I was thinking about “thriving” on my way home from the gym yesterday, wondering about how to even begin talking about it.  What in the world is thriving?   The dictionary says this: “to grow or develop well or vigorously.”   That resonates, mostly because of my recent adaptation of the word “grow”, exchanging it for the words “change” and “transformation.”  (But that’s another blog post.)  Okay, to grow, I thought, but the notion of life’s hardness kept raising its head, that war (of art, of life, of spirituality)  that St. Paul and Stephen Pressfield remind us of.

What is human thriving anyway?

On the Christian side of things, the two great commandments are the primary orientation:  Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Love you neighbor as yourself.   Christ said not to worry too much about the bottom layer of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs triangle, that God would come through with all that stuff if we just chased after his kingdom first.  And the study of what many Christians might call “Kingdom living” is a massive study in itself, and the faith is, that following along behind the Christ, acting as he did for his reasons, is the foundation of human thriving.

On the psychological and sociological side, lots of study continues about just what it is that makes human being and personhood, and what thriving means.  Back to Maslow’s hierarchy…looking at that triangle again, it looks pretty solid.   Survival is need, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and that famous “self-actualization.”   I also love the list of “capacities” of the human person found in Christian Smith’s What is a Person?  (Existence capacities, Primary and Secondary Experience capacities, Creating capacities, and what he calls Highest Order capacities.)   Thriving in that world would seem to be the growth and “vigorous development” of these various capacities according to our “core gifts”, which is another idea I encountered somewhere on the web yesterday.

Well, truth is, I don’t know that I know just what thriving is, but yesterday, on that drive home, somewhere on 5th Avenue between Northgate and NE 80th, the word “now” presented itself, and it occurred to me that the possibility of thriving inevitably presents itself not in the past or the future, but in the present.   In the now.  This very now.

This one.

Lots of spiritual writing these days focuses on the idea of “Mindfulness” and “Presence.”   (“Presence” is another big word for me, but more about that later, too.)   The past is gone.  Strange to say it, but the river from yesterday has moved on.  Memory and remembrance is so vital for living, but it’s easy to get lost in images of memory that may or may not be all that accurate anyway.  And who knows why our minds are so fond of the destroying memories, the ones where we failed, were humiliated, were lost, confused, abused, and made to feel so much less valuable than we are.   Our brains seem to be bent that way, and it takes grit and vigilance and a strong faith in God and grace (or something far bigger than that gnarly, negative brain) “to grow and vigorously develop” in the face of the onslaught of memory.

And the future…it’s coming, sure enough.  But very little of what I project into it has anything to do with reality.   My best shot and growing and developing vigorously is to take on what’s in front of me.   This moment, choose to act in faith.   This moment, choose to push back the dark.  This moment, choose to follow-through, keep the promise, make the best start I know how to, finish with the best “kick” I’ve got, and in this moment, do what I know to pour courage into those next to me in this now.   This moment, take the plank out, pray the secret prayer, seek the next step in kingdom life.   This moment, serve.  This moment, walk.  This moment, make some beauty.

Every now matters.  Every now is a chance.   Every now is dense with life waiting to be lived.

Now…

Jonathan Harris is an artist I just came across last night, but already, there’s something about what he’s up to that appeals to me.   Go to his website to explore.   He begins with a clear statement of vision, and then you go to a page with descriptions of his work.   He is working in the space where humans touch technology, and his basic thought is that somehow, technology isn’t necessarily helping us become more human.  As a believer in technology, Harris is doing some pretty amazing things with the grammar and syntax of what technology can do in story-telling and expression.

The piece I came across last night is called World Building in a Crazy World.   The title appealed to me immediately, because when it comes down to it, that’s what I think we’re here for.   To create and make worlds in light of God’s ongoing making, in an amazing partnership between humanity and divinity.    The first piece of this work is called “Baz” in which Harris recounts two stories about his fourth grade teacher.   The gist of what emerges from these stories is to bring all of yourself to the work everyday, and to stop thinking you have the answers to the big questions, especially if that pride is bleeding into what you’re trying to do as a playwright.

