Put the sink in, today, as per plan. It looks nice, but there’s a couple of points of the installation that need to be touched up a little. It took most of the day today, and will probably take a few hours tomorrow. What can I say? I’m not an expert in plumbing.
Just came back from the movies, were we saw Happy Feet. imaginative, in a pedestrian sort of way. Certainly, a monument to modern day computer graphics. But can’t Hollywood film writers come up with the kids story that isn’t centered around man destroying natural habitats ? In the end the movie was “Hoot” with animated penguins. Which is why it’s no longer outstanding… everything Hollywood turns out anymore is the same story line, with minor alterations to fit whatever they happen to be drawing. This week, it’s penguins. I guess you have to spread the propaganda any way you can, but this kind of thing is beginning to annoy the living crap out of me, to be honest.
I’m a little disturbed by what I find over at Eternity Road tonight.
When I reached Lana at Live From The Guillotine, who’s been silent for a distressingly long time, what I read brought my thoughts into sudden, painful focus:
I’ve spent far too much time dinking around with inside baseball politics when I should have been baking cookies, watching movies with my kids, playing with my grandbaby, and kissing my husband silly. That’s over. I don’t get paid to know about that junk and I’m finished following it unless I’m reading for the humor factor. Life is too short and I have better things to do.
Thank You, God, for the gift of this supremely sensible woman. For what, after all, is our attention to politics and public affairs doing to any of us? Is it enriching our lives? Bolstering our hope for a better future? Is it even allowing us to undo some of our past mistakes?
No, no, and NO! Most emphatically not, on all counts. It’s making us crazy, individually and as a society. Indeed, if you reflect for a bit on what it means to concern oneself with politics, you’ll come to recognize the congruence between immersion in politics and obsessive-compulsive neurosis.
He goes on to say…
Does this mean that I’ll no longer write about politics and public affairs? Certainly not. But readers should expect a heavier admixture of essays on other topics henceforward. Fulfillment is an individual matter; my fulfillment, as a writer and thinker, has been hampered by focusing on politics six days a week with a little restful mysticism on the seventh. I’m going to reorient, possibly quite dramatically.
With all respect, Fran, I have to tell you that I disagree strongly, here. What you call an obsessive compulsive neurosis I would refer to as “fighting the good fight”. Yes, there are those who let politics take over their lives. But I approach the subject of politics a little differently then do some, and I suggest you try it… it’s an angle I’ve often written about in these spaces:
I view a person’s politics as a reflection, albeit in some cases a slightly distorted reflection, of their personal beliefs and I view politics as a means to an end. That end being your belief structure having a stronger voice in the world around us. I’m not speaking of religions, specifically. Rather, I’m talking about culture. And of course religion is a part of every major culture. It’s driving force if you will.
Which is why I have several times in the spaces publicly registered annoyance at pictures of Bill Clinton hauling going his sorry but out of the church in the DC area with a huge Bible in his hand that you know darn well he’s not cracked in over twenty years, for example. Here is someone to whom politics is everything. And because there’s nothing beneath that. Similarly, Hillary Clinton. And I suppose I’ll have the opportunity to get to her over the next couple of years, since as much as anything else this is a current events commentary blog… and barring a bus or a bullet she’s going to be part of our public discussion for the next two years at least.
That said, though, there is a major difference between that kind of individual, and people such as you and I and the literally millions of others who are out there batting electrons around for the purpose of engaging hearts and minds in our way of thinking; We get involved in politics and the arguing thereof, because we are passionate in our personal beliefs. We are fighting for the survival of our culture by standing up for our own beliefs and those of our culture. It really is that cut and dried.
Fran, you and I have disagreed on several points on and off for years now. But I’ve always had a healthy dollop of respect for you, because, Hell, high water, or good government, you were passionate about your beliefs; willing to stand up for them, willing to speak out for them. In the end, willing to fight for them. I’ve never perceived your arguments as overtly political per se’, because I have invariably seen your comments as viewing politics as I do; a means to an end…
And personally, I don’t know is I would be overly concerned about the approach of the grave, At least, insofar as what you write about. First, because of the faith that you have described to us.
Secondly, consider; That end comes to us all. The ones who get remembered past it, are the ones who continue speaking up for their beliefs in the face of it… as a re- reading of the writings of Paul might suggest to you.
I’ll be watching his place closely for a while. (Sigh)
I did manage to get Matt’s site started. It’s nowhere near where we want it, but it has a heart beat, and that’s exciting. Better get some sleep… don’t want to fall out of my chair while I’m working on it, tomorrow.
Tags: Life, other blogs/bloggers
