Saturday Video

Anything you can do,
I can do better.
I can do anything
Better than you.

No, you can't.
Yes, I can. No, you can't.
Yes, I can. No, you can't.
Yes, I can,
Yes, I can!

Anything you can be
I can be greater.
Sooner or later,
I'm greater than you.

No, you're not. Yes, I am.
No, you're not. Yes, I am.
No, you're NOT!. Yes, I am.
Yes, I am!

I can shoot a partridge
With a single cartridge.
I can get a sparrow
With a bow and arrow.

I can live on bread and cheese.
And only on that?
Yes.
So can a rat!

Any note you can reach
I can go higher.
I can sing anything
Higher than you.
No, you can't. (High)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I CAN! (Highest)

Anything you can buy
I can buy cheaper.
I can buy anything
Cheaper than you.

Fifty cents?
Forty cents! Thirty cents?
Twenty cents! No, you can't!
Yes, I can,
Yes, I can!

Anything you can say
I can say softer.
I can say anything
Softer than you.
No, you can't. (Softly)
Yes, I can. (Softer) No, you can't. (Softer)
Yes, I can. (Softer) No, you can't. (Softer)
Yes, I can. (Softer)
YES, I CAN! (Full volume)

I can drink my liquor
Faster than a flicker.
I can drink it quicker
And get even sicker!

I can open any safe.
Without bein' caught?
Sure.
That's what I thought--
you crook!

Any note you can hold
I can hold longer.
I can hold any note
Longer than you.

No, you can't.
Yes, I can No, you can't.
Yes, I can No, you can't.
Yes, I can
Yes, I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I No, you C-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-N'T--
CA-A-A-A-N! (Cough, cough!)
Yes, you ca-a-a-an!

Anything you can wear
I can wear better.
In what you wear
I'd look better than you.

In my coat?
In your vest! In my shoes?
In your hat! No, you can't!
Yes, I can
Yes, I CAN!

Anything you say
I can say faster.
I can say anything
Faster than you.
No, you can't. (Fast)
Yes, I can. (Faster) No, you can't. (Faster)
Yes, I can. (Faster) Noyoucan't. (Faster)
YesIcan! (Fastest)

I can jump a hurdle.
I can wear a girdle.
I can knit a sweater.
I can fill it better!
I can do most anything!
Can you bake a pie? No.
Neither can I.

Anything you can sing
I can sing sweeter.
I can sing anything
Sweeter than you.
No, you can't. (Sweetly)
Yes, I can. (Sweeter) No, you can't. (Sweeter)
Yes, I can. (Sweeter) No, you can't. (Sweeter)
Yes, I can. (Sweeter) No, you can't, can't, can't (sweeter)
Yes, I can, can, can (Sugary)

Yes, I can! No, you can't!

A Pacifist Memorial Day

For most of us, Memorial Day is a joyous occasion. We may think of idyllic, lazy summer days of childhood, whole months away from school. Our greatest concern might well be the inevitable traffic jams created when large groups of people head for the same destination at the same time. This holiday is intended to commemorate the service and bravery of those Americans who have served in combat. My own religious convictions speak against war. Friends are, as we are taught, to live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars. It forms the basis of the Peace Testimony.

Five years after its original airing, I recently watched the Ken Burns documentary about World War II. It was a particularly memorable experience for me because I saw the stories of my grandparents and great-uncles illustrated by miles of newsreel footage, shaky handheld cameras set up at the front, and succinct commentary. The final conclusion of that series is that the Second World War was a just conflict. The atrocities inflicted and experienced, ghastly as they were, could not have been avoided. While I disagree, I do not let theology blind me to the human realities, especially those inherent in my own family.

My mother's mother had, in many ways, a tragic life. She lost both parents, for all intents and purposes, before she was even a teenager. Her father died unexpectedly when she was ten. Her mother, overburdened by raising four children by herself in the middle of the Depression, was then lost to insanity. My great-grandmother spent the rest of her life in an lunatic asylum. My maternal grandmother was largely raised by three older brothers, each of which dutifully served in combat once the war began.

