Decoding the Dissimilarities And Similarities When Talking About the Topic of The Nuclear and Extended Family.

I remember in the 1990′s when the spouse of President Bill Clinton named Hilary wrote a tome entitled It Takes A Village. Anything Ms. Clinton did immediately became controversial. Yet in this case the debate focused around the function of the community and family in rearing children. The religious conservatives felt that Clinton needed to emphasize the function of the relatives in rearing children, especially because her husband’s government didn’t appear concerned with family values. The secular progressives defended Clinton and recognized that a community mattered too.

This debate brings up an imperative question about the essence of the family. Does the nuclear family or the extended family have greater worth? It is interesting that such a discussion would happen on something so seemingly innocent. yet the manner through which we rear our kids is an explosive topic whether it happens in Congress or among local mothers. Most people prefer to act in the way they desire, not according to the wisdom of different people.

It’s helpful to first look at some definitions. The nuclear family is the mother, dad, and kids. Some experts don’t include adopted or step-children in this definition. The extended family consists of the remaining family members. This can be anyone from beloved uncle Bobby to seventh cousin Eric who’s always getting sent to jail. The extended family are those close or distant individuals who are related by blood or marriage.

Now, we are able to check out the function of the relatives in cultures throughout history. In almost each case, the extended family was the standard. Most couples with a child couldn’t survive in the rugged conditions of olden life. Even as civilization progressed, poor individuals preferred to associate with their extended families for material benefit. Pooling resources and sharing land and houses was essential to become successful in the olden world. The Bible gives us many examples about the prominence of the extended family.

Through the 1940s and 1950s standards of living rose enough in the Western world that families were able to separate from their relatives. So, mom and dad could rear little Davie without having grandma in the family unit. In fact, as the extended family declined, the building of nursing homes rose. It is not a coincidence that this happened when it did.

In my opinion, both the extended and nuclear families are indispensable. A strong nuclear family is required to rear healthy, well-adjusted children while extended families provide strong anchors with the past and good role models. Plus, with the economic downturn that began in 2008, numerous Americans would benefit from the extended family model.

With big homes underwater and falling incomes, families could share space and pool their incomes to both live better lives. A lot of families are already doing this, but countless more could raise the standard of living by sharing homes and combining incomes. The only problem is if family members could really get along. So, it appears that both sides throughout the 90s were correct.

I feel confident you enjoyed this essay about family. perhaps you can glean some important insights into your own family.

The essayist regularly writes and speaks about topics related to relatives. His essays about the decline of the nuclear family and the rise of the extended family are quite fascinating.

The Crisis of Identity- Man’s Search for Meaning- Some Reflections on Death

This last weekend I had the opportunity to take some time out for a spiritual retreat.  I was able to go with one of my dearest and closest friends to a retreat house in Fremont, Ohio, Our Lady of the Pines, run by the Sisters of Mercy.  It was a fantastic experience- there is nothing like a place that has been prayed in, and that is one of those places.  It reminded me a lot of the place in Morristown New Jersey where I spent thirty days in silence last summer. 

Places that have been “prayed in,” are obvious.  It is sort of like a hotel room that has been smoked in- it is in the walls and in the sheets and the bedding.  It is obvious when you first walk into the room that someone has been there who was smoking- in an analogous manner, the feeling that a place has been prayed in is just as obvious- it is in the walls and in the bedding.  It soaks into the carpet, and is reflected in the people who live and work there- it is obvious when you walk in, as you smell not the acrid smell of cigarette smoke, but the fragrence of holiness.

I spent the weekend in silence- except for the part where I visited my spiritual director in Toledo- the sun was out and bright (a nice change from the cloud belt of Columbus, Ohio), but there was also snow on the ground.  It made things even brighter!  On the last day I decided to go for a walk and to shoot some pictures of the grounds and the surroudning area. (I actually don’t have any pictures uploaded yet, they are still in my camera- and may be for another 3 or 4 years… you know how it goes!)  I walked through the cemetary where the sisters were buried from the decades past, and saw an even bigger cemetary just across the street.  So I mosied over there- I like cemetaries for some reason- I grew up near a giant one in Lima, so I guess I have never felt creepy there or anything like that.  Cemetaries tell a lot about the people who lived near them- whole families buried together- some people lived a long time, while others only a few days.  A gravestone is sort of like the tip of the iceburg- there is so much more about a person underneath that their marker just can’t tell.

One of the striking things about the grave markers though, was the fact that every single last one tells us about a relationship that the person it commemorates had- large or small they all had names on them.  Those names denoted a relationship with people of similar names.  As I mentioned above, there were whole families- sons, daughters, mothers and fathers- all buried together.  Some of the grave stones told of a married couple- the day they were married, the kids they had, when they were born and when they died.  Some were just little kids who only lived for a few days, but were never forgotten- even 50 years after her death at the age of 4 days, one person’s gravestone read beloved daughter.  There were fresh flowers there.

My favorite gravestone didn’t have a picture of a family member, or even a picture of Jesus or Mary (it was a Catholic cemetary), but a tow truck- a tow truck with the name Fischer Towing was carved into the side of a gravestone!  Must have been his truck.

Certainly gets one to think doesn’t it?  I mean, as another friend of mine often says, none of us are getting out of here alive.  Where is the meaning in our lives?  Where do we go when we die?  No matter how strong one’s faith is, that second question is always unknown.  The first though, I think can be answered.

