how can we ever work together with such disdain?

Childish egocentrism is, in its essence,
an inability to differentiate between the ego and the social environment.
Jean Piaget

(Huff Post)

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit
atrocities.
Voltaire

Here are two different images from two different years but each image offers the same
feelings of rude pettiness…

So I don’t think frustration is a strong enough word to describe how I felt last night when watching
the President’s State of the Union Speech—what with the Speaker of the House,
who was perched directly behind the President, displaying visibly blatant disdain
for the President of the United States.

She sat behind him and proceeded to mock him, shaking her head, and babbling under her breath
throughout most of the speech and finally, in a nationally observed crescendo of disrespect,
ripped up her copy of the speech that she was handed by the President just prior
to his delivery.

Just like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

A professional adult acting exceedingly unprofessional.

And so what of…
Decorum?
Respect?
Professionalism?

Such public displays of childish behavior offered by our legislators are not what I want
my grandchildren to think appropriate or accepted.

“Pelosi’s act dishonored the institution and destroyed even the pretense of
civility and decorum in the House.
If this is the Speaker’s “drop the mike” moment,
it is a disgrace that should never be celebrated or repeated.
In a single act, she obliterated decades of tradition.”
Jonathan Turley

Over the past week, watching on and off some of the Impeachment hearings, I obviously
grew frustrated with the entire farce and waste of tax payer’s money.
That would be me and you and our money.

I grew tired of listening to the likes of Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler
rambling on and on while simply saying the same things over and over…

Our bipartisan divide has grown into such a deep, wide and empty void with the average
American sitting perched on the precipice.

Do not we the people not desperately want a bridge?
I should think that Americans want their Nation to work…
which means we have got to learn how to work together.

In 60 years of living…I have witnessed the typical, and often contentious, tit for tat
within our political parties…
There has been resentment, the blocking of bills, lies, and innuendos,
but throughout it all, in the end, most politicians have eventually understood that
there must be a compromise…there must be a give and take…
the reaching across the proverbial aisle in order to get things done for the betterment
of the Nation.

Yet the current thread of hate, disdain and the refusal to reach across party lines
have each become more and more assinine.

And so it was, in all of this frustration, there was a small story at the end of last week
that stopped me in the tracks of my tirade.

Jerry Nadler announced that he would not be present in this week’s wrap up of the
Impeachment hearings.
‘Thank the Lord’ I thought…. but it was the reason he gave for his absence which brought
me back to the essence of our humanness.

Jerry Nadler’s wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the end of the year.
And so I will assume that treatments are not going as they should as he announced that he needed
go home to be with his wife and family as they pondered their next steps.

The rabid dog who has been nipping at the heels of the President,
even before he won the election, is also a husband whose wife is battling cancer.

My heart went out to him, his wife and family.
I added them to my prayers.
Lifting them up to God’s special care during this difficult time.

Did Mr. Nadler stand to applaud Rush Limbaugh when he was spotlighted during the
State of the Union speech as he too is now battling cancer… stage 4 lung cancer.
The President awarded Mr. Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom Award.
I don’t know if Mr. Nadler stood to recognize a fellow human being who is now
also struggling.

But isn’t that the true heart of the matter here…our humanness?
That which makes us all more alike than different?

So I will echo what I wrote a few weeks back…
“It is so easy for me to fuss and cuss the idiocy taking place from both sides of the aisle
as these people, this body of governmental leadership, has put the running of our Nation’s
business on permanent hold as they wage a petty battle among themselves.

And for what?

Vindictiveness?

And so looking at the Bible sitting on that table, I got to thinking that I actually had
an opportunity. I could either fuss, cuss and lament about our Governmental leadership,
or lack thereof, or I could do something much more important—
I could pray”.

https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/waiting-rooms-and-prayer/

And so I will pray.
I ask if you might wish to join me.

Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our
heritage: We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove
ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will.
Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and
pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion;
from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend
our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes
brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue
with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust
the authority of government, that there may be justice and
peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we
may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth.
In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness,
and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail;
all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Book of Common Prayer

there is a crudeness about us…while the devolution is busy at work

The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent,
actor, director, producer, leading man;
and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order.
Crude, but true.
Hedy Lamarr

(Hedy Lamar staring in Tortila Flats 1942)

1930’s film star actress Hedy Lamarr seems to state the obvious in today’s quote…
yet most of Hollywood has opted to hide this dirty little, yet widely and openly known,
secret for decades.
However, suddenly as if out of nowhere, Hollywood is now in an uproar and aghast
over such open knowledge…think Harvey Weinstein.

