Franksummers3ba's Blog

Today, March 29,2011 is a time of revelation. Of course every other day is also a time of revelation. However, this is a special time. Of course all times are special. Nonetheless, today is a special time of revelation.

We all have times for revealing something about ourselves. In love that matters quite a bit and sometime the times which two lovers require for various kinds of revelation cannot be reconciled. In business, there is a timing for revelations of various kinds that is essential. This is particularly true  under the contract theory and law which governs a great deal of business. In that system there is Offer and Acceptance. This sequence creates a contract.  A counteroffer creates a voiding of the original offer in most cases and a new offer is made which can then be accepted or rejected by the one who made the firsts offer.  So if one wants legal support for a contract the time of revelation for each part of what one must get is very important.    

Today Britney Spears had an airing special free concert in San Francisco which city government proclaimed it to be Britney Spears Day and she had a special appearance on Good Morning America. She used all this hype to reveal to her many fans that she will begin touring with Enrique Iglesias in June. Ms. Spears has long ago revealed herself a quite skilled in the pace and time of revelation.

I recently revealed some truths about myself to and some associated facts to someone and it has not been in the time I would have chosen as ideal but I seldom have things work out in the ideal way for the kinds of secrets I carry around. Nonetheless, sometimes there is a benefit in the honesty that a relationship has earned even if the  revelations do not lead to any real and measurable progress. I also feel that somehow I have revealed to myself that I have been slowly dehydrating myself. Something recently “snapped” and I was aware that I simply have not been drinking nearly enough water for my needs.

My mother’s second volume of her memoirs will also be a revelation to some who thinkey know our family when they get to read it. 

I read my mother’s second volume of her memoirs Our Family’s Book of Acts: To Love and Serve the Lord (Summerise Media Publication, ISBN 978-0-615-45595-2-5195) which is a sequel to Go! You are Sent.  Of course I lived many of the events, knew many of the characters, edited one of the early exploratory drafts which has then been edited twice at least before the final putting together of the galleys — so far me it not so revealing. Thismay not be much of a revelation to many people I relate to often because this is the Asian edition put together by Noah’s Ark Creations in Singapore and there is no large American or European distribution going forward. I am not sure when this will be available from an American publisher but some people are reading it. I find people already have lots of opinions about me and my family in many circles so I am usually happier when they have more facts rather than fewer on which to base those opinions.  This second volume of my mother’s memoirs do provide many facts in some kind of context.  I do not complain about the book, mostly I am happy to have it out there. It is a well-written and compelling story presented nicely in  an attractive volume. I think it deals with many issues, topics and persons of real interest and importance. I would not expect it to be such a fast readas it was for me (in the few hours it took) for most people — indeed I plan to read it again when I get the chance. However, it really has a nice flow. Discussing life as a Missionary, being a wife and mother, an intense productive and troubled marriage, the Catholic Church, social stresses around the world and the people who make up her family is a challenge for the book of this length. It does not disappoint the reader and does not waste the reader’s time in pointless  searches thought things the reader does not have the time to really grasp or understand.  It is in my opinion a good book and well worth the cost in money and time.  I doubt it will greatly increase the pain and misery index in my life which has never been a very happy one.

This is also a time of year when many students are waiting for the revelation of their class standings and grades. It is a time when lots of us have just had it revealed to us that our NCAA Men’s Basketball brackets are shot completely to hell. It is a time many Christians observe Lent seeking a little revelation of the Christian mysteries and ideal in their own hearts and lives.  I think that my Lent could be going a lot worse and lot better. However, I will comment that it has edified me to have Jay Leno make several quite respectful Lent jokes in recent days. I think I have heard some similar comments from others but Leno has stood out from the crowd in this regard.  I want to see the way what is left of my own Lent will go — it will be a revelation to me I think.

Last Sunday’s readings at Church were about water. There was the Old Testament passage about Moses drawing water from the rock and the Gospel reading was the passage about the Woman at the Well and the living waters. Life is of course very much about and involved with water. It so happens that I have also begun greatly increasing the amount of water that I drink. This does not mean I won’t die of something terrible next year but I do feel a remarkable improvement in my general health in a few days. The readings did not motivate me to go on the water-drinking journey. I had begun the process before I realized what the readings were. But I did notice them because they were the readings from the first Sunday of this water enriched life change. I do not know how long I will keep this up but I believe it is vital for me to do it as long as I can and not sink back entirely to my insufficiently hydrated state.

Here are some of the threads i am trying to weave into the tapestry of my life:

1. There was some kind of problem at the Washington DC Ronald Reagan airport, fire in the fuel tank farm at the Miami International Airport and one wonders if there is something going on in aviation. My mother flies back into the United States from Asia today.

2. Life has got me a bit banged up and bruised these days and I cannot remeber how I got hurt — not a great sign.

3. An old friend and contemporary with the initials PEN has his birthday today and another JSM recently had his and I wish them well. I also compare and reflect at such times.

3. Spring has really started here in Louisiana.

4.There is little in the world that distracts us from the basic state of distractedness if it becomes deeply enough rooted in our lives.

Look at that strong field of Republican presidential candidates! Well look at them…

Newt — was running maybe but maybe not.

Sarah Palin — losing momentum daily.

Mitt– Sort of hanging around is not the same as running.

Rudy– “No, I don’t think this wife wants me to die yet”.

Kucinich — that four percent is locked in if he runs, bu they aren’t Republicans.

Paul — promises to abolish the White House and operate off of a park bench he might have a chance.  

The general rule in American politics is “go black and never go back”. The Negros are so racist that it is hard for any politics other than open race-baiting to dislodge a black man. Open race-baiting is illegal and is also bad for the country. It will be interesting to see if Dubya  was our last white President of the United States.

