After spending a few hours watching her tend the small herd of jersey cows, walking along as she lead them from the pasture, one by one into the milking room, and finally into the "treat" room, we listened as she talked about her work, her lifestyle, her simple pleasures and deep laments, and finally her passionately voiced political points of view on the subject. "We incentivize the wrong thing," she asserted. "All our problems [we were talking primarily about health and obesity rates] would be solved if we shifted the governmental incentives from corn to grass."
I think she is guilty of hyperbole -- over-speaking to make her point -- although deep down I suspect she has genuinely been convinced by the argument. Frankly, I don't believe in "silver bullets." I have no confidence that "all our problems" -- whether they be church problems, economic problems, agricultural or socio-political -- would be solved by doing any ONE thing. That said, her larger point is well-taken: just as what we measure matters, what we reward makes a difference.
I recalled her observation recently while reading about permaculture -- that emerging set of strategies for creating a self-sustaining world. Reflecting on the health care system of Britain, the author, Graham Bell, notes that, "Britain has a very special approach to health, with its public access to a free National Health Service. It has often been suggested that the NHS is succeeding because of the increased case load which it has carried over the years. This is debatable -- a successful 'health' service would treat fewer people as the population got healthier. The NHS is a major asset to Britain, but not by making us healthier as a nation, rather as a necessary tool for people divorced from a wholesome way of life" (The Permaculture Way, p. 38)
All the recent attention to "wellness" strategies and issues notwithstanding, how much of our own culture's view on "health care" is geared toward illness mitigation rather than the prospering of healthy living? And isn't the former but a more systemic example of the kind of enabling more particularly condemned in other behavioral venues? Who knows how extensive the cultural benefit might be if we retooled and re-aimed our incentives away from the invention and production of better crutches to help us limp along with and prop up our myriad bad habits, toward the habitualizing of behavioral tools for building that "wholesome way of life" of which the author spoke?
I understand the difficulty. The former -- treating sickness -- merely takes the ingestion of a pill. The latter -- incentivizing wholeness -- requires real change. The cynic in me supposes that "change" will lose every time. The dreamer in me wonders aloud, "well, who knows? Maybe it's not too late."
Monday, July 16, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
May It Hopefully Accomplish the Good That Was Intended
So let the posturing begin. This morning the United States Supreme Court announced their ruling that allows most provisions of the healthcare reform act (I'll not dignify with use the pejorative term more commonly applied to it) to stand. Already, conservatives are declaring that the sky is certain to fall -- that life as we know it (or at least health care as we know it) is coming to an end and "ain't it awful." Liberals, meanwhile, certain that the Promised Land must be near, agree: health care as we know it is, indeed, coming to an end, and "ain't it wonderful." Something better, they trust, can now take its place. My guess is that neither has it quite right.
I'll stipulate that there are many details of the law that I have not taken the time to dissect and understand. There may well be onerous elements in it that will need some second thought. If Congress' track record on major policy initiatives on virtually any topic is any predictor, this one almost surely is not a perfect bill. That said, I lament that access to health care for all people finds itself such a controversial topic, and am mystified how it has come to be parsed as a liberal/conservative debate.
The Supreme Court ruling now in hand, perhaps conservatives might learn something from their liberal counterparts -- as distasteful as that may be. A little over 10 years ago, liberals were equally sure that the sky was falling when the draconian provisions of the "Patriot Act" were passed into law. How, they asked, did curtailed freedoms and government-intervention-on-steroids constitute "patriotism?" Liberals spit, blustered, fumed and decried this terrible inversion of everything American stands for, and predicted the worst. And in my humble opinion, there are indeed onerous -- even egregious -- dimensions to the law that have, in honoring them, made us slightly less "American." But has the sky fallen? No. And liberals have had to live with the muffled thud that took the place of the cacophonous explosion they expected. Conservatives, now the ones predicting certain calamity, will almost surely experience the same kind of disappointing disaster. Just it won't be as good as the liberals insist, neither will it be as bad as conservatives forewarn.
Meanwhile liberals might want to temper their champagne cork-popping celebrations. The ruling gives them a victory -- although only in the political alternative universe of parallel reality where anything that isn't an outright defeat is chalked up as a victory. The Supreme Court decision is, to say the least, a backhanded validation.