Everyone knew.
Everyone played along.
Most everyone either participated or turned a blind eye…
Until one day…not everyone wanted to keep playing.

Ms Lamarr was born in Austria in 1914 to Jewish parents.
At the youthful age of 18, she stared in an Austrian film that became famous for its controversy.
The film, Ecstacy, was way before its time as it was complete with nudity and
and for an added bonus provided an up close orgasm for good effect.

Lamarr became famous for this staring role although the film was rejected by
Feminist groups here in the United States while being hailed as extremely artistic
throughout Europe.

My how times have changed.

During that same time, the young Hedy married a much older and wealthy Austrian
ammunition manufacturer.
He was very controlling of his young wife, treating her more like a treasured doll.
He despised the racy film and actually forbade her from ever acting again.
Lamarr’s life now mirrored the very plot of that film.

Life imitating art, or so it seemed.

No longer able to feel as if she could breathe, Hedy eventually fled to Paris and
later London where she met Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer fame,
who hired her for the American film industry.

Married 6 times, Ms. Lamar was more than just a 1930’s / 1940’s bombshell actress.
It seems that Ms. Lamar had a brain.
A rather highly functioning brain yet one that lacked formal training.

Although Lamarr had no formal training and was primarily self-taught,
she worked in her spare time on various hobbies and inventions,
which included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water
to create a carbonated drink. The beverage was unsuccessful;
Lamarr herself said it tasted like Alka-Seltzer.
An unrelated effort resulted in Fizzies, which became a cultural icon of the 1950s-60s.

Among the few who knew of Lamarr’s inventiveness was aviation tycoon Howard Hughes.
Lamarr discussed her relationship with Hughes during an interview,
saying that while they dated, he actively supported her “tinkering” hobbies.
He put his team of science engineers at her disposal,
saying they would do or make anything she asked for.

During World War II, Lamarr learned that radio-controlled torpedoes,
an emerging technology in naval war, could easily be jammed and set off course.
She thought of creating a frequency-hopping signal that could not be tracked or jammed.
She contacted her friend, composer and pianist George Antheil,
to help her develop a device for doing that,
and he succeeded by synchronizing a miniaturized player-piano mechanism with radio signals.
They drafted designs for the frequency-hopping system, which they patented.

Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s,
the principles of their work are arguably incorporated into Bluetooth technology,
and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi.
This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
(Wikipedia)

Both smart and inventive, Ms. Lamar remained in the film industry for most of her adult
life until her career, along with her age, began to wane in the late 1950’s and early 60’s.

Sadly, in her older age, she was caught shoplifting twice.
It seems that Lamarr had fallen on dire financial straits.

Eventually, she shut herself away from any sort of public life or visible contact with
the outside world..including her own two children.
She died in 2000 in Florida at the age of 85.

And so whereas Ms. Lamar’s words continue to reach out to us from a distant past,
her words manage to shine a forgotten light on a continuing dark entertainment industry…
an industry our society and culture oddly continue to worship and adore.

We allow these paid performers to do and say things we would never accept from
anyone else.

Take for example the actor Robert De Niro….

The other day, my son and I had each read the latest brouhaha following that latest
gathering of all things elitist, Hollywood and entertainment.

It was the story of actor Robert De Niro’s expletive-laced tantrum while appearing on stage
at the Tony awards.

It seems as if he felt most compelled to do more than his part that evening which was to
simply introduce singer Bruce Springsteen.

Rather De Niro got on stage, and once to the mic, launched a foul-mouthed tirade regarding
the President of the United States.

“F” this and “F” that…he went on and on regarding President Trump.

Lord knows there have been plenty of presidents I’ve never cared for, but due to the fact that
I still hold respect for the office, not to mention respect for our country, I would never have
behaved as poorly as Mr. De Niro.

