Unapologetically Liberal

The stories that form us are also the stories that help to shape our political beliefs.  The word on the street is that liberalism is a dying belief.  I guess that my story is the story of why I consider myself a committed lemming!  To this day, I proudly call myself a liberal American patriot.  I’m writing this article because it helps me to understand a little bit more about my core beliefs and about how my story has helped to shape and form those beliefs.

On November 22, 1963, I was a kindergartener and I was home with the mumps.  I was watching T.V. in the living room as my mother washed dishes in the kitchen.  Suddenly, my regularly scheduled program was interrupted for a special announcement.  I did not understand what the announcer was saying until after it was explained to me.  The announcer said that some guy named “President Kenny” was shot. 

“Mommy, the guy on the T.V. said that some guy was shot.  I think his name is Kenny or something.  He’s the president or something I think?”

“Jeff, don’t ever joke that way,” she said.  It seemed that she was angry.

And then I think it occurred to her that I was way too young to make such a joke, that I probably didn’t even know who this “Kenny” fellow was.  I then saw something that I’ve never seen before or since.  I saw my mommy look back down at the dishes, visibly weak as she feebly continued to try to wash them and as tears rolled down her face.  This “Kenny” fellow must have been very important to make my mommy cry.

And then there was 1968.  My mom took me down to Lloyd Center sometime in May of that year.  I was able to reach my hand out and touch this politician’s hand.  Mom said he was very important.  He was the younger brother of that other guy, the one who had died on the day that mom cried.  I touched Bobby Kennedy’s hand in 1968!  To this day it sends chills down my spine.  I touched Bobby’s hand!!!  I was too young to remember what exactly Bobby had said but I will always remember that his words were words of great hope, words that would make a difference for people, that would make our lives better.  I reached out and shook Bobby Kennedy’s hand that day.  It meant so much to me that we stopped by the campaign headquarters a few days later.  I picked up campaign literature and handed it out at a neighbor grocery store.  I stayed up late on the night of the California primary but not late enough to hear all the news.  I can’t remember whether mom and dad woke me late that night or early in the morning to tell me the bad, bad news but I do remember looking at Bobby’s picture on his campaign poster that was on my wall and intentionally changing my hairstyle so that I parted it exactly the same way as Robert Francis Kennedy.

Life would never the same in this country nor would it ever be the same for this fourth grader with the new hairstyle.  The death of Bobby, wedged in between the King assassination, the Democratic National Convention, the Anti-war movement, seemed like the death of hope itself to me and many others.  That all cemented me firmly in the liberal camp and helped me to see politics as an ongoing battle where good was not always triumphant over bad.

In the simplest of definitions, liberalism is, according to Wikipedia, the belief in the importance of individual liberty and equal rights.  My definition is a bit of a jump from the Wikipedia definition but, as I look back on history, the great liberal impulse in our society has been towards the “civilizing” of our country and sometimes of our world.  Liberals are into creating a country that is geographically big enough and governmentally bold enough to provide equal benefits and opportunities to everyone.  In this sense, the Louisiana Purchase and what ensued from that purchase are a classic example of the good and the bad of liberal expansion at work.  When we bought so much land, we also bought so much opportunity for the people in our country who were down on their luck.  We didn’t have that opportunity before when all of our lands had become tighter and less available.  We then settled or civilized that land over a couple of centuries by building an infrastructure of transportation, communication and government protection.  We also tried to “civilize” those who we perceived to be less “civil” and less progressive such as the savages as we called them in those days.  It really was a part of the negative side of the liberal impulse to "liberate" everyone else whether they wanted it or not and so we “conquered” the savagery of the savages as well as conquering the savage West.

As I review the development of my own perceptions over time, it is this idea of progressively “civilizing” the world that first grabbed my attention.  My icon of America in my early life was the airplane and the rocket ship.  In fact, as “metrosexual” as I now seem, I will never forget the time in my life when I wrote Lockheed, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas to request publicity packets of their rockets and their airplanes. When these packets arrived, I opened up all of the pictures and pinned them to my wall and I admired them and revered them like they were Miss January and Miss February.  That was the first America that I remember.  I lined my walls with airplanes, rocket ships and Bobby Kennedy campaign memorabilia because that was what America was all about and I read Captain America comic books like they were going out of style.  We were the most advanced society in all of history and we were going to bring the rest of the world into this new modern era.  When I thought of America, I wrapped these pictures up in a ball along with big words like liberty, equality and justice and I claimed that this was what America was all about.  It was so big and bright and beautiful that I could not understand how the rest of the world would not want it.  To this day, when I defend the roots of liberalism, I try to remind people that we would not be here, in Washington State, with telephones and railroads and cars and airplanes and running water and sewer systems and electricity and even the internet if it were not for the singular passion of our activist LIBERAL government to civilize the West and make this land not only inhabitable but abundant for all who resided here.

Another way of saying all this is to say that I am a liberal because, or rather, “in order to…” form a perfect union.  That’s the American part of the vision.  We are thereby a country founded upon the social contract.  In a “social contract, we choose to give up our “beastliness”—our battle of all against all, if you will--and turn over that power to a sovereign or a unified power in exchange for the protections and the comforts that this unity of power provides.  The American experiment came together as a social contract and its founders chose a specific language in the preamble to the constitution:  “in order to form a more perfect union”.  This is the “city on a hill” vision of America, what Roosevelt called the Great  Society, what Johnson called the New Frontier.  We band together to form something much greater than ourselves.

Now, I repeat, there have been many occasions where our goal to civilize has been the source of folly.  I already mentioned the conquest of the Native Americans.  There have been many other occasions both within this nation and in international affairs where we have thrust our concept of civilization and of morality upon other cultures and individuals to disastrous effect.  I am quick to admit that this American imperialism, whether it is imperialism towards national and cultural difference outside of our boundaries or imperialism towards culture and moral difference inside of our boundaries, is also a part of the heritage of liberalism, or at least my perspective on liberalism.  Modern liberalism is far less quick to act imperialistically today because of the many lessons we have learned about ourselves over the centuries.

