Category Archives: Life

A New Government of National Concentration

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Adolf Hitler rose to power by playing to the fears, anxieties, and anger of the German people. His strategy was to play the strongman who would fix it, make Germany great again. A nation that had regarded itself as exceptional had lost its way, humiliated by defeat in World War I. Hitler focused that anger at the weakness of the post-World War I Weimar Republic whose inept Chancellor and Reichstag (i.e. Congress) he blamed for the nation’s drift. He blames Marxist thinking and Communists. He declares Christianity to be the religion of the German state. By narrowing and scapegoating, he focuses the people’s fears and anxieties on visible targets. It was only a matter of time before Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies joined the ranks of those to be eliminated in a purified Aryan state.

Notice how quietly, how slowly this speech begins. He waits for the crowd to be quiet before he continues to speak. He is taming them. Mesmerizing them. Training them for Fascism. And when he has brought them to heel, he unleashes a tirade that taps into the people’s volcanic desire for a return to national exceptionalism.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Jan. 11, 2016.

Verse – Mary’s Bastard Child

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It’s dark and drear on the way
to Bethlehem where relatives
abound with rooms to spare
to welcome our coming.

Why are the lights all out,
the doors locked, the knocks
unanswered, no candles lit for
us from out of town?

Has news of the coming illegitimate
child scared them off, driven them
way inside bolted doors named fear
and blame and shame?

Has the buzz been mean, the
relatives praying to stay clean
of bedsheets soiled of a bastard
birth and bloody after-birth?

Have the men in town gathered
stones and the women
shrunk back from mid-wifing
Mary’s child into life?

A flop house on the other side
of town welcomes us with fires
outside the barn for black
sheep guests from Nazareth.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, January 7, 2016

Another Use for Vaseline in 2016

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Three gifts are mentioned in the story of the Three Kings, aka the Wise men, and the Magi: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Moments ago, on Epiphany, three seminary friends arrived at Steve and Nadja Shoemaker’s home on the prairie near Urbana, Illinois. It’d be a stretch to call Harry, Bob, and Don the Three Kings or the Wise Men. More like three wise guys, not from the East, but from the West and North – Corsicana, Texas; Prescott, Arizona; and Highland Park, Illinois – bringing a lighter touch to Steve, the patient with the terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Harry, the musician among them, will lead them in his own freshly-written lyrics to the tune of the Epiphany hymn “We Three Kings” – a trio of bass and baritone voices – bringing laughter to the room Kay and I can hear all the way in Minnesota.

Many years ago, a similar thing happened in New York City where Episcopal lay theologian William (Bill) Stringfellow was in Surgical Intensive Care following near fatal pancreatic surgery.

Entering the room following the surgery, Stringfellow’s close friend Bishop James A. Pike exclaimed, “Well, I’m a bishop. I should do something!” He promptly disappeared. Moments later he returned with Bill’s attending nurse and a large bottle of petroleum jelly. He consecrated the jelly, declaring to the nurse with typical Pike humor that “this substance has now been set apart for uses other than those ordinary and familiar for Vaseline.”

“Taking a thumbful of this freshly made urgent, he came to the bedside and anointed me,” wrote Stringfellow, “signing my forehead with the cross, and saying:

“‘I anoint you in the name of God; beseeching the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all your pain and sickness of body being put to flight, the blessing of health may be restored to you. Amen.'” [William Stringfellow, A Second Birthday, Doubleday & Company, 1970]

The bishop’s prayer of unction for the sick was near verbatim from The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

When the surgeon told the patient that his recovery was spectacular, Stringfellow replied, “That doesn’t surprise me at all. I was anointed by Bishop Pike! – what else would you expect?”

This Day of Epiphany, I hope the Three Wise Men, Steve and Nadja may enjoy the same fellowship, humor, and prayer all these years later. They bring no gold, frankincense or myrrh, but everyone in the Urbana gathering tonight knows that when the end is in sight, only the frankincense, the myrrh, and telling stories only dear friends call tell are appropriate. The third gift – gold – no longer matters, if it ever did!