Never to publicly and verbally bash any one of our presidents, be they good or be they bad…
and since we seem to live in a democracy, a place where folks actually get to vote for
the person of their choice, I’ve had to learn to just grin and bear it through those
years that it was obviously not my choice.

It’s what we do in a democracy.
We vote.
And then we in turn live with the results…be they good or be they bad.

Then as the next election rolls around,
we get out when the time is right and rally toward the hoped for.

We call such actions living with…restraint, decorum, and civility.
Three things Mr. De Niro obviously is lacking.

The same article in our morning’s reading next moved on the story regarding talk show
host Bill Maher and his own public proclamation that the best we can hope for is a recession.

Huh?

It seems that in Mr. Mayers skewed thought process a recession is just what the country
needs to get rid of the President.

A recession, really???

The unemployment rate is at the lowest it’s been in years–a 48 year low actually.
It is the best rate for both Blacks and Hispanics that it’s been in decades…if ever.
The economy is equally making great strides as it continues to grow as small businesses
are reporting a feeling of stability and even improvement.

And yet we’ve got an overpaid celebrity whining that we need a recession as that is the only
way we will be able to rid ourselves of the current sitting president.

A president who has negatively impacted our growth and stability how???

“Sure,” Maher says “because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy.
So please, bring on the recession,” he said.
“Sorry if that hurts people, but it’s either root for a recession or you lose your democracy.”

Oh really?

Perhaps that’s easy for a multimillionaire elitest entertainer to say.
A recession would not hurt Mr. Maher nor Mr. De Niro not as it would hurt most of
middle to lower income America.

My 30-year-old son turns to me after having read all of this craziness and asks
“why would anyone want something bad to happen to this Country??”

And I’m left scratching my head because I’m lost for any sane answer.

Why shoot yourself in the foot?
Just like draft dodgers literally did…as a last resort from being drafted.

They were willing to risk a limb to save their life,
Maher is willing to risk others lives to cut what he considers
to be a bad limb.

The devolution of our society is in full swing.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him,
but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of
the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and
birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual
impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie,
and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—
who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.
Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were
inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men,
and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God,
so God gave them over to a depraved mind,
so that they do what ought not to be done.
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.
They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.
They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful;
they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death,
they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1:21-32

the sustenance of existence …

“The last degree of love is when He gave Himself to us to be our Food;
because He gave Himself to be united with us in every way.”
St. Bernardine of Siena

(lemons to be / Julie Cook / 2018)

Sometimes I get busy.

I get distracted.

Some might even say that my distraction is more than that of “normal” people…

I simply call it brain multi-tasking…
Others may call it scattered or ADD or unfocused…

Whatever…

Yet it is in those moments, those days, those weeks, those chapters of life that
I seem to allow myself to become consumed.

I become consumed by the demands of a world that may or may not be good.

And as I am consumed…thinking that I am focused, going through the motions,
doing that stuff that needs doing…
I then become tired, irritable, out of sorts, short, curt, ill-tempered, mean,
hateful, mean-spirited, disrespectful, ungrateful, arrogant, self-serving…

You can see where this is going right?

It’s a journey going down into a dark hole.

Yet I continue to rationalize my busyness, my preoccupations, my activities, my doings
my demeanor, my unappealing self…

“Who has time for anything other than______???!!!” (fill in the blank)
as I hear my inner-self rationalizing an ever-increasing darkening journey…

Yet Saint Bernardine of Siena’s words have stopped me in my tracks this morning…
As I am pulled immediately and abruptly back into my own reality…

The one piece of the maddening puzzle that is missing…

That of loving nourishment…

Jesus gave himself as my food.

Food as in…
“This is my body…take and eat…

My sustenance,
my nourishment,
and the sustaining of my actual existence…

The host that feeds both my body and soul…

His very self which is to be consumed by me who is starving and yet who is totally
unaware of how malnourished I’ve allowed myself to actually become.

