Too Many gods? Too Many God Complexes?

I suspect that most of us Players in this Glorious Last Quarter of Life recall the story of the Pied Piper. A town (Hamelin) was over-run by rats and hired a rat-catcher to rid it of this infestation. Alas, he was interested in taking a fee much higher than that offered and stole all the children by alluring them with his catchy tunes. Some have suggested that the story represented the people's choosing a magician, of sorts, over their God in trying to save their children from the Plague -- and that this was their comeuppance. No matter.

For me, I often find that while there may be a sufficiency of Rats, these days we more often suffer from too many Pied Pipers, each telling us how to live our lives and criticizing the ones we live. (An art student of mine for a class assignment years ago photoshopped the above redecoration of the Vatican ceiling that I borrow here without attribution and with apologies -- having forgotten his name.)

The edginess and gratuitous snarkiness of the world occasionally does trouble me. By the Fourth Quarter, one may be swimming for one's life in an ocean of criticisms. Just this week, I was giving a talk wondering about how Moses got to a place in his conversation with God at the Bush-that-Wouldn't-Be-Consumed (in the first three chapters of Exodus) that moved him to bark at his God and demand rhetorically:

Why have you depressed this people?! 

I had no answer and wasn't seeking one. I was more interested in what is a four-volume dialogue that the Bible records between a man and his God. A friend called to tell me how impossibly non-linear my thinking was in this talk.

Damn, I needed that! 

(like a new sphinctor magnum, I needed that)

Edginess seems to be if-not-the rule then a common occurrence, these days ...  this blog, perhaps, can be accused of edginess, too! I don't know. I do hope it's heard in a spirit of warm sharing. Perhaps, we Fourth Quarter-niks just get sensitive, as we grow long in the tooth. I'm not certain but, if so, I'm no exception. Jim Hillman (now, gone himself) wrote an interesting book on aging ... he called it The Force of Character. In it, he proposes that, as we age, we just get to be more of what we've always been. Not always a good thing. But I'll hold on to my sensitivities ... they add to my humanity.

I could list the curious slights that have collected in just the last week ... but I suspect readers to this blog have been exposed in the same amount of time to snide comments in their own worlds. To paraphrase a title from the Good Dr. Freud:

The Gratuitous Slights of Everyday Life. 

Mine this week came mostly from Second and Third Quarter folk. One did amuse me. It came from a person who was organizing a new program of the type I ran for many years. I made the offer to send some of the literature and brochures from that training program and was responded to with dismissiveness. Can I still remember what it was like to "flip off" the older generation? I suppose so. Still ... How easy is it to simply say "thank you" without the edge.

Let me be clear: I cherish the not-infrequent little supportive comments from children, grandchildren, friends and others near and dear to me. Doesn't get better than that and many of those interchanges came my way this week, as well.