We Did (n’t) Build It

“Amazing Grace.”  That’s what the Republican National Convention featured at 7:00 p.m., CST, on Tuesday evening, just before and after speeches about people who built their own businesses “on their own.”  I am awestruck.  Did I miss something?  How is it that these generous pretty people can see so clearly that they have “built it on their own” while welling up tears when singing the tender Christian hymn? 

I know, I know.  The “we didn’t build it” mantra is focused on “less government” and more local, small business control.  I understand.  Small businesses need not to be overly burdened with government restrictions.  There are issues that need to be addressed: support for small business tax breaks, limitations on large corporate tax loopholes / welfare; revisions of outdated health care and retirement programs; renewal of blighted neighborhoods; restrictions on horribly inadequate gun control laws; support for public education for all.

But fundamentally, at the root, we need a reality check.  We did not build it.  None of us.  Whatever It is.  We built it – we worked long and hard, no doubt – with the strengths and talents and family structures and support bases and tax system breaks and educational systems and inheritances and cultures and grossly inordinate blessings and local electricity and water infrastructures – to build it “ourselves.”

I am a successful, quite well off, relatively healthy, large home-owning, health insured family man.  I have large debt, but large resources.  I can get to the doctor tomorrow, if need be.  I can claim some superb tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant.  I have an enviable family, and a superb wife.  I can boast as (occasionally) being an outstanding teacher.  I can quote others who say I write well.

But I did not build it myself.  I am who I am because of my grandfathers John Franklin Ivy and John Patty, frontier farmers and preachers and judges.  I am who I am because of a father, O.C., who worked his b… off day and night drilling for Midland white collar oil.  I am who I am because of a mother who modeled working hard and never accepting second best.  I am who I am because of Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Acreman and a host of other public school teachers who a worked long and longer for us.  And I am who I am because of Les Perrin and Dan Hardin and Leon Crouch and John Fortner and  Doug Brown and Chris Morse and Dan McGee, and any number of other professors whose lives and hearts changed me.

Without my family’s influence, I would not have worked so hard.  Without my schools’ teaching (largely supported by every citizen’s taxes and every teacher’s learning), I would not have learned.  Without my church’s support and admonition and encouragement, I would not have learned faith.  Without my student loans – only possible because of U.S. support – I would not have gotten an education.  Without my network of powerful and successful people, I would not have a job.  Without my city’s taxed based services, I would not have a home, or water, or air conditioning, or the power to write this missive.  Without my friends, and mostly my wife, I would not be aware of how much I – I – did not make it happen on my own.  Without faith, I would not face the fact that I did not build it.  Any “it.”

“It” all depends on grace.  Pure and simple.

 

 

 

On Technology and Silence

How does one prepare for a week of silence and inactivity? What will he do without a laptop, or I-Pad, or even a Blackberry? How many books might hold his attention, denying the reality of the place itself? What ingenious projects might still be accomplished for some practical goal? What will make the week at a Benedictine monastery "worthwhile" for this multitasking professor?

Today's readings, found while in catch-up mode cleaning piles off the desk, startle:

"I would not be surprised, however, if un-anticipated consequences followed from this value-laden race for precocious practical accomplishment. . . . We are already well on the way to being enslaved by gadgets, and America's second- and third-tier institutions of higher learning are being reduced to the level of trade schools for producing technicians to fix those gadgets. Home sapiens and Homo ludens have, in our time, beeen displaced by Homo faber." -- Historian Lewis Pyenson, from a speech given to the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge

"There is no greater serenity of mind than when one can shut the hectic noise and pace of the materialistic outside world, and seek inner peace within oneself." -- Malcolm X, from his Hajj travel diaries, as quoted in the new biography by Manning Marable

Randy and Amy Loughner

To Randy and Amy Loughner,

Days have passed, and the memorials to the fallen have begun, as have tributes to the heroes. What happened last Saturday morning is indeed tragic, unexplainable, sad.