It was also later in the same year that Bobby died that I started working.  Pretty weird, huh?  Working in the fourth grade.  I had a paper route.  My parents let me bicycle around the neighborhood (which was, incidentally, on a busy highway—how times have changed) and give out newspapers once a week.  I also went door to door collecting and soliciting subscriptions…in the fourth grade.  I remember the young man who trained me how to deliver newspapers.  He was about 21 and he seemed to be angry all the time.  I used to talk to him about the things about which I cared:  my Bobby Kennedy, my Captain America comics, my rocket ships.  And he kept telling me that I would change, that I would not see things in the same way later in life.  He was so angry that he sometimes scared me and yet he seemed to like me.  I don’t think he ever would hurt me.  He had been a soldier and so he was something of a hero to me.  He had just come back from a place called Vietnam and he said that it had somehow changed him and not in a very good way.  Modern liberals bare deep, permanent scars from this time in our country’s history and the role that we played in that war.

While I still see the family resemblance between the liberal progressivism of nation building in the past and the liberal progressivism of today, I am more aware of the fundamental commitment of liberals to equal rights and equal opportunity than I am to this vision of “civilizing” the world.  I think it is here where we find the greatest difference between conservatives and liberals.  The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal”.  From what I can tell, conservatives tend to believe that to be true.  Conservatives believe that the playing field is naturally leveled and that everybody starts at about the same spot.  While some may be lacking in initial affluence and upbringing, they can make up for it by rolling up their sleeves and participating in the American dream.

Liberals, on the other hand, are not so quick to accept that belief.  Now back in the days of the open frontier, when land was available dirt cheap to all who wished to inhabit it, the playing field had more potential to be equal.  Once the frontier lands ran out, however, around the start of the twentieth century, opportunities became far less plentiful.  The liberal believes that, where the starting line is not even, it must be evened out and it is the responsibility of government to even it out.  The liberal also believes, or at least this liberal believes, that there is a lot of good old fashioned kismet or blind faith that leads to one having wealth and another not having it.  There is not, in other words, a clear path of competence and hard work that leads all who want it badly enough to wealth and affluence (and isn’t it funny that the wealthy who always believe in this path and the less fortunate are the ones who do not).  In other words, it simply is not true that God materially rewards those who work hard and are “good” and punishes those who are not.  Not only, therefore, does the starting line, have to be leveled but government also has the responsibility to provide opportunity (that’s different than a free handout) to those who are down on their luck.

On Wednesday, April 21, 2009, I was watching Jennifer Garner on Idol Gives Back.  She was visiting an area near her own home, somewhere in the Catskills.  She learned that the literacy rate among the poor in this region was something like 33% as against the 70% among richer regions.  She reflected on that and then repeated, “it’s not fair, it’s just not fair”.  American liberalism is based upon the great American belief that the starting block should be the same for all.  Liberalism is about leveling the playing field, making it so that the starting gate truly is the same for everyone.  I tend to believe that this same yearning and revelation is what inspired the Kennedys.  They knew that they had a leg up.  They wanted to make sure that all Americans had the same opportunities that they had.  And we’re not talking here just about black versus white or woman versus man.  We’re talking about the fact that the poor remain poor and the rich remain rich and it’s not just because the poor are “lazy” and the rich are ambitious.  It takes a combination of skill, ambition and just plain old good luck to become one of the privileged.  Even where skill and ambition are available in good supply, the tides may not turn in your direction.

I go back to Thomas Jefferson when I think about the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives (and, no, I am not necessarily claiming that Jefferson would be a liberal or a conservative if he were alive today—he would probably be appalled by both options).  When Jefferson envisioned this capitalist republic of ours, he thought it might be a good idea to eliminate the whole idea of inheritance in order to level things out a bit.  He wanted us all to start out of the same starting blocks at the same time.  Of course, in Jefferson’s world, he was mostly hopeful that all white males would start out of an even gate together but the point remains the same.  Jefferson understood that the playing field is tilted and uneven and that something needs to be done to level it out.  That’s where government comes in (not Jefferson here, but me).

We are now to the point in history where we begrudgingly have to admit that Ronald Reagan changed the course of our politics forever.  One of the phenomena that R squared brought to the table was the anecdote.  During the eighties, we also stopped listening to statistics and facts and started listening to stories about peoples lives.  For better and for worse, Reagan had much to do with this.

Of course, the great Reagan stories in his attacks on liberalism always centered on the person who was cheating the welfare system.  Sometimes it seemed as if Reagan’s viewpoint on poor and working America is that they were all looking for a handout and government seemed more than willing to provide that handout.  I don’t disagree with the idea that sometimes this is true.  I confess that I am not quick open my window and give money to people at intersections and freeway exits for that reason.  If I were less lazy, least cheat and  and less cheap, I would get off my butt and buy some MacDonald’s $1.00 gift certificates to hand to these people but right now I tend to give them nothing. 

I’m not going to try to argue with Reagan’s perspective concerning the welfare cheater.  There is no doubt that those people are out there.  I have no way of knowing what percentage of our beggars are middle class professionals but I know they are out there.  At the same time, I’m pretty sure that this impulse to want a handout is not present simply among the poor.  I must confess that I wouldn’t mind winning the lottery.  I’d be likely to take the money.  Likewise, if a rich aunt or uncle died and left me their fortune without giving my sister a dime, I’d probably earnestly express sympathy for her and give her a few buck but I’d keep the lion’s share for myself.  People tend to be selfish.  People tend to want more than what’s coming to them.  That cuts across class lines.  If that is the case, however, then the rich and the powerful are as corruptible and as selfish as the poor.  What’s more, the rich and the powerful have more power to use to maintain their power.

Throughout history, liberalism has stood for the weak, the poor and the powerless against the privileged and the big corporation (yes, there are exceptions….I know that).  That’s a part of the reason, by the way, that I’m a United Methodist.  The United Methodist Church has a grand tradition of protecting the rights of the worker against exploitation.  Because of the liberalism of the United Methodist, there are no longer textile factories where children who are the age of our children are indentured slaves for ten to fifteen hours per day.  They are protected under the law.

Simply speaking, those who are rich tend to have more power than the poor in this country and most countries.  With a few glowing exceptions, they also tend to use that power to maintain their advantages.  The liberal tradition is the tradition in our society that protects the poor from the rich.  For some reason, we liberals have not done as good a job in this time of highlighting that value as we once did.  When I was younger, to be a Democrat, and therefore a liberal, meant to be united with the workers, with the people, with the little shop owners.  As far as I’m concerned that’s still who we are.  Liberals protect the interests of those who have less power.  Liberals are the voice of the poor because the rich are just as corruptible as the poor and their forms of corruption do more damage.  Reagan’s anecdotes concerning the welfare cheater were fine and they were certainly effective but they didn’t go far enough.  There are cheaters at every level in society.

