A Case Against Elitism

Robert Fulghum once wrote of speaking to a Kindergarten Class during which he asked the students how many could draw.  All of them raised their hands enthusiastically.  "How many of you can dance?"  Same response. "Who here can sing?"  Again everyone excitedly volunteered that they could!  Some time later Fulghum found himself before a University audience.  He asked the same questions,  "Who here can draw?"  Only a few hands went up.  "Sing?"  Very few.  "Dance?"  Hardly any.  Then this favorite writer of mine, posed the same question I am interested in asking, "Why?"  What has happened between Kindergarten and College to rob these students of their enthusiastic confidence?  I suppose the primary reasons are criticism and ridicule.  Does that tell us anything?  It should.

Another cause, in my view is opportunity.  In Kindergarten, everyone is issued a box of crayons.  Everyone is expected to sing and to dance.  Everyone is expected to want to.  No one is criticized for less than stellar performance.  Gradually, though, our schools and other cultural systems take license to criticize and ridicule and slowly but surely we weed out all but the finest.  Why do we do this?  Why do we insist on competition and comparison?   I think the fundamental emotion driving this phenomenon is greed.

Last night I watched the results of America's Got Talent.  It is thrilling to see the best of the best, doing their very best.  The whole concept of the show is to find the finest talent in the land.  I think they do pretty well at it.  There are some inherent problems in the format however.  It is not necessarily the act that has the best talent or who has worked the hardest that moves forward.  I don't think anyone would argue that Fighting Gravity had anywhere near the talent, depth of preparation or longevity of determination displayed by Studio One Beast Society; yet Fighting Gravity won.  Why?  Because they had a more unusual, entertaining, idea.  Level of talent, strength of preparation, magnitude of difficulty are all, in the end, trumped by what is most crowd pleasing.  They are also trumped then, by what will draw the most attendance and make the most money.  Greed.

It happens locally as well.  We begin with enormous numbers of children playing soccer, baseball, basketball, wrestling and playing football.  We begin with large numbers of children taking dance and other music lessons.  Then we promptly weed them out and eliminate opportunities to continue participation for all but the very best, or at least the most crowd pleasing.  I asked the kids at the Detention Center one day, "What could our community have done that might have kept you out of trouble."  More than half of the kids said, "They might have continued to make sports available to us."  Several said that they had lived for sports as children.  They'd played little league and soccer, but when they got older those opportunities were offered only to the All Stars, so to speak.  This, at the most critical time in their young lives.  The time when they are trying to develop their own personal identities, part of what they've always identified as - an athlete, gets jerked out from under them.

I think it is time we remodeled High School sports.  We hear, all the time, complaints about the expense of busing our teams all around the state to games.  We hear complaints that the process takes players out of the classroom an inordinate amount of time.  Still we don't do a thing about it.  Why?  Greed.  Sports, even at the High School level equates to revenue.  Couple that with the motivating dream of ascending to the College level and then on to the Pros and everyone, player, coach, parent has had their motivation tainted by greed.  The greed to money,  The greed of bragging rights.  The greed of superiority.  Elitism.

May is suggest an alternative model, that might actually satisfy all, even those who seek elite status?

How about building High School sports around an intramural program.  Anyone who wishes to play may be on one of the teams.  Coaches and parents will take a vested interest in broad participation.  The intramural activities could culminate in a tournament to give each team something to shoot for, something to motivate excellence.  Then at the end of the season an All Star team would be chosen from the best in all the teams.  The All Star Team would then participate in Regional and then Statewide tournaments where the best from each school could still have their day in the sun before recruiters and glory hungry parents and coaches.  There are problems with the model.  But they're surmountable ones.  They are also less surmountable than the problems with the current model.

An Intramural model would save considerable funds in busing teams all season.  It would involve significantly more children in sports with all the developmental advantages that has to offer.  And it would still provide advancement opportunities for the most gifted participants.  I will guarantee that there are children today who are not currently participating who are potential stars.  They would be much more likely to be discovered under an intramural based program than the are in the current scheme of things.