I am reminded of the decision, several years ago now, that allowed nativity scenes to remain in public spaces. Certain Christians rejoiced at the seeming victory. A more careful reading of the decision, however, revealed that the justices' rationale rested on the interpretation that nativity scenes had become a secular symbol in our culture rather than a religious one. That didn't seem to me like a decision I wanted to celebrate -- for all kinds of reasons. Today's decision on health care reverberates through me in a similar way. The Supreme Court said "yes," but for reasons that liberals will quite likely find repugnant. Instead of truly celebrating, they might find themselves merely holding their nose and moving forward.
For opposite reasons, conservatives might do well to do the same.
In the meantime, the law was passed in the first place as an effort to do something helpful and good. I know this is naive, but maybe we can now simply get together and hope that it actually does.
I'll stipulate that there are many details of the law that I have not taken the time to dissect and understand. There may well be onerous elements in it that will need some second thought. If Congress' track record on major policy initiatives on virtually any topic is any predictor, this one almost surely is not a perfect bill. That said, I lament that access to health care for all people finds itself such a controversial topic, and am mystified how it has come to be parsed as a liberal/conservative debate.
The Supreme Court ruling now in hand, perhaps conservatives might learn something from their liberal counterparts -- as distasteful as that may be. A little over 10 years ago, liberals were equally sure that the sky was falling when the draconian provisions of the "Patriot Act" were passed into law. How, they asked, did curtailed freedoms and government-intervention-on-steroids constitute "patriotism?" Liberals spit, blustered, fumed and decried this terrible inversion of everything American stands for, and predicted the worst. And in my humble opinion, there are indeed onerous -- even egregious -- dimensions to the law that have, in honoring them, made us slightly less "American." But has the sky fallen? No. And liberals have had to live with the muffled thud that took the place of the cacophonous explosion they expected. Conservatives, now the ones predicting certain calamity, will almost surely experience the same kind of disappointing disaster. Just it won't be as good as the liberals insist, neither will it be as bad as conservatives forewarn.
Meanwhile liberals might want to temper their champagne cork-popping celebrations. The ruling gives them a victory -- although only in the political alternative universe of parallel reality where anything that isn't an outright defeat is chalked up as a victory. The Supreme Court decision is, to say the least, a backhanded validation.
I am reminded of the decision, several years ago now, that allowed nativity scenes to remain in public spaces. Certain Christians rejoiced at the seeming victory. A more careful reading of the decision, however, revealed that the justices' rationale rested on the interpretation that nativity scenes had become a secular symbol in our culture rather than a religious one. That didn't seem to me like a decision I wanted to celebrate -- for all kinds of reasons. Today's decision on health care reverberates through me in a similar way. The Supreme Court said "yes," but for reasons that liberals will quite likely find repugnant. Instead of truly celebrating, they might find themselves merely holding their nose and moving forward.
For opposite reasons, conservatives might do well to do the same.
In the meantime, the law was passed in the first place as an effort to do something helpful and good. I know this is naive, but maybe we can now simply get together and hope that it actually does.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Too Busy Being Grateful to Disapprove
I will admit to being something of a purist when it comes to religious and civic celebrations, preferring to keep them disentangled and at some remove. Mother's Day and Father's Day, for example -- important observances for greeting card companies, florists and families, to be sure, but not so much the liturgy of the church. Yes, I am aware of the mandate to "honor your father and your mother," but Moses was speaking of a lifestyle disposition not an annual recognition. July 4th, to cite what is often a more controversial example, is, in the same way, an important anniversary for a citizenry to observe, but I haven't yet discerned its relevance to the church. And while in my personal life I swing open the Christmas music vault on the day after Thanksgiving, at church I held to Advent hymns during that four-week period (much to the disapproving whines of our members) and reserved the Christmas carols for the Christmas Eve service and subsequent Sundays.
