Newtown and the Constitution

While not unexpected, I am still disappointed in the online postings falling back on the second amendment, the right to bear arms, in light of the tragedy that took place in Newtown.

Could we all stop a minute and think about the constitution and its amendments differently?  Is the Bill of Rights immune from amendment?

First, why did the authors of the constitution provide for amendments?  They recognized that the document, conceived by men, might have flaws.  They almost immediately introduced those first ten amendments, what we call the Bill of Rights.   Some were concerned that the original constitution did not spell these rights out.  But even then, not all of the founding fathers agreed on the need for those first ten amendments.

Now, let's think about amendments generally.  They occur because the constitution was meant to be a living, breathing document and that over time, changes in society may drive the need to revise (i.e., amend) the constitution.  Remember that the "Bill of Rights" is nothing more than a name for the first ten amendments.  And, just like all the rest, are subject to amendment themselves, if the people decide there's a need to amend.  (There is precedent.  The twenty-first amendment overturned the eighteenth amendment which prohibited alcohol.  I'm sure many of us are grateful for that circumstance.)

Finally, let's think about the second amendment specifically.  Think about the age in which the authors lived.  "Arms" meant a muzzle load musket, which could only fire one shot at a time.  The people of the time needed arms to defend themselves in wild frontiers and to provide food for their families and themselves.  How is that the case today?  We have home alarm systems to warn us of intrusion.  We have police, sheriff, and state trooper departments to serve as first responders when we encounter threat.  Most of us get our food in grocery stores.  Some of us hunt for food, but does that call for a semi automatic weapon to kill a deer, a pheasant, or a duck?

Beyond the issue of arms, consider that of mental health.  Remember, in 1789, medicine as a discipline barely existed.  People were still using leeches to cure the ill.  It was before Freud.  Before treatment for paranoid schizophrenia.  It might as well have been in biblical times when those suffering from what we would recognize as mental illness were considered possessed by demons.  And certainly a condition as complex as autism was well beyond the abilities of the best of the practitioners.  We still grope in the twenty-first century for answers to that condition.

Could the framers of the constitution have imagined a world of video games that desensitize the participant to violence, of stores full of toy guns?  

The world has changed since then.  We have a responsibility to acknowledge the extent of that change and to accept the effects such change mandates to the law of the land.

I confess that President Obama's remarks in Newtown, along with some of the online comments I've read, motivated me to develop these thoughts.  

Repeating my earlier plea, could we please stop and think.  Not react, not shoot from the hip, not fall back on established thoughts and positions.  Think.  Please.  It's really important.

The lives of our children depend on it.

Be a Light

Have you heard the expression "more heat than light"?  It means that a discussion makes people angry without providing solutions or answers.

Our political climate would be an example.  There are few politicians who speak in public in other than a partisan way.  They make people angry.  They provide few solutions.

Then you can get some of the media involved in this circus like MSNBC and, of course, Fox News.

It occurred to me that we should take that expression more seriously and that we have some good metaphors for how we engage each other.  Think about sources of light.

The candle:  produces very little light and disproportionately much heat.  You generally don't want to touch a burning candle unless you have an affinity for third degree burns.

The incandescent light:  can produce a great deal of light but carries a good deal of heat with it.  Think about the last time you touched an incandescent light that was on.  No fun, regardless of the wattage.  Second degree burns result.

The fluorescent light:  even more light and less heat.  Still uncomfortable but the worst you'll get is a first degree burn, light a mild sunburn.

The LED:  lots of light, especially in aggregate.  Cool enough to hold in your hand (and many of us do).

What do you want to be?  Be a (LED) light.

The Spirit

This last Sunday was Pentecost.  The Episcopal Church is a liturgical church which means, among other things, that they follow a lectionary which is a standard set of readings that are followed each day throughout the year during worship.  For Pentecost, the readings included the selection from Acts describing the first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples.  Tongues of fire, speaking in tongues.

There was also a selection from psalm 104 where the psalmist talks about the "Spirit", a reading from Romans where Paul writes about the Spirit helping us in our weakness, and that part of the gospel of John where Jesus promises the Advocate, the Spirit of truth.

That set me to thinking.  Did the Hebrews of the psalmist days and Jesus think of the same entity when they used the word "Spirit"?  Christians profess belief in the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Before Jesus arrived, did the Jews believe in a two-nity, Father and Spirit?  Or was referring to the Spirit of God their way of thinking about how God can live and give life to the world?

Assuming that the Spirit in Acts is the same entity that Jesus promised would come, would Jesus have been surprised to see the effect of the Spirit?  I suppose the speaking (or being heard) in tongues can be directly related to the charge Jesus gave the disciples, to teach all nations.  

Then, I thought about today's Christians and how they regard the Spirit.  Is it all the same?

One other thought I had.  When everyone in Jerusalem could hear the disciples speak, each in his own language, did that represent the "undoing" of the results of the Tower of Babel, when the people tried to build something that would reach to God and God would have none of it.  God tends to get testy in Genesis when humans aspire to god-likeness.

For those who know a lot more of all of this than I do, I'd love to hear your comments.

Facebook

Like so many other things in life, the Internet has its advantages and its disadvantages.


I resisted Facebook for the longest time.  It seemed artificial and meant for people younger than me.  Kind of like match.com but "just friends".


I finally joined Facebook.  In my "youthful" exuberance, I friended anyone that Facebook presented or that I found on my own.


Eventually, though, I found myself tiring of some of the status updates.  It really is TMI to know you're driving to work, going to the bathroom, eating breakfast.   Being something of an introvert, I was becoming overwhelmed with the volume of information that my "friends" were willing to share.  


So, I've become somewhat more selective about my Facebook friends.


Still, being the oldest of six, all married with children, my "family" friends are numerous.