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Epiphany, Jan. 6, 2016

 

Verse – Yule-ogy

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after christmas the tree puked
needles the cat even ignored ornaments
the smudgy guilty fingerprints
enhanced the window glass
about two feet up with proof
of candy eaten frosting licked
from fingers and dog nose prints
mixed in for the seurat effect
while good people slept the sleep
of the over-indulged oblivious to the
recent refugees while focusing
on their personal holy family

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Jan. 6, 2016
Detail from Seurat's La Parade de Cirque (1889), showing the contrasting dots of paint used in Pointillism, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Detail from Seurat’s La Parade de Cirque (1889), showing the contrasting dots of paint used in Pointillism, Metropolitan Museum of Art

NOTE: I, Gordon, not as well educated as Steve, had to look up ‘seurat’. Click HERE for information on George Seurat, the 19th Century painter known for introducing chromoluminarism and pointillism. and to get the drift of Steve’s upbeat poem. Though not feeling well these days, as noted elsewhere on Views from the Edge and on his CaringBridge page, Steve continues to amaze with his sardonic sense of humor in the face of the eventual eulogy.

Today three close mutual seminary friends from Texas, Arizona, and Illinois meet at Chicago’s Midway Airport and drive to Urbana for a short visit with Steve, Nadja, and their confused dog, Blazer. Blessings and peace to Don Dempsey, Bob Young, Harry Strong, Steve, Nadja, and Blazer.

Donald Trump’s Bible

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“Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.” —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

“Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” —Will Rogers

61c82479a4d640ef3fed3bcfaca3cd16“That’s it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I’m going to clown college!” Homer Simpson.

“It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen” Homer Simpson.

“It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.” Homer Simpson.

“When will I learn? The answers to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle, they’re on TV!” – Homer Simpson.

Bart: “Grandpa, why don’t you tell a story?” Lisa: “Yeah Grandpa, you lived a long and interesting life.” Grandpa: “That’s a lie and you know it” Grandpa Abraham Simpson [Loser]

“Life is just one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead” – Homer Simpson on his religious neighbor Ned Flanders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE QUESTION – to be or not to be?

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Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

The questions “Who am I?” and “Why is Views from the Edge still here in 2016?” share a bit of Hamlet’s question whether “to be or not to be?”

We’re no Shakespeare! But writing is what we do. To not write would be not to be, a kind of denial of consciousness and the need to speak. So I’ve written and aired commentaries on MPR’s All Things Considered and anywhere else that has provided an opportunity to think and feel out loud.

Speaking from a pulpit is what I did most of my professional life along with some publishing on the side. Words matter. They deserve to be handled with care and thought. Which is why I go back and forth between days when I dare to think I have something worth saying and days when my words and thoughts feel like sending more pollution into cyberspace.

Not everyone cares about Views from the Edge, nor should they. But if you’re interested in a different viewing point on the news that searches out the hidden, taken-for-granted convictions, beliefs, and ideas that underlie life in the 21st century, you might find a second or third home here.

The edge from which my colleague Steve Shoemaker and I view the world is the margin, the place of an outsider peering in, the way an anthropologist looks at an ancient civilization to find out what it was really about. Steve and I cut our eye teeth on two stories that likely never happened but are always happening: Cain slaying his brother Abel, and the building and crumbling of the Tower of Babel. Both stories concern human anxiety and a refusal to live within the limits of meaningful time.

Hamlet’s “to be or not to be?” is the question in 2016 as climate change exposes the folly of the prideful, unspoken western philosophical conviction that the human species is superior to or exceptional to nature. We’re learning the hard way that we are not, and perhaps, just perhaps, we will also rediscover in the deepest core of the western tradition itself a wisdom and virtue akin to aboriginal traditions: a humbler human calling and way to be our neighbor’s and our planet’s keeper.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Jan. 4, 2016

Young Jesus at Bath Time

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Young Jesus at Bath Time

Young Jesus at Bath Time

Verse – Dinner for Two

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We were young with no money to show,
But had patience, we want you to know:
We bought Mexican take-out,
And before we would make-out,
We looked good in the candlelight glow.

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Jan. 3, 2016

Verse – Chemo Hair Loss, Male

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Steve Shoemaker welcoming President Bill Clinton

Steve Shoemaker welcoming President Bill Clinton

I’ve been bald quite a while to the North,
But luxuriant beard’s round my mouth.
The Chemo’s relentless,
And soon I’ll be beardless,
And I never again will glance South…

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Jan. 1, 2016

Verse – A Short Walk in the Dark

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I hear the purr from spouse
As I feel the urge to pee
The quilt I push aside
And pivot socks to floor

The Persian carpet edge
I feel and know is worn
As I pad unsteadily
Around the bed

My right hand holds
The maple top
Of bureau that long ago
Lost the marble slabs

I wobble but reach out
For the chrome handle
Of the closet door
And inch to reach

The bathroom door
Always open to the bars
That help the elderly
Stay upright until

The seat is reached
No more do I stand
To urinate but
Lower pull-ups

Ahh release
Pull old body up again
Repeat my steps
Return to bed

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Jan. 1, 2016