For similar reasons I have tenaciously reserved remembrance of the beloved dead for All Saints Day -- November 1 -- that ancient designation in the liturgical calendar for precisely such attention, never mind that the rest of American culture is doing so Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day, again, is a significantly important discipline for a citizenry, created as it was to honor those relatives and neighbors and total strangers who gave their lives in service to their country. As I have heard their sacrifice described, they are those who left the comfort of their home to serve their country and never returned. All Saints Day represents the church's discipline of remembering its dead, and the place of those deceased in the larger gospel story. Memorial Day is the country's day to honor its dead and to remember their sacrifice in the nation's larger story. It isn't that those stories are necessarily in conflict with one another; it is simply to sustain the clarification that they are, after all, separate stories.
That said, it was somehow comforting that this particular Memorial Day inserted itself into our family's grieving a scant week after the death of Lori's father precipitated it. We couldn't help but remember -- to "memorialize". It was still more touching that the congregation with which we have been worshiping, opting for this day rather than November's, included Jim's name in their recitation of names to be remembered, solemnized in the blossom of a rose that, retrieved for home, now graces our mantel as a petaled personification of the beauty, elegance, and fragrant bloom we have lost.
To my liturgically fundamentalist way of ordering time, they did it wrong, but it's hard to be judgmental when you are too busy being grateful.
For similar reasons I have tenaciously reserved remembrance of the beloved dead for All Saints Day -- November 1 -- that ancient designation in the liturgical calendar for precisely such attention, never mind that the rest of American culture is doing so Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day, again, is a significantly important discipline for a citizenry, created as it was to honor those relatives and neighbors and total strangers who gave their lives in service to their country. As I have heard their sacrifice described, they are those who left the comfort of their home to serve their country and never returned. All Saints Day represents the church's discipline of remembering its dead, and the place of those deceased in the larger gospel story. Memorial Day is the country's day to honor its dead and to remember their sacrifice in the nation's larger story. It isn't that those stories are necessarily in conflict with one another; it is simply to sustain the clarification that they are, after all, separate stories.
To my liturgically fundamentalist way of ordering time, they did it wrong, but it's hard to be judgmental when you are too busy being grateful.
Friday, May 25, 2012
The Bittersweet Cocktail of Gratitude and Grief
It is, of course, a privilege to be welcomed into a family voluntarily. It happens all the time, I know, but its commonality does not diminish the wonder of it. While the lottery of genetics and birth is the first means of family expansion -- creating a non-discretionary bond of blood and obligation for which I am equally grateful -- there is something incredibly generous about this secondary benefit of marriage. And I was blessed to be such a beneficiary. In exchanging vows, it turns out that I not only married a wife, but in humbling ways, her family as well. So it has been that for almost 15 years I have had the privilege of eating Thanksgiving turkeys, tearing off Christmas wrappings, singing "Happy Birthday" and sharing ordinary life with Lori's siblings and their parents. They share, I have learned over the years, much in common with my family of origin -- albeit in larger numbers. Married 62 years, the Alexanders not only raised 5 children of their own, they have willingly opened their arms to 4 spouses, 10 grandkids and 1 great-grandchild. It hasn't been often that we have all been together, which is probably good. The conversational animation of the assembled multitude routinely threatens the noise ordinance, and there are rarely openings into which to wedge a word of your own, but the parents love the chaos.
It was, however, quieter this weekend. Grief had gathered us this time rather than celebration. On Thursday evening, sitting in his Lazy Boy recliner, watching the Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Lions, holding his beloved partner's hand, Lori's Dad passed away. Our bodies, of course, aren't engineered to last forever, and he had had some health issues in recent years that reminded us all that life is fragile and precious. But that said, this particular moment was a surprise. The children by birth arrived first; the rest of us trailing to tend to our own details. Eventually in each others' keeping we told stories, shared memories, made plans and, each in his or her own way, grieved.
And gave thanks for more blessings derived from Jim than we could count, augmented in the ensuing days by neighbors, former colleagues, friends of long-standing and random community members who passed through our fellowship with their own stories of blessing. He was, as was affirmed in the funeral, "an
encourager...a mentor...a devoted and attentive
friend, son and brother; a person of elegance, integrity, trustworthiness, professional
excellence, and a great sense of humor." Not a bad list.