When I was in High School a group of us, who'd not qualified for the basketball team and who were weary of being expected to go the gym and worship those who had; decided to create and organize an new game.  We called it Szhungaelzee.  It involved kicking a roll of masking tape around a gym floor, like a hockey puck.  Instead of using sticks we used our feet.  We chose a night that didn't conflict with High School or Church activities and held a tournament.  Eight teams formed up and entered.  We arranged a location and adult supervision.  Still, the sports establishment in our community felt threatened and after three weeks of good clean fun, they pulled the plug on us.  We were shut out of every venue in town.  I bring this up to illustrate how clearly anxious we were to be participants instead of onlookers.  Why did they stop us?  Greed.  They feared that gate revenues at the High School games would plummet.

I've seen the same thing happen in Church sports.  Our Ward had enough interested young men who wanted to play basketball to field three teams.  Rather than distribute the talent equally among the three teams, or even to have an older, younger and youngest team; it was determined to put the best talent on the first team, the second best on the second team and the poorest players on the third team.  Greed.  Winning was more important than participation.  The result?  The second and third teams languished into non-existence, while the elite team went on the trounce all comers.

We need to reconsider what it is we hope to accomplish here folks.  We will probably always have the elite among us.  Does than mean everyone else must be relegated to the audience?  When Sweetie and I were in Newfoundland and Cape Breton we found a society where everyone participates.  What a refreshing culture to enjoy.  They have no spectators in their society.  Up until recently, they've had no television or radio.  They gather to sing and everyone sings!  Everyone dances!  Young, old, talented or not, beautiful or not, everyone is a participant, there are no spectators!  All who run may win the prize!

About Love

In yesterday's post I made a comment that I haven't got off my mind ever since.

 Since I can't change him, I might as well love him.  The only way I can love him is just the way he is.  Otherwise I'm loving the figment of my imagination, which is ridiculous.

That's how it works when we write.  We make discoveries of thought that hadn't even occurred to us before.  Having made the discovery, and having it predominantly featured in my mind for the day; other observations began to emerge.  Other examples began to present themselves.  I began to examine all of my relationships.  Are there conditions I've placed that might interfere with the genuine quality of any of them?

I've mentioned before that I spend some time assisting a sweet neighbor lady in the care of her Alzheimer's patient husband.  As we moved him to a different position in bed yesterday it was obvious that he hurt.  I noticed that she began to cry.  It hurt her to hurt him.  She asked, "How long must he suffer so?"  The conversation stopped as we went about the business of caring for him.  Then, after several long moments, she looked at me, her eyes shining with conviction and said, "The more I serve him, the more deeply I love him."

That is the kind of unconditional love I was speaking of yesterday.  Her husband is incapable of responding to her love in any kind of meaningful way.  She cannot change him.  She cannot change that.  She cannot apply any conditions to which he might respond in order to qualify for her love.  Yet she loves him.

That is the crux of the matter.  She loves him.  She doesn't love the idea of him.  She doesn't love some fantasy of how he might be.  She doesn't love some future him.  Or some past him.  She loves him!

I once wrote an article called The Secret To Happiness.  It was on another forum. ( I'll have to look it up and post it here one of these days.)  In that article I concluded that happiness can only be experienced in the moment.  My catch phrase was that, "To be happy you have to get your heart, and your head and your butt in the same place at the same time!"  I still strongly subscribe to that notion.

Yesterday I discovered that the same is true of love.  It can only be experienced in the moment.  My dear friend's love for her husband cannot abide in the memories of the past.  The past has evaporated and while there are loving memories, they cannot fully sustain her present.  Neither can she draw sustenance from imaginations of her association with him in some conjured future.  While I and she fully expect that she will indeed have a wonderful future with him, and while we all expect that future to be glorious, free from Alzheimer's and other afflictions; today it is only in our imagination.  I contend that the only time she can truly love him is right here, right now, just as he his.  The verity of that notion lies in the evidence.  For that is exactly what she is doing.  Love is a verb, after all.

