makes them better and more wise and sensitive and kinder than everybody else, so much so that they can lecture the rest of us on our lack of wokeness. Here's my question to the wokers, with all your cultural/social sensitivity and positivity, when was the last time you were intentionally kind to another human person who was neither a good friend nor close relative? In all your sensitivity and wokeness, have you seen and addressed the needs around you? Have you comforted the mourning, listened to the anxious, encouraged the disheartened, bought a meal for the hungry, reached out in friendship to the lonely, welcomed the outcast, visited the ill...talked to someone who isn't 'woke?' Or has all your piety been in condemning those who aren't themselves enlightened?
This isn't new, though it has a different trendy name at the moment, two thousand years ago it was the Pharisees, today it the liberal, academic, and social elite who talk big about their care for the poor, the outcast, the under appreciated, the race or social minority of the moment, but who in reality have done nothing for the weak, the lonely, the needy around them. They are all 'for' the oppressed but know neither their names or true situations, but they are a champion of 'the cause!' If elected, they'll do this or that for those wretched individuals, but as a private human person, they would be hard pressed to name even a single individual of this oppressed social subclass that they have an actual relationship with or have helped with a single moment of their time or resources, but hey, they'll spend other peoples' money on any social cause that will get them elected, published, or otherwise benefit their own cause. Worse, they don't see the strange irony in treating all their 'opponents' as they insist their opponents treat the 'special' group, of whose cause they are the most outspoken social champions.
As Shakespeare was wont to say:
“Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.”
I don't know much about the 'woke' movement, but out here in the hinterlands it seems to be a bunch of self-congratulatory people who have the 'right opinion' about all the different sorts of people and this right opinion makes them better and more wise and sensitive and kinder than everybody else, so much so that they can lecture the rest of us on our lack of wokeness. Here's my question to the wokers, with all your cultural/social sensitivity and positivity, when was the last time you were intentionally kind to another human person who was neither a good friend nor close relative? In all your sensitivity and wokeness, have you seen and addressed the needs around you? Have you comforted the mourning, listened to the anxious, encouraged the disheartened, bought a meal for the hungry, reached out in friendship to the lonely, welcomed the outcast, visited the ill...talked to someone who isn't 'woke?' Or has all your piety been in condemning those who aren't themselves enlightened?
This isn't new, though it has a different trendy name at the moment, two thousand years ago it was the Pharisees, today it the liberal, academic, and social elite who talk big about their care for the poor, the outcast, the under appreciated, the race or social minority of the moment, but who in reality have done nothing for the weak, the lonely, the needy around them. They are all 'for' the oppressed but know neither their names or true situations, but they are a champion of 'the cause!' If elected, they'll do this or that for those wretched individuals, but as a private human person, they would be hard pressed to name even a single individual of this oppressed social subclass that they have an actual relationship with or have helped with a single moment of their time or resources, but hey, they'll spend other peoples' money on any social cause that will get them elected, published, or otherwise benefit their own cause. Worse, they don't see the strange irony in treating all their 'opponents' as they insist their opponents treat the 'special' group, of whose cause they are the most outspoken social champions.
As Shakespeare was wont to say:
“Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.”
All of modern politics and academia has become a blame game, helping no one, merely elevating oneself by demonizing the 'other.' And as Beatrice declared, I too would depart unkissed, save that you cannot escape this noisome atmosphere save by escaping the planet by some means or other, which I am at present unable to accomplish. Perhaps if we ignored the most vitriolic of these verbal crusaders, instead of lauding them as noble heroes intent on our cause, and rather demanded that they prove their words by their actions or else remain silent, instead of throwing more money at education perhaps they could tutor kids in their own neighborhood? And can we not, each in our own little worlds, propagate kindness for those about us, whether they are of the 'special' class or not? That merely for the sake of being human, they deserve our consideration and respect, they have an innate dignity and the right to be treated with such? Kindness must begin with us, only then will we undermine the culture of hate and vitriol upon which our social leaders perch like contented vultures atop the carcass of personal virtue.
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Look back and laugh!
I was glancing through someone's adoption blog the other day, the writing dating from the time before the infamous call, when their child finally came home. She seemed rather distressed at others' use of the word 'exciting' to describe what her family was going through during the long, unpredictable wait. Being now two years out from our second placement, I am almost a little wistful about that so-called excitement. For nothing in life compares to the exhilaration of 'the call,' that moment you find out you are finally parents, it makes me almost want to go through it again, almost. But this young lady does have a very good point, while excitement is certainly a part of it, the whole experience can hardly be summed up in that word. There's so much of doubt, fear, worry, impatience, frustration, grief, and a hundred other emotions tied up with it that it is impossible to distill it down to one word.
I'm sure Frodo's flight from the Nazgul might have been considered exciting or the experience of a soldier in any given war, at least to those on the outside, those only hearing the tale; it is quite another creature altogether to actually be in the midst of it. But even our own stories come to look that way in our own remembering thereof with enough time and distance. Scripture tells us that the woman soon forgets the pain of her travail in the joy that a human being has been born into the world, and that concept applies to so many things in life, even the adoption process. During the waiting, the doubt, the fear, the what ifs, the grief, the interminability, the frustration it seems like it will never happen, that you'll never be free of this endless swamp. But whatever happens, eventually you look back and wonder what all the fuss was about, hopefully you laugh at yourself and how silly your impatience was, for in the end, the trouble was worth it, the struggle was not in vain for it was just another chapter in that great book called your life, which is but one minor volume in a great and boundless library, and that book but the introduction of an endless volume containing a story that will never end. Like the children at the end of the Narnia series, they all look back and laugh, will we? What's your story about? Are you trying to write your own or is there a vastly experienced Author penning your tale?
I'm sure Frodo's flight from the Nazgul might have been considered exciting or the experience of a soldier in any given war, at least to those on the outside, those only hearing the tale; it is quite another creature altogether to actually be in the midst of it. But even our own stories come to look that way in our own remembering thereof with enough time and distance. Scripture tells us that the woman soon forgets the pain of her travail in the joy that a human being has been born into the world, and that concept applies to so many things in life, even the adoption process. During the waiting, the doubt, the fear, the what ifs, the grief, the interminability, the frustration it seems like it will never happen, that you'll never be free of this endless swamp. But whatever happens, eventually you look back and wonder what all the fuss was about, hopefully you laugh at yourself and how silly your impatience was, for in the end, the trouble was worth it, the struggle was not in vain for it was just another chapter in that great book called your life, which is but one minor volume in a great and boundless library, and that book but the introduction of an endless volume containing a story that will never end. Like the children at the end of the Narnia series, they all look back and laugh, will we? What's your story about? Are you trying to write your own or is there a vastly experienced Author penning your tale?
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