Saturday, August 29, 2009

Old Iron, '09

Greetings all. I took in the annual Pioneer Power antique tractor show in Le Sueur, MN on Friday, and here's some of the highlights of this year's show.





















a) Abraham Lincoln




















b) Old guy in Batman baseball cap. Its hard to see, but trust me. He's the guy with the sweater over his shoulders.




















c) Lemonade.

Also of interest, saw a guy with big black rimmed glasses like my great-uncle Kermit used to wear. Also saw a guy with a big, curled moustache. (No photos available.) And yes, there were some old tractors there too.

Matt

Monday, August 24, 2009

Birdie!


#3 hole at Oak Marsh, Oakdale, MN.
Par 3. 40' Putt from the fringe of the green.

8-23-09.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Love is the Thing

Its been a tough week. After golfing Monday through Friday last week, it decided to rain this week, curtailing my diversions. Growing wearing of watching "Happy Gilmore" I lured my retired friend out to the course on Thursday under the advisement of the weather channel's "we should be okay for a few hours" forecast.

Not so. It sprinkled, then it rained. Then it stopped, and all seemed well. Then it the monsoon-like torrential downpours ensued. Throughout all the head scratching as to why we were there, 3 things occurred to me: 1) No rush. There were no groups following us, and not ahead meant we could play at the pace we liked. 2). Quiet as the grave. Well, quiet as a rainstorm, anyways. 3). We actually didn't play that much worse than usually. I made one par and my friend made 2. That's a good day for us. We also found this course has lousy coffee.*

But that isn't what this post is about. If you've been following the blog, and I'm told there's no less than 3 of you that read the last post(!), you've read that the message of Jesus is that of Love. It is the simplest of messages, yet often the hardest to practice. Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus understood everyone loves themselves, so he said that if we only loved others as much, the world would be so much better off.

Enter the next book on my shelf: "How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships" as written by the 14th Dalai Lama.

Here's your warning: don't read any further if you're uncomfortable with this idea that religions other than Christianity might have some helpful insight. Or that Christianity "is a relationship, not a religion." This book isn't so much a Buddhist document as it is a practical life application text. There is some overlap to be read with a discerning eye. This is the difference between being "open minded" and "empty minded." Basically, don't believe everything your read. Less of what you hear. But you can still listen and process new information.

The intro of the book is an explanation that the Dalai Lama talks of love and compassion not as a Buddhist, but as a fellow human being. This is this tone he sets for the book.

Throughout the text, the Dalai Lama repeats a common theme, as I indicated Jesus also spoke of above: Love one another. He uses the example of looking at yourself from a third person's vantage point. There's "You", the selfish, greedy, hoarding person you are, and next to you is a group of 100 people, with afflictions and impoverished. From the third person's point of view, it is hard to see why "You" do not share what you have with all those suffering.

Suffering a an important subject in Buddhist teaching. The logic goes that suffering comes from desiring something you don't have but would like (sometimes such that one would say you "Need", but rarely do). Thus, being content with what we have negates suffering and promotes happiness.

"Contentment is the key. If you have contentment with material things, you are truly rich. Without it, even if you are a billionaire, you will not have happiness. You will always feel hungry and want more and more and more, making you not rich but poor." (p. 111)

The idea is to find contentment with what you have rather than looking for what next toy to buy to make you temporarily happy. Once you are content, material hoarding no longer looks appealing and this allows you to help our fellow humans.

In a series of meditation points, The Dalai Lama says that we ought to extend love not only to our closest relatives and friends, but also people we dont' know and even our enemies - those that actively oppose us. Now wait, Meditation Matt? Are you jumping off the deep end? Well, if you know me, you know I'm a little removed from reality to begin with. I might cite an earlier blog about Cataphatic Prayer, which is basically the same concept as meditation. The Apostle Paul calls us to meditate on the scriptures. If you don't like any of these answers, just consider it "thinking about" loving others. But thinking profoundly, and really focusing on it. If you see yourself being kind to specific others when you're not around them, you would become more apt to be kind when you actually are.

The next point is the Dalai Lama backs up the need to love one another based on Reincarnation; we've all be born innumerable times, so everyone at some point has been your nurturing mother or best friend at some point. Every enemy has been your best friend before. Every current friend was once an enemy. So it makes no difference who they are now, we ought to love one another.

I'm not so sure about the reincarnation bit. Mostly I just skimmed over that. Its an interesting theory to think about. In some sense the Dalai Lama here is saying we ought to Love one another to balance out our karma and achieve enlightenment, just as Jesus taught to Love one another so that we might reach heaven. In that sense, its the same Quid Pro Quo rationale, but I think both would argue that isn't the purpose. We ought to love one another because that should be important to us. The reward is not to be the focus.

Another point the Dalai Lama makes is that we should not take any measure of joy in others' suffering. This is often easy to do if they are a bad person, political opponent, or just someone you don't like for whatever reason. Western Philosophy calls this Schadenfreude. So the Dalai Lama is essentially saying that Schadenfreude is not a virtue (p. 138).