As I read that story, I knew I needed to sit up and pay attention.   Baz had told Harris that he’d wept one day over his realization that his disappointment with the plays he was writing stemmed from his desire to impress his audiences with big answers to big questions.  He decided to own the fact that he didn’t know the big answers, and concentrated on asking the right questions, and inviting the audience into the answering.

I suppose it helped me because all around me I see big questions.  The Civil War (inspiration for current project) is a huge question, and there are times when I get glimpses of answers that I want to tell everyone.  Pride is insidious.

Go read World Building In A Crazy World.  It will take you about 15-20 minutes.   You’ll hear a call to humanize the digital world, a call to make those worlds beautiful, and a few pointers (one I found sort of life-saving) about how to find a place to put your feet down in a world of constant, overwhelming flux.

Have you seen One Day On Earth?  On October 10, 2010, people from all over the world shot video and have been in the process of uploading those videos ever since.   Click on the archive, and see a map of the world with links to tons of snapshot videos of all kinds of things.  From the South Pole to Australia to Washington State, people are going about their lives, and with One Day on Earth, you can have a glimpse of all that’s going on on a typical day.   If you have video of your own life from that day, upload it and be a part of the project.  A feature film is due out that looks to be pretty amazing The next “one day on Earth” happens on 11.11.2011.

The video above is from Global Tribe, a missions organization.  I came across the video at Creative Visions Foundation, an organization supporting creative activisits who are using media to “inform, inspire, and empower.”   As I watched the piece, the sense of the growing connectivity around the planet became palpable.  The impression is that everywhere you turn these days, people are reaching out to people, all around the world.  And yes, there are wars and atrocities and Congresses who can’t get their act together, but still, you can’t help but be excited about the good things people are up to these days.

My primary reaction is one of awe and amazement.   “Vast” is a word that comes to mind constantly, as does “limitations” and “finite.”   The tension between vast and limitations is simple that of the frame.   The greatest works of art that carry us into universal meaning all travel through some framing device that both limits and frees, and it’s only through local culture and particular acts that the human connection is made.   As frustrating as some days can be, the experience of being human in this time has possibilities that we have only just begun to touch.

Worship is the first response…then, creation…

Each category in the list above (and I could easily stretch the list out another 100 words) has something deep to do with what I’ll simply call my Jeff-ness.   And whoever “the other” is, he or she too is made up of –nesses of all kinds: skin color, age, gender, culture, geography, beliefs, values, sexuality, spirituality, language, intelligence, emotional intelligence…make your own list.   But in using any one descriptor to describe “the other”, deep though they may be, what have you really said that is of much use in the colossal struggle to right what’s wrong about human interaction?

I read in a book about Jungian archetypes that while categorical thinking about personality has truth in it (there are common things to know about us old white guys), nobody really fits any of the categories.   Nor does anybody want to.  Why? Because we deny we have these truths about us?  No, because we don’t want to be reduced to a stereotype.

We are our selves.   We are different.  And we are human, which, ironically, is a like-ness that makes talking about difference both possible and meaningful.

We human beings have trouble with each other.  And the trouble we have with each other is in no way pretend; it is real, functional, practical, and costly.   It is historical, and it is now.   New scars are created every hour, via glances, words, injustices, slights, and ignorant we-didn’t-know-any-betters.   Fights break out, people go to jail, lose homes, destroy businesses and marriages, and yes, folks get killed, even to the tune of genocide.  The culprits are fear, greed (monstrous greed), selfishness, and (here’s the hard one) competing ideas of what words actually mean, and what actions represent those words.

At a Taproot Theatre community event last night, the conversation on race in Seattle (“Do we have a race problem here?”) was enlightening, awkward, and inspiring.   It was made of both stories and ideas, which are not always the same thing.  One assumption (and it’s a good one, I think) driving the conversation is that “your personal story” is the only real access a person has to the conversation.   Speak from your experience (as if you had anything else to speak from) is the mantra, and listen to the story of “the other.”  “Respect” and “love” are the goals, story-telling the means to get there, and listening seems to be the skill we could all use some instruction in.