Were it not for that love.  I don't know if she could maintain the stress and drudgery of her care-giving task.  With that love, each duty is a pleasure.  I know this because I love him too.  Some of our duties are not all that pleasant, but love supersedes the mundane and unpleasant.

We do this for babies all the time.  They are adorable, but they are also difficult, time consuming, inconvenient and yet most of us find these duties easy and delightful - for love.  Gradually, though, some parents begin to imagine a more lovable child in some future arrangement; when he's potty trained, or can communicate with reason, or can keep up with me on a hike or can deliver himself to school.  If they are not careful they begin to love the one they've imagined instead of the one they have, in the moment.  Then the temptation comes to recreate the child into the imaginary one and the manipulation begins.

Often, I have sat in the Detention Center and realized that just years previous these were sweet, precious, untainted, unspoiled children.  In some cases it may have been just weeks or days previous.  Then I would ask myself, "What changed?"  Dixon says, "Its puberty!"  He may be right.  But, I'm beginning to think that the biggest factor, perhaps the only factor, was that someone had attempted to re-manufacture them in some other image than the one in which they were created.  Someone was trying to make them be something they were not and to some degree, had fallen out of love with who they were in favor of who they were supposed to be.  Or should we say imposed to be.

I believe that the moment we stop loving someone in the present and start loving our imagination of them in some future state; is the moment we lose them.

Betty has not lost Whitey, even in his sad and restricted state, because she loves him, even in his imperfection. Her love is not the idea of him in some imaginary, perfect, future state; hers is in the here and now.  The very fact that she does this, to me, ensures that she will one day enjoy a time with him beyond her wildest imaginations.

Dixon often says, "The past is history, the future a mystery.  Today is a gift. That's why they call it the present."

Let's give ourselves the greatest gift of all.  Let's give ourselves love. Let's gift ourselves the children and friends and neighbors we might have by loving them now!  Just the way they are.

It All Started With A Lie

I was awakened in the wee hours by a ringing cell phone.  With death approaching on two fronts these days, I can't ignore a phone call.  Bleary eyed and not yet fully awake, I had trouble first finding the phone and then getting it open to answer it.  By the time I did, the caller had hung up.  I pulled up the number, which was unfamiliar, and returned the call.  I got an answering machine.  I left a message indicating that I was returning the call and closed the phone.  Seconds later my phone rang again.

"Mike, this is Alan," a voice said in a jocular tone.  My brother got _______ __ and took a shotgun and blew his head off!  Me and Josh and Jan are headed out to Salt Lake.  We're going to find some shit and get wasted."  That was a lie.

Not that Alan wasn't telling the truth, at least in his words.  The lie was in his tone and attitude.  Alan was grief stricken but had no clue how to show it to Mike.  Their lives have been devil-may-care of late and Alan knows no other way to be, with Mike.  You see, I am Myke, not Mike, but Alan doesn't know this, yet.  He wants to know if I want to come along?  When I ask who he is, he sounds incredulous.  He can't imagine that Mike doesn't know who's talking.  I have to explain that I am not Mike.  Still unbelieving Alan seeks clarification, "You're not Mike Walsh?"

"No I am not."  Alan hangs up without apology.  Now, I know Josh Walsh and I happen to know he has a brother named Mike.  It isn't hard to put together that Alan is borrowing Josh's phone and has made a simple error in the directory, having chosen to dial the wrong Mike.

Unsettled and not quite ready to go back to bed I get on line.  On face book I find a message from Josh.  

Lost a friend I've taken Alan and Randy out to the desert

No mention is made of Jan.  Still, the message confirms the death of Alan's brother.  I saw Josh and Jan just a week and a half ago.  We had a great visit.  They seemed so happy together.  Josh's career is progressing nicely and his future seems bright.  Now I am not naive enough to think that Josh is out of the woods.  I see the photos on his Facebook page and it's pretty easy to see that his ways haven't changed all that much.  He still likes to party and get rowdy now and then.   Josh has made a career out of helping troubled youth.  Most are drying out from serious drug abuse.  He is compassionate and effective and a hypocrite.  On his off time, he's doing the same thing he's helping them overcome.  He assuages his conscience in that regard by avoiding the topic in his work.  His job, after all, is only to hold them accountable.  It has little to do with the details which are, under the circumstances of place, irrelevant.  Jan works with him.

