Why?

“Why do they stay among the campfires to hear the whistling for the flocks?” Judges 5:16

That was the life that they knew the best and had come to love. They were simple people with a simple lifestyle and derived simple joy from the simple things that they did daily. What more could others ask of them? They had no great ambition or lofty aspiration except the simple desire to shepherd their own flocks and to raise their own families. Some of them might have been highly intelligent and others very creative, but it made very little difference to their lives. Intelligence and creativity didn’t set them apart from the masses. What they did to make a living required no such attributes, therefore rendering whatever they were endowed with worthless.

“Did you know yesterday was the two-year anniversary of your father’s passing away?” my mother asked me over the phone this morning.

“I forgot,” I said to my mom, feeling a little sad about it. My dad’s untimely death two years ago isn’t something that I enjoy thinking about, yet his presence seems to be ever-present in my life. My father was a simple man who tended his ducks and his children the best he could and took his love and concern for his loved ones with him when his time came.

“What difference did it make for my father to grace the earth for seventy-some years?” I ask. Was raising a family the sole purpose of his fleeting existence? Perhaps. What else can we ask from man with a lowly family background and no formal education except to till the land and raise a few children? Such are the things that most people on earth have done and will continue doing before the world comes to an end. So why was a question such as this even raised? “Why do they stay among the campfires to hear the whistling for the flocks?”

There was something soothing about the whistling for the flocks, wasn’t there? It was the end of a long day of roaming the fields searching for green grass and still waters and their reward was a hearty meal and a sweet sleep. I used to follow my dad behind a flock of ducks at sunset after a long day of work, rejoicing at the fact that I would get to eat and play into the night. I remember the twenty-minute cow cart ride home on the narrow dirt road when the sunset was behind our backs and the village ahead of us, bathed in the warmth of an autumn dusk, and there was nothing in my mind but a warm meal and evening rest. I stayed beside the campfire and watched the flocks, for that was the only life I knew, the only life my father and my father’s father knew, a life they had come to enjoy.

Why was this question even asked at all? What else could they have done except the simple things that they did to make a hard living, to keep their children from starving, to make life a little more tolerable that what it was? Perhaps this question would have been moot unless there was threat coming from the north, coming to rob the shepherds of their simple life and simple joy. Perhaps that was exactly what happened that took Deborah from husband and children, and forced many shepherds from their loving wives and glowing hearths.

Change

It’s almost like grasping at straws when I listen to Rush on the radio. I am just trying to glean a straw of hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. The polls don’t look good for the Republicans and the “Messiah” seems to have gotten all the momentum by going on a whirlwind “tour of duty” overseas with an entourage of foreign policy advisers in tow and three anchor men (women) ready to sing his praises. All he has to do is avoid making any blunders in his disjointed speeches and he will be home free. I have tasted a Bush victory twice, but I am afraid a McCain’s defeat appears to be inevitable. We are tempted to blame the President for the impending possible demise of the Republicans in the general election, but I believe history will be kinder to him than most of us. I will take a statesman who is philosophically, ethically, morally, and spiritually grounded than a man of change who appears to be willing to change directions every which way in order to get himself elected. It’s anybody’s guess what drastic changes he will take us through when he assumes power. Isn’t this the perfect time for the second coming when all things will be renewed and all filth purged by the true Messiah?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Don’t these lines by Yeats sound all too familiar when you look around at the world?

Creativity

“They recited the righteous acts of the Lord.”
Judges 5:11

Originality is very important for those people who are in the business of creativity. We strive to see something that has never been seen before and create something that has never been discovered by anyone.

“There is no new thing under the sun,” wrote the author of Ecclesiastes. What we are trying to do is an impossible task, and those of us who claim to have succeeded in their endeavor of finding something entirely new merely deceive themselves. We can only claim that we have create something relatively novel, but not entirely new.

I had no boundaries for my writing when I was a young poet and for me, like most of my peers, composing was a form of searching for something more permanent in a changeable world. I was free to roam in a world of unbridled imagination but often came out empty, for I wasn’t at all certain about the certainty of all the things that I had created through writing.

Nothing makes sense unless we have found an absolute we can use to measure all the discoveries of our senses. “Is he a man; is man he?” This was the beginning line of one of the poems I wrote at age seventeen. I was searching for something as a young man, yet I had no idea that I was searching; I was completely lost, yet thoroughly enjoyed my lostness.

I enjoyed being in a stage of perpetual fluidity because it gave me the thrill of freedom and adventure. There are surprises in every corner when one is lost and the yearning to be found pales compared to the excitement of being lost. There is nothing to be hoped for if hope is finally realized, is there?

“I once was lost, but now am found.” John Newton’s search for home ceased when he was found and, humanly speaking, his life seemed to go downhill, for the slave-trader’s days of thrill-seeking were over. The winding river has left the valleys and hills behind and comes home to the ocean and becomes a mere droplet in an immense sea. There are quickening pulsations in the steady rhythm of the sea that keep us guessing and the thrill of its unpredicted predictability far surpasses the swelling river that breaks all the boundaries and floods the whole fruited plains.

