THE STRANGE CASE OF THE KENTUCKY CLERK

I don't always get things right. Just ask anyone who knows me. I can have blank spaces in my thinking which when realized are quite embarrassing. But if I stay with something long enough, the blank spaces get filled in. Sometimes however, there are situations that keep me wondering where the truth of the matter really lies, if indeed that can be determined. Like the situation of the Kentucky clerk who is refusing to issue marriage licenses to anyone because her religious conviction is that marriage is between a man and a women only, but if she issued licenses only to them it would discriminate against the man/man and women/women applicants. Does anyone have some aspirin?

Add to this that her main defender says it's actually Kentucky law and that the law has to change before she is obligated to follow the Supreme Court ruling. This apparently is how the constitution works but so few understand it that way. This Kentucky clerk is apparently one of the few. But also her defender says that this Kentucky clerk has the conviction of her beliefs, natural law and the law of God that overrides any Supreme Court decision and that she might be the first Christian (in the modern era I assume) to go to jail for standing up for what she believes. I guess Martin Luther King was just there for a visit. 

So, is it a matter of constitutional law, standing against what is morally wrong like slavery, or convoluted politics wrapped in religious zeal? Just so I won't be completely wrong, I'm going to say all three.

Constitutional law isn't that constitutional when it varies according to which justices happen to be on the court at the time. But there are ways to change Supreme Court rulings. One is by amendment, but that is quite the process so replacing the justices who will overturn or change the law to something you like better seems to be the more direct approach.

Standing against what you believe to be morally wrong is not only a right, it's a duty. The problem is that this duty is shared by everyone else. There are several options here. Be in a position in order to enforce or impose your beliefs. Be in position to argue for your beliefs. Be in position to do peaceful protest ...or violent if you're really angry. Be in position to support politicians that agree with you or at least say they do. Be in position to use Second Amendment solutions as needed, unless of course you are a Muslim.

The church and state relationship seems to be something that's used when it's convenient and not used when it's not convenient. Whatever way it's currently taken, it's that way for all "churches." But some argue that a majority church can have priority. I'm not sure why that's necessary if the majority church votes as it should. They would win by the sheer reality of numbers. But maybe this is the problem. The majority church doesn't vote as it should because there's not an agreement as to what is right for a nation of many voices. Must be that's harder than it looks.

It will be interesting to see what all comes from further legal, religious and political involvement. But if I were this clerk in Kentucky, I'd think about getting a job at Hobby Lobby or Chic-fil-A. ...But for sure, it would be out of practicality more than anything else.

WHAT GOD?

I want to be clear. I'm not questioning the existence of God. I'm questioning what people mean by God. Mike Huckabee said that God is more real than the clouds. That's nice enough but does that mean he knows God better, that his idea of God is the right one, or is he just saying something after equating the nuclear deal with Iran to the ovens of the holocaust? Hard to tell. But it seems the God card can be thrown as conveniently as all the others.

First off, I don't think the Israelis are just going to sit there. They've already bombed the Palestinians back from the border, so I don't think taking on Iran when necessary will be any problem. Besides, there are several other factors involved.  No, it seems as if Mike Huckabee, Pastor Huckabee when it's convenient, is no different than any other politician. None of which can speak realistically about the deal's pros and cons. I personally think it's a pretty sizable diplomatic failure that could have used some of Donald Trump's verbosity to fatigue them into submission.

But Mike is not the only one who uses the God card. Scott Walker in an email to potential supporters said that God had called him to run. In checking further, it seemed as if only the less than reliable agenda driven sites carried anything about it. They all had the sense of the preposterous. But I've always believed that God works in mysterious ways. And believe it or not, he hasn't asked my opinion in a couple months or so. Besides, is being called by God some kind of disqualifier? I was grateful that at least one candidate was called by God until I saw an article in Salon (July 22, 2015) that said other candidates, directly or indirectly made the same claim.

That was confusing at first. Apparently, John Kasich, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum and not so surprisingly Mike Huckabee were also on God's list of candidates. What was the point of a multiple calling? Certainly not just for his own entertainment. I didn't believe God is that frivolous. Believing there was a purpose and not a conflict, I decided that some are more called than others, which fits the general belief that some are more equal than others. So for me, it's going to be that Scott Walker who has my imprimatur. That is of course as long as he stays ahead of the others in the polls.

But has the one who is presently first in the polls just not said that he is also called by God? I pondered the possibility but realized that he had an even higher calling from his massive echo. I'm sure some are saying that he might be called by Mephistopheles. The hair is obviously covering something. It could easily be horns. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt and just say he talks a good game and makes a great deal. ...But on second thought?

I would be more anxious about this situation if there weren't little over a year yet to spend a lot of money, steal the neighbor's yard signs, and marathon watch Netflix to avoid the political commercials. But hopefully in the end, there will be a reason for it all.

