Sherwin died.  That was all there was to it.  He died leaving behind his wife of fifty-two years.  Everybody attended the funeral and shook their heads wondering how Poor Adele would manage to survive. They nodded and whispered that he’d been wise to leave his money in a trust.  He’d been such a good man, such a good husband. She looked so lost.  How would she even manage to pay her bills?  Sherwin did everything and made all the decisions.

The first hint of trouble came at the reception following the memorial.  Poor Adele stood by the window staring out at nothing.  Her long black dress seemed too dressy for the occasion.  Those with a trained eye guessed her heels to be closer to four inches high than to three inches.  Sherwin had picked out her clothes and given them to her as presents, so everybody could forgive her lapse from her usual polyester style. They told each other they understood her faux pas with the dress and heels.

Muriel approached her at the window.  “Come, my dear, I have a plate of food for you.  Let’s sit over here.”  Muriel led Poor Adele by the arm to a chair at a table occupied by her husband’s friends.  The poor widow did seem unsteady on her feet.

After the general greetings and comments on the goodness of the food, which wasn’t all that good, Poor Adele politely turned the subject, “Ron and Marilee, how good to see you here.  Weren’t you just in Ireland?”

Ron and Marilee told about their trip, then the conversation drifted off to Hawaii then Tahiti.  Finally, someone interrupted their table to tell Poor Adele how sorry they were for her loss.  Poor Adele sounded just a wee bit cross when she brushed off the well-wisher and asked Ron and Marilee who they used for a travel agent.  Sherwin’s friends shook their heads and told themselves she was grieving. 

After Poor Adele had greeted each of her husband’s friends and relatives most properly, she hugged her cousin, Carol, and whispered, “Thank you for coming.  You are the only person who came here for me.  Can you come by the house and discuss some things with me?”

Once Adele reached the safety of her own home.  She took off her high heels and danced a waltz through the living room while mentally considering what she intended to get rid of.  She snorted, “There isn’t much here I want.”

When Carol, arrived, Adele surprised her cousin.  “You are retired now.  We’ve always had fun together.  What would you say to taking a cruise around the world?”  Adele went into the laundry room and took a large scrapbook down from the shelf. 

Carol wondered about her poor cousin as Adele caressed her clothes dryer.

Carol forgot any weird behavior as she and Adele looked through the big album of postcards from around the world.  “These are from his friends at work.  They talked about Greece for years after the visit.”  The cousins talked about how beautiful Greece appeared and how wonderful Hawaii would be. 

Finally Carol closed the book.  “I don’t think either of us has enough money for such a trip.”

Poor Adele whispered,  “He did leave me some money, and I intend to have a garage sale.  He was so organized that I have a list of everything he owned and it’s value for the executor of his will.”

“You know you won’t get anything close to full value at an estate sale.”

Poor Adele looked around the slightly shabby living room.  “True.  I think I will have to use some of his savings.”

As the week passed, Adele met with the attorney for the estate and the executor.  When she got home, she sorted her belongings from her husband’s things.  She asked her son to take the family photos and make electronic copies for everybody.  She paid the bills as she always had from the small amount of her social security and her pension.  Sherwin had insisted they live on her income and save his for the future.  She continued to make plans to travel with her cousin. 

On the first of the month she paid her bills, started the laundry, put a large load of towels in the dryer and turned it on to high.  She picked up a shoe box containing her favorite treasures and put it in the car.  After locking the house securely, Poor Adele drove to the grocery store.  She treated herself to a coffee while she studied her shopping list.  Poor Adele stood in the shampoo aisle trying to choose between shampoo for volume or shampoo to revitalize damaged hair when she heard the fire sirens.  She chose the shampoo for damaged hair, smiled to herself and continued her shopping. 

Before driving home, Poor Adele stopped at the pharmacy and looked at the pretty glass decorations before picking up her refills. 

Finally, Adele returned home to find the street blocked with fire trucks and firemen.  She parked near the corner, got out and walked toward her house until a neighbor grabbed her up in a big hug while cooing and comforting.  “Come inside with me there is nothing you can do.  The house was fully engulfed before the firemen got here.”