A few months back I read (and wrote a blog on) Viktor Frankle’s book on man’s search for meaning, entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  He talked about how he survived the death camps at Auschwitz because he had a meaning and purpose.  Those who didn’t survive, often died because they lost a reason to live.  We all need that or we die- we die in our daily actions, in our relationships, and in ourselves without meaning.  We are not meant to drift- even the ancient philosophers knew that we had a “final cause,” that is, something we are directed towards.

How do we find meaning then?  I suspect that is something that we all struggle with- it is the issue of trying to figure out our identity in this life- to give our lives meaning.

Frankle’s solution was an interesting one- he said that we have to imagine ourselves on our deathbed, looking back at our lives.  What do we want to see there?  What would we see if that day was tomorrow?  I do not believe that this exercise is intended to be moribund, rather it is a means to focus ourselves and the direction we are supposed to in life, and the meaning we attach to our identity.

I have a sneaking suspicion that those grave stones I saw last week were a key to the answer.  With the exception of the tow truck guy, nobody had their occupation on their gravestone.  But everybody had some reference, even if just a name, to a relationship.  Be it to God, or their spouse, or children or parents invariably what defined people were their relationships.  That is what gives us identity and meaning- or that is what should.

 Even the nuns who were buried there had an R.S.M. after each of their names, denoting a relationship with their order, and the other sisters in it.

My spiritual director told me the story of his uncle who was very rich.  He spent his whole life amassing a great deal of wealth- he never married because he was too busy making money.  He was a very successful man- when he was in his 60′s he had a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair in a (probably very nice) nursing home.  My director told me that until the day he died he only said one phrase over and over- “what a rip-off.”

So I guess I would challenge you with the same exercise as Victor Frankle- if you were on your deathbed looking back on life, what would you see?  What would you want to see? What are the relationships in our lives that give us meaning, and how are they going? The answer to the second question is also the answer to our search for identity, and the search for meaning in our lives.

Only this way will life never become a rip-off.

“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in a love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

Light and Darkness: The Problem of Evil and How it is Overcome

As I write this post, I am sitting in one of my favorite green lazy-boy-chairs in my living room, in front of two halogen light bulbs atop a tall red tri-pod.  Yep… I am sitting in front of two blindingly bright lights that my brother lent me. 

Maybe this sounds dumb, or insane, but as a good friend of mine once said, “I am solar powered.”  I am not sure why I don’t live in Mexico frankly… I mean, I hate cold, love the sun, and would look dashing in a sombrero.  Instead, my base of operations is Columbus, Ohio, where the sun doesn’t even shine for half of the year.  Sometimes I think it would be better to live in Alaska or the North pole where it is completely dark for 6 months- none of that “tease” stuff where it is light out, but “dank.” (I have to say, that other than the sun not shining, Columbus is a great town to live in.)

Typical Overcast Day In Columbus

  So I compensate with the halogen bulbs.  I am not sure it does any good, but at least they reduce my heating bill a little as they are powerful enough to heat the house!  I am a guy who is very very sensitive to light and darkness.  There is always some mix of light and darkness for me, both in the physical world, and in the spiritual world.  I think that is the same for everyone really.  If we were totally light, I guess we would be perfect.  There are days in which it is just hard to put my feet on the floor, especially when it is dark at 7:30 in the morning.  Some people have varying degrees of light and darkness in their life too- some are darker than others.  I am always searching for good natural light- no matter how bright these halogen lights are in my living room, they will never ever be as good and refreshing as the light of the sun.

Some people thrive on darkness though, the same way that I thrive on light.  I try to surround myself with people who thrive on light, but inevitably I will encounter people who don’t.  That is frankly very hard for me, for as much as I am sensitive to real light, I have to admit that I am also very sensitive to spiritual light.  And in a similar vein that I am unhappy when it is dark out, I am afraid of the dark in a spiritual sense too.  It doesn’t matter if that darkness is in me, or in another person, I am wearied by it either way.

Light and darkness is a constant theme in a lot of religions and spiritual traditions.  Being Catholic, it is something that is very prominent in the liturgy- candles are processed in with the cross, advent wreathes are lit before Christmas- candle light pierces the darkness of the Easter Vigil as we await the resurrection. 

 

The whole liturgical season is based on the length of days and how much light is in the world.  This is why, for instance, Christmas is the 25th of December, when the days start to get longer, and Lent starts in the darkest month of the year, February, only to culminate in Easter in the spring when light begins to shine brightly again, and flowers start to bloom.

Other traditions have picked up on this though- the Aztecs sacrificed young warriors in an attempt to keep the sun going- Jews light Hannukah lights in the darkest days of the year- I could probably go on and on.

As light and darkness are themes in a personal sense, and a spiritual sense, they reflect the conflict that goes on in a cosmalogical sense.  Light and darkness have always been analogies for good and evil.

The good is easy to talk about in a sense- everything is good to some extent because it exists- good and being are synonymous with each other in a philosophical sense. 

Evil though- it is tricky.  It is tricky to define- it is tricky to see- it is hard to talk about.  Evil is as intangible at times as darkness that can veil our lives.

There was a class back in school called “the problem of evil.”  It is a problem.  For the most part of western philosophy, evil is simply a privation- that is a lack of goodness in the same way that there really is no such thing as “cold,” rather there is simply less heat.

Evil is like Cold- Less Good and Less Heat

But I have encountered evil in my life- it is dark- it is tiring.  I guess in another analogous way, darkness is simply a lack of light too.  But there seems to be something to evil.  It is frightening- exhausting.

I wonder if most “evil deeds” are done in the cover of night.  I am sure they are in fact.  I wouldn’t have any problem walking through Columbus in the day, but there are parts I would never walk in at night, simply because I know that in the cover of night, bad things happen.

