Reconnecting in the Time of COVID

Buzzfeed recently posted an article about how this pandemic is causing many people to try to repair broken relationships...or even confess to secret crushes.

The idea seems to be that, all things considered, a lot of people are looking at what destroyed their relationships as being small potatoes, and want to try to fix things before one of them dies. Not that they necessarily want that person back in their lives again, but that they wanted to get rid of any bad blood that may have existed between them. In many of the cases this has gone well. In others, the person who received the olive branch said, “Nice, but I really don’t need to deal with this person anymore. I don’t really care. There’s no bad blood, there’s just no blood.”

I can understand both sides of this. On the one hand, there are people out there who’ve hurt me who I’d love to contact and say that all is forgiven. In fact, there’s one person out there who I’d like to tell that not only is all forgiven, but I wouldn’t trade the two weeks we had together for anything...regardless of how it ended. There are people who I’ve inadvertently hurt, that I’d like to apologize to; but they’ve been out of my life for so many years...decades even...that to try to contact them for this might open up a wound that had been long since healed and forgotten about.

On the other hand, there are people I’m perfectly fine with not having in my life anymore. Or as I said before, not so much bad blood as no blood. Sometimes I’ve even forgotten that they existed until some little thing jogs my memory. Years have gone by with me having no reason to contact them, and I figure they have no reason to contact me. I figure we’re both fine with blessed nothingness.

But those “secret crushes.” Oh...they can be ever so tricky. Sometimes what you feel you need to say “before one of you gets hit by a bus” comes out the wrong way, is taken the wrong way, and makes things very awkward between the two of you for quite a while. I know this because I’ve been on the giving end of the awkwardness. But do you tell someone how much they’ve meant to you while they’re still around, and risk the awkwardness that may come from that, or do you hold it in, with that person never knowing that they were special to you...something they may have wanted to know...before one of you goes to your grave?

This reminds me of that one special friend from many years ago, who I loved dearly, but didn’t tell for many reasons, including not wanting to risk ruining the friendship by making things awkward if she didn’t feel the same way. To this day, even though I know we weren’t right for each other, I still regret not having told her how I felt.

Will I be writing her during these unusual times, to finally let her know how I felt all those years ago...before one of us gets hit by a bus? No, I don’t think so. But if she wrote me, I’d be thrilled. 

Just not to death, I hope.

Being People in the Time of COVID-19

One of my coworkers has a saying that I’m fond of. She says, “Being people is hard.” She’s right. Being people is hard.

And being good people is even harder. Especially in times of crisis. There’s such a conflict between what we know we ought to do and what we want to do, between what we feel and the way we know we should think, that being good people is incredibly hard. None of us is perfect at it, despite our best efforts. And the sooner we face up to that fact, and admit that we all have ugly little thoughts that we do the best we can to mitigate, the better.

Why am I saying this? Well, with this COVID thing upon us, and people scrambling, panicking, making bad decisions, and acting downright horribly, I thought about the fact that Passover is also coming, and thinking of the ten plagues of Egypt, I posted on Facebook:

Suppose the coronavirus could be guaranteed to pass over your house if you painted your doorposts with the milk of human kindness…

Some of which you had partaken of first.

As of this writing, I had four likes, and not a single dislike.

Of course, the dark, implied back side of this was that if you weren’t able to demonstrate that the milk of human kindness existed in your house, then you were screwed. But still...no one took me to task for that sentiment.

Contrast that to the response I got to my comment on a friend’s post about people who were making this whole thing worse. I said:

I know this is an evil thought, but wouldn’t it be nice if the only people taken out by this were the idiots, assholes, and deniers?

I got immediately slammed for wishing a horrible thing upon people. But really, it was no different from what I said about painting your doorposts. I attempted to clarify the situation by saying that I wasn’t wishing this on anyone, but if we know that, barring a miracle, some people have to get it, I’m pretty sure that there are some people we’d rather see get it than others.

Slammed again.

But let’s be real folks. I may try to be my most logically Spock-like at all times, but I’m still human, and I have emotions. And emotionally, I don’t want good people to suffer from this. And knowing logically that a certain number of people are gonna get this thing, I would much rather have it be the person who’s gonna try to shoot up a school or house of worship than some little old lady who never harmed anyone in her life.

Of course, the Grim Reaper is gonna pass right by Margaret, the lady who gives out full-sized Snickers bars at Halloween.

You may not want to admit this, but we all do this kind of moral calculus. We do it every time we ask “Why do the evil flourish while the good are cut down like the grass?” We all implicitly say that if there’s any suffering to happen, it should be to those people.

Not that we want that anyone should suffer. Ideally, no one should. But if there is suffering to be doled out, let’s be honest, and admit that we’d all prefer it to be visited upon the evil, the selfish, and the mean-spirited.

