Jack LaFountain's Blog, page 12

Know Jack #423 The Lunatic Fringe

Would it surprise you to learn that I have always wanted to be odd? I like Sinatra’s music, but I’ve never wanted to be in New York or A-Number-One, Top-of-the-Heap. I much prefer being the kind of person who needs to be explained. I may be wrong, but to me, my mind seems to work in its own peculiar fashion.

 

At one time I worked in a psychiatric hospital in a locked unit where people were very reluctant to discuss the voices they heard in their head that no one else could hear. I freely confess that my imaginary friends speak to me. Ed Landry decided last night’s four AM bathroom break was the perfect opportunity to tell me how I messed up the last chapter I wrote.

 

That I see things differently and hear the voices of characters in books equips me to be a writer. If nothing else, it involves me in interesting conversations (or debates depending on your take). Just as talking to God enhances my spiritual walk, talking to my characters enhances my writing. It may sound like it but I’m not boasting. When other people begin to empathize with my invisible friends, I take it that I’ve done something right.

 

The truly scary part is that those voices are, more often than not, the voices of reason and sanity. How often I change my mind is a closely guarded secret. If it ever got out, my image as a hardline, narrow-minded geezer would be in serious jeopardy. In fairness though, there are some things I think that even the voice of reason fails to moderate.

 

In the lines of an old song: “You may be right. I may be crazy. Oh, but it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for…”

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #215 Knowing and Understanding

“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

Hebrews 11:3

 

I understand fewer things than the number of things I know. Though both are learning processes, I find that acquiring knowledge is much easier than obtaining understanding. Knowledge does not, of necessity, require action on my part. Knowledge can be gleaned from whatever enters by way of my senses. That is not true of understanding.

I know the atomic structure of oxygen. I’ve seen charts and listened to lectures on the subject. Beyond the most rudimentary sense, I cannot say I understand it. That is because I have no satisfactory answers to all the “why” questions I have about oxygen. Why is it arranged as it is? The reason might be to perform the functions it does. But why does it have functions in the first place and why must oxygen do it and not helium or some other element?

To understand why, one must step beyond the realm of science. My friends devoted to quantum theory believe they know. They think an unseen particle granted mass to energy and chance took over. But where did the particle come from and how did it decide to “grant” anything? It is here they rush to the vague notion of a “universe” that decides things, orders things, is concerned with what we do, upholds justice, and that one day we will become an intimate part of.

To me, that sounds an awful lot like the God Christians talk about. But of course, that cannot be—Christians operate by faith, not science and so must be either wrong or deluded. However, the Bible assures us that it is through faith that understanding is gained.

When a person accepts by faith the idea of a personal Creator as espoused in the opening line of scripture, they have a firm foundation from which to pursue an understanding of the origin of things seen and unseen.

The cry that such actions are not rational or scientific is predicated on the assumption that faith is not tested by its adherents. Christian faith is transmitted by principles that must be “worked out” under the guidance of God. This is, by its very nature, an experimental process.

God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Before you can seek, you must believe there is something to be found.

Maranatha

Know Jack #422 Power to the Writers, Right On!

“If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place; for yielding pacifieth great offences. ~Solomon.

 

This is not one of the Lost Crusader’s sermons. It is more the ghost of the Colonel, like Marley, come to haunt me with the rattling chains I have forged in life. The thought as expressed by Solomon is rather ironic. The king did not handle opposition well, as is true of most kings. It does explain Solomon’s excesses. To give in to unjust wrongs is only to encourage more of the same.

So, here I take my stand to defend goofy-looking, straight, White, male writers everywhere who suffer exclusion, oppression, and inequity at the hands of the masses our existence offends. It is high time we demand fair play for GSWMW. Where is our category in libraries and bookstores? When is our month of pride?

Change can only come when we throw off the chains of oppression that relegate us to obscurity where books are sold and the suppression of our DEI rights. Are we not people? Are we not unique? Where then is our recognition and reparation for the systemic prejudice against us?

