I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

OR CAN I?

Often in times like this I struggle for the right words to say. See, I want to say something... I don't want to say something that will offend, and these days, no matter what you say you're going to offend someone and set off a frenzy of frustration and rebuttal. So why not just keep my mouth shut and lay down my pen and paper? I think it's because, for me, I work through stuff by writing, erasing, underlining, striking through. Many times I wad up the paper and through it in the trash. Is silence better than strife?

Often I think about vantage point. If I'm going to judge or offer an opinion I need to look at the position I'm in as I do so. Am I speaking as one who seeks to follow the teachings of Jesus? If I say that do people assume that I'm one of those radical, religious, evangelical, "blessed", nut jobs because I live in a deep red state and grew up in a southern baptist church? Can I really see things clearly wearing the goggles of a white, male, bald, baby-boomer. Is there a vantage point that allows me to think and speak and act justly? Of course, I can't suspend completely who I am, how I've been raised, the color of my lens, but I can try.

I reached out to a dear friend, who is one of the sanest people I know. I asked him to share his words as sort of guest post on my blog. He consented and I'm letting him have the last word. Thank you Dr. Randall O'Brien for friendship and wisdom.

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After the emotions, comes thought:

*A THEORY of JUSTICE* Changes anyone???

(A theory, a book by John Rawls)

1. Who was John Rawls?

* A philosopher who taught at Oxford, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard.

* Famous for his Theory of Justice, and his book by that title, which sold 200,000 copies, and spawned 5,000 articles, papers, and other books (and counting).

2. What is Rawls’s Theory of Justice?

* Concerns SOCIAL JUSTICE.

* Rawls, essentially sees “Justice as fairness.”

* He establishes justice, or fairness, through a hypothetical “Veil of Ignorance.”

* Meaning? Meaning we imagine agreeing to the rules of society—fairness and justice—without knowing our place in society, our class, social status, assets, intelligence, etc, to which we might add race, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, or any other imaginable demographic.

In other words, what rules for a fair society would we write beforehand if none of us knew who we’d be in this world?

This “Veil of Ignorance” should lead to fair rules, and laws to enforce them.

3. So. Question: If we were to seek to form a more just society using Rawls’s theory, what changes would we make?

4. Let us remember: Justice is a coin with which we purchase peace.

5. With a tip of our hat to JFK, shall we acknowledge:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.”

Hope.

By Randall O’Brien

50

50: IT’S NOT WHAT IT ONCE WAS..

That was our argument when we discovered our kids wanted to throw us a 50th wedding anniversary shindig. Speaking for myself, the real reason for my resistance to a golden celebration is that it's hard to imagine that we're old enough to be married that long. Don't misunderstand, I am grateful for My Amazing-Missus daily and for our 50 years of matrimony.

Growing up in church I can remember many occasions when we would go back to the church fellowship hall on a Sunday afternoon for a 50th Anniversary party for a lovely couple celebrated with pastel mints, assorted nuts, cake and punch. I remember thinking, "I hope they both make it to 51." When you're young, old people seem older than they seem to themselves.

In that spirit of denial, I like to view 50 as the new 40 or at least 49.

It seems like only yesterday I drove my VW Bus onto the beautiful farm where she lived to pick her up for our first date. Surprisingly, her father didn't run me off with a shotgun. As one who pokes fun at the absurdity of the idea of predestination, it seems a little hypocritical to say that it was a match made in heaven, but I can't explain it any other way. 50 years later, I still can't.

Now if you ask her she might concur that it was a match made somewhere; but... There are those days. Some days we've been Romeo and Juliet, some: Homer and Marge. Maybe once or twice we've had the misguided daring of Bonnie and Clyde without the crime and violence. We've certainly dreamed of the idyllic home life of mom, dad, and two boys of Ward and June Cleaver.

I guess our story is our own. And it's fifty years and counting. As I said at the outset, 50 doesn't seem like a big deal these days--my mom and dad celebrated 73. But, in a way 50 is a big deal these days when marriage seems to be like a contrivance of convenience more than a "for as long as we both shall live" kind of commitment.

Are there "keys"? I don't know. I do believe there is a certain amount of luck, a large dose of magic, a larger measure of miracle and an eternal source of love.

Our courtship was literally a whirlwind. Our first date was on New Years Eve. A few weeks later on Valentines Day I asked her to marry me. A few months later on June 16, 1972, we were wed. I'm sure there were those that suspected there might be an additional motivation for the rapid run to the alter. Why else would a lovely girl like Arlene Cox marry a poor college student/drummer-in-a-rock-band/long-haired/VW Bus driving pseudo hippie? Maybe it was the fact that he came from a good family or maybe it was his sense of humor. Yeah, that's probably it. Let's build a marriage on that foundation.