At first, I found Facebook so addictive, I was spending way too much time reading posts, seeing status updates, and reading when some of the younger generation were simply "bored".


Facebook is, as Mr. Spock would say, fascinating.  I love when people tell me about their travels.  I love it, but it makes me a little bit jealous.  Regardless, Facebook is its own medium to me.   The way it allows people to connect, to share, to communicate (and pontificate) at times represents a step in our development that I find wonder-full.

Normal Pressure Hydrocephaly(us)

Before my wife and I moved to our little southern town of Arab, Alabama, I had been experiencing some steadily worsening symptoms in my walking.  More and more frequently, I would trip, having caught my right foot on anything from a crack in the sidewalk to a step in an auditorium.


(At the risk of giving away the punch line here, there were other symptoms.  I had developed a problem of urinary incontinence, not frequent, but still bothersome, to say the least.  In addition, going as far back as three or four years, prior to my retirement, I was having difficulty at work in what would normally have been straightforward problem solving.)


Back to the issue at hand, I went out one day for a walk through the golf course that lies behind the condo we rent.  It was early June and already getting warm.  I walked through most of the back nine holes and arrived at the club house.  I felt I needed some hydration and, as it turns out, the club house is near the local Wal-Mart.  I stopped in the store to get some water and headed out down the four lane divided highway that would take me back to my street.
After about a quarter mile going down the breakdown lane, I started having trouble walking.  It was not so much the gait problem to which I was accustomed, but a sense that my upper body was moving ahead of my legs.  


Suddenly, I was lying on the ground surrounded by three Good Samaritans who had stopped when they saw me on the ground.  They called for an ambulance which took me to the nearest emergency room at Marshall County Medical Center in Guntersville, Alabama.
Once the doctor discovered that I had been having this gait problem, he asked two other key questions that no other physician had asked:

1. Have you had any incontinence problems?
2. Have you had any indication of early dementia?

In addition to being floored at the relevance (to us) of the questions, we learned that I might have a condition called Normal Pressure Hydrocephaly.  It results when the brain fails to drain cerebral spinal fluid from cavities called ventricles.


The doctor ordered a CAT scan of my brain and suggested I see a neurologist.


To make a long story short, I was positively diagnosed with the condition and referred to a neurosurgeon who recommended that I have a kind of surgery called a shunt placement.  The shunt drains the spinal fluid into you abdominal cavity where it is absorbed by other organs.  When I resisted a quick decision, he simply asked if I want to pee on myself for the rest of my life.  Decision made.


Post surgery, relief of all symptoms was practically immediate.


Why do I bother the internet with these experiences?  This condition is not diagnosed as frequently as it occurs.  Sometimes it is diagnosed as early onset dementia or Alzheimer's Disease.  Sometimes (as in my case) the suggestions were that I pay more attention to my walking and my cognitive tasks.


Because of this triad of symptoms, it is frequently misdiagnosed as other conditions.  So I write this as a kind of public service announcement regarding a condition that may affect many individuals and for which there is a relatively painless remedy.


Sometimes physicians diagnose what they are accustomed to treating.  I had four physicians (internist, orthopedic surgeon, psychiatrist, urologist) to whom I had described what I thought was the relevant symptom.  They diagnosed based on the one symptom and passed it off as something else entirely.


So, be attentive to your body as you age.  And if you see a physician, make sure you describe all symptoms whether or not you think they are relevant.  If you are worried about one or more in particular (both my wife and I worried about dementia but neither articulated the extent of our worry), your solution may exist and may dispel your fears.

What's In a Name?

We humans seem to have the need to name things.


In the second creation account in Genesis, the man (Adam) is asked by God to give names to all of the animals.


Some of us dither for 9 months over the name of an expected baby.  Even worse, I've had friends who obsess over what their grandchild will call them!


Most of us recognize the Shakespearean line "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet", concluding Juliet's soliloquy that begins "Romeo...wherefore art thou Romeo."


At our wedding, some seventeen years ago, a little toddler niece went around to everyone asking "What yo name?".  It was so important to her that she knew everyone's name.


There was a time when a name was more than the current fad or the cute (or manly) sounding name.  Names had meanings.  You can search the internet for the derivation and meaning of your name.  Throughout the Bible, you will find references to names and their meanings.  St. Peter had his name changed from Simon.  "Petra"--Latin for rock.  God changes Abram's name to Abraham and Sarai's name to Sarah as part of the first covenant God made with his people.  Perhaps the most dramatic name change came when Saul experienced his encounter with God and was named Paul thereafter.  


In my case, my mother, a lifelong devout Catholic, and father decided that I should be named after each of my grandfathers:  James and Philip.  Not coincidentally, those happen to be the names of two of Jesus' apostles.  James is a derivative of Jacob, as in Esau and Jacob.  Jacob means "supplanter"; Jacob supplanted Esau in obtaining his birthright.  Philip is from the Greek and means lover of horses.  I think neither the Jacob and Esau story nor the meaning of Philip played much of a role in the choice.  I was the firstborn.  I never was much of a horseman.  


Sometimes we do our children a disservice by using a middle name as a primary appellation.  I named my first child Margaret Claire but we always intended to call her Claire.  So she spent a lifetime having to respond to Margaret and explaining that she goes by Claire.  Think of all the forms we fill in that ask only for a middle initial.  For all intents and purposes, in that circumstance, the middle albeit primary name disappears.


Wouldn't things get interesting if we named our children based upon the dreams we have for them, based on the meaning of the name?

Why This Blog

As a young person in school, I developed a reputation for being a pretty good writer.

Later, writing fell by the wayside along with piano, guitar, basketball, and probably a dozen other sidelines.

Now in my 60s, every once in a while, I feel as though I have something that I can say well.

So, here goes.