I am a parent of adult children. I hope, I think, I know, I tried to raise them well. Parenting in these days is not easy, nor has it every been, to be sure. But parenting today, while paying bills; protecting marriage; balancing sibling interests; struggling with bosses and memos and committee meetings; trying to find ways for our high schoolers to get to school and home, with insurance and good, old Volvos that will protect; hoping to keep ahead of them and their algebra or history, though they never "have homework;" denying futile flights--to expensive MLB games, or NFL games, or Disney retreats, or vacation cruises, or even Christmas escapes--all of these compete for attention, for dominance,

while our children, our young grown women and men

struggle to make their ways,

focused on screens large and small, tweets and texts and God knows what else, with bedroom doors shut (those without teens will not comprehend)

trying to find their ways.

And then, watching them leave home, and praying -- verbal or not -- each day that they find their way, safely, without too many E.R. visits; wishing we had kept up with their music, their friends, their lives,

never quite sleeping well,

every day wanting to call them home, and see them asleep at midnight in our beds,

but tired,

Just tired.

And tragically hopeful. While ever real about the facts that sometimes happen.

And if they do, feeling then doubt. What did we do wrong? Why us? Why our son/daughter? What if we had done ..... better? Why did no one .....? W...?


To you, Jared's parents, I send my prayers, my thoughts, my hopes. May you know that parents everywhere pause in horror, and thanks, and sadness, and grace, and whatever love they can, for you whom they do not personally know.

I cannot imagine your pain. I am sad, as you are for lost lives, for all.


God be with you.

God, give us all humble grace.

To My Father: On Mining and Baseball, Texas Style

12 October 2010. Mark this day. Two miracles transpired, both of major importance to West Texans. Seeemingly most important, the Texas Rangers clinched the American League semifinal games, sending them to the AL Championship against those arch rival New York Yankees. It is a match made in heaven, or in my childhood living room, where I sat dutifully in my little rocking chair next to my dad, rooting for the Yankees (before there were any Rangers) and where I formed those visions of baseball victories that later led to a real Texas Rangers team that my dad and I would favor. I'll never forget the time we all went to Arlington together, probably in the early 1990s, to watch those Rangers. I think they lost that night, but the glory and glamour of finally being in a big league stadium with my dad -- who can forget such an experience? And then, throughout his "retirement" years, I remember many, many nights sitting in that Desdemona home listening to Ranger baseball with my dad, and always, always, hoping against hope, and ultimately seeing them come close to championship an playoff worlds, but never close enough.

My dad died 12 year ago, but he would be proud of the Rangers tonight. They made it to the ALS championship, and to make it even better, it's against those Yankees. I'm wishing Mickie and Roger could see how their influence on my life continues, even if as the new rivals attempt to take over for the great old models of father and son and baseball.

But my dad was never quite focused on baseball, or anything really, except providing for his family. O.C. Patty was a roughneck, a not-so-distant cousin of a miner, one of those long-suffering and hard-working men who never came home without an ache and never complained at all. My dad, I always take pride in saying, worked on the then deepest oil well ever drilled, some 2-and-a-half miles deep, some time in the early 1970s. A lot of folks will say that Texas Oil is what made former president George W. Bush so famous; I say it was my dad, and his fellow-very-hard-workers.

Anyway, oil field roughnecks and miners are of the same breed -- very, very tough and hard-working family men who care little about their own needs and much about their wives' anc childrens' needs. They come home daily sore and hurting, but sure that they have done well. They cherish the moments outside of the rig, or the mine, but they go back each day, knowing the dangers. And, they occasionally get to see a moment or two of real, pure value, when the whole world stops to honor one, or 33, or their number.

So, as the miners literally arise, I say "Thank You" to each of them, and to my dad, and I wish them all a wonderful family reunion. And some time to recover.

While they watch the Texas Rangers whip the New York Yankees and move on to the World Series.

slp

The Hubris of Internet Postings (Including this One)

So I was frustrated at responses to my recent Facebook posting. They were self-centered and over-confident, or at least they drew more attention to their authors than to the subject at hand, or any rational critique of it. I thought, "Why do these people think they can so quickly take over my brilliant posting, making it their own opportunity to shine, to show how clearly they understand properly what I only thought was a noble enterprise." (In this case, it was reading a classic book.)

But then I realized that their own attempts merely mirrored mine, which was in itself a kind of cute attempt to bragg about my skillful choice of provocative reading material on a national holiday weekend. Alas, I too wanted to mark my space, make my claim, place my flag of power and worth before the amorphous and explosive world of the internet. (And now I am doing it again.)