Later in the book, speaking of suffering is concept of recognizing our capabilities to overcome situations. Citing an anecdote of personal experience, the Dalai Lama advises that, "If you can do something about a problem, do it; if it is impossible, worry is useless." (p. 151). After considering this, he said he was put at ease in a stressful situation, for it was out of his hands. This reminds me of the saying about knowing the difference between something I can change and something I cannot.

A final note comes on the topic of using others for personal gain. The Dalai Lama asks the reader to consider, "Should everyone be used for my attainment of happiness, or should I help others gain happiness?" (p. 173). I heard a similar question posed in a church service: Should we use people and love things, or love people and use things?

Jesus had little use for things and loved people.

Love one another.


---
* Note 1: Picture from above is from a different golf course on a different day. Just here for visual aid. It was far too rainy to be taking pictures.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Good News!

Good News!

Its happened again. I've completely read through the religious texts of Christianity in their entirety. A few years ago, (sometime after 2001, I think?) I ran across a copy of the Good News Bible with Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha, with an endorsement from the former Blue Earth Priest, Father Tighe. I had been meaning to get a Good News Bible, as they have little stick figure illustrations. Having read the thing, a rich commentary would have been more helpful. The Deuterocanonicals, aka "The Apocrypha" are a series of Books kept in the Bible by Roman Catholics, but protestants felt were helpful,

but not the divine Word of God, so they were set aside. Like most protestants, I was largely unaware of this and had never heard of these other books. Predominantly history books of Israel, there's a lot of overlap with the other history books. The Wisdom of Solomon is pretty good, something on the same level as the Proverbs.


So here's the Breakdown:

Old Testament: 1,041 pages
Deuterocanonicals/Aprocrypha: 217 pages
"Some Additional Books" (1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh): 59 Pages
New Testament: 354 Pages

Grand Total: 1,671 pages

In short, that's one large book, and small wonder why many adherents don't read the thing.

The admonition I've received over the years is to read the Bible through, especially coinciding with a calendar year. The best rationale I can come up with for this is that it makes for easy "New Years' Resolution Sermon fodder." Seriously, I don't see the connection. There are 66 books in the Protestant Bible, so why not do one a week, and be done in 66 weeks instead of 52? or read 11 a month and be done in half a year?
The short answer is that a year works out to Christians can do without too much trouble, and still feel pius about their religiosity. I'm not entirely sure who all reads this, so let me clarify for those chanting "its a relationship, not a religion!" That cliche hurting my ears aside, It isn't accurate in terms of the mandate of reading the Bible through in one swoop around the sun. Breaking down to 4 chapters a day, the reader spends 75% of the year in the Old Testament. While I admit that the OT is important, much of it is largely irrelevant (have you memorized the geneologies of Numbers? Do you obey ALL of the Levitican laws, or just the ones you like?) or incredibly dry histories of wars that happened a long time ago, or are prophecies by Israelites and For the Israelites, not to be taken out of context and applied to (insert your nation here). You might say that Christ brought us into the fold and therefore it does apply to us. It depends on the passage, and that's not my rant here. I was talking about the Old Testament reading is largely religious. Plodding along and not getting much out of the OT can be nothing short of the definition of Religion. I asked myself quite a few times, "why am I reading this? Oh, because I'm told that I'm supposed to." I heard of one theologian who said that if the Holy Spirit has come upon us as Christ said, we really don't need to check the book, just check with the HS, so he recommended "religiously burning Bibles." Extreme, yes, but he makes an interesting point.

Christians are not the Israelites of the Old Testament. Christians sometimes use select Levitican laws to back up being hostile towards homosexuals, but these same people wear clothes made of two different plants, or they eat pork, or have tattoos, or any number of these rules. Why is this? My theory is that people were told to read the Bible, and spending 3/4 of their time in the OT, have adopted OT rules. The apostle Paul says something about a baby must drink milk before it moves on to solid food. That's what needs to be done here. It is my opinion, that, rather than spending so much time in the OT, which gives supporting documentation to the New Testament, Christians ought to spend the majority of their time in the New Testament.
Rather than spending 3/4 of a year reading the OT, spend 3/4 of the year reading the New Testament. That means reading the New Testament 9 times for each trip through the OT. "Wait, that's an insane amount of reading!" you exclaim. Yes, yes it is. So don't read it all in a year, but get a firm grip on the teachings of Christ before you wander around the Old Testament. I'd go even further and say that much of the New Testament, like the epistles, are letters specifically written to unique churches addressing particular problems. We can gain a lot of insight from these, but its not an exhaustive list of what we should and should not do. Therefore, maybe it would be best to read the Gospels moreso than the rest of the NT. Again, this poses the concern of the Gospels making up much less of the NT than the rest. So what? If we don't adhere to Christ's basic teachings, what good is it to study Revelations again and again? There's a movement called "Red Letter Christians" a reference to some Bibles having the words of Jesus in red letters. They try to live their life by these words. To me, this seems redundant. If you're not following Jesus' words and at least trying to live by them, you're hardly a Christian.

Here's a simple quiz to prove my point about Christians not knowing Jesus' basic teachings:

Question 1)

What is the greatest commandment?

a) Love your neighbor as yourself.

b) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

c) You shall not commit murder.

d) You shall not steal.