One served in the European theater. A member of the Army Corps of Engineers, he was one of the first soldiers to come ashore on D-Day. Another hopped from island to island in the Pacific, fighting the Japanese tooth and nail. Beyond my blood relatives, I came to know others who had taken part. A family friend served in the Navy on an aircraft carrier, dodging Japanese kamikaze attacks. An older man I befriended had a front row seat to the horrors of the surprise German counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge. The experience affected him profoundly, as was the case for many American soldiers. He never returned to Europe again, even in peacetime, even as a tourist.

I see now why these servicemen often avoided speaking about their wartime experiences. The trauma, violent visuals, and resulting combined emotional impact drove some men mad. It led others to find their own means of coping with the constant fear of death. Their memories and recollections challenge me to remove the occasion for all war in my own time. I do not expect to find easy solutions to a practice as old as humanity itself. We have, gradually, embraced more civilized ways of resolving conflicts, and in some ways pushed away from the barbarism and carnage of a different epoch.

My dreams and aspirations are yet incomplete. In this country, we know of war now in a very different context. American casualties in recent wars have been minimal compared to those of especially bloody conflicts like World War II. Technology has taken over for boots on the ground, in an effort to minimize casualties. Yet, in many countries across the world, the brutality and slaughter persists, as does the lust for blood revenge. I cannot reconcile within myself that this must be somehow necessary, a means of population control or a consequence of irreconcilable differences.

At times, I admit I do feel disappointed and discouraged. Every time war is declared, pacifist faith groups protest heartily, with words and often out in the streets as part of peace vigils. We are ignored once again, completely marginalized when war fever grips the country once more, our opinion a minority view. I try to take the long view, believing that diplomacy will eventually overtake armed struggle as a means of resolving differences. I concede I may not see it in my lifetime, but I look back across the centuries, and that perspective gives me comfort.  

Health Update

What follows is another in a series of Life With a Chronic Illness.™

Bladder surgery was a success, I am glad to say. I healed up quite nicely and now bear only a small scar on my lower back. The device implanted underneath the skin was placed at a part of my body without much fat to serve as cushioning. This means that I've had to be vigilant about making sure the implanted pacemaker device doesn't shift inside or, worse yet, burst through the skin of my lower back.

Though my condition has improved, I still experiences periods of bladder irritation, which two specific medications and a surgical procedure have never fully corrected. The pacemaker device regulates the electrical signaling between the spine and the bladder by emitting an electric current. Initially set at a low level, I upped the power slightly following surgery. I was warned by the urologist who performed the surgery that I was not to set it too high. Doing so would jeopardize battery life. The battery is supposed to last five years, after which a brand new one will be inserted in similar fashion.

I've begun my typical early summer depressive episode. Fortunately, up to now, it has been mild. People with bipolar are often sensitive to shifts in season. It's been postulated that increased or deceased sunlight is the culprit. I find myself more likely to be manic in the wintertime and depressed in the summer. Accordingly, I've increased my Lithium dosage and will up the level of an augmenting antidepressant as needed. Around this time of year, I find myself holding my breath a little wondering what to expect next. If only depression were more predictable and easier to treat.

The endocrine disorder has been the most problematic condition of all in the past several days. It is a difficult balancing act to make sure my body doesn't transform testosterone into estradiol. Every biological man has some estrogen present within his system. Too much of it, however, is a problem. In my case, high estradiol makes me physically tired and weak. This imbalance can be addressed with aromatase inhibitors, originally designed to stop breast cancer in biological women, but specialists are reluctant to prescribe it for men. For some reason, my body produces more Estrogen than is average, a fact that does not especially surprise me.

Only bloodwork can determine my precise hormonal levels. In a couple of weeks, it will be time again to have testosterone and estradiol checked, along with thyroid. Speaking of thyroid, I've been on Synthroid for three months. My thyroid levels were too low, so now I take a pill in the morning to make up the difference. In addition to other less interesting side effects, my fingernail and toenails now grow twice as fast. The same is true for the hair on my head.

If I take too much time to fixate upon everything that must be researched, completed, and swallowed, I begin to feel overwhelmed. This is why I try to live in the moment as best I can. My problems are not unique only to me. Regularly, I speak to people whose symptoms are worse than my own. The biggest concern for me is the early onset of these problems. I'm still in my early thirties and worry that the intensity of my medical problems will eventually overwhelm me completely.

Are the Gospels Mythical?