Now, there is a possibility that Josh and Jan are going along to be Alan's designated drivers; to administer safely, Alan's means of escape.  I doubt it.  They've all lost a friend and they're headed out where they won't get caught and plan to deal with their overwhelming grief in the only way they know how.  At once, this behavior is going to soothe, for a moment, their sorrow, while allowing them to express their defiance.  They will curse the world and curse God and unavoidably exacerbate their common lot.

I have their number.  I thought of calling back.  Could I talk some sense into them?  I longed to do it but felt constrained by the strength of my experience.  Already they're in open rebellion.  All I will do, in an attempt to intervene, is fan the conflagration that is already raging out of control.  So I wait.  And I pray.  "Keep them safe for a saner moment when we can talk this over; please, dear Father?"  "Keep them safe."

I lie awake for hours wondering what has damaged these precious souls to the extent that they would react in such a destructive, inappropriate manner.  Alan's voice haunts me.  He sounded so much like he didn't care.  Like he'd given up on caring.  Probably didn't dare care.  Yet his actions are screaming the torture he's so desperately trying to hide.  They will get wasted.  What a waste.  And then they'll laugh and rage and curse and finally weep in exhaustion for their lost one, knowing they are just as lost as he.  They'll battle with confusion, anger, envy, blame, guilt and they'll come home weary, numb and empty.

All of this behavior is a clear manifestation of rebellion.  I can't help but wonder from what?  I have a notion that we never, naturally rebel from goodness.  We rebel as a coping mechanism in the presence of manipulation.  Someone, somewhere applied conditions to these young lives.  Conditions under which they were kept in servitude or bondage.  It all started with a lie.  The first lie came from the person applying the conditions.  "You are not acceptable unless you....."  "You don't deserve my love or approbation if you don't...."  You can fill in the blanks.  I guarantee that these are the kinds of messages that so repulsed, disillusioned, dismayed these young adults, when the were children, that they began their rebellious bitter course.  Now, you may say it can't be that manipulation is that universal a catalyst.  You might suggest that people rebel against God all the time and He is most certainly no manipulator.  And you'd be right on both counts.  The trouble is that in between God and man are people.  Children especially, cannot avoid projecting human attributes onto God.  If a child lives with manipulative adults he will, by default, surmise that God too, is a manipulator.  How do I know?  Because that was the view I took of God based on the evidence I was immersed in.  How do I know?   Because my number was on Josh's cell phone.

Josh and I are friends, not because we have a single thing in common.  We are friends because there are NO conditions in our friendship.  He was, is and will be, completely acceptable to me, just the way he is.   He's quite unfamiliar with this phenomena and is unavoidably attracted to it.  He manipulates and is manipulated by virtually all in his circle of acquaintances.  His parents manipulate him.  Law enforcement manipulates him.  His friends manipulate him.  So do his enemies.  And he manipulates them in return.

He hangs around me because for quite possibly the first time in his life, he's found someone who doesn't manipulate him.  It's not that I'm not tempted.  I almost called back, remember.  It's just that I've finally got it through my own thick skull that I can't change Josh or anyone else for that matter.  Since I can't change him, I might as well love him.  The only way I can love him is just the way he is.  Otherwise I'm loving the figment of my imagination which is ridiculous.

The rebellious already know that their course of action is a downward slide to destruction.  I don't need to point that out.  They do it because the alternative, a life of conditions and rejection is even more unthinkable.

I believe that their only hope is in the discovery that there are indeed those, who love them for who they are.  I want to be one who will show them that kind of love.  Not so they'll love me back, but so they might begin to superimpose that truth over their previously held false notions about the nature of God.

