We Lost All That He Knew, What a Shame

Red Eagle Feather knew all there was to know about animals, fish and birds–every kind of owl, for instance; every kind of warbler and hawk as well. He knew their markings, their calls, their songs, their homes, their nests and their habits of migration.  Her knew more about bears than any man before or since, and of course, of all species of buffalo, deer, antelope, coyotes, pumas, rattlesnakes, ground squirrels,  feral hogs, skunks and raccoons.  Every kind of fish he could name, describe, and discourse on. Red Eagle Feather was a genius.

He was known only to his village and tribe.  He was exposed, while growing up, to no more knowledge that any other boy, but he remembered all that he learned and, as he grew up, he talked to others who were well versed in nature and then remembered everything they told him.  Moreover, he spent countess hours among the woods and streams, observing all the creatures that lived there. What a shame, that when Red Eagle Feather departed his village for the Happy Hunting Grounds, that his huge body of knowledge had to go with him.

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Good Jokes Are Durable

A classic joke is just as funny today as it was a hundred years ago–or even two thousand years agop.  You can laugh at a classic just as hard at age 60 as you did at age 10.  For example, the oldest baseball joke, circa 1900: A man out blunders upon a sandlot baseball game and asks a spectator, “What’s the score?”

 ”100 to nothing.”

“Whose favor?”

“Theirs.”

“Beating up on you, aren’t they?”

“Can’t tell. We ain’t got our bats yet.”

Or the sight gag about the stingiest man in Athens, in the time of Socrates. A frugal old miser has died, and two of his young grandsons are having a hard time carrying his corpse, in its heavy casket, to the graveyard .  The boys sit down to rest, laying the casket on the ground. Soon a couple of strong young men come up and offer to  carry the casket.  Naturally the grandsons ask, “How much  will you charge?”

“Ten drachmas.”

Sudddenly the lid of the casket pops open, and the miser pops up. “Eight, no more,” he says, lies back, and the lid of the casket closes upon him.

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The Unattainable Objective

Jesus never really defined the Kingdom of God.  On the other hand, he told us, in story after story, what the Kingdom is like. From these descriptions, it is evident that those who dwell in the Kingdom of God love all their neighbors, without exception, and assign little priority to material goods.  Now, the idea of living this way is not one that most of us are willing to accept.  We may not covet great riches, but we think we have a right to certain basic material things. We find it almost impossible to place certain neighbors on our “love list.” For these reasons we find it very difficult to apply for entrance to the Kingdom of God.

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Luxury

For over seventy years I have begun the day with a shower bath.  It cleanses  my body physically and my mind symbolically. I value it the most on cold winter mornings.

My grandfather was never able to enjoy such luxury, for the last three decades of his life anyway. To bathe, he placed a large zinc-coated wash tub on the kitchen floor, close to the old wood-burnuing  stove. He poured a teakettle full of boiling water into the tub. He then added cold water until the temperature was low enough to be ciomfortable.  He and my grandmother did not bathe every day.

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Why the Statues

Easter Island’ s huge stone itatues were erected because the community was small and isolated.  In a large communty, where people move back and forth across borders, ideas about the supernatural are subject to continual evaluation by many. On Easter Island, in contrast,  one dominant tribe was able to enforce its own idea of the supernatural without significant challenge.

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Durability

Atoms are durable,

Words are not.

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The Root Problem

Christianity is, at its best, the imitation of Jesus.  The root problem of Christianity is that this is virtually impossible for all but a few very exceptional persons.

One powerful reason is that to imitate Jesus is to offer the gospel directly, and daily,  to the poor.  Neither we nor our church embrace the poor. In fact, we avoid them, for a number of reasons: They make us highly uncomfortable. Unwashed and ragged, they often stink.  It may be hard to converse with them owing to language problems. They are uneducated. We have little in common with them. We do not trust them. They may dirty our things, or even break them. It will lower our social standing if we associate with them.  We simply cannot accept such as brothers and sisters.

Second, Jesus renounced worldly goods and lived the life of an itinerart mendicant. This is asking too much of most of us. Even a selfless pastor deserves an income, a house, and a way to provide responsibly for his family. Is the solution to beome a monk, or a nun? No. Monks may bake bread  for the poor daily, but they live in a world apart.

Is there, then, any solution to this fundamental problem of Christianity?  No.  The best we can hope for is that,  by recognizing the problem,  we may try partly to alleviate it.

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He Don’t Call Me Tubby No Mo

Oh, he used to call me Tubby.
And it’s true that I am chubby,
Cause I can’t tie my shoes no mo.

It was just the way he said it–
With a grin. I come to dread it,
At the church, and the hardware sto.

Well, I cornered him one night.
Down he went, a sorry sight–
And he don’t call me Tubby no mo.

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Which Way to Go?

The middle-aged preacher complained to an old friend, “We are doing all we can to attract folks to our church, but attendance is still declining.” The old guy said, “Have you thought about soliciting the poor of the parish?”  The minister said, “Jim, you know that’s not practical. Many of our members would leave. It would ruin the church as we know it.”

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Faith

God cannot magically make the right thing happen. The task is up to us. What God can do is give us the insight, courage, strength and endurance required to make it happen.

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