Glad, Sad or Mad?

(a picture of me without my masks ... )

These have been weeks of Glad and Sad. Throughout my ramblings on this blog since, I think 2011, I've revisited my sense of my and maybe Monty Python's sense of life ... mine acquired over the past seven decades. They don't have the feel to me of deep metaphysical truths espoused by students of Nietzsche, but maybe by Nietzsche, himself:

"You have your way;

I have mine.

As for the Perfect way

or the only way,

that doesn't exist."

Among the movies that have moved me is a feminist one about Antonia and her Line ... her daughter and grand-daughter. Maybe it's unfortunate that it mocks men a bit ... but we men and our need to prove ourselves is, in the end, a comically pathetic attempt to hide and deny vulnerability. In any case, in the film is a man ... a student of Nietzsche who cannot quite leave his home or his books ... his name in the film is Crooked Finger. Maybe he serves as counter-character to a crazed lady, la Luna, who howls at the Moon, at night. Crooked Finger suicides; la Luna keeps on howling!

As I said: these weeks have been Glad and Sad. M's baby Sister turned 60 and we travelled 300+ miles each way to celebrate. Just M and I in the roadster ... top down ... at one time leading a caravan of Corvettes anxious to pass our little German 2 seater. Just fun! ... Just Glad, though talking a bunch with each other about the loss of a 57 year old friend ... the one I spoke of last, I think. We talked, too, about a 37 year old daughter of a friend who tried very hard but couldn't make it and was dying ... and, indeed, died a day after we returned. Can't imagine what it's like for her Mom and Dad. Our youngest used to babysit for her ... a sweet young woman plagued by chemical Demons and undoubtedly demons of another ilk. 

I haven't been able to write very much, these days ... a problem as I need to speak in New York in just 4 or 5 days and I'm not certain what to say to the very Nietzschian audience of serious-minded thinkers. Maybe it has been watching GuntherDog struggling in these weeks. This morning, he did what he's been doing each morning, lately. Climbs down slowly from his chair and waits for me to pee and then walks out of our bedroom. He pauses, at just that moment, and walks towards a bedroom that is no longer occupied, sniffs a bit, and gets back on path towards the stairs. I've never been quite certain what to say to him, especially as his vocabulary is limited. He knows "upstairs" and barks and clammers to go up each evening after hearing that word. He knows "wanna pee" and it moves him to the door. "Couch" takes him out of my chair and onto the love seat where he and M snuggle. Still, he doesn't get: "They're no longer there." How do I explain these things to an Old Dog ... to myself ... I think Gunther is about 14.

So, back to the issues of my five simplistic truths.

First -- maybe foremost! If y'can't juggle Sad and Glad, you're phukt!

Second: The Canvas on which you get to Paint your Life is Framed and Finite;

it's very big but y'don't get to expand it.

Third: Life IS the Only Game in Town; 

Life IS the Only Thing that IS -- at least in these dimensions!

Fourth: Life is Meaningful only in the context of Relationships.

(if y'don't believe me, go read Kohelles, author of Ecclesiastes)

&

Fifth: For the Envious, Mad and Miserable cover Glad and Sad.

Frankly, I think Gunther and the 6 or so other Noble Beasts who have accompanied M and I on our journeys taught us all but the second of these so-called truths ... and the second, unfortunately, I won't be able to explain to him.

Alas!

So Little Time ... but So Much

Whenever I/we go to a funeral, the recognition of just how little time may be left becomes, at least momentarily, unavoidable. R led the good life. I never heard him say a bad word about someone in public. Seemed to love his Kids, adore his Wife and include his Mother in his posse. He was famously a good Doctor who took care of little babies for a living ... those endangered infants who came out just-too-soon ... some, no bigger than a guinea pig. I knew him to be uncomplicated. We attended a prayer-group, together ... I had come there about 17 years ago ... the year before, M had met him in the weeks after his Dad died on the same day that M's Dad, Murray, had. 

In those years, R would contribute to discussions ... always in straightforward yet fundamental ways. I recall one discussion where somehow the conversation about the Biblical text turned to the requisite need to think positively about one's illness. R wasn't suggesting a pessimistic attitude but one -- pointedly -- where the ill person didn't have the additional burden of being encouraged to believe that his illness was his fault. That stuck with me, as did, I think, everything else R said. He died two days ago. Yesterday, when I was discussing the weekly texts in front of the group, I heard myself saying and meaning that I remembered what he said more often than what I had. I then heard myself talking about Moses' Blessing/Curses at the end of Deuteronomy, a part of which has always moved me.

"May Z'vulon rejoice in his goings-out and Yisasschar in his ethereal studies."

One of the great commentaries of the 13th C, Simon Yitzchaki, comment, I thought I recalled (I haven't checked, yet) that these two Tribes of Jacob had an agreement. Z'vulon would indulge in what Simon Yitzchaki called in his Old French prakmatia ... pragmatics ... business ... earning a buck. In the meantime his successes would support Yisasschar's studies. Good enough, I recall thinking in Seminary in 1960, but Moses only addresses Z'vulon ... only bothers talking to the Pragmatist. I thought of R. as just such a pragmatist ... decent? always ... a gossip/trash-talker? never. Simpler, as the kids say it in describing the Mosaic distinction:

"Bullshit walks and action talks."