So what is the liberal vision?  Liberals vote as they vote…

…in order to form a more perfect union;

…so that all will have equal opportunity;

…and to protect the powerless and the poor against the wealthy and the powerful.

They base their decisions on at least the three following questions:

• How can we provide opportunity and assistance for those who, for one reason or another, are less fortunate?
• What can we do better together than we can separately?
• How can we protect each other from each other?

I’m proud to be a liberal.

Book Review: The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

p. 31
Okay, this wasn’t my favorite read of all times but this may not be Amy’s fault. I find that I lose interest in short stories really fast. I don’t have time to really get into the characters and I tend not to concentrate. Some of her stories seemed really good to me but others were a bit banal. I certainly do see how she gets her reputation as a reductionist writer. Her prose are very clear and simple and often leave you thinking. Here’s the places that I marked:

p. 31
“The best I can explain it is this—I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not the grisliest, but it’s the one that did. A man wrecked his car on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the wet bone—and when he looked at it—it scared him to death.
“I mean, he died.
“So I hadn’t dared to look any closer. But now I’m doing it—and hoping that I will live through it.”

Of course the other thing that gets me about short stories is that they are often highly symbolic and I have admitted in other places that I am a bit of a symbolism dork. At the same time, I have the tendency to hunt for symbols rather than simply enjoying the story. Perhaps that is why I’m not a writer. I would have the tendency to try to develop symbolism behind all of my stories. I don’t know how I would do at that. I would be comfortable, however, simply creating stories that are snapshots into everyday life.

Like much of Hempel’s quotes, this one about the “wet bone” can’t be read once and lightly dismissed. It stays with you. What kills us? We don’t often die because of who we are and what we are but because we can’t stand to look at who we are and what we are. Perhaps survival is in the seeing. Perhaps salvation is in the seeing. Survival might demand an epiphany.

I remember the depression of my young adult years just out of high school. I felt rejected by friends, girlfriends, professors, you name it. They didn’t like the fact that I smoke and drank. They didn’t like my writing. I wasn’t doing anything right. I only heard negatives and that after years of positives in high school. This time of heavy criticism taught me to look at myself in a way that I had never looked at myself before. I was now the guy who smelled like coffee, cigarette and alcohol. I was now stupid. These were the things I saw through the eyes of my friends. We all have negative things to look at in ourselves. It’s our choice whether to focus on them or on the positives.

It was finally in my second year out of high, once I had moved to L.A., that I started to change my perspective on me. I still was the same person that I was before. I didn’t change my habits at all. What I did change was my attitude towards my habits. Prior to this, I had a list of behaviors and a list of ideals and I did all that I could to get the behaviors to conform to the ideals and yet I failed dismally. That led to depression. During this particular year, however, I changed my tactic. I relaxed my ideals and let my behavior determine a great deal about who I was. I therefore saw myself differently. I changed nothing and yet everything changed.

Now there were more struggles through the years and I did have to come to terms with soe of my bad habits but this decision to see myself differently and to let my ideals go really did more for my survival than anything else I had tried.

p. 73
“The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge—though not, she threatens, for long.
“I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.
“I tell the woman about a man in Bogota. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.
“Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.
“When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then—that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.”

This is a great metaphor, almost a parable. I think that much of Amy Hempel is trying to say is that it is in the seeing. In this case, I am struck by the fact that this kidnapped man must have seen nothing positive to his kidnapping during the time of struggle. Even after the kidnapping is over, it is not the victim who has the objectivity to realize that the kidnapping ended up being a positive in his life. The doctor had to name it.

How many kidnappings have I experienced? How many kidnappings do I experience today? I know that it is a great source of pride for me that I do everything that I can to turn all of my kidnappings to the positive. Perhaps, however, I try too hard to seek resolution while I am still in the moment rather than letting the experience be. There are times when it is way too early to ask someone what they learned from their experience.

p. 184
There is a great description of a train ride on this page. I’ll let it speak for itself. It is a classic example of this writing genre.

p. 239
This page begins with the narrator talking about how she grew up believing it was best to wear big oversized sweaters and sit in oversized furniture in order to make herself smaller. She then asks,
“Are you wondering why a person who is already small would want to make herself smaller? That should become clear. Not everything that I know is something I want to see. Though on highways and, once, on a mountain road, I have strained to see things I didn’t want to see. The worst I ever saw was a body without a head. That was when I realized that I don’t mind seeing everything as long as everything is there for me to see.”

More allusions to self-awareness I think. We are much more likely to want to see everything if everything is out there and not inside ourselves. We have a morbid curiosity about others that we consider inappropriate when that curiosity is directed towards ourselves.

p. 243
“The woman left to tend the other dogs, and Karen spoke to Banker; she said it was exhausting to always have two jobs—your job, and the job of being able to do your job in the first place.”

I long for the day when having a job is not such a job.

p. 252
“All I remember of church when I was a child is a part of a sermon about the ordinary. The title of the sermon was “The Blessing of Dailiness,” and had to do with why we should thank God for our toothbrush in the morning. We should thank God that each day much begins with an ordinary ritual, and does not go immediately into crisis. It’s a time-honored fact that after a close call, we all embrace the ordinary. But that is because it has become miraculous. Or we have—alive to see it.”

I think that church people, myself included, get addicted to the emotional high. Life is an ongoing struggle of going from one experience, conference, convention, meditation, prayer to another looking for the biggest feeling thrill. I am a emotional junky. There have been at least two times in my life when I’ve had to come down from years of emotional highs. The first time was coming out of high school. The second time is now. The first time I learned to meditate, to stabililize my feelings. I am still trying to figure out this second time.

When I think of the images that meant healing the first time, I think of late urban nights in Portland and jazz music playing on KINK radio. I have ridden the roller coaster ride of life and I have cruised. I am at a point right now where I miss the roller coaster and have not yet rebuilt the cruise. I’m also at a point where it is hard to favor the cruise over the roller coaster.

p. 265
“And she said, ‘Helping someone else can make you better.
“In large part, we are meant to heal each other. The garden is a metaphor. Seeding, tending, weeding, watering—all leading up to the harvest. Although leave it to Warren to point out these words that are synonymous with “plant”: hide, secrete, conceal, bury, entomb.”

