oh how the times are a changin’

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Bob Dylan

(the Mayor’s new ride)

Sadly the Mayor has come and gone…having returned to her official office in Atlanta.
In her wake, this satellite Woobooville office is now in a bit of disarray.

There is washing, cleaning, boiling of bottles and rearranging of a few moved rugs…
chores that this aide must attend to which help to ease the bittersweet sting
that comes with the here then there, the ins and outs of grandchildren coming and going.

Like any grandparent, I obviously love my grandchild.
I see so much wonderment and joy in her existence.

And like her parents…the sun rises and sets in this little girl.

So it only makes sense that we as her family look out and around this oddly
changing world of ours a bit warily.
Troubled by what we see and what we hear.

We wish to hold her just a bit tighter.
Holding her in the protection of our arms within a presumed assumption of safety
in this little corner of this world of ours.

As Bob Dylan sang in 1963…the times, they are a changing…

And the changing is not to my liking.

Friday evening I was watching the news.

There was a story complete with video—
because don’t we seem to video everything these days,
don’t we feel we must record every moment rather than simply living it????…
anywhoo, I digress—
…there was a recorded clash between two very different minded individuals…
and the clash was not pretty.

There was a lady standing on a busy street corner in Portland, Oregon who happened to be
wearing an NYPD ballcap.
Some punk, and yes the word punk is most appropriate, came up behind the woman and
began harassing her….all because of the ballcap.

He had a foul angry tirade directed at this woman for her obvious support of law enforcement.

Antifa came to mind and Antifa he was…

He cursed, berated and belittled this woman…He was crude, crass and vile…
all because she seemed linked to the police–a group he obviously held vehement disdain for…

She turned to the punk and told him that the hat was because her husband had been killed in 9/11.
Rather than backing down or even expressing a bit of remorse, his response grew even viler,
cruder and laced with a deep seething hatred.

I immediately felt my own blood pressure shoot up as I wanted to jerk this dude up by
the scruff of his neck and read him my own form of the riot act.

I call it having a ‘Peter moment’…

I really like both Peter and Paul—
I feel very much akin to their often expressed sense of unworthiness due to their faults and sins…
I know all about faults and sins…
all about not living up and yet thankfully all about redemption.

Yet I probably identify more with Peter than I do Paul.
Peter is more of an emotional hot head.
He often lead by the heat of the moment and of his heart whereas Paul was more
calculating in his actions…
he was full of thought and recourse.
A cause and effect sort of leader.

It was Peter during the height of confusion and conflict, on the night in the garden
during the arrest of Jesus, who draws his knife in a fit of rage and proceeds to cut off
the ear of one of the soldiers
He’s reacting as I would…defensive, protecting, frightened and angry.

Jesus screams out to Peter to stop.

Jesus rebukes him and then proceeds to heal the soldier’s ear…
Now why at that moment the soldiers didn’t all drop their swords and run away,
I don’t know… but that wasn’t to be the ending of the story now was it…

But the gist here is that Jesus rebuked that knee-jerk reaction of Peter’s.
Just as he would have rebuked me when I turned and dotted this jackass’s eye…an expression
my students would often say…”I’m going to dot that eye of yours…”

But the woman maintained her cool, for the most part, and only appears to curse the fellow at the
end before the light changes and they both, I assume, go on to cross the street.

That clash, that confrontation bothered me to no end.

First…who whips out a phone to videotape that kind of crap?
Who has a bunch of cronies standing behind them, snickering and laughing
when one of the members tells a widow that he hopes her husband rots in the grave…
all because he’s a cop.

I don’t understand Nancy Pelosi saying that anyone who disagrees with her party’s agenda
will simply be “collateral damage” and that they just don’t matter.

I disagree so therefore I’m collateral damage and I don’t matter.

I don’t understand Eric Holder telling his minions to ‘hit republicans
low and hit um hard’ —because his minions are taking that literally.

I don’t understand Rep Maxine Waters telling crowds to attack any and every republican
that they see out and about…make their lives miserable she extols the crowds.

I don’t understand what is happening.

I don’t understand the loss of civility.

There is a WWI cross memorial in Maryland that has been on public display since the end of the war
erected in 1925 to remember those Maryland boys who had lost their lives in “The Great War”, the war
that was to end all wars…

Its case is coming up for review at the Supreme Court as there is a suit that has been brought forth
attempting to have the cross removed because it now sits on Government property.
Never mind that the cross is a memorial to war dead.

And so now the hairs of the sites are set on Arlington.
What of all those crosses on graves in Arlington?

I think of all those crosses, and stars, in Normandy.
Foreign soil yes, but an Amercian governed Cemetery.

We have forgotten who we are.

From punks on street corners to leaders in office to people who view
memorials…we have lost our humanness… we have lost our sense of sensibility.

Some days I’m left shaking my head.
Some days I just want to keep my head under the covers.
Some days I simply hang my head
But every day, I need to lower my head to pray…
Lord have mercy on our souls…..

**Tomorrow I will have a story about what should and does matter—
It goes far beyond this idiocy we’ve allowed to consume us–
It’s a story that actually has something to do with a kid who loves his
college and his football and whose life is tragically very limited…

http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/10/20/911-widow-harassed-leftist-protester-portland-tucker-carlson-ann-coulter-react

Have you found what you’re looking for?

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
Albert Camus

(image of a dilapidated abandoned farm house in rural west Georgia / Julie Cook / 2014)

“But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for”
Lyric refrain from the song “I still haven’t’ found what I’m looking for”
by U2

Certainly not being one to claim some sort of privileged knowledge about the inception of the 1987 song, nor of its meaning,“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” by the Irish rock band, U2– the one thing I do know, however, is how I find the lyrics most applicable to my humble observations of the world in which we live.