Even though it didn't start out to be a celebrational gathering, in the end I suppose that's the way it turned out: a celebration of a life well lived; a stone of grace tossed into a pool of relationships with ripples we are all still feeling and appreciating.
And now limping along, we get about the work of recalibrating our orbits in the absence of one of our orienting planets -- new work for most of us, and as always commenced under duress. The celebration, however, mingles with the grief and the resulting emotional cocktail is, if not sweet, at least nourishing. To have been known -- loved, embraced, and affirmed -- is a precious gift, indeed. And simultaneous with our ache is our grateful,
...silent...
...awe.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Looking Back, and of course, Forward
It has been a year -- a good and tearful, exciting and anxious year. Last year, the week after Easter, I announced my plans to leave my pastoral position at the end of August. The small group conversations and congregational letter set in motion a series of shifts and turns and momentous new experiences that have brought us to this vantage point for looking back.
How has it been? Blessed.
Has it been hard? Of course.
Do I miss anything? Lots.
Do I regret my decision? Not for a second.
I had an important advantage: I wasn't merely moving away from something; I was simultaneously moving toward something different. Like Job, I had helpful and expert friends who were sure they understood. "You are simply burned out. Step aside, relax, and then move to another church." Rest and relocation, they counseled with certitude, would fix me up in no time.
The only problem was I didn't feel broken. Tired? Guilty. Burned out? Well, I don't think so but I'm not the expert. All I know is that all I found myself thinking about in my free time was this new direction -- and my "free time" was starting to encroach on the rest of my time. I was eager to pursue this new passion.
Do I miss anything? Yes, the relationships both professional and social. I haven't moved that far away, but it's different -- as it should be. We talk occasionally, various ones from the church; we have socialized a bit. But those I used to see multiple times in a week I now connect with once every couple of months. That is a hole that hasn't been filled. For 19 years these people were my life. I miss them.
I didn't miss undertaking a stewardship campaign, or nominating officers and ministry chairs; I didn't miss budget negotiations or the annual plea for help "undecorating" the sanctuary after Christmas. But I was surprised at how much I missed planning an observance of advent in December, and much easier Christmas Eve was than I had expected. I missed planning special lenten services, and Holy Week services were especially poignant in a way that Easter surprisingly was not. Part of that might be that for 30 years I struggled -- largely unsuccessfully -- to persuade congregants to enter into the fullness of the Passion story instead of simply skipping from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection. Easter, on the other hand, always struck me as too much pressure to generate too many fireworks for too many people for whom the breathtaking Good News of the Resurrection ought to have been splendor enough.
And I don't miss the anticipation of the post-Easter and summer slumps. My anticipation now is getting asparagus crowns planted and the garden tilled and divining how to get the rain water from the barrels conveniently to the furrows. Those challenges seem, frankly, infinitely more fun.
How has it been? Blessed.
Has it been hard? Of course.
Do I miss anything? Lots.
Do I regret my decision? Not for a second.
I had an important advantage: I wasn't merely moving away from something; I was simultaneously moving toward something different. Like Job, I had helpful and expert friends who were sure they understood. "You are simply burned out. Step aside, relax, and then move to another church." Rest and relocation, they counseled with certitude, would fix me up in no time.
The only problem was I didn't feel broken. Tired? Guilty. Burned out? Well, I don't think so but I'm not the expert. All I know is that all I found myself thinking about in my free time was this new direction -- and my "free time" was starting to encroach on the rest of my time. I was eager to pursue this new passion.
Do I miss anything? Yes, the relationships both professional and social. I haven't moved that far away, but it's different -- as it should be. We talk occasionally, various ones from the church; we have socialized a bit. But those I used to see multiple times in a week I now connect with once every couple of months. That is a hole that hasn't been filled. For 19 years these people were my life. I miss them.
I didn't miss undertaking a stewardship campaign, or nominating officers and ministry chairs; I didn't miss budget negotiations or the annual plea for help "undecorating" the sanctuary after Christmas. But I was surprised at how much I missed planning an observance of advent in December, and much easier Christmas Eve was than I had expected. I missed planning special lenten services, and Holy Week services were especially poignant in a way that Easter surprisingly was not. Part of that might be that for 30 years I struggled -- largely unsuccessfully -- to persuade congregants to enter into the fullness of the Passion story instead of simply skipping from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection. Easter, on the other hand, always struck me as too much pressure to generate too many fireworks for too many people for whom the breathtaking Good News of the Resurrection ought to have been splendor enough.