The internet is a remarkable and troubling medium. It allows complete strangers, distant acquaintances, and close family or friends to post things -- pictures, writings, links, games -- that "connect" and "communicate" and, often, "confuse." The internet allows for "community" and convenient contact.

Or does it? I'm beginning to think that for all its benefits, the internet provides a kind of false comfort that we are actually flourishing as a human community, that we are growing intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually as we post our lines and poke our friends. We come to believe that we are happier and perhaps more entertained or more enriched through it all. Perhaps we deceive ourselves. Maybe we are only using the protection of the screen as a way to pump up our own self-centeredness, our own pride, our own sense of worth. Maybe not.

Christians are compelled to take seriously the central teaching of the faith: God became flesh and dwelt among us. The Lord of the universe took on human identity to model what being human means. God did not send a text message, a Facebook post, or a blogger essay. God essentially said "It's not enough to talk at each other, or about each other. If we want to maintain humanity, it's crucial that we actually touch and see, smell and hear each other." For when we don't, we make easier the move to hubris and power, rather than humility and love.

Yes, it's full of inconsistencies, including the use of this blog to speak against blogging.

Hmmm.

Surprises Along the Highway

So I start out at 8:00 a.m. to travel the 4 and 1/2 hours to my mother's home, hoping to surprise her on her Easter Sunday 82nd birthday. An hour into the trip, my right rear tire blows, and I find myself trying to put one of those really small temporary spare tires on the axle, on Easter Sunday morning. But the spare is flat.

Off the Caprock (if you don't know Texas, you need to look it up), in the middle of nowhere, I dutifully change the tire -- flat for flat -- and decide to crawl back to the nearest town, Post. There I find out what is not surprising at all -- no tires stores open on Sunday ever. So I air up the tire, and proceed back home, at 45 mph, because I don't really trust a spare tire on which I just rode for 15 miles.

All is well, so as I climb up the Caprock (really a spectacular sight), I decide to pull in at the lookout picnic area that I've passed a million times before. (The day is shot, and who's in a hurry?) It's called "The Chimney Rocks," according to the sign. Apparently, back in the early 1900s, C.W. Post fired dynamite off the rise, into the lower range below, hoping to feed the atmosphere with necessary air changes that would produce rain. (Really; look it up). Yes, the Post of the cereal fortune. It's a beautiful sight, especially for those of us on the High Plains who long for topographical change; the vista is lovely and large and produces a longing for all.

So I walk around the park, and there it is: A bumper sticker poster on the garbage can, proclaiming "Honor your Father and Mother." Oh, no. What have I done? Is this a sign too turn back, trust the temporary spare, go on valiantly?

But I ignore it. I walk to the fenced edge, looking over prickly pear and mesquite, hugging the edge of the cliff as it falls down onto the city of Post. And there it is, the second sign: a tire. Oh, no. Oh, no. Should I panic? What in the world am I supposed to see/hear? I squint, and look for the size -- 205 55 r 16 -- that would be a stunner. But, alas, it is a 14 inch tire. I am safe.

No message from God. or the Easter Bunny.

Just a lost travel to my Mother's home, and

A day to live and wonder.

slp

A Tribute to an Executive

I do not know Mr. Rob Katz. A Wharton Business School graduate and former Wall Street player, the 42-year old now serves as the chief executive officer for Vail Resorts. While congressional politics were finding ways to bail out major financial and business institutions in late 2008, Mr. Katz was exercising bold creativity himself. He announced that his own 2009 salary would be cut to zero, and in successive years reduced from its previous rate by 15 percent. The company's executives and top directors would see a 20 percent pay cut, office workers a 10 percent pay cut, and all other workers a 2.5 percent pay cut.

When asked in an interview about these moves, Katz said "We have chosen to address this situation by making the preservation of jobs and protecting the guest experience our highest priorities. By asking everyone to take less, starting at the top, we can continue to focus on our mission of extraordinary resorts, exceptional experiences."

Preserving jobs and protecting the product for customers. What a novel idea. Starting at the top. What a virtuous ideal.

Would that other corporations, businesses, and schools would follow suit.