The lie is that their value is based on conditions.  The truth is their value is intrinsic and has nothing to do with their performance according to anyone's standards.  Accepting that truth, they'll find no further need to rebel or mistrust and will begin to correct their own course while growing in the warm, sustaining environment of love.  This is not rocket science folks.  Lehi said, "Wo be unto the liar for he shall be trust down to hell."  It is so because the purpose of the lie is to manipulate and the end result of manipulation is rebellion and a misbegotten concept of God.

It all started with a lie.

Book Review - Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Bury Your Dead is a masterpiece!  You know I have loved the Chief Inspector Gamache series.  This latest installment is far and away her best work yet!  Building upon characters and cultures and plots from the past Louise Penny takes us on a most marvelous journey.

How thankful I am to have been to the Townships along the Vermont border.  How wonderful that I've spent time walking the narrow streets within the old walled Quebec City.  For me this was a nostalgic, enriching, enlightening refresher on our wonderful experiences there.   While for you, should it be that you've not been to those places, it will be a fine primer in preparation for what ought to be a foremost destination on your bucket list.

So much history.  So much tragedy.  So much triumph.  So much culture.  Quebec is rich, inviting, enchanting and Louise Penny has captured it all.  Add to that the elaborate, credible, triple plot and you have, to my mind, one of the best books of fiction ever written.  I expect it to stand as a favorite for the balance of my life.  I am in awe of the author's elaborate, deep, heartfelt understanding of human nature and motive.  I cannot read her work without understanding myself more fully.  I cannot spend time with her without wanting to be better, kinder, more settled and confident.  She teaches and inspires me on every page.  She strips away the veneer of her complex characters and finds something to love in even the coarsest.  She shows me how I might do that with those with whom I rub shoulders.

Great fiction is not only entertaining, it is cathartic.  That is a gross understatement when considering not only this book but this series of books.  I am better and more at peace for having experienced the thought and emotion generated in such well developed fiction.

 I recommend you read the series in order.  Not that they can't stand alone.  They can.  But the deep rich theme and texture of Louise Penny's work is best enjoyed like a long delightful meal with good friends, not to be rushed, but to be savored and relished.  Clearly she began with the end in mind and the depth of her preparation in character development and plot detail and intricacy are rivaled by only a few masterworks like Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities.

Thankfully, we are anticipating more from my new favorite author.  I have every reason to expect it to be even better than this.  Louise Penny does not disappoint.

Of Inheritance and Mansions

I'll never forget the impact of a couple of questions asked by Stephen E. Robinson in his book Believing Christ.  Here are the questions:  When you stand before the judgement bar of God, do you want a fair trial?  (Most people will answer, Yes!)  So, you're telling me that you want to get what you deserve?  (Oh, most certainly not!)  It is fun to watch the sudden and startling paradigm shift that always takes place when I pull the same trick.

I'm fascinated by that word, deserve.  I think it fits perfectly when it comes to punishment.  We do something wrong; we commit sin.  Justice demands that we get the punishment.  It is after all what we deserve.  Gloriously, the Atonement of Jesus Christ can absorb what we deserve enabling Him to offer us mercy, to let us off the hook.  What He expects in return is faith and repentance, a willingly maintained covenant and continued submission to His will and desire for us.  Small price to pay in order the avoid what we deserve.

In our logical and hyper-sensitivity to justice with regard to others, however, we've developed a sense that we also deserve something on the positive side of the spectrum.  If we do good we feel we deserve a reward.  We take it as a right.  If we put in a fair day's work we feel we deserve a fair day's pay.  If we spend a dollar's worth of our hard earned cash we darn well better get a dollar's worth of goods and or services.  We deserve it.  This mortal method of exchange works pretty well for us in general and is an utter disaster in specifics.  Who can honestly suppose that an NBA star deserves his millions while the soldier sweating behind a pile of sandbags in Afghanistan does not?  Who can fairly claim that the movie star deserves her millions and the Kindergarten teacher does not?  In an economy as afoul as ours, those imbalances prevail.  And those who benefit most from the imbalance often feel fully justified on the grounds that they deserve what they're getting; even more!  Meanwhile, many of those who's benefit from their contribution to society is rewarded poorly seem to think that since the imbalance is clearly unfair, it is completely fair to correct it by force.  More and more, we are gravitating toward even competition that rectifies the imbalance by the application of force, often violent force.  "If I can dominate you on the football field or in the board room," we tell ourselves, "I deserve a bigger piece of the pie than you do."