Our first child was born eight years, YEARS, after we married. I wanted to remove all suspicion from the old busy bodies in the church. If someone were to ask me the key for our 50 year marriage, I would say maybe it had to do with those early years: we became best friends. To this day she is my best friend. There is no one I would rather hang out with, be happy with, hurt with, and hope with.

So, if our kids want to celebrate that with us and some of the people who have been a part of our story, then LET'S PARTY! Here's the invitation that our oldest put together [without a doubt the coolest 50th Wedding Anniversary invitation I've ever seen]. Our kids have done all the planning: I don't even know if we'll have pastel mints and assorted nuts. I do know this: DRESS IS CASUAL and you're invited.

WHEN THE END IS A BEGINNING

THE END OF WHAT? The story or a chapter?

Here's the short version: I wanted to see if the rumors are true--Airstream travel trailers are in short supply and high demand; so, people are willing to pay a big price for one. Turns out the stories are true. I came up with a price based on some significant numbers for us--a price that was also beyond what I thought anyone would pay. The next day it was sold.

Having an Airstream has been wonderful, but that was for a season. Want to hear something crazy? We were visiting with a lady while delivering our Airstream to its new owner. She has a vintage Airstream that "might be for sale." What's the word I'm looking for? Tempting? Crazy? Unsurprising?

I belong to a group called "Airstream Addicts". Maybe it is an addiction. There is something about those silvery, capsule-shaped, adventures-on-wheels that gets in your blood. Wanderlust is real.

Stay tuned.

Reflecting on the journey... I've been looking back through photos and reading old journal entries. Here are the highlights of our Airstream adventure for me.

FRIENDSHIPS

We have met people we never would have met without the Airstream. Airstreamers are a tight-knit group and prone to a healthy-elitism or maybe it's tribal pride. For example, for these folks there are two categories of travel trailers: Airstreams and SOBs (Some Other Brand). Early on we joined a group called "Air Midwest," an Airstream rally club of folks mainly from Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. The thing I love about the Airstream community is that it is extremely diverse and people manage for the most part to leave politics outside the campground and do what they do best: tell great stories, share amazing food, laugh out loud, all the while sitting around the campfire as it reflects off of the circle of shiny Airstreams.

FORCED SOCIALIZATION

As a hardcore introvert the Airstream has been good for me. The mixing and mingling at a campground is not only good for making friends that I never would have ventured to know. Pulling an Airstream also starts conversations that might go something like this:

[at the gas pump with the trailer hooked behind]
GUY AT NEXT PUMP: Airstream? Wonder if they still make those?
ME: Yes, they do.
GANP: Are they expensive?
ME: Cheaper than a ride on a Jeff Bezos rocket.
GANP: Mind if I look inside?
ME: Sure.
GANP: No slide out?
ME: Nope.
GANP: Bet you coulda bought a motorhome with a couple of slide outs for what this cost.
ME: Have a nice day.

See, I wouldn't have had those random conversations and social interactions without the AS.

QUARANTINE ESCAPE

Our Airstream provided a mobile bubble during the Covid quarantine. We had our own bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and lounge. We could join other campers and social distance around the campfire in the great outdoors.

This wasn't the first time an Airstream was called into quarantine duty. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins spent quarantine time in an Airstream after returning from the moon on Apollo 11 in 1969.

ADVENTURES

We have now owned two Airstreams: a little 16-footer called Bambi. Next we moved to a little more room in a 23-footer named LUM NUM. It's a play on a word. When people ask what the Airstream is made of, like a good Okie, I answer, "Lumnum". Between the two we've logged over 30,000 miles of adventures on America's highways and byways. We've been through heat, hail and high winds; cold, snow and ice. We evacuated to shelter during a tornado warning and rode it out during an earthquake. Turns out an Airstream is a great place to be during an earthquake. It just bounces a bit, just like it does going across Oklahoma's lousy highways.

KNOWLEDGE & UNDERSTANDING

I saw a sign in Alva on a recent visit to see our kids and grandkids: "Geology rocks but geography is where it's at!" We've learned about both. We've learned history, We've learned some physics and chemistry, and lived in the midst of sociology and anthropology. We have been awestruck by the sublime. We have wondered and wandered.

WANDERLUST

Two of my personal core values are curiosity and creativity. They are life givers and fuel the fires of wanderlust. Two things I fear in life are stagnation and squandering the opportunities of each day. Airstreams were born out of the wanderlust of a man named Wally Byam, a study in creativity. I know it will be possible to stay curious and creative without an Airstream, but I am so grateful for the time we spent in ours. It provided a challenge and motivation somehow to experience life a bit larger.

AN INSTAGRAMABLE LIFE

I'm 70-something. I should be old enough to not care about "social media" but the fact is that I really enjoy seeing the posts of people who share their curiosities and creativity with a camera, a brush, a needle and thread, a van, a bus, or an Airstream. And to be totally honest I do find it nice when someone "likes" a photo I post. The Airstream provided a source of content and an entry into that world with a dash of hipness-- [an old man driving a gas-guzzling pickup truck... I use it to pull our Airstream... OH, you have an Airstream! I would love to have an Airstream and a gas-guzzling pickup to tow it.]

THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE (for a brief time)

Especially early in our travels we could travel somewhere and spend enough time to experience the cultural quilt that is America. We could visit local places, eat local foods, learn a little about the stories of what makes this place or that place so unique and valuable.

The Airstream provided a base camp for living in the midst of it all beyond the typical tourist stops. Once people discovered the opportunity for RVing as an escape from the pandemic, RV parks and campgrounds began to fill up. Prices increased and the paradigm shifted. Still, with careful planning way ahead it' a great way to go.

WE DID IT TOGETHER

The best part of our Airstream life was that we did it together. We were a team. We would pull into a camping spot late afternoon or early evening. I would do the outside routine: unhook from the truck, level, stabilize, hookup that kind of stuff. By the time I would finish and go inside, My Amazing-Missus would have our little home all set up and we would sit down for tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. She might work on a sewing project. I might read/sleep or go outside to start a fire. Occasionally I would go to a quilt store with her and occasionally she would go to a minor league baseball game with me. Often our most interesting stops and memories made were totally spontaneous. Just like life.

WHAT'S NEXT

I don't know. I just know I want to do it together--with her, with our sons and beautiful daughters (in-law) and our seven phenomenal grandkids.

NON AGE

WANT TO KNOW THE SECRET TO ETERNAL YOUTHFULNESS?

I typed "non age" for the title because I thought it looked like a more compelling title. The actual word is "nonage" —a lack of maturity, sort of being stuck in a state of youth-hood.

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance." --Immanuel Kant

Or, as my mother would say, "If everyone was jumping off a building would you?"

I started to title this entry: "SAPERE AUDE!" But that seemed like a sure way to guarantee no one will read the first sentence and beyond. But don't click away yet. Sapere aude is a latin phrase translated: Dare to know! Or, "Have the courage to use your own understanding," which Kant called "the motto of the enlightenment."

A bunch of years ago now, around this time of year, it was "Senior Sunday" in the church where I was the youth minister. I stood in the vestibule with the seniors all lined up in their caps and gowns ready to march in and be recognized for their attainments. The first young lady in line wore the stole of the valedictorian. She said to me, "I've been meaning to ask you a question. What is it we're supposed to believe about (insert any moral ambiguity)?"

"You're the valedictorian!" I thought to myself. "And we've talked and talked about knowing who you are and what you know to be true and what values guide you."

Now, I sit here typing this and I realize that Sapere Aude is a life-long journey. Not only is it never-ending, we shouldn't wish for it to be. We should fall in love and stay in love with the beauty of discovery. As Peter Fenton says, "Be a learn-it-all; not a know-it-all." The worst thing we can do is abdicate our journey of discovery to others. Not that we can't learn from others, standing on their shoulders, but we must not settle or sell out to a "party line"; ANY party line without exploring it, testing it, and knowing it empirically.

The word Dare in the phrase Dare To Know is so appropriate because it can be risky business. It might mean standing on your own, seeing from a different perspective, disagreeing with even significant others. It might also mean you'll have to admit your were wrong about something, or that you JUST DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING.

[NOTE: What I write here at About Pops is mainly introspection. I'm not preaching to anyone (at least not intentionally). This is a personal journal with a little soapbox for ranting built in.]

Now, a little more from Kant's essay on enlightenment:

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me... Thus it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it, and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use--or rather abuse--of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds."

An undeniable fact I'm discovering: that while I may be mired in nonage mentally, socially and spiritually; physically I'm marching on to the inevitable. Let's sing the last verse of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" together:

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day
I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Not to misunderstand Joni or to question her life view, but this song does seem to reduce all to just two sides. Maybe she's acknowledging that tendency and also saying clearly life is not either/or; cut and dried.

Personally, I've been...
Republican and Democrat
Evangelist and Agnostic
Teacher and Student
Optimist and Pessimist
Liberal and Conservative
Happy and Angry
Pro Life and Pro Choice
Confused and Certain
Beautiful and Ugly
Hawk and Dove
Wishy and Washy
Pro and Con
Enlightened and sometimes living under a spell as if I had never had a thought, a belief or value of my own.

The truth is I've always lived in the gray in-between. That doesn't mean I have no certainty. I do. I tend to spend a lot of time in my own head. (Not recommending that.) And when I do, a question my self often gets asked by me is: Of what are you certain? Here's one:

Certainly moving to maturity and beyond nonage doesn't mean we forsake youthfulness. The innocent curiosity of that age is essential to the momentum, the enlightenment.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the light surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

[verse 2 of "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan]

And, then this from the Psalmist: "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path."

Be enlightened my friends. That's the secret.