Or as the Poets might say it (like Lerner and Lowe):

"Don't talk of stars, burning above

If you're in love? show me!

Tell me no dreams, filled with desire

If you're on Fire, show me! 

... Don't talk of love ... Show me!"

As his sons and Medical Practice partner and Brother spoke, I was to learn much more about R than I knew from our brief supportive moments in our prayer groups; R or I or both of us would show up exhausted after days of caring for sufferers:

"Y'OK?"

"Pretty Good."

I recall no bullshit. And I only was privy to a part of his life ... At the memorial service (what in my tradition is called "accompanying the dead" on their final journey), I was to learn that R.  really listened to the Grateful Dead and Bruce Springstein on his way to driving his son last-minute 100 miles to see some great basket-baller? I had no idea that he loved Baseball, Football, was enamored of the local teams, skiing, Fly-Fishing, or that he had really encouraged his two sons to follow their dreams away from the Medical Practices that he, his Parents, and his wife had each built. I hadn't known that he and his wife met 40 years ago on maybe the first day of undergraduate studies or that  he had built what his brother called a Full Life that Lady? He used the same expression when he was first diagnosed with Cancer 23 years ago ... "I've had a good ride." I knew none of this. Nor did I know that he'd been invited to testify on a Medical Miracle in the Vatican.

I let the cat out of the bag, didn't I? .... started school 40 years ago? So R was 58 when he died and hadn't yet been blessed with playing in the Fourth Quarter, as I think of it.

But fullness of life isn't measured in linear and equal measures along a stick or by hand shaped pointers running about a circular dial. When at 57, the Cancer returned and even in the many months that followed, it could be said by those who knew him:

We loved you, R ... we'll miss you.

Y'did real good!

Evangelical Hypocricy

35 years ago, I taught a course to psychotherapists on Culture, Religion and Psychotherapy. Throughout the early months of the seminar, I was struck by one fact and one fact, alone: every time one of my students -- all growed up and life experienced with maybe the average age being 45 -- every time a student mentioned a religious person, it was someone who was emotionally ill. I, at last, commented that not only was it true that most of the great works of the ages were God-Fearing but, indeed, the last psychoanalyst who had taught the course for years before he unexpectedly died was a religious person, as well.

All this to say: I don't know if Donald Trump "loves women" ... the tabloids certainly claim that he's bedded many of the "fairer sex" ... but I have been drawn, in my life, to devout and religious folk and their texts. Lord knows, some readers of these scribbles have complained that my blog is overly peppered ... too heavily spiced, that is, with quotes from various Scriptures.

So, I wonder .... and so does M ... how can it be that some Evangelical Christians and some Ultra-Orthodox Jews are supporting for the Presidency of the Nation (that gives them the right to pray to their God in whatever way they choose) a man who at least reportedly is a serial adulterer, a public smearer of others, an offender of women based on their weight or looks, a man who discusses his and his women's sex lives on such programs as the Howard Stern Show, and someone who garishly transgresses Deuteronomy's prohibition on even the King having too much stuff (horses, women, ...).

Where is this roughly 50% of religious folk coming from? In my own religious tradition, each day is started with a prayer asking God to protect the one praying from public displays of arrogance (עזות פנים) and from those who publicly display their arrogance (עזי פנים). How can this be that 50% of Indiana's Evangelicals supported such a man? As I noted in a recent posting, the sages of Babylonia were confused by the juxtaposition in Deuteronomy 17:18-21 of the rules for judges and public officials with the prohibition against idolatry (tree worship, there). They explained it by arguing, as I recall, in Tractate Sanhedrin (p 11, maybe) that "anyone who stands up for the election of an unfit judge/leader is essentially guilty of idolatry."

Somebody, please explain how religious folk can stand up for electing one such as the reported Donald Trump for leader of the Free World?

Elizabeth Warren said something similar but so much better than I ever could:

Donald Trump is now the leader of the Republican Party. It's real – he is one step away from the White House. Here's what else is real:

Trump has built his campaign on racism, sexism, and xenophobia. There's more enthusiasm for him among leaders of the KKK than leaders of the political party he now controls.

He incites supporters to violence, praises Putin, and, according to a columnist who recently interviewed him, is "cool with being called an authoritarian" and doesn't mind associations with history's worst dictators. 

He attacks veterans like John McCain who were captured and puts our servicemembers at risk by cheerleading illegal torture. In a world with ISIS militants and leaders like North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Un conducting nuclear tests, he surrounds himself with a foreign policy team that has been called a "collection of charlatans," and puts out contradictory and nonsensical national security ideas one expert recently called "incoherent" and "truly bizarre." 

What happens next will test the character for all of us – Republican, Democrat, and Independent. It will determine whether we move forward as one nation or splinter at the hands of one man's narcissism and divisiveness. I know which side I'm on, and I’m going to fight my heart out to make sure Donald Trump’s toxic stew of hatred and insecurity never reaches the White House.