Rather obviously though, being called to run doesn't mean you'll win. It's kind of like when parents tell their children they can be whatever they want to be. Then reality smacks them in the face and they settle for being the Vice-President. I still think that my man Scott Walker will be the luckiest dog in the pack. ...Or as we sometimes say, "The Chosen One." This is only a fragile prophesy that could be exposed anywhere along the way. But I did notice that, to my knowledge anyway, there haven't been any Democratic candidates who have claimed that God called them to run. ...But who would believe them if they did?


BONUS GOTCHA GRAPHIC

CREDITS: SALON Sophia Tesfaye HUFFPOST Scott Conroy, Sam Wikes WHOEVER DID THE GRAPHIC, STATUSMIND.COM, MIKE HUCKABEE, MINDCONTROLBLACK ASSASSINS.COM

LAW AND ORDER: PERSONAL OFFENSE TEAM

With the amount of strident and invective rhetoric in the social media and elsewhere, there needs to be a way to determine if someone is truly and rightly offended or if they are just overly sensitive about all that they hold to be true. Apparently, hurt feelings are the most heinous of wounds. I'm talking about the personal offenses that occur daily in the war of opinions, beliefs, social classes, political agendas, and critical reviews not to mention the battle for superior knowledge and the ultimate in refined taste. 

This is a good perspective, but I'm not sure if anyone can stay so focused. To me, it's another one of those damned paradoxes of life. We might all save our offenses for the BIG, LIFE AND DEATH realities, but they aren't that easy to change. Maybe that's why we can become so invested in LESSER offenses like just about everything on Days of Our Lives. Come on Abigail! Get your act together. Are you going to be a little tramp all the days of your life?

I don't watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit very often. But when I do, I fall in love with Mariska Hargitay all over again. Perhaps if I didn't, I'd watch more. But maybe not. I'm more of a Hallmark: Crimes Of The Heart kind of viewer. But things like murder and sexual assault need every bit of the attention they can get.  The way I figure it, the more special units the fewer traffic cops and highway patrolmen with radar guns. ...A win-win for everyone. 

So the idea of a special personal offense team or POT doesn't seem that far fetched. Of course there would have to be the obligatory couple of detectives but beyond that, the team should have a counselor or two, and a pawnbroker. (who knows better than someone who doesn't mind capitalizing on your valuable possessions) If one isn't available someone from the IRS would do. Others should be added as the need is made clear. Right now, personal offenses are a moving target. 

"It's a PO if I say it's a PO" seems to be standard of determination at this point. The other point is how many are laughing. Interestingly, what an enemy does is offensive no matter what. When a friend does the same thing, "Well, that's different." You can see that being POT investigator wouldn't just be having great theme music, an on and off love life and a back-story that continues to surprise. Tell me again how it was that you were a nun in a convent and ended up killing three priests who were part of a sleeper cell from a militant atheist group. And how you got pregnant by one of them and now fear the time when your son finds out that you killed his farther.

Having no fear, the POT agents would delve even into the PO complaints that involve relatives. These may prove to be the most popular episodes of the program. It might take more than the wisdom of Solomon to make accurate PO determinations. Rather real or just over sensitive, you can be sure they will likely go on much further than the evidence shows to be reasonable. Perhaps through the course of the show, the POT detectives can find out why relatives are so offensive in the first place. If they weren't so offensive, there'd be fewer PO's. But some are going to be offended no matter what.

Another difficult part for our POT operatives will be those who can interpret most anything as a PO. It could be because they are overly critical or maybe addicted to a sense of moral or intellectual superiority and love the feeling of being outraged. Here, the team, who don't carry guns, may have to at least carry tasers to deal with situations where the PO has gone over the edge and caused an emotional explosion. This might be a bit much, but who hasn't wanted to taser someone who is ranting on about something that you did to them.

I'm sure as the show develops there will be plenty of stories to take from real life in order not to strain the writing staff. This would easily fit the always popular week-to-week infusion of special guest stars. Typecasting according to the particular PO would add an extra touch. After a while, the show could begin to show the wear and tear on the team, certainly one of them gets PTSD. Then there's the possibility later on that PO's start to gain even more legal merit. Each new possible crime would get the full treatment but with a twist that no one had thought about before.

All though the show, there's an ongoing discussion if not somewhat of a conflict as to what PO's are all about and ultimately what is the best way to deal with them. In the series final, the team finds a plaque in an old abandoned school cafeteria kitchen that reads, "Don't be offended by forgiveness." "Could it be that simple?" one of them asks. Another replies, "I think that's only when it truly was an offense to begin with." 

