As the increasingly feeble old codger sits back this beautiful spring morning, recuperating achingly from what in years past served as a pleasant day of spring yard work (ouch, not so much now!), he finds himself contemplating — if you’ll pardon me for waxing philosophical — the fallibility of man.
As God constantly tries to remind us, we screw up. It’s in our nature. We’re weak, envious, suspicious, vindictive, fearful, covetous, greedy, and powerand control-seeking. Hey, other than that, we’re just about perfect! It brings us back to faith, because of that weakness and fear, we inevitably either use our belief system to attack others or our fear-filled ego to hide from reaching for real faith.
Hey, I know we don’t like to hear it or embrace it, but that’s just who we are. That’s why He constantly has to grab us by the lapels, slap us upside the head like Cher in Moonstruck, and tell us, “Snap out of it!” Though maybe He doesn’t say it in that terrific Brooklyn accent from the movie. If you haven’t seen it lately, it’s still pretty darned epic!
If we don’t pay attention, we can — and too often do — spend much of our God-bestowed human energy, lives, will and heart on coveting, hate and fear, closing ourselves off from love and from truly trusting and working together with our fellow human beings to address the very real a n d i n - creasingly tough problems we all face in this increasingly complex and chaotic world.
We can see it reflected over and over in our advertising media. If we just buy this big honkin’, grossly overpriced piece of chrome, it’ll pretty much fix everything that ails us. One wonderful bit of Madison Avenue fluff even has the gall to say it’ll bestow “confidence” on us. Hey, it’s got four wheels and a price tag the size of the Canadian national treasury — the only thing it’s going to give us is heartburn, insomnia and maybe a trip to bankruptcy court.
And what do we teach our kids? All they need is more “things,” especially if they’re bright, shiny and expensive, until we can’t even find the floors in their rooms and these ideal gifts of “love” we got them a couple of months ago sit around gathering dust. But maybe the old geezer was just spoiled by having to figure out how to have fun with a stick, an old shovel, some blocks and a rusty bike. And we can see it every day in those who preen and strut, gild their ample thighs and pretend they’re somehow “representing” and “serving” us. Well, maybe — if “serving” means serving themselves as much as they can rake in of our national wealth, while serving us and our fellow human beings a massive, stinking load of horse manure and more and more closed caskets and lifelong human grief.
Even if we have eminently common goals — and news flash, every blessed one of us as human beings does — we distrust and attack each other like insane, wild and slavering dogs… again focused only on somehow struggling to preserve our incredibly fragile egos and nourishing and stoking our petty fears, hate and impoverished will.
Hey, the old codger was raised in another time. We had hate and fear, but we also had courageous, strong, faith-filled human beings willing to put their lives on the line for freedom, love, faith and human equality. Can we embrace that love, faith and collaboration today?
The old codger would ask us all to read about, think about and embrace the will, courage and faith of these eminently fallible, but beautiful human beings: Kennedy, Gandhi, King and Mandela.
We are His children. Let us embrace love. Let us embrace courage. Let us embrace our potential for perfection in His eyes. Let us embrace working together to lift up His beautiful kingdom.