If you have ever watched One Tree Hill, there’s some pretty profound conversation on there. This one comes from the season finale. Lindsey and Lucas are talking:

Lucas: “I’m thinking about taking off for a little while.”
Lindsey: “Lucas please stop running. You’ve got to let go of this dark weight you’re carrying around.”
Lucas: “This morning Nathan told me the darkness doesn’t have any answers.”
Lindsey: “He’s right. You saw him after his accident and look at him now. You know that romantic notion that all the garbage and the pain is actually healing and beautiful and sort of poetic? It’s not. It’s just garbage and it’s pain. You know what’s better? Love. The day that you start thinking of love as overrated is the day that you’re wrong. The only thing wrong with love, faith and belief is not having it.”

I have never been one who believes that pain is the best way to salvation or atonement or whatever. The basis of my theology is that this life we have been given is a gift. It would take a cruel God to choose to soil that gift. God wants things to be good for us all the time. The fact that things are not always good shows the extent to which we have faded away from our relationships with God and bad things also just happen frequently. I will never say that we should avoid our problems or not acknowledge the pain but maybe we are supposed to just go on with life, get over it, play the game with a little bit of pain occasionally. And if we get in there and start helping others, we will feels the healing increase a hundredfold. Maybe we are called to be what we are called to be and we will find healing primarily by being what we are called.

Here’s some lines from one of my favorite songs to sing to my kids at night night time:

Smile though your heart is achingSmile, even though it's breaking When there are clouds, in the sky, you'll get byIf you smile, through your fear and sorrowSmile, and there'll be tomorrowYou'll see the sun come shining throughIf you'll....Light up your face with gladnessHide every trace of sadnessAlthough a tear, may be ever so near,That's the time, you must keep on tryingSmile, what's the use of crying?You'll find that life is still worthwhile, If you'll just....Light up your face with gladnessHide every trace of sadnessAlthough a tear, may be ever so near,That's the time, you must keep on tryingSmile, what's the use of crying?You'll find that life is still worthwhile, If you'll just....Smile

‘Nuff said.


On the same page, the following:
“There is one counselor here we suspect of being something more. She gives such encouraging and optimistic guidance that one day I asked if I could tape her. We set a time to meet for a talk on the patio off the parlor. I turned on my pocket-sized tape recorder and showed her where to speak into the mike. She delivered a kind of pep talk, one I could not replay and refer to as the need arose.

“The need arose the very next day, so I grabbed my tape recorder, fitted in her tape, and went up to deserted Little Egypt. I pressed the “On” button, and closed my eyes. I let myself believe her good words; they displaced my bad thoughts for the length of an hour. When it was over, I pressed the “Off button. Nothing happened. The tape continued to wind in its cartridge. I held the “Off” button down with my thumb, and still the tape played, though there was no more voice to hear.

What is my tape?

p. 289
“San Francisco,” my mother once said, “is the only city that demands you love it.”

I love this sentence about SF. SF is like that. It’s like a puppy standing in the doorway waiting for you to come home. It jumps on you. It must be noticed. It is too rich, too rare and too much for the eye for it to be ignored. It jumps all over you.

Cindy’s gentleman called was due to arrive. Back in her room, I brushed green eyeshadow on her, but she said it made her look like she ate colored babies for breakfast. I painted on the palest lip color. “I’d sooner ride a hog to Memphis,” she said.
“The Hindus have a word for this,” Karen said, watching the makeup lesson. “Overexcitement. They say that when your pulse races and you get flushed and anxious, the person is bad for you.”
“He was trained to get us overexcited,” Chatty said. “By keeping himself still? By holding the best part back, and suggesting it? The best actors do that.”

More on addiction to high emotions. I”ve found that I do my best in life when I hold some back.

p. 322
working the hotline
“Some of the group never said the word man. Instead they said “potential rapist.” There were men who wanted to donate money, but there was a faction among us who did not feel right accepting donations from future rapists.”

Wow, what a great statement about prejudice.

Movie Review: 27 Dresses

Okay, so I"m not supposed to like this because it's a girl flick (that's never stopped me) plus it's supposed to be kind of superficial. You know what (now I sound like Simon Cowell), I like this one. Katherine Hegl stars as Jane Nichols. She is the person who never does anything for herself. From the day her mother has died she has taken care of everyone expecially her little sister and she is absolutely horrible at doing anything to get her own needs met. In fact, she works as the assistant to a man whom she has a major emfatuation for and he has absolutely no idea. She carries this role of servant on further by keeping a busy social calendar as the bride's maid at various weddings. She has done something like 27 or so weddings as a matter of fact and the title refers to the many dresses that she has kept as a "reward" for these weddings.

Okay, so the plot's kind of cliche. Another man comes along and she learns for the first time how to say no to this other man and finally she discovers that she CAN say no and that she CAN take care of her own needs and, of course, she falls in love with this other man.

I guess I like this movie for two reasons. First, I can relate to it. I tend to be a giver myself. I also tend to live by the rule "don't sweat the small stuff" (and I really do believe that everyone else should live by that rule too). As a restaurant manager, it's kind of inevitable in this day and age that I'd be a giver but I also play the same role at home without much recognition or thanks.

When I do want for myself, it tends to be too late and I tend to get upset. That makes me look kind of selfish and childish (oooh, bad thing to admit). It thus becomes a never ending cycle. I thus like the movie because I see myself in it.

I also like the movie, however, because it is really not overstated or over dramatic. The message is presented and the issue is resolved without too much drama. When we overdramatize our problems, these problems become mountains rather molehills and they look like they are too high and too difficult to be climbed.

"Nuff said. It's a good watch. There are some delightful visuals in here as well like when Katherine Hegl opens her closet and shows the man that she later falls in love with all of the dresses that she has collected over time.

Movie Review: No Country for Old Men

I thought I was going to get a "bang 'em up, shoot 'em dead" movie and I got exactly that but I also got one of the most meaningful movies I've seen for awhile. As usual, I'm better at identifying the symbols than figuring out what they mean so I depend on some of you. Okay, I’m going to try to figure this thing out. I’ll no doubt fail. If you think I’m all screwed up, please let me know. Does somebody have a Cliffnotes that I can borrow?

