Season's Greetings!

Season's Greetings! - © Kent Fletcher
December 22, 2006

As this year rolls ever on toward an end, with a new year to follow, with new dreams, with new accomplishments, with new outlooks to be had, let us not forget the reason for the season. While I have my own thoughts about Christmas, let me share one other with you, from people who are far beyond my talent of making sense of a yearly celebration of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

*****

There is a wonderful line from the American scholar Stephen L. Carter that is worth pondering this Christmas season: "Religion is, at its heart, a way of denying the rest of the world." He is astutely and gloriously correct.

Faith's view of this world is strangely skeptical. No, more than that. It is a posture of unequivocal distrust leading to rejection! When the world recites its mantras — you matter only if you are beautiful, the most important thing is money, winning is everything, Look Out for Number One — faith protests them all. It adopts a posture of doubt and incredulity. It rejects them.

I refuse to believe that selfishness is acceptable or that it is permissible to resent another's good fortune. I will not swallow the world's way of thinking in order to justify prejudice, aggression, and hatred. No believer can be anything but incredulous about this world's claim that he/she is entitled to anything he/she can get his/her hands on or that he/she should not feel guilty about exploiting and using people.

So distrust the alleged certainties of sense that cancel the mysteries of faith. Fight the tendency of the masses to look forward only for the sake of declaring the impossibility of living with hope. Deny the inevitability of such greed, hatred, and violence in the world that we cannot prove the reality of love.

The Bible warns against being blinded by this world and speaks of the danger of the blind leading the blind. That warning puts us on notice that things, people, and ways of thinking totally rooted in the finite world of time, space, and matter will keep us from discovering, experiencing, and delighting in the greater realities of God, spirit, and eternity that can only be known by faith.

Faith isn't self-talk or self-deception. It is neither wish projection nor wishful thinking. It is our willingness to hear and stand with the things God has shown us through events and people as awe-inspiring as a trembling, smoking mountain in the desert and as modest as a baby's first cry in the village of Bethlehem.

So let Christmas deny the hold of this world on your heart. Let it open your eyes to what the willfully blind will never see, your ears to things the incorrigibly deaf can never hear. See Immanuel — and know God is with us. Hear the song of angels — and receive God's peace offered to anxious hearts. Hold the confusion, cynicism, and antagonisms of this troubled world suspect — and choose God's rule as your way of affirming the true realities.

*****

In this past year, my family has lost a couple of family members, and I cannot speak for them, but I miss my first cousin and my aunt dearly. I think about them nearly every day, and my heart aches. And, yet, I do know they are both in much better form than we are here, and I do know I will see them again, some day.

You all should know pretty well my feelings toward my animals. I lost my next best friend, Felix, just a couple of months ago. I know where he is, too, playing in that meadow over the Rainbow Bridge with his two playmates, Zeke and Hercules, being fit and trim, with no bodily aches or pains, waiting for ever how long it takes for me to get there, too.

I also fear my Lil Darlin' won't be long for this world, as she has renal disease. But I do call her my "Wonder Dog", as in it's a wonder she is still kicking. Her face has turned gray in the last few months, and her gait has diminished, but she keeps bounding back with renewed energy that amazes the vets as well. I hope the Good Lord will take her peacefully, should He beat me to the vet.

The time each year beginning with Thanksgiving through the New Year has been a pretty solemn time for me, for the last 41 years. It all started, the solemnity, with my father's death just before Thanksgiving, 1965. As I just wrote, it's solemn, not necessarily sad, giving me a brief respite from the hectic other days of the year, to reflect on my own morbidity to come, and my own brief future on this planet.

Well, I guess the plagiarism from an acquaintance and my own brief thoughts pretty much wraps up this short spiel. I want to wish each and everyone who reads this a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, may His face shine upon you, and give you peace. Amen!

An Epistle

How Long Is a Lifetime? - © Kent Fletcher
December 14, 2006

How long is a lifetime, or just a half a lifetime? Well, for instance, I'm a young 60 years of age, actually I'm really only 59, according to the Social Security Administration, but that's another subject, really confusing, kind of like attempting to figure out... nah, forget it, it wouldn't make sense to anyone but a drilling reservist, anyway. So I'm 60/59, and 31 years ago today, half of my lifetime, I took a leap of faith and got married, only to have the platform I landed on crash and burn on my birthday some 11 years later. A little over a half a lifetime has passed since that fateful day. Cool!

Now some folks call me lazy, and others call me crazy for not remarrying. Oh, I've had some nice young ladies who I was totally taken with, but for whatever reasons - Navy transfers, non-moveable problems, stuff like that-there - I never have. Some days I regret it, most days I don't. It's so much easier for me to just live with myself than to run willy-nilly around the country, searching for that one true love. I know this is going to upset one or two people, but I'm only passing along my own inner feelings. I hope you understand. It's kinda like the writing about living in Texas, now, and how it's my home, away from home.

Back to the story. Lazy, or crazy, but unlike that one-time popular song, once-burned was one time too many for my fragile soul at the time. As much as I really wanted to be in a solid relationship, every time I started getting too close, claustrophobia set in, and I would walk away. I would dare say even now, I would still walk away. I've been single for over 19 years, about a third of my lifetime, and it's kinda hard to accept someone of the fairer sex into my life. I've got my animals whom I dote on, and who don't give me too much trouble, other than those stares that break my heart when I have to leave them at home. Oh, but the joy beheld when I return. It is worth it, for sure.

