Out of Context

While reading hot topics in The Facebook followed by comments from people who have their fixed opinions, I’ve noticed, in particular, those who proudly consider themselves the highest of intelligent thinkers seem to be the most practiced at making specious arguments - drawing conclusions based on comparing apples to oranges. 

The Facebook is a stirred pot for sure. Gather folks together and there will be disagreement. I can’t help but recognize and count the various classic debate techniques almost as though they are following a printed guideline. 

The most common tactic for attempting to shut down one who takes a different view is the adroit combining of a concept presented as ‘fact’ as though it is foregone conclusion with a snarky final jab implying that anyone with half a brain ought to understand. This usually signals the downward spiral into ugly name calling. I give this sort of interaction wide berth because, frankly, I don’t care to debate anything with anyone anyway. 

Live and let live, right? Thus far we still reside in a country that supports the right of all to have opposing views, though I see disturbing signs that this is a dying construct. It seems the loudest voices are those who tout freedom of speech even as they condemn other views being expressed. But that’s another topic for another day.

I will admit to secretly admiring those who have the gift of effective argument though. I am talking about those who have truly done their homework, know the irrefutable facts and are gifted with the art of clear communication. I also freely admit I am not one of those. I think this is because I must have been elsewhere when the power of persuasion was being issued. Thus any tactic of rebuttal will effectively shut me down but not in the way an opponent is likely to assume. 

I don’t give up because I am bested, I bail when it is clear nothing I can say or do will coax someone else, if not to my side, at least to agree to disagree. 

I console myself with the Scriptures about not casting pearls among swine and when you find you are not welcome, turn and leave, shaking the dust off your sandals as you depart. Stoic that I am.

We live our lives, form our opinions, and dig our heels into our fixed perceptions based on what we want to be true, not necessarily what is true. And this perception is woven from a million little threads of individual experience, good and bad that we collect along the way. Sentient beings that we are, we still are mostly shaped from personal sensory experience and thus our take-away is often myopically out of context. From all the things thrown at us we pull only those familiar threads that we recognize and then artfully reweave these into our own tapestry of assumption. 

Perhaps this is the rationale for Christ admonishing us not to judge others, lest we wish to be judged ourselves. God knows us from the beginning to the end. He knows that we see that which we want to see when it better fits our perception of how things ought to be, as well as how we prefer to justify our POV rather than ask a few pointed questions the answers of which might threaten to unravel our context.

Since I know for sure that it is not possible for me to know everything and furthermore it’s not even close to possible for me to be right all the time, I refuse to be frustrated at being silenced by those who think they are. I respond with a smile and let them think they won. 

Proof is in the pudding, everything comes out in the wash, time will tell - as the old-timers used to say. 

For Him,

Meema

Prove all things: hold fast that which is good.  (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

Can We Talk?

Though I have stayed at a Holiday Inn once, I’ve never thought of myself as a professional anything. Even when I earned a pay check and could have legitimately claimed I was in the middle of a career - I never thought of myself as anything other than me just being what I do. 

Like it or not, sometimes you have to meet things face on to realize the truth of a matter. 

My epiphany on this came when my granddaughter recently interviewed me for an assignment. She has just entered graduate school. In a few short years we’ll be able to call her ‘Dr. Olivia’. 

[Allow me pause here for a proud moment to gloat.] 

For the assignment she had to interview a geriatric (that would be me) and write a lengthy report, the object being to humanize an old person. I’m a bonafide Boomer so my generation, now entering our retirement years, will likely make up a large part of her clientele for a few years after she becomes a physical therapist thus I was the perfect subject for her report. 

Plus, I have a lot of human history to tell. 

While she was learning all about my past seventy years, I was forced to dig out some vintage information - growing up, family of five in a two bedroom one bath house in the American boom years after WW2, then the hippy years, the Vietnam war protest years, the photo of me in my senior year book the moment I found out JFK was shot - all the little dots connected to one another, this leading to that, that leading to something else - all of which the unearthing caused some serious introspection for me later and into the next few days. 

Bragging makes me squirm, so when I say I have done a lot, I’m not boasting. I’m revealing that I am a nutcase who is driven to do things - to stay immersed in a learning curve of some kind or other - always jumping into the middle and working my way out to both ends, which, over time, has naturally added up to a lot of odd, sometimes unrelated, experiences. Frankly, I didn’t mind telling Olivia my history, in this case, but it’s not something I usually do because, for one thing, who would believe me anyway? It’s almost embarrassing to see that look of incredulity on people’s faces. 

The timing was interesting, though, as this exercise came at a critical juncture for me because lately I’ve found myself swept up into a rite of passage that’s forced me to admit there’s so much more behind me than in front of me and even worse, realizing that none of it matters. Not really. Everything I learned, my assorted accumulated knowledge, my crazy quilt biography, isn’t worth the paper Olivia’s report will be written on. 

Except. Except for the humans who are here because God graced me with them in spite of my lack of skill set in parenting. My kids and I sort of grew up together - working our way out to both ends. 

All this is a rambling lead up to why I am blogging about this. 

For more than fifty years (not including child raising) of doing, creating, making do with the limited materials, tools and skills I had to express the various forms of the art of my life, I admit I loved best my guitar and writing songs that no one ever heard but me. I kept all my favorite songs in a blue cloth binder. When I could no longer play guitar because of my old hands, I gave the binder to my oldest grandson, Hayes, who is a multi-tasking artist in his own right. When I discovered I could play ukulele, I asked him to let me have the binder back for awhile. 

I think that’s what did it. 

That was the thing that unlocked old dusty bins of memories and set me thinking and sorting, trying to make peace with what A E Housman referred to as the land of lost content. 

There are no words to explain to a young person how it feels to realize you are officially an elder, a geriatric. But this I know, life is a carousel, goes round and round and round. We leave to those who follow us so we have to try to tell them if nothing else so that one day they say - oh, now I understand. 

Because, it’s just the kind of hairpin I am, regardless of the handicap of advancing age, that I can’t not do my art - as jack-legged and amateur as it might be - so I took one set of lyrics I penned forty years ago and made a video. 

For Him, 

Meema

America! America!

For Him, Meema