I planned to run a marathon this month only to find that there is no GSWMW category for me to win. I was equally excluded from the local university that offers no GSWMW Studies curriculum. I cannot grow and feel empowered when there are no courses of study. The feelings of depression and stress I experience at being invalidated by society shorten my life span and render me unfulfilled. No one in America should have to live under such conditions of oppression and exclusion.

Fight cultural bias—buy my books. Power to the writers, right on!

Know Jack #421 Tilting at Windmills

“This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far…”

Don Quixote has a lasting literary legacy as an eccentric, tragically comedic character. It’s well deserved, but his eccentricity is not the entire picture portrayed in the classic story. Don Quixote was rational, intelligent, and well-reasoned in all matters except one. When the subject turned to knights and chivalry he was lost. The man he normally was disappeared, windmills turned into giants, and village inns into castles. His heart burned with passion and his head was so filled with romantic dreams that they came to life.

Don Quixote’s rapid shifts from reality to fantasy are much like those of an author I know. He is too reserved and socially awkward to be a good conversationalist. Like Cervantes’ character, he reads books steeped in the ideals of a forgotten age. He studies too much for a man his age, convinced that he was born two hundred years too late. For all that, he is a rational, fairly intelligent sort—until he is struck by a whim to write.

When that happens, rationality and reality seem to get lost. He hears the voices of imaginary heroes. They tell him stories of romantic exploits that come to life. A living room becomes a bayou filled with monsters or a cattle ranch plagued by lycanthropy. The street outside the door is so quiet because a mass alien abduction of his neighbors has taken place. He sallies forth from reality until he drags himself home beaten and weary.

Don Quixote died believing he had read all the wrong books and so had given his life in a vain pursuit of wrong ideals. My writer friend, though grown old, is still unrepentant of his books and notions. He persists in romantic dreams of a world that can be made right through virtue and fidelity to a quest for truth and honor.

Though some who love him have warned him of his error in the pursuit of writing, he is undeterred. Wearing cobbled together odds and ends, which he sees as armor, he mounts his trusty steed and sallies forth at the most importune times. Where he goes no one, except, perhaps, those who entertain his yarns, really know. It is enough for him that he dreams of unrequited exploits.

“Come, Sancho, we ride at dawn.”

Lost Crusader #214 Addition and Subtraction

“He must increase and I must decrease.  John 3:30

 

The words are those of John the Baptist, the greatest messenger of God not just of his day, but according to Jesus, the greatest of all time. He was tempted by the teachers of the law who tried to stir up a rift between John and Jesus, thereby doing away with both. When their words came to John’s ears, he laid down a clear message about the nature of true Christianity.

Those who serve God are to become disciples of Jesus. As disciples, fidelity to God admits to movement in only one direction toward God. John described what that movement looks like. It begins with birth, a new spiritual birth, and from that moment on a person is transformed over time.

The teachings and the very life of Jesus increasingly become the principles and practices of the Christian’s life. This transformation comes at the cost of one’s own life and desires. The natural person we once were must steadily decrease while the spiritual person we are grows, filling up our new life.

The curious thing about this is that while the natural grows smaller, we become more and more our true self—the self we were created to be. We are not as a drop fallen into an endless sea, nor a single consciousness lost in a vast collective. We are as unique as only the mind of God is capable of making us.

The devil tempted the first people with the idea that they could be as gods if only they would reject the idea of being like God and going their own way. His lie was not in the idea that they could be as God, but in that they could do it alone. We shall indeed “be as gods”. We will have the life of God moving through us, the love of God guiding us, and the power of God in upholding us, but only as we are filled with God in the person of Christ.

Maranatha

Know Jack #420 Urgently Important

“What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”

Dwight Eisenhower

 

Comfort is king in our land. We urgently rush to preferred pronouns and turn a blind eye to the reality before us to ensure the comfort of the most easily offended among us. We talk of laying out millions of dollars to make people comfortable with a tragic past they never experienced. We hurry to the aid of a corrupt government so some here do not suffer the discomfort of a monetary loss. It’s all so very urgent that we relieve those who feel oppressed, depressed, and stressed.

 

I read that young people today want us dinosaurs to quit saying, “Life is hard”. Ironically, at the same moment, they wish to be sheltered from life in safe places. Why seek shelter from that which is easy?