CREDITS: IZQUOTES.COM, LAW AND ORDER, SUE FITZMAURICE

THE UNEASY PACE OF CHANGE

Change on the prairie is remarkably slow at times. That's the way we like it. But change does come. Farming and ranching changes a little from year to year and progresses slowly toward an eventual new look, but without very much fanfare. Communities change with increase in population and school enrollment as others change with a decrease. But further, you can see the remnants from times past of once potential communities and hopeful homesteads that were left for different dreams. 

Every now and then, a faster symbol of change occurs. The most recent was the going out of business of a store that has long served rural communities. It could have been quicker except for that it came by some sort of scale of percentages off until the inventory was gone. Granted, they were likely cycling in all the merchandize from warehouses but the incremental drops in percentage off was more like water torture.

I live 45 miles from three towns of any size, Yuma, Wray and Burlington. Each had an ALCO store; the one in Wray moved into a new store location not that long ago.  The weekly sales flyer was always perused and kept until the next arrived, just in case. Downsized Wal*Marts would be a good description. The prices matched what you had in mind to spend. I have no idea of what happened to the company but with the now empty stores, I wondered if something else would come in. But so far, they're just sitting there, at least they were the last time I looked.

When my wife and I traveled though out Colorado and neighboring states, we found other ALCO stores and often stopped to get one thing or the other because that was the kind of stores they were. I suspect most of the ALCO's were in smaller rural towns. To me, the store closings just didn't seem right. They fit well. As long as you weren't looking for anything too exciting, you had a good chance of finding it there.            

The ALCO stores no doubt caused some local stores to close and drew business from the larger towns that people made special trips to in order to get what they needed. The new stores must have found enough customers and became profitable. They eventually were the new norm, that which was expected, and the way it always was.

Sometimes it's hard to say if a change will be for better or for worse or for staying the same. It likely depends on who's saying it. But no matter, other factors come along that eventually produce the next change, whether subtle or dramatic. 

Let me say, so there is no misunderstanding. I live here, but I don't have to make a living here. For the locals, that's a big difference. Many are religiously devoted to the local economy. But for several years now some people have gone more frequently to more distant and bigger towns to get better deals and choices, even as far as a two hour trip to Denver.

Of course, mail ordering now has a big impact. I'm sure the every time the UPS truck makes a delivery to our house, it will be another year before we'll be accepted into the prairie community. But both UPS and FED-EX deliver daily in this area, so I'm not the only one ordering from amazon. But we've also had SEARS and AMERICAN FURNITURE deliver. So it might be awhile before we ever get invited to a potluck or are recognized by anything more than the obligatory wave.

So, it makes sense that these, and perhaps several other factors, which are changes in themselves, came together to necessitate the closing of the ALCO stores. And now, they are just the remnants of a day not so long ago that serve to symbolize even more changes, but mostly in finding new places or ways to get what  we need. If indeed, that wasn't something that was happening all along, but we were just too busy to think that much about it. 

CREDITS: ALCO Stores, Miscellaneous Arts, Getty

COMMONLY HUMAN, UNCOMMONLY DIVINE

Grief and loss as the unifying factor of life seems like the last thing one would consider. Yet, if anything, it is our most raw and real experience. We might have a context for such to occur. But many times there is just too much to make any kind of sense. The first time I heard this spoken by a cleric was at the funeral of Alan Laff. Alan died leaving younger children who were the focus of his life and a Catholic wife who made sure that the children were raised in the Jewish Tradition. His rabbi very bravely said, "I don't understand why. It makes no sense. ....And I don't think it makes sense to God either." Truly that was the case for losing Alan and many others. 

Yet some do quite well within their own particular understanding of loss or losses. I think there's a parallel with the number of others who share that understanding and participate with you in the traditions observed when one passes. There is such a thing as "Good Grief" as Charlie Brown would say. I think that's possible when there is some sense to the loss, even with those who were dearly loved and especially close. Eventually the pain fades a little and you can begin to accept what your life is without them. But there will always be those moments.

But what of the losses where the grieving continues to be a dominant part of your everyday life and leaves you overly sensitive to reminders and without any control of emotional triggers? It's been described in many ways but the one that seems to fit the best is "the hole in the soul that does not heal." It's hard to explain why some losses leave us permanently wounded. It's hard to explain tearing up and not being able to speak as your spirit shutters anew with the pain and emptiness. It's hard to explain how after so many years that your love has actually grown, leaving you to wonder even more about what could have been.

We are drawn to the peak of life when another life is taken from us. Maybe if only an instant we fully see what we had with them all along and the difference their lives truly made. It is a time when all that normally seems so important fades in the light of spiritual understanding. Our base instincts are nulled by an ethereal feeling of love, kindness and caring. Few could ever stay at this point and I think that is for the best. It may vary, but it's not that long before the natural distancing begins to occur. We may wonder why the awareness, feeling and and experiencing of the ultimate reality doesn't work any better. Oddly, there's some needed comfort in a familiar laugh, some hope in a fond remembrance and some order to the demands of everyday living.