Because we’re human. We’re people. And being people is hard.

And being good people is especially hard.

Now as for me and my family, we’re gonna start painting our doorposts.

And we’ll help you paint yours too.

Religious vs Political

Two Sundays ago I preached a sermon on Transfiguration Sunday that talked about our need to be transformed. I talked about the kind of people we need to be transformed into and the kind of people we need to be transformed from. I didn’t talk in bland generalities, but rather, gave specific examples of how we needed to be transformed in order to show the love of God through Jesus to the world more clearly.

And when the service was over, at least one person complained to two people I know...but not to me directly...that my sermon was “too political.”

“Too political.” Funny...I knew that someone was going to say that. Even though I mentioned no specific names in my sermon, I knew that someone was going to say it was “too political.” Perhaps it was “too political” because it sounded like something “those damned liberals would say.” But my wife astutely pointed out that had we visited a conservative church...conservative both in the way they interpreted the Bible as well as the political views of the pastor and most of the congregation, and heard a sermon from their particular point of view, where they were specifically political, and where everyone else was enthusiastically shouting “Amen!”, this person probably wouldn’t have complained at all.

And actually, nor would we. We would simply have chalked it up to differences in how we interpret the Bible, and how those differences inform our daily lives. Indeed how those differences inform our political lives.

So the question here is when is something religious and when is it political. Or perhaps more precisely, does our religion inform our political views or do our political views inform our religious beliefs?

I know how I think things work with me, and because I firmly believe that my religious beliefs inform my political views, I can comfortably say that my sermon of two weeks ago was not political...although it definitely made some people with opposing political views very uncomfortable.

But wait...there’s more!

Ash Wednesday was last week, and in the liturgy for the service that evening, I found the following words in the confession of sin:

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people, we confess to you.

Our neglect of human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty, we confess to you.

Our false judgements, our uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us, we confess to you.

Our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us, we confess to you.

Restore us, O God, and let your anger depart from us.

I saw these words in the liturgy for the day, and felt vindicated. This was everything I had said three days earlier, except that instead of trusting people to connect the dots themelves (which we often don’t), I came out with a big black Sharpie and did it for them.

Why? Not because my politics inform my religious beliefs. But because my religious beliefs inform my politics…as well as the rest of my life.

Religious beliefs which I’m always re-examining in the light of new data.

Which is as it should be.

In both cases.

What Price "The Kingdom"?

Today is Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, or whatever you want to call the day before Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and Lent is key to what I want to talk about today.

In those churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary the Gospel lesson for the first Sunday in Lent is Matthew 4:1-11. This is the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. And one of the things he’s tempted with is being given all the world if he’ll just bow down and worship the evil one.

Jesus refuses and tells him to begone. I want you to hold onto that thought for a bit because we’ll come back to it after I tell you another Bible story.

This one comes from the book of Isaiah, from the Hebrew Scriptures, and is about how King Cyrus of Persia was annointed by God to end the Babylonian exile, and send the Jews back to Israel to restore the kingdom. Even though he wasn’t one of them, and even though he didn’t worship their God, he was widely praised for having restored the kingdom to Israel.

And of course, someone who restores your kingdom to you, with all the power a glory you had before is worthy of praise, aren’t they? As is someone who promises to restore the kingdom to you as you knew it...or thought you knew it, right?

And this is exactly why 81% of Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the last election. Notice I didn’t say 81% of Christians, but 81% of Evangelicals...because they felt that he had promised to “restore the kingdom” to them. They felt that he had promised to deliver to them the power to put “real Christians” back in charge, “real Christians” who would stand up and defeat the LGBTQs, the people who were pro-choice (which is not the same as pro-abortion), and the people who believed in science rather than the Bible...to name a few. And they even went so far as to say that they believed that they were dealing with a Cyrus, who, while not one of them, was chosen by God to give them back what was rightfully theirs.

But there were two things they didn’t realize.

The first was that they weren’t dealing with a Cyrus, who gave them back the kingdom with no expectations of anything back, but with the evil one who expected to be worshiped, and who Jesus told to begone. And they figured that having the kingdom, as they understood it, restored was worth the price of making a deal with the evil one. They saw it as a good thing brought about by evil means.

Do I really need to say anything about that?

The second is that they didn’t realize that their idea of restoring...or bringing about...the kingdom may have been very different from what Jesus had in mind. 

But that wouldn’t have been the first time that happened. 

Jesus constantly confounded many of his followers, as well as the Jewish authorities, whose expectations of a messiah were of someone who would lead them to kick some Roman butt, and “restore the kingdom”...that is to say restore it to its “glory days.” And yet, in thinking about a little biblical history, one has to wonder if there really were any “glory days.” Seems that God was always getting after them for one failing or another, and that if there were any glory days, they lasted for about a week and a half before they screwed up again.

