Mourning, In A Season of Thanks

Baby Candace with Daddy Sam, Winter 1978

For most, Thanksgiving is a holiday full of rich memories of family and friends, while, for many, this time of year is but the beginning of a dark season of despair.

Reasons offered for this general tendency are varied, some researchers cite the increased pressures or unfulfilled expectations of the holiday season, combined with a sudden and dramatic propensity for increased festivities or indulgence.

Maybe it’s a turnabout on the old adage: “You can’t appreciate the sweet without the sour,” that too much of the “sweet” makes the slightest amount of “sour” that much more unbearable.

Wife, the Universe, & Everything…

Upon this day, in the year of our LORD 1978, my sweet wife Candace Rae Daniels Prosser was born in suburban Dallas. Today is her thirty-first birthday.

We’ve been a couple since the spring months of 1996 and were married during the summer three years later, so I’ve been a participant in no less than thirteen of her birthdays.

As I reflect upon each of these observances my thoughts become episodic, replaying the good times and bad…  as is the course of a marriage. While I can honestly say that I’ve never forgotten my wife’s birthday, I have certainly made my share of blunders.

Such is the due process of a marriage over a span of time, an interwoven tapestry of tranquility and strife.

When I think about those two selfish and headstrong people that said “I do” in a little white church ten years ago, I am awestruck by how far we have come as husband and wife.

Together we have weathered the untimely death of her father and the births of our four living children (with the loss of another one in-between), we have moved thousands of miles and held a number of jobs, we have fought bitterly and forgiven each other countless times. A marriage is nothing if not a labor of love.

“…a Time for War, a Time for Peace…”

Veterans Day, also called Armistice Day (or Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth), is today.

This day marks the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, in the year of our LORD 1918, when the world celebrated the signing of an armistice that brought an end to a war which was supposed to have been “the war to end all wars” World War I.

I recall once reading a quote from an English historian named Charles A. Repington who wrote, with no shortage of acerbic wit: “We mutually agreed to call it ‘The First World War’ in order to prevent the millennium folk from forgetting that the history of the world was the history of war.”

As a passionate student of human history, as well as someone who seeks to understand from where our civilization has come and to where it is going, I cannot help but to stop and deeply reflect upon the significance of this day.

In many ways, World War I is a line of demarcation between two distinct eras of military history, but I believe there is also a divide culturally between that more agrarian-based Age and our current post-industrial civilization.

Because of the “Great War” new nations emerged and new national identities with them. Old empires and socio-political ideologies crumbled under the oppressive weight of utter irrelevance. Advances in technology burst forth, forcing the outmoded tactics of warfare to take on a new and even more horrifying form.

Give a man a grain of sand, and he will find a way to make it cause Cancer.

No Problem With Evil

An old friend of mine (I’ll call him “José”) was in town recently, having had some business to attend to at the county courthouse, and he invited me to lunch.

Initially, I resisted. The middle part of the afternoon is my favorite time to work, as the office is a bit quieter during this time than it is during the frenetic mornings.

However, my friend was apparently aware of my inability to refuse a free meal. When he offered to pay, I had to grudgingly accept his invitation.

José works in law and possesses a keen mind with a talent for logical deduction. It sorts well with his choice of vocation.

Truth in a season of lies…

Another Hallowe’en is imminent, a time of year when children dress up as fictional or fantasy characters in order to acquire a plastic bag filled with candy. Small favors, indeed.

For an occurrence which traces its origins to a vague syncretistic fusion of the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain and the Roman Catholic holy day of All Hallow’s Eve, our modern custom bears little resemblance to either the sacred or the profane.

However, much like religion itself, Hallowe’en is rife with innumerate legends and mythos pervading its observance.

A Harsh Word Stirs Up Anger

I was reading The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald last night and I came across a passage which read: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
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Reading this line, I smiled and read it again, savoring the words.
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Given the context of this line in this collection of Fitzgerald’s essays, which are reputed to be something of a “downer” in literary circles, I should have taken these words as being more of a cynical aphorism than a motivational or inspiring quote.

A parallel sort of statement has been long attributed to that philosopher from antiquity Aristotle, though I have as yet been unable to find it in any of his works: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

In considering the implications of this idea, my mind quickly turned towards the issues of my own day. Not only those of national politics but also those found in the intimate thoroughfares of home, church, and the workplace.

GOD is in the Details

There is an old German proverb which states, “Der Teufel steckt im Detail,” which translates as the English idiom: “the devil’s in the details.”

What we mean, of course, is that certain particulars or fine points of minutiae can oftentimes come back to haunt us if they are overlooked.

This idea that in a chaotic universe, even the most ordered endeavor is soon to fall into disarray.

I suppose there is a certain earthy and homespun wisdom to this but I have to admit, on the whole, I don’t buy it.
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Sure, I concede that man is capable of as much atrocity as he has imagination but I am not willing to supplant the beauty and wonder that surrounds all of creation, with the perverse belief that an utter uncertainty pervades human existence.

In the Psalms, King David writes: “The heavens declare the glory of GOD and the sky above proclaims His handiwork,” and the Apostle Paul writes to the Colossian church that in Him all things are held together.

This is what I see in the details.

In Defense of Reading

A friend of mine recently asked me to recommend a good book for his children that would, in his words: “make them love reading.”

I responded that if his children, who are already well into their teens, do not yet appreciate the inexhaustible treasure that is the written word, then it is probably too late for them.

“Set your sights a bit lower,” I said to him.

“If you can bring them to a point where they can at least see a practical value in developing good reading habits, such as for college or career advancement, you will have won a great victory.”

I could tell he was disappointed and I did not intend to utterly discourage him, but, as I have worked and dwelt within the realms of public/private education and academia (as well as a lifelong student of humanity), it is my own experience that a person possesses an appreciation or discipline for reading in the same way that some are able to maintain a certain physical fitness through the ebb and flow of life.

That is, a person reads well and reads often because they like to read. A person reads well and reads often because they like what reading brings to them.

Why I Work

Every single day the first thing my eldest son tells me when I come home from work is: “I missed you!”

He says it just like that, with an exclamation point. He says it like he hasn’t seen me in years.

As endearing and loving as this sincere gesture of my son is to me, it’s probably the hardest part of my day.
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Right now I am writing my column for the week, only minutes before its deadline, and I am dreading arriving home to my little house.

I am dreading the loving embrace of my family, and the sweet tenders of their affection.

Of course, my apprehension is not due to some absurd loathing of my precious ones but due to the inevitable question that arises when I realize that I have been away from them for nearly ten hours: “Why am I doing this?”

Homecoming

Last night my family and I braved the elements in order to observe our local high school wage gridiron battle with that of another rural East Texas community. It was the first time I had been back in my hometown for a Homecoming game in many years, and it was a surreal experience.

To begin with, the difference in context is vast. If memory is to be trusted, the last homecoming game I attended was within a couple years of my graduation, more than a decade ago. I remember how I inwardly scoffed at this provincial fête with all of its earnest self-importance and small-town pageantry.

A hard-line atheist with the clichéd anarchistic leanings of post-adolescence, I rolled my eyes at the invocation and even yawned during the national anthem. Such is the distinct privilege of being an ungrateful youth.

During the game, I’m sure I was standing along the gates with every other “has-been” and “never-was” complaining about everything that was occurring on the field, thumping our chests about how hard we had it or how great we were “in our day” and how our deeds will always overshadow those who dare to come after.
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