I had some overt racism in my extended family growing up; it was overt enough that I instinctively knew something was wrong with it.  I’ve been accused of being clueless about the larger world, but in my Texas elementary school, junior high, and high school, I had friends of all stripes, and just didn’t think about it.   But looking back, I can see clearly the advantage of institutional white privilege at work, and to not acknowledge that strikes me as little more than burying my head in the sand.   We are always in a historical moment, and it is into this moment, by God’s grace or by his humor, with all its racial craziness, sin, and need, that we have been thrust.

Here’s the first question I’d like to put out there.   And I ask it because it’s so much easier to point out how we’re blowing it than it is to articulate what it would look like if we were getting it right.   (This is one of the reasons Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is so powerful and iconic.)  How do we articulate and describe our Promised Land?  Anybody ever seen such a place?  A place where justice, love, and respect were the rule and not the exception?

Here’s a little exercise: let’s say our culture is something like the situation God faced in Genesis 1.   Even if Genesis 1 is not your story, it’s still a good story by which to think about this.   “The earth was null and void” the old text says, and artists like to speak of this state of being as “chaos.”  And I like the phrase “…and darkness was on the face of the deep.” (Though in the racial conversation the classic metaphors of light and dark just sort of suck, you know?  But I haven’t really figured out how to escape them, because they actually refer to night and day, and to be without light is really not good.)  “…and darkness was on the face of the deep.”  A state of un-enlightenment, if you will.

With God’s Spirit hovering over the face of this “deep,” God said, “Let there be light.   And there was light.”

So we face a racial situation that’s got some null in it, some void in it, and some lack of light.  If it were up to you, and you knew that you could say, “Let there be _______ , and there would be _________ ” what would you speak into being in order to change our race-conflicted world?

And as your spirit hovered over the “deep”, your –ness said, “Let there be …

What?

One last thing: if we’re standing in a dark room, does anybody not know light when they see it?  

And Marty said, “Let there be glue…”

And there was glue, applied to icons of the holy, the kitschy, the comic, and the kooky; surreal landscapes featuring damsels and dinosaurs, nudies and nerds, monkeys and moon rockets.

Coffee shops are the perfect place to look at art, right?   Maybe, but Marty Gordon’s current show at Capitol Hill’s Victrola Coffee presents a dilemma for the interested collage-o-phile.  Inevitably, due to their diminutive size and detail (not to mention the color), these collages invite you closer; you want to stick your nose right up against the glass, so to speak.  I mean, who wants to miss the delicious little word bubbles, all these children and vixens and deities and sumo wrestlers chatting up devils, cherubs, and misogynists?  I mean, come on, you want your eye to have time to wander a bit, back and forth between these wildly disparate elements, these densely packed juxtapositions intriguing enough to lead you to wonder if there just might be a 3-D comedic horror movie surreptitiously playing on the other side of the frame.

But it’s hard to get close on a night like last night, when I headed up 15^th Ave NE to Victrola for a sandwich, a green tea, and some art viewing.  Food and drink were fine, but looking at the art didn’t really work out, because the place was packed.  It was as if each painting had it’s own little guardian, protecting these precious truth-windows, as if an evil (or at least dastardly) wizard with a great big word bubble might come floating in the door any minute to steal them all!

But who could blame a wizard for wanting these collages hanging in his wizard house?  They’re pretty magical.

Full disclosure: I’m a friend of Mr. Gordon’s, and have been looking at this work for several years, but this is the first time I’ve actually decided to bring a critical eye to what he’s up to, and talk about it.  Not being an art critic per se, I’ll probably miss by a mile, but my purpose is to perhaps expose a few more people to the complexity and delight of this dynamic, definitely-to-be-taken-seriously, artist.  And let it be said that these are just my opening salvos; I may be returning to his work again.  The more I look at it, the more impressive and curious it becomes.