But Jesus didn’t come to “restore the kingdom”, he came to bring the kingdom...a kingdom that was much different from what the anti-Roman zealots and the temple authorities had in mind.

And perhaps much different from what the modern day Pharisees and Zealots among at least 81% of Evangelicals have in mind.

It sure would be nice if we all came out of not only Lent, but through November, having soundly decided to reject the evil one and all his empty promises.[1]

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[1] One of the baptismal and confirmation vows used in the Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and other liturgical churches

Maybe It's the Population After All!

There’s a running joke in my family that when I die, my obituary is going to start off something like this:

Keith Edward Gatling, of Syracuse, NY, has died, and no longer has to deal with the people who wouldn’t listen to him the first time...when he was right to begin with.

Actually, that’s not a joke. I’m going to write my own obituary, and it’s gonna start off just like that. You know why? Because it’s true. There’ve been way too many times when I’ve said something which has been either ignored or discounted, until...well...it actually turns out that I was right, and that other people were stubborn.

Which brings me to the subject of today’s post.

Many years ago...like about 40 or more of them...I was very concerned about increasing population. I knew enough about Malthus to be dangerous, and was concerned that sooner or later...maybe sooner...we’d end up with more people than we could feed; in which case the whole population thing would take care of itself because half of us would starve.

This idea was pooh-poohed by some friends of mine, who optimistically said that we’ll figure this out. And that one of those “too many people” born in the future will figure out how to feed us all.

But it wasn’t just that. I had friends who believed that having children was a moral imperative. We should all have children, whether we wanted to or not, because children are an intrinsic good, and people who didn’t want to have children were just plain selfish. And even the reasons they gave for not wanting children (like concerns about the population) were just masks to hide their selfishness behind.

Me...I figure that these people wanted children so badly that they had to justify it by saying that everyone should have them. They couldn’t let there be “different strokes for different folks.”

Then there are those who worry that if we don’t have enough children, two very bad things will happen. The first is that the Ponzi scheme called the economy will collapse. The other is that there won’t be enough young people to take care of people to take care of an increasingly aging population. I believe that both of these concerns, however, are very short-sighted and selfish.

And so where are we forty years after I first voiced my concerns about increased population? In a situation which may well have been caused by too much population growth over the past four decades. Human-induced climate change and new diseases that spread much more quickly are but a few of the possible results of having reached a certain population threshold.

I can’t recall where I read it, but I saw somewhere that if the world population was around what it was in 1915, we’d probably be doing just fine. But now there are too many people wanting and needing too much stuff; and while there’s enough food (for now), we’re strangling ourselves in other ways.

But what about the economy? What about taking care of the elderly among us? Do we really need to keep pumping out more and more of us in order to deal with those issues?

Maybe not. Maybe we can be more creative. Maybe our economy can be based on something other than increased consumerism, and become something more sustainable. Maybe there are ways to take care of an increasingly aging population without having to pump out more babies to do it.

Maybe we need to take a look at how other cultures did this in the past.

And maybe we should take seriously the idea that maybe we should slow down...and even reverse...this population growth.

Because...maybe I was right in the first place.

What's in a Name?

Over the December break, my two daughters, 17 and 26, were discussing a Quebec law that said that a married woman couldn’t take her husband’s last name, and how unfair it was. They felt that these women should at least be given a choice in the matter.

As I marveled at the Christmas miracle of these two actually getting along, and holding a civil conversation with each other...finally...I decided to look this up to see if it was true, or simply some urban legend they were responding to. And you know how many of those there are out there!

Turns out that it was true…and not only that, but it wasn’t even a new thing. This law has been on the books in Quebec since 1981. This means that almost two generations of women have grown up with this, and you’d think that they’d be used to it by now. I mean really…39 years? On the other hand, if their mothers and grandmothers changed their names, they still have examples of the old tradition to go by.

But wait…according to an article from Time, Quebec isn’t the only place that has this rule. It’s been the case in Greece since 1983, and in France since 1789.

1789? When I read that, I was like “Whoa! So that means that Marie Curie wasn’t really Marie Curie?” Well…yes and no. Legally…on all official documents, she was still Maria Sklodowska, but socially and publicly she was Marie Curie. And we’ll come back to that later.

Indeed, in many countries and cultures, that thing about taking the husband’s name went the way of the dinosaurs with the dinosaurs themselves…if it ever existed at all.

But let’s get back to Canada…and the States…and this particular law in Quebec.

When I looked it up, I was surprised at the strong opinions I found not only in favour of it, but  also harshly against those women who wanted the ability to change their names; asking why any modern woman would want to go back to such an archaic system and lose her identity like that.

