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Sunday, December 30, 2007
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: A Year’s-End Assortment
The calendar being a cyclical thing, we go through this year's-end business regularly. Once a year, in fact. You'd think the repetition effect would have numbed us to it by now, but they keep hoisting a light-covered ball to the top of a tall building each December 31 and lowering it as the midnight hour approaches, and we keep staying up with Dick Clark et alii to watch it, so there must be something about it that compels attention.
Well, I'm the sort who can't look away from an odometer that's about to roll over, so how should I complain? Anyway, Gentle Reader, have a few end-of-year remembrances and reflections from a weary blogger, still feeling fat from his Christmas dinner and not at all ready for New Year's Eve finger foods, in summary of this soon-to-be-concluded year of Our Lord 2007.
I shan't remember 2007 overly fondly. Many things developed this past year that were good for no one. But General David Petraeus's counter-insurgency "surge" has been a success, the Iraqi people are steadily assuming responsibility for their own security, the French were wise enough to elect mildly pro-freedom Nicolas Sarkozy rather than socialist Segolene Royal, and Hugo Chavez was dealt a sound rebuff by the people he still hopes to tyrannize. The federal deficit is a bit lower than we'd expected, the Democrats on Capitol Hill have largely been restrained by the Republican contingent and a couple of well-timed presidential vetoes, and quite a lot of state legislatures -- 41 at last count -- have passed anti-Kelo laws to obstruct the rapacity of municipal governments. Last but far from least, everywhere Al Gore goes, a blizzard follows. So politically, 2007 wasn't all bad. Indeed, freedom lovers have a fair amount to be thankful for.
The next great hurdle is, of course, the 2008 general election. Seldom has an electoral season been so prolonged. But then, seldom has such a parade of pygmies postured before us, importuning us for money and votes. Embarrassing candidacies festoon both sides of the aisle:
- Barack Obama the Callow,
- Bill "Major Leaguer" Richardson,
- Dennis "Department Of Peace" Kucinich,
- Mrs. William "We Are The President" Clinton,
- Mike "Endorsed By Jesus" Huckabee,
- Rudolph Giuliani the Thrice-Married,
- John "If The New York Times Loves Me, So Should You" McCain,
- Mitt "Let's Not Discuss Why I Foisted Socialized Medicine Onto Massachusetts" Romney,
- and of course Dr. Ron Paul, who at 74 years of age has no excuse for not knowing better.
I maintain that the only worthy presidential candidate on either side of the aisle is Fred Thompson. He's not perfect, but he's head-and-shoulders above anyone else contending for the Oval Office. I hope the rest of the country sees him that way on November 4, 2008, and gives him a solid majority of true conservatives to work with in Congress.
I'm grateful to have "made it here alive." I had a number of health setbacks and scares, a couple of which were scarier than I like to recall. But I'm still on the sunny side of the sod, still capable of plying my trade and venting here at Eternity Road, and still prone to injuring myself over a piece of "customer-assembled" furniture. Yup, that last bedevilment continues to bedevil me; only yesterday, I managed to wrench my back while assembling a futon frame. The BLEEP!ing thing was given to us by an acquaintance of the C.S.O.'s, in yet another demonstration that anything free is worth what it costs.
Yes, I'm slowing down. If you're my age or older (55), you're probably slowing down too. If you're younger, have patience; your turn will come. It chafes me not to have my full powers any more, but time spares no one. I can only pray that I'll continue to be useful in some degree to the day I die.
But slowing down isn't merely a concession to the erosions of age; it's also a transition to another style of life, a more contemplative one. Americans at the peak of their powers don't allow themselves much time for contemplation; there's always something else to do, and often it seems obligatory. I'm not about to say that that attitude is wrong. Such things are always a matter of context and circumstances. But for my own part, I'm grateful that as my personal dynamo starts to spin down, I have something not wholly uncongenial with which to replace it: time to think, and plenty to think about.
Extraordinary tragedies notwithstanding, children grow up and "leave the nest." The younger of our two did so just this year. She'll soon be on her way to graduate school in a faraway place. It's a prospect that mingles pride and poignancy in equal measures, for the C.S.O. and I can't be certain we'll see much more of her, from that point forward.
The poignancy also arises from if-onlies and might-have-beens. Every parent lucky enough to raise a child all the way to maturity and independence will have them, not just those of us whose spratlings spent $200,000 of our home equity acquiring degrees in expressionist dance with a minor in feminist theology. Did I love him enough to impress him with the supreme importance of love? Did I teach her enough about the ways of the world that she'll be safe on her own? Did I show them a good enough example of maturity and responsibility that they'll be able to lean upon it when they're confused and beleaguered? No parent has ever been able to answer those questions to his complete satisfaction. Especially no parent of our time.
Love 'em while you've got 'em, friends. You won't get to keep them for long.
Distant friends, acquaintances made and solidified over the Internet, have become ever more important to me as the years roll by. Quite a number of these are persons I've never met; I count them as friends even so. At least, if I were struck by a crisis to which a friend might be able to lend a helping hand, I'd recur to any of them with full confidence.