 

Life can be lived in many ways. We decide whether the life we choose enriches us or degrades us as human beings. I am not setting myself up to tell anyone which is which. It is not my place nor is it necessary. There is a voice within us all that tells us that. Call it conditioning, conscience, spirit, or God, it is unerringly accurate when it takes aim at our folly and makes us uncomfortable.

 

I know life is hard. I know it not because I have gone hungry or wept over my children unjustly suffering want. It is hard because what is important to a good life doesn’t come overnight. It is not handed out to those who feel entitled to it. It goes to those who wrestle with it and come away still standing.

 

Life requires us to do hard things, things we’d rather not do. It’s not necessarily urgent that we do them, but it is critical that we do them, nonetheless. If we embrace life, it will break us and reduce us to ashes physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It will also lift us up from those ashes stronger and with a clearer vision of what is truly important. Comfort is a by-product of a life of conscience, not the goal of life.

Maranatha

Know Jack #419 Triggered

Trigger, verb: to release or activate by means of a trigger, to cause the explosion of. Noun: the part of a firearm that releases the hammer and so fires the gun.

 

Gun owners tell the tale of loading a weapon, setting it on their porch, and, over the course of a day, it never kills anyone. The point is that triggers don’t pull themselves. But suppose someone makes their way to that porch, picks up the gun, points it at themselves, and squeezes the trigger.

What happens next? The gun goes off causing harm to the person who pulled the trigger. But who is responsible for the injury? That is a matter of modern debate. Those opposed to others owning guns say it’s the owner of the gun. The reasoning is that the owner is his brother’s keeper and must above all things protect the activator of the trigger—even from his own foolish action.

Gun owners will tell you that if you see a gun and leave it alone, it will not harm you. They will also say that you should assume that a gun will do what guns do and their owners are not responsible for the willful idiotic actions of others.

Take either side you choose. A popular Facebook meme tells us that everyone is responsible for their own triggers. This moves the debate from the physical to the spiritual and emotional because people have triggers too. Like the gun, leaving them alone causes no harm. Willfully pulling the trigger will cause an explosion. So, who’s really responsible?

I have triggers—yes, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Some are as harmless as the cork shooting from a popgun. Unfortunately, others are like pushing the launch button on an atomic weapon of mass destruction. Betraying my friendship is of the latter variety. I am not proud of either reaction. Nor am I blind to them, and I don’t think many other people are either.

I do try to keep them locked away. However, if you go out of your way to trigger an explosion, you will likely get one. In this case, I refuse to accept full responsibility. It’s a shared responsibility. I try hard to be my brother’s keeper, but we live in a world filled with people who believe they may do as they will with impunity. Pulling a trigger sets off processes that cannot be stopped until the consequences occur.

Lost Crusader #213 The Baby as a Man

“Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.” Hebrews 10:5-7

When I was on my Labor and Delivery rotation in nursing school, one of my first assignments was the nursery. I admit, I did not have the same enthusiasm for the assignment as my fellow students. They “oohed and aahed” and spoke in the singsong voice adults use with babies. As the father of three teenagers, I issued them a warning. “You know those things grow up and then they aren’t so cute anymore.”

I am going to make a spiritual point here. The “he” referred to in this passage from Hebrews is Christ. His helpless innocent appearance has worn off. He’s a man who speaks as never a man spoke before and what he has to say drives people from Him.

He tells people that God is more interested in how people live than in ritual—even heartfelt ritual. Their sacrifices and observances were only reminders that doing the will of God was supreme. Every Christian can say with Christ that they have become flesh for the purpose of doing the will of God. In fact, that may be our sole (and soul’s) purpose.

We are created in the likeness of God so that we might fellowship with Him. That is the design behind the entire multiverse. There are some who say the plan went wrong, but that is not so. Christ is the lamb slain “from the foundation of the world”. It was always to happen as it has.

God made us like Him with a will and having a will of our own we have the power to let that will run amok. We also have the power to place that will back in God’s hands. Alas, even when we try our best, we don’t always succeed. God, in a single offering for sin, built that into His plan too.

