NFL, taking a knee

Didn’t the NFL fine players for over-zealous touchdown celebrations through last season?

Weren’t those demonstrations of glee protected “free-speech”?  If not, why not?

What if a player wants to wear a 49’ers jersey while freely and publicly endorsing a political candidate?  OK by the 49’ers?  The NFL?

What if a player wanted to sew a Cross onto the front of their playing jersey, or put a Jesus decal on their helmet for game-time?  OK with the NFL?

Protected speech, right?

Personally, I think the President should stay out of these things, but I myself am a little mystified regarding what seem to be dramatic inconsistencies within what the NFL recently fined and now appears to fully support.

Maybe it’s just me.

The National Anthem represents all of us, and especially those who died enabling us to sing it.

It has nothing to do with a sitting President (as these protests began during the previous administration).  It’s bigger than that.  It’s bigger than party or team, or individual.

Much bigger.

That’s why it’s respectfully rendered before many games across many sports.

How is it that some, wearing an NFL uniform, will take a knee during our National Anthem, while taking a big check that uniform, and thriving in our country, provides?

How was aggressively spiking the football last year more of a concern to the NFL than actively disrespecting the National Anthem was and is today?

 

2017 Solar Eclipse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite things to do is take time off, not only to decompress, but also re-vision my sense of self, my calling, and my God.

Stepping away from daily pursuits offers valuable perspective, and there’s a reason why the One Who called a Universe into being, commanded us to take regular rest.

Over a period of three weeks, I watched very little news.  What a blessing that was, as the world went on without my scrutiny, and, in reality, what I was doing in life was just as relevant as what I might find on TV.  As a former broadcast journalist, I’ve always known this, but still it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking we have some kind of holy obligation to attend to what is printed in the New York Times.  Do we feel the same way about opening up and reading the Scripture?  Or is it perhaps that we deem the message in the Bible less relevant or current.

With encouragement from Lisa and Niue, I did some internet gymnastics, and wound up economically ensconced in Kearney, Nebraska, perchance to see and photograph the 2017 total solar eclipse.  Some locales were mobbed, but on the big day, I found myself resplendently emplaced on a wide expanse of emerald green grass within in the Mormon Island State Recreation Area.

Truth is, I found it a bit by accident, just off I-80, en-route to somewhere else.  As I’ve said to my kids, have a plan, but be open to what unfolds.  Instead of being in a stadium or field of thousands, I was able to make instant friends with 15 or 20 nearby souls, who’d come in from all directions and persuasions, in all manner of transport, for a totality climax set to last more than 2.5 minutes.  We were literally going to be “made in the shade”!

Trusty Mylar and cardboard filter in front of my eyes (and one for the camera) during the partial phases, the clock ticked down as the Moon soared through space to provide the ultimately defining moment.

Then, it happened.  It clicked in.  No announcer to tell us what was occurring, no media outlet spinning the event.  Just one sphere perfectly interposing itself 400X closer over a fiery orb 400X bigger.  Rather straightforward.  Yet, in our neck of the galaxy, incredibly rare.

Maybe that’s why folks spontaneously shouted and screamed.  Some cried too.  Glasses off, it was a sight to behold.  In totality, the corona was made visible and iridescent prominences revealed the radiation that gives us life.

Looking up to an actual event that takes us beyond ourselves, people become one.  Left, right and center, as the temperature dramatically drops, humans are lifted up and unified in seeing the light and darkness that define our being.

Total eclipses are celebrations of a star, 13 billion years in the making, that supplies 99% of our planet’s heat.  That reality becomes rapidly obvious as the temperature drops precipitously with the suddenly imminent dusk.

Some might see our “yellow dwarf” eminently stable star as an accident.  My guts and my belief tell me it’s part of an act in the only play that matters.  It is but one expression among many millions and billions of cause and effect events that enable you and I to see, consider, and celebrate.

Solar eclipses fall upon the weak and the strong, the rich and poor, the black and white, the serious and silly.  Clouds be willing, they call us to look up, and far, far away from ourselves.

I believe, when the Moon, in its very special place, flawlessly interposes itself in front of our Sun, it is a little reminder from the Word, Who perfectly and precisely called us into being, to rise above our petty divisions.  Thus we will see ourselves as most fortunate people, who are, whether by faith, or simple fact, sisters and brothers on a blessed Earth.

Mouth control

Let’s see, we have a re-worked version of Julius Caesar, with the simulation of an assassination involving an actor looking a great deal like the President.

We have a “comic” posing with what is intended to be the decapitated head of the President.

We have a has-been pop singer claiming she has thought about blowing up the White House, where the President lives.