No one is grateful when they obtain something they feel they deserve.  No one is their benefactor but themselves.  We are not inclined to thank our boss for a paycheck we feel we deserve.  Now there are those who are very thankful for their pay checks.  These are grateful for an employer who was gracious enough to offer them a job and are pleased to do their best for the benefit of their employer.  While is fair to expect compensation for their efforts, those who feel they deserve it tend to be dissatisfied with what they're getting and harbor resentments toward rather than appreciation for their benefactor.

This is also true of our relationship with God.  Many of us feel that we can earn our way to Heaven.  Therefore we demonstrate no appreciation toward God for something we are accomplishing quite handily on our own, thank you very much!  Others of us realize that we don't deserve to go to Heaven and acknowledge that neither can we deserve such a privilege.  If, acknowledging the gift of Redemption, we are granted assurance of such joy, it is because it is clear that it comes because of the merits of Christ and not any merit of our own.  Too often we grossly underestimate the strength and extent of His merits.  Without them we would have no air to breathe, no health, no freedom, no capacity and no resources with which to do anything, let alone making progress toward returning to the presence of God.  So, on the positive side of the spectrum the notion of me personally deserving anything is a complete fallacy.  I am entitled to only one thing in this life and that is my free will.  All, and I do mean all, else is a gift for which we can claim no credit with which to purchase or deserve anything. This is a hard concept to buy into in a carrot-and-stick world such as ours.  Nevertheless, it is true and the sooner we ingrain this truth into our consciousness the happier we'll be.  Elder Neal A. Maxwell made this observation:

"Jesus, who accomplished the most by far, was also the most glad to give all the glory to the Father. Alas, even when you and I do place something on the altar, we sometimes hang around as if waiting for a receipt."  (General Conference, October 1997)

In other words, we think our effort deservs a reward and we are sticking around to make sure we're fairly remunerated for our contribution.

We are currently considering the settlement of a parent's estate.  Suppose there are those who think their mere relationship to the departing one entitles them to certain things.  What if others think their presence at an item's acquisition lends strength to its sentimental value and so makes them more deserving than others to be that item's ultimate custodian.  Consider if someone feels that they've given more in service and devotion and so deserve a more significant portion of the booty.  None of these approaches seem very grateful to me.  They all smack of a sense of deserving, a sense of entitlement, a sense that, "If I get the biggest prize I was somehow the most loved or most deserving."  There will be some who'll want no more than a simple memento like a red Texas Tumbler from the kitchen table or a tree from the back yard.  These only want something simple by which they might stimulate memories and feelings of precious moments together, never to be forgotten.  Now, our family are all good people and in the end, I think things will be done equitably and fairly and that no one will have cause to complain that they were unfairly treated.  But that is not my point.

Would it not be better if, rewards and remuneration, accolades and back pats; bigger shares of the pie, had nothing to do with it.  Wouldn't it be better if the services rendered to this marvelous benefactor were done for nothing more than the privilege of doing so?  Without the sniveling hope that one day, there'd be a big, well deserved prize at the end?  Would it not be better that our expressions of love, devotion, loyalty, service, sacrifice and attention were for the benefit of our loved one, with absolutely no thought for ourselves?  Of course it would.

Does it not apply to our Father in Heaven as well?  Are we serving Him for what we might gain?  Or are we doing it for sheer love of Him and His worthy Son?  Talk of Mansions in Heaven is carrot-and-stick talk and may get us started in the right direction.  But ultimately, those who inherit all that Our Father has are those who took no thought of themselves and served Him for the blessed privilege of doing so.  Why?  Because they love Him.  It is clear that those who feel they deserve a mansion on high, won't.