When we sin, that is not living up to what we are created to be and are inauthentic, we want to keep that hidden and in the dark- evil deeds are much easier to do and to get away with when they are done in the cover of darkness.  I know that when I have sinned I simply wanted to keep that to myself, but like bread kept in a dark cold place, we beging to foul and fester and become nasty and deadly.

Evil and Darkness will eventually consume us

Maybe that is the solution to evil- in our own lives, and in the lives of others.  Rather than follow our instinct and hide evil behind whatever we can find, we should bring it into the light- expose it- and as light consumes darkness, bringing our own struggles and privations into the light will consume that as well.  Maybe we could call that “rigorous honesty.”

We can do that through prayer and meditation, journaling, speaking with a friend or a professional- there are a variety of ways to shine light into our own personal struggles with darkness, as well as others.

There are people who live in incredible darkness- people who try all sorts of things to artificially bring in light, just like I do with my halogen bulbs.  But there just is no substitute for the real goodness of true natural light.  Deeds done in the darkness always lead to more darkness, and when the light eventually shines on those deeds and on those people, all will eventually be revealed.  Goodness and light will always consume the darkness.

Maybe that is why dark people stay dark- they get used to it, and become afraid of the exposure to the light, because they are afraid of what they might see.

My Dad told me once that there is no such thing as a secret.  Everything eventually gets revealed, and the good or evil that we do will ultimately be exposed one way or another.  That is wise advice- if we try to hold the darkness that we struggle with in- or if we do deeds in the darkness they will ultimately be revealed as they come out in the wash.  I eventually have to pay my electric bill for the artificial light that I am using.

I heard once- share the bad, it is cut in half, share the good, and it is doubled.

There are no secrets really.   Everything is revealed, in this life or the next.

Light will always prevail.

More Important Than the Bible: Opinion and Truth

 This Post is a Re-Post from my Old Blog…

 

I found Waldo… he is strangely alone…

Do you remember those pesky magic eye puzzles that were all the rage ten or fifteen years ago?  About the same time as we were trying to find that stupid Waldo guy (who apparently liked to hang out in large crowds… I can relate) every single mall had a kiosk where they sold these stupid magic eye puzzles.

To the naked eye, it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting- a hodgepodge (love that word) of colors sort of splattered onto a poster.  Apparently, if you stared at this thing long enough, crossed your eyes, stood on your head, and had a few drinks, the image would change and you would see a farm-scape or a sailboat, or Waldo, in 3D appear before your very eyes.  It just so happened that the next kiosk over sold little bottles of Advil and eye drops, because not only did you have a headache from staring at these stupid posters, but your eyes dried out because you had to hold them open for so long trying to figure out if it was a monkey or a baseball bat that magically appeared out of the mixture of colors and textures.  These stupid things were just as popular back then as hyper-color t-shirts.  (Yea… remember those?  If you touched them they changed color because of the heat in your hand.  Until you washed them once.  I am sure we were all poisoned by those shirts somehow.  Maybe that is how we could see that magic eye puzzle- the hyper color t-shirts were making us hallucinate.)

I have to admit trying out these magic eye puzzles myself the first time.  I walked by the kiosk and saw people just staring into the collection of various eye puzzles, and decided to join the herd.  3 hours later, I think I saw a camel in a space suit pop out in 3D.

It is the Mona Lisa… you see it don’t you?

There were always three types of people at these kiosks- the people that would walk up and look into the magic eye puzzle and instantly yell out (as if any of us cared) “I SEE IT!!  IT IS A SUNSET IN TOKYO IN JUNE!”  Others, grumbling, also loud enough for people to hear, “I just can’t see it, it is just a bunch of colors running together… I just can’t see it… are you sure that’s there?”  The third type of person was the type that felt sorry for the second type of guy who couldn’t see the dolphin jumping out of a bowl of spaghettio’s and would help out assuring the incapable person- “It’ll be alright- just relax- let your eyes cross- don’t you see the dolphin?  He’s right over there!”

This one is meaningless… they just made this one to mess with us.

I think that the most entertaining feature of the magic eye puzzle was not the magic eye puzzle itself, but watching the people stare for minutes at a time into what looked like a child’s finger painting. 

I know the feelin’ buddy.

I did eventually see the images pop out of the posters, and it was neat, but I wonder if there was anything there at all, or if I was just buying into the hype of the magic eye puzzle.  Maybe there was something there and maybe there wasn’t- was it my own perception, or was I borrowing the perception from my neighbor who gleefully “got it?”

Here is an interesting fact I heard recently- up to 90% (90%!!!!) of our perceptions are borrowed from other people.

I will let that sink in for just a minute.

It’s like Homer Simpson once said- 42% of statistics are made up on the spot, but only 12% of people know that.  Sometimes we trust in the perceptions of others more than we know.

So when it comes to a world view- a cosmology as the philosophers like to coin it, a lot of our views come from what other people have told us.  I think that is what Nietzsche was talking about when he was talking about his “will to power.”  The will to power is the ability to impose our own perception onto the people around us.  It works- just watch the news.  They are imposing their views on us all the time, and I am even tempted to believe it simply because it is easier to believe them than to do the research on my own.  I don’t have the time, the resources or the energy to do that.

Perception is a tricky thing.  As I have mentioned in past posts, there are as many perceptions as there are people- if I am looking at this chair, and so are you, we may be seeing the chair differently- I may think it is red, and you may think it is violet.  Perceptions, whether given or borrowed, are never 100% accurate.  That is where communication comes in, in order that we may cut through what is mere opinion to the objective truth underneath.  Life is constantly about that- it is a constant battle that I think a lot people really don’t engage in too well because it is a lot of work.  Rather they would just rather accept the perceptions of others- culture, media, or what have you.

