Eine Kleine Paranoia

There is a kind of paranoia that seeps in in the Fourth Quarter ... something about the manner in which some members of the younger generation feel a need to disembowel you .... to reach into your peritoneum and rip out whatever organs are still functioning. If there's anyone reading out there, they might think such a view a little paranoid, unless, that is, they've experienced similar occurrences.

Marsha and I were at a religious ceremony and party that related to the birth, one month ago, of a strapping young firstborn to his parents ... Scripture requires that such first fruits either be given over to the priestly-class or, else, redeemed. It's a charming ceremony where the parents have a special "right of return or redemption." There really isn't more than a whisper of tension as the new Father says, essentially: I've decided that I wanna keep the kid! I went through this redemption of my own first-born son 45 years ago ... it was, on balance, a good decision. Indeed, it was on the 50 mile trek to this party that that very son convinced me to take a 1200 mile road-trip with him, as our wives flew there in comfort with our youngest grandchild.

All this is to say that I was feeling a degree of ebullience as Marsha and I arrived ... and almost everything, indeed, was wonderful. I don't get to see my cousin very often ... or his wife, 4 kids (one of whom was the 'new Father') and their 11 grandchildren ... running around and being kids. Other folk in that part of the family were equally "gifts to see" ... one, in particular, another cousin's child, had always treated us with such dignity when we'd attend her kids' weddings. Family is -- or so we wish for in our dreams and waking fantasies -- a safe place.

As we were getting ready to leave early (I had early work to do, this AM), there was that other couple. They are 40'ish and have adorable kids and practice another form of the craft which I practice and have, as well and as many members of the family, stayed connected to different forms of our faith-practice. There are many ways to live and they seem to be living one form of the Good Life and practicing ethically and as they see fit.

Still and all, every exchange with this couple has the form of challenging the worldview that informs my form of the craft that we both practice. It wasn't violent ... more mocking, than violent. More like:

             We came to a seminar with so and so. He's brilliant. Do you know A, B and C? You don't? But
             they're neighbors of yours, practicing in the same city and very well-known, No. You really
             must know them (smile, smirk, ....) I mean, they are your neighbors ... your professional neighbors.
             They're world-known. ... 'etc., etc. and so forth.'

We took our leave.

I promise. I am, indeed, Playing in the Last Quarter. I and my style of thinking will inevitably and soon be gone and, yet, I leave such encounters with a sense of being rushed out the door.

In the Babylonian exile, there were codes of law. Among these laws were one that stipulated: if A has pleasure and B has no loss, there is no legal loss. So that if a man is walking in an orchard and sees an apple on the ground and knows that the farmer is overseas for the season and not going to return to harvest this apple, eating it incurs no liability. The reverse, though represents another general principle of ethical thinking: If A has no gain and does something that incurs a loss in B ... gratuitous enmity, it might be called ... is, indeed, a crime.

And it's a crime that left me with glimmers of paranoia in the 50 mile trek home.