This year, one of those distant friends helped to save my sanity, and possibly my life, at considerable personal cost. It was the sort of extension of self the beneficiary can never forget. You don't need my friend's name. But should any of you ever require assistance with a serious matter of your own -- and sooner or later, we all do -- I hope you have a friend as good as mine was to me.
Yet there are people who say the Internet is inherently depersonalizing. It is to laugh.
If you're blessed with the gift of Christian faith, I hope your faith has served you well. Mine has. Indeed, there have been times I don't think I would have survived without it. But there are many persons, including some of the finest folks I know, who have no faith. Far too many of them think of Christian faith and affiliation as hobbles -- restraints and obstacles to getting or doing what they want -- rather than as augmentations of life. Some were offered the gift and spurned it; others have never had it. In either case, it's a limiting condition.
A rational man who confronts the problem of meaning sees at once that meaning is a consequence of interpretation. "What does it mean?" is a poor question, unanswerable as it stands; it must be amended to "What does it mean to some specific interpreter?" This compels him to one of two conclusions:
- God is the ultimate Interpreter and bestower of meaning on all things.
- There is no absolute meaning to anything.
Being interpreters ourselves, we are as hungry for meaning as we are for food. We want to mean something to those around us, particularly those whom we love or admire. More, we want to mean something in a grander sense, as persons whose passage through the world left it a better place on net balance. Finally, we want to mean something eternal: something that the erosion of the eons cannot efface from history.
Anyone not wholly sociopathic can have the first sort of meaning. Persons with any sort of productive skill and the will to use it can have the second sort. But only persons who've been offered, and have accepted, the gift of faith can have the third sort.
It's my conviction that God offers the gift of faith to every man who lives. We might not recognize it when He thrusts it at us. We might spurn it repeatedly, out of excessive skepticism, pique, or arrogance. But He is relentless. Unless we harden ourselves so completely that nothing can get through, not the harmonious grandeur of the natural world, not the sweetly piercing arrows of joy in life, and not the still, small voice that issues from our hearts in times of trial, that balm will always be available to us.
Of course, for any chosen individual, there are surely trials of mind and heart he must endure before he can grasp the value of faith. Thus, no one is necessarily ready to accept it at any arbitrary point in his life. Faith of any kind is a commitment to a proposition which cannot be proved; it takes more than indoctrination to implant it, and more than a yearning for meaning to sustain it. That's why aggressive proselytization is always destructive.
If you have the Christian faith and are concerned for the well-being, emotional or spiritual, of others in your circle who don't have it, be a candle in the darkness. Make one of your 2008 New Year's Resolutions always to be a good example to others. People emulate those they admire. They ask themselves, "What is it that makes him this way?" Unless terminally crippled by envy, they'll embrace as much of the answer as they can. Even when such emulation requires a leap into the unknown -- and what could be more unknown, to one who has never ventured there, than the plain of the spirit? -- it's odds-on for anyone confronted with a more successful model for living than the one he's followed so far.
If you don't have faith, spare a thought now and then, this coming year, for why those of us who do have it, which surely includes persons much like you in every imaginable way, cherish and celebrate it, despite its seeming costs. Despite the propaganda, Christians don't worship out of fear of the wrath of God; we rejoice in His love and hope to be granted greater knowledge of, and nearness to, Him when our days under the veil of Time are done.
Perhaps 2008 will be your year to accept the gift of faith.
May God bless and keep you all. I'll see you all again in 2008.
Comments
Bless you too Francis. I can’t thank you enough for the example you’ve set and the hours of enjoyable and enlightening reading.
Posted by Keith on 12/30/2007 at 02:32 PMA Happy and Blessed New Year to you, Fran.
I most sincerely hope that 2008 is the year when things begin to look better for our country. I think that this will do each of us, individually, a world of good if it happens. I will try to start that ball rolling this week by participating in the Iowa caucuses.
Thanks for all your posts this past year. They have been much enjoyed.
Posted by on 12/30/2007 at 06:02 PMMay 2008 bring you (and yours) greater wisdom, greater peace (of mind), greater health, wealth, and happiness. And know you (and your thoughts) are respected, appreciated, and always looked forward to.
Happy New Year ... from the hinterlands of northern Illinois.
Posted by Guy on 12/30/2007 at 06:14 PMI can’t thank you enough for your wonderful Ruminations. They really are a light in the darkness.
Many blessings in 2008, and every year.
Posted by Fausta on 12/30/2007 at 06:30 PMBeautifully written. Best to you in 2008.
Thanks, V/R JWPosted by on 12/31/2007 at 08:52 AMYou provide the crisis, honey, we’ll provide the crime. Happy new year!
Posted by og on 01/01/2008 at 01:43 AMHappy new year, Fran, and bright blessings.
Posted by Jeff Medcalf on 01/01/2008 at 11:39 AMLovely thoughts. Happy New Year.
Posted by Heather on 01/01/2008 at 11:16 PMHappy New Year, Frances.
Posted by Nice Deb on 01/02/2008 at 12:17 AM