The rose colored glasses of opinion.

What is more important than the chair in our above example is not the chair necessarily, but our perception and our interpretation of the chair.

In a like manner, when we talk about theology, more specifically the Bible, it really isn’t the Bible that is important these days, but it is MY personal interpretation of the Bible that is important.  You can really interpret the Bible in any way you want- a great example that I like to use is the whole slavery issue in the history of the United States- the abolishionists used the Bible to go against slavery, while the south used it to support slavery.

So when it comes down to it these days, what is more important than the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, or the Big Book in this culture, is our personal interpretation of the book- I can interpret those books to mean whatever I want them to mean- or whatever someone has told me to interpret them as.  In order to interpret the Bible in the proper way we would need to go back to the original intention of the author (and the Spirit that inspired that author) and begin from there for a proper and true interpretation.  Otherwise the snake handlers are just as justified to handle snakes as any of the mainstream religions.

It is a fine line between figuring out the truth and separating it from mere opinion or perception.  As I said, this is probably the work of our lives, because the intellect seeks the truth.  I do not think that there is a simple answer to this problem, as it goes back to the radical individualism of our modern western culture.  Truth is out there though, it is simply not a matter of perception, but finding the truth requires us in some sense to question the perceptions that we have, the perceptions that others have, and to find the truth that underlies it all.  That doesn’t mean that a generally accepted perception isn’t necessarily true, but we should deeply question EVERYTHING in our search for what is true and what is merely opinion.

There are two philosophers that come to mind here that I think would be important to mention.  The first is Francis Bacon, and the other is Martin Heidegger.  Both of these guys were advocates of what I am talking about- Bacon said that we have preconceived “idols” of the marketplace- accepted notions that were given to us by our upbringing and inculturation that we accept as truth.  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t true, but that we need to toss them out every so often to test them to find which is true, and which is simply an “idol.”  Heidegger on the other hand advocates a similar plan- that is to “step into the clearing of being,” in other words like a forest to step into a clearing that the sun (being) is unobscured by the trees of perception and opinion.

The “clearing” of being

Only when we step into the clearing of being, and get rid of the idols of the marketplace, can we begin to compare our own and others perceptions of things- including things like religious texts like the Bible, the the truth.

I remember my first day in philosophy class ten years ago- we studied… I think it was the Phaedo by Plato (I could be wrong on the title of that one)- the whole thing centered on the difference between mere opinion and truth.  Its conclusion was that opinion can be true, but isn’t necessarily true, and it is our task- really our deepest desire- to separate opinion from what is objectively true.  That’s about as hard sometimes as seeing those pecky pictures in the magic eye posters.

At the end of the day, finding truth is sort of like picking Waldo out of one of those “Where’s Waldo” pictures.  There are a lot of things that LOOK like Waldo that are not, just like there are things that APPEAR true which are not.  We can never be content with a look a like to the truth, just like we are not done with our search until we find Waldo, or see the 3D image in the magic eye poster.

Where’s Waldo?  Where is the truth?

The Flabbergasted Philosopher is moving!

I have enjoyed wordpress so much folks that I have installed it into my own domain (thanks to the help of “the Shadow,” a guy who works for wordpress).  So for now I will be moving my blog over to www.totalpossibility.com/blog.  The new posts will be there, but I will let the old posts remain here until wordpress.com gets tired of me.   (I will find some way to move them over.)

18,500 Visitors!

As of today, January 8th, 2007, I have had over 18,500 visits to my blog.  Not too shabby for a blog that is less than 6 months old! (totalpossibility.com isn’t far behind that!)

This blog has brought world peace! (OK that is a lie)

So far this blog has reunited me with old elementary school classmates, introduced me to new and exciting people, solved world hunger, and eliminated the threat of nuclear war.  Who knew a blog could do all that?!

 I am also changing the name of the blog to simply “Total Possibility,” to stay with my website’s theme. (Don’t worry, I will eternally be Flabbergasted… I hear there are pills for that…)  There will be more exciting changes to www.totalpossibility.com as well. (As you may have seen if you are a regular visitor there.)

 I will update the main website when I update the blog, so there will be regular updates to both totalpossibility the website as well as archives in the blog, so you can go to either.

MORE EXCITEMENT?!?!?!

Some other exciting stuff coming is that I am going to expand my blog out to some other, hand picked contributors so that there can be more of a variety to the blog on some various topics.

 In addition to that, I am planning to start a podcast, which is one of the reasons that I am moving the blog. (wordpress.com doesn’t as easily support podcasting vs. if I have it installed myself.  That podcast will not only be me yakkin’ but other contributors as well.

So go and visit www.totalpossibility.com, and help me out by clicking on some of the google ads that I have there. (I don’t pick that content by the way… google puts up there what it dang well feels like, so if there is something weird, blame google) (I try and find some way to blame google for all my problems)  It’ll only take a second of your time!

 Tell all your friends and neighbors, cats, and dogs, heck, tell that creepy guy you saw at the movie theater last week!  There was a guy who used to come into the movie theater that I worked at in High School who looked like Elvis.  Mean guy actually.  Cool hair though.

 Joshua Wagner S.T.B., M.A.
Founder, CEO, President, Mail Clerk, and Dog Trainer to:
 Total Possibility LLC
(OK there aren’t any dogs) (There are a couple of stuffed monkeys).

www.totalpossiblity.com

Stuck in a Car Wash! (Dealing with Inner Confusion)

Oh this is a great story…

Last year, during a cold snap in February, the roads were covered with salt, which meant my car, Lucy, was also covered in salt.  So on my way home from a friend’s house late one night I was concerned for Lucy and the many layers of salt she had on her, and before acrewing a new layer, I figured I would give her a quick run through the car wash.