Find Marty’s collages at his website Martworks: The Art of Marty Gordon (What Would Jesus Glue?) .  He also has pieces for sale at his Etsy site.

So here you are, standing in front of a collage by Marty Gordon.  What are you seeing?

You’re always looking at a new world with these collages; it’s as if God were constantly reconsidering how he originally put things together and keeps trying.  It’s good to keep in mind that when you first engage the frame, all bets are off, all usual connections are suspect, and if you’re going to tread metaphorically in these lands do so with a light foot.  Put too much weight on what you think the whole thing means, and you’re liable to fall through the floor.  At the very least, you’ll find yourself stuck back at head scratching.

So, yes, these are 5 x 7, 8 x 10, 10 x10 worlds, and Marty is a god-like hand peopling them with all manner of creatures, technologies, time epochs, sciences, spiritualities, and witticisms.  Each world is built to jar the viewer.  Not as in hit-you-with-a-hammer: it’s more like Doc’s little knee whacker that just won’t quit.   Most of the time, Gordon’s work hits you in a funny bone kind of way, but sometimes it’s closer to the smack on the elbow, the one that leaves your whole arm ringing.

For all you fans of bullet point critique, so you can peruse swiftly, here are a few of the things Marty’s up to, and I’ll bet there’s lots more, but I’m running out of time:

•   He’s drawing lines of tension between what is serious and what’s not, allowing the not-so-serious to call the seriousness of the serious into question.  Pop Culture’s mashup with religion, science, and commercial nuttiness can become ludicrous when you think very hard about it, and Marty leads us into thinking about it. 

•   He’s exposing our false sense of security in the stories we tell ourselves.  

•   He’s using satire and absurdity to lift those questions that lurk beneath the surface of our consciousness into our awareness.  The comedy—and its ambiguity—allows us to confront what often just doesn’t make much sense.  (What does it mean that Jesus loves Hitler?  Was Adam’s inability to find a mate among the animal kingdom really the reason God made woman?)

•   He’s suggesting that we live in a time of confusion, where we have a hard time understanding what best serves and ennobles human culture and civilization.  (The Pope wants the wisdom of the Bhudda, a professional wrestler wants to pretend-fight, and a child wants candy while planes head toward skyscrapers.)

•   One of my favorite themes in Marty’s work is his ability to locate technology and its effects both inside and outside the human.  (Space Stations inside the brain of a man in distress, and two men observing that maybe video game playing is about as serious as they need to get.) 

•   He’s slamming images suggesting sacredness into spaces where they are forced to interact with pop culture kitsch bordering on the profane, raising not only eyebrows, but also the question, “Where the hell do we find the holy, anyway, and who gets to say?”

•   He’s playing with words, conversations, tweets, names, icons, almost as if they are independent of each other, allowing his new created contexts to jar us, alter meanings and perceptions of things we often take for granted. 

•   He’s doing beautiful compositions. His strong sense of balance, line, contrast, unity, color, and rhythm means we almost always like what we see long before we get to what it’s suggesting.

To briefly summarize—and like I said, I may be missing this by a mile—I’d say Mr. Gordon is nimbly, and often, brilliantly, mocking our tepid notions of the sacred, the holy, and the important.  Which, by the way, is very different than saying he is mocking the authentic Sacred, Holy, and Important.   If people get offended by the alleged irreverence of Marty’s work, they need to remember that it’s not Jesus he’s making fun of.   God is not as much on trial in Marty’s work as we are.  (Oh…we do get it, and that’s why we’re offended.)  And by “we” (and this is very cool of Marty), I mean both believer and non-believer.  We need to acknowledge that not only do Jesus-folk not have a corner on the market of knowledge, we’re not cornering the market on craziness, either.

And oddly enough, the alleged inhabitants of Heaven keep showing up in these topsy-turvy worlds, watching (and reminding us that they’re watching) making me wonder if the whole crew up there figures our world and our antics are just about as surreal and strange as the worlds Gordon creates.   To Jesus, maybe the Fall of Humanity in Genesis 3 turned everything into a Marty Gordon collage.   (So now we could label his work “realism”—hah!)