For me my personal life is completely engrossing and mostly very bad as it is for many other people. Politics is compelling but the idea of keeping a white man in office does not compel me the way it compels black urban voters to wipe out white civilization in many of our cities. I am fortunate to have lived more than half my life by any reasonable estimate. My pain is limited by expiration date. But there is a lot of pain coming down the pike in all probability and many of us can make out its general features in the distance.

I am thinking of vulnerability today. I am thinking of how, in fact, the world and my own life interweave varied vulnerabilities. My greatest invulnerability now comes from my sense that things are astonishingly bad in general. Worse things may happen but wrapped in a cloak of relative hopelessness and misery one is not able to be suddenly very downcast.

It reminds one of the possible mercy in the sign Dante puts on the gates of Hell “Abandon All Hope You Who Enter Here”. CS Lewis wrote that if in fact Hell is the worst place in the Universe then more or less by definition it is a floor of mercy avoiding everlasting free-fall and a tourniquet that stops the bleeding of a wound it cannot heal.  Wrath and Compassion joined in infinite intensity may be the Christian view of Hell.

I look around the world and my life and see a lot of hell. I remember decades of endless hell and yet of the vulnerability that hope brings. In recent decades I have learned to find some good moments with only trace amounts of the virtue or feeling of hope. There has been more joy, Faith and Love proportionate to hope in the good. But mostly there has been the assent to the creator of the Simpsons cartoons earlier strips point of view. When I was in college I read his strips depicting and describing life and school in hell and as with many people found a resonance there. The world has the war with Libya, the nuclear crisis in Japan, the thousands dead and a tiny hidden few likely still dying horribly and never to be known as still alive in Japan. The world has all manner of political conflicts and environmental problems and cultural conflicts.

However, for each of us we find the amount of hope we can stomach personally. For me that has been almost none for a very long time. Yet beyond hope I find I still have a few things to lose and so remain vulnerable.

My heart goes out to the people of Japan in their suffering. Perhaps this earthquake has contributed to our avoiding our enemy-president’s plan to lead us into war with Libya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan just to start. While it is still fatal to have one’s sworn enemy as Chief Executive and Head of State we live another day…

Doubtless President Obama is hard at work on the next stage of his contignecy plan to obliterate our society. He is a hard worker and a motivated monster whose commitment must grow over time.

Inappropriate or not, here are some questions about America and its place in the world: 

76. Do people in the Pentagon really believe that Taiwan has any secrets from Beijing?

77. Do people in our government really think the only reasons North Korea is dark at night is because they cannot afford as much electricity as South Korea?

78. Does the Wikileaks scandal really stand alone as proof that the National Security we pay so much for is made ridiculous by our dying ability to think and act as a coherent society?

79. Don’t some people realize we are led by people who proclaim and extreme and dangerous ideology and insist we are lucky to be in a country united by ideas and not history, geography and ethnicity?

80.  Hoe much has the US government spent developing Hopi and Navajo jewelry to the limits of the industry, Eskimo kayaks, Cherokee pipes, Iroquois beads, Sioux tanneries, Hawaiian dance? Is this the government that dares to lecture people about opportunity, justice and respect for minorities?

81. How close to pure lying propaganda is the Anglo-centric history which all White children in this country are supposed to relate to in school?

82. Even where they are legal do we have to have a system where we cannot recognize the toll of easy divorce, abortion, adultery, child abandonment and promiscuity as a kind of misery index in society?

83. Does anyone really doubt that the dominance of congregational organization and nondenominationalism in churches calling themselves Christian is bound to break down any effort at building up the social order to cope with the problems of a great power?

84. Do we think that not having apprenticeships, diminishing industrial and agricultural education and trying to have everyone be technical college graduates will produce better technology? Must it not produce more chaos, displacement and a strain on resources needed for those with an aptitude for engineering?

85. Is the Bureau of Land Management well-known to the Americans for whom it holds over 250 million acres of land?

86. Is the Bureau of Land Management well-managed?

 87.  Is the Bureau of Land Management accountable?

88. Does anyone realize that discrimination means more or less the same thing as intelligent thought, so intelligent thought is a crime in this country?

89. Do we realize that the free market as we define it and shore it up with bad politics is really what decent people would call piracy?

90. Do we think the lack of national policy which is forced forward across the changes of the two-year election cycle is freedom?

91. Do we believe the miniscule number of real native US citizen linguists we have is less than a crisis?

92. Do we really think teacher certification is mostly working well and that the way it works has no great costs involved to society?

93. Does a failure to invest in local pedestrian malls, condominiums, public transit and safe sidewalks really make us the richest nation in the world because our basic lifestyle is so very expensive?

94. Does not having any real savings rate for decades not remind our analysts of addicts and gamblers more than workers and investors?

95. Does our fascination with prohibiting everything from smoking to fatty foods by law and not allowing people to build exclusive institutions still tell the few who can think that this country is a tyranny?

96.Wouldn’t any country that uses drones and missile strikes on soft targets be ashamed to call terrorists cowardly if it was not completely morally bankrupt?

97. Don’t we believe that there is a rise in counterfeit drugs, stolen organs, insurance fraud and bad policy which will obliterate much our health care system unless the perfect storm is slowed before it reaches critical mass?

98. Does Brazil have to become a Chinese province before we see that we are not really trying to compete in much of our hemisphere anymore?

99.Isn’t it more likely that we are headed to destruction than that our system will correct itself in a good way?

100. Did you knowe that not feeling pain when you are injured is what causes the principal deformities in leprosy patients/