Now I understand the absurdity of the idea of washing my car in below freezing temperatures, with salt coating the roads, and having to avoid the army of salt trucks I saw on the way home, but for some reason it seemed like a good idea. So I went to one of those “touchless” car wash, put my credit card in, the door opened and I pulled in, business as usual. The car wash ended and I am sure Lucy looked nice and clean. When it came time to leave, the garage door in front of me wouldn’t open, and the one I came through was closed… so basically, I was trapped. I got out and pushed the emergency release button, and the door was still shut.   Frozen solid!

I was trapped…I was trapped… there was no door to the outside for humans either, and since I have not experienced the resurrection, and I am not GOB or David Copperfield (the fictional character nor the magician) I could not walk through the walls, and I felt a certain sense of dread come over me… Plus, inside the touchless carwash there is always water shooting from all directions, so to get out of my car was like walking through an obstacle course of water. At one point I was standing there thinking about what to do for a minute, when I realized that one of the streams of water was hitting the upper part of my right leg which I didn’t feel for about 30 seconds, as the water was also warm… I don’t have to tell you what that looked like… or felt like, as the water was very warm. Plus there was steam everywhere which fogged up my glasses. I was in a bad position. I did begin to laugh at this point, and realized how funny the situation was. THEN I moved out of the way of the stream of water. HA!!!There was also no phone number posted to call, plus it was 10:30 at night. Anyway, I walked over to the other adjoining carwash chamber (great descriptive word there) (reminds me of the carbon freezing chamber from Star Wars), and I hit the release button for the garage door and that one opened. Instantly the steam increased 3 fold as it contacted the arctic air outside, and I must have looked like an alien emerging from the belly of the space ship.

Too bad nobody was there to see it. So it’s cold wet and steamy, and my pant leg was drenched but I had my sweet freedom. Except Lucy herself was still trapped. I called a number that I finally found and left a message for “Greg.” Greg never got back to me, so I went back into the car wash, backed Lucy up to the back door, went around and bought another car wash, which opened up the back door and I backed her out into the cold, again in the midst of all is steam, Lucy emerged. Great story huh?

There were moments while I was trapped in that steamy mixture of cold air and hot water that I just didn’t know what I was going to do.  I was terrified at moments that I was going to have to spend the night in the middle of the car wash.  Did I call 911?  If I did, was it enough of an emergency and would I get in trouble?  Worse yet, would the cops get there and just laugh at me?  Talk about inner confusion!  I was at my wits end!  There were seemingly a thousand options that I could have pursued in securing my freedom, and none of them seemed adequate.  Plus, once one door opened (literally!) all the other ones in front of me were still closed.

The cops would have laughed at me…

I think this is a great analogy to how a lot of people view life.  They are in situations which baffle them- really it isn’t the situation that baffles them, rather it is their own interior confusion that makes life-situations baffling to most people.

All of us deal to some extent with inner confusion.  A lot of us like to avoid it because it makes us feel uncomfortable in our own skin.  We are sort of like that car wash in some ways- like the water that was squirting in all directions, clouding up the cold air with steam, so we are often a flurry of emotions, thoughts, fears, rationalizations, and any number of things that “fog up” our interior “lenses,” and prevent us from understanding who we really are, and what we need to do.

Inner confusion

Dealing with this confusion is a basic human need.  All of us get stuck in the car wash from time to time.  Maybe we can relate to my little foible in the car wash last year- we know we are stuck in the steam and the sprays of water, closed behind doors that won’t open due to our choices or circumstances, and we are too embarrassed or afraid to ask for help.  I was afraid to call the police to get help because I figured they would laugh at me.  Maybe some of us are ashamed about our own inner confusion and rather than seek help and be ridiculed or hurt, we prefer to spend the night in the chaos of our own “inner carwash.”

Eventually, I took the time that night to think my way out of the carwash, and if we take the time, calm down, and really begin to look at our inner confusion, both the causes and the effects, we may just figure out a way to free ourselves from the bondage of our own inner confusion.  That takes work- it also invariably requires another person, or people to help us.

The first requirement is a relationship with a Higher Power.  God made us, he can help us to figure out what is going on inside of us.  He can calm us and give us a new perspective on our own inner confusion.  Really we are wonderfully designed, and what seems like chaos to us is actually working properly.  Going back to our carwash, the streams of water, the steam, and all the other elements of the confusion car wash told me that everything was working properly!  It just seemed confusing to me!  Once I figured out the glitch, I was free in a matter of minutes.  Often what seems confusion to us is confusing because of a matter of perspective.  God has the ultimate perspective on how we are supposed to work.  Unlike “Greg” at the car wash, when we call on him he will come and help us fix the problem.  We have to call Him first though.

Second, we need a community of support.  Maybe that is family, maybe it isn’t.  Maybe it is friends or a support group.  The first step to managing the seemingly unmanageable inner confusion we all face is admitting that we might have a problem, or a glitch in the mechanism.  Once we do that we can go to people that can help us.

As I have mentioned in other blogs, you can’t see your own face without a mirror.  We need someone outside of ourselves to be vulnerable to- both human and divine, that can help us sort out our inner confusion.  This is an ongoing process if we want to be happy and free.

Of course, there are inappropriate ways to deal with inner confusion as well- avoidance behaviors that try and suppress the inner confusion we all face- Drugs, alcohol, bad relationships, or any number of things.  These things not only are ineffective against suppressing our inner confusion, they make it worse.