My understanding is that the tune/ melody is steeped in the band’s front man Bono and lead guitarist Edge and their equal appreciation for American music genres. Bono supposedly has claimed the song to be a quasi piece of gospel mixed with a smattering of Bob Dylan influence. And who among us, of a particular age, can’t say that there isn’t a little bit of Bob Dylan, with that avant guard philosophical musical view of life of his, hiding deep down in us all?

Not that I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan by any stretch of the imagination, but the older I become, the more I find I have a deep appreciation for the method behind his madness. Bob Dylan can write a mean set of lyrics and he is tremendously musically gifted, despite the fact that I never thought he could sing. That garbled, almost unintelligible, nasal voice of his with his folksy bluesy sound was, when I was younger, not my cup of tea. I was a pure member of Beatle Mania coupled by a love of early Motown. Little did I know, at the time, of the tremendous impact Bob Dylan had had on the lives of those musicians whom I loved!

And so it goes as new generations of music makers continue to tap into and weave the poetic mastery of Bob Dylan into their own current take on music–with the boys from Dublin being no exception.

But back to the song. . .

As I look out upon a landscape, which seems to be more like the song Helter Skelter rather than the peace and tranquility of songs such as What a Wonderful World, I am almost overwhelmed by the madness.
Life is indeed colorful.
Life is indeed loud.

Life is full of the flashy gadgetry of the off the chart growth and hunger for all things electronic with the roots deep in technology, which this brave new world of ours seems to crave. Demand can’t keep up with the insatiable appetite. That new IPhone of yours, the one you just bought last month, its already obsolete as a new one will be out shortly—oh the frustration of keeping up!

We are now living in a country where more people currently live in large urban centers rather than the rural countryside. Songs from distant childhoods such as “This Land is Your Land” once painted a picture of a quilted country with a sweeping landscape which was stitched together by a population of residence spread out far and wide, dotting the land from coast to coast. Today it seems that most of those dots, that population of ours, is crammed in on either coast with a few remaining clusters bridging the gaping empty landscape in-between.

Our news, which is really no longer news but rather extensions of what we consider entertainment, is laced with so many stories of those who have fallen from grace it’s almost difficult to keep up. “Stars,” whose lives are splashed across our eyeballs, often against our will, along with their endeavors and exploits appear on almost every magazine cover in grocery stores, drug stores, television programs, computer screens, commercials, movie screens and even the air waves. We couldn’t escape them if we wanted to. Arrests, heroin overdoses, sex scandals, explosive public temper tantrums, bad boy and bad girl behavior run amuck—the list goes on and on.

My question: why does any of this, of what those folks do, matter to me?

Interlace Hollywood with our politicians and Government officials, whose behavior is proving equally as disturbing from the lurid sexting scandals, numerous affairs, drugs, alcohol, bribery, chronic pleading of the 5th. . .as I suppose we could say it all boils down to a sick sort of entertainment.

I for one, however, find it all terribly sad.

It seems as if Society, as a whole, is the one singing the lyrics of U2’s song— as it is our overall Society which seems to be so empty and in search of something that it just can’t seem to find.

Fulfillment
Contentment
Security
Love
Happiness
Acceptance
Success

Those seem to be the key words in which most people, famous or not, continually seek. And the seeking seems to be at a non stop pace with many of the end results coming up empty.

The drugs don’t work.
The sex doesn’t work.
The arrests don’t help.
The re-hab doesn’t help.
The endless affairs don’t work
The insatiable shopping and buying doesn’t work
The binge eating and drinking doesn’t work
The obsession with weight and looks don’t work.
The constant quest for youth doesn’t work.
The anger, the resentment, the hatred, the denial, the isolation. . .none of it works.

So everyone goes on singing.
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”

There is but one thing that works.
It will, however, require a great deal from an individual.
It requires a death.
It is not a physical death per se.
But it is a dying of self.

Giving up me in order to gain a life lived with the Creator of the Universe.
Giving up me to have a relationship with an only Son who died so I could have that relationship.
Giving up me to receive a mystical gift of Grace known as the Holy Spirit.
That is the only thing that will work.

But nobody seems too interested in hearing that.
Dying unto self just doesn’t seem nearly as exciting as the news these days.

My favorite psalm—Psalm 139: 1-18– Words which humble me, reassure me, touch me deeply— especially as an adopted child who knows not form whence I come. . .

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.

“Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door”

“I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.”
Bob Dylan

Photograph mine, quote and lyrics Bob Dylan’s…..and that’s exactly how I feel when I fly through the clouds (in a plane mind you)—a magical situation to be on the upside of the clouds…I’ve never been one to wish I could fly but to be able to get up and walk on clouds—that would be a quiet yet wonderful adventure, don’t you think?

Grey dark clouds can pass overhead and yes, I too can become pensive, aggravated, depressed, or relieved..it all depends on whatever is going on in my life at the time down on the ground under the clouds…but being able to fly up through them, being perched on top of them, looking down, just imagining I could just stop the plane stepping out onto that pillowy top—now that is truly a magical thought.

I wonder if it is human nature to want to go upwards…a primal desire to seek our Creator upwards, heavenwards…? If I go far enough will I find Him waiting for me? Perhaps it is an innate longing and desire to be with God, by His side, in His presence. And I suppose it is my yearning and desire to indeed go seeking after Him. And it is through and on top of those very clouds where I feel I should start.

Oh I know that I can sit in the middle of a virgin wood forest, or on a rocky cliff over looking a churning sea and I know that He is there. I knew I saw Him when the baby fawn gingerly hopped through our yard. I saw Him the day our son was born. I saw Him as my mom died…..

….but the clouds— up in those giant white billowy puffs—-somewhere up there I know He is there—
I will always look upwards—what about you?