The article from which I have pulled excerpts is very lengthy and also very dense. Should you wish to read it, take it in slowly. The article can be accessed in full here. I've included some of the main ideas below. The author is René Girard.

From the earliest days of Christianity, the Gospels' resemblance to certain myths has been used as an argument against Christian faith. When pagan apologists for the official pantheism of the Roman empire denied that the death-and-resurrection myth of Jesus differed in any significant way from the myths of Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, Attis, etc., they failed to stem the rising Christian tide.

In the last two hundred years, however, as anthropologists have discovered all over the world foundational myths that similarly resemble Jesus' Passion and Resurrection, the notion of Christianity as a myth seems at last to have taken hold—even among Christian believers.

Beginning with some violent cosmic or social crisis, and culminating in the suffering of a mysterious victim (often at the hands of a furious mob), all these myths conclude with the triumphal return of the sufferer, thereby revealed as a divinity. The evangelists see something very simple and fundamental that we ourselves should see. As soon as we become reconciled to the similarities between violence in the Bible and myths, we can understand how the Bible is not mythical—how the reaction to violence recorded in the Bible radically differs from the reaction recorded in myth.

This counterforce is, I believe, the mythological scapegoat—the sacrificial victim of myth. When scandals proliferate, human beings become so obsessed with their rivals that they lose sight of the objects for which they compete and begin to focus angrily on one another.

Peter spectacularly illustrates this mimetic contagion. When surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, he imitates their hostility. He obeys the same mimetic force, ultimately, as Pilate and Herod. Even the thieves crucified with Jesus obey that force and feel compelled to join the crowd. And yet, I think, the Gospels do not seek to stigmatize Peter, or the thieves, or the crowd as a whole, or the Jews as a people, but to reveal the enormous power of mimetic contagion—a revelation valid for the entire chain of murders stretching from the Passion back to “the foundation of the world.” The Gospels have an immensely powerful reason for their constant reference to these murders, and it concerns two essential and yet strangely neglected words, skandalon and Satan.

The traditional English translation of stumbling block is far superior to timid recent translations, for the Greek skandalon designates an unavoidable obstacle that somehow becomes more attractive (as well as repulsive) each time we stumble against it. The first time Jesus predicts his violent death (Matthew 16:21-23), his resignation appalls Peter, who tries to instill some worldly ambition in his master: Instead of imitating Jesus, Peter wants Jesus to imitate him. If two friends imitate each other's desire, they both desire the same object.

And if they cannot share this object, they will compete for it, each becoming simultaneously a model and an obstacle to the other. The competing desires intensify as model and obstacle reinforce each other, and an escalation of mimetic rivalry follows; admiration gives way to indignation, jealousy, envy, hatred, and, at last, violence and vengeance. Had Jesus imitated Peter's ambition, the two thereby would have begun competing for the leadership of some politicized “Jesus movement.” Sensing the danger, Jesus vehemently interrupts Peter: “Get behind me, Satan, you are a skandalon to me.”

If we choose Jesus as our model, we simultaneously choose his own model, God the Father. Having no appropriative desire, Jesus proclaims the possibility of freedom from scandal. But if we choose possessive models we find ourselves in endless scandals, for our real model is Satan. A seductive tempter who suggests to us the desires most likely to generate rivalries, Satan prevents us from reaching whatever he simultaneously incites us to desire. He turns into a diabolos (another word that designates the obstacle/model of mimetic rivalry). Satan is skandalon personified, as Jesus makes explicit in his rebuke of Peter.

We hear nowadays that, behind every text and every event, there are an infinite number of interpretations, all more or less equivalent. Mimetic victimization makes the absurdity of this view manifest. Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self- deception we call mythology. Instead of blaming victimization on the victims, the Gospels blame it on the victimizers. What the myths systematically hide, the Bible reveals.

Summertime

This seems seasonal enough.



It's summertime and the living is easy
The fish are jumping and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich and your mama's good looking
Won't you hush, pretty baby, don't you cry

One of these mornings you're going to wake up singing
Then you're going to spread your wings and take to the sky
But 'till that morning ain't nothing, nothing going to harm you
With your mommy and daddy there standing by

It's summertime and the living is easy
Fish are jumping and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich and your mama's good looking
Won't you hush, pretty baby, don't you cry

Confronting Mental Illness

Today, I meet with a representative of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The nature of my visit is to see what resources they, as an organization, can share with us, the Meeting. A previously established program of theirs exists to educate houses of worship on these sorts of issues. The unique particulars of unprogrammed Quaker Worship and our ways of doing things must first be taken into account. The existing curriculum will need to be modified.