In a quiet, dazed voice Adele confessed, “I put towels in the dryer and left home.”

Her neighbor hugged her some more.  “There, there, there.  That was a normal thing to do.  It might not have been from the dryer.”

Poor Adele watched the firemen from the window while she drank tea.  Finally the fire chief found her.  She confessed immediately.  “I put towels in the dryer and left home.”

The Fire Chief consoled, “There now.  You couldn’t know it would catch fire, and it is a good thing you were gone when it happened.”

“Had I been home maybe I could have stopped it.”

The neighbor cooed, “Oh no darling, we were all so glad to discover your car gone.  I was so relieved to see you drive up all safe.”

Within another minute the Fire Chief completely exonerated Poor Adele of any responsibility for the fire and promised to help with the reports for the insurance company.  “Call your insurance agent, and I’ll send the reports.  Do you have family you can stay with?  You’ve had a rough time can you drive?”

Poor Adele assured her neighbors that she could drive to her cousin’s house.  As she turned her car around in the neighbor’s driveway, she paused to look back at the charred remains of the hell-hole, she’d called home for fifty years.  She whispered, “That’s what happens when people don’t repair their houses, Sherwin.  You wouldn’t let me get a new dryer when the old timer broke.  You said I could sit by the dryer and turn it off when the clothes were done.  You said I should be thankful I had a dryer at all.  You know what I’m thankful for Sherwin?  I’m thankful you were so allergic to chicken and that the dryer never shut off.  I’m done with you.”

Six months later: The elegant widow Adele accompanied by her cousin stood beside of the temple of Diana and relished the feel of wind through her hair. Some of the Greek men sitting nearby wondered who the mature beauty might be, but she never looked their way.

During his National Day of Prayer address, President Obama mentioned that Christians have commit atrocities in the past and referred to the Crusades among other horrors.  I suspect he has not read the fine print about Christianity.

Yes, we have so-called Christians running around committing all sorts of evil and heartbreak.  However, we have an interesting little concept in Christian scripture called the Anti-Christ.  Perhaps someone along the line understood that people do not always behave as they ought so we have an anti-Christ to account for bad behavior.  Some schools of thought think that the Anti-Christ will be a specific person in a specific time and place.  As a member of a main-stream church, I suspect that the Anti-Christ has been with us since, at least, the time that Judas betrayed Jesus.  People want following Jesus to be about something Jesus was never about, thus they create the Anti-Christ.

It seems as if things start out fine with people following the teachings of Jesus and feeding the poor and clothing the naked and bringing hope into the darkness of the human condition.  Then, the Anti-Christ sneaks in and whispers something about power over others, or getting more money, or fame and off the person goes on a wild hunt to eliminate witches from the countryside.  This person still says the same words as before, but they have wandered off after the Anti-Christ of judging others.

The whole concept of loving mercy, acting justly and walking humbly is hard and people don’t like hard things so they follow a path that allows them to judge and condemn.  Being humble isn’t very rewarding either, especially with the braggart gets all the attention.  Thus, the person who started out okay wanders off to follow the Anti-Christ of condemnation or fame.

That whole thing about Christians not believing or accepting science is false.  The problem with accepting the Bible as a science or history book is that the reader misses the spiritual significance of the stories and accepts lies about history and science.  Focusing on lies is bad, but the substitute of a form of magical thinking for reason is sorcery, thus people leave the pat of faith to follow the Anti-Christ of lies and sorcery.  Not good.

Sadly, the church structure tends to reward the person who strives to get ahead.  The pastor with the growing church gets a raise.  When the congregation grows, the pastor gets promoted to senior pastor with a staff of clergy under him.  She may get promoted to district superintendant and eventually a bishop.  Meanwhile, the humble servant who’s small congregation cares for widows and orphans, feeds the hungry and shelters the grieving is overlooked in the church structure.  The structure itself makes room for the Anti-Christ of pride and arrogance to take control.