Walking by faith and doing God’s will while wearing this body is very much like walking on water. It can be done when God allows it but lose your focus for a moment and you must be rescued. One of the many things I wonder about is how Peter got back in the boat. Was he miraculously transported back? Did Jesus carry him? I like to think he walked back holding Jesus’ hand.

My personal performance in this body is far from spectacular—most of the time, I’m not happy with it. Heaven knows my fellow humans find plenty of faults. How then can God be pleased? Because this too, was His plan from the beginning. He knows me, and yet He loves me. My hope is that means He will make something out of me one day. God’s ways are past finding out.

The baby grew up and it was said of him: “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

Lost Crusader #212 The Babe of Bethlehem

“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law.”

“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger…”

The idea of God becoming a man and the wonder of it is being celebrated by Christians everywhere at this time of year. Many who do not claim the name Christian ascribe to this celebration a certain nodding acceptance of the feeling of goodwill toward men it brings.

There is something about the Divine as a helpless baby that people can buy into—as long as He stays helpless and in the manger. Let Him out to walk among us as the bodily fulness of God, and the world is quick to deny He exists.

God is not supposed to ask things of us. God is supposed to be waiting on our cry to give things to us. God is supposed to always be with us to affirm our worth. An adult Jesus does not seem to fit with that idea, but that is because we are willfully blind.

Jesus says, “Follow Me” in order to lead us into sharing the eternal life of joy He has to give. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” He could not remain a baby and save us any more than we can coo over Him in the manger and be saved. The Holy Spirit of God housed in human flesh is the gift the Christ child brings to all who will receive it.

The foundation of Christianity is not about what we give to God or what we do for God. It is about what God has already done for us in the person of the Babe of Bethlehem.

In the words of the old hymn,

What child is this who laid to rest, On Mary’s lap is sleeping?

Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, While shepherds watch are keeping?

This, this is Christ the King, Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:

Haste haste to bring Him laud, The Babe, the Son of Mary,

Know Jack # 418 How and Why

“…the person who knows “How” will always have a job, but the person who knows “Why” will always be the boss.”  Benjamin Franklin.

 

This bit of wisdom would stand Ben Franklin in good stead with modern business experts, as long as he kept his mouth shut about politics. The drive to be the boss is keenly developed in most humans. However, it is one thing to be the boss, it is quite another to be an effective leader. It is my contention that before anyone can really understand “why” they must first know “how”.

A group of Christian missionaries once traveled by motorboat far up the Amazon when the motor on the boat conked out. The villagers they were with were amazed beyond measure that none of the travelers knew how to repair the motor. The missionaries were quite capable of explaining how the turning screw propelled them through the water—they knew why the boat moved, but none knew how to make it do so. One of the reasons this so amazed their hosts was that they made everything they possessed. They were thoroughly acquainted with how it worked. This familiarity gave them an understanding of the limitations of what they made and why it worked in some instances and not others.

Many successful writers are notorious for breaking the rules of composition. However, they do not do so ignorantly. They know the rules, that is, they know “how” to write. Armed with the knowledge of how words work, they were free to explore “why” breaking the rules sometimes worked for them.

I once worked on a med/surg unit with a nurse who had recently graduated from a Master’s program at a very prestigious university. She had been asking why for six years and getting answers to her questions. She had extremely limited skills when it came to how to function at the bedside and often came to me for practical advice and help to do the job. This was true even though I had graduated from my Associate program at about the same time.

Now, someone will say to me, but one day she will be your boss. That’s true enough. A major problem I found with the profession was that there were too many bosses who did not know how to do what they asked others to do, rendering them technically useless. Those supervisors lacked adaptability. Their answers to “Why” were slow and clumsy in situations that demanded knowing how to do something on the fly.

The Air Force taught me that if I learned to be a boss, it didn’t matter what activity I was the boss of, whether it was aircraft repair, operating radar, or overseeing the finance office. I suppose they are right as long as they never find themselves upriver without a working motor.

There is one last thought. A man with a job can always become so skilled that he one day works for himself. Those who boss others always have to find someone to make them a boss. Sorry, Ben.