No Country for Old Men is about givers and takers and those who no longer want to play the game. It is about fate and about our ability or inability to take control of our own lives by living by our principles no matter what cards the arbitrary gods of fate may deal us.

The killer in this movie, named Sugar ironically, is about as cold and as mean as any killer in any movie including Silence of the Lambs. His way of dealing with fate is to kill before others have the chance to kill him. He does not, however, seem to take lives indiscriminately. As Carson, played by Woody, the bounty hunter who is trying to kill Sugar and ends up as one of Sugar’s inevitable victims says:

Sugar’s “…a peculiar man. You might even say he has principles, principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that. He’s not like you. He’s not even like me.”

Sugar seems to track down whoever gets in his way, whoever takes from him in one form or another. He seems to take the lives that he needs to take. On the other hand, those lives that he does not need to take, he leaves to fate. If it is not in his plans to take a life, he takes a quarter out of his pocket and asks his potential victim to call it. If the victim calls it right, Sugar spares his life. If not, Sugar kills him. Ultimately Sugar is right, our lives are as certain as the flip of a coin. Sugar does what he can to increase his odds of living by killing.

The lawman, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who is chasing Sugar reinforces this perspective when he tells someone the story of a cattle rancher named Charlie who attempted to shoot one of his cattle but the bullet ricocheted and then hit Charlie in the shoulder. As he says, "...the outlook is not certain even between man and steer." At the same time, things are becoming more certain because they now use an air gun that lodges a steel plate right intop the steer’s brain. The steer never knows what hits him. If arbitrary fate doesn’t get us, in other words, the arbitrary decisions of others may do so. That’s why Sugar asks the bounty man who he is about to kill “if the rule that you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

The hero in this movie, Lewellyn seems fated to die. At the beginning of the movie it looks like Lewellyn, played by Josh Brolin, is another lifetaker. He is a kind of a witless ex-Vietnam Vet whose life seems to revolve around beer. While out hunting, he stumbles into 2 million dollars, a whole bunch of dead people and one barely alive person who asks for water. If Lewellyn simply took the money and ran at that point, he would be up 2 mill and the movie would be over. Instead, once he hides the money under his house trailer and banters with his girlfriend Carla Jean a little bit, he tries to fall asleep. Finally after awhile he gets up and says "okay" or something similar. He then grabs a full gallon of water and brings it to the crime scene. He couldn't help himself. He needed to bring him the water. As the movie progresses, it also becomes clear that the money is not so much for him as it is for Carla Jean. It’s not so clear, after all, that Lewellyn is one of the takers. As he leaves Carla Jean, he says that "he's fixing to do something dumber than hell but I'm going to do it anyway. Tell mother I love her." Carla Jean reminds him that his mother is dead and he responds by saying, "Well then I'll tell her myself." An element of inevitability is established throughout the whole movie in this scene. Of course, the irony is that Lewellyn seems as fated to die as Sugar is fated to live. Sugar’s principle of kill or be killed keeps him alive even as Lewellyn’s principles of giving people what they need, whether it's water or money, kill him.

That’s how Sugar looks at it. If it is all about fate, why not just go on a shooting spree, why care who dies and who lives. If it is all about fate, then why not take all that you can and not worry about others. On the other hand, some believe that in a world where God is silent and all of history seems to be ruled by chance, ALL we have to fall back on are our principles. In order to live with yourself, you have to live with integrity.

Ultimately, it is Lewellyn’s wife who teaches us a lesson after Lewellyn has already died. Sugar finds her and prepares to shoot her. He says he has to shoot her because it’s a promise that he made to her boyfriend. She convinces him that he has no reason to shoot her. He gives her the usual option: flip a coin and fate will decide. She refuses. We assume that he shot her. That’s the ultimate act in the midst of fate: refuse fate even if it kills you.

Also,
here’s a notable quote from Tommy Lee’s brother in the movie and I can’t quite fit it into the theme today. His brother’s back was broken when he was a deputy. The person who was in jail for breaking his back is about ready to come out. Tommy Lee asks him whether he is going to exact vengeance and he says these words:

“All the time you spend trying to get back what's been took from ya more is going out the door. After awhile you've got to get a tourniquet on it.”

Also,
the movie is riddled with clothing symbolism: people selling or lending clothes to Sugar and Lewellyn, Lewellyn not having any clothes to wear, clothes that are worn to hide wounds, Lewellyn appearing in a pure white outfit. I"m sure that the clothing fits into the giving and taking motif but I'm quite frankly not in the mood to figure it all out. You do it.

Also,
the final scene. The movie ends without resolution. The lawman has retired from law enforcement and Sugar has apparently never been caught. The movie ends with the lawman recalling a dream from which he just awoke. He is walking along with his deceased father. Suddenly his father starts to walk ahead of him and leaves him behind. The lawman sees his father walk into a forest and eventually he sees smoke in the forest. The movie ends with the lawman explaining that his father had gone up ahead of him to build a fire and set up a campsite so that they could be together at the end of the journey. That is, of course, the great hope: that this struggle of life will lead us all somewhere where we can be together with others whom we love.

Book Review: Diary, A Novel

I have a new friend in my life named Bethany Leigh who I met on a really cool social website entited 43Things (www.43things.com -- check it out when you get a chance). As I read her materials, it became pretty clear to me that we have really similar reading tastes and that we both love to read. Later on, I did the visual personality test on facebook and found out that she and I are 100% intellectually compatible so that verifies the similar reading tastes thing. There was, however, a new author on her list who was not on mine: Chuck Palahniuk. She likes him so much, as a matter of fact, that she wants to come visit him in his native city, Seattle. Pretty cool! All I knew about this author was that he wrote Fight Club and I totally loved the opening scene in Fight Club where he totally disses (how do you spell "disses"?) the Ikea lifestyle. Anyway, I thought it was about time that I read this guy so I started with Diary. I also discovered that Amy Hempel was the one writer P. constantly refers to as his favorite writer so I also picked her main book: The Collective Stories. To my credit, I didn't do what I usually do and buy every possible thing that P. wrote. I started with one book. Ahh, what a display of great restraint!!!