Well, I’ll tell you one reason that a “modern woman” might want to “lose her identity” like that. When I was in college, I knew a girl with the last name of Boring, and she said the despite her devotion to feminist causes, she couldn’t wait to get married and ditch that name without offending her family. She was tired of being one of those “Boring girls.”

Another reason might have to do with going from a hard name to an easy one. When my wife and I were planning our wedding, I asked her what she wanted to do about her name…take mine, keep hers, hyphenate, or make something new. She said, “My last name is Kutscher. No one can pronounce it. No one can spell it. Yours is Gatling. It’s phonetic. Done.”

But there’s another reason, and it’s perhaps the same reason that Maria Sklodowska became known as Marie Curie…love…and signaling the relationship to others.

One of the Canadian opinions basically said that while legally, and on all official documents, she still Ms MacDonald, that doesn’t prevent her from publicly and socially being Mrs Makenzie to show the relationship she was in.

Interestingly enough, this whole issue came up in our house at the same time that one of my former students was getting married for the second time, and was wondering what to do about her name. Should she become Mrs Allen to signal the new relationship that she was proud to be entering into; remain Ms Siegel, which is the name she had used professionally for years, and that her daughter shared; or take this opportunity to go back to her original status as Ms Scott? Her intended didn’t care what name she used, as long as he got to have her, but she was still thinking about it.

Finally, after much discussion back and forth about it, she decided to remain Ms Siegel officially, socially, and publicly, but her relationship name…in those hours when they were together all by themselves, and as a pet name…would be Mrs Allen.

Different things work for different people.

So to all of you who are in any kind of relationship, and no matter what you’ve decided to do with your name, I wish you a happy Valentine’s Day!

And a special congratulations to the new “Mrs Allen.”

What We Say

I was thinking earlier about things that girls can say to guys, and it’s just fine, but if a guy were to say it to a girl, it would be seen as incredibly creepy. And then that got me thinking about the thing that a number of you, who don’t see the forest as a whole, but instead, focus on the one tree you have an issue with, have probably already seized upon.

I said “girls” and “guys” instead of “women” and “men.” And, of course, to refer to any female over the age of 18 as a girl is “demeaning.”

But linguistically, it’s so much more complicated than that. We have the legality of adulthood mixed up with perception of youth (or relative youth), and the whole alliteration thing to deal with. How do we handle this?

I don’t know if I can work this out to everyone’s satisfaction, but I’m gonna try as best I can; knowing that some people will still disagree with me.

Yes...technically, at age 18, you’re no longer children (although you have to wait until 21 to buy beer), and thus, no longer girls and boys. But do the terms “girl” and “boy” of necessity only refer to children? What about “girls’ night out”, or “boys’ night out”? Some of those girls and boys are in their 40s and older. But more specifically, we don’t tend to use “boys” all that often when talking about males in general. We use the “ageless” term “guys.” This gets us to that alliteration thing.

With girls and guys we’ve got two terms that both begin with the letter “g.” It’s a parallel structure. It trips off the tongue more easily. And so we use it.

So now we’ve got girls and guys. I’ve already mentioned that “guys” is a pretty much “ageless” term for any male. Is there something similar in regular English for females? Well yes...and it just happens to be “girls.” Why isn’t there a totally different term for ageless females like there is for ageless males? There used to be...it was “gals” (there goes that alliteration again).  But for some reason, it’s fallen into disuse over the years. And as linguist John McWhorter will tell you, language doesn’t always behave logically.

But why not just use “women” and “men” for anyone over the age of 18? This brings up issues of youth, and relative youth. I don’t know about you, but “women” and “men” makes me think of older people...people who are at least in their 30s. And actually, when I looked up discussions of “girl vs woman” and “guy vs man” online, I found that each of the former terms is generally used to refer to young women and young men...with young being defined as under 30. Fascinating...no one ever actually teaches you this distinction, but it’s one that most of us instinctively know.

But another article pointed out something so obvious that most of us don’t even notice it…”girls” and “guys” are informal terms we use for talking about people. They’re the terms we use when referring to them colloquially. If we were talking about someone past high school or college age formally, we’d likely refer to them as women and men. But while they’re in school, it’s girls and guys. Referring to a person on a college campus who is a student, and not a faculty or staff member, as a woman or man, seems kind of affected and pretentious.

And then comes the thing that makes this whole issue so darned difficult in the first place...there’s not even agreement among women about what they want to be called and when. It’s not like there’s one monolithic voice out there saying “We always only want to be called women.” There isn’t, and there are enough women out there who use the term “girls” to refer to themselves that you just never know when you’re going to hit that nerve with someone.

But getting back to my original point, did you ever notice that there are some things a girl can say to a guy and it’s just fine...and even cute, but if a guy said it to a girl, we would all just go “Eeew”?