In the end of the day, we simply need to make sure that we are rigorously honest with ourselves, our friends who we trust, and with God.  We need to be humble enough to make that call when we need to when we are stuck in some situation, even when fear is telling us not to, or we are afraid of being hurt or made fun of.  Only then can we begin to sort out that inner confusion which at one point or another, plagues us all.

Peeking Duck- Self Worth

As I mentioned in previous posts, actually, about 3 days ago, I mentioned my fondness for Chinese food.  Usually when I go into Chinese restaurants, the entrees that I order always have some similar elements: They are chickeny, the contain some kind of nut, and they are spicy.  Every so often though, I like to order duck, as it is a nice change of pace from my nut-chicken-spicy combo that I usually get.

The only reason I wrote that above paragraph was so that the title of this post might at least have some reference to Peking Duck, often served in Asian restaurants.  I did that so that the pun I used in the title might also have a reference.  Other than that, the above paragraph has absolutely no purpose in this blog.  Thank you for reading.

Anyway, as I mentioned yesterday, I was visiting my spiritual director from Toledo.  A great Jesuit who I got to know in Rome 7 years ago when he was the director of spiritual formation at the North American College.  When I arrived in Rome, tired, smelly from the flight, and covered in ketchup (that is another story) they shoved us into the refectory for our first Italian meal.  My now spiritual director was at my table, and was the first people I ate with in that city.  I remember him making bruschetta (pronounced Bru-sk-ett-a) out of the bread on the table when he toasted it an poured cheese and olive oil on it.  He was a good salad maker as I recall as well.  Beyond that, I really never knew him until I got a friend’s ordination a few year ago in Michigan, and he offered to be my Spiritual Director.  He has stuck with me in these last years in thick and thin- he has been a real blessing to me, and I am sure others who have struggled through the years.

I was covered in Ketchup the day I arrived in Rome… mmm … ketchup

One of the things we talked about this week was, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, getting my ducks in a row.  Those crazy ducks.

The first of the five ducks, or psychological needs that we have to wrangle up, is that of self worth.  Man have I struggled with that.  Where do we get our self worth?  How do we find it?  What are the sorts of things that prevent us from realizing our self worth?

Primarily, as I have mentioned in previous posts, we are made in the image and likeness of God, which has two implications by nature.  One is that we have free will, or we should have it, and second is that we are capable of entering into relationship with other people. (See my post on the Trinity and its interior relationship if you need material to put you to sleep).  Free will and the ability to enter into relationship culminates in love.  Love, as my director tells me, is willing the good of another.  I always say that love is a choice, not a feeling, so even if it hurts, we have to do what is the greatest good for ourselves, our communities, and our neighbors.

That being made in the image and likeness of God is what primarily gives us our self worth.  No other creature, not dogs or angels, can claim to be made in God’s image and likeness.  They cannot express free will, or enter into relationships in love the way that we can.

The problem is that we have a hard time perceiving that we are made in that image and likeness.  The primary cause of that: Sin.  Now, I am not going to go into depth here about sin, but I already have in this post here.

Sin primarily detracts from the beauty and worth of every person, not because it destroys the fact that we are in the image and likeness of God, but because it tarnishes it like a mirror can get tarnished, making it difficult to see our reflection of God’s divine nature.  When we sin, in any of the stages, our instant reaction is like the of Adam and Eve’s- we see that we are naked, and we are ashamed of ourselves, heck, we even become ashamed of the fact that we are not living up to the image and likeness of God in which we were created.  That leads us to do what they did- they cover themselves- they cover their nature.

So it is sin that detracts from us seeing our self worth- that dignity that we have been made in God’s image and likeness- each and every person.  From the greatest saint, to the greatest murderer, nothing can take that image and likeness to God away from us, but sin can make it harder for us to see.

So we are constantly having to rediscover our self worth- we really do need to have this duck in a row if we are going to get the others in line.  We want to know we are worth while, and we will, without a doubt, seek some kind of validation of that self worth, or we will try to cover it like Adam and Eve, and we will be ashamed of something that is so beuatifually created by God.

Some of the ways that we try and find validation is through relationships.  That is ok if the relationship is healthy.  Often though we seek people that we relate to, or are similar to, in order that we might validate ourselves in them.  Sometimes that means multiple marriages, sexual partners, remaining in abusive situations, or any number of things.  There are people that constantly seek the validation that only God can give to them.

There are ways of covering it up too.  People who are ashamed of themselves cannot face or accept that they are worthwhile and try to cover their nature with booze, or drugs, or shapping, eating, jobs, uniforms, or any number of potential addicitions that are out there.  We can even be addicted to people or ideologies!

In the end if we truly want to find our self worth, we have to “peek” (ahh there is my title reference) into ourselves- take the good with the bad, and see that underneith it all, we still have that beauty and that dignity of being made in the image and likeness of God, despite the fact that we are a bit tarnished at times by our choices to turn away from the inherent dignity that is in each person.

The other way to find self worth requires a bit of spirituality I think.  We need to see ourselves as God sees us.  He doesn’t require us to be handsome or smart or funny or have a great job or a great car or any number of things that give us validation in our culture.  Rather, he loves just because we exist.  Unconditionally.  Whether we love Him back or not.  That is the ultimate validation of our self worth.

Once we begin to realize that we have self worth, it directs us toward putting our second duck in a row, which I will talk about tomorrow- the need to love and to be loved.