I was becoming a man then, but had no earthly idea into what I was turning. I could have become many things, just like some of my friends. Some became alcoholics and drank themselves to death and others have become scholars who continue to seek something new in a giant pile of ancient documents and data and warm themselves with the dying heat of yesteryear. As for me, I will be content to be a small seashell that year after year keeps on riding the giant waves to the shore and will recite the old stories that I have heard to the ones who place the shell to their listening ears.

Village Life

“Village life in Israel ceased, ceased until I, Deborah arose, arose a mother in Israel.” Judges 4:7

What did the “mother of Israel” care about the most? What was Deborah trying to achieve when she marched against the ferocious Canaanites? She merely wanted to have the “village life” in Israel restored. That was all.

O how peaceful it once was when the village people went out to work in their vineyard early in the morning, when the dew was yet to dry, and to rest in the shade of the olive trees when the sun rose above the distant hills. How pleasant it was when they rested from their labor and watched their children at play, weaving in and out of the olive groves, singing and laughing, not having the slightest care in the world. How comforting it was when they saw smoke rising from the chimneys of their homes at a distance and they hastened along when they smelled a warm meal at their kitchen table waiting for them.

That wasn’t all that much for a man to ask from life, was it? Just a little life with a little joy in a little village. Why was it even considered a luxury at all and why did insolent people constantly try to rob them of their little village life? they wondered.

“Village life in Israel ceased, ceased until I, Deborah arose, arose a mother in Israel.” Mediating on this verse brought tears in my eyes, for I was once a little boy who lived in a little village and enjoyed the little joy that she generously offered, but the dream of living large in a big city took me away from the simple joys of life, and my village life was forever lost.

“Weeds are about to take over your field; why don’t you return?” an ancient Chinese poet asked himself when he was about to resign from his government post and return home to reclaim his field and his old way of life. “I looked at the southern hills with ease while I was picking chrysanthemums underneath the eastern fence.” Doing simple thing such as this was what made Tao give up what most people considered the route to prosperity and fame and become a farmer.

Being a wife and a mother, Deborah had never asked to be a judge over her people or a prophetess with beatific visions and strange dreams, and going to war was the last thing she would choose to do in life. Yet the simple way of life in the village that she loved had been taken away and, against all odds, she was called by the Almighty to do something about it. Brave men of old fought wars out of selfish ambition and aspiration for fame, but common people fought to preserve their simple way of life. Surely such was a small desire that didn’t take much to fulfill or to preserve, but the lifestyle common folks came to love was often disrupted and disturbed by forces out of their control. People often had to fight great wars to preserve their little lives and little joys and, in most cases, lose their little lives to keep their dreams alive.

Even at the moment of peace, the rising tide of this world is drawing nearer and nearer to my village home and my glowing hearth and I am growing weary of trying to stem the rushing current to keep my little village life and myself from getting swamped. How long will I remain standing?

Progression

“I am progressive,” proudly proclaimed Obama in a rally. What does he mean? I ask. All the good things that involve progression, I suppose.

Progression signifies an onward movement from the past to the future, from imperfection to perfection. The basic assumption is the past is bad and the future is good. But I see a problem here. The things of the past are a mixture of good and bad, imperfection and perfection, and what will take place in the future will likely be a mixed bag, just like the past; therefore, progression may also be digression. Besides, as a pragmatist and opportunist who adheres to the philosophy of relativism, it’s absurd to assume that there is a definite perfect destination toward which he is advancing. His primary goal of making such a claim, like most politicians, is to gain power so that he can advance his personal agenda of progression, which, I am afraid, is a misnomer at best. There is no progression without absolutes.

Self-loathing

Future football star!->

None of us likes ourselves entirely. There is always something that we dislike about ourselves. I am not all that comfortable under my own skin. I don’t even like my skin color all that much. I get too dark if I am exposed to the sun just a little bit. William thought I was black when he was a little boy. It’s odd that dark-skinned people would like to be fairer and fair-skinned people would like to be darker. We seem to have difficulty accepting ourselves as who we are and desire to be someone else if we can. The problem is that the someone we would like to be most likely doesn’t like herself either. A lot of movie stars are not that pleased with their looks and have problems with self-esteem and many great athletes seem to feel that they repeatedly need to prove themselves.

Who do you really want to be? Nicole Kidman or Bill Gates? It’s fun to fancy that, but it may not be all that pretty in reality. Kidman may be longing for true love that seems to have eluded her and Gates may have problems with insomnia and an anxiety disorder. I used to feel sorry for the guys who do manual labor for a living, not knowing that those people most likely have a better appetite for food and sleep a lot sounder than I do.

Instead of trying so hard to become someone else or to turn ourselves into a worldly success, we need to work on being the best that we can be. We have to build upon the foundation and structure that has been laid by the Builder. With a 5’ 9’ frame (a little stretched) I can never be a basketball star, but I can still practice my shooting and learn to enjoy the game just the same. Being illiterate in math, trying to become an engineer is going against the grain or swimming against a strong current. It’s better for me to cultivate my natural aptitude for writing and other artistic crafts.

“You cannot couch height.” This is quite a cruel statement, isn’t it? Well, there are plenty of couchable things in short people. In fact, we can surely use our shortness to our advantage and excel to great heights.