Wandering Elder

It seems strange to me which issues take off and which do not.  Take, for example, the accusations against Harvey Weinstein.  Not that they aren't deserving of being addressed - they absolutely are.  So were those against Bill Cosby.  But why is it that this time the accusations stuck  and the nation seemed to take full notice of this behavior? Yet we didn't follow through with the allegations against the President for misconduct and a variety of other allegations? Or why is it that the Weinstein issue took forefront and the issue of gun control has virtually disappeared?  Or the issue of disaster relief?  Or the fact that social injustice - most notably put to the foreground by the kneeling during the National Anthem - has somehow faded until the next shooting.  Why is it that Weinstein has become the cause célèbre?   I don't know.  I'm not saying anything in defense of Weinstein's alleged behavior.  It sounds reprehen...

Some years ago, I wanted there to be a big shakeup in the political landscape.  I was young, I had only a nascent interest of politics, but I wasn't satisfied with what I was hearing or seeing.  It seemed that things were becoming polarized and that parties weren't doing much more than being obstructionists to the agenda (real or perceived) of the opposing party. Then that became the status quo, with the thing Republicans were for was to be against the Democrats and the thing that the Democrats were for was to be against the Republicans.  And the people who were sending these persons to steer the future of the country mattered less and less. And then we got into wars that haven't ended - that have run the entire lifetime of some high school kids.  Wars that were falsely presented and that have no end in sight.  War became our job as a country, with education being relegated to the back-burner and money seeming to become the only issue of national interest th...

We have become wearied with the tragedies.  We are exhausted by the mental and emotional toll that we are paying with each storm, with each gunshot.  We have to face the fact that as a species, humanity has not learned to prepare for the worst - we believe we have conquered the earth.  Yet the earth keeps reminding us that it can shake us off at any point.  We have yet to face the fact of the symbiotic relationship of humanity to the earth and if we don't take care of our planet, it will likely take care of us. Of course, for some, taking care of the earth is un-biblical.  There is the line of thinking that says that we can trash this planet, because as Revelation indicates, there will be a new  heaven and a new  earth.  That seems to somehow justify fracking, strip-mines, and why disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010 are really not worth the fuss that some would make of spilling oil into the oceans. I do not share that view, I sh...

A good question was asked in response to my last post about the Defenders (maybe I should talk about comic books some more…).  Before I answer it, let me say that I don’t mean to denigrate the Defenders as a b-team comic.  B-team in this particular context just means that they aren’t the most well-known of heroes in the comic universe (here particular to the Marvel Comic universe).  Being on a b-team is still pretty good.  There were some b-teams that brought some relatively obscure people up from the minor leagues, to be sure (I am here thinking of characters like Dr. Druid or Rocket Racoon – talk about coming from obscurity…Rocket was in the old Hulk comics first long before he was a Guardian of the Galaxy.  Speaking of which, a really odd ball cameo in the Guardian movies is that of Howard the Duck, who had a terrible movie back in 1986). There are some c and d listers as well, but sometimes a character like that can be a major player without ever holdin...

Let's change gears for a post. Let's talk about comics. I just finished watching the Netflix series "The Defenders" based on the Marvel Comic series (that should be plural, I suppose!).  It wasn't bad.  It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. Here's why it wasn't bad.  It did a good job at pulling the characters together in a short amount of time and resolving the story line in a short amount of time as well.  In some respects, the series was the vehicle for the next seasons of Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones (and probably Iron Fist, but I will get to that in a minute).  It pulled the stories of these heroes together and provided them with direct knowledge of each other and a (mostly) willingness to work together. The Defenders is a tough comic to bring to the screen, large or small.  That's because the more recent iterations of The Defenders focuses on the idea that it is a non-team, but a name that applies to a particular group who...

The Doppler Effect is this: the change in frequency of a sound (or other event) for an observer based on the movement of either the observer or the source.  Most commonly, this is heard when a vehicle with a siren is heard approaching, beside, passing and receding. It is a phenomenon we all experience, and I think it is an important illustration.  Because the sound and the observer or, I suppose, listener, do not actually change.  Just the change of sound or observation based on position.  But that position changes how we interpret the sound: is it close?  Is it moving away from me?  Is it a threat?  Do I need to move? etc. etc. As someone who has driven a fire engine, I know that the siren sounds the same from start to finish.  But that doesn't mean it sounds the same to everyone else as we encounter them. The same is true for theology.  I have found that, especially as I re-read some old books, that the words on the page haven't chang...

I recently read that some far-right writers are making the claim that Sen. John McCain’s brain tumor is the justice of God on the Senator for not backing the President.  Ok.  For a moment, let’s take the politics out of that barbaric statement.  Is it theologically true ?  To answer that, we have to consider the nature of the claim.  As one person wrote, “I’m pretty sure that God is punishing him.”  Why?  “God made it pretty clear that he supports the New Right now.” Of course, how one proves that God is on the side of the New Right is the challenge.  What most of these claims say, the ones that aren’t so offensive that they stagger the mind, is that God has chosen the President as God’s agent of change, which, in the Bible, is usually described as one who is ‘anointed’ or, in translation, ‘messiah.’ That’s a huge claim for any group to make about a President.  It has been made on behalf of a few presidents here and there, but nev...