For my next trick…

I am really happy to announce the publication of my first book, The Flabbergasted Philosopher Gets Motivated, which is for sale at this link.  This is sort of a “Best of Josh Wagner” book, sort of like a Beetles Anthology, but without the music… or the fan base… or Yoko Ono.  Don’t think she hasn’t tried to horn her way into my creativity with her “Plums floating in Perfume in a Man’s Hat.”  She is crafty alright.  I hope whoever buys a copy enjoys it. 

It would make a great gift…  now only if there was some kind of gift giving holiday where someone might enjoy this as a gift.  Oh well…

The Resplendent Garment

The first book will be called “The Resplendent Garment.”  This last summer I was able to go on a 30 day silent retreat in Morristown New Jersey, where I did the Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.  I tell you what… 30 days sitting and listening to God will certainly give you a lot of insight into His great love for us, how and why he created us and the universe, as well as knowledge of the great world of groundhogs.  Yep… groundhogs. His name was Harvey.  Harvey the Groundhog.  I guess you will have to wait for the book to know exactly what I mean.  All I can say is what God said to me: “Be the Groundhog.”

 There was so many good and rich spiritual experiences in those 30 days that I knew one of the things I was supposed to do with my time was to write a book about those experiences.  The theme of the resplendent garment of God’s divine love kept coming up through the retreat, and so I intend to share that with people through writing a book about it.  I had started to write it shortly after the retreat, but I needed a few months to process all of the wonderful graces that God had given to me during that time.  I plan to start writing that shortly, within the next week.

 Title to be announced

The second book will be a collaboration between me and a friend and his miraculous journey through a life threatening illness.  My friend should have probably died, but somehow managed, with the love of God, his friends and family to become miraculously healed, changing not only his life, but the life of those around him. 

What Makes your Heart Burn?

Finally, I would like to do a compilation book where I interview people, get their stories about life and what motivates them in terms of all aspects of life- spiritually, intellectually, professionally, physically, and socially.  It will be a collection of vignettes similar to what my first book looks like, but integrating other people’s stories, in addition to some of my own.

This is where I need your help!  If you think that you have a story worth telling, or have had an event that changed your life or the lives of others, that you think would help other people, let me know through an email! (joshua.john.wagner@gmail.com)

Due to my short attention span (maybe I have ADHD, who knows) I will be working on all three simultaneously, a little bit every day.  I have a day by day approach to things, and I have a “vitamin” mentality.  That is, like vitamins, you take one pill a day, not a hand-full once a week.  You can really achieve any goal like this.  I read once that Jerry Seinfeld sits down and writes one joke a day- one joke!  Imagine the virtually endless amount of material that he has acquired over the years doing that.  I figure if I write 2 or 3 pages a day, I will have a book in draft form in a month or so.  But like all things, sometimes it is just tough to get started.

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St. Nicholas

Hi everybody! (Hi Dr. Nick!)

Man I love Dr. Nick Riviera from the Simpsons.  This post has nothing to do with him.  Well… almost nothing… no wait… nothing.  Wait!  HIS NAME IS NICHOLAS TOO!!!

It does however have something to do with that lovable jolly fellow that comes around our houses every year at this time with presents.  No, I am not talking about Uncle Melvin, although he is jolly, and he does come around this time of year with presents, but I am talking about Santa Claus!  Yeah!

This isn’t Uncle Melvin, but it is Barry White and I have been looking for any excuse to put him in my blog.

Now I have a vested interest in Santa… he is a fellow near and dear to my heart in many ways.  Mostly because I have dawned the red and white myself so many times in my life since I was in pre-school, that I feel I have walked a mile in his boots, which oddly enough, smell like reindeer poo.

It all began when I was in preschool.  Thank goodness that the pictures that exist of this event do not exist in digital form, or I am sure that they would be posted all over the internet right now.  I know it would be a highly searched commodity on google if it did exist.  Luckily, there remains one Polaroid, in my possession, of the day in question.  I assure you, were its cuteness be unleashed upon the world, all the cute polar bear babies in Germany couldn’t stand a chance.

This guy is a Knut… Knut the Polar Bear that is…  That is darn cute there…

I was part of one of those “Hey-let’s-dress-our-kids-up-like-reindeer-elf-angel-Santa” pageants that a lot of preschools and elementary schools put on, and probably constitutes some kind of cruelty to children in some way.  We sang too.  I played Santa, and I believe that we even dressed some kids as reindeer and pull me in on a sleigh.  I think I was born for the part.  I think the “ham gene” (discovered by Danish scientists in the late 1980′s) (mmm… Danish) saw its first light on that fateful and cold Christmas evening at Gardendale Church of God in Lima, Ohio.  (mmm… ham gene).

I believe there were rave reviews, simply because only cuteness was a factor, and there is nothing cuter than a 4 year old dressed up to look like a fat old man with a beard.  Nothing.  Especially when it was me.  Like McCauly Culkin, I lost some of that cuteness factor as I grew up.  All child actors do.

Anyway, I had the bug, which would not be revisited until I went to Rome for school.  There, every Christmas, at the Gregorian University, I would again put on my Santa Suit (OK it wasn’t the same Santa Suit) (That would be both silly and wrong) and I threw candy at the eagerly awaiting students with visions of really bad hard candy dancing in their heads.  The Gregorian had two levels in the inside courtyard, and I was able to hurl the candy all the way up to the second level to the waiting arms of those hungry Christmassy students.  Only 4 were injured in the years that I played Santa.  But really, who needs TWO eyes?!?  Overrated…

Often, I would just walk around town with a Santa hat on, to the ringing sounds of “Bobo Natale,” their word for Santa Claus.  I didn’t mind.  He needed the good PR.