A food bound by a tie of immense and all-encompassing Love

Another dynamic saint once said,
“…I will not be a burden, for I want not what is yours, but you…
I will most gladly spend and be utterly spent for your sakes” (2 Corinthians 12:14).
There is danger that we see only the whirlwind of activity in the Bernardines of
faith—taking care of the sick, preaching, studying,
administering, always driving—and forget the source of their energy.
We should not say that Bernardine could have been a great contemplative if
he had had the chance.
He had the chance, every day, and he took it.
Franciscan Media

But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
John 4:32-34

God is laughing

“I love people who make me laugh.
I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh.
It cures a multitude of ills.
It’s probably the most important thing in a person.”
Audrey Hepburn

(A closeup shot of Pere(Father) Jacques Marquette, a 17th-century Jesuit missionary and explorer of New France, along with his visiting gull pal, whose statue graces the central green on Mackinac Island, MI / Julie Cook / 2017)

Sometimes I feel like one of those poor city statues…you know the ones…
those once well thought of monuments to those once notable figures
which are now more of less forgotten to time and are relegated to being a
resting spot for both weary tourists and disprespectful birds.

Now whereas Fr Marquette’s statue is looking rather regal and very clean,
not yet having been “desecrated” on this particular day with the random and
less than nobel telltale signatures left by resting birds—
I just can’t help but feel that my life lately is that of such a statue…

I feel as if I’ve become just another old forgotten statue that currently
has an entire flock of birds resting on my head,
just waiting for the moment when the commanding bird gives the signal for the
troops to simultaneously do what it is they do…
all the while, being simply left to their mercy.

And then it would be just like God, or so I would imagine,
who’d be the first one to laugh.
Yet what a joyful laugh it would be….

For you see I tend to take life seriously….
a little too seriously…

I tend to think things are a big deal.
I allow myself to get all worked up and bent out of shape when my
seemingly grandiose, well thought out,
detailed plans get all skewed as I watch everything I’ll have worked so hard over
collide head-on with the proverbial Murphy of Murphy’s law.

I can come unglued and unraveled as I sit in the midst of the debris…
sadly picking up the pieces, while crying over my life’s spilled milk….
As I furiously and frustratingly try to figure out the lessons
I’m to find in the current spate of misfortune, error, accident and
simple run of bad luck that has all come my way.

For you see I believe things in this life are never random—
everything has a purpose and a plan.

God has a plan in not only the good events of life…
but more importantly and most especially, His plans are even found in the
bad events…

And being the ever impatient one, I try to quickly figure it all out so the
current run of misery will not seem to be all for naught….

And then He laughs because He knows it’s really a matter of His timing
and not mine.

I have a post to write—a little self deprecating post but one filled with lots
of humor.
All because I was much like someone sitting in the middle of one of those
Chevy Chase family vacation movies last week during the little trip my husband
and I had taken—
if it was to go wrong,
it would…
and boy… did it ever…
over and over and over.

First there were the tears of utter frustration as I saw our precious “away”
time being bombarded by misfortune…
with my poor husband trying to offer comfort.
The smart man knew it was best that he keep his temper and composure over
our relentless misfortune and misadventure as I was likely to come totally
unglued…
And not knowing if anyone could survive a total meltdown by his now
distraught wife—heck I didn’t know if I could survive such a self implosion
as I’ve never had a total crumbling….
he managed to keep his cool–something he’s usually not good at doing.

However by week’s end, it all became almost comical…
the kind of stuff one looks back on when fondly remembering some of life’s
greater adventures.

Yet when we got back home, trying to put things back into the play of routine,
there came word of something else–something, when compared to all that we’d
just been through, went totally over the top.

For this latest “event” has now put the icing on the cake…
which in turn is giving me grand pause to sit back and see that God has
indeed had the final teaching moment…

And it all is culminating with God delightfully laughing…
Laughing a grand ol belly laugh full of love and full of hope and full of joy…

and soon, when life slows down, at least just a tad,
and I find myself caught back up with things here…
I’ll share my tale…
One in which we will all be able to commiserate together and then joyously laugh
triumphantly…

Sarah then said,
“God has given me cause to laugh,
and all who hear of it will laugh with me.
Genesis 21:6

disrespect found in a den of iniquity

Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality,
but from several–from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others,
from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought,
from contempt of others, from jealousy.
Jean De La Bruyere

(the 2017 Jeopardy college championship, with our little friend from Stanford on the far right)

Disrespect….