I have to admit that it took awhile for me to get into Diary. The book is written in what is called the minimalist style. Hemingway is probably the best known in this style. It is exactly the opposite of F. Scott Fitzgerald in many ways. F. absolutely drenched everything he did in words. On the other hand, the minimalist attempts to simply words. Great minimalists are capable of saying a great deal while maintaining tremendous economy. They also tend to be very multi-interpretational. It's not always clear exactly where they are coming from but they come along with these absolutely marvelous loaded statements every once in awhile that make you think and think and think. The other thing about P. is that his plotlines are rather outlandish in a manner reminiscent of one of my all time favorites: Tom Robbins.



I'm not going to talk much about plot line. I don't think that I can try to describe this plot without destroying it. I'll leave that to the book. Suffice it to say that Diary is the story of Misty, a waitress at the Waytansea Hotel, and a erstwhile artist who everybody in the town turns back into an artist. You can find out the rest. The book is supposed to be Misty's diary and it is written to her husband who is in a coma.



The first place that the book catches me is on the entry dated June 28 (p. 17). This chapter introduces Misty to the reader. The rhythm to this writing reminds me very much of the movie beginning to The Fight Club:



"This is a day in the life of Misty Marie, queen of the slaves.

"Another longest day of the year. It's a game anybody can play. This is just Misty's own personal coma. A couple drinks. A couple aspirin. Repeat.

"Everytime someone asks for table....you need to take a drink...

"Well you should serve tofu instead of vale!" take a drink...

"Misty, how could you? You know I'm always a regular here at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Really, Misty..." then you need to take two drinks.

"When the summer people ask for coffee drinks with foamed milk or chelated silver or carob sprinkles or soy-based anything, take another drink.

If they don't tip, take another."

And it keeps repeating the same mantra over and over--take a drink, have an aspirin, take another--until you know exactly what it feels like to be in the midst of yet another longest day of the year with Misty, queen of the slaves.

In the midst of all this is a line, however, that opens up the whole chapter and really the whole book. In the midst of the repetition, Misty says,

"You can see where this is going.
"This is where Misty Marie Kleinman's whole life has gone.
"You have endless ways you can commit suicide without dying dying."

And in the midst of this rhythm and this repetition, we are slapped in the face with this one liner.

I enter into this one liner in my own life. Today I am halfway through my weekend. I have come to realize that my weekends can make or break my week. You see, I am in the midst of a job that is not anywhere close to my main passion in life and yet I have experienced jobs that are so my main passion in life. If I waste my entire weekend by RESTING, DOING NOTHING, taking a drink, having two aspirin, taking another--whatever my drink may be--then I will return to work unrested and feeling like a nothing. The week will be a horrible experience for me and spend all of my time thinking about the next weekend when I just might completely repeat the process if I'm totally stupid, which I occasionally am. The one saving grace in my life is that I am forced to one of my passions and that is parenting. My children don't let me rest, do nothing, take a pill. I have to father. Because, however, this weekend I have at least chosen to write this blog, and to clean my office by the way, then it is at least a little bit possible that I will break the cycle and truly go back to work rested, refreshed, energetic. Everyday we choose life, as it says in Deuteronomy, or we choose suicide. Misty had reached a point in her life where she no longer believed in herself so there's no way that she could be all that she was supposed to be and every day was the very longest day of her life until the next one.

Now for a few one liners that caught me throughout the book:

July 12 entry (p. 102):

The resort where they live has gone through cycles of being a resort and being nothing. In this chapter, Misty talks about other places like that:

"Money gives you permission to just walk away from everything that isn't pretty and perfect. You can't put up with anything less than lovely. You spend your life running, avoiding, escaping.

"The quest for something pretty. A cheat. A cliche. Flower and Christmas lights, it's what we're programmed to love. Some young and lovely..."

I am reminded of a long conversation that I had with someone at Candler School of Theology on the campus of Emory University on the topic of "the aesthetic of pretty". She captured a realization for me that I had never been able to articulate. This above quote names it again. We are all about the pretty in our lives. It's what America wants to capture. If we can just keep things neat and tidy and not ugly. Think of Target. It's a much prettier and more orderly store than K-Mart. And things cost more too. We want to beautify our streets. We want to keep the riff raff out. We want old people in nursing homes. We don't even really like to talk about sex because it's kind of messy, after all.

We prefer our nature to be cultivated instead of wild. It's funny because my children and I went to a little nature refuge not one half mile from out house. We wanted to get to the lake because it was the lake but there was no direct pathway and so we went through the bushes and just made a mess of ourselves. It would have been so much more fun, we thought, if we had just stuck to the nice, neat, well-manicured pathway. But the bushes were such a great adventure!

I could go on with this topic for quite awhile. Certainly we expect our lives to follow orderly patterns and they almost never do. We also expect our God who is an ordering God (from page one of the Bible: the creation of order out of mystery and chaos) to provide us with order. And our churches and other institutions also have to be very orderly. I want to on about this but I think I"ll wait. It is those who would have us order the church that have led me to absence the church. SOMEBODY PROVOKE ME ON THIS SO I CAN CONTINUE. ASK QUESTIONS. ARGUE WITH ME. I truly am an extrovert who needs a response if I am to keep babbling on.

August 2 Entry (p. 172):

This is the section in the book where Misty has been confined to her room and forced to do only one thing: draw. "Just for the record, ever color Misty picks, every mark she makes, is perfect because she's stopped caring."

Haven't you ever reached that point? I know I have. That point is when I do really, really good because I could just care less anymore. It's like our worries, our debts, our fears all ebb away because we just don't care anymore. If I haven't played pool for like two years and then come back to a game, just watch me. I'm friggin' incredible! That is, I'm incredible in game one because it really doesn't matter. Game two sucks. I was always the best practice basketball player on the court but I sucked in game situations except when I was playing for the Mormons and then I didn't really. I didn't really care in that game when I scored 23 points. I just didn't care.

We can just be who we are made to be and if we are truly being who we are made to be then we just don't care who we are and who we are becomes action instead of words. I get so tired of telling my eldest daughter how to do her work in school. I would love to let go so that she can just go through the cycle on her own and yet I keep holding on. If I don't care, then she will be forced to care and she can eventually get to the point where she doesn't care and then she becomes verb and just does who she is instead of doing who she wants to be.