In a nutshell, here lies the problem. A very vocal minority of our regular attenders and members suffer from severe mental illness. Often they refuse to take medication, despite the fact that seeking treatment would help them substantially. Due to their illness, they routinely act out in a multitude of ways, most of which we have learned to anticipate over the years.

One Friend is perpetually rude and turns Worship into a private soapbox. Another hijacked a committee meeting to harangue Friends about an entirely nonsensical concern. This Friend alternates between deference and respect to accusatory and confrontational behavior. A third refuses to bathe regularly, assuring that others will sit as far away from him as possible. These are only the worst offenders, the ones whose mental illness shows as plainly as an eye of the face.

In the midst of these are Friends whose behavior and general conduct is often erratic. Often, they have never sought formal diagnosis and treatment for reasons entirely their own. Instead, they suffer alone, and the rest of the Meeting takes silent count of their eccentricities and trigger points. The outgoing clerk of the committee I have recently taken under my care noted that, to her, "all Quakers are a little nuts." I'm not entirely sure I agree with her conclusions, but I do respect her insight.

These problems are not limited to one Quaker Meeting or one city on the map. The mentally ill continue to be some of the most stigmatized members of society. Often, they find the Religious Society of Friends out of a desperate desire to belong to and be accepted by anyone. Routinely, they are the most diligent in learning our terminology and ways of doing things, memorizing routine, the most obscure bits of procedure. They would be model Friends, if their periods of acute illness did not create friction and hostility among those with whom they worship.

My committee routinely oversees behavior problems, ones where the usual suspects are to blame. One fire is put out only to have a new blaze rage in its place. Quakers are uneasily confrontational in the best of circumstances. What is meant to be love, patience, and tolerance becomes instead enabling and co-dependent. Established stable and successful precedent, in this context, can be safely deemed an unqualified failure.

I want to educate the Meeting, to find healthier solutions for everyone, mentally ill or not. As I've disclosed several times publicly before, I have bipolar disorder. What has saved me from the same fate as the Friends I've pointed out earlier in this post is my willingness to seek medical help. I take nine different medications a day, and five of them are exclusively for psychiatric medical conditions. Though I experience a few hiccups here and there, I can carry on a largely normal life with only a few impediments standing in my way.

That is to say, I know the potential for greater health that exists. And, if I wish to pull up those painful memories, I know what it's like to be held at arm's length for being mentally ill. As I observe the vocal ministry and behavior of some Friends, I see a partially deformed image of the predominant cultural mindset staring back at me. They want to be activists, proclaiming the grave seriousness of their chosen cause. Mostly, they want to be heard and taken seriously, but their illness removes any veracity and authority they might have otherwise sought.

Action is what is needed now. We have hesitated long enough and if delay were sufficient in and of itself, we would have surely found a solution by now. We need to reexamine ourselves and our priorities. We have the means and the wherewithal, but we cannot justify or allow dysfunction any longer. We may not have created this mess, but we're the only ones who can clean it up.

Quote of the Week

"Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen can passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath."- William Shakespeare

Saturday Video

Pull the string and I'll wink at you,
I'm your puppet
I'll do funny things if you want me to,
I'm your puppet

I'm yours to have and to hold
Darling, you've got full control of your puppet

Pull another string and I'll kiss your lips,
I'm your puppet
Snap your finger and I'll turn you some flips,
I'm your puppet

Your every wish is my command
All you gotta do is wiggle your little hand
I'm your puppet, I'm your puppet

I'm just a toy, just a funny boy
That makes you laugh when you're blue

I'll be wonderful, do just what I'm told
I'll do anything for you
I'm your puppet, I'm your puppet

Pull them little strings
and I'll sing you a song, I'm your puppet
Make me do right or make me do wrong,
I'm your puppet

Treat me good and I'll do anything
I'm just a puppet
and you hold my string, I'm your puppet

Walking, talking, living, loving puppet
I'm hanging on a string, I'll do anything now

I'm a walking, talking, living, loving puppet,
and I love you