And now we have a shooter, who’d apparently threatened to “destroy Trump & Company”, trying to kill as many Republican representatives as possible.

Is there a correlation?

What about causation?

Perhaps it’s all just an incredibly improbable and extremely sad coincidence.  Sure.

Some will try to score political points by using this latest tragedy to push gun control.

Perhaps we should learn to practice mouth control first.

 

 

 

Kathy Griffin

I didn’t know who Kathy Griffin was before I saw the posed shot with her ostensibly holding a bloodied and severed head of President Donald Trump.

She is now attempting to pose as a victim…

 

Venezuela

I was born in Venezuela, and still hold citizenship there.

For those promoting the Utopian dream of broadly based socialism, check out Venezuela.

It is a sight to behold.

Ann Coulter & UC Berkeley: Linguistic Totalitarianism?

Totalitarianism is a strong word.  Worth looking up.  It’s as sad as it is dangerous.

Ann Coulter has been invited to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, and the threats against her, along with the event, have come rolling in.

Such is the state of play in too many colleges and American centers of higher learning.  The commonplace, thankfully not universal mantra is: scream, destroy, and avoid debate.

Ann Coulter is highly articulate.  That might be an inconvenient truth, but its veracity remains.  That’s why the insecure must attempt to shout her down.

Coulter is an erudite elocutionist, and if educated individuals in pursuit of intellectual advancement cannot hear her views without melting down and mashing free speech, it highlights a much deeper problem.

Setting fires, breaking glass, and rioting as an extra-curricular activity, is the image UC/Berkeley seems hell-bent on putting out to the world.

Really?  Is that OK with the Trustees and wider student body population, not to mention the parents paying dearly to foot the bill?

Some in that institution may shrug and laugh off the antics of those they deem part of the “lunatic fringe”.

But, if my degree had the imprimatur of that institution emblazoned across the top, I’d be very disappointed.

At best.

 

 

Good & Evil

Long, long time ago, it was written:  The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;  but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

This verse in the Book of Genesis may be the most profound exposition of the human predicament ever set down with ink upon paper.  Yes, the increase of knowledge brings with it dynamics of good and evil.

Apparently, knowledge, by itself, is not an automatic happy meal.

Indeed, with increasing automation and artificial intelligence, what will we do when many jobs can easily be done by robots, with humans only required to do, what?

The day is soon coming when our burgeoning intelligence will leave us squarely facing the challenge of remunerating, and also finding a role, for those that smart machines will surely replace.

In other words, our amazing intellect will leave us with an ethical and economic question fundamentally more difficult than any society has ever had the luxury of encountering before.

Simply put, “What if we don’t need to do anything, because, by our increase in knowledge, the need to do something has been eclipsed by the emerging ability to do nothing at all?”

Can we happily sustain a society in which sophisticated computers will rule, without relegating some people to some kind of redundant slag-heap?

I have great confidence in our future, but I am also convinced that finding our future will not be an easy task.  It will be a struggle of ideals, more than technology.

The machines our knowledge has developed will force us to find a good way we can relate to one another as a community of people beyond the laws and principles of commerce.

Thus, while robots make some things easy, with that factor, other enormous challenges may well emerge.

Age of Aquarius

NASA’s Spitzer telescope has discovered a “solar system” related to a star in the constellation we call Aquarius, only 40 light-years from Earth.  Within this system, a few of these so-called “exo-planets” orbit inside the “Goldilocks zone” – a region where it is considered neither too hot or too cold to sustain life.  Thus, with liberal use of the words “could”, “might”, “possibly”, and “perhaps”, the prospect of extraterrestrial being is tendered once again.

For scientists, and actually, for anyone, even the discovery of fossilized bacteria beyond earth would warrant enormous headlines.  To date, outside of terra-firma, not a single cell of such material has been discovered, even on Mars.  This is informative because, relative to our Sun, Mars is well within a radius where an adaptable Goldilocks might choose to enjoy her porridge.

Astronomically speaking, our Martian cousin is incredibly close to our teeming abode.  Yet, to the best of our first hand, long-term, on-site, rover-based knowledge, Mars is stone dead.  Like a door nail.

What this demonstrates anew is that even within a vast Creation, where untold numbers of planets exist, many factors have to be in sync before bacteria can emerge.  Thus, the best scientific awareness we have shows that even the presence of simple microbes cannot be assumed, anywhere.

More profoundly, it means that sentient beings under the stars, who can read and ruminate on missives like this one, may be the rarest thing of all.

Isn’t it funny that some doubt the existence of God, when the real question is, why should God’s existence be any less likely than our own?

