LEST WE FORGET

As I type the date, September 11, at the top of my blog draft this morning I almost expect it to morph into some googlish twin tower rememblem. Such is the power of cultural memory and media. For each of us, certain dates invoke images: November 11th (poppies and cenotaphs) and the 22^nd (a black motorcade and a flag-draped casket), July 1^st or 4^th (fireworks and flags), October 31st (jack-o’-lanterns and boisterous children) and September 11^th (two great office towers smoking and collapsing). These are the kinds of things that make us a people, with joys and sorrows we share. They are tokens of cultural exchange, our common bonds, our corporate identity. “Where were you when you heard that Kennedy had been shot?” – It’s interesting that this question almost always refers to John, not Bobby. – And “Where were you when you heard about 9/11?”. The numbers are a coded incantation that conjures up a shared experience of shock, of rage, of sorrow. And the images are more than our life video. They shape us, make us who we are. They draw us into mourning and even into war.

And so, as this date has approached, we have been inundated with news stories and documentaries, reminding us of what we all remember. And many of us will pause today with our cultural and political leaders. We will ponder, or at least appear to ponder. And then we will go on our way, renewed for the coming decade in our commitment to remember to remember.

But regardless what we do the memory will fade, as all memories fade. With each year a year's worth of new babies with be added; people who were nowhere at all when it happened, and will have no idea where they were, or what thy were doing, when they first heard about 9/11. And a year's worth of others will be subtracted; folks who were there and remember it all.

And I believe this is the real lesson of 9/11. We are mortal, each of us and all of us. Every person and people, every nation and empire, every monument and memory is passing away. It’s good to remember for as long as we remember: the Battle of Hastings and the Plains of Abraham, the fall of the Bastille and the Berlin Wall, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But all of these memories will fade in time, and our descendants will move on as did our ancestors.

It’s pride that makes us imagine that we will be different somehow. But, in the end there is only one who is eternal, only one whose memory never fades. At the apex of the British Empire Rudyard Kipling said it well. And at the apex of the American Empire we might do well to ponder his words anew – lest we forget.

Recessional (For Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897)
God of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle line—
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies—
The Captains and the Kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

JACK LAYTON

On Monday, August 22, 2011, Jack Layton died. For the vast majority of Canadians he was not a personal friend but merely a celebrity politician. Indeed, most Canadians did not support his politics, and many actively opposed him. But, for almost two weeks now, he has been lying in state, so to speak. A few, like Ezra Levant of Sun Media, have been unable to endure this truce period, but most have stood by quietly, politely allowing the NDP to enjoy their moment in the sunset.

The first step in becoming a saint is one we all accomplish eventually; we die. And with our passing we enter a period of grace during which people are reluctant to say anything very negative about us. Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the like are exceptions of course, but exceptions that prove the rule. People must have a remarkably low opinion of you before they will withhold this period of grace.

It’s all a bit awkward when applied to an opponent who has regularly been the target of our opprobrium, but that’s okay. This opprobrium free zone allows his or her loved ones to deal with their loss in peace, or to use it for partisan advantage for that matter. And presumably they will accord us the same benefit when our turn comes.

And this is really the point of it all. Our turn does come, because mortality is the thing we share with everyone, friends and enemies alike. The one good thing that can be said about death is that it brings a certain equality and sense of proportion.

Perhaps no one has said it better than John Donne:

"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

These past few days have been, for the most part, a nice break, not from partisanship but from rancour. Soon we will be back to “normal”. But for a while we have recalled our common humanity and how, for good or ill, our allies and opponents, our friends and enemies, are a lot like us.

LIFE RULES

Thanks for your rules of life. I think it’s worthwhile to ponder how we live and what we’re trying to do in this world. Of course, right living is probably far too complicated to be reduced to three rules, though I do like Mary’s suggestion that it might be reducible to one. I suppose that’s what John was getting at when he said “God is love.” (1 John 4:16) Nevertheless, here are my three suggestions:

Be humble. – We human beings are infinitesimally small, live only an instant, and know almost nothing. So it seems only reasonable that we strive to be as modest as possible about everything we think we know. In fact, come to think of it, we may be bigger, live longer, and know more than we think. And that’s one of the really cool things about humility; it allows us to revise.

Be worshipful. – I don’t particularly mean the kind of thing we do in church, though it happens even there on occasion. I mean an attitude to life that springs from humility and issues forth in wonder, gratitude and praise. Whatever we imagine is behind all this, even if nothing at all, existence is amazing. It would be a shame to be here for a lifetime and miss that.