And I don't miss the anticipation of the post-Easter and summer slumps. My anticipation now is getting asparagus crowns planted and the garden tilled and divining how to get the rain water from the barrels conveniently to the furrows. Those challenges seem, frankly, infinitely more fun.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Everywhere, Everywhere Pillars of Salt
Salt, I suppose I'll have to admit, is a little bit in my blood. But that is to get ahead of myself.
The Bible seems diabolically confused about this whole notion of memory. On the one hand, much is made of the importance of not forgetting. A whole liturgy, for example, is prescribed in the Exodus preparations to insure that subsequent generations remember not only what their ancestors had been through, but what the God of their ancestors had accomplished in setting them free from slavery. Whole mantras are composed through which legacy is sustained -- "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor..." One of the most heart-rending Psalms ultimately takes the shape of a paean to memory -- "How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you... (137). The Lord's Supper -- the Eucharist -- the Great Thanksgiving -- is, at its very core, observed in obedience to Jesus' instruction that we remember. "When you do this, remember..."
Remember, remember, remember.
But then just as often there is this opposing voice. "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old" instructs the prophet Isaiah (43:18). And the Apostle Paul -- "...this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal..." (Philippians 3:13). Even Jesus -- "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). That last one perhaps reminiscent of what might just be the most damning image of them all -- the tragic example of Lot's wife who, departing with her family for a future of unknown shape and character, looked over her shoulder to catch one last glimpse of the past and was, for her nostalgia, summarily turned into a pillar of salt.
As I hinted at the outset of this reflection, I have more than a little sympathy of Lot's wife; prone as I am, every now and then, to moisten with a little sentimental nostalgia of my own. Hence the suspicion of salt content in my blood.
There are, after all, important things back there in the past -- precious things; instructive things. Why all this insistence on the future? And what ever happened to that old "those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" piece of cautionary wisdom?
I don't finally know. What I do know, however -- despite my tenderness toward its favorite parts -- is that "back to..." efforts inevitably create more problems than they intend to solve. Teaching church history classes the past several months, I have stumbled over too many stump speeches by one Emperor, Pope, King, reforming crusader, or another bent on re-burnishing and recreating the glories of the past, whose ultimate legacy was persecution, repression, war-mongering and small-mindedness. Efforts to bring the past forward have always served only to set the present -- and certainly the future -- back. Even a proud progeny, like myself, of a denominational tradition established by founders who wanted to "restore New Testament Christianity" has to admit that the admirability of their efforts was ultimately impossible to achieve.
So when I hear preachers or politicians announce their intent to "restore America" or "bring this church back into its glory" or any other phrasing of such over-the-shoulder preoccupation/pandering, I get nervous. Our future is not back there, no matter how good those old days were; and I don't care what any "majority" might think, there were plenty of "minorities" who didn't experience them to be all that great in the first place.
It has often been said that the measure of a person -- or a country or an institution -- can be taken by whether it is viewed that his/her/its/their best days are behind or ahead. People of faith might chew on that a bit. It has always struck me as odd that we have always busied ourselves trying to replicate what God has already done instead of seeking to partner with what God is still in the process of doing. Ultimately, though it certainly urges us to learn all we can from all that has gone before about patterns and consequences and the "mighty acts of God," biblical faith ultimately drives us forward -- to those "best days" that are still ahead; toward which God is even now "creating all things new."
The Bible seems diabolically confused about this whole notion of memory. On the one hand, much is made of the importance of not forgetting. A whole liturgy, for example, is prescribed in the Exodus preparations to insure that subsequent generations remember not only what their ancestors had been through, but what the God of their ancestors had accomplished in setting them free from slavery. Whole mantras are composed through which legacy is sustained -- "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor..." One of the most heart-rending Psalms ultimately takes the shape of a paean to memory -- "How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you... (137). The Lord's Supper -- the Eucharist -- the Great Thanksgiving -- is, at its very core, observed in obedience to Jesus' instruction that we remember. "When you do this, remember..."