Historically, the Christian church has been as much about the Anti-Christ as it has been about Christ.  In the name of Christ they have gone to war.  In the name of Christ the church has commit genocide of native peoples across entire continents.  In the name of Christ the church has judged, condemned and killed. 

However the Anti-Christ is not the Christ and following the Anti-Christ is not Christianity.  Christianity is a quiet almost invisible system of actions that seeks to heal the sick, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and offer hope to the hopeless.  When you see someone offering mercy instead of condemnation you might suspect they are Christian.  If someone speaks out against the injustices of our society, they just might be a Christian, and if they go quietly about the business of serving those who have nothing to give back they just might be Christian.   There is a vast difference between the followers of the Christ and the Anti-Christ if the observer is willing to set aside the rhetoric and look at behavior and what that behavior creates, they will find the difference. 

Why is this theological distinction important?  The answer is not a pretty one.  History tells us that when Christians do stand up and call out the behavior of those who follow the Anti-Christ, the Christians are the ones who get killed first.  When the rest of society gets fed up with the behavior of the followers of the Anti-Christ and finally decide to eliminate the scourge, they tend to get confused and kill those who feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless and shun judging others.  At this point, all considered, I’d like for those who get fed up with the followers of the Anti-Christ to be able to tell the difference between the two groups and abstain from killing the innocent.

Most of us have figured out that the media we don’t like lies to the public, but what about our favorite station or news outlet?  They agree with us, so surely they don’t lie.  Maybe they do.  How can we tell?

The astute reader can, with difficulty, ferret out the truth if they follow some simple rules of logic and careful listening.  I want to demonstrate how this works using actual headlines.  I will use President Putin as my target because he has great SEO, which I like to borrow, and the headlines about him are great for demonstrating my points.  So, what are the flags that tell you that what you are about to see or hear is false?

Clairvoyance, one person can never ever know what another is thinking, feeling, or planning to do.  “Former NATO chief says Putin’s true goal is to return to position of ‘great power’ and Europe isn’t ready to fight back”  From: The National Post.  While Putin may have dreams of returning Russia to a great power, maybe his thoughts run more along the lines of dragging his country out of a morass of poverty and alcoholism.  We do not know, and we can never know what his deepest goals, dreams and aspirations are.  We can just as easily look at his policies and say he dreams of being a great athlete or hanging out with athletes.  Claims of clairvoyance are false, even if they are uttered by someone who claims to know the target of the discussion.  I found this example of clairvoyance in the Financial Times.  Ukraine is only part of Putin’s game plan   

Supposition: “Putin could attack Baltic states warns former Nato chief”  From: The Telegraph.  He could attack the Baltic states.  He could take up dancing in the Russian ballet.  He could resign.  He could write adventure stories. He could become a stand-up comic.  This is not news, folks.  This is idle speculation, and unlike my examples of clairvoyance is manipulative in that it used the word attack, which is generally associated with aggression and fear.

Prophesy or foretelling the future:  Alas and alack we do not know what the future will bring.  We don’t know what any one person will do tomorrow.  Even our news sources cannot foretell the future.  The following headline came from Fox News.  “Putin and Ukraine: Expect more brutal aggression from Russia's desperate leader” Really?  Maybe he will change policy.  Is he known for being mercurial? Will he receive new information that influence policy?  Note the appeals to fear with the words brutal, aggression and desperate.  Fear is not a valid logical device for making a point or communicating facts either.   

False Premise:  The headline above also demonstrates the fallacy of false premise.  The premise is that Putin is currently engaging in brutal aggression.  It does not define brutal aggression nor does the article present explicit examples of brutal aggression. Military advice or sending weapons is generally not considered brutal aggression when our country does it.  The false premise makes any rational dialog challenging.