August 12 entry (p. 188):

He talks about right brain-left brain stuff and the fact that suppression of the rational mind is source of inspiration. Congratulations to us weird computer blogger/social network people who spend our time doing nothing purposive or meaninful by spending our time on our computers. Yeah, perhaps we are addicted but perhaps we just want to get the creative side out a little more. The greatest times in my life have been those times when I could get together with other people and plan programs and worships because I would insist that we find ways to use our imaginations, to think the unthinkable, to go way outside the box. And sometimes we even succeeded at presenting that creativity in artform!

The other day I was watching my daughter perform in The Nutcracker. My daughter's lyrical dance coach is particularly creative and she and two other women did this incredibly eclectic dance performance in The Nutcracker. After the show I told her that I knew it was hers because it was so creative. She told me that it was actually quite collaborative. Later on I came back to her and reminded her that the truly creative is TRULY collaborative. What could be more collaborative then a situation where a group of people leave their pretensions behind to create?!? Those moments are truly living for me. Again, caring about nothing...

August 21 entry (p. 207):

I'm beginning to think that the subtext to this novel is about living out the patterns of life versus true creativity. Misty, the artist, believes that she is being truly creative not only with her artwork but also with her life choices. She comes to find out that she is not creative at all. She is repeating a pattern. She is being captured by a pattern. Back to the beginning of the book: Which is worse? It is to consciously live out the same pattern over and over again--take a drink, take two drinks--or is it repeating the same pattern over and over without knowing it. Is it conscious suicide or unconscious suicice?

This aspect of the story reminds me very much of a great book turned movie. The book was A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and the movie was Simon Birch. The young, ugly hero in that book knew he was born to be a hero and he died the death of a martyr/hero. He stepped into the pattern for his life while others were resisting the patterns for their lives. If it is true that anything taken to its ultimate conclusion is excessive, is idolatrous, then could the same be said for our American worship of freedom? Are we so much into freedom that we deny ourselves who we are called to be? Do we see life as just boring if we step into our fates? What about the life patterns that we don't see? How are we stuck?

Entry August 28 (p. 252):

"According to Plat, we live chained inside a dark cave. We're chained so all we can see is the back wall of the cave. All we can see are the shadows that move there. They could be the shadows of something moving outside the cave. They could be the shadows of people chained next to us.

"Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow.

"Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Proections. Our associations.

"The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight.

"The camera obscura.

"Not the exact image, but everything reversed or upside down. Distored by the mirror or the lens it comes through. Our limited personal perception. Our tiny body of experience. Our half-assed education.

"How the viewer controls the view. How the artist is dead. We see what we want. We see how we want. We only see ourselves. All the artist can do is give us something to look at."

Wow. This always amazes me. Is there really a world out there that we can see and touch? Are the external and the internal related or are they almost completely unrelated? I can look at a picture of myself and see who is on the inside because I know the picture to me. I can also look at a picture of myself, however, and see someone that I could never possibly be and wonder how this soul or spirit or geist got stuck inside that person and his world. I realize this as a white male. I remember a friend who was a strong feminist. It took us awhile to become friends because she did not see me for who I was but as a white male. She was right in the sense that white males get treated a certain way (including the way that she was treating me) but she was also wrong to assume that all white males react and respond the same way to the stimuli of being treated this way.

I have a confession to make. It's still true that when I see a beautiful woman, I want to enter into the beautiful world that this beautiful woman must inhabit. I guess my latest is Natasha Bedingfield. She is absolutely gorgeous and about as poetic and creative and artistic as anybody I've ever had a chance to observe. I would love to enter into her world and have her world become mine. It's not so much that I want to possess her, not that at all. I want to be possessed by the imaginery world that I have created for her. What Carl Jung says, and I think it is truly beautiful, is that everything that we see outside of ourselves is really not outside of ourselves but inside of ourselves. It is as though we are all trapped in our own individual phone booths that are completely mirror on all sides (does everybody still remember what a phone booth looks like?). We keep thinking that we are looking outside of ourselves but we keep merely projecting out other parts of ourselves. When I see Natasha Bedingfield I make her into that Natasha Bedinfield that is within me (oh, come on you people...don't go there).

I remember that I used to be envious of anyone who experienced the sixties from the inside. What I was really seeing, according to Jung, was the part of me that was captured by my image of the sixties. By the way, when I saw Across the Universe recently, my image of the sixties began to change. This was a hard, hard time. Not a beautiful time at all. And yet I still see why some are captured by its images.

Final page:

"What she's learned is what she always learns. Plato was right. We're all of us immortal. We couldn't die if we wanted to.

"Every day of her life, every minutes of her life, if she could just remember that."

I believe that he is saying that living into our patterns makes us a part of the immortal story itself.

Wow, I need to think about this alot more. So often I am troubled by the patterns that I am a part of. My wife wants me to pick something up off the floor or gives me a chore to do or criticizes the way in which I handled some other chore. I respond defensively, crossly. I realize in the midst of this that I feel like a fourth grader again speaking with my mother. The pattern has repeated itself. Aren't we supposed to break these habits? Aren't we supposed to become empowered, to go on to new levels? Are we destined to repeat the same patterns? If so, then is there freedom in accepting the pattern and moving on? Is that, in a sense, a way of breaking the pattern? Is there resolution in acceptance?

Book Review: The Essential Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama was recently in Seattle and I regretted the fact that I had not taken the time to schedule attendance at one of his public events, particularly the Dave Matthews Band Concert with the Dalai Lama. I thus considered this a good time to read some of his writings.The Essential Dalai Lama is divided is a compilation of his various works that has been organized and divided into four sections: The Vision, Buddhist Perspectives, Practice and A World In Harmony.

