Wind

Remembering the passage in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Mark, about the woman who touched the cloak of Jesus, and was healed from her serious illness as a result of this faith, there is a lot in today's 21st century world that we could learn from this woman.  She showed us that faith can take us a long ways when we perceive ourselves to be in desperate times or situations, and that reaching out to Jesus in times of need or even in the moments when we take time out, or need to, to reflect on the Glory of God and praise Him for all His Greatness, will lead us to our greatest goals, to the most awesome of wonders, and enable us to overcome the most challenging of obstacles.  

In essence, we would have the strength to push forward through the spirit of God, as those who wonder where this strength is coming from would be amazed that those who may seemingly have so little to offer, or come from the most bleakest of backgrounds, are suddenly pushing through the storms of life with amazing fortitude or winning contests thought unwinnable.  The wind is at our backs if only we would strive to touch the Lord's cloak.

Vanishing Act

Much of today's entertainment is detrimental to the young generation: the coarseness, foul language, degrading depictions and words, the propensity for bullying and aggression, and the outright disrespect for anybody perceived as lesser, inferior, or not belonging, though innocent as a flower.  This is what goes for much of youth entertainment, or entertainment in general for that matter, and then we have the gall to wonder why civil society is in a tailspin.  Traditions have been lost.  It used to be that parents and adults wouldn't tolerate foul language from youngsters, tawdry entertainment across the board would be banned for minors, and ethics and morality played an integral part in our schools.  Not anymore in this anything goes/"whatever" society that has been fostered by negativism, cynicism and apathy.  Until we can return back to our best traditions, a general coarseness and non-civility may well continue to be an albatross around our nation.

Traditions and a sentimental possession: great memories, lost dreams, but they can rise, again.

Post-script:  I recovered my great possession, today, March 19, 2015, which was written about more thoroughly in the pre-revision post!

[Originally published on Almanac as "Lost Traditions, Lost Possession" on March 17, 2015; revised on 3/19/15.]

Reflections from a Half a Century Ago

From Leo's Maxim (Memoirs & Poems), originally published on November 16, 2013:

Sometime in 1964, I told Mom (Ellen Greene) that I wanted to be a politician.  As an altar boy at that time, she had hoped that I would be a priest instead, nonetheless, about a week or two later, we went to Hudson's Department Store in Detroit where she bought a pictorial book about the Presidents of the United States of America, and she inscribed the words "To a future president, my son Mark." 

(The written statement by Ellen Greene, theologian, referred to in the paragraph above, is paraphrased.)

Stronger Than Mountains

 The Bible says that faith is stronger than mountains, so we must keep faith no matter what, because sooner or later almost everybody faces some trial or stern test.  Our closest friend or friends may desert us, we may come to devalue ourselves after some humiliating loss, or many losses, we may suffer physically or mentally, and even our belief in God may be tested sometimes, but despite all we must endure, as the Apostle Paul reminded us to do.  In politics, it is faith that could lead activists and politicians to do what's right and moral even in the face of apathy or unpopularity.  That's not the easy path, but we have to remember what are we in politics for: to improve society or for self-gain and glory?  Or for all of those?  We need not ask which is the better answer, because we know very well the answer that Jesus gave us.

[revised on 11/25/13]

Culture Matters

"Hollywood's" slide to debauchery -- and we use the word "Hollywood" broadly, since a lot of this degeneration comes from outside of technical Hollywood -- has been long and profitable to the participants of some of the most disgusting and degenerate movies imaginable, as these movies (or CD videos, now) have infiltrated American culture for decades -- to our nation's regret.  It's not just movies or videos, but other so-called entertainment as well, such as heinous language in music. As a result, morals have been undermined in our society, and moral decay and crime has skyrocketed.  As long as the sleazy and seedy writers, directors and producers continue to get money from this decimation of the mind through the dissemination of the most outrageous sleaze, and as long as the American public enables them by paying for or seeing this stuff, the ongoing deterioration of our culture will continue unabated.

[revised on 7/30/2013]

Copyright 2009 - 2013, Party of Commons TM

Arrogance Vrs. the Golden Rule

So much of the self-serving and disreputable disdain in this country for the poor has to do with those who amazingly say to themselves that they, themselves, had no trouble getting a job, why does anybody else does?  It's pure arrogance that only considers their own circumstances, but not that of their less fortunate citizens, and there are a host of reasons of why some may find themselves luckier than their fellow citizens in being able to obtain work that provides for a decent living, not all them because of their allegedly superior traits, such as a great work ethic.  Remember, the Golden Rule.

Copyright 2009 - 2012, Party of Commons TM

School and Morality

In the first half of the nineteen sixties decade, I attended a private school in Detroit, Michigan for elementary education. The former west side Catholic school was only a few miles from the Detroit cultural center on Woodward Avenue, the avenue that divides Detroit between east and west sides, and incidentally where one of the largest and most acclaimed art museums in the nation is located. I happened to be thinking of my old school, which has been defunct for quite some time, now, because of the moral degeneration that is occuring in the country today, with political corruption and madcapper antics in Washington D.C. & the state capitals, violent crime rates that the nation seems to just shrug off as normal, Hollywood and video game producers who will stoop to any degeneration as long as they're not legally liable and it will put dollars into their bank accounts, and on and on.

Really, though, it all goes back to how we were educated as children, and I don't mean just formal school education, but today the schools scoff at moral values education and are more and more only concerned with making sure that kids become cogs and instruments of the great corporate nemesis (e.g., the emphasis on testing over real education, and becoming compliant to the narrow educational demands of CEO's as opposed to a broad-based liberal arts education), the same entity that has put us on the brink of environmental calamity with their nukes and mountaintop mining, to name just a couple, and has thrown people that don't fit into their plans to the curb, so to speak, although in some cases quite literally as the number of people without jobs and homes grows.

Schools are more concerned about placing kids into the greedy hands of the corporations after their graduations, those relative few that can get in, in the present "free trade" era, than teaching civics in which they can learn that government is suppose to serve the greater good (the Republic, "We the People") rather than just a handful at the very top of the economic echelon. Now, colleges are even being dictated to as to what their curriculum should contain by big private funders with a corporate agenda, because too many people in the nation have bought into the lie of "big government," and as a result, many state and public colleges, and other schools indirectly, are not getting the necessary funding that they need. Of course, we need a big government, this is a nation of more than 300 million people, after all. To the nation's detriment, academic freedom in the schools and colleges is waning. It should be noted that the saint whom my old school was named after practiced self-denial and austerity. Values that the colleges which accept corporate funding with strings attached could learn something from, not to mention the nation as a whole, which prides rugged individualism, maybe, a little too much.

So a lot of these decisions being made in government, in the corporate world, and in the Hollywood studios, all goes back to the first grade, in a sense. What were we taught about moral values in the home and in the school, and how does that, in the aggregate, affect how our nation makes the big decisions overall? To me, the first grade cannot be underestimated, and although some people shrink from talking about moral values, because they, themselves, cannot possibly live up to its most idealistic tenets, as if anybody except the most rarest of people could (and I don't include myself in that rare category), I think this issue should be discussed more, and that we should demand that the schools teach basic moral values, not necessarily with a religious content as that would relate to whether the school is public or private.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to Sister Ruth Patrick, my first grade teacher from 1960 - 1961, who drilled me and all her students in reading, writing, arithmetic, and morality with great dedication. My late mother praised her, rightly, as the best teacher that I ever had.

- by Mark Greene

Copyright 2009 - 2011, Party of Commons TM