Question 2)

What is the greatest commandment?

a) Love your neighbor as yourself.

b) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

c) You shall not commit murder.

d) Honor the Sabbath Day and Keep it Holy.


Question 3)
Who is my neighbor?

a) My friend

b) everyone

c) my relatives

d) people who live close to me


Question 4)
Someone has wronged me, yet again. How many times must I forgive him?

a)Just once.

b) 7 Times

c) 70 Times

d) 490 times


Question 5)
What must I do to get to heaven?

a) Good Deeds

b) Pray 3 times daily

c) Believe that Jesus is the Son of God

d) Be kind and live better than at least some other people you know


Short answer.

Question 6)

What is the message of the Wise Man who built his house on the rock vs the foolish man who built his house on the sand?

Question 7)

Jesus follows up the Beatitudes with teachings on Anger, Adultery, Charity, Prayer, and Fasting. What is he getting at here?


Question 8)

Jesus addressed the concept of eating unclean things. What was his point?

Question 9)

Jesus said many things about money. What is the gist?

Question 10)

Along with the idea that we ought to love one another, Jesus spoke about forgiveness in connection. Provide an example of this.



1). b. Matthew 22:38
2). a. Matthew 22:39. Give yourself half points if you swapped a&b.
3). b. Luke 10:25-37. The parable of the Good Samaritan indicates our neighbors include even people groups we dislike.
4). d. 70 times 7. Probably a flowery way of saying, "you will lost track of the number of times you forgive someone, but you still should." Matthew 18:21-35. The parable of the Unforgiving Servant explains that God forgave us much more than any wrong anyone else could do to us, so if we want to be forgiven, we must be equally as forgiving.
5). c. John 3:16. Jesus tells Nicodemus that if he Believes, he will have eternal life.
6). Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49. This references listening to the words of Jesus and obeying them, vs listening and not obeying.
7). Matthew 5:17-6:34 In a nutshell, Jesus says follow the spirit of the law, not just the letter. Don't just not murder someone, don't be angry. Don't just not actually commit adultery, don't even think about it. Don't show off how much you are praying, fasting or giving to the poor, then you're just being prideful.
8). Matthew 15:16-20; Mark 7:14-23. Jesus says that eating without washing your hands doesn't make you unclean. Doesn't matter what you eat, for that matter. Things that you say, however can make you unclean.
9). Best summarized in The question about paying taxes (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26), Jesus said money has Caesar's picture on it, so pay taxes to Caesar. Basically, we ought to trust God to provide and not worry about money, lest it become more important to us than God.
10) A poignant example is as Jesus hung upon the cross, he asked God to "forgive them, for they know not what they do" Luke 23:34. Even in death, Jesus forgave his fellow man. Would you forgive someone who was in the process of killing you unjustly?

Okay, so the answers are not exhaustive, you may have some different ideas on the short answer. The point is that the Gospels offer rich teachings which Christians can - should - ought to apply to everyday life. So if you're insistent upon bible reading each and every day, I think one's studies should primarily be the Gospels.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Unnecessary War

Political pundit Patrick J. Buchanan put forth his divergent view that World War II was an unnecessary battle which the British Empire and the West would have done well to avoid in "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World."

Buchanan has long been branded an isolationist, xenophobic, and lots of other things, but his account of WWII here is well researched.

The thesis Buchanan puts forth in the 400 page book is simple: Hitler was geared towards the East, not the West, and therefore allowing Hitler to battle against Stalin would have ground the two powers down at the expense of each other, leaving the West to fill the power vacuum created.

Wait, you say. Hitler was evil and had to be stopped. He murdered innocent Jews. His aggression in France and Norway as well as Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and later attacking Russia needed to be halted. Buchanan provides a detailed chronology, starting with events which lead to the first world war which provide some rationale to support his view. Obviously, stopping Hitler was a moral victory and the allied soldiers of WWII are to be regarded as nothing short of heroes. That's not the question Buchanan is asking. He's questioning what the West gained from our actions. Britain declared war on Germany as a response to German aggression in Poland, and France followed suit. Only then did Germany look west and overrun France, quelling opposition to the west took priority so that Hitler could again look to the East and conquer Russia.

So what would have happened if Britain had held back? Poland would not have been aided. But following WWII, they were handed over to Soviet rule, arguably worse for the Poles. By that narrow definition of the aims of the war, Britain did not accomplish its goal of securing Polish sovereignty.

But what of the Jews that Hitler killed? This is indeed a valid rationale for fighting WWII, but it wasn't the reason Britain and France declared war. Stalin also did his share of cleansing, so giving half of Europe to him following the war made life difficult for many, both Jews and Christians alike.

Do I agree with Buchanan's assessment? I don't know. Moreover, it doesn't change the past what I think about what Britain should or should not have done 70 years ago. Buchanan's postscript pertains to the future: America is going down the slope of the British Empire, working for democracy on a global scale. Rather than fighting wars in far away lands, we ought to focus on enriching our homeland (read: its the economy, stupid). A country which looks after the interests of others over our own soon finds itself weakened, just as the United Kingdom has become following their 'protection of Poland.'