THE VISION

p. 8
"How am I to be happy?" The Dalai Lama is very clear that he understands this to be the key question that preoccupies human existence. I want to agree with that. I really do believe that is my major motive in much of what I do in life. Sometimes my actions make that confusing. For example, I was looking at my personal schedule yesterday and trying to figure out why it is that I don't have any time to go down to Portland to visit my life and my city. I realized that almost all of the time that I am not working, I am watching my kids. I don't really have "free time" in my schedule other than a few hours in the morning prior to going to work. Even my weekends are filled with obligations primarily to my children. How am I to be happy under these circumstances? Then this morning before I woke my children up for school, I looked down at my sleeping Lauren and I came to realize that SHE makes me happy. Most of the time she makes me happier than visiting Portland would make me. Happiness is the goal but sometimes happiness is problematic. I have heard it said many times before, the human personality is like an onion. There are many, many layers to who we are. Ahhh, wouldn't it be grand if life were as simple for us as it is for the pet dog? We would be happy with a good meal, playing in the sun now and then and getting our bellies scratched. Alas, the human experience requires alot more than that. The Jeff Anderson who is father loves his children and will do anything for them. I nurture and cherish that image of myself and so I sacrifice to maintain it. That makes me happy. The Jeff Anderson who gave up Portland and moved away from his family has yet to die. I miss my sister and I miss my hometown. I feel at ease in Portland in a way that I do not anywhere else in the world and this is true even though I have now lived in Washington for over ten years. Happiness is problematic.

p. 9-10
I love the way he approaches the question of dependence versus independence. In this age of psychology with all of the language about function versus dysfunction, we worship the individual and come to be believe that humans are autonomous. The Dalai Lama points out the humans were not meant to live alone, that we are dependent, that this yearning for independence in society has led us into some pretty unreal expectations of ourselves. He looks back to the time when farmers and families would work together to help with the harvest. Today we hire someone instead or we call a contractor. Modern living is "organized so that it demands the least possible direct dependence on others." In lieu of community dependence or "interdependence", our modern society is organized in such a way that we are wholly dependent upon our employers. We fear nothing more than loss of job and yet our employers, unlike our communities or our families usually could give a damned about our personal welfare. The priority is making a profit. The Dalai Lama suggests that this shift explains why we do not consider it important to nurture the happiness of others. It's not that our society moves us towards malevolence towards others. Instead, it moves us towards indifference.

I"m struck as I read this section with the realization that the modern model for living is radically different than the biblical model that I frequently embrace. In the modern model, the power resides only among those who have the money, who own the capital for production, and we are literally a bunch of blood suckers who are trying to survive off of the few. Instead, the Bible talks about the uniqueness and the sacredness of the individual. We are each gifted with special talents and abilities that we use to better our own lives and in turn the lives of all others as we contribute this giftedness back to the world. There is no hierarchy in the biblical model. We all have something infinite within us to contribute to the whole. There's no blood sucking going on in this model.

It would be interesting to do a study on the rise and development of the vampire archetype. How much is that archetype dependent upon the breakdown of the community as the primary source of strength and the rise of industrialist society? When is it that we start thinking of humans as blood suckers? It's funny because we all have a relative or a friend who occasionally sucks us dry and we think of the vampire or the leech yet we are all a bunch of vampires!

p. 13
The Dalai Lama comments that in his travels he has discovered that happiness really is not dependent upon wealth. Why is it, he asks, that the peoples of the developed nations seem less happy than many people in the third world? While cooperation is a necessity in third world countries, it still leads to a level of contentment that we do not share. "The challenge we face is therefore to find some means of enjoying the same degrees of harmony and tranquility as those more traditional communities while benefiting fully from the materials developments of the world as we find it as the dawn of a new millennium. To say otherwise is to imply that these communities should not even try to improve their standard of living." The Dalai Lama suggests that there is room both for a healthy materialism and a healthy spirituality in today's world if we simply learn how to do it. I like this! I'm refreshed by it because I don't have to live like a hypocrite with this thinking. Jesus is constantly demanding that I sell all that I have and give it to the poor. We Christians have found a multitude to take his words and twist them. He's speaking metaphorically, we like to say. But Jesus commands in this situation are based on the same premise as the modern world's: that there is not enough for everyone therefore we need to give up something. That premise is called "the zero sum game". It is the idea that the whole world is like a resource pie that does not grow nor expand. In order for all of us to survive, perhaps we need to cut our slice slightly (or greatly if we are in North America) so that others can have a slice too. The Dalai Lama might be suggesting that the resource pie is not finite, that is does grow. We can produce more to sustain more. I think that might be true. I certainly think that this assumption contains alot of faith in the ability of human creativity to be able to produce more and find solutions to the world's problems.

p. 21
this is a great statement:"On this basis, I will speak today on how a human eing can find happiness as an individual, because I believe the individual is the key to all the rest. For change to happen in any community, the initiative must come from the individual. If the individual cna become a good, calm, peaceful person, this automatically brings a positive atmosphere to the family around him or her. When parents are warm-hearted, peaceful and calm people, generally speaking their children will also develop that attitude and behavior."

p. 22
Dalai Lama affirms that the most important factor in achieving a sense of peace is the ability to feel compassion. He separates this from the kind of love that a person feels for his/her friends because he thinks that the latter involves too much of a sense of attachment or what we would call "favoritism". Compassion and bias are mutually exclusive for him. Additionally, compassion does not include pity because we only pity those who we look down at. He is calling for radically equalitarian relationships with nature and with others.

p. 23
The Dalai Lama has confidence that we can develop that sense of "unbiased compassion" within our lifetimes. Here his confidence sounds very similar to John Wesley's confidence that we all can develop a perfect love for others.

p. 25
One of the most vexing problems of my life is that I truly believe in the power of nonviolence, in patience and longsuffering winning out over anger and selfishness but I consistently see the latter winning out over the former. I am a great believer in nonviolence but I consistently wonder whether nonviolence is as powerful as violence. According to the Dalai Lama, nonviolence consistently wins out because the nonviolent tend to die older and live a happier life. The violent frequently win the petty battles and skirmishes but they never win the wars.

p. 26
Here the Dalai Lam argues against the idea that we need to express our anger. He suggests that we need to learn to let it go. Over time, the anger diminishes, he says. I totally agree with us. From everything I've seen, anger merely fosters more anger until you have an absolute war on your hands. In my thinking, anger is really an emotion for the stupid and it leads to ignorance. Now I have to say that I have been angry on more than one occasion. Everytime I'm angry, however, I really learn lashing out in anger merely makes me look stupid. It is so much better to wait, to hold on, to assess the situation and try to reach a place of understanding.

Okay, that's enough for now. I'm looking forward to getting into the next sections. I really value the qualities that the Dalai Lama is trying to nurture. I can ask all sorts of metaphysical questions about the nature of God, the nature of sin, the actual nature of Jesus Christ, etc., but in many ways they don't matter to me because they aren't fully answerable here and now nor may they ever be. On the question of whether nonviolence is more powerful than violence, I face that conflict every day. On the question of how to deal with anger, I face that question every day. I'm eager to see what some of the methods are the the Dalai Lama proposes to alleviate anger.