Remember, remember, remember.
But then just as often there is this opposing voice. "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old" instructs the prophet Isaiah (43:18). And the Apostle Paul -- "...this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal..." (Philippians 3:13). Even Jesus -- "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). That last one perhaps reminiscent of what might just be the most damning image of them all -- the tragic example of Lot's wife who, departing with her family for a future of unknown shape and character, looked over her shoulder to catch one last glimpse of the past and was, for her nostalgia, summarily turned into a pillar of salt.
As I hinted at the outset of this reflection, I have more than a little sympathy of Lot's wife; prone as I am, every now and then, to moisten with a little sentimental nostalgia of my own. Hence the suspicion of salt content in my blood.
There are, after all, important things back there in the past -- precious things; instructive things. Why all this insistence on the future? And what ever happened to that old "those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" piece of cautionary wisdom?
I don't finally know. What I do know, however -- despite my tenderness toward its favorite parts -- is that "back to..." efforts inevitably create more problems than they intend to solve. Teaching church history classes the past several months, I have stumbled over too many stump speeches by one Emperor, Pope, King, reforming crusader, or another bent on re-burnishing and recreating the glories of the past, whose ultimate legacy was persecution, repression, war-mongering and small-mindedness. Efforts to bring the past forward have always served only to set the present -- and certainly the future -- back. Even a proud progeny, like myself, of a denominational tradition established by founders who wanted to "restore New Testament Christianity" has to admit that the admirability of their efforts was ultimately impossible to achieve.
So when I hear preachers or politicians announce their intent to "restore America" or "bring this church back into its glory" or any other phrasing of such over-the-shoulder preoccupation/pandering, I get nervous. Our future is not back there, no matter how good those old days were; and I don't care what any "majority" might think, there were plenty of "minorities" who didn't experience them to be all that great in the first place.
It has often been said that the measure of a person -- or a country or an institution -- can be taken by whether it is viewed that his/her/its/their best days are behind or ahead. People of faith might chew on that a bit. It has always struck me as odd that we have always busied ourselves trying to replicate what God has already done instead of seeking to partner with what God is still in the process of doing. Ultimately, though it certainly urges us to learn all we can from all that has gone before about patterns and consequences and the "mighty acts of God," biblical faith ultimately drives us forward -- to those "best days" that are still ahead; toward which God is even now "creating all things new."
Thursday, March 8, 2012
A Helmeted Brave New World
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” (Matthew 20:20-23)
I have lately been reading stories about parents, concerned about possible head traumas in their toddler children, buying these cutesy little protective foam helmets. The kids apparently wear them most of the time -- around the house where a rabid coffee table might spring out of hiding, out for walks in the yard where a mole hole could hungrily and craterously open to engulf the unsuspecting sprout; in the grocery store cart where God only knows when a box or a can could plummet dangerously from a shelf. They even come decorated with colors and little animal ears; all, I assume, in a subliminal effort to obscure how ridiculous they really do look.
"Yes," such a parent might chastise me, "but the world is dangerous..."
"True," I would respond.
"...and the child is precious."
"True again."
"We simply can't take any risks."
Well, that might be further than I can go.
It's natural, I know, for parents to be concerned for their kids. I have kids of my own. We want them safe; we want them to be successful. We want the best for them of whatever life might have in store. The only problem is that we don't know what that is.
There is mounting evidence that our almost neurotic war against germs -- witness the ubiquitous dispensers of antiseptic gel -- is preventing our bodies from developing their own (superior) defenses, leaving us more vulnerable than before. Our herculean efforts to intercept every struggle, every insult, every challenge in the name of care and self-esteem are rendering us flaccid and incapable of standing against even the gentlest breeze; unable or at least afraid to feel what is real. Perhaps Aldous Huxley’s hero John the Savage was on to something when he recoiled from society's efforts to encapsulate everything within a cheery, protective bubble in Brave New World: “I don’t want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness.”
"You don't know what you asking," Jesus told the mother and her sons in the passage . Given the ever-reliable law of unintended consequences from which we are not likely to escape, I suspect we rarely do.
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