The old codger in December indicated the goal of doing columns focused on important issues for us as a community and a nation. He didn’t envision what would be dropping from the heavens in the weeks since.
However, thinking on it, this may be just about the most important issue we face as a nation and a people right now. So, here goes.
I’ve had to fess up a bunch of times in my recent scribblings that I am old. Yep, I grew up in a seemingly more innocent time, but it was a time pretty much fraught with rampant inequity, discrimination, and often disgusting and abhorrent violence against many, many souls across this beautiful land and this world of ours.
But I had the incalculable blessing of growing up, though poor, with the loving guidance and Christian humility of three incredibly strong women—my mother; her mother, my grandmother; and her sister, my beautiful aunt. If there were saints who’ve walked the earth in our times, they would unequivocally qualify.
They weren’t perfect, far from it, and they didn’t expect perfection from anyone else—and thankfully that included me—but they saw no one as enemy or adversary and everyone as an equal and potential friend. You may have a hard time believing me, but these beautiful ladies knew no hate and held no grudge.
Were they somehow naïve and/or misguided in their heartfelt belief in their fellow human being’s potential for goodness, kindness, and trustworthiness?
I would not only guarantee that they were not, but I would warn every one of us that not only to fail to do everything we possibly can to embrace those beautiful Christian values, but to not abhor those who would impugn or diminish those core values is not only grossly and hideously both un-American and unchristian, but clearly displays a pitifully self-centered and self-deluding nihilism.
And that way finally leads any and all of us, as Americans and as human beings, to a single destination— and that terminus is clearly and categorically both a physical and soul-destroying self-nullification, not just in our current, so-brief lives here on this earth, but in whatever we may choose to embrace as a hereafter.
I’d ask all of us to look in the mirror. Integrity, character, humanity, humility—the ultimate Christian values…
Do we exhibit them every day, in all our dealings with our fellow human beings? In our attitudes about them, in our expectations of them? Or do we label, curse, demean, devalue, disparage, and embrace— and worse still, wallow in— the reeking emotional hog trough of hostility, fear, and hate-focused groupthink, whether it be on social media or around “like-minded” “friends” and neighbors?
Though it may be tough, and often very much is, character demands that we, in the privacy of our bedroom and in our inmost prayers and reflections, examine ourselves—our thoughts and our actions, or lack of them—honestly, and then move courageously to do what integrity and character demand. Every time we do, we grow a little. Every time we fail to, we shrink and wither.
It’s up to each of us—finally, irrevocably alone.
As an old veteran, I can tell you that when push comes to shove, we can hunker down in some type of metaphorical bunker— whatever we may call it: friends, media, polls, perceptions, anger, fear, delusion— for a long time, but at some point we’re gonna have to stand up and face what’s incoming. And the longer we take, the worse that incoming’s going to be.
But hey, the old codger politely tips his hat to each one of us. In the final analysis, it’s up to each one of us, alone, whatever route we take or destination we think we seek. He hopes and prays it’s the one that allows us to fully and honestly look at ourselves in the mirror.