I’m pretty certain that I’ve rambled on about this little topic before…
and here I am finding myself, once again, addressing the whole
notion of respect vs disrespect, morality vs immorality…
as I caught a little story in the news this morning that has left me troubled…

And it seems as if the story centers on, of all things, the college
championship competition on Jeopardy…
as if sadly, nothing is currently off limits…
particularly when it comes to this notion of respect…
even the benign bastion of all things related to trivia being apparently fair game…

Disrespect, which actually walks hand in hand with it’s first cousin immorality,
as in each are the mirror effect of respect and morality,
are two negative human traits that if left unchecked, unaddressed….
two actions that left either ignored or simply tolerated,
are two of the key undoings of any society.

For disrespect, and its cousin immorality, lead directly to the erosion of civility.
The erosion of civility, in turn, is the undermining of any civilization…
all of which leads directly to anarchy.

Throughout much of the history of humankind, it has been the youthful ones
who have had the most trouble with these two notions…
that of both respect and morality.

There is a time in all growing up when these two choices, or perhaps more aptly put,
decisions in behavior, come powerfully and dangerously into, well, jeopardy.
Be it testing the waters with a devil may care lifestyle,
the growing pains found in a struggle for independence or simply part and parcel
of growing up… that time period between late adolescence and early adulthood
is a murky pool swarming with defiance, emotional roller coasters and lots of
poor choices…

In times past, society had done well to nurture its angst filled youth through these
troubling waters…
today however, we are witnessing a dangerous anomaly taking place on
college campuses all across the country….
An enabling of the molly coddling coupled by a dangerous ideology of a liberal manifesto
found not in what was once considered to be the bulwarks of higher education but rather
now found in places that are considered nothing more then dens of iniquity.

Society now not only tolerates the anger filled intolerance of the self-centered youth,
it is embracing it and them with a heinous zeal while affording these young people the
luxury of living a Peter Pan type of lifestyle…as in never having to grow up and
accepting responsibility for the poor choices of their negative actions.

On this particular Jeopardy episode, three kids from various colleges were competing
for the college championship.
During the brief meet and greet portion of the show, Alex asked each student
a question allowing them a brief time of explanation.

One nice looking young man from Stanford was asked a question about his major.
While answering Alex’s question, this young man was, it appeared, to be not only
talking with his hands as he responded to the question,
but one hand was actually raised while he was coyly shooting a bird for the cameras.
For roughly 10 seconds, this kid talked while shooting a bird on national television.

I actually saw this particular episode and never noticed.
But why would I….
why would I think a competitor would want to act like a fool on a national platform?
Alex apparently didn’t notice either.
But Twitter noticed.

Someone tweeted out about the incident with the student quickly responding,
“damn right I did”

Really??

Now why pray tell would some kid, who is sporting the sweatshirt of his college,
proud to be representing his college in a national televised competition want to
show his butt by shooting a bird while casually explaining his college major
to the host of the show?

Rude comes to mind.
As well as selfish.
Selfcentered.
Arrogant…
Disrespectful…

I was angry.
Mad at this blatant act of total disrespect to not only Alex the host, but to
the crew, this student’s fellow competitors, his parents, the audience..
both in the studio and those of us at home.

So now, as a society, do we decide to tolerate this cheeky kid’s behavior?
Do we choose to ignore his disrespectful behavior?
Do we opt to laugh it off as merely brash?
Do we simply chalk it up to youthful ignorance?
Do we shrug it off as just a kid being kid…?

Or do we say enough.

Do we say grow up kid.
Man up, as it were.
Step up to the what it means to be and act like an adult.
Do we respond with a “you think you’re so smart, then act it?”

Maybe his winnings should be forfeited for his disrespectful behavior…
Maybe Stanford should be reminded about the type of “ambassadors”
they’re sending out as representatives of their fine institution of all
things educational.
Maybe it would behoove all of us to recall that actions, all actions,
have consequences…
instead we’ve chosen to turn a collective blind eye to
poor behavior….

Having a lack of respect leads not merely to the obvious opposite of disrespect…
but rather it leads to contempt…
contempt of both one’s self as well as others…
eventually leading us all down the chaotic path to the loss of soul
found only in anarchy.

http://nypost.com/2017/02/24/jeopardy-contestant-gives-trebek-the-finger/

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’
You blind fools!

You snakes!
You brood of vipers!
How will you escape being condemned to hell?
Matthew 23:13-17,33)