Relevance is required for truthful reporting.   I felt horrified over the headlines about Putin having Asperger’s Syndrome.  Does Vladimir Putin have Asperger's syndrome? Highly Cited-CBS News-Feb 4, 2015  Is this an error in relevance or meant to be an ad hominum attack?  Frankly, my sense of justice after years of advocating for people with disabilities is outraged.  From what I’ve read of the report it is based on observations of videos and does not employ any valid clinical measurements.  This is just so unethical that it surprises me that dozens of media outlets carried the story.  Because it is scientifically not valid, it is certainly not relevant.  Relevance is another criteria for truthful discussion.

I’d like to conclude with Appeals To Fear To Prove A Point as another invalid method of presenting facts.  We have this Headline from the Mirror, which is speculative and uses fear to make their point. Vladimir Putin's war chiefs 'could go nuclear' defence bosse  Or what about this weird headline from the Huffington post? Putin Is Bringing Darkness to the Edge of Europe What about this one from The Guardian? “Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns.”  None of these headlines bring us closer to data based knowledge or common sense.  They do use language that creates a sense of fear.  

I could have substituted headlines about Obama for this paper.  My point is not to exonerate the President of Russia.  The inability of our news media to stick to facts leaves me with no concrete knowledge of the character of either my own president or that of Russia.  I merely point out the challenges to becoming an informed citizen of any country.  Our fourth estate has abandoned its responsibilities.



 

 

Yesterday, my cousin commented on a parent, who showed up for a school meeting about their child, wearing pajama bottoms for pants.  She was not impressed with the pajamas.  I understand why.  How we present ourselves does make a difference in how others respond to us.  I wrote about this in M’TK Sewer Rat as something that defines social class.

In my hero, Jake’s, language, b’trk means something like poise and decorum.  It is considered both an innate skill and a learned behavior.  Like many cultures, Jake’s country holds good manners and courteous behavior in high regard.  Those who cannot behave with the proper level of b’trk are considered lower class, and not worthy of the rights and privileges of citizenship. 

When I was young, my friends and I attended classes, not just concerning manners, but how to make others feel comfortable and how to be comfortable ourselves in the presence of our elders. These classes do not quite equate to the level of b’trk valued in Jake’s country, but they are the sort of training young people in Jake’s country and the older generations in ours received and value.  Perhaps our youth need a few hints in this direction.  Creativity in dress and speech is one thing.  Self-destructive rudeness is another.

The idea of behaving with poise and decorum even in the presence of your enemies might be more valuable than modern western people think.  I am well aware of conflicts among my friends, business associates and church congregation that could have been avoided if individuals had exercised a little b’trk in their rhetoric.  There may well be times when getting in someone’s face and dressing them down may be appropriate.  It is usually more fun to do so than stepping back and returning a mild and courteous response.  However, most of our conflicts do not require near the level of confrontation westerners put into topics such as political differences, pet ownership, diet, clothing, books, movies, the meaning of a word, misuse of their- there- they’re, and a million other details of life that get blown out of proportion. 

I think, subconsciously, we do value some level of poise and decorum.  The person who flies into a rant on Facebook may soon find himself without so many friends.  We condemn and shun public figures, who step outside the boundaries by publically criticizing a child.  I hear cries of outrage when a representative of either political party steps outside the boundaries of poise and decorum.  Of course those cries of outrage are not expressed with any respect for the beliefs of their friends and associates.  And, my cousin could not help but wonder what kind of parent shows up for a meeting with the principal wearing pajama bottoms for pants.

I’m certain it is the inability of some of our social movements to treat those who disagree with them with courtesy that will cause their movement to fail.  I occasionally find myself in the position of agreeing with what someone says but disagreeing violently with how they say it.  Being able to present yourself and state your opinion with poise and decorum makes the difference between your opinions and statements being respected or dismissed as foolishness or being shunned by your allies.

Thus, life is easier for those who practice b’trk. Our communities and movements for social justice are more successful if the proponents practice b’trk.  Think of Dr. Martin Luther King.  He is respected for his role in the civil rights movement because he spoke with respect and poise.  Ronald Regan won more respect than many other presidents mostly because of his poise and decorum.  Either side of the aisle, the respected winners know how to behave with b’trk, so it is with us in common life.