Santa Claus is based upon a Catholic saint named St. Nicholas, who was from Myra, which is in modern day Turkey.  His feast day is today, December 6th.  Back in school we would put our shoes outside of our doors, and by morning they would be filled with candy left by St. Nicholas himself.  There is nothing more delicious than hard candies which have been sitting in shoes all night.  Especially my shoes.  Sometimes they smell like hot buttered pop corn.  (Too much?)

This is where we get the tradition of hanging stockings by the Christmas tree for him to fill up.

St. Nicholas was a 4th or 5th century Bishop in Turkey.  As always there was all sorts of poverty and hardships for most people, and as the story goes, there was a guy who was up to his ears in debt, and whose life was threatened.  He had no other choice (well I guess maybe he had other choices but this was the one he landed on) but to sell his three daughters into prostitution to pay his debts.  The night before they were to be sold, St. Nicholas caught wind of this diabolical chapter 11, and snuck into the residence of Johnny McNoMoney, and put gold into the stockings (or possibly shoes) of the three young daughters of this fellow, thus saving them from the prostitution that they faced.  Hence, the tradition of the stockings and shoes and the whole fat guy in a red suit leaving stuff in your house and eating your cookies thing.

The other side was that as a Bishop, and a saintly one at that, St. Nick probably heard a confession or two during Advent, so all the kids (and adults) would go to see and him and tell him whether they had been naughty (or in some cases nice).  That is where the tradition of going to Santa and telling him your life’s story at the mall came from.  (The mall part was added later). (When malls were built). (Sometimes even when it isn’t Christmas time, I go to the mall, find a guy with a white beard, and tell him stuff about me.) (It is funny how easily guys with white beards get freaked out).

I will say one year when I put my shoes out, I got a lump of coal (OK carbone actually which is explained in yesterday’s blog.)  I still ate it.  Tasted like burned sugar and hot buttery popcorn. (Too much?!)

If you would like to destroy my sweater… pull this thread as I walk away.

Weezer.  It isn’t what people call me when I try to walk up a hill too fast.  It is the name of a band who sang the Sweater Song with the lyrics that appear in the title of this post.  It evokes a great image of that one thread that holds the whole sweater together.

I know I have pulled that thread at times- that stray thread that seems just to be hanging there dangling, doing nothing special.  Who knew it was a load bearing thread!  When we pull it the whole tapestry seems to come apart, literally, at the seams.

It doesn’t just work for clothing and tapestries, but it even happens in buildings where there is a network of forces working together to keep a building upright.  If those interconnecting forces begin to crumble, or lose their unity, the whole building will begin to crumble.  

There is then a unity working in the midst of all parts of things, be it a sweater, or a building, or even us as human beings.  As you may recall from a previous post, unity is a transcendental quality of being- that is if you destroy the unity of a thing, you destroy the thing itself.  (As you may recall, half a car isn’t very good as a car.)

So how does that work into how reality operates?  It seems on the macro level of observation, things work rather independently of each other.  This tree grows over here, or that tree over there.  Perhaps Jupiter seems to be a distant and separate planet from our own.  Individuals have their own identities and one culture differs from the next.  It seems that in reality there is not really any unity to speak of between one thing and the next, except maybe for the fact that each object enjoys being and existence.

That is the catch I think in how all things are really interconnected.  From a philosophical point of view, what this tree and that tree share is that they both exist- so existence, or being, is the “common thread” that unites all things together.  Being is…  whether it is being as a tree or a rock or Jupiter or myself.

So what does this mean?  If we are constantly on the search for what “being” is, can we really come to any conclusions about what being is?

Materially speaking, everything comes down to the same basic elements.  Everything that “is” in reality comes down to atoms and quarks and neutrons etc.  But on a macro level things are highly complex and organized- time and space and material work in a consistent way- it simply isn’t a conglomeration of atoms that are thrown together randomly- there is an intelligence behind how reality works, even if it is hard to see or understand.  I believe that this has been humanity’s project for its entire existence- the search for understanding of how things… more specifically, how reality actually works.

 

How does it all work together?  How does being at its fundamental levels work on the reality that we perceive?  Beyond just an acceptance of “being qua being” there must be some common thread that is holding together the whole “sweater” of reality.

In physics there has been for the last few decades something called the “unified field theory.”  Big minds like Einstein spent decades trying to prove that this unified field exists.  I am not physisist of course, but the basic definition of this theory is that time and space and gravity, and really all forces of nature from the atomic level to the macro level of the entire universe, are all linked by a common force of nature or field.  Everything, in other words, comes down to the thread that is holding together everything.

 

This theory hasn’t been proven yet, as when we percieve reality we tend to change it, but it seams pretty plausible to me as a philosopher and a theologian.  What if that unified field is God Himself?  It seems believable that there is a common element holding the whole thing together, and we know that reality is intelligible- that is has an intelligence behind it- so why not posit, at least from a philosophical point of view, that this unified field is the divine Himself?  

The fact that humanity has intelligence shows that there is intelligence in the universe.  You can’t give what you don’t have- so intelligence can’t just form at random- intelligence comes from intelligence.  Otherwise there is simply just a random conglomeration of atoms that just happend to become intelligent when expressed they collectively form a human being.

Maybe a study of this theory and of physics will lead us to what the ancient philosophers like Aristotle called “natural theology.”  That is specifically, that nature tends to lead us to knowledge of the divine being that is truly behind everything.

What this means as well is that there are really infinite possibilities-even in this reality- that the intellect that is behind the universe could organize matter, time, and space, in any one of infinite combinations- the possibilities are truly endless, as are the implications from such thought.