I like the idea that life sometimes doesn't make any sense to God. I like the idea that in our deepest pain and sorrow, we might be as close to the divine as we will ever be in this life. I like the idea that being permanently wounded isn't so much a life sentence as it is a constant reminder that life is bigger than I could ever possibly imagine. And I like the idea that all pretenses are loss to the sameness of tears.

BACK INTO THE FRAY AGAIN

It's been awhile since I last put any posts out, mostly due to some health problems. Being in pain and having little energy makes for a very dull imagination. I spent a lot of time watching TV that for me is HULU and NETFLIX via Amazon Fire. I'm basically a Hallmark Special kind of viewer but with the extra time, I've gone astray. I am now somewhat an expert on torture techniques, subversive countermeasures, undercover disguises and assassination techniques. This was quite a bit more than what my regular soap opera ever portrayed. The overload of dark and dangerous shows and movies left me to fear almost everyone I met, or at least to make a potential threat assessment. 

I'm doing a little better now. However, I'm still trying to figure out how the hero with only a pistol can take out fire guys with assault rifles. I know a little about weaponry from being in Vietnam but apparently, the usual laws of physics don't apply anymore. Yet such critical observances didn't matter as much as the need for pure distraction in a realm that I would have normally not wanted anything to do with. 

On my better days, I thought about what I was doing with blogging, if anything at all. I never expected them be popular as I can be an equal opportunity offender. But maybe something a little more nuanced would get more page views. With the extra time, I was able to see that many have similar critical considerations. It can't be helped unless you limit yourself to writing about puppies and kittens. For a while, several new directions and approaches were entertained. In the end it wasn't so much as needing change as it was needing inclusion, the inclusion of all things - all people, all suffering, all happiness, all evil, all hope, all need, all laughter, all illness, all success, all hunger, all joy and all displacement. 

Many more realities can and ought to be named. But a look at the world as it is, or was, or might yet be at every given moment "IS" rather massive. It seems then that any understanding could at best be only a mere reflection of its cohesiveness. But some don't consider things that can be known with only a little effort because they already have everything figured out.

The more we know about what life on the Earth is for all who have found themselves as it's inhabitants, the less we are to apply dogma. Sadly, many lives have left only a trace and certainly no record. At best we can paste together what life may have been for them. Even with recorded histories, some have been lost or destroyed or grossly incomplete. Too many histories have been written from limited or self-serving points of view even as our current history is often formed in the same molds. But what would a complete and concise history of everything actually look like? ...I'm definitely waiting for the movie. 

Let me be quick to say that I know of no approach that fully takes in all that there is. Some of that is based on how little we really know. The rest is based on how much we don't want to know. Perhaps faith is best seen as our hope in knowing enough. But that may likely depend on what we attach to it. It seems that some faiths are so burdened with add-ons that the original truth is distorted. I think the more narrowly defined, the more likely that even God has to consult it. 

Even the closest explanation of and for all things (which usually is the one that we currently hold) is not without problems. Many conflicts of course come from those who have a different explanation. But what is of more concern is when you can clearly see that some things don't fit and can honestly admit that you don't know what to do about it. Here I recommend a hefty dose of denial, or allow for some anomalies to exist or make unfounded accommodations. But if you can't just broad-brush all the incongruities away and the desire for reasonable understanding persists, welcome to living life without the safety net of knowing why.

The world is full of those who claim to have the truth about life; some even do it when they have people at gunpoint. And apparently, it can get even worse. Truth-telling can be a very risky business. But I can honestly say that I've never been so confident about the meaning of life that I would kill someone. I just don't see where that is necessary; leaving them traumatically wounded is good enough.

In writing posts for a blog, I sometimes feel like the "American Sniper." But it is said that the keyboard is mightier than the armed drone. Figurative killing and maiming seems to be a rather popular literary sport. Some of it is providing push back or at least a prick to the illusion of rightness. It is to point out that their solutions are just plain impossible, that they don't get to determine who is the best American or a real Christian, that they can't say that equal rights are only for their friends, that they don't get to be the only ones who speak for God, and that they can't just watch Fox News or MSNBC with mindless admiration.

Okay then, I think I know what I'm doing with this now. So it's back into the fray again. But maybe this time with a little more learned treachery disguised as objective analysis, and of course, at least some puppies and kittens. 

There is only doing, no guarantees or assurances. You have to deal with life one way or the other. Not so much the ideal as it is the practical that is needed. Perhaps it is as the best blogger I know put it in another time.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.

Special thanks must go to Sydney Bristow, Elizabeth Kane, and Peggy Carter.

CREDITS: William Shakespeare Henry V, Scene One