Fact is, apart from faith, there’s nothing in the known Universe that says we must be here at all.  Yet, we are.  And we take so much for granted.

What with ISIS, al-Qaida, riots and ghastly acts of war being reported on a daily basis, many of us take a dim view of the human state.  Still, even in its worst expression, humanity may well be the most sophisticated and wonderful thing the Universe has witnessed in 14 billion years.

You want a miracle?  You’re it.  So is your neighbor with the noisy dog and smelly cigars.

Space exploration tops my list of our most important planetary pursuits.  Yet, it’s amazing how in our search for what exists in far distant places, we look straight past the miraculous bounty resting at arm’s length.

God came all the way to us, bringing life in Jesus Christ.

Perhaps there is a dawning of consciousness in Aquarius.  Hopefully that awakening will continue to occur right here at home.

 

Immigration

“Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt…”  — Matthew 2:13

We are a nation of immigrants.  Hailing from Italy and Ireland, my great-grandparents persevered through a rather stringent vetting process on Ellis Island.  In time, my dad would be born in Cuba and I would arrive in Venezuela, where I still hold citizenship.

As it happens, Jesus Christ was also an immigrant.  Considering the classic doctrine, coming from Heaven, He was truly an alien as no other has been, and indeed His parents were caused to flee the little town of Bethlehem to find refuge elsewhere.

Once again, the immigration debate is raging in our country, though, in reality, deportation raids were taking place well before our most recent Presidential election.  It is noteworthy that the last administration made it easier to import Cuban cigars, while turning Cuban refugees away, even if they’ve risked their lives to reach landfall in the United States.

My eldest daughter is intimately familiar with the young lives of those whose parents hail from Mexico, and the fact that many come here to escape a horribly inhumane existence.  Her students believe in us, even when it may not seem we believe in them.  Just last Memorial Day weekend, a gentleman in San Antonio told me if he was to visit his original hometown of Mexico City by car, he’d likely be kidnapped along the way and held for ransom.

So, I am left to consider these questions…

What if we were to treat Mexican immigrants as refugees, with all the reasonable vetting attached to that designation?

Does it make sense to have any immigration law, reformed or not, if we do not have secure borders?

How much has each one of us economically benefited from those who have stepped outside the law to enter our country?

What about the many upstanding foreign nationals legally here in the United States for years, who own homes, pay taxes, have American children, yet they cannot get Green Cards to afford them a permanent stay?

Today, the UN claims there are 60 million refugees world-wide, and, while each one is a beloved child of God, no one nation can harbor and give safe-haven for all.  How do we decide who we are capable of welcoming, and who we must turn away?

The dynamic of migration is as old as the Scriptures and as new as the latest headlines on FOX or CNN.  There are many sides to this ethical polygon, and it does us no good in this country to call names or denigrate the character of those with whom we may disagree.  This national tendency will hopefully not become a permanent habit.

In a sense, as complicated as it is, the immigration challenge is a good one for us to face.  It means people deeply want to come to the United States, and the Unites States continues to represent a heartfelt and abiding respect for all good people.  In these areas, I don’t believe anything has fundamentally changed at all.

In the Church, with Christ as our guide, we can neither be personally callous or politically naive.  No one can lay claim to an easy answer, and a great nation need not take comfort in the absence of facing real challenge.  In our community, with diversity as a gift, I believe each of us needs to continue modeling, wherever we can, what it means to be a faithful person, and thereby, a good American.

Fake news?

Whatever happened to the expectation that journalists and news outlets would report what actually happened, as opposed to the speculation of what might transpire?

Back in college, I recall a national magazine cover posing the question:  “The Depression, What will it be Like?”  At the time, the economy was really foundering, but I wondered if this was news worth reporting, or simply “news” profitable in predicting.  Given how fragile consumer confidence can be, perhaps what had been published would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For quite some time now we’ve been engulfed in a 24 hour, non-stop news-media machine that must be filled so as to avoid blowing hot and dead air.  There are some good things about being able to tune-in to a given outlet for an immediate update on what the current headlines might be.  Still, this is a far cry from consulting various news media that are feeling the pressure to jam each second, or page, with “information” that may not turn out to be factually informative at all.

 

 

 

Taking in certain outlets before the recent Presidential election, it was clear that our current President had no Electoral path to victory at all.  Then the votes were tallied and the facts became blatantly obvious.

Classic journalism might be boring for those who have grown accustomed to daily events being presented as provocative entertainment.

Yet, if simple facts, relative to what has actually taken place in our world, are not readily and reliably available from sources demonstrating some integrity, one wonders who will report that the Fourth Estate has, in fact, become extinct.