Don’t be afraid. – Fear has its place in the evolutionary scheme of things but, beyond helping us stay around long enough to transfer our genes from our parents to our children, it’s mostly a problem. Fear makes it hard to love and trust, and without love and trust what’s the point? I believe that one of the greatest philosophical and psychological insights ever made happened when the Apostle John talked of love as opposed to fear rather than hate. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear... 1 John 4:18

Fear is a great motivator, which is why it’s a favourite theme of preachers, politicians, and so many who seek to have influence over people. But they are playing with fire. People who are afraid will do the most horrific things. But the best things in the world are done by people who make up their minds to not be afraid.

Supplementary comment:

I was watching an interview with Wendell Berry, a very down-home, humble, Kentucky farmer and philosopher who writes about life and the world around him. Toward the end of the discussion he was asked what he would say if he could sum up everything in a “last word”; similar to what we’ve been doing here I suppose. His response was thoughtful, as all his responses tend to be, and quite consistent, I hope, with the spirit of our discussion.

“I don’t think I know anything that’s reducible to a ‘last word’... What really interests me is the possibility that we humans can make sense... We’ve had two generations of college-bred people now who have been indoctrinated with the idea that every big problem has a big solution. And I just don’t believe it. The big problems we have now are going to be solved, if they ever are solved, by hundreds of people accepting local responsibility for small problems... People who make simple solutions always make trouble, and they’re always surprised by the trouble they make. So, to hell with the last words. Let’s try to make one sentence that’s rightly positioned within a manageable context so that we can utter it to somebody else and they’ll understand it. And we’ll be, then, on the way to defining a job that we can actually do.”

Again, thanks for your thoughts.

MISSED ME AGAIN.

For some time now I’ve been going on about the census form and saying I had no intention of answering all the questions this year. I won’t go over it all, since a few of you expressed a fair amount of weariness with the subject, and one got fed up enough to tell me off in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, I expect a few may be wondering what actually happened when I came to fill out the form. Well, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but nothing at all happened.

When the census came out this year we were in transition from our home in Edmonton to our new home in North Bay. We were visiting with my wife’s sister in Victoria, but on the actual day the form was to be filled out we were away in Parksville. When my sister-in-law filled out the form, because we weren’t actually there, she didn’t include us. So we are numbered among the thousands of Canadians who didn’t get numbered this year.

It’s all pretty anticlimactic, but it does make my point that all the fuss about the long form census this year, and the fear that the data would be compromised, was a lot of political hot air.

The census is of great value, not because it’s a perfect picture of the make-up of the country, but because, as a survey, it is hundreds of orders of magnitude more exhaustive than any other survey of the population. But, in the end, it is an approximation. Misinformation, disinformation and no information are just realities of life in the survey world.

If it bothers anyone that the census was a few ciphers out this year don’t worry about it. Nothing’s perfect. I know a man who has voted in every federal election for decades even though he’s never been a Canadian citizen. He says he’s just covering for one of the thousands of Canadian citizens who fails to vote. For every goofball like me who didn’t get counted someone who shouldn’t have been probably did. And once again we have a picture of the Canadian population that’s approximately perfect. That’s stats.

THREE RULES OF LIFE

A while back I was watching an interview with Jerry Seinfeld. People tend to love him or hate him. Personally I’ve thought he was very funny ever since I first saw him in the early 80s. But my point isn’t really that Seinfeld’s funny, but that he had some interesting things to say in this interview. People who think about things for a living, writer’s and comedians in particular, generally have interesting things to say if you can get them to stop “performing” even a little. Robin Williams interviews are, predictably, a waste of time.

Anyway, Seinfeld was asked about a graduation speech he’d given, and he said he’d tried to come up with three life rules. (Enough Rope with Andrew Denton part 3 – for those of you who are not Seinfeld fans it’s bout 7 minutes in.) His were: (1) bust your ass, (2) pay attention, (3) fall in love.

By “bust your ass” he said he really just meant, whatever you do, do it as hard as you can. In his opinion nothing bad can come of hard work. Sounds good to me but what would I know?

By “pay attention” he meant, just make it a practice to notice what’s going on around you. Similar, I suppose, to what Satchel Paige meant when he said, “It’s amazing what you can see by just looking.”

And by “fall in love” he didn’t particularly mean romantic love, but that capacity to give yourself to a moment; a really fantastic cup of coffee for example. To not be afraid to really love the beautiful things of life, no matter how small they may seem.

I think these are interesting suggestions, but I wonder what your rules might be. Please click on comment and share your three rules of life. Of course, you probably don't have three right now, so just make them up. It's what I'm going to do, but not till a few others have had a chance.