On another short tangent, December 14 is also the birthday of a dear friend of mine. Strange as it is, I really don't think about that marriage date any more, but I do remember her birthday with regularity. Instead of calling her on her birthday, though, I call the day before because she and her sister and usually one or two of her girlfriends are off and running for the day, a girls-day-out. She told me last night they were off to Nag's Head for lunch and shopping today. She has another year to go before the big 6-0 rolls around, so she better enjoy it while she can. Happy Birthday, Bonnie!

Some other events which are on my mind from time-to-time include my father's death on the Sunday before Thanksgiving in 1965. 41 years ago, two-thirds of my lifetime, and I can still tell you exactly the chain of events from three days prior to his passing. The only time I really think about it is during this holiday season, and then only briefly. I've reconciled my differences with his spirit, May He Rest In Peace.

My mother passed on in October 1984. I remember the event well, of course, but I can never nail down the exact date, or day. That was 22 years ago, a third of my lifetime. And I miss her and her counsel to this day. May She Rest In Peace.

I've lost other family members, and several four-legged family members. It seems the older I get, the more losses I have, and yet while it does bother me, I know it's a fact of life. Just like Dr. Wilson was asked in a class at Delta State why are events always, or most always expressed in fractions or percentages. He turned the question around and pointedly asked me, "Mr. Fletcher, what is the probably you are going to die?" Of course, that satisfied the other student, and me, too, for it was something I knew, but had never really thought about.

Every now and again, I run across a silly statement that goes something like this: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, double espresso in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, "WOW what a ride!"

Half a lifetime for some of the events in my life. Perhaps I've only lived a half-lifetime at age 60/59. That is not for me to know, but to accept when it does come. I really won't have a choice in the matter, will I?

Perfect People

Perfect People - © Kent Fletcher
December 10, 2006

Ever since the news came out of New York City and Mayor Bloomberg's decision to rid the city of trans fats, the notion of nanny states has come to the forefront of lots of folks. Especially the "Perfect People", for purposes here, a.k.a. PPs.

You know who these PPs are, heck, you may be one of them. PPs are the folks who have been there, done that (BTDT) in any number of things. In a small way, I suppose I am one of them, in that I used to eat fried chicken more often than not, salivating in the grease. I used to drink colas all the time, too, with peanuts dropped in the necks of the bottles. I used to gorge my belly with food, whatever the food was. I used to drink anything but gin. But as I have aged, I've found my "tastes" have flattened, my attitudes toward some things in life have changed, and I have no need for these destructive little nuances of typical everyday life.

Oh, this is not to say I don't eat fried chicken anymore, I do, but on real rare occasions. I've learned to eat the meat, not the skin and all the grease contained in that skin. I did make an error in judgement last week by eating the skin. My gut rolled over about a half hour later. On the colas though, I haven't conscientiously had a cola since the late 70s or early 80s. Too sweet. I'm also allergic to the cola, something about one ingredient, arginine I think. About the same time I realized I was allergic to cola, I also found out I was allergic to nuts of any kind and chocolate which also have arginine. So I stayed off all of it until a few years ago. I had a strong urge for some chocolate ice cream. Ate some, nothing happened. Ate some more, still nothing happened. Same for nuts. But I don't overdo it on either, as my body will react in strange ways, and it's just easier to parcel the urges out, or take smaller amounts.

During his high school years, my nephew worked at McDonald's at home. After the stories he told me of patties falling on dirt-laden, unmopped, filthy floors, being picked up and tossed on the grill, well, that pretty much turned me against fast-food, any of it, from Captain D's on to McDonald's on to KFC and Church's Fried Chicken. Besides, the food is fattening, and that is one thing that just bamboozles me to no end, to see a fat family in a fast-food joint, gorging themselves on fattening food. And that's where the food nannies, PPs, and governments should NOT be concerned - on the personal practices of the folks who buy the food - but on the cleanliness of a given food-oriented place.

Another matter that keeps coming to my frontal lobes, whether searching for it or not, is smoking. It seems whenever the notion of trans fats comes up, or some other item for human ingesting comes up, the PPs chime in about the ills of smoking, yet another human consumption for decades, no, make that centuries. When the Surgeon General made sure warnings were put on cigarette packs way back in 1965, I remember my father clipping the first one he saw and putting it under glass. To smoke is a personal choice, and it should remain that way, even if smoking exacerbates the cause(s) of one's death. After all, none of us is going to get out of this life alive, are we?

So, in the end it boils down to what the Perfect People think is good for all mankind, whether here in these United States, or any other country in the world. I would say that nine times out of ten, these same Perfect People were at one time imperfect, in that they were smokers, boozers, unhelmeted motorcycle riders, fattening food addicts, cola addicts, nut addicts, sex addicts. The PPs think that by their having BTDT lives and having beaten their old wily ways, they can dictate to the rest of society who are still addicted to some foul way of life, such as skiing, snowboarding, water skiing, hotrodding, drugging, you name it, they've got the best answers. NOT!

As I mentioned above, government, and PPs to an extent, should stay out of peoples' lives, peoples' bedrooms, peoples' eating habits. Warnings and admonitions are fine, but the last I heard or read, we all live in a free society, a democracy, where we, individually, alone are ultimately responsible for our actions, or inactions. And when those actions run detrimental to the overall well-being of society, only then should the government be responsible for the solution, be it incarceration, fines, or the ultimate, death.