As J.B. Phillips once famously put it, our God is too small.  I think we need to thank Marty Gordon for giving us a pretty cool ongoing visual reminder of just how small we think holiness can be.  For in so doing, he intimates the legitimate power and beauty of the Real Thing.

Have you ever had a moment when you knew you were being the best “self” you could be?   How about the opposite, when you knew you were somehow presenting to those around you, in that particular moment, the worst of your “self”?

Authenticity.  Being “authentic” is not just the craze; it’s the litmus test we have to pass.  Is there a worse criticism to lob at someone than “you’re not being authentic?”  Kierkegaard declared “To will to be himself is man’s true vocation.”  One of the greatest praises you can receive is for someone to declare that “you are the same everywhere you go.”

I want to point out a tension in this thinking and ask a couple of simple questions.

Just how does the face we present to the world arrive?  Does it arrive by natural organic process, so that if we simply “stay out of the way,” our “authentic” self will arise?  Or is the self determined by choices we make regarding our state(s) of being as we move from moment-to-moment?   If I feel lousy, is it more authentic to cave in to the lousy, presenting my lousy-feeling-self to everyone who comes along?    In the authentic self, does negative-feeling-state beget negative attitude and negative action while positive-feeling-state begets positive attitude and action?

It’s pretty easy to recognize there’s something wrong with that idea.

Is it an inauthentic move to give the world your “better self” everyday, regardless of how you feel?  When our state of being is under siege, and our feeling-state is primarily negative (pick your word–depression, stress, upset, down), is it inauthentic to take action in the opposite direction, and say…smile?  What is the difference between the struggling Sunday worshipper who “puts on a mask” and offers his friends an “inauthentic” version of himself, and the struggling worshipper who strains under the weight of his difficulty to offer those around him his “best” or “better” self?

“Be the best you can be” is a cliche and a joke in our age of authenticity.   We mock such platitudes…and then spend lots of money on books to tell us how to be just that–the best of who we are physically, emotionally, professionally, and spiritually.  And authenticity, of course, is assumed to be part of what being our better self requires.

Each of us knows a bothersome little secret: there are moments when for whatever reason, the best of who God made us to be, arises.  Arrives.  And we also know that there are moments when we are quite clear that we have just seen the worst of ourselves.   Life is mostly lived somewhere in between.   But being “authentic” cannot mean that we are at the whim of emotion’s winds.   Whatever it means, being authentic must mean living in the struggle between illusory selves and true selves, selfish selves and loving selves, lying selves and honest selves.

The simple question is this: have we determined to give our best or better selves to the world today?   (Since you’re asking how, I refer you to Peter Block’s The Answer to How is Yes.)

And if I don’t feel like being my best self today, is it inauthentic to bring my best self anyway?  Or do I choose not to because it’s just really hard?

And what makes me think “Resistance” (Pressfield, The War of Art) will be overcome by anything less than the best of what God is doing in me?

There are issues in these questions, I know.  But while we debate them, is it too much to ask that we bring our best or better selves to the debate?  And to the work of the day?

What happens to a day when, by God’s grace,  we bring our best selves to bear?

Let’s go find out…

Here’s how it went for me, and the 17 steps I took (or that I felt myself taking?  Or that someone gave me the strength take?  Or…) to keep my project going.

1. Woke up with the following forms of Resistance sitting on my chest: jealousy, ambition, self-deprecation, doubt, fear, defeatism, and why-don’t-you-just-give-it-up-now-itis.
2. Waited, sitting in bed, staring at my computer screen, feeling the weight of ONE specific problem in my current project.  It felt like Mt. Everest, and I feel barely capable of driving up Queen Anne Hill.
3. Prayed.  But note: I didn’t yet name those things sitting on my chest.
4. Got out of bed.  One step, another step, and so on.
5. Got coffee: important step.
6. Went to my work space, moved letters and words around in some of the character files, trying to sneak up on the whole thing.
7. Left my house with Anjie and headed toward Sea-Tac to pick up Amy, all the while naming out loud some of those Resistance guys from when I first woke up.
8. Got coffee at coffee shop (Anjie worked until time to get Amy); important step.
9. Reached out to a couple of people describing the exact nature of the problem. (As well as subjecting them to my end-of-my-life-as-an-artist whining.)
10. Went to work, applying what I knew, hunting down clues, places of entry, places to begin.
11. Heard back from a couple of friends.  I accepted their feedback, and each of them had at least one killer idea to help dislodge the logjam.
12. Went back to work, drilling deep into the character that was causing me fits, and discovered, “WOW!  This is an interesting person I’m trying to write here!”
13. Decided I wouldn’t end my life as a writer, and continued pounding away.
14. Was again kind to the people in my life.
15. Prayed, said thanks.
16. Took that Mt. Everest hill, and found it really was about the size of Queen Anne, which isn’t small, but it’s not Everest.
17. Tomorrow, I’ll keep this ground, and take some more.

I’m joking a little, and a little not.   Maybe the list is smaller.  Maybe 2. and 3. should be reversed, but here it is succinctly.

1. Wake up
2. Wait
3. Pray
4. Take Sustenance
5. Go to Work
6. Name the Enemy 
7. Go Where You Have to Go
8. Reach Out to Allies
9. Apply What You Know
10. Hunt for Clues
11. Accept Feedback
12. Drill Deep into the Problem
13. Make the Decision to Keep Going
14. Be Kind
15. Pray Your Thanks
16. Take the Ground You Need
17. Give Tomorrow”s Resistance Fair Warning That You’re Taking More Ground Tomorrow.

One thing I could have done, that I’ll do next time and let you know.  After 6., I could have simply shown the enemy the door, and said, with great heart and sincerity, “Get out!”

Spiritual implications?

Do the work…they’ll find you…

I am not content, but I’m close.

I am frightened.   A little, at least, because of a situation in my family that I’m unsure how to insert myself into, or even if I should.   I am thrilled.  I’m acting again, last night being the first rehearsal of the next play at what I think of as my home theatre.   I am hopeful.   Plans for the next ten years are clarifying, and though I know there are no guarantees, the fact that any shape at all is observable I take as a blessing, an arrival of a guide.   (I say arrival…He’s never gone.)  I am proud.   Both good and bad, this one–so I’ve got children I can barely think of, I love them so much.   Then again, the pride thing is my back being up, being offended, thinking I’m something I’m not, having a hard time saying “sorry”, even though I’ve said it a zillion times in my years.  I am grateful.   I won’t even begin to list.   My thanks likes lists, and I haven’t time for the full boggling of the mind that comes with that sort of inventory.   Begin with material, end with the invisible, sandwich them with cosmos large and small, quantum and Newtonian, and wrap it family and whatever bits of love you can wrap your head around.   I am in love.   I blew a kiss to the girl who has my heart as we drove cars in opposite directions in the pre-dawn rain.   She is light that refuses to be extinguished, much like the Lord we both look to.   I am tempted.   It’s Fat Tuesday after all…what’s a little indulgence like the rest of the world?  Lent comes tomorrow, and it’ll be time to bow the head anew, reflect again on the loss and the sacrifice and the regret.   Confession is good for the soul.  Should I do a thing today I’ll have to confess tomorrow, knowing God will forgive?   As Paul said, “Dumb idea.”   (My translation.)

Here comes the light, here comes the day.  How do you plan worship?  How do you plan to be surprised by the greatness of God so much so that you have to sing about it?   Who knows, but that’s my task today.   And we ministers will pray, and I’ll meet with people over more and more coffee, and I’ll memorize lines, and imagine two guys named Grant and a guy named Lee slugging it out over a long ago war.   I’ll grade a couple of papers if I have time, all of it before doing the table work with a director and the other actors of the play that will be part of my Lenten practice for 2010.   I’ll miss things.   I’ll discover something big, a small thought, like I did yesterday (not ready to say what it is.)  I’ll sleep, or I won’t, and I’ll think of whether I built the day on rock or sand.   Did I judge?  Did I let my yes be yes?   Did I lay up a treasure here, or perhaps in a higher place?   (Is Heaven really “up?”) I’ll hurry, I’ll work hard, I’ll slough off at least one thing, and I’ll torture myself over some bit of incompetence I’ll be sure someone will notice.   I’ll do better and worse than yesterday and tomorrow all at the same time.

Here we go.

I have nothing to say, really, but words arrive anyway, appearing ready for service, and I write them down, trusting that something will emerge.

On Sundays, I forgo Lenten practice because always, the Christ rises on Sunday.   I cannot fast as resurrection happens all over again.   As the tradition holds, feasting trumps fasting on the Son’s day.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner…

In my view it was Jim Lehrer who lost ground. He is the well-respected news anchor from PBS, but on this night it seemed his chief job was to goad the candidates into face-to-face confrontation, hoping for sparks that make for good TV. He kept asking the candidates to say something directly to the other, hoping mostly for those sparkling exchanges we love so much on ESPN and Crossfire-type shows, where combatants get snippy and stop the dialogue and begin engaging in belittling each other with smirks and “can you believe this idiot” facial grimaces. And this morning in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank paints the picture of what she calls “tepid” responses that frustrated Lehrer, as if Lehrer was forced to badger the candidates in order to get some substance from these guys. And I understand that politicians avoid specifics and questions so reporters pursue and push. But it’s one thing to push for deeper and better answers, and another to push for the emotional confrontation that makes for good TV.

Maybe that’s who we are anymore, unsatisfied as we gather at the national arena of political gladiators, the TV. Ideas, those things that have consequences and rewrite history, aren’t nearly enough. Let’s have our visceral confrontations, and pick the fighter we like best. And I’m not naive enough to think personality and emotional patterns are irrelevant, and many a smart man or woman has been destroyed by personality quirks and emotional outbursts, but still, what these men think and what action they will take is what is at stake. Must they badger and squabble at each other, TV hosts goading them as if that’s the point, in order for us to grasp what we need to grasp?

Call me old-fashioned, but in the film The Great Debaters, set in the mid-1930s, a small all-black college from Texas takes on the big Ivy League Champions from Harvard in a debate that was nationally broadcast on radio. The topic was race, so the stakes are not small. As they debated in full hearing of the nation, can you imagine the moderator trying to goad them into arguing face to face? Somehow it appears absurd, because it would drop the entire plane of discussion, robbing it of the dignity demanded by the severity of the issue. If the two teams had stood jaw to jaw interrupting each other, personally belittling the opposing side not with sharp thought, but with visible facial contempt and disdain, etc., would the frank superiority of the winning argument have been nearly as clear?

We talk about the need to end partisan bickering, but on national TV, we goad our candidates toward what Milbank in the Post calls “blood-letting.” And when she mentions we finally got to it, “blood-letting” is without doubt a relief, almost the debate’s reason for being. Again, I’m just out of step with the times, I suppose, but I’ll be glad when the blood-letting is over.

Enough of that…

Jimmy Joe Berryman died of leukemia on July 23rd, 1988, one month before my first child was born.  Amy will be twenty on August 26th.  This will not be a long remembrance, but I should at least say that Dad has traveled with me a lot over the years, especially during performances of Leaving Ruin.  There is a spot at the end of the play where Cyrus simply utters the word “Dad,” and imaginatively, it’s always my Dad standing there, usually leaning on a door frame at the back of the theatre.   It’s also his physicality I bring to the stage for Cyrus, so his ambling and loping have remained with me all these years.  I’ve written about my feelings for his faithfulness and goodness elsewhere, but I just wanted to stop and say his name into the world again.  He made